The glbtq carnival page is up. I’m also posting the info here.

GLBTQ Carnival is made up of submitted blog posts from various blogs on articles of interest to the gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, trans and queer communities. GLBTQ Carnival is published monthly and posts included are from the previous month in GLBTQ blogging.

Here’s how it works: Go here and click on “Submit Your Blog Article to This Carnival” (found on the upper right side of the page) to submit a post to GLBTQ Carnival. Enter the URL of the post you wish to submit along with your name, email and the category your post falls under (art and performance, books, magazines and zines, music, news and politics, tv, movies and film or other). All appropriate submitted posts will be included in the carnival. The submissions deadline to have your post appear in the upcoming carnival is the 1st of the month (for example: if you want your post to appear in the 12/10/05 carnival, I must receive it by 12/01/05).

This is a traveling carnival. If you want to host GLBTQ Carnival, email me and let me know. Please include the month you wish to host the carnival (as alluded to above, carnival posts will be made on the 10th of each month).

For those who are not familiar with blog carnivals (I wasn’t), here are two examples of other carnivals in the blogosphere.

I had no idea there were inmate awards until I read about Leslie Ann Nelson, the transsexual go-go dancer who killed two law enforcement officers in a 1995.

Transsexual go-go dancer Leslie Ann Nelson shot to death two law enforcement officers in a 1995 standoff. But now, officials at her prison have given her an award, as well as a hug, an honor that has infuriated a statewide police organization…

…Nelson received a certificate; a hug and a special lunch during an Oct. 20 Inmate of the Month ceremony at Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women in Clinton, where Nelson is serving a life sentence…

…Department of Corrections spokesman Matt Schuman said Edna Mahan presents 120 of the inmate awards annually, a number equal to 10 percent of the Hunterdon County prison’s population. Schuman said the award is a piece of paper for a certificate and the choice of a turkey, vegetable or tuna wrap for lunch, along with a soda and a doughnut…

As you might imagine, groups like the state’s Policemen’s Benevolent Association aren’t pleased:

“The idea that our state would award a vicious and cold-blooded murderer like Leslie Ann Nelson is both outrageous and disgusting,” state Policemen’s Benevolent Association President Michael J. Madonna told The Star-Ledger of Newark for Saturday newspapers.

If awards like this keep prisoners form harming prison employees and each other, I say give them the certificate, the tuna, the soda and the donut - someone like Nelson won’t be getting much more for the rest of her life.

LA’s new antismoking campaign, the “Last Drag,” is being aimed at gays and lesbians, who according to Los Angeles County health officials are nearly twice as likely to smoke as the general population.

Bonus - Those who give up smoking may gain a higher IQ. Included in the findings of a study that was designed to look at alcoholism’s long-term effect on the brain, researchers found:

…the effect of smoking on memory, problem-solving, and IQ was most pronounced among those men who had smoked for many years. The negative effect of smoking on the brain remained significant in alcoholic men after alcohol and drug use were taken into account…

It is sexy, though.

Don’t miss it. Go and let the hip hop encourage your homosexuality.

Today’s scheduled performers:

SATURDAY OCTOBER 29

DOOR at 7PM/ SHOW at 8PM

800-810 DAZIE GREGO

815-820 THE TRANSFORMERS

825-845 SCOTT FREE

850-915 ROBO SAPIEN

920-925 THE TRANSFORMERS (Drag Kings)

930-945 CHASE ONE

950-1020 DEADLEE

1025-1105 DEEP DICKOLLECTIVE

Tomorrow’s scheduled performers:

SUNDAY OCTOBER 30

DOOR AT 6PM/SHOW at 7PM

700-720 NYAH’HRI SUHALIA

725-730 DOWN EFX (Hip Hop Dance)

735-755 KIRYA TRABER

800-815 JAYCUB “SCARLETTO” PEREZ

820-825 NAPPY GROOVES (Drag Kings)

830-855 MID*ONE

900-920 NAR (TRUE BLUE and MAZEN)

925-950 ILL FORM AND MISTERMAKER

(Q FAM LONDON)

950-955 NAPPY GROOVES (Drag Kings)

1000-1040 JEN RO

Click here for performer bios.

The FDA’s Blood Products Advisory Committee will soon consider recommending the OraQuick Advance test for over-the-counter sales.

The test is accurate more than 99 percent of the time, Spair said. Still, a positive result from the test should be confirmed through an additional test by doctors or public health officials, he said.

To take the test, a person swabs the inside of his mouth, between the cheek and gum, to insert his saliva into a vial of fluid that comes with the kit. Twenty minutes later, an indicator will light up if the test detects the presence of HIV-1 or HIV-2 antibodies.

Those antibodies become present in the body several weeks after a person acquires HIV; the test will not detect the virus if it was more recently acquired.

In Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture, Ariel Levy devotes a chapter to lesbian interpretation of raunch culture and boi culture - which she, or Katherine Volin ( I’m not sure which one) describes as the latest incarnation of the butch-femme dynamic. I strongly disagree. The ‘boi culture’ Levy describes doesn’t have a place in the butch-femme dynamic I cherish.

Described as the most recent lesbian label, Levy says, bois want to be like men, but without the responsibilities of adulthood.

“I never really wanted to grow up, which is what a lot of the boi identity is about,” says Lissa Doty, one of Levy’s interview subjects who self-identifies as a “boi.”

The chapter also describes lesbian sexual opportunism among bois, particularly across the New York-San Francisco migratory pattern. This approach to sexuality, the book says, is distinctly different from that of traditional lesbian relationship patterns.

More about Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture from Publishers Weekly review at Amazon:

What does sexy mean today? Levy, smartly expanding on reporting for an article in New York magazine, argues that the term is defined by a pervasive raunch culture wherein women make sex objects of other women and of ourselves. The voracious search for what’s sexy, she writes, has reincarnated a day when Playboy Bunnies (and airbrushed and surgically altered nudity) epitomized female beauty. It has elevated porn above sexual pleasure. Most insidiously, it has usurped the keywords of the women’s movement (liberation, empowerment) to serve as buzzwords for a female sexuality that denies passion (in all its forms) and embraces consumerism. To understand how this happened, Levy examines the women’s movement, identifying the residue of divisive, unresolved issues about women’s relationship to men and sex. The resulting raunch feminism, she writes, is a garbled attempt at continuing the work of the women’s movement and asks, how is resurrecting every stereotype of female sexuality that feminism endeavored to banish good for women? Why is laboring to look like Pamela Anderson empowering? Levy’s insightful reporting and analysis chill the hype of what’s hot. It will create many aha! moments for readers who have been wondering how porn got to be pop and why feminism is such a dirty word.

click here

Read more about Transamerica here and here.

More about The Matador, which features Pierce Brosnan as a bi-sexual hitman:

In writer/director Richard Shepard’s dark comedy THE MATADOR, Julian Noble (Pierce Brosnan) is a hit man who’s very good at what he does, but is losing his taste for the business. Danny is a salesman whose marriage and finances are in trouble. One night, at the hotel bar, these two men meet. Before long, they find themselves having an extremely unique Mexico City experience, one that will change them both forever. Julian the hit man, Danny the ordinary American businessman find that while they have nothing in common, they both need each other in ways they never knew they would.

Ohio State University is the first college or university I’ve heard of that has an Intersex Awareness Day. Does anyone know of any others?

A complaint was filed against Ryan Miner, a sophomore at Duquesne University, when he called homosexual behavior (he claims he was strictly speaking about actions and not about people) “subhuman” on his profile at Facebook.com. Duquesne University’s Judicial Affairs panel found Miner in violation of the school’s university code of conduct and ordered him to take the offensive comment off of his profile at Facebook and write a 10-page paper on homosexuality in the Catholic church. The comment has been removed from his Facebook profile, but Miner refuses to write the paper.

“If I write this paper, I’m going against my faith and my beliefs on the issue and topic of homosexuality within the university and the Catholic Church,” said Miner.

Arguing that it is a First Amendment issue, Miner is appealing the school’s decision.

Channel 4 Action News reporter Gus Rosendale asked Miner if he would be willing to be thrown out of school to stand up for what he wrote.

Miner responded, “Absolutely.”

Duquesne University says all of its students have to follow its code of conduct, whether they’re on or off campus — and in this case, online.

W. King Mott, a gay associate dean at Seton Hall University, wrote a letter that was published Oct. 19 in The Star-Ledger of Newark in which he stated that that the Catholic church is unfairly attacking gay men and making them scapegoats for the church’s pedophile scandal and was then asked to step down by Seton Hall University’s dean, Molly Smith, because he included his relationship to Seton Hall in the letter.

Mott, who has been working at Seton Hall for the last seven years, said a university should be a place for free expression of ideas but said he holds no ill will toward Smith.

“She works for a Roman Catholic institution,” Mott said. “If the church didn’t have this position (against homosexuality) no dean would have to be so guarded on this issue.”

A university spokesman, Tom White, said it was “inappropriate” for Mott to speak against the Catholic Church or its policies while identifying himself as part of Seton Hall’s administration.

Mott said next Friday will be his last day as an associate dean, and although he also teaches in the school’s political science department, Mott said he will begin looking for a new job.