There's a great video interview on Broadway World with Mad Men's Bryan Batt, who plays closeted ad exec Salvatore The out gay actor talks to producer/director Richard Jay-Alexander.
Via Andrew Sullivan:
As expected, one reason Proposition 8, stripping gay couples of marriage equality, is still viable in California is because of strong African-American support. Black Californians back the anti-gay measure by a margin of 20 points, 58 - 38, in the SUSA poll. No other ethnic group comes close to the level of opposition and black turnout is likely to be very high next month.This is exactly what Obama needs to hear. The past few weeks (and today as well) I have been saying that we need Obama to stand up and tell the world that we are equal. Now he has been given a perfect opportunity. Step in to the ring, step up to the plate, step it up. Whatever analogy it takes, just do it.
All this makes it vital, in my opinion, that Barack Obama strongly and unequivocally oppose Proposition 8 in California, rather than keeping mainly quiet as he has done so far.We need him to make an ad opposing it. This is a core test of whether gay Americans should back Obama as enthusiastically as they have in the last month. If he does not stand up for gay couples now, why should we believe he will when he is in office? And if black Americans are the critical bloc that helps kill civil rights for gays, that will not help deepen Obama's governing coalition. It could tear it apart.
Memo to Obama: make an ad. Speak loudly. Defend equality. Defend it when it might actually lose you some votes. Show us you are not another Clinton.
Tom Toles, copyright 2008 Universal Press Syndicate
Obama seeks LGBT support in battleground state
Bill Clinton recommends . . . .
Obama shatters fundraising record
Meet Kay Hagan, the woman who's about to end Elizabeth Dole's senatorial career
And, of course, Colin Powell endorses Obama. You can watch Powell's appearance on Meet The Press in The Media Bar. Daily Kos thinks the endorsement "inflicted real damage."
John McCain Accidentally Left On Campaign Bus Overnight
In one of the Psychology Today blogs, Satoshi Kanazawa discusses two kinds of fallacies that many people often commit and the kinds of people who commit them:
[P]olitical conservatives are more likely to commit the naturalistic fallacy (“Nature designed men to be competitive and women to be nurturing, so women ought to stay home to take care of the children and leave politics to men”), while political liberals are equally likely to commit the moralistic fallacy (“The Western liberal democratic principles hold that men and women ought to be treated equally under the law, and therefore men and women are biologically identical and any study that demonstrates otherwise is a priori false”).Of course this remedy works only if all people simultaneously behave this way, otherwise, as soon as someone starts talking about how whatever is ought to be, someone else is going to say the exact opposite. Thankfully for me and this blog, people will never just talk about what IS (and even if they did, they'd never agree on what IS really is.). Which, um, is my way of saying that whatever I say IS is, it's right! And, anyway, talking about what ought to be is the only way to hop, skip, and jump from a bad IS to a new IS.
. . . It is actually very easy to avoid both fallacies – both leaps of logic – by simply never talking about what ought to be at all and only talking about what is. It is not possible to make either the naturalistic or the moralistic fallacy if scientists never talk about ought. Scientists – real scientists – do not draw moral conclusions and implications from the empirical observations they make, and they are not guided in their observations by moral and political principles. Real scientists only care about what is, and do not at all care about what ought to be.
But that does not mean that we shouldn't be as rigorous as possible in our thinking of the world around us. Let's face it - we do commit fallacies, both the left and the right. And more often than not, it gets in the way of making any real headway.(Remember when Rachel Maddow said, "It's a fuzzy line between changing people's minds and changing the world.")
I think Kanazawa might agree with me. He says, "We can never devise a correct solution to a problem if we don’t know what its ultimate causes are." Which might just be another way of saying, "Sometimes what is is just not enough.
MIAMI – The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida announces that Heather Gillman has been selected by the Playboy Foundation to receive the Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award for "her fearlessness in speaking out on behalf of the rights of gay students" at her Ponce de Leon high school, located in Florida's Panhandle.Atta girl.
Gillman sued her school after her high school principal discriminated against her gay and lesbian friends. At trial, the principal testified that he believed clothing or stickers featuring rainbows would make students automatically picture people having sex, and he forbade students from wearing any sort of clothing, stickers, buttons, or symbols to show her support of equal rights for gay people.
The lost Madonna tapes via The Daily Beast
Calling all smartphones! You need a new name.
Vampire Bill naked! (NSFW)Mr. Blackwell dies at the age of 86
Thousands attend funeral of right-wing gay Austrian politician Joerg Haider
Sizing up gay celebrities' boyfriendsTraveling exhibit explores Nazi persecution of gays
Hustlaball catches fire (site NSFW)
The new search engine - SearchMe
Computers getting closer to passing the Turing test
Tennis's Jon Wertheim reviews the past week in tennis in his weekly
Ad-in/Ad-out
Via Charmants : "Evan Wadle was featured in last month’s edition, lensed by Randall Mesdon. The New Jersey model said he had no problem going naked for a gay audience."
Click thumbnails to enlarge. Bonus NSFW shot after the jump.
