Archive for October, 2009
SSM fight on in Texas
I’m a bit late on this – there is a constitutional challenge in Texas, USA, over a court decision that the state’s ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional. Strangely enough, the case against the ban was prompted by a case of two gay men seeking divorce in Texas. If you know Texas, you’ll know this is huge.
Recently the brave judge in that case, Tena Callahan J, shared some personal insight into how she came to her decision.
Call for Submissions: Read These Lips, Volume 4 (June 2010)
Read These Lips is a free e-book project dedicated to lesbian literature. In our fourth year, we are inviting submissions to our anthology series.
We seek multi-dimensional literary writings that speak the possibilities of lesbian lives. We feature popular genre as well as cross-genre works.
Submissions are open from 1 November 2009 to 31 January 2010. Please read our Submissions Guidelines carefully, and our previous anthologies for guidance.
Early expressions of interest are encouraged.
All correspondence to submissions@readtheselips.com
(more…)
Reasons not to marry
1. Homosexuality is not natural, much like eyeglasses, polyester, and birth control.
2. Marriage is valuable because it produces children, which is why we deny marriage rights to infertile couples and old people.
3. Obviously, gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.
4. Straight marriage, such as Britney Spears’ 55-hour escapade, will be less meaningful if gay marriage is allowed.
5. Marriage has been around a long time and hasn’t changed at all: women are property, matches are arranged in childhood, blacks can’t marry whites, Catholics can’t marry Jews, divorce is illegal, and adultery is punishable by death.
6. Gay marriage should be decided by people, not the courts, because majority-elected legislatures have historically protected the rights of minorities.
7. Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That’s why we have only one religion in America.
8. There is no separation between religious marriage and legal marriage, because there is no separation of church and state.
9. Devout, faithful Anglicans should never accept same-sex marriage, because it is an affront to the traditional family values upheld by Henry VIII and his wife, Catherine of Aragon, and his wife, Anne Boleyn, and his wife, Jane Seymour, and his wife, Anne of Cleves, and his wife, Catherine Howard, and his wife, Catherine Parr. They all knew the meaning of marriage and none of them lost their heads over the matter.
10. Married gay people will encourage others to be gay, in a way that unmarried gay people do not.
11. Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because dogs have legal standing and can sign marriage contracts.
12. Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to legislative change in general, which could possibly include the legalization of polygamy and incest. Because we don’t know what comes next, we should never change our laws.
13. Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That’s why single parents are forbidden to raise children.
14. Gay marriage will change the foundation of society. Heterosexual marriage has been around for a long time, and we could never adapt to new social norms because we haven’t adapted to things like suburban malls and tupperware parties.
15. Legal marriage will inspire gays to mimic the straight traditions of spiritual commitment ceremonies and celebratory parties, which is currently impermissible for them to do and which they have never done before.
16. Marriage is designed to protect the well-being of children. Gay people do not need marriage because they never have children from prior relationships, artificial insemination or surrogacy, or adoption.
17. Civil unions are a good option because “separate but equal” institutions are always constitutional. In fact, compared with marriage, civil unions are so attractive that straight people are calling dibs on them.
18. A man should not be able to marry whomever a woman can marry, and a woman should not be able to marry whomever a man can marry, because in this country we do not believe in gender equality.
19. If gays marry, some of straight people’s tax dollars would end up going to families whose structure they may find morally objectionable. Clearly, it is more just to continue taking gay people’s tax dollars to support straight families, who are going to heaven regardless of what anyone else thinks of them.
20. Gays should hold off on the marriage question until society is more accepting of them, because they are not part of society.
21. The people’s voice must be heard on this issue. Therefore, we must have a referendum on a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, because we can’t think of any other way to discuss the issue.
22. Each state should decide for itself whether gay marriage will be recognized, because there is no “full faith and credit” clause that requires states to recognize each other’s institutions.
23. Gay marriage attempts to replace natural heterosexual instinct with a cultural institution. Morality demands that we subordinate institutionalized commitment to raw, unfettered, biological impulse.
24. Gay marriages could very well suffer maladies like domestic violence and substance abuse. That’s why we invented the Quality Control department to pre-approve the righteousness of all marriage applicants, such as convicted serial killer Richard Ramirez who married a woman while on Death Row.
25. Those who support gay marriage aim to overthrow the dominant culture, as evidenced by their enthusiasm to participate in it.
26. The country can’t afford to provide benefits for married gay couples. That’s why Bush would never consider spending $150 million on programs that encourage more straight people to get married.
27. Gay couples do not deserve marriage because, if everyone on earth limited themselves to same-sex sexual behavior, humanity would soon be extinct. Based on the same concern, we also deny marriage rights to the biologically childless and to those who have borne only one child. (We are also considering denying marriage rights to those who have borne three or more children, because if everyone copied them, the world population would shoot through the roof.)
28. Marriage was created in the Bible as a bond between a man and a woman. The people who lived prior to the writing of the Bible, such as the Chinese, sat around in confusion for many years until the Mesopotamians finally came around and invented the family unit.
Book 6 HHGTTG
And Another Thing is the sixth book (just released) in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, bravely undertaken by Eoin Colfer for Douglas Adams.
In onetwo lines, the story is about Arthur Dent, a loser who lives in country England, who wakes up just as the earth is being destroyed by aliens to build a hyperspace highway. He sets off to find out why and in the process makes friends (sort of) and enemies (sort of) of other aliens, and aides in the search for the question to the ultimate answer (42).
For those not in the know, Hitchhiker’s is an absurd space/time adventure satirical soap opera that is just too funny. I first heard it as a radio serial, then I read the series, and then watched the movie when it came out a few years ago. My friends know I’m a fan of absurd literary comedy and it is because of books like these.
If there isare onetwo things you will remember from this adventure : Don’t leave home without a towel, and you won’t look at steak the same way again.
Can you keep up with e-book readers?
I can’t and I don’t bother – someone does a market recap every few months anwyay – but I will mention some recent developments.
- B&N have released their own e-book reader called Nook. Like the Kindle it is dedicated to their stores only. Looks better cosmetically but is rubbish for the rest of the world coz wi-fi access is limited to instore (i.e. US only), and there’s no browser.
- A new reader, this one for Australia, from BeBook (aka the Hanlin ebook reader). It’s ugly, has limited RSS sites but reads most popular formats including Mobi, and it can browse online stores. Like all new hardware, software updates expected. Price AUD499 (the Iliad from Dymocks was priced at AUD799 – it has disappeared from their store but they are selling a Hanlin reader for AUD399)
- I’m still waiting for Plastic Logic’s Que reader, set for release in January.
- Or the Pixel Qi, which I think is too cute for words. Production starts this quarter.
- Microsoft’s Courier tablet , not so secret. *drool*
Watch U2 in concert
Live on YouTube this Sunday (not all countries though)
Sqweeling with delight
Is this that what we’ve been waiting for? By we I mean women and lesbians. A sex toy that looks like a miniature mining excavator in your hand and works like a one-way fan that bats 10 silicon tongues against your clitoris (2-speed stroke engine). Whee! Finally, a toy that looks beyond vibration and it’s for my clit – forget that it mentions possibble use on…ugh… penises and such.
It’s called the Sqweel and this is what it looks like.
Pretty one-way, innit? Great for those with a Pac-Man fetish wishing for baddies to tongue them to death. [Reviews on fleshbot and Gizmodo]
While on fleshbot, I found an even better toy for me. By me I mean as a woman and nothing for the mens. A stylish discreet toy that does it all and only for your clitoris. According to description, the SaSi remembers your favourite settings (from vibrate to pressure to circling to oh, giving you cunnilingual variety). Rather cute, don’t you think?
Nosh galore
It’s almost the middle of the month and I forgot to post about the Sydney International Food Festival in its first year. Truckloads of events are on the calendar, more than one can possibly attend…er… so we haven’t attended any of them. But we are celebrating by exchanging family recipes with friends and exclaiming at the recent Mid-Autumn Moon (Harvest Moon) celebration that the year is almost over. Ah, sweet pastries and hot tea. Stuff to watch the world go by with.
