Neo-con XmasHeaven forbid that neo-cons become infused with the holiday spirit.  They are busy celebrating the birth of Christ that they forget everything that he stood for which is the acceptance of everyone.  
On a side not Merry Christmas everyone.

The “war” on Christmas

Oh, nice! — The anti-trans pejorative he/she used against a drag performer! Super!

Honestly, I’m surprised they didn’t say “it”.
And it’s amazing for all their collective b*tching about the “war” on Christmas with us secularists trying to wreck it (pfft), they seem to be doing all the damage themselves.
Anyway, I hope you have a Happy Holiday Autumn!

Hedda Lettuce = *crickets*, Mao = *pissed*I couldn’t care less about the image of an American transvestite/female impersonator/stage performer gracing the surface of a Christmas tree ornament in the White House.
I’m absolutely disgusted that the image of a Communist dictator does so.
Frankly, I have to wonder how many pics of Milton Berle graced the people’s house over the decades.

ContextI absolutely, without reservation, agree with the original post. I am also a gay veteran, although of 10 years and no disability, but I agree completely that it is great that these ornaments are on the White House tree.
But.
or maybe And.
This feels so much to me like the wingnuts who complain that they watch every single episode of Two and a Half Men and are shocked! SHOCKED! at the sexual innuendo, week after week after week….
of the people who Tivo’ed the Wardrobe Malfunction or made it the biggest internet video because if you freeze-framed and blew up the image you could be shocked, SHOCKED! by Janet Jackson’s nipple….
What else is on the tree? I assume that the White House tree has hundreds if not thousands of ornaments, and a small section of two ornaments, photographed and blown up, show perfectly g-rated images that offend the sensibilities of the people who have to go out of their way to see them.
Why do I assume that taken as a whole, the tree is elegant and appropriate? (Because if it was awful, we’d see pictures of the whole thing….)
That it is mostly full of traditional and/or conservative Christmas images? That nobody who wasn’t closely studying it would ever see these, and that most of the people who did see them wouldn’t have the context to be offended even if they were offended by such things?

Is it making fun of Mao?It sounds like he is being taken in a lighthearted manner or being lampooned in some way.
That’s fine with me.
Of course a serious tribute to Mao would seem a bit strange to me…

well, certainly it’s out-of-contextThe pundits get paid by the outrage-o-meter level, so they have to, somehow, find an innocuous little something and blow it up until it’s as big as the Hindenburg, and then use it as the exception-that-proves-the-rule, which is usually that it will bring down the Republic, or bring on the Apocalypse, or something. I wonder when their spleens are going to wear out under the load.
Oh, and as a technical term, the Janet Jackson affair is what’s known as “a partial divestiture.”

O’Reilly’s War on Christmas,
If only in his dreams.

Feeling a Little Bit SuperiorThose in the NeoCon right wing need to feel “morally” superior at every turn or their self-esteem shrivels up like a mouse ‘nads in an icebox.

on the other handPersonally, I would not break out the trans outrage o-meter over “he/she” in this instance. Hedda Lettuce’s own website promotes a project called “The Hedda Lettuce Show; The Dixie Chicks with Dicks.”  
http://heddalettuce.com/?page_…
No offense meant to the performer, tree decorator, Autumn, or even Andrew Breitbart but if this is the White House’s idea of trans inclusion, I’d rather be left out.

He/She means GodlikeAnytime I hear the term “he/she” I make sure I let it be known that He-She is one of the names of God.  A rabbi from Pleasantville, New York, has written that God’s Name was rendered YHWH with the secret nema backward – HWHY, pronounced Hoo-hee, which in Hebrew means He-She.  This ties in very well with the creation story in which people are created “male and female” in God’s image and likeness – meaning that God is “male and female” in nature, and the name He-She is certainly an appropriate one.
This indicates clearly that those who use the term as an epithet are really acknowledging their victim as a God-like creature.
We must also remember that those who intend to disparage us are the true Sodomites – the intellectual heirs of the Men of Sodom – misogynistic haters of people who are different.

It was Andy Warhol’s Mao imageya culturally-challenged

MCC hymn….Our God is Like An Eagle…..Larry BernierOur God Is Like an Eagle
When Israel camped in Sinai, God spoke and Moses heard,
This message tell the people, and give them this my word:
From Egypt I was with you and carried on my wing,
The whole of your great nation from slav’ry I did bring.
Just as a mother eagle who helps her young to fly,
I am a mother to you, your needs I will supply.
And you are as my children, my own who hear my voice,
I am a mother to you, the people of my choice.
If God is like an eagle who helps her young to fly,
And God is also father, then what of you and I?
We have no need of labels; we have no need of roles.
If God’s own being blends them, we seek the self-same goal.
Our God is not a woman; our God is not a man.
Our God is both and neither; our God is I WHO AM.
From all the roles that bind us, our God has set us free.
What freedom does God give us? The freedom just to be!

What if that ornament had represented Lynn Conway?I’ll wager someone would have taken issue with a Whit House Ornament honoring Prof. Conway.
The reich will always pick the most extreme icon, or make do with whatever slight deviancy they find, inflating it into a cause for offense du jour.
Hedda Lettuce is not who I want becoming the de facto icon of my demographic.  But I’d rather have SOMEBODY represent the demographic, than to be run off the playfield by the right-eous bullies.  And with someone on the playfield, we can shift and add others who are less skewed to the extremes that easily enrage the wingnuts.
Perhaps next year we can make the effort to flood the gatekeepers of the White House Christmas Tree with hundreds of ornaments that truly represent the LGBT community.  Of course there will be a few ‘extreme’ representations, but the majority of ornaments should represent the majority of us — mostly ordinary in every way (aside from non-standard orientation or identity.)

Autumn
Thank you for your service. You are a real hero. I think this whole ‘controversy’ is just ridiculous. Who cares if people are gay, straight, bi or transgendered….were ALL people and we ALL deserve to be treated equally under the law and with dignity and respect.
I also find it sad that as a community,IMHO of course, were so shellshocked at the lack of ‘fierce advocacy’ the President promised, were now happy that he at least ‘recognizes’ we all exist. It would be silly of me, and certainly my anger and frustration talking, if I were to say under President Obama we had taken a step back…..well maybe not a step back but certainly it isnt a step forward.

And when the President of the United States,  is shown pictured as Hitler they feel that is OK.  What a bunch of whining imbeciles.  Face it, the Religious Reich won’t be happy until all Liberals are dead or in prison.  
 Interesting they (Reich) want to tell us who Christian this Nation was when the Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution were written, signed and ratified.  And now the reason this country is Fucked up is because God has been removed from classrooms.  And they claim to know history.
 History shows us clearly that the KKK used religion to manipulate people into their form of hatred and total lack of diversity.  Seems like the same hatred these Ass Hats are using to oppress, beat and murder LGBT Citizens.
 I guess we LGBT Citizens who served this Nation in the military are not worthy of life, even when we put our lives on the line for this Nation.  
 To ALL veterans, Thank you for you service, it is very well appreciated by so many, and trust me I know as I served in the US Navy as well.  As for the Religious Reich, they need to remember that the US Constitution is not the bible for a reason.

True, PeteBut are you surprised these intelligence-challenged nitwits from the brain-dead teabaggers don’t see that?
OMG I popped on this moronic site and all the “Maobama” cracks and severe lack of intelligence on the comments… OY!  

Just read the comments its chilling.

We need to change that. Protests will only get us so far; 10 dead democrat politicians laying in the street will get these sellouts and prostitutes in DC to “see the light” immediately.

I take it these morons don’t understand the concept of democracy.

NoIt’s Simon giving a shout-out to one of his friends.

Both, and NeitherOf course!  Whenever I lecture to a cissexual audience on expanding their understanding of the binary of sex and gender, I start out with the traditional “Either” male “Or” female; and then add “Both” and “Neither” attributes in each “binary” characteristic.
Of course, from a Universalist perspective, one can also parse the Tetragrammaton to say that God is “WHO I AM” (as long as the understanding that God permeates all of Creation.
In Heinlein’s classic Stranger in a Strange Land, there was something very profound in the greeting used by members of Valentine Michael Smith’s religion, “Thou Art God.”
If we were to treat our neighbors as if they, as we, are one with God, it would be easier to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.  
Just imagine if these folks on the Christianist Right would actually read and properly understand the sacred scripture they like to thump.

Perhaps they believe in Clauswitzian solutionsIf we slide down the slippery slope of ssing “War is the extension of diplomacy,” it becomes easy to accept populist insurrection as “democratic” insurance for a representative republic.
At the time of the creation of the American Republic, the very real possibility of armed rebellion existed – and if the government were to become tyrannical, then many of the founding fathers would have approved of insurrection.  After all, the American Revolution itself was an insurrection against the lawful authorities, based on a philosophical basis that those authorities had breached the “social contract.”
Treason never prospers, for if Treason prospers, none  dare call it Treason.
I have commented in this forum on the issue of justification for insurrection against oppressive government.  If we can think those thoughts (even if we reject them, at least until they start dragging us of to sports stadia for stonings), there is no reason that the proponents of Evil can;t think these toughts when they perceive the oppression of our people as lessening.
It was their kind that fomented the War of the Rebellion in the 1860′s – and they were far more interested in preserving slavery than the federal government of the time was interested in ending it.  Had there been no secessions and no insurrection, it may have taken much more time to eliminate slavery, and the slaveholders would have been comoensated.  The United States was the last of the “civilized” nations to abolish slavery.  It will probably be the last of the “civilized” nations to abolish capital punishment.  It will also probably be the last of the “civilized” nations to eliminate the oppression of the LGBT community.
The Forces of Evil, represented by the Christianist Right Wing, generally favor capital punishment and the oppression of the LGBT community.  
If they start assassinating liberal Cemocrats, there are surely people out there who would be willing to start a policy of counter-assassinations. That will only lead to a further erosion of civil liberties, and the completion of the Bush Administration’s interrupted movement toward establishing an american fascist police state, with the elimination of one freedom at a time.

You’d think seeing Mao with blue eye shadow might have tipped them offhe only did that for “special” ocassions….LOL
   http://search.it.online.fr/cov…
  http://sg.88db.com/sg/HTML/en-…

To put the dim witted hacks on Breibart TV in their placeI tell them to have a hissy fit over two Christmas balls
Cuz they have nothing else to do.
Actually if Obama was clever he’d sponsor a tree, perhaps on the DC mall, as a protest tree, ANY ornament is welcome, ZERO censorship…and think of it as a celebration of the FIRST AMENDMENT, and a catharsis…get all your angst out in an ornament which hurts NO ONE, and if you are easily offended….stay away from the DAMN TREE.

And, I’m not just for trans inclusion……I’m for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community inclusion.
I’m aware that most discrimination against LGBT community members is due to gender variance — violation of societal gender norms. In our society, men are supposed to be sterotypicaly masculine; women are supposed to be stereotypically feminine; sexuality is supposed to be firmly heterosexual. The further we vary from societal gender norms, the more likely we are to face discrimination in our lives.
So, what I have in common with Hedda Lettuce, besides both of us belonging to the LGBT community, is that we both “violate” societal gender norms. I embrace Hedda Lettuce as a peer LGBT community member; I would hope Hedda Lettuce would do the same for me.

For all the bad rap drag queens and drag kings getThey are ENTERTAINERS, and in Minneapolis the drag shows were HUGELY popular with young straight couples. The MC would make some gentle barbs at a newbie couple, and it was as fun for the newbie couple as for the rest of the audience. So maybe the drag performers are a bridge which makes LGBTs less threatening, and can take issues not with dire seriousness, but let folks relax and have fun. For many of these young straights it is a rare time they see inside a gay/lesbian bar.

dragMaybe I am alone in finding drag highly offensive.  That others feel differently is fine.  

You’re not aloneThat doesn’t mean you’re correct. There is good drag and bad drag. Some of it is an aquired taste, and some of it is just enjoying it for what it is.

I love HeddaWhen I was first transitioning in the early 90s, I got to know Steven Polito, the actor who portrays Hedda, through some business dealings.  He was very, very nice to me at a time when I needed help, and I will never forget what a sweetheart he was.  Hedda makes me laugh, and that’s a rare and precious thing.  I’m glad he’s getting known to a wider public, and continuing to outrage the right wing, as well as the left wing, and everyone in-between.    

You may rememberOn I think it was on one season of Project Runway when Hedda and a number of NYC’s top impersonators were the subjects of the contestants, and Hedda’s costume was smack on gorgeous, and what was best was the fact they outfits were auctioned off on eBay with the proceeds going to an AIDS charity.

A “political statement?”

Why let a holiday season come between the White House and making some political statements?

How exactly is someone’s existence, whether he or she is a drag queen, a straight man, a black woman, a lesbian, etc., a “political statement?”
Rather it would seem to me that imposing one’s personal religious values on everyone else and lobbying to keep other people from acquiring equal rights under the laws of the land is a “political statement.”

I think my experience with drag was summed up thusly:…in closing her show, one performer said, “Goodnight you f***ers, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, and I especially hate you!” and blew a kiss to the wild applause of everyone in the audience.
I think it’s not to the exclusion of anyone, I think Hedda (and most performers) is just pushing that “in your face so far we take your tonsils out” thing as far as possible, which is basically outright mockery with the hopes that people will at least see that at the end of the day, it’s done with care and enough irony to get the wrinkles out of Betty White.
Now, if they step off stage and mock you to your face, then we have a problem and I get that odd twitch I get in my middle finger from time to time. Funny how that happens.

lighten up   
 

and   http://www.starz.com/titles/Lo…
 

like you saiddrag is an acquired taste.  I totally support the right of other people to enjoy it or to perform it.  I also favor the right of people to find drag offensive (for whatever reason), criticize it or otherwise not support it. Personally, I choose to not support drag or some other forms of gender performance because I don’t like my identity conflated with those things.  Some of my dislike also stems from a general hesitance to support things that objectify or parody women (or African-Americans, ethnic groups, gays…). Again, that others feel differently is totally cool.