The Christian Civic League of Maine's Mike Hein calls Pam's House Blend: "a leading source of radical homosexual propaganda, anti-Christian bigotry, and radical transgender advocacy."
He is "praying that Pam Spaulding will "turn away from her wicked and sinful promotion of homosexual behavior."
(CCLM's web site, 10/15/07)
Ex-gay "Christian" activist James Hartline on Pam:
"I have been mocked over and over again by ungodly and unprincipled anti-christian lesbians."
(from "Six Years In Sodom: From The Journal Of James Hartline," 9/4/2006, written from the "homosexual stronghold" of Hillcrest in San Diego).
"Pam is a 'twisted lesbian sister' and an 'embittered lesbian' of the 'self-imposed gutteral experiences of the gay ghetto.'" -- 9/5/2008
Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth Against Homosexuality heartily endorses the Blend, calling Pam:
A "vicious anti-Christian lesbian activist." (Concerned Women for America's radio show [9:15], 1/25/07)
"A nutty lesbian blogger." (MassResistance radio show [16:25], 2/3/07)
Pam's House Blend always seems to find these sick f*cks. The area of the country she is in? The home state of her wife? I know, they are everywhere. Pam just does such a great job of bringing them out into the light.
--Impeach Bush
who monitors yours Bevis ?? Just thought I would drop you a line,so the rest of your life is not wasted.
Let's lighten up the mood in the coffeehouse between the somber headlines. Feel free to share links and news stories.
Clearly this member of Mensa* has a problem with the quality of the coffee served here.
from nick m to pam @ phblend.com date Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 8:55 PM subject wow
your site is horrible two scroll bars lmao and you talk about dumb ass shit on there hank williams is not being rascist by showing the whites of his hands you are just someone with no life looking for somethine to raise a fuss about my suggestion lose some weight get man and get fucked
UPDATE: People have pointed me to this DKos diary, where it appears Holmes was not diagnosed with a brain tumor, but a cyst, and she has repeatedly appeared on TV claiming the tumor story. While that's not particularly surprising, that even underscores the bottom line is her story proves we need reform because she had to put a second mortgage on her home, borrow from friends and her husband took a second job to be able to afford the $100k U.S. surgery.
Q of the day: do you have a health care horror story to share? Was it denial of service or meds by your insurance, or hospital bureaucracy, or something even more onerous, like poor quality care?
***
I have to agree with this assertion over at Eschaton -- "The reality is if you get real sick, no matter if you're insured or not, you're probably financially fucked." The partisan bickering over how much it is going to cost is ludicrous -- the cost is just one part of the problem, the fact that we have so many people uninsured and worse, under-insured, is the reality of too many Americans and to get everyone adequate care will likely cost trillions.
Those of us who do have decent insurance, are rightfully concerned that government mucking around in the system and playing politics with something that should be a right -- equal access to GOOD medical care for all -- is going to end up a big mess.
I'm not going to debate the merits of one plan or another here; I'm just looking at health care as a "frequent flyer" consumer with pre-existing conditions who sees doctors and specialists several times a year, and has adequate insurance that still has left me with long waits to see a specialist (3 months is not unheard of), and dealt with substandard care.
In our current system nearly everyone has horror stories about waiting for insurance to approve the most basic common sense things -- like one extra day in the hospital after a c-section, or trying to get a medication not yet in generic form that you and your doctor know works and the insurance company insists on a different generic substitute or you pay outright. The number and type of what I call "drive-by" surgeries, where they kick you to the curb a couple of hours after you've been opened up on the table is astonishing -- they wanted to do that for my gall bladder surgery and I begged to stay overnight because I've had complications after ambulatory surgery before that landed me back in the ER the next day. Thankfully it was approved, because I was right -- I developed a fever and had serious difficulties that I wouldn't have been able to manage at home.
But what if the insurance company had said no. That happens all the time. It happened to me several years ago, I wasn't able to stay overnight and went into the drive-through surgery; I developed a serious staph infection. It required a second surgery a couple of weeks later. Oh, and I had to pay a lot out of pocket for that second surgery even though I wasn't responsible for the need for it, even with insurance. A little time and attention would have saved everyone a lot of grief.
And prescription insurance -- well big pharma makes us all pay for the price controls in other countries. I totaled up medications I take each month to see what they would cost if I didn't have insurance -- over $900/month! That's insane. John's story is no better, and again, he has insurance.
I didn't know what my good plan covered until I got asthma as a result of my allergies. Now I know that my asthma drugs cost a whopping $471 a month. That's $5,652 a year. After Blue Cross' paltry share, that leaves me with $4,152 a year in asthma drugs (not counting any other prescriptions I may have to take for other unrelated problems that may arise). My insurance costs me nearly $420 a month. That's another $5,040 a year. And the premium goes up around 25% a year. Imagine how much it's going to be in ten years when I'm 55. And the joke, Blue Cross will still only give me $1500 in prescription drug coverage ten years from now - that's the way their policy works. I got $1500 when I started 12 years ago with them, and I'll have $1500 in ten years.
The problem here -- and I'm calling out all of the elected officials on the Hill -- is that while they are bickering about numbers (it will be huge no matter what we end up with I want all of them to answer one question: do they believe every person in the country is entitled to the same health care choices and offerings as Congress? If not, why not?
"It's too expensive" is not a legitimate answer.
That answer is loaded with the difficult truth underlying the debate -- a lot of people determining the fate of our health care system believe there should be a tiered level of care -- that some people are deserving of A+ quality care with all the options available, and some are not, and should be satisfied with something less, or fewer options because they poor or underinsured. If this is the case, state it now.
If Congress is satisfied with their current care, why not price out that model to cover everyone, and work the numbers. Obviously Dear Leader didn't put a price tag on his war adventures and we're still running up an endless tab that produced death and destruction that Congress keeps funding.
The high cost of health care is also due to doctors and hospitals covering their butts with extra unnecessary tests to avoid lawsuits, emergency rooms flooded with people who have no insurance and cannot pay, so the cost is passed on to those who can. Big pharma counts on us to boost the profits they cannot extract from countries with price controls; doctors have to carry high liability insurance because we're such a litigious society...the list goes on and on.
Employer group policy deductibles keep rising each year, or services are reduced because the employer cannot afford to underwrite the costs to hold the line on premiums. No one should have their health care plan tied to their employment. It has to be portable and stable. COBRA, intended to provide portability of a policy for those who leave a job, is often too expensive.
And remember, if your plan is tied to your employment and you're have pre-existing conditions, you better find a large company with a big group policy and never leave that job, since small businesses are more likely to have crappier policies or heinously high premiums -- or offer no insurance at all.
The whole system is broken -- except when it's not and works just fine for a good number of people.
Why is it so difficult to put that level of priority setting on health care? Maybe I'm missing something.
So back to the debate -- since any solution -- public/private/co-op will be a huge, expensive endeavor -- what is the baseline of quality services that everyone should receive? Ability to pay should not matter, because we already know we have millions of unemployed people without the ability to pay right now. We have a system where only the well-insured and wealthy are able to get expedited or specialized care.
The real underlying problem here in all of this -- and I think it's tied to the general capitalist, class-based mindset in this country -- that there's a basic assumption that the health of some Americans is worth more than others. And I'm not just talking about the super-wealthy, it goes for the "aspirational set" as well. You know, the Rush listener, the Base, the blue-collar social conservatives who dream of the wealth and upward mobility that the Republicans sell them -- until those titans of industry shut the plants down or move them overseas, and leave Joe Lunchbucket high and dry with an empty wallet, no health insurance and a family to feed. Only then does the reality set in.
Because of that there will always be a feeling out there it's essential for any reform to include a way to "get a leg up" in terms of access and services that preserves the best care for the class-based or luck-based (you have a good job with great health plan benefits) privileged, leaving anyone who doesn't getting cost-restricted, access-restricted services.
Let's take a look at an ad (R) you might be seeing on your TV right now. More below the fold.
I made the comment below in the reposting of the Trans-ghettoized diary. Pam commented to me privately this past Tuesday on how this comment should likely be unburied from that comment thread, and put on the front page. Dyssonance made the same comment a week ago Friday. So, I'm unburying this -- but I waited for the weekend when we take a little more liberty to do personal diaries.
Basically, this was a response to a comment by Eshto, where that blender commented that the Trans-ghettoized seemed to be a post that called for civility towards trans blenders, and that Eshto thought some of the comments behind why I originally wrote the Trans-ghettoized diary were really over the line. Here's how I responded a week ago Friday to Eshto's comment in that thread:
It's like mothering. We think of mothering as a virtue, but the reality is that you can over-mother a child.
Definitely, the pendulum has swung very widely in the past two weeks. As a group, we at PHB went from piecemeal, sometimes "over-mothering" of threads to, as a group, not "mothering" the threads at all.
I know for me, saying "I'm sorry for my many mistakes" at this point is part of being civil. But, being sorry for "over-mothering" our threads really isn't enough.
It's the repenting that's the more important part. Sure, changing the system we use to moderate will minimize the chance that a "cis- scenario" repeats here. But too, maintaining awareness of my personal potential to over-reach and "over-mother" -- especially when I feel personally stressed -- is going to be another part.
So, it's sort of a two-part fix. One part is The Blend's systematic fix for moderating. The other part is more personal -- changing my perspective and my actions. It's the repenting of my past mistakes that is going to be key for my part in maintaining my own personal civility here at PHB.
As if there were safety in stupidity alone. --Henry David Thoreau
The systematic fix to how we moderate was implemented on Monday, July 13th with the update to the Pam's House Blend Terms And Conditions Of Service (TOS), as well as the blenderReport TOS Violations section (and its Submit Report button) up in the top of the right column.
But, I guess I need to clarify something. And that is, if I actually express that I've made a mistake, or express I was wrong, implicitly I'm saying I'm sorry, and I'm already thinking about repenting -- about how to change my thoughts and behavior so I don't repeat my mistakes.
Sometimes, I don't say the words "I'm sorry" because I think that's understood in admitting I've made a mistake; that it's understood that I have a habit of alwaysrepenting of my admitted mistakes.
But, you blenders shouldn't be expected to attempt to figure out what I implicitly meant. During these past weeks I should have explicitly stated that "I'm sorry." I should have also stated that I have been working out with Pam and my fellow barists systematic fixes to the moderation problem, and that my act of repentance -- that change of my thoughts and my behavior -- was intended as a follow-on to that should-have-been-expressed "I'm sorry."
Basically, I didn't clearly state what I should have clearly stated.
So, I've listened (and listen) to Pam, and I've listened to Dyssonance. So here that comment from the Trans-ghettoized has made it to the front page as its own diary.
So, if it's not clear what I'm saying:
• I made many mistakes at The Blend in "over-mothering" our comment threads for civility.
• I'm sorry I made those mistakes.
• Pam and my peer baristas have implemented a systematic change to way we moderate so the moderation will be more clear, fair, and even-handed with our new Terms And Conditions Of Service (TOS).
• I'm now very aware of my tendency to want to "over-mother" our threads to tamp down anger. Between those systematic changes to the TOS, and that new awareness of that "over-mothering" tendency of mine, my approach to moderating has changed dramaticly.
It really is the repenting of my past mistakes that is going to be key for my part in maintaining my own personal civility here at PHB.
Let's see. I guess I should start off by saying I'm straight. I support GLBTQ civil rights because I want to live in a society where all people are allowed to live with dignity and where they are not forced to hide who they are or whom they love.
I identify as African American although I'm often mistaken for everything but. I benefit from skin privilege, and I've had other African Americans ask me why I say I'm AA when I "don't have to." ::sigh:: Point being, I could hide.
I am grateful for the courageous people before me who made it possible for me to not feel compelled to pass like many of my relatives did and continue to do. Many of those courageous people weren't African American, and their support helped the African-American Civil Rights Movement, which continues to this day. (Hellllooo, Philly!) They risked their lives for a cause that they believed in, and some of them even died alonside us.
I fully support and hope to help advance the GLBTQ Civil Rights Movement. I do not know your experience, and I don't pretend to, but I empathize. I might misspeak, and I hope you'll correct me when I do, but I'm here for my closeted relatives who think they have no voice. We are all related.
Since we are having a day on civility, I'd like to take a moment and discuss some of the things that aren't civil. This is, of course, a variation and reposting of an earlier diary.
It is not civil to refer to someone as crazy. Especially if they are religious. Doing so says that being crazy is bad, and, if you were to listen to some of the transfolk working very hard to remove Gender Identity Disorder from the DSM-V, why, that means that you are saying being trans is bad.
Not to mention further stigmatizes the millions of people with depression, Alzheimer's, and schizophrenia, and so forth.
Someone who is religious is, simply put, religious. You can call them irrational, you can call them bigots, but that does not make them crazy, and saying they are is not civil.
It is not civil to say that someone is a wackjob, or a nutcase. Go ahead and say they are bigots or prejudiced, or oppositional.
It is not civil to refer to someone as the enemy.
It is not civil to attack someone on the basis of their religious beliefs -- however harsh those beliefs are regarding you.
That's not something most of us remember.
Its *very* hard to speak to the whole of the issues surrounding our persecution without cynicism -- but in order to be civil, you do, indeed, have to avoid it. That means you have to avoid sarcasm, that means you have to avoid hyperbole. That means you have to avoid significant generalizations.
You can be skeptical, but cynicism is something a little more nasty, a little more forught with trouble, since it usually involves snarkiness and snideness.
It is hard to claim tolerance and respect for everyone when you don't give it out to everyone.
A lot of people hold up Ghandi -- who inspired MLK. He was a bigot. He admitted it. He said some incredibly uncouth things.
Civility is comprised of elements of courtesy, consideration, and thoughtfulness, combined with speaking from a position of knowledge and understanding.
That's pretty rare.
It one of the reasons that we don't attract more straight and cisgender readership from outside the LGBT/Queer community. Its a part of why FOX news attracts so many viewers, why Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and O'reilly are so popular.
They are not civil.
Keith Olbermann is civil. Or is he?
Charlie Rose is extremely civil. Or is he?
And if we are going to have a conversation on civility, then we need to start *there*, and seriously look at the role that a lack of civility plays in what our opponents call a culture war.
On both sides.
And then, if we truly are going to enshrine MLK's ideas (as opposed to Malcom X's, in this case, lol), then we need to rise above that lack of politeness, that lack of courtesy, that unrelenting expression of rage that is beneath so much of the rancor here.
We cannot call people ReThugs. We cannot call them crazy. We cannot call them idiots, or morons, or dipshits, or halfwits, or fuckwits, or fucktards, or retards, or any of four score more slurs and various insults and barbs.
Today at Pam's House Blend, we're begining by reposting Pam Spaulding's June 3, 2007 diary Civility on the Blend. It's the kick-off post for a day we've declared here to be Civility Day.
Pam's Civility diary goes hand-in-hand with the Trans-Ghettoized diary (that posts later this morning), as both of these diaries from PHB's past go to drawing lines regarding civil comment behavior within The Blend's threads.
So grab yourself a virutal cup of coffee or tea, and remember we're a virtual LGBT coffee house where friends meet to discuss what's on our minds. So, be a friend today (and every day) at The Blend; be civil to others sitting at the virtual coffee house table with you.
And, in conjunction with Civility Day, there will be a number of diaries posted on the front page today regarding civility. Please feel free to include your thoughts on civility towards others -- even behaving civilly to those who disagree with your opinions -- in the comments of all of today's posts.
Hey! It's Civility Day! Woo-hoo!
Warmest thoughts,
~~Autumn~~
Pam's House Blend is for civil discussion of issues. We may not all agree on political matters, but we can stay above calling each other names in threads. From the Community Rules:
This Blog is not a haven for trolls, threats, or people wishing to spam or harass...We have the right to edit, remove or deny access to content that is determined to be, in our sole discretion, unacceptable. Please respect the rights of others to be heard and to be respected. We welcome all viewpoints, but we do not welcome personal attacks on our users, in any form. The moderators of The Blog retain the right to ban any user from posting at The Blog for behavior deemed inappropriate.
Most folks can handle debate and discussion without losing their cool and resulting to lashing out at fellow commenters; others can't even manage to handle themselves after being warned. I have no patience for this and I'm ready to drop the hammer on any user who persists in being uncivil or hijacking threads simply to be contrary and antagonistic. You're not likely to change any minds, and quite frankly, the responses become quite predictable and boring.
Repeated, flagrant use of cursing against fellow commenters, violent threats (even in jest) can result in you getting trapdoored. And no, we don't have to give anyone a warning, but we do out of courtesy. Everyone receives the terms of service when you sign up, so no one can claim ignorance of the house rules.
Comment threads that are mostly full of bickering simply drive readers away, no one commenter is worth keeping in the coffeehouse if they cannot behave. Your booty will be bounced onto the street.
And for the rest of you: the rule of the game is don't feed the trolls.
Hi folks, this is a reminder that the "free speech zone experiment" on Pam's House Blend ends on July 9th; Pam and I (as well as the other baristas) aren't moderating threads until then. To cap off the week, we invite you to join us in a celebration of Civility Day on July 10th.
During Civility Day, we encourage folks to post diaries with their thoughts on civility in various realms: general civility within the Blend's virtual LGBT coffee house; civility between identity communities here at the Blend, elsewhere on The Internets or in society at large; and civility in general society.
On July 13th we'll also roll out the new Pam's House Blend Terms And Conditions Of Service (sometimes referred to in short as the Terms Of Service, or just TOS). All diaries and comments posted July 11-13 will fall under the old TOS; anything posted on the 13th and thereafter will be subject to the new TOS -- that will be announced on a front page post Monday AM.
Update from Autumn: For those of you who think this post is a comment from me that says "F*** it, it doesn't matter if I identified the right first person" of "First actual perceived-by-me weaponizing of the term cis, cisgender, or cissexual" ... that is literally not what I meant. I likely did get it wrong -- it was the first weaponizing of the term that I remembered specifically as the weaponizing of the term, as opposed the probable first actual perceived-by-me weaponizing of the term cis, cisgender, or cissexual. I should have wrote it that way initially, but the way it was presented editorially left it open to wide interpretation. This was not a news story or reporting, but my personal commentary.
In addition, I'm saying that if you think I got the "first" aspect of this wrong, that's probably correct as well. If the point of the continued commentary is to achieve resolution of this editorial or semantic lack of clarity, I'm presenting it here. To those who want me to specifically admit I got the timeline wrong -- I didn't scan the comments looking for the first instance of what I remembered the initial perceived-weaponized-as-weapon comment, it in all likelihood wasn't the first one; that's obviously a mistake. If the purpose of continuing this discussion is to ensure there are clear public winners and losers regarding this entire time-draining endeavor, then this is the "win" you're looking for. The bottom line is that this is the correction, the statement of fact to answer the questions you've expressed. It's not clear that many of you will accept it no matter how it's phrased or presented, but I wanted it to be clear that this needed to editorially be put to bed.
There is a new meme of commentary out there now that I wrongly misstated the timeline of who threw the first snowball(s) in the current cisgender and cissexual discussion.
In the big picture, does it matter who threw the first snowball? Is the argument that no one threw any snowballs? Or, is argument that there were snowballs thrown and I misstated who threw the first snowball? Or, is the argument that I threw the first snowball, and no one else has thrown any snowballs?
Would we all agree that snowballs have been thrown? Does it really matter that much who threw the first snowball or snowballs? Do we need to know who threw the first snowball(s) in this ongoing snowball fight? Or, is the real question WHY is the snowball fight continuing unabated?
And while this fight has been going on and seems to have escalated to pitchforks and torches being passed out at the snowball forts, in the grand scheme of things...
• is the upcoming Latisha Green Hate Crime Murder Trial receiving our attention?
• is the hate expressed at the young, trans woman Angie Zapata Hate Crime Murder being forgotten?
• is our community focused on passing the Matthew Sheppard Act -- the federal hate crime legislation?
• is our community making calls to ensure the passage of a fully inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA)?
• have we highlighted that the Department of Justice (DOJ) isn't going to appeal the Diane Schroer trans federal government discrimination case decision?
• is our community taking notice that an apparent hate crime murder of an apparently gay sailor is being called "not a hate crime" by the United States Navy?
I don't care to rehash how and why the snowball fight began at The Blend and the blogosphere in the first place, or who and when the first snowballs were thrown. But now, of course, the snowball fight has taken on a life of its own -- I don't think anything I do at this point will affect an end to the snowball fight. Nothing. What this snowball fight has done is leave me asking bigger picture questions. In the grand scheme of things: What is important to our community? -- What is the bottom line for our community? -- What are the priorities for our community?
Note from Pam: Just so people know,Kynn decided to engage in sock puppetry(as "Caoimhe") and got herself banned again. If you're banned, you're certainly not welcome to come back and pretend to be someone else advocating for the banned person.Take a look.
What websites were you on before Pam's House Blend, and which forums/blogs are you currently on?
I began in chatrooms on Gay.com, usually in the POZ (HIV/AIDS) room. I was on John Edwards' site before that the Kerry/Edwards' site, then that morphed to Common Grounds/Common Sense. I was on Huffington Post, and still post there. There was a bizarro site Volcanvo I was on for awhile, (I don't recommend it.)
If this questions doesn't generate interest just post things which interest you, that don't fit another thread....I'm Easy....not cheap but I'm easy.
After some thought regarding the comments moderation issue discussed in Autumn's post, and taking seriously the issue of what constitutes "silencing" or not listening to a group, it's time for Blenders who comment, not lurk, to determine whether a fully free-speech zone is actually what is desired.
Here's the scoop: from right now until 7/9:
* The ratings will be turned off.
* The three commenters who were banned in the threads in question have been reinstated; they will stay active after the experiment. That's part of the reboot.
* No baristas will moderate any front-page post or diary comments for opinion, tone, language or cross-commenter exchange of ideas or disagreement.
* The exceptions:
-- diaries created for spamming (we have some dolts who sign up to promote a product, not write a discussion post)
-- direct physical threats between commenters, or publishing of private information.
No baristas will review comments; you can email the PHB tips addy, but we will let the experiment run its course. This means that all of you now have the freedom to say anything you want in any way you want to any other Blender in the comment threads; however, so would others have that ability to do the same thing to you.
That will change the blog's character from my original intent for the short term; it will no longer be a coffee table discussion among friends within a virtual coffee shop -- the comments sections will resemble what you see on most other blogs.
That leaves civility up to you to enforce in the comment community. The results may bring some lurkers come out to share their thoughts with baristas about the change and how it plays out. People who comment are a very small fraction of the people who actually read the Blend, and regular commenters an even smaller sample. I don't know how this experiment will play out, but I think it's worth knowing what changes will occur when you're on your own.
For those of you who think moderation is the better route, you may or may not be vindicated. The feedback on how best to moderate in the other thread is interesting and predictable -- it also points out that it's a subjective matter to "know" what is or isn't acceptable, how long is too long to do something about it and what the price that should be paid and when. That's a tall order and there won't be a consensus on it.
Many Blenders have commented on how the HRC, Courage Campaign, and other like organizations are BIG money makers. It can be argued that these organizations are just cogs in the "Non-Profit Industrial Complex". To learn more, read on. For a full account, please feel free to visit: http://leftturn.org/backissue&tid=55 and http://www.incite-national.org/index.php?s=89
These are fantastic!! They are taken from a book entitled Recovery From Cults. It was written by 20 or so different specialist that in some way are familiar with cult techniques and overcoming them.
Great BIIIIIIIIG H/T to PostMormon.org and one of it's members!
Although, it's not because I'm a style or fashion icon...
A few weeks ago, I was interviewed by Jose Antonio Vargas of the Washington Post. He was doing a piece about gay bloggers and what's in store post-election as the political landscape shifts, kind of an exploration of where do we go from here in the age of citizen journalism, commentary and new media - and what bloggers' relationship might be with the MSM, LGBT advocacy orgs, etc. The Post sent a photographer down to snap some shots (you never know if they will actually be used, particularly if you're one of several interviewees).
Lo and behold I received an email from Jose giving me a heads up that the story was going to run today, and looking at my inbox this AM, it must have hit the web last night some time since folks are congratulating me for it. I'm actually just taking a look at it now -- "Gay Bloggers' Voices Rise in Chorus of Growing Political Influence." A photo runs with the article in the print edition (it's not on the web edition), so I have no idea how it came out. Ah, vanity.
Also interviewed for the article were Mike Rogers, Joe Solmonese, Andrew Sullivan and Steve Hildebrand (who is gay and served as deputy campaign manager on the Obama campaign). A snippet:
Pam's House Blend is an influential voice in the gay political blogosphere, must-reads that include the Bilerico Project, Towleroad and AMERICAblog, each attracting a few hundred to a few thousand hits a day. Just as the liberal Net-roots and the conservative "rightroots" movements have affected traditional party structures, the still relatively small gay political presence online is rebooting the gay rights movement in a decentralized, spontaneous, bottom-up way. It's spreading news via blogs, Facebook and Twitter. Online, a story about two 16-year-old girls in a Lutheran private school in California being expelled for "conducting themselves in a manner consistent with being lesbians" -- as the school's lawyer describes it -- goes viral. And hits nerves.
"Those two girls live in California. California! Imagine what's happening in, say, Alabama. Or Mississippi," Spaulding says in an interview.
In the past, someone like Spaulding would have been relegated to the sidelines. She doesn't work for national gay rights organizations such as the Human Rights Campaign or the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. She lives with her partner, Kate, an audiologist, in Durham, far from San Francisco, New York or Washington, where gay activism has been historically based. But now she's helping shape the agenda, one voice in a chorus of sometimes dissonant, sometimes harmonious, often in-your-face voices that is pushing established gay groups and redefining the meaning of grass-roots action in this new media age.
The piece itself is fair, even complimentary -- bloggers frequently aren't portrayed in a fair or accurate light by the MSM --- the whole "incendiary blogger sitting in a basement at the computer in Cheetos-stained PJs" stereotype was rampant there for a while. I can't say that I've had a bad experience so far in that what I said wasn't accurately portrayed in the end product or that I come across as a wild-eyed crazy extremist. (Some links to prior press can be found on the About Pam page.)
Anyway, take a look and share what you think about the Post's take on the gay blogosphere and its influence.
UPDATE: First, I'm moving this back up to the top to make the updates more prominent. Second, I apologize for cutting this short last night. There were some technical difficulties and some access issues. While I wanted to try and get some interviews, it just didn't happen for a couple of reasons. Reasons that were partially under my control. And I may have gotten a little terse in one of my comments which was uncalled for and unprofessional but the old saying about "three fingers pointing back at yourself" is true. I also need to remember that this event was not for me, but for the Junior Statesmen, high-school student learning and participating in our democracy. So again, my apologies. However, I have a little more background information on those who spoke to post along with some pictures after the jump.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
7:30 PM Good evening all, I'm coming at you live from the Luxurious Hotel Monaco in Washington, DC for one of the inaugural kickoff parties, "The Junior State of America" put on by the Junior Statesmen Foundation and sponsored by POLITICO and Facebook.
Not literally on Rick Warren... eww! No Saddleback Mountain for me!
No, I just mean those two subjects were major topics on my radio show this afternoon and I went OFF on it. Thought you might enjoy listening.
I also offer my theory that Cheney et al knew torture wouldn't work, and used it anyway to further their goal of purposefully inflaming the Muslim world, for without that massive recruiting tool, plus too few American soldiers plus unguarded ammo dumps, there wouldn't have been enough chaos and bloodshed to get away with stealing billions from the Treasury.
The Blend has been my diary, my venting place, my outlet for my eccentric sense of humor, a venue to work out the pros and cons of all sorts of issues from the mundane to the critical with folks out there.
Unfortunately, a full-time day job, a full-time blog and my offline efforts to work for equality have taken a toll. What's gone by the wayside as I burned the candle at both ends since July of 2004 when I launched the blog, has been my health. I was hoping to take a much-needed break after the 2008 election, but then the debacle of Prop 8 only ensured that covering the aftermath was essential to do for all sorts of relevant reasons that we have discussed here in the coffeehouse.
It's pretty clear is that there never will be a downtime; there's always the next big important issue in the struggle for equality and the effort to return to a sane democracy...
NOTE FROM PAM: I had the recent pleasure of guest-blogging at Open Left, thanks to Jon's invitation. It was an experiment that led to interesting results, to say the least. I did invite him to bring this excellent post to the Blend. Please join in the discussion.
Thanks to Pam for encouraging me to post on the Blend, where I'm a regular reader and occasional commenter. For the last month or so, I've been heavily involved as one of the organizers of Get FISA Right, which started as a protest group on my.barackobama.com and quickly spread to the blogosphere, Facebook, the getFISAright.net message boards, MySpace, and yes, even the mainstream media with coverage by Time, CNN, the New York Times, NPR, and elsewhere.
The FISA battle's far from over. The July 9 Senate vote on the "FISA Amendment Act" permits warrantless wiretaps with virtually no oversight and grants telecom companies immunity for any illegal actions they may have taken at the Bush administration's request. Fortunately, the ACLU immediately filed suit on behalf of plaintiffs including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International USA, SEIU, Naomi Klein, and The Nation. EFF is preparing a lawsuit as well, and so the issue will remain alive into the next administration and Congress. Get FISA Right's strategy-in-progress sketches how we intend to take advantage of this time to influence this debate, and the discussions and poll in our What is your vision for the future of Get FISA Right? thread chart a likely path towards a more general focus on civil liberties issues.
Along with my significant other Deborah Pierce and brother Greg, I'm working on a book about social networks called Tales from the Net, and the current working subtitle for our chapter on online activism is "Towards a rebirth of freedom", from an inspiring talk Chip Pitts gave describing his vision for Get FISA Right's future. Deborah and I lived in the Castro for a decade and still hang out there, and so for me "freedom" starts with marriage equality, an inclusive ENDA, Pride, Folsom, and Pink Saturday every bit as much as it starts with the Fourth Amendment, the rule of law, and privacy.
So I'm tinkering around on the PHB code (Sitemeter's apparently back up), and I pulled some stats on what people type into their search engines to click over here. There are some interesting entries...
So what the heck is up with some of those entries?
If you use Internet Explorer and you've had trouble loading the Blend and other blogs/sites that run the Sitemeter stats counter, this is what's going on. (Wired):
A number of web sites that use SiteMeter tracking code to monitor the number of visitors to their site are reporting that the code is causing Internet Explorer browsers to crash when users visit their sites.
...The problem appears to be affecting IE 5.5, 6.0 and 7.0. Internet surfers using IE to access a site that has SiteMeter tracking it receive a message saying the site cannot be loaded and "operation aborted." The issue seems to have begun late afternoon Friday.
SiteMeter has not responded to a request for comment and so far has posted no announcement to its web site addressing the issue. But SiteMeter's blog has a few posts published earlier this week referencing its move to a new platform and changes to its tracking code.
I've not removed the code, I just disabled it by commenting it out. If you run Firefox or Flock (the social media web browser built on Firefox code), it's business as usual.
In the meantime, I've put StatCounter code on the blog to keep track of visitors.
And pardon the dust -- I'm tinkering around with the column content code to make the site load faster and to add new features (you can now rate posts and use the Web 2.0 "Share" widget), so I'll be a little light on the posting this weekend.
Let's lighten up the mood in the coffeehouse between the somber headlines. Feel free to share links and news stories.
The real underlying problem here in all of this -- and I think it's tied to the general capitalist, class-based mindset in this country -- that there's a basic assumption that the health of some Americans is worth more than others. And I'm not just talking about the super-wealthy, it goes for the "aspirational set" as well. You know, the Rush listener, the Base, the blue-collar social conservatives who dream of the wealth and upward mobility that the Republicans sell them -- until those titans of industry shut the plants down or move them overseas, and leave Joe Lunchbucket high and dry with an empty wallet, no health insurance and a family to feed. Only then does the reality set in.
As if there were safety in stupidity alone.
So grab yourself a virutal cup of coffee or tea, and remember we're a virtual LGBT coffee house where friends meet to discuss what's on our minds. So, be a friend today (and every day) at The Blend; be civil to others sitting at the virtual coffee house table with you.
After some thought regarding the comments moderation issue discussed 
