by danu on March 12, 2008
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J.K. Rowling, author of the world famous Harry Potter books, caused a bit of a stir last year when she outed Professor Dumbledore as gay, despite there being no real relevance to his character in that fact.
In a recent interview with Scotland's Edinburgh University student paper, Rowling says she doesn't care if some people have a problem with a gay character in a children's novel.
"It is a very interesting question because I think homophobia is a fear of people loving, more than it is of the sexual act. There seems to be an innate distaste for the love involved, which I find absolutely extraordinary. There were people who thought, well why haven't we seen Dumbledore's angst about being gay? Where was that going to come in? And then the other thing was — and I had letters saying this — that, as a gay man, he would never be safe to teach in a school...He's a very old single man. You have to ask: why is it so interesting? People have to examine their own attitudes. It's a shade of character. Is it the most important thing about him? No, it's Dumbledore for God's sake. There are 20 things that are relevant to the story before his sexuality."
Why yes indeed, according to evangelical pastor John Hagee, who recently endorsed John McCain for the Republican presidential nominee.
Shortly after Hurricane Katrina, Hagee said:
All hurricanes are acts of God, because God controls the heavens. I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they are—were recipients of the judgment of God for that. The newspaper carried the story in our local area that was not carried nationally that there was to be a homosexual parade there on the Monday that the Katrina came. And the promise of that parade was that it was going to reach a level of sexuality never demonstrated before in any of the other Gay Pride parades.
John McCain is being asked by many to denounce Hagee's endorsement, similar to the way he did last week when conservative radio commentator Bill Cunningham used an introduction to one of McCain's rallies to make inflammatory remarks about Barack Obama.
These fundamentalist nutbags are truly scary sometimes, but it's good to see people like John McCain realising they don't have to pander to such a small but vocal mob-like part of their base to represent their party.
And as Dan Savage points out in his article:
God, according to Hagee, is all-knowing and all-powerful… but incapable, it seems, of a surgical strike. Annoyed by the gay decadence in the French Quarter, God sent a hurricane that drowned little old ladies in their attics in the Ninth Ward, sick people in their beds in hospitals, and old folks in retirement homes. The French Quarter’s gay bars—site of all that decadence—survived Katrina unscathed.
by danu on February 29, 2008
Stepping up his campaign in the lead-up to Ohio and Texas primaries next week, Barack Obama today released this open letter to the LGBT community...
Open Letter from Barack Obama to the LGBT community
I'm running for President to build an America that lives up to our founding promise of equality for all – a promise that extends to our gay brothers and sisters. It's wrong to have millions of Americans living as second-class citizens in this nation. And I ask for your support in this election so that together we can bring about real change for all LGBT Americans.
Equality is a moral imperative. That's why throughout my career, I have fought to eliminate discrimination against LGBT Americans. [click to continue...]
