UN TERF Wars
The “Man Bites Dog” story of the year is a United Nations report on “violence against women and girls in sports.” Getting to the report’s recommendations use pretty standard “UN Group Think language,” according to the Economist magazine, quoting that “sports institutions are built on colonial and extractive structures.” Where the dog gets bit is that the report recommends that, “Countries and institutions should do what they can to ensure that female sports competitions are limited to athletes whose biological sex is female.” The U. S. delegate protested that the report presenters, “Used demeaning language to refer to transgender persons,” A South Africa delegate said the report’s recommendations ran counter to U.N. resolutions on human rights. The report pointed to the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, where female boxers had to compete against two competitors whose sex was contested. The report concluded, “Female athletes are more vulnerable to sustaining serious physical injuries when female-only sports spaces are opened to males.” The report has no enforcement power to force any sports bodies to change who competes in women’s sporting events, but the report is in the record as the UN’s contribution to the controversy.
For the Love of Christ
A feel-good story that has a Christian religious sect as the hero comes out of the Episcopal Church Diocese of West Virginia. Forty years ago, Rev. Harry Stock studied at West Virginia School for Religion and Virginia Theological Seminary and was ordained a Deacon. He was openly gay, which kept him from becoming a priest in the Episcopal Church. He held secular positions with Episcopal congregations in Washington, D.C., for a while. He eventually became a minister at the Metropolitan Community Church of Washington. His work with the LGBT-oriented church ended his ordination from the Episcopal priesthood in 1987. At MCC, he got involved in advocacy of gay and lesbian acceptance in Christian faith communities and was a minister to people living with AIDS. He retired from MCC in 2012. In 2023, after working in pastoral duties in DC area churches, he met West Virginia Diocese Bishop Matthew Cowden, who saw the injustice of the earlier church action and worked to restore Stock’s standing. The restoration to the ordained ministry service took place this year, with West Virginia Bishop Cowden officiating. Helping in the reinstatement was Rt. Rev. Gene Robinson, the first openly gay bishop in The Episcopal Church, and the Very Rev. Ian Markham, dean and president of Virginia Theological Seminary.
Scholarships to Red State student with the blues
From the tragedy of the shooting at Pulse Nightclub in Orlando came the Dru Project, named for shooting victim Drew Leinonen. The Project provides college scholarships to LGBTQ students. Dru Project officials announced they would give scholarship preference to applicants from U. S. states deemed “Red” by virtue of voting patterns. “This is our direct response to the election,” Dru Project board president Sara Grossman said. “For many queer youths, staying in their home state is challenging, if not outright dangerous. We’re giving priority to applicants from red states.” The $5,000 scholarships are intended to help with college, relocation, or living expenses, with no mention of glitter.
RIP, Dorothy Allison
The prolific author Dorothy Allison died of cancer at the home she shared with her wife in Northern California. Born in Greenville, S. C. her career took her to NYC, Florida, Washington D.C. A publisher eulogized her, “Allison wrote about a queer, poor South with dynamism and ferocious love. Her books tangoed frankly with historically taboo subjects, like sexual abuse.” She was editor of “Amazing Grace,” a journal featuring lesbian themes. She published books of poetry, notably “The Women Who Hate Me.” Her books of short stories won Lambda Literary Awards and the American Library Association’s Award for Gay and Lesbian Writing. “Bastard Out of Carolina,” her National Book Award-nominated work, was made into a Showtime series in 1986, but it was not aired as Showtime owners objected to graphic depictions of sexual abuse. Another novel, “Cavedwellers,” was adapted for TV in 2004 and was aired. A life packed with talent and accomplishment ends too soon at age 75.
Not just a pretty face
The Eric and Wendy Schmidt Award for Excellence in Science Communications has gone to a novel recipient. Kyne Santos, who appeared on “Drag Race Canada,” is the winner of the award that “honors outstanding communicators who bridge the gap between complex scientific topics and the general public.” The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, which sponsors the award, is funded by the U. S. Congress and is composed of private, nonprofit institutions that provide expert advice on STEM issues. Santos is male but performs in female costume under the drag name “Kyne” and is a TikTok influencer with 1.6 million followers. Santos, a math communicator, has a degree in mathematics from his native Canada’s University of Waterloo. As the over-the-top “Kyne” he uses his drag persona to reach audiences who may shy away from the subject. The awards committee praised Santos’ impact, saying “Through the art of drag, complex scientific concepts are made approachable and memorable, while at the same time challenging stereotypes about who can be a scientist or science communicator.”
Senate Wins
Democrat Tammy Baldwin has won election to a third term as a U.S. senator from Wisconsin, and will be the only lesbian in the Senate, unless you count Washington Senator Patty Murray’s bangs. She narrowly won reelection in a state that voted for Republicans in the majority of other races, including the presidential election.
Turkey bans Daniel Craig’s Stuffing
The country of Turkey banned the exhibition of the new Luca Guadagnino-directed film “Queer,” which features some explicit same-sex lovemaking featuring former James Bond star Daniel Craig. This caused the streaming service Mubi to cancel a film festival in Turkey’s capital city of Istanbul. Mubi is the international distributor of “Queer” and planned to screen the film at the festival. The film is based on gay author William S. Burroughs’s 1985 novel of the same name. The company stated, “We believe this ban is an intervention that restricts art and freedom of expression.” The festival was sold out. U.S. audiences will be able to see Craig in his straight-washing gay sex scenes at the U.S. premier this winter.
Trevor Project note increase in crisis calls
On election day, The Trevor Project saw crisis calls, texts, and chats increase almost 700 percent year-over-year. Non-crisis calls dealing with the election, increased an unbelievable 5,200 percent in the days leading up to the election. A tracking survey conducted for Trevor Project by a market research firm found that 90 percent of LGBTQ+ young people said “their well-being was negatively impacted due to recent politics.” Some $215 million in advertising was spent against the LGBTQ+ community, mostly on “transgender issues” of girls’ sports, and providing minors pharmaceutical and surgical transgender therapies. The Democratic presidential candidate was portrayed as radical using the tagline, “She is for They/them. He is for you.”
STI cases decrease
Sexually transmitted infections have hit record levels practically every year this century. It seems diagnoses of the three top bacterial STIs peaked with the COVID-19 pandemic. Data for the U.S. aggregated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from the states show that from 2022 to 2023, total diagnoses decreased by 2 percent to 2.46 million new cases. Primary and secondary syphilis — the most infectious stages of the infection — dropped 10 percent to 53,000 cases. Gay and bisexual men, usually half of all cases, showed a 13 percent drop in syphilis diagnoses. Overall, gonorrhea declined by 7 percent, following a 9 percent decline the previous year. Chlamydia remained stable from 2021 to 2023, at about 1.65 million cases. We hope it’s safer, not less, sex that’s led to the drop.
RIP, Ted Olson
People were shocked when a pillar of the conservative Republican legal fraternity, Theodore Olson, became the lead attorney in a case that laid the groundwork for marriage equality. In 2008, he successfully sued to overturn California’s anti-marriage equality ballot initiative, Proposition 8. Olson, age 84, died of a stroke in Washington, D.C., in November. He was the lead attorney in Gore v. Bush, in which the U. S. Supreme Court stopped the election recount in Florida in 2000, giving the presidency to George W Bush. He joined with the opposing attorney in Gore v. Bush, David Boies, to get Prop 8 thrown out. The two created arguments around equal protection and human dignity, which presaged Obergefell v. Hodges at the U. S. Supreme Court in 2015, leading to a ruling for marriage equality. Recruited by actor Rob Reiner to fight Prop 8, his opening statement to the California Supreme Court included, “What Prop 8 does is label gay and lesbian persons as different, inferior, unequal, and disfavored. It says to gays and lesbians, ‘Your relationship is not the same.’ It stigmatizes them. It classifies them as outcasts. It causes needless and unrelenting pain and isolation and humiliation.” Said Olson about his work with Boies and remarrying a woman of the liberal persuasion (Olson’s first wife was a prominent conservative activist who died in the airplane that hit the Pentagon on 9/11/2001)¸ “It’s important to be surrounded by people who think differently than we do. We don’t learn anything if we surround ourselves with people who think the same way we do.”
