Shawn Syms asks who would offer more: a cacophonous cabal of kookily choreographed marauders, or the Harper government?
gay rights
Remember queer youth when casting your school trustee votes
In the wake of the recent wave of queer teen suicides due to homophobic bullying, it would be a mistake for Ontario voters to trivialize the Oct. 25 province-wide municipal election of our school trustees. School trustees are also elected in four other provinces across Canada over the next few weeks. If education is a great equalizer in our society, many schools are still not doing enough to provide equal access of education for our LGBTQ students.
Too often, we tend to merely pay attention to LGBTQ students when one of them commits suicide. Last month, we witnessed a string of queer-related teen suicides across the U.S., with one of the victims being an eighth-grader who killed himself in Texas because he was "bullied to death" for being gay, according to his family.
Lt. Dan Choi is discharged from the U.S. military
"As we mark the end of America's combat mission in Iraq," President Barack Obama said this week, "a grateful America must pay tribute to all who served there." He should have added, "unless you're gay," because, despite his rhetoric, weeks earlier the commander in chief fired one of those Iraq vets: Lt. Dan Choi.
Choi was an Iraq War veteran, a graduate of West Point and a trained Arabic linguist. I ran into Choi the day after he received his official discharge. We were at the Netroots Nation conference in Las Vegas, a gathering of thousands of bloggers, activists and journalists.
Though Choi had known the discharge was coming, he was still shaken to the core. He took out his phone and showed me the letter he was e-mailed.
Macedonia's successes in fighting HIV/AIDS
Healthy Options Project Skopje (HOPS) is the recipient of the 2010 International Award for Action on HIV/AIDS and Human Rights, the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network and Human Rights Watch announced this week. The award, which recognizes outstanding individuals and organizations that protect the rights and dignity of people living with or affected by HIV/AIDS, was presented in Vienna, Austria, at the XVIII International AIDS Conference. Here is a description of their program and challenges.
The Republic of Macedonia remains a country with a low rate of HIV. In fact, with 129 cases, it has the lowest reported number among southeastern European countries.
Lesbian teen accepts settlement after being denied prom date
July 20, 2010
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: ACLU RELEASE
ABERDEEN, MS - Itawamba County School District officials agreed to have a judgment entered against them in the case of a recent high school graduate who sued her school for canceling the prom rather than let her attend with her girlfriend. The agreement ends a precedent-setting lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of 18-year-old Constance McMillen, who suffered humiliation and harassment after parents, students and school officials executed a cruel plan to put on a "decoy" prom for her while the rest of her classmates were at a private prom 30 miles away.
Pride without apartheid
Freedom of speech has been trumped by politics this year at Toronto's Pride Festival.
Thanks, or no thanks, to certain politicians and Zionist lobbyists and defamatory editorials and columns by a national newspaper that has never championed queer rights, Pride's raison d'etre has been corrupted.
To them, Pride should be about nothing more than partying. They believe we should ignore the hard-won rights for which those who have come before us fought, rights that were earned after centuries of oppression.
All of this over a group which marches under the banner Queers Against Israel Apartheid.
Coming out against Israeli apartheid: The case for solidarity
Each year, in the lead up to Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW), organizers expect backlash and attempts to shut down events. IAW 2010 was no different. The Ontario Legislature condemned IAW, The Toronto District School Board banned IAW from its premises even though no events were scheduled there, and Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff slammed IAW for the second year in a row.
We demand
On August 28, 1971 queer activists hosted the first large scale gay rights protest on Parliament Hill. 100 to 200 women and men stood in the pouring rain to listen to speeches from Toronto Gay Action, The Homophile Movement of Toronto and Front de Libération Homosexual. The demonstration was to follow up to a list sent to the federal government, later printed as"We Demand" in the queer magazine The Body Politic.
Build up
Stephen Lewis addresses the issue of criminalization of HIV
In the first part of a three part video series Stephen Lewis is interviewed by local AIDS activist Tim McKaskell. Below is the first part of this series in which Lewis talks about the criminalization of HIV, what it means for gay men and issues a mea culpa around his work on queer issues here in Canada and Ontario.
Father Mychal's message: Choosing the path of peace on Sept. 11
The body bag marked "Victim 0001" on Sept. 11, 2001, contained the corpse of Father Mychal Judge, a Catholic chaplain with the Fire Department of New York. When he heard about the disaster at the World Trade Center, he donned his Catholic collar and firefighter garb and raced downtown. He saw people jump to their deaths to avoid the inferno more than 1,000 feet above. At 9:59 a.m., the South Tower collapsed, and the force and debris from that mass of steel, concrete, glass and humanity as it hit the ground is likely what killed Father Mychal. His was the first recorded death from the attacks that morning. His life's work should be central to the 10th anniversary commemorations of the Sept. 11 attacks: peace, tolerance and reconciliation.
