Antinous Archives - Alex's Asteroid Astrology

December 29th, 2022 at 09:22am by Alex Miller

George Santos: Lying to (Get Into) Congress

One standout in the 2023 GOP Congressional Freshman class is Representative-elect George Santos (R-NY), the first openly gay non-incumbent Republican elected to the House. In November 2022 Santos managed to flip a redrawn district in metro New York from Blue to Red, adding to the slender House GOP majority. But he did so under what seem to be increasingly false pretenses, with virtually no part of his life history and resume holding up to public inspection.

December 12th, 2022 at 07:45am by Alex Miller

Home for the Holidays: Brittney Griner’s Harrowing Russian Adventure

WNBA star Brittney Griner’s unexpected release from Russian custody on December 8^th, after almost ten months in detention for a drug trafficking violation, sent waves of relief through family, friends and fandom. Griner had been arrested February 17, 2022 on smuggling charges after customs authorities found vaporizer cartridges containing less than a gram of hash oil in her luggage. Griner had a prescription for medical marijuana use from the state of Arizona, but all forms of the drug are illegal in Russia.

December 1st, 2022 at 08:36am by Alex Miller

Same-Sex Marriage in the US: From Defense to Respect

The US is poised to formally enshrine marriage equality in law, as opposed to allowing the practice via Supreme Court fiat. Same sex marriage, first legalized in Massachusetts in 2003, was validated in all fifty states by the Obergefell v Hodges decision in 2015. But recent events with the overturning of Roe v Wade and its abandonment of federally guaranteed reproductive freedoms have shown just how fragile governance by judicial rulings can be, and advocates have been pushing hard for legal codification of the right to same-sex unions.

November 25th, 2022 at 04:07pm by Alex Miller

The Colorado Springs Drag Show Shooting

Just before midnight on Saturday, 19 November 2022, a man clad in body armor with an AR-15-style long rifle entered Club Q, an LGBTQ+ watering hole in a strip mall on the outskirts of Colorado Springs, Colorado, which was hosting a drag show that evening. He began shooting into the crowd, but was tackled two minutes later by two patrons and subdued until police arrived. In those two minutes, he had killed five and wounded 18 others.

May 2nd, 2022 at 08:46am by Alex Miller

Of Mice and Mean: DeSantis vs Disney

On April 22, 2022, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law a mean-spirited, retaliatory Bill meant to punish Disney World for its outspoken opposition to his so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law, which bans discussion of same-sex and transgender orientation in primary public schools in the Sunshine State, signed by the governor the month before. The new legislation revokes the Disney World theme park’s special status as a self-governing enclave within Florida, allowing it to function as a municipal or county government, providing its own electrical grid, security, emergency, medical, fire and rescue services, in exchange for special tax status in the state. DeSantis pushed for the law after Disney’s CEO Bob Chapek publicly denounced the anti-gay legislation, and announced a reassessment of Disney’s political contribution policy.

June 21st, 2020 at 01:20pm by Alex Miller

SCOTUS Cockblocks Conservatives

In a surprise 6-3 decision June 15^th, the United States Supreme Court ruled that gays and transgendered individuals are in fact protected by Title VII of the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act, which already prohibits discrimination in the workplace on sexual grounds. Conservatives Chief Justice John Roberts and Trump appointee Justice Neil Gorsuch joined the bloc of four liberals in essentially grandfathering in sexual orientation and gender identification to the nearly sixty-year-old law. Well, duh.

The senior Justice in the majority determines who will write the decision, and John Roberts wasted no time in passing this hot potato along to junior Justice Gorsuch, perhaps the unkindest cut of all for conservatives, who have put up with all manner of crudity, ignorance, and anti-Christian-values shenanigans from Donald Trump, all in the name of the justices he would appoint to the Supreme Court, whom they assumed would rule in support of their views. As historian Jon Meacham recently opined, “they sold their souls to Trump for the Supreme Court, and now find that his check has bounced.”