Davis Senior High School found itself some new royalty recently.
For the first time in the Monterey, California school’s history, students voted two men as their homecoming prince and – er – prince. Brandon Raphael and Kiernan Gatewood were honored by their peers when they won a school wide election for the annual honor.
While some schools would be torn apart by such a ruling, Raphael and Gatewood’s community rallied around them, much to Raphael’s surprise, “I thought the administration would have more to say about it.” The school principal didn’t comment on the story, but said that he hoped to keep it “low-key”.
While the boys were surprised by the news, they definitely welcomed it. Says Raphael, “We wanted to be nominated and win.” Adds Gatewood, “Just like anybody else.” That’s sickeningly cute.
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
Mr. B
Awwww!
Reminds me of the children’s book King & King.
Dom
Well, that must be the reason that God sent down those soul-purifyin’ wildfires, because two gay teenagers got elected as perom princes, dontcha know. LOL! Man, I would LOVE to see what would have happened if this had occured in Mississippi! Why, I think I’m coming down with a case of the vapors, Aunt PittyPat!
More power to you, guys!!!
DavidDust
Cutest.Story.Ever.
Dawster
damn… that’s adorable… and incredibly hopeful.
Padraic
as a proud grad of this school, just a heads-up:
it’s Davis, CA. not Monterey, CA.
thanks!
Rt. Rev. Dr. RES
When John Fitzgerald Kennedy nephew-in-law again vetoes equal marriage rights in California – it is wonderful to see how homophobic that bodybuilder is.
Rt. Rev. Dr. RES
Congratulations to both men.
Dom
Yeah, I wonder when someone will finally break the story that circulated a few years ago about Aaahnold, from a book that his lawyers had buried, about how the Governator used to tease older gay men for money. Maybe that’s why Maria stays so thin – she pukes every time she sees the fucking anti-Kennedy she married. And I may be a little off-topic but what the fuck is up with that still-cheesy Austrian accent? The mother-fucker has been in this country for over 35 years. Charlize Theron came to this country from South Africa and you couldn’t tell she wasn’t born in Passaic , NJ. WTF, Arnold Saggytits?
Bill Perdue
Hillary Clinton’s in for a wild and bumpy ride when she gets elected.
Because Dawster is right… it’s a very hopeful sign. So is the explosive growth of GLSEN/GSA chapters which have proliferated to over 3500 high school campuses. So are the stories about 10 year olds confidently coming out in Australia, the new openness of gay youth in Stalinist Vietnam and across Eastern Europe, the ‘pink shirt’ movement in Canada, and the political combativeness of GLBT who stand up strong and proud against the bigoted candidates of the twin parties.
Whether Brandon and Kiernan wanted to make a political statement or not that’s just what they did. The emergent politicization of GLBT youth and their much gay friendlier generation mates is part of a profound global youth radicalization.
It’s likely to have the same impact as the student/youth radicalization of the 60’s and 70’s that that defeated Democrat LBJ’s genocide in Vietnam and unceremoniously dumped him and Nixon into the garbage can of history.
Poor, poor Hillary. She’ll be just in time for the next round – Iraq and Iran.
No one deserves it more.
John Jeffers
Mr. Perdue,
Why would you think anyone would deserve the mess the next president will inherit in the Middle East? I just hope those cute high school princes don’t end up having to fight over there because of the mess we will be left with.
We are running out of troops and National Guard and we have a president who seems to be eyeing Iran as a last big hoohah before he leaves office.
NO ONE deserves any of this!
John
Leland Frances
One doesn’t recall seeing compound nouns made from the word “Hater” before the Net turned into a kind of parallel universe. In any case, I’ve always thought it juvenile because it typically comes from the mouths of the young and ignorant and is a cheap and lazy ass substitute for response. Criticize Britney, and you’re reduced to a “Britney Hater,†using any excuse to put her down unfairly. Criticize Reichen, and you’re a thoughtless, jealous “Reichen Hater.†Therefore, it pains me to come even remotely close to the one-man mental ward that is Chris Crocker but the ludicrous reach of the post above by Bill Perdue using this lovely incident as another excuse to bash Hillary Clinton only proves my previous conclusion that he starts with hating her a priori and then staples, glues, Scotch-tapes, makes up whatever he can to try to justify it.
The joke, on him, of course, is that just as his response to others who disagree with him about whatever is simply to try to assassinate their character by calling them conservatives, equating them with Republicans, etc., virtually everything her writes about any Democrat but particularly Hillary could come word-for-word from a Republican propaganda playbook.
His tactics and delusions most remind me of Indiana Republican Congressman Dan Burton who invited reporters to his backyard to watch him, I kid you not, shoot a watermelon with a .38 handgun and examine the resulting holes to “prove†that White House advisor Vince Foster could not possibly have committed suicide in 1993 thus giving more “credence†to the whackos’ claim that the Clintons had him murdered which resulted in five different official investigations, all concluding suicide. Comrade Perdue has not been earning his pay from the Republicans or the Socialist Workers Party if he’s left that out of his diatribes.
Bill Perdue
John Jeffers _ you’re 100% right – WE don’t deserve it, and it’s likely that Bush will make it as bad as he can before his term is up.
I lost too many friends, a lover, and almost lost my brother in Vietnam and I hate it that Iraq/Iran is a sick sequel to Democrat LBJ’s ‘Nam. That why I was in the antiwar movement for 10 years and why I talk about Iraq a lot. It’s a vital issue to GLBT folk. US involvement there is an obscenity.
If Clinton’s elected she’ll be continuing the Bush policy of war which she fully supports and votes for time and again. She said she can’t guarantee that US troops will be leaving for years. She’s for invading Iran, dividing Iraq and stealing its oil. There’s a good chance this war could go on for years and the draft could return. In which case young men like Brandon and Kiernan are at risk.
The best hope we have now for stopping the Bush war, soon to be Clinton war, is the youth radicalization I spoke of.
We only learned after his death that LBJ nearly stroked out every time he heard “Hey, Hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?!” If she’s elected pro war Clinton will hear “Hey, Hey, Hillary, how many kid did you kill today?” And for her efforts to date supporting the war SHE deserves it. Pelosi, who refuses to impeach deserves, and all but tiny number of Congress members deserve it. It’s their war as much as Bush’s.
Above I said she, not us. That’s a distinction you missed.
Alan down in Florida
Bet the 2 boys are Republicans coming from Davis as they do.
Leland Frances
“If Clinton’s elected she’ll be continuing the Bush policy of war which she fully supports and votes for time and again. She said she can’t guarantee that US troops will be leaving for years. She’s for invading Iran, dividing Iraq and stealing its oil.”????????????
Comrade Perdue, apparently you confuse the fairy tale about one’s nose growing the more they lie with the hope your dick will grow the more you tell lies. Don’t hit the floor with your nose checking out how wrong you are.
WL Perdue
Proving that Hillary Rodham Clinton is an oil pirate sailing on a parallel course with George Bush is just a matter of being able to read.
Democratic Party spin doctors have to cultivate a blinkered vision of reality to survive. Otherwise they’d even look silly to themselves as they robotically genuflect before the altar of HRH HRC.
These hacks rationalize voting for right wing judges, deny the truth about the war, proffer blind allegiance to Frank and Pelosi while they deliver a toothless ENDA to the businesses that underpay us and invent lame excuses for obscenities like DOMA and DADT. They can’t bring themselves to ask why Pelosi says that “impeachment is off the table.â€
{Politics are anything but static. Deep divisions are appearing across the political landscape, causing society to splinter and fatally fracturing the consensus that’s held radicalism in check. A great polarization is occurring over the linked questions of the war(s), union busting, pandering to bigots, cruelty to immigrants, and a falling standard of living, and etc. The only response of Republicans, Democrats and their toadies is to march in lockstep to the right.
Their rightward movement, particularly their sordid attack on ENDA sparked a healthy process of intense debate and fissuring in GLBT circles. The betrayals of the Democrats and Republicans leave us no choice but to find an independent voice so we can resume our fight for full equality.
The oil piracy in Iraq is at the core of these political shakeups. It’s the linchpin that connects, informs and polarizes every political question and every layer of American society, including ours. We ignore its impact here or its murderous cost on our brothers and sisters in the Mideast at our own peril. The massacre of GLBT folk Iraq by US armed and financed right wing death squads creates a menacing precedent.
Imperial wars of economic aggression always move politics to the right, energize right-wingers and divert attention from domestic questions like workplace discrimination, hate crimes, etc. The war is especially gut wrenching for us because the US military command routinely arms the same militia and security forces in Iraq. Every vote for a war appropriations bill by every Republican and Democrat is a death warrant for GLBT folk in Iraq doctor.
According to the Federation of Workers Councils and Unions in Iraq this US sponsored murder campaign is being used to undermine Iraqi society while US companies steal their oil. Nothing else accounts for the genocidal level of civilian murders.
So how does HRH HRC perform on this question? Is she for total and immediate withdrawal or will she lead us deeper into the quagmire?
Start by checking out her comments or visiting her websites and you’ll soon discover that she runs on Bill Clinton’s record. That includes the gay bashing DADT and the backstabbing treachery of DOMA, both enacted by bipartisan bigoted pluralities. And it includes the union busting NAFTA.
Then go on to check out her record.
When the uproar over USMC General Peter Pace’s statement that “I believe homosexual acts between two individuals are immoral and that (the U.S. military) should not condone immoral acts…†even the Democratic lapdogs of the HRC had jump in and demand an end to the spineless silence of Clinton and Obama who finally distanced themselves from his comment, although neither lifted a finger or introduced a bill to demand his ouster as Chairman of the JCS.
How does the press portray Clintons two faced shifting support and pretense of opposition to the war?
David Koppel speaking on National Public Radios’ “All things Considered†program on June 11th this year said “Democrats are telling voters that if they are elected, all U.S. troops will be pulled out of Iraq. But as Sen. Hillary Clinton privately told a senor military adviser, she knows there will be some troops there for decades. It’s an example of how in some cases, politics can force dishonesty.â€
Maureen Dowd, winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary, said in a NY Times Op-Ed that Clintons attempt to appear in control “gliding along with the help of good lighting, a hearty guffaw and a clever husband†has been replaced by panic as her consistent support for the war sheds light on her two faced strategy. When questioned about supporting Cheney’s wet dream, the latest “Sense of the Senate’ resolution which gives him and Bush an opening to attack Iran, Clinton said, “labeling them a terrorist organization gives us the authority to impose sanctions on their leadership. …I consider that part of a very robust diplomatic effort.†The draft of that resolution, since camouflaged, was described as “tantamount to a declaration of war†by Senator Jim Webb of Virginia.
Dowd concludes that “Voters seem more concerned with Hillary’s political expediency — which the vote underscored — than with her ability to be manly.â€
David Bromwich teaches literature at Yale and frequently contributes to the New Republic, the Nation, and the New York Review of Books. Writing in the Huffington Post on Sept, 27th this year he said “Hillary Clinton voted in favor of the Kyl-Lieberman amendment to press the army toward war with Iran. This was an important step, for her, and a vote as closely considered as her vote to authorize the bombing and occupation of Iraq.†Bromwich thinks that the bipartisan “Sense of the Senate†resolution is an alarming escalation of the preparation for extending the war because it states that, “that it should be the policy of the United States to stop INSIDE Iraq the violent activities and destabilizing influence of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, its foreign facilitators such as Lebanese Hezbollah, and its indigenous Iraqi proxies.”
The bipartisan “Sense of the Senate†resolution goes on to declare that the “Islamic Revolutionary Guard of Iran (their army) is a “foreign terrorist organizationâ€. Bromwich concludes that “… during the Vietnam War (it was said) that a dead Vietnamese is a Viet Cong. It will assuage the conscience for U.S. bombers of Iran to know that a dead Iranian is a terrorist. The Senate, by this classification, has absolved the bombers in advance.â€
The websites for alternet dot org, the NY Times, uslaboragainstwar dot org, antiwar dot com, codepink4peac dot org, thenation dot com, Der Spiegel, huffingtonpost dot com, npr dot org and others provide total and convincing evidence that Hillary Clinton is Bush Lite. She’ll do exactly what she said she’d do; extend the war until the oil is in American hands.
The hallmarks of lying politicians and their shills, hacks, buzz meisters and flacks is that they never bother to try to prove their ideas. The substitute venom and lies for facts.
But hey, what else can a Dixiecrat like Clinton and a hysterically bitter outdate rightwing spin doctor like Frances do?