Brian Brown Accepts Dan Savage’s Invitation

Dan Savage  recently invited NOM’s Brian Brown to a debate at his home (read background story here).  Today on NOM’s Blog, Brian accepted:

Dan — I accept and will look forward to debating you at your dining room table. As I said in my challenge to you, anytime, any place.

While I appreciate the invitation that you have extended to my wife, she will not be able to attend. She is a full-time mom with seven beautiful children and an eighth on the way.

I have no objection to Mark Oppenheimer from the New York Times covering the discussion, nor to you hiring your own video crew to film the event, provided that I am able to hire my own video crew to be sure there is no creative editing of the discussion.

Not that a New York Times reporter would slant the news, mind you! :)

This will be fun!

Yes, this should be all kinds of fun!

Happy Harvey Milk Day

Harvey Milk was the first openly gay American to be elected to public office. Before he was murdered by former city supervisor, Dan White, Harvey Milk made real changes for LGBT people in San Francisco, California, and across the nation. He said:

Hope will never be silent.

He also encouraged gays to come out. He wisely believed that it is harder to discriminate against someone you know personally. I think he’d be happy in the recent progress we’ve made in the civil rights of LGBT people in this country. Let’s keep up the momentum!

How’s your “gaydar”?

Can you tell if someone’s gay at a glance? My gaydar is fair, but I always attributed it to aspects other than a person’s features. The way some one dresses, their mannerisms, their speech patterns or topic of conversation is what tips me off. For me the clincher is if a good looking person of the same sex walks by… Is there a fleeting “check ’em out” look?

It seems that, at least for some, the face is all that’s needed. Researchers at the University of Washington have shown that college students positively identified the sexual orientation of gay men and women at a high rate – 65% for women and 57% for men. What was remarkable was that the identification was made a glance. Subjects were shown photos of faces for a mere 50 milliseconds. There were no other identifying characteristics such as jewelry or facial hair.

Study authors say it is not completely clear how the snap judgements are formed, but believe the results show ‘configural processing’, quickly identifying how another person’s face is made up in terms of distance between features, and ‘featural processing’, examining individual features, helps people determine sexuality.

This makes me wonder if this type of research will lead to determining a genetic factor that determines sexual orientation.

Read the entire article here.

RIP Donna Summer

Disco Queen Donna Summer died at age 63 today. She had been battling breast cancer

I am not a big fan of disco music, but she had an incredible voice and sang disco ad well as gospel and pop songs beautifully. I have sung along with her loudly and slightly off key in my car many times.

Some of her hits include “Love to Love You Baby”, “Last Dance”, “MacArthur Park”, “Hot Stuff”, “No More Tears (Enough is Enough)”, “She Works Hard for the Money”

A great talent that will be missed. What was your favorite Donna Summer Song?

Drinking 6 Cups of Coffee a Day is Good for you? Woo hoo!

I gave up drinking alcohol almost 10 years ago. My last cigarette was 9 years ago. I lost 70 pounds. I work out everyday, take vitamins, eat sickeningly healthy – but I can’t give up my coffee.

I tried once for about 3 hours, but it was useless. I love coffee. I like it very strong and very hot -like my husband :-). I take a fair amount of guff from people, but it’s my one vice. I allowed my self one unhealthy pleasure.

But last night I read an article citing a new study that showed coffee drinkers…. heavy coffee drinkers – were less likely to die during the same period as their non coffee drinking counter parts. People who drank 6 cups per day had the greatest benefits.

This morning I’m drinking my 6 (or more) cups with guilt free pleasure!

Read the article here.