Monday, June 10, 2013

What Billy Porter's mother can teach the Church about 'love'



The Tony Awards were last night and, like we do every year, lgbt performers showed out.
However, for my money, the best of the night goes to when openly gay performer Billy Porter received Best Actor in a Musical for his performance in Kinky Boots.
It wasn't just the win and it just wasn't his speech. It was when he paid tribute to family and particularly how his mother accepted who he was as a gay man (staring at 28 seconds) even though she didn't fully understand his orientation.

While it may seem like a small detail to some, it's a huge detail to me.  It's not a matter that Mr. Porter's mother could understand her son's sexual orientation, it's the fact that she didn't desert him.

Sometimes that one thing - i.e. the faith that a parent has in his or her lgbt child - is the difference between life and death.

Fox News reporter smears transgender community with ugly tweets, poor article

Editor's note - Todays's news briefs will be postponed due work needing to be done for How They See Us's unveiling at September's SC Pride. 

Riddle me this. Who sent out the following derogatory tweets about the transgender community:



A. Fred Phelps,

B. A religious right talking head, or

C. Todd Starnes, a reporter for Fox News who should know better .

If you know this blog, then the answer is C. Starnes, who is steadily making a name for himself by posting attacks on the lgbt community disguised as articles, is at it again.

This latest article by Starnes details an alleged incident Nashville where there was one complaint about a transgender woman using the bathroom.  According to Equality Matters, Starnes' article

 . . . included various quotes from the disgruntled woman’s husband, inappropriately referring to the transgender woman as a man and commenting that her presence in the public restroom “poses a safety hazard”

As mentioned above, Equality Matters pointed out that this poor article is yet the latest attempt by Starnes to manufacture a backlash against the lgbt community by writing false stories portraying them as so-called attackers of American values.

Equality Matters has pointed out fives other times in which Starnes has posted misleading articles against the lgbt community in pursuit of this agenda.

Looks like the Nashville incident is number six.