Posts made by leatherbear

:blink: I only see one fat dude and the otter and bear have the bodies but lack the hair requirements totally.

:pleasant: Eye of the beholder I guess.  ::)

by Lorenzo Herrera y Lozano

This week, California experienced another high in the rollercoaster of marriage equality. By declaring Prop 8 unconstitutional, Judge Vaughn Walker ignited celebrations across the country and in my home city of San Francisco. On a Wednesday night, the Castro district was alive as if it were prime Pride season.

However, the jubilee was bittersweet, given that Judge Walker attached a stay to the decision — forcing couples to wait to marry until after attorneys on both sides present further arguments. Accordingly, in a sea of celebration, LGBT couples — such as my partner and I — are continuing to wait.

As I consider walking down the aisle, I have to keep asking myself: why do I want to participate in one of the most heterosexist practices around?

In weighing the question, I’m reminded of something I once heard Evan Wolfson, Executive Director of Freedom to Marry, say: “People of color have the most to win and the most to lose when it comes to marriage equality.”

When I first heard these words, they resonated. But as I looked around the room in which they were spoken, I wondered how genuine they were. After all, we were sitting in a room of LGBT leaders of color who had been convened inside a Manhattan law firm boardroom, with Wolfson sitting at the head of the table. Taking in the scene, I had to wonder: If people of color have the most to win and the most to lose, why aren’t we at the head of this table and of the LGBT movement?

When it comes to the fight for marriage equality, LGBT people of color have had little choice about whether to go along: marriage became our movement’s priority early on. Even with efforts like BeyondMarriage.org, the marriage equality fight continues.

For people of color, the marriage equality debate has long been freighted with controversy, as the fight over Prop 8 demonstrated. One major critique of the Anti-Prop 8 Campaign, for example, was how it failed to engage people of color. I'd further argue that it specifically failed to engage LGBT people of color. Alienating LGBT people of color from the marriage equality movement still further was the way that people of color were blamed — as Adriel wrote here yesterday — for helping to pass the bill. Though white voters played a huge role in the bill’s passage, they weren't targeted with the same violent slurs. Instead, it was people of color who were painted as anti-gay rights — as if the LGBT community didn’t include people of color.

But if Wolfson was right, perhaps it’s time for LGBT people of color to ride this wave of momentum for marriage equality and lead the national movement. After all, we have the most to win and the most to lose, right?

Photo Credit: herreraylozano

Lorenzo Herrera y Lozano  is the Associate Director of Justice Matters and has previously worked in queer communities of color in the South and Southwest.

More from the Author  hXXp://race.change.org/blog?author_id=570

hXXp://race.change.org/blog/view/do_communities_of_color_oppose_same-sex_marriage

by Adriel Luis August 05, 2010 11:21 AM (PT)

At the polls on election day in November 2008, a black woman in front of me turned in her ballot and shouted, "I voted for Obama and against gay marriage, and that's all that matters to me!" Soon after, the results came in.  California voters had helped elect the first black president with the same ballot that they used to pass Prop 8, the ban on gay marriage.

Immediately, the question was framed: Were minority voters who helped usher in President Obama also responsible for helping kill gay marriage? The message was simple yet scathing: People of color are as pro-race rights as they are anti-gay rights.

This, of course, was all balderdash.  And as we celebrate yesterday's court ruling striking down Prop 8, it's important to understand that — contrary to popular belief — this victory comes with the blessing of a substantial proportion of the race rights community.

First, let's get the stats right. Immediately after election day in 2008, the exit numbers came in, proclaiming that a whopping 70% of black voters voted for Prop 8. Such figures helped frame the narrative that blacks were the leading group opposing gay marriage. Actually, in January last year, an in-depth study found that black support for Prop 8 was actually more in the 57-59% range — about the same the proportion of college-educated white voters.

In other words, race wasn't a major deciding factor in Prop 8, despite how aggressively Prop 8 proponents targeted black churches prior to the election. Similarly, it was revealed that the Latino vote in favor of Prop 8 had likewise been exaggerated, and when religion was factored out, race played virtually no role.

Also ignored was the fact that the NAACP's California chapter spent a considerable amount of effort denouncing Prop 8 prior to the election, and participating in efforts to overturn it afterward. In 2008, for example, NAACP chairman Julian Bond spoke in support of same-sex marriages, stating, "Like race, sexuality is not a preference.  It is immutable, unchangeable, and the Constitution protects us all from prejudices and discrimination based on immutable differences." In February 2009, the national NAACP office announced its support for overturning Prop 8.

As for the idea that people of color oppose gay rights? Actually, the Asian-American voting community was the leading racial demographic that voted against Prop 8 (hellz yeah!), with 46% opposing the initiative. Among Asian-American voters aged 18 to 34, 59% voted against banning same-sex marriage. A study showed that opposition of the bill increased still further among those with better English proficiency, suggesting that many immigrant voters may have voted for Prop 8 because of miseducation, not disdain for queer rights.

Yes, race does play a role in discussions about sexuality. But to view America's minority communities as somehow "anti-gay" disregards countless factors and serves only to sow discord. People of all sexualities and the people they love come in every color. Our civil rights movements can't be divided.

Photo Credit: Doxiehaus

Article from Race in America

by Tamara Winfrey Harris  August 03, 2010

As you drive down I-75 in Georgia, bold billboards advertising "Plantation House" periodically pepper the landscape. Perched just off certain exit ramps are the plantation houses themselves: wide, white and fronted by columns. They're like a dream — aren't they?

Across the antebellum South, such plantation homes are the site of much tourist romanticization. The stately mansions conjure up the idea of lost causes, genteel living, dashing men with accents that flow like honey and alabaster-skinned women in ornate dresses.

But this vision of history is too easily divorced from the lives of the enslaved black people who made it possible.

Over the years, at least two white women have gushed to me: "I would just love to go back to that time!" Presumably, these women did not consider that for them to be "Scarlett" of Gone With the Wind, I would have to be a darkie working in the fields. My family would have to live in bondage as chattel — our very lives dependent on the whims of our masters. Life in the antebellum period wasn't simply colorful and romantic, it was dependent on free labor and the dehumanization of people of color.

As an African-American descendant of slaves, when I read Gone With the Wind, I didn't think about how grand it would be to be Scarlett O'Hara — I wondered how awful it must have been to be Mammy. As an amateur genealogist, I have seen my ancestors listed in documents as property, just like the fine china and horses on the Southern farms where they lived. Once you've seen that, it's hard to perceive the way the South still venerates its old culture as somehow benign.

Far too few plantation home tours for tourists even mention the lives of enslaved black people at all. Guides cloak history by using euphemisms like "servants," or by focusing on architecture and interesting tidbits about the lives of the plantations' white owners. A 2009 study of 20 North Carolina plantation homes by East Carolina University, for example, found that seven didn't mention slavery at all and only three made efforts to reflect the experiences of black people who lived and worked on the land.

Some go even further, presenting a whitewashed vision of slavery as a positive force. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, several plantations tours "create the image of happy slaves cared for by benevolent masters." The article quotes Meredith Hall, who owns Darshana Hall Plantation, as saying, "I think that there's a real misconception of slavery; it was a relative thing. This family tried to treat people well. They kept the families together. … They had a pretty good reputation with regard to slavery."

What's more, some plantation homes have actually started welcoming tourists to spend the night in slave quarters — ones re-imagined as charming suites, of course. For example, Virginia's Edgewood Plantation boasts "eight luxurious and charming guest rooms; six in the main house and two in the former slave's quarters." One of those rooms might be Prissy's Quarters, "an enchanting retreat, with rose-covered, vine-canopied queen bed."

So here's what we've learned: slavery was a "relative thing," and slaves slept in quaintly comfortable rooms with flowered bedspreads. How crass can you get?

James Baldwin says, "American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it." Right now, the version of the antebellum South that tourists get to see is pure fantasy — one that erases the histories of black Americans.

As Derek Alderman, who authored the plantation study, puts it, "These plantations were not just about their white owners." No, indeed. The mansions we pose in front of today are sites of a brutal history that should never be forgotten or papered over, lest it be repeated.

Photo Credit: Corey Ann

edit : Kinsey6 : 8/14 : corrected BBC code to display photo

@ ja32 Currently there are 19 leechers for the downloads in your profile and yet you are not currently seeding any of these torrents. 0 torrents seeding.

If you and all others will just leave the torrents active and your computer on with your bit torrent client open , our system will connect you to as many as 15 torrents to seed at any time.

Seeding is a habit that must be gained to ever have a minimum ratio.

The Fetish torrents are quite popular here so if a torrent is not seeding just now  a leecher can show up at any time.

Seed Bonus points can also help with ratio troubles. But again, you have to be at least trying to seed to gain them.

My upload rate is capped at 58KBS and I have excellent stats at 4 torrent sites. This only happens with leaving torrents available to seed so when a leecher shows up you connect with them

(except the admins, of course.  i'm sure they are totalitarian douche bags)

:faint:  :crazy2:

I do hope this was a joke!!

BTW : I am behind this idea totally  :ok1:

@ grannymae ~ No Live links are allowed in our forum posts and your smileys are live links  :spank2:

Never saw this recipe before but will try this soon :jaj:

Hot couple Indeed!!!! :jaj:


:hot2:

:hot2:

:hot2:

JOEY