Triumph of Serbia is also triumph of the "big-boned gals"

The Eurovision Song contest of 2007 was won by a 23-year old Serbian lesbian, singing in a deliberately non-glitzy but not what you could say is traditional setting. According to Germaine Greer (who seems over the moon about it):

It was wonderful enough that a solid plain girl in glasses won it for Serbia with an old-fashioned torch-song; that she should have sung it in passionate earnest as a lover of her own sex is what made this viewer switch off the iron and start praying that the gods might let her win. When Marija Serifovic was asked in interviews why the presentation was so subdued, no high kicks, no pelvic thrusts, she was puzzled by the inappropriateness of the questions. While all around her were writhing and mugging, she sang Molitva as her ostracised self.

Molitva is a traditonal Serbian ballad; the word means "prayer".

Nightlife - New York in the 70s

This is a smashing collection of photos of New York arty and queer and rock-and-roll society in the 1970s. The photos are all copyrighted by Allan Tannenbaum. I stole this link from Pete. And like he says, these are NOT work-safe pix so look at them late at night in the privacy of your study. Or with an open-minded friend.

Defrocked lesbian minister wins appeal

Elizabeth Stroud, the lesbian Methodist minister defrocked by a close verdict in a church trial, has won an appeal on the grounds that the Methodist Book of Discipline had failed to define "open and practicing homosexual".

A young gay woman discovers her history

Sarah, blogger of 'not you, the other one,' was initially unimpressed to learn that February is GLBT history month. Born in 1981, she is younger than my son Carey (my youngest). Here's what she says:

I dunno, I thought, probably some old queen on Radio 4 is going on about how Shakespear was gay. Then, during my near-daily read of naked blog, I picked up the following from Mike of Troubled Diva in the comments:

She then goes on to quote a basic and yet gripping summing up of the state of homophobic policy and public behaviour in the early 1980s. "I had no idea that any of that happened," says Sarah. And she's a politically-savvy young woman and even a bit of red-diaper baby as we used to say in the states. But unless you have either a gay mentor, a gay(gay-aware or gay-friendly) parent or a really radical school system that is going to teach you this stuff, how would you know? So apparently lots of young gay people get "their" history from blogs. Another plus for us, then.

"We got your back."

Soldiers to a comrade in Iraq? Police officers to a fellow officer in trouble? No, these were the words of one member of an evangelical church in Oklahoma to another - and in this case the other was a gay teenager threatened by the infamous Rev. Phelps. And it wasn't just one church member speaking for himself either; the whole congregation rallied round Michael Shackleford of Sand Springs Oklahoma to assure him that God loved him and they were still his church. I got the link to this beautiful story in the Washington Post, Coming Out for One of Their Own, through a mailing list. And I have to say it sort of made my day.

Another great quote from Fafblog

Fafblog! the whole worlds only source for Fafblog.: "Eleven States voted to Define Marriage tonight, says Lester Holt, and they have Defined it as a slow-moving, thick-skulled poison-spitting reptile that hates queers. America has spoken."

The Great American Man-Dog Marriage Panic

Put your coffee cup on the other side of the room and read this bit in The Village Voice by Richard Goldstein. Link found on Earl Bockenfeld's Radio Weblog.

Will not compute! Help! Hair on fire!

The incomparable Zoe Williams has a Guardian daily comment article today called "In pursuit of the pink". This is all about the Tories and New Labour falling all over each other trying to woo the "homosexual vote". She has a really ingenious explanation of why "family values" politicians cannot come out (as it were) in support of gay marriages:
"My personal theory is that, if they did bring in gay marriage, there would de facto be gay divorcees, and the upholders of "family values" would become irretrievably confused over whether these were destroying the very fabric of society. (Divorce: bad! Homosexual partnerships: unnatural! Divorcing homosexuals... emergency! Will not compute! Help, hair on fire!)"

Dayton attacks proposed ban on gay marriage

Good old Minnesota and the good old DFL. And the good old Strib to report about it. Political blogging doesn't get much better than this.

You know what I think?

I think you should not enter into the debate on same sex marriages until you have read The Marriage of Likeness: Same-sex Unions in pre-modern Europe, by John Boswell. That's what I think.

The best lack all conviction

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity."


No, I haven't converted to a millenarian sect. My vision is no more apocalyptic than it ever was. But these words from Yeats's "The Second Coming" keep coming back to me. The two stories I have been tracking the most intensely - the upcoming trials at Guantanamo Bay, and the looming schism in Christianity (it's not just the Anglican church, although that's the one on the boil at the moment) over the Godliness, or maybe even the human-ness of homosexuals, have both appeared in headlines today at crisis point.


There is a thread that connects the stories, and that thread is two men, very alike in their positions in the world, and very, very alike in the fury and disappointment and betrayal that their former supporters are now feeling. Those two men are Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, and Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Both men have revealed themselves as weak and mistaken and the tools of a joined up force embodied in, at present, the US administration of George W. Bush (aka the Smirking Chimp, aka aWol, aka the Shrub Who Stole the Presidency) and the world-wide dangerous cult of Christian right-wing evangelism.


Here is the story of MPs' (both leftist Labour and opposition parties!) fury at the PM for caving in entirely to Bush & Co. over the two British detainees at Guantanamo facing military "trials". Here is the story of liberal Anglicans' pain about the Archbishop caving in entirely to evangelical pressure, even to the point of forcing the resignation of Canon Jeffrey Johns from his appointment to the post of suffragan bishop. Note the similarity. Note the fact that both Blair and Williams have been eloquent champions of such lofty ideals as democracy, radical Christianity, tolerance, uncompromising defence of human rights, and most tellingly, "speaking truth to power". The best lack all convictions. . .

Thou shalt hate?

Are the Bible and the Quran hate literature? A fierce debate in Canada is going on over the introduction of laws making it a crime to incite hatred against homosexuals.

Hiphopophobia

Zoe WIlliams asks why we conflate "black culture" with the views and mores of only young, straight, black males in her article Hiphopophobia.

Disorientation about sexual orientation

Government disorientation about sexual orientation.