Ash Beckham delivers, and brings it home, laying out the whys and hows of not saying

That’s so gay

in a 5-minute speech in front of over 800 people as part of part of a series sponsored by Ignite Boulder.  With 20 slides set on auto-advance every 15 seconds, it’s a challenge, and Beckman conquered it, laying out the difference between tolerance and acceptance, and evoking laughter from the crowd for her use of images.

She rocks. And she’s right.

HT: SheWired

Jonah Mowry expresses his feelings on being bullied since he was 6.  He began cutting himself that year. He is now in 8th grade. With tears in his eyes, he assures viewers he is not going to kill himself, he

just needed to get this out here.

Lady Gaga bought a top-tier ticket and attended an exclusive Silicon Valley fundraiser at the home of Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg on Sunday night. Wearing a black, sleeveless lace gown and with her hair piled up, Lady Gaga was 2 feet taller than everyone including Obama, thanks to her super high heels and substantial up-do. Her outfit included a black veil. In recent days Gaga has been saddened and angered by the suicide of 14 year old fan Jamey Rodemeyer, and her choice of attire suggests mourning.

Last week Lady Gaga said she would be meeting with POTUS to discuss her concerns about bullying–at one point Gaga tweeted that bullying

must become illegal

USA Today reports from pool reporter Carol Lee of The Wall Street Journal:

POTUS spoke for about 8 minutes, with Lady Gaga sitting front and center. And although he never acknowledged her obvious presence, it seems likely the two crossed paths during greetings inside the house before the dinner.

ABC reports a slightly different scenario from an anonymous source inside the tent. According to their source, Gaga thanked the President for what he has accomplished, then read what she said was a letter from a fan discussing another of her fans who committed suicide over bullying. After which she

thanked Obama for hosting his anti-bullying conference with Michelle Obama, and then made a general plea to everyone in the room, including the president, to do what they can to prevent bullying.

Gaga was spurred to tweet on bullying after Jamey Rodemeyer killed himself over incessant bullying. His final tweet was

@ladygaga bye mother monster, thank you for all you have done, paws up forever

and he was buried in a “Born This Way” shirt. Jeremy had made an It Gets Better video in May, but the bullying at Williamsville North High School in Buffalo, N.Y., and online was ceaseless. New York already has an anti-bullying law, the Dignity for All Students Act, passed in 2010.

The Gay Straight Alliance issued a statement with regards to Gaga’s call for the criminalizing of bullying:

It’s great that Lady Gaga is bringing national attention to this problem, but now we must focus on real solutions. By writing letters, starting and supporting Gay-Straight Alliances, talking to teachers and administrators and mobilizing our communities, we can push schools to enforce existing non-discrimination policies in a way that doesn’t contribute to an environment of fear and punishment, but rather fosters a culture of safety, inclusion, and respect for all students.

Ticket cost for the Obama fundraiser was the standard $35,800 per couple/single seat. Gaga apparently came alone.

This caught my eye:

The Gainesville (Georgia) School Board has promised it would look into why two Chinese oriented meditation websites come up as ‘occult’ and are blocked by the Gainesville High School Internet filter…Expressing her concern at Monday’s board meeting held in the high school cafeteria, Mary Silver, who supports Clear Wisdom and Falun Dafa, told board members the sites do not encourage involvement in the occult. Far from it, she said.

Falun Dafa is also known as Falun Gong, a form of exercise and meditation banned by the Chinese government in 1999. Practitioners have been jailed, sent to work camps and tortured. And if you believe some websites, killed and their organs sold for transplants. Occult means “secret” or “hidden.” At time the word is equated with “esoteric,” and has by used by some to describe practices like meditation, yoga, astrology, witchcraft as well as various mono- and polytheistic faiths which may practice these exercises and arts. Lumped into “occult” by pop culture are werewolves, vampires, zombies and anything else scary.  Eye roll.

A quick search for “Falun Dafa” and “occult” gets you to discussion forums like Vampire.nu and Occultforum.org, as well as one site that claims Falun Dafa practitioners

collect energy for [their] own benefit, but a portion is re-directed (by occult processes) to the Falun Gong cause in China.

So basically, Falun Dafa practitioners believe they are using some not readily known method to help gain freedom to practice their religion and to draw attention to human rights abuses. Kinda like prayer circles where the faithful pray to make money or to get rid of demons in their neighborhood.

But wait a minute.  Why is the term “occult” blocked by the high school’s internet filter? What other words are blocked? And why? Is “atheist” blocked? “Evolution”?   Are certain religions? Philosophies? And how would parents feel if terms like “resurrection” or “son of God” were blocked?

In April Prince William School District in Virginia received a letter from the ACLU pointing out that the school district’s internet ban on the term LGBT was unconstitutional. TDB reported:

According to the ACLU, barred websites under the system’s “LGBT” filter include those for educational organization The Gay Lesbian and Straight Education Network, school diversity campaign the Gay-Straight Alliance Network, anti-bullying initiative Day of Silence, and anti-suicide initiative the It Gets Better Project.

Meanwhile, because Prince William County Public Schools does not elect to bar “political/activist groups,” “health,” or “reference,” it currently allows students to access anti-LGBT websites like People Can Change, the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality, and Exodus International.

At they time they sent out the letter, the ACLU issued the following statement:

The ACLU also sent similar letters to schools in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Texas as part of the organization’s “Don’t Filter Me” initiative, which seeks to combat illegal censorship of LGBT information on public school computer systems by enlisting students to check their school’s web browsers and report what they find.

Under the First Amendment right to free speech and the Equal Access Act, gay-straight alliances and LGBT support groups should have access to national organizational websites that help them to function, just as other groups, such as Key Clubs and the chess clubs, are able to access their national websites.

Ken Blackstone, a spokesman for the Prince William school system said that:

the school system is required by federal law to use Internet filtering software to keep students and staffers from looking at inappropriate content at school. He said the division’s Blue Coat filtering software blocks out 32 specific categories, including, for instance, sites containing pornography or promoting violence or drugs.

Butt the process is automated and sometimes the software doesn’t correctly differentiate between, for example, gay support groups and gay pornography.

In order to correct that problem, Blackstone said the school division has a process by which students or staff can request to have a site unblocked. He said that to the best of his knowledge, no one made such a request in this case.

So, if websites about certain  “occult” faiths, philosophies and belief systems are not allowed into the school, and other religions and philosophies are allowed to pass through the Internet filter, why? Who sets up these filters? Are they set by prevailing community standards, the Federal government, or by the school itself using certain guidelines and their own interpretations?

Seems though that blocking equal access to all religions is a blow against freedom of religion, one of the very cornerstones of our nation and one of the reasons we even have Founding Fathers.

And side note: banning the word “occult” prevents seekers from finding information about colon cancer, arthritis and even baseball!

UPDATE below

Country star Blake Shelton who has had charted numerous hits over the past decade and is now one of the judges on the new NBC singing show The Voice posted the message above to his Twitter Wednesday night, parodying Shania Twain’s “Any Man of Mine.”

Note the use of “tries” rather than “does.”  One accidental bump in a bar, or someone looking at you in a way you construe as inappropriate and a beat down is okay? WTF? If women acted like that toward men who tried to touch them, let alone did, civil behavior in public would be long gone.

And what if a woman grabbed Shelton’s ass? Would that be okay? Why? What if it was a woman he didn’t find attractive?

Shelton seems to be justifying this violent anti-gay behavior not because he thinks “no means no” gay or straight, but rather--based on the report below from the Advocate– because he definitely likes to mock LGBT and now feeds on his fans’ reactions to his comments:

Shelton hosted the Academy of Country Music Awards in Las Vegas with Reba McEntire over the weekend. When Swift came up, McEntire warned, “Don’t make jokes about Taylor Swift. If you make her mad, she’ll write a song about you. She writes songs about guys who break up with her. Which I don’t understand in the first place. She’s beautiful, she’s talented, she’s sweet. What in the world was Jake Gyllenhaal thinking anyway?”

Shelton responded by saying: “Wait a minute, he was in Brokeback Mountain.” The crack prompted laughter and cheers from the audience.

(Um, Blake honey, acting is a job. Straight actors play gay or straight. Gay actors play straight or gay.)

Now with that audience approval, Shelton seems to have found an angle: Making fun of LGBT.

To suggest that beating up anyone who “tries” to touch you is despicable. And in a climate of increased bullying and violence against the LGBT community from elementary schools onward, to suggest beating someone until they are a

bleedin’ heavin’ kinda guy

is grotesque and vile. And cowardly.

UPDATE:  On their blog GLAAD points out that The Voice, which features Blake Shelton as a judge, was praised for being one of the most gay-friendly shows on network TV. GLAAD calls for action from The Voice and an  apology from the cowardly cowboy Blake Shelton.

We have already called the show’s producers asking them to take action. But right now, Blake Shelton needs to recognize that violence against the LGBT community is not a laughing matter, and he needs to apologize to his fans, and to fans of The Voice, for his comments. We sent Blake this tweet: http://twitter.com/#!/glaad/status/66144223379984384

UPDATE 2: Shelton tweeted the following:

Hey y’all allow me to seriously apologize for the misunderstanding with the whole re-write on the Shania song last night…

It honestly wasn’t even meant that way… I now know that their are people out there waiting to jump at everything I say on here or anywhere

But when it comes to gay/lesbian rights or just feelings… I love everybody. So go look for a real villain and leave me out of it!!!

@glaad hey I want my fans and @nbcthevoice fans to know that anti-gay and lesbian violence is unacceptable!!!!! Help me!!!! And DM me…

“Misunderstanding”?  “People waiting to jump on you”?  Mmmm…not quite. You said something vile and inflammatory. Teddy has it best in comments below.

Thank you, Obama. While you haven’t been the president we thought you would be, thank you for your compassion in speaking out on the rash of LGBT teen suicides. I hope other former presidents–George W Bush for instance–do the same, as do other eected officials from both sides of the aisles.

You are not alone. You didn’t do anything wrong. You didn’t do anything to deserve being bullied. And there is a whole world waiting for you, filled with possibilities. There are people out there who love you and care about you just the way you are. And so, if you ever feel like because of bullying, because of what people are saying, that you’re getting down on yourself, you’ve got to make sure to reach out to people you trust. Whether it’s your parents, teachers, folks that you know care about you just the way you are. You’ve got to reach out to them, don’t feel like you’re in this by yourself.

The other thing you need to know is, things will get better. And more than that, with time you’re going to see that your differences are a source of pride and a source of strength. You’ll look back on the struggles you’ve faced with compassion and wisdom. And that’s not just going to serve you, but it will help you get involved and make this country a better place.

It will mean that you’ll be more likely to help fight discrimination – not just against LGBT Americans, but discrimination in all its forms. It means you’ll be more likely to understand personally and deeply why it’s so important that as adults we set an example in our own lives and that we treat everybody with respect. That we are able to see the world through other people’s eyes and stand in their shoes – that we never lose sight of what binds us together.

As a nation we’re founded on the belief that all of us are equal and each of us deserves the freedom to pursue our own version of happiness; to make the most of our talents; to speak our minds; to not fit in; most of all, to be true to ourselves. That’s the freedom that enriches all of us. That’s what America is all about. And every day, it gets better.

In 8th grade, we read Lord of the Flies. Very cheery book for an all girls school. Since then I have spent a lot of brain and life looking at how people behave towards each other. What we call “bullying” has a long history–it is part of our animal nature, driving out what is perceived as weak or different in order to make the herd feel secure. Witch burnings, the Inquisition, anti-Semitism, persecution of Protestants during the Reformation, genocide are bullying in the extreme and all stem from fear. You can this in any society and culture past and present be it indigenous jungle dwellers or MTV watching kids. There is a drive and belief that the Other must be blamed, must be destroyed.

Often that fear is fueled from a place of self-righteousness based in twisted socio-religious justifications which gives the bully, the persecutor the sense of moral superiority.  Since most of America identifies as Christian, it becomes necessary to bring up this:

Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them (Matthew 7:12; cf. Luke 6:31).

Yeah, basically

do unto others as you would have them do unto you

Parents of bullies, school administrators and other officials should think for a moment how they would feel if their child or family member were treated thusly, potentially to the point of killing themselves, and act accordingly. And kids who are being bullied need to having coping resources that empower them and get them through that vile place.

Modeling is important, which is why I was a bit shocked by the “turd burglar” comment in HCAN’s otherwise spot on video with Jack Black. Like wtf, a progressive group perpetuating anti-gay epithets?

I pray daily that the actions of school bullies toward LGBT, the disabled and and all those who are perceived as different will stop; that old women will not be stoned and burned in their villages; that love will replace hatred.

Today, through Tumblr and Facebook, over 3.5million people are wearing purple. Please join them in showing your love and support for teens who are bullied and harrassed, and to mourn the suicide of LGBT teens who were the victims of bullies.

Purple represents Spirit on the LGBTQ flag and that’s exactly what we’d like all of you to have with you: spirit. Please know that times will get better and that you will meet people who will love you and respect you for who you are, no matter your sexuality. Please wear purple on October 20th. Tell your friends, family, co-workers, neighbors and schools. RIP Tyler Clementi, Asher Brown, Seth Walsh, Justin Aaberg, Raymond Chase and Billy Lucas. You are loved.

Our youth is a vital resource, and we should be fostering love, support and tolerance. Please avoid the use of the word “gay” as an insult as in “That’s so gay.”

And while today is to visibly support spirit and peace, every day we need to make the effort and set an example.