Joy Nash: Fat Rant 3 - Staircase Wit

She communicates it so well, there's nothing else for me to say!

New evidence on the origins of HIV

Reported in Science Magazine:

MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA--The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1) responsible for most of the AIDS cases in the world infected people approximately 100 years ago, more than 20 years earlier than previously believed, according to findings presented here this week at the Evolution 2008 meeting. Its lesser known cousin, HIV-2, jumped into humans decades later, from a monkey species that carried the virus for just a couple of hundred years, not the millions of years researchers had assumed, according to other research presented at the meeting.

Read the entire Science article here.

This new evidence pushes back the year HIV is believed to have entered the human bloodstream from 1931 to 1908.

Box Turtle Bulletin offers a history of the AIDS pandemic here. Their article will soon be updated to include the new Worobey group findings.

Clio | Cop

Village People, cute guy, hot cop. What's not to like?

lookin' up teh gay

Poking around in odd corners of the internet has long been a fascination of mine. Sometimes it's just out of boredom, but often it starts with a specific topic. Like today. i was looking for info about Wallace Thurman, a Harlem Renaissance intellectual and homosexual (or bisexual, depending on which history you're reading.)

While following links i discovered a website that i can already tell will draw me back again & again. It's called glbtq, an encyclopedia of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer culture. There looks to be alot of info there, and the site's well organized. Check it out.

What did i learn from this first look? Well, i found an lgbt symbol from the 1970s that i'd never heard of before: the Lavender Rhinoceros. It first appeared in Boston, and never achieved widespread usage. But it encapsulated a militant message: Rhinos are considered generally docile, but will put up a strong defense when threatened. You know, kind of like queer folk!

Jim Wallis speaks out against Dobson's Obama smear

Jim Wallis is an evangelical Christian leader, as well as President & CEO of Sojourners, an organization of progressive Christians with the mission "to articulate the biblical call to social justice, inspiring hope and building a movement to transform individuals, communities, the church, and the world."

"James Dobson is insinuating himself into this presidential campaign, and his attacks against his fellow Christian, Barack Obama, should be seriously scrutinized. And because the basis for his attack on Obama is the speech the Illinois senator gave at our Sojourners/Call to Renewal event in 2006 (for the record, we also had Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republicans Rick Santorum and Sam Brownback speak that year), I have decided to respond to Dobson's attacks. In most every case they are themselves clear distortions of what Obama said in that speech. I was there for the speech; Dobson was not.

I haven't endorsed a candidate, but I do defend them when they are attacked in disingenuous ways, and this is one of those cases. You can read Obama's two-year-old speech, which was widely publicized at the time, and you can see that Dobson either didn't understand it or is deliberately distorting it."

Read the entire article at the Huffington Post.

LOL Flapjack

More states abstaining from federal funds for abstinence-only ed

From an AP article available through the Huffington Post:

Supporters [of abstinence-only education] say comprehensive sex education sends a mixed message and that abstinence is the only method that is 100 percent effective in preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease. Critics say abstinence education simply doesn't stop teens from having sex, and those teens need more information about how to reduce pregnancy and disease.

In April 2007, a federally funded study of four abstinence-only programs by Mathematica Policy Research Inc., found that participants had just as many sexual partners as nonparticipants and had sex at the same median age as nonparticipants. The four programs had taught students about human anatomy and sexually transmitted diseases, helped them improve their communication skills, manage peer pressure, set personal goals and build self-esteem.

Now, i think helping young people improve their communication skills, manage peer pressure, set personal goals and build self-esteem are excellent goals. But if abstinence-only education has no impact on actual sexual behavior, what is the justification for continuing to spend our tax dollars on it? Supporting tax and spend neo-conservative ideology? Not with my hard-earned dollars. i need them to pay my mortgage and buy gas so i can drive to work.

Read the whole article on HuffPo.

Compare & contrast

Today's news media cycle has been force-feeding the story of James Dobson's criticism primarily of a speech Barack Obama delivered in June 2006 to the Christian group Call to Renewal. Dobson (the founder & chairman of Focus on the Family) accuses Senator Obama of "deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible" and of having a "fruitcake interpretation of the Constitution”.

A website called "James Dobson Doesn't Speak For Me", created by a group of pastors and Christians who support Senator Obama has posted a comparison of Dobson's criticisms against quotes from some of Obama's speeches.

When i look at the comparisons, it's obvious to me that it's Dobson who is distorting "the Bible to fit his own world view, his own confused theology”. It's apparent that Dobson's the one who has "a fruitcake interpretation of the Constitution”, not Senator Obama.

But don't base your conclusion on mine. Make up your own mind.

From the newsdesk

Some interesting articles have appeared in the press lately. Among them, Jonathan Rauch's opinion piece, Gay Marriage Is Good for America which was in the Wall Street Journal last Saturday. After referencing the start of same-sex marriages last week in California, he says:

More ceremonies will follow, at least until November, when gay marriage will go before California's voters. They should choose to keep it. To understand why, imagine your life without marriage. Meaning, not merely your life if you didn't happen to get married. What I am asking you to imagine is life without even the possibility of marriage.

Re-enter your childhood, but imagine your first crush, first kiss, first date and first sexual encounter, all bereft of any hope of marriage as a destination for your feelings. Re-enter your first serious relationship, but think about it knowing that marrying the person is out of the question.

Imagine that in the law's eyes you and your soul mate will never be more than acquaintances. And now add even more strangeness. Imagine coming of age into a whole community, a whole culture, without marriage and the bonds of mutuality and kinship that go with it.

What is this weird world like? It has more sex and less commitment than a world with marriage. It is a world of fragile families living on the shadowy outskirts of the law; a world marked by heightened fear of loneliness or abandonment in crisis or old age; a world in some respects not even civilized, because marriage is the foundation of civilization.

I'm not sure i can entirely embrace Mr. Rauch's perspective, but it's certainly interesting.

Another report, this one from the New York Times, concerns the intriguing U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. While not mentioned in the NYT article, the Survey itself contains some revealing data. For example, each person surveyed was asked:

...tell me whether the FIRST statement or the SECOND statement comes closer to your own views -- even if neither is exactly right. 1 - Homosexuality is a way of life that should be accepted by society, OR 2 - Homosexuality is a way of life that should be discouraged by society.

People from the Mainline Protestant denominations favored the first statement by 56%, while only 34% favored the second one. The remainder either favored both statements equally or didn't answer the question.

The majority of Roman Catholics surveyed also favored the first statement, by 58%, compared to only 30% of their number who favored the second one.

Orthodox Christians favored the first statement by 48%, with 37% preferring the second statement.

With the exception of Evangelical Churches, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Historically Black Churches, every US Christian Tradition surveyed favored the first statement over the second.

i think the UCC is right. God IS still speaking! And evidently some are listening.

And those great guys over at Box Turtle Bulletin are reporting that opponents of California SB-777, which provides an array of anti-discrimination and anti-bullying protections in California’s schools, are throwing in the towel on their efforts to overturn this law, which was signed by Gov. Schwarzenegger last October.

Finally, an article published last Friday by the San Francisco Sentinel reports how the Lawyers for Equality are battling against the proposed November anti-gay ballot initiative to stop same-sex marriages in California.

GAFCON & their "new" Anglican Sanctimony, er, "Orthodoxy"

The reports are easily found in the Anglican blogosphere about the gathering of Bishops known as GAFCON. After initial gaffes with the location of the conference, ++Akinola gave the opening address, and their official effort at revising what it has historically meant to be Anglican begun.

I have little to say that isn't being discussed elsewhere, ad nauseum. It seems to me that despite the hype, despite the almost continual claims to represent the Global South, the number of GAFCON adherents has been dwindling. It appears that a plurality of Bishops attending hail from two countries, Nigeria and Uganda. Hardly representative of the entire Global South, though the self-inflated there claim otherwise.

For an authentic Ugandan counter-perspective of life and religion in relation to GAFCON and its effects, from the blog GayUganda, click here and here.

While having lunch after Sunday services this week, our wide-ranging conversation touched on those meeting in Jerusalem this week for this conference. A gathering which continues a troubling predilection on the part of these Bishops to disrespect the the classically Anglican tradition of honoring provincial and diocesan boundaries (GAFCON did not consult with the Anglican Bishop Dawani of Jerusalem when they were initially planning to meet in Jerusalem, and basically ignored his concerns.) You'll find a Church Times report of the concerns of several Anglican Bishops here.

As we briefly talked about GAFCON over Sunday's brunch, i realized that my predominant feeling about the matter is sadness. i can't help but think that these men seem more interested in re-establishing purity laws than following the Way of the Christ. While they are still Christians, i don't recognize this faith that they claim as more true, more orthodox, than the Way i see when reading the Bible or looking around at the people in my parish.

How many of the very kind of outcasts that the Bible clearly shows Jesus sought to bring compassion & mercy to will suffer as a result of these prince-Bishops who seek to revise Anglicanism into Neo-puritanism? How this conference must pierce anew the Sacred Heart.

"The Gay After"

Posting shamelessly borrowed from "Of Course I Could Be On Vacation..."

Engines full ahead, Mr. Sulu!

George Takei (the original Star Trek's Mr. Sulu) and his partner Brad Altman were among the first folks this morning in West Hollywood, CA, to obtain their license to marry.

AP Photo/Hector Mata

You can read the latest courtesy of the LA Times.

Under the Chuppa in LA

The first same-sex couple married in LA County:

AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian

Tyler, 66, and Olson, 54, have been together for 15 years and were the first same-sex couple in Los Angeles County to apply for a marriage license at the Beverly Hills Courthouse on Valentine's Day 2004. When their application was rejected the couple took their fight all the way to the California Supreme Court.

Dean Logan, acting Los Angeles County registrar, said in a statement that the decision to allow Tyler and Olson to marry earlier was "in recognition of their unique role in the court's decision."

Check out the whole article in the Jerusalem Post online.

I heard the newlyweds interviewed this morning on the Stephanie Miller Show. My favorite quote is from Ms. Tyler, in response to a question about the anti-gay marriage "Christians": "I don't call them Christians, because they are to Christianity what paint-by-numbers is to art."

UPDATE: There's more from Robin Tyler in The Advocate.

A marriage of our elders

Just after 5pm yesterday in San Francisco, Del Martin, 87, and Phyllis Lyon, 83, were the first gay couple married in the city.

SFGate has a great article about this new chapter in marriage rights, and Box Turtle Bulletin pays tribute to these godmothers of gay rights, who were among the founders of the Daughters of Bilitis in 1955. And that 'Evil Lesbian Priestess', the Rev. Elizabeth Keaton, shares her warm perspective over at her wonderful blog, Telling Secrets.

It's almost always a good day to be gay, but especially so today!!!

If you're interested in the history, you can find out more about Del & Phyllis here, and about the Daughters of Bilitis here.

More evidence of a biological basis

NewScientist is reporting on a study that found more evidence that being gay is a fixed biological trait.

Brain scans have provided the most compelling evidence yet that being gay or straight is a biologically fixed trait.

The scans reveal that in gay people, key structures of the brain governing emotion, mood, anxiety and aggressiveness resemble those in straight people of the opposite sex.

The differences are likely to have been forged in the womb or in early infancy, says Ivanka Savic, who conducted the study at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden.

"This is the most robust measure so far of cerebral differences between homosexual and heterosexual subjects," she says.

Check out the rest of the article.

Ain't it the truth...

"To wait open-endedly is an enormously radical attitude toward life. So is to trust that something will happen to us that is far beyond our imaginings. So, too, is giving up control over our future and letting God define our life, trusting that God molds us according to God's love and not according to our fear. The spiritual life is a life in which we wait, actively present to the moment, trusting that new things will happen to us, new things that are far beyond our own imagination, fantasy, or prediction. That, indeed, is a very radical stance toward life in a world preoccupied with control."

-Henri Nouwen

Gay Unions Shed Light on Gender in Marriage

Maybe this is what folks who are against the idea of gay marriage are really scared of.