In love. In remembrance. All photos are 1500 x 996, click for full size.
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Affinity
Art, Fun, & Nonsense.
In love. In remembrance. All photos are 1500 x 996, click for full size.
Free to use, no restrictions.
“The good news is that there’s 50 less pedophiles in this world, because, you know, these homosexuals are a bunch of disgusting perverts and pedophiles. That’s who was a victim here, are a bunch of, just, disgusting homosexuals at a gay bar, okay? And then I’m sure it’s also gonna be used to push an agenda against so-called “hate speech.” So Bible-believing Christian preachers who preach what the Bible actually says about homosexuality — that it’s vile, that it’s disgusting, that they’re reprobates — you know, we’re gonna be blamed. Like, “It’s all extremism! It’s not just the Muslims, it’s the Christians!” I’m sure that that’s coming. I’m sure that people are gonna start attacking, you know, Bible-believing Christians now, because of what this guy did.I’m not sad about it, I’m not gonna cry about it. Because these 50 people in a gay bar that got shot up, they were gonna die of AIDS, and syphilis, and whatever else. They were all gonna die early, anyway, because homosexuals have a 20-year shorter life-span than normal people, anyway.”
— Steven Anderson, preacher at Faithful Word Baptist Church, Tempe, AZ in response to the slaughter in Orlando.
I felt like I had been dipped in sewage just reading that, and dipped again posting it. If Steven Anderson wants to talk disgusting, I suggest he get in front of a mirror. It was just a short while ago that I brought up in a thread here that a lot of people (Americans in particular) still believe in the gay man equals pedophile canard. And there it is, in neon arrogance, the self-righteous judgment smug only Christians can work up into such a fine froth. There were women who died in Orlando. There were hetero people who died in Orlando. There were queer people who died in Orlando. Some of them were parents. All of them were loved. But here’s the same old Christian crap of old, disease riddled predators. Naturally, the only thing Anderson is truly concerned about is whether or not people might start looking at him sideways, possibly accusing him of hate speech. Oh, and of course, us lefty pinko commie rainbow warriors might take his bible away. Disgust, thy name is Steven Anderson, and all those like you.
Radical right-wing Christians must recognize the part their anti-gay rhetoric, legislation, hate speech and repeated attacks on the LGBT community played in the slaughter at Pulse Nightclub in Orlando. Yes, the terrorist homophobe who reportedly pledged allegiance to ISIL before he repeatedly pulled the trigger deserves all our anger and outrage. We will hear plenty about his radicalized religious beliefs in the coming days, but that is likely all the religious analysis we will hear in the media. But, we cannot let religious ideologues in the far-right Christian camp off the hook. Steven Anderson is not an anomaly. America has been painstakingly codifying beliefs he expressed into law. Polished politicians blunt the edges of Anderson’s words though the language of legislation but the hate and fear remains.
They will claim the assertion they have any role in the massacre as an attack on their religion – much like the consistent and well-orchestrated “war on Christmas” we heathens rage every year. They will tell you that their prayers are enough to overcome this act of terror. They will tell you Jesus wants you to arm yourself. “Get your guns before Obama takes them.” They will tell you this is about radicalized Islamist terrorists. They will whistle away the notion that guns or gays had anything to do with this tragedy.
And here is a major problem. Along with people busily straight-splaining, the rest are focusing on that terrible Muslim problem, because that’s the only terrorism that counts, and this was oh-so-definitely Islam based (even though it wasn’t), but you have a lot of Christians bristling over the idea that they might have had anything to do with this. Abrahamaic based religions all have the same root, and they have the same deep-rooted bigotry. How that bigotry is expressed isn’t the important bit – it’s why this expression is being allowed in the first place, why so many people who don’t have a personal stake in the current Christian war on all things queer, sit idly by, maybe let a small tsk escape their lip, shake their head, and decide to do nothing at all. Here in the U.S. open bigotry is being turned into law. People act like politicians spilling the most awful, bigoted bile is simply entertainment, yet another bad reality show.
The multitude of ways right-wing Christians discriminate against and kill – directly or indirectly – LGBT people can be incredibly nuanced.
[…]
Around the country LGBT couples are fighting for the right to adopt children. HIV is criminalized around the country putting a big red X on gay men and others. Gay men – by law – cannot donate blood. Most people didn’t even know that until Orlando. Federally funded abstinence-only programs populate our public schools masquerading as sexual education. What the actually do is preach sexual purity until heterosexual marriage, and they stigmatize girls and LGBT kids. How about the Great Bathroom Panic of 2016? It isn’t secular humanists behind these laws and programs; it is right-wing Christians serving in state and national office.
What message is all of this sending to our LGBT citizens? That you are less than, you are poison, your blood is tainted even if it’s not, you are after our children, you cannot love who you love. The message coming from the far right is “We Hate You”. Donald Trump gloat-tweets, Paul Ryan doesn’t mention guns or gays in his statement – just Islamic terrorists. The GOP’s (political party of choice for the far right Christian camp) presumptive presidential nominee and the US Speaker of the House deny any connection between the slaughter at Pulse and anti-gay hate crime.
While the husbands of men wounded in Sunday’s Orlando nightclub shooting are crying and praying, they can’t easily offer their spouses the one thing so many others can: their blood.
Defying federal policy, Patty Sheehan — Orlando’s lesbian city commissioner — announced after the shooting that she was recommending the city temporarily lift the Food and Drug Administration-mandated ban on blood donated from sexually-active gay and bisexual men. In response, Orlando hospitals appear to be welcoming donations from all queer men and transgender women — also included in the FDA ban — but it’s still murky whether the federal government will crack down on Sheehan’s directive and blood will actually get to the injured.
The Orlando massacre, in a grim coincidence, came two days before the World Health Organization’s World Blood Donor Day, observed today. While the mass shooting, the nation’s worst, briefly brought the FDA’s discriminatory policy to the world’s attention, it was quickly forgotten in the barrage of news updates about the Orlando killer and his victims.
[…]
The current prohibition has been in place since December, when the FDA amended its ban, so now instead of barring any male donors who had sex with men since 1977, the new rules turn away those who haven’t had gay sex in 12 months. For many, that’s still an outright ban on any gay or bisexual man, no matter the semantics.
[…]
GMHC and FCB Health joined together to launch a campaign called the Blood Equality campaign, which will plaster cities with posters that read, “My blood is type O, not type homo” and “My blood is type A, not type gay.”
Democratic legislators like Mike Quigley of Illinois, Barbara Lee of California, and out Wisconsin senator Tammy Baldwin also want the FDA to reconsider the ban, which the agency considers imperative to keeping the nation’s blood supply free of HIV. The three politicians disagree with the FDA’s assertion and jointly released the following statement late on Monday:
“The resiliency of the American people is always magnified after a tragedy, and we are witnessing that compassion as Floridians rally around the people of Orlando, and the local LGBT community, by lining up to donate much needed blood after Sunday’s horrific shooting at Pulse nightclub. However, we find it unacceptable that gay and bisexual men are banned from donating desperately needed blood in response to this tragedy. Blood donations are needed now more than ever, yet gay and bisexual men remain unable to donate blood due to an outdated and discriminatory FDA rule. For years, we have worked through both authorizing and appropriations committees to overturn the FDA’s donor referral policy for men who have sex with men. We’ve made progress; this past year, the FDA reversed a lifetime ban to a 12-month deferral policy. But this revision does not go far enough in ending an outdated policy that is medically and scientifically unwarranted and that perpetuates inaccurate stereotypes. Tragedies like the one we witnessed in the early morning hours on Sunday show how crucial it is for FDA to develop better blood donor policies that are based on science and on individual risk factors; that don’t unfairly single out one group of individuals; and that allow all healthy Americans to donate. Given the enormous response by the citizens of Orlando, including members of the LGBT community, to donate blood to help heal their community, the FDA should lift this prejudicial ban once and for all.”
Nations like Spain have ended blanket deferrals for gay and bisexual men, instead considering the sexual behavior of individuals when deciding who qualifies as a donor.
When Grover Cleveland, an assimilation supporter, started his first term, an estimated 260,000 American Indians lived on 171 reservations comprising 134 million acres of land in 21 states. Whitehouse.gov
Grover Cleveland opened his second term as president of the United States with a call for “humanity and consistency” toward Indians as efforts continued to assimilate them into mainstream American culture.
“Our relations with the Indians located within our border impose upon us responsibilities we cannot escape,” he said in his second inaugural address, in March 1893. “Every effort should be made to lead them, through the paths of civilization and education, to self-supporting and independent citizenship. In the meantime, as the nation’s wards, they should be promptly defended against the cupidity of designing men and shielded from every influence or temptation that retards their advancement.”
[…]
The day before Cleveland took office a second time, in March 1893, Congress authorized the Dawes Commission, which extended the allotment policy to the Five Civilized Tribes (Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole). The commission, headed by Henry Dawes, also introduced citizenship records called the Dawes Rolls, which required individuals to enroll by claiming only one line of ancestry—even if they had mixed heritage from several different tribes.
[…]
The Dawes Rolls, which ultimately stripped some individuals of their ancestry, are still used to determine citizenship or as a requirement for tribal membership. The federal government uses the Dawes Rolls to determine blood-quantum status when issuing Certificates of Indian Blood.
Cleveland’s second term, which came on the heels of the Wounded Knee Massacre and was the first administration free of Indian wars, was marked by a distinct change in federal relationships with Indians. Four months after Cleveland took office, Frederick Jackson Turner delivered his “Frontier Thesis” to a gathering of historians at the World’s Fair in Chicago, an enormous event celebrating the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s voyage.
Turner, a professional historian, declared that the American frontier was gone, a statement that came three years after the U.S. Census Bureau announced the disappearance of a contiguous frontier line.
Calling the frontier “the meeting point between savagery and civilization,” Turner argued that America’s unique character was defined by “the influence of the frontier.” He pointed to “the disintegration of savagery” as one of several developmental stages America endured on its path to industrialization.
[…]
The end of the frontier also marked a new era for Indians. In his first message to Congress, in December 1893, Cleveland said the government had a “sacred duty” to improve the condition of the Indians.
“I am sure that secular education and moral and religious teaching must be important factors in any effort to save the Indian and lead him to civilization,” Cleveland said. “I believe, too, that the relinquishment of tribal relations and the holding of land in severalty may in favorable conditions aid this consummation.”
During his second term, Cleveland opened to white settlers “surplus” lands purchased from the Yankton Sioux in South Dakota, the Alsea in Oregon, the Kickapoo in Oklahoma and the Nez Perce in Idaho. The allotment program, which opened surplus land to settlers, diminished Indian land holdings from more than 155 million acres in 1881 to about 78 million in 1900.
In his final message to Congress, in December 1896, Cleveland announced the discovery of “a very valuable deposit of gilsonite or asphaltum” on the Uncompahgre Ute reservation in Utah. Calling the find an “important source of public revenue,” Cleveland assured Congress that the government would secure a “fair share” of its value, while a “nominal sum” would be extended to “interested individuals.”
[…]
In the same speech, Cleveland called himself a “sincere friend of the Indian,” and reported that the Indian population topped 177,000. More than 110,000 individuals had accepted allotments, and 23,000 of the 38,000 total school-age children were enrolled in nearly 200 government-operated Indian schools.
“It may be said in general terms that in every particular the improvement of the Indians under Government care has been most marked and encouraging,” he said.
From Lofty:
Today was cold but sunny so I rode the bike down the quickest way to the City and back home another way. The pictures illustrate what I like most about this time of year. The fresh green grass thinly covers the sun blasted slopes of the season just past, without making the bones of the hills invisible. Down the hill I go into the lusher valley below. Even the urban park I ride through has a fresh green surface past the gnarly head height oak branch. Back up to 2000ft and the green is not always from grass, and not everything that grows is green.
© Lofty. All rights reserved.
(Calopteryx maculata). So beautiful! From D. Gregory. 1500 x 996, click for full size.
© D. Gregory. All rights reserved.
We had the privilege of watching a pair of Killdeer (Charadrius vociferus) choosing a nesting site, on our property! They danced off property a bit, because we were stalking them, but were attracted by some areas of high grass on our place. We have never seen killdeer in Almont, or even very close, before this day. The male was a bit upset with me, because the female was attracted by the shutter noise, and made right for me a time or two. Hopefully, after we left them, they’ll choose a spot on property or close, so we can watch them parent. A very exciting event for dinosaur watchers! All photos are 1500 x 996, click for full size.
© C. Ford. All rights reserved.
Just in case you haven’t cried enough the last two days…
Joshua McGill (Facebook)
McGill got up, and brought the man behind the car.
I think I got shot,” the man said.
McGill searched the man’s body and quickly found two bullet wounds — one in each arm.
“Don’t worry, I got you,” McGill said.
He knew he needed to stop the bleeding. He pulled off his lavender V-neck shirt and wrapped it around the arm of the weakening man slouched against him.
As the man continued to bleed, McGill removed the wounded man’s shirt and used it as a tourniquet on the second gunshot wound. But then. McGill realized that the man needed more help than he would be able to provide, so he helped to ready the man to run with him to the perimeter.
Tony Enos poses next to a Rainbow Shawl the day after an armed gunman wielding an assault rifle and handgun opened fire at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida, killing 50 people and injuring 53, the Two Spirit and LGBTQ communities turned to social media to share their thoughts with worldwide audience. Others in photo include singer Shawnee Talbot, writer D.A. Navoti and youth advocate Layha Spoonhunter (with Obama.) Credit: Twitter, Instagram.
Though the FBI is regarding the attack as an act of a radical terrorist, some Two Spirit and LGBTQ advocates, such as Shawnee Talbot, say the acts are perhaps more appropriately labeled as homophobic.
Talbot is a First Nations singer and songwriter whose work has appeared on Disney TV and the television series “Mohawk Girls” and has shared the stage with Lady Gaga and Roxette, among many others. She identifies as Two Spirit and works as an advocate for LGBTQ and Aboriginal women’s rights.
Talbot said she is “battling with anger and is overwhelmed with sadness by the hateful actions” that have affected her community. “This tragedy was driven by homophobia and hate and it makes me realize how much work we have in front of us,” she said.
Talbot also said she refuses to hide or retreat based on the actions resulting in such a tragedy. “I am even more proud to be who I am as a Two Spirit person,” she explained. “I say to my community, together we will change the world to understand love in its entirety and I love you all so very much for that.”
Photo by Alberto Lammers
ORLANDO—Javie White typically dances Saturday nights at Pulse in Orlando. But this weekend, he gave up his dancing shift to bartend at another nearby club. So the young go-go dancer wasn’t on his box next to Pulse’s entrance when a gunman came in and opened fire.
“I’ve been crying home alone for seven hours,” he says.
[…]
“Orlando is the most tightly-knit gay community I’ve ever been in. We are here to support each other and we are not afraid,” he says.
He hugs a friend, Tyler Block, who is barely holding together. Block found out only an hour ago one of his closest friends was killed. She had a 2-year-old son.
“For someone to come into my home and murder my family, it’s beyond anything you will ever feel,” Block says, trembling and eyes full of tears.
[…]
“I cried all day. I’m done crying. I’m ready to be myself again,” Adonis said. “I’m trying to be my funny, catty self for the kids.”
Moving forward, she knows that safety will be a priority among those left behind.
“Everything’s up in the air. (The police) don’t want us to do things that put us all together,” she said. “But no one is going to break us. No one is going to break this community.”
Lin-Manuel Miranda accepts the award for best original score for “Hamilton” at the Tony Awards at the Beacon Theatre on Sunday, June 12, 2016, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
“Hate will never win,” host James Corden said at the opening of this year’s Tony Awards at the Beacon Theater in New York City. “Theater is a place where every race, creed, sexuality and gender is equal, is embraced and is loved.” Those attending the ceremony, which was dedicated to the victims of the Orlando mass shooting, wore silver ribbons in solidarity.
Upon winning for Best Original Score, Hamilton‘s Lin-Manuel Miranda performed a sonnet he wrote as tribute to his wife and victims of Orlando.
Will Orlando Attacks Bring Congress to its Senses on Gun Control? Don’t Count On It.
youtube.
Gay, Bisexual Blood Donations Still Restricted After Orlando Massacre.
Sky news Orlando.
A highly-regarded journalist stormed off the set of a live television segment when the host and guest refused to recognize the Orlando shooting as an attack on LGBT people.
Owen Jones, a gay Guardian columnist and the author of The Establishment: And How They Get Away With It, appeared on the Rupert Murdoch-owned Sky News on Sunday with the show’s host, Mark Longhurst, and guest Julia Hartley-Brewer. In the group’s discussion about the Orlando tragedy, Jones continually called the event a “homophobic hate crime” and “an intentional attack on LGBT people.” Longhurst and Hartley-Brewer disagreed, calling it a crime against humanity instead.
Image via Wikimedia Commons
I was angry. Hell, I was fucking pissed.
Initially, an immense sadness washed over me at the news of the Orlando mass shooting, the deadliest in American history. A sadness that I wasn’t surprised that this happened, a helpless, hopeless sadness for the dozens of people lost due to hate and ignorance. But the sadness was quickly replaced by anger.
Anger that this type of violence, to this degree, only happens in this country, and happens far too often, but still nothing is done about it. Once I realized that in America it’s okay for 20 children, ages six and seven, to die in the middle of the day at an elementary school, I knew that a couple dozen faggots dead in an Orlando nightclub would never and could never move the needle on gun control.
Marco Rubio wants to share his prayers, but not his civil rights, with LGBTQ people.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Republicans have quick enough off the mark to offer up assorted prayers in the wake of the Orlando massacre, but they are being very careful not to acknowledge that these were and are LGBTQ people. The fact that a majority of them were people of colour is notably absent as well.
Marco Rubio tweeted: “Our prayers are with those injured and killed early this morning in horrifying act of terror in Orlando.”
Rubio is a staunch opponent of same-sex marriage and would like to overturn the Supreme Court’s ruling affirming gay people’s constitutional right to wed. Worse, when Rubio served as Florida’s House majority leader, the state’s foster care system was in a crisis: Due to a severe lack of foster parents, children were essentially being imprisoned in inhumane conditions. One possible solution would be to lift Florida’s ban on allowing gay people to foster children. Rubio rejected the idea. “Some of these kids are the most disadvantaged in the state,” he explained. “They shouldn’t be forced to be part of a social experiment.”
Then there’s Mike Huckabee, who tweeted: “Please join Janet and me in praying for the victims of the Orlando attack and their families.”
But if it were up to Huckabee, gay people would not be legally permitted to start their own families. Huckabee staunchly opposes same-sex marriage, civil unions, and gay adoption. […] At various points in his career, Huckabee has also said that AIDS patients should be quarantined; that homosexuality is a “lifestyle” similar to drinking alcohol; and that legalizing same-sex marriage is analogous to legalizing incest and drug use. When the Supreme Court invalidated a federal same-sex marriage ban, Huckabee tweeted: “Jesus wept.”
There are many more examples of aggressively anti-gay politicians tweeting about the Pulse shooting, but one common thread ties them together: None of them mention that the shooting targeted, or even involved, the LGBTQ community. Indeed, not a single congressional Republican who tweeted about the shooting mentioned LGBTQ people. That stands in stark contrast to President Barack Obama’s clear assertion that “shooter targeted a nightclub” where “lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender people … came together to be with friends, to dance, sing, and live,” and “to raise awareness and speak their minds and advocate for their civil rights.”
Republicans’ silence is actually quite apt. As a party, after all, the GOP has spent decades attempting to degrade sexual minorities and even drive them out of public life. It is altogether fitting, then, that conservative politicians are erasing LGBTQ people from their own tragedy. The gesture of support, I suppose, is basically benevolent. But let’s be clear about this: The 50 victims of Orlando’s LGBTQ nightclub massacre died as full and equal citizens under the law in spite of the Republican party’s best efforts to relegate them to second-class citizenship.
Vigil in Santiago, Chile.
In the midst of an outpouring of solidarity, love, and shared grief around the world over the loss of so many lives in Orlando, Florida, there runs a river of poisonous hate through the United States. Images and hate-filled tweets will be behind the fold, because no one should have to see those unless they choose to do so. First up, and I know this will surprise no one at all, the Westboro clan had to jump right in, with an attempt to be as crass and disgusting as possible. I’d say they succeeded, but what makes me sick is the sense of glee they give off. Second is the story of a Florida Imam who offered condolences and praise for emergency workers was met with a great deal of bigotry and hate.
Trigger Warning: extreme hate, bigotry, and sheer ugliness behind the fold.
The Falling.
James Bullough is an American born artist living and working in Berlin, Germany. His paintings, and huge monumentally scaled site-specific murals, are phenomenal combinations of realist painting technique and graphic punctuation. Inspired by gritty urban graffiti as a young artist growing up in Washington, DC, Bullough harnessed its energy in his work, and perfected a realistic oil painting technique from his study of the Old Masters. Combining the momentum of the one and the technical precision of the other, his work is about staging compelling contrasts and juxtapositions. Working in everything from oil, spray paint and ink on canvas, Bullough’s paintings strike a balance between realistic figurations and stylized interruption. Disjointing the realistic elements with graphic areas and fractured or striated planes, Bullough intends to challenge the viewer’s perception.
His work is stunning, and highly emotive. For his Breaking Point series:
In this new series of works, Bullough captures moments of existential fracture, disruption, and personal breach through the expressive movement of the body, asking his models to channel personal memory and to recall experiences of “breaking” at the moment of their capture. Working with dancers from Berlin, Bullough begins with the body in motion, arrested in an expense of negative space, then dissembles it further, splicing, striating, and fragmenting its surfaces and planes. The models remain anonymous and faceless throughout, an omission intended to reaffirm the symbolic universality of the emotive physical gesture.
Enough.
Burst.
Oil painting on old, found book.
Click images for full size. Have a wander around James’s gallery, it’s full of amazing works. James Bullough.com.
