Maine and Maryland approve same-sex marriage by popular vote

The president of the USA is still on the job today, but that isn't what I want to talk about. There are also lots of other votes going on during an election day in the USA, including electing the Senate, the House of Representatives and lastly various laws that need to be approved in state by state votes.

For example:

Maine and Maryland has approved same-sex marriage by popular vote.

Maine and Maryland have become the seventh and eighth states to allow same-sex couples to marry. Some states also allow "civil unions" but it just isn't the same as being "married".

In another gay-rights victory, Minnesota voters defeated a proposed constitutional amendment that would banned same-sex marriage in the state. So that isn't happening, thankfully, which basically means that gay marriage is still legal in Minnesota.

Washington state also voted on a measure to legalize same-sex marriage, though results were not expected until later today.

The outcomes of the marriage votes could influence the U.S. Supreme Court, which will soon consider whether to take up cases challenging the law that denies federal recognition to same-sex marriages, which means the USA could end up allowing same-sex marriages on a federal level (which it already de facto does, because people can just go and get married in a state which allows gay marriages, and that marriage will be recognized when it comes time to pay federal taxes).

Below is a map I found and modified to represent the new changes thanks to last night's historic votes.

Lesbians with Kids

Ketchup on Ice Cream is a Matter of Taste

Feel free to share this. :)

"If someone asks you "Do you like ketchup on your ice cream?" and you say "No." are you basing that negative reaction on experience, morality or taste? You haven't tried ketchup on your ice cream, so you can't claim its a matter of experience. You don't have any moral reasons against someone else having ketchup on their ice cream, so it isn't morality. So it really comes down to taste. The same thing goes with homosexuality. Its a matter of taste. There is nothing immoral about it."

- Suzanne MacNevin

The Truth about Postfeminism

ENTERTAINMENT - Today someone asked me what my favourite feminist book was, which one I would recommend... and I immediately thought back to university and a book I found in a bookstore...

INTRODUCING POSTFEMINISM

It wasn't one of those dry, boring reads.

It was funny. It was informative. It was full of information and facts, history and a distinct look at what postfeminism is.

WHAT IS POSTFEMINISM?

Put plainly, postfeminism is about choice.

Examples:

#1. The choice between having a child or not having having one.

#2. Having a career vs being a gold-digger (or being homeless and jobless).

#3. Getting married or not getting married.

#4. Enjoying sex and exploring your sexuality vs being a prude.

Life is all about choices. Postfeminism supports the idea that women without choice are slaves to whatever society tells them to be. Thus in order to break free women need to choose for themselves what they want to do.

Nobody is forcing them to choose, but bad situations will often cause people to make difficult choices.

ie. You have 2 kids already and you're a single mother. You get pregnant and you don't think you can afford a third child. You might not believe in having abortions, but you and your 2 kids can't afford to have another mouth to feed. Does the woman stand by her beliefs and risk becoming homeless or does she opt for the practical approach for the safety of her existing children?

It may not even seem like she has much choice sometimes. It happens.

ie. A teenager with very conservative Christian parents gets pregnant. She is too afraid to tell her parents and too young to go to an abortion clinic without a guardian (some countries require parental approval if the teen is considered too young). She becomes paranoid her parents will disown her or maybe even kill her if she tells them she is with child. Does she tell her parents? Does she run away and have it anyway? Does she have an abortion using a coathanger?

So many options. Each a hard decision.

ie. A young woman gets raped by her boss. Does she tell her friends? Does she tell the police? Does she press charges? Does she quit her job or does she keep working under such stressful conditions, putting her in a position where she might get raped again? Does she sue his ass for mental and physical anguish? Is she able to move on and eventually find happiness or will she eventually become androphobic?

The importance of choice and freedom of choice thus becomes abundantly clear. Each of these choices has to be equally supported by family, loved ones and society. Not necessarily approved of because some people will doubtless disagree, but the woman's right to make her own choices is fundamental to her freedom as a human being.

Women, regardless of what decisions they make, need societal support for those decisions. If they choose one thing over another society should not be ridiculing such women. They're victims of circumstance.

We should not be blaming the victims. We need to be helping them. (Of course some people will choose to blame the victims, and that is their right, but one can hope that most people would be kind, compassionate and understanding enough that they would recognize that sometimes people get into bad situations and when in bad situations they often just follow their heart.)

Lets take myself. I am currently shopping for sperm because I want to have a child. I suppose I could just find myself a willing male participant, but I don't want any daddy with legal issues coming back to haunt me.

I've made a choice that I want to have a child. I've also made a choice that I don't want there to be a father. The closest thing to a father will be my girlfriend (who may eventually become my wife).

And to those of you out there who don't think two lesbians can raise a kid, I recommend you watch this video:

The Truth about Details

RELIGION/SEX - What does religion have to do with men's magazine "Details"? Well, I'll tell you at the bottom of the article.

Not like it really matters. The content of Details magazine was always a bunch of macho bullshit anyway. Here is list of sample articles listed in Details magazine (Jan/2010):

How Internet Porn is Changing Teen Sex

The Five Creepiest Substitutes For a Woman

Meet the Man Who Has Slept With More Than 600 Women

Should You Get a Sex Coach?

Robot girlfriend ushers in a new dawn in "solo" sex

In the January 2010 issue there is an article called "The Lure of Dating an Ex-Lesbian", which we have quoted below (complete with images):

Certain female archetypes capture men's sexual imagination because they represent that elusive thing men can't have. Among them: the porn star (for obvious reasons), the nun (for obvious, more disturbing reasons), and the lesbian. For Dudus Americanus, this last image tends to conjure up the predictable girl-on-girl fantasies that have consumed him since he first stumbled upon Dad's secret stash of Oui magazines. But what about the guys who manage to break through? Is landing a woman who once found gratification in her own sex really a cause for celebration—or something more like trepidation?

Paul Mattingly, a 34-year-old actor, was doing "Klingon work" at Star Trek: The Experience in the Las Vegas Hilton when he met Anne, the pretty young manager of the attraction's gift shops. He chatted her up at a party (out of costume) and found out she'd dated a few other guys at the Experience, which didn't bother him. But after he and Anne became serious, he learned she'd been romantically involved with a woman for years.

"There was a minute there where I had a little Ben Affleck Chasing Amy moment," says Mattingly. "It was this feeling of 'Clearly, this person has out-experienced me—is that going to come back and bite me in the butt?'" Five years later, it has not; in fact, the two have been married since 2007. And while Anne admits she will probably always be attracted to women, he isn't worried. After all, the Mattinglys now have celebrity analogues. After three years as one half of the most famous lesbian couple ever, Anne Heche ran off with Ellen DeGeneres' very vagina-less cameraman Coley Laffoon. When she split with him, she didn't seek comfort in the arms of someone of her own gender—but instead shacked up with Men in Trees stud James Tupper. Even Ani DiFranco, folk guitarist, feminist icon, and prominent bisexual, just hitched up with a man for the second time last January—in freaking Hawaii. And Lindsay Lohan—well, these days it's safe to say Firecrotch will take whatever she can get.

There are no reliable statistics by which to gauge how many refugees there are from the isle of Lesbos. Nor could there be: Bisexual women, for instance, don't have to "switch teams" to enter into relationships with men, even if they've lived with other women for decades. But if the hasbian (and for simplicity's sake, we'll include bisexuals who've shifted from women to men) really is having a coming-out moment, it might be because the lesbian had her big coming-out moment in the nineties—the decade that saw Cindy Crawford shaving k.d. lang on the cover of Vanity Fair, the birth of Lilith Fair, and the mainstream popularity of lesbian-friendly folksingers like DiFranco, the Indigo Girls, and Dar Williams, not to mention a slew of literal "coming-out moments" set off by Ellen's "Yep, I'm gay" in 1997. Today, The L Word has come and gone, Katy Perry has qualified her confession about kissing a girl with "I hope my boyfriend don't mind it," and the tabloids are far more preoccupied with LiLo's dropout antics than with her sexuality—just as we are more compelled by Rachel Maddow's intelligence than by her orientation. It's safe to say the novelty has faded. A woman who began her sexual exploration in the lesbian-leaning nineties would be in her thirties now. Is it unreasonable to suggest her biological clock could also affect her sexual proclivities?

"It's impossible for women reaching their child-rearing years not to be aware of that at some level, and to have that influence who they're with," says Dr. Lisa M. Diamond, an associate professor of psychology and gender studies at the University of Utah and the author of Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women's Love and Desire. "I've seen bisexual women who say they could go either way, but as they get older, that structures how they want to be and who they want as a partner. The standard first question, Mattingly says, is "Aren't you afraid she'll go back to dating women?" "Continued change is really the norm," says Diamond. "We have this notion that as people get older, things stabilize. Not so. Meredith Baxter just came out at 62."

Benji Friehling, 26, a restaurateur in upstate New York, had another concern when he started dating his fiancee, who had been in a 12-year relationship with a woman and identified fully as lesbian: Could he possibly navigate the female anatomy as skillfully as a woman? Those concerns weren't limited to the usual matters of clitoral mastery and G-spot triangulation. "I worried that perhaps I was a bit inadequate," says Friehling, "that my penis wasn't as big as her dildo." This sort of fear raises a question about that whole adolescent obsession with girl-on-girl action. Though these guys may be in a better position than the rest of us to act on it, none, including Friehling, has any interest in actually following through—not because they're worried their wives and girlfriends will revert, but because they fear that they themselves won't be able to handle it. And that might be the greatest irony of dating a hasbian: In the end, we're the ones who lack the balls to explore our sexual margins.

"Of course I think about it. What man wouldn't?" Mattingly says. "But my wife's argument is that I wouldn't be able to emotionally survive it because I'm the one hung up on the 'sex is love' thing. She knows enough to know that it'd probably end in tears—and I'd be the one who's crying. She's the one who wears the pants." Anne Heche's rugged-looking new beau, Tupper? He enjoys bird-watching. After high school, he lived on a coffee farm in East Africa where he studied Swahili, and he has since appeared in several Off Broadway plays—not the resume of a dude who opens MGD with his molars and whacks off to Coochie Hoochies 2. It is hardly a stretch, then, to suggest that the reason modern men are more ably attracting hasbians is that modern men are, quite simply, offering these women something close to what they had before. Just look at Tom Cole, a pastoral-care director at International House of Prayer in Kansas City. Without a healthy exploration of his feminine side, he probably wouldn't have met his wife, Donna—who like Tom identifies as a "former homosexual." Before the two met years ago at church meetings for born-again Christians, Donna was in a lesbian rugby league. "They didn't even wear pads or anything," Cole recalls. "She had a tattoo and she drove a motorcycle." Since then, Cole notes, Donna has "softened up," and he's learned that the right woman can get him "extremely aroused." But a few aspects of their former selves never changed. "She doesn't love to cook, that's for sure," says Cole. "But I do, so it works out really well."

So according to Details magazine...

Lesbianism was just a fad from the 1990s.

There is a mass exodus of lesbians back to being straight.

Lesbians need a man to have babies.

And WTF is up with the photo of a woman sucking a banana?

Okay now here is the truth of it... Details magazine has been hiring a lot of Christians (or born again Christians) on their staff in recent years, including former American evangelical preacher. Try reading the above article and look for hidden messages that sound remarkably similar to the same crap being spouted by right wing Christians who obsessed with trying to convert homosexuals.

Conclusions? Even men's magazines have a dual purpose, to convert people to the Christian right-wing way of thinking: Lesbians and gays are evil! We must convert them into born again Christians!

Details my ass.

Lesbians Attacked in Hate Crime

A lesbian couple in Oshawa were brutally assaulted in front of their six-year-old son and his classmates on November 3rd by a stranger. Mark Scott, 43, also of Oshawa has been charged with two counts of assault causing bodily harm. He was released and is scheduled to appear in court on Dec 16. Police are also deciding whether to charge him with a hate crime.

CANADA - Anji Dimitriou and Jane Currie were picking up their three children up from Gordon B Attersley Elementary School when a fellow parent attacked them.

Currie says they had just parked their truck and Dimitriou had gotten out when she saw Mark Scott — who has verbally harassed them in the past — approaching.

"Out of the corner of my eye I saw this man whom we've had run-ins with in the past. He made a beeline straight for Anji. I can see him getting him angrier and angrier. He said to Anji, 'Which of you two men spoke to my kid? Fucking dyke lesbians.' I jump out and just as I come around he spits right in her face. She wiped the spit off and he punched her in the face and hit her again in the back of the head."

"She was yelling obscenities and another father tried to shoulder him out of the way. Then he smacks me. My cheek burst with the force of the impact. He's about 6'4" or 6'5" and 250 pounds and we're both about 5'2". His fist was probably half the size of my head."

"My face was bleeding profusely everywhere. All these children who had just finished school had to see all this blood. They were screaming, including my own son who was up close and personal. They were devastated, hysterical. His own child saw this."

Currie says their two daughters, ages six and seven, came out in time to see their parents' bloody faces. "They were terrified. They didn't know where to go."

Currie says Mark Scott was collecting his children and preparing to leave when the principal came out and told him to wait in her office until the police arrived.

"He said, 'Fine.' He didn't think he had done anything wrong."

Currie says she and Dimitriou were taken to the hospital and the man was arrested by Durham Regional police based on eyewitness testimony from teachers, students and parents present. "But the worst is the mental side and the children. We took them to see a therapist on the Wednesday."

"We have to show them every night how the alarm will go off," she says. "We went to Zellers and they didn't want to get out of the truck. 'What if he's in Zellers?' they asked. 'What if he comes back to the school and comes after us?'"

Dimitriou says the assault has also been devastating for other children at the school and parents. "The principal says he's done more damage than just beating us," she says. "Parents and students are terrified."

The Oshawa school has placed Mark Scott under a no-trespass order which requires him to stay 200 metres away from the school. The police have also obtained an order requiring him to stay 500 metres from Dimitriou and Currie.

Dimitriou says she and Currie have each had a previous encounter with the man, in which he has blocked their access to a parking spot and called them "fucking dykes." She says the man has also been verbally abusive to other parents, but that everybody has let it slide.

"Teachers know about him," she says. "Nobody wants to talk to him because he's a psycho. This is a town of soccer moms and nobody wants to open their mouths."

Sgt Paul McCurbin, the media relations officer for Durham regional police, says the police will ask the Crown attorney to approach the case as a hate crime.

"If the evidence shows that the only reason these two ladies were attacked was because of their gender or sexual orientation that evidence will come forward," he says. "We don't appreciate anybody being assaulted in our community. The police did what they're supposed to do, we arrested the bad guy."

But area residents say the police have been useless in helping to stop homophobic incidents in Durham region.

"My partner and I actually had to sell our house because we were being discriminated against so much," says Udana Muldoon, the chair of Durham Queer Parenting. "We had poo thrown at our house, water in our gas tank, we were called names all the time. The police officers said, 'If it's such a big deal, you should probably stay in your backyard."

Muldoon says she, her partner and their three-year-old are moving from Oshawa to a smaller town on the outskirts.

Peter Richtig, the executive director of the AIDS Committee of Durham Region, says the assault is not isolated. He says there have been homophobic assaults in the past.

"There have been other incidents, some even more violent. We have clients who have been forced to move out of the region, who have lost their housing after they were outed. Some have been outed by the police, some have ended up in psychiatric wards because of psychological harassment."

"Because of situations like this people are very closeted. They're afraid to be out."

"I'm angry," she says. "I just moved up here two years ago. I lived in Toronto my whole life. I never had anybody call me a dyke or make remarks to my children."

She says the couple is considering a civil suit against Mark Scott.

About Lesbianism and Feminism:

Lesbianism and Feminism

The Woman Identified Woman

1970s Lesbian Feminism

Big Dyke on Campus

Is Gay the new Black?

UNITED STATES - Now that America has elected Barack Obama President, who happens to be an African American, many believe we’re well on our way to moving past the struggles of the civil rights era. It appears the egalitarian democratic republic our Constitution hoped we would someday become has arrived.

Except it hasn’t.

Across the nation homosexuals (and single parents for that matter) took a hit on November 4th. Proposition 8 - which bans gay marriage in California - and similar initiatives in Florida and Arizona have dampened the mood. America can rejoice that President-elect Obama embodies all that it has become since the arrivals of settlers in Jamestown and Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock - the good and the bad - but even he has faltered on the topic of homosexuality. While perhaps necessary for election, toeing the line on gay rights is a sham and a shame. Full rights should be granted to all law-abiding members of the United States of America.

Full, unalienable rights.

Marriage and the option to adopt a child in need of a caring home should one be mentally, emotionally, and economically fit for the task - notice I didn’t say straight or married - are two of these rights. They are not privileges granted to the elite or the predominant. They are unalienable. Just as we now look back at slavery, Jim Crow, and institutionalized, tolerated, widespread racism, we will look back at these acts of hatred just the same when times change.

Just as we cringe when our grandparents show the ignorance of their day by using offensive or hateful words such as "Chinaman" or "Colored," our children and grandchildren, ashamed, will look at us in disbelief for allowing this mistreatment of American citizens. Next time you hear a friend or even yourself calling something or someone "queer," "homo," "butch," or worse, think about that.

Barack Obama can win the presidency as a biracial man, but rest assured he would not have won as a homosexual.

It’s time the call for equal rights for all Americans takes center stage. Gay is the new black.

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And don't think for an instant that George W. Bush hasn't been pushing gay rights too.

Bush was the first Republican president to appoint a gay man to serve in his administration, Scott Evertz as director of the Office of National AIDS Policy and he also nominated Michael E. Guest as ambassador to Romania, who became the first openly gay man to be confirmed by the Senate as a U.S. ambassador.

And lastly, whats with all the kissey faces with the Saudi Arabians? Don't forget Bush kisses men regularly as part of his job. He also kisses Saudi butt too, but thats because they invested money in his oil company Arbusto years ago... but that is another story.

See also: TheCall to stop Homosexuality

Sarah Palin is NOT a Feminist

FEMINISM - If Sarah Palin is a feminist she's not a very good one. Oh sure, she believes in equality but does she fight for it? Sure, she believes women and mothers perform an important role in society, but does she respect the right of women to make their own choice?

Sarah Palin is an extremist. By extremist I mean she forces her beliefs onto other people. She is a Christian Crusader and her primary interests for getting into the White House (either in 2008 or 2012) is so she can push for banning abortion, ban gay marriages, ban books that support gay rights, feminist rights, etc. and basically do whatever the Vatican and conservative Christian minority wants.

So taking those facts in stride, can we still consider her a feminist? No. She's an anti-feminist which is a very complicated term.

If you thought feminism was complicated you haven't encountered the sheer complexity of ideas and backwards logic that is anti-feminism. Anti-feminism believes (essentially) that feminism is inherently wrong, that feminism is about "male hating" and "female supremacy", etc. Anti-feminism works a bit like the KKK blaming everything on the Jews, except in anti-feminism they blame everything on the feminists. According to anti-feminists we "fem-nazi-bitches" want to destroy marriage, families, promote abortion/divorce, convert to socialist communism, practice witchcraft/wicca and turn everyone into lesbians.

"[Feminism is] a socialist, anti-family, political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians."
- Pat Robertson (being sarcastic), Feminist Quotes

Women like Sarah Palin like to preach the philosophy of Traditional Womanhood, which basically pushes that women should pursue motherhood first, careers second and essentially be subservient to their husbands demands. In other words a virtual slave in their own home. Its not wonder women in the 18th century got "hysteria" so often, they were driven mad (or at very least really pissed off) from their over-demanding, over-controlling husbands.

There's also something called Conservative Feminism, but frankly its so close to anti-feminism in its ideals the lines become a bit blurred. Conservative Feminism also promotes the idea that women belong in the home first and foremost. Conservative Feminism also promotes Pro-Life when it comes to abortion and promotes Traditional Womanhood/Motherhood. Hardly any differences except women are more likely to identify themselves as Conservative Feminists and men are more likely to call themselves anti-feminists. No big difference at all.

Postfeminism says that women have a choice. They can choose to have abortion or not, they can choose to have a career or not, they can choose to wear skirts or pants, they can choose to wear lingerie if they want to, they can choose to get an education, they can choose to get married/divorced, they can choose to run for public office. Does this make Sarah Palin a postfeminist? No, because she wants to get rid of some of those choices. She still wants to run for public office evidently, and she's not about to get rid of divorce... but she is in favour of denying women a choice when it comes to abortion.

So evidently Sarah Palin falls into the category of Conservative Feminist/Anti-Feminist, and there's very little distinction between the two.

Now what was that I said about 2012? Oh yes, lately Sarah Palin has been trying to distance herself from electoral partner John McCain and has even been arguing with him over several key election issues. Why? She wants to distance herself from him and run for president herself. Currently all the polls are predicting Barack Obama to win 49% to 48% with an estimated voter turnout of 59% (in 2004 voter turnout was 56% and in 2000 it was 51%). Voter turnout is expected to be higher in 2008 thanks to Barack Obama and Sarah Palin.

Indeed these days it seems more like Republican voters are voting for Sarah Palin, not John McCain, as quite a few people expect the 72 year old John McCain to kick the bucket sometime soon.

I know there's a lot of women out there who seem to think Sarah Palin is a feminist, but really she isn't. She's just an Conservative extremist. There's a huge difference. If people still think of her as a feminist it will only serve to give feminists a bad name (as if feminists don't already have enough problems being called "a bunch of baby-killing lesbians").

Admittedly there is a minority of women in the United States who support the idea of banning abortion and no longer giving women a choice in that matter. But is there enough Pro-Lifers to push Sarah Palin into office in 2012?

I certainly hope not.

Remember the Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher? She was Prime Minister of the UK from 1979 to 1990 and the first female Prime Minister of England. She was very good at it too, but there's a problem. She had a lot of feminist support when she first got into power and as soon as she was in power she cut funding to women's groups such as women's shelters, programs to promote literacy and education amongst women, etc. It struck a tremendous blow to women's rights in England. She was a good leader and well respected in some respects, but she wasn't called the Iron Lady for nothing.

If Sarah Palin should run for president in 2012, and win by some ill fate, she needs a moniker that would more effectively describe her Conservative extremist background. How about the Palinbomber? It would reference the willingness of Pro-Lifers to bomb abortion clinics and reference her pro-war stance on the Middle East.

---

See Also:

A Woman's Choice - Abortion Privacy and the Right to Choose

Womens' Rights in the United States

Feminists = Good Lovers?

Feminists are not the ideal wives or lovers right? So we've been told for years.

But that assumption would be false. Feminism can improve the quality of heterosexual relationships, according to Laurie Rudman and Julie Phelan, from Rutgers University in the USA. They've published a study (The Interpersonal Power of Feminism: Is feminism good for romantic relationships?) that shows that we have unflattering stereotypes of feminists, that depict feminists as unattractive and sexually unappealing.

But are feminists ugly and sexually unattractive? Are they horrible sex partners and wives? False, their study concludes.

Most people believe that feminists can't be romantic, but Rudman and Phelan have discovered this to be false. They carried out a laboratory survey of 242 American undergraduates and an online survey including 289 older adults, and determined that couples with feminists are more likely to have had longer relationships and greater life experience. They looked at men's and women's perception of their own feminism and its link to relationship health, measured by a combination of overall relationship quality, agreement about gender equality, relationship stability and sexual satisfaction.

They also found that having a feminist partner was linked to healthier heterosexual relationships for women. Men with feminist partners have more stable relationships and better sex lives. According to the results feminism does not predict poor romantic results, but in fact actually boosts the amount of "spark" in the relationship and adds to healthier and more romantic results.

The two authors also tested whether feminist stereotypical beliefs were valid and asked participants a series of questions to determine whether feminists really are more likely to report themselves as being single, lesbian, or sexually unattractive, compared with non-feminist women. Instead Rudman and Phelan found no support for this hypothesis amongst their study participants. In fact, feminist women were more likely to be in a romantic heterosexual relationship than non-feminist women. The authors concluded that feminist stereotypes are wildly inaccurate, and that the stereotypes are unfounded.

In other words the idea that feminists would make poor lovers is just plain a lie.

So what is the real truth? Misogynists have been spreading these lies for years, spreading it as a combination of urban myths and hearsay.

Your wife dumped you for her lesbian lover and got married in Canada? Don't get angry. She was probably a lesbian long before she married you and only married you to have kids (or keep up appearances).

Think feminists are ugly or sexually unappealing? Think twice. Take a look at Gloria Steinem (former Playboy Bunny and feminist activist) and Dorothy Pitman Hughes (renowned black feminist). Pretty hot looking I think.

And think the authors of this study are probably ugly too? Wrong. I checked them out. One hot redhead and one sexy brunette.

Think your girlfriend has too much self-respect to marry you? Maybe she's just not interested in marriage just yet.

Women have dedicated years of writing in magazines in trying to understand men and what men want in their sex lives, but how much writing is dedicated to helping men actually understand women? Comparatively little.

But I'm willing to bet there are lots of men out there who would be interested in getting the inside scoop for what women really find romantic.

Sexuality and Truth

Sexuality and Truth
By Suzanne MacNevin

In our modern society people are often discriminated against based upon their sex or sexuality. Both women and men are discriminated against and discriminate against others. Likewise, heterosexuals and homosexuals discriminate back and forth and pass judgement far too easily.

The problem I have is that people are not honest when they discriminate. They provide 'reasons' (excuses) to justify their actions or their speech. Lets start with the example of Gay Marriage.

Marriage is a promise to stay faithful to your mate. It embodies truth, honesty and love for one another. Marriage based on a lie (such as marrying for money) is not a real marriage.

EXCUSES:
In traditional Christian thought, marriage is for the purpose of one thing, and its not love: To make babies. The idea of gay marriages with the lack of children is therefore an abomination in the eyes of traditional Christianity.

The next factor is the idea of gay married couples adopting children and the idea that gay couples can't raise children properly or might molest the children. Homophobes are scared and upset at this idea because it gives gay couples the same right as heterosexual couples.

If we allow gay couples to marry, whats next? Polygamy marriages? Beastiality marriages? (Besides the point that there is no way beastiality marriages will ever become legal.)

Thus you see the excuses line up, and you could see more of them. But the fact remains that marriage is still just a promise and an oath, and totally unrelated to the other factors.

Whether or not people actually believe their own excuses is besides the point. My primary concern is the fact that they are lying just for the sake of being ignorant and mean.

People derive pleasure from being mean, but what they don't realize is that their discrimination just makes people MORE determined to fight for their rights.

Twenty years ago gay marriages was barely an issue. It rarely made headlines. These days its constantly in the news and the gay community isn't going to give up until they have won their rights.

And as for the people who stand in their way? Well, they will simply be exposed as liars, bigots and homophobes.

People talk a lot about who will be the first female president or the first black president of the United States. I'm actually more curious about who will be the first lesbian or gay president. Its not an issue yet, but I think someday it will be.

Thoughtfully,
Suzanne MacNevin