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After last night's visit to the Saloon, the consensus is to have tonight's JMG reader meet-up at the Eagle/Bolt, which is at 515 Washington Ave South. I'll should be able to get there by 10pm, based on what tonight's Netroots schedule looks like. Hope to meet some of you there!
My blogging schedule may be somewhat erratic all this week as I attend the various lectures and seminars at Netroots 2011. Today I'm attending Mike Rogers's LGBT pre-conference, where most of your favorite activists, bloggers, and writers will gather. You can follow the goings-on on Twitter at the hashtag #NN11LGBT. By the way, I have very fond memories of the Minneapolis gay bar scene and we'll definitely put together a JMG meetup somewhere for this Friday night. I'm thinking Saloon?
JMG reader Sean Chapin has convinced the San Francisco Giants to become the first professional sports team to create an "It Gets Better" video. Chapin's petition to the team on Change.org had drawn over 6000 signatures.
In an interview Monday, Chapin, a 35-year-old accountant who lives in San Francisco and works in Oakland, described the team's decision, announced Monday, as a "breaking bubble" that will have profound reverberations. Giants spokeswoman Staci Slaughter said that the team had been thinking of joining the campaign before Chapin started his petition drive, but that his efforts speeded things up. She said the exact content of the video and which, if any, players or members of the coaching staff will participate have not been determined. Originally, the plan was to produce the video for the Giants LGBT Night home game in August, Slaughter said, "but now we're trying to get it done sooner than later."Congratulations, Sean!
Some of yesterday's posts have magically reappeared, but sadly your incisive and thoughtful comments have not. Boo, hiss and all that jazz.
For those unaware, Google/Blogger experienced a global outage for the last (approximately) 24 hours, taking down tens of millions of sites and doubtlessly losing them zillions in ad revenue. For now, things appear to be working. You'll notice, however, that all of my 25 or so posts from yesterday have vanished. We'll see if they reappear. Thanks for hanging in there.
Today is the seventh blogiversary of this here website thingy. As is tradition for today, here is my very first post.
April 27th, 2004I appreciate all of you being here for these last seven years. Help yourselves to some cupcakes and punch. Please don't let the cat out.
I was born and raised in rural North Carolina.
My fondest childhood memory is of playing in the dense, acrid, poison fog that was belched out by the county mosquito control truck during its daily dusk-time trip down our dirt road.
The cry of "Smokey! Smokey!" would fly up and down Nine Foot Road once the first faint sound of the pest control truck's generator was detected in the distance. Trailer screen doors would slam open and kids would pour into the street for ten minutes of gleeful, giddy, mad dashing around in the thick white clouds of DDT. We would smash into each other with full force in the blinding swirls and just scream and laugh hysterically, pick ourselves up and start running again. Parents had not a whit of concern about their children playing directly behind the spewing pipes of a pest control truck. In fact, NOT being allowed to play in the poison fog was often held out as potential punishment for misbehavior.
I think this explains a lot about me.
And onward to JMG year eight.
"If the affront to my personal safety wasn't enough, it was embodied in an article that was so poorly researched. The two factual errors come to mind: first of all, if as you say my chief-of-staff is gay, no one has bothered to tell her. Also, if any of your readers are interested in attending a counter-demonstration, they shouldn't bother taking your directions to gather at 181st Street expecting the end of our rally there, I and the thousands of New Yorkers who believe in respect for human life and sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman will be found praying near the Bronx County Courthouse at 161st Street and the Grand Concourse. It's so sad to see people in journalism abuse their positions, but it's outrageous to see how the editors of the Village Voice use their editorial discretion to facilitate and encourage homicide." - New York state Sen. Ruben Diaz, responding to a Village Voice blog post in which a commenter made a death threat against him.
RELATED: On May 15th Diaz, who signed the above letter "Senator Reverend Ruben Diaz," will stage what may be the largest anti-gay rally in state history. A similar rally in 2009 brought over 20,000 Hispanic evangelicals to midtown Manhattan, most of whom arrived via out of state church buses. LGBT groups have noted that Diaz' rally is scheduled to conflict with NYC's annual AIDS Walk in order to diminish counter-protests.
ALSO RELATED: Please do not leave comments making even the most idle of threats of physical harm or property damage against any persons or places. Longtime readers may recall that in late 2009, anti-gay and Christianist websites launched a campaign against JMG, claiming that readers were making "terrorist threats" against supporters of Proposition 8. Please contact me via email if you see any threats or calls to violence and I will dispatch them at once. Our enemies are reading every word you write.
I guess it's about time for my annual plea for forgiveness regarding my lousy email habits. I am very appreciative of all of your news tips and personal messages and I totally suck for not being able to get back to everybody. (Including on Facebook!) But this here website thingy, for now, is a one-man show. I'm pedaling as fast as I can!
Several times a day I get emails objecting to some of the banner ads here on JMG, which as I always explain are often triggered by the content of my posts. For example, if I mock Crazy Eyes, there's a good chance you'll see an ad for her reelection campaign or whatever. If it makes you feel any better, the same thing happens on wingnut blogs, where you're just as likely to see an ad for the ACLU or whomever. So please, enough with the screen shots, folks.
This here website thingy is presently running at about 1.7M - 2M pageviews per month. As you can see above, Mac owners are highly overrepresented among JMG readers, which I'm sure has something to do with y'all being all artsy and shit. Pageviews via iPad have gone up tenfold in the last couple of months, a trend I expect to continue. I do find it rather fascinating that over 10% of you are here via handheld devices.
The Boston Pops writes us today to invite JMG readers to participate in a Judy Garland tribute. Post a YouTube clip of yourself singing Over The Rainbow and you may be featured in their "national choir collage" to be played at Boston Pops performances all this season.
To pay respect to the shared cultural heritage of the American Songbook, the Boston Pops is asking for video submissions of fans singing “Over the Rainbow” for inclusion in a video collage to be shown at Boston Pops performances throughout the season. Voted number one on the RIAA and NEA’s “Songs of the Century” list, Harold Arlen’s “Over the Rainbow” is an American Songbook selection that unites generations and ties the 2011 Spring Pops Season together—from the Opening Night Judy Garland tribute to the finale “Triple Crown” performance celebrating America’s Heartland. The signature Boston Pops sing-along has long been an audience favorite, so this year the orchestra is opening the sing-along to a national choir. Participants of all ages can submit video of themselves singing “Over the Rainbow,” by adding a video to YouTube and emailing a link and contact info to overtherainbow@bso.org. Videos will be featured on the Boston Pops YouTube channel, on the Boston Pops website, and at Boston Pops performances throughout the season. All video submissions are due by Saturday, April 26, 2011.There's more than a few of you that I'd love to see do this.
Longtime JMG reader Calvin writes to brag about his big brother, who has published a full-page pro-same sex marriage ad in New Hampshire's biggest newspaper.
Longtime JMG reader Vivian Cummins has announced his candidacy for Ireland's Parliament as a Green Party proponent of same-sex marriage. Via press release:
Vivian Cummins, the Green Party candidate for Kildare South is believed to be the only gay and officially recognised civil partnered candidate in the forthcoming General Election in the Irish Republic to be held on 25th February 2011. Cummins married his partner, Erney Breytenbach, in South Africa in 2009. Like other same-sex couples with a previous foreign civil marriage or partnership, their union became recognised in Ireland on 13th January of this year. Cummins said: “ The Green Party intends to introduce gay civil marriage if re-elected to Government and believes that same-sex couples should be entitled to the same rights as heterosexual couples. In Government, the Green Party introduced the Civil Partnerships legislation, which goes a long way to ensuring better rights for same-sex couples. But, it is not marriage, and we believe all consenting adults, should have the option to marry."Last February, Cummins and his husband were the first gay couple to have their wedding announcement published in the Irish Times. We wish him the best of luck in the election!
Many thanks to all that participated in yesterday's freeping of Pepsi's "big ideas" contest as GLSEN finished in second place and WON the $250,000 grant for their safe schools project! You guys rock! JMG reader Tom notes via email: "Based on the rankings it [also] appears Gay & Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD) got a $25k award, as did a LGBT health awareness program, and an Equality Pennsylvania youth leadership training program. If I’m doing the math right, Pepsi just committed $325K to LGBT causes around the country. I usually don’t drink soda, but I’m heading to the vending machine now to get a Pepsi for my morning break."
I've been getting quite a few emails complaining that someone purporting to represent GetEQUAL has been spamming the JMG comments with requests for donations. Last night I'm grumbled about it on Facebook, after which GetEQUAL's Robin McGehee immediately called to let me know that they are NOT behind these donation requests, which have been appearing across the LGBT blogosphere.
As it turns out, the spamming campaign is being done to discredit GetEQUAL, rather successfully so, considering how you folks have reacted. In fact, multiple sockpuppet accounts have been created on LGBT blogs wherein the same anonymous person or persons then attack GetEQUAL for daring to request donations. Pretty clever, eh?
According to numerous folks, this dumbass campaign is the work of "AndrewW", a prolific commenter recently banned on sites such as The Bilerico Project and Pam's House Blend. McGehee has tried in vain to learn of AndrewW's true identity, even offering a personal $500 reward to anybody that can out him. Some IP traces have placed AndrewW in Plano, Texas, but searches I performed on three different IP's left here on JMG turned up locations in San Diego, Los Angeles, and Santa Barbara. That suggests that either AndrewW has cohorts or that he is adept at spoofing IP addresses.
Jump into the comments on this post with your tips and information about this issue, including clues (and there do appear to be some) to AndrewW's identity. Regardless of what you may feel about GetEQUAL's political tactics and mission, they don't deserve this bullshit. As I told Robin McGehee last night, we here at JMG have an army of of very, very smart IT bear geeks at our disposal. Fly, my winged monkeys! Fly!
