April 9, 2010

The Big Gay Storm Is Coming

The Big Gay Storm Threatens

posted by Eric Steinman Apr 11, 2009 12:00 pm

filed under: blogs, parenting at the crossroads, relationships & sexuality,civil rights, gay marriage, homosexual rights, marriage, nom, proposition 8

80 comments

By Eric Steinman

There are big polemic and polarizing issues out there, that demand either advocacy or opposition. Things like tax reform, climate change, and civil rights are some prime examples of divisive topics that will easily send calm and collected individuals on an unyielding diatribe that will, at worst ignite plumes of hatred and resentment, and at best be cause for discomfort and effectively break up what was once a convivial dinner party. Gay marriage happens to be one of those issues.

To come right out and say it, I support gay marriage. Much in the same way I support the right of clouds to move effortlessly through the sky, ice to melt into pools of water, and chocolate to be dark and/or milky brown (for the record I think white chocolate is an abomination against god). In short, I think the right of consenting adults to marry is a veritable no-brainer (regardless of gender or sexual orientation), and can’t imagine wasting my energy trying to think up reasons why this right should be relinquished or even challenged.

I have followed the recent developments on the subject with the passage of Proposition 8 in California, as well as the recent victories of gay rights advocates in both Iowa and Vermont, and am encouraged by the possibility of change through straightforward political action. To characterize my mood about the general movement towards equality, I would have to say it would be something like composed sanguinity. And then along comes a commercial that is so misdirected, manipulative, hateful, and dishonest that all that composed sanguinity that was casually pinned to my lapel becomes a raging pendulous mace ready to smite my enemies.

The National Organization for Marriage (NOM), a conservative religious group in heavy opposition to gay marriage, is running a television advertisement titled the “Gathering Storm” as an effort to rally and recruit an online army of two million gay marriage opponents willing to blather and bellow to anyone listening. Now, I have railed against ads in the past when they have been cynical, dishonest, and manipulative, but this particular advertisement has shaken me out of my passive state of composed sanguinity and moved me towards rabid activism against NOM and in favor of gay marriage anytime and anywhere.

I encourage you to view the ad yourself and make up your own mind (and feel free to use the space below to voice your opinion), but to summarize, the advertisement taps into a particular fear that says, by allowing gay marriage to occur, straight Americans everywhere will have their rights supremely violated. In this advertisement, actors stand in for real Americans as cheesy superimposed clouds and lightning gather in the distance (likely the electrical hellfire that are the nuptial-crazed gay masses) as each actor makes declarations like “My freedom will be taken away” and “Those advocates of gay marriage want to change the way I live.” Now, I empathize with (not respect nor understand) people who are not on board with gay marriage and feel uneasy about the definition of marriage changing to include everyone, and I have no reason to want these people to feel uncomfortable or disenfranchised. However, I have no regard and little patience for political and activist groups that are willing to feed on fear and ignorance in a self-serving effort to impede the rights of others while spreading misinformation and fueling intolerance.

But really–enough of my yakking. After viewing this advertisement and taking into account everything you know, believe, and trust, do you feel a message like this adds anything to the public debate? Is there value here? If there needs to be a voice of dissent regarding gay marriage, shouldn’t it be more constructive, and scrupulous?

When Some Do Not Like What They See: They Denied is Happening and Replace Their Facts For The Actual Events

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Revising History Part I: The Meaning of Denial

posted by: Peaco Todd 19 hours ago

67 comments

History, as a gestalt, is preciously, uniquely human (I'm assuming here that dolphins, crows and cockroaches don't fool with time as we perceive it). We are able to experience our lives, and their contexts, only in retrospect – as each moment passes instantly into memory it's the recollection of things past that forms the basis of whatever understanding we might have of continuity and meaning.

Like any human endeavor, the process of recording historical occurrences is not flawless – it's fallible, subject to interpretation and misinterpretation. However, the purpose of creating histories should be to promote the acknowledgment that facts exist outside our own desires. History, as a discipline, recognizes that past actions not only happened but also have consequences. History is the record of those reverberations rippling through time. Whether on a personal or national level, history asserts: I (we) did this…that happened…and something developed from it. History is the ultimate accountability – the record of human choices.

Remember pre-Photoshop photographs? Few doubted that those images -- the napalm-drenched Vietnamese girl, the stills of Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald, Walker Evans's poverty-stunned sharecroppers – told the truth. By 'truth' I mean that people believed that they represented something objectively factual, real beyond the manipulations of the photographer.

Written history, since its medium (writing) doesn't create a direct record of events, is more prone to construal. Nevertheless, history (individual or societal) is the best thing we've got for determining what, in terms of actions, is true. One can argue that truth is, by its very nature, subjective, but hey: things happen. The invasion of Iraq was planned well in advance of 9/11. The Khmer Rouge murdered millions of people. Bill Clinton did have sex with "that woman." Wishing won't make it not so.

One motivation for altering history is to deny that something in fact occurred. Several recent notable instances come to mind. Who can forget the smearing of John Kerry's Vietnam War record by the partisan and thoroughly discredited "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth"? Who didn't shudder when Iran's Mahmūd Ahmadinezhād (who seriously needs a personal shopper) called the Holocaust a "lie" and a "hoax"?

In a book just out by Marc A. Thiessen, this former Bush speechwriter makes a number of claims against an overwhelming body of evidence to the contrary. In his eagerness to portray Obama as weak and naïve, and to serve as apologist for the Bush agenda, he asserts that not only was the Bush Administration uninformed about Al Qaeda prior to 9/11, but that "enhanced interrogation techniques" (which, BTW, are NOT torture) provided information that thwarted a host of post-9/11 attacks.

A little benign denial is a temporary coping mechanism that has its uses. We all know what can transpire in the dentist's chair, but telling yourself "that root canal really won't hurt much" might get you through the door.

One, however, is in denial when the facts contradict one's beliefs, such as: Since the earth is 6000 years old, dinosaurs and people must have coexisted. To be in denial is to make a wholesale claim with a much more interesting, and often obscured, subtext -- that to acknowledge the reality, the truth of what one is denying, is to face the moral necessity of reexamining one's beliefs.

The consequences of being in denial can range from the personal – that lump is just a cyst – to who we are as human beings – the Holocaust didn’t really happen. To be in denial about something that presents itself as a moral imperative is an act of spiritual cowardice. Much better that denial be in the service of personal courage -- to use a dash of delusion to propel oneself into facing up, and standing up.

Of course some history needs revising. The Caucasian-male-centric version of our own national trajectory not only neglects many of the contributions of minority groups, including women and African Americans, but, perhaps worse, whitewashes atrocities like slavery, the ethnic/cultural cleansing of native peoples, war crimes, the exploitation of the environment, to name but a few. Realizing that the winners write history can be the first step toward reinterpreting facts through the lens of wisdom and a more inclusive perspective. However, such reconsideration of scope or meaning doesn't transpire into permission to twist facts to suit an agenda. There's a better word for that: it's called lying.

How These Tiny Antibodies Stops HIV Infection

How A Novel Class Of Antibodies Inhibits HIV Infection

Main Category: HIV / AIDS
Also Included In: Immune System / Vaccines
Article Date: 06 Apr 2010 - 5:00 PDT

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Scientists at Duke University Medical Center have identified a set of naturally occurring antibodies that can block one of the key ways the AIDSvirus gains entry into certain blood cells. They say the discovery, published online in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, expands traditional notions about how the immune system fights HIV and offers a potential new strategy for HIV vaccine design.

Researchers have been puzzled and frustrated for years by antibody responses to HIV. In most infections, antibodies that fight off invading pathogens show up quickly and get right to work. But with HIV, the most powerful antibodies typically don't materialize until weeks or even months after initial infection - way too late to be effective.

"The beauty of this newly identified set of antibodies - called polyreactive anti-phospholipid antibodies - is that they are so potent against the type of virus that establishes infection during mucosal transmission," says Anthony Moody, M.D., a member of the Center for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Immunology (CHAVI) at Duke and lead author of the study appearing in the Journal of Experimental Medicine. "Our research suggests we may be able to harness them and enhance their anti-viral activity with a vaccine to fight HIV directly," Moody says.

Moody says the antibodies, PGN632, P1, IS4 and CL1, do not appear to have any pathogenic features, even though other members of the class do. Earlier studies by others have demonstrated that anti-phospholipid antibodies have anti-viral effects, but "what we have done in this paper is to show how they do that," Moody says.

Through a series of laboratory tests on blood taken from HIV-infected patients as well as healthy volunteers, Moody discovered that when these antibodies bind to white blood cells (monocytes), it causes them to secrete substances called chemokines that block HIV from docking with its favorite entry point into a blood cell, the CCR5 receptor. "In other words, they don't go after individual viral particles directly, but instead, indirectly, by creating a chemical roadblock at one of the virus' most commonly used portals."

That doesn't happen all the time, however. The study showed antiviral activity in only 85 percent of the blood they tested - and only in the presence of monocytes.

Investigators believe the finding has particular strategic importance because most of the HIV strains use the CCR5 receptor to gain entry into a cell. Since it is one of the earliest events in the process of infection, being able to potentially intervene at that juncture could be meaningful.

While the findings still have to be tested clinically, they do suggest a new way the immune system might be manipulated to thwart HIV, said Barton Haynes, M.D., director of CHAVI and the Duke Human Vaccine Institute and senior author of the study. "There are two parts of the immune system - the innate and adaptive components - and this study shows a vaccine that could elicit these polyreactive antibodies could recruit both components to fight HIV."

"We have long assumed that a successful vaccine would probably need to attack HIV on multiple fronts," Haynes says. "These findings have given us one more potential way to use the immune system to fight HIV."

The study was supported by a Collaboration for AIDS Vaccine Discovery grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a Veterans Affairs Merit Review Award, an NIAID NIH grant, the Center for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Immunology as well as resources from the University of Alabama and the Birmingham Center for AIDS Research.

Colleagues from Duke who contributed to the study include David Montefiori, Hua-Xin Liao, S. Munir Alam, Richard Seacre, M. Kelly Plonk, Daniel Koznik, Mark Drinker, Shi-Mao Xia, Laura Sutherland, Georgia Tomaras, Thomas Denny and Kwan-Ki Hwang. Others who contributed include Ian Giles, University College, London; John Kappes, Christina Ochsenbauer-Jambor and Tara Edmonds, University of Alabama; Melina Soares, Gustavo Barbero and Philip Thorpe, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center; Donald Forthal and Gary Landucci, University of California Irvine; Connie Chang and Steven King, Peregrine Pharmaceuticals; and Pojen Chen, UCLA.

Source:
Michelle Gailiun
Duke University Medical Center

STUDY: Immigration Reform Wouldn't Hurt U.S. Job Market

Study: Immigration Reform Wouldn't Hurt U.S. Job Market

posted by: Nicole Nuss 17 hours ago

29 comments

By Erin Rosa, Media Consortium blogger

According to a recent study described by New America Media, passing comprehensive immigration reform and providing a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants wouldn't negatively impact the job market for those who are already citizens. This is one of many myths promoted by anti-immigration groups that have recently been busted wide open.

In an interview with Public Policy Institute of California research fellow Laura Hill, New America Media editor Sandip Roy notes, "People say in the current economy with 10 percent unemployment we cannot afford immigration reforms because native born Americans would lose out on jobs. Is that borne out by your study?"

The answer is no, the study shows. "It won't cause competitive hardship for native born workers because there is not suddenly mobility among the people being legalized," Hill tells New America Media. "So this is not a sudden new adverse competition for those already in the workforce."

Immigrant entrepreneurship

Bruce Corrie via American Forum looks at falsehoods relating to the "costs and burdens of immigrants," and finds that immigrants have actually helped revitalized Minnesota.

"One just has to visit certain commercial corridors in the Twin Cities to see how immigrant entrepreneurs have vitalized run-down neighborhoods by providing services and jobs, and serving as role models in their communities," writes Corrie, who notes that immigrant consumers have also helped stimulate the state economy. "Analysis of census data for Minnesota shows that the buying power of Asian, Latino and African immigrants is around $5 billion."

At AlterNet, Seth Hoy reports that immigration reform could help turn America's lagging innovation and competition rankings around.

"As leading economists and immigration experts continue to point out," Hoy writes. "Reforming our entire immigration system—reform which includes a legalization program for unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. as well as revised high- and low-skilled visa caps—is paramount to reviving our economy, re-investing in innovation and technology and giving American back its competitive edge."

More enforcement abuses

For Inter Press Service, William Fisher reports that according to a recent audit by the Department of Homeland Security, "A controversial government programme that enlists local police officers and sheriff's deputies to help enforce U.S. immigration laws is verging on being out of control and unable to assess whether it is meeting its stated goals."

In an interview, Brittney Nystrom with the advocacy group National Immigration Forum tells IPS, "given the well-documented abuses committed by some local enforcement agencies enrolled in this programme, the lack of concern with the civil rights record of enrolled agencies is astounding."

The Washington Independent's Julissa Treviño writes more on the audit findings of the program known as "287(g)" in law enforcement circles. "Among its observations, the [Office of Inspector General ] found that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Local Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) had not met all of the requirements of the program, such as meeting regularly with steering committees to review the program's assessment and adequately training its officers."

For more links on immigration check out:

This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about immigration by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint.

Shocking Video of Animal Abuse. How Do You Like Your Eggs Done?

ew HSUS Video Reveals Shocking Animal Abuse from Nation's Top Egg Producers

posted by: Nicole Nuss 9 hours ago

74 comments

There is basic information about factory farming that everyone should know. You should know where your food is coming from. And you should know the livelihoods of the animals used to produce that food.

The good people over at The Humane Society of the United States just released brand new undercover investigation footage from inside the walls of four Iowa factory farms, owned by two of the country's largest egg producers. The investigation took place in February and March, and uncovered unimaginable horrors at Rose Acre Farms and Rembrandt Enterprises -- the second and third largest egg producers in the nation.

Here are just a handful of the egregious acts and deplorable conditions uncovered at the Rembrandt Enterprises factory farms:

The wings, necks, legs and feet of hens entangled in cage wires.
When slamming battery cage doors shut, workers would sometimes catch birds' wings, legs and necks in the door, leading to broken bones.
The HSUS investigator caught--on tape--hens with abscesses that caused their eyes to close and beaks and mouths to swell.
The investigator discovered many dead hens who had clearly suffered uterine prolapses. One live hen's prolapse actually became caught in the floor of her cage.
Rather than euthanizing sick, injured and suffering hens, the animals were often returned to their cages.
The HSUS investigator found hens stuck in manure pits—starving to death.

A few weeks ago I wrote about Subway moving towards phasing in cage-free eggs. Some of you responded, saying it's not enough. And you're right. In no way does cage-free mean cruelty-free. But let's be realistic, folks, we have to start somewhere.

Cage-free hens certainly don't get to frolic in wide-open, divinely green pastures, but life for these hens is a whole hell of a lot better than what I just described above. Cage laying hens are considered to be among the most grossly confined animals in all of agribusiness. Hens crammed intobattery cages are not permitted to walk, spread their wings, or lay their eggs in nests—a trait innate of all hens and one that they heartbreakingly struggle to make happen even in their barren, wire steel cages, obviously to no avail.

While about 95 percent of egg-laying hens are forced to endure life in battery cages--which, on average, afford each bird less space than a single sheet of 8 X 11 inch paper to live in--cage-free hens generally have two to three times more space per bird. They may not be able to go outside and they may still have parts of their beaks cut off without anesthetics, but cage-free hens are allowed to spread their wings, walk around, and lay their eggs in nests. And some are even provided perching and dust-bathing areas.

Again, cage-free is certainly not the end-all solution, but it's a huge step in the right direction.

Please watch the video. I warn you, it is graphic and may be upsetting, but please, please watch. You need to know exactly where your food is coming from. And if you don't want to commit to eliminating eggs from your diet, please do your best to buy cage-free eggs. The hens will thank you, I promise.