1036 East Burnett Avenue
Louisville, KY 40217

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G3 is teaming with Fairness for their monthly First Thursday Soiree to present an evening of COSMIC DISCO BOWLING–the lights go out and the disco ball clicks on! Bowling is just $2.50 per person/per game, though you don’t have to bowl to enjoy Strike Zone’s great bar and snack menu.

Fairness will be on hand to answer questions about the current legislative session–right now we’re in the midst of a heated battle to pass a statewide anti-discrimination Fairness law. Show your support by making a contribution to Fairness!

Here’s the info: Strike Zone
Thursday, March 4, 7-11PM
911 Phillips Lane
Louisville, KY 40209
FREE Admission, $2.50 Bowling
Strike Zone is the new building next to Executive Lanes near the Airport and Fairgrounds. Drive to the back of the parking lot and look for “Strike Zone” signs.

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Want to know more about homosexuality and the Bible? Many of you do. Now you can hear the prospective of Charles Hawkins, an Episcopal Priest, in his book, “Homosexuality & Christian Scripture.” Hawkins is serving as Rector of St. Mark’s, Louisville.

The book, which is a lecture by Hawkins from 2004, is available at Carmichael’s Bookstore. Both the Frankfort Avenue and Bardstown Road locations have copies available.

Each book comes with a DVD of the lecture.

Great for study groups or book clubs (by the way, does anyone want to start a club for Fleur de Lez? Let me know…).

The proceeds from the sale of the book will go to The Fairness Campaign.

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FRANKFORT, Ky. — Businesses and landlords in Kentucky shouldn’t be allowed to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, gay rights supporters said at a Capitol rally Wednesday.

They acknowledge that they have a long way to go before passing legislation to achieve that goal. But Christopher Hartman, director of the Louisville Fairness Campaign, said the group is gaining supporters.

For the first time, it has 10 House members who have co-sponsored legislation to give gays and lesbians protections under Kentucky civil rights law. And also for the first time, one of those members is from outside Louisville or Lexington.

John Johnson, executive director of the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights, also was on hand Wednesday to speak at the Statewide Fairness Coalition’s annual rally. He urged activists to keep pushing for protection under the law.

“They say good things happen to those who wait,” he said. “Good things come quicker to those who agitate.”

Rep. Mary Lou Marzian, D-Louisville, the primary sponsor of the gay rights legislation, House Bill 117, said there are more members in the House who support it than the 10 who signed on as co-sponsors.

“They just need a little bit of oomph to get his passed,” she said, noting that some members are “a little bit scared” of voting for it.

Sen. Kathy Stein, D-Lexington, the sponsor of the Senate version of the bill, noted that last year gay rights advocates stopped passage of legislation to prohibit them from adopting children. She said it’s time for lawmakers to pass a bill that helps gays and lesbians.

“It’s not too much to ask that you don’t fire someone because they are gay,” she said.

Rep. Tom Burch, D-Louisville, told the crowd in the Capitol Rotunda that the legislation seeks nothing more than basic rights.

“Until we accept everyone for how they are, for what they are, none of us are free,” he said.

And the Rev. Albert Pennybacker, an ordained minister in the Christian Church Disciples of Christ, told the crowd that those who use God’s name to attack them are wrong.

“I refuse to let that form of Christianity go unchallenged,” he said.

During the rally, gay rights activists held signs with the names of the 14 legislators in the House and Senate who signed on to support HB 117 or Senate Bill 138. None are Republicans, and none are from rural areas.

Hartman said that the group believes it has some support in rural areas and that it doesn’t expect to get a hearing in a House committee on its legislation before next year

Reporter Joseph Gerth can be reached at (502) 582-4702.

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Another of her exes, even though they broke up about three years ago, still can’t handle being subjected to social events where my friend brings her current girlfriend.  Seriously this baffles me, because otherwise this dyke appears to be a responsible and intelligent woman, but her obsession with my friend is unreal.  Even more apparent is that she is so selfish, she is incapable of truly wanting my friend to be happy and at times seems to go out of her way to undermine her happiness. Being a rational human being, this baffled me for about one minute, then I just felt sorry for her, because she apparently doesn’t know how to let go.

So I decided to write this blog with her in mind, here is a simple plan for how to get over your ex:

1. realize she is over you and will never take you back
2. grow up
3. move on

It is a three step program so it should be easy to follow, but oddly enough some dykes have trouble letting go.  Fortunately for me, non of my exes have this problem, but it did take my little cancer crab self some time to let go even when the relationship was unhealthy and its termination was a relief.  In my case it wasn’t the “I want her back and can’t live without her” feeling, it was the I can’t believe “I wasted so much time and put up with all her shit” feeling.  Even the latter is indicative of not letting go, because you are spending emotional energy every time these thoughts come across your brain.

The real keys to letting go are forgiveness and benevolence.   You have to reach that point where you can forgive your ex for the pain the break up caused you, for the unfulfilled plans you had to give up on,  but most importantly forgive her for the fact that she is human, therefore fallible, and has her own limitations that contributed to the demise of the relationship.

After forgiveness the next step is to cultivate feeling of benevolence for your ex.  If you really did love her, or do love her, then ultimately you should just want her to be happy.  Seeing her happy, even if that is with someone else, should not turn you into a tantrum throwing eight year old child who lost her favorite toy.  It is worth the excruciating effort required to accomplish these two steps, because the rewards are unfathomable.  Ultimately, you will find yourself free and finally open to pursue new options to obtain that happiness you thought you could never find again.

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Last semester, I was walking up Normal Drive from Mass Media and Technology Hall toward Northeast Hall to visit a friend. A pickup truck full of young men—presumably students—drove by and yelled “faggot” as they passed. I felt humiliated, I felt scared, I felt hurt but most of all I felt angry. Homophobia, I’d always been told, had no place on the Hill. This incident proved otherwise.

Last week, the Benefits Committee again showed an ugly homophobia was alive on campus. While they didn’t call us fags to our faces, they did tell gay and lesbian employees and students that they are not seen as equal to their heterosexual colleagues. In a vote of eight to six, the Benefits Committee refused to offer domestic partner benefits to same-sex and opposite-sex unmarried couples.

“But Skylar,” you might say, “if it applies to both gay and straight people, it’s not homophobic!” But this is nothing more than a convenient argument used over and over against offering domestic partner benefits Lesbian and gay employees can’t be married in Kentucky, so they are unfairly left out of any opportunity to ever have benefits. Besides, even if you don’t think the decision was homophobic, the decision is clearly unfair, as not all employees are granted equal benefits for equal work.

That phrase, “equal benefits for equal work,” is one I used when I first took up this cause last year. In the spring of 2009, as student body vice president, I authored a piece of legislation encouraging WKU to offer domestic partner benefits to unmarried same-sex and opposite-sex couples. I did this out of a desire to achieve a more fair and just university, and the Student Senate agreed—the resolution passed with overwhelming support. Not long after that, University Senate passed a similar resolution with similar zeal.

Yet here we are, a year later, and nothing has changed. Not all employees have the same benefits as their colleagues. Unmarried employees who happen to be in long-term relationships but, because either they choose not to or cannot, be married are ineligible to receive the same benefits. This is blatant discrimination and is totally unfair.

And it’s not only unfair to the employees who can’t cover their families. It’s unfair to the university as a whole, including the student body. Not only does it send a message to the world that Hilltoppers are content to discriminate against other Hilltoppers, including students, but it severely hinders our ability to recruit the best and brightest in the respective disciplines. Why would an enlightened genius want to come work at a university that can’t even grasp the kindergarten concept of playing fairly?

Study after study has shown that offering domestic partner benefits if beneficial to recruiting the best employees possible while costing very little to implement. Private sector employers, including a whopping 83% of Fortune 100 companies, offer domestic partner benefits, many of which have offered them since the 1990s or early 2000s. Closer to home, the University of Kentucky and the University of Louisville have found ways to offer domestic partner benefits to their employees, despite Kentucky’s repugnant constitutional amendment banning gay marriage (or any recognition of gay couples at all). In the interest of keeping up with the Jones’, we ought to want to adopt domestic partner benefits, if only to thumb our noses at the other schools.

But fairness and superiority aren’t reason enough, let’s pull in another controversial issue: health care. No matter which side of the debate you’re on, I hope you’ll agree every American deserves access to health insurance. While many Americans are covered by their spouse’s employer, unmarried partners of Western employees aren’t eligible. According to a study by UCLA’s Williams Institute, “[p]eople with same-sex or different-sex unmarried partners are two to three times more likely to be uninsured than married people, even after controlling for factors influencing coverage.”

The number of uninsured Americans is outrageous, and employers offering domestic partner benefits is one way to drastically drop the number of uninsured. (This should also make you Tea Partiers out there happy, as the federal government is not involved in the least. See, equality can be a conservative issue, too!)

Furthermore, the cost of actually extending benefits at Western would be small, especially when compared to the cost of, say, Chauncey the Bunny or the big red “key” perched on Centennial Mall. According to the Williams Institute, employers offering domestic partner benefits can expect to see a 1.4% to 2.1% increase in employees signing up, which is nary an increase in the number we’re insurin or the cost of insuring them. Those who say cost is a factor are blatantly lying at worst and patently wrong at best.

Whether they’re lying to hide their homophobia or just ignorant to the facts, I can’t be sure. But it is my hope that the eight people on the Benefits Committee will start thinking progressively, or at least contemporarily. This is an issue of fairness, plain and simple. Other universities in Kentucky are already ahead of us on this, and it is time for Western to catch up with the rest of the crowd.

Better that crowd than the crowd that called me a faggot. Western shouldn’t want to be associated with homophobia. When those guys yelled that slur at me, I felt a lot of things, but the Benefits Committee has made me feel something entirely different: ashamed. I’m ashamed that a committee I’ve supported doesn’t support me. I’m ashamed that ignorance and fear have been allowed to prevail. I’m ashamed that inequality and discrimination are rife on this campus.

But most of all, and I never thought this would happen, I am ashamed to be a Hilltopper.

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But now that I’ve had some time to stew on it and have had a few choice text messages with one person in particular, I’m starting to feel a little bad. While I’m still angry, I can now see that I’m acting a bit like a middle schooler. I don’t want to be that way. I want to act like the adult I am, but I fell to my feelings.

So this is an apology of sorts. Not just to my ex and her former lover, but to myself as well. I took some shots at people that I probably shouldn’t have and now I have to live with that.

Don’t get me wrong, I still feel very strongly about the situation — I just think I probably should’ve taken the “high road.”

I appreciate all the supportive e-mails I received and was shocked by how many people identified with what I wrote. It was nice to see that I’m not alone.

My advice to you, dear readers, is to learn from my mistakes. Express yourself — especially when your heart is broken — just don’t try to take someone down with you.

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DISCLAIMER: For those of you out there appalled by my honesty and openness in my blogs, you can shove it. You see, what I do to express myself is nothing less than what a musician does when she writes songs.

There is definitely something to be said about sex with an ex. It’s often times really passionate and fulfilling because you both know you could choke the other person at any moment. All animosity aside, it’s easy to sleep with someone you have history with. Heck, they definitely know your body and how you respond. And that, dear friends, is a recipe for an orgasm.

But is a good orgasm worth the trouble? After dealing with my ex the last two weeks, I think my answer is “no.”

I won’t get into the particulars now, but lets just say I’ve learned (or re-learned) some valuable lessons over the past few weeks. Here they are:

1) Anytime an ex wants to keep you a secret to protect someone else’s feelings, you’re not the one she’s in love with.

2) If an ex is willing to tell you intimate details of her previous lover’s life, job, physical body, family situation, etc, then she’s definitely telling all your business, too.

3) No matter how many times an ex tells you she loves you while you’re wrapped around each other in bed like snakes, it doesn’t mean it’s true.

4) When an ex begins to create a list of demands for the relationship on day two of your reconciliation, run.

5) Anytime an ex tells you she’s feeling “smothered” by you when you demand that she tells her ex that you’re working on the relationship, she’s a coward.

6) When an ex tells you that she wants to take a step back from you after revealing to you that you’re the love of her life, she’s a liar.

7) Don’t try to have a sexual fling with an ex who has been proven in the past to be emotionally inept and dysfunctional. Find a good book or buy a subscription to Red Tube instead.

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