Motley Moose – Archive

I’ve been too busy to develop any meaningful resolutions. Not that I’m particularly good at sticking to them anyway. So this year, I’m going to steal some from Woody Guthrie’s New Years Rulin’s.

Many of these seem doable (reprint after the jump).  What are your New Year’s resolutions, and if you don’t play that game let us know what you think the most important news story of the year was? Arab Spring? Japanese earthquake/tsunami? Debt ceiling fiasco? Lots to choose from. Or how about the most under covered story of the year?

Audre Lorde once spoke at a feminist conference, noting that she was the only black lesbian there and one of only two women of color.  She was pointing at privilege and exclusion within a group formed to remedy and address privilege and exclusion.  In this address, she pointed to the language and organizational structure adopted by feminists to address patriarchy was formed by patriarchy to reinforce patriarchy.  That language and organization are the “master’s tools” she speaks of and her assessment is that by using them, privilege will not be eliminated, but instead renewed and sustained.  

(Posted at SexGenderBody)

What do Michael Dukakis, Paul Tsongas, John Kerry and Mitt Romney all have in common? Obviously, they are politicians from the state of Massachusetts who have sought or are seeking the presidency.

Since John Fitzgerald Kennedy in 1960, however, no Bay State politician has been behind the bid desk in the Oval Office. The bastion of the Northeast and–as we are often nostalgically reminded these days–site of the Boston Tea Party, what has happened to the state’s national political prestige?

The following is an article that recently appeared in the Harvard Business Review. It is written by a good friend and the world’s leading food expert, Ellen Gustafson. She is founder and executive director of the 30 Project (whose audacious ideas have appeared in these columns many times before), founder of FEED Foundation and formerly worked at the United Nations World Food Programme.

In a feature, Holiday Homophobia: Is it Christian to Reject Gay Partners? ABC news interviewed Marilyn Bowens, a lesbian African-American minister, who recounts her experiences of exclusion from family events.  

“My mom would host a big family gathering with my sister, nieces and nephews – everyone,” said Bowens, now 56 and living in New Haven, Conn. “She always wanted me to come home with my children, but not invite my partner to come.”

Bowens is a lesbian, coming out well into adulthood after a heterosexual marriage that produced two boys, now age 20 and 27.

Today, she ministers to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community and challenges the church in her new book, “Ready to Answer: Why ‘Homophobic Church’ is an Oxymoron.”

Another interviewee with more conservative views grapples with moving toward the “loving” part of “love the sinner but hate the sin.”  Generally, not always, that movement will lead to a more thorough re-examination of views down the line.

Crossposted from the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.

As we head into 2012, many of us will be resolving to lose those few extra pounds, save more money, or spend a few more hours with our families and friends. But there are also some resolutions we can make to make our lives a little greener. Each of us, especially in the United States, can make a commitment to reducing our environmental impacts.

The United Nations has designated 2012 as the International Year of Sustainable Energy for All. Broadening access to sustainable energy is essential to solving many of the world’s challenges, including food production, security, and poverty.

Hunger, poverty, and climate change are issues that we can all help address. Here are 12 simple steps to go green in 2012:

By: inoljt, http://mypolitikal.com/

For some strange reason, the American media has always been obsessed with Twitter and Facebook. The movie “The Social Network,” which is about the founding of Facebook, received far more media commentary than any other movie in 2010, despite being only the 28th highest U.S.-grossing film that year.

This applies to foreign affairs as well. In the context of the events occurring in the Middle East, the Western media loves to argue that Twitter and Facebook constitute catalysts for revolution in the modern era. Indeed, some articles called the 2009 Iranian protests the “Twitter Revolution.” One excited journalist at the time wrote:

Iranians are blogging, posting to Facebook and, most visibly, coordinating their protests on Twitter,  the messaging service. Their activity has increased, not decreased,  since the presidential election on Friday and ensuing attempts by the  government to restrict or censor their online communications.

On  Twitter, reports and links to photos from a peaceful mass march through  Tehran on Monday, along with accounts of street fighting and casualties  around the country, have become the most popular topic on the service  worldwide, according to Twitter’s published statistics.

The trouble with all this is that in June 2009, the entire country of Iran only had 19,235 Twitter users, according to statistics assembled by Sysomos.

More below.

America was founded in part by a bunch of Christians whose kids couldn’t celebrate Christmas in school Back Home and who were also fleeing from all the gay people in the military. While all that may not have worked out so well for them in the long run, they brought with them the tradition of Christmas and for this we thank them.

Today we celebrate the birth of a child who grew up to argue that people should be nice to each other. We remember our forefolks’ hope that lengthening days would bring relief and new life. We stop to look around us, perhaps, and note that our own lives are more full of joy than we might have realized. We weigh our struggles against those of our fellows, our neighbors, our distant kin and people far away.

For all of us this day is sometime in our life a hard day, where we are the ones who need an open face and a warm embrace. All of us on this day will find ourselves at some point the one to offer that face, that hug, that hand.

Whether this is your year to nestle in the glow of family and friends, or to sit quietly alone, know that you are loved. You are part of a family that stretches around the world and into the depths of time. Where there is love there is hope, where there is hope there is joy to be found.

I wish you all the Very Merriest Christmas and all the best for a prosperous and peaceful New Year.

I just could not let this one go without saying something…

Cardinal George set the low bar for reason, respect and atrocity this week in comparing LGBTQI persons and organizations to the KKK.

He is upset that a bunch of queers want to have their pride parade on a street where one of his churches are.  He claims that queer people walking past his church violate his religious freedom.  Here is my open letter to him.

(Posted at SexGenderBody)

I was tripping over the many tumblr conversations about Hugo Schwyzer lately.  A good number of people articulated some solid points about him, as well as the many who stated their outrage and distrust of him.  Some folks take his writing as separate from his life and others will not grant this as valid.  From what I see, he’s done some pretty shitty things.  Each one of those points is worth discussing, yet something else was gnawing at me in all of this and that’s what I want to discuss now.

How did a cis-het white man get to be a voice for feminism?

(Posted at sexgenderbody.)