the world is your acorn

A bill has been filed in the Tennessee House of Representatives and the Tennessee Senate that would prevent anyone that isn’t legally married from adopting, making it impossible for gay couples or individuals to adopt children.

Tennessee House bill HB3713 by John DeBerry (D-Memphis) and Tennessee Senate bill SB3910 by Paul Stanley (R-Memphis) would amend the Tennessee Code (TCA Title 36 and 49) to “prohibit any individual who is cohabitating in a sexual relationship outside of a marriage that is valid under the constitution and laws of this state from adopting a minor.”

Conveniently enough, now that Amendment 1 to the state constitution is in place, the queers have no shot at ever being legally married in this state. Phew, maybe if we can keep them from getting married and from adopting here we can convince them to take their homosexual agenda to another state? I wonder if lesbian couples could still adopt if they could convince whoever that lesbian bed death has long since settled in their relationship?

*In case you don’t know me, I was being sarcastic up there with those last two sentences.

“Tennessee legislators seek to limit adoptions to married couples ” [via Out & About]

I guess I’m supposed to call it “alleged” anti-gay assault. That’s fine, I guess. The main gist of the story is that a Vandy student and a recent graduate were physically assaulted on campus last weekend by a freshman and a non-student friend. There were words exchanaged in a Quiznos, and when the student and recent graduate walked out of the building, they were jumped. It sounds like there were no serious physical injuries, and the attackers have been identified.

I’m interested to hear what will come of this. Is it the kind of news story that 6 of us who care about anti-gay hate crimes will read, become enraged about, then be forgotten about a week later? Is it the kind of thing that will spark some sort of action, either on the part of students, the administration, or both? I’m not yet sure how personally I feel about it. Does it make me scared for my own safety? Relieved that it was a freshman and not a senior who did it? Am I angry that shit like this happens in the first place? Sad that there are still supposedly educated people in the world who are capable of doing this? I guess there is a little of all of that floating around in me right now. I hope something happens because of this, but I hate admit that I’m not optimistic that if anything does happen that it’ll be much in the way of progress for queer rights.

“Students attacked in alleged anti-gay hate crime” [via insidevandy]

The WNBA’s defending champions, the Sacramento Monarchs, met with President Bush yesterday at the White House. It seems strange to me that those players find it an honor to meet him. It’s the kind of sexism and homophobia that he exhibits that kept professional women’s sports from thriving for so long, and even still it struggles. Many lesbian athletes remain closeted, afraid to fill the stereotype and give naysayers more reason to disparage women’s sports.

“One of the things you’ve done is you’ve set a great example for young women athletes,” Bush said. “As the father of twin daughters — who had trouble finding a backboard, I might add — sorry, girls. I love the fact that there are role models, though, for young women, that somebody can look up to and say, ‘Gosh, I want to be like her. I want to realize my dreams by being like Yolanda.”‘

“Not my daughters,” is what he’s really saying. Bleh.

from Hothouse: Two Cherokee women have gotten legally married! Though challenged, the marriage has been upheld by the highest court in the Cherokee Nation. When they got married in 2004 same-sex marriages were allowed by tribal law, but that law has since been changed. It will be interesting to see how the US government chooses to deal with this (if at all).

Top US Indian court upholds first gay marriage [Reuters]

The Little Red Haired Girl is allergic, so we can’t implement this lifehack. Those of you who can, however, I highly encourage getting a cat. It seems that a man in Columbus, OH fell and couldn’t get up recently. His cat dialed 911. No kidding. via Boing Boing.

Cat Calls 911 to Help Owner, Police Say [Yahoo! News]

Sheryl Swoopes has come out! Woah! While two others (then-active, not playing anymore) from the wnba have come out before her, Swoopes is a superstar and a spokesperson for the organization. Again, woah. I’m excited for her and I’m excited for female athletes who have to hide behind that vague, asexual jock facade. I’m also excited for the whole of women’s sports, which is so afraid of being demonized as being “what dykes do”, that it hides and disguises its lesbian participants. Of course not all female atheletes are gay, but some are. Sheryl Swoopes is, anyway. Did I mention she is also going to start promoting Olivia Cruises?

Swoopes could open door for others to follow [ESPN.com]

An article in Saturday’s New York Times details a report from the Government Accountability Office which found that the administrations has been spending money to analyze news for hints of approval and to disseminate “covert propaganda”.

Lawyers from the accountability office, an independent nonpartisan arm of Congress, found that the administration systematically analyzed news articles to see if they carried the message, “The Bush administration/the G.O.P. is committed to education.”

The auditors declared: “We see no use for such information except for partisan political purposes. Engaging in a purely political activity such as this is not a proper use of appropriated funds.”

The report also sharply criticized the Education Department for telling Ketchum Inc., a public relations company, to pay Mr. Williams for newspaper columns and television appearances praising Mr. Bush’s education initiative, the No Child Left Behind Act.

No, Mr. Bush, it’s not suspicious at all that you have to pay people to fake news reports about the success of your education program. Why don’t you just skip the middleman and pay teachers to tell kids whatever you want? Oh right, you’re already trying to do that

My favorite part:

In March, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel said that federal agencies did not have to acknowledge their role in producing television news segments if they were factual. The inspector general of the Education Department recently reiterated that position.

The administration has a clear history of misunderstanding the meaning of the word “factual”. At the very least current events mentioned above make this clear. Perhaps some government funding might be set aside for vocabulary lessons? It would be like a retroactive No Child Left Behind act.

Buying of News by Bush’s Aides Is Ruled Illegal [New York Times]
In Pennsylvania, It Was Religion vs. Science, Pastor vs. Ph.D., Evolution vs. the Half-Fish [New York Times]

Ok, my penny-pinching friends. With the exception of a few of you who have sold your souls for luxury, most of you who read this are poor like me. Those 2 pennies per gallon on gas make a 30% difference in your snack money for the week. Well, there’s a cool site called GasBuddy which lets users report cheap (and expensive) gas prices. There seems to be a pretty comprehensive and relatively up-to-date database for many cities, including New Haven, Boston, and Nashville.

GasBuddy: Find Cheap Gas Prices [Quick Online Tips]

How many times have you been trapped on the Red Line between Porter and Harvard, you’re late for work or to meet friends, and you have no way to communicate with anyone? Well, maybe this is old news (the press release is from Feb 2005), but I just found out that the T has decided to install “an underground neutral wireless communication network”, starting with Park Street, State Street, Government Center, Downtown Crossing, and the tunnels connecting them. The press release says cellular and pda communications, which I take means no internet. Oh well, you haven’t have everything.

Boston Subway Stops To Be Readied For Wireless Communications Devices [MBTA News/Events]

Since I have lots of computer projects to do this summer, and I have been trapped in front of about 35 computers with little responsibility for about 6 hours now, I decided to tool around the internet instead of being productive. Anyway I decided to check out folks’ first blog posts, to see how they started. Hothouse seems to have just jumped in, without acknowledging anything new happening. Of course, they could have been posting somewhere else before and neglected to migrate previous posts.

Most blogs have some sort of awkward introduction, where the author introduces him or herself and the context of or reason for blogging. My favorite is Aunt B’s intro at Tiny Cat Pants. Her voice is so distinct, and she seems to have figured out her style before even beginning. She also has a great nicknaming system, which I think I will steal adopt. Hope she does not mind.

My First Post [Tiny Cat Pants]