This quote from President Obama’s second inauguration is an example of his acknowledgement of LGBT Americans.

BY MORGAN WELCH
dot429

A study by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) on contemporary US presidents’ use of the word “gay” in public speeches or statements found that current president Barack Obama has said it the most, with 272 instances in the five years since his inauguration in 2009 and has used the widest LGBT vocabulary; the report found that he said “lesbian,” “gay,” “bisexual,” and “transgender” 421 times in total.  Second place went to Bill Clinton, who said “gay” 216 times while in office. He said it 46 times in reference to gays in the military and 80 times when discussing hate crime legislation. In 1998, during Clinton’s second term, University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard was beaten to death for being gay; his murder put anti-gay violence on the national radar and furthered efforts to enact laws against hate crimes.

In contrast, between 2001 and 2009, George W. Bush said “gay” only twice, and one use was to express disapproval of same-sex marriage.

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The post Words matter: How much ‘gay’ does the President say? first appeared on Lesbian.com.

BY ANDREA RAEL

Job applicants seeking a position with Colorado College will find five options for a question about gender identity: not disclosed, male, female, transgender and queer.  The question for the Colorado Springs-based private liberal arts college is voluntary, but the inclusion of the word “queer” on the application made 66-year-old John Kichi of Pennsylvania very upset and even prompted him to file a complaint with Colorado Attorney General John Suthers’ office, adding that he’s been discriminated against because of his sexual orientation. “It’s totally from the Dark Ages,” he says.

Colorado College’s Office of Minority and International Students defines queer as “an umbrella term describing people who have a non-normative gender identity, sexual orientation, or sexual anatomy — includes lesbians, gay men, bisexual people, asexual people, transgender people, intersex people, etc.” At another college group, The Queer Initiative, at the University of Colorado at Boulder, queer is meant to be self-empowering.

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What do you think you think about the transformation of words like “queer”?

Many feel it’s a progressive move intended to be inclusive. Others are afraid it will open up opportunities for discrimation. How do you feel about Colorado College’s choice to include more options than “male” and “female” for gender?

The post Colorado College under fire for use of ‘queer’ on job application first appeared on Lesbian.com.

Rumors say the Oxford English Dictionary will soon change its definition of the term marriage to include same-sex couples. While this has sent the Religious Right into meltdown, it isn’t actually true — yet. The OED reflects accepted usage and adjusts when words are widened to include different meanings or characteristics, adds to itself when neologisms are offered and retires those terms that fall out of favor. It does not demand strict definitions precisely because it recognizes that language is an evolving creature constantly changing as society changes.

“We continually monitor the words in our dictionaries, paying particular to those words whose usage is shifting, so yes, this will happen with marriage,” the OUP spokesperson is quoted as saying. “We are constantly monitoring usage in this area in order to consider what revisions and updates we may need to make.”

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The post Redefining marriage, literally first appeared on Lesbian.com.