The Christian Civic League of Maine's Mike Hein calls Pam's House Blend: "a leading source of radical homosexual propaganda, anti-Christian bigotry, and radical transgender advocacy."
He is "praying that Pam Spaulding will "turn away from her wicked and sinful promotion of homosexual behavior."
(CCLM's web site, 10/15/07)
Ex-gay "Christian" activist James Hartline on Pam:
"I have been mocked over and over again by ungodly and unprincipled anti-christian lesbians."
(from "Six Years In Sodom: From The Journal Of James Hartline," 9/4/2006, written from the "homosexual stronghold" of Hillcrest in San Diego).
"Pam is a 'twisted lesbian sister' and an 'embittered lesbian' of the 'self-imposed gutteral experiences of the gay ghetto.'" -- 9/5/2008
Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth Against Homosexuality heartily endorses the Blend, calling Pam:
A "vicious anti-Christian lesbian activist." (Concerned Women for America's radio show [9:15], 1/25/07)
"A nutty lesbian blogger." (MassResistance radio show [16:25], 2/3/07)
Pam's House Blend always seems to find these sick f*cks. The area of the country she is in? The home state of her wife? I know, they are everywhere. Pam just does such a great job of bringing them out into the light.
--Impeach Bush
who monitors yours Bevis ?? Just thought I would drop you a line,so the rest of your life is not wasted.
Pleeeeease feel free to chat, blogwhore, and link-share in the comment thread...
So here's what Bookworm Bob & I have been looking at this week:
• Los Angeles Times' L.A. County has failed to curb STDs in porn industry, lawsuit contends; An activist group asks that the L.A. County Health Department be ordered to enforce regulations on condom use in adult films or take other steps to keep sexually transmitted diseases from spreading:
A prominent AIDS advocacy group filed a petition in Los Angeles County Superior Court on Thursday alleging that county public health officials have failed to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases in the pornographic film industry.
The petition, filed by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, asks the court to order the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health to enforce regulations that require condom use in adult-film production or take other reasonable steps to stem the spread of disease.
... "We're the porn capital of the world and it's clear that the county has no intention of making these sets safer or of protecting the rest of the community from the diseases that are being spread in the production of these films," said Michael Weinstein, president and chief executive of the Los Angeles-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation. "You cannot conduct public health in a fashion where you won't speak publicly about an issue." ...
Gay-porn star Taleon Goffney won't be making any new Internet videos with his twin brother anytime soon.
Instead, he'll be serving three to eight years in state prison for two February 2008 rooftop burglaries of businesses near 9th Street and Washington Avenue, in South Philadelphia...
...As part of the [plea] agreement, Goffney, 27, identified his twin, Keyontyli, who is free on bail and attended the hearing, as a co-conspirator in the burglaries...
Thousands of jumbo flying squid -- aggressive 5-foot-long sea monsters with razor-sharp beaks and toothy tentacles -- have invaded the shallow waters off San Diego, spooking scuba divers.
Call me crazy, but I personally prefer to eat the calamari instead of having it eat me.
Mark Horvath, a documenter of homelessness who was once homeless himself, was touring a tent city in Sacramento when he raised his cellphone to take a photo of one man's ingenious shopping-cart storage system.
Suddenly, another man rushed at him, screaming, with a knife.
Horvath was terrified, he said, but not so scared that he stopped sending photos and text messages about what was happening.
"I am a little scared because people will protect their home and everyone is angry," read one, followed soon after by another: "One man . . . starts screaming at me. I walk away. Two guys follow me to my car. I'm scared." ...
Discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity is now prohibited by the City of Akron.
The city issued equal employment and anti-harassment policies Friday that added these classifications, as well as ancestry and military status.
...The changes were hailed by the Stonewall Democrats of Summit County, which advocates for equal rights, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity, and had been pushing for these additions.
''This is good business for government,'' said Edward ''Chip'' Clupper, the group's president. ''It protects city workers. . . . If you don't have it, people are scared of losing their jobs.'' ...
Yea Stonewall Democrats! Yea Akron!! (The hometown of one of my favorite 80's bands -- Devo!)
The number of female service members who have become homeless after leaving the military has jumped dramatically in recent years, according to new government estimates, presenting the Veterans Administration with a challenge as it struggles to accommodate the hundreds of thousands of returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan.
As more women serve in combat zones, the share of female veterans who end up homeless, while still relatively small at an estimated 6,500, has nearly doubled over the last decade, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.
For younger veterans, it is even more pronounced: One out of every 10 homeless vets under the age of 45 is now a woman, the statistics show.
And unlike their male counterparts, many have the added burden of being single parents.
Overall, female veterans are now between two and four times more likely to end up homeless than their civilian counterparts, according to the VA, most as a result of the same factors that contribute to homelessness among male veterans: mental trauma related to their military service and difficulty transitioning into the civilian economy.
But while veterans' services have been successfully reaching out to male veterans through shelters and intervention programs, women are more likely to fall through the cracks.
The trend has alarmed top lawmakers and veterans groups, who fear that the federal government - which is already straining to care for new veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, brain injuries, and other physical ailments - is ill-prepared to deal with the special needs of female veterans who find themselves on the street.
Wow- this is terrible news.... glad this isn't old news or had been reported before or anything.
Equality Texas mourns the death of Jennifer Gale, a 47-year-old transgender homeless woman who died yesterday. Jennifer's body was found Wednesday morning. She was lying in an outdoor walkway at the First English Lutheran Church in Central Austin.
...Jennifer's voice rang through Austin Council Chamber doors every week, often times in support of the homeless population of which she was a part.
"Let's give the homeless a place to exercise that need jobs and need help," said Gale Tuesday night before the city's Health Services Board.
Her death points to critical problems faced by the homeless, and especially by homeless women and the transgender homeless.
"Jennifer most nights slept outdoors," said Austin Mayor Will Wynn. "Jennifer, we believe, is the 136th person who has died sleeping on the streets (of Austin) over the last 12 months."
Marti Bier, policy aide for Austin City Council Member Randi Shade, said the following regarding Ms. Gale's death:
Something Jennifer would never talk about, but was a reality for her, is that she is a transwoman living in a transphobic society. Homelessness in the trans-community is a really big problem, and one that goes ignored. There are no laws in Texas protecting transgender people, whether from job discrimination, housing discrimination or hate crimes.
There was really nowhere for Jennifer Gale to go to protect herself from the cold last night. The Salvation Army (the only shelter in town that takes in women) would not let her in there unless she was grouped with the men (which includes sleeping with, and showering with, other homeless men). They would make her use her male birth name and completely disregard, and disrespect, her identity as a trans-woman. There is so much to be learned from Jennifer Gale, and so much to be worked on in our community.
I have chills running through my spine over this. Homelessness is a scary reality that many trans people face in every city -- they don't have jobs because they're discriminated against for being trans (and often in combination with also being a member of a second minority group or protected class, such as regarding race, disability, etc.), and there are often no shelters that will take trans people as they are. If gender expression doesn't match natal sex, there is often no shelter for them to get out of the cold.
My eyes are already welling over Jennifer Gale, and how she died sleeping on the streets...how she appears to have died from exposure on a cold, cold night.
Reading Suicide Isn't Painless by Kaija recently, I again realize that how for me, sometimes issues and stories are personal to the point of evoking strong emotions. And sometimes, that strong emotion is anguish.
It's painful to write these descriptions up. In the process of writing the stories up, I found a person who was killed for hate violence that wasn't previously counted. Here's his first person write up:
My sister-in-law's name was Hasan Sabeh, but many knew her as Tamara. She was seized in the street by an Islamist death squad, and then hanged in public on a holy Shia religious day, 11 January 2007. After she was hung, her body was mutilated and cut to pieces.
When I tried to defend her, I was also killed.
To give you an idea how difficult some of these were to write up, here's a particularly detailed first person entry:
Ruby Rodriguez
Location: San Francisco, California
Age: 27 Yrs. Old
My name was Ruby Ordenana, but I was also known as Ruby Rodriguez. I was a 27-year-old transgender woman living in the San Francisco Bay Area. I originally was from Nicaragua, and I'd immigrated to the United States like so many others, to make a better life for myself. I was involved within the local community, attending area support groups and attending language classes.
I also was a sex worker in the Tenderloin district, fighting my own personal issue of drug addiction, and struggling with my immigration status.
On March 16, 2007 -- a little before 6:00 a.m. -- my body was discovered on the sidewalk of Indiana Street in San Francisco by my friends. I was stripped of my clothes; I presumably was dumped there by my killer. I'd been strangled to death.
Michael Savage said of me on his talk radio show that I was a "psychopath" who "should have been in a back ward in a straitjacket for years, howling on major medication."
I keep weeping. Putting myself in the place of my transgender community's dead to write their stories is incredibly difficult.
[Spending the day with a homeless transgirl after the break]
In the gay community, youth suicide continues to be a persistent problem, experts say.
Among gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender youths, as many as 40 percent are likely to attempt suicide, said Cassie Blume, youth programs coordinator for the Billy DeFrank LGBT Community Center in San Jose. The national data is derived from several studies, Blume said.
"They are three times more likely to attempt suicide" than straight young people, Blume said. "Our work can be just about keeping them alive."
University of Minnesota pediatrics professor Gary Remafedi's book, "Death by Denial," found that 30 percent of gay youths said they had attempted suicide at least once as a teenager.
A U.S. Department of Health and Human Services report from 1989 concluded that gay youths are two to three times more likely to commit suicide than straight teens. Gay and lesbian teens accounted for about 30 percent of youth suicides, the department found.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimates that the number of homeless and runaway youth ranges from 575,000 to 1.6 million per year.1 Our analysis of the available research suggests that between 20 percent and 40 percent of all homeless youth identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT).
Common sense would tell us that being homeless is a factor that makes one significantly more vulnerable to violence. But how do we know that being trans makes one more likely to be homeless? Its hard to capture numbers of trans people in the population because of stigma, medical definitions of transsexual which differ from community definitions, issues self identification, and linguistic/cultural barriers. Its [also] hard to capture numbers of homeless people who are trans because most shelters only have male and female on their intake forms [and] homeless trans people may be discriminated against and turned away. What shelters document that they discriminate by turning trans clients away? The police are another example - again, incident reports do not offer a 'trans' option for an officer to mark - only male and female. And if such an option were available, the trans person might be reluctant to disclose their ID as trans. Why? Because of institutional transphobia.
And, that all said, that's not even touching on the violence and bullying our LGBT youth face.
When I ask myself if I've done enough to help our LGBT youth see brighter futures, I have to answer "No." I wonder how many of my LGBT peers would have to answer that same question with the same answer of "No."
Is the next generation of LGBT youth worth the investment the time, energy, and cash of the older generations of LGBT people? I hope so. I really hope so.
If you need your Egg nog buzz killed or your Christmas cheer dampered, I encourage you to read this. If that hasn't done enough, try this. I'll let you read the articles for yourself.
This is something I've got quite a few opinions on. I live in Chicago, which has a massive populace of LGBT folks, I've got a lot to say about the city's homeless issue, I'm dating a social worker who deals with these folks every single day, and I've got a pretty sizeable interest in LGBT rights.
I think it's important to read this stuff, as it kind of fits a meme that I harp on pretty reguarly.
Bad Situation + Queer = worse situation
I use that little rule of thumb a couple of different ways. I'm not going to detail it. It kind of speaks for itself.
The reason I want to bring stuff like this to the attention of the general population is that it's something that we'd all like to forget about. It's not a sexy issue like SSM. You're not a revolutionary if you're advocating for homeless folks who happen to be queer. You're not appealing to the masses when you're speaking about a sub group (the queer kids) of a larger group (the homeless) which nobody really wants to speak highly of in the first place.
"I love the homeless. Unfortunately they're really interfering with the quality of life." --Former Mafia defense lawyer/current Las Vegas Mayor Mayor Oscar Goodman, who once proposed shipping homeless to an abandoned Nevada prison 30 miles outside of Las Vegas
(Another fantastic diary by Autumn. I'll admit that my attention to transgender issues is sparse and my experience with transgender people is limited, so I'm very glad we have an expert posting diaries for us on the Blend.
Hmmm... I wonder what coffee metaphor I can use for a TG story? Something about a dark roast coffee that felt like it should have been born an Earl Grey tea? Nah, too crass. :D
I love the comment about the bathroom. Why do we have such a hang-up about separate gender bathrooms? Everyone I know grew up in a house with a unisex bathroom and the Earth didn't stop spinning then. It's not like I'm going into the stall with you - why do I care about the gender of the person washing their hands (or desperately trying to with those furshlugginer motion detector faucets!) next to me in front of the mirror?
Maybe it's because with unisex bathrooms, we men would discover the secret pillow fight lingerie parties you ladies throw in the ladies room when you all go there together in a pack... - promoted by Russ)
New York City's Office of Children And Family Services (OCFS) just settled a lawsuit regarding treatment of a transgender youth in their care. In NY Juvenile Facility Admits Denying Care To Transsexual Teen, 365Gay.com is reporting that during 2002 and 2003, transgender teen Alyssa Rodriguez was...
...deprived of her prescription hormone medication and punished for her feminine hairstyle and other aspects of her gender expression by the OCFS while she was at the Red Hook Residential Center and other New York facilities...
The article went on:
Rodriguez, who is now 20, had been on hormone therapy from a young age and experienced both severe health consequences and emotional distress due to withdrawal symptoms after being forced to go without hormone treatment.
"OCFS placed Alyssa in a male facility, denied her appropriate health care, and punished her for being herself," said Gabriel Arkles, Staff Attorney at Sylvia Rivera Law Project and organization which serves the transgender, intersex, and gender non-conforming communities in New York.
"This is a clear example of why it is critical that institutions such as OCFS are educated about the needs of transgender youth before anyone is harmed," Arkles said.
In the articles Church haven for transgenders may lose home and Thousands of homeless NYC youth are LGBT, we read that homelessness among gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender young people is epidemic -- particularly in New York. Of the 15,000 to 20,000 homeless youth estimated to live in New York City, 42 percent are LGBT. In comparison, approximately 3 to 5 percent of the U.S. population identifies as gay or lesbian.
In the article Port Authority Protest Against Trans Arrests, we read about transyouth staying in a shelter being arrested for trespassing for using Port Authority women's restrooms -- one of the arresting officer's aledgedly saying "I wouldn't want my wife going into the restroom with you things."
When it comes to LGBT youth in NYC -- and likely even more so elsewhere in the U.S. -- there is a real problem. I'm thinking long and hard this holiday season about our next generations of LGBT youth.
For those not in the know, the Fathers' Rights movement is an international movement against feminism and women's rights gains. The movwement's focus on child custody battles has consistently blinded it to issues of domestic violence and more extreme elements within often harass mothers at their homes. In the case of Darren Mack, many in this movement even defended a murderer who killed his estranged wife and tried to murder a family court judge.
Call me crazy, but I personally prefer to eat the calamari instead of having it eat me.
