As other countries with much smaller fundamentalist Christian influence over the government are working steadily towards equality and full legal rights of the LGBTQ+ communities the US is falling backwards in a regressive retreat of minority rights. Again for some reason driven by fundamentalist Christian religious groups who create problems that never existed and use lies to promote disinformation creating hate towards the minorities they target. You ask why the republicans have partnered with these fundamentalist Christians? Because both groups seen the lost of group power over society they banded together to force society back to a time and culture when they did have majority power. It comes down to power over others, and control of society. I did not think that Christians believed in that. At least I know Rev. Ed Trevors doesn’t. But for far too many tradition, what was done by my grandparents, done by my parents, should be done by me also. That is wrong because time, cultures, and the understandings change. Hugs.
2017 MAY 08. TOKYO JAPAN. LGBT rainbow flag covered on back of a man
The Fukuoka High Court of Japan has become the third of Japan’s eight high courts to rule that the government’s policy against same-sex marriage is unconstitutional. However, the court upheld a lower court ruling that dismissed three same-sex couples who had sought 1 million yen ($6,540) each for being denied their constitutional rights to gender and legal equality, individual dignity, and the pursuit of happiness.
The couples, who live in the southwestern cities of Fukuoka and Kumamoto, had their damage claims dismissed by the Fukuoka District Court in 2023 after the court ruled that the government wasn’t obliged to compensate them or legalize marriage equality legislation despite being in “state of unconstitutionality,” The Mainichi reported.
Trans people just scored an important win for bodily autonomy and freedom.
High Court Judge Takeshi Okada ruled that civil laws forbidding same-sex marriages violate the nation’s constitution, saying, “There is no longer any reason to not legally recognize marriage between same-sex couples.” However, he noted that any change in national marriage laws must be decided by Japan’s legislature, known as the National Diet.
As the judge read his ruling, a 35-year-old plaintiff identified in the media as Kosuke couldn’t stop crying. Despite this, his 37-year-old partner Masahiro said “[the judge] understood our suffering, and I felt very reassured.”
Opponents of marriage equality in Japan have noted that Article 24 of the Japanese constitution specifically states, “Marriage shall be based only on the mutual consent of both sexes and it shall be maintained through mutual cooperation with the equal rights of husband and wife as a basis.”
However, marriage equality advocates have also pointed out that the constitution’s other articles state, “The people shall not be prevented from enjoying any of the fundamental human rights,” and, “All of the people are equal under the law and there shall be no discrimination in political, economic or social relations because of race, creed, sex, social status or family origin.”
Regardless, in October the Tokyo High Court ruled similarly, echoing another one made by the Sapporo High Court in March, which said that limiting marriage to couples of the opposite sex is “unconstitutional” and “discriminatory.” Despite the rulings, the country’s judiciary doesn’t have the power to overturn existing civil marriage codes.
Marriage equality has divided the country’s court system in opposing rulings over several years. Meanwhile, Japan’s conservative government lags behind increasingly supportive public opinion. Seventy percent of the Japanese public supports marriage equality, but it faces opposition from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
The party lost its parliamentary majority in last Sunday’s election and will likely have to compromise on more liberal policies pushed by the opposition parties, like marriage equality, the aforementioned publication noted.
Right now, Japan doesn’t offer national LGBTQ+ non-discrimination protections or same-sex marriage. As a result, LGBTQ+ people in Japan often face inequities in employment, housing, education, and health care.
More than 200 Japanese municipalities offer some form of recognition for same-sex couples. Such recognition can help same-sex couples rent apartments together, visit each other in city hospitals, and receive other services that married heterosexual couples enjoy.
Though several jurisdictions offer “partnership certificates,” they’re entirely symbolic and don’t offer federal benefits given to married heterosexual couples.
LGBTQ+ advocacy groups have pushed for a national bill that would enshrine equal civil rights and non-discrimination protections into law. However, the conservative party of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida helped defeat the effort in the lead-up to the 2021 Olympic Summer Games.
Japan remains the only country in the G7, a political and economic forum of seven of the world’s most advanced economies, that has not legalized marriage equality. Currently, the only Asian countries that have legalized same-sex marriage are Taiwan, Nepal, and Thailand.
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I know I posted a link to the story via email as I was reading on my phone at the time. But here I am reposting the story in full as it is a grand reason while the camp is being closed. I am so happy for the reason. Hugs.
Willow River, Minn., camp One Heartland is for sale after serving kids there for nearly three decades.
By Jana Hollingsworth
The Minnesota Star Tribune
December 27, 2024 at 7:00AM
Campers paddle on a Willow River lake at One Heartland, a camp for kids affected by HIV/AIDS. (Submitted by One Heartland)
The ashes of 12-year-old Chris Edwards are buried on the grounds of a Pine County camp, where his mother insisted his memorial service be held after his HIV-related death in 1999.
It’s one of the reasons former campers are saddened by the news that One Heartland in Willow River, Minn., about 40 minutes southwest of Duluth, is for sale. The 80-acre site is home to a camp that has served kids living with or affected by HIV/AIDS for more than 30 years. But the number of babies contracting the virus through their mothers has declined to the point where such a camp no longer needs to exist.
“It’s a heartbreaker,” said Chris’ brother, Dylan Edwards, who attended the camp with Chris for years.
“But the purpose of the camp was for sick kids,” he said, and if there are so few that a camp isn’t feasible, “it’s hard to feel bad about that.”
In the United States, the perinatal HIV transmission rate, or the rate of a mother passing the virus on to a child through pregnancy, birth or breastfeeding, is now less than 1% thanks to antiretroviral medications, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The World Health Organization says that globally, new HIV infections among children up to age 14 have declined by 38% since 2015 and AIDS-related deaths have fallen by 43%.
As a Wisconsin college student, founder Neil Willenson read about a 5-year-old boy in the Milwaukee area living with HIV who faced isolationism and discrimination at his school. Willenson reached out to the family and got to know them, learning the virus’s deep effects on each member.
He founded One Heartland in 1993 when he was 22, intending it to be a short project. Now 53, he often marvels at how quickly his college-age dreams of working in Hollywood as an actor and producer diverged to running a nonprofit.
“The impact was so transformative the first summer in 1993 that during the week the children were already saying ‘When can we come back?’ ” Willenson said.
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They rented camps around the country the first few summers. Because knowledge of the virus was still minimal at the time, at least one camp didn’t want kids with HIV swimming in its pool, said Edwards, who attended the camp its first year. One Heartland was forced to go elsewhere the next year.
Willenson bought the Willow River property from an Optimist Club in 1997. Former Minnesota Twins player and manager Paul Molitor donated money for the purchase and was a spokesman for the camp for several years.
“We wanted to create a safe haven where children affected by the disease, perhaps for the first time in their young lives, could speak openly about it and be in an environment of unconditional love and acceptance,” said Willenson, who is the president of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Metro Milwaukee, as well as a public speaker and founder of other camps. He stepped away from One Heartland leadership in 2010.
With referrals from the National Institutes of Health, children were flown to Minnesota from around the country at no cost to their families; expenses were paid by donors.
Nile Sandeen was the boy who inspired the camp. Now 38, he is a married pastor and doctoral student living in South Carolina. His mother, a nurse who died from the virus in 2010, had tried to provide AIDS education to parents and others concerned about Sandeen attending school. He recalled one student backing off and throwing his hands in the air when he got near him, and one friendship a boy kept a secret from fearful parents.
Sandeen attended camp for several years and traveled the country with the nonprofit, speaking at schools. One Heartland was an outsized presence in his life, giving him a place to “let go and be a kid” and be among others feeling the same isolation, sorrow and pain, he said. It fostered a community created among kids living “radically different” lives than most.
“It was a level of camaraderie and commiseration that is hard to put into words,” Sandeen said.
Chris Edwards was Sandeen’s first close camp friend, and Sandeen reeled from his death, recognizing his own mortality at age 13. Campers and staff members united during those dark periods, a support system Sandeen continues to feel.
The camp “is still part of the tide pushing you forward in life,” he said. “And so many people had that.”
The Edwards brothers are from the Atlanta area and had never had a northwoods experience, Edwards said. The volunteers and medical staff there helped quell some of the cynicism campers had from living with HIV or AIDS, he said, and when kids wanted to talk about death, they led those conversations with grace. The Edwardses lost their father to the virus when they were small children. Their mother died from it when Dylan was 20.
During the first several years of One Heartland’s existence, death was common. Now, many of the thousands who swam and hiked and made crafts at the camp have married and had children, Willenson said. He noted a documentary is being filmed about the camp, which eventually broadened its reach to serve different campers, including those with diabetes and LGBTQ youth. It was largely serving the latter group last summer. The nonprofit hopes to sell the camp to another group that will serve kids.
That there’s no longer a need for the camp’s original purpose “is the greatest story that I ever could have imagined,” Willenson said. “It’s something I never could have predicted.”
They won’t get nearly the jabber that Liz Cheney’s and Bennie Thompson’s medals are getting, and all are good people. I emboldened a bit especially pertinent to this blog.
Biden Giving Liz Cheney A Fancy Medal Today, So That’ll Make Trump’s Butt Itch by Rebecca Schoenkopf
Every 2024 Presidential Citizens Medal winner is a better human than the bastard who’s about to be president again. Read on Substack
The first time Donald Trump was president, one of the ways he absolutely beclowned the office and rendered it meaningless was who he’d pick to give the Presidential Medal of Freedom and other similar honors.
Historically, such awards went to people who had done something important. Under Trump 1.0, it was more like “Here is the presidential medal of excellence in giving me money!” It went to Miriam Adelson, AKA one of Trump’s big bucks no whammies donors. (That’s the one where he got in trouble recently for saying Adelson’s award was better than Medal of Honor winners, AKA the military’s highest honor.)
Trump gave the Medal of Freedom to Rush Limbaugh, before that guy waddled off to hell. He gave it to Devin Nunes and Jim Jordan, for excellence in doing congressional coverups for Trump or something.
We are sure Trump 2.0 will make those recipients look like American patriots.
The Presidential Citizens Medal is the award just below the Medal of Freedom, and Trump didn’t seem to give much of a shit about it during his first term. He awarded it in 2019 to a 9/11 first responder, posthumously. But that appears to be it. The award is given to someone “who has performed exemplary deeds or services for his or her country or fellow citizens,” so you can see why it might not get Trump very excited.
President Joe Biden is big on giving it, though. In 2023, he gave it to people like Capitol Police officers Michael Fanone and Aquilino Gonell, who protected Congress during the terrorist attack Trump’s supporters committed on January 6, 2021. (He awarded it posthumously to former Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, who died after he was assaulted by Trump supporters at the Capitol that day.) Also to Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, the Georgia election workers Rudy Giuliani owes all his money to, for repeatedly lying about and defaming them.
In all, he gave it to 12 people who in various ways defended American democracy from Trump’s attacks in 2020.
Now, today, Biden is giving another set of 20 of these medals for 2024, and damn, they are just more people Donald Trump could never ever fucking be, not in a million years, not if he went to the Emerald City and grabbed the Wizard by the pussy and begged him for a soul, or for integrity, or decency, or goodness. (In this mental image Elon is in drag as Dorothy, obviously.)
Liz Cheney is getting one for her work on the House January 6 Select Committee, and all the ways she’s stood up to defend democracy the last couple years, so that’ll piss Trump the fuck off.
Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson, who co-chaired the January 6 Committee with Cheney, will also receive the medal.
We are sure Trump will have some sort of hallucinatory conniption about how they deleted all the evidence that TOTALLY EXONERATES him, because once Trump gets an incorrect conspiracy theory mangled up inside that big ugly head of his, he never gets free of it.
On top of those types of folks, there’s Mary Bonauto, who argued Obergefell v. Hodges, AKA the marriage equality case, before the Supreme Court. Plus Evan Wolfson, perhaps the single most important activist over the decades of that fight.
You can check out the whole list here.On top of a number of former politicians like Bill Bradley and Chris Dodd, it’s full of people with bios that read like that of Diane Carlson Evans, who “founded the Vietnam Women’s Memorial Foundation to ensure female service members received the recognition they deserve.” Plus civil rights leaders and more women’s rights leaders, and so on and so forth.
And this posthumous award, which seems to contain a pre-emptive rebuke for the incoming Hitler wannabe administration:
Mitsuye Endo Tsutsumi
In a shameful chapter in our Nation’s history, Mitsuye Endo was incarcerated alongside more than 120,000 Japanese Americans. Undaunted, she challenged the injustice and reached the Supreme Court. Her resolve allowed thousands of Japanese Americans to return home and rebuild their lives, reminding us that we are a Nation that stands for freedom for all.
The entire list is a rebuke of Trump, really. American heroes, all.
But yeah, the Liz Cheney part is the part that’s gonna stick up Trump’s ass and give him sideways bowel movements. Bet those sting REAL bad. (snip-comments on the page)
January 1, 1831 William Lloyd Garrison first published The Liberator (four hundred copies printed in the middle of the night using borrowed type), which became the leading abolitionist paper in the United States. He labeled slave-holding a crime and called for immediate abolition. From the first issue: “I will be harsh as truth, and uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or speak, or write with moderation.“Assenting to the ‘self-evident truth’ maintained in the American Declaration of Independence, ‘that all men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights—among which are life, liberty,and the pursuit of happiness,’ I shall strenuously contend for the immediate enfranchisement of our slave population.” Selections from The Liberator
January 1, 1847 Michigan became the first state – the first government in the English-speaking world – to abolish capital punishment (for all crimes except treason). This was done by a vote of the legislature, and was not a part of the state’s constitution until 1964. How it happened (it’s a .pdf)
January 1, 1959 32-year-old lawyer Fidel Castro led Cuban revolutionaries to victory over the corrupt government of Fulgencio Batista who had fled the island the day before. Batista, a former army sergeant, had seized power in a coup, canceling an election, in 1952. Fidel Castro More on pre-Castro Cuba The news at the time Perspective of a U.S. intelligence agent
January 1, 1983 44 women scaled a 12-foot fence at dawn, breaking into a cruise missile base at Greenham Common in Great Britain, and danced on a missile silo. The lyrics to their “Silo Song”
January 1, 1987 Ten anti-nuclear activists were arrested for trespassing at the Nevada Test Site, the culmination of a 54-day encampment at the main Test Site gate. The camp established momentum for what became a movement ultimately involving over 10,000 arrests in numerous Test Site protests over the following years in the campaign to achieve a freeze of all nuclear weapons testing. Nevada test site landscape The Nevada site includes more than 14,000 sq. km. (nearly 6000 sq. miles, larger than the state of Connecticut) of uninhabited land where atmospheric, and later underground, nuclear testing had been conducted since the 1950s. About the the Nevada Test Site
January 1, 1989 Kees Koning Kees Koning, a former army chaplain and priest, and Co van Melle, a medical doctor working with homeless people and illegal refugees, entered the Woensdrecht airbase (for a second time), and began the “conversion” of NF-5B fighter airplanes by beating them with sledgehammers into ploughshares. The Dutch planned to sell the NF-5B to Turkey, for use against the Kurdish nationalists as part of a NATO aid program which involved shipping 60 fighter planes to Turkey. Koning and van Melle were charged with trespass, sabotage and $350,000 damage; they were convicted, and both sentenced to a few months in jail. Read more about the plowshares movement
January 1, 1991 Early in the morning Moana Cole, a Catholic Worker from New Zealand, Ciaron O’Reilly, a Catholic Worker from Australia, and Susan Frankel and Bill Streit, members of the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker community in Washington, D.C., calling themselves the ANZUS (Australia, New Zealand and U.S.) Peace Force Plowshares, entered the Griffiss Air Force Base in Rome, New York. Moana Cole After cutting through several fences, Frankel and Streit entered a deadly force area, and hammered and poured blood on a KC-135 (a refueling plane for B-52s), and then hammered and poured blood on the engine of a nearby cruise missile-armed B-52 bomber. They presented their action statement to base security who encircled them moments later. About Moana Cole
January 1, 1994 The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) took effect. A treaty among Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, it called for all three countries to follow similar policies for environmental, safety and investment regulation, apart from laws passed by their respective legislatures.
January 1, 1994 On the day NAFTA (see above) took effect, more than 2,000 native Mayans in Mexico’s Chiapas state marched into the state capital, San Cristóbal de las Casas, and five neighboring towns, and seized control. Calling themselves Zapatistas, or the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), a “declaration of war” was issued. Chiapas is among the poorest parts of Mexico. The indigenous peoples of Mexico long suffered as second-class citizens due to the dominance of the Roman Catholic church and the traditional Mestizo (mixed Spanish and Indian ancestry) political leadership of the country. The EZLN was certain that NAFTA would permanently lock in the top-down economic situation in Mexico. The Zapatistas’ slogan was !Ya basta! (“Enough is enough”). Employees at the Mexican stock exchange were evacuated by riot police. 25,000 Mexican soldiers arrived in Chiapas equipped with automatic weapons, tanks, helicopters and airplanes. 145 deaths were reported, mostly civilians. Massive arrests and subsequent torture of prisoners by the government took place.
2017 MAY 08. TOKYO JAPAN. LGBT rainbow flag covered on back of a man
![Minnesota Vikings wide receiver Justin Jefferson (18) was upended by Detroit Lions safety Ifeatu Melifonwu (6) in the second quarter after picking up a first down Sunday December ,24,2023 in, Minneapolis , Minn. ] JERRY HOLT • jerry.holt@startribune.com](https://arc.stimg.co/startribunemedia/L76S4N2SALMCVYNGJGFNOQ6PDI.jpg?&w=80&ar=1:1&fit=crop)
Scottie's Playtime 