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Thursday, November 27, 2008

Thanksgiving...Slasher Style

Some friends dropped by to offer a special holiday greeting...


Happy Thanksgiving!
Hope your family gathering isn't a bloodbath!

x/o Vince

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Happy Birthday To Her

Happy Birthday to my main girl, Jamie Lee Curtis, who celebrates her milestone 50th birthday today!

Through her grace, beauty, and charity, she proves that life just gets better with age.

Here's to you Jamie Lee! Enjoy every minute of your special day.

Friday, November 14, 2008

Saturday, November 8, 2008

Gay Cthulhu with a Tori Spelling Twist

So, if election week wasn't surreal enough, how about a gay Cthulhu movie with Tori Spelling?

From the movie's official website:

When young history professor Russ is called upon by his sister to execute their late mother’s estate, he is reunited with his boyhood chum and with his father, the charismatic leader of a New Age cult. While exploring his memories, Russ wanders into a warehouse where hundreds of names are listed on the walls. As he sleeps that night, he dreams of a stone cudgel and awakens to find a stone cudgel in his motel room.

The town drunk warns Russ that it is an instrument of sacrifice, and a young liquor store clerk enlists him to help find her brother, who she believes has been taken by the cult. Russ’ aunt, who has been living in an asylum, tells him that his mother left a message hidden in her house.

Looking for answers in the warehouse, Russ is taken on an unbelievable journey through the small town’s ancient, subterranean origins. When he escapes, he and Mike find the girl’s brother murdered. Russ begins to believe preparations are underway for a mass sacrifice, and engages the attentions of a sexy seductress in order to obtain information. Raped and arrested for murder on the eve of the May Festival, the stakes are raised for Russ — maybe higher than the world has ever known.

In its review of the film, AfterElton.com called it “an assured, creepy gay horror flick.”

Pretty decent trailer, too:

Friday, November 7, 2008

LGBT Writers Respond to Prop 8

California's Proposition 8, the controversial anti-gay-marriage measure that was fought furiously on both sides for several months and included Tricycle Press's children's book King & King as a negative spin in supporters' TV commercials, won a stunning victory on November 4 in the state's election. Gay writers responded to the win with outrage, concern and heartbreak.

Read more about what John Rechy, Christopher Rice, and Dorothy Allison had to say at Publishers Weekly Online, in an article by Wendy Werris.

An Open Letter from Katherine V. Forrest (Distributed by the Lambda Literary Foundation):

Yesterday was just a very difficult day. Such gladness over Obama and all he symbolizes, watching the national euphoria. And yet the sharp slap in the face that none of it includes us. Yet again the line is drawn through us; we're left to peer in the window. This time it seems a much worse feeling, at least for me, because I'd let down my guard and stopped steeling myself, for the first time I'd let myself hope.

We will win this of course. We actually won it in 2003 with the most important civil rights decision of my lifetime, the Supreme Court's 6-3 Lawrence vs. Texas decision that struck down sodomy laws under the equal protection clause. I've always known that the continuing hodgepodge of discriminatory state laws and the opposition by the single most legitimizing agent for the prejudice against us – the churches – would eventually land us back at the Court. Where we will then be accorded – under the same clause – the final and definitive decision that will end the practice of putting our lives on a ballot for a majority to decide.

I'm getting over the personal stuff, I feel a little better today and have more perspective. In order to get this thing passed in California, they had to argue that we already had rights as Domestic Partners. How big a concession is THAT, given where we were a decade ago? The fact is, except for our losses, the right wing got their heads handed to them on Tuesday. Gay people were voted into office all across the country. All the abortion crap got voted down, it's no longer a viable political issue, it's dead, dead, dead, folks. Assisted suicide was passed in Washington State, stem cell research will happen, the Supreme Court appointments are ours for hopefully the next eight years. Their right wing VP candidate became a figure of national scorn, the religious right as a political power has been left where it belongs, on the margins.

So good things are happening. We are the great unfinished business of this nation, and it will indeed get finished. I trust it will hurry along because I ain't gettin' any younger. Now that I've lived to see a black president, I want to see it all. As a friend of ours in Australia emailed yesterday, "Whilst a black President is certainly a good thing, let me know when the President is a black lesbian...."

Here's to the bright future.

Katherine

Thursday, November 6, 2008

The Sad Irony of Election Day

It’s ironic that on the same day one civil rights group realized victory another was defeated by bigotry, fear, and intolerance.

It’s ironic that on the same day America finally laid to rest its deeply-rooted fears and prejudices as they relate to the color of their neighbor’s skin, millions of Americans in California, Arizona, Florida, and Arkansas voted to legislate discrimination. Disheartening that on the day we elevated an African-American man to the highest office in the country, we allowed the same majority to shit on the civil rights of another minority.

It’s demoralizing that a majority of voters – at least those in California, Arizona, Florida, and Arkansas – still feel that tax-paying GLBT citizens are somehow “less than.”

It’s business as usual in the US of A — same righteous bullies, different minority target. Same bus, just a different group being told to sit in the back.

This “victory” was spearheaded by the National Organization for Marriage, a well-oiled propaganda machine that preyed upon people’s fears and insecurities in the month’s leading up to Tuesday’s election. And while the national eye was on a different ball – the economy, the war in Iraq – this group took full advantage to organize and pass what amounts to legal discrimination based on their thinly-veiled faith-based philosophies and ideologies. The religious definition of marriage is now civil law in California, Arizona, and Florida.


So much for separation of church and state.

Their cause seems predicated on the faith-based idea that inclusion of gay civil marriages somehow erodes the foundation of families and poses harm to children. And while the “The Threat to Marriage” tab on their national website doesn’t say what the actual threat is, their “Why Marriage Matters” tab presents a list of talking points via downloadable PDF documents arranged by religious denomination. Clue #1. The gist of these talking points are unsustainable “facts” that speak to the favorability of children being raised by one mother and one father, yet do not address any specific studies that show children in GLBT households at any kind of disadvantage.

Finally, under the organization’s “Marriage Talking Points” tab, we find out what all the brouhaha is about.

What’s the harm from same-sex marriage? [or] “How can Adam and Steve hurt your marriage?”

A: “Who gets harmed? The people of this state who lose our right to define marriage as the union of husband and wife, that’s who. That is just not right.”

A: “If courts rule that same-sex marriage is a civil right, then, people like you and me who believe children need moms and dads will be treated like bigots and racists.”


A: “Religious groups like Catholic Charities or the Salvation Army may lose their tax exemptions, or be denied the use of parks and other public facilities, unless they endorse gay marriage."

A: “Public schools will teach young children that two men being intimate are just the same as a husband and wife, even when it comes to raising kids.”

A: “When the idea that children need moms and dads get legally stigmatized as bigotry, the job of parents and faith communities trying to transmit a marriage culture to their kids is going to get a lot harder.”

A: “One thing is for sure: The people of this state will lose our right to keep marriage as the union of a husband and wife. That’s not right.”

You’re shaking your heads right now. I’m kidding, right? Not only am I not kidding, millions of Californians, Floridians, and Arizonians bought into this rhetoric. And voted. Love and commitment between two people lost in the name of fear and ignorance.

I can’t even begin to ponder the inanity of the Arkansas vote that bans GLBT couples from adopting or caring for foster children — a vote that clearly says children are better off getting tossed around foster care systems than in a loving home with a committed gay or lesbian couple. One can only hope that there’s some foster kid who was in the middle of being adopted by a gay couple when this piece of legislative garbage got passed who will someday sue the Arkansas government for denying him or her a loving family.

Congratulations, America. You let fear win out even in the midst of your great courage.

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

What She Said...

Nearly 24 hours after the annoucement that Barack Obama had been elected the first African-American President of the United States, I'm still speechless. I'm still trying to untangle the myriad emotions that have taken hold of me at this magnificent, hopeful crossroads in our nation's history. There's a bit of a black cloud tempering my joy – but more about that tomorrow. This is about celebrating the fact that this great country of ours rose above and opted for change – bravely, with no guarantees.

Last night, over on her blog at the Huffington Post, Jamie Lee Curtis expressed all that I'm feeling and more. And she said it with far more eloquence than I'm capable of today. I hope you'll take a moment to read what she has to say to President-elect Obama.

An excerpt:

"Thank you for reminding us that this next period of time will be hard. That there are no easy answers. That there will be sacrifice. There will be blood. There will be sweat. There will be tears."