Andrea Houston
Thursday, May 23, 2013

Murray Lipp
05/23/2013

It is not sufficient to prosecute those individuals who commit anti-gay hate crimes. We must also address the societal conditions and contexts that create and fuel homophobia in society. Acts of abuse and violence against gay people are clearly symptoms of a broader societal problem, one that must be treated structurally if we are to ever succeed in reducing and eradicating violence against LGBT people.

A Societal Context That Is Hostile to Gay People

In the common, cultural meaning of the word, “homophobia” refers to the maintenance of negative and discriminatory views toward gay people. It is not a “phobia” in a psychiatric sense. Rather, the word serves as a concise way to refer to discrimination against those who are gay, in the same way that the words “racism” and “sexism” relate to discrimination based on race and gender, respectively. Homophobic beliefs drive homophobic conduct that occurs in all domains of societal life: at home, at school, in politics, on television, on the Internet, in churches, in organizations, at work and on the streets.

Earlier this month I wrote about two anti-gay hate crimes that had been committed in New York City, and I put out a call for LGBT people and our allies to rally against this violence. A rally was held on May 16, and two days later the city awoke to the gruesome death of Mark Carson, shot in the head in what police called a random act of homophobic violence. A second, much larger rally was held May 20, and within less than 24 hours, another two acts of anti-gay violence had been reported.

What has happened in New York City recently is not unique to this city. In cities and countries around the world, gay people are subjected to homophobic abuse and violence on a daily basis. Although the increasing visibility of LGBT people and gains in equality may be associated with short-term rises in homophobic violence, these changes are merely triggers and not causes of such violence. We must move beyond superficial and individualistic analyses of such heinous events and target their root causes: religion, patriarchy and heterosexism.

Religion and the Preaching of Hate

Any discussion about homophobia in society must absolutely reference religion. Clearly, not all religions or churches teach and promote homophobic messages. There are various LGBT-affirming streams of Christianity and Judaism. Religion as an institution, however, has, in general, played a key role in the fueling of homophobia throughout society. Conservative divisions of Christianity, Islam and Judaism continue to teach extremely negative views about homosexuality and gay people. In recent years in the U.S., the Catholic Church and its unofficial affiliate, the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), have taken on an almost national leadership role in the demonization of gay people under the veil of religion.

Continue reading at:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/murray-lipp/we-must-target-the-origins-of-homophobic-violence-religion-patriarchy-and-heterosexism_b_3323308.html

By Tara Culp-Ressler
on May 22, 2013

A coalition of sexual violence prevention and women’s equality organizations are joining forces to pressure Facebook to take a stand against any messages that “trivialize or glorify” violence against women, which they say the company should recognize as gender-based hate speech. The activist groups — led by Women, Action & the Media, the Everyday Sexism Project, and author Soraya Chemaly — are asking Facebook to commit to removing this type of content from its platform. And until it does, they’re telling companies to pull their advertising from the site.

In an open letter to the organization, the groups point out that Facebook’s content moderators already police some images of women. In fact, images of mastectomies, breastfeeding mothers, and other non-sexualized depictions of women’s bodies are often removed from the site after being incorrectly labeled as pornographic. On the other hand, however, images and forums that make light of abusing and raping women are allowed to remain on the social media platform under the “humor” section of their content guidelines.

“It appears that Facebook considers violence against women to be less offensive than non-violent images of women’s bodies, and that the only acceptable representation of women’s nudity are those in which women appear as sex objects or the victims of abuse,” the groups’ open letter reads. “Your common practice of allowing this content by appending a [humor] disclaimer to said content literally treats violence targeting women as a joke.”

Facebook currently allows pages on its site called “Fly Kicking Sluts in the Uterus,” “Violently Raping Your Friend Just for Laughs,” “This is why Indian girls are raped,” and “Punching your girlfriend in the face cuz you’re Chris Brown.” The social media site also permits pictures of battered women who are bleeding, bruised, tied up, or drugged alongside captions like “This bitch didn’t know when to shut up.” Women, Action & the Media has collected several additional graphic examples here (trigger warning).

Continue reading at:  http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/05/22/2046491/facebook-violence-against-women-boycott/

Misogyny’s deepest roots are exposed in the endless repetition of stories about capture and rape.

By Lynn Stuart Parramore
May 22, 2013

If you think about it, a woman carried off against her will is one of the most popular stories in human history. Whether she’s forced to marry, sexually violated, or otherwise tormented, the female captive pops up in Persian tales, Arthurian legends, and the great epics of India. She’s a staple of every art form and cultural product, from the paintings of great masters to true crime stories, from sonnets to soap operas. She’s woven into explanations of imperial origins: the Romans became the Romans because they snatched women from a neighboring tribe in a celebrated event known as the Rape of the Sabines. Biblical stories of captured women are so commonplace that the Lord issues helpful instructions on how to do the thing correctly, which include shaving the captive’s head, and if she fails to please you, properly disposing of her after she has been “dishonored.” ( Deuteronomy 21:10-14).

Myths overflow with women abducted and raped (the two terms have an ancient linkage): Persephone is carried off by Hades, Europa by Zeus, and Helen by Paris, which sets off the Trojan War. The romance would not be the romance, nor the novel the novel, without the long tradition of captive women in everything from the legendary medieval romance Apollonius of Tyre, to the grotesqueries of the Marquis de Sade, right on down to Stieg Larsson’s pop culture sensation, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (original title: Men Who Hate Women).

How do we explain this persistence? First, there’s the ancient notion of a maiden taken for the purpose of bringing “new blood” to the tribe  – what anthropologists call “ exogamy.” This idea, usually expressed in a rape or a violent raid, gets sanitized and elevated in originary cultural narratives like the story of the Virgin Mary, whose divine impregnation (which she didn’t appear to choose), transforms her into the mother of the Christian religion.

Sometimes the captive woman expresses dramatic tensions, and even attractions, between men, as in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, where the capture and violation of a female creates a fraught male triangle. Other times captive women express economic and political conflicts between large groups. In Europe, popular stories of women abducted into Oriental harems (often featured in erotica) were brought over by settlers to America, where they gave way to tales of white people – often young women – taken captive by Indians (Western movies like The Searchers carried on this tradition). The visual titillation provided by captive women, a favorite theme of great European painters like Rubens and Titian, became a cinematic staple of schlocky slasher films, where young girls are abducted and terrorized until a “rescue” releases the audience from any collective feelings of guilt about watching women chopped into confetti.

Continue reading at:  http://www.alternet.org/culture/why-has-humanity-always-fantasized-about-capture-and-rape-women

by Kate Davies
Published on Friday, May 24, 2013 by Common Dreams

On Wednesday, the Chemical Safety Improvement Act (2013) was introduced in the Senate. It is the latest attempt to overhaul the antiquated and ineffective Toxic Substances Control Act (1976). What makes this bill different from previous Democratic efforts is that this one has bipartisan support. For the first time, Democrats and Republicans have found some common ground. Introduced by Senators Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) and David Vitter (R-LA), this bill is the result of intense behind-the scenes negotiations and many compromises.

According to its proponents, Chemical Safety Improvement Act  bill will “ensure that all chemicals are screened for safety to protect public health and the environment.”

But many in the environmental health movement aren’t so sure. Although they acknowledge that the bill is a political breakthrough, the concessions made to the powerful “big chem” industry are too large for some to swallow. Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group bluntly declared “we can’t support this bill.”

Using softer words, the Environmental Justice & Health Alliance said, “We are deeply disappointed that those most harmed by failed chemical regulations and those who have worked tirelessly to support industrial chemical protections … will themselves be left inadequately protected.”

Others are more positive. Richard Denison, Senior Scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund says the bill “gives EPA vital new tools to identify chemicals of both high and low concern, and to reduce exposure to those that pose risks.  And while this bill represents a hard-fought compromise, it opens, at last, a bipartisan path forward to fix our badly outmoded system to ensure the safety of chemicals in everyday use.”

The new bill marks the latest development in the environmental health movement’s efforts to strengthen toxic chemical legislation in the U.S. The movement’s first victory was the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (1980), otherwise known as Superfund. Passed in response to Lois Gibbs’ and the Love Canal Homeowners Association’s protests about the health effects of a leaking toxic waste dump in upstate New York, it provides EPA with the authority to clean up abandoned waste sites.

Continue reading at :  http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/05/24-2

By Kate Sheppard
Wed May. 22, 2013

A coalition of grassroots environmental groups—plus a few professors and celebrities—issued a public message to the Environmental Defense Fund on Wednesday: You don’t speak for us on fracking.

The coalition of 67 groups released an open letter to EDF President Fred Krupp criticizing his organization for signing on as a “strategic partner” in the Center for Sustainable Shale Development (CSSD), a Pittsburgh-based nonprofit that bills itself as an “unprecedented, collaborative effort of environmental organizations, philanthropic foundations, energy companies and other stakeholders committed to safe, environmentally responsible shale resource development.” CSSD’s partners include Chevron, CONSOL Energy, and Shell. The partners have been working together on voluntary industry standards for hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a controversial process used to extract natural gas from shale rock.

The groups that signed the letter included national organizations such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, as well as regional environmental outfits such as the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition and Catskills Citizens for Clean Energy. Actors Mark Ruffalo and Debra Winger also signed the document. They wrote:

The very use of the word sustainable in the name is misleading, because there is nothing sustainable about shale oil or shale gas. These are fossil fuels, and their extraction and consumption will inevitably degrade our environment and contribute to climate change. Hydraulic fracturing, the method used to extract them, will permanently remove huge quantities of water from the hydrological cycle, pollute the air, contaminate drinking water, and release high levels of methane into the atmosphere. It should be eminently clear to everyone that an economy based on fossil fuels is unsustainable.

Gail Pressberg, a senior program director with the Civil Society Institute, criticized EDF for a “willingness to be coopted” by industry in a call with reporters about the letter. “For too long, nationally-oriented groups have tried to call the shots on fracking,” she said. “These local people can and should be allowed to speak for themselves.”

Continue reading at:  http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2013/05/grassroots-greens-challenge-environmental-defense-fund-fracking

Sungevity founder Danny Kennedy talks about his book and how solar power is transforming communities and creating jobs.

By Heeten Kalan
May 20, 2013

Rarely do we switch on an appliance or flick on the lights and consider the source of energy. Yet, in the past few years, we have become more conscious about the mountains being blown up in Appalachia to extract coal or the massive onslaught of gas drilling and fracking on new shale formations. Danny Kennedy’s new book, Rooftop Revolution: How Solar Power Can Save Our Economy — and Our Planet, turns our endless search to keep looking down for future energy sources and simply asks us to look up for it. The sun, he argues, is waiting to be tapped for clean, cheap energy if we can get our heads out of the sand.

Danny Kennedy, Greenpeace activist, Project Underground founder and long-time campaigner, decided to apply his organizing skills to harness the sun’s energy. Choosing to do something about our energy crisis and climate change, he founded Sungevity with a small group of trusted friends in 2007. Now, Sungevity is one the world’s leading residential solar-energy companies and is the exclusive residential solar partner for Lowe’s.

I sat down with Kennedy to learn more about his vision and reasons for writing this book.

Heeten Kalan: Your book is titled Rooftop Revolution. Why do you think solar power is a revolution in the making?

Continue reading at:  http://www.alternet.org/environment/rooftop-revolution-how-solar-energy-putting-power-back-hands-people