Calling all critters! It’s time for us to rejoice and then rejoice some more over a big ol’ batch of queer cheer, because it’s Sunday Funday! Here’s this week’s best news all rolled up into one post, just for you. Because that’s love.
Pretty Much Everyone Wants a Supreme Court Decision on Gay Marriage
The New York Times Editorial Board urged the Supreme Court this week to finally take up marriage equality, offering some clarity once and for all for the LGBT people stuck in legal battles from state-to-state to marry the people they love. And the Board isn’t alone – over half of the nation’s Attorneys General and five religious organizations are pleading for the justices to make up their mind on the matter, too.
This South African Artist is Finally Bringing Her Work to America
Gabrielle Le Roux’s hand-painted portraits completed in collaboration with trans and queer people around the world are finally coming to the United States. In my humble opinion, that’s a big fucking deal.
Le Roux draws all of her portraits from live sittings with the subject that can last as long as three days. The works are completed by the subjects themselves, who write personal statements directly on the portraits. The Turkish portraits are also accompanied by video interviews, a component of the work she hopes to expand in the Mexico collection.
“If you offer to draw somebody, they feel very honored and they interpret as a mark of respect,” Le Roux said in an interview in her house outside Cape Town last year. Including their own marks on the finished work, she said, allows these portraits “something that a person has asserted about themselves.”
Cardinal Dolan Will Grand Marshal Gay-Inclusive St. Patrick’s Day in NYC
Out of the closet, into the festive streets!
There is no more natural spot for Roman Catholic Cardinal Timothy Dolan – a proud, ebullient Irish-American – than grand marshal of the city’s historic St. Patrick’s Day Parade. But the honor now has an added significance: Parade organizers said Wednesday they will allow the first gay group to march under its own banner.
Dolan was quick to issue a statement of support for the parade organizers, accepting their decision. While supporters of gay and lesbian Catholics are cheering, some conservatives want the archbishop to withdraw from the event.
“I think we’re seeing the Catholicism of Pope Francis come to the Archdiocese of New York,” said J. Patrick Hornbeck, chairman of the theology department at Fordham University. “Cardinal Dolan’s statement is welcoming. He did not make this decision, but sees the parade as an opportunity for unity.”
Santa Fe Queers Are Crazy in Love
Marriage equality has shaken things up in Santa Fe County. Applications for licenses skyrocketed, doubling in one year – and 55% went to same-sex couples.
HRC Apologizes to the Trans Community
Chad Griffin, President of the Human Rights Campaign, apologized for the HRC’s shortcomings this week in advocating for trans folks during a keynote speech at the Southern Comfort Conference, the largest gathering of the transgender community in the world.
I am here today, at Southern Comfort, to deliver a message. I deliver it on behalf of HRC, and I say it here in the hopes that it will eventually be heard by everyone who is willing to hear it.
HRC has done wrong by the transgender community in the past, and I am here to formally apologize.
I am sorry for the times when we stood apart when we should have been standing together.
Even more than that, I am sorry for the times you have been underrepresented or unrepresented by this organization. What happens to trans people is absolutely central to the LGBT struggle. And as the nation’s largest LGBT civil rights organization, HRC has a responsibility to do that struggle justice, or else we are failing at our fundamental mission.
You can read the transcript at The Advocate.
Applications Open for Trans Women Who Want to Come Home to Mt. Holyoke
Mt. Holyoke is now accepting applications from trans women, which is a victory not only for members of its community but also for the world-at-large.
Trans exclusionary radical feminists have found more support within the academy than in the feminist grassroots. The feminism of the academy is based in trans-exclusionary theory in many ways, and this is so deeply embedded that it’s influenced feminist thinking broadly, even for folks who aren’t transmisogynist — I’ve worked for years to unlearn the gender ideology I learned at Hampshire, which said I didn’t get to be a woman. So, while some of the language and logic in Mt. Holyoke’s FAQ could use some work, the fact that such a positive policy has been produced by an institution that still has plenty of cissexism to unlearn only makes this victory more powerful in my book. We won on anti-trans turf.
Here’s hoping we’ll see lots of other women’s colleges quickly follow suit.
Jane Lynch Just Got Back from Portlandia
Jane Lynch has been spotted in Portlandia, best place on Earth.
This Dog Reminds Me That I Need A Trip to the Spa
The Conservatives really want to get this marriage equality issue out of the way as the 2016 elections commence. They don’t want to have to talk about it, but still retain the religious conservative vote. Talking about it will lose votes one way or the other so they want to be able to blame the Courts and not the lawmakers.
Ohhh my goddess, HRC, you think that speech is going to make up for 30 years of ignoring, silencing, and undermining transgender advocates and activists? You got another thing coming…
And as far as I can tell, they also aren’t backing away from their endorsements of anti-choice candidates (candidates who support marriage equality but are against reproductive justice). I’m skeptical that HRC can become more than a group primarily for gay, white, cis men without major institutional change, not just once speech.
And I did not mean to shift the conversation from trans people to reproductive justice, just wanted to add that HRC doesn’t seem to understand how deeply their prioritizing of white, cis, wealthy gay men has affected others in the community, so that action and not speech is needed if they want to change. Sorry if it seemed like I was trying to shift the conversation away from the topic of trans people and HRC.
It’s cool, no sweat. I care a helluva lot about reproductive rights too, even if they don’t directly affect me.
I am strangely attracted to Jane Lynch in that photo.
The best support, I believe, is to simply realize that we do know we are not the gender that society assumes of the body we were born in. And visualize us as the gender we identify as, and allow us to prove our gender by interacting with us in some mutually comfortable venue to exchange thoughts , which will help foster understanding.
For me, political inclusion is great and necessary, but emotional connection to intelligent lesbians who can understand that I am a female, react emotionally as a female, love as a female, and need a loving female to share all of that emotion and love , and life. My heart aches to find that brilliant, loving woman.
That speaks to me Sarah. It’s like, in my case anyway, I spent my whole childhood in awe of women, looking up to and aspiring to be like other women in high school, all the while being told I categorically can never be like them because I’m not one.
And you get this spark of hope, someone tells you “well yeah you can be a woman, from what you’re telling me you are a woman.” And it burns away this awful misery you’ve lived under and thought you’d live your whole life under, except that even after you clear it out inside yourself, there’s so so many women who just look at you like a Frankenstein’s monster.
Just this morning I got a bunch of TERFs up on my dash screaming at my friends. Nothing hurts as much as their hate. Nothing. I couldn’t care less about what men think of me, but when it’s women, queer women, it’s like getting stabbed through the stomach every time. Because it’s other women whose companionship and presence I long for in my life, and sometimes it feels like it’s always going to be trans women supporting trans women, all on our own, afraid of and suspicious of all other queer women because of poisonous opinions spread by a dwindling fringe.
I see a lot of cis girls up on here really trying their butts off to be inclusive but I often think, that the gravity of that feeling is really invisible to them, but I don’t know how to share it. So I guess this comment is my attempt!
Thank you.
Hi Starling. I loved your comment, and agree that the women on this site are wonderfully open to including us. However, to feel totally accepted by a cis woman requires real interaction ,of some sort, for them to know in their heart that we are really female in our hearts, and that we want to simply want to be gfs and be treated like any of their other gfs.
But that is asking for a lot of courage on their part because of having to look beyond previous perceptions.
But each day brings more hope and more acceptance. :)
Starling and Sarah, what you both wrote was absolutely beautiful and vulnerable. My heart muscle feels things right now and I hope both of you are in good places with support because you defenitely have mine here at AS.
I want to throw love, kittens and glitter everywhere.
Thank you, bra. Your reply is so sweet….and so is that heart “muscle” of yours! :)
Thank you for this, Sarah and Starling.
Any other NYC Autostraddlers want to meet up with me at Gabrielle LeRoux’s showing on Wednesday? (and/or Hedwig and the Angry Inch) I’m so excited to see this!
I just want to say im so proud of my city.yay Santa Fe Queers we are cute!!!!!!!
Its a Fanta Se round here!!!