A Seton Hall University student has lost a crucial battle in his effort to get formal recognition of a campus group for gay and lesbian students.

A three-judge state appeals court dismissed Anthony Romeo’s lawsuit against the Catholic university, ruling that religious institutions aren’t bound by the state’s Law Against Discrimination.

The panel also rejected Romeo’s argument that the school’s anti-bias policy - which forbids discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation - amounted to a binding contract between the school and its students.

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What else ya got for me? This:

*Transgender Victims Near Death After Silicone Party
*Hillary branded liar and a lesbian
*Court axes lawsuit over Seton Hall refusal to recognize gay group
*St Matthew-in-the-City celebrates being gay
*New leader for gay and lesbian film festival
*The Queer Peter Pan Syndrome
*The random gay quiz: Test your queer IQ

Check out GayData.org, the new sexual orientation research website.

Very little is known about the challenges and successes of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people (LGBT) because the main sources of data about people living in the United States, U.S. Federal Agencies in particular, do not collect data on sexual orientation. One of the greatest threats to the health and well-being of LGBT people is this lack of scientific investigation. The new website GayData.org addresses this concern by acting as a central repository for LGBT scientific information produced using large probability surveys. The website catalogs datasets that have collected sexual orientation data and links to findings from those datasets. It also encourages further analysis of these datasets while providing technical assistance for collecting additional sexual orientation data.

Near San Francisco’s City Hall. Tomorrow.

This Sunday in a Wells Fargo bank parking lot near San Francisco’s City Hall, August Knight will demonstrate for any adult who cares to stop by what it’s like to be flogged — and enjoy it.

An Oakland hairstylist by day and co-owner of a South of Market dungeon popular with the whip-cracking crowd by night, Knight, 46, is an ambassador of kink. She and about 70 other volunteers will staff Leather Alley, one of the fastest-growing niches at the annual San Francisco Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Pride Parade and Celebration.

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Coincidences are curious. By Monday night, The New York Times Sunday Styles article, “Gay or Straight? Hard to Tell,” was the newspaper’s most e-mailed article, a sure sign that people are talking about the latest social trend, “gay vague.”

Fashionistas believe “many men have migrated to a middle ground where the cues traditionally used to pigeonhole sexual orientation—hair, clothing, voice, body language—are more and more ambiguous,” reported The Times.

A recent book published by Princeton University Press, “Straightforward: How to Mobilize Heterosexual Support for Gay Rights,” recommends that heterosexuals adopt what amounts to “gay vague” behavior—what the authors call “ambiguation.”

Ian Ayres and Jennifer Gerarda Brown, who wrote “Straightforward,” urge straights to abandon the trappings of their heterosexual privilege in order to help the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community, a tactic self-consciously derived from the changes in social norms ushered in by the African-American civil rights movement. Americans of European extraction, for example, are far less likely today than they would have been several decades ago to refer to themselves as white in settings such as personal ads. Ambiguation involves acts like a straight couple displaying a gay pride flag.

Continue reading Harnessing the Power of Gay-Vague Politics.

From Lesbian AWOL:

There are no innocent straight women. They’ve all gone wild!

Scott was scoping the boys on the dance floor. Scott was looking for friends that fortunately never showed up. One glance led to another, and soon they were shouting over the booming sounds of the latest dance remix.

“Scott.”
“What? I’m Scott.”
“Scott.”
“What?”
“Vodka tonic.”
“No! What? Me, too!”

And we found even more things in common: Fireplaces and red wine. Mountains and lakes and sunrises…

The stories since.

Read more: A New Romance at NYTimes.com (New York Times registration may be needed to view article).

The gay-teen movie Formula 17, Taiwan’s current “feel-good” offering from Strand Releasing, and the Singapore docudrama entitled 15, released earlier this spring from Picture This Entertainment, are just two examples of how Asia’s most economically progressive countries are coming to terms with their homophobia.

In 2003, the conservative city/state of Taiwan rescinded a list of long-standing taboos to appear more progressive to the Western world. That list included gum chewing, bungee jumping and homosexuality, sort of. Taiwan’s Senior Cabinet Minister, Goh Chok Tong, informed his constituents that the government would now openly employ gays and lesbians. He further urged each Taiwanese citizen to accept homosexuals as human beings.

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The Saturn — a gay-friendly vegan/vegetarian eatery that has been a Santa Cruz institution for a quarter-century — is not just the place to go for the quintessential Santa Cruz dining experience. The Laurel Street restaurant is at the heart of a small but growing movement aimed at making transgender and “intersex” people — those born with genitalia that aren’t typically male or female — feel more comfortable using public facilities.

“This is the new wave — to really look at bathrooms,” said Deborah Abbott, director of the Lionel Cantú Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex Resource Center at the University of California-Santa Cruz.

A “new wave” in bathrooms may seem like something that could happen only in Santa Cruz, but the issue is being taken seriously by the mainstream gay and lesbian community. At its huge annual conferences, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force now replaces the “men” and “women” signs with “gender-free” or “unisex” signs.

Many people who are transgender — an umbrella term that includes transsexuals, cross-dressers and people who consider themselves androgynous — say they often feel threatened in traditional restrooms. “People stare, and the message transgender people get is that they don’t belong there,” said Bryan Burgess, coordinator of the Safe Bathroom Access Campaign at the Transgender Law Center in San Francisco.

Click here for your guide to performances and events.

I’m already feeling ill this morning, but in case you need help…

A new film spotlighting the truth that gays can change their sexual orientation is being offered to public schools nationwide as a way of countering the one-sided message students currently receive about homosexuality.

The message of “Sexual Orientation: Is Change Possible?” is that no one has to live the gay lifestyle. Producer Warren Throckmorton, a professor at Grove City College in Pennsylvania, presents the topic from a scientific—not religious—point of view.

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School is not the place for the ex-gay perspective.

What else ya got for me? This:

*Nike Announces Endorsement of Civil Unions & Anti-Discrimination Legislation
*Anal Cancer Precursors Common in Homosexual Men
*Pre-Stonewall gay organizing
*Anti-homosexual petition sends wrong message