Thursday, October 18, 2012

Mitt Romney's oldest son makes Obama threat !!!!

Mitt Romney's oldest son, Tagg Romney joked in a radio interview Wednesday his preferred method of dealing with a combative President Barack Obama was to "take a swing" at his dad's rival.

Asked on the Bill Lumaye radio show what it's like "to hear the President of the United States call your dad a liar," Tagg Romney joked about his fantasy response.
take a swing at him," he said. "But you know you can't do that because, well, first because there's a lot of Secret Service between you and him, but also because that's the nature of the process. You know they're going to try to do anything they can do to make my dad into something he's not."

"We signed up for it, we've got to kind of sit there and take our punches, and send them the other way," he continued.

One of Tagg Romney's brothers, Josh, downplayed the comments in a Thursday morning interview on ABC's "The View."
"That brother has slugged me a couple of times," Josh Romney said. "I'm sure President Obama has nothing to worry about."

Asked about the original comments on Thursday, Romney campaign spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg said Tagg Romney was "joking about how frustrating this process can be for family."
Forget about all of the quotes and comments about "binders for women" and "gender pay equality," let's chat for a moment about violence and children.

Tagg Romney, Mitt's son, who got his job as a managing partner at Solamere Capital through family privilege, was recording stating that he "wanted to punch President Obama." And that the only thing stopping him was the Secret Service.

More likely the only thing stopping him was knowing he'd have likely gotten his block knocked off right in front of the whole world. Then again, for a man raised by a single parent, President Obama more than likely would have been too much of a gentleman to hit the whining privileged kid back. He's a lover, not a brawler.

But forget who would have won a brawl between the two of them ... let's talk about violence. Period.

Mitt Romney stood on stage at the debates on the evening of October 16 and let the world know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is nothing more than a collector, and that he wants the United States White House on his collector's shelf.

In less than an hour, he told the nation's women that he had "binders full of women" that were hired during his administration, neglecting the fact that the majority of women in executive positions dropped to less than half during that time as well.

He said that as President, he would 'understand' that women need to sometimes get off work early to go home and "cook and clean." (Where is he? Still back in the 19th century?)
He said that single mothers, single parenting, is the biggest cause of gun crime violence in the nation, while talking to a President who was raised by a single mom who has a Secretary of State who is married to a former President who was raised by a single mom.

Yet ... his own son, as the former governor speaks about the violence of children raised by single mothers, is recorded saying that he "wanted to punch President Obama" for doing what President Obama should have been doing ... calling his father a liar.

Considering that his father has been leaked to the world as not only a liar and a tax hustler who should be in prison, not in the Oval Office; but also as a man who would tape his family dog to the top of an SUV for a cross-country trip, as a school bully himself who went around dressing up as a cop to scare people, and whose wife also says that she worries about his "mental health" if he is elected ... that should just about tell everyone everything what they need to know about the entire Romney family ... husband, wife, kids, dog, and all.

They are saying what they want to say exactly like they want to say it...and they don't seem to be aware that the whole world is listening through ears that they don't have to hear with.

They are being interviewed, not just for Mitt Romney, but their whole family is being interviewed by the United States of America for a job it doesn't look like they're going to get.

Boy Scouts' Internal Files Equated Gay Leaders With Pedophiles

A newly posted database shows in disturbing detail how the Boy Scouts of America has regularly equated gay people with pedophiles — a false equivalence sometimes made by those that argue gays are rightly barred from the group.

The so-called "Perversion Files" were made public by Seattle attorney Tim Kosnoff, who used the BSA's confidential "Ineligible Volunteers" list to track down those scoutmasters accused of sexually assaulting minors and bring them to justice in court.

According to a statement issued to The Seattle Times, the BSA believed that the confidential list was the best way to protect Scouts from sexual abuse, since an accused volunteer couldn't simply move on to another troop after allegations of abuse.

But among more than 1,200 names of those accused of pedophilia, the "Perversion Files" also list several Scout volunteers who were barred solely for being gay, not for sexually assaulting children. The BSA recently reaffirmed its ban on openly gay Scouts and volunteers, saying the ban was "absolutely the best policy for the Boy Scouts."

That the list makes no distinction between pedophiles and volunteers declared ineligible solely because of their sexual orientation shows the Scouts perpetuated the stereotype that gay people are compulsive pedophiles. That assertion is plainly false, but it hasn't stopped conservative pundits from also feeding the lie as reason to back a gay ban in Scouting. In July, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee told a caller to his radio show who had been abused by a scoutmaster that, "You make us understand why the Boy Scouts made a decision that at least I think was the right one."

The spreadsheet, which lists the date and location of offense, name and troop number of the accused, and comments surrounding the accusation, lists several volunteers declared ineligible after they "Confessed to [a] gay lifestyle." One such case, from 1985 in New York, blacklists a volunteer who was "Jailed for larceny. Confessed to gay lifestyle."

Another volunteer was added to the list in 1989, and the only comment about his suspension reads "Originally suspended in 1960 due to homosexuality."

In 1991 a Massachusetts volunteer was blacklisted with a simple, two-word reason: "Confessed homosexual."

A Maryland volunteer in 1983 was disavowed after he was "accused of homosexual acts."

While some of the instances of assault occurred between people of the same sex, several male volunteers were convicted of assault against women and girls, according to the document.

According to another attorney who used the list to prosecute criminal pedophiles, making the names public allows victims to discover whether their assailant was ever reprimanded. "The stories in those files are real little boys and real stories of abuse," Oregon attorney Kelly Clark told The Seattle Times. "And when the public sees these stories in black and white, I think the level of understanding and frustration about sexual abuse in Scouting is going to be significantly elevated."

Bill O'Reilly Confused by the Difference Between Gays and Child Molesters

Bill O'Reilly of Fox News seemed confused in an interview when told there's no basis for saying pedophilia is more of a gay problem than a straight one.
ThinkProgress points out that O'Reilly Monday night interviewed the Southern Poverty Law Center's Mark Potok, who leads its decision-making on which organizations should be labeled as "hate groups." SPLC had been the target of complaining by right-wing groups that the "hate group" moniker leads to attacks like a recent shooting at the Family Research Council.
Potok tried to explain to O'Reilly that FRC has a long history of distributing "flat-out lies" and "demonizing" information about LGBT people, including its regular conflation of gay people with child molesters.
"So they are pointing out that in this area, there is a higher percentage of gay pedophilia, homosexual pedophilia, than heterosexual pedophilia," O'Reilly said, as if he were citing a fact. "Are they a hate group for pointing that out?"
"But Bill, they’re not pointing something out that’s true," Potok said. "They’re making a false allegation."

Nurse Falsely Outs Gay Man as HIV-Positive to Patients

A gay man has received an apology after a nurse announced that he was HIV-positive in front of a crowded waiting room of other patients, as well as the man's boss.

Liam Taylor, of Christchurch, New Zealand, said that he had gone to his dentist's office for a root canal earlier this year, and during the procedure, a dental assistant pricked herself with a needle. According to The Dominion Post, Taylor was asked to take a blood test to ensure that he had not transmitted HIV or another blood-based illness to the dental assistant

When he arrived at St. George's Hospital for testing, Taylor went to a nurse supervising the desk to clarify the details on the incident report.

"I took it back up to the desk and the nurse said I had filled out the wrong section of the form," he said in the article. "She said I needed to fill out the 'source' section, not the 'recipient' section because I was 'the source of the HIV or AIDS.' I was just totally shocked when she said that."

Taylor's boss accompanied him to the clinic, and overheard the nurse's statement. "The nurse then said, 'sorry, I mean the potential source of HIV or AIDS.' I was so embarassed, All these people were in the waiting room, and she said it loudly...and the first thing that came to my mind was, 'is she just assuming that I have diseased because I'm gay?'

Taylor tested negative for HIV.

After he told the dental office what happened, they reduced his bill by $150. A staff person at the lab also called Taylor to apologize for the incident.

Transgender Zombies Take Manhattan in Music Video

Just in time for the Right Out TV Music and Video Awards, transgender cantador StormMiguel Florez has released first music video to celebrate his nomination. The video for Florez's popular song "I've Been To Manhattan" has a heartbroken zombie who finds his true nature in this ode to the legendary cocktail of the same name. Sounding like a sexier transgender answer to Johnny Cash, Florez is a Mexican-American folksinger to watch out for, and the video is chock full of of other trans pop-cultural cameos from other San Francisco-based artists including indie rocker Shawna Virago and dancer Sean Dorsey.

Florez is up for a Right Out Award in two categories: Best Video DIY (along with Blinded by Stardust, Charles K Brown, Kat Devlin, Brett Every, Sonasfly, Corday) and Fan Favorite (along with a number of other LGBT artists including Melange LaVonne, Ladi G, and Grrlz Will Be BoiZ).The awards are meant to honor the contributions of out LGBTI musicians and fans can vote on the latter category until tomorrow at RightOutAwards.com.Winners will be announced October 29.

Is James Bond Bisexual?

That's the question on everyone's mind after the flirtatious scene between Daniel Craig and Javier Bardem
Well of course the answer is yes. Haven't we always detected the crackle of sexuality in all his interactions—whether with a woman or a man? But to many, James Bond is seen as a heterosexual icon, as he womanizes his way through his many daring exploits. Now that the question as to whether Bond could be bi has become a big topic of discussion with the latest film in the franchise, Skyfall (out November 9), we wonder if it really is that surprising after all these years.
 In an early reaction to the film, Frank Digiacomo noted that Javier Bardem's villain Silva, a former MI6 agent, seems to have a thing for Bond. And when Bond and Silva meet, the latter "caresses the bound MI6 agent's chest. In response to Silva's attentions, 007 replies, 'What makes you think this is my first time?' "

So the Movieline writer asked Craig about it at a recent press conference, wondering if it was just a bluff.

"What are you going to do?" Craig replied breezily, getting a nice laugh from the crowd, but then he added: "I don't see the world in sexual divisions." He then changed the subject from Bond to to Bardem's wonderfully flamboyant character, Silva. "Someone suggested that Silva may be gay," Craig said with a big smile. "And I'm like, I think he'll fuck anything."

Bardem made some statements of his own—"It was part of the game, but it’s not entirely the game"—that seemed to reflect an idea that it wasn't about sex, it was about power.

But whatever the case, there's always been air of around Bond, and his ease with jumping into the sack with anyone, no matter what the consequences, seem to point more to his sexual slipperiness rather than any clearly defined roles.

In fact, the homophobic nature of the secret services was a reality and U.S. and U.K. secret agents were gay was often seen as a security risk. In Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, the adaptation of John le Carré's novel, an agent is revealed to be gay, and he must break up with his partner due to a security risk. So even though it was a feeling that pervaded the Cold War era especially, now that Bond has been rebooted for a post-Cold War era, we should wonder: Would a bisexual Bond really change his image all that much?

Arizona Student Paper Apologizes for Violent, Homophobic Cartoon !

The editors of the Arizona Daily Wildcat, the student newspaper for the University of Arizona, have formally apologized for publishing a cartoon that seems to advocate violence against gay people. The apology says, "The Wildcat staff made a serious error in judgment in printing a cartoon that some readers felt was homophobic and inappropriate."

The four-panel comic, written by UA student D.C. Parsons and published Tuesday, features a father telling his young son, "If you ever tell me you're gay ... I will shoot you with my shotgun, roll you up in a carpet and throw you off of a bridge."

"Well I guess that's what they call a Fruit Roll-Up!" the child responds, before the two characters are seen laughing hysterically.

Reader response was harsh and swift, including the creation of a petition on Change.org calling for the cartoonist, editor in chief, and copy editor to be fired. The petition has more than 3,000 signatures. 

The student cartoonist also publicly apologized, stopping short of a full mea culpa.

"I would like to formally apologize to anyone who I may have offended in my comic 'etc.' on Tuesday. The comic was not intended to offend," wrote Parsons in a response posted on the Wildcat's website. "It was based on an experience from my childhood. My father is a devout conservative from a previous generation, and I believe he was simply distraught from the fact that I had learned (from The Simpsons) what homosexuality was at such a young age. I have always used humor as a coping mechanism, much like society does when addressing social taboos. … I do sincerely apologize and sympathize with anyone who may be offended by my comics (I am often similarly offended by 'Ralph and Chuck'), but keep in mind it is only a joke, and what's worse than a joke is a society that selectively ignores its problems."

Several commenters pointed out that what's actually worse than a vastly unfunny joke is a society that condemns LGBT people for who they are and makes light of the fact that they are so often victims of murder, suicide, and assault.

                                          -Thoughts from Celeste-                                     


Sometimes stories will come across my desk and I think "There is no way this has happened,how could some thing so shocking and bizarre be real" Well this is one of those times !  The disturbing comic was printed in a student paper at the University of Arizona. The comic was written by a student,however I do believe that all submissions to the paper has to be approved by the editor before being published. In my opinion the editor failed horribly. In the apology that was issued by the paper stated "The Wildcat staff made a serious error in judgment in printing a cartoon that some readers felt was homophobic and inappropriate."

Error in judgement,WOW.....that's an understatement ! As an institution of higher learning did they honestly not think people would be upset.The apologies issued seamed to be very cold and even less sincere. I urge readers to visit Change.org and sign the petition, this simply can not be allowed to happen and the University of Arizona needs to take responsibility and action !

Monday, October 15, 2012

Facebook Outs Gays to public



AUSTIN, Texas—Bobbi Duncan desperately wanted her father not to know she is lesbian. Facebook told him anyway.
One evening last fall, the president of the Queer Chorus, a choir group she had recently joined, inadvertently exposed Ms. Duncan's sexuality to her nearly 200 Facebook friends, including her father, by adding her to a Facebook Inc. discussion group. That night, Ms. Duncan's father left vitriolic messages on her phone, demanding she renounce same-sex relationships, she says, and threatening to sever family ties.
The 22-year-old cried all night on a friend's couch. "I felt like someone had hit me in the stomach with a bat," she says.
Soon, she learned that another choir member, Taylor McCormick, had been outed the very same way, upsetting his world as well.
The president of the chorus, a student organization at the University of Texas campus here, had added Ms. Duncan and Mr. McCormick to the choir's Facebook group. The president didn't know the software would automatically tell their Facebook friends that they were now members of the chorus.
The two students were casualties of a privacy loophole on Facebook—the fact that anyone can be added to a group by a friend without their approval. As a result, the two lost control over their secrets, even though both were sophisticated users who had attempted to use Facebook's privacy settings to shield some of their activities from their parents.
"Our hearts go out to these young people," says Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes. "Their unfortunate experience reminds us that we must continue our work to empower and educate users about our robust privacy controls."
In the era of social networks like Facebook and Google Inc.'s Google+, companies that catalog people's activities for a profit routinely share, store and broadcast everyday details of people's lives. This creates a challenge for individuals navigating the personal-data economy: how to keep anything private in an era when it is difficult to predict where your information will end up.
Many people have been stung by accidentally revealing secrets online that were easier kept in the past. In Quebec, Canada, in 2009, Nathalie Blanchard lost her disability-insurance benefits for depression after she posted photos on Facebook showing her having fun at the beach and at a nightclub with male exotic dancers. After seeing the photos, her insurer, Manulife Financial, hired a private investigator and asked a doctor to re-evaluate her diagnosis, according to Ms. Blanchard's lawyer.
Ms. Blanchard didn't realize her photos were visible to the public, according to the lawyer, who added that depressed people often try to disguise their illness to family and friends. Ms. Blanchard sued to have her benefits reinstated. The matter was settled out of court.
A Manulife spokeswoman declined to discuss the case, saying "we would not deny or terminate a valid claim solely based on information published on websites such as Facebook."
Losing control online is more than a technology problem—it's a sociological turning point. For much of human history, personal information spread slowly, person-to-person if at all.
The Facebook era, however, makes it possible to disclose private matters to wide populations, intentionally or not. Personal worlds that previously could be partitioned—work, family, friendships, matters of sexuality—become harder to keep apart. One solution staying off Facebook, has become harder to do as it reaches a billion people around the world.
Facebook is committed to the principle of one identity for its users. It has shut down accounts of people who use pseudonyms and multiple accounts, including those of dissidents and protesters in China and Egypt. The company says its commitment to "real names" makes the site safer for users. It is also at the core of the service they sell to advertisers, namely, access to the real you.
Closeted gays and lesbians face particular challenges in controlling their images online, given that friends, family and enemies have the ability to expose them.
In Austin, Ms. Duncan and Mr. McCormick, 21, deliberately tried to stay in the closet with their parents, even as they stepped out on campus. Ms. Duncan's parents home-schooled her and raised her in Newton, N.C., where the family attended a fundamentalist church. Now a linguistics student, she told her best friend in the summer of 2011 that she might be gay.
As she struggled with her sexuality, she adjusted her Facebook privacy settings to hide any hint of it from her father, whom she had helped sign up for Facebook. "Once I had my Facebook settings set, I knew—or thought I knew—there wasn't any problem," she says.
Mr. McCormick, studying to become a pharmacist, came out in July 2011 to his mother in his hometown of Blanco, Texas, but not to his father, whom Mr. McCormick describes as a member of a conservative church that teaches homosexuality is sin.
He set Facebook controls for what he calls a "privacy lockdown" on posts that his father, in San Antonio, could see. "We have the one big secret when we're young," he says. "I knew not everyone was going to be accepting."
UT Austin was more accepting. As many university campuses have for years, it offered a safe space for young people to come out without parents knowing. Last fall, Ms. Duncan and Mr. McCormick attended the first rehearsal for the Queer Chorus, a group for gay, lesbian and transgender students and their allies. "This is a great place to find yourself as a queer person," says the chorus's then-president, Christopher Acosta. The group is known for renditions of pop songs in which it sometimes changes the gender of pronouns. Ms. Duncan agreed to play piano and sing alto. Mr. McCormick, who has a slight frame, surprised the chorus with his deep bass.
At the rehearsal, on Sept. 8, Mr. Acosta asked if any members weren't on the chorus's Facebook group, where rehearsals would be planned. Mr. McCormick and Ms. Duncan said they weren't.
That night, Mr. Acosta turned on his MacBook Pro and added the two new members to the chorus Facebook group. Facebook, then and now, offers three options for this sort of group: "secret" (membership and discussions hidden to nonmembers), "closed" (anybody can see the group and its members, but only members see posts), and "open" (membership and content both public).
Mr. Acosta had chosen open. "I was so gung-ho about the chorus being unashamedly loud and proud," he says.
But there was a trade-off he says he didn't know about. When he added Ms. Duncan, which didn't require her prior online consent, Facebook posted a note to her all friends, including her father, telling them that she had joined the Queer Chorus.
When Mr. Acosta pushed the button, Facebook allowed him to override the intent of the individual privacy settings Ms. Duncan and Mr. McCormick had used to hide posts from their fathers. Facebook's online help center explains that open groups, as well as closed groups, are visible to the public and will publish notification to users' friends. But Facebook doesn't allow users to approve before a friend adds them to a group, or to hide their addition from friends.
After being contacted by The Wall Street Journal, Facebook adjusted the language in its online Help Center to explain situations, like the one that arose with Queer Chorus, in which friends can see that people have joined groups.
Facebook also added a link to this new explanation directly from the screen where users create groups.
"I was figuring out the rules by trial and error," says Mr. Acosta.
A few hours later, Ms. Duncan's father began leaving her angry voice mails, according to Ms. Duncan and a friend who was present.
"No no no no no no no," Ms. Duncan recalls telling a friend. "I have him hidden from my updates, but he saw this," she said. "He saw it."
Ms. Duncan's father didn't respond to requests for comment for this article.
Her father called repeatedly that night, she says, and when they spoke, he threatened to stop paying her car insurance. He told her to go on Facebook and renounce the chorus and gay lifestyles.
On his Facebook page, he wrote two days later: "To all you queers. Go back to your holes and wait for GOD," according to text provided by Ms. Duncan. "Hell awaits you pervert. Good luck singing there."
Ms. Duncan says she fell into depression for weeks. "I couldn't function," she says. "I would be in class and not hear a word anyone was saying."
Mr. McCormick's mother phoned him the night his name joined the Queer Chorus group. "She said, 'S—has hit the fan…Your dad has found out.' I asked how," Mr. McCormick recalled, "and she said it was all over Facebook."
His father didn't talk to his son for three weeks, the younger Mr. McCormick says. "He just dropped off the face of my earth."
Mr. McCormick's father declined to participate in this article.
Privacy critics including the American Civil Liberties Union say Facebook has slowly shifted the defaults on its software to reveal more information about people to the public and to Facebook's corporate partners.
"Users are often unaware of the extent to which their information is available," says Chris Conley, technology and civil-liberties attorney at the ACLU of Northern California. "And if sensitive info is released, it is often impossible to put the cat back in the bag."
Facebook executives say that they have added increasingly more privacy controls, because that encourages people to share. "It is all about making it easier to share with exactly who you want and never be surprised about who sees something," said Chris Cox, Facebook's vice president of product, in an interview in August 2011 as the site unveiled new privacy controls. Facebook declined to make Mr. Cox available for this article.
Still, privacy advocates say control loopholes remain where friends can disclose information about other users. Facebook users, for example, can't take down photos of them posted by others.
A greater concern, they say, is that many people don't know how to use Facebook's privacy controls. A survey conducted in the spring of 2011 for the Pew Research Center found that U.S. social-network users were becoming more active in controlling their online identities by taking steps like deleting comments posted by others. Still, about half reported some difficulty in managing privacy controls.
This past September, the National Football League pulled referee Brian Stropolo from a game between the New Orleans Saints and the Carolina Panthers after ESPN found a photo of Mr. Stropolo wearing a Saints jacket and cap that he had posted on Facebook.
It remains unclear whether the photo was intended to be public or private.
An NFL spokesman said, "I don't believe you will see him back on the field." The NFL declined to make Mr. Stropolo available.
Privacy researchers say that increasing privacy settings may actually produce what they call an "illusion of control" for social-network users. In a series of experiments in 2010, Carnegie Mellon University Associate Professor Alessandro Acquisti found that offering people more privacy settings generated "some form of overconfidence that, paradoxically, makes people overshare more," he says.
Allison Palmer, vice president of campaigns and programs at the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, says her organization is helping Facebook to develop resources for gay users to help them understand how best to maintain safety and privacy on the site.
"Facebook is one of the few tech companies to make this a priority," she says.
Mr. Acosta, the choir president, says he should have been sensitive to the risk of online outings. His parents learned he was gay when, in high school, he sent an email saying so that accidentally landed in his father's in-box.
Today, he says, his parents accept his sexuality. So before creating his Facebook group, he didn't think about the likelihood of less-accepting parents on Facebook.
"I didn't put myself in that mind-set," he says. "I do take some responsibility."
Some young gay people do, in fact, choose Facebook as a forum for their official comings-out, when they change their Facebook settings to publicly say, "Interested In: Men" or "Interested In: Women." For many young Americans, sexuality can be confidential but no longer a shameful subject. Sites like Facebook give them an opportunity  to claim their sexuality and find community.
For gays, social media "offers both resources and risks," says C.J. Pascoe, a Colorado College sociology professor who studies the role of new media in teen sexuality. "In a physical space, you can be in charge of the audiences around you. But in an online space, you have to be prepared for the reality that, at any given moment, they could converge without your control."
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has long posited that the capability to share information will change how we groom our identities. "The days of you having a different image for your work friends or co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly," he said in an interview for David Kirkpatrick's 2010 book, "The Facebook Effect." Facebook users have "one identity," he said.
Facebook declined to make Mr. Zuckerberg available.
Days after their outings, Ms. Duncan and Mr. McCormick met at the campus gender-and-sexuality center, which provides counseling. On a couch, they swapped tales. "I remember I was miserable and said, 'Facebook decided to tell my dad that I was gay,' " she says. "He looked at me and said, 'Oh really, you too?'"
Mr. McCormick's mother, Monica McCormick, meanwhile, was worried how the Facebook disclosure might affect her business selling insurance. "Every kid in this town now knows," she says. "I am sure that I have lost clients, but they are not going to tell you why. That is living in a small town."
Mr. McCormick and his father eventually talked about his sexuality over an awkward lunch at a burger joint and haven't discussed it much since. But Mr. McCormick feels more open and proud about his sexuality. He changed his Facebook profile to "Interested In: Men."
After Ms. Duncan's Sept. 8 outing, she went through long periods of not speaking with her father.
For a while, Ms. Duncan's mother moved into her daughter's apartment with her. "I wanted to be with her," says her mother, who is also named Bobbi. "This was something that I thought her father had crossed the line over, and I could not agree with him."
Speaking of Mr. Duncan, she says: "The big deal for him was that it was posted and that all his friends and all his family saw it."
The younger Ms. Duncan says she tried to build bridges with her father around the year-end holidays. But the arguments persisted.
"I finally realized I don't need this problem in my life anymore," she says. "I don't think he is evil, he is just incredibly misguided."
She stopped returning her dad's calls in May.
She and Mr. McCormick remain in the chorus. Mr. Acosta changed the Facebook group to "secret" and the chorus established online-privacy guidelines.
Today, Ms. Duncan has her first girlfriend. "I am in a really good place," she says, but wouldn't want anybody to have her experience. "I blame Facebook," she says. "It shouldn't be somebody else's choice what people see of me."


                                       -Thoughts from Celeste-

Dear Friends,

When I read about this,I was completely blown away for many reasons. Like myself (facebook.com/celeste.devereux.7 ) many,if not all of you have a facebook page. The PR team @ Facebook boast 250 million users actively have profiles. As of October 1, 2012 the United States had a total resident population of 314,585,000, so with some simple math that means that only 64,585,000 of U.S. population does not have an account on Facebook. With this in mind I began to wonder how many of those accounts might belong to people that are Gay,Lesbian,Bi,or Transsexual. Many studies and Institutions suggest that 3.8% of American population(around 9 Million) are LGBT folks like us,however I believe that statistic is SEVERELY wrong ! If any company or corporation was to lose 9 Million people it could possible destroy that company. LGBT people have an extremely difficult time coming out to their family and friends and for many this can cause thoughts and attempts at suicide or even worst. Why would any person or company ever think that outing any LGBT people would be a good thing. Recently I have had trouble with Facebook.com and "THE TEAM" at facebook seemed very unwilling to resolve the issue which continued for almost a week. Personally I believe that facebook is due for a much needed "FACELIFT" before 250 million people end up joining Myspace ......AGAIN !

As a final word, I urge People not posting personal information and if any site,group,app etc. ask for any that user should decline immediately and file a report. Facebook has never had a proven track record,and honestly I don't think it ever will ! Mark Zuckerberg should consider the site user and completely redo Facebook and their policies and procedures.

Meet Adam Pally, the Actor Behind TV's Funniest Gay Character


Max Blum is a complex guy. He’s a scruffy, lazy sports fan with a mean streak. He’s a pigheaded friend who’s incapable of backing down from a stupid challenge. He’s tone-deaf when it comes to dating, but is a savant kisser capable of inspiring unrequited love from the ladies with a simple smooch. And thanks to actor Adam Pally, Max, a main character on ABC’s lauded comedy Happy Endings, is also the most relatable, offbeat, and compelling gay character on network television.
In the hands of 30-year-old Pally, Max isn’t just comic relief. He’s a beer-swilling, prank-playing, decidedly schlumpy everyman, but at the same time, he’s not just playing against type to teach us a lesson that not all gay guys sparkle. When Max becomes interested in bear culture, it means hibernating all winter, eating honey, and eventually straddling a unicycle. Yet it’s not entirely surprising when his all-guy Madonna cover band -- who go by the name Mandonna -- stage a reunion. You just can’t peg this dude.
For Pally, playing Max isn’t a matter of plotting the layers of his personality. His method is a bit simpler. “I just try to play him for the moment and make him as funny and real as possible,” he says. “If you start thinking about repercussions or stereotypes or ideas to break down, it stops being fun and it’s not pure. I try not to think about the end result.” Embodying Max is something that comes naturally to the actor. “There’s not a lot about Max that’s a stretch for me,” Pally says. “I am slovenly, I like sports, I drink too much, I have a gambling problem, and I’m highly competitive. And do I know someone like Max? Yeah. My best gay friends just got married, and in the middle of their big, lavish wedding they were telling us how they were moving to a better school district. I was like, ‘Wow, you’re really mature. In my mind, you guys are always just drinking or at the gym.’ ”
Comedy is something that practically runs through Pally’s veins. The New Jersey native grew up with a performer father -- his parents were once in a Borscht Belt rock group called Pally and Pal -- and knew early on that show business was for him. “When I was about 17, my parents took me to the Upright Citizens Brigade to see a show,” he recalls. “I loved it and knew that it was what I wanted to do.” After a stint at the University of Arizona (“I went and kind of fucked up for a couple of years and almost died.”) he moved to New York to attend college and join UCB, where he took and taught classes for nearly a decade. A relocation to L.A. turned up Pally’s breakout role in Happy Endings, a series that can be summed up as a richer, more bizarro, more self-aware take on Friends.
In the midst of filming the show’s third season, Pally is penning a script for a film being produced by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay, though he’s sworn to secrecy about its details. He’s less tight-lipped, however, about whether Max will get another chance at love when Happy Endings returns. “I think he really liked his old boyfriend, and when that didn’t work, it made it tough for him to recover,” Pally says. “We’ll see a lot of dates, but we might not see the boyfriend.”
And what about his admirers? Surely, Pally has raised a few eyebrows from fans who mistake him for Max and are surprised to spot him with a wife and kid? “Not really,” he says. “I feel like it used to be a much bigger deal to have a straight actor playing a gay character. Now people just don’t give a shit. They see me on the street and most of them are like, ‘Didn’t I go to high school with you?’ ”

Over Half of Native Trans People Have Attempted Suicide

As Native Americans celebrated Indigenous Peoples Day last week (the reclaiming of Columbus Day that's taken root in recent years), the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and National Center for Transgender Equality released the fourth and final piece in a series of reports designed to specifically shine a light on the experiences of transgender people of color. Injustice at Every Turn: A Look at American Indian and Alaskan Native Respondents in the National Transgender Discrimination Survey measured transgender people's experiences of discrimination and showed that the combination of anti-transgender with structural and individual racism meant that transgender people of color experience particularly devastating levels of discrimination.
Among the startling results:
• American Indian and Alaskan Native transgender and gender non-conforming people often live in extreme poverty with 23% reporting a household income of less than $10,000 a year. This compares to a rate of 15% for transgender people of all races. It is about three times the general American Indian and Alaskan Native population rate (8%), and nearly six times the general U.S. population rate (4%).
• American Indian and Alaskan Native transgender and gender non-conforming people were affected by HIV in devastating numbers: 3.24% reported being HIV positive and an additional 8.53% reported that they did not know their status. This compares to rates of 2.64% for transgender respondents of all races, and 0.60% of the general U.S. population.

• Fifty-six percent (56%) of American Indian and Alaskan Native transgender respondents reported having attempted suicide compared to 41% of all study respondents.