La Parola Index last modified Fri Jul 11, 2008 15:43 PDT

WELCOME to our La Parola Online page.

Happy Holidays : In correcting a typo on another page, I've unintentionally updated the "last modified date" of this department. So, let me take this chance to ask you all to have heart, stay the civil liberties course, stick to core values and principles, don't let the immorality of the current and unholy church-state union get you down, and enjoy the holidays.

New Article: "Perhaps you could lend a helping hand and point me in the direction of some topics I might research aside from Harvey Milk that pertain to the rights movements." -- Patrick, Age 20

New Article: Smoke and Mirrors and the Gay Marriage “debate”: Protecting Yourself from Time-Honored Fallacies. Recently, my favorite Astronomy forum "Cloudy Nights" hosted a Gay Marriage topic: "should we allow gay marriage?"

The thread was an unmitigated disaster. By all accounts a similar debate on Astromart was even uglier, but this one quickly degenerated into defamatory conduct, name-calling and personal attacks. I came home from vacation to discover no one from the GLBT comnmunity was represented in the thread. To me it appeared that the heterosexual community was arguing both sides of the topic as a spectator sport.

I "came out" on the thread to make sure everyone was able to associate the topic with a flesh and blood name and face and real human cares and concerns. I managed about four carefully composed posts before the proprietors deleted the whole thread in despair and inposed a permanent ban on sex, politics and religion. The whole experience was unsatisfactory for everyone, and I almost left the membership for good.

Personally, I would never go to an Astronomy forum for that kind of topic. Moreover, I condemn the whole idea that our civil rights are debatable -- despite the fact that is precisely what is happening across the whole nation. What happened here?

What I saw was that (a) the level of debate on that thread was of low quality and no one had the training to control or moderate it; (b) the most objectionable aspects of the thread were assertions that could be stopped cold when anyone challenged them as basic rhetorical fallacies, and (c) the religious gay-bashers were losing good-guy points, but my side was losing votes in the US House and Senate. The other side risks loss of face. We risk continued loss of basic civil rights that we have never had in the first place. The debate and the stakes here are unfairly lopsided.

I wrote "Rhetoric 101" as a primer to help make sure thinking Americans remember their basic debating principles. Right now, few Americans mind being seen as anti-gay, but almost no one wants to be caught red-handed in sleazy debating tricks that were first codified over 2,000 years ago. Do pick up this topic and have yourself a good read.

New Article: We caught the Parade on TV, but it didn't stop there. La Parola takes a look at change and progress in the gay community since Harvey Milk and the pioneering days of 1977.

Can't find an old favorite page? Consistent with what we're doing in other Summitlake.com departments, we're updating pages to a newer format and consistent style and fonting. With this, comes some directory reorganization. In the past, multi-page articles would get a separate listing for each page in our AutoList LISTINGS menu, on the left-hand panel of this page.

The 1998 Matthew Shepard article (still one of this site's most popular!) consumed almost a vertical foot of menu panel, pushing the menu far below the bottom of the main text. This adds little utility to La Parola readers, since the Matthew article itself is fully indexed in a Summitlake "Page Browser".

When first starting out in 1995, Summitlake ("Alex's Home Page") and La Parola were glad to index each and every page. Now, with over 800 pages, page listings have become a problem!

Multi-page articles such as Matthew's will soon have the main "parent" page or frame Page Browser index page moved to a higher level directory. (The name and location of the "parent" Matthew index browser file will remain the same, because it is bookmarked all over the world.) But "child" pages will be moved to hidden _files directories that do not list out. All related-page indexing will be handled by the parent page when one article is divided into many pages.

As we work our way down the directories, this has already been done with the David Kelley article ("Despising Gays" and the Laissez-Faire Books article ("Inventing the AIDS virus").

If you bookmark La Parola articles, only multi-page articles are affected, but you should check this page for the last word on files locations.

New Page: snappy shorts!

New Page: Flames and Crank Mail

GLAAD Alert: NEW REPORT TAKES A COMPREHENSIVE LOOK AT GAY LIVES, ISSUES:

The Kaiser Family Foundation has released an authoritative, comprehensive survey of the lives and issues of lesbians, gays and bisexuals. Both GLBT and general populations are surveyed.

We have republished the here in full, but it contains a link to the KFF site where you can see the full surveys in PDF form for yourself, and or send links to friends and family. The numbers are impressive. Check it out.

* Three-quarters of the general public support laws to protect gays and lesbians from prejudice and discrimination in employment (76%) and housing (74%). Large majorities also support other benefits for LGB partners, including inheritance rights (73%), employer-provided health insurance (70%) and social security benefits (68%).

Insensitive Bastard: If it seems it's been quiet in La Parola lately, it's because we've been arguing for freedom on broader fronts.

Here at Summitlake.com, we are still in deep shock over the horrible, horrible terrorist attacks on the eastern seaboard. But that doesn't mean we haven't kept our eyes and ears open.

If you thought La Parola has always been a little too - well - polite, stiff and formal, you'd better read our remarks on the latest outrageous utterances of the Rev. Jerry Falwell. We chose not to post them here, but (following an increasing pattern), to give them the broadest possible exposure on What's New, one of the most heavily trafficked pages at Summitlake.com.

Read Insensitive Bastard now, on the Front Page of the whole Summitlake.com site.

Please take care. These are trying times. Hugs and such.

GLAAD Alert: USA Today: The August 21 USA Today "Forum" carried a feature editorial arguing against gay marriage. The argument was conventional in several respects, resting on a bedrock of unquestioned beliefs and prejudices. It also bore the familiar subtext of the "respectable-perverts-with-no-place-to-go" theme, and supported the proposed anti gay marriage amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The author is William Mattox Jr., who happens to be on USA Today's board of contributors. His assertion that he and his wife also have a stake in what other parents teach their children is interesting. You should check out the article.

Monday, July 16, 2001

New Interactive La Parola Forum: La Parola Chat. We as internet travelers may be interested in dropping a note or comment to a site from time to time, but engaging in a formal email exchange can take more time and commitment than we have available. As we wrote in the "kick-off entry" this evening:

This forum can only be reached by the "LP Forum" button on the La Parola index page. It is private in the sense that visitors to other departments will not be aware of this forum, but public in the sense that anyone who gets here is free to browse.

As with other Summitlake.com interactive forums, please see our "CGI" page ("Databases.shtml") for more information on our databases, and about what they can and can't do. We discuss privacy, security and cookies, among other things.

Mostly, this area is just for us, the GLBT community. It is just for fun. Please feel free to start topics of your own. Do respect our hospitality, but don't worry about spelling or formal expression. Enjoy!

Just click the red "LP Forum" button (always found also at the top of this page) to begin!

Happy Fourth of July: this is becoming almost a de facto tradition. In LP 2001 Notes, we review where we've been, where we're going, and where La Parola's readers fit into the picture. This year, we do also have some questions for you personally, so drop in and check out our review. Enjoy, and Happy Fourth!

Humor: This is a true story about a visit I paid to my brother many years ago. He has always been somewhat homophobic, mainly because he says the Bible tells him to voice loud objections to anything of which he personally disapproves. Even a blessed saint can commit horrendous gaffes which directly contradict the heavenly directives. This story is slightly off-color, but we hope you'll enjoy this: read it to find out what happened.

ALERT: this isn't a La Parola article, but instead a pointer to a highly unusual (and recommended) series of articles about GLBT life in Salt Lake City. The item is not only that the articles seem fair and balanced in presentation, but were published by the Salt Lake City Tribune in one of the least-tolerant states in the union. Thanks to GLAAD for this alert. The links, also provided by GLAAD, returned a 404 Not Found in October 2002.

Letter to Fox Broadcasting

La Parola saw the show that GLAAD protested, and we would take it one step further. When a popular show that aspires to quality issues deliberately takes hurtful potshots at transgendered persons, it crosses a line of unacceptability that could otherwise distinguish it from the merely uninformed and lowbrow.

Informal survey of the state of the union

We take a break from work, the web and election woes to look at where the gay community stands and where we're headed in the next four years. Exclusive for La Parola readers.

The Other Side of Hate Propaganda

Here's the "other side" of the "abomination" dialog that you almost never get to see first-hand. It's pathetic.

GLAAD ALERT: Dr. Laura Schlessinger's TV Show To Be Sponsored by Proctor & Gamble. Read this alert for news of a bad blunder on P&G's part. If you like, there is a very convenient link to Proctor & Gamble's feedback web page. NOTE: thanks to thoughtful national feedback, Proctor and Gamble and several other advertisers dropped sponsorship of Dr. Laura less than a week after this posting.

Dignity and first-class seating: In a letter to a friend, we answer the question, "tell me about this 'log cabin' Republican thing." While intending no offense to individual gay Republicans, we called it as we see it, and believe us, "working within the party" ain't a pretty sight. If you find yourself with strong opinion on this topic one way or the other, by all means drop us a line.

We review the recent California referendums, specifically Proposition 22 and 21. Civil rights are in trouble, but, regarding "gay marriage", I don't give a darn what they call them. Just give us our civil liberties.

We didn't think we'd have a lot more to say on this issue. As you know, the Vermont State Supreme Court decreed that a ban on same-sex unions or partnerships is unconstitutional. But, the Court left implementation of the ruling to the legislature to work out. The result is a renewed debate in Vermont and across the nation.

Unsurprisingly, the framing of the "issues" is not too different from what we have seen in the past. Thanks to some excellent reporting by Carey Goldberg of the New York Times, the debate is shaping up as church vs. state: theocracy versus civil liberties. What's different, on the popular level, is how much of it, how much of the Christian Right rhetoric, is out in the open.

So we took another look. Also unsurprisingly, La Parola takes a dim view of the caliber of argument found, mostly by the other side. But bringing it out in the open is the surest way to force the vast middle-of-the-road majority to decide whether they want church law in their future.

What is the "Data Access Objects" thing about? We found some bad code in a database project of ours, and we think the political solution in Vermont should take the same approach: isolate the bad code, and rip it out -- or fix it.

For more articles and features, please see our Archives abstracts

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