The American Civil Liberties Union, however, said that policy was a violation of civil rights.  The ACLU's point had already been decided in Fricke v. Lynch, 491 f. Supp. 381, way back in 1980.  So the school district made a decision: rather than let one girl wear a tuxedo, they cancelled the prom for everyone.

The report didn't actually say it was because of that, but "due to the distractions to the educational process caused by recent events."

Apparently, in that county in Mississippi, learning about civil rights is a distraction to what they consider a proper education. 

Read the story at http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_lesbian_prom_date

Image used is at http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-13517.html/ and appears at http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-13517.html/ No threat to its copyright is intended.

"Iron Chef" Daniel Angerer said necessity is the mother of invention--and in this case the source of milk.  He had and wife Lori Mason had a freezer full of her breast milk, and were running out of room.  Rather than waste it, he decided to serve cheese made from it with figs and Hungarian pepper at Klee Brasserie.

Of course some people are shocked.  Even the New York City Health Department advised him to stop serving it.  They didn't have a law against it, but you know if they work hard enough they can make up--I mean find--something.

It's actually odd that it would seem odd.  People think nothing of swallowing bodily fluid from a fat, four footed creature that regurgitates matter from its stomach, then chews it and shallows it and regurgitates it again.  But humans drinking a drink that's specifically designed to fill the nutritional needs of humans?  Horrors!

And if it starts with getting adults to consume breast milk, it won't end there!  Before you know it, they'll be having teenagers, preteens and young children doing it.  Can you imagine the atrocity of having babies breast feeding?

Read more: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/35778477/ns/today-today_food_and_wine/

For all our entries that touch on breast feeding, click on http://www.loveshade.org/blog-mt/mt-search.fcgi?IncludeBlogs=1&search=breast+feed  The PETA story is at http://loveshade.org/blog/2008/09/will_ice_cream_made_from_breas.html

The cheese breast image is at http://www.dvorak.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/cheese.jpg and appears in the article http://www.dvorak.org/blog/2008/04/10/human-breast-milk-cheese/.  No threat to its copyright is intended.

California approved it after a court decision there, but it changed after Proposition 8 banning same-sex marriage passed in November 2008.  It left California in the odd position of having legally approved same-sex marriages that were now against the constitution, which also didn't allow the state to force divorces on those already married.

Regardless of how this case of two same-sex couples is decided, the decision is likely to be appealed to the U. S. Supreme Court.  America's final court may then well make a decision that will greatly affect marriage through all of America.

In a fundamental question in the current case, District Court Chief Judge Vaughn Walker asked lawyer Ted Olson about state-controlled marriage.  Olson, who is arguing in favor of same-sex marriage, was key to getting George W. Bush elected president by, essentially, one vote in the U. S. Supreme Court after a recounting of the inaccurate Florida voting was denied.  Walker asked if the goverment could get out of the marriage business.  Olson responded, Yes, I believe it could."

Here, we largely agree with Olson.  Why can't marriage be returned to being a social and/or religious institution, and not something completely controlled by big government?  Participants could sign a contract on how their assets and child custody could be handled, and would have a choice of contracts.  Now, the government tells you who you can marry and how.  Couldn't that be a decision guided by your own conscience?

For more information, see http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34801259/ns/us_news-life/.

To see all our entries on gay marriage, click on http://www.loveshade.org/blog-mt/mt-search.fcgi?IncludeBlogs=1&search=gay+marriage

Image is from http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/MSNBC/Components/Photo/_new/g-cvr-100111-marriage1-9a.hmedium.jpg. No threat to its copyright is intended.

Why can't you ride the subway without pants?

That's the question asked for the ninth annual No Pants Subway Ride on Sunday, 10 January. Begun by Improv Everywhere in New York, this year it was also held in various parts of the United States and the world, with participants in a reported 16 countries. A few thousand people took off their pants in New York, and others dropped them in Baltimore, Washington D.C., and, of course, San Francisco. Other places included Lisbon, Portugal, and Buenos Aires.

But it's actually related to an earlier tradition called No Pants Day celebrated by The Knighthood of BUH at the University of Texas, Austin, since 1997. And some claim it began even earlier, around 1985 or 1986. It's often celebrated on the first Friday in May.

In both No Pants Day and No Pants Subway Ride, particpants may act like nothing unusual's going on. If questioned, act as if they forgot to wear their pants, but that's no big deal. Other celebrants make a point of being pantsless, even wearing T-shirts celebrating wearing no pants. How you celebrate is up to you (but for most areas, you're safer if your nether regions are covered by underwear. "Pants" in the United Kingdom means underwear, but in America it means trousers).

See Links:

Check out the No Pants Day site at http://www.nopantsday.com/wp/

Read a report at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34799796/?GT1=43001

Watch the ZeitGeist version at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26852192/vp/34805765#34805765

The photo above is from http://improveverywhere.com/images/nopants7_17.jpg. No  threat to its copyright is intended.

That is from the blog of Saul Landau, an Emmy-award winning documentary producer I had the priviledge to work under as head writer of a university-produced, English-language telenovela.  Landau, a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies, is an internationally-known filmmaker, television producer and author who focuses on domestic and foreign policy.  Discordians might be interested to know he won a Golden Apple award for "The Sixth Sun: Mayan Uprising in Chiapas," a film that was a major inspiration to both myself and Reverend Loveshade.  Saul is also a man who, like many of us here, was thoroughly investigated because he knew the "wrong" people and asked the "wrong" questions.

You can read a short bio on Landau, who can be profound and entertaining at the same time, at http://progreso-weekly.com/2/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=971:saul-landau&catid=42:our-columnists&Itemid=60

At that page you can click on "Show Other Articles By This Author" to read his blog entries, including the one on Obama quoted above, which is at http://progreso-weekly.com/2/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1364:almost-one-year-assessment&catid=40:lastest-news&Itemid=59

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Other links:

His homepage is at http://saullandau.com

For those who don't believe anything outside of Wikipedia, there's an article on him (which previously mentioned me but currently doesn't) at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saul_Landau

The image of Saul Landau above is from http://progreso-weekly.com/2/images/semana0/landau1.png. No threat to its copyright is intended.

The blocking law was passed in 1987, back when ignorant Americans (and apparently their elected officials) thought HIV/AIDS could be passed by handshakes and hugs.  It became the late 20th century equivalent of an earlier America's "C-word" (cancer), or America's equivalent of the biblical leprosy.

But Americans, unlike the enlightened bibical writers of a few thousand years ago, were ignorant of current medical knowledge.  Even in the late 1980s, the evidence was that HIV/AIDS could not be spread by casual contact.

And even if it was justified in the panicked 1980s, how could it have taken 22 years for HIV to be moved out of the category of highly contagious diseases spread by casual contact?  The United States was one of only about 12 countries to have such a ban.  Others include Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Libya.

It's another example of how American politics are often rooted in superstition, and how many years it can take to correct a misguided law that those in the know, in this case the medical community, had long said was not helpful and was, in fact, harmful.

Finally, after 22 years, familes who have been separated have a chance to come together again.  Assuming members have not died from legally-sanctioned second-hand smoke.

http://archives.chicagotribune.com/2009/dec/01/travel/chi-hiv-travel-ban-01-dec01

After all, didn't some 13-year-old girl commit suicide over it?

No.  She wasn't a victim of sending nude photos of herself, she was a victim of vicious cyberbullying.  People who could be helped with counseling for self-esteem issues brought on by hormonal changes and, often, non-supportive parents, need help.  But they can get an easy release by harassing people online.  After all, it takes no courage attacking someone who can't really attack you back (plant your attacks, then log off).

The old "sticks and stones may break my bones, but your dirty words can't hurt me" is a great philosophy to live by, but it doesn't reflect the reality that human beings are a social species.

But can't you get arrested?  Yes.  As we've reported here before, young people have been arrested and charged with promoting child pornography for sending pictures of themselves.  The criminal and the victim become the same person.

In societies where public nudity is accepted, this sort of thing isn't a problem.  Even hormonal teenagers don't get all hot and bothered by seeing each other naked because they see naked people on a regular basis.  So it's the laws that need to change, not the behavior.

But what about those images being seen years later, say when you're looking for a job or running for political office?  Ask Arnold Schwarzenegger if his posing nude in sexual situations stopped him from getting elected governor of the State of California.

Yes, it might be a problem right now, but in the future?  Having posed nude and shared sexy images will be like smoking marijuana is now.  The presidential candidate will say, "Yes, I sent nude pictures of myself in my youth, and wouldn't do that now.  But now I want to focus on current issues...."  Name me a recent president of the United States who didn't publicly say he smoked pot.  There hasn't been one for decades.

Americans, like people in much of the world, freak out over things that are new.  Until 1969, the "pornographic" Playboy magazine didn't even show pubic hair.  Ironically, the family-oriented nudist magazines showed everything of men, women, boys and girls.  Now, most people don't even consider those type of pictures to be pornography--oh, unless they're under the arbitrary age of 18, if they're sexually oriented nudity or semi-nudity and not just nudity, and if they're obscene, which no one has yet to adequately define.

Get over it, folks.  Adolescents are horny, and they were horny before the Internet, television and Playboy.  As a friend of mine here likes to say, America's teen pregnancy rate in the sexually-repressed 1950s was higher than in the sexually-explicit 1990s.  The reason people keep looking for new porn is that what you've already seen gets boring.  If you want to cut down on sexual foolishness and people getting so caught up in their hormones they don't think about what they're doing, expose them to as much sexual imagery as possible.  It's really a turn off.

See a report at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34257556/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets?GT1=43001

And if you want to see a report about something that really is dangerous, texting while driving, see http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33920495/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/

Image is linked to http://www.nbcactionnews.com/media/lib/92/2/d/4/2d4b51e9-f837-4d86-afcd-92c5e04a1e21/Original.jpg No threat to its copyright is intended.