ENDA or the Employment Non-Discrimination Act is one of those pieces of legislation that has left me baffled for years for the seemingly lack of support outside of the LGBT activist community. But if the roadblocks that went up during the process of getting the Puerto Rican Amendment into the Voting Rights Act are any indication, the long road for equal LGBT rights has proven to be equally as difficult.

If we can't discriminate against people of a different race, ethnicity, language, religion or even sex, I don't understand why we can't expand the definition of sex to "sexual orientation and gender identity". This should be a no-brainer for every person who gets teary eyed every time they listen Martin Luther King's speech, "I have a dream".

That's why a coalition of LGBT bloggers and allies ( Daily Kos, Open Left, Americablog, Towleroad, Pam's House Blend, Joe My God, Michelangelo Signorile, David Mixner, Daily Gotham, Culture Kitchen, Taylor Marsh, PageOneQ, Dan Savage, GoodAsYou) have bandied up today to ask our readers to call Speaker Nancy Pelosi at 202-225-4965. Ask that the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, HR 3017, move to a vote. This is what Dr. Jillian T. Weiss has to say about today's ENDA blogswarm:
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Yes, I said it. Am ashamed to admit am ... gasp! ... heterosexual.

In the past few weeks I've been asked more than a couple of times if am gay. Am totally flattered. I mean, I get offended if I don't get hit on by a mamacita at least once a week.

Unfortunately ... ahem ... I like dick too much. Like, you know, the kind that is attached to a really hot and sweaty and horny guy. Yeah ... that kind.

This blog though has been a queerish blog since forever. We used to have Jeff Langstraat blogging about queer politics in the US eons ago. Now we have Leo Igwe doing it from the context of Africa politics and culture.

Am happy to call myself a fag hag --even though the term is so totally politically incorrect-- and an honorary member of the clit club.

Do I ever fantasize about being gay?

Totally. For an instance I think it would make my love life easier and then all I have to do is call up my lezzy or gay friends to smack me into reality. My love life woes may have different contexts but they hit me in just about the same way as theirs hit them.

Have I kissed a girl?

Yup, and then some.
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National Rally to be held at city halls everywhere in the United States on Jan 10th at 1:30pm EST/10:30am PST. The LGBT community is protesting the Defense of Marriage Act and urges President-Elect Barack Obama to repeal this act.

For more information go to JoinTheImpact.com

They are both the awesome words of the day!

A fauxmosexual is a hetero who tries use celesbianism as a marketing ploy a la Katy Perry. Why? Because celesbians are only famous for being lesbians and very little else. It's like shooting fish in a barrel in a culture where media presentations of lesbians are the most often borne of male heterosexual sexual fantasies.

So even if it is surprising it is not shocking that Katy Perry would jump on the celebianism bandwagon to move an album or two. Up until last year she was a daughter of Christian Evangelical pastors, struggling as a Christian pop-singer under the name Katy Hudson.

Cue an overnight makeover, some fauxmosexual lyrics, a masterfully manufactured image and behold! A new, improved and, it goes without saying, successful product.
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Yesterday was the 40th anniversary of the Loving vs. Virginia US Supreme Court decision to strike down the bans against interracial marriage that in 1967 where still in the books of 16 states.

Just to put matters into perspective, I am biracial (even though both my parents are from Puerto Rico). They married in New York City, so the issue of their interracial marriage was moot. Had they been in Maryland or Florida, they technically could have ended up in jail --but maybe not if they could prove even if they were US citizens by birth (all Puerto Ricans are), the 'being Puerto Rican' may have then exempted them from the law.

Anyhow, it is amazing to see over at Loving Day's legal map that Florida had even codified the 1/8 drop rule into the marriage ban --exactly because the ban was about protecting the supremacy of a group of people who, if you look real close, have always been the minority (with the most wealth and political power) in this country. All the white-looking octaroons (at least at that time) need not apply for enjoying the perks of their physical (yet not genetic) whiteness.

So it's 40 years later and the same-sex marriage movement is using Loving vs. Virginia as the standard for all people who want to marry, be fruitful and multiply.

Here's the money quote from Justice Warren's decision :
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It is amazing that in this day and age anybody would think that you could create a neuro-toxic bomb that would turn soldiers gay and render them incompetent for war, but that's exactly what the Pentagon considered when they took a look at a proposed $7.5 million chemical weapon project.

CBS5.com reports :

Pentagon officials on Friday confirmed to CBS 5 that military leaders had considered, and then subsequently rejected, building the so-called "Gay Bomb."

Edward Hammond, of Berkeley's Sunshine Project, had used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain a copy of the proposal from the Air Force's Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio.

As part of a military effort to develop non-lethal weapons, the proposal suggested, "One distasteful but completely non-lethal example would be strong aphrodisiacs, especially if the chemical also caused homosexual behavior."

The documents show the Air Force lab asked for $7.5 million to develop such a chemical weapon.

"The Ohio Air Force lab proposed that a bomb be developed that contained a chemical that would cause enemy soldiers to become gay, and to have their units break down because all their soldiers became irresistibly attractive to one another," Hammond said after reviewing the documents.

"The notion was that a chemical that would probably be pleasant in the human body in low quantities could be identified, and by virtue of either breathing or having their skin exposed to this chemical, the notion was that soldiers would become gay," explained Hammond.
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