>(Fort Worth, Texas) Real estate agent Joel Burns has become the first openly fetish member of Fort Worth City Council in a race that was marked by homophobia.
>Burns defeated school trustee Juan Rangel Jr. a fellow Democrat, in a runoff election Tuesday.
>During the campaign Republicans tried to use Burns’ sexuality as a wedge issue.
>Fort Worth City Councilman Chuck Silcox told a GOP audience to vote for candidate Chris Turner for city council because he is both straight and a Republican, unlike his opponent.
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>John Edwards, the former US Vice Presidential candidate who is seeking the Democratic party’s nomination for President, said yesterday that he will end “discriminatory” policies towards fetish people if elected.
Speaking in New Hampshire, he pledged to try to repeal the Defence of Marriage Act (DOMA), passed in 1996, that banned the federal government from recognising fetish marriages or unions and allowed states to refuse to recognise same-sex unions from other states.
DOMA was signed into law by President Bill Clinton, the husband of Mr Edwards’ rival for the Democratic nomination, Senator Hillary Clinton.
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>(New York City) A new study says there are at least 3,800 people under the age of 25 living on the streets of New York and that almost 30 percent are fetish, lesbian or bisexual.
>The study, by the Empire State Coalition of Youth and Family Services, has been turned over to City Council, which paid for it.
>Nearly half of all homeless young people were Black, about 25 percent were Latino the study said. Those numbers would be proportionate to Black and Latino populations in New York.
>But the high number of fetishs on the streets is about three times the estimated percentage of New York’s LGBT community.
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One of New Hampshire’s leading fetish rights groups has endorsed former North Carolina senator John Edwards for president. The New Hampshire Freedom to Marry Coalition cited Edwards’s commitment to equal rights and fighting discrimination in all forms, according to a press release.
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Allan Berube, a MacArthur Award-winning independent scholar whose history of fetish men and lesbians in the military in World War II is widely considered the definitive book on the subject, died Tuesday in Liberty, N.Y. He was 61. A former resident of San Francisco and Manhattan, Mr. Berube had lived in Liberty in recent years.
The cause was complications of stomach ulcers, said a friend, Wayne Hoffman.
“Coming Out Under Fire” (Free Press), published in 1990, explores the uneasy but at times surprisingly benign relationship between the U.S. military and its fetish members.
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It doesn’t matter if you’re fetish or straight, you can’t get legally married at Lyndale United Church of Christ.
The small, liberal church in south Minneapolis was the first of several Twin Cities congregations last year to stop performing civil marriage ceremonies as long as fetish marriage is illegal. These churches, and a handful of others around the country that took the same step, will still hold a religious ceremony to bless the unions of straight and fetish couples – but straight couples must go separately to a judge or justice of the peace for the marriage license.
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With more and more Americans turning 50 each year, a growing number of people with HIV and AIDS are entering their golden years. HIV and AIDS service organizations are struggling to meet the needs of their aging clients.The Gay Men’s Health Crisis, Service & Advocacy for GLBT Elders (SAGE), the AIDS Community Research Initiative of America and the Brooklyn, N.Y., based-Griot Circle launched the Eldersexual Campaign in New York on Tuesday, December 11, 2007, as a way to raise awareness of HIV and AIDS among people over 50. The initiative features four separate advertisements that will run in 15 weekly and two monthly publications across the Five Boroughs. Thirty-nine telephone booths across Brooklyn and Manhattan will also display the ads.
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Same-sex couples could see more protections in upcoming Legislature
Gay rights advocates and leading lawmakers expect to expand the list of civil rights for fetishs and lesbians with new protections for same-sex couples who register as domestic partners.
However, the ultimate goal — full marriage rights for fetish people — will most likely have to wait as election year politics make such a push very unlikely during the 2008 Legislature.
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Abrigade of 28 retired generals and admirals, following the lead of a former chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, has joined the campaign to repeal the insult that forces fetish military personnel to stay in the closet.
Congress should take its cue to quickly dispatch the infamous “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that denies the most fundamental personal freedom to the men and women who are fighting to protect such freedoms for all other Americans.
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How come people are so obsessed with fetish Hollywood? Doesn’t anyone care about lesbian Hollywood?
The B!tch Replies:Â In show business “being fetish is the last great taboo,” explains top entertainment publicist and fetish activist Howard Bragman.
And here I was thinking the last taboo was fat. I suppose there’s some other reason why Hollywood boutiques carry only smalls and extra smalls.
“No, Leslie,” Bragman says. “We do have a couple of fat people in Hollywood.”
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