Iowa Democrat Liz Mathis was victorious in a special Iowa state Senate race on Tuesday, allowing her party to retain control of the chamber, blocking Republican efforts to overturn the state’s gay marriage law.
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Liz Mathis
Democrats will maintain a 26-24 edge through the 2012 legislative session, reported the Des Moines Register.
Republicans had hoped for a 25-25 tie and the potential opportunity to move forward on now-gridlocked priorities, such as a move to begin the process to ban same-sex marriage in Iowa.
“I pledge to the voters of this district: I will go to the Capitol and fight for you every day. I will be your voice in the State Senate,” Mathis, a former television news anchor, said after her win Tuesday night.
Mathis received 56 percent of the vote, according to unofficial returns, in one of the most expensive races in the state’s legislative history. Nearly $1 million was raised for the race as of last Friday.
Small business owner Cindy Golding, a Republican, received 44 percent, and third-party candidate Jon Tack received 1 percent.
The seat became open in September with the resignation of Democrat Swati Dandekar, whom Republican Gov. Terry Branstad appointed as a member the Iowa Utilities Board.
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I live the gay lifestyle, the gay lifestyle that is often mentioned by some Republican candidates for president. For those who are unfamiliar with the lifestyle, this is a typical day:
7:00 a.m. I wake up, and just as I have done every morning since puberty, I choose to be gay today. This will come as a great relief to my gay, homosexual, male lover who lies beside me. Because being gay is a choice, our relationship is a gamble day to day. Even though we have both chosen to remain gay and to be together every day for the past 16 years, we never take anything for granted. One of us just might throw in the towel one day and give up the lifestyle.
7:30 a.m. I take a gay shower and let the gay water rinse off my gay body.
8:00 a.m. I have a gay breakfast of cereal with milk, and a good, strong, gay cup of coffee. I am fortified for another day of ruining the fabric of American society.
9:00 a.m. I start my morning shift as a gay hospital volunteer. The hospital is not gay, just me. The patients are mostly normal people. But it is OK. The hospital has a rule that all volunteers must sanitize their hands before meeting with patients. This is to avoid spreading germs, but I think that hand sanitizer is also effective in stopping the transfer of my gayness to other people.
12:00 p.m. I return home, eat a gay lunch and take my gay dogs for a walk. Well, I am not sure if the dogs are actually gay. I have heard it said that homosexuality does not exist in the animal kingdom because it is not natural, so chances are that the dogs are not gay. But because they live with me and my gay, homosexual, male lover, they are perceived by others to be gay. I would feel bad about this, but the fact is that I need these dogs. They are the closest that I will ever come to having actual children, because, as everyone knows, gays should not (and cannot) have children. I push this out of my mind as I walk the dogs gaily through the neighborhood.
1:00 p.m. I teach classes at a small, prestigious, liberal arts college. I am a gay college professor. The college is not gay, just me. But some may view the college as way too liberal, because “sexual orientation” is listed within the college’s anti-discrimination policy. This basically means that the college turns a blind eye as I infect the impressionable students with my gayness on a daily basis. I do not teach anything particularly gay in my classes. I am a theater professor, which, for all intents and purposes, is gay to most people, anyway.
6:00 p.m. My gay, homosexual, male lover returns home from his job. Luckily, he has chosen to be gay today, too, so we can sit down and have a nice, relaxing gay dinner together. We are aware that our relationship is ripping at the seams of our heterosexual neighbors’ marriages, but we choose to ignore this. If we were normal people, the guilt might weigh on us heavily, but we are gay, after all, so we do not have consciences. We eat in peace.
8:00 p.m. We go gay bowling at our Suburban Gay Bowling League. There are quite a lot of us homosexuals who gather each week to bowl at our local bowling alley. This makes the normal suburban bowlers uncomfortable, but we do not care. Some of them are openly hostile to us. The more polite ones just stare at us. It makes us feel like we are caged, exotic animals in a zoo. But we count ourselves lucky because the alley owners have sold out. They allow us to bowl here because they are desirous of our ample, disposable gay income. Ah, the almighty dollar! The owners show mercy on the normal suburbanites, though, by putting a buffer zone of two vacant lanes between our gay league and them. We are respectful of this line, which we call the “edge of gayness,” and do not cross it. We try to tone down our gaiety and frivolity by focusing intently on our bowling. The normal suburbanites never venture past their side of the line, either, because it would be unimaginable to them to interact with us.
11:00 p.m. My gay, homosexual, male lover and I collapse from the weariness of the gay lifestyle we have been living today. All of this subversive loving, volunteering, working, eating, playing and socializing is exhausting. Some say the gay lifestyle is self-enslavement, but we just cannot think about that now. Before we fall asleep, we each take out our personal, leather-bound copies of The Gay Agenda. The Gay Agenda is our Bible. We do not look at the real Bible because we are gay and therefore have no religion or morality. We read and strategize how we can best destroy American society tomorrow. Sharing a good, hardy, gay laugh, we each fall into a sound, gay sleep.
– Domenick Scudera of The Huffington Post (via shadow-sea)(Source: inappropriatetouchtuesday)
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[Image description: Stock image of a smiling high school girl. Next to her are the words:
“Before High School, I didn’t realize that there were any other sexualities besides hetero and homo.
Then I entered into a high school full to bursting with the different sexualities and learned.
(I had a girlfriend during freshman year, but broke it off after three weeks. We’re still friends.)
I used to think I was straight, but going to High School has left me confused.
Now I don’t know what to think.”]
Amelia Roskin-Frazeel came out in middle school, but realized there weren’t a lot of resources for LGBT students like her in the school library. Last month, the 14-year-old from California launched the Make It Safe Project, which donates LGBT-inclusive books to schools that don’t have the resources or support to provide them to students with school funding.
Each package of books comes with 10 titles and costs around $100. They’re provided to K-12 schools across the country, already in five states since the project launched last month. Schools with younger students also get packages including LGBT-friendly picture books. See the list of books at the profile linked above.
The project’s web site also includes a space where students can anonymously share their stories about being LGBT in school. Through this forum, Roskin-Frazeel helps students who need a boost getting their campus GSAs off the ground. Currently she’s working on getting the Make It Safe Project to become a nonprofit, a goal she has for next year.
This is a fantastic, fantastic idea and I hope it gets the attention and support it deserves. This girl rocks. Donate to the Make It Safe Project here.
A new poll by the Public Religion Research Institute found majority support for equality for transgender people. The poll shows that 89% “agree that transgender people deserve the same rights and protections as other Americans.”






