The next edition of the Carnival of Bent Attractions will be hosted at Marti Abernathey.com on November 10th. Submissions are due by 12:01am on November 2nd.

Read the current edition of the Carnival of Bent Attractions here.

You can find Maria on MySpace here and read her current call for essays on femme identity here. Pick up Queer Shorts, her new anthology, at MergePress.com.

In Piggee v. Carl Sandburg College, 2006 WL 2771669 (Sept. 19, 2006), the plaintiff brought suit against her former employer. Plaintiff, a former instructor for Carl Sandburg College, was terminated after distributing anti-gay materials to students in her class, reported Eric J. Wursthorn for the October, 2006, edition of the Lesbian/Gay Law Notes (see page 4 for this article). According to Mr. Wursthorn’s summary of the facts of the case,

On September 5, 2002, Piggee gave a gay student, Jason Ruel, two pamphlets entitled “Sin City” and “Doom Town,” respectively. “Sin City” is a story about “a man who tries to persuade gay pride advocates that homosexuality is an abomination. He is beaten when he tries to stop a gay pride parade; he is arrested by the police; a demon urges on a minister who preaches that God loves even gay people; the man then asks about Sodom and Gomorrah; and eventually the minister repents his sin (which apparently is supporting gay pride).” The second pamphlet told a similar story.

Once Mr. Ruel reported this incident to the school, officials investigated and questioned Ms. Piggee, who agreed that she had distributed the materials described above. The school issued a written reprimand for her behavior.

Mr. Wursthorn wrote that the school “formally found that she sexually harassed the student ‘in the hopes of changing Mr. Ruel’s sexual orientation and religious beliefs.’” The school chose not to renew Ms. Piggee’s contract for further employment; nearly a year later, she brought suit against her former employer.

According to Mr. Wursthorn’s summary, Ms. Piggee’s lawsuit alleged “that the college violated her due process rights, her rights under the Free Exercise, Equal Protection and Free Speech Clauses of the Constitution, and that the College’s sexual harassment policy was constitutionally infirm.”

On appeal, Judge Harlington Wood, Jr., held for the school, indicating that Ms. Piggee’s actions in disseminating anti-homosexual literature disrupted the instruction that she was hired to provide.

You can read Judge Wood’s reasoning and the comments from other students about Ms. Piggee’s actions by clicking on the banner for the Lesbian/Gay Law Notes to the right.

I’ve been talking about putting a call for essays on femme identity out for quite some time now.

Here it is!

Femmes are still invisible. Society can’t see past our heels to hear our stories, so we must continue to build platforms for our voices. Visible: A Femmethology, a forthcoming anthology about the power and complications in presenting femme as a gender and breaking the traditional meaning of feminine, aims to showcase blunt, personal essays exploring what “femme” means to those who claim it as an identity.

Give me your experiences, your inner dialogues, your theories and practices. Please do not send fiction, poetry, erotica, or any material to which you do not fully own the rights. I am seeking prose that is thoughtful, analytical, raw, challenging, exploratory, and uniquely you.

Submissions must be sent as Word files with text in 12 point Times New Roman font. Essays must be previously unpublished, 1500-6000 words in length, and typed double-spaced. You may submit more than one essay.

Author maintains and controls the copyright of their essay and licenses their First North American Rights to Merge Press for publication purposes. Author retains the right to reprint the material in any publication.

Send SUBMISSIONS ONLY to Maria Angeline at femmethology at mergepress dot com. Include your legal name, pseudonym (if any) you wish to use, address, phone number, email, and the bio you would like to appear in the book if your selection is chosen for publication. Put the title of your essay in the subject line of the email. Each essay must be emailed separately.

Send questions to Maria Angeline here.

Visible: A Femmethology is expected to be released in 2008. Do not email to inquire about the status of your submission after you receive a confirmation that it has been received. It is not possible to respond to all email inquires. Once selections have been made, every person who has submitted work will be sent an announcement. Please do not submit material if you do not regularly check your email.

Please post freely!

You can find Maria on MySpace here. Pick up Queer Shorts, her new anthology, at MergePress.com.

Transcending Boundaries Conference is for bisexual/pansexual, trans/genderqueer, and intersex people and our allies. TBC is for and about those who do not fit into the simple categories of gay/straight, male/female, and we couldn’t be more excited!

The 2006 Transcending Boundaries / PFLAG Northeast Regional Conference begins next week on Friday, October 27th, at the DCU Center in Worcester, MA, with a 7 p.m. opening forum on Intersex Awareness hosted by Esther Morris Leidolf. View the conference’s complete program and schedule here.

You can find Maria on MySpace here. Pick up Queer Shorts, her new anthology, at MergePress.com.

Queer Shorts contributor Ethereal is featured in this month’s edition of AboveGroundTesting Magazine. Click here to read about her poetry, her songwriting, her first album, and her upcoming music.

Ethereal on her piece in Queer Shorts, “Room for Rent”:

Now you’re a published author. Tell me about your story, the compilation it is appearing in and how was it to write?

I’m so happy you mentioned that. **smiles** I’m very proud of my new accomplishment as a writer. The story is called, “Room for Rent” and it is published in the new GLBT anthology, Queer Shorts released in September of 2006 by Merge Press. The story revolves around a young woman who moves into an apartment with whom she believes to be a gay male and becomes very attracted to him, only to find out there is much more to her roommate than she would have imagined. It’s a poignant love story dealing with the transgender and butch/femme community and how the characters further each other’s growth through mutual acceptance. The butch/femme and transgender community is still on the “outskirts” of the Gay and Lesbian community and I am honored to be able to put a spotlight on such a relationship through my writing and help spread awareness of this type of diversity. Writing “Room for Rent” was a lot of fun actually. When I put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard, usually it’s my characters that tell me what’s going on and there are just some funny scenes that just sort of popped out that had me laughing out loud and moments that had me tearing up. It was a very emotional experience, as though I were not creating these characters, but merely telling their story and experiencing it with them.

You can find Maria on MySpace here. Pick up Queer Shorts, her new anthology, at MergePress.com.

I posted Shani Heckman’s short documentary Wrong Bathroom here. Shani has a call for interviewees for America’s Unwanted: Foster & Group Home Kids who made “it”, her newest documentary project, on her website here.

“America’s Unwanted” seeks former foster or group home kids who completed their college degrees for interviews in this upcoming documentary. Queer folk are especially encouraged to apply.

“only 1 in 5 foster kids makes it to college and graduates”; “more than 1/3 of foster kids will spend time in jail”, “60% of youth on the streets in Hollywood are former foster kids”.
Los Angeles Weekly, July 2006.

We are those kids and we’re now grown up–let’s stop the statistics. This film is meant to inspire foster and group home kids to go to college. Made by a former foster kid this project will seek funding from ITVS, NEA, Horizons, Grants for the Arts and other sources.

Please visit Shani’s site to view the full call and find out how you can contact her if you are interested in taking part in this documentary.

Shani Heckman is also a publicist who works with emerging and national queer artists. Read more about her here.

You can find Maria on MySpace here. Pick up Queer Shorts, her new anthology, at MergePress.com.

This time it’s not an anti-gay sign on a bus making the news.

Minneapolis-St Paul Metro Transit is allowing an employee who says homosexuality is against her religion to refuse to drive any bus that displays an “Unleash Your Inner Gay” Lavender Magazine ad. The employee’s union has objected to Minneapolis-St Paul Metro Transit’s decision.

“The decision has nothing to do with the content of the advertisement,” he said. “It has everything to do with the employee’s religious beliefs,” Metro Transit spokesman Bob Gibbons told the paper.

But the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1005 said the decision condones intolerance.

“Our union tries to represent all diversity — whether it be religion, cultural, race, sexual orientation, any of that,” said Michelle Sommers, Local 1005 president.

“We have Muslim employees,” she said. “Now if there’s an ad for alcohol on the side of a bus, should Muslim employees be allowed to not drive that bus? And is the next step that mechanics don’t have to work on the bus?”

Many Muslim taxi drivers at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport already refuse to accept passengers who are carrying alcohol.

Read “Driver Wins Right To Refuse Work On Bus With Gay Ads” here.

You can find Maria on MySpace here. Pick up Queer Shorts, her new anthology, at MergePress.com.

Dean Hara, who married former U.S. Rep. Gerry Studds in Massachusetts after same-sex marriage was legalized in the state, has been denied death benefits by the government. The Washington Post reports that Hara “will not be eligible to receive any portion of Studds’s estimated $114,337 annual pension because the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act bars the federal government from recognizing Studds’s marriage.” I think this comment from Sue pretty much covers it: “Nice to see they treat their own just as bad.”

You can find Maria on MySpace here. Pick up Queer Shorts, her new anthology, at MergePress.com.

Janet T. Neff has been nominated by Bush to a federal district judgeship in Michigan as “part of a multi-judge deal between the White House and Michigan’s two Democratic senators resolving a long-standing fight over federal court nominees from that state.”

But because Neff attended a commitment ceremony for a lesbian couple in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, in 2002, Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback is blocking her nomination.

Mr. Brownback has said he wants to satisfy himself that the judge was not presiding over an “illegal marriage ceremony” in Pittsfield, Mass., in 2002 — before the state legalized same-sex marriage. He has written to Judge Neff asking for an explanation, his spokesman says, and will hold up her nomination until he learns the nature of the ceremony and its legality. “It seems to speak about her view of judicial activism,” the senator told the Associated Press.

Also in Politics: Presidential Hopeful Mitt Romney Speaks at Anti-Gay Marriage Rally

You can find Maria on MySpace here. Pick up Queer Shorts, her new anthology, at MergePress.com.

The GLBT Historical Society will host a reading of the forthcoming anthology Bitchfest: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism From the Pages of Bitch Magazine.

According to Advocate.com,

Local contributors, including historical society board member Don Romesburg, will read selections from their work that appears in the volume. The event will take place at the GLBT Historical Society building in San Francisco on Tuesday, October 23, 6–8 p.m. It is free and open to the public. For more information, call (415) 777-5455