The Column

This morning was a beautiful Minnesota spring day. Walking along Northrup Mall on the U of MN campus, I noticed a throng of students shouting and a police car. What was all the commotion?

Brother Zed is back. This man is the local Christian fanatic. He walks around campus telling everyone that they are going to hell. He always has some harsh words for the ‘homah sekshuls.’ Today he had another man with him shoutin’ and yellin.’ But perhaps the worst part was that he had kids with him. Like grade school age kids.

Aside from the hate spewing, I’m glad the fanatics were there. The number of students arguing with him and supporting the GLBT community was immense. At one point there were at least 150-200 observers, many wearing anti-homophobia stickers being passed out by the Queer Student Cultural Center, and group of at least 30 very vocal students arguing with these fanatics.

Seeing that support got me a bit choked up. There people you wouldn’t expect to be rallying for GLBTS folks; fratboys and guys wearing football jerseys, conservative looking girls and hippies, all gathered together, defending the rights and well-being of their fellow GLBT students. It’s easy to forget the support we enjoy at the U of MN, especially in light of the virulent attacks by the religious right over the past year or two. This university rocks, this city rocks, and this state ain’t so damn bad after all.

I am really, really glad I moved here. And I’m really fortunate that I’ve had the opportunity to be myself in school, at work, and at home. The students at the U of MN should be proud, because I sure am proud of them.

And this was the one time I didn’t have my camera with me. Godammit!

POSTSCRIPT: The fanatic I referred to may have been Brother Jed, the notorious ‘mall preacher’. I certainly wish I would have taken a picture, because I can’t tell if it was him or not. He did have his family there, which is a trademark for him, so I suppose it could have been. If you are interested in knowing more about Brother Jed or other campus ‘mall preachers,’ check out this editorial. Brother Jed’s sloppy website can be found here. Thanks to Jason at the Game and How We Played It for the info!

A Minnesota couple seeking to adopt a child was harassed by 200 members of the Minnesota Family Council, so much so that the couple has asked to have their names removed from the Lutheran Social Services website.
This doesn’t sound very pro-family to me. But isn’t pro-family just another term for anti-gay?

Just got the word that Minnesota will be trying to amend the state constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman.

The legislative session doesn’t begin until Feb. 2nd. Good god! I’m going to be a busy man in 2004.

I talked about this a week or two ago. Here’s a great event if anyone wants some action on this topic.Rolling Out The Trojan Horse

The CDC’s New Plan for HIV Prevention

The feds have a new plan for preventing HIV and it ain’t all that good. Abstinence until marriage is the guiding light, and less and less money for tried and true community prevention seems to be the way Uncle Sam wants to go. It’s all starting to sound like a throw back to the Eighties when we couldn’t talk about the real needs of gay and bisexual men, there was a witch hunt mentality about HIV testing, and blame was placed at the feet of people living with HIV. Hear what Terje Anderson, executive director of NAPWA (National Association of People with AIDS) has to say about our government’s break from effective HIV prevention and how it will affect you.

Tuesday, November 18

7 – 8 p.m.

Davis Auditorium at

Macalester College

St Paul

A PrideAlive, Positive Link, MAP Public Policy event sponsored by Minnesota AIDS Project.

To register, please contact the MAP AIDSLine at

(612) 373-AIDS or (800) 248-AIDS

Reading Bob Herbert’s November 3rd New York Times editorial got me thinking…. This country is becoming more puritanical, more deadly. The fact that a fundie group could create so much excitement, by creating a list of scientific research that they disagree with, is cause for alarm. But what is even more alarming is that this ideology is winning.

A while back, I was handed a report by Rep. Henry Waxman, which this site is based on. Science is swiftly becoming replaced by christian ideology, and pretty soon we’ll be faced with the assertion that, yes indeed, the universe revolves around the Earth, again (sorry Galileo, Copernicus).

The dangerous part is that queer healh concerns are being erased from conciousness of American government. It started with Healthy People 2010, a report comissioned by the Clinton administration to evaluate the health of the country. For the first time it had specific focus on GLBT health concerns. As soon as Bush arrived, the GLBT part of that report was rescinded.

Then, the government started increasing funds for abstinence-only until marriage health education, at the same time it continued to rally support for the proposed amendment to the Constitution banning same-sex marriage, thereby mocking all queer youth in America, telling them they are worthless and sexless. This is a perfect recipe for inflicting psychological torture on our queer youth as well as denying them any useful information about their sexual health.

The Centers for Disease Control also altered their information on condom effectiveness. In addition, studies on the CDC website that showed that comprehensive sex education does not cause kids to have sex was deleted. Abstinence infromation was put in it’s place.

And around the same time, HIV prevention and education programs thoughout the country are under attack.

This is only the tip of the pimple known as the Bush administration and its fundie christian pus is ooozing all over our health and safety. Welcome back to the 80s.

The Maranatha Christian Fellowship at the University of Minnesota is suing the university because they are scared that queers, communists, vegetarians, and other crazy folks are going to infiltrate their happy little group.

The heart of the suit focuses on the Equal Opportunity Statement that all U of MN student groups must sign in order to receive the benefits of registered student group status. These benefits include access to grants, free meeting space, and a credit union account among other things. They contest that the statement violates the group’s First Amendment rights.

MCF does not want to sign the document that would theoretically allow gays, atheists, adulterers, and fornicators into leadership positions within the group. MCF is concerned that these evil-doers will gain leadership and bring them down from the inside.

I don’t know how I feel about this one except that it would set a dangerous precedent if the Equal Opportunity Statement was ruled unconstitutional.

On a more serious note, I stopped by the MCF table at Coffman Union today out of curiousity, and thank the lord I did! As it turns out, the bible condemns Halloween, and dressing up for it is considered evil. Whew! That was a close one. Just think, I could have burned in hell for dressing up on Friday.