A conservative US state senator who has voted against gay rights measures during his 14 years in office has confessed he is gay.

Republican Roy Ashburn came out during a radio interview in California, where he sits on the state legislature.

Roy Ashburn (Associated Press)

He has been on leave since his arrest last week on suspicion of driving under the influence.

Mr Ashburn said his votes reflected the way his constituents wanted him to vote, not his own “internal conflict”.

“I am gay… those are the words that have been so difficult for me for so long,” the 55-year-old divorced father-of-four told KERN radio.

Mr Ashburn said he felt the need to address rumours that he had visited a gay nightclub before his arrest on suspicion of drinking and driving in Sacramento on 3 March.

Last year, Mr Ashburn opposed a bill to establish a day of recognition to honour murdered gay rights activist Harvey Milk.

He has also voted in the statehouse against efforts to expand anti-discrimination laws and recognise out-of-state gay marriages.

Que the exuberant queer cheers, “Another anti-gay gay politician gone”, “One less enemy in government”.

Mr Ashburn, who represents California’s 18th district, said he does not plan to run for any public office after his term ends later this year.

Outed and ousted, another victory for truth and justice.

But hold on a minute. Isn’t this counter-productive to the goal of having gay representation in the government? By applauding Ashburn’s decision to leave government service, we are essentially agreeing with the anti-gay crowd that anyone who is open and honest about their homosexuality like Ashburn is now shouldn’t be a politician. It’s reasonable to chastise him for his prior dishonesty and the harm he’s done the gay community. But now that he’s being honest about himself, shouldn’t we be the first to encourage him to stay in politics and to vote for him when he runs again?

We deserve representation; the same percentage of LGBT citizens of the population should be represented by an equal percentage in the Congress and most California legislatures.

1.51% of the total U.S. population identifies themselves as gay, lesbian or bisexual, or 4.3 total million Americans. These numbers are based on figures provided by a broad-based coalition of gay rights organizations and homosexual advocacy groups. The primary source cited was the The National Health and Social Life Survey (NHSLS), published in the book The Social Organization of Sex: Sexual Practices in the United States (1994), by Laumann, Gagnon, Michael and Michaels. (Source-U.S. Census 2000)

Most likely there’s one LGBT person in hiding for every one that was identified as such, so let’s double the percentage to 3%. Not exactly a threatening number. 3 people out of a hundred.

One advantage to electing and supporting gay politicians is that they also represent other minorities. A senator could be a woman who used to be a Black man, a congressman could be a gay Hispanic. The LGBT community embraces men and women of all races and national origin. There are gay millionaires and homeless lesbians. There are members of the clergy, those of all faiths and those with no religious faith at all who are also members of the LGBT community.  Yes, as hard as it is to believe, there are even gay republicans.

Whether they are dragged kicking and screaming out of the closet or openly disclose their orientation, we owe it to ourselves to judge the fitness to serve of these individuals by more than with whom they prefer to have sex.

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As an experiment, inspired by a comment on my Radical Atheist blog today, I have disabled the DISQUS commenting system here and am going back to comments within the framework of HeathenQueer.

This is a change I’ve wanted to try for some time. I’m not totally comfortable with having comments hosted by another service, away from the blog itself.

I don’t have any issues with the DISQUS service itself. It does what it claims and it does present a pleasant interface. I’ll be doing this same thing with IntenseDebate over at RadicalAtheist.com Both are worthy of consideration by blogs encumbered with hundreds of replies to deal with. They offer statistics and controls that many built-in commenting systems don’t.

I don’t suffer that burden. To me, sending the comments off-site is an impersonal way for me to treat those who do bother to leave a comment. I enjoy reading the comments left here. I know I need to reply more often, to encourage the conversation. For me the comments are personal. When I write I’m expressing honest opinions and beliefs (or lack of same). When people respond to my writing, they are responding to me, to my thoughts, to what makes me me to a large extent.

So let’s see how well this works. I’m eager to hear your opinions.

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A student has been suspended from school in America for coming to class dressed as a pirate.

But the disciplinary action has provoked controversy – because the student says that the ban violates his rights, as the pirate costume is part of his religion.

Bryan Killian says that he follows the Pastafarian religion, and that as a crucial part of his faith, he must wear ‘full pirate regalia’ as prescribed in the holy texts of Pastafarianism.

The school, however, say that his pirate garb was disruptive.

Pastafarianism gained wide attention when its key prophet, Bobby Henderson, wrote to the Kansas School Board during the height of the controversy over ‘Intelligent Design‘ being taught in science classes. His letter, also published on his website, demanded equal time be given to the teachings of the Flying Spaghetti Monster as was given to ID and evolutionary theory.

Since then, the Flying Spaghetti Monster has gained countless followers worldwide, although there are those who remain spagnostic.

The school, in North Buncombe, North Carolina, remains adamant that their decision to suspend Killian for a day has nothing to do with his religion, and quite a lot to do with his repeated refusal to heed warnings against wearing pirate outfits. (Source-Sunday Metro)

Pirates, unite! We must stand by our fellow Pastafarians when they are oppressed. AAAARRrrrrggggg.

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Do you believe everything has a cause? Do you believe some supernatural/unnatural entity has created reality as it is and created everything for a reason? Do you believe nothing really happens by chance, especially on a macro level?

Why are days 24 hours long? What meaning does 24 hours have that it wouldn’t have had if it were a 27 hour day? Science suggests that there’s evidence that during the development of the Earth-Moon relationship the “day” on Earth has gone from 4 hours to our present 24. It will change more in the future. But if god created and/or designed everything that exists as it exists today, a “day” could never have been anything but 24 hours (god’s thousand-year-days don’t count), and that number of hours must have been chosen for a reason? So what is it? What does the Bible or Koran say about the significance of a 24 hour day?

Why are there two sexes and different races? There are plenty of examples in nature of plants and creatures that can impregnate themselves and give birth without ever having sex. We are told that god’s primary intent in creating male and female was procreation. The holy books are less clear on the creation of racial groups. Maybe god the designer just thought humans looked better in a variety of colors and shapes. Yet just look at all the problems that stem from humans being differentiated as male and female, black and yellow, comely and homely. So much strife, bloodshed and death brought on by nothing beyond the fact that humans are different from one another. Any designer that strays from the simplest solution, that unnecessarily complicates the goal the designer is attempting to realize, that introduces harmful noise into the design, lessens efficiency. It’s inefficient, if the goals attributed to the gods are true, to have two sexes and all the other differences between humans. Sexual propagation is inefficient. Asexual reproduction accomplishes same goals as those attributed to the gods. As long as the designer remembers to also make humans immune to any disease or virus that could take advantage of such a degree of genetic uniformity. What goals of a god would be thwarted by a planet full of single sex, single race, indistinguishable in appearance and genetically identical human beings? Would any of that stop humans from filling the Earth with their children, having dominion over the planet or worshiping a god? The gods could have achieved their goals much more simply with a far greater assurance that those goals would be met and with far less damage to these beings they are said to love had they not created sexes, races, varieties of any kind in nature. One kind of bug, hoofed animal, fish, tree, bird or human would have done the job better than the current condition. If we’d never known any different condition we’d never know what might have been. That’s why the gods created science fiction writers and conspiracy theorists. I suggest there is no practical reason for variety in nature. If the gods delight in variety, why isn’t there a variety of real gods?

Why is there a moon, why are there stars? Most holy books have some sort of “Genesis” story (in the “catholic” sense), a tale of how the gods brought the universe into being. Since ancient man must have been aware of the moon and stars, even the most ancient of religions have stories about how these came to be. If everything exists for a reason, what’s the point of a moon and stars? Why even have other planets? Everything that seems important to the gods is happening solely on this planet. What purpose do the others serve? Surely god or a good designer doesn’t need a moon to create tides or maintain Earth’s orbit. What good do stars do, other than our own? If Earth was created solely to house humans and humans were the gods’ greatest creations, of what use are the stars to us? They don’t even provide enough light to do us any good. Why wasn’t all that mass used to create one massive planet, ours? Then I could easily believe that the Earth was created for us.

Image by zachstern via Flickr

From a telephone sampling of more than 2,000 households, university researchers found that Americans
rate atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups in “sharing their vision of American society.” Atheists are also the minority group most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry.

Even though atheists are few in number, not formally organized and relatively hard to publicly identify, they are seen as a threat to the American way of life by a large portion of the American public. “Atheists, who account for about 3 percent of the U.S. population, offer a glaring exception to the rule of increasing social tolerance over the last 30 years,” says Penny Edgell, associate sociology professor and the study’s lead researcher.

Edgell also argues that today’s atheists play the role that Catholics, Jews and communists have played in the past—they offer a symbolic moral boundary to membership in American society. “It seems most Americans believe that diversity is fine, as long as every one shares a common ‘core’ of values that make them trustworthy—and in America, that ‘core’ has historically been religious,” says Edgell. Many of the study’s respondents associated atheism with an array of moral indiscretions ranging from criminal behavior to rampant materialism and cultural elitism.

Edgell believes a fear of moral decline and resulting social disorder is behind the findings. “Americans believe they share more than rules and procedures with their fellow citizens—they share an understanding of right and wrong,” she said. “Our findings seem to rest on a view of atheists as self-interested individuals who are not concerned with the common good.”

The researchers also found acceptance or rejection of atheists is related not only to personal religiosity, but also to one’s exposure to diversity, education and political orientation—with more educated, East and West Coast Americans more accepting of atheists than their Midwestern counterparts. (Source-American Sociological Association)

Atheists are distrusted because the majority (Christians) have been allowed to frame the debate and define the participants. We’ve allowed those who are grossly misinformed and ignorant about what atheism is and what atheists do believe to define us. Our voices are drowned out by the blather and nonsense being spouted by those who hold fanciful and baseless ideas about atheism.

That’s changing, slowly but surely.

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If assigned to the agency you had to have a Top Secret Codeword clearance. You were subject to a Special Background Investigation (SBI). Your life was exposed back as far as the investagators could go. Gradeschool friends were interviewed. Ex-girlfriends. Friends of the family. You hope they really are your friends. It’s said that after an SBI the government knows you better than you know yourself. Your memories are frail and forgotten. Their “memories” of you are written down, stored in secure (again we hope) data banks, never erased and never deleted.

If you’ve ever smoked a joint they’ll find out about it. If you ever sucked a cock they’ll find the cock owner’s name and he’ll get a visit from the feds. That’s always perceived as such a nice way for your friends to spend an afternoon, being interview by federal agents. Of course for some it will be the highlight of their year if not their lives.

You have to pass two interviews yourself, one for entrance into the ASA and then at Ft. Meade. You know damned good and well you, on several occasions, smoked grass with Walter before letting him plow your ass. You know they’re going to know when they conduct that SBI. You think if you lie when asked about drug usage and homosexual activities (not “are you gay?” but rather “have you ever engaged in homosexual activities?” Why in a moment) you’ll be living in fear of discovery for the next few months before getting booted out. If you tell the truth you’ll get booted out now. No win.

Then you get to talking to the interviewer. He has a few tips before you get started with the formal interview. He says, “If you need to, tell me you tried marajuana, smoked maybe two joints, didn’t like it and you aren’t doing it now.” None of that is a lie, none of those answers will come back to bite you later. He also suggested that if you ever even played “you show me yours, I’ll show you mine” once with a person of the same sex you should mention it. They don’t like surprises, but at the same time they don’t need the details from you.

They want to know you are being honest and that you have done nothing that you could possibly be blackmailed for.

Here’s where the National Security Agency’s priorities best the priorities of the military, even though both are within the Department of Defense. The most famous defectors from the NSA to the Soviet Union were rumored to have been gay (rumor put to rest), yet the NSA didn’t bar you from admission just because you were gay, as long as you were open about it or were willing to be open about it, so you couldn’t be blackmailed over it. The same with pot usage. They didn’t care how much you did (as long as it didn’t affect your work) but only whether you have and most likely do. The NSA values creative thinking, much of code work involves finding patterns others can’t detect and unconventional solutions.It understands people like that are often gay or have experimented. It’s all about honesty and the benefits of honesty. Ironically, after you’ve been completely honest with them you’re admitted to the most secret building (people know about) in the country.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell encourages lying, it requires you to pretend you’re someone you aren’t. And it punishes you if you’re honest. Honesty is sacrificed to image.

India decriminalized homosexuality today, marking a major victory for gay rights activists worldwide. But there’s still a long way to go, according to international watchdog ILGA.

Being gay in India carried the risk of a lifelong prison term, reports the ILGA’s May 2009 world map of gay rights. At least five other countries — Mauritania, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Iran — substitute the death penalty in place of imprisonment. Only six countries afford gay couples marriage with full legal rights: South Africa, Spain, Belgium, Norway, Sweden and Canada.

But I’ve noticed that adult, otherwise rational, theists continue to debate this question amongst themselves. Some even have “animal blessing” rituals. They are so conflicted about this issue. They have to acknowledge they love their own pets (those who do have pets and like other animals) but their Bible appears to rule out the possibility that animals of any kind (except humans, thank god!) will get to enter heaven. I believe in the “New Kingdom” they manage to even get rid of those pesky white doves. Sure they’re pretty and symbolic, but birds crap, and I don’t see their god putting up with that.

Perhaps that’s why there are no non-human animals in the Christian heaven. That heaven is always portrayed as white, pristine, unblemished in any way. Hardly the environment you want to bring beasts into, critters that just dump whenever and where ever they feel inclined. In heaven no one would be assigned to clean up dog poop. That’s not the kind of job for a resident of the gated community of god.

So I know what humans think about animals other than themselves being raptured. But what about the other animal’s point of view?

I decided to interview my dog and cats on this topic, and while the cats are unanimously atheist (I suspect they’ve been raiding my library while I’m at work), Cleo assured me that dogs and cats (but only if they are very, very good and allow dogs to chase them) plus a few other select beasts will indeed go to heaven.

Cleo, resident Dogist

Their version of heaven is a little bit different than the one envisioned by humans. For instance, there are humans in animal heaven, but we’re relegated to the role of servants. We exist solely to open cans and bags and pour the contents on the floor. Animals consider humans to be both incredibly useful pets and dangerous competitors. So to be safe, they allow us into their heaven but only after we have been neutered, licensed and properly trained.

Cleo appears convinced of this vision of the afterlife. Nothing I say dissuades her from her beliefs. So I generally just go along with it as long as it doesn’t intrude on my life. I even bought her a collar with her religion’s version of the cross attached, a metal dogbone with her name engraved.

The Minneapolis Gay Pride Fest is the third largest GLBTQFA festival in the country. Of which we are very proud. Which is why we call it the pride festival.

Well, yesterday, three people form Hayward Wisconsin, which seems to be in a region that is a hotbed of bible thumping yahooism, were arrested.

Previously, these three people (father, wife, son, traditional family and all that) had a booth at the fest but this year were not issued a permit. The difference between previous years and this year is how much of the park fees were paid by the pride fest organizers. This year, for the first time, the festival organizers paid the full fee instead of getting support form the part, and therefore, had the legal right to determine exactly who would be issued rights to set up a vending booth and who would not be issued a permit.

The bible thumping yahoos are all about curing teh gayz, and rescuing them from the sin of homosexuality and stuff. The equivalent would be having a holocaust denial booth at a celebration of the founding of Israel, or a creationist booth at a science education convention.

(Source-scienceblogs)

Lately the tone of discourse on the topic of same-sex marriage has caused me to wonder if gays are hoping that when we win the right to marry we will also enjoy an increase in acceptance and general social equality. I hope not, because I think just the opposite might occur.

We are already seeing an increase, ending soon I hope, of extremely violent and anti-social crimes being committed in the name of one god or another. When those on the far religious right feel that their power is being taken away, that their passionate beliefs are being challenged and even being marginalized, when they begin to realize that they are losing their choke-hold on the population they panic. In their panic they are lashing out in sometimes violent ways.

Religious extremism has killed a security guard, a doctor, Olympic athletes and over three thousand workers in two high-rise office buildings in New York. Religious extremists would like to turn this country into a theistic state so every time an American soldier has to kill an armed and dangerous enemy soldier, it can instead be portrayed as a war between Christians and Muslims. And hasn’t that played well throughout history. Religious extremists want to tell you what to think. The rest of us are begging you to think for yourselves.

The more that gays are out there, the more attention is called to the gay community, the more these wing-nuts will see us as a worthy target of their frustration and anger. How long before we hear about crosses being burned on the lawns of gay couples? Bigotry is not always a silent, festering sickness. Bigots can be like pimples, both pop if squeezed hard enough. The output of both is pretty disgusting.

I don’t mean to rain on the progress being made by gay people across the nation. I just want to send a warning message: Don’t mistake the courts granting marriage rights in some states as a sign that society is becoming more accepting of everyone who identifies as LGBT. Paul Lynde was accepted by my peers though it was clear he was a complete queen. Openly gay people have enjoyed acceptance in small numbers, better if they’re artists and entertainers. But there remains a general reluctance to accept gays in every day life. The Average Joe doesn’t want us in his church or on his bowling team. On his TV set, OK. Living next door with his husband? Not so OK, even though they’d be the first people he asked to watch the family cat while they go on vacation.

Let’s get the right to marry in all 50 states. That’s a worthwhile and acheiveable goal. But it won’t be the end of the road by any means. Gays have been demonized by the religious right (an attitude that has managed to infect even the generally liberal) so well and for so long that it will take several more generations before being LGBT is of minor interest to the general population. Unbelieveably, there are still racists, and how much longer have Blacks enjoyed acceptance by that same Average Joe?

We still have a long row to hoe. We shouldn’t let a bad case of social acne slow us down or defeat us.