motherjones:

Michele Bachmann and Mitt Romney just signed a pledge to “Support and send to the states a federal marriage amendment defining marriage as one man and one woman” and “Appoint a presidential commission to investigate harassment of traditional marriage supporters.”

In other news, this photo exists.

curiositycounts:

Niagara Falls goes rainbow on the first day New York allows gay marriage 

newyorker:

The story behind this week’s cover

good:

Americans are more likely to be killed by lightning than get HIV from a blood transfusion. So why is there still a lifetime ban on gay men donating blood? Amanda Hess looks into the structural homophobia of the blood supply:

Even some guys who are otherwise out of the closet have copped to lying to donate blood as a political statement. “Like jury duty, donating blood is something I consider my civic duty,” a gay blood donor wrote on Queerty in 2009. “And because I’m committed to donating blood, I regularly lie to the Red Cross about my sexuality.” The donor declined to include a byline. Back in 2002, Canadian blood donor Kyle Freemanwrote an anonymous email to Canadian Blood Services informing the agency that he had donated blood 18 times despite the country’s lifetime ban on donations from men who have had sex with men. “I am a gay man and have been involved in a long-term committed relationship,” he wrote. “Both my partner and myself [have] been tested for the HIV virus and are both negative and intend to stay that way. We are both very honest people and are both blood donors.” Canadian Blood Services didn’t see it that way: It tracked Freeman’s IP address, outed him, and sued him for $100,000 for lying on his blood screening questionnaire. 

Read more on GOOD →

angelic-intelligence:

bittergrapes:

pinupboy:

esmeweatherwax:

thetransboy:

no1curr-opinions:

[Image description: White text on a black background, reads “Dear 14-year-old girls, You are not bisexual.  Stop making a mockery of what the word actually means.  You word is ‘bicurious.’ Start using it.”  Parts have been crossed out in red and it has been edited to read: “Dear 14-year-old girls, You are whatever you think you are.  Stop assuming you know other people’s sexual orientations better than they do.  Your word is whatever you want it to be.  Start using it, or not, it’s up to you.”  In addition, the following text has been added to the left in red: “Funny how people never imply that a straight kid might not have enough sexual experience to know if s/he is truly attracted to just the opposite sex.”  At the bottom it reads in yellow italicized text: “NO1CURR about your biphobic & ageist bullshit.”  End description.]

I am bisexual and I had had crushes on both boys and girls by the time I was 14.  I considered that I might be bi, but didn’t really understand it until college, partly because of the sort of nonsense expressed in this image.  Most of my other gay, lesbian and bisexual friends had at least some inkling, even if they weren’t able to piece it together yet, by the time they started high school, because they had had same-sex crushes by then.  I don’t understand why people think LGBA kids mature at a slower rate than heterosexual kids.

By the way, the  bit on the left is not to imply that straight kids’ labels as such should not be taken seriously.  I just find it quite telling that people who claim to be concerned about teens “applying labels too soon” never care when that label is “straight.”  And this is despite the fact that there are probably more LGBAs who identify as “straight” at 14 (like me) than straight people identifying as gay/lesbian/bisexual/asexual at that age, since in most high schools it’s not that easy to be a queer teenager.  

I personally do question whether straight kids have enough experience to know they’re not gay. 

^^^ It’s touted as the default sexuality, I was never told that I might have to think about whether I was really straight or not. It could well have been that I was just scared to admit that I was gay or bi or ace or any other sexuality.

I didn’t realize straight or gay people existed until I was, like, 10. I always had crushes on men and women and I thought everyone was like that.

I thought if you had those feelings about the same sex you were supposed to be friends with them and if you had those thoughts about the opposite sex you were supposed to marry them. That was my explaination for why men usually married women, even though I thought everyone had equal feelings for both genders.

And I say both genders because at that age I thought there were only two.

YES OH MY GOD THAAAAAANK YOU FOR THIS EDIT!

Seriously, fucking SERIOUSLY. I have NEVER heard someone say that a straight person doesn’t know that they’re straight at that age. It’s ALWAYS someone on the LGBT* spectrum. What, are we going to start telling 13-year olds that they’re actually just heterocurious? What the fuck?

It’s institutionalized queerphobia, and it disgusts me.

Basically, all of this.

I actually never know what to say when someone asks because I honestly don’t know what my orientation is. I call myself ostensibly straight because nothing is certain. I don’t know who I’ll end up loving and I don’t want to deny myself a possibility because someone decided I don’t know myself.

I’ll state my position again: the heart loves who it will love and how many it will love. To place a label on a young person trying to force them to fit to a word that isn’t what they feel to be true to themselves is unfair to all involved. If someone feels that they are bisexual, so be it. Why force them to conform to another label when you would not want that done to you?