Dear Mr. Barth:

I am writing to state that I am very disturbed by the way your reporter, Justin Weaver, has sensationalized the Zach Patterson/Beloit Memorial High School story. I am an open lesbian whose children attend Beloit Memorial High School. I spoke with Justin and asked him why he did not include the following facts in his original article: (1) Beloit Memorial High School has a Gay Straight Alliance whose purpose is to create a safe space for the school’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) youth (2) Beloit Memorial High School honors National Day of Silence, a day when the world raises awareness of suicide among LGBT youth and (3) Beloit Memorial High School has worked for years to eradicate the phrase “That’s so gay” because it’s offensive and hurtful to both LGBT people and their straight allies.

Zach Patterson was not asked to remove his “Marriage is so gay” t-shirt because it supports gay marriage. He was asked to remove the shirt because it could be misinterpreted in so many ways. As I understand it, Zach originally went to the GSA advisors and asked them what they thought of the shirt. He was told by the GSA that, because the shirt could be misinterpreted as anti-gay, it might not be a good idea to wear the shirt at school.

It’s my opinion that Justin is sensationalizing the Zach Patterson/Beloit Memorial High School because it sells papers. The Beloit Daily News is exploiting not only Zach Patterson, but the teachers and administrators who have worked so hard to protect our city’s LGBT youth.

Do you need to sell papers so bad that you’re willing to ruin the reputation of a school that has worked hard to create a safe space for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth? Do you need to sell papers so bad that you’re willing to exploit the recent rash of suicides among gay teenagers? Shame on you. Shame on Justin Weaver. And shame on the “Marriage is so gay” t-shirt company for exploiting this story for financial gain.

Genia Stevens
Beloit, WI

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Lt. Dan Choi released a statement to announce that he and Capt. James Pietrangelo will start a fast in opposition to the “don’t ask, don’t tell” compromise. He also said that more civil disobedience and arrests could be possible this weekend.

My response: LMAO! Really? FOR REAL? ROTFLMAO!

Seriously? This is a slap in the face to millions of Americans who – due to the current economic climate – are starving through no fault of their own. Two gay men who have homes and jobs and the ability to purchase food are willingly starving themselves because they oppose the current DADT compromise. Let’s ponder that for a moment.

How is this move supposed to make Americans sympathetic to the gay community’s cause when too many people are personally associated with people who are homeless and struggling to feed themselves and their children? This move wreaks of gay privilege because if anyone can CHOOSE to starve themselves it must mean they’re not that hard up economically. The same person who can choose to starve himself can also choose to eat whenever he wants. For Americans who don’t have that choice – and folks like myself who sympathize with them – I’m rolling my eyes at Dan Choi and James Pietrangelo and calling them media hungry whores just lookin’ for more attention.

That’s my opinion and I’m stickin’ to it.

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Here’s the video of what happened in SF:

I love how Obama made the crowd laugh about the situation – AND laugh at Williams! Classy! I was also very pleased with the support Obama received from the crowd. The crowd started chanting (again!) “Yes we can! Yes we can!” to drown out the noise coming from the riff-raff. Williams looked stupid and Obama came out of the situation looking just as suave as ever.

Obama handled himself very well. He didn’t dare let the likes of Kip Williams break his stride.

Obama wouldn’t ever say this to Williams because he’s much too classy and professional, so I’ll say it for him: Kip Williams, sit yo’ punk ass down somewhere.

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Within 2 minutes a self-identified gay man posted the following response: Prolly cuts down on the smell.

And of course, I responded in the thread with:  Leave it to a gay man to make the same tired-ass comment about how a woman’s vagina smells.

I’m so fed up with this kind of sexist and hateful running off-of-the-mouth, especially from a group of people who – in my opinion – make jokes about a woman’s vagina just to prove they’re gay.   A friend of mine once suggested that gay men who repeatedly make jokes about a woman’s vagina do so because they feel the need to justify  why they’re gay. It seems ridiculous to me that one would stoop to such a pathetic tactic, but I’m not a self-loathing queer so I get completely lost in that warped logic.

Months ago, I ended a friendship with a gay man who refused to respect his fellow lesbian sisters.   Without fail, every time we saw him, he cracked a joke about a woman’s vagina: “It smells like fish,” or “I don’t like the taste of vinegar,” or “I don’t wanna have to pinch my nose to eat it.”     I finally asked him, “Do you hear us making jokes about gay men?” His response was “No.”  So I asked, “Then why do you make lesbians the butt of your jokes?”  No response.

I’m not sure what that kind of gay man (yep, I said “that kind”) thinks he’s accomplishing by alienating the female segment of our community, but I can tell ya this much . . . nothing good comes out of that kind of behavior.  That kind of gay man looks stupid – and his jokes seriously lack creativity.

As for the Steel Vaginas comment . . . apparently the update was referring to a comment made in Boomerang by Grace Jones.  She wanted Steel Vaginas to be the name of her new perfume.   It has a nice ring to it, I think.

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Whenever members of the conservative christian reich want to claim a certain group of people don’t really exist, they place that group’s identifier in quotation marks. You’ll often see “gay” instead of gay and “transgendered” instead of transgender (the correct way to format the word).

It was no surprise to see this kind of ridiculous disrespect on a conservative christian web site, but this is what I did find extremely interesting (bold emphasis is mine):

“This isn’t like appointing an African-American in order to try to provide diversity and right some kind of discriminatory wrong,” he said. “This is about political correctness.

Stop.the.press.

Did one of the nation’s largest conservative web sites just suggest the following:

1. Hiring a Black person is a good thing
2. Hiring a Black person is a sign of true diversity
3. Hiring a Black person has nothing to do with political correctness

Has this group of hateful christians replaced their hatred for Blacks and Affirmative Action with their hatred for homosexuals and transgender people?

Nope.

Those people haven’t swapped one hatred for another; they’re simply pretending they give a shit about Blacks because they’ve used Black christians to fuck over homosexuals and transgender people for awhile now.

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Members of the Catholic Church hierarchy in DC announced they will prohibit Catholic Charities from providing services to DC residents if DC’s City Council decides to recognize all married couples – even same-sex couples – as equal under law.

That’s some seriously fucked up divide and conquer goin’ on right there. What kind of church withholds charity from a group of people in order to convince them to fuck over another group of people? I’m sure there are some really decent Catholics out there who are extremely embarrassed by all this.

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Listen to her perform the song using this homophobic insult:

Miley didn’t get the memo. She needs to watch this:

This post definitely belongs in the Bitch Slap category.

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I hate when that happens.

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Maine’s Attorney General already stated that heterosexual marriage isn’t currently part of any Maine public school curriculum so it’s untrue that gay marriage would sneak its way into any public school curriculum either.

If pimpin’ young, seemingly innocent, white children in a deceitful, hateful and manipulative anti-gay marriage campaign isn’t bad enough, the rabid anti-gay winguts have stooped to using a Black female in their landing page image. That’s a blatant attempt to appeal to anti-gay conservative Blacks – you know, one of the groups that helped pass California’s anti-gay Prop 8.

Seriously, how many Black people live in Maine?  Not a lot!  Maine’s Black population is less than 1.5%.   Did they find the only Black female teacher in Maine and use her in their ad?  Stand for Maine is hoping to raise funds from anti-gay Blacks in other states to help screw over homosexuals in Maine.   Now that’s a pathetic move.

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Personally, for me, a hairy bush is a dealbreaker. But I don’t claim I’m a feminist magazine published to empower all women, so I can say that.

In my opinion, it’s not the hairy bush that bothers the folks over at Bitch. It’s the hairy bush peeking out of a pair of pink panties that bothers them. If that hairy bush was visible through the opening of a pair of plaid boxers, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. True hairy feminists don’t wear pink undies, correct?

Of course I’m joking.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Bitch rag can do whatever it wants and reserves the right to refuse any advertisement. But, does anyone else find it odd that a feminist magazine that’s struggling to pay its bills wouldn’t run an ad like this one? It seems pretty harmless to me, but then again, I’m not one of those kinds of feminists so I wouldn’t understand what “harmless” means to them.

And yep, I used the qualifier “those kinds” to describe those kinds of feminists. We’ll be discussing this more on SistersTalk Radio Monday night. Join us!

Update:
One of my Twitter followers said “Though, rather than the hair it may have been the male stereotype on the front of the panties that did it.”

Since we don’t know for sure, let’s assume (hypothetically, of course) that the reason Bitch refused to run the ad is because it supposedly objectifies women. Pfft! Call me an objectifier then because I love pretty pink vaginas – and a whole lot of sex positive lesbians would agree with me.

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