[Gay] Gay News from Around the Gay World That is Gay

[Tonitrus]

"Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility."

[crazy canuck]

That definition would be more accurate if the word individual was replaced by the word shareholder.

[crazy canuck]

Corporations can contract with people to shoot you. 

And, with USSC, they will probably be able to claim self-defense if they stand their ground.

 

[Valmy]

Ok I don't want Trans shit to derail the Trump thread so I thought I would address a few points here:

Let's take the trans issue, since Trump apparently made a big deal of it in his final ads.  But you could go with so many other culture issues.

I think fairly reasonable people can go "you know, I'm worried it's much too easy for youths to medically transition which will have irrevocable side effects".  Someone like JK Rowling made similar complaints.

The left would go "Transphobe! TERF!  Don't you know what time it is!".

I think such objections did a noticeable amount of damage in driving people with otherwise reasonable views, or at least mostly reasonable views on most issues, into the arms of the Trumpian-right.

Sure but that is just going to happen man. This is the internet and this is like trying to form DWI policy in a conversation that involves lots of people whose families just got killed by drunk drivers. For a ton of people this is really personal and there exists no way to hunt them all down and force them to be quiet. And yeah lots of institutions and powerful people were supporting those voices. I get it. And it's annoying. I know.

But on the other side you had tons of people calling any kind of accommodation even to adult trans people as being in favor of rape, child mutilation, and various other forms of absolute evil. And a huge multi-million dollar propaganda campaign, large religious institutions, and some of the worlds richest and most powerful people driving it forward. That is supposed to inculcate debate?

So it seems weird to me that with tons of unreasonable people on both sides the impact is only to steer people to the extremist position that just happens to have the more powerful and better funded propaganda network.

But, believe me I certainly would prefer that everybody on both sides was reasonable and sat down and had an honest debate made in good faith and came up with a compromise that everybody would live with. That's not the world we live in though.

My goal is, at the end of the day, to be kind to Trans people. That is what this is about. So if all we need to do to protect important and needed trans care for youth is to add some good faith and helpful guard rails that do not currently exist then I would support that.

But I understand why some are paranoid about it. We have decades of examples of limitations being put on things that were not made in good faith. That are actually just an attempt to crush the minority position. And indeed I think there are lots of people who are pretending to care about kids but in fact just want to eliminate trans. So I get why some might react with hostility. But at the end of the day you have to assume that somebody over there can be won over with good faith arguments, you can't just assume everybody is vile. A lot of them have only heard one side of the story and won't hear yours unless you are debating them or people they know and trust.

[Barrister]

Sure but that is just going to happen man. This is the internet and this is like trying to form DWI policy in a conversation that involves lots of people whose families just got killed by drunk drivers. For a ton of people this is really personal and there exists no way to hunt them all down and force them to be quiet. And yeah lots of institutions and powerful people were supporting those voices. I get it. And it's annoying. I know.

This is a very interesting analogy.

A lot of our policies about drunk driving come from a group MADD - Mothers Against Drunk Driving.  It was founded by people who, you guessed it, had family members who were killed by drunk drivers.

Nevertheless - MADD and the like never embraced temperance/teetotalling as the solution.

You can argue where MADD and other groups wanted to draw the line.  No advocacy group is perfect.  But there was at least some acknowledgement that there was a line to be drawn.

My goal is, at the end of the day, to be kind to Trans people. That is what this is about. So if all we need to do to protect important and needed trans care for youth is to add some good faith and helpful guard rails that do not currently exist then I would support that.

That is my goal as well.  A lot of modern politics ought to just boil down to simple politeness or manners.  Call people what they want to be called.  Do not be deliberately rude or insulting to people.

But no - even as the trans issue seems to have slightly turned, we now see the online right insisting it is imperative to mis-gender trans people, to be deliberately rude and insulting to them "for their own good".

[Syt]

Some More News had a focus on how statistics about detransitioning etc. get distorted. (Though I don't assume SMN has many fans here The episode itself was written by a trans person.)

[grumbler]

Some More News had a focus on how statistics about detransitioning etc. get distorted. (Though I don't assume SMN has many fans here The episode itself was written by a trans person.)

SMN is terrific.  I don't agree with everything presented, but Cody Johnson is a great presenter and the writing is always good.

[Syt]

From Reddit. Apparently someone styled a pride flag based on the Austro-Hungarian flag.

[Syt]

And if there was any doubt that many brands just marked Pride Month because it seemed the right decision for the bottom line:

https://apnews.com/article/pride-parades-companies-dropping-out-1f41c6bc5f61dc96fbfb34ca66fb18b3

[Solmyr]

In Finland, the Presidential couple are official protectors of Pride for the first time in history. 

[jimmy olsen]

Jonathon Joss, voice actor of John Redcorn in King of the Hill, gunned down in a homophonic hate crime.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/jun/02/jonathan-joss-king-hill-actor-killed-shooting

[Valmy]

Holy shit. That is amazing. I love that person.

And if there was any doubt that many brands just marked Pride Month because it seemed the right decision for the bottom line:

There was never any doubt about that. We were happy that it was the right decision for the bottom line. For awhile anyway. But yeah I don't think anybody thought those corporations were taking a stand on principle or anything.

Jonathon Joss, voice actor of John Redcorn in King of the Hill, gunned down in a homophonic hate crime.

  RIP

[Syt]

https://apnews.com/article/harvey-milk-navy-ship-renamed-pride-month-d6cda5df15ee5bc066092d54c591c6f2

Hegseth orders the name of gay rights activist Harvey Milk scrubbed from Navy ship

WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the Navy to rename the USNS Harvey Milk, a highly rare move that will strip the ship of the moniker of a slain gay rights activist who served as a sailor during the Korean War.

U.S. officials say Navy Secretary John Phelan put together a small team to rename the replenishment oiler and that a new name is expected this month. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said the next name had not yet been chosen.

The change was laid out in an internal memo that officials said defended the action as a move to align with President Donald Trump and Hegseth's objectives to "re-establish the warrior culture."

It marks the latest move by Hegseth and the wider Trump administration to purge all programs, policies, books and social media mentions of references to diversity, equity and inclusion. And it comes during Pride Month — the same timing as the Pentagon's campaign to force transgender troops out of the U.S. military.

Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement that Hegseth is "committed to ensuring that the names attached to all DOD installations and assets are reflective of the Commander-in-Chief's priorities, our nation's history, and the warrior ethos."

Phelan's office did not respond to a request for comment on the decision, which was first reported by Military.com.

The USNS Harvey Milk was named in 2016 by then-Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, who said at the time that the John Lewis-class of oilers would be named after leaders who fought for civil and human rights.

Milk, who was portrayed by Sean Penn in an Oscar-winning 2008 movie, served for four years in the Navy before he was forced out for being gay. He later became one of the first openly gay candidates elected to public office.

Milk served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and had sponsored a bill banning discrimination based on sexual orientation in public accommodations, housing and employment. It passed, and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone signed it into law.

On Nov. 27, 1978, Milk and Moscone were assassinated by Dan White, a disgruntled former city supervisor who cast the sole vote against Milk's bill.

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat representing San Francisco, said in a statement Tuesday that "this spiteful move does not strengthen our national security or the 'warrior' ethos. Instead, it is a surrender of a fundamental American value: to honor the legacy of those who worked to build a better country."

California Gov. Gavin Newsom also slammed the move, saying Milk was a Korean War combat veteran whose commander called him "outstanding."

"Stripping his name from a Navy ship won't erase his legacy as an American icon, but it does reveal Trump's contempt for the very values our veterans fight to protect," the Democrat wrote on X.

The ship was christened in 2021, and during the ceremony, then-Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro said he wanted to be at the event "not just to amend the wrongs of the past, but to give inspiration to all of our LGBTQ community leaders who served in the Navy, in uniform today and in the civilian workforce as well, too, and to tell them that we're committed to them in the future."

The ship is operated by Military Sealift Command, with a crew of about 125 civilian mariners. The Navy says it conducted its first resupply mission at sea in fall 2024, while operating in the Virginia Capes. It continued to resupply Navy ships at sea off the East Coast until it began scheduled maintenance at Alabama Shipyard in Mobile, Alabama, earlier this year.

While the renaming is rare, the Biden administration also changed the names of two Navy ships in 2023 as part of the effort to remove Confederate names from U.S. military installations.

The USS Chancellorsville — named for the Civil War battle — was renamed the USS Robert Smalls after a sailor and former enslaved person. And the USNS Maury, an oceanographic survey ship originally named after a Confederate sailor, was renamed the USNS Marie Tharp after a geologist and oceanographic cartographer who created the first scientific maps of the Atlantic Ocean floor.

Maritime lore hints as to why renaming ships is so unusual, suggesting that changing a name is bad luck and tempts retribution from the sea gods.

[garbon]

Petty

[Syt]

Like everyone in the administration.