In October 2001 I had been in Toronto for less than a year, was single, still identifying as straight and renting a room in the home of a wonderful dyke and her two little girls. The launch of Rewriting The Script caught my attention - queer Brown people were assembling for queer brown things. I went alone. I was curious. I barely knew anyone in the city and I found this anonymity to be comforting, especially at events like these. The launch took place at the Innis Hall theatre which I sat in every Wednesday morning all year for Film Studies 101.

Rewriting the Script: A Love Letter to Our Families is produced by Friday Night Productions, a volunteer collective of South Asians from queer communities, based in Toronto. The video was made over the course of four to five years as a resource for South Asians when coming out to family and loved ones with tiny grants from the City of Toronto and Community One Foundation (previously Gay and Lesbian Community Appeal) and private fundraising.

I don’t remember feeling any emotion as I watched the video, but I was glad that it existed and glad that I had attended the screening. I listened as questions were asked. Most notable was a remark about the lack of a word in Hindi or Urdu to describe gay or queer relationships. I purchased the video on VHS as a gift for one of my cousins. She married a man a year later.

I didn’t really think much about the video after that. Not even after coming out myself in 2004. I didn’t think about sharing it with my mother because my coming out process was simple and it was over the phone, she was on the other side of the planet.

Then in 2007 I landed the job of coordinating a wonderful project called Among Friends, to train service providers on how to work with queer and trans immigrants and refugees. I designed a three-hour workshop, in which I screened Rewriting the Script followed as a way to break the ice. It proved to be one of the more powerful tools used in workshops. The most common response from participants was that the video shed light on some of the struggles our families face when confronted with a queer child. Providers felt better equipped to respond, more aware of what people are facing.

Rewriting The Script is a hugely important video. It has brought the community along. It has given strength to so many who are isolated and struggling. For me, just being at the launch was a significant event, there was an energy in that space which I still remember. It felt like community. At the time it was not my community, but it was community. Queer South Asians (and anyone who experiences ‘otherness’) often lack community, and this is what we struggle with most. Visibility, validation, voice. Rewriting the Script has helped people to speak that voice.

Yet Rewriting the Script has not received the attention it deserves, so I wanted to do my bit and write about it. I posed a few questions to Farzana Doctor, one of the founding members of the Friday Night Productions collective, and here are her responses.

RC: Why did you decide to make this video tool?
FD: Many years ago (I think it was 1996 or 1997) a group of us started talking about how hard it was after we’d come out to our parents. We felt invisible. After coming out, many of our families went into denial, and it was like our proclamations hadn’t even happened. Unless we kept talking about our orientations, relationship etc., it seems like the issue didn’t exist.

So that year we decided to hold a workshop at Desh Pardesh (an annual queer, South Asian arts and culture festival held in Toronto until 2000 or so) called “I came out to my mother at the Dixie Mall Food Court. Now what?”

At the workshop, we had a couple of parents on the panel. The audience, mostly queer South Asians, talked about the need for some sort of resource to help with coming out, but also to talk about what can happen after coming out. They recognized that South Asian parents might not want to go to PFLAG and had no resources for processing the coming out announcements. So, we decided to create a video that straight family members could watch, with role models of other parents talking about their experiences.

RC: Who is the intended audience for the video?
FD: It’s intended mostly for families. But queer people use it too, and show it to their families. I have also used the video at Queer 101 trainings I’ve facilitated to offer examples of intersections between queer and South Asian identities.

RC: What was the initial response from the South Asian community, the queer community and mainstream community?
FD: We showed it to a packed audience most of whom were queers and queer allies. There was overwhelming support and celebration for the video. Since then I sometimes hear from young queer folks who found it helpful – it spoke to their experience. To mainstream audiences (at Queer 101 training) it’s mostly a hit (except for consistent complaining about the poor sound quality! I wish we had more money for higher production value)

RC: How was the project continued since then?
FD: The year after it came out we hired someone to do outreach to South Asian communities, to get the video out there. We later hired another person to distribute it to groups across Canada, the US and UK. We hired people to create a manual to use alongside the video. We made international versions and distributed them to groups in India. We’ve done closed captioning and updated to DVD. We still bring in sales money occasionally which is used to have more copies made. The manual is now also available in PDF form on our website. And we have a Facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?v=info&ref=ts&gid=7943082239


RC: Can you share any stories from people who have watched the video with family, and received understanding or acceptance?
FD: One story I recall – a young woman was going to come out and she decided to show the video to her parents as part of the process. They all watched it together (nervously) and it seems to help them open up some dialogue. I recall she said that it was helpful that everyone in the video was South Asian and they we addressed the myth that ‘this is a White thing.”

RC: Do you have anything in the works for the future?
FD: Many of the Friday Night Productions members have since had children and we thought a video about South Asian queers with kids would be good. But right now we don’t have the resources or the time to commit, we sacrificed many Friday nights to get the first one done – hence the collective’s name. And other good films on the topics have since been made including the wonderful DVD “Brown Like Me” from ASAAP.

For me as a writer it’s important for me to engage these issues through literature, so that’s where my energies have moved. “Stealing Nasreen” which has queer South Asian characters came out in 2007 and “Six Metres of Pavement”, my second novel, will come out in winter 2011 with Dundurn, and it too addresses some of these themes.

RC: What do you think are the major challenges facing South Asian queers in North America today?
FD: I think visibility and community spaces continue to be challenges, even with the gains we’ve made in the last decade. It’s still hard for queers to come out to their families, and families still don’t have enough supports.
For more about Rewriting the Script and where to get the DVD visit their website: http://www.rewritingthescript.ca/index.html

Farzana Doctor is a Toronto-based author and social worker. Her novel, Stealing Nasreen (Inanna, 2007) has received critical acclaim from the Globe and Mail, Quill and Quire, and NOW Magazine. She has also co-written a manual for therapists and was part of the video collective that produced the documentary, “Rewriting the Script”. She is now working on revisions on her second novel, A Six Meter Stretch of Pavement. Check out her website at www.farzanadoctor.com

"Watch this, post it to your fb, and help spread the word. These people put themselves out there for the world in protest against the claim from the Phillippine Commission on Elections that LGBT people are immoral and not fit to run for elections." RT Alex B.

Apprently, Japanese-American pop star Utada is pitching for gay marriage.

Hikaru Utada, a megastar in Japan, is currently touring to support her latest English-language album This Is The One. At her San Francisco show on January 24th, she threw baseballs scrawled with a very cute teddy bear holding a sign reading “Legalize Gay” into the crowd.

While the J-Pop star hasn’t made any public political statements, Utada recently did a Christmas duet with flamboyant bi pop singer Mika and tracks from her remix album Dirty Desire are showing up on gay club playlists worldwide. - JustOut

Go to the Community Townhall at API Wellness Center in San Francisco!

Thursday, January 28th from 4 - 6 pm

730 Polk Street, 4th Floor.


--------------------

Letter from the E.D.:

With a heavy heart, I write to you—our supporters, clients, and community members—to communicate some painful changes at Asian & Pacific Islander Wellness Center. Across the world, we are all experiencing a difficult start to 2010. The earthquake in Haiti is causing unimaginable hardship for countless families and communities, and our hearts and prayers are with them. Closer to home, we at A&PI Wellness Center are also going through a difficult transition, and our hearts and prayers are also with those most affected by the upcoming changes. We have had to make some painful decisions about our service delivery model in Alameda, San Mateo and San Francisco Counties that will undeniably affect our HIV-positive clients.

Decreased funding at the national, state and local levels have overtaxed A&PI Wellness Center’s budget, necessitating drastic cuts to ensure long-term sustainability. Because of this, we closed our operations in Oakland, CA and Daly City, CA on January 15, 2010. Our 45 clients in these areas are being triaged to their respective county services. Services at our San Francisco office will remain open. This decision hurts, but it could not be avoided. We must be fiscally responsible in order to secure the future of our services to the community. We are committed to this goal, to building a vital and healthy future.

This decision was made in full consultation with the Board of Directors and was a direct response to ongoing agency budget reductions. Over the past three years, public and private funds to our programs and services for HIV-positive Asians & Pacific Islanders have been reduced by over $350,000 annually, representing over 40% of the budget for these programs. Despite this decline in funding, A&PI Wellness Center has carried a financial deficit for the past several years in order to maintain our services. We continued to provide services in Alameda and San Mateo Counties without any dedicated support from the state or local governments.

Still, A&PI Wellness Center worked hard to avert any reduction in services, opting instead to aggressively pursue new funding sources and institute other cost-saving measures. Over the past year, we reduced our overall workforce by 20%. We also reduced non-HIV-positive client services by $150,000 through the end of our fiscal year (in the form of overall agency salary reductions, hiring freezes, and streamlined expenses). Despite these strategies, approximately $80,000 of forecasted revenue for HIV direct services failed to come through in 2009, leading to a projected fiscal year-end deficit of $160,000 for these programs alone. A deficit of this magnitude jeopardizes the future of A&PI Wellness Center and demanded immediate corrective action.

We know these painful and difficult decisions directly impact the health and well-being of many of our clients and community members. We share this loss with you. I understand and am terribly sorry AND I know we needed to do this. We needed to do this to ensure we are here to stay. We must continue to support all our communities—A&PI youth, transwomen and transmen, gay and bisexual men—and the Asians and Pacific Islanders living with HIV most affected by these changes. We will continue to advocate and fight for more resources and health services on behalf of all our clients. We will work to secure long-term A&PI HIV health services for our communities.

In San Francisco, HIV-positive clients will still be able to access services at our main office’s on-site clinic (730 Polk Street), including mental health services and intensive case management services. We will also continue to provide our HIV and Hepatitis testing services in addition to our health education programs for the transgender community, gay and bisexual men, and LGBT youth. These programs increase sexual health awareness and sensitivity to issues facing people living with HIV. Without them, we cannot hope to build a healthy community or prevent new HIV infections.

A&PI Wellness Center Board Chair Mike Rabanal addressed this issue recently, saying: “While HIV case management services outside San Francisco have been eliminated, a wealth of services delivered by our San Francisco-based staff will continue, and we encourage our clients outside of San Francisco to access these resources to the extent they can. These difficult events have made clear the need to invest in the expansion of our policy advocacy program as well as the implementation of our free health clinic. These initiatives will allow us to fight for the continued funding of critical client service programs. We must fight to implement a more sustainable model of health delivery for our clients, less reliant on government-based funding.”

A&PI Wellness Center is hosting a Community Town Hall meeting to communicate the organizational changes being implemented and our vision and plan for the future. We know everyone is invested in the future health of the A&PI community, and we appreciate your concern and feedback. Feel free to attend the meeting this coming Thursday, January 28th from 4–6pm at 730 Polk Street.

I’d like to say a deep and heartfelt good-bye to our staff leaders who are departing—thank you for your many years of commitment, expertise, service and leadership on behalf of the agency. Your collective contributions are immense and will be missed deeply.

I know that some of you may be troubled by this news. Please know that my virtual door is always open to you (lance@apiwellness.org).

Take good care,

Lance Toma

Lance Toma, LCSW
Executive Director
- APIWC

Here's the specification of my dick: 6 inches long, 1.5 inches wide, uncut. It's uncut not because of my choice, but because that's the norm in Japanese culture. I never had a reason to have my dick go through a surgery for practically nothing. Thank God.

A friend of mine, a father of a beautiful 1-year-old son, recently told me about his experience of having his son get circumcised. He actually didn't know what was going to happen to his son, and he said jokingly that he almost fainted when he saw it.

Obviously, I am biased in this topic, having only one side of the experiences around circumcision. What I attempt to do here is to analyze the dominant ideas around foreskin and highlight the practice of removing it in the context of sexual assault, comparing with pedophilia and statutory rape.

I was told by a male teacher in sex education class in 6th grade that foreskin would naturally peel back and the head would become exposed as we grow up and mature. I didn't figure out that it was false until years later. I'm not too familiar with Japanese dicks, but I have barely encountered naturally cut Japanese dicks in my life. I don't know why the teacher said as if all dicks would become cut; however, there's a whole industry that offers Japanese men in their 20s and 30s circumcision as cosmetic surgery, based on the myth of naturally cut dicks, which I guess all adult men are supposed to have. Here, uncut dicks represent immaturity and femininity, and cut ones maturity and masculinity.

There are various cultural reasons behind male circumcision; some say that it was introduced to prevent boys from jacking off. I don't know what it's like to jack off without foreskin, and I feel quite awkward when I give a cut dick a hand job because I don't know exactly how to jack it. I'm always scared that I might be pulling too hard or rubbing too much or grabbing it too tight. But I guess they still enjoy manual stimulation in general, which is good news. Meanwhile, I never had problems jacking off mine and feeling great. I cannot personally compare which feels better, with or without foreskin, but it seems like there's no point in removing it if we're all happy about our all-time favorite activity anyway. Oh, and some say it's for better hygiene--a big bullshit.

In fact, I hear that some men report varying levels of negative experiences resulted from circumcision, including PTSD. I also hear that mothers approve male circumcision just because they don't know much about what it means to men. Well, I don't have any empirical evidence about that at hand, but I wonder why they still practice it today, religious reasons or otherwise. I mean, what kind of boys today would really try to avoid jacking off? Removing foreskin now seems not only pointless but also fundamentally harmful and oppressive, because most men don't have choice over what happens to their dicks when they're babies or boys due to adultist nature of circumcision. If they don't have choice, wouldn't that be basically the same as sexual assault?

Now let's think about ideas around pedophilia. Many years ago, there were no such laws that prohibited children from having sex or adults from having sex with children. Then the idea of statutory rape was introduced, as adolescence was invented when education became normalized. It varied country by country, but in the West the legal age to have sex was around 12 to 15 years old only a few decades ago. As these societies developed under capitalism, they needed their young people to be working and not reproducing. Thus, it was necessary that they raised the legal consenting age up to 16 or 18 years old. I had a culture shock when I learned that dating a minor is a serious issue in the US (and I thought it was stupid). Similarly, pedophilia was socially constructed as childhood was. Before then, nothing distinguished pedophilia from adult sex. It became illegal because they invented childhood as something innocent and thus in need of protection. It was completely arbitrary.

What we see here is that childhood is determined and defined by adults who control them. And minors' sexuality and agency are too often disregarded, disrespected, denied, degraded, and destroyed. It is ridiculous enough that some adults seriously believe that they can control what information about sex their children can access to, as if they had completely forgotten how they grew up. Boundaries between children and adults are essentially arbitrary, and it should be considered as taking away whatever-they-think-are-children's freedom of (sexual) expression when they refuse to provide accurate and detailed information about sex and gender, as well as to forbid minors unlimited sexual pleasure.

So I wonder why pedophilia is illegal and circumcision is not? They can be equally harmful, oppressive, and traumatizing. They can be both considered as sexual assault. What does this say about the interaction of sexual oppression and adultism? What does it mean for men and boys to be forced to go through irreversible alteration of their bodies basically for nothing, if not something worse?

What I hear more recently is that circumcision reduces the "risk" of HIV transmission by 50%. This Western-centric medical discourse poses threat to Third World bodies when it is used to justify circumcising men in sub-Saharan Africa for their conquest of the epidemic. Hey, they used to tell me that condoms work almost 100%. If circumcision is a sexual assault, what does it mean when it's done to those "at-risk" populations in "Third World" countries?

When I believed my foreskin would peel back, I used to wait impatiently for that to happen, sometimes attempting to assist that "natural" process. Now that I know what's really natural to my body, I am very comfortable with it. After all, the best thing you can do to your body is to accept it, love it, and enjoy it.

China's first gay couple, who openly "got married" on Jan 3, want more understanding from society and hope to get an official marriage certificate, the Beijing News reported today.

The couple, Zeng Anquan and Pan Wenjie, "fell in love at first sight" when they met at a bar in Chengdu, the capital city of Sichuan province.

Related readings:
Gay couple want more understanding First Mr Gay China 'coming out' in Beijing
Gay couple want more understanding Chengdu gay couple wed in public
Zeng is 46 years old and has a daughter from a 26-year marriage. Pan, 27, confessed to his parents that he is more into men after the failure of many blind-dates arranged by his family.

"I don't feel well when I am with a woman, but I could not speak about it in the past. When Pan planned a surprise wedding for me, I was shocked at first but on second thought, said, 'Why not'" Zeng said.

But Zeng said publicity about their marriage is creating new pressures for the couple. "Every day, a dozen of people watch us where we live. It's inconvenient and awkward for us," he said.

The couple wants a marriage certificate to seal their love, even though they both face angry families at home.

"We go on TV shows and interviews, and all we want is more understanding from society. I want more gay people to say, 'This is how we live and it's not wrong,'" Zeng said. - China Daily

A week ago China's first gay pageant was cancelled, on orders from the police.

The event had been hailed as a new chapter of openness towards the gay community in China, where homosexuality was illegal until 1997 and defined as mental disorder until 2001.

Here three gay men in China describe the pressures they have to live with and the compromises they have to make.

Michael Tsai, 23, restaurant manager, Beijing


I was going to be the host for the gay pageant Mr Gay China, but unfortunately the government has once again oppressed its people silently. It would have been a wonderful step but there is much more fear than understanding.

Although I wouldn't call it discrimination, there's definitely a pressure to conformity in Chinese society. The goal is to to marry and produce male offspring. Since the Chinese are allowed to have only one child there is even more pressure to conform.

Thankfully I come from a family of two boys and the need to carry on the family name has already been fulfilled. I am out to all my family, my friends and colleagues.

Although I do feel that the country as a whole has become a lot more tolerant, it isn't necessarily more understanding

My family feels that if something is not spoken about then it either doesn't exist or it will be forgotten. Even though they know I'm gay they still say things like "When you find your wife..."

I'm sure my parents are not thrilled by my sexual orientation but they seem to be dealing with it through denial and that's perfectly fine with me.

China has become a get-rich-fast society, a society where you build up power and forget about everyone else. There are more things to worry about than who's attracted to who.

Most of the older Chinese feel that being gay is just a phase and that eventually it will work itself out.

I don't feel that there are any problems in China that I've come across. If we aren't too loud and proud about it then the subject doesn't even cross anyone's mind.

Although I do feel that the country as a whole has become a lot more tolerant, it isn't necessarily more understanding.

Anonymous man, Guangzhou

I'm 35, I work as an environment researcher and I am married with two children. I am also gay.

I come from the countryside, where most people don't even know what gay means.

Several years ago, I came out to my three closest friends. I haven't, and will never, come out to my parents, wife and children.

There's a strong tradition in China you can't go against - to get married. I think most of the gay people in China are married. There's a lot of pressure from the family to do that.

The Chinese family is very traditional and it's not based on so-called love. My wife and I have a good relationship, we love each other like a brother and sister. I am happy in my family, we are the true family.

I don't need freedom. I need to keep this secret, so that I can live normally

We need to keep to that, but I also have the freedom to make friends outside. Me and my gay friends have our own meetings, we go to a badminton club and have dinner together. That's all I need.

Happiness is not about desiring things you cannot have, but enjoying the things you have.

I have two children, one three-year old boy and an eight-year old girl. I would never come out to them - I don't want them to know that I am gay.

I hope that my children can have a normal life and I think to be gay is not normal because it's different from everybody else. I've accepted what I am because I cannot change.

I support our government's decision to cancel the gay pageant. Freedom is perhaps the most important thing in the Western world, but for us Chinese people, the most important thing is harmony.

I don't need freedom. I need to keep this secret, so that I can live normally.

There has been a change of attitude lately towards homosexuality, there's more acceptance and understanding. There's still lots of prejudice but I think it will take time for that to be eliminated.

Miles, 30, Shenyang

I was born in a small village in Liaoning Province in north-east China. Currently I work for a China-based multinational in Dubai, but I go back to China every four months.

I have been in a relationship with a guy since I started working in Shenyang in 2001. We now live apart because of my current job.

I've never come out to my colleagues, family and friends. In my opinion, keeping a low profile is the real way of life, especially when your sexual preference is not the mainstream one.

Both my father and sister met my boyfriend, which is kind of dangerous. I am afraid one day they might discover that I am gay. I won't come out to them, as I don't want to hurt them.

In my opinion, the younger generations are more open to homosexuality than the older ones.

There is one problem all gay people face in China - that's marriage.

I wish to stay abroad, so that I can escape the fate of having to start a family

This tradition is deeply rooted in most Chinese people's minds. The pressure is particularly strong on those born in a one-child family as they have to fulfil their God-given mission to maintain the family continuity.

I am trying to stay far away from marriage. While I am in Dubai, I don't sense the pressure from my family for the time being. But that day will come if I return to China. I wish to stay abroad, so that I can escape the fate of having to start a family.

With the young generations growing into adults, I believe Chinese society will become more tolerant towards homosexuality. I have young friends who don't care at all.

Even though homosexuality is legal, large-scale events are still not possible. But in our everyday life gay people are, in most cases, accepted by their close peers and colleagues because most gay people are friendly and have good personalities.

We have many gay websites, we have gay night clubs in the big cities and we have a professor of a top Chinese university, named Li Yinhe, who is an advocate of gay rights.

China is changing to accept new ideas and develop in many different areas and so I believe that one day gay marriage will become legal. - BBC News

Police shut down what would have been China's first gay pageant on Friday an hour before it was set to begin, highlighting the enduring sensitivity surrounding homosexuality and the struggle by gays to find mainstream acceptance.

Organizers said they were not surprised when eight police officers turned up at the upscale club in central Beijing where the pageant, featuring a fashion show and a host in drag, was set to take place.

"They said the content, meaning homosexuality, there's nothing wrong with that, but you did not do things according to procedures," Ben Zhang said. Police told him he needed official approval for events that included performances, in this case a stage show.

"I kind of saw that coming," Zhang said.

Chinese police frequently cite procedural reasons for closing down gatherings that are deemed to be politically sensitive. Though the pageant did not have any overt political agenda, similar events in the past — such as a parade during the Shanghai Pride Festival last year — have been blocked by authorities.

"It totally has to do with moral standards and culture," said contestant Emilio Liu, 26. "If most people can't accept it, then the government won't let it happen."

Zhang had said he hoped the pageant would raise awareness of homosexuals in a country where gays are frequently discriminated against and ostracized. Eight men were competing for the title and a spot in the Worldwide Mr. Gay pageant, to be held next month in Oslo, Norway.

The Mr. Gay China pageant had attracted a great deal of press attention and even the normally staid state-run media reported on the event this week. Tickets, which cost 100 yuan (US$14.60) and 150 yuan (US$22.00), sold out three days ago.

"I feel really sad. This was going to be a very good event to show a positive image of gay people," said Wei Xiaogang, a pageant judge and host of Queer Comrades, a popular Internet talk show on gay issues.

Guests began trickling in after Zhang's announcement to the 50-plus journalists at the club. Some guests hugged each other after learning the show would not be taking place after all, while suit-clad club staff members began stacking up the chairs. Still, the mood was not entirely somber.

"I'm a bit disappointed but I can also relax now. I don't have to be on a diet anymore," Liu joked.

Contestant Simon Wang, who had planned to perform a self-choreographed dance to Lady Gaga's "LoveGame," struck cheeky poses for the cameras, while wearing green trousers and black straps across his bare chest, topped with furry maroon shoulder pads.

Someone had scribbled on the black backdrop behind him: "The revolution has not succeeded, comrades need to work harder." Comrade is the slang term for gays in China.

Organizers still planned to send a China representative to Oslo and will probably ask the pageant judges to choose someone from the contestants, organizer Ryan Dutcher said.

Gay rights in China have come a long way since the years just after the 1949 communist revolution when homosexuality was considered a disease from the decadent West and feudal societies, and gay people were persecuted. Sodomy was decriminalized in 1997, and homosexuality was finally removed from the official list of mental disorders in 2001.

But tellingly, most of the contestants interviewed asked The Associated Press to use their English names instead of Chinese names, to better protect their identities at home. While treatment of gays has improved in recent years, many are still reticent to draw attention to their homosexuality, particularly in the workplace.

Chinese authorities had appeared to be more open toward addressing gay issues in recent months. The country's first gay pride festival was held in Shanghai, the nation's commercial capital, last June. That month also featured the five-day Beijing Queer Film Festival — an event that police blocked in 2001 and 2005.

China is officially atheistic, and without religious reasons for opposing homosexuality, attitudes are slowly shifting among city dwellers from one of intolerance to indifference. Gays living in big cities, like nearly all the men participating in the pageant, said their biggest challenge was dealing with parents and deeply ingrained expectations for them to get married and have children.

But Liu said he thought it would be 10 years before anyone can successfully organize a gay pageant in China.

"Cultural change needs time, society isn't going to change tomorrow," he said. - MSNBC

Filed at 8:56 p.m. ET

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- An appeals court cleared the way for a pivotal federal trial to decide whether gays can wed in California to be televised.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday turned down a request by the sponsors of the state's same-sex marriage ban to keep cameras from the trial, set to begin Monday in a San Francisco federal court.

Lawyers for Proposition 8 backers opposed video recording of the trial, saying they feared witnesses might restrain or alter their testimony if cameras are present. Federal trial courts generally prohibit cameras.

Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker, who will preside over the trial without a jury, previously approved using court staff to record the proceedings and upload them on YouTube.

The three-judge panel authorized the recording in a brief, one paragraph order.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Gay marriage foes on Friday sought to stop the video recording of Monday's scheduled trial on the legality of California's ban of same-sex nuptials so they could appeal a judge's decision authorizing cameras in the courtroom.

Also on Friday, an outspoken gay marriage opponent serving as an official litigant on the case asked a judge to remove him from the lawsuit because he feared the trial would generate publicity that could endanger him and his family.

Hak-Shing William Tam was one of five people who formally intervened to defend a federal lawsuit filed against the state that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Jerry Brown have declined to defend. Tam and the other four interveners were also the official proponents of Proposition 8, which passed in November 2008 and was upheld four months later by the California Supreme Court.

''I dedicated the majority of my working hours between January 2008 and November 2008 toward qualifying Proposition 8 for the ballot and campaigning for its enactment,'' the San Francisco resident told the judge in May in urging to be named an official party to the lawsuit.

On Friday, Tam told the court that he was harassed and his property vandalized during the campaign, and feared similar retribution if he continued to represent gay marriage foes' interest in the lawsuit and trial.

''In the past I have received threats on my life, had my property vandalized and am recognized on the streets due to my association with Proposition 8,'' Tam said in a court filing. ''Now that the subject lawsuit is going to trial, I fear I will get more publicity, be more recognizable and that the risk of harm to me and my family will increase.''

Tam on Friday didn't mention the judge's decision to allow cameras to record the trial, but lawyers representing Proposition 8 interests urged Walker to delay implementing his order while they appeal his recording decision to 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The lawyers oppose video recording the trial, which the judge will preside over without a jury, because they fear witnesses may restrain or alter their testimony if cameras are present in the courtroom. Federal trial courts generally prohibit cameras in the courtroom.

But with an eye on the Proposition 8 trial, chief judge Alex Kozinski of the 9th Circuit announced last month a pilot program to allow cameras to record civil trials decided by a judge without a jury. Kozinski said ''being able to see and hear what transpires in the courtroom will lead to a better public understanding of our judicial processes and enhanced confidence in the rule of law.''

The appeals court has jurisdiction over federal courts in nine western states and no federal trial in the region has ever allowed cameras. Walker did bar live broadcasts, opting instead to post the proceedings on YouTube.com several hours later.

Lawyers representing the gay couples who filed the lawsuit support cameras in the courtroom. So does a group of media organizations, including The Associated Press, that filed court papers Friday urging the 9th Circuit to uphold Walker's decision to allow cameras. - NYTIMES

KAMPALA, Uganda — Last March, three American evangelical Christians, whose teachings about “curing” homosexuals have been widely discredited in the United States, arrived here in Uganda’s capital to give a series of talks.

The theme of the event, according to Stephen Langa, its Ugandan organizer, was “the gay agenda — that whole hidden and dark agenda” — and the threat homosexuals posed to Bible-based values and the traditional African family.

For three days, according to participants and audio recordings, thousands of Ugandans, including police officers, teachers and national politicians, listened raptly to the Americans, who were presented as experts on homosexuality. The visitors discussed how to make gay people straight, how gay men often sodomized teenage boys and how “the gay movement is an evil institution” whose goal is “to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity.”

Now the three Americans are finding themselves on the defensive, saying they had no intention of helping stoke the kind of anger that could lead to what came next: a bill to impose a death sentence for homosexual behavior.

One month after the conference, a previously unknown Ugandan politician, who boasts of having evangelical friends in the American government, introduced the Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009, which threatens to hang homosexuals, and, as a result, has put Uganda on a collision course with Western nations.

Donor countries, including the United States, are demanding that Uganda’s government drop the proposed law, saying it violates human rights, though Uganda’s minister of ethics and integrity (who previously tried to ban miniskirts) recently said, “Homosexuals can forget about human rights.”

The Ugandan government, facing the prospect of losing millions in foreign aid, is now indicating that it will back down, slightly, and change the death penalty provision to life in prison for some homosexuals. But the battle is far from over.

Instead, Uganda seems to have become a far-flung front line in the American culture wars, with American groups on both sides, the Christian right and gay activists, pouring in support and money as they get involved in the broader debate over homosexuality in Africa.

“It’s a fight for their lives,” said Mai Kiang, a director at the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice, a New York-based group that has channeled nearly $75,000 to Ugandan gay rights activists and expects that amount to grow.

The three Americans who spoke at the conference — Scott Lively, a missionary who has written several books against homosexuality, including “7 Steps to Recruit-Proof Your Child”; Caleb Lee Brundidge, a self-described former gay man who leads “healing seminars”; and Don Schmierer, a board member of Exodus International, whose mission is “mobilizing the body of Christ to minister grace and truth to a world impacted by homosexuality” — are now trying to distance themselves from the bill.

“I feel duped,” Mr. Schmierer said, arguing that he had been invited to speak on “parenting skills” for families with gay children. He acknowledged telling audiences how homosexuals could be converted into heterosexuals, but he said he had no idea some Ugandans were contemplating the death penalty for homosexuality.

“That’s horrible, absolutely horrible,” he said. “Some of the nicest people I have ever met are gay people.”

Mr. Lively and Mr. Brundidge have made similar remarks in interviews or statements issued by their organizations. But the Ugandan organizers of the conference admit helping draft the bill, and Mr. Lively has acknowledged meeting with Ugandan lawmakers to discuss it. He even wrote on his blog in March that someone had likened their campaign to “a nuclear bomb against the gay agenda in Uganda.” Later, when confronted with criticism, Mr. Lively said he was very disappointed that the legislation was so harsh.

Human rights advocates in Uganda say the visit by the three Americans helped set in motion what could be a very dangerous cycle. Gay Ugandans already describe a world of beatings, blackmail, death threats like “Die Sodomite!” scrawled on their homes, constant harassment and even so-called correctional rape.

“Now we really have to go undercover,” said Stosh Mugisha, a gay rights activist who said she was pinned down in a guava orchard and raped by a farmhand who wanted to cure her of her attraction to girls. She said that she was impregnated and infected with H.I.V., but that her grandmother’s reaction was simply, “ ‘You are too stubborn.’ ”

Despite such attacks, many gay men and lesbians here said things had been getting better for them before the bill, at least enough to hold news conferences and publicly advocate for their rights. Now they worry that the bill could encourage lynchings. Already, mobs beat people to death for infractions as minor as stealing shoes.

“What these people have done is set the fire they can’t quench,” said the Rev. Kapya Kaoma, a Zambian who went undercover for six months to chronicle the relationship between the African anti-homosexual movement and American evangelicals.

Mr. Kaoma was at the conference and said that the three Americans “underestimated the homophobia in Uganda” and “what it means to Africans when you speak about a certain group trying to destroy their children and their families.”

“When you speak like that,” he said, “Africans will fight to the death.”

Uganda is an exceptionally lush, mostly rural country where conservative Christian groups wield enormous influence. This is, after all, the land of proposed virginity scholarships, songs about Jesus playing in the airport, “Uganda is Blessed” bumper stickers on Parliament office doors and a suggestion by the president’s wife that a virginity census could be a way to fight AIDS.

During the Bush administration, American officials praised Uganda’s family-values policies and steered millions of dollars into abstinence programs.

Uganda has also become a magnet for American evangelical groups. Some of the best known Christian personalities have recently passed through here, often bringing with them anti-homosexuality messages, including the Rev. Rick Warren, who visited in 2008 and has compared homosexuality to pedophilia. (Mr. Warren recently condemned the anti-homosexuality bill, seeking to correct what he called “lies and errors and false reports” that he played a role in it.)

Many Africans view homosexuality as an immoral Western import, and the continent is full of harsh homophobic laws. In northern Nigeria, gay men can face death by stoning. Beyond Africa, a handful of Muslim countries, like Iran and Yemen, also have the death penalty for homosexuals. But many Ugandans said they thought that was going too far. A few even spoke out in support of gay people.

“I can defend them,” said Haj Medih, a Muslim taxi driver with many homosexual customers. “But I fear the what? The police, the government. They can arrest you and put you in the safe house, and for me, I don’t have any lawyer who can help me."
- NYTIMES

I was talking to one of my friends about how I thought I had much higher standards of beauty for white people than I did anyone else, and I tried to explain that I'd seen so many pretty white people on TV that it was easier for me to decide which white people conformed to the Hollywood standard of beauty. On, say, the people-of-Asian-descent end, all I get is Sandra Oh, who is not considered a world beauty, and John Cho, who looks too angry in most of his pictures to be considered a dazzlingly hot person. Around the same time, I also got tired of referencing this really awful source that framed trends of attraction in terms of masculine and feminine facial features because I realized that it raised more questions than it answered, and that it was written about random samplings of white people in England, which is all well and good but isn't really pertinent to anything I'm really interested in, as the unfortunate reality is that my ancestors were from China and my facial features are doughy and androgynous and I have too much malar fat in the wrong places and I like boys.

Another unfortunate reality is that Berkeley's 97% some-sort-of-Asian population is not representative of the rest of the U.S., which is sobering, in that the chance of meeting another gay nonwhite boy while doing something I actually like is slim to none, but that is another story for another time.

So, back to what I was supposed to be talking about. Attraction, as a rule, is something we all aspire to in one way or another because it's built into us. The innate frustration with not being found attractive leads to lots of issues that expressly point into you being a genetic failure since nobody wants your jankyass genes. Thus, there are many ways in which people cope with not being attractive. My way will be blogging. I'm going to reinvent a wheel that has about 30 sides as opposed to smooth curvature by talking about "what's attractive?" using flimsy reasoning and wikipedia, because none of the articles on google scholar are free.

Author's note: The following is mostly male-centric and I'm sorry to all the females that feel miffed. More it's that I chose males as a case study to try and show my explanation of trends.

The points.

1. What is physical attractiveness?

At the root of it all, attractiveness should be classified as a biological and evolutionary process which eventually ends in procreation. In this vein, the popular view of what governs attractiveness should be the environmental fitness of a person's genes and his or her nurturant parenting skills. Let me pause and back up a moment and go "Hmm," because I'm not actually sure if I should assume this in regard to man-on-man-lovin'. Does an innate difficulty (or unwillingness) to procreate fundamentally change the meaning of attraction? I'm going to venture that since we all happen to be humans that have been successfully created mostly through a man and a woman bumping uglies, this sort of mentality is inescapable, in that it is built into us in one way or another.

2. How do physical qualities relate attractiveness to an individual?

The commonly held belief is that there are two roles that categorize how a great many animals interact and copulate.

The burnout:
Men are sperm packets: they procreate, (and sometimes protect and hunt,) and then die.

Attractive males look physically capable. This entails
-Thriving despite handicap properties (see peacocks, lyrebirds, and testosterone, discussed later)
-Physical strength and size

The oven:
Women look fertile and sturdy so it looks like they could keep their kids from running off and so they can try not to die during childbirth.

This means that attractive qualities should include
-Good childbearing equipment
-Attachment to young
-Healthiness

3. Now, how did these attributes manifest physically, and is this the entire picture?

In human females, higher levels of hormones associated with fertility are correlated with the hourglass figure.

In human males, the production of testosterone is reported to cause 2 things.
-Increased growth of cheekbones and jawbones
-A suppressed immune system

I'm going to accept these two things on faith, because I don't have the data to prove otherwise. This suggests that faces that are considered more masculine have differently shaped cheek and jaw bones. As a result, these faces are considered to have better genes and are thus the most appealing, as the males that possess them are still alive and kickin' despite their slight suppression in their immune systems. Big males are also favored, because they appear more physically apt, and strength can be correlated with the triangular shape of a torso, signaling upper body strength. Facial and bodily symmetry is a sign of health in both sexes, because, unequal weighting can result in bad things like curvature of the spine, and you don't want some crazy's mutant genes to turn your babies all sideways.

So attractive women have hourglass figures and wide birth tunnels and men are tall and triangular and have good big cheekbones and jaws. The end.

Just kidding.

There are other mechanisms at work, of course, which explain how my parents got together to produce this chimpy-faced asshole.

There's a lot of diversity in the animal world, and, annoyingly, our species has become pro-social, meaning that it's not about how well we can defend our bananas, it's about how many friends we can swindle into helping us defend our bananas (or how we can convey the illusion of having a whole monkey army armed with lasers to defend our bananas for us). Some of our monkey relatives work inside a society where sexual selection is within a social hierarchy, which enforces dominance through support in numbers based on smaller acts, such as grooming, as well as one-on-one physical intimidation. To learn more about silly horny male animals, watch this episode of Nature.

Now that I'm done talking about monkey sex...

4. Is attraction completely a sociological concern? Are there things that are considered innately or universally attractive?

I think it's uncharitable to say that attraction is solely culturally bound--i.e. "oh he just wants my Chinese genes because he likes the exotic implications of it (and I want that in my spawn)" or "he just likes white people because they symbolize upward social mobility or the ruling class (and I want that in my spawn)."

What I've been trying to say is that sociology works alongside individual concerns. On the one hand, since a very long time ago, good mates have been strong and fertile. This appears to have a high precedence and it would be unfair to discount this completely. On the other, there are always new rules and regulations as to what else a mate has to be in order to survive. My hypothesis is that because different environments choose to make different factors attractive, (say, dark pigmentation nearer to the equator where there's far too much sun for it to be very nice, and you will probably die of sunburns if you move there from Norway) humans undergo a stage of high neural plasticity when they are very small that helps them adapt to what seems to be attractive given their current situation. The question of what these qualities are is the domain of sociology, but murmuring somewhere amongst it all is a base or bias of biology that favors one quality over another.

4a. (Aside) How important is a gendered approach to attraction?

Essentially because humans undergo sexual dimorphism, it's suggested that men and women really were made to look attractive to one another.

When we talk about how gayness arises, we ultimately run into the sex problem, and what failing occurs where in our development to cause this state. There is a research about the gay gene in fruit flies, but I'd like to think, at least, that human sexuality is a little bit more complicated than that (but who knows, maybe it isn't). A view that sort of takes it all in would explain that sexuality is determined by when genes are activated, or what neural networks are wired together when time of life is an impressionable period what regions of the brain are active as part of sexual determinacy, and how the environment around us plays a role.

I have faith that science will solve all questions of gayness eventually once they decide they have to find a way to stop it, because gayness has become endemic and we've almost unpopulated ourselves because too many of us are afraid of opposite-sex dick or pussy.

Anyway. Back to the real question,

5. How do differing phenotypes express the same qualities, and how do we integrate these views across environments and cultures?

Author's note: I'm going to pause here for a second and say that I'm really sorry, but I'm not going to try and prove anything revolutionary, or even satisfactory. This is, and has been, from the start, my attempt to rationalize my not hotness, and it will lead me, hopefully, to take an aerial and anthropological survey of the world to find a place where they find my features strangely beautiful so they will shower me with gifts in my internet-connected cave (because that's everyone's dream, isn't it?). This was also my attempt to try and explain why people fight for and against the things they do and that its reasons may be a great deal more stupid than we'd like to think and that our existence is increasingly pointless (and really I wonder why I'm even saying this).

The short answer is, we can't. The other answer is, we should be able to, because my rambling indicates that there are underlying biological implications as to how we look, and that we should be able to recognize them. However, these universals are far and few in between, and, given what we know about environmental fitness, can be exhibited in many different, possibly conflicting ways.

Essential qualities are expressed differently. An example of this would be the distribution of body hair. The expression of hairiness is based both on the amount of androgen hormones, which include hormones such as testosterone and DHT, produced by the body as well as the number of androgen receptors on each follicle. It's perfectly possible to have two people with the same number of androgens running through their body but to have different visible hair profiles.

Environmental qualities have been selected for, and some regions don't care. If a person lives in a very sunny area, it may be advantageous to have a stronger brow so you have less sun in your eyes. In other, cloudier regions, it doesn't matter a wit.

Taken together, we get a selectional view that's both localized, and been around far longer than we have. Views of attraction are based on environmental fitness and, as a consequence, are culture specific.

This is not to say that we have no influence on what we find attractive. More than ever, there seem to be new and confusing ways to see what's best for your progeny. At this point in history, in most first world countries, humans have mostly created and modified their own environment. Some might argue that this has created a new type of environment, in which power and social standing is a key factor in what is attractive. I would argue that, instead, these sociological concerns have a biological underpinning, which alters essentially how we view one another in whatever social construct we create. What causes culture is the expectation that that people that are thought of as physically appealing often end up being more successful. This is exhibited by the study of the pretty, on average, doing better monetarily through the realization that they are objectively better as passing on their genes than the rest of us gives them more opportunities to pass on their genes.

In addition, the viewer's biology influences the way he or she sees others, as each individual is selected to approach attraction to favor themselves. The aesthetics of his or her outlook can be disseminated through culture. There are at least two principles that help discuss what a person will select for. The directional selection theory proposes that he or she prefers the person with the strongest visible traits of masculinity as seen in a person's own type. The better adapted a person is despite his testosterone handicap, the more fit mate he should be. The convergence theory states that this person finds the prototypical male more attractive than the one with the most extremely prominent traits. This was proposed by Darwin, when he overlaid different faces onto each other, only to find that the composite image produced was more appealing than any single picture. This supposedly acts in the interests of stabilizing selection, which keeps out the men that die shortly after they procreate or that happen to have deviant, strange features in addition to whatever masculine ones they have.

As a take-home message, I'd like us all to remember that what we're essentially fighting for in whatever sociological arena we choose, is some incarnation of genetic viability. The truth is that the way the majority of people look, and how we ourselves look influence the way we select what is and isn't attractive. The societal implications of this notion are linked in horrible and convoluted ways which eventually lead back down to certain selection pressures. So, for all you kiddies out there reading me, first, if you're unhappy with the way you look, there's probably a good reason for it, in that somewhere down the line your genes weren't good enough to snag you a healthy mate, and, second, whatever standard is applied to you to judge that you aren't good enough, you inevitably apply back onto your peers, in one way or another. For all you people that have interesting ancestry, go back to your home country where people look like you; you'll have an easier chance finding a mate there since you've most likely been selected to look like you thrive in that environment. And, for all you gays out there like me, you've mostly been plucked out of the gene pool already, so go have some fun or fight for the genetic viability you'll probably never use before your pointless existence ends.

Tonight will be one for the history books in Campbell. The City Council is expected to select the Evan Low as their new mayor, making him the city's youngest openly-gay mayor and youngest Asian American mayor in the country.

Evan Low, 26, was first elected to the Campbell City Council in 2006 and is currently filling the seat as the city's vice mayor. He earned his BA in political science from San Jose State University and graduated from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. He has accumulated quite a few honors in his so-far short political career. He's been called a trailblazer and named one of the most influencial Asian Americans Under 30. He even has a day set aside just for him. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom declared June 5, 2006 "Evan Low Day" because of his leadership in the community and Bay Area.

The biggest hurdle he faced in running for office was not his ethnicity or his sexual preference, but his youth, he told Passport Online. Low will replace Mayor Jane Kennedy, whose term expired in November. With a good, solid and honest start in politics, it seems Low would be setting his sights on higher office. But, he's not making it clear. When Passport Online asked him what his future holds he told them he's not ready to commit to a lifetime in politics. In the next 10 years, he sees himself, "continuing to help those disenfranchised, by empowering them through civic engagement, cultural identity, and education."

Community organizing. Sure sounds like a familiar and successful path to higher political office. - NBCBAYAREA