Posts made by leatherbear

:cheers: I love Lentils  :cheers:

This I will make soon  :ok1:

Of course being from the South I will make a cornbread to eat with this Stew. 

This sounds delicious and an excellent Party Treat  :cheers:

I think I will try this for New Years Eve celebration  :hug:

:sorry: I did not reply earlier agis been very busy lately.

IMHO most LGBT couples feel married and live life as a married couple. It is only when we come to some legal issue that we encounter problems. The $363,000 dollars is a prime example of these problems. It seems to me that the very root cause of most of these legal issues have as a basis for problems starts with the IRS and tax codes. There is a vast difference between single and married status within these Tax Codes and these differences follow thru to many other Laws,Rules and Regulations when dealing with other Government agencies.

For me and many others, this fight is about equal treatment in these married vs single issues with the Government and its laws currently.

:welco: to the GT.ru Forums !!!

Looking forward to your shares  :cheers:

:drool2: :drool2: :drool2: :drool2: :drool2: :drool2: :drool2: :drool2: :drool2: :drool2: :drool2: :drool2:  :drool2: :drool2:

हिंदी भाषा के इस ख़ास मंच में आपका स्वागत है.हमारे अंग्रेजी मंच के वे सदस्य जो हिंदी को अधिक बेहतर समझते हैं उनकी सहायता के उद्देश्य से लिए इस मंच को बनाया गया है. इस मंच को hogutacmo द्वारा संचालित किया जाएगा.इस मंच के निर्माण के उद्देश्य निम्नलिखित हैं:
१.सदस्यों के बीच मेलजोल बढ़ाना
२. समलेंगिक मुद्दों के बारे में ख़बरें, चर्चाएँ आदि के लिए स्थान उपलब्ध कराना
३. तकनीकि सहायता उपलब्ध कराना
4. प्रश्न पूछना और प्रश्नों के उत्तर देना
५. अपनी फंतासी पूरी करना

यदि आपके पास कोई भी सवाल या सुज्झाव है ,आप उसे यहाँ पोस्ट करने के लिए स्वतंत्र हैं.

leatherbear
GT.ru स्टाफ

The United States Supreme Court will review the decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that struck down Proposition 8, a 2008 law which banned gay marriage in California.

The appeals court's ruling was issued in February and found the law unconstitutional.

The court will also hear a challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act.

According to SCOTUS Blog, the court is expected to hear arguments in late March and make a decision in late June:

SCOTUSblog @SCOTUSblog

Arguments in gay marriage cases around Mar 25-27, decision around June 27.
    7 Dec 12

The AP reports:

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court will take up California's ban on same-sex marriage, a case that could give the justices the chance to rule on whether gay Americans have the same constitutional right to marry as heterosexuals.

The justices said Friday they will review a federal appeals court ruling that struck down the state's gay marriage ban, though on narrow grounds. The San Francisco-based appeals court said the state could not take away the same-sex marriage right that had been granted by California's Supreme Court.

The court also will decide whether Congress can deprive legally married gay couples of federal benefits otherwise available to married people. A provision of the federal Defense of Marriage Act limits a range of health and pension benefits, as well as favorable tax treatment, to heterosexual couples.

The cases probably will be argued in March, with decisions expected by late June.

Gay marriage is legal, or will be soon, in nine states – Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Vermont, Washington – and the District of Columbia. Federal courts in California have struck down the state's constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, but that ruling has not taken effect while the issue is being appealed.

Voters in Maine, Maryland and Washington approved gay marriage earlier this month.

But 31 states have amended their constitutions to prohibit same-sex marriage. North Carolina was the most recent example in May. In Minnesota earlier this month, voters defeated a proposal to enshrine a ban on gay marriage in that state's constitution.
    The biggest potential issue before the justices comes in the dispute over California's Proposition 8, the state constitutional ban on gay marriage that voters adopted in 2008 after the state Supreme Court ruled that gay Californians could marry. The case could allow the justices to decide whether the U.S. Constitution's guarantee of equal protection means that the right to marriage cannot be limited to heterosexuals.

A decision in favor of gay marriage could set a national rule and overturn every state constitutional provision and law banning same-sex marriages. A ruling that upheld California's ban would be a setback for gay marriage proponents in the nation's largest state, although it would leave open the state-by-state effort to allow gays and lesbians to marry.

In striking down Proposition 8, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals crafted a narrow ruling that said because gay Californians already had been given the right to marry, the state could not later take it away. The ruling studiously avoided any sweeping pronouncements.

The larger constitutional issue almost certainly will be presented to the court, but the justices would not necessarily have to rule on it.

The other issue the high court will take on involves a provision of the Defense of Marriage Act, known by its acronym DOMA, which defines marriage as between a man and a woman for the purpose of deciding who can receive a range of federal benefits.

Four federal district courts and two appeals courts struck down the provision.

The justices chose for their review the case of 83-year-old Edith Windsor, who sued to challenge a $363,000 federal estate tax bill after her partner of 44 years died in 2009.

Windsor, who goes by Edie, married Thea Spyer in 2007 after doctors told them that Spyer would not live much longer. She suffered from multiple sclerosis for many years. Spyer left everything she had to Windsor.

There is no dispute that if Windsor had been married to a man, her estate tax bill would have been $0.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York agreed with a district judge that the provision of DOMA deprived Windsor of the constitutional guarantee of equal protection.

Thousands of people fill Mexico City's Paseo de la Reforma during a gay pride march on June 30, 2012.

MEXICO CITY – Mexico's Supreme Court has ruled that a law in southern Oaxaca state that bans same-sex marriages is unconstitutional, paving the way for same-sex couples to marry in that state and possibly in the rest of Mexico.

In a unanimous decision on Wednesday, the tribunal struck down a Oaxaca state law that declares that "one of the purposes of marriage is the perpetuation of the species."

The court said in its ruling that to condition marriages to the union of one man and one woman "violates the principle of equality."

Currently, same-sex marriage is only legally allowed in Mexico City, where a same-sex marriage law was enacted in 2010.

The court's ruling comes from a lawsuit filed by three gay couples against the state of Oaxaca.

That's my boy !!!

Put It in the Index of Mental Disorders

George Weinberg

Psychotherapist; Author, 'Society and the Healthy Homosexual'

Homophobia is still highly prevalent, though an increasing number of people wish it weren't. The movement for LGBT justice has made immense strides. But as the therapist who coined the word "homophobia" in the late 1960s, I still see a great deal of homophobia in the world. This irrational fear of gay people still translates into violence in many cases. Even in the U.S., it still motivates people to punish gay men and women, to deprive gay people of rights, and sometimes even to kill them.

Nevertheless, the Associated Press, in the latest update of its stylebook for reporters, banned the use of the word "homophobia" on the grounds that it suggests emotional disturbance in people when we allegedly have no proof of such disturbance.

Consider some of these recent news stories and you tell me if homophobia is in play or if you can come up with a better word to describe what's going on:

A teenage boy in Mobile, Ala., at Thanksgiving dinner beats a young woman nearly to death for being his sister's lesbian lover. Would it be wrong to infer that the boy was emotionally unhinged?

James Finley, the successful women's volleyball coach at Virginia Commonwealth University, has been out as gay on the job for eight years. A new athletic director came along who refused to go to games where Finley was coaching – despite attending all other team games -- or even to speak with him. After Finley's 25-6 season, the director fired him, telling the women on the team that he wants "a better representative for the school" as a coach. Wasn't that a homophobic act?

A high school principal in Arizona "punishes" two boys caught fighting by making them sit and hold hands in front of their classmates for an extended period of time while they are bombarded with anti-gay slurs by the other kids.

The AP says that the word "homophobia" doesn't apply even here. It argues that we can't be sure that those who taunt people for being gay or who torture or kill them for it are homophobic. Officially, according to the news service, we don't know enough to call them that.

AP Deputy Standards editor Dave Minthorn notes that terms like "homophobia" have been "used quite a bit in the past and we don't feel they're quite accurate."

"Homophobia" is most certainly an emotionally charged word. But aren't we allowed to feel a little emotional about the death penalty for gay people in certain developing countries? Or about proposals for long prison sentences just for supporting gay rights in Nigeria, or for counseling a gay person in Uganda?

Gay people were denied virtually every kind of right in the U.S. until a half-century ago. These included the right to hold jobs, the right to keep their pensions, and the right to stay out of prison if they were found out. Can we say that our nation was homophobic then? As Minthorn said, that that would be "ascribing a mental disability to someone and suggest a knowledge we don't have."

As it turned out, the word "homophobia" was exactly the concept that gay men and lesbians needed to achieve liberation. The word conveyed that gay people were not the ones suffering from an emotional problem; their oppressors were. Gay individuals saw that there was no longer any reason to condemn themselves or other people like themselves.

For gay people everywhere, the term "homophobia" became a reminder of their personal worth. Understanding that homophobia is at work in their tormentors gave gay people a new sense of dignity and humanity. Indeed, it has helped many non-gay people understand that when they have homophobic feelings, they themselves have a problem.

Even today, when a parent comes to me for help and cries about a son or daughter who is gay, I ask the person, "What are you afraid of? What is the worst thing that can happen?" There are always, in every case, irrational fears, and a sense of having failed as a parent in some way. The discovery that there is no real threat, that no mistake was made, that nothing bad will happen between them and their child unless they want it to, makes a huge difference to these parents.

What needs to be banned is not the word "homophobia" but "conversion therapy" for gay minors. We must put a stop to a practice that should have ended once homosexuality was removed from the index of mental disorders in 1973. California has done just that, and other states are seeking to follow suit.

By the AP's logic -- that we cannot attribute motive where we haven't proved it -- we would have to get rid of terms like "hate crime," but no one suggests that. Unlike other persecuted groups, gay people have been characterized as "emotionally disturbed," so a word that assigns the disturbance where it belongs -- to the oppressors -- is needed.

It is a curious decision to shun the word "homophobia" when there is no other word that does the same job. No other word suggests that the problem is in those who persecute gay people. As long as homophobia exists, as long as gay people suffer from homophobic acts, the word will remain crucial to our humanity. Indeed, the next big step should be to add "homophobia" to the official list of mental disorders -- not to cleanse the language of it.

George Weinberg is a psychotherapist in New York City. He coined the term "homophobia" in the late 1960s and crusaded for its acceptance. He has written 12 books, including Society and the Healthy Homosexual, published in 1972.

Gay People More Financially Secure Despite Unique Barriers: Study

The gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community is in better financial health than the rest of the country on average, a recent study found.

Not only do gay people earn more than the average American does, gay people are more likely to be employed, they have more money in savings and they are better at managing debt, according to a Nov. 14 survey of more than 1,000 gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people by Prudential.

The average LGBT household earns $61,500 annually, which surpasses the average national household income by more than $10,000. Unemployment is also lower within the LGBT community. Only 7 percent of respondents reported to be out of a job, while the national average stands at 7.9 percent. When it comes to putting away money for the future, gay households save on average $6,000 more than the national average. Gay households also have $4,000 less in debt.

The results are encouraging given the number of financial hurdles gay people face in today's political climate. The 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which bans same-sex marriage from being recognized at a federal level, is one of the main factors that inhibits financial affluence among gay people.

Despite the fact that gay marriage is legal in a number of states, under federal law gay married couples are prohibited from filing joint tax returns. A gay person is ineligible to collect a partner's full Social Security payment after he or she dies. Divorce also generally costs gay couples more.

Financial constraints aside, gay people tend to be highly educated and live in more affluent areas of the country. According to the Prudential survey, 50 percent of respondents said they have at least a bachelor’s degree and almost 50 percent lived in big cities or big city suburbs.

That said, only 14 percent of respondents indicated they feel well-prepared financially compared with 29 percent of the general population.

On Nov. 5, Washington joined the ranks of six other states and the District of Columbia that have enacted laws or issued court rulings that permit same-sex marriage. LGBT residents in states that permit same-sex marriage were found to be more confident financially than those living in states with no legal relationship status, domestic partnerships or civil unions, according to Prudential.

Mormon Church Calls For Compassion Toward Gays, Says Homosexuality Is Not A Choice

The Mormon church has launched a new campaign encouraging its members to be more compassionate toward the LGBT community.

On Thursday, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints launched the website mormonsandgays.com, in which it calls for Mormons of all stripes to "love one another."

As Buzzfeed notes, the new campaign reflects an "evolution from [the church's] past teachings" as it asserts that sexuality is not a personal choice.

An official statement posted on the new website reads:

The experience of same-sex attraction is a complex reality for many people. The attraction itself is not a sin, but acting on it is. Even though individuals do not choose to have such attractions, they do choose how to respond to them. With love and understanding, the Church reaches out to all God’s children, including our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters.

CNN reports that the website's launch appears to support the belief held by some gay-marriage activists that the LDS church is "toning down its opposition to same-sex marriage."

However, as the Associated Press notes, church leaders still insist that "they aren't changing the Mormon teaching that same-sex relationships are sinful."

Still, church leaders say they hope the new resource will foster a greater "understanding of homosexuality among Mormons and a more civil conversation about the issue."

Church spokesman Michael Purdy told the Deseret News that the site is also part of an effort by the Mormon church “to teach and clarify" the church's position on homosexuality.

"There are some aspects of our belief and practice that are simply not well understood," Purdy said. "Too often these types of big, important issues are dealt with in sound bites, and often by individuals who do not have the complete picture of what the church is doing."

Think Progress' Zack Ford had this to say about the new campaign:

[T]hese improvements over blatant ostracization and condemnation could very well save the lives of many young people and help keep families together. However, with this approach, the Mormon Church has essentially only caught up to the “hate the sin, not the sinner” approaches of the Catholic Church and many evangelical Christians, which are still incredibly problematic.

In 2008, Mormons faced "intense criticism" after church authorities offered vocal support and funding for California's Propositon 8, a ballot measure that called for a ban on gay marriage.

The backlash was swift – and church leaders say they were "stunned" by the negative response. Since then, the Associated Press writes, the church has been actively reaching out to the LGBT community "to heal tensions."

Meanwhile, the American public has seemed to have grown "more sympathetic toward same-sex marriage," Buzzfeed notes. According to USA Today, a Gallup poll published this week revealed that more than half of Americans support the legalization of same-sex marriage.

Huffpost Gay Voices article.

@Amazonios:

64% pure: A tad inexperienced.

Hey, this stinks! So, do I have to experience all those fetishes to call myself experienced? What if I don't like them? The thinking behind this questionnaire was too narrow

P.S. It's funny how it asks if I had continuous sex for over an hour, when I implore to have such, but usually the bottoms don't have that much of energy!

:hehe: I know that problem from the past but I have my boi up to the task now  :cheers:

:hmmm: If 1 can't last may I suggest you add a second bottom to the party ~ that ought to help your score on several counts Fetishes are not for everyone it's true. What matters is that you are skilled at you do enjoy  :ok2:

The U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether to wade into gay marriage cases Friday.

By Liz Goodwin, Yahoo! News

On Friday morning, the Supreme Court may announce whether it will hear two major cases that could have a sweeping impact on the definition of marriage in the United States and on same-sex couples' right to wed.

Ten cases dealing with gay marriage are pending before the court, but legal experts pinpoint two of them as the most likely for the court to consider.

The Defense of Marriage Act

The Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, recently has been struck down by two federal appeals courts, which means the Supreme Court is all but obligated to take at least one of the cases to settle the dispute between Congress and the courts. The case thought most likely to be picked up by the justices is Windsor v. United States, which challenges DOMA, a law passed by Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996 that prevents the federal government from recognizing same-sex married couples, even those in states that allow gay marriage.

The suit was brought by Edith Windsor, a resident of New York who paid $363,000 in estate taxes after her wife died because the federal government did not recognize their marriage. New York is one of nine states (and the District of Columbia) where gay marriage is legal, so Windsor argues that the federal government is discriminating against her by not recognizing her state-sanctioned marriage.

Doug NeJaime, an associate professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, said that equal protection under the law, which is guaranteed under the 14th Amendment, is the key issue at stake in this case. Windsor argues that by singling out same-sex marriages and treating them differently from other marriages, the federal government is in violation of their rights.  Since marriage has traditionally been regulated by the state, Windsor's lawyers say the federal government has no business interfering with New York's definition of marriage.

Windsor's attorneys are not arguing, however, that marriage is a fundamental right that all Americans are entitled to, no matter their sexual orientation. And few experts expect the Supreme Court to make such a sweeping decision.

If the justices do strike down DOMA, the decision will broadly affect gay couples who marry in states that recognize same-sex nuptials.  Most importantly, they would begin to qualify for the same federal marriage benefits other couples receive, including tax breaks and Social Security survivor benefits. And according to advocates, the decision would send an even larger message – that all marriages are equal under the law.

As with other recent major cases, Justice Anthony Kennedy appears to be the swing vote. For DOMA to be overturned, Kennedy would have to join the court's four liberal justices to form a majority.

Kennedy has a libertarian streak that makes his votes unpredictable, as well as a legal record in favor of gay rights. In 2003, Kennedy wrote the Court's opinion in Lawrence v Texas, a landmark decision that said the government cannot outlaw sodomy since it's an intrusion into the private lives of gay people. Kennedy also cast the deciding vote striking down a Colorado law that would have prevented local governments from passing laws specifically protecting gay and lesbian civil rights.

Because of Kennedy's history on the issue, many legal experts think there's a good chance the court will strike down DOMA if it takes the case.

"I think that Justice Kennedy knows that he has the choice: Does he want to write the next Plessy v. Ferguson or does he want to write the next Brown v. Education," said Erwin Chemerinsky, founding dean of the University of California, Irvine School of Law, and a proponent of gay rights. The landmark Brown civil rights case overturned Plessy, which had endorsed "separate but equal" segregation in public schools.

"There's no doubt where the world is going on this issue," Chemerinsky said of same-sex marriage.

But John Eastman, chairman of the anti-gay marriage National Organization for Marriage and a law professor at Chapman University, said it's still unclear how Kennedy will decide, despite his landmark opinion in Lawrence. "There's a pretty big difference between criminalizing conduct and redefining marriage," Chapman said, referring to the anti-sodomy laws Kennedy struck down. "He could draw the line there."

Proposition 8

Court watchers think the Supreme Court also will take up Proposition 8, California's gay marriage ban. Voters passed Prop. 8 in 2008 months after the state's high court had legalized same sex unions and thousands of gay Californians had already tied the knot. Two federal courts have struck down Prop. 8 as discriminatory, leaving the Supreme Court to render a final judgment.

The lower courts' decisions made an overt appeal to Justice Kennedy by repeatedly citing his decision in the Colorado gay rights case. The lower court judges argued that by revoking marriage rights after they had already been granted, same-sex couples had been illegally singled out for discrimination.

If the Supreme Court agrees with that interpretation and decides to let the lower courts' rulings remain in place, gay couples in California--the nation's most populous state --would be able to get married legally within the month. But the decision would only apply to California. If the court does take up the case, the justices will decide by June whether to strike down or uphold the state's gay marriage ban.

The Prop. 8 case differs from the DOMA case in one key respect:  In Prop. 8, the pro-gay marriage side is arguing that marriage is a fundamental right that should not be denied to people based on their sexual orientation. That means the Supreme Court, in theory, could issue a sweeping decision on Prop. 8 that legalizes gay marriage throughout the country and invalidates state gay marriage bans.

Geoffrey Stone, a law professor at the University of Chicago, thinks that's unlikely. He says the justices will most likely wait for public opinion--which has just recently begun to swing in support of gay marriage--and state laws to coalesce around the issue before issuing a broad decision.

"The more this percolates, the easier it is to address this in the future," Stone said.

:welco:  to GT.ru!!!

Is that you in the picture?

@imDutch:

76% pure: Mostly Innocent

:afraid2: Why you are almost a Virgin  :afraid2:

PM me when you feel the urge to lower your score a bit  :lolp:

:bpr:

:bpr:

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