Categories
Politics Queer Politics, Culture, and History

Anti-gay adoption bill narrowly defeated in committee by seven votes to six

Breaking News

Originally appeared in Windy City Times on April 13, 2011

In a narrow victory for gay rights activists SB 1123, which would have effectively allowed religious child welfare and adoption agencies to bar adoptions and foster care by gay parents was just struck down.

Categories
Immigration Prison industrial complex Queer Politics, Culture, and History

National Immigrant Justice Center files mass civil rights complaint on behalf of LGBT immigrant detainees

Breaking News

Originally published in Windy City Times, April 15, 2011

The National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC), a project of the Heartland Alliance, recently released a mass civil rights complaint about the “abuse and mistreatment” of thirteen immigrant detainees in the custody of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The complaint was filed with the DHS’s Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and Office of Inspector General on April 13.

Categories
On Books and Publishing Race, Sex, Gender, and Sexuality

Bright Life, Big Sex: The Susie Bright Interview

“I get very excited about the international sex worker organizations, who will not let these positions go uncommented upon, who speak a little truth to the power.”

Categories
On Books and Publishing Prison industrial complex Queer Politics, Culture, and History

Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States

It persuasively argues that innocence is a shifting category, contingent on visible markers of race and class privilege.

Queer (In)Justice
Categories
Feminism On Books and Publishing

Review: Peggy Orenstein’s Cinderalla Ate My Daughter

Categories
Gay Marriage Yasmin's Media Appearances

Ryan Conrad and I Present on Against Equality: Queer Critiques of Gay Marriage

“Contrary to what some people believe, it is not just conservative heterosexual institutions that criticize the gay-marriage movement. Although their reasoning is different, queer activists also have their criticisms.”

Ryan Conrad and I unveiled the first Against Equality book, Against Equality: Queer Critiques of Gay Marriage, at my beloved Bezazian branch of the Chicago Public Library.  Andrew Davis, my longtime editor at Windy City Times generously covered the event.  We had about 30 people in attendance, and could not have been more thrilled with the conversation. 
A little-known fact: Ryan and I have been working on the book for over a year, but this was the first time we met in person. 

You can read the article here.  Image by Andrew Davis. 

Categories
Gay Marriage Queer Politics, Culture, and History Race, Sex, Gender, and Sexuality

Queer Sucides: Complicate the Issue

“Just as anti-depression pills are being handed out like candy to people in my generation, gay marriage is offered as the magic bullet to solve all of our gay woes.”

Categories
Gay Marriage

A “Curvey” nomination AND an “amicable discussion about smashing capitalism in history” in Time Out Chicago!

UPDATING WITH PDF, please check back.

It has been a while since I posted here, but now that the Against Equality book is published, things will start winding down and I will be posting with the same regularity. Much has been happening, and here are just a couple of highlights.

Categories
Capitalism, Class, Inequality Film, Art, Television, and Media On Books and Publishing Queer Politics, Culture, and History Race, Sex, Gender, and Sexuality

Make Art! Change the World! Starve!: The Fallacy of Art as Social Justice – Part I

Excerpt: For the most part, arts and social justice funding is infused with the aura of nobility, combining the portrait of the penniless but determined artist with the desire and drive to change the world.

Categories
Gay Marriage On Books and Publishing

Yasmin on the front page of Chicago Sun-Times [September 23, 2009]

This image (soon to be replaced by a larger one, bear with us) appeared on the front page of the Chicago Sun-Times. Yasmin was interviewed for a cover story titled, “Are singles getting a raw deal?” which appeared on September 23, 2009 to mark Singles Week.