WordInEdgewise

Oh no, he didn’t….

Oh yes! He did! Here is the link to the ABC News story.

Let’s see what happens now….

I’ll have more on this historic event soon. I’m still a bit in shock.

Here’s a great perspective on it from David Badash (citing several sources) over at The New Civil Rights Movement.

Here’s my post on the transgender panel from Thursday night, over at TNCRM.

I won’t try to summarize it here, but most of the discussion revolved around two topics of enduring interest to the transcommunity:

1. What’s the teaching role of transpeople, and are they allowed to get tired of it? Teaching the same course (“Trans 101″) can get tedious after a time.

2. Are gays and lesbians natural allies of the trans-community? On this, the panelists were not of one voice — but all agreed that there was at least one group that had been a steadfast ally. Read more to find out the secret identity of this mystery group!

As for the Caster Semenya reference — well, read the post!

First post from Equality Forum is up over at the New Civil Rights Movement. Here’s how it begins:

Well, that was interesting.

About an hour into last night’s Equality Forum “Featured Nation: Israel” panel, four or five protesters barged into the room and began shouting about Israel’s inhumane treatment of the Palestinians. They had a huge banner that they never managed to unfurl, and what looked like a manifesto that they never managed to read — because they were quickly dragged out of the room by the hotel’s security staff.

All but one woman. Inexplicably wearing what looked like a Mardi Gras mask, she moved toward the front of the room and tried to speak. For a minute or so, there was a bizarre stand-off between her and several loud and angry audience members, who shouted (unhelpfully) “Get out.”

What happened next? Toggle on over and find out.

Here it comes again — Equality Forum, Philadelphia’s internationally known and always interesting cavalcade of events that celebrates, informs and provokes on all (or many, anyway) things LGBT. I’ve been blogging the event for the past three years (here’s a compilation of my entries), and am delighted to be doing so again this year.

If you’re coming to this site for EF updates each year, you might be surprised to see that there aren’t already entries for this year’s event. That’s because the format’s been compressed, squeezed from its traditional, week-long schedule down to four days. It kicks off tonight with a big welcoming party, and then jumps into high gear for a bunch of panels tomorrow, Friday, and Saturday.

This new format makes sense. It’s more attuned to people’s busy schedules — especially the many people who come (many of them, for years now) for the entire event. But it does make life tougher for a blogger, because  the highlighted panels for Thursday and Friday run concurrently. I’ll do some combination of running back and forth and simply choosing between the two panels for each session. I might not have any less blogging to do, but I’ll be doing it on overdrive. Highlights from each post will appear here, with links to the full story over at my cyber home-away-from-home, The New Civil Rights Movement. (You should check that site out anyway — it’s packed with information and opinion on LGBT issues. Site master David Badash is nothing if not relentless!)

You can get the full panel schedule here. (All of the Thursday and Saturday national panels are at the Doubletree Hotel.) It’s hard to choose highlights from among so many star-studded panels, but I’m especially looking forward to a few of them, viz.:

• Tomorrow (5/3), at 7 pm is the National Transgender Panel. It features quite a diverse line-up of subjects of interest to the trans-community, judging from the panelists chosen. In my experience, the TG panels have been among the most reliably interesting, perhaps because, as a community, trans-people have been compelled to think about issues on a level of depth that is not always matched by the rest of our community. (There! I’ve said it.)
• Also tomorrow, at 8:30, is the Featured Nation: Israel Panel. It features actual Israelis(!), including a city council member and a couple of LGBT tourism promoters. It’s moderated by Mazzoni Center Executive Director, Nurit Shein, who I’ll bet is more qualified than you to be on the panel — she was a career officer in the Israeli Army!
• Friday at 4 pm, at the National Constitution Center, is the National Legal Panel. Get out of work early and go! Don’t make me repeat myself. They’ll be talking about Prop 8, DOMA, and (apparently) other issues of legal discrimination affecting our community. (I wish they would talk about civil unions, but that’s my axe to grind — and I ground it here.) The panelists are all good — a mix of litigators, policy-makers, and academics — but Bill Eskridge is especially worth the price of admission. He’s really good at explaining legal arcana to those who didn’t invest in a law degree.
• Right after the legal eagles soar, the National Politics Panel takes the same stage (at 5:30 pm) to talk about the upcoming election and the political landscape. Will appeal to all political junkies of every party (all two of them here in the U.S.).
• The full Saturday schedule is here. It’s chock-a-block, in part because that’s the day featuring collaborative panels with local organizations and interest groups. Based on my experience, it’s well worth poring over the local options, because you’re likely going to find something of major interest to you — almost every conceivable topic of interest to our community (broadly defined) is represented. There are also great national panels at 1 pm and 2:30 — again, two at each time, so you’ll have to choose (assuming you haven’t already picked a local panel!). Sports, Same-sex Marriage, Military — it’s all here. But perhaps most interesting will be the James Wheeler National Youth Panel, featuring a couple of young men who captured the popular imagination: Chris Armstrong, a U of Michigan student who was harassed by the creepy assistant AG of the state (but who fought back with a lawsuit that resulted in the firing of the jerk) and, most compelling, Zack Wahls. I could go on and on about him, but this will suffice:

There’s also a pretty good play, and more parties than you can shake a groove thing at! (Where…did…I…put…that…groove…thing?) Get busy!

In this post over at the New Civil Rights Movement, I take a critical look at a new affordable housing development for LGBT seniors for Philadelphia. It’s slated for move-in by late next year.

My brain is having fun thinking of the various senior activities such a place will host…any thoughts?

It’s all here! At the New Civil Rights Movement, a few hours ago.

It’s over at the New Civil Rights Movement. Seems like the court, in its 2-1 decision, was trying to whisper directly into Justice Kennedy’s ear. Let’s see if it works.

I know it should be “Socarides and I,” but the post title is catchier. Anyway, I will be on NPR’s Radio Times tomorrow at 10 am. (Here’s the link; you can listen then, or later via podcast. On radio it’s 90.9 WHYY in Philadelphia. I think it’s also on satellite radio but I don’t know the time.) We’re discussing DOMA, Prop 8, Obama and marriage equality, maybe civil unions (I hope).

Richard Socarides, if you don’t know, was a high-level Clinton advisor and is currently a hugely important figure in struggle for LGBT legal equality. What you’re even less likely to know is that his father, Charles Socarides, was an infamous homophobe who for years fought back (unsuccessfully) against the decision by the American Psychiatric Association to delist homosexuality as a mental disorder. I’m guessing there were some interesting dinner conversations….(or maybe not!)

I was just plain delighted to have been invited to participate in one of the “Room for Debate” forums with the New York Times. The question we were asked to address:

“If more couples considered monogamy optional, would divorce and cheating be less common, and unmarried cohabitation less attractive?”

Here’s a link to the front page; here, you can find my individual entry, which looks at alternative forms of relationship recognition (such as civil unions) as a way to refresh the debate about expectations within relationships. But the whole debate is fascinating.

As the Australian Open gets underway, my thoughts naturally turn to…the Margaret Court homophobia controversy??

Yes. Would that it were not so, with so many interesting plot lines developing in the actual tennis itself. But a brightly colored group of gay fans (and their straight allies) have made their presence known at Margaret Court Arena, protesting Court’s recent, mean-spirited comments about LGBT people. I wrote about it for The New Civil Rights Movement.

And then the latest British hope (and therefore likely doomed never to win a major tournament), Laura Robson, stepped onto court wearing this: