after-words.org

You were expecting, maybe, gratitude for your lynching apology? You should live so long. Here are my top 10 reactions to America's latest patronizing attempt to repent its racism:

1. Bite me.

2. Damn right, the least you could do.

3. Mighty white of you.

4. Gee, couldn't you have waited just a little longer -- until even the trees from which the "strange fruit" swung were dead?

5. I'm not impressed, but then, I'm bell-curved. What do I know?

6. Thanks for kicking our asses so hard, and for so long, that we were forced to develop entire art forms around our oppression.

7. Try not to break your arm patting yourselves on the back.

8. Give us back the land, the businesses and the unpaid debts that were the true cause of many lynchings. You sleaze bags!

9. Gee, was there no appropriate Hallmark card? Let a sister help you out:

Sorry I castrated your granddad. My bad.
What's 300 years of raping your ancestors among friends?
Sticks and stones may break your bones ... Oops. They already did.

And my topmost reaction to your lame-ass, late-ass lynching apology:

10. Thanks for absolutely, positively nothing. You feel better. We feel worse. Déjà bloody vu all over again....

WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) refused repeated requests for a roll call vote that would have put senators on the record on a resolution apologizing for past failures to pass anti-lynching laws, officials involved in the negotiations said Tuesday.

And there was disagreement Tuesday over whether Saxby Chambliss, one of Georgia's two Republican senators, had supported the measure when it was approved Monday night. As dozens of descendants of lynching victims watched from the Senate gallery, the resolution was adopted Monday evening under a voice vote procedure that did not require any senator's presence.

Eighty senators, however, had signed as co-sponsors, putting themselves on record as supporting the resolution. By the time the Senate recessed Tuesday evening, five other senators had added their names as co-sponsors, leaving 15 Republicans who had not.

Georgia Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson was among the 80 sponsors listed Monday night. Chambliss' name was added to the list of co-sponsors after the resolution was adopted, according to the Congressional Record. But his office said he had signed onto the bill as a co-sponsor before Monday's vote.

The resolution was adopted under what is called "unanimous consent," whereby it is adopted as long as no senator expresses opposition.

But the group that was the driving force behind the resolution had asked Frist for a formal procedure that would have required all 100 senators to vote. And the group had asked that the debate take place during "business hours" during the week, instead of Monday evening, when most senators were traveling back to the capital.

Frist declined both requests, the group's chief counsel, Mark Planning, said Tuesday evening.

"It was very disappointing" that Frist handled the matter the way he did, Planning said. "Other groups have gotten roll call votes, so there was nothing new to this, nothing different that we were asking for." [...]

Updated list of bill cosponsors at THOMAS.

A pair of risque Art Deco statues at the US Justice Department have been quietly put back on show, three years after a mysterious cover-up. Majesty of Justice and Spirit of Justice depict a partially nude man and a woman with one breast fully exposed.

The two sculptures, in the building's famous Great Hall, were covered during the tenure of former Attorney General John Ashcroft, a devout Christian.

A spokesman said new Attorney General Alberto Gonzales backed the unveiling. But the decision to remove the curtains which covered the two statues was taken by an assistant attorney general, and not Mr Gonzales himself, the spokesman added. Mr Gonzales "agreed with the recommendation", Kevin Madden said.

The homes of some 200,000 Zimbabwean city dwellers have been demolished in the past three weeks, according to the United Nations.

Police have been moving from area to area, in some cases forcing people to knock down their own homes. In others, they have turned up with bulldozers to demolish structures which they say have been built illegally.

"We were busking, enjoying the winter sun when we heard trucks and bulldozers roll in. There was pandemonium as we rushed to salvage the little we could," one resident of the capital, Harare told the BBC News website. "In no time the cottage I had called home for three years was gone. Then it dawned on me that I was now homeless, you try and pinch yourself and wake up but this was no dream. My life had been shattered before my very own eyes."

Worshippers at a Harare mosque have even been made to destroy it, says opposition MP Trudy Stevenson.

Thousands of desperate Zimbabweans are living on the streets, others have gone back to their rural homes, while some have managed to squeeze into parts of the cities not yet touched by what some are calling the "tsunami". President Robert Mugabe said "Operation Murambatsvina [Drive out rubbish]" was needed to "restore sanity" to Zimbabwe's cities, which he said had become overrun with criminals.

His critics say it is no coincidence that opposition to his rule is strongest in urban areas - and that in March the opposition Movement of Democratic Change (MDC) won almost all urban seats for a second election in a row....

(White) Women We Love (washingtonpost.com) By Eugene Robinson Friday, June 10, 2005; Page A23

Someday historians will look back at America in the decade bracketing the turn of the 21st century and identify the era's major themes: Religious fundamentalism. Terrorism. War in Iraq. Economic dislocation. Bioengineering. Information technology. Nuclear proliferation. Globalization. The rise of superpower China.

And, of course, Damsels in Distress.

Every few weeks, this stressed-out nation with more problems to worry about than hours in the day finds time to become obsessed with the saga -- it's always a "saga," never just a story -- of a damsel in distress. Natalee Holloway, the student who disappeared while on a class trip to the Caribbean island of Aruba, is the latest in what seems an endless series. [...] The specifics of the story line vary from damsel to damsel. In some cases, the saga begins with the discovery of a corpse. In other cases, the damsel simply vanishes into thin air. Often, there is a suspect from the beginning -- an intruder, a husband, a father, a congressman, a stranger glimpsed lurking nearby.

Sometimes the tale ends well, or well enough, as in the cases of Smart and Lynch. Let's hope it ends well for Holloway. But more often, it ends badly. Once in a great while, a case like Runaway Bride comes along to provide comic relief.

But of course the damsels have much in common besides being female. You probably have some idea of where I'm headed here.

A damsel must be white. This requirement is nonnegotiable. It helps if her frame is of dimensions that breathless cable television reporters can credibly describe as "petite," and it also helps if she's the kind of woman who wouldn't really mind being called "petite," a woman with a good deal of princess in her personality. She must be attractive -- also nonnegotiable. Her economic status should be middle class or higher, but an exception can be made in the case of wartime (see: Lynch).

Put all this together, and you get 24-7 coverage. The disappearance of a man, or of a woman of color, can generate a brief flurry, but never the full damsel treatment....

Media under fire for missing persons coverage (MSNBC)
By ERIN TEXEIRA, AP National Writer

Updated: 7:25 p.m. ET June 15, 2005

Most of the missing adults tracked by the FBI are men. More than one-in-five of those abducted or kidnapped are black.

advertisement
But you might not get that impression from the news media, and some journalism watchdogs are now taking the industry to task for what they see as a disproportionate emphasis on cases in which white girls and women — overwhelmingly upper-middle class and attractive — disappear.

Television executives, who receive much of the criticism, defend their coverage. They stress that cases such as the recent disappearance in Aruba of 18-year-old Natalee Holloway of Alabama are extraordinary, and would be newsworthy no matter her background. [...] “To be blunt, blond white chicks who go missing get covered and poor, black, Hispanic or other people of color who go missing do not get covered,” said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Washington-based Project for Excellence in Journalism. “You’re more likely to get coverage if you’re attractive than if you’re not.” [...] Many consider women more sympathetic potential victims than men — and white women even more so, said Kristal Brent Zook, a professor at the Columbia University School of Journalism. Zook wrote an article published in this month’s Essence magazine about missing black women who are largely ignored. “Who’s appealing? Who’s sexy?” she asked. “The virginal, pure, blond princess is missing. ... It has a lot to do with class and sexuality and ageism, not just race.” Maynard said many news directors, editors and everyday people stereotype men and minorities who turn up missing and assume “it’s drugs or criminal activity or some sort of pathology.” If journalists — consciously or unconsciously — expect men and minorities to be crime victims, she said, few will consider it newsworthy if that actually happens. “I don’t think it’s a conscious thing,” she added. “I think it’s an unconscious bias.” [...]

Spotlight skips cases of missing minorities
By Mark Memmott, USA TODAY

Tamika Huston's family reported her missing a year ago this week.

When police in Spartanburg, S.C., began investigating the 24-year-old woman's disappearance, her loved ones swung into action. They distributed fliers, held news conferences and set up a Web site. Huston's story became a cause célèbre in the local media. Huston lived alone and obviously hadn't been home for days, if not a week or two. Her dog, Macy, had given birth to puppies.

Rebkah Howard, Huston's aunt and a public relations professional in Miami, tried to get the national media interested in the case. "I spent three weeks calling the cable networks, calling newspapers — even yours," Howard said this week.

Not much happened.

Last August, Fox News Channel's On the Record with Greta Van Susteren briefly noted Huston's disappearance. Fox network's America's Most Wanted did a story about the case in March (it will be repeated this Saturday). National Public Radio did a report last month that, like this story, focused on the lack of interest in Huston's case.

Now, the disappearance of Alabama high school student Natalee Holloway, 18, in Aruba is getting lots of airtime on the cable news networks and morning news shows. Those networks, which drive such stories, are being asked a tough question: Do they care only about missing white women? [...] "When the Aruba story broke, I didn't know if she (Holloway) was white," said Mark Effron, vice president of news/daytime programming at MSNBC.

He said he saw a story about "a parent's worst nightmare."

Howard conceded it's unlikely her niece is alive. This year, Huston's blood was found in an acquaintance's apartment. No suspect has been charged. National attention might generate clues, however. What Huston's family is asking for, Howard said, is balance.

"If you were dropped on to this planet you'd think there's a strange thing going on, where only young white women are missing," Howard said. "That's not true."

By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 16, 2005; Page A01

The House handed President Bush the first defeat in his effort to preserve the broad powers of the USA Patriot Act, voting yesterday to curtail the FBI's ability to seize library and bookstore records for terrorism investigations.

Bush has threatened to veto any measure that weakens those powers. The surprise 238 to 187 rebuke to the White House was produced when a handful of conservative Republicans, worried about government intrusion, joined with Democrats who are concerned about personal privacy. One provision of the Patriot Act makes it possible for the FBI to obtain a wide variety of personal records about a suspected terrorist -- including library transactions -- with an order from a secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, where the government must meet a lower threshold of proof than in criminal courts.

Under the House change, officials would have to get search warrants from a judge or subpoenas from a grand jury to seize records about a suspect's reading habits.

Some libraries have said they are disposing of patrons' records more quickly because of the provision, which opponents view as a license for fishing expeditions.

House Administration Committee Chairman Robert W. Ney (Ohio), one of three House Republicans who opposed the Patriot Act when it was enacted in 2001, voted yesterday to curtail agents' power to seize the records.

"Everybody's against terrorism, but there has to be reason in the way that we fight it," Ney said. "The government doesn't need to be sifting through library records. I talked to my libraries, and they felt very strongly about this."

BOISE, Idaho -- A Kansas preacher and gay rights foe whose congregation is protesting military funerals around the country said he's coming to Idaho tomorrow to picket the memorial for an Idaho National Guard soldier killed in Iraq. A flier on the Web site of Pastor Fred Phelps' Westboro Baptist Church claims God killed Cpl. Carrie French with an improvised explosive device in retaliation against the United States for a bombing at Phelps' church six years ago.

"We're coming," Phelps said yesterday.

Westboro Baptist either has protested or is planning protests of other public funerals of soldiers from Michigan, Alabama, Minnesota, Virginia and Colorado. A protest is planned for July 11 at Dover Air Force Base, the military base where war dead are transported before being sent on to their home states.

Phelps gained national notoriety in 1998 when he picketed the funeral of Matthew Shepard, the gay college student beaten to death in Wyoming. Since then, Phelps said his church has been the target of hateful words and actions, including a bomb attack six years ago. Phelps' church has picketed the funerals of AIDS victims for more than a decade.

French, 19, was a Caldwell High School graduate and varsity cheerleader. She was killed June 5 in the northern city of Kirkuk. French served as an ammunition specialist with the 116th Brigade Combat Team's 145th Support Battalion. Phelps said the fact that French led an all-American life gives him all the more reason to picket her final public tribute. "An all-American girl from a society of all-American heretics," he said. "Our attitude toward what's happening with the war is the Lord is punishing this evil nation for abandoning all moral imperatives that are worth a dime," Phelps said...

Though Andreas Villazane, 22, was his high school’s prom king — its first Hispanic prom king, in fact — the night wasn’t quite complete.

“I didn’t go to prom with my boyfriend because I was afraid of what people would think,” he says, touching the collar of his coral dress shirt. He looks up and smiles. “We couldn’t go to prom together, so we got to do it tonight.”

Villazane sits at a confetti-spangled table behind a bevy of red and black balloons, taking a breather from the dancing at Noche de Arcoiris (Night of the Rainbow), a queer youth prom held in Pilsen, Chicago’s largest Mexican American neighborhood. Behind him, in the Mexican Fine Arts Museum’s West Wing, the few wallflowers watch the crowd from the sidelines. Fledgling drag queens test their heels on the dance floor, from time to time touching the ends of their hair. A girl in a red salsa dress, grinning, elbows a male friend towards a tall, dapper boy in a fedora, and a slightly older white lesbian couple, one in a suit, the other wearing a midnight-blue gown, grin sheepishly at the boys grinding on the dance floor. Two girls share a tender kiss.

The event is hosted by WRTE 90.5 FM’s Homofrecuencia, the country’s only Spanish-language queer youth radio show, as a reclaimation of the beloved and benighted high school ritual. It is, to the best of their knowledge, the first time a queer prom has been held in Chicago outside of the North Side’s Boystown, Chicagoland’s mostly-white gay mecca. “That’s part of the point,” says Homofrecuencia producer Tania Unzueta,. “We want to create a safe space for us within our own communities. We want to be who we are, where we live.” Unzueta says the invisibility of Latinos in the queer community inflicts a crisis of identity on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and quuer Latino youth. “It implies this dichotomy,” she sighs, “that gay means white, and Latina means heterosexual. If youth can’t see gays within the Latina community, and Latinas within the gay community, it affects their image of themselves.”

The Supreme Court overturned the conviction of a black death row inmate who said Texas prosecutors unfairly stacked his jury with whites, issuing a harsh rebuke to the state that executes more people than any other.

The 6-3 ruling today ordered a new trial for Thomas Miller-El, who challenged his conviction for the 1985 murder of a 25-year-old Dallas motel clerk. It was the second time justices reviewed the case after a lower court refused to reconsider Miller-El's claims.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans was wrong to reaffirm the conviction by a state court in light of the strong evidence of prejudice during jury selection, justices said.

The state court's conclusion that the prosecutors' strikes of people from the jury pool was "not racially determined is shown up as wrong to a clear and convincing degree; the state court's conclusion was unreasonable as well as erroneous," Justice David H. Souter wrote for the majority.

In the opinion, Souter noted that black jurors were questioned more aggressively about the death penalty, and the pool was "shuffled" at least twice by prosecutors, apparently to increase the chances whites would be selected.

He was joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer....

By Tom Hamburger, Times Staff Writer
Los Angeles Times
June 12, 2005

A closed-door vote by the Senate Intelligence Committee last week to expand law enforcement powers under the USA Patriot Act is prompting sharp criticism from some conservative leaders who are otherwise among the most vocal allies of President Bush and the Republican leadership in Congress.

The conservative leaders -- who have formed a coalition with critics on the left, including the American Civil Liberties Union -- vowed to press their concerns in coming days with public statements, rallies and radio advertisements in key congressional districts. The conservatives, including former U.S. Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.) and political activists who have been long-standing critics of the anti-terrorism law, lashed out with particular force last week against the White House, members of Congress and Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales. They said they had expected a more open review of the Patriot Act in which lawmakers considered some limits in order to safeguard civil liberties.

The conservatives complained that the Senate panel had moved in secret to expand the act. They are particularly upset about proposed "administrative subpoenas" that would let the FBI obtain a person's medical, financial and other records in terrorism cases without seeking a judge's approval. [...] The head of the American Conservative Union, David Keene, said he was upset that the administration appeared to be encouraging the Patriot Act provisions' renewal through the more secretive Senate Intelligence Committee, despite pledges of openness and of a willingness to consider compromise. The Senate Judiciary Committee also has jurisdiction over renewing the act, but it has not begun deliberations, which are generally open to the public.

Keene is particularly upset with Atty. Gen. Gonzales, who has agreed in recent meetings with conservative activists, participants said, to the principle of open discussion and careful review of the Patriot Act before 16 of its most important provisions are renewed. The Intelligence Committee's decision to proceed on the Patriot Act was made without objection from the White House or from Gonzales.

"I find it disquieting that he talks like he is a reasonable guy and then, when it comes down to it, acts like he is not," Keene said. "We need to know: Who is the real Gonzales?"...

The AIDS epidemic is increasingly taking on a female face in America, with the number of women with AIDS soaring 15% between 1999 and 2003 - compared with 1% in men - a sobering new report shows.

And a growing percentage of all new infections with HIV - the virus that causes AIDS - is happening between men and women and is on track to eclipse homosexual transmission within a decade if left unchecked, researchers said yesterday. "This is going to continue on the same trend until we get much more targeted prevention to women," said the lead researcher, Thomas Quinn of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

In New York City, the number of women with HIV or full-blown AIDS has grown 9.4% between 2001 and 2003, outpacing the 8.5% increase in men, though there are still about twice as many HIV-positive men as women, city records show. The alarming trend spurred city officials to issue a health bulletin earlier this year warning women that unprotected sex is riskier for women than men.

"Women are more vulnerable to this disease than people had thought," said Diane Tufaro, a member of the state Health Department's HIV Women's Guideline Committee. Women are more likely to become infected with HIV than men because of their anatomy and because having other sexually transmitted diseases is more likely to break down the vagina's natural barrier against the virus, said Tufaro, a nurse practitioner at Westchester Medical Center.

Four out of five American women with HIV were infected through heterosexual sex, with the rest getting it from tainted needles, according to findings published today in the journal Science. "Men are the ones who are spreading it to women," Quinn told the Daily News. "Women can spread it to men, but it's harder."

Black women were 25 times more likely to be diagnosed with the incurable disease than white women, underscoring a strong link between AIDS and poverty and lack of access to good health care, Quinn said.

In sub-Saharan Africa, 60% of AIDS patients are women. "We're just following the same trend if this remains unchecked," Quinn said....

Will cancer vaccine get to all women?
# 18 April 2005
# NewScientist.com news service
# Debora MacKenzie

DEATHS from cervical cancer could jump fourfold to a million a year by 2050, mainly in developing countries. This could be prevented by soon-to-be-approved vaccines against the virus that causes most cases of cervical cancer - but there are signs that opposition to the vaccines might lead to many preventable deaths.

The trouble is that the human papilloma virus (HPV) is sexually transmitted. So to prevent infection, girls will have to be vaccinated before they become sexually active, which could be a problem in many countries.

In the US, for instance, religious groups are gearing up to oppose vaccination, despite a survey showing 80 per cent of parents favour vaccinating their daughters. "Abstinence is the best way to prevent HPV," says Bridget Maher of the Family Research Council, a leading Christian lobby group that has made much of the fact that, because it can spread by skin contact, condoms are not as effective against HPV as they are against other viruses such as HIV.

"Giving the HPV vaccine to young women could be potentially harmful, because they may see it as a licence to engage in premarital sex," Maher claims, though it is arguable how many young women have even heard of the virus....

Virginity or Death!
Katha Pollitt
The Nation

Imagine a vaccine that would protect women from a serious gynecological cancer. Wouldn't that be great? Well, both Merck and GlaxoSmithKline recently announced that they have conducted successful trials of vaccines that protect against the human papilloma virus. HPV is not only an incredibly widespread sexually transmitted infection but is responsible for at least 70 percent of cases of cervical cancer, which is diagnosed in 10,000 American women a year and kills 4,000. Wonderful, you are probably thinking, all we need to do is vaccinate girls (and boys too for good measure) before they become sexually active, around puberty, and HPV--and, in thirty or forty years, seven in ten cases of cervical cancer--goes poof. Not so fast: We're living in God's country now. The Christian right doesn't like the sound of this vaccine at all. "Giving the HPV vaccine to young women could be potentially harmful," Bridget Maher of the Family Research Council told the British magazine New Scientist, "because they may see it as a license to engage in premarital sex." Raise your hand if you think that what is keeping girls virgins now is the threat of getting cervical cancer when they are 60 from a disease they've probably never heard of.

[...] Christian conservatives have a special reason to be less than thrilled about the HPV vaccine. Although not as famous as chlamydia or herpes, HPV has the distinction of not being preventable by condoms. It's Exhibit A in those gory high school slide shows that try to scare kids away from sex, and it is also useful for undermining the case for rubbers generally--why bother when you could get HPV anyway? In 2000, Congressman (now Senator) Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, who used to give gruesome lectures on HPV for young Congressional aides, even used HPV to propose warning labels on condoms. With HPV potentially eliminated, the antisex brigade will lose a card it has regarded as a trump unless it can persuade parents that vaccinating their daughters will turn them into tramps, and that sex today is worse than cancer tomorrow. According to New Scientist, 80 percent of parents want the vaccine for their daughters--but their priests and pastors haven't worked them over yet....

CBS News | Army Recruiting Continues To Lag | June 9, 2005 13:13:19

Although the Army will not release its numbers until Friday, it fell about 25 percent short of its target of signing up 6,700 recruits in May, officials said Wednesday. The gap would have been even wider but for the fact that the target was lowered by 1,350. The Army said it lowered the May target to "adjust for changing market conditions," knowing that the difference will have to be made up in the months ahead.

The Army also missed its monthly targets in April, March and February -- each month worse than the one before. In February it fell 27 percent short; in March the gap was 31 percent, and in April it was 42 percent.

"It's like having a persistent drought," said Daniel Goure, a military analyst at the private Lexington Institute. "At some point when you have drought conditions you have to institute water rationing, and that's what you potentially face in the military if it goes on long enough. You would get to a stage where you don't have enough people to staff your organizations."

These recruiting statistics appear to indicate that the Army will likely to fall short of its full-year recruiting goal for the first time since 1999, raising longer-term questions about a military embroiled in its first protracted wars since switching from the draft to a volunteer force 32 years ago....

DoD assumes responsibility for releasing recruiting stats
(Army Times; June 3, 2005)
By Laura Bailey
Times staff writer

The Army and Marine Corps, as they struggle with recruiting shortfalls, will no longer announce their monthly recruiting numbers at the beginning of each month. Instead, the Defense Department will approve the release of recruiting statistics for all four services.

Normally, each service releases its monthly statistics at the beginning of each month, but a spokesman for Marine Corps Recruiting Command said on Wednesday that he was no longer authorized to do so. In April, the Corps missed its contracting goal by 260 contracts — falling 9 percent shy of its goal to enlist 2,971 recruits — marking the fourth month in a row that the Corps missed its contracting goal. But whether the Corps was able to turn that around in May will not be known until the Defense Department releases the statistics June 10, said Maj. David Griesmer.

The change will ensure consistency and give Pentagon officials time to review the data, Air Force Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said on Wednesday. “We just wanted to release all the information at the same time. It’s all the numbers at once, instead of one service coming out on this day of the month and another service coming out on another day of the month,” Krenke said....

When Marine recruiters go way beyond the call
By SUSAN PAYNTER
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

For mom Marcia Cobb and her teenage son Axel, the white letters USMC on their caller ID soon spelled, "Don't answer the phone!"

Marine recruiters began a relentless barrage of calls to Axel as soon as the mellow, compliant Sedro-Woolley High School grad had cut his 17th birthday cake. And soon it was nearly impossible to get the seekers of a few good men off the line. [...] Axel's father, a Marine Corps vet who served in Vietnam, died when Axel was 4.

Clearly the recruiters knew all that and more.

"You don't want to be a burden to your mom," they told him. "Be a man." "Make your father proud." Never mind that, because of his own experience in the service, Marcia says enlistment for his son is the last thing Axel's dad would have wanted.

[...] Next thing Axel knew, the same sergeant and another recruiter showed up at the LaConner Brewing Co., the restaurant where Axel works. And before Axel, an older cousin and other co-workers knew or understood what was happening, Axel was whisked away in a car.

"They said we were going somewhere but I didn't know we were going all the way to Seattle," Axel said.

Just a few tests. And so many free opportunities, the recruiters told him.

He could pursue his love of chemistry. He could serve anywhere he chose and leave any time he wanted on an "apathy discharge" if he didn't like it. And he wouldn't have to go to Iraq if he didn't want to.

At about 3:30 in the morning, Alex was awakened in the motel and fed a little something. Twelve hours later, without further sleep or food, he had taken a battery of tests and signed a lot of papers he hadn't gotten a chance to read. "Just formalities," he was told. "Sign here. And here. Nothing to worry about."

By then Marcia had "freaked out."

She went to the Burlington recruiting center where the door was open but no one was home. So she grabbed all the cards and numbers she could find, including the address of the Seattle-area testing center.

Then, with her grown daughter in tow, she high-tailed it south, frantically phoning Axel whose cell phone had been confiscated "so he wouldn't be distracted during tests."

Axel's grandfather was in the hospital dying, she told the people at the desk. He needed to come home right away. She would have said just about anything.

But, even after being told her son would be brought right out, her daughter spied him being taken down a separate hall and into another room. So she dashed down the hall and grabbed him by the arm.

"They were telling me I needed to 'be a man' and stand up to my family," Axel said.

What he needed, it turned out, was a lawyer.

Five minutes and $250 after an attorney called the recruiters, Axel's signed papers and his cell phone were in the mail....

US Army misses 4th monthly recruiting goal in row
08 Jun 2005 19:24:32 GMT
Source: Reuters

In fresh signs of the strain the Iraq war has put on the U.S. military, the Army missed its fourth straight monthly recruiting goal in May, while divorce rates for officers have surged, officials said on Wednesday.

[...] Meanwhile, the divorce rate more than tripled among Army officers from 2002 to last year, Pentagon figures showed. The Army provides most of the ground forces in the Iraq war, which began in 2003.

[...] SPIKE IN DIVORCES

Maj. Elizabeth Robbins, an Army spokeswoman, said the Army is aware overseas duty in combat zones can be stressful on soldiers and their families, and that the recent spike in divorces has caused concern.

"The burden on officers is especially hard because of their responsibility for their troops when they are deployed," Robbins said.

In fiscal 2002, which ended on Sept. 30 of that year, 1.9 percent of 54,542 married Army officers got divorced, along with 3.1 percent of 193,638 married enlisted soldiers.

In fiscal 2003, which included the first six months of the Iraq war, 3.3 percent of 56,078 married officers and 2.8 percent of 198,230 married enlisted soldiers got divorced. In fiscal 2004, 6 percent of 55,550 married officers and 3.5 percent of 202,134 married enlisted soldiers got divorced.

The 6 percent divorce rate for Army officers was far higher than the figure for officers in other military services in 2004 -- 1.5 percent for the Air Force, 1.7 percent for the Marines and 2.5 percent for the Navy.

Army soldiers serve yearlong tours of duty in Iraq. Robbins said the Army briefs soldiers on how their absence during deployments and their eventual return can affect family relationships.

"We take seriously our obligation to assist soldiers and family members with the inevitable challenges," Robbins said.

Few people know that before he started making movies, Stanley Kubrick was a star photojournalist.

Six weeks after graduating from high school, Kubrick went to work for Look magazine the way other kids went to college.

Much later, Kubrick called his job at Look "a miraculous break." It taught him a lot about photography, but more that that, Look "gave me a quick education in how things happened in the world." In the summer of 1949, Look sent him to Chicago to shoot the pictures for a story by Irv Kupcinet. He brought back 40 rolls of film and a rare record of his own education as a filmmaker.

The Kubrick-Kupcinet story, "Chicago City of Contrasts," ran five pages, and included 11 pictures. Plenty of landmarks are here: State Street at night, dinner at the Pump Room, a South Side kitchen full of kids, a cheerful stripper in the middle of her act, a jazz club, a boxing match, the floor of the stock exchange, sleek commuter trains standing in the station, a bum eating lunch alone in a rubble-filled lot on the West Side....

Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean on Wednesday defended his recent harsh criticism of Republicans, including his observation that they are "pretty much a white, Christian party." Dean noted that he, too, is a white Christian. But he said the GOP is too narrow in its scope and the Democratic Party is far more diverse.

While even prominent Democrats in recent days have distanced themselves from some of his comments, the outspoken Dean, appearing on NBC's Today show, said criticism of him is meant by Republicans to divert attention from the country's problems and make him the issue instead Dean told a forum of journalists and minority leaders Monday that Republicans are "not very friendly to different kinds of people, they are a pretty monolithic party ... it's pretty much a white, Christian party." Challenged on that during the NBC interview, Dean said "unfortunately, by and large it is. And they have the agenda of the conservative Christians. This is a diversion from the issues that really matter: Social Security, and adequate job opportunity, strong public schools, a strong defense," Dean said....

Having come out at 15, teen doesn't have to hide
Sunday, June 5, 2005

By Kati Phillips
Staff writerVince Lognion started to notice boys in the seventh grade, about the same time his pals started to notice girls.

A student at a small, Lutheran school, he kept his feelings to himself because his teachers said they were sinful.

But Lognion didn't want to keep the secret from his friends forever. He asked his parents to send him to a public high school.

Now an 18-year-old senior at Lincoln-Way East, Lognion has been "out" to his friends and family for three years [...]

Lognion came out at age 15 by accident.

He came home one day and saw his mom crying in the driveway. When he got up to his room, he found the journal where he recorded feelings about his first boyfriend — a student in Palos Hills whom he met online — laying open on his bed.

Lognion became physically ill and nervous. He stopped eating and had only terse conversations with his parents while holed up in his room.

Eventually his mother confronted him in the car, a place he couldn't escape, and told him she loved him and accepted him no matter what. Later, his dad repeated the car trick and warned him to be careful of sexually transmitted diseases.

They cut off his relationship with his boyfriend, though the teens continued to talk, Lognion said. The rocky start has eased into acceptance of something that can't be changed.

"They (know now) it wasn't a phase, that this is really who I am," Lognion said. "This hasn't changed anything between us or my friends. It's just a different way of loving somebody."

Coming out to friends during his freshman year at Lincoln-Way East High School was a different story.

He arranged for dinners or coffee dates in other towns with the friends he felt would be understanding, and he worked his way down to people he met at the parochial kindergarten.

"I was afraid they'd think I was going against the church, going to hell," he said. "With friends from outside school and church, I feared they'd think it was morally wrong or gross, that they wouldn't want to be around me."

Their reactions were anti-climactic. They said they knew already and were just waiting for him to tell them....

In high school, he found his voice
Sunday, June 5, 2005
By Kati Phillips
Staff writer

Before Liam Reed started classes at Oak Forest High School, he pinned a gay pride button to his backpack.

He wanted people to know he was gay — and that he didn't care if they knew.

The pronouncement singled Reed out for bullying. Peers would call him "faggot" in the halls and locker room.

But Reed, a slim 17-year-old with gleaming braces, shouted right back. "I never had a big voice in grammar school since I moved here in the fourth or fifth grade," he said. "I was ready to talk. This was the perfect opportunity for me to show I could take care of myself."

Reed said he always knew he was gay, from his strange attraction to Power Rangers action heroes to crushes on cute boys in class. He first came out to a girl who shared his appreciation for the cult movie "Rocky Horror Picture Show."

The second person was more of a risk, a fellow eighth-grade boy he pined for all year. The boy politely declined, a sign that his generation was becoming more comfortable with homosexuality even if they were not gay, he said. [...] Some of Reed's gay and lesbian friends are out at school, but not at home. They fear being kicked out or physically abused by their parents, Reed said. To give them a social and support outlet, Reed founded the Gay-Straight Alliance this semester at Bremen High School District 228 with the blessing of his parents. The GSA provides a space for students to talk about their sexuality and deal with problems at home or school. They learn that it's OK to be themselves, to keep an open mind about people's differences and to be kind to and respect each other.

"If freshman year I had a GSA, it would've been easier," Reed said. "I probably would not have felt the need to scream." [...]

Into class and out of the closet
High school students 'coming out,' and schools are trying to keep up
Sunday, June 5, 2005

By Kati Phillips
Staff writerIf you are friends with Nate (not his real name) or you ask him nicely, he will share with you that he is gay.

Most everyone at Bremen High School knows, but this tall, punky 17-year-old hasn't talked about it with his parents for fear of being punched in the face or tossed out on the street.

In the past few weeks, he has attended meetings of the school's new Gay-Straight Alliance, a social outlet and support group for gay, straight and questioning teens.

He plans to "come out" to his parents this summer.

"I've gotten that from the GSA and being around people like me," he said. "Everybody else is out. Why am I waiting?" [...] Peter LaBarbera, executive director of the Illinois Family Institute, a conservative family-values organization, questions whether youths are emotionally mature enough to label themselves as gay.

He blames pro-gay groups and popular culture for glamorizing the gay lifestyle and encouraging students to come out, while not informing students about the dangers of gay sex.

"There is a big difference if this is happening in college or later in life," LaBarbera said. "At least then they are adults making adult decisions."

Coming out in high school is not without danger or isolation, according to the American Medical Association and American Counseling Association.

Gay youths are two to three times more likely to attempt suicide than their straight peers. Almost a third drop out of school or earn lower grade point averages because they are harassed.

Even in schools with anti-bullying policies, 84 percent of gay students report being verbally harassed because of their sexual orientation. More than 90 percent regularly hear derogatory comments like "that's so gay," according to a 2003 survey by Gay Lesbian and Straight Education Network.

Homewood-Flossmoor High School senior Alissa Norby said taunts can be direct, like when peers jeered at her, saying it's "Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve" before class. Or they can be indirect, like the way, she says, fellow tennis players ostracize a gay teammate.

South suburban students also have made national headlines for acts of gay acceptance.

In 2002, 60 students in Crete-Monee School District 201U staged a walk-out to protest anti-gay bias in the administration. Seniors voted two lesbians "cutest couple," but administrators put a hold on the yearbook picture until the girls' parents gave their permission.

"There is movement toward making a safer climate ... but it is too slow to keep up with students," said Aren Drehobl, spokesperson for the Chicago branch of GLSEN. [...] When Drehobl conducts staff training, she encounters teachers whose religion teaches that homosexuality is wrong.

Drehobl never advises people to change, just to create a safe space for all students.

"I often say I don't know a religion in the world that teaches violence and hate," she said.

Girls who wound up in Cook County's juvenile detention system were eight times more likely to die than the typical girl in Cook County, according to a study made public today. The study also found delinquent boys' mortality rate was 4.5 times that of those in the county's general population, pointing to a need for stronger intervention in low-income neighborhoods where most of the deaths are occurring, said one of the study's authors, Linda A. Teplin of Northwestern University.

Teplin acknowledged the numbers might not shock those accustomed to news of inner-city violence. "But I think the finding about the girls is surprising, and the finding about the boys is stunning," she said. "The nation was riveted by the 52 deaths in mass school shootings between 1990 and 2000. And yet in that same period in New York City alone, there were 840 deaths by guns among 14- to 17-year-olds."

The $15 million study tracked 1,829 youngsters between the ages of 10 to 18. They were selected randomly from the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center in Chicago between 1995 and 1998. The study is appearing in the June edition of the journal Pediatrics.

Each one of the youths in the study had at least one experience with the juvenile justice system. "That means there were opportunities to intervene," Teplin said.

Dr. Gary Slutkin is director of the Chicago Project for Violence Prevention, whose group works to hold down homicides by intervening in gang conflicts. "This is the heart disease or cancer for young people," Slutkin said, referring to the top killers for adults. "We need to figure out how to prevent it."

Teplin said the study was the first one to explore the deaths of delinquent girls. "Think about what kinds of girls wind up in juvenile detention," she said. "A lot of them were on the streets, turning to drugs and prostitution to support themselves. They live very high-risk lives. Some were shot. One was stabbed to death by her boyfriend."

The 71 Cook County study subjects who died ranged in age from 15 to 25 at the time of their deaths. Thirty-five of them were under 18. At least 47 were shot to death. Homicide rates for the survey group were more than double those of male youths between the ages of 15 and 24 in Cali, Colombia, Teplin pointed out.

Gender

For violent offenses, males have been victimized at higher rates than females, and the rates for females fell to 19.0 in 2003. Except for rape/sexual assault males had higher rates than females for other violent crimes.

According to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports, most murder victims were male, 77% in 2002.[...] Men were more likely than women to be the victim of a carjacking (2 men and 1 women per 10,000 persons).

Uniform Crime Reports, 2002 (Federal Bureau of Investigation, via FindArticles.com)
[...] Victims

Based on 2002 SHR data provided (where age, sex, or race were known for the victims), 90.1 percent of murder victims were adults. Males accounted for 76.8 percent of murder victims. Just over 8 percent (8.2 percent) of male victims and 15.3 percent of female victims were under the age of 18. By race, 48.7 percent of murder victims were white, 48.5 percent were black, and 2.7 percent were other races. (Based on Table 2.5.)...

(NOTE: 2002 data cited because it's the only year not locked up into PDF and Excel file formats. More recent data in those formats available at The FBI's Uniform Crime Reports website.)

The Internet's primary oversight body approved a plan Wednesday to create a virtual red-light district, setting the stage for pornographic Web sites to use new addresses ending in "xxx". The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers said it would begin negotiations with ICM Registry Inc., run by British businessman Stuart Lawley, to iron out technical issues and prices for the new Web addresses. Adult-oriented sites, a $12 billion industry, probably could begin buying "xxx" addresses as early as fall or winter depending on ICM's plans, ICANN spokesman Kieran Baker said.

The new pornography suffix was among 10 under consideration by the regulatory group, which also recently approved addresses ending in "jobs" and "travel." ICM contends the "xxx" Web addresses, which it plans to sell for $60 a year, will protect children from online smut if adult sites voluntarily adopt the suffix so filtering software used by families can more effectively block access to those sites.

The $60 price is roughly ten times higher than prices other companies charge for dot-com names.

"It will further help to protect kids," said John Morris, staff counsel at the Washington-based Center for Democracy and Technology. Morris predicted some adult sites will choose to buy "xxx" Web addresses but others will continue to use dot-com.

Back in the not too distant past
When I would need a quick repast
Or a temporary break from my agenda

Up to the bedroom I would head
Pull out the Playboy from 'neath the bed
And sneak a peak at all the portraits of pudenda

My alternatives were slim
If I tried to find another source for sin
I'd have to hang out with the weirdos in the backroom of my local video store

But last month I finally made the call
I got a brand new cable modem installed
And it opened up the floodgates of a whole new universe of
INTERNET PORN

Internet porn... Roman orgy scenes
Internet porn... Dominatrix queens
Internet porn... Girl on girl on girl on girl on girl on guy on sheep

Internet porn... Gross anatomy
Internet porn... Pam and Tommy Lee
Internet porn... When you're given so much to choose from
who has time to sleep?

After my girlfriend goes to sleep
And I get out of bed and down the hall I creep
So I can hunker down and wallow in depravity until 3 or 4

You'll always find me in that same tableau
Silhouetted by my monitor's warm glow
And absorbing all the bounty from the cornocopia of
INTERNET PORN

Internet porn... Barely legal teens
Internet porn... Naughty figurines
Internet porn... Geriatric German grandmas spanking Spanish men

Internet porn... Erotic Asian art
Internet porn... Guys with extra parts
Internet porn... I don't think I'm ever going to see the sun again!

Internet porn... Melonlove.com
Internet porn... There's my neighbor's mom
Internet porn... Bikers wearing diapers chasing nurses dressed like smurfs

Internet porn... maison lec navage
Internet porn... Un, deux, trois, menage!
Internet porn... Every kind of smut from every corner of the earth!

LATELY I've become wary of the question "Frank, what are you doing next Saturday night?" In the month of May it can only mean one thing: I'm going to yet another prom. And no, I'm not doing a favor for a cousin. Cousins are out. I'm this century's new answer to the last-minute prom date: the gay best friend.

By the end of June I'll have worn the tuxedo I swiped from the school drama department three or four times. While most 18-year-old guys are preparing for their one big night, I'm whipping up more magical evenings than Lance Burton or David Copperfield.

I am also swimming in corsages. I went to the florist today for the second time this week, and she gave me a suspicious look. Does she know what I'm up to? After all, I can't be the only one who understands that gay is the new cousin.

Until recently this wasn't really possible, because most gay men postponed coming out until college or later, if they came out at all. But now more and more young men are coming out in high school. I knew I was gay in sixth grade and came out in eighth. Originally I didn't plan to tell anyone until ninth grade, when I would enroll in a new school, but I decided I needed to let people know who I really was.

My decision had a traumatic aftermath. How is a school supposed to handle the coming out of an eighth grader? My middle school also contained an elementary school, and alarmed parents feared for their little children, worried, I suppose, that I might convert them or something.

I endured a set of excruciating meetings with school administrators during which parameters for my behavior were discussed. That and the cruelty of my classmates left me feeling isolated and scared, and I found myself turning mostly to girls for support and friendship. Although things improved in high school, I still found myself relying primarily on friendships with girls, some of whom I met at summer drama camps and who attended different schools. As I see it, these girls saved me, and now it's my turn to save them. Dancing a few steps in a beautified gymnasium is the least I could do to thank the girls who helped me become who I am....

'Now I get to be like everybody else'

By Greg Garber
ESPN.com

HANOVER, N.H. – Margarita Monday at Molly's on Main Street.

Those sweet, lime-colored, tequila-drenched drinks are the overwhelming hydration choice of this modest gathering of Dartmouth College lacrosse players.

It's all legal. The waitress duly carded all four team members, as well as their eight companions, on this evening in late April. There's a predictable run on buffalo chicken, rib-eye steaks and Caesar salads, loud talk and that typically bawdy collegiate humor.

Andrew Goldstein, leaning back in a commanding corner seat, surveys the scene and smiles. Even though he has a test tomorrow on the daunting structure of cells, he is happy to be here, hanging with his teammates. The All-American goalie, the guy everyone calls "Goldie," fits right in.

The fact that he's publicly gay – an unprecedented turn of events in its own way – doesn't seem to matter. Goldstein, who graduates in two weeks, routinely faced blurring, hard rubber balls that approached 100 miles an hour during his distinguished four-year collegiate career. And yet, his courage cannot be measured by the 110 saves he recorded this season.

There are a handful of gay professional athletes – David Kopay, Billy Bean, Esera Tuaolo – who came out after their careers ended. There are a number of talented gay collegiate athletes, some who play individual sports at the Division I level (such as California gymnast Graham Ackerman), others from team sports at the Division II and III levels.

But Andrew Goldstein, according to those who document these things, is the most accomplished male, team-sport athlete in North America to be openly gay during his playing career. He revealed his sexuality to his team after the 2003 season, and an online essay that appeared on Outsport.com elevated his story to national prominence.

Yet as Goldstein points out, "gay All-American" is a phrase that is still contradictory for some.

"All-American is what you think of, you know, the three kids, the white picket fence, All-American," Goldstein said. "And gay does not fit into that. So it's nice for me to hear 'gay All-American,' and to think it's just the same as 'All-American.' ".....

SJC rejects church group's bid to delay gay marriage law - The Boston Globe - Boston.com - Mass. - News By Jonathan Saltzman, Globe Staff | May 28, 2005

The state's highest court yesterday rejected a long-shot request by a Roman Catholic group to put on hold the landmark decision legalizing gay marriage until at least November 2006, when a proposed constitutional ban on same-sex weddings may go before Massachusetts voters. The Supreme Judicial Court rejected an attempt by C. Joseph Doyle, executive director of the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts, to shelve the court's 4-to-3 ruling in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health in 2003. Lawyers for the group had argued that marriages of same-sex couples would make it harder for supporters of the ban to change the state constitution. But in a unanimous two-page decision, the full court concluded last year that Justice Roderick L. Ireland had correctly denied the league's petition for an immediate stay of the ruling. [...] The decision came as little surprise. Lawyers for both the Catholic Action League and GLAD had expressed doubts that the court would stay its ruling. Michele Granda, a staff lawyer for GLAD, was so confident that she did not make an oral argument May 2. "The court has affirmed our view that no harm has befallen anyone in the Commonwealth as the result of same-sex couples marrying in the state," Granda said in a statement yesterday. "Goodridge is the law of the Commonwealth, and nothing has happened to change that."

Chester Darling, who represented the Catholic Action League before the SJC, denounced the ruling. He said justices have made it harder for supporters of the ban to persuade Massachusetts voters to outlaw gay marriage.

More adults in the Bay State support the concept of wedlock for homosexual partners, according to a poll by the University of Massachusetts. 45 per cent of respondents believe same-sex marriage should be allowed, a seven per cent increase since January. [...]