Cyrsti's Condo

From ABC News: " The Boy Scouts of America today voted to lift its longtime national ban on admitting openly gay Scouts but will continue to exclude openly gay adults from leadership roles. The vote by its 1,400 national membership came as no surprise to gay rights advocates, who hailed it as a first step to ending discriminatory practices in the 103-year-old organization. The Boy Scouts said that it had completed its "most comprehensive listening exercise in Scouting's history" on the issue and will change its policy Jan. 1, 2014. "The Boy Scouts of America will not sacrifice its mission, or the youth served by the movement, by allowing the organization to be consumed by a single, divisive and unresolved societal issue," it said in a statement.  "While people have different opinions about this policy, we can all agree that kids are better off when they are in Scouting," it said. "Going forward, our Scouting family will continue to focu

Breaking news from the sports site : SB NATION. Ravens linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo was released by Baltimore this offseason, and on the heels of comments earlier this week where he suggested that he was cut in part because of his outspoken stance on gay rights and equality issues, Ayanbadejo clarified himself to the Baltimore Sun on Friday. During an hour-long interview he made it clear that he harbors no resentment for the Ravens, and respects them for the support they offered him throughout his career both on and off the field. But that's not all. When the conversation turned to his work with gay rights and the question of when we might see an openly gay player in the NFL, Ayanbadejo had this to say: "I think it will happen sooner than you think," Ayanbadejo said. "We're in talks with a handful of players who are considering it. There are up to four players being talked to right now and they're trying to be organized so they can come out on the same

Check this out: "The gay rights movement has added a few more letters onto its initialism: LGBTQIA. LGBTQIA stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning, Intersex, and Asexual. The new acronym allows the sexuality and gender identity-based community to include individuals who may not conventionally identify themselves as a man or woman." From the The University Daily Kansan (University of Kansas) Let me add three more, OMG! Renee Richards (78) on Katie Couric this week said something to the effect the transgender word wasn't even invented when she was young. Hopefully Renee will be around this world long enough to see the entire alphabet not included in descriptors for our culture. Furthermore I disagree with the first sentence: gay rights movement  and transgender being lumped together at all. That's the subject of a whole other post and a whole other alphabet.

For many of us who lived through the 1960's (and remember it) 1968 and 1969 were especially exciting years. All different genres of music were bursting onto the scene and were showcased in the 1969 Woodstock Music Festival in upstate New York. The previous year Martin Luther King Jr.   and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated in 1968. Nothing was for certain except we were stuck in a lose/lose non war in Vietnam which was drafting and killing friends. D.M - R.I.P. In the midst of all of this came the Stonewall Riots in late June of 1969. Of course Stonewall is widely regarded as the beginning of the gay rights movement long before the "T" words were widely recognized. (transgender, transsexual excepting transvestite) Don't hold me to dates and people here, my point is looking back Stonewall was huge for me as a transgendered person. Let's remember even the gay community had nowhere to go easily or even legally before it. As gay venues became more accessible the