Michelle Obama, please become my idol !

Michelle Obama

According to Obama gay freedoms include being able to put your life on the line in the military, to die for the country, (even dragging out enacting that change), but not the right to have a legal marriage.

During her early months as First Lady, Michelle Obama visited homeless shelters and soup kitchens. She also sent representatives to schools and advocated public service. On her first trip abroad in April 2009, she toured a cancer ward with Sarah Brown, wife of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
She has begun advocating on behalf of military families. Like her predecessors Clinton and Bush, who supported the organic movement by instructing the White House kitchens to buy organic food, Obama has received attention by planting an organic garden and installing bee hives on the South Lawn of the White House, which will supply organic produce and honey to the First Family and for state dinners and other official gatherings. ALL WELL DONE
But there is something missing Mrs. to become my idol !

Mrs. Obama has never made any public statements about same-sex marriage.

President Obama and his wife have said that they believes marriage is between a man and woman but not same-sex couples. Here in Holding Trevor we don't think so and we hope,  that sooner or later, they could change their point of view.

Emily Dickinson

Was He afraid - or tranquil -
Might He know
How Conscious Consciousness - could grow -
Till Love that was - and Love too best to be -
Meet - and the Junction be Eternity

F688 (1863) / J622 (1862)

Sabina Guzzanti

Identity is given by the courage of being who you are and by the deep respect for your own life; by the real value that we give to it. 

At the same time, identity is the only true source of power of human beings.  

Only if you have an identity you can change the world, enjoying life and understanding what it is.

Jay Brannan: new video, new album ! Rob Me Blind

New York Magazine premieres today the new video of this great singer: Jay Brannan.

He is a talented american actor and singer-songwriter, an awsome boy that we well remember acting in Shortbus (2006) and Holding Trevor (2007), singing songs like "Housewife", "Can't have it all", "Lower my gun" and also doing wonderfully cover like "Leaving on a jet plane".

The song of the video is "Beautifully", that you can download from iTunes, where you can also pre-order the full Album "Rob Me Blind", set to be released later this year.

Anyone who pre-orders Rob Me Blind from jaybrannanstore.com will be entered to win a 15-minute Skype call with me!! we can chat, just stare at each other, or I can even play you a song from my repertoire!

the limited-edition CD with live album download should be up on Amazon for pre-sale soon as well, for all you Amazon-addicts like myself.

official album street date is March 27, and i really need your help to get the eyes & ears of music fans & the music industry to really perk up :)  

Check out Jay's Euro tour dates, with more dates on the way in the coming weeks.

We hope that we'll come back soon to Italy, and you ? Where are you from ? 

Tell us in a comment where would you like to see a concert of Jay !

And be sure to have in your own home this album:

Identity change without becoming permanently infertile

Vladimir Luxuria

If you are a transgender person in Sweden wanting to change your legal gender, you are forced to undergo surgery that will render you permanently infertile and unable to have children in the future. That's right: in 2012, Swedish law still mandates forced sterilization in order to do something as simple as changing the gender on your driver's license.

Despite a massive push to repeal the law, including support from 90% of Swedish MPs, Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt has stayed silent on the issue: allowing one small conservative party to block the change.

Right now a reform of the law is being debated in Sweden. We need a massive show of support across Sweden and Europe that finally convinces PM Reinfeldt to speak out and break the deadlock. Will you take one minute to sign our urgent letter? RFSL, the Swedish federation for LGBT rights, will publicly deliver our signatures directly to the Prime Minister and demand that he intervene right now:

allout.org/stop_forced_sterilization

Forced sterilization has a long and frightening history in Sweden. Beginning with programs in the 1930s that tried to eliminate certain "undesirable" traits in society by forcing individuals to be sterilized, Sweden has long grappled with the painful history of stripping from citizens what we now consider to be a basic human right. Even Prime Minister Reinfeldt has publicly called sterilization law a "dark chapter in Swedish history".

Now he has a chance to close that chapter for good. A reform of the law is ready to be presented directly to the Parliament - where 90% of MPs are in favor of banning forced sterilization - but without a push from the Prime Minister, the conservative KRISTDEMOKRATERNA party will use its seat in the government to block the change.

We know he is on our side: whether you are straight, gay, lesbian, bi or trans, will you take a moment to raise your voice and ask Prime Minister Reinfeldt to take a stand for human rights?

Our friends at RFSL, the Swedish LGBT Federation, will deliver your signatures directly to the Prime Minister's office.

I've received this e-mail today, at 9.02 AM, from "All Out", a remarkable Movement for the full equality of rights: www.allout.org
This is not just a swedish problem, it's also an italian question, and I think almost totally a european issue of debate.
Why should a person change physically to have the right of be what he or she is ?

Could you imagine the embarassment if you would look like a woman and show an identity card with the mark "male" ?

It's really so important what you have there ? 

I think that your physical sex isn't the point, it couldn't make the difference.

And you ? What do you think ?

What's strange about it

What's strange about it:
Being not afraid
of what you feel.

What's strange about it:
looking for a way out,
stumbling on you
I fell in love with life.

What's strange about it,
everything, maybe nothing.

 S.V. 

Translation of a very short poem published by "Aletti" in the anthology "il Federiciano 2010" .

News republican debate: Mitt Romney on gay rights

He could be the President of the United Sates !

Could he be our President ?

"Mitt Romney, when asked about what he had done to advance gay rights, replied, “I don’t discriminate,” and recalled his appointment of a gay man to his cabinet as governor of Massachusetts.

His response about the appointment is accurate: Mr. Romney’s secretary of transportation, Dan Grabauskas, is gay.

The first half of his response (“I don’t discriminate”) is the subject of a spirited debate. Mr. Romney has long argued that marriage, in the eyes of the law, should be defined as a union between a man and a woman. He aggressively fought the legalization of gay marriage in Massachusetts, and he opposes it nationally, by supporting the federal Defense of Marriage Act.

Many gay rights advocates argue that any politician, like Mr. Romney (and President Obama), who opposes the legalization of same-sex marriage is practicing a form of discrimination against gay men and women. Many who oppose same-sex marriage argue that since there are alternatives in place, like domestic partnerships and civil unions, which grant rights to gay couples in some states, denying them “marriage” is not discrimination."

From The New York Times 

What do you think about this issue ?

Let's talk about "Sentiamoci qualche volta"

"And if you knew these persons less from <<newspaper>> and more from life, you would find that they are completely marked by their choice. In two versions, in my opinion, equally sad: the apathy and melancholy and unbridled and chatty vitality.

[...]

 I know, Andrea: reductions, simplifications, literature. But also desire of being on my own side. And finally understand which is it. And not being too afraid if it doen't fall into the categories of classics majorities and minorities, and even in those of the new liberations and new ghettos for neoliberals. We are not expected? Does it matter? The cowardice, the error, is believing that patterns and ratings are more important than one's life. That nobody will live it taking our place. For which no one will fight if not us... "

These phrases are taken from a beautiful book by Gilberto Severini, titled "Sentiamoci qualche volta" published in 1984 and now difficult to find. It's an epistolary novel in which two protagonists, after many years from their common youth experiences, found a sensitive communication  about their past, about divorce and illness, about feelings and personal fulfillment. Very pleasant to be read, the text offers many breathing spaces, as in the fragment shown above: the stereotype of self-centered homosexual, chatty and frivolous, it's well known, but how many know the other side of being gay? we mean the difficulty in relating to a disrespectful society, intolerant, sometimes even homophobic. It's for this problem that many boys and girls fall into depression, of which apathy is one of the symptoms. The melancholy of these persons cannot be hidden and unspoken. Severini doesn't do that. He emphasizes the issue in a few lines, underlining the importance of the problem, well awaring that a group of people can't be lined up on a table under two adjectives, but in the intention of stressing two important and opposite aspects. 
What do you think?  
There is a degree of realism in the classification of gay being that Severini does?

Same Sex Navy Kiss

Petty Officer Marissa Gaeta from Placerville shared a kiss with partner Petty Officer Citlalic Snell of Los Angeles on Wednesday as Gaeta's ship, the amphibious landing ship Oak Hill, returned to base at Virginia Beach, Va., after an 80-day deployment to Central America.
It's something new, that's for sure," Gaeta, 23, told reporters after the kiss. "It's nice to be able to be myself. It's been a long time coming."
The two met while training to maintain and operate weapons systems aboard ship. They've been dating for two years.
"We did have to hide it a lot in the beginning," said Snell, 22, in an Associated Press story. "A lot of people were not always supportive of it in the beginning, but we can finally be honest about who we are in our relationship, so I'm happy."
Gaeta was chosen to have the honor of the "first kiss" as part of a raffle in which sailors bought $1 tickets to raise funds for a Christmas party for military children. Gaeta said she bought $50 worth of tickets.
Navy officials said it was the first time a same-sex couple was chosen to have the first kiss. The first kiss is a Navy tradition for ships returning to port.
In San Diego, the premier Navy town on the West Coast, the televised image of the kiss was widely applauded.

The snap of this kiss on the 22 December 2011 was felt all over America and now it's sound is propagating in the rest of the world. Do you like it?