I am looking for people who would be willing to collaborate with me in an attempt to continue a project very similar to the round-up of gay rights legislative, judicial, and executive bodies on the federal, and state/provincial levels in the US, and even the rest of the world, as very comprehensively done by Bill Myers. You can see one of the latest versions of it available on the web here, courtesy of The Wayback Machine. I could especially use someone to keep track of events in Virginia as they happen.
The Scandinavian nation of Norway legalized gay marriage Thursday, becoming the sixth country to do so. This has attracted little attention, but perhaps that is a sign of how nonchalant such things are these days, both from the perspective of Europeans and from that of international observers of trends within various EU nations, even third world countries. An interesting incidental fact -- Norway has been ranked #1 on the Human Development Index more times than any other country in the 21st century thus far. It came in as #2 in the latest released results (for 2007), which is still pretty damned close. Another frequent #1 acheiver was Canada, which made it on there ten times.
If you're wondering what exactly HDI means, you can go to the web page of the UN agency that compiles the statistics to determine the order, or else there's always our handy Wikipedia:
The Human Development Index (HDI) is an index combining normalized measures of life expectancy, literacy, educational attainment, and GDP per capita for countries worldwide.
Along those lines, I can't help wondering -- could HDI rankings go hand-in-hand with the conclusion by the government that equality for all its citizens is a no-brainer?
On the equality in the workplace front -- a shareholder resolution to formally add a nondiscrimination policy to the books at ExxonMobil was voted on last month, getting 39.6% of the vote, almost two percentage points higher than last year, but obviously short of a majority.
If you, like me, have been following this for a while, and thought Exxon was bad, you should see just how bad it is at Dish Network.
The good news is that it's a lot more meaningful to boycott one cable company in favor of its equality-oriented competitors than it is gas from one chain in favor of a fair-minded oil company. And besides, it looks like there won't be many gas stations with the ExxonMobil banner printed on their signs for much longer, anyway.
In entertainment news, for gay primetime drama afficionados (or straight allies who tend to notice relevant content on these shows), the season finales of both Brothers and Sisters and Desperate Housewives featured each series' respective gay couple enter a "commitment ceremony". This isn't exactly breaking news, but what hasn't been discussed in depth is that the treatment of the couples on one show vs. the other were in marked contrast. Long before both gathered their friends and family to say "I do", the AfterElton.com diarist snicks had this to say about how one couple stacks up against the other:
Trying to compare Kevin and Scotty with Desperate Housewives' Bob (Tuc Watkins) and Lee (Kevin Rahm) is like comparing apples with garishly dressed oranges, but when you have two gay couples back to back on high profile network shows, it's impossible to avoid.
I find it applies to the treatment of both couples' 'mantrimony' (a term invoked by the brother of one {guess which show}) as well.
Generally speaking of all the entertainment that is taking a gay-themed plunge lately -- even ABC Family, which is the very same network the 700 Club calls its home, just featured its first couple of gay kisses (same guys, same really bad show, same episode, same scene). Unfortunately, the scene was largely shot in silhouette, but you can only expect a network that airs Pat Robertson every day to go so far.
(both liplocks were part of the same scene of the same episode featuring the same two guys in the same really, really, REALLY bad show), although they were mostly silhouettes, but can you expect so far from a network that airs Pat Robertson every day http://www.afterelton.com/blog...
Here's what the key players had to say about it:
Paul Lee, president of the ABC Family Channel, in a web interview from last summer:
I've actually not heard anything negative at all about [Greek's] Calvin. We're very open about the storylines that we're going to cover, and I think very responsible in the way that we cover all topics, not just 'issue' topics. I mean, these kids are at college.
Tim Wildmon, president of the American "Family" Association:
If they want to have a relationship as gays or homosexuals [portrayed on television], you can do that, in our view, that's okay. "We don't approve of it because of our worldview, but we understand that gay people are real people and part of the social fabric of our country. [But] what's the next scene, a bed scene? Do we show them doing other kinds of activities? All we're saying is let's draw the line at kissing, at physical activity and beyond.
Lastly, summed up by Brent Hartinger, an AfterElton columnist:
By his statement above, Wildmon basically concedes that the AFA doesn't object to gay characters and gay relationships on television. This concession alone is revolutionary, even if it was probably spoken, at least in part, to fool a pro-gay Canadian radio audience into thinking the AFA is more reasonable than they actually are. But Wildmon's only argument for drawing the line at kissing? Because it'll somehow lead to actual gay pornography on television.
What's especially excellent about the above is that it's undeniable that though Pat Robertson calls Virginia his home, if his influence is declining here (and if he couldn't prevent a gay male kiss from being shown on the network he calls home as well), it's undeniable his influence in the rest of the country is falling like a brick.
Finally, contrast Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick's handling of his daughter Katherine coming out to him to how disgraced multiple election-loser Alan Keyes handled it when his daughter Maya did. Keyes even makes Dick Cheney look good by comparison.