Gay stuff 
Next Gen Evangelicals(0)
A surprisingly detailed and measured look at the changes in the evangelical landscape from gay magazine The Advocate raises some of the same points covered in the Newsweek article I wrote about a few days ago. It notes that young evangelicals are more likely to be concerned about the environment and more likely to believe [...]
Full Story»A Christmas gift for Ted..
This is what Ted Haggard wanted for Christmas… It’s just one of the poses from Mike Jones massage web site. Rev Haggard is obviously not the only local Jones was keeping happy, his site says:
“Voted best massage and personal trainer for the years 2000, 2001 and 2002 by readers of the community newspaper Out [...]
Evangelical male order
It’s fascinating to watch yet another Evangelical/Republican homo-sex scandal erupt. After Rep Mark Foley was introduced to the world by a White House page, Rev Ted Haggard hits the media courtesy of a Denver prostitute called Mike Jones. Not only did the (now former) president of the National Association of Evangelicals pay Jones for sex [...]
The long hual effect
From the Week in Review > Maybe Same-Sex Marriage Didn’t Make the Difference”>The New York Times yet another analysis about what the values vote means. They won the battle we’ll win the war!
Evan Wolfson, executive director of Freedom to Marry, a coalition based in New York, said the poll results show remarkable progress made [...]
More Values data
The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank does the values math and gets some slightly different figures:
Many religious conservatives have asserted that Bush owes his victory to values voters. That is partially true; more voters (22 percent) said their top issue was moral values than any other single issue, and an anti-gay-marriage ballot initiative in Ohio helped [...]
Washington Blade Blog on the values effect
Lots of interesting election analysis from Washington Blade Blog about the ‘moral values’ effect. Although various politicians, such as
California Democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein, is crediting the mass gay weddings as a factor – "It gave [conservatives] a position to rally around. The whole issue has been too much, too fast, too soon” – as Blade [...]
Gays vote for Bush
Chris Bull’s Campaign Notebook at gay.com has a fascinating set of statistics from exit polls indicating that 20% of self identified lesbian and gay voters voted for Bush, only a 5% decrease on his LGB vote in 2000.
"In 1984, when the Republican candidate for president, Barry Goldwater, voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, [...]
Values
Everyone’s reporting on the values issue and Karl Rove’s masterly strategy. No one yet seems to know quite what it means. The NYT sums up the numbers succinctly:
It was not a landslide, or a re-alignment, or even a seismic shock. But it was decisive, and it is impossible to read President Bush’s re-election with larger [...]
Was it about the gays?
In the wake of President George Bush’s decisive victory in the US presidential elections, and a clean sweep by Republicans in the senate and house elections, many commentators are pointing to “values” and gay marriage as the clincher in these victories.
In a round up of press reports the BBC highlighted the following comments:
In the Washington [...]
Young and gay in Tulsa
An extraordinary piece of long narrative journalism in the Washington Post: In the Bible Belt, Acceptance Is Hard-Won.
Michael Shackelford slides under his 1988 Chevy Cheyenne. Ratchet in hand, he peers into the truck’s dark cavern, tapping his boot to Merle Haggard’s “Silver Wings” drifting from the garage.
Flat on his back, staring into the cylinders [...]
Star Trek Star and Republican senate candidate in Paris sex club
It’s a Republican sex scandal with a twist. Deliciously, it involves not only public sex at Paris and New York sex clubs but Star Trek star Jerri Ryan whose character Seven-of-Nine achieved a certain gay cult status.
Ryan’s former husband Jack Ryan has been forced to abandon his run for the US Senate after embarrassing [...]
New posts at SSONET Blog
I haven’t posted here for a while. But I am making regular postings to the staff blog at Sydney Star Observer.I will post here from time to time but if you want to know what I’m up to then check out the SSO Blog.My classical music column is also now archived here
Fissures
Following the decision of two Californian judges not to injunct the San Francisco granting of marriage licenses to same sex couples President Bush has again said that he is troubled by “activist judges, who are defining marriage”
“I’m watching very carefully, but I’m troubled by what I’ve seen. People need to be involved with [...]
Trickster
This is a copy of an article I recently published on the John Marsden defamation tiral and mythological images mobalised in the media coverage of the trial.
Recent scholarship has explored the mythical function of news reporting. A diverse set of studies has shown that when news takes mythic shape it can perform both a community-building [...]
Mad Vow Disease
I’ve neglected this blog for a couple of months now. Mainly because I am trying to finish off my Master’s thesis.
But I want to get back into the discipline of regular posting. So to begin here’s an excerpt from a talk I gave recently about media naratives of same sex marriage. I’ll post some more [...]