Florida Agenda

By JARRETT TERRILL

(Photo: Courtesy WMXDESIGN)

Paul Ryan is really something to look at, isn’t he? On the rare occasion that he smiles, it’s like heaven has just opened up before you. His square jawline, small ears, and light eyes are the stuff that we seek in models for gay magazines. He’s got that whole Abercrombie-meets-Bass Pro Shops thing going on that I find adorable.

Just looking at Paul Ryan gives me a sort of “tingle” that even Chris Mathews could never understand. I become disoriented and light-headed. His appearance motivates me: I want to lace up my boots and go out to do his bidding.

It’s important for America to eventually have a sexy Vice President, right?

That being said – when Paul Ryan speaks to the issues, he’s clearly Satan in a necktie. The Log Cabin Republicans don’t dare look at what the Human Rights Campaign has to say. It only took them one digit to send him straight to gay hell. He received the pitiful “0%” ranking on their congressional scorecard.

Let’s say for a moment, though, that you don’t give any weight to the most powerful gay rights lobbying group in America. There are other reasons that Paul Ryan is toxic. Ryan has repeatedly professed that he serves three gods: The first almighty recipient of the congressman’s devotion is clearly the Temple of Ayn Rand. Rand, as you may know by now, is the much-maligned preacher of the “Objectivist” philosophy and doctrine of unrestrained— extreme—Free Market Capitalism. This philosophy does not allow for LGBT persons to have any federal protections in the workforce. Ayn Rand says that you are not special for being either a minority or in the majority. You are an individual to whom anything can happen in capitalism, and your only shot at success is by being more of a carnivore than the next guy.

The next house in which Ryan will worship is nestled in a little place called Vatican City. The Roman Catholic Church is always going to be greater than the sum of its parts by design: There is currently a band of wayward nuns who are saying something about contraceptives in Indiana, but they are of no consequence to the Holy See- No-Evil. The Pope does a better job of protecting child molesters than he does gays or women.

The last—reluctant and beleaguered— object of Paul Ryan’s heavenly gaze is Mitt Romney himself. This faux fascination will be short-lived, I guarantee. We often reward those who bestow greatness upon us with temporary adoration. Ryan recently said that he stands firmly behind Romney’s record as a “job creator.” This is great news for China, where those jobs were actually created. It doesn’t quite wash with the people of Florida, however, where our unemployment level leaves us weighing the pros and cons of prostitution in its sincerest form.

I really do regret having to rain my “liberal hatred” all over Paul Ryan’s parade. Perhaps I’ll change my mind about him if I can see him with his shirt off.

By Jarrett Terrill

Among the thousands of online petitions categorically aimed at reducing “bullying” in schools, a highly successful movie producer, Harvey Weinstein, is advocating one. The petition on the Care2 Network (thepetitionsite.com) asks the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) reverse its decision to “restrict” (or give an “R” rating) to a documentary about the severity of bullying in America’s school system.

Lee Hirsch, the Creative Director of the documentary “Bully,” has placed an impassioned note on the website for the movie which reveals that the project is important to him because he was bullied as a child. An “R” rating would, in effect, keep his dream of the project being shown by teachers to their students, since public schools traditionally do not allow “R” rated movies to be shown in class.

Weinstein made his entrance into the project by saying that he would drop his membership with the MPAA if they did not reverse the rating of Hirsch’s film.

According to reports by the BBC, Weinstein and Alex Libby, one of the students featured in “Bully,” had appealed against the rating, asking for a PG-13 – which warns parents that some material may be unsuitable for children under the age of 13.

However, they lost the appeal to reverse the decision by only one vote. Calling the decision by the appeals board, “a bridge too far”, he said The Weinstein Company “is considering a leave of absence from the MPAA for the foreseeable future”.

Although Weinstein’s threat to drop his membership to the MPAA can be seen as killing a “sacred cow” in the film industry, the ratings board within the MPAA (a panel of 10 “raters”) has remained impervious to threats in the past. Decisions made by the anonymous board members are given the highest authority and even the most famous movie directors find themselves changing the content of their films to please the board and get the rating they want.

In 2005, another documentary, “This Film is Not Yet Rated,” revealed the true identities of the ratings board members after hiring a private investigator to seek out the coveted information. The presentation of the results indicates that all 10 “raters” are conservative Catholics who regularly attend church or have ties to Catholic churches. The process of appointment to the ratings board is one of nepotism since an MPAA rater is expected to select their replacement on the board when they part ways. Furthermore, that documentary states that the MPAA raters often do not have young children of their own as the MPAA claimed at one time. While the social and religious identification of MPAA Ratings Board “raters” may have factored into their decision to restrict the documentary, the Appeals Board that Weinstein and Libby took their complaint to is a secondary panel. That panel also consists of religious conservatives like Harry Forbes (from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops), but also adds film industry insiders like Steve Gilula (CEO of 20th Century Fox). Unfortunately, Weinstein’s production company, Miramax, is not known to have any members on the MPAA Appeals Board where one more vote would have made all the difference in the world to him, to Libby, and to Hirsch.

Stone:Gay and lesbian voters should be very happy that Mitt Romney won the Sunshine State’s Republican presidential primary last month. The results showed that Florida Republicans care more about liberating our economy than shackling our community. By choosing a pro-growth businessman over a social conservative, Floridians chose to look  forward rather than backward.

Terrill: I don’t think that gay and lesbian voters have much to cheer about in any of the Republican candidates. Romney may be considered “Republican Light” in some circles, but we both know that he recently went on a tirade about Obama’s so-called “assault on marriage and religion,” so let’s not pretend that he will fall on the right (our “right”) side of that particular issue at the end of the day.

Stone: Speaking of Barack Obama, Florida voters look forward to  electing a new president.  Erosion of support among youth and the  elderly alike, not to mention Jews and Hispanics, will cost the  president come November.  With Obama’s approval ratings below 50 percent, the president is in real political trouble in the Sunshine State.  Like liberals always say, demographics are destiny.

Terrill: Speaking on behalf of all “liberals [who] always say” that—come to think of it, when do we say that?  This particular liberal does not think that approval ratings polls are worth the paper they’re printed on.  Personally, I have never been selected by such a poll for my opinion–I don’t own a landline telephone–so therein is your flaw.

Stone: Political activists don’t complain about polls unless they are behind in those polls’ numbers.  When you hear, “the only poll that matters is the one on Election Day,” for example, you can bet your bottom dollar that person’s cause is grasping at straws. But if you don’t  trust polls, which is a legitimate position to take, then trust your gut. President Obama won Florida with 51% of the vote. Since 2008,  do you think he has earned or lost support?  Yeah, that’s what I thought, too.

Terrill: I’m a multicultural kind of guy—and I realize that Florida’s Hispanic voters, mainly Cuban Americans, have always had a good number of Republicans in their midst. This year might be different, though, as Republicans like Arizona’s Jan Brewer, Donald Trump, and other “birthers,” “ID’ers,” and genuine racists have clearly indicated that not everyone is “American, First” in their eyes.  Romney is perhaps even worse when it comes to race issues. When you belong to a church that did not let a black person through the front door until the late 1970s, you’ve got big race-relation problems.  At least with Obama, Hispanic women are now represented in our highest court and gays can openly serve in their country’s armed forces with pride and dignity.

Stone: Left wing charges of “bigotry” neglect certain inconvenient truths. For starters, the reason gays can serve their country is that a  growing bipartisan consensus says they should.  For the LGBT  community, marriage equality is rightfully the mother of all culture wars.  I take great pride pointing out that both of the attorneys who argued Bush v. Gore in 2000, teamed up in bipartisan support for equality.  Liberals pummel conservatives as bigots on the issue, ignoring their own elephant in the room. Putting politics above  principle, Obama lacks the fortitude to speak up for marriage before the election. So I challenge any left-wing activist to come out from behind their 2012 rainbow sign and riddle me this: how does Obama’s position on marriage differ from Mitt Romney’s, again?

Terrill: I agree that Obama could stand to “gay up” his rhetoric on  marriage, but certainly not before the election. That would just  firebrand the opponents.  Regardless of Mitt Romney’s recent anti-gay marriage revelation, experience tells me that he would sign any bill that Congress brings him, no matter how objectionable.

By Jarrett Terrill

“Little white boys in Indiana don’t sing Whitney Houston songs… They play kickball.” That is something I likely heard in the 3rd grade when one of my all time favorite celebrities landed on my radar with the insanely bubbly (and GAY) video for “How Will I Know.”  How would I know, indeed.

Over the years, Houston would fade in and out of the present tense until just this last Saturday night where she burst full throttle into the omni-present tense and onto the tip of everyone’s tongue.

It was heartbreaking to say the very least – soul crushing, in fact.

I won’t antagonize her during this long awaited and well-deserved restful sleep with my opinions about her personal decisions and recreational activities. Those are concepts for the living to struggle with.  What I will address is the enduring spirit, which has been released, phoenix-like, from the heavy bondage of public opinion and crass tabloid journalism.

Don’t expect Whitney Houston to  get the “Michael Jackson treatment” much longer in today’s media.  She’s  no mystery to most of us.  She’s  every woman.

Like most Americans, Whitney had financial problems. Related to those, she had family problems.  Beyond her struggles with independence from her parents and her feisty rebellious marriage to Bobby Brown was an uphill battle with addiction that would end in a kind of truce with Whitney waving a white flag.

None of these descriptors should have been shameful to the songstress who was admittedly a “Queen of the Night.”  Neither should they shame the countless other Americans who struggle with the exact same problems even in broad daylight.

Sadly, Whitney DID feel deep shame.  I could see it on her face.  I wanted to burst into Whitney’s living room and save her from the wrath of Diane Sawyer on that fateful December evening in 2002 when she was being interrogated, not interviewed.

Since that point, the very concept of a “celebrity interview” has changed.  Certainly, Houston herself never rebounded after Sawyer’s awkwardly aggressive profile.  Even in 2010, Caroline Sullivan wrote in the UK’s Guardian newspaper that the media, “[most] of whom were not even there,” were blindly trashing Houston’s UK tour as “the worst thing they’d ever seen.”

Celebrities are now easy prey for sensationalist reporters and counter-intuitively, our politicians are given the benefit of the doubt.  There was a time, during the George H.W. Bush Administration, where this would not have happened to Houston.  Whitney Houston brought our nation together with a performance of our National Anthem (during the Persian Gulf war). It likely still brings tears to the eyes of many who remember the performance itself, as well as to those who associate it with September 11th 2001–since it was re-released afterward and Houston donated 100% of her royalties to first responders, victims and their families.

Fast forward to a few wars later and Houston was once again used to rally everyone under a common cause: distraction.  Houston tried her best to roll with the punches and aside from drugs, she took solace in new clothes, new hair and new friendships. She and George Michael made a quirky yet classy video together, set in a dark nightclub. It wasn’t exactly the biggest hit but it was a fun little tongue-in-cheek track that marked the beginning of the new Whitney. The Whitney who let it all hang out.

Human Whitney.

The Whitney Houston who lay under water in the bathtub of her suite at the final hour before Grammy Night was the Whitney who would probably have been further humiliated and taunted by the press, her family, her husband and her own inability to be what everyone expected of her. Jennifer Hudson, who is now also far more familiar with pain and humanity than she would like to be, graciously gave this particular Whitney a befitting farewell at the Grammy’s with her own performance of “I will Always Love You.”

The other Whitney – the Whitney who laughs, fights, sings and knows how to have a good time is still with us.  This is the Whitney that gave Bobby Brown some semblance of sex appeal (he’s still not right but it’s ok).

She’s not perfect but she’s damn close –with the Billboard top selling single of all time, praise and accolades from other superstars across the spectrum (Dolly Parton, Smokey Robinson, Simon Cowell), at least a whole page of her own in every karaoke book from here to Tokyo, and near constant rotation with DJ’s throughout gay clubland.

I love the Whitney she left in our care. She’s messy and aggressive but she’s also inspiring and legendary.  She may have been an “unfit mother” in some people’s estimation – but she’s our child forever now. Let her laughter remind us of how we used to be.

Sony (Almost) Cashes in on Singer’s Death Party Doesn’t Stop for Whitney’s Colleagues

In what is being viewed as a major PR gaff and money grab, Sony Music has officially apologized for raising the price on two Whitney Houston albums during the first hour after the legendary singer’s death.  Calling the price hike “unintentional,” the label issued a statement saying, “Whitney Houston product was mistakenly mispriced on the U.K. iTunes store on Sunday. When discovered, the mistake was immediately corrected. We apologize for any offense caused.”

By coincidence—or maybe not– the two albums struck by the pricing mishap, Ultimate Collection and Greatest Hits, were Houston’s compilation discs, the two most likely to be purchased by nostalgic or mourning fans. Ultimate Collection jumped 60 percent above its regular list price (from $7.85 to $12.50), while the Greatest Hits album saw a 25 percent increase in its cost (from $12.50 to $15.67).

The record company was already under fire for “insensitivity” over the fact that its Chief Creative Officer, Clive Davis, went ahead with his planned pre-Grammy party at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, site of Huston’s demise, mere hours after her death. Davis is expected to attend the singer’s funeral, to take place in Newark, New Jersey on Saturday at the New Hope Baptist Church, where the icon first performed as a child.

While Houston’s ex-husband, singer Bobby Brown, has been reportedly banned from attending the funeral, va roster of other celebrities are said to  be among the guest list of 1,500 who will attend. Among them: gospel singer Marvin Winans (who will give the  eulogy), Houston’s godmother  Aretha Franklin (who will perform), Houston’s cousin, singer Dionne Warwick, singer Chaka Khan, and  the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

By JARRETT TERRILL

The Broward Human Trafficking Coalition (BHTC) hosted a film viewing at The African American Research Library last Monday. The documentary film,  “Not My Life” was previewed as part of Human Trafficking Awareness Week.

Adriane Reesey, the President of BHTC facilitated a panel discussion during the film’s intermission which included an impressive array of Justice Department representatives, federal law enforcement agents, victims’ advocates and social workers.  The experts on the panel took turns fielding questions from the audience.

“Not My Life” is a heart-wrenching exposé from CNN about the global sex exploitation industry.  One segment of the film shines a light on runaway teens in America’s heartland that are abducted, threatened, blackmailed and forced to work as prostitutes at truck stops and alongside highways.  Another segment of the film introduces us to the underworld of sex trafficking in India, where hundreds of women and girls can be found locked in small containers and hidden crawlspaces behind restaurants and factories.

This was not the first film showing and panel discussion that the BHTC has conducted but their events are drawing more attention from the community lately.

The horrors of human trafficking have also made a few blips on the radars of some prominent lawmakers in Florida like Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Schultz has long been a consistent advocate for children’s safety in Congress but has recently amplified her concern in a very direct way – by addressing the actual perpetrators of crimes against children in a YouTube video.

Schultz, along with other Florida legislators and officials like Congresswoman Frederica Wilson and James Loftus of Miami-Dade Police, appear in the “Dear John Campaign” videos.  The campaign, which was created by the Children’s Trust and the Women’s Fund of Miami-Dade, is focused on the perpetrators of sex trafficking rather than just the young people who are frequently being exploited against their will or intention.

In the United States, victims of sex trafficking are often jailed on prostitution charges while those who manipulate, abuse and discourage them go free.  Both the BHTC and the Dear John Campaign aim to counterbalance this problem in Florida by offering support services to victims and increased apprehension of “johns” (the buyers of prostitution).

“No longer will you be able to manipulate, use and abuse them,” says Schultz in the video.  “They are our children.  We are standing up and saying, ‘No, not in my district.’”

Read more:
http://BHTC.us
http://NotMyLife.org
http://Youtube.com/childrenstrust
http://WomensFundMiami.org

By JARRETT TERRILL

MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylo-coccus aureus) is a staph infection that is not easily treated with antibiotics.  However, it is relatively easy to acquire and spreads under the skin at an alarming rate.  Local emergency rooms are seeing a rise in the number of MRSA cases that they treat.

Last week, the Sun-Sentinel noted that “infections from a relatively mild variety of drug-resistant staph have been on the rise in South Florida in recent months,” seemingly downplaying the phenomenon by calling it a “weak strain,” and reporting that “no one is calling the jump in cases a serious danger.” This could be misleading, as the treatments required to treat the bacteria often involve surgery, intravenous medication, lengthy hospital stays, and sometimes even amputation. Those treatments are no guarantee that the infection will not reoccur.

The LGBT community in South Florida has certainly been affected by the recent spike in MRSA cases. What is not clear at this point is whether or not our community has been affected to a greater degree than others. It is known, however, that persons with HIV, children, and the elderly are at greater risk for opportunistic infections, like staph.

Historically, MRSA was thought to be transmitted primarily in prisons and hospitals, or by sharing intravenous drugs. That is seemingly no longer the case. One person in four is now known to be an asymptomatic carrier of staph bacteria, and one in 50 have a strain that is specifically classified as MRSA.

MRSA can be spread by skin-to-skin contact. Not all patients are sure how they acquired it. Like all bacterial infections, humidity and a general lack of cleanliness may be contributing factors. It is suggested by medical professionals that regular hand-washing and early detection will decrease the likelihood and severity of the disease.  MRSA may initially appear to be something harmless, such as an ingrown hair, cat scratch, or acne. The condition is made worse by attempts to puncture or rupture the site of infection.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) “The biggest risk factor for MRSA infection is open or broken skin (such as a wound or surgical site); however, MRSA infections can occur even on areas of the skin where there is no obvious wound or break in the skin.” Experts say that keeping a clean, well-ventilated home will reduce the chance of infection.

Erin Carr-Jordon, a health activist in Arizona, was recently banned from McDonald’s restaurants in that state after she swab-tested their playground equipment and discovered traces of MRSA. “Contaminated items and surfaces” are also cited by the CDC as sources of MRSA infection.