Bullied to death

An 11 year old boy from Springfield, MA committed suicide last week after countless taunts that he was gay. In fact, Carl Walker-Hoover didn't identify as gay but his mother found him hanging by an extension cord after she'd repeatedly appealed to her son's school to do something about the abuse.

From the ABC NEWS article:

Carl's suicide comes about a year after California eighth-grader Lawrence King was shot and killed by a fellow student in his classroom for supposedly being gay.

In response, GLSEN has launched a multipronged education campaign to fight the use of anti-gay language and bullying.

Its annual Day of Silence, started at the University of Virginia in 1996 with 150 students, has now grown to more than 7,500 middle and high schools nationwide. Participants draw attention to LGBT issues by not speaking for a day.

Since October, GLSEN (Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network) has aired thousands of public service messages, "Think Before You Speak," to reduce the use of the slur, "That's so gay."

"When you are in elementary school, one of the first things you learn is the feeling of hurt when you are called 'gay' or 'fag,'" said Presgraves. "It doesn't matter if you are gay or straight. The term 'gay' has become synonymous with "uncool."

"The expression 'That's so gay' is one of the most heard in school, and students recognize it as derogatory," he said.

Carl would have turned 12 on this year's Day of Silence, April 17.

While Carl didn't identify as gay, studies indicate suicide rates among LGBT teens are higher than their heterosexual peers. Suicide rates among kids Carl's age are lower, but are reportedly on the rise.

Locally, Springfield Representative Sara Lampe has been actively working towards anti-bullying legislation.

Amazon saga continues: Hacked?

The plot gets even messier. A hacker is now claiming he exploited Amazon's own software to create the Big Gay Debacle. From Gizmodo:

Okay, maybe Amazon is off the hook. The well-known troll Weev is claiming that he's actually responsible for Amazon's sudden surge of LGBT prudishness. Which Valleywag says actually makes sense.

It's startingly simple: It doesn't take very many votes at all to get a product flagged as "inappropriate" and booted off the rankings. He says he created a script that generated a list of product IDs for every gay and lesbian book on Amazon. From there, he just needed a whole bunch of people to flag the books as inappropriate, which wasn't hard, because simply getting someone to go the URL of a successful flag would count as another one. Using an invisible iframe on popular websites owned by friends and a group of "third-worlders" he hired to register accounts, he generated enough votes to de-list gay and lesbian books en masse.

Lending credence to his claims, Valleywag notes that the "flag as inappropriate" feature is currently disabled. Free reign for inappropriate books! [Livejournal via Valleywag]

Off the hook? I'd say NOT. While being anti-gay is bad, having a major e-tailer site be THAT vulnerable to attack is even scarier. The bigger story here may not be that Amazon.com is anti-gay but that they denied being the victim of a nasty online attack.

Amazon says glitch not discrimation

While many of us are still scratching our heads over Amazon.com's decision/snafu/glitch that removed sales rankings from LGBT titles, the mystery seems to almost deepen.

From Publisher's Weekly:

A groundswell of outrage, concern and confusion sprang up over the weekend, largely via Twitter, in response to what authors and others believed was a decision by Amazon to remove "adult" titles from its sales rankings. On Sunday evening, however, an Amazon spokesperson said that a "glitch" had occurred in its sales ranking feature that was in the process of being fixed. The spokesperson added that there was no new policy regarding "adult" titles. As of Monday morning, a number of titles affected by the glitch were still without sales rankings. No one at Amazon was available this morning to discuss when the problem might be fixed or what caused the glitch.

For most of the weekend on Twitter, in conversations with the hash tag "#amazonfail," users were discussing the fact that the e-tailer was removing the sales rankings for books that it deemed featured "adult" content. Many readers, and writers, decried the fact that Amazon appears to be removing the sales ranking for titles that feature gay and lesbian characters and/or themes.

The director of the Erotic Authors Association, who goes by the pen name Erastes, told PW that many of her members "noticed their titles had been stripped of their sales rankings" on Amazon. One, Mark Probst, contacted a customer service representative at Amazon and wrote about the exchange on his blog. Probst wrote that the Amazon rep responded to his inquiry by saying that "'adult' material" is being excluded from appearing in "some searches and best seller lists" as a "consideration of our entire customer base."

Whatever the cause, titles like James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room and Annie Proulx's Brokeback Mountain are among the those that have lost their sales ranking. Bloggers aren't buying the glitch explanation and some are calling an Amazon boycott, but the fact that such a wide range of titles have lost their rankings suggest that whatever Amazon may have been trying to do went haywire

.

So first they told an LGBT author, the reason the titles were disappearing was they wanted to hide "adult" content from younger customers. When the furor broke out they changed their story to say a "glitch" caused the problem.

Searches conducted by yours truly are now turning up LGBT titles but the rankings situation has yet to be resolved. I've yet to decide how to feel about this, large companies often have problems where the right hand doesn't know what the left is doing, but I'd be lying if I said I don't buy the sudden switch in story.

Amazon.com relegates gay titles to porn status

Nope, not a joke. Tell everyone you know and for heaven's sake don't use Amazon until they change their stupid policy:

See this gizmodo article.

Amazon in it's infinite wisdom has decided that LGBT books are now "adult" content. What this means is not only do LGBT books not show up in the best seller lists, but a search for homosexuality in their search function only turns up anti-gay titles.

Folks this is definitely NOT ok. Danielle Steele titles, which are often VERY steamy, are still in the regular searches but a book on lesbian parenting is now considered porn by the geniuses at Amazon.

Ladies' woman

Fiction for your Friday is a bit early this week ...

She told me she liked women. Originally, this seemed like really good news. I was all about women who liked women, especially attractive ones. I like women. Hey great minds!

Well, not so much.

The more I spent time with her, the more I noticed her noticing women. And talking about women. Women who weren’t me. Yet that were was always that reassuring, “But I find you attractive,” disclaimer. So it was ok. It had to be.

Right.

At first, I found her frequent out of town trips and insistences we do things with our own friends separately refreshing. It can get suffocating being with a person who merges into you, who get hurts if you want a night out with your buds or you just want to hide in your safety zone and read a book. I thought it was healthy.

It wasn’t.

At first, we spent more and more time apart. Then, it felt like we were apart when we were in the same room. Then, this lover of women wanted no part of my touching her. She was having her period. Her breath was bad. My breath was bad. The sheets were the wrong color.

I swam the river denial. She was just going through a phase. We moved a bit fast, so things need to slow down and then they’ll even out. We’re meant to be and if I’m just patient, if I am her rock, she’ll drift back to me.

As she floated out into the ocean of her own desires.

There was no evidence, no defining moment, no righteous declaration. There was only the sinking feeling I’d been left behind. She never had to admit her guilt, she was not capable of feeling it. Why should she? Some infatuations don’t turn out.

They turn towards a new infatuation.

I can’t even be angry, for the same has happened to me too. There is a spark of interest that can only fan the smallest, brief flash. The fire can’t be sustained by a bit of paper that floats into the flame.

If you’re lucky, after several good tries, you meet someone who transcends the initial infatuation. Her spark hits some form of love accelerant and the fire grows bright and hot. In time, it dims but slows into a steady, warm glow.

She told me she likes women. But after awhile, she told me she just liked me.

Domestic partnership registry in Columbia

Just days after Iowa overturned their ban on same sex marriage, Columbia, MO made a baby step in that direction. The City Council unanimously voted for a Domestic Partnership registry.

The registry, which would allow unmarried couples to register as partners, is open to couples of any sexual orientation for a $25 fee. But most of the people who testified spoke of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community’s need for such a registry.

The registry, administered through the Columbia/Boone County Department of Public Health and Human Services, would not obligate employers to give domestic partner benefits or force hospitals to allow partners access to patients, but it would serve as proof of partnership for institutions that already recognize those relationships.

While this step is a far cry from Iowa's momentous decision, here's hoping our own new City Council members take steps in this same direction.

Support from friends

After hearing about Iowa's decision to legalize same-sex marriage just before the weekend, I immediately thought of a friend of mine. She was born and lived in Iowa for a few years, but moved to the Queen City with her parents while she was still quite young.

I've known her about six or seven years at this point, and in that time, I've watched her grow immensely. This straight friend was once one of the most conservative, Jesus-freak Catholics I've ever met. Now, she has become far more socially aware--probably in part to getting a degree in social work. And with that awareness, she's become more frustrated by the world she sees surrounding her, which in turn has led her to take some time away from church.

This is not about church-bashing. As one who grew up Catholic, I have little I can defend at times. I'm as livid as anyone about Benedict XVI's illogical remarks on condom usage and AIDS. It's a regular occurrence for me to be frustrated by the number of indivdiuals and churches who claim to be followers of Jesus--a compassionate and loving, person if one existed!--but deny dignity to anyone who's "different". (Be that difference sexuality, nation of origin, race, or another creed...)

But after Iowa's decision late last week, I decided to call this friend. She was excited to hear from me, and immediately all I could say was, "Well, you have a reason to be proud of your home state now, huh!?" She agreed enthusiastically. Then after a bit of small talk, she said to me that she was glad for the decision, because it was an opportunity for me--for ME--someday to get married.

These are the friends of whom I am most proud. These are individuals who, if not challenged by the idea of knowing someone who was both monogamous and gay, would likely believe that the two were incompatible with one another. These are the friends who probably would vote against anything labeled "same-sex" simply for the terminology, except that they know someone who is directly affected by the decision.

I feel a bit like a part of the "Get to know us" campaign that took off after Prop 8's defeat. But in a way, it's true. You don't have to tell the world you're gay. Just be honest with those closest to you. You will probably rock their world. But you may find support in the most (un)likely of places.