My old local newspaper in Lafayette, IN has a nice interview with me about how my life is still a little crazy post boobquake. I think it’s a good one – go check it out.
My favorite comment on the story so far is the one that calls me smelly. The creativity is overwhelming!
From the South Bend Tribune:
The South Bend Common Council voted Monday to defeat a proposal to ban workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
The vote was 6-3 with council members Tom LaFountain, David Varner, Derek Dieter, Timothy Rouse, Karen White and Henry Davis Jr. opposed.
[…]Explaining his opposition to the proposal, council President Derek Dieter, D-District 1, said afterward, “I just don’t think it’s needed in South Bend.”
Dieter said he had not seen any documentation proving workplace discrimination against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people exists, “and I think it (the proposal) would cause more harm than good to small businesses.”
For his part, Patrick Mangan, executive director of the conservative group Citizens for Community Values, praised Dieter and other opponents of the proposal, who he said “stood up to a lot of pressure behind the scenes.”
“I’m pleased the council did the right thing in lovingly opposing special rights for homosexuals,” he said, adding, “And I renew the offer to all those struggling with same-sex attraction to come to freedom and come to wholeness.”
And Indiana wonders why it suffers from such a brain drain. Let me give you a hint: educated, caring people get sick of dealing with the rampant backwards bigotry. Unfortunately that means when you’re electing people, too many of your choices are hateful idiots. Sigh, what a Catch 22.
Why do all the awesome things happen after graduation?!
Purdue University is hosting an intercollegiate Quidditch tournament from 10:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday (Oct. 24), just days before the world debut of the final Harry Potter film, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.”
The Hogwarts-looking Windsor Halls will serve as the backdrop as caped contestants chase gold-clad human snitches and launch balls through custom-made hoops, all while dashing around on broomsticks trying not to be leveled by bludger-bearing beaters.
Several colleges will send players, including Purdue, Ohio State, Loyola University Chicago, Illinois State, Ball State, Bowling Green State University, Carthage College, Miami of Ohio and Transylvania University. Purdue’s invitational tournament is scheduled for the same week as the DVD and Blu-ray release of “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” Ultimate Edition, the movie in which Harry and Ron Weasley attend the Quidditch World Cup.
JEALOUS.
Of course, if the Harry Potter universe was real, my complete ineptitude in gym class would probably translate over into not being able to fly at all. Though if Ravenclaw can still have a decent team, maybe not all magical nerds are unathletic.
…*geek*
Why is Dan Savage in Indiana? Have we traded places?
Though I am genuinely curious. He’s been making posts about being in Bloomington, IN for a while – almost since I moved to Seattle. Is IU getting up to some awesome sexual shenanigans again? Man, why can’t Purdue be cool enough to have Dan Savage visit, let alone camp out there?
I mean, I’ve always been the unofficial Sex Advice Giver of my group of friends, thanks to scientific curiosity. Freshman year of high school I had the “Birds and the Bees” event in Science Olympiad, which forced me to learn a lot about human sexually. Soon I had read everything on Scarlet Teen and Ask Anne, and then I spent many years listening to Love Line. And then I spent many years listening to the Savage Lovecasts to undo most of the sexist crap I learned from Love Line (though it wasn’t all bad). Add to that the four classes I took at Purdue dealing with sex*, and all the random books** and papers I’ve read, and… well, yep, I’m a bit academically obsessed.
So, sex advice wouldn’t be out of character for me. Though I guess I’m really only qualified to talk about rodent sexuality. I’m going to guess no one is having problems with their partner’s copulatory plugs.
Hopefully.
*For the curious:
Sex, Gender, & Sexology (Health and Kinesiology Dept)
Human Sexuality (Psychology Dept)
Evolutionary Psychology (Psychology Dept)
Sex & Evolution (Biology Dept)
**I highly recommend:
Dr. Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation
The Red Queen
As Nature Made Him
I’m glad I still check out my old student newspaper, because I found this wonderful story (emphasis mine):
Indiana regulations on homosexual marriage could be ignored for a Purdue Director of Communication in the College of Education and her partner when they entered to win a wedding in Washington, D.C., where binding their love is legal. Tonya Agnew and her spouse Amy Crampton received an e-mail that could bend the rules of gay marriage and reinforce love with no boundaries.
With a 200 word essay, any gay couple could enter to win a $100,000 wedding ceremony in the nation’s capital. Expenses could cover anything from the rings to the flowers to the entertainment. The winner is determined through online voting that ends Sept. 30. Anyone can vote in the contest, Freedom 2 Wed.
Agnew and Crampton are one of six finalist pairs that anticipate Thursday’s results, waiting to see if other applicants beat their first place standing of over 4,000 votes. Even though they live in a conservative state, putting faces to their names has brought overwhelming support and encouragement from friends and strangers.
“I was pleasantly surprised with the responses we were getting and many people have come up to us and thanked us for doing this,” Crampton said. “I started crying.”
Not only has this been an exciting experience for Agnew and Crampton, but marriage directly influences the lives of their two sons, Jesse, 17, and Leo, 7. The affirmation of their family was the primary inspiration for partaking in the competition, but it was also about letting the voters know that they are as equally committed to their family as anyone else.
Former co-worker to Agnew, Jennifer Jeffries, said winning will highlight compassion and love regardless of sex, because communities like Lafayette and Purdue are strengthened by the presence of strong and caring families.
“Tonya and Amy love each other, but they didn’t enter the contest to make a statement,” Jeffries said. “It is a response to their 7-year-old who couldn’t understand why, in the land of the free, his parents couldn’t marry.”
The eldest son, Jesse, has been an advocate for their cause and believes that his parents should have the same rights and freedoms as any other citizen. For that reason, Agnew says that having an actual ceremony where they will be legally recognized demonstrates that “if it’s good enough for our nation’s capital, it should be good enough for the rest of the country.”
Since the role of Crampton and Agnew as a joined family has become exceedingly more important to their children, their status as public figures and leaders in the gay community is also having an impact on Agnew’s work at Purdue.
“I feel responsible to be available and out and proud, especially for those who can’t be for whatever reason,” Agnew said. “Hopefully we are raising awareness and breaking down misconceptions.”
It’s not being out at Purdue, and it’s even harder being out in the rest of Indiana. What these women are doing is brave, and will hopefully serve as an example of how loving and normal gay couples can be, just like any heterosexual couple. It’s a message Indiana definitely needs to here.
I’m sure any of the couples in the competition are worthy of winning, but I’m going to play favorites for my Alma mater and ask that you vote for Amy and Tonya here. Voting ends 11:59pm EST TONIGHT, so please hurry! They’re in second place – let’s have Blag Hag readers get them into first.
Need more convincing? They even stopped by the Society of Non-Theist’s Blasphemy Day event today and took a photo with our secretary.
Oh Indiana. And to think this happened in one of our biggest, most liberal (relatively) cities.
This is what they were after: a mulitcolored cupcake to celebrate “National Coming Out Day” next month; a rainbow confection to honor the diversity on the campus of IUPUI. But the student who had the order placed at Just Cookies was told no. […]
“Look around, we don’t have cupcakes,” said owner Lilly Stockton.
Stockton said she talked to someone who did ask for rainbow cookies but couldn’t accommodate the order.
Stockton: “I don’t have enough colors to do that.”
Reporter: “Not enough colors, not because you didn’t like what they stood for?”
Stockton: “She didn’t tell me what it was for.”
Oh, wait, that sounds like a reasonable excuse. I’m sure other people from the store would back her up.
Then we talked to her husband David, who gradually made it clear that there was an earlier order… and yes, the customer was refused.
“I explained we’re a family-run business, we have two young, impressionable daughters and we thought maybe it was best not to do that,” said co-owner David Stockton.
Nevermind.
To quote one of my fellow grad students: “First cupcakes, then THE WORLD!”
This is what Purdue’s campus looked like last Monday:
Crazy campus preachers are fairly typical in the fall. One, it’s still warm, which is conducive to standing around outside yelling at people. But two, they hope to prey on the confused and lonely freshman. Because, according to this group, going to college is the work of the devil:
“Satan has a job to do…and you are it! The tremendous emphasis put on education these days is demonic. Satan knows his time is running out. Resounding throughout the halls of Aristotle are the voices of demons imposing their curriculum from hell. They insist ‘Memorize and regurgitate. Better this world. Self-esteem. Defy God! Exalt Babylon!”
“Deny God! Exalt Babylon!”? Shit, they found the Biology Department’s curriculum!
But my godless alma mater, the Society of Non-Theists, has a light-hearted way of dealing with our standard street preachers: our annual Pastafarian Preaching on Talk Like a Pirate Day.
Mike has a great summary here, describing the overall positive reaction of the event. Our Pastafarian Preaching is a silly satire of all the hateful preachers who come to campus, so it really does put a smile on people’s faces. And they even made the day of this little pirate fan:
Great job, Purdue Non-Theists!
A Geocentrism conference? Really?
I saw this story floating around and wasn’t going to comment on it, but then I found out the conference is being held in South Bend, Indiana. Oh, Indiana. This is why I usually tell people I’m from Chicago instead (my home town is a Chicago suburb in Indiana, I swear!).
Phil Plait has an excellent summary of why Geocentrism is wrong over at Bad Astronomy, including this particularly insightful bit:
Look, I’m human: I say “The Sun rose in the east today”, and not “the rotation of the Earth relative to the rest of the Universe carried me around to a geometric vantage point where the horizon as seen from my location dropped below the Sun’s apparent position in space.” To us, sitting here on the surface of a planet, geocentrism is a perfectly valid frame of reference. Heck, astronomers use it all the time to point our telescopes. We map the sky using a projected latitude and longitude, and we talk about things rising and setting. That’s not only natural, but a very easy way to do those sorts of things. In that case, thinking geocentrically makes sense.
However, as soon as you want to send a space probe to another planet, geocentrism becomes cumbersome. In that case, it’s far easier to use the Sun as the center of the Universe and measure the rotating and revolving Earth as just another planet. The math works out better, and in fact it makes more common sense.
However, this frame of reference, called heliocentrism, still is not the best frame for everything. Astronomers who study other galaxies use a galactic coordinate system based on our Milky Way galaxy, and the Sun is just another star inside it. Call it galactocentrism, if you want, and it’s just as useful as geo– or heliocentrism in its limited way. And none of those systems work if I want to know turn-by-turn directions while driving; in that case I use a carcentric system (specifically a Volvocentric one).
You use coordinate systems depending on what you need.
So really, there is no one true center to anything. I suppose you could say the Universe is polycentric, or more realistically acentric. You picks your frame of reference and you takes your chances.
…That’s where Geocentrism trips up. Note the upper case G there; I use that to distinguish it from little-g geocentrism, which is just another frame of reference among many. Capital-G Geocentrism is the belief that geocentrism is the only frame, the real one.
I never thought about it that way! Thanks, Phil!
From formspring.me: What do you do to cope living in a state as backwards as Indiana? I live in KY and am about at my wits end!
Escape. Did I mention I’m super excited to be moving to Seattle in a couple weeks?
Though seriously, I sympathize. Sometimes it can be a little maddening living somewhere that’s the antithesis of your political, religious, and moral views. I think one way to stay sane is to find the other rare individuals who are suffering with you. I did it by starting my own atheist student group – maybe you could find something similar, or start your own.
Other than that…I’m not sure what to say. The internet is certainly your friend – a virtual community is better than none at all.
If you’re living somewhere that tends to drive you crazy, how do you stay sane?
Add this story to my long list of “Why I am so happy to be finally moving away from Indiana”:
Erin Vaught went to a Muncie emergency room coughing up blood. Two hours later, she was refused treatment on grounds that she is transsexual. In what is a serious lapse of medical ethics, and had Vaught died, would have been criminal negligence, Ball Memorial Hospital staff treated Vaught with contempt, ridicule, and even eventually met with dismissal of her condition.
It stated when the admitting nurse at the ER entered that Vaught was male into the computer despite the fact that her ID stated that she is female. Vaught stated “I pointed out that my ID says female. There were two ladies there, and one of them snickered a little bit and covered her mouth. The other got a very annoyed look on her face. Vaught was there with her wife and son.
When she went to the exa-room, she was met with stares and insults. She was referred to as a ‘he-she’, an ‘it’, and a ‘transvestite’. Vaught is a transsexual, or one who is physically undergoing the process of changing physical sex. Transvestites are people who often get sexually aroused while wearing the clothes of the opposite gender, but have no desire to change sexes.
The doctor arrives two hours later and said that she could not treat Vaught because of “her transgender condition”. According to Vaught “I was confused. I told them I didn’t know my condition, that’s why I was there. She said ‘No, the transvestite thing.’ She said I couldn’t see a doctor until I came back with test orders from my doctor in Indy.” What her exact condition is has not been released.
It’s so sad that people who make their living out of helping others and saving lives would be so cruel to someone based on their gender identity. Even if for whatever reason you don’t agree with or understand transsexuals, that doesn’t mean you should deny them medical treatment. Maybe since she was transitioning that posed valid medical concerns that this particular hospital’s staff was not specialized enough to deal with, but that doesn’t excuse the insensitivity of their statements.
