Blah Blah Flowers

I'm back from a great family holiday in the West of Ireland. I'm uploading photos to Flickr right now. In the meantime, AVERT's table of the various ages of consent for hetero/homo sex around the world. [via Dr Petra Boynton's blog.]

Labels: gay, lesbian, sex, straight

The White House's official site has been updated with what, sadly, in 2009 we still have to call a brave list of commitments to equality for LGBT citizens of the United States. It will be truly inspirational if it passes. The thing that this doesn't make clear is that while Obama supports civil unions and opposes same-sex marriage ban legislation, there's nothing about what's going to happen to the POTSS that have actually got married, as opposed to unioned. Will they get legally recognised as married again or will they be downgraded to just being in a civil union?

Labels: American Presidency, Barack Obama, Civil Partnership/Gay Marriage, gay, lesbian, lesbians, United States

It turns out that God hates the UK. Who knew? Yes, Fred Phelps's tech-savy grandson has helped him create a definitive list of why God hates the UK and, wouldn't you know it, it's all about the bumming. What seems odd in all this is that God has been half-hearted in expressing his dislike of the United Kingdom's supposed relaxed attitude toward the gays, or perhaps he's been so angry that his punishments have actually travelled back in time to affect the UK before homosexuality was decriminalised.

If you want to find out why God hates your country (hint: It may have something to do with man-on-man action) check out http://www.godhatestheworld.com/">God Hates The World, although you might have to wait until Fred works out how to spell most of the countries.

Labels: Fundamentalists- Christian, gay, homophobia, humour, lesbian, lesbians, queer

Just when you think the Government has surely reached the pinnacle of offensive decisions and stupid ministerial outbursts they prove that actually, there's miles of virgin territory still to explore... Home Secretary Jacqui Smith justifies the decision to deport gay and lesbian asylum-seekers to non-gay friendly Iran on the grounds that they'll be perfectly safe as long as they are 'discreet' about their sexuality. This is offensive on many levels, just at random I'm going to go with Smith's pretence at not understanding why people claim asylum, if people could pretend to go along with the social norms of their countries they wouldn't be seeking to move away. And why should these people have to pretend to be straight? We've just about managed to get people in this country to accept that a person's sexual orientation isn't acceptable reason to attack or belittle them (no matter what that gay Chris Moyles thinks) and we would presumably be holding other countries to the same standard if we weren't following the openly racist foreign policy of News International. The Home Office now seems to be spending it's time trying to come up with arguments for sending back asylum seekers to unsafe countries where they face almost certain torture and/or death, just to try and curry favour with the Daily Hate Mail and The Sun. When a man faces the genuine danger of being sent back to a country where his boyfriend was killed then I really despair for the moral health of the country I was born in.

Labels: gay, Government, homophobia, Iran, lesbian, United Kingdom

I notice that, in public, I seem to have an automatic timer that warns me not to gaze at [my girlfriend] as long as I might at the privacy of our dining room table, a subtle mask that shifts the set of my smile when I respond to hearing her laugh, and an inner language editor that reflexively erases "honey", "my love" and "darling" from my lexicon as I'm calling to her across a parking lot...

I don't edit myself this way because I am ashamed of being a lesbian. I do it because I'm afraid that someone else, who thinks I ought to be ashamed of being a lesbian, might hurt me -- or worse, hurt my beloved.

Labels: homophobia, lesbian, lesbians

Lesbians go to the courts for the right to be the only ones that are called Lesbians saying that lesbians don't have the right to be lesbians, unless they are a lesbian by birth presumably, though of course, most lesbians would argue they are lesbians by birth. Lesbian lesbian lesbian.

Labels: lesbian, lesbians

Israeli politician blames earthquakes on gays.

"Why do earthquakes happen? One of the reasons is the things to which the Knesset gives legitimacy, to sodomy," [Shlomo] Benizri said during a parliamentary debate on earthquake preparedness.

Stopping "passing legislation on how to encourage homosexual activity in the state of Israel, which anyway brings about earthquakes," would represent a cost-effective method of preventing future earthquakes, he continued.

..."God says you shake your genitals where you are not supposed to and I will shake my world in order to wake you up," he added.

Which, as a description of homosexual sex surely has to rate, for accuracy, below the various girl-on-girl depictions you normally get on late evening telly dramas. And there's no word yet from Benizri on how to stop tornadoes by outlawing lesbianism.

Labels: gay, homophobia, Israel, lesbian

There's a very interesting interview with the Reverend Richard Kirker, stepping down as head of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement in the New Statesman. Kirker is very bitter at Anglican liberals, like Robert Runcie and Rowan Williams, who have proven unwilling to stand up to the militant anti-gay tendencies in Anglicanism.

Labels: Christianity, Fundamentalists- Christian, gay, homophobia, lesbian

So you think you might be straight?

Labels: gay, humour, lesbian, queer, sex, straight

What it's like to not exist in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Iran.

Labels: gay, Iran, lesbian, queer

Hillary Clinton is not a lesbian. Apparently some people were confused.

Labels: lesbian, United States

Stephen Green, head and, it would seem, sole member of charmless bigots Christian Voice, posted his review of his day picketing Brighton Pride last month. It's very amusing.

'Shame on you', chanted an overweight man, You bitch! clutching his 'boyfriend's' hand, seemingly unaware of the paradox of accusing others of shame while foaming out his own shame (Jude 1:13)

...What were the National Front doing turning up half-way down the parade? Homosexuals are not black or Asian as a rule, they are overwhelmingly white, and therefore totally scrumptious from a National Front point of view... Funny how the NF have just picked up on the idea of protesting at gay pride events, three years after we started in London 2005. Could it be that some homosexual in the NF has worked out that their presence could devalue ours? No, they aren't that bright, surely? But just maybe the spirit of homosexuality is still as inseparable from national socialism as it was when the Nazi Party began its obscene life in a Munich gay bar.

Labels: Brighton, Christian Voice, Fundamentalists- Christian, gay, lesbian, queer, Stephen Green

Why I Don't Do Bi. Excellent article.

Labels: bisexual, gay, lesbian, queer

Angry men get ahead, angry women are called incompetent and get paid less.

Inside Every Girl Mouse Brain Is a Swaggering Boy Mouse. [both via Scientific American]

At last! No more arguments with the Gaydar Sexual Orientation Detector! [via Sex and Blogs]

Labels: gay, lesbian, science, sex/gender, transgenderism

Went to my cousin's wedding yesterday. Because I haven't seen him or most of my cousins on that side of the family for best part of a decade it's always a surprise when they stand up and make a witty speech compared to the last time I saw them when they were a sulky and inarticulate teenager.

His only problem is that now he'll be taking his beautiful bride back to his flat in Gloucester...


This morning I are be mostly laughing at ThirdGender666, a kooky site set up to convince us that gays and lesbians are bring round the apocalypse. This guy is so confused about the facts of life in his Bible (Kids! The Bible is not 'The Joy of Sex'!) that he ends up looking foolish rather than hateful.

Labels: Fundamentalists- Christian, gay, homophobia, lesbian, transgenderism

From the comments to this entry (reposted here before they drop off the bottom of my Haloscan account):

Patrick: Please God, no.

Me: Body fascist!

Patrick: Look, I don't make the rules. I just enforce them.

Jon B: No: You reinforce what society preaches by giving in to what they tell you is attractive, even though through history, the larger figure has been known to be attracted and desired. It's not a rule: It's fascism.
Of course why would anyone expect a skinny fuck like myself to know such a thing?

Dylan: I'm with you JonB. I think most men would admit to wanting a softer woman with more jiggle, if their mates weren't listening. You can't tell me this photograph isn't dead sexy. http://adipositivity.my-expressions.com/archives/9478_1745602162/237191

Patrick: Actually, that picture is hideous and I do not think I'd say otherwise if I were straight. Beyond its mere unattractiveness there is the issue of health.

You reinforce what society preaches by giving in to what they tell you is attractive

Why waste so much energy on trying to distinguish yourself physically from the masses? Just eat well and exercise regularly and worry about your insides a little (the mind and the soul). You'll find that that it was really throws people off; someone who looks like they "fit in" but as soon as they express an opinion they are immediately found to be truly different than the crowd. It's like clobbering them over the head and it is great fun.

Jon B: Actually, that picture is hideous and I do not think I'd say otherwise if I were straight. Beyond its mere unattractiveness there is the issue of health.

-Giving into society once again. You fail to realize that:
A. Obesity is not synonymous with being unhealthy. It's a risk factor, and it can worsen certain conditions. It's also been proven in many studies that while the obese have a higher risk factor, they are less likely to die from certain diseaes (As in getting Diabetes, but having a lower fatality rate while getting it).
B. If you sit around eating shit, refusing to exercise, and you're still thin, you will die before someone who is large that has a better lifestyle. Science has proven that notion on many occasions. It's what you do, not how much you weigh. What a concept. I'm so glad I don't misinterpret what the data says.
-I like distingushing myself from society. Society doesn't tell me what I find attractive, and I am not going to let it. It's amazing what you can achieve when the picture of beauty on a magazine isn't something that defines what you find alluring. You, however, proudly display your prejudice ways, and insinuate that because you find it unattractive, you can speak for the human race. Thank god that's inaccurate on your part.
I'm sorry I find curves or more attractive. Most men would agree that they are attractive, and some would also agree with me that not liking curves is closer to being less straight than liking them. I don't hate thin women, but do you honestly think everyone likes a woman like... ohh...Nicole Richie?

Why waste so much energy on trying to distinguish yourself physically from the masses? Just eat well and exercise regularly and worry about your insides a little (the mind and the soul). You'll find that that it was really throws people off; someone who looks like they "fit in" but as soon as they express an opinion they are immediately found to be truly different than the crowd. It's like clobbering them over the head and it is great fun.

- The movements aligned to this aren't demanding people eat unhealthy and not exercise. They actually ADVOCATE a healthy lifestyle.
I think you tried pulling that weight card on me when I gladly said I was a skinny fuck. Are you running out of attack points Mr. Weight Bigot?

I don't know what Patrick's issues are, quite why he's so vehement that being fat is bad or why he seems determined to sit in the corner that people are fat only because they eat too much and exercise too little and that overweight equals unhealthy, I hope he doesn't expound on that in the hearing of any rugby players or Olympic hammer-throwers.

I've been meaning to link to this post I found via the Big Fat Deal blog, which talks about how a sizeable proportion of post-teen Americans think obesity is a greater threat to public health than drink or drugs. I suspect that this is really about the perception of the plump, fat kids getting bullied at school, the cool kids smoking behind the bike sheds.

Hey there, mainstream media? JOKE’S OVER. Young people believe inhaling poison causes fewer problems than being fat. THIS IS NOT OKAY.

Then there's an article from yesterday's Times, Why I love getting to grips with a fat man. It's especially nice to see a woman talking about her love of Big Handsome Men, as on the few occasions that the mainstream media go anywhere near this area it's all about weedy men and Big Beautiful Women.

Working through comics-related links I find the Fat Wonder Woman blog, dedicated to artist's renditions of a plus-sized Wonder Woman. Some are nicer than others, and the specificity of Wonder Woman over other super-heroines seems a little odd but it's all part of the wonderful tapestry of life.

Then, finally, there's an article I came across from the Village Voice about big lesbians. A study has just been released saying that lesbians are more likely to be overweight than straight women, but as yet no-one can explain why that might be.

What I do wonder about is how, if supposedly the western world is slowly getting fatter, it's taking so long for our media to catch up. Sure, there are exceptions, from what I've heard The Gossip are are a depressingly average, almost mediocre, band, but would I even know they existed if not for their plus-sized front woman Beth Ditto, having a great year after the NME threw aside their fear of girls to make her their coolest person in rock? But the faces we see on the small and large screens are mostly gamine, is Norbit bad because it relies on the idea that a woman being fat is automatically hilarious? When are we going to have a thriller where it's the fat bloke who saves the world? When are we going to see our culture reflecting our own jowly faces and jiggling bellies back at us, rather than frantically going further in the opposite direction, if size 0 is unattainable for most people when are people going to start feeling comfortable in the bodies they're in?

Labels: BBW (Big Beautiful Women), BHM (Big Handsome Men), blogs, comics, fat, fatism, health, lesbian

That's the special kind of sense that only lives in Bill O'Reilly's head. This clip has been making the rounds because of it being Fox News insanity at it's very finest.

Seriously, how the hell is The Half-Hour News Hour supposed to compete with this?

Dykes beat up young women to recruit and indoctrinate them into their gangs. Using pink pistols, supposedly.

As Pandagon points out, it's all about the hate crimes legislation.

(Sadly I can't find a picture that I had as a teenager of Kathleen Hanna (IIRC) with a big fuck-off gun to illustrate this with)

Labels: Fox, gay, lesbian, news, queer, YouTube

Japanese lesbian art (Mostly SFW). Quite endearing really. [via Sexblogs]

Your ring-finger length, now not just for telling whether you're a lesbian! [via Developing Intelligence]

Selfkiss. A French art website about people snogging themselves (SFW). [via Wired]

Labels: gay, lesbian, sex

A gay man goes to one of those 'ex-gay conferences' to see what goes on. It's sad that the parents of gay children get told that it's their fault and chilling to wonder what effect this has on minds looking for an explanation for something they don't understand. [via Pandagon]

Labels: Christianity, gay, homophobia, lesbian, queer, United States

Ahhh, it's the spirit of '88 as the Daily Mail resurrect the old Oh noes, our kids are being taught about teh queer! This will turn them into interior designers or car mechanics! It is noticeable that this time the Mail don't try to pretend there's no difference between 'teaching about' and 'promoting', they have those wacky, wacky Christians to do that for them, although by mentioning Section 28 the inference is there. I went to school under Section 28 and in a gulf of space between Danny La Rue and Lily Savage and look at me, so the idea that a few schoolbooks can make you gay you'd think even newspapers would have given up on that one by now.

Thousands face pay cut under new equality law. Because, you see, the villains here are all those women in lower paid jobs expecting equality, not management for refusing to raise them to the same level as that of men doing the same work.

Labels: bisexual, Daily Mail, feminism, gay, lesbian, school