The NYT reports:
In the past two months, the bodies of as many as 25 boys and men suspected of being gay have turned up in the huge Shiite enclave of Sadr City, the police and friends of the dead say. Most have been shot, some multiple times. Several have been found with the word “pervert” in Arabic on notes attached to their bodies, the police said.
Timothy Kincaid calculates how same-sex couples fare nationwide:
4.5% of Americans live in a state that recognizes marriages (Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, and Vermont)
16.6% of Americans live in a state that offers all of the benefits and obligations of marriage by a different name (California, New Jersey, Oregon, and New Hampshire)
5.1% of Americans live in a state (or District) that offers recognition to same-sex couples, but not with all of the same benefits and obligations as marriage (Hawaii, Maine, Washington, District of Columbia, and Maryland)
7.4% of Americans live in a state that either recognizes out-of-state legal marriages or in which that status has not been fully determined (Rhode Island, New York, and New Mexico)
66.4% of Americans live in a state that does not recognize their relationship at all
Of course, Kincaid is talking about state benefits. DOMA ensures that 100% of gay couples are denied federal benefits.
In 2001, one country decided to end the criminal treatment of possession or use of street drugs, to counter alarming numbers of deaths and HIV infections. Dealers and traffickers are still locked up. Users aren't. Glenn Greenwald put the study together for CATO. Its results are striking:
The number of deaths from street drug overdoses dropped from around 400 to 290 annually, and the number of new HIV cases caused by using dirty needles to inject heroin, cocaine and other illegal substances plummeted from nearly 1,400 in 2000 to about 400 in 2006, according to a report released recently by the Cato Institute, a Washington, D.C, libertarian think tank. "Now instead of being put into prison, addicts are going to treatment centers and they're learning how to control their drug usage or getting off drugs entirely," report author Glenn Greenwald, a former New York State constitutional litigator, said during a press briefing at Cato last week.
The paper is available here.
Or, the worsening plight of non-celebrity journalists:
For a working hack—that word is used here without judgment—it's hard enough to get a pitch accepted by an editor (much less an 11-page evergreen on a 72-year-old who's in not in the Jonas Brothers). But now you gotta compete with writers editors think are cooler, better connected, and who don't even need the money.
A fascinating, and perfectly pitched, response:
TPM has a cool, if depressing, slide-show.
This is, in many ways, a remarkable turn of events. A newly converted Catholic directly challenges the old guard’s continuing stigmatization and denigration of homosexuals:
In the interview Mr Blair spoke of a “quiet revolution in thinking” and implied that he believed the Pope to be out of step with the public.
“There are many good and great things the Catholic Church does, and there are many fantastic things this Pope stands for, but I think what is interesting is that if you went into any Catholic Church, particularly a wellattended one, on any Sunday here and did a poll of the congregation, you’d be surprised at how liberal-minded people were.” The faith of ordinary Catholics is rarely found “in those types of entrenched attitudes”, he said…
People’s thinking had changed fundamentally, he added. “Now, that doesn’t mean to say there’s not still a lot of homophobia and a lot of things to be done. But the fact that it is unacceptable for any mainstream political party to be anything other than on the side of equality and respect is, in a way, the biggest change. The items of individual legislation matter a lot, but I think it’s the general shift in climate that is perhaps the most important point.”
This shift in climate is, of course, what the GOP is now determined to resist and attack. But Blair is as adamant on this as the Tory leader, David Cameron:
He said: “When people quote the passages in Leviticus condemning homosexuality, I say to them — if you read the whole of the Old Testament and took everything that was there in a literal way, as being what God and religion is about, you’d have some pretty tough policies across the whole of the piece.”
He continued: “What people often forget about, for example, Jesus or, indeed, the Prophet Muhammad, is that their whole raison d’être was to change the way that people thought traditionally.”
Am I dreaming or do we seem to be reaching a cultural tipping point?
)Photo: Stephen Hird/AFP/Getty.)
Ever wonder why all those Disney movies seem the same?
The right does not have a monopoly of cultural prejudice.
I'm not sure if this is a spoof on Turkish television, or not. I suspect not.
The Dish 