Adam Sunny Flanders

Today I received an email from the Human Rights Campaign letting me know about an outrageous act. Parents of students at Constance McMillen’s (see 3/16 blog below) high school organized a secret prom for straight students and then created a fake (decoy) prom for Constance and mentally disabled students, thereby excluding them by tricking them into missing the real prom. This shows just how far bigotry goes in this small Mississippi town. As would be expected (rightfully so), the school and other individuals are in deep – expect more lawsuits. A Federal judge has already ruled that the school violated Constance’s constitutional rights.

You can show your support for Constance by signing the HRC Petition. I’m sure the discrimination at this school will only further ensure the passage of a currently pending bill in Congress that will make it a Federal crime for public schools to discriminate based on sexual orientation. Here in Maine, we already passed a similar state law in 2005, prohibiting discrimination in not only education, but also employment, housing, credit, and public accomodation. Sexual orientation, under Maine law, includes gender identity and the law has already ensured the rights of a transgender elementary school student.

“Ah, happily do we live without hate amongst the hateful; amidst hateful men we dwell unhating.”
~The Dhammapada

With all the fighting that’s going on – war and political/social battles, we should all remember to cultivate peace and that individuals who hurt us do so because of a personal problem of their own. Therefore we should not fuel the fire, rather walk in peace and extinguish the flames. Getting angry at someone gives them the power they wanted to begin with and ends up causing you more harm. Instead of getting upset and waste my day being angry, I’d rather go rollerblading or hiking or scuba diving. It’s sunny weather – go out and enjoy the day or read a good book!

All she wanted to do was take her girlfriend to prom, but instead her Mississippi school cancelled prom just to stop her. I’m sure some of you are already familiar with Constance McMillen as her story circulates the major news networks. By doing this the Itawamba County Agricultural High School has violated the law and Constance’s rights. Christine Sun of the American Civil Liberties Union is now representing Constance in a lawsuit against the school. I’m sure they will win – the school’s behavior is something we’d expect from a 3rd world country with no civil rights.

On Facebook you can become a fan of Let Constance Take Her Girlfriend to Prom!, which at the time of this writing has over 300,000 supporters! The ACLU offers information about gay and lesbian rights at prom. The ACLU points out “Fricke v. Lynch, a federal court [ruling] that [stated] any policy excluding same-sex couples from proms or school dances violates the right to free expression guaranteed by the 1st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Other decisions have found that enforcing outdated notions that only boys can wear tuxedoes and only girls can wear dresses to Prom is illegal.”

This reminds me of my high school situation in 2005 when I was suspended for a week from Belfast Area High School for wearing a t-shirt that said, “It’s OK to Be Gay.” You can read the article by clicking HERE or visiting my Activism Page. In my case the ACLU also intervened and threatened BAHS with a lawsuit if they didn’t allow me to wear my pride t-shirts and have equal access to school resources for my Gay-Straight Alliance, as required by Federal law. Unfortunately the homophobia and anti-gay harassment continued from both students and teachers, and I transferred to Searsport District High School, graduating that same year. In fact, the superintendents both signed a superintendent’s transfer admitting the grounds for transfer (without tuition costs) was because of student and staff homophobia and harassment. I definitely empathize with you, Constance. Keep up the fight!

Definite cute thing of the day. Speaking of dinosaurs, my new website based on paleogenetics is coming very soon, probably sometime this week. I’ll post a link as soon as it’s ready to be published!

Daniel Radcliffe has become the new face of The Trevor Project. He just filmed a public service announcement for the organization, which focuses on suicide prevention efforts among gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered teens. In the video below he discusses the fact that he has known many gay men and that he thinks it is very important for a big star like himself to support gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender youth. He says this there is no other issue that he is more passionate about. I think this is great, following right on the heels of Dumbledore’s outing as gay. The second video below gets the main stars’ reactions to Rowling’s outing of Dumbledore. It’s cute and funny. Just more reason to love the series that got me into reading to begin with!

Today the District of Columbia began issuing licenses for same-sex couples. The DC Council recently ruled overwhelmingly in favor of same-sex marriage and some of them spoke to the fact that it would be wrong and unfair to allow voters to determine minority rights. Congress even had the opportunity to intervene and they did not, which seems to suggest an overall support for marriage equality in our Federal government.

The arguments in the Federal Prop.8 Trial rested last month and we await a decision. Judge Walker, who is presiding over the Prop.8 Trial, has apparently come out as a gay man. The fundamentalists are of course claiming bias, which is ridiculous, but I hope he does have a bias because this whole majority-voting-on-minority-rights thing has gone on long enough. We need the high courts and/or Congress to start making these rulings in favor of same-sex marriage so it can be legalized nationwide and the argument can be put to rest, just as the issue of interracial marriage was put to rest in 1967 following the Loving case, despite over 70% of Americans being opposed to it.

I’m SOOOO excited about the coming July 2nd release of The Last Airbender!!! I own the entire cartoon series and watch it religiously, and now we’re getting a live action film. I’m sure it will be incredible! Also, today marks the release of Endless Ocean 2: Blue World for the Wii. I’ve really enjoyed the first Endless Ocean, so I’m definitely getting this one. It doesn’t quite makeup for actual scuba diving, but I’m sure I’ll be back in the water this April.

I’ve been watching the Olympics and it seems the hottest guy so far is definitely J.R. Celski, age 19 (American speed skater, but Filipino by heritage). Apolo Ohno, age 27 is kinda cute, too. It’s really cool that this is the first year in which gay and lesbian Olympians have a place to socialize, just for them. Pride House Vancouver is offering their location to Olympians for the Winter Games. It’s really cool because there are more and more Olympians coming out as gay or lesbian, some of whom play in the Gay Games. Wiki has a list of GLBT sports professionals who are out. I think it’s important especially for gay and lesbian youth to know about this in order that they might have good role models to identify with. I know such individuals were very important to me when I came out back in middle school at age 14. I don’t know about Celski’s and Ohno’s orientations, but they both look really hot in recent photos! Matthew Mitcham, age 20, Olympic diver who won the gold in the Beijing diving competition, is openly gay.

J.R. Celski – American Speed Skater, age 19

Apolo Ohno – American Speed Skater, age 27

Matthew Mitcham – Australian Diver, age 20

I’ve really been loving my microbiology class this semester. We’re constantly identifying bacteria and looking at various other microorganisms. A couple weeks ago I recorded a Vorticella feeding under one of our lab microscopes, using my camera (see bottom video below). Tonight I got out my video microscope and went on a treasure hunt around my apartment, mostly looking for microorganisms. I photographed a salt crystal, a strand of my hair, and an Arabidopsis seed (I’ve just begun working with Arabidopsis in my lab). You can view those still images in my Flickr account.

I didn’t find any organisms until I took a sample from some standing water beneath one of my orchids. There were a whole bunch of protozoa swimming around at high speed! I had to wait about half an hour for the water drop to mostly evaporate and therefore shrink the perimeter of movement for the protozoa, basically herding them into a smaller area that I could track with my microscope. However, as the water began to evaporate, some of the protozoa lysed and then they were all completely destroyed when the water drop completely evaporated! Check it out below…

Hope everyone had a fun Valentines Day! I wanted to share this PSA, which is one of the best I’ve ever seen. Very creative…