The Republic of T.

OK. I’ll confess to breaking at least a couple of these. I’ve broken no. 1 countless times, mainly because of poor reception. If I get a call at work, the reception in my office is a little spotty, so I’ll end up walking to the empty office across the hall while saying “Hello?! Hello?! Can you hear me?” pretty loudly because they can’t hear me. At least not until I get across the hall. In the meantime I’ve got to sound like an idiot long enough to make sure I don’t lose the call between point A and point B. If the empty office across the hall is occupied, then I might end up standing in the hallway sounding like an idiot. A loud idiot.

There there’s my good friends at WMATA. (The picture above is one of their old posters.) There are two bus stops at the end of my street, one on my side and one on the other, both for buses that will take me to Metro stations roughly equidistant from my office. So, I can catch either. The one across the street comes a little earlier, and that’s the one I prefer. But the bus arrival times are more like a window period. It may arrive a few minutes early, in which case I’ve already missed it by the time I get out the door. Or it’s running a few minutes late. The problem is, I don’t know which is the case, but I need to know soon, because the bus on my side of the street comes just a minute or two later (though sometimes they arrive at the same time.)

So, I end up calling WMATA’s number, to get the scheduled arrival times. Their system is voice automated, and it never fails that I have to shout over the noise of the traffic, and the damn thing doesn’t understand me anyway. At least I’m outside, and there’s no one around for me to annoy.

But those are small issues compared to no. 8.

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By the time I got out of my meeting this afternoon, and the rest of the day finally opened up, I thought today would be a wash blog-wise. Certainly, it was unlikely I’d post anything, since I still have a ton of things I haven’t even read yet. So I checked the stats, just to see if anyone had stopped by, and found a lot of visitors coming in from YouTube. YouTube? Why would I be getting visitors from YouTube?

Well, it turned out that a guy named Dan posted a video about his views on same-sex marriage, and he linked to my post “What Rights Should Same-Sex Couples Have?”, as a reference for his readers.

Thanks, Dan! I wish more people thought like you. And since one good turn deserves another, here’s the video.

• A flickr CC search toy
  (tags: tool search photos pictures)
• Howtostudy.org | When you hit the books -and they hit back.
  (tags: study resources learning)
• LIVEdigitally » Blog Archive » Words the Internet Killed
  I’m noticing that a few very common words are losing their meaning, specifically due to their various implementations online.
  (tags: language internet humor)
• MyTextFile
  MyTextFile is ajax-powered online text editor for a single plain text file.
  You can use it to store notes, texts snippets or any other information.
  (tags: writing web2.0 text tool)

Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for August 13th from 11:38 to 14:18:

• Kids of Queers: More Gay Men are Embracing Fatherhood – One of the commenters stated that it is fine for the young kids who have two dads but when they get older they will get teased horribly. Funny, I don't remember being teased as a kid or teen. And saying that children will be harmed because of the teasing is another attempt to blame the victim. Maybe if these concerned folks taught their kids that it isn't okay to tease anyone and that gay men and women have just as much right to marry and have children as the rest of us then maybe their kids wouldn't tease kids of gay parents. Maybe.
• Behind the gay-marriage talk : Opinion L.A. : Los Angeles Times – In any case, one Prop. 8 supporter said, gay rights are not as important as children's rights, and it's obvious that same-sex couples who married would "recruit" their children toward homosexuality because otherwise, unable to procreate themselves, they would have no way to replenish their numbers. Even editorial writers can be left momentarily speechless, and this was one of those moments. Aside from this notion of a homosexual recruitment plot — making it understandable where the word "homophobia" came from — this made no logical sense at all. Same-sex couples. whether married or not, already have children. Marriage wouldn't change a thing about this picture except, perhaps, to model for children that parents tend to be married.
• What’s Their Real Problem with Gay Marriage (It’s the Gay Part) – All of this suggests to me that the real problem opponents have with gay marriage is not that it will extend benefits or threaten marriage. The objection is that it will end the socially acceptable discrimination against lesbian and gay people.
• Feministe » John Edwards – In late December 2006, in an interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News, Edwards said, “Do I believe they should have the right to marry? I’m just not there yet…” (This was during the same time period as his affair with Rielle Hunter). This seems more reminiscent of Ted Haggard or Larry Craig, taking positions on family values and then specifically contradicting those. It’s important, in my opinion, for a representative to actually represent her
• Box Turtle Bulletin » Today In History: A Bugger Was Hung – “Buggery” — the quaint British legal term for homosexual activity — was a capital offense until 1861, when the laws were finally relaxed to allow for life imprisonment. But that change came almost thirty years too late for Captain Henry Nicholas Nicholls, who was hanged 175 years ago today for the “abominable vice.”
• Jayne Lyn Stahl: John Edwards And Our Rovian Politics – When asked whether John Edwards can forget about his future in politics, even his former campaign manager, David Bonior, turned against him: "You can't lie in politics and expect to have people's confidence." Excuse me, but what do you call it when, a president lies to Congress, and the American people, about the existence of weapons of mass destruction, takes us to war without a formal declaration of war; and one that has cost the lives of many thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians?

It’s funny, what memories come back to you, just from reading a news story. I finally read, this morning about Cullen Jones and his Olympic win.

Bronx-born swimmer Cullen Jones didn’t just help power the U.S. relay swim team to Olympic gold – he just may have shattered the stereotype that blacks can’t swim.

Although Jones isn’t the first African-American swimmer to make the Olympic squad (he’s the third), or the first to win a gold medal (he’s the second), he figured in one of the most exciting races in sports history.

And that thriller will be replayed on Olympic highlight reels for generations to come. “I hope this exposure from the race today, a kid can see this and say, ‘Wow, a black swimmer – and he’s got a gold medal,’ ” Jones, 24, said. “The stigma that black people don’t swim ended today.”

…Jones was 5 years old and living in Irvington, N.J., when his parents took him to a Pennsylvania water park to cool off. His mother, Debra, didn’t want him to go down a slide in an inner tube because he couldn’t swim.

Jones should have listened to his mother. When the inner tube flipped over, he panicked instead of letting go and then passed out.

It took CPR to bring him back to life. The next week, his mother sent him for swimming lessons at a YMCA in nearby Newark and then the John F. Kennedy Aquatic Center, which is also in Newark. Jones took to the water immediately, but wasn’t a standout at first, his coaches said. “At first he was an average swimmer and he progressed,” said Elliott Bradley. “The more he progressed, the better he got at it. I never thought he would go this far. I’m very proud of him.”

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I don’t mean to start any blasphemous rumors,

But I think that God’s got a sick sense of humor.

And when I die, I expect to find him laughing.

~ Depeche Mode, “Blasphemous Rumors”

This is something I’ve never quite been able to get my mind around for a number of reasons, the most mystifying being that evangelical right wingers think this is supposed to win the rest of us over to their way of seeing things. I mean, it amazes me on a daily basis that anyone, anyone who takes even a minute to think about it actually buys this bullshit.

Yes I said bullshit. If you ask me, the late great George Carlin called it.

In the Bullshit Department, a businessman can’t hold a candle to a clergyman. ‘Cause I gotta tell you the truth, folks. When it comes to bullshit, big-time, major league bullshit, you have to stand in awe of the all-time champion of false promises and exaggerated claims: religion. No contest. No contest. Religion. Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told.

Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there’s an invisible man — living in the sky — who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever ’til the end of time!

But He loves you.

He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He’s all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can’t handle money! Religion takes in billions of dollars, they pay no taxes, and they always need a little more. Now, you talk about a good bullshit story. Holy Shit!

– George Carlin Politically Incorrect, May 29, 1997

The reason for this rant comes via Ex-Gay Watch.

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I wrote this yesterday:

Sometimes I’ll come across an article focusing on family and friends remembering the victim, and may be able to glean a little more information. But just as often, those friends and family may not have known — may have guessed or inferred, or may have assumed since they were not told — that their loved-one or their friend was gay. Co-workers who have worked beside the victim for years, friends and family who have known the victim even longer, may simply not have known who their friend and love-one really was. That is, until they become the victim of a hate crime.

That was the case with the murder of Victor Manious. When I filed away an article on Manious’ murder a couple of months ago, I intended to get back to it, and I did. But I didn’t expect to find so much information on the case, or to spend much time with it. But the more time I spent looking in to it, the more I was reminded of a few other stories, which raised some questions for me.

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Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for August 11th through August 12th:

• Why We Should Stop Demonizing John Edwards | Sex and Relationships | AlterNet – If we're going to make the private lives of our politicians grist for the media mill, then we ought to at least correctly understand them. We don't. Instead, we reduce behavior to simple good/bad dichotomies, infer only the most superficial of motives to the culprits, and make sweeping judgments about their basic characters without a shred of evidence.
• The Day Lincoln’s Hometown Erupted In Racial Hate : NPR – A century ago this week, the normally placid town of Springfield, Ill., the hometown of President Abraham Lincoln, erupted in a two-day spasm of racial violence and mayhem that still has the power to shock today.
• ACLU Blog: Because Freedom Can’t Blog Itself: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union » “Abstinence-only” Education Not a Free Pass for Anti-Gay Discrimination – A recent Florida federal court decision in an ACLU case did a lot more than simply make advocates for both reproductive freedom and for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights very happy: It signaled that the days when folks could get away with making outlandish anti-LGBT arguments are going, going, and almost gone.
• The 5 Most Chill-Inducing Olympic Moments | The Best Article Every day – The Olympics seem to have lost their luster. In an age where NASA is designing swimsuits, there seems little hope for the upset victory or the unexpected burst of brilliance. But like these videos prove, the truth is that something exceptional can happen at any given moment.
• Steven Weber: Playing to the Muddle – What is the lethal disconnect in our judgement which permits the ascension of dickheads to positions of power, rather than the arguably less charismatic but genuinely effective personalities capable of shrewdness and insight?
• The Becker-Posner Blog – The gay-marriage movement raises a number of interesting questions, which I approach from an economic perspective: why do homosexuals want to marry? What are the consequences of gay marriage likely to be? Why is there opposition to gay marriage?
• The Becker-Posner Blog: Should Gay Marriages be Allowed? Becker – For the reasons just stated, one can understand why many gay couples want to be allowed to marry. What I find difficult to understand is why there is so much opposition; for example, I doubt if a referendum legalizing gay marriage would pass in many states. As Posner indicates, allowing gay couples to marry will have little effect on either the attraction or stability of marriages between heterosexuals. I believe this opposition reflects hostility to gays and their unions that can no longer be expressed in other more traditional forms, such as calling them names or harassing them. As a result, the marriage issue has become a rallying point that allows hostility to gays to be hidden behind other reasons.

I’ll admit up front that I’m not one to watch sports much at all. But the Olympics has always been the exception, ever since I saw Greg Louganis dive.

I wanted to see more. Can you blame me? Besides, I’m a gay man, and the Olympics is a feast for the eyes when it comes to male beauty. The television screen abounds with athletic young men, in top condition — probably in better shape than they will be ever be in again for the rest of their lives.

So, here’s my (first?) Olympic Hottie Rundown.

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I’ve written this before, but one of the most striking things I’ve found about researching cases for the LGBT Hate Crimes Project is how little information is often available about the victim. In some cases, where the victim or victims survived an assault or attempted murder, they may speak for themselves, unless they are minors or afraid of reprisals if they speak out. (Some victims are targeted because they are marginalized and less likely to speak out and report a crime against them.) In some cases — where the victim has been killed and was also a member of a marginalized group — the victim almost disappears, except for a fleeting sentence here or there in one news article or another, hinting at the life that existed before the crime that snuffed it out.

Sometimes I’ll come across an article focusing on family and friends remembering the victim, and may be able to glean a little more information. But just as often, those friends and family may not have known — may have guessed or inferred, or may have assumed since they were not told — that their loved-one or their friend was gay. Co-workers who have worked beside the victim for years, friends and family who have known the victim even longer, may simply not have known who their friend and love-one really was. That is, until they become the victim of a hate crime.

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Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for August 7th through August 11th:

• Edwards Affair Casts a Shadow – You have to wonder if there is a gene for philandering closely linked to the political ambition gene.
• Maureen Dowd: Keeping it Rielle – International Herald Tribune – The stunning admission Edwards made to ABC's Bob Woodruff, and in a written statement from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, on Friday afternoon, was that he's a narcissist. He admitted that wallowing in "self-focus" out on the trail and thinking you're "special" can result in a solipsism that "leads you to believe you can do whatever you want, you're invincible and there'll be no consequences."
• Truthdig – Reports – The Two John Edwardses – To the extent that he has faced the music, that is. He was forthright and plainspoken with ABC correspondent Bob Woodruff about the central facts—his relationship with Hunter, his having lied about it repeatedly, his betrayal of his marriage. But when pressed on certain details, Edwards retreated into lawyerly precision.
• Open Left:: John and Elizabeth Edwards’s Mistake Was Not a Big Deal – So anyway, one frustrating part of this whole situation is how the cult of personality piece is playing out in an extremely misogynistic and invasive way, how Elizabeth Edwards is seen as the wounded woman deserving of chivalrous praise while John Edwards is considered the betraying scornful husband. That is just lame. She's not a possession, and he's not a manly saint. If she asks for privacy and a non-judgmental pose, then give it to them. They worked this out, or at least that's what she says. So let them deal with their marriage. And politically, if he betrayed their followers, she betrayed their followers as well, so hold them both accountable if you feel so strongly about his bad judgment. Anything less is just residual sexism.
• Talking Points Memo | The Recent Unpleasantness – Edwards made a strong run for the presidency knowing full well that he was carrying on an affair, at least in the early stages of the campaign, which could come to light in the midst of the general election and fatally damage all Democrats' hopes for regaining the presidency. Just think how fun this weekend would be if John Edwards had won the nomination. Indeed, it seems clear that the aftermath of the affair was such that the chances of its coming to light were substantial. It's a level of recklessness and selfishness that I probably shouldn't but still do find shocking.
• FiveThirtyEight.com: Electoral Projections Done Right: Subtext Conflict: Celebrity Vs. Otherness – How can someone being portrayed as "the biggest celebrity in the world" also be painted as radical and out of the mainstream? Either Obama is like Britney Spears and Paris Hilton: a fluffy, substanceless, mass-consumed but empty celebrity-for-celebrity’s sake, or he is an unfamiliar and dangerous other with a hidden anti-American agenda.
• How Is John McCain’s Affair Different from John Edwards’? | Election 2008 | AlterNet – So, why are McCain's actions any more excusable than Edwards'? Because it was thirty years ago? Does that wash it away? Will we be fine with Edwards running for office again in a couple of years because then it will all be in the past? What is the statute of limitations on an affair?
• Open Left:: On Edwards – It is pathetic that, as a nation, we are even talking about this. The President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, was divorced only four months after he took office. Within a year of taking office, both he and his wife had remarried. The net result was a seven-point drop in his approval rating, most of which wasn't even attributable to his personal life. We really need to grow up as a country. Our collective lack of maturity about sex is pathetic.
• Gay Marriage, Church, Politics and Christian Music « – A Christian music artist cancels a performance at a San Diego rally, after learning the purpose is to rally voters against same-sex marriage in California. His brother posts about it and asks, "lastly, if you took a 30,000 foot view of how the church is and has dealt with the Gay and Lesbian community in this past 30 years to present what would you have to say about it?"
• Truth Wins Out – Meanness Exemplified: P.C. Ex-Gay Retaliation against Kind Gestures – Georgia-based ex-gay activist D.L. Foster is something of a leader within Exodus Global Alliance. In recent years, Exodus has given Foster an international soapbox from which Foster affirmed violence and imprisonment in Jamaica and Barbados as tactics to coerce local gay people to closet themselves and pretend to be heterosexual.

It just goes to show you can’t necessarily trust a pretty face.

I wasn’t going to say anything about this.

John Edwards has admitted to having an affair with filmmaker Rielle Hunter, according to ABC News.

In an interview with Bob Woodruff that will air tonight on “Nightline,” Edwards reportedly says that he did not love Hunter and also claims that he did not father her infant daughter Frances, although he has not taken a paternity test.

Edwards reportedly tells Woodruff that he can’t be the baby’s father due to the timing of her birth last February.

ABC reports that Hunter was hired by Edwards’ presidential campaign to produce documentaries for his web site, and that Hunter traveled with Edwards to locations in the U.S. and Africa. According to ABC, his political action committee paid her $114,000 for her services.

Edwards reportedly tells Woodruff in the interview that his wife of 31 years, Elizabeth, who gave birth to four children with the former Senator, found out about the affair in 2006. Elizabeth is currently suffering from incurable cancer, but Edwards reportedly told Woodruff that her cancer was in remission when the affair began.

It burns me up that now we’ll waste at least a couple of news cycles talking about it while people dying in Iraq and losing their homes back in the U.S., but there’s something that burns me upmore

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I’m probably sticking my neck out here, and so I’ll preface this by saying that I’m supporting Obama for president and will vote for him in November.

That said, I have been wanted to ask one question of progressives talking about Obama moving to the center. And I ask knowing that s a black gay man, a college-educated, white-collar worker, and non-Christian who doesn’t live in a southern state, and who’s further to the left than anyone the Democrats are going to put up for office, I’m probably among the least important and least relevant voters in this election.

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Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for August 7th from 13:19 to 16:52:

• 10 Mispronunciations That Make You Sound Stupid | The Best Article Every day – #2: Nuclear Do you know how tough it is to be an advocate for the correct pronunciation of this word (NU-clee-er) when the president of the United States pronounces it NU-cu-lar? I don’t buy that it’s a regional thing. Ya’ll is a regional thing; nu-cu-lar is not.
• ACLU Blog: Because Freedom Can’t Blog Itself: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union » NYCLU Sues Insurance Company for Denying Coverage to Married Lesbian Couple – The New York Civil Liberties Union recently filed a lawsuit against Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Western New York on behalf of a married lesbian couple who were denied spousal health care coverage by the insurance company. While the insurance company provides spousal health care coverage for the different-sex spouses of employees at a school district, it refused to do so for the same-sex spouses of school district employees. This means that our clients, who have been together for over ten years and have a one-year-old daughter, must live without the security of having full family health insurance. One of the parents in the family has been categorically excluded from eligibility for the plan.
• Feministe » Elitism – John McCain and Barack Obama are both elites. So are all the media figures crying about elitism. Whether they sip wine or chug beer, the both of them are far removed from the sort of life I lead, you lead, your neighbors lead, your coworkers lead, your families lead. It doesn’t make a goddamn drop of difference to any of us whether either of them turns his nose up at other figures in the same high class they already occupy. It just hurts the feelings of those higher figures who have toxic levels of self-importance.
• Feministe » OK, folks, it’s time for a privilege check. – Really, though, that’s not it. It’s not the drugs that make people nervous. The drug panic is just the superficial manifestation of a much, much more deeply-rooted fear. The fear of disability.
• Obama Strikes Back: ‘It’s Like These Guys Take Pride in Being Ignorant’ | Video | AlterNet – Now two points. One, they know they are lying about what my energy plan is. But the other this they are making fun of a step that every expert says would absolutely reduce our oil consumption by 3 to 4%. It's like these guys take pride in being ignorant.

In the previous post, I wrote:

Basically, I had someone say to me that if a hate crimes case didn’t get widespread coverage, didn’t spark large protests, or catalyze new legislation, then it wasn’t noteworthy enough to warrant its own entry. Well, part of the reason I started the project was because so many cases don’t get the kind of coverage that a Matthew Shepard or Brandon Teena gets. In fact, many don’t get coverage beyond their local areas, and don’t spark huge protests in part because the victims are already members of marginalized groups; people we tend to care even less about in death than we do in life.

This is one of those stories.

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One of the things that surprised me after starting the LGBT Hate Crimes Project is the amount of email I get. Much of it is from people who knew, or were related to the victim. Sometimes I’ve heard from family members who didn’t know the outcome of their loved one’s cases. Sometimes it’s from people who want to let me know about cases that they think should be on the site.

In the latter case, I usually take them and research them, unless they’ve been covered in depth elsewhere. If, for example, they’re already covered in depth on Wikipedia I may decide not to duplicate efforts. I started this project on Wikipedia, by the way, but stopped posting entries on Wikipedia when it became clear that their notability guidelines would cause many of the cases I was writing about to get deleted, because one editor or another didn’t think they were noteworthy enough. In one case, one person asked me “What makes this different from any other crime story?”

I thought I’d scream, but it got worse.

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Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for August 7th from 11:46 to 12:09:

• The New Face of Terrorism? A Square White Guy | AlterNet – The deadliest biological assault on the United States may have been perpetrated by a church-going white man, with anthrax from our own weapons labs.
• I Don’t: A Contrarian History of Marriage | Sex and Relationships | AlterNet – Squire's witty and deeply researched work proves one thing: marriage has been hard on both husbands and wives for a very long time. But, but, but … is there anything we can do to make it easier?
• Lynching Advocate Toby Keith: Obama Acts White To Win – During Toby Keith's appearance on the July 30 broadcast of Beck's show, he remarked, "I think the black people would say he [Obama] don't talk, act or carry himself as a black person." "What does that even mean?" the audibly shocked Beck replied. "Well, I don't know what that means," Keith drawled, "but I think that that's what they would say. Even though the black society would pull for him I still think that they think in the back of their mind that the only reason he is in [the general election] is because he talks, acts and carries himself as a Caucasian."
• Burgers or Biofuel? – Even more hidden from public view is the role of animal feeding in global warming. The shocking fact is that production of beef, pork and poultry is a bigger part of the climate problem than the cars and trucks we drive, indeed of the whole transportation sector.
• My Turn: Why I Finally Gave Up Diet Soda | Newsweek My Turn: Health Triumphs | Newsweek.com – Diet soda was the last and seemingly the least harmful addiction I had to conquer. But giving it up, and recognizing the havoc it was wreaking on my body, was harder than I thought.
• Suckers and Saints: How We Rationalize Being Wimpy | Newsweek Voices – Wray Herbert | Newsweek.com – How do we move forward when we have disappointed ourselves by our weakness, failed to stand up for what we believe? How do we shore up our self-esteem when we have failed to act as free thinkers?

It’s come to this. The long downward slide may not end here, but it’s brought us what should — if we’re lucky — be the nadir of American politics: a point at which characteristics that in any other circumstances would be admirable in just about anyone are actually undesirable if that person is running for president.

Never mind being unfit for office. It’s now entirely possible to be too fit for office.

Call this “exhibit A.”

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Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for August 5th through August 6th:

• Apologies for Slavery, Should Acknowledge Privilege : NPR – But let's set that aside and focus on what is "not" being talked about — the other part of the apology— the apology for Jim Crow, the system of legally imposed, culturally sanctioned and violently enforced discrimination that lasted well into this century. The legal framework of Jim Crow was dismantled only a generation ago, which means that the people who lived with, suffered from and benefited from Jim Crow are very much with us today.
• The Volokh Conspiracy – New study says gay couples really do want marriage: – Now the UCLA's Williams Institute, which supports same-sex marriage, has taken another look at the numbers. In a new report studying the recognition of domestic partnerships, civil unions, and gay marriages across the country, the report challenges the conclusions of the skeptics that gays don't really care about marriage.
• God-o-Meter – A scientific measure of God-talk in the elections – Neither Senators Barack Obama nor John McCain feel particularly comfortable talking about gay marriage as a campaign issue."Both have this nuanced 'On the one hand and on the other hand' need-to-explain position, and I think that makes it difficult for either to take a stand," says David Domke, a University of Washington professor, in an interview with National Public Radio's "All Things Considered." The NPR story, which aired Monday evening, contains statements made by each candidate, in public forums, which would seem to fit Domke's analysis. But the story also suggests–unsurprisingly–that this is more problematic for McCain, who needs support from conservative evangelical Protestants who rallied around George W. Bush.
• Feministe » Killing a Woman Because She’s Trans “Not a Classic Hate Crime” – “Duped.” “Fooled.” “Not a classic hate crime.” Why isn’t it a classic hate crime? The argument doesn’t hold up — the defendant did kill Zapata because of her gender identity. He sexually assaulted a woman, in the process discovered that she was transgender, and as a direct result he chose to beat her to death. Ergo, he killed her because she was trans, and this is not hard to follow logic. So allow me to translate. What Robinson really means is: “This is not a classic hate crime, because this time the defendant had a good reason.”
• Why many Americans prefer their Sundays segregated – CNN.com – Americans may be poised to nominate a black man to run for president, but it's segregation as usual in U.S. churches, according to the scholars. Only about 5 percent of the nation's churches are racially integrated, and half of them are in the process of becoming all-black or all-white, says Curtiss Paul DeYoung, co-author of "United by Faith," a book that examines interracial churches in the United States.

Why is this man smiling? If you had the same sweet deal he’s got, you’d probably smile too.

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