Shakesville

Sanford Won't Budge

Calls are mounting for disgraced South Carolina Governor King David Mark Sanford to resign, mostly from his own party members, but Sanford is making like a New Kid and hangin' tough, because staying governor is all part of God's plan for him.

[I]n the aftermath of this failure I want to not only apologize, but to commit to growing personally and spiritually. Immediately after all this unfolded last week I had thought I would resign - as I believe in the military model of leadership and when trust of any form is broken one lays down the sword. A long list of close friends have suggested otherwise - that for God to really work in my life I shouldn't be getting off so lightly. While it would be personally easier to exit stage left, their point has been that my larger sin was the sin of pride. They contended that in many instances I may well have held the right position on limited government, spending or taxes - but that if my spirit wasn't right in the presentation of those ideas to people in the General Assembly, or elsewhere, I could elicit the response that I had at many times indeed gotten from other state leaders.

Their belief was that if I walked in with a real spirit of humility then this last legislative term could well be our most productive one - and that outside this term, I would ultimately be a better person and of more service in whatever doors God opened next in life if I stuck around to learn lessons rather than running and hiding down at the farm.

So, his larger sin was the sin of pride—and he's going to atone for that by exhibiting a real spirit of humility, exemplified by bragging about having the right political positions on issues most damaging to the sorts of people to whom the man central to his religion most passionately ministered: the poor, the starving, the ill. In other words, he knows better than Jesus. But humbly so!

This guy's a trainwreck.

And, worse than that, a bully. He invokes his god as a battering ram with which to swipe at those who would levy legitimate criticisms. "God wants me here!" he insists. "Would you question God?" Because he knows there are people who won't.

[Standard Disclaimer: Just to be clear, I don't think that anyone axiomatically needs to resign from public office over an infidelity. I do, however, think that someone who goes AWOL from his post for a week and charges taxpayers for international trips to get laid does. Sanford has a few more problems than a guy who gets caught with his pants down but does the job he was hired to do.]

They're Celebrating in Iraq

Because we're leaving (sorta):

Iraq declared a public holiday Tuesday to celebrate the official withdrawal of American troops from the country's cities and towns, emptying the streets as many people stayed home because they feared violence.

As Iraqi officials' celebrations went on, the American military announced the death of four soldiers on Monday from combat operations in Baghdad, a reminder of the continuing vulnerability of soldiers as they wrap up operations in the field.

In the past few weeks, nationalist sentiments have spread within the Iraqi government and military, with officials all but boasting that Iraq is ready to handle the security situation on its own.

Even though they had to tell everyone to stay home today because they fear violence they can't control. Sigh. What a mess we've made there.

Many ordinary Iraqis said that a day they long doubted would come seemed to have arrived. Although some worried that the security forces may not be able to control the insurgency, they were also relieved to have the Americans out of sight. Some said they believed that the American presence had given insurgents a pretext to stage attacks.

The American presence here is associated with better security in some places, but it is despised in others for detention techniques that are sometimes heavy-handed, for creating traffic jams and for generally reminding Iraqis that they are not in control.

"It really is a sovereignty day," said Balqis Eidan, a 30-year-old state employee. "I agreed with [Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki]. It is a very important day in our history. But we are still worried about security. We hope that our forces will be able to handle security. The way will be a long one."

Maude help them.

American troops are withdrawing cautiously, with soldiers ordered "to remain in garrison for the next few days to give the Iraqis a chance to demonstrate that they are in control," and the Iraqi government has requested that "a handful of urban outposts in Baghdad...remain open" indefinitely. But the "vast majority" of American troops have already shuttered their urban bases and relocated to "large forward operating bases."

Undoubtedly, if the insurgency surges again, American troops will be asked to step back in, but, for the moment, Iraq is being given at long last an opportunity to test its fledgling security forces. And Maliki is issuing a little preemptive blame if the insurgency should surge and overwhelm them:

Mr. Maliki said the news media would encourage insurgent attacks if they questioned the ability of the security forces to handle the job. The Iraqi government has periodically tried to muzzle news organizations perceived as supporting insurgents.While only a couple of outlets have been prevented from covering the country, the message has been clear.

Looks like Bush was successful in spreading his brand of democracy to Iraq. Awesome.

Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime

Sigmund and the Sea Monsters

What The Hell?

Shaker katecontinued
What the hell is all that, a corsage or a shrub? What the hell is with those haircuts?? What the hell is with that coat you're wearing??? What the hell????

[See also: Deeky, Liss, and evilsciencechick.]

Question of the Day

What's the klutziest thing you've ever done?

I'm gonna have to go with the situation I described in today's Quote of the Day thread:

I'm about 15. I've got my first Walkman, which I bought with the proceeds of my first job, cold-calling homeowners about some insulation thing or other. CDN$2.15/hour.

Anyway, I'm 15, so of course I'm both thoroughly invincible, and too cool for words. So when I ride my bike, I ride it no-hands. Cause that's what the cool kids do.

I'm also wearing my new Walkman, with the AWESOME auto-reverse feature. English Beat are skanking away in my headphones (NOT earbuds, let's be clear, those won't happen for a couple of years yet), and I've got The Two Towers in my hand, reading the fabulous Battle of Helm's Deep yet again. While I'm riding. And listening to music, in the wild suburbs of Toronto (Scarberia, specifically: in the time of which I speak, Toronto pretty much ended at McNicoll, between Finch and Steeles - there were farms beyond Steeles).

And rode my bike beautifully into the back bumper of a parked AMC Pacer (that help place it in time for you?), launching myself, book, Walkman and all, over the handlebars and onto the car.

Now, you might well have thought that I'd take this lesson to heart, and stop riding no-hands, or maybe stop reading while riding.

But in proof that wisdom comes late in life to some, this was not so. Nor (not coincidentally) was it the last time I'd see my handlebars go by below me.

Now: what's yours?

You Go, Grrl: Giorgia Boscolo

Giorgia Boscolo, Venice's first female gondolier

After nine centuries of keeping women on dry land, Venice has broken with tradition by approving its first female gondolier.

Giorgia Boscolo, 23, a mother of two, came through a grueling course, which included 400 hours of instruction, to enter an all-male club that has resisted admitting women. ... She denied that she would not have the physical strength to manoeuvre gondolas, saying: "Childbirth is much more difficult."

Ms Boscolo's father, Dante, also a gondolier, said he still had reservations about his daughter ferrying tourists up the Grand Canal. "I still think being a gondolier is a man's job, but I am sure that with experience Giorgia will be able to do it easily," he said.

I guess that means it's actually not a man's job then, dunnit?

Congratulations, Giorgia!

[Via.]

All The Proof You Need

Last year Jack Cashill, a blogger at American Thinker, presented iron-clad proof that former Weatherman and Obama ally William Ayers actually ghost-wrote Barack Obama's book Dreams of My Father. His proof? There are a lot of similar words in that book and in books written by commie-pinko-DFH Ayers.

Although there are only the briefest of literal sea experiences in Dreams, the following words appear in both Dreams and in Ayers' work: fog, mist, ships, seas, boats, oceans, calms, captains, charts, first mates, storms, streams, wind, waves, anchors, barges, horizons, ports, panoramas, moorings, tides, currents, and things howling, fluttering, knotted, ragged, tangled, and murky.

There's also the shared use of the words "a", "and", and "the".

Now Mr. Cashill has more evidence.

Ayers is fixated with faces, especially eyes. He writes of "sparkling" eyes, "shining" eyes, "laughing" eyes, "twinkling" eyes, eyes "like ice," and people who are "wide-eyed" and "dark-eyed."

As it happens, Obama is also fixated with faces, especially eyes. He also writes of "sparkling" eyes, "shining" eyes, "laughing" eyes, "twinkling" eyes, and uses the phrases "wide-eyed" and "dark-eyed." Obama adds "smoldering eyes," "smoldering" being a word that he and Ayers inject repeatedly. Obama also uses the highly distinctive phrase "like ice," in his case to describe the glinting of the stars.

The smoking gun, however, is that both Mr. Obama and Mr. Ayers misquote Carl Sandburg's poem, "Chicago":

From Dreams:
He poured himself more hot water. "What do you know about Chicago anyway?"

I thought a moment. "Hog butcher to the world," I said finally.
From Parent [Ayers' book]:
"At the turn of the century, Chicago had a population of a million people and was a young and muscular city - hub of commerce and industry, the first skyscraper city, home of the famous world exposition, "hog butcher to the world" - bursting with energy."
This I would call a B-level match. What raises it up a notch to an A-level match is the fact that both misquote "Chicago," and they do so in exactly the same way. The poem actually opens, "Hog butcher for the world."

Well, whaddaya know; that's how I thought the poem started, too, even though I memorized it for my eighth grade English class in 1967. I guess that's proof that the terrorist Weathermen were already infiltrating the depths of our society, going so far as to reach their tendrils into the minds of middle-school students in Toledo, Ohio, and pervert their learning of a great poem by a great American. Oh, the perfidy.

On the other hand, it's fine with me that folks like Mr. Cashill are obsessed with trivial crap such as this rather than care about anything that might actually matter.

HT to Hilzoy.

Cross-posted.

Exposing Promoting Hatred

Sacha Baron Cohen was on The Tonight Show last week, promoting his new film Brüno, in which he plays a "flamboyant" gay reporter with the ostensible objective of exposing homophobia. But just like every other promotional appearance for the film, SBC arrived in character and made Brüno's sexuality and gender expression the continuous punchline throughout the interview. The only homophobia being exposed that I could see was SBC's.

In addition to the overt and pervasive homophobia, the misogyny, and the rape apologia I've already discussed in association with this film's promotional materials, there appears to be a hefty dose of racism, too: The segment includes an extended clip (staring at 7:13) of a scene featured in the film's trailers, in which Brüno appears on a Jerry Springer-like show in front of a largely black audience, and brings with him a black baby (wearing a shirt reading "Gayby") who he introduces as his adopted African son. He tells the audience he "swapped" an iPod for the baby.

Naturally, the audience members react with outrage (as any decent person would), because they don't realize it's all bullshit. (And gee, isn't it just hilarious for we viewers "in the know" to watch a white person piquing a predominantly black audience with a total fabrication about an African parent trading away an African child for material goods? Haw haw—the painful history of slavery is such a comedy goldmine!) But because the professed premise of the movie is exposing homophobia, we're evidently meant to tsk-tsk at the aggrieved audience's homophobia—as if there is not another legitimate reason for their indignation—and it's all too easy to do because of the pernicious narratives, real and imagined, about the incidence of homophobia among black Americans.

Those narratives exist because of institutional homophobia. That Sacha Baron Cohen relies on them for his dubious humor is not exposing homophobia; it's exploiting it.

[Previously on Brüno: One, Two, Three, Four.]

Radio Shakesville

Women Who Dare To Make Noise*, Part 2, is now available. You can pick it up here. Or click the player embedded below. (Not sure how well that actually works, by the way, but I thought it was worth trying.) If you're a subscriber, the RSS feed is making its way across the toobz as we speak, expect a download soon. Same for iTunes users. This ep's playlist is here. Enjoy!

Radio Shakesville
* Thanks to Kevin Wolf for giving this series a decent name.

Ft. Worth Police Celebrate Stonewall Anniversary With Raid On Gay Bar

A raid by Ft. Worth police on a gay bar Saturday night, the fortieth anniversary of Stonewall, lead to several arrests and left one person hospitalized.

[S]even people were arrested in the raid although witnesses at the scene said many more people were handcuffed with zip ties and taken out of the bar. One man, identified by his sister as Chad Gibson, was in the intensive care unit at Fort Worth’s JPS Hospital with bleeding in his brain after officers threw him to the ground and used zip-ties to handcuff him.

(The story played out here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here over the weekend.)

To sum up briefly, the cops arrived with a police van and zip-tie handcuffs, under what may be rather flimsy pretenses and carted off several allegedly intoxicated patrons of Ft. Worth's newest gay bar. Some arrestees were charged with groping arresting officers. One man received a head injury when police threw him to the ground. He is now in critical condition.

Civic leaders are calling for an investigation. A rally was held last night in response.

(Sorry for dashing this off with no commentary, things have been busy here this afternoon, and I wanted to get word out.)

[H/T to InfamousQBert.]

Quote of the Day

"My friends couldn't imagine their parents using this monstrous box, but there was interest in what the thing was and how it worked."—Scott Campbell, 13 years old, who was invited by the BBC "to swap his iPod for a Walkman for a week" and report the results.

Daily Kitteh

Shaker Lisa emails:

About a month ago I brought home my very first foster cat, who came with the name Speedy. He was quickly followed by a litter of six kittens who are just about ready to go to the adoption center so they can find homes. (Wah! I'm going to miss them!)

But Speedy? I can't let him go. I've officially adopted him and I am changing his name to Teaspoon.

He's the first teaspoon in what I hope will be a long line of teaspoons for kitties.

Reached for comment, the three adoptees of Shakes Manor say they "totes approve!"

Monday Blogaround

This blogaround brought to you by Shaxco, makers of Mrs. Kulchawick's Organic Katanas.

Recommended Reading:

If you can, please donate to these women, including our own extraordinary Elle, who are making their ways to the Allied Media Conference.

Nancy: Stonewall's Unfinished Legacy

Janet: Rally in Canberra September 7: Homebirth: What's the Crime?

Resistance: Two Years (strong trigger warning)

Lisa: Resistance to Objectifying Advertising

mzbitca: FML Fail: Fatties Can't Have Orgasms

Send your support to Dan Choi before Tuesday's trial and help him fight "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

Leave your links in comments...

On Brisenia Flores

When I was working on my dissertation, I had to read quite a bit of “immigration” literature for my last chapter. One of the books I remember most was John Higham’s Strangers in the Land, because so many others referenced his assertion that throughout U.S. history, nativism and xenophobia have ebbed and flowed.

I remember that, because as I’ve said before, I think we are caught in a peak period and it seems we have been for well over a decade now.

But having the historical perspective to see it as part of a pattern, to know that it might recede some day, does not make it any less painful to live through, especially as we bear witness to the beating deaths of Luis Ramirez and Jose Sucuzhañay, the disrespect shown to the memory and family of Ana Fernandez,

And the murder of nine-year-old Brisenia Flores.

I heard about Brisenia Flores a few weeks ago, from the Sanctuary, VivirLatino, and via Twitter. She and her father were murdered, and her mother was shot, in their home, in the middle of the night, by people "associated" with the Minuteman Project.

I have been unable to get the words together to write about this child, because of all the thoughts racing through my mind:

Racists still come to our homes and murder us in the middle of the night.
Still.

This reinforces for people of color how tenuous the safety of our children is.
Still.

We live in a white supremacist patriarchy that claims to value a certain family structure while violently disrupting that structure in families of color.
Still.

How long are people going to deny the violence that permeates so much right-wing extremism? What do we expect from people fed on a constant diet of "us vs. them" and "retain-our-privilege-at-all-cost?" Why aren’t more of us repulsed that it’s cloaked in the language of love for “God and country?”

Beyond all the symbolic things, a nine-year-old child and her father were killed because of hatred. Even then, we can’t talk about that without feeling the need to air the murderers’ opinion that Raul Flores, Jr., Brisenia’s father, sold drugs.*

As if the Minutemen need justification to act violently against a Latin@ family and community. As Maegan notes:

The goal [of Shawna Forde and Gunny Bush] wasn’t to observe, document and report as Jim Gilchrist, the leader of the Minuteman Project, has said in trying to distance himself from his associates charged with two counts of first-degree murder, one count of first-degree burglary and one count of aggravated assault. The goal was to use violence against a family viewed as expendable to help further their cause of using violence against those viewed as expendable.

(Crossposted)
__________________________________
*I have not read anything that backs the truth of that claim, and yet the NYT juxtaposes it with the local Sheriff’s observation that “there is ample drug activity between here and the border.” Now, he doesn’t say that Raul Flores, Jr., is connected to it, but that quote is somehow relevant when talking about the murder of a Latino man who lived near the border.

Madoff Sentenced

Let me be perfectly clear: I have no sympathy for Bernie Madoff, not a single, solitary, infinitesimal iota.

But surely I am not the only person who reads that he's been sentenced to 150 years in prison and sees the sort of ridiculously excessive sentence that's typically reserved for scapegoats.

Ah, the evil Madoff has been given 150 years—finally someone is being held responsible for the horrendous economic clusterfucktastrophe which has befallen us all! Now we can go back to not paying attention! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee!

It's just a little fucked up that the asshole who swindled rich people gets 150 years, but most of the assholes who swindled poor people haven't even lost their jobs. And that's to say nothing of the assholes staffed by the regulatory bodies whose enormous incompetence enabled Madoff's crimes, no less members of the administration under whose watch the economy collapsed.

I hope next time Former President Mondo Fucko is strolling around his yard, picking up dog shit, he thinks kindly on Mr. Madoff, strolling around the prison yard, serving a sentence on behalf of all the Great Swindlers.

The Trials and Travails of Transness: Dude Looks Like a Lady

by Shaker Alexmac, a transgender woman studying at the University of Florida.

[Part 2 in an ongoing series. Part 1 is here.]

In this post, mostly drawn from chapter six of Julia Serano's Whipping Girl, I am going to explore gender and sexual diversity and the concept of oppositional sexism. I need to first introduce a new and useful concept: subconscious sex. Serano describes this as the sex we unconsciously feel ourselves to be. Subconscious sex is not to be confused with gender identity, which is the gender that we identify as.

The best way I can describe it is before I realized I was trans, I identified as a male, but my subconscious sex was female. This created cognitive dissonance which caused me pain, but I did not know entirely why. As I came to realize I am trans, it has eased my pain somewhat, but my physical sex still conflicts with my subconscious sex and the only way to get rid of the dissonance is to try and match my physical sex with my subconscious sex. It would be very much harder to change my subconscious sex as it is hardwired in my brain and would involve brain surgery. When you wonder why people go through transition, realize that it is much easier to deal with hate and discrimination from others than to fight your own body.

To fully explore gender and sexual diversity, we must understand gender expression. Serano defines gender expression as whether our presentation, behaviors, interests, and/or affinities are considered masculine or feminine or some combination thereof. So, if a gay man wears eyeliner and doesn't like sports he would be considered to have a feminine gender expression or even worse, be a woman!

Since gender expression is the most outward aspect of gender, it is the part which Serano says "is the most widely commented on, critiqued and regulated aspect of gender." Since it is so highly regulated, some people have proposed that gender itself is entirely a social construct, which is a popular view among some branches of feminism. Unfortunately, this approach has the distinct disadvantage of disappearing trans folk, with trans men becoming confused butches and trans women becoming gender storm troopers (at least if you read The Transsexual Empire).

Oppositional sexism, or gender essentialism, seeks to reduce the diversity of sexuality and gender into two immutable groups: "Men" and "Women," where "Men" are aggressive, immature, attracted to women, and "Women" are emotional, calculating, and attracted to men. Oppositional sexism is a system where men and women are positioned as opposites. Oppositional sexism is more commonly known as the binary gender system. It is why queers are lumped into a group, because we break the system of binaries. Gay men are men who are attracted to men, trans women are women born physically male who seek to fix the problem, butch lesbians act in "masculine" ways. This all ruptures the artificial barrier between the two categories of "man" and "woman." People who violate this system set themselves up for a ton of abuse and ostracism.

Why would people voluntarily set themselves up for abuse? Not everyone is a rebel trying to bring down the system of oppositional sexism; I know I did not choose to be transgender, but as I said earlier, I can't fight against my brain. Social constructionists and gender essentialists can agree on one thing—that transgender people are the kink in their theory and need to be erased.

So, where can trans people fit in? Serano uses the phrase "inclination" to describe these feelings, as a persistent desire, affinity, or urge that predisposes us to a particular gender and sexuality. She then proposes a nifty model called the intrinsic inclination model where subconscious sex, gender expression, and sexual orientation are independently determined inclinations. These inclinations are intrinsic, because they occur mostly subconsciously and remain intact despite social factors that try and change them. These inclinations happen on a continuous range—there aren't two classes ("men" and "women"), but many. The last part is that these inclinations roughly correspond to physical sex and form a series of two overlapping bell curves, so while a majority of men have a typically masculine gender expression, there are also men with feminine gender expression and vice versa. People who differ from the average of these inclinations are just an example of human variation and not freaks or deviants.

I really like this theory; it allows for a large variety of gender and sexual diversity. The biggest problem I can see from it is the biological basis for gender expression. Serano notes this concern in episode 66 of the Transponder podcast. She compares the biological basis of specific gender expression inclination to identical twins. While they are genetically identical, they have different life experiences, preferences in music, and love interests. The exact same biological inclinations can have extremely different results. Humans are incredibly complex and socialization can have a strong influence on how a person turns out. Her model suggests that there are certain inclinations we can't socialize against. The incredibly high incidence of military veterans among male to female trans women, for example, shows how even trans women going through male socialization and pursuing a stereotypically male job, still have a female subconscious sex. They eventually can't fight the gender dissonance any longer and transition into the women they were born as.

Her theory works to breakdown the gender binary, not through denying gender, but recognizing the vast diversity of gender and sexuality, saying that it is all okay. From the woman who loves romance novels and painting her nails to…the man who loves romance novels and painting his nails. We are an incredibly diverse species and should appreciate our diversity. The problem comes from people forcing others to live the way they think is correct—that "women" aren't good at sports, so they shouldn't be allowed to play. This idea should form the core of feminist belief: that people are different—men, women, trans, cis, white, black, able-bodied or disabled—and we are all equal, no one of the infinite options being better or worse than the others (unless that option involves oppressing others).

In my next post, I will address the main thrust of Julia Serano's book, the dismissal of femininity in our culture and what it means for trans women and feminism in general.

SCOTUS Rules on Ricci

Justices Rule for White Firefighters in Bias Case:

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., were unfairly denied promotions because of their race, reversing a decision that high court nominee Sonia Sotomayor endorsed as an appeals court judge.

New Haven was wrong to scrap a promotion exam because no African-Americans and only two Hispanic firefighters were likely to be made lieutenants or captains based on the results, the court said Monday in a 5-4 decision. The city said that it had acted to avoid a lawsuit from minorities.

The ruling could alter employment practices nationwide and make it harder to prove discrimination when there is no evidence it was intentional.

A very disappointing, if unsurprising, ruling. Typically, it was Roberts, Kennedy, Alito, Scalia, and Thomas in the majority, with Ginsburg, Breyer, Souter, and Stevens dissenting. Ginsburg authored the dissent and noted, that the white firefighters "understandably attract this court's sympathy. But they had no vested right to promotion. Nor have other persons received promotions in preference to them."

They had no vested right to promotion is pretty much the crux of the whole case, as far as I'm concerned. Seven words that say a hell of a lot about entitlement and privilege.

Related reading: CNN Poll: Two-thirds think firefighters were discriminated against.

Also see: Steve and LeMew.

Hitman Returns: The Anticipationing

Hey, assholes! It's Kenny Blogginz here with another one of my infamous movie anticipation threads! I was just informed by my good friends at aintitcoolnews.com that Hollywood big-wigs are currently in the initial stages of creating a sequel to the smash hit video-game-to-film adaptation Hitman.

Everyone knows that Hitman was a film years ahead of its time, and a sequel can only be better. I believe I once read somewhere that little Timmy Olyphant was the first white male to dual-wield automatic pistols on screen, which is a real achievement as far as I'm concerned.

And remember that one part where all the Hit-mans threw down their guns in order to have a katana fight? That was probably one of the defining moments of modern cinema, like that one part from Bloodrayne, or that part from Bloodrayne II. Not since Underworld III: Rise of the Lycans has there been such a cinematic undertaking.

Hopefully the Hitman team will take a page out of Underworld III's book and include some werewolf-on-vampire action this time around. Who wouldn't love to see Agent 47 look up at the full moon (CGI) and utter a catchphrase like "HERE WE GO AGAIN"? Nobody, that's who. And here's a twist for the ages: Agent 47 is a werewolf THE WHOLE FUCKING TIME!!!!!

You know that when the last of Agent 47's humanity slips away, there's only one man who can take him out: Sheiae LaBeoufeaux. Don't even pretend like that doesn't make perfect sense.

You guys aren't even going to believe my choice for Head Werewolf: Bruce God-Damn Willis.

I think we all know about Michael Bay's high standards, but wouldn't it just blow your mind if he were to be the director for Hitman II? Forget about it! Only under Bay's sage direction could Olyphant finally reach the levels of master thespians like John Turturro or Bumblebee Jefferson.

You know what? Fuck it. I'm writing the screenplay for this masterpiece. This could finally be my well-deserved breakthrough hit that takes me from art-house flicks to the exalted realm of the Summer Blockbuster.

India To Decriminalize Homosexuality

Homomentum on the Subcontinent:

The Indian government is considering rewriting a law drafted more than 100 years ago that criminalises homosexuality. The news emerged as the capital, Delhi, held its second gay rights march yesterday and other cities across the nation played host to similar parades.

"This [law] is an absurdity in today's world," a government source said. "The government will certainly move to repeal it."

Details here.

[H/T to InfamousQBert.]

Coup in Honduras

Over the weekend, Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was ousted in a military coup, after "months of tensions over his efforts to lift presidential term limits":

In the first military coup in Central America since the end of the cold war, soldiers stormed the presidential palace in the capital, Tegucigalpa, early in the morning, disarming the presidential guard, waking Mr. Zelaya and putting him on a plane to Costa Rica.

Mr. Zelaya, a leftist aligned with President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, angrily denounced the coup as illegal. "I am the president of Honduras," he insisted at the airport in San José, Costa Rica, still wearing his pajamas.

Later Sunday the Honduran Congress voted him out of office, replacing him with the president of Congress, Roberto Micheletti.

The military offered no public explanation for its actions, but the Supreme Court issued a statement saying that the military had acted to defend the law against "those who had publicly spoken out and acted against the Constitution's provisions."

So this is a rather interesting situation in that Zelaya was making part of his citizenry angry by attempting to change part their established democratic process (possibly illegally; in any case an overreach), so to stop him, the entire democratic process was subverted. A dubious victory, to say the least.

Or would have been, if the issue was strictly about protecting Honduras' democracy, but that isn't the whole story: "[Zelaya] has the support of labor unions and the poor. But the middle class and the wealthy business community fear he wants to introduce Mr. Chávez's brand of socialist populism into the country, one of Latin America's poorest."

Leaders across the hemisphere, however, denounced the coup, which American officials on Sunday said they had been working for several days to avert.

President Obama said he was deeply concerned and in a statement called on Honduran officials "to respect democratic norms, the rule of law and the tenets of the Inter-American Democratic charter.

"Any existing tensions and disputes must be resolved peacefully through dialogue free from any outside interference," he said.

...Obama administration officials said they were working with other members of the Organization of American States to ratchet up pressure on the Honduran military to end the coup and dismissed the prospect of outside military intervention in the matter.

"We think this can be resolved through dialogue," said the senior administration official. However, he admitted that the Honduran military was not responding to calls from the American government.

Discuss.