Look. I don’t know much about Nigerian politics. In fact, I know virtually nothing save that there’s a pretty horrific piece of legislation floating around the parliament that would outlaw any positive discussion of homosexuality and imprison people for simply being in a relationship, getting together in gay groups or expressing a desire for civil rights.

But apparently, Britain’s most energetic activist, Peter Tatchell of Outrage, knows just about as much as I do.

Last week, he issued an international call to arms against the bill, which he claimed in an open letter was “certain” to be passed “soon” absent a world outcry. I read this letter with nary a second thought, thinking something like, “My that Peter Tatchell sure keeps his finger on the world’s pulse,” or maybe, “Wonder whether the snack cabinet is unlocked.”

Well, Tatchell’s missive was greeted with rank irritation by Human Rights Watch, which has been monitoring the Nigerian legislation on a daily basis since its introduction a year ago. Tatchell, says the group, never contacted any local activist groups, nor did he do the minimum research before unleashing his confident directive to an army of cyber gadflies poised to send angry emails to Nigerian officials. In fact, says Human Rights Watch, the bill has been moldering in committee, and assuming no one stirs up the pot, local gay and lesbian activists expect it to die a natural death.

Here’s what Human Rights Watch has to say:

“While some action [on the bill] is still technically possible, the legislature is now winding down and readying for elections. They’re not likely to take up the bill unless something—such as an international campaign—- pushes them to. Moreover, after the elections there will no longer be a Christian President. This doesnn’t mean Nigeria’s leaders will be less homophobic, but it does mean that the influence of [Anglican] Archbishop Peter Akinola and the Christian Association of Nigeria, who have been the main forces pushing this bill, will be more or less moot.”

Skipping over some of the lengthy release, the group continues: “None of the LGBT and human rights activists who have worked to develop a political strategy around the bill were ever consulted by Outrage, or asked about the facts or strategy before this release came out…. Nigerian activists are angry. When they are blindsided by a release like this, in defiance of a political strategy they’ve tried carefully to develop, it looks like a profound act of disrespect.”

 I for one am glad to know that the bill’s passage seems unlikely. I wasn’t aware that it was stalled, due to my aforementioned ignorance of all things Nigerian. The incident also reminds me of how little I know in general, with the notable exception of the details of the legal fight for same-sex marriage (my favorite subject!) and a few other specific areas of GLBT and constitutional law. Yet, despite Alexander Pope’s famous warning, I will continue to indulge in shallow intoxicating draughts from the Pierian spring. Won’t you join me?

There is, by the way, a huge difference between activist groups like Outrage and humble reporters for the gay press. Perhaps, some people might wonder, the gay press should keep coverage of the Nigerian bill to a minimum in order to lend an indirect hand to the valiant local activists who are trying to put the lid on publicity? Never! We are not unbiased, we hackers of the GLBT media. But we are still journalists.

Our job is to deliver information, including the information that Nigerian activists want everyone to just SHUT UP about the horrible bill.

Flier Power

I hate it when a news item comes across that rings a faint little bell in the back of my head. Before covering the story, I have to identify the bell and then take the time to follow the tinkling chime to the source. For example, here’s a note from author/activist Wayne Besen, who has formed an anti-ex-gay group called Truth Wins Out. Besen says the Montgomery County schools in Maryland are allowing the ex-gay group Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays (PFOX) to send fliers home with the kids.

OK, first I haven’t confirmed exactly what’s going on. Second, the Montgomery County schools are in the news anyway, because they have been going back and forth on a sex-education policy that is too gay friendly for local conservatives and might be challenged in court for a second time. But third, a bell tells me that several months ago I read a federal appellate court ruling on the extent to which the Montgomery school district can set limits on which fliers are sent home with kids. Can this be a coincidence?

The case involved Christian fliers. The school district had refused to allow them to be sent home with the children based on the well-established idea that public schools are not supposed to lend their sponsorship to specific religious messages. A lower court agreed, but the appellate court ruled that the district’s official policy gave Montgomery County too much discretion in censoring various messages, and therefore violated the First Amendment rights of the flier people. I think. It’s been a long time. Dingaling.

I looked it up. The ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit came down last summer, which was why the bell was still ringing. And I guess the poor schmucks over in Montgomery County are walking on eggshells when it comes to regulating fliers. By rights I should spend another hour calling people up and finding out where the litigation stands, whether the flier policy has been tightened up, which school allowed the PFOX material to be sent home with the kids, and whether the fliers were widely distributed or distributed at all, for that matter. In journalism jargon, this is known as “fact checking,” but I think we can dispense with it in this instance and move on to the State of the Union.

Bush Bash

Did you watch it? I was immediately struck by the fact that our fearless leader did not even throw a scrap of red meat to the Christian conservatives. No marriage talk, nothing about abortion, not a word on stem cell research. Nothing.

Yet at this point, even I am more concerned about Iraq than I am about gay politics or dealing setbacks to the far right. You know what’s strange? I might even support Bush if he advanced a plan to send 200,000 more troops to Iraq—- emphasis on  “might.”

The idea of invading a country for no good reason, triggering a civil war, killing and dislocating tens of thousands of civilians, destroying the infrastructure of a nation, creating a safe haven for criminals and terrorists, and then walking out and leaving behind total chaos that will destabilize the region for decades, is not my notion of responsible foreign policy. If there was any evidence that massive escalation would secure Iraq and that Iraqi leaders had the will and power to build on that security, it would be worth a shot on behalf of the world and future generations.

However, there is no such evidence. There is also no evidence that an extra 20,000 troops will do a damn thing to improve the situation. So, one wonders. WHAT THE HELL IS HE DOING? Scream with me for just a moment. Bush and his magical thinking are sending the world into an abyss and he’s up there talking about reducing our gasoline consumption by 2010, which by the way is a fine idea, but Jesus. It was surreal to watch him.

Wasn’t Jim Webb great, by the way?

Freak Calf Wins Over Family

I had to take a break just now to click on an AOL headline that read: “Freak Calf Wins Over Family.” It was a touching account of an animal named “Star,” who has two faces. The farmer originally thought he would donate her to science but has since grown too fond of the calf, who he cuddles in his arms and feeds by hand. Awwwww.

Now there, that’s better than thinking about Iraq isn’t it? While I was on the AOL news page, I also had to check out a link to “Man With 500 Parrots in Car Arrested.” According to Reuters, the man was detained while trying to cross the border from Uzbekistan into Kazakhstan with hundreds of live birds. The wire service said it was “unclear how the parrots fit into the Kazakh man’s Audi.”

You know what? That item makes my account of the Montgomery County school flier episode look well researched. “Unclear?” Yes, it’s unclear. How is it possible to drive around in an Audi with 500 wild parrots in the car? How were these creatures acquired? And what did the man think would happen to him once he reached the border? “Your papers are in order sir. I like your parrots by the way. They’re so colorful!”
It must have been a van. By the way, I also just read a piece about an elderly Australian woman who got stuck in a tub for four days. Once you start in on the adventure of “odd news” surfing, you can’t stop because each new tidbit has a sidebar with several other must-read headlines.
Leaping Lesbian Lizards

Good news. The snack cabinet was unlocked! I had two potato chips and seven peanut M&Ms. Not exactly the lunch I would have wished for, which if you’re interested would have been a whole cold poached trout in aspic with a small green salad, a crispy baguette and a couple of glasses of Alsatian Pinot Blanc. The trout would have a little cucumber circle over its eye and the skin off from the neck to just above the tail. Well, you can picture it, I’m sure.

Did you know that there is a species of lesbian lizard that enjoys Sapphic sex and can give birth to new lesbian lizards without a drop of sperm? Yes, it’s true! My adored girlfriend tipped me off to the phenomenon after seeing the whole story on Animal Planet, and sure enough, I found an article online by none other than Simon LeVay.

LeVay, who discovered the link between homosexuality and the size of the anterior hypothalmus, tells us that this whiptail lizard lives “on a parched windswept lake bed in southeastern Arizona,” Cochise County to be exact. Ominously, if we want to explore for ourselves, the scientist directs us to drive east from Tucson and then “turn south on Highway 666 to Cochise, hike out onto the lake bed and look for a slim long-tailed lizard with five stripes down its back.”

The devil’s highway!

Anyway, the lizards, aka cnemidophorus uniparens, were discovered in the late 1970s. They “pseudocopulate,” with one lizard taking a dominant role and the other one remaining passive depending on where they are in their hormonal cycle. All the lizards are either butch or femme depending on whether it’s “that time of the month,” or whatever the appropriate lizard ovulation interval might be. Apparently, the romantic interludes increase their chances of delivering offspring, due to some scientific process that eludes me. I confess I am also at a loss to explain how the lizards then give birth, but I guess some species have been known to accomplish this miraculous feat. “A few odd invertebrates” have done so, LeVay explains.

LeVay warns that because the baby lizards are all clones of the mother lizard, the species is vulnerable to mutations that could wipe it off the face of the map, or at least off the windswept lake beds of Cochise County. He also cautions that “lesbian humans shouldn’t read too much into this research.” Well, maybe not, but I plan to conduct my own human experiments with unisexual pseudocopulation and see what happens. Time will tell, and these will be lengthy experiments indeed.

More News

What else is new, you might ask?

Good question. The state legislative sessions are starting to get rolling with predictable results. Bills are announced with fanfare and media attention even though for all we know they’ll never even get a committee hearing. I am saving my news powder for those bills—both good and bad— that begin to show signs of forward progress..

The powers that be in Madison, Wisconsin went ahead and passed a provision that allows city officials to modify their oath of office in order to distance themselves from the new constitutional amendment that bans marriage recognition. If they like, officials can add a line to the normal “I swear to uphold the constitution blah blah” oath that says the anti-gay amendment “besmirches our constitution.”

I find that disturbing and somewhat dangerous, personally. For God’s sake, the unadulterated oath is a commitment to the rule of law and the principles of the state government. I think I wrote those exact words in the last column because I just heard the bell that means “you’re repeating yourself.” But no matter. Making an exception to the oath in this case will just lead to people making an exception for other parts of the Wisconsin constitution that they don’t like. Soon, we’ll be marrying our pets and legalizing polygamy.

And finally, I suppose I should mention one of the major GLBT stories of the last two weeks, the kerfluffle over Grey’s Anatomy star Isaiah Washington (Dr. Burke) who called T.R. Knight (George) a “faggot” on the set last fall. As far as I understand it, Washington used the f-word behind Knight’s back, but Knight, who is gay, overheard the slur. It all remained hush hush for the most part until Washington made a public denial after the Golden Globe awards in a backstage interview, insisting “No, I did not call T.R. a faggot.”

The idiot! First of all, he did indeed call Knight a faggot, and all sorts of people heard him, so he was lying. And second, he used the word again in his mendacious denial! Washington was subsequently obliged to apologize until the cows came home, admit his various short-comings, promise to engage in efforts to defend the GLBT community against discrimination in the future, meet with GLAAD, and polish the floor of the Grey’s Anatomy set with a toothbrush until it shimmered.

So now you know, even though you knew already because you spend your time reading The National Enquirer in the check out line, don’t you? Have you heard that George and Laura’s marriage is on the rocks and that he walked out on her during an argument and went to Camp David? I’ll fill you in later.