If your congress member is someone other than Kathy Dahlkemper, please call them their Washington DC to make sure that they are a co-sponsor of HR 3017. If you aren't sure who your congress member is, then just give your zip code when you call the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121.

Please do this right now! We need everyone here! The number of calls that we make has a direct bearing on what happens.

(The above is a message that I sent to the Erie GLBT News and Events email list.)

The message was a response to a forwarded email from Lambda Legal:

The next few weeks may mark a critical milestone for LGBT rights: The House Education and Labor Committee is scheduled to consider the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) in the next few weeks, and a vote in the full House could happen soon after!

We've been working closely with committee staff members for the past few weeks and will continue to do so to ensure the bill that goes to committee vote is the strongest possible. Introduced in June 2009 by Rep. Barney Frank, the bill, also known as H.R. 3017, would prohibit workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. Rep. George Miller chairs the House Education and Labor Committee.

Congressmembers tell us that what influences them most are calls and emails from people back home.

Make a difference. Call the U.S. Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121. Give your zip code and ask to be connected to your Representative.

Say: My name is _____ and I’m a proud resident of (your city, state). I am calling in support of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (H.R. 3017), to protect lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people from job discrimination. Please pass ENDA before the end of the year. I can be reached at _______ (give your phone number). Thank you.

Or, you can send the same message via email to your Representative.

Lambda Legal has long prioritized workplace fairness for the LGBT community. We currently represent Vandy Beth Glenn, a transgender woman who was fired from her job as a legislative editor by the Georgia General Assembly simply for being true to who she is. In September, she testified before Congress, urging members to enact ENDA so that others will not be fired or face discrimination in employment based on their gender identity and expression or sexual orientation.

Lambda Legal has set aside today to urge our supporters to contact their representatives in support of ENDA. Please call or email Congress today to let lawmakers know how important ENDA is to all of us who care about equality. Let's burn up the phone lines and tell them that the time to pass ENDA is now.

I remarked that it sounded possibly unseemly and concluded by jokingly saying, “You hussy!” It got a laugh.

However, even I have my limits. The only way I would get onto this device is if a gun were held to my head. And even then, it would be a tough call.

There are certainly other tools for tracking that kind of info. For some folks, maybe sharing how they are progressing on their fitness program is a great idea.

I wonder how the devices distinguishes between multiple people, and how it configures for a Twitter account for each.

In LOLSpeak: DO NOT WANT! And I am thinking that probably thinking that I would not be alone in this. And if you forgot to weigh yourself for a while, would your Twitter followers just assume that you were packing on the pounds and were too afraid to step onto the scale, lest your weight gain be apparent. (“It’s been 5 whole days since Morty last weighed himself – he must be as big as a house by now!”)

Nope, I also wouldn’t want something that broadcast my bank balance (or finances), how often I used the restroom, was sexually active or anything like that. Even oversharing moi has limits!

Twitter-equipped bathroom scale tells the world how much you weigh

November 10, 2009 |  4:12 pm

This bathroom scale knows how much you weigh and it can blab it to your Twitter friends. Credit: Withings.

The most embarrassing new tech product of the year just got more embarrassing.
Last month, we let you know about the Wi-Fi Body Scale, the first bathroom scale equipped with a wireless connection to send your weight and body fat information directly to your Web page and iPhone.
But weight, there's more.

Twitter-equipped bathroom scale tells the world how much you weigh | Technology | Los Angeles Times

Below is an excerpt from the article I just posted at Erie Gay News.

Incidentally, I was due to have lunch with Thomas Waters and his partner, and I wanted to get this article posted as quickly as possible. The contact at Attorney.org had kindly provided us with the text ready to go. I waas able to paste in and then dash off to lunch. Cool beans!

Legalize Same-Sex Marriage in NJ

By: Attorney.org staff

Following Tuesday's narrow rejection of same-sex marriage in Maine, the latest front in the battle over gay rights has moved to New Jersey. The Democrat-controlled legislature in New Jersey, which currently recognizes same-sex couples in civil unions, is under pressure to pass a bill that would authorize gay marriage before Jon Corzine ends his term in mid-January. Corzine, who was unseated in Tuesday's election, said he would sign such a bill.
On the contrary, his successor, Republican Chris Christie, has taken a stand against same-sex marriages and has stated that he would veto it as governor.

Read the rest of this article here.

Legalize Same-Sex Marriage in NJ

The Beast make up came off fairly easily on Saturday night. Actually, it was more of a problem keeping it on. However, I felt an itch in my ear this morning and ended up with a blue smeared Q-tip.

Still waiting to get some photos from James, but some folks have already posted photos at Facebook. Check out one here. See the album here. Also, another album is here. After taking some photos, I asked if taking photos that included someone dressed as the Falcon meant that I was getting the bird.

Oddly enough, despite my concerns about people asking me if I was Grover or Cookie Monster (or maybe a Smurf), the person who had confusion was local drag diva Michelle Michaels. The outfit was the White Queen, a villainess from the Hellfire Club. However, people kept asking her if she was Storm. Um, The White Queen (and Michelle Michaels) are Caucasian, and Storm is African.

Eventually, she just sort of sighed and let it go. I shared about going to the boat cruise in Pittsburgh a few years ago. I had thrown on some army camouflage just to sort of have an outfit that wouldn’t be too irksome to drive in. After the 50th person asked me if I was Fidel Castro, I just yielded and said “Sure. Whatever.” (If you are a bearded guy in army camouflage, you are Fidel Castro, regardless of your original intent.)

The recovery is expected to take 6 months to a year. We just had a lovely chat, and she is glad that things are going better.

By the way, this doll should be sold with Enrique, the hot cabana boy. Barbie might have fun shopping during the day, but I would lay odds that this Ken ends up at some swanky gay bar. Or a bathhouse.

Wow.

Barbie Palm Beach Sugar Daddy Ken Doll

(description)

Barbie Palm Beach Sugar Daddy Ken Doll - MATTEL - Barbie - Dolls at Entertainment Earth

I have long believed that the real message that all religions (including Christianity) have at their base is one of love and inclusiveness. Sure, some of the hierarchy get it wrong, but that is the failings of human beings, not the divine.

So, for those small-minded and undeveloped souls who insist that their interpretations of the God and Jesus compels them to hate other human beings, listen to the words of a REAL follower of Christ!

A Manifesto! The Time Has Come!

I have made a decision. I will no longer debate the issue of homosexuality in the church with anyone. I will no longer engage the biblical ignorance that emanates from so many right-wing Christians about how the Bible condemns homosexuality, as if that point of view still has any credibility. I will no longer discuss with them or listen to them tell me how homosexuality is "an abomination to God," about how homosexuality is a "chosen lifestyle," or about how through prayer and "spiritual counseling" homosexual persons can be "cured." Those arguments are no longer worthy of my time or energy. I will no longer dignify by listening to the thoughts of those who advocate "reparative therapy," as if homosexual persons are somehow broken and need to be repaired. I will no longer talk to those who believe that the unity of the church can or should be achieved by rejecting the presence of, or at least at the expense of, gay and lesbian people. I will no longer take the time to refute the unlearned and undocumentable claims of certain world religious leaders who call homosexuality "deviant." I will no longer listen to that pious sentimentality that certain Christian leaders continue to employ, which suggests some version of that strange and overtly dishonest phrase that "we love the sinner but hate the sin." That statement is, I have concluded, nothing more than a self-serving lie designed to cover the fact that these people hate homosexual persons and fear homosexuality itself, but somehow know that hatred is incompatible with the Christ they claim to profess, so they adopt this face-saving and absolutely false statement. I will no longer temper my understanding of truth in order to pretend that I have even a tiny smidgen of respect for the appalling negativity that continues to emanate from religious circles where the church has for centuries conveniently perfumed its ongoing prejudices against blacks, Jews, women and homosexual persons with what it assumes is "high-sounding, pious rhetoric." The day for that mentality has quite simply come to an end for me. I will personally neither tolerate it nor listen to it any longer. The world has moved on, leaving these elements of the Christian Church that cannot adjust to new knowledge or a new consciousness lost in a sea of their own irrelevance. They no longer talk to anyone but themselves. I will no longer seek to slow down the witness to inclusiveness by pretending that there is some middle ground between prejudice and oppression. There isn't. Justice postponed is justice denied. That can be a resting place no longer for anyone. An old civil rights song proclaimed that the only choice awaiting those who cannot adjust to a new understanding was to "Roll on over or we'll roll on over you!" Time waits for no one.

I will particularly ignore those members of my own Episcopal Church who seek to break away from this body to form a "new church," claiming that this new and bigoted instrument alone now represents the Anglican Communion. Such a new ecclesiastical body is designed to allow these pathetic human beings, who are so deeply locked into a world that no longer exists, to form a community in which they can continue to hate gay people, distort gay people with their hopeless rhetoric and to be part of a religious fellowship in which they can continue to feel justified in their homophobic prejudices for the rest of their tortured lives. Church unity can never be a virtue that is preserved by allowing injustice, oppression and psychological tyranny to go unchallenged.

In my personal life, I will no longer listen to televised debates conducted by "fair-minded" channels that seek to give "both sides" of this issue "equal time." I am aware that these stations no longer give equal time to the advocates of treating women as if they are the property of men or to the advocates of reinstating either segregation or slavery, despite the fact that when these evil institutions were coming to an end the Bible was still being quoted frequently on each of these subjects. It is time for the media to announce that there are no longer two sides to the issue of full humanity for gay and lesbian people. There is no way that justice for homosexual people can be compromised any longer.

I will no longer act as if the Papal office is to be respected if the present occupant of that office is either not willing or not able to inform and educate himself on public issues on which he dares to speak with embarrassing ineptitude. I will no longer be respectful of the leadership of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who seems to believe that rude behavior, intolerance and even killing prejudice is somehow acceptable, so long as it comes from third-world religious leaders, who more than anything else reveal in themselves the price that colonial oppression has required of the minds and hearts of so many of our world's population. I see no way that ignorance and truth can be placed side by side, nor do I believe that evil is somehow less evil if the Bible is quoted to justify it. I will dismiss as unworthy of any more of my attention the wild, false and uninformed opinions of such would-be religious leaders as Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Swaggart, Albert Mohler, and Robert Duncan. My country and my church have both already spent too much time, energy and money trying to accommodate these backward points of view when they are no longer even tolerable.

I make these statements because it is time to move on. The battle is over. The victory has been won. There is no reasonable doubt as to what the final outcome of this struggle will be. Homosexual people will be accepted as equal, full human beings, who have a legitimate claim on every right that both church and society have to offer any of us. Homosexual marriages will become legal, recognized by the state and pronounced holy by the church. "Don't ask, don't tell" will be dismantled as the policy of our armed forces. We will and we must learn that equality of citizenship is not something that should ever be submitted to a referendum. Equality under and before the law is a solemn promise conveyed to all our citizens in the Constitution itself. Can any of us imagine having a public referendum on whether slavery should continue, whether segregation should be dismantled, whether voting privileges should be offered to women? The time has come for politicians to stop hiding behind unjust laws that they themselves helped to enact, and to abandon that convenient shield of demanding a vote on the rights of full citizenship because they do not understand the difference between a constitutional democracy, which this nation has, and a "mobocracy," which this nation rejected when it adopted its constitution. We do not put the civil rights of a minority to the vote of a plebiscite.

I will also no longer act as if I need a majority vote of some ecclesiastical body in order to bless, ordain, recognize and celebrate the lives and gifts of gay and lesbian people in the life of the church. No one should ever again be forced to submit the privilege of citizenship in this nation or membership in the Christian Church to the will of a majority vote.

The battle in both our culture and our church to rid our souls of this dying prejudice is finished. A new consciousness has arisen. A decision has quite clearly been made. Inequality for gay and lesbian people is no longer a debatable issue in either church or state. Therefore, I will from this moment on refuse to dignify the continued public expression of ignorant prejudice by engaging it. I do not tolerate racism or sexism any longer. From this moment on, I will no longer tolerate our culture's various forms of homophobia. I do not care who it is who articulates these attitudes or who tries to make them sound holy with religious jargon.

I have been part of this debate for years, but things do get settled and this issue is now settled for me. I do not debate any longer with members of the "Flat Earth Society" either. I do not debate with people who think we should treat epilepsy by casting demons out of the epileptic person; I do not waste time engaging those medical opinions that suggest that bleeding the patient might release the infection. I do not converse with people who think that Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans as punishment for the sin of being the birthplace of Ellen DeGeneres or that the terrorists hit the United Sates on 9/11 because we tolerated homosexual people, abortions, feminism or the American Civil Liberties Union. I am tired of being embarrassed by so much of my church's participation in causes that are quite unworthy of the Christ I serve or the God whose mystery and wonder I appreciate more each day. Indeed I feel the Christian Church should not only apologize, but do public penance for the way we have treated people of color, women, adherents of other religions and those we designated heretics, as well as gay and lesbian people.

Life moves on. As the poet James Russell Lowell once put it more than a century ago: "New occasions teach new duties, Time makes ancient good uncouth." I am ready now to claim the victory. I will from now on assume it and live into it. I am unwilling to argue about it or to discuss it as if there are two equally valid, competing positions any longer. The day for that mentality has simply gone forever.

This is my manifesto and my creed. I proclaim it today. I invite others to join me in this public declaration. I believe that such a public outpouring will help cleanse both the church and this nation of its own distorting past. It will restore integrity and honor to both church and state. It will signal that a new day has dawned and we are ready not just to embrace it, but also to rejoice in it and to celebrate it.

– John Shelby Spong
(Episcopal Bishop)

John Shelby Spong: A Manifesto! The Time Has Come!

After dinner, there was the usual presenting of the candidates. Cathi Zelazny, the party chair had a DVD that was running through a player to a projection unit. It was hooked up correctly, but there were a couple of controls. Fortunately, I was able to figure it out and since I was sitting up front, I didn’t even have to get out of my chair! I was worried about being too close to the candidates. (When you stand a real possibility of being able to count their nose hair, it is probable that one is too close.) There wasn’t a good place for me retreat while at the table, but I happened to get a call on my cell phone, so I had an excuse to duck out of the room. When I came back, I just sat at a different table.

I first came out publicly when commenting on a second degree murder conviction of 2 men in the killing of a local gay man. Protecting on the basis of sexual orientation is just as important as protecting on the basis of religion, race or gender.

We become a more just society when everyone is protected!

Good job by everyone! Looking forward to the happy news of President Obama signing this into law.

Hate crimes passes Senate: Goes to President's desk

Filed by: Bil Browning

October 22, 2009 5:30 PM

As expected, the Senate passed the defense authorization bill this afternoon on a bipartisan vote of 68-29. Hate crimes legislation has already passed both houses of Congress, but the entire bill had to be voted on again after differences in the two versions of the defense bill were worked out.

The House version of the consolidated bill passed October 6 - just in time for the National Equality March and Obama's speech to the Human Rights Campaign's national dinner. The bill goes to the President's desk for his signature next. President Obama is expected to sign the legislation soon.

This legislation is vitally important for states like Indiana which doesn't have a hate crimes law thanks to our state legislators lack of support for our community our an ineffective state-wide LGBT organization. The message of the National Equality March rings true for me today. Our lack of progress in our state has been salvaged by federal action. The only way we're going to gain our rights is via federal law.

Hate crimes passes Senate: Goes to President's desk | The Bilerico Project