Tag Archives: inclusion

The Importance of LGBT PRIDE: Celebrating Diversity and Promoting Equality

REMINDER: The Importance of PRIDE: Celebrating Diversity and Promoting Equality

Featured, Gay History, Gay News Domestic & U.S. Politics, , , , , , ,

Just a reminder for those who need it right now. *cough* Wilton Manors *cough”.

LGBT Pride, an annual celebration of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community, holds immense significance in today’s society now more than ever.

PRIDE promotes acceptance, fostering inclusivity, and advocating for equal rights. By raising awareness, celebrating diversity, and empowering individuals, LGBT Pride catalyzes positive change.

  1. Fostering Inclusivity and Equality: LGBT Pride serves as a powerful symbol of inclusivity and equality. By organizing parades, festivals, and educational events, Pride brings together people from diverse backgrounds, encouraging dialogue and fostering connections. These celebrations allow LGBT individuals to connect with allies and support networks, creating a sense of solidarity and unity. Moreover, Pride events raise awareness about the challenges faced by the LGBT community and advocate for equal rights. They provide an opportunity to engage with policymakers, promote legislation that protects LGBT rights, and drive social change. By highlighting the importance of equal treatment under the law and advocating for policies that ensure fairness, LGBT Pride contributes to building a more just and inclusive society for everyone.
  2. Empowering Individuals and Celebrating Diversity: LGBT Pride empowers individuals by providing a platform for self-expression and celebrating diversity. In a society that often marginalizes and silences LGBT voices, Pride events offer an inclusive space where individuals can embrace their authentic selves without fear of judgment or discrimination. It fosters self-acceptance, resilience, and pride in one’s identity, helping individuals to overcome the challenges they may face. By celebrating diversity, Pride encourages people to embrace their unique identities, challenging societal norms and fostering a more inclusive understanding of human sexuality and gender. This empowerment not only benefits the individuals but also positively impacts their communities by promoting a culture of acceptance and respect.
  3. Promoting Acceptance and Combating Prejudice: LGBT Pride plays a crucial role in promoting acceptance and combatting prejudice. For many years, members of the LGBT community have faced discrimination, marginalization, and oppression due to their sexual orientation or gender identity. Pride events provide a platform for individuals to come together, share their stories, and celebrate their identities openly. By creating a sense of belonging and community, Pride fosters understanding and challenges the stereotypes and stigmas associated with the LGBT community. It sends a powerful message to both LGBT individuals and the wider society that love and acceptance should prevail over discrimination and hate.

LGBT Pride plays a vital role in promoting acceptance, fostering inclusivity, and advocating for equal rights. By combatting prejudice, fostering dialogue, and empowering individuals, Pride celebrations create spaces where the LGBT community can be visible, celebrated, and respected. Through its emphasis on acceptance, equality, and diversity, LGBT Pride serves as a powerful force for positive social change, fostering a more inclusive and equitable society for all. It is essential to continue supporting and participating in Pride events to ensure that progress toward acceptance and equality continues.

FLORIDA take note: THIS is what PRIDE is all about. There is also one more aspect of PRIDE not mentioned: Courage. Something that seems to be lacking in the state as PRIDE celebrations are being canceled and neutered left and right.

CHICAGO: Man Abducted At Gunpoint on Christmas Eve in Boystown

Chicago’s Historic Gay Neighborhood “Boystown’ Now To Called “Northalstead” To Be More Inclusive

Featured, Gay News Domestic & U.S. Politics, , , , ,

Boystown, the historic gay neighborhood in Chicago will now be known as Northalsted after calls from certain groups that it should be named something more inclusive.

The Northalsted Business Alliance announced Wednesday it was eliminating the use of “Boystown” in its marketing campaigns to be more inclusive of all genders despite the fact that most of the area’s businesses are gay male orientated.

Local non-binary queer activist Devlyn Camp launched a petition in July to push for a new neighborhood name.

The NBA launched a three-month survey to get more feedback. They opted for the name change even though the majority of people who responded said they supported keeping the Boystown name.

Of the nearly 7,900 people who responded, 58 percent favored keeping the Boystown moniker and 80 percent said they don’t feel unwelcome by the name.

As culture and language change and develop over time, we must listen to the community to support inclusivity, and this survey is a step towards gaining valuable insight,” NBA President Ramesh Ariyanayakam said in a press release.

Response to the name change so far has been overwhelmingly negative:

Marc Roger I’ll stop calling it Boystown just like I stopped calling the Sears Tower the Sears Tower and the Hancock building the Hancock.
So, never.

Dillon David If you feel unwelcome in Boystown, you will still feel unwelcome even with the name change… it’s not a neighborhood name issue, it’s a much bigger issue of the discrimination that occurs within the community… it’s an issue that needs to be addressed with business owners and how the neighborhood runs its events… the name change won’t change squat and everyone is still going to call it Boystown.

Josh Kanode And the New Stupid just keeps rolling in Chicago.

Jamie Henderson North Halsted is a direction, Boystown is an identity.

How do you feel about the change? Sound off below.

UMass Tell Student To Remove "Nazis Not Welcome Here" Sign Because It's Not Inclusive

UMass Tell Student To Remove “Nazis Not Welcome Here” Sign Because It’s Not Inclusive.

Featured, Gay News Domestic & U.S. Politics, , , ,

The University of Massachusetts at Amherst told a college student Nicole Parsons to remove a sign from her dorm room window that read “Fuck Nazis. You are not welcome here” –  because it wasn’t “inclusive.”

Parsons placed the sign in her window after a swastika was drawn on campus earlier this month.

Resident director Eddie Papazoni sent the following email to Parsons last week

“While Residence Education cannot force you or your roommate to take the sign down, I am asking that you or your roommate take the sign down so that all students can be a part of an inclusive residential experience, as well as having a respectful environment to be a part of here on our campus,”

Parsons said the sign had been up for less than a week before she received the email. Two other members of the resident life staff also approached her.

I decided that if UMass won’t condemn these actions, then someone should,” Parsons said.

The college later released a statement on the resident director’s email, calling it “poorly worded.”

“UMass Amherst emphatically rejects Nazis, and any other hate group, a view expressed in the students’ sign. However, we are sensitive to the use of profanity, which some could find inappropriate.”

“Ladies” and “Gentlemen” Announcements Banned on NYC Transit System

Featured, Gay News Domestic & U.S. Politics, , ,

 

MTA transit workers recently received a bulletin that requires them to use gender-neutral terms such as “passengers,” “riders” or “everyone,” the New York Post reported, adding that conductors will override prerecorded greetings that use “ladies and gentlemen” until the replacements are made.

“Please don’t use any greeting other than these,” the memo says. It also directs conductors on newer trains with automated announcements to override the prerecorded message with the updated, PC ones, until the agency can get them changed out.

The bulletin warns workers that line managers and train service supervisors will be monitoring them to make sure they don’t use the old phrasing.

An MTA spokesperson said that gender issues were a consideration for the move.

“They are trying to be politically correct,” said station worker and Transport Workers Union Local 100 member Anthony Staley. “They are acknowledging that they have some transgender riders. They don’t want to offend anyone.”

Last year, the New York City Commission of Human Rights released a list of gender-neutral pronouns to all the city’s businesses and landlords. The list required business owners and landlords to use gender pronouns like “ze,” which can be used instead of “he” or “she,” and “hir,” which is similar to “they.” A business could be fined as much as $250,000 for willful, hostile and repeated misuse of pronouns.

According to a recent report, to fund the program, the MTA’s debt service and other operating resources are expected to increase over the next five years by 22 percent to $3.5 billion.

In addition, the authority’s debt service is projected to total about $2.6 billion in 2017, almost a threefold increase since 2003, and is projected to reach $3.4 billion by 2022.

There has been no estimate of how much new announcements throughout the city’s massive transportation system would cost.

 

Amazon Tells GOP Senators It Won’t Sell Books That “Frame LGBTQ+ Identity As Mental Illness”

Minneapolis Pride Reverses Decision, Invites Police to Participate In Pride Parade

Featured, Gay News Domestic & U.S. Politics, , ,

Days after announcing they’d be limiting police presence at this year’s Pride Parade, due to the emotions swirling from the acquittal of Officer Jeronimo Yanez, in the shooting  of Philando Castile Pride officials announced Friday they will allow police after all. 

In a statement on its website, Pride organizers say, “We would like to apologize to the law enforcement community for neglecting to communicate and consider input for other possible alternatives prior to releasing the details of this decision.”

The decision to limit police was met with backlash after some community members called the move hypocritical, when the basis of Pride is to promote inclusiveness. 

Minneapolis’ first openly gay police chief Janee Hartea responded sharply  last Thursday to a decision by organizers of the Twin Cities Pride Parade to ask her department to minimize its participation in Sunday’s annual event. 

Hartea called the decision “divisive” and saying it “really hurt so many in our community,” including LGBT officers and their families.

“One unmarked police car will clear the way as originally stated, and we would like to invite members of the law enforcement community to participate in the parade by holding the Unity flag or marching alongside any other flag they feel comfortable with,” the release states. 

The Big Gay Walking Dead – After A Long Wait TWD Universe Proves That Gays Can Survive The Zombiepocalypse

Entertainment, Featured, , , , , ,

Aaron and Andrew Gay Kiss

 

After years of begging, prodding, whining, and screaming, last night on The Walking Dead the newest character of Aaron came out in big way with the introduction of his partner Eric, and TWD’s first gay male kiss.

After finally meeting the group last night and a rather defensive Rick Grimes, Aaron convinces them to come with him to a “safe” community (Alexandria) And the group eventually does so,  hesitantly.   But due to Rick’s paranoia (you should have taken Rte 23 dude) and a herd of zombies which are run over, flare gunned, and generally massacred in a 10 minute melee the group divided into two vehicles gets separated. But thnks to another flare (shot in the sky this time and not into a zombie’e head) the two groups reunite and take shelter inside a store room. There’s a tearful reunion between Maggie and Glenn, and Rick and Carl – and then a third, surprising,  reunion. Aaron runs inside and kneels to the side of a man lying down with a broken ankle. His name is Eric. And as the two men kiss warmly

They tease each other intimately – Eric has brought Aaron another license plate for his collection and Aaron admits he not only lost his license plate collection – he lost the entire car. They embrace. They say they love each other. They joke about getting the blood-stained car back and parking it in front of their house, where the hideous wreck can scare away walkers. At this point Rick is in the shadows watching all of this in the shadows and this, perhaps more than any other display or speech that Aaron has given in the last 24 hours, seems to convince Rick that his guy is also a “person” who maybe, just maybe, can be trusted.

So with that one scene TWD universe finally rounded out its “veritable United Nations of characters” since the show began, and has proven that gay men can survive the Zombie apocalypse (and still stay well groomed. Daryl take note).

I have been brutally hard on TWD over the past few years about its lack of gay diversity, especially after it skipped a major gay storyline in Season 3 at the Prison.  And while Tara was a great addition even her lesbian storyline that lasted 3 episodes was very subtle.

So I would like to publicly thank AMC, Gale Anne Hurd and Scott Gimple for introducing Arron and Eric in such an unflinching, honest and if you pardon my expression “straight forward” way.

Bravo.

My work is done here.

Now….bring on Jesus!

*The Walking Dead Skips Season 3 Gay Storyline – Keeps Imperfect ZERO LGBT Character Rating

The Walking Dead Season 4 GAYWATCH: More Deaths, More Threats. But Any Gay Characters?

EXCLUSIVE – Walking Dead Exec Producer Scott Gimple Hints LGBT Character To Be Introduced

 

 

Las Vegas Creates National TV Commercial To Draw LGBT Tourists – “The Check Out” (Video)

Featured, Of Interest, , , ,

Las Vegas - The Check Out

 

ln it’s latest advertisement campaign to promote Las Vegas as a hotspot for gay tourism the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority premiered last week its first national television ad campaign geared toward the LGBT community

In the commercial titled The Check In, a man and woman prepare to check in at a hotel. The woman steps away for a moment leaving the man waiting for front desk assistance.

The man is joined by another (smoking hot) man and the two are mistaken by an attendant as a couple.

“You gentlemen ready to check in,” the attendant asks in the commercial before the familiar “What Happens Here” slate concludes the ad.

According to the LVCVA “The addition of an LGBT spot to the ‘What Happens Here’ campaign was a natural next step,” said Cathy Tull, senior vice president of marketing. “(The) Las Vegas’ campaigns are based on adult freedom and encouraging visitors to experience that freedom first hand.”

Las Vegas as the second most popular U.S. destination among gay men and third among lesbians.

Winner, winner prime beef dinner!

Watch “The Check Out” below:

The Walking Dead Season 4 GAYWATCH: More Deaths, More Threats, But Any Gay Characters?

Featured, GayGeek - All Things Gay and Geeky, , , , , ,

The Walking Dead Season 4 Poster

With The Walking Dead: Season 4 premier only a week away its once again time for me to ask the same question that I have for the past three seasons.  Why is there not one LGBT character on the hit television show and will this season FINALLY be the one where an LGBT character is introduced?

Since the show began there has been a veritable United Nations of characters that have been seen on The Walking Dead,  every nationality and type of person you can imagine which in the end makes the lack of an LGBT character even more glaring and jarring.  Add to this the fact that in the Season 3 Prison storyline two gay characters were actually removed from  the comics transition from page to screen and later in the same season when the LGBT community was finally mentioned it was so in a stereotype way with the character of Axel thinking  that Carol was a lesbian because she had “short hair”. At this point you really have to begin to wonder if creator and writer of TWD Robert Kirkland is he afraid that he might upset his loyal GFB (Greasy Fan Boy) core audience, finds LGBT characters too hard to write or just simply doesn’t like gay people.

So as TWD: Season 4 is about to begin once again the question is will there be an LGBT character this season?

Well if Kirkland follows the comic book story-line, no.  After the introduction of the gay storyline in the prison arc the next gay charters don’t appear in the comic until the group of survivors reach the Alexandria Free Zone where we meet Eric  and his partner Aaron.  But that’s not until issue #68, and at the snails pace speed the television show is going would be about Season 100.   But Kirkman and TWD does not stick to the comics story line verbatim, if it did Dale, and Sophia would be still alive and The Governor and Woodbury storyline would have been a helluva lot more exciting.

Recently in an interview at San Diego Comic Con Kirkman did mention that in the comic’s story-line the Woodbury character of Cesar Martinez (played in the television series by the humpy ) was meant to be homosexual  but Kirkman never got around to it. (Shocking).  On the television show Martinez is still alive and well and at the end of last season rode off into the sunset with the Governor.  TWD  has been confirmed that the Governor as well  Martinez will return in season 4, but  Kirkland has already written the character as straight (Kirkland did get around to that though) by having Martinez state on the Season 3 episode Arrow on the Doorpost that he hates the walkers, after what they did to his wife and kids.

Invisibility on television is a major problem for the LGBT Community and both TV and movies need to learn that a characters sexuality is an aside, a trait like being left-handed or having blue eyes and should be presented as such, a passing comment, a bit of back-story and not something to fear presenting. Its just who they are.  It doesn’t need to be a main story but it does need to be included.

LGBT viewers of The Walking Dead and television and movies in general deserve much better.  Better characters, better representation, and better advocating for such by concerned individuals and organizations.

So once again this season it seems that there will be no representation of the LGBT community in The Walking Dead.  Unless of course Daryl Dixon, who has been fending off the advances of Carol for the past few seasons, turns out to be a shit-kicking, sexually confused, redneck.

But I wouldn’t hold my breath for that.