from Mombian:
You are cordially invited to participate in the second annual Blogging for LGBT Families Day on June 1. I’m especially pleased to announce that the Family Pride Coalition will be sponsoring this year’s event and working in conjunction with us to get the word out and raise visibility for our families.
Last year, over 130 bloggers participated, including lesbian moms, gay dads, adult children of LGBT parents, members of the transgender community, LGBT individuals without children, and straight allies. Countries represented included the United States as well as Australia, Canada, and the UK. Some bloggers told stories about their paths to parenthood, or tales about their children; some wrote about LGBT relatives or friends; others discussed current political events; and several spoke of why their faith obliges them to support LGBT rights. This year’s writings should be equally diverse and compelling.
Here’s how it works:
- Blog on a topic related to LGBT families on or before June 1, 2007.
- Any blogger who wants to support LGBT families is welcome, LGBT or not, parent or not. I especially encourage those who don’t usually post about LGBT families or LGBT issues, as well as those for whom every day is Blogging for LGBT Families Day.
- Leave a comment on this post, or send an e-mail to lgbtfamilies@mombian.com with the permalink to your post. (If you know how, you may also add the tag “blogging for lgbt families day” to your entry.)
- I’ll compile the posts and highlight them here on June 1. Come back and read the stories and insights of our community and allies.
In the meantime, please download a banner and promote the event on your site. The more people who participate, the more awareness we can raise.
for months now, i’ve been toying with the idea of creating an online zine archive that would allow anyone to upload their zine and anyone to download the zines all for free. the idea was sparked by a friend who has what he describes as “every zine printed since the 1980s”. i’ve never seen his complete zine collection, but i’ve seen a portion of it and it is impressive. when he said he was thinking of getting rid of all but the best ones, but that he didn’t want to get rid of such an archive, my first thought was to digitalize the collection and make it accessible to everyone.
really, its an idea i had a few years ago, but it really didn’t solidify until more recently. i have about 4 -5 dozen zines myself. they’ve followed me from house to house over the years and i’m now looking to downgrade the amount of stuff in my closets. but the zines i have are all good zines and i hate to just trash them. so having just completed the bulk of digitalizing my photo collection, i decided i would start the process of digitalizing my zines. before starting a new project, however, i like to make sure someone else isn’t already doing it. i didn’t find exactly what i had in mind, but i was VERY excited to find the Queer equivalent. they have a very impressive collection of queer zines for download, including several that i’ve never heard of.
i like zines for several reasons. the most of which is the idea that anyone can write/illustrate/compile a publication, publish it, and distribute it all with a very small budget and little-to-no knowledge of the publishing industry. zines are, in my opinion, the predecessor of blogs. my two favorite types of zines have always been Queer zines and DIY zines. i like the DIY zines because i like to learn practical skills without having to pay for it:) i like Queer zines because they have been a fuck you to the silencing of and co-optation of Queer voices. a large part of my introduction to trans identity (and how i learned to make my own gender toys) came from reading people’s experiences in zines. some were funny, some sad, some infuriating, most a combination of emotions, and all of them persynal and wonderful.
don’t get me wrong. i like blogs, but i hope zine culture never dies.
i wrote awhile ago about the Oregon State University and the Oregon Health and Science University’s experiments in “curing” homosexuality in sheep. Well, looks like they’ve had some success (although I’m still skeptical of this considering animal testers’ history of playing with results).
According to The Times, researchers at Oregon State University in the city of Corvallis and at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland were able to “pinpoint the mechanisms influencing the desires of ‘male-oriented’ rams by studying their brains”.
Specifically, they cut open the offending sheeps’ skulls, attached electonic sensors to their grey matter and monitored them while “varying the hormone levels, mainly by injecting hormones into the brain”. They reported “considerable success” in getting previously gay rams to consider a bit of boy-on-girl.
The purpose behind these experiments is to “improve the productivity of herds” since “approximately one ram in 10 prefers to mount other rams rather than mate with ewes”. The implications are far more sinister, opponents claim, since the acquired knowledge could in the future be used to “cure” human homosexuality, or may offer the prospect that “pregnant women could one day be offered a [hormone] treatment to reduce or eliminate the chance that their offspring will be homosexual”.
Sounds good to me. I’m gonna go adopt me some gay-bos, cut their skulls open, and inject them with hormones to make god happy… i mean improve the productivity of the herd.
read the full article at The Register
