Respond to The Daily Sheet

[CactusGal]

I'm not sure I understand the entry in the Tuesday, May 23 Daily Sheet, about Fan Fiction.  Does the story Taking Chances by Louisev actually exist somewhere, is it currently being written, or is the whole entry in the Daily Sheet just fiction?  I must be missing something. 

Here is the link to her LiveJournal where her story is posted: http://louisev.livejournal.com/

Hope this helps.  Jan

[nova]

Jan,

Thanks for the link to Louisev's live journal.  That's exactly what I needed.

nova20194

[Ellen (tellyouwhat)]

Oops Slate has updated their link (5/24 funny of the day) but the good news is-- I described yesterday's cartoon in enough detail so you can imagine it from TDS, and if you click on the link you will see another cartoon re Da Vinci code.  So actually two funnies of the day.  Enjoy

[Lyle (Mooska)]

Today's Daily Sheet has an update on all of the current campaigns underway on this forum, with the conspicuous absence of any word about the academy/homophobia campaign

The initial part of that campaign has been over for some time (sending a letter to the Academy).
... While there may not be actions discussed as of yet that we feel warrant the forum's involvement, one never knows what ideas may come of such a in depth conversation.

Perhaps we should archive that thread soon. Thanks for the suggestion.

Pete

Pete, the ideas from the conversations on that thread are some of the best on this forum and maybe a different thread should be started for it--or merge it with the awards aftermath thread.

As for "there may not be actions discussed that we feel warrant the forum's involvement", well, if not US (the forum and members) then who?  NO ONE is dealing with the things we are discussing there.  Not the general press, the gay press, etc.  No one.  If not us, who?  If not now, when?

[WLAGuy]

brokeback_1 wrote:--A homesick young soldier from  Wyoming with internet access stumbled across a  link to the Forum. Knowing nothing about Brokeback Mountain, he  checked out the site and found the debate. When his friends asked what  he was looking at, he said it appeared to be an online war. Pressed for further details, he explained that it seemed to be a debate between two opposing camps bitterly arguing whether or not one fictional gay cowboy had left  the other fictional gay cowboy in the film Brokeback Mountain. 

After doubting his sanity several soldiers checked it out for themselves. Before many days had elapsed 5 or 6 of the younger soldiers in his unit were following the posts, augmented with information collected from various sources and a copy of the short story from the original collection, sent along with many other books by someone's relatives.  Straight boys all, without ever seeing the film, had begun to debate it among themselves.

Soon, one could hear  heated conversations in the streets of Baghdad, with lines like "I can't see the Texan just walking out after 20 years,"  and  "Why did he STAY 20 years, I'm glad he walked!"  My personal  favorite?  "We could use Ennis in this unit."

But perhaps the finest line  was spoken by one of these young soldiers while on patrol in Baghdad, dodging street bombs: "Baghdad, I wish I could quit YOU!"

I am constantly amazed by the things I read on this site.  Just when I thought there was nothing else about BBM that could surprise me, I read this post and the hair stood up on the back of my neck.  Maybe there is hope for the human race after all.

[mountain boy]

WLAGuy, I 2nd that!  What an amazing piece on the soldiers in Iraq!  Thanks, Daily Sheet!!   

[Ellen (tellyouwhat)]

Thanks to everyone who responded to that story, I stand by it.

[peteinportland]

This wonderful story was brought to us by brokeback_1 who is actually related to one of the soldiers who told all of this to him (his brother's nephew). In some ways, the story sounds too good to be true, so it is very exciting that brokeback_1 was actually able to give us all of the details and verify all of this for us.

A big thanks to one of our Daily Sheet Editors, tellyouwhat, for following up on this and bringing it all to our attention.

I know there is some discussion about maybe putting together a care package for these Brokeback Baghdad soldiers to show we are thinking of them. We will be sure to give you all the details as they develop.

Thanks again to everyone involved with this wonderful story.

Pete

[WLAGuy]

I'm guessing one or two of the soldiers might have a portable DVD player, so a few copies of the BBM DVD would probably get a lot of use. 

[bbm-mmm]

For those interested in the situation developing in Moscow, here is an update:
Part 1:

Russian Police Attack Activists, Disrupt Banned Moscow Gay March
  MOSCOW, May 27, 2006 (Special to davecullen.com) -- Several hundred Russian OMON special anti-riot police detachments, as well as groups of Russian nationalists, militant Russian Orthodox believers and neo-fascists attacked local and foreign gay rights activists in Moscow Saturday, disrupting the Russian capital's first ever planned -- and banned -- gay rights march.
  Police arrested more than 120 people, mainly gay activists, including 28-year-old Nikolai Alexeyev, leader of the gay rights organization GayRussia, as he and other supporters attempted to approach the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Alexandrovsky Gardens near the Kremlin -- one of Russia's most sacred and honored places -- to lay flowers in a symbolic protest equating the fight for gay rights with the war against Nazi Germany.
  The gay activists were outnumbered at least twofold by men and women carrying Russian Orthodox icons and chanting "Moscow is not Sodom."
   As a hundred nationalist youths, some wearing clinical face-masks -- apparently to guard their identity -- chanted "Glory to Russia!", several trampled on a rainbow-colored ribbon -- a symbol of gay rights -- into the ground.
  "This is a perverts' parade," said one Christian protester holding an icon of the Madonna, a woman who gave only her first name, Irina. "This is filth, which is forbidden by God. We have to cleanse the world of this filth."
  Police closed the gates to the park where the eternal flame burns under the Kremlin walls, and a large group of Christian Orthodox women singing hymns, together with a group of shaven-headed nationalists, many dressed in black, tried to charge into the gay activists as they arrived at the park gates.
  "The entrance to the park was closed when we got there and there was a crowd of people outside, what most people would call neo-fascists," said Robert Wintemute, a professor at King's College in London and one of the foreign gay activists who took part in the protest.
   "There was a scuffle and then I saw police taking Nikolai Alexeyev away and putting him in a police van. After that, neo-fascist thugs started running wild here and there. Thugs kicked Merlin Holland, the grandson of Oscar Wilde. I've never seen such things," Wintemute said.
  "This is a great victory, an absolute victory -- look at what's happening," Alexeyev said as he was dragged, bent almost double, away from the gates by two policemen.
  Volker Beck, a gay German member of parliament who attended the rally, had blood on his face after being punched in the face. Images of Beck, a leader of the Greens party and a prominent gay rights leader, being hit in the face were broadcast by German television.
  "I was attacked," Beck said. "It was a stone and a fist. It shows we're not safe in this country. The security forces did not protect us but instead prevented us from retreating. We were left without any protection."
  “It is inadmissible that police wouldn’t protect peaceful gays and lesbians from hooligans,” he said.
  Volker Eichler, a gay activist from Berlin who witnessed the beating, said police did not intervene. He said Beck had been giving an interview to a television crew when about 20 nationalist youths surrounded him and pummeled him, bloodying his nose.
  "What happened today unfortunately is representative of the non-respect for human rights in Russia. You can't express your point of view, and you are not protected from extremists," said French gay activist Sebastien Maria.
  Philippe Lasnier, who was heading a delegation from the office of Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe, was briefly arrested.
  Russia's official Itar-Tass news agency, citing a police official, reported that the deputy mayor of an unidentified German city had been detained together with other foreign gay activists taking part in the rally.
  Alexeyev had invited gay activists from all across Europe to the march, the culmination of three days of events that were a first Russian attempt to hold a Gay Pride festival like those in Western cities.
  "We came here to lay flowers at this anti-fascist memorial, but the mayor is so terrified of us that he took the step of ordering the gates closed," said Peter Tatchell from the British gay rights group OutRage.
  "As soon as we arrived we were set upon by fascist gangs and police. Today is a great shame for Russia because a peaceful protest has been suppressed," he said. "Both the authorities and the fascists had the same objective -- to suppress the Moscow gay pride," Tatchell said.

[bbm-mmm]

Part 2 - Moscow

Regular Moscow city police reinforcements backed by hundreds of OMON anti-riot troops tracked gay activist protesters and hundreds of nationalists ranging from "skinheads" -- young Russian nationalists who have grown in number in recent years and have been behind a series of attacks on foreign students -- to members of Cossack and Orthodox Slav groups along Tverskaya street, a main avenue in Moscow within walking distance of the Kremlin and Red Square.
  At one point, police had formed a line between the two sides, but a group of skinheads rushed toward the gay activists.
  Their faces masked, they threw flares as they ran, but OMON riot police stopped them and dragged them to waiting buses, as passers-by outside the parliament building looked on in disbelief.
  There were minor scuffles at various places on the street, including outside the State Duma, the lower chamber of Russia's parliament. Reporters at the scene said the confrontation between the gay activists and their opponents included aggressive posturing and shouting of insults such as "Moscow is not Sodom" by the hardline nationalist supporters.
   But bands of skinheads attacked the gay rights activists in front of the mayor's office, disrupting a plan to leave a letter protesting the ban on the gay pride march.
   Besides the arrest of the gay activists, police detained dozens of young nationalists, in some cases putting them in the same detention centers.
  At the same time, policemen in Bolshaya Dmitrovka Street, near the Bolshoi Theatre, blocked a group of 150 neo-fascists who were heading for the mayor's office intent on clashing with the gay activists. They were asked to leave, and nobody in this group was detained.
   Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov had banned gay activists from holding a parade in the city center, a decision supported by Russian religious groups and religious leaders of all faiths, and upheld by a court where it was challenged on Friday.
  “I believe that such a parade is inadmissible in our country above all for moral considerations,” Luzhkov said, stressing that “people should not make public their deviations in the sphere of organization of life and sex.”
  The Moscow mayor admitted that his decision to ban the gay parade “caused a storm of publications in the Western press, severely criticising the actions of the Mayor’s Office.”
  “However, I said at once that we would not even consider a possibility of holding such a parade,” he said. Luzhkov claimed that 99 percent of Muscovites had supported the ban.
  "As long as I am mayor, we will not permit these parades to be conducted," he said.
  Protest organizers had said they would try to hold two demonstrations in defiance of the ban.
  "Homophobia is part of the larger problem of xenophobia" in Russia today, Alexeyev said at a news conference ahead of the march.
  "This country defeated fascism and today it is again on the rise," he said.
  "We are conducting a peaceful action. We want to show that we have the same rights as other citizens," Alexeyev said, noting that by banning the march, the city government had broken the law. Russia's Constitution guarantees the right of assembly to all citizens.
  In his decision to prohibit the parade, Luzhkov had said such a march was morally "inadmissible" because people should not publicly display their "deviations in the sphere of organization of life and sex". Other city officials called the gay rights march an "outrage to society."
  The issue of the gay rights march has split Moscow's gay community, many of whom say that Russian society is still too conservative and that a parade would only provoke more violence from skinheads and radical groups. Some activists said the march only risked inflaming Russia's widespread intolerance of homosexuality, and wished Alexeyev had chosen a less direct way to protest against discrimination and homophobia.
  Homosexuality was decriminalized in Russia in 1993  -- Saturday being the 13th anniversary of the decree's adoption -- and although some gay clubs exist in big cities, same-sex couples almost never make a public display of their affections.

[CactusGal]

BBM-MMM -- We so appreciate you taking the time to post this detailed account of what occurred today.  I've been watching Moscow Times.com and gotten almost no info.  It certainly is an appalling situation -- thanks for letting us know.  Jan

[CactusGal]

There is an error in today's (Sat) TDS -- credit was given to the wrong person for the photo capture.  It should have gone to tfmisc    Sorry, tfmisc!  Jan

[DCLuke]

Bbm-mmm, thank you for the update on the situation in Moscow.  I will be writing a letter to the Russian ambassador (he lives blocks from me!).  I had been considering a 2007 trip to Russia, but that is out of the question now. 

If any of my fellow Americans wish to join me in writing a letter to the Russian Ambassador, his contact information is as follows:

Ambassador Yuri V. Ushakov
Embassy of the Russian Federation
2650 Wisconsin Ave., NW
Washington, DC  20007

[TwistsBitch]

The webcam link is stunning - thanks.  I clicked on a link from it & found out about mountain top weddings. 

http://www.kunelius.com/index.html

http://www.kunelius.com/casual.html

Imagine getting married on "Brokeback".  I've been engaged for about 5 years & so far have been uninspired to organise a wedding, but this has got me thinking...

TB