Posts made by leatherbear

@uicuic ~ The author of this article may happen to have a certain view on this topic. I have not expressed my opinion in any way ~ yet that is.

Featuring Broadway Hunks, Slick Dance Sequences

Cheyenne Jackson is ready to storm the pop music scene – and his latest effort just might be his sexiest yet.

In the video for "Don't Wanna Know," the Broadway and TV hunk pines over a long-lost love and cavorts with hunky construction workers while strolling downtown streets.

Musical theater fans should keep their eyes peeled for cameo appearances by stage favorites Nick Adams ("Priscilla, Queen of the Desert") and Matt Cavenaugh ("Grey Gardens") among others.

"Don't Wanna Know" is the third single from the "Glee" and "30 Rock" veteran's forthcoming album "Drive," which is due for release next spring.

Listen here:  hXXp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/18/cheyenne-jackson-dont-wanna-know-video-_n_2324479.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular

about

Every 10 minutes, someone in the United States is infected with HIV. A preventive vaccine against HIV offers the best long-term hope to end this worldwide epidemic. Finding a safe and effective HIV vaccine that will protect people is a huge task. We cannot do it without your help.

We are currently seeking 2500 participants for a vaccine trial.
    You cannot become infected with HIV from the vaccines
    The study will take place in several cities in the United States.

Safety is a primary goal of the vaccine trial. This is a Phase II study, designed to yield limited information on the effectiveness of the vaccine. The research vaccines have been found to be safe in animals and hundreds of humans in previous trials. One of the vaccines is made from an inactivated cold virus known as an adenovirus. The vaccines do NOT contain the HIV virus, and CANNOT cause HIV infection. Since these vaccines are still being researched, we urge all of our participants to practice safe sex.

The HIV vaccine trial is a collaboration between the HIV Vaccine Trials Network, the Division of AIDS, NIAID and the Vaccine Research Center, NIAID.

hXXp://hopetakesaction.org/contact/getyourhearton.aspx


Why does there seem to be such an increase in rejecting campness?

Andy West The Indepedent

What would you expect the most common phrases on gay dating sites to be?

Don't answer that you bigot. I'll tell you. They are as follows…

'Straight acting.'

'Non-scene.'

'No camp guys please.'

'Real blokes only.'

Time and time again, you see the same sentiment popping up and revealing the harsh truth: a lot of gay men don't fancy camp guys. And I, though I'm uncomfortable admitting it, am one of them.

A very cute-looking bloke messaged me on POF (The Plenty of Fish dating site – catch up!) last night. He seems clever, interesting, funny, caring, driven and fit. But he has a certain…way about him. There’s something about his plucked eyebrows, polished skin and, what is it? His posture? His…smile? His cravat? That tells me he might not be the most masculine of men. My interest droops. I chastise myself…and then delete his message anyway.

I can’t date camp guys. I've tried it. Only recently I showed up at a pub, excitedly scanning the packed room for the tall, broad-shouldered mountain-climber from the profile photographs. I recognised him instantly when he appeared but...I don't know...it was as though he was a marionet puppet of the bloke I'd imagined, only with his strings being handled by a dove. His hips swung, his head lolled to the side, he held his wine glass delicately at the stem and his voice was high and soft. He was a beautiful man with bright green eyes, tanned skin and brown hair and he was clearly kind and intelligent. I would gladly have chatted to him for hours but...I didn't want anything more.

Why do I feel so awful saying that? I can state that I don’t fancy very short men or very fat men or men with beards or men who wear jumpers from Next with a little bit of T-shirt stitched in but I can’t say that I don’t find 'femme' men attractive? Why not? It can’t be homophobic because lots of gay men aren’t at all camp. And saying I don't like gay men is like saying Mary Berry hates cake. No it isn't homophobic to find camp men unattractive. Perhaps it's…campophobic.

Before going any further, it's worth taking a moment to ponder what camp actually means. Is it the way you move and talk or is it also your musical tastes and personal interests? Giraffes are camp: For the sake of argument, I'll have to define it as behaving in a flamboyant and effeminate fashion. Do you agree? Do I care?

You can be straight and camp of course. I don't find those men attractive either. Effeminate heterosexual men like Lawrence Llewelyn Bowen and George Osborne are no more attractive to me than effeminate gay men like Alan Carr or Julian Clary. It's the campness that switches me off, you see, not the sexuality.

I just fancy men who act like...men. That alone is a clumsy thing to say, I know. I suppose what I mean is, men who like cars and play football and talk in deep voices and drink pints. Is my preference genetic or chemical or is it the result of social pressure? Those of you who have read my article on bullying will know that I was painfully self-aware as a boy and I did try not to behave in a 'girly' way around other boys. Am I rejecting feminine men because I was taught at school that acting queer is embarrassing and shameful? And, if so, is that what other guys on dating sites are doing too? Or is it merely that I find men attractive and the more manly they are, the more I like them? My mum likes chocolate. Therefore, triple chocolate fudge cake with chocolate icing and chocolate shavings in chocolate sauce is more appealing than a Caramac.

Being serious, I genuinely think there's something troubling...pernicious...about campophobia. It has seeped well beyond the realms of simple attraction. It reflects the new way in which the gay world regards itself. Post-campist culture prides itself on being normal. Loud and proud gay guys are an anathema to that.

So now I often hear gay men belittling camp men in just the same way that straight men have attacked homosexuals for centuries; ever since the first homo sapien refused to go hunting until someone helped him set up a series link for Hollyoaks on Tivo. A date said to me the other evening: 'Why would I fancy camp guys? If I wanted to date women, I'd be straight.' What does that mean for camp men? That they're not allowed to be male just because of their voice or their mannerisms and facial expressions? It seems a somewhat nasty sentiment to me, but I do hear it regularly. I might not be turned on by camp blokes but I don't see them as de-sexed. I have only dated two camp men in the past but both were steely, determined, single-minded, brash confident and – it must be said – aggressive. On paper, aren't those traits masculine?

It's a vein of prejudice that runs through the whole of society. How often have straight people said to me: 'I wouldn't have known you were gay because you don't act it!'? Or, as one friend at university said: 'It's okay you being gay because you're not at all queer.' It's okay to be gay, it seems, as long as you don't act gay. And that rule increasingly applies on the 'gay scene' as much as anywhere else. I find that worrying. We shouldn't be ridiculing one another. We are a band of incestuous brothers. Sticking together is what we do best.

So maybe I should delete the line; 'Likes straight-acting' from my dating profile. I'm a hypocrite anyway because, like 90% of gay men who claim to be blokey, I am - in 100 subtle ways - very camp indeed. Just press the trigger and out it pops from under the supposedly butch façade like Kenneth Williams tumbling from a Jeep. Sure, we 'non-scene' guys walk and talk like most other men. And yes, we run around parks all manly-like. But, if you dashed past in the other direction with a Laura Ashley cushion we would be on your tail like a pack of greyhounds.

Well it is all academic anyway. I can't help myself. I will continue to hide my camper side on dates by wearing baggy jumpers and jogging pants and drinking cheap, tasteless faux-Australian lager because, frankly, it goes down a storm. And I can't make myself fancy camp men any more than I can make myself fancy Inuits (something to do with the igloos). Perhaps I should try to be less shallow and look at the person inside rather than the shell. Problem is, we are dealing with sexual partners, not eggs. This isn't the 1990s anymore and I think most of us now accept that sexual attraction exists, is important, and to discount it is to deny a wonderful and important part of who we are.

So I shall continue to be campophobic on the dating scene, in spite of my own discomfort. After all, I pay a high price. Masculine blokes might be cheeky, sexy and fun but they are also often selfish, sex-obsessed, unreliable bastards. I continue to date. Offers gratefully received. Straight-acting only.

True Dat!!

A viral photograph of a young boy who opted to wear pink shoes on his first day of preschool has sparked intense debate in the blogosphere.

The boy in the photograph is identified only as 5-year-old Sam. A Facebook user identifying herself only as Sam's sister posted the photo to the "Have a Gay Day" page, and wrote:

"Yesterday my mom posted a picture on Facebook of my 5-year-old brother Sam wearing a pair of shoes he picked out for his first day of preschool. She explained to him in the store that they were really made for girls. Sam then told her that he didn’t care and that 'ninjas can wear pink shoes too.'

However, my mom received about 20 comments on the photo from various family members saying how 'wrong' it is and how 'things like this will affect him socially' and, put most eloquently by my great aunt, 'that sh*t will turn him gay.'"

The user goes on to explain that Sam liked the shoes because they were "made out of zebras," as zebras are his favorite animal: "What does it say about society when a group of adults could stand to take a lesson in humanity from a class of preschoolers?"

The photograph has since drawn over 120,000 likes and has been shared over 19,000 times.

Meanwhile, the photograph was the subject of a heated blog posted on The Stir. In the piece, blogger Mary Fischer disagreed with Sam's mother, saying she wouldn't let her own son wear pink shoes to school because it would "subject him to being bullied or treated unfairly all because most people associate pink with girls and blue with boys."

Fischer continues:

"Yes, I get the whole 'we should let kids be free to express themselves' thing, and I'll be the first to say 'more power' to this mom for taking a chance and letting Sam go off to preschool in his pink zebra print flats.

Somehow I'm guessing if my son were to put on that same pair of shoes – he wouldn't even make it through the five-minute bus ride to school in the morning before someone laughed at him, asked him why in the heck he was wearing pink shoes, spewed all sorts of mean jokes his way, or told him he was dressed like a girl."

She then adds, "Bullying is bad enough as it is without handing tormentors their material on a silver platter."

You can read the full blog post here.  hXXp://thestir.cafemom.com/big_kid/147885/mom_who_let_son_wear

Video @ hXXp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/11/little-boy-sam-pink-shoes-preschool-photograph_n_2277397.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices

Gay Male Couple Profiled In JET Magazine's Weddings, Speak Out

The first gay couple profiled in JET magazine's "Weddings" section is speaking out.

Speaking from Massachusetts, Dr. Ravi Perry and Paris Prince tell MSNBC's Thomas Roberts that having their wedding announcement hit newsstands nationwide was an "exhilarating experience."

"I think Darwin would be amazed at the evolution that's occurring now," Prince said.

Among those to praise the feature was Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) President Herndon Graddick. “This is yet another opportunity to applaud JET Magazine for continuing to highlight the diversity of the African-American community and to urge other media outlets to recognize that it’s these stories that help grow acceptance of our community and give a voice to LGBT people of color who are too often invisible in the media," Graddick said in a statement.

Video @  hXXp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/11/dr-ravi-perry-paris-prince-jet-magazine_n_2279914.html

Hey, Queers! Lighten Up!

Noah Michelson

Editor, HuffPost Gay Voices

Yesterday HuffPost Gay Voices published a piece entitled "The 27 Gayest Christmas Songs." The slideshow, which featured songs and videos that we deemed "gay" by virtue of "[being sung by] LGBT artists or allies, having a queer subtext (real or imagined) or [just being] too campy to resist," had only been up for a few minutes when we started receiving complaints.

One of the emails that landed in my inbox read:

I'm am very concerned about the editorial policy that HuffPost has that allows this kind of article to be published. The "gayest" Christmas songs ever? You're nearly using "gay" as an epithet here. Further, this article, by using the word "gay" to mean "camp" etc is pigeonholing the entire gay community. I find this extremely (!) offensive.

Some argued that the piece was ill-conceived because we would never allow a list of "the straightest Christmas songs," and they were furious that we were endorsing "dangerous stereotypes" about the LGBT community. Others were mad that we would spend time on a piece like this when there are "bigger battles to fight."

As the editor of what is not only the number-one LGBT site on the Internet but, as far as I know, the only queer site to exist within the framework of a mainstream news outlet, I'm used to people being angry with me. The queer community is incredibly diverse, and we all have different opinions about what is important, what is offensive, what we should be concentrating on, what we should be avoiding, how we should present ourselves and what we should or shouldn't be saying. For the most part my skin has grown incredibly thick, and either I'm able to gratefully process and use constructive criticism to constantly make Gay Voices a better, more vibrant and inclusive page, or I shrug off negative comments about how I'm running the site and concentrate on speaking to and about as many people in the queer community as possible.

But emails and comments like the ones above really get to me, because I believe they misunderstand – or forget -- what it means to be queer and why it's such a brilliant thing. In the right hands (and mouths) "gay" isn't an epithet, and dubbing something "the gayest" is a celebratory distinction, for me at least. I see it as a way of looking at the straight world -- a world that we have not been welcome in or have forcibly been removed or erased from -- and saying, "This is ours." It's a rebellious emblem of our splendid discrepancies, our magnificent divergences, and it involves reorganizing and reimagining parts of the dominant culture (like Christmas songs) so that we can not only see ourselves in them but so that we can also see ourselves as apart from them and can thereby understand the pleasures and possibilities inherent in our differences.

I didn't always feel this way. For much of my life, the word "gay" terrified me. I will never forget the spring day in seventh grade when my best friend Krissy and I were blowing up marshmallows in her grandma's microwave after school. As she prepared to plop a scalding blob of sugar into her mouth, she blurted out, "Matt said you're gay. You're not, right?" I assured her I wasn't (unconvincingly, I'm sure -- I was a big ol' queen from the moment I slid out of my mother's womb) before making some excuse about why I had to leave, and then I ran home dizzy and queasy with a panic I have rarely felt since that day.

I spent the next six years of my life doing whatever I could to avoid the word and the horrors it held. I prayed that God would make me straight. I wanted nothing more than to be just like everyone else. I finally made it to college, came out and learned about all the warriors who came before me -- those who threw the first shoes at Stonewall; the brave, berserk men and women of ACT UP; visionaries like Larry Kramer and Kate Bornstein and Harvey Milk -- who were fighting for their places in the world and doing it without apologizing or pathologizing who they were or what they wanted. I realized that being queer was not something to be ashamed of but something to cherish.

As Sir Ian McKellan recently told The Huffington Post, "Part of being gay is that we were different." And, for me, part of being queer is that we use our startling wit, our disarming candor and wicked humor to stake our claim in the world, to say, "We're here, we're queer and we're not going anywhere." Is that a stereotypical view of the community? Perhaps. Are there queer people who have no interest in camp? Of course. But being able to write pieces like "The 27 Gayest Christmas Songs" is my way of lovingly critiquing culture and pushing my way to the table.

As much as I want to see queer people given all of the same rights and attention as straight people, I do not want to be straight or live a heteronormative life. I've never understood those who say, "My sexuality is a tiny small part of who I am. It doesn't matter." My sexuality -- and the tragedies and triumphs that it has brought, not to mention the specific vision of the world it has given me -- is everything that I am. Even when that bright holy day comes when we can marry whomever we choose (if we choose), when we can't lose our jobs simply for who we are or how we live our lives, when we are no longer intimidated or attacked or murdered because we love or simply want to have sex with someone who looks or sounds like we do (or nothing like we do), I do not want queer culture to disappear.

And just to set the record straight: There is no need for a list of "the straightest Christmas songs," because almost every Christmas song is already straight. We'd just be listing them all. That's the same response I give when some loudmouth asks why there's no "Straight Voices" vertical on The Huffington Post: Every vertical on The Huffington Post (and on every other mainstream website on the Internet) is filled with straight voices. We need a place of our own where we can exist, share, wonder, argue and support each other.

We have huge battles to fight -- and we're fighting them. Amazing, exciting things are happening every day, and Gay Voices will always cover our community's important stories. But we cannot survive on advocacy and anger alone. Sometimes we need a little fun and something as frivolous and lighthearted as "The 27 Gayest Christmas Songs." Because our senses of humor have made us fabulous -- and helped us survive. Because we aren't the same as everyone else (and we shouldn't want to be). Because we shouldn't be policing ourselves into silence for fear of angering the majority for not "behaving" ourselves. If we're only accepted on their terms and not for who we truly are, whatever that may be, that isn't much of a win, is it?

So, my dear queer brothers and sisters, lighten up! Fight the good fight, but don't forget that celebrating our differences and our ability to laugh at the world -- and ourselves -- is what has helped to keep us alive and will see us victorious in the future. Happy holidays! May they be merry and, yes, gay!

It's that time of the year where you can't go anywhere – drug stores, elevators, your great Aunt Frida's retirement center -- without being attacked by Christmas songs.

Not that we're complaining, but once in a while we find ourselves pining for a fresh new playlist to blast during the holiday season. And if the songs are by LGBT artists or allies, have a queer subtext (real or imagined) or are just too campy to resist, all the better!

Rather than wait for Santa Claus to gift us a collection of the gayest Christmas songs, we came up with one on our own.

So hang the mistletoe, pour the egg nog and hit play. We guarantee these 27 tracks will make your holiday Mary... ahem... merry and bright.

Videos @  hXXp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/12/27-of-the-gayest-christmas-songs_n_2279564.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular#slide=1783992

Duncan Hosie, Princeton Student Who Challenged Antonin Scalia On 'Anti-Gay' Writings, Speaks Out

The gay Princeton student who challenged Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on legal writings which some have deemed anti-gay is speaking out about the experience.

In an appearance on MSNBC’s "The Last Word," Duncan Hosie said, "I think there’s a fundamental difference between arguing that the Constitution doesn’t protect gay rights and [saying that] the Constitution justifies that we need to use this language when talking about gay rights, and that was the point of my question."

Hosie had questioned Scalia’s comparison of bans on sodomy to those on bestiality, murder and incest. Scalia was appearing at Princeton University to promote his new book, "Reading Law."

Scalia replied by saying he was not equating sodomy with murder but rather drawing a parallel between the bans on both, but Hosie didn't buy it.

"I think he needs to persuade a lot more Americans about his views because I think they're becoming increasingly out of the mainstream," Hosie, who said he received an "overwhelmingly positive" reaction after the story broke nationwide, noted.

Video @  hXXp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/12/duncan-hosie-princeton-student-antonin-scalia-legal-writings_n_2286826.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular

Scalia defends arguments that strike some as anti-gay

By Geoff Mulvihill, The Associated Press | Associated Press – Tue, Dec 11, 2012

PRINCETON, N.J. - U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on Monday found himself defending his legal writings that some find offensive and anti-gay.

Speaking at Princeton University, Scalia was asked by a gay student why he equates laws banning sodomy with those barring bestiality and murder.

"I don't think it's necessary, but I think it's effective," Scalia said, adding that legislative bodies can ban what they believe to be immoral.

Scalia has been giving speeches around the country to promote his new book, "Reading Law," and his lecture at Princeton comes just days after the court agreed to take on two cases that challenge the federal Defence of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as between a man and a woman.

Some in the audience who had come to hear Scalia speak about his book applauded but more of those who attended the lecture clapped at freshman Duncan Hosie's question.

"It's a form of argument that I thought you would have known, which is called the 'reduction to the absurd,'" Scalia told Hosie of San Francisco during the question-and-answer period. "If we cannot have moral feelings against homosexuality, can we have it against murder? Can we have it against other things?"

Scalia said he is not equating sodomy with murder but drawing a parallel between the bans on both.

Then he deadpanned: "I'm surprised you aren't persuaded."

Hosie said afterward that he was not persuaded by Scalia's answer. He said he believes Scalia's writings tend to "dehumanize" gays.

As Scalia often does in public speaking, he cracked wise, taking aim mostly at those who view the Constitution as a "living document" that changes with the times.

"It isn't a living document," Scalia said. "It's dead, dead, dead, dead."

He said that people who see the Constitution as changing often argue they are taking the more flexible approach. But their true goal is to set policy permanently, he said.

"My Constitution is a very flexible one," he said. "There's nothing in there about abortion. It's up to the citizens. … The same with the death penalty."

Scalia said that interpreting laws requires adherence to the words used and to their meanings at the time they were written.

By Bryan Fischer    December 13, 2012

Researchers Peter Bearman of Columbia and Hannah Bruckner of Yale furnished proof that, as a matter of fact, gays aren't "born that way."

If gays are "born that way," then the concordance rate in identical twins should be 100%. If one twin is gay, the other one ought to be 100% of the time since they share identical DNA. After all, if one identical twin is tall so is the other. If one is blond, so is the other. If one has green eyes and red hair, so does the other.

But what Bearman and Bruckner found, after studying data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, is that the concordance rate is only 6.7% for males and 5.3% for female identical twins. This is overwhelming scientific proof that homsoexuality is not genetically determined.

In one small step for mankind, scientists are starting to bend in the direction of actual data rather than blindly adhering to the kind of political correctness that punished scientists like Galileo who followed the truth rather than prevailing, intimidating and threatening cultural trends.

In a piece in US News, Jason Koebler reports that scientists from the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis are now saying that whatever the hereditary link may happen to be, it is not "a strictly genetic link, because there are many pairs of identical twins who have differing sexualities." Well, good for them.

Koebler adds, quite sensibly, "Evolutionarily speaking, if homosexuality was solely a genetic trait, scientists would expect the trait to eventually disappear because homosexuals wouldn't be expected to reproduce." I've often observed that Darwinians should be even more resolutely opposed to the normalization of homosexuality than evangelicals, since the whole point of evolution is the propagation of the species.

So scientists have abandoned the search for the gay gene. As I have said before, I suspect that not even homosexual activists today want the gay gene to be found, even if it exists, because of advances in prenatal genetic testing. It is now possible to routinely screen for 3500 genetic defects while a child is still in the womb.

So these activists rationally fear that preborn children who are detected with this gene will be aborted before they even have the chance to be born. After all, if 90% of babies in the womb who are diagnosed with Downs syndrome never draw their first breath, what are the chances that parents disposed to abortion will not exercise the same choice with regard to the gay gene?

The scientists in Koebler's article, in my view, are now resorting to genetic subterfuge and are coming dangerously close to saying that homosexuality is the result of a genetic defect, a genetic abnormality. In other words, read from one angle, these same scientists are saying that homosexuality is the result of a birth defect. All this in an effort to maintain some ever thinner thread of connection between biology and homosexuality.

They posit that "homosexuality seems to have an epigenetic, not a genetic link." (Carefully note the word "seems.") These "epi-marks" are "extra layers of information that control how certain genes are expressed."

Now these epi-marks are "usually, but not always, 'erased' between generations. In homosexuals, these epi-marks aren't erased — they're passed from father-to-daughter or mother-to-son." This according to William Rice, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California Santa Barbara and lead author of the study.

According to Rice, these epi-marks "provide an evolutionary advantage for the parents of homosexuals: They protect fathers of homosexuals from underexposure to testosterone and mothers of homosexuals from overexposure to testosterone while they are in gestation."

But if these epi-marks are not "erased," as they normally are, then when they "carry over to opposite-sex offspring, it can cause the masculinization of females or the feminization of males," which can lead to a child becoming gay.

So in other words, when something goes wrong genetically, and these markers are not erased, the epi-markers which provide an evolutionary advantage to parents instead do evolutionary damage to their offspring.

Now these researchers are quite at pains to avoid saying anything like this, but the logic to me seems inescapable: Homosexual children, on this theory, are born evolutionarily and genetically disadvantaged. They have been overexposed or underexposed to testosterone because something has gone wrong in the process of genetic transmission. In other words, they are the product of a genetic abnormality at best, a birth defect at worst.

Now Rice is quick to add all kinds of qualifiers. These markers are "highly variable" and only "strong" epi-marks will result in homosexual offspring. But if Rice is correct, I expect many abortion-minded parents will want to know exactly how strong this epi-marker is in their unborn children so they can decide whether or not to exercise reproductive choice.

In fact, I expect that if this theory gains some currency, it will not be long before we have legislation from the homoexual lobby prohibiting "sex-selection" abortions on any child carrying this epi-marker. They'll be happy to let you abort anyone else, but these children will be as protected in the womb as unhatched bald eagles.

Koebler's article adds even more qualifiers and caveats. The model "still needs to be tested on real-life parent-offspring pairs," "is a "story that looks really good," although "more verification [is] needed," and "we need other studies to look at it empirically."

Rice says his theory "can be tested and proven within six months," because "it's easy to test." And, he concludes, "If it's a bad idea, we can throw it away in short order."

I'm guessing this is a theory that will soon find its way to the scientific dustbin, if only because homosexual activists will find themselves not wanting it to be true even if it is.

Under a Judeo-Christian moral construct, we can freely admit that we do not understand the origin of all of our impulses. But it is not necessary to understand the source of every impulse to know that self-destructive impulses must be resisted at all costs. That's what the message of the gospel is all about — that there is power in Christ to resist dark impulses, no matter what the source, that will destroy us if indulged.

It was fashionable for a time — and it may be still — to believe that alcoholics were born with a predisposition to alcoholism. But even if they were "born that way," genetics was disallowed by those who loved them as an excuse to engage in behavior that would destroy them, their lives, their health, their marriages and their families.

I do not for one moment believe that homosexuality is pre-determined, either genetically or epigenetically. But even were it true, it would make no ultimate difference. We are still back to the simple truth that homosexual behavior, regardless of the source of the impulse, is always a matter of choice. And by God's grace, everyone is capable of making better choices, starting today.

I have never heard of The Oatmeal until your post. I got it from a Quiz Site plainly noted in the original post and the Quiz Site gave no credit for an origin of the gif. It was clearly stated at the Quiz Site that this was intended to be shared on all social media sites.

I have done nothing wrong.

Very interesting recipe indeed. Can't wait to try this but I can not buy Leeks in this small town (area) I live in. I will buy some Leeks the next time I am in a City where Leeks are a common item to purchase.

I can't help but wonder from looking at this recipe if this could be miniaturized into a hot appetizer for parties  :hmmm: