Microsoft's reversal on lgbt rights

Microsoft has already gotten some bad press, but it's important that they keep hearing from people. I'm pasting in a list of contacts below.


********** TAKE ACTION **********

1. Call Microsoft's director of Government Relations,
Jack Krumholtz, at tel. 202-263-5900

2. Contact these other contacts for Microsoft and its
public relations reps

- Jim Desler, Microsoft US
425-703-6061
jdesler@microsoft.com

- Dirk Delmartino,
Microsoft Europe
+32 (0)2 550 06 21
dirkdelm@microsoft.com

- The firm handling public policy for Microsoft in DC:
The Glover Park Group
Washington, DC
202-337-0808

- The firm handling Microsoft's "rapid response" to
questions:
Waggener Edstrom Rapid Response Team
rrt@wagged.com
503-443-7070

- Media Relations for Microsoft
Global Communications & Television
(212) 339-9920
mediarelations@gctv.com

- Microsoft Investor Relations
Curt Anderson
(425) 706-3703

- Walt McGraw, Edelman, (206) 223-1606,
walt.mcgraw@edelman.com

- Shon Damron, Edelman, (323) 857-9100,
shon.damron@edelman.com

- Carlos de Leon,tel. 425-703-3824, or
carlosde@microsoft.com

- Katie Goldberg, tel. 206-268-2244, or
katie.goldberg@edelman.com

3. Demand that Microsoft return the award it received
from the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center. We don't
give corporate bigots awards, and we don't expect them
to keep such awards under false pretenses. If
Microsoft has now rethunk its position on defending
civil rights, then give back the damn award:

Per Microsoft's own Web site:

"Microsoft has been honored for its pioneering work on
behalf of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender
community with the annual Corporate Vision Award of
the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center."

Sex roles - or more bizarre deviant behavior

"When students tell me that they picked the 'wrong'--say, sociology--topic, I related them to the agonies and ennui that fellow candidates who chose 'in' topics on sex roles or more bizarre types of deviant behavior are experiencing."

- David Sternberg, How to Complete and Survive a Doctoral Dissertation (1981)

NGLTF assails new pope's record of "venomous hatred"

>Tuesday, April 19, 2005
>The Task Force On the Election of Joseph Ratzinger as Pope
>
>MEDIA CONTACT:
>Task Force Communications Department
>Roberta Sklar, Director of Communications
>media@thetaskforce.org
>646-358-1465
>
>National Gay and Lesbian Task Force On the Election of
>Joseph Ratzinger as Pope
>
>"Today, the princes of the Roman Catholic Church elected as
>Pope a man whose record has been one of unrelenting,
>venomous hatred for gay people, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.
>In fact, during the reign of John Paul II, Cardinal
>Ratzinger was the driving force behind a long string of
>pronouncements using the term 'evil' to describe gay people,
>homosexuality, and marriage equality. As a long-time
>Catholic from a staunchly Catholic family, I know that the
>history of the church is full of shameful, centuries-long
>chapters involving vilification, persecution, and violence
>against others. Someday, the church will apologize to gay
>people as it has to others it has oppressed in the past. I
>very much doubt that this day will come during this Pope's
>reign. In fact, it seems inevitable that this Pope will
>cause even more pain and give his successors even more for
>which to seek atonement."
>
>- Matt Foreman
> Executive Director

thoughts on friendship

"And yet it is perhaps in the nature of friendship, as opposed to love, that we can think of it as a constancy that requires no nurturing, and from which we can withdraw when we choose, certain that, like the affection of our mothers, it will be there to welcome us back whenever we return. Alas, this is not how it is with friendship...."
- David Leavitt, Martin Bauman

"People don't do right because of the fear of God or love of him. You do the right thing because the world doesn't make sense if you don't."
— Dorothy Allison, Bastard Out of Carolina

my mom is pretty cool

My mom is mentioned in a New York Times article on women in the sciences...and it's a front-page story.

...tyin' up my white tie...puttin' on my tails!

The pope left very elaborate instructions about what everyone should wear at his funeral.

After the millions had filed past the pope's body, his face was covered with a white cloth by his faithful aide Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, who was also JPII's closest companion for twenty-five years and the only individual he thanked in his last will and testament.

Later, the pope's coffin was carried by 12 pallbearers wearing white gloves, white ties, and tails.

Where was gay liberation born?

Jason sent me a very interesting article about a controversy that has resulted from a decision by the folks who sponsor Philadelphia's PrideFest, a sort of secondary gay pride event held each spring there for many years. This year, they've decided that the event will honor the 40th anniversary of the annual picket held outside Independence Hall beginning in 1965.

The question of course has become which city is the "birthplace of gay liberation," or something. Within the admittedly ridiculous terms of the question, Philadelphia actually has a pretty strong case. The first commemmorations of the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall riots, which eventually became that which we know as Pride, was (as Marc Stein has described) the outcome of a decision by the East Coast Homophile Organizations (ECHO) to replace the annual Independence Hall picket (begun in 1965) with the Stonewall observance.

Of course, what's really at stake here is money, at a time when cities are starving. Equality Forum, which was called PrideFest at the time I lived in greater Phila, seems to have decided to hold this big 40th-anniversary party for the 1965 pickets, when they didn't really have a 35th or 30th anniversary party. They basically want to create a new anniversary.

This of course is within their rights. We celebrate all kinds of anniversaries that were long unrecognized; Roe v. Wade didn't make the front page of the NYT when it was decided in 1973. But they shouldn't imagine no one will object.