Antinous Archives - Page 2 of 3 - Alex's Asteroid Astrology

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.”

June 27th, 2019 at 07:40am by Alex Miller

Summer of ’69, Part I: The Stonewall Riots

The summer of 1969 was long, hot and volatile, still reverberating with the cosmic gong that was the Uranus/Pluto conjunction of four years previously. In this fiftieth anniversary summer, AAA will be taking a look back at some of the blockbuster events from that period, some of which were obviously momentous at the time, like the Moon Landing, and others which initially seemed to be predominantly personal tragedies, like the drowning death of Mary Jo Kopechne or the Manson Family murders, but which have reverberated for decades.

The summer had barely begun when one of its most consequential events occurred, involving some of what society viewed as its least consequential members. In the wee hours of June 28^th, 1969, a group of fed-to-the-teeth drag queens challenged a police raid on a gay bar in New York’s Greenwich Village neighborhood, essentially inaugurating what became the Gay Rights movement.

April 16th, 2019 at 09:24am by Alex Miller

AAA Profile: Mayor Pete

On Palm Sunday 2019 South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg became the first openly gay candidate for the Democratic nomination for US President, in a speech before more than 6,000 supporters. Known affectionately as “Mayor Pete”, Buttigieg had been turning heads with a $7 million haul for his campaign in the first quarter of 2019, even before making his candidacy official. Third place showings in recent polls of Iowa and New Hampshire, as well as several attention-grabbing interviews and speeches, mark him as a potential force to be reckoned with in the Democratic Primary contests.