Phone Operator blocking LGBT Sites

Pink News reported last week that mobile phone operator T-mobile was blocking access to LGBT websites for customers under 18. This was based on complaints from customers, who complained that they were unable to access sites for gay venues, bars, travel companies – or even cultural or news services such as Pink News itself.

 

 

This is totally offensive and discriminatory. It is reasonable to block access to adult services, including sexually explicit content or bar advertising to under –18’s: but does the service equally block other bar advertising? To block gay news or cultural services purely because they are gay is to make the common but entirely incorrect assumption that “gay” is necessarily sexually obsessed. At about this time last year, Amazon books made a similar assumption in its screening out of all LGBT titles as “adult” – and suffered a powerful backlash.

The company initially took some time to respond to the complaints, but they have now provided a response to Pink News, stating that they are investigating, but “would never” exclude content solely because it is gay-related, but  only if it contravenes adult guidelines.

"T-Mobile is currently investigating this issue. To be clear, we would never actively block material based on sexual orientation. It’s possible that the sites were blocked because they contain advertising or other content that falls outside of the Content Lock system which helps prevent children from accessing 18-rated material. This is done in accordance with a voluntary code that mobile operators agreed to in 2004."

The provider's Content Lock system, is automatically set on phones to filter out 'offensive' material. Users must confirm they are over 18 to remove the restrictions. Information on how adults can remove Content Lock can be found on the operator's website.

This just doesn’t cut it.  Pink News is just one of the news sites which has been blocked, and as the site itself confirms, is totally without the kind of adult content that should legitimately be screened for younger users.

T-mobile must be reminded is that “would never” is simply not the same as “has never”. It may not have been their intention, but it is clear that they are using a Content Lock system which does in practice block content purely on the grounds of orientation, preventing youth access to gay sites which are in no way adult related – yet simultaneously letting through some clearly pornographic heterosexual material.

“Gay” does not equate with sexual licence. Young people of all orientations experience a bewildering time in adolescence, coming to terms with hormonal and physical changes, and learning to deal responsibly with their sexual interests and needs. Young straights have numerous systems in place to help them, from role models in families and popular culture, to formal guidance in schools and churches. Young gay people do not. Without access to good guidance on what it means to be young, gay – and responsible, it is all too easy for them to yield to one of the two extremes of gay youth: self-hatred, depression, and even suicide, or its opposite, a complete rejection of all conventional standards of personal morality – succumbing to the very hedonistic lifestyle that the moralistic censors are presumably trying to prevent.

T-mobile and other phone operators, just like Amazon and other booksellers, should be encouraging, not blocking, access to responsible LGBT sites. Its the best way to safeguard the gay, lesbian and gender queer youth they are claiming to protect. 

 

 

Customers of T-Mobile have complained that the mobile phone network bars access to gay websites. T-Mobile, one of the UK's largest mobile phone networks, appears to block gay-related content as unsuitable for under-18s. This includes gay websites which contain no nudity or offensive content. The provider has a system called Content Lock, which is automatically set on phones to filter out 'offensive' material. Users must confirm they are over 18 to remove the restrictions. PinkNews.co.uk is among the websites affected, while others include gay travel websites, bar and club listings and gay culture websites. Bryan Manley-Green, who is with T-Mobile, told PinkNews.co.uk: "This must be in breach of the Equality Act and it must be affecting gay businesses." Mr Manley-Green said that after a lengthy conversation with a T-Mobile customer complaints advisor and assistance from staff at a local store, he was able to access gay websites on his phone. Several other readers contacted us about the problem, including Darcy C-Oshimida, who also could not access gay websites through her T-Mobile phone. She said: "I think this is ridiculous and assumes that anything gay must be inappropriate for children. I believe you are losing a lot of readers this way, and important young readers at that." T-Mobile did not return repeated calls for comment.

The "Impact" of Iowa Marriage Equality - Findings From Evidence.

One important feature of Judge Walker's verdict in the Prop 8 trial was his finding that the case against marriage equality rested on claims, of the "harm" done by same sex marriage and the supposed threat to children is based on no evidence whatsoever. The substantial evidence that does exist on gay parents, and the experience from Manhattan and the Netherlands where marriage is well established, is that there is indeed no demonstrable harm - to between sex marriages, or to the children of same-sex couples.

Now yet another independent survey, this one from  Iowa, shows the same finding. "Iowawatch" is an online news service for The Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism, an independent, nonprofit and nonpartisan news service. Their researchers conducted interviews with married couples and professional experts, and examined extensive published urnal articles, marriage statistics, census data, polls and court rulings.

The conclusion? There is no "harm" - at least no more than from the between sense marriages they so closely resemble. These are extracts from an extensive report at Press Citizen:

Defending Real Families.

 

The fatal flaw in the argument against gay marriage and gay adoption is that since children “need” a mom and a pop (a dubious proposition in itself), then all mixed  -sex couples make better parents than any same-sex couples. This flaw is tragically highlighted in an open letter to Pastor Joshua Beckley, posted by Derrick Matthis  at RENWL.

There is much in this articulate and thoughtful piece to applaud.  The scandalous part is the professional footballer he cites, Antonio Cromartie, who has eight children from  six different mothers – but struggles to even name them all.   On the other hand, Matthis writes movingly though from deep personal experience, describing his own family, in a graphic image, as a “village” – but also rejoices in the successes within his family, which patently means the world to him.

It is obvious that there are some irresponsible gay men who would make appalling parents – just as there are some straight men who fit the same description. There are many superb mixed couples who raise great families – just as my own parents did. And there are gay and lesbian couples who make excellent parents. Matthis does not make clear whether he is himself either partnered, a parent, or aspires to be either – but just consider the immense pride with which he writes of his siblings and their offspring: of one niece, he writes:

My baby sister's little girl. Thuglette, Bad Stuff, Little Monster, BeBe's kid, Rug Rat...the various nicknames I call her when we're together. Her name is Mya. And she is every beat of my heart.

This is a world away from Comartie , who is unable to name his own kids – yet in the argument against family equality, Comartie is presented as the model, and Matthis as inherently unsuitable to be a father (unless he denies his identity and marries a woman).

I can quote only extracts – so cross to the original, and read the full post, too.

 

From  RENWL  (Restore Equality Now~ West Adams/LA South Marriage Equality And Community Activists):

Open Letter to Pastor Beckley

Senior Pastor Joshua Beckely

Ecclesia Christian Fellowship

1314 Date Street

San Bernardino, CA 92404

Dear Pastor Beckley:

Based on your commitment to the continued and unchanged definition of marriage I thought since this latest effort didn’t quite work out, that perhaps I could interest you in some other very pressing issues that could use the input of a committed man of the cloth in the African American community. In doing a little background research you seem to be a man who cares deeply and takes every opportunity to give back.

You’re a father, a devoted husband, man of the cloth and community leader. We so need many more like you to help shape the direction of the black community . You must be aware of this already.

There’s a specific issue that hit me HARD in recent days. It came to me in the form of video in a news article. I’d like to share it with you. And please do not be concerned. There’s nothing offensive or unsavory about the contents. But it is very saddening. And its effects continue to rip through our community almost completely unchecked.

You may be aware of NY Jets player Antonio Cromartie. A week or so ago he he was asked about his family, specifically to name all of his children on camera. In the video, Cromartie is seen discussing being a father and when finally asked to name all EIGHT of his children—this is eight children from six different mothers spanned across several states. Cromartie could barely name all of his children.

A sportswriter called this one of the most shameful moments in NFL history. I beg to differ. I find it one of the most shameful recent moments in black American history. The fact that an issue hasn’t previously been made of this gives you an idea of how poorly the idea of the “Family” unit is regarded to a lot of people.

My baby sister, 22 years old. Workin' on that hair last Thanksgiving morning. She is also a single mother raising a child among the village called my family.

…….children born out of wedlock in the United States tend to have poorer health and educational outcomes than those born to married women, but that may be because unmarried mothers tend to share those problems.

Pastor Beckley I’m almost certain that you’re well aware of all of the above and please forgive me if I’m being redundant by reintroducing these statistics and facts to you. But the whole point behind my sharing this with you is that there is an obvious breakdown in terms of the family unit in the black community. The problem is so paramount that I have to be honest, when I see our black church leaders making themselves so visible in matters such as same-sex marriage, I sincerely wonder with deep frustration and sometimes a sense of hopelessness if their priorities are in tandem with the realities impacting the greater black community of this nation.

Pastor Beckley, I write this letter to you not to discourage you from your beliefs or your commitment to your beliefs. I write this letter to you asking you to re-examine all the wonderful truly abundant possibilities for the black community if we decided to focus on our community in a way that serves to strengthen it in every imaginable capacity.

That focus would be on the black family.

And what are the factors that lend to destroying the black family—TODAY. RIGHT NOW. Those things that are serving RIGHT NOW to deteriorate our families: joblessness, poverty, poor education, fatherlessness, high incarceration of our young men—HIV/AIDS infection exploding through the roof in our women and same gender loving men and no prevention funding from the government or state—-so many issues on the menu right now.

Can’t we all work together? Can’t we work to build an inclusive world for our children, all God’s children, to receive the love and nurturing all of them so righteously deserve, today? Can’t we work to create a unified vision as black people that serves to empower all of us?

Family means everything to me. I love my family so much—my siblings, nieces and nephews, my mother, my belated father, that deceased grandmother who worked in the cotton fields of Texas as a child—couldn’t go to school cause she had to help put food on the table. I miss that old lady. I miss her love for the Lord and her strength, and her vast all encompassing love for her children and grandchildren. Most of all I miss her abundant and bottomless love for me. When I told her at 19 years of age that I was gay, she told me, “you are my child. I will love you no matter what.”

I believe that was the day that I finally decided to believe in God, to truly accept God. Before that day I couldn’t. God seemed to belong to someone else. I was afraid and ashamed of who and what I was, the feelings I had. There was no place in God’s heart for me. But finally one day I broke down. And through tears told my NaNa everything. I did this because I trusted her and loved her so much. Throughout all my childhood she never made me feel bad about being me. I knew she wouldn’t turn her back on me if I told her my truth. So I shared with her the things I felt and my fear and shame. And then she said what she said. It was like a great weight was lifted from me. The way I saw it, if Nana loved me no matter what, then God had to feel the same.

And that’s because I learned everything I knew about about God through her. NaNa’s love was unquestionably God’s love as far as I was concerned. Nobody loves the way she did, live with such abundance, gratitude for life and not be a true child of the Lord. Now I’m not the churchy type. I’m not gonna lie. And yes Pastor Beckley, I do believe in the Lord. And his merciful love for all his children.

 

Again I hope this letter finds you well, Pastor Beckley. I look forward to receiving your thoughts.

Best,

Derrick Mathis

RENWL

Oz State Premier Stands Up To Cardinal Pell, Secures Gay Adoption for NSW.

Breaking news today is that the New South Wales state assembly has narrowly approved a bill to put LGBT and heterosexual couples on an equal footing for adoption procedures. There are still a few hurdles to clear before this becomes final, but (as far as I can tell), with this one, the biggest has now been cleared. This is big news for queer Catholics. The formidable Cardinal Pell made clear his strong opposition - but the equally strong support of the Catholic NSW Premier, Kristina Keneally, appears to have been decisive in providing just enough resistance.

Kristina Kenneally, Catholic and Advocate for Adoption Equality

Perhaps it was the full-fledged backing given to the Bill by New South Wales Premier Kristina Keneally, a devout Catholic, which took the wind out of the sails of opponents. "In forming my position on this Bill, I have considered my experiences as a mother, my responsibilities as a parliamentarian and my conscience as a Christian and member of the Catholic faith," she told lawmakers. Instead of proving divisive, it served to unite New South Wales's main political outfits with Opposition Liberal Party leader Barry O'Farrell also voting in its favor.

-RTT News

Hadrian (76-138)

Hadrian was an accomplished military ruler, but owes his fame more to his success as a wise and civilized leader and administrator, who helped to stabilize the Roman Empire - and for his renowned devotion to his lover, Antinous. After his young lover drowned in the Nile in 130, the Emperor was publicly overcome with grief, and declared the young man to be a god, and founded an Egytpian  city,  Antinoopolis, in his honour.  The new cult was happily taken up bright across the empire, with and at least 2000 bronze and marble busts and statues made to honour him. In Greece at alone, thirty one cities minted coins with his portrait.

Bust of Hadrian’s beloved, Antinous

In total contradiction to some modern stereotypes, there is no sense in which Hadrian could be considered in any way wimpish or effeminate:

Hadrian was a brave, resourceful soldier and an intrepid hunter of bears, boars, and lions. He bore cold and bad weather with stolid endurance. He was bearded and dressed simply. He allowed no ornaments on his sword belt or jewels on the clasp.

His sexual taste, like that of Trajan, a cousin of his father and his predecessor as emperor, was predominantly for teenage boys, though ill-wishers accused him also of affairs with grown men (adultorum amor) and of adulteries with married women. He had no children. He often said that had he been a private citizen he would have sent away his ill-tempered wife Sabina.

-glbtq encyclopedia

Hadrian and Antinous in Egypt. Plate VII from "De Figuris Veneris"

Insight from History into Orientation

The evidence from history, anthropology and the animal kingdom seems clear - it is not "homosexuality" that is unnatural, but exclusive heterosexuality. The trouble lies in that little qualifier "exclusive": if we apply it impartially, then the corollary also holds. Exclusive homosexuality is also "unnatural" - at least in the purely statistical sense, of being rare.

When we speak glibly of the acronym LGBT, we tend to think of the first two, and (sometimes) of the "G" - and overlook almost entirely the "B". This is odd, as the evidence, from human societies across history and from Kinsey's research, is that most people fit naturally along a scale of bisexuality, with relatively few people "naturally" places at either extreme. Yet in the modern (Western) world, the assumption too commonly is the reverse- that either we are "straight", or we are gay or lesbian.  Why should this be? The interpretation I that has been making sense to me, is that the medicalisation of "homosexuality" in the twentieth century led those who are are primarily heterosexual, developing a positive aversion to admitting (let alone expressing) any degree of same sex attraction at all. In reaction and as self- defence, those who are primarily "homosexual" then began to embrace the evidence, from science and from personal experience, that their same-sex attraction is inborn, not a mere lifestyle choice - and in embracing this, embrace also a gay "identity". Yet in earlier centuries, most people would have been puzzled by the very idea of a fixed, exclusive sexual "orientation".

This is a theme I have been wanting to explore and write about for some time, but do not yet have sufficient knowledge to present a reliable exposition. The following passage, which I came across in a review of the play "Abraham Lincoln's Big Gay Dance Party ", provides a useful description of the historical facts - if not yet the historical explanation for the anomaly:

American culture has always had deep divisions regarding any open display of sexuality. For many right-wingers, the concept of gay equality sticks in the craw because it means admitting that gay people have a right to exist openly. Christians and Jews can find Biblical arguments against homosexuality, but they can't find any in the Constitution. A historical disparity is involved: Homosexual practices, found throughout nature, have probably been part of human life since it first evolved, but homosexuality, as we understand it, has existed for barely more than a century. Oscar Wilde, a married man with two children, who saw his attraction to younger men in part as continuing an ancient Platonic tradition of ideal love, probably did not think of himself as a homosexual—not, at least, until after his imprisonment. He may never even have heard the word, which only came into use in later decades. (And "gay," in Wilde's time, merely meant "loose" or "promiscuous.")

Homosexual identity, often viewed today as a central and absolute character trait, was seen through most of history as a quirk affecting very few. Men—like Lincoln and Joshua Speed—embraced each other, and slept together for warmth; men took sexual advantage of slaves they owned, boys they mentored, servants they employed; prisoners, soldiers, and sailors, apart from women, engaged in clandestine mutual pleasuring. But most of them assumed that, when conditions altered, they would engage with women and presumably produce children. Few, no matter which role they played in the act, would have assumed an exclusively homosexual preference; a great many might have been startled to know that people who thought themselves exclusively homosexual even existed.

Today life's different. Gay is an identity, and a highly politicized, assertive one at that—an inevitable reaction to the millennia during which homosexual acts were stigmatized, outlawed, and persecuted, often violently. Every concern that gays might confront, from coming out to one's parents to becoming parents, has taken on an absolutist mentality, apparently subscribed to by both its adherents and those who wish they would disappear. The secondary cultural traits through which gays in the clandestine era once signaled their shared interest have become a kind of instant public shorthand. Quarterbacks who enjoy showtunes are instantly suspect; 10-year-olds with a gift for classical music conceal their interest for fear of being bullied at school. Future generations may come to regard our time's extreme emphasis on sexual identity as nearly equal in absurdity to the frantic hostility and repugnance that kept same-sex attraction clandestine in preceding centuries.

- Full review at Village Voice

The Turning (Conservative) Tide for Family Equality

One of the tragedies of the struggle for marriage equality has been the way the rightwing opposition has been able to portray this as a contest between the supporters of "marriage", and those bent on destroying the institution. This is clearly not so - the advocates for marriage and family equality are not wanting to destroy it, but to enlarge and strengthen it by bringing more couples and families under its legal protections. The opponents, on the other hand, who have insisted on a narrow and rigid, relatively modern interpretation which they insist on terming "traditional" marriage in total contradiction of all historical evidence, who who have re-interpreted and distorted it - and largely destroyed it themselves, with high rates of divorce and teen pregnancy. (Both of these rates are highest in the states most strongly opposed to marriage and family equality.)

Times, however, are changing. For some time, there have been signs that opposition to gay marriage is no longer the magic GOP vote winner that it once was. Earlier this year, the NOM poured big money into Republican Iowa primary races in support of state level candidates who promised to overturn last year's court judgement in favour of marriage - and they lost heavily. (In the same primaries, tea party candidates who steered clear of the marriage issue did well). More recently, in the wake of Judge Walker's judgement overturning the Prop 8 win against marriage, it was notable how Republican politicians were carefully avoiding notable comment.

The stance of the tea party is instructive, as it highlights one of the reasons conservative voices are now starting to speak up in favour of same sex marriage (or, more accurately, against laws to prevent it.) This is the libertarian belief that good government is limited government - and one of the areas where government should be just about entirely absent, is in the privacy of our bedrooms and families, especially at a time when there are urgent matters of jobs and the economy requiring attention. This was explicitly the argument used by Glen Beck last month, when he said