It’s an open thread! Pleeeeease feel free to chat, blogwhore, and link-share in the comment thread…

So, this is what my cartoon sockpuppet Bookworm Bob have been looking at since our last This & That post.

• Los Angeles Times‘ Medical treatment carries possible side effect of limiting homosexuality; A prenatal pill for congenital adrenal hyperplasia to prevent ambiguous genitalia may reduce the chance that a female with the disorder will be gay. Critics call it engineering for sexual orientation:

Each year in the United States, perhaps a few dozen pregnant women learn they are carrying a fetus at risk for a rare disorder known as congenital adrenal hyperplasia. The condition causes an accumulation of male hormones and can, in females, lead to genitals so masculinized that it can be difficult at birth to determine the baby’s gender.

A hormonal treatment to prevent ambiguous genitalia can now be offered to women who may be carrying such infants. It’s not without health risks, but to its critics those are of small consequence compared with this notable side effect: The treatment might reduce the likelihood that a female with the condition will be homosexual. Further, it seems to increase the chances that she will have what are considered more feminine behavioral traits.

That such a treatment would ever be considered, even to prevent genital abnormalities, has outraged gay and lesbian groups, troubled some doctors and fueled bioethicists’ debate about the nature of human sexuality.

The treatment is a step toward “engineering in the womb for sexual orientation,” said Alice Dreger, a professor of clinical medical humanities and bioethics at Northwestern University and an outspoken opponent of the treatment…

This reminds me about what discredited researcher J. Michael Bailey, PhD wrote about gay eugenics in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, Vol. 30, No. 4, 2001 article Parental Selection of Children’s Sexual Orientation:

As we learn more about the causes of sexual orientation, the likelihood increases that parents will one day be able to select the orientation of their children. This possibility (at least that of selecting for heterosexuality) has generated a great deal of concern among supporters of homosexual rights, with such selection being widely condemned as harmful and morally repugnant. Notwithstanding this widespread condemnation, and even assuming, as we do, that homosexuality is entirely acceptable morally, allowing parents, by means morally unproblematic in themselves, to select for heterosexuality would be morally acceptable. This is because allowing parents to select their children’s sexual orientation would further parent’s freedom to raise the sort of children they wish to raise and because selection for heterosexuality may benefit parents and children and is unlikely to cause significant harm.

It appears we may be entering the time that J. Michael Bailey envisioned; a time that many of our community activists will no doubt decry as a new kind of immorality. That is, at least for some potential lesbians.

This is also an effect of treating intersex conditions as a disorder — specifically as Disorders of Sex Development (DSD).

Expect the religious right to respond with some glee.

• Americans For Truth About Homosexuality‘s VIDEO: Glenn Beck Is Wrong on the Importance of Homosexual ‘Marriage’:

Looks like Glenn Beck could have benefited from attending the AFTAH Truth Academy [order DVDs or CDs of the Academy HERE; order online through AFTAH’s donate page]. Beck is doing incredibly important work in helping to save America from the misnamed “progressives” — but evidently he is woefully ignorant about the real threat that homosexual activism poses to this nation and our precious freedoms. Memo: to Glenn: people of faith – like Matt Barber and Julea Ward — already have been fired or discriminated against for defending the historic Judeo-Christian sexual ethic. And this began happening before “same-sex marriage” became the dominant issue in this cultural debate. The oppression will only get worse if homosexual “marriage” is legalized nationally through an activist court ruling. Thanks to Lynn Thomas of Cao’s Blog for creating this video.

– Peter LaBarbera, www.aftah.org [Partial transcription of exchange follows video]:

You can go to Peter LaBarbera’s website/link above if you want to read the partial transcript.

The video itself ends with a commentary from the video’s creator. She begins her commentary with this line:

Yes, homosexual marriage is a serious issue for religious freedom.

I don’t have to say more — you can see where this is all going with LaBarbera and the video creator.

• Montreal Gazettes‘s A Question Of Trans Pride:

As the 30-year-old Association des transsexuels et transsexuelles du Quebec marches for only the second time in the annual LGBTA Pride Parade in Montreal tomorrow, some say the focus should now be on transgender issues, including legal rights and social acceptance.

“We have to remember that during the Stonewall raid (a 1969 police raid on a New York City bar that was a pivotal event in the modern gay-rights movement), it was transgender people, drag queens and men in leather who fought back,” said Eric Pineault, president of Celebrations LGBTA Montreal, the pride parade’s non-profit organizer. “We owe them for their courage. Even though their personal struggles may differ from our own, we’re natural allies.”

Transgender people, he explained, have to come to terms with their gender identity, whereas gays and lesbians have come to terms with which gender they are attracted to.

With same-sex marriage legal across Canada, the main gay-rights focus has shifted to battling homophobia and for trans people, trans-phobia –bigotry toward a range of people who don’t fit mainstream definitions of male or female, including transsexuals, cross-dressers, and others who may or may not plan to surgically change gender.

Marie-Eve Baron, secretary-treasurer of the ATQ, said in the past trans people were reluctant to participate in the parade because they felt they were seen as misfits or freaks. “There was no distinct place for us,” she said. “But last year and this year, there will be about 35 or 40 of us and we’ll march with our own signs. Many of us make an effort not to dress outlandishly. We believe it’s important for people to see us as real people.”…

Many of us are out; many of us are proud; many of us will continue to remain out and proud working on freedom, equality, and justice not only for our subcommunity of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) community, but for the entire LGBTQ community — as members of my subcommunity have done since even before the Stonewall Uprising.

• momento24‘s Peru Says No To The Gay Marriage:

According to a survey published today in Lima, Peru, “The 71.5% of Peruvians opposed to the gay marriage, while the civil union is legally accepted in Argentina, Spain, the federal district of Mexico and California.”

According to the survey conducted between May and August 9 in 28 cities in Peru by the Peruvian Society for the Study of Public Opinion and Market (CPI), “Only 21.3% of Peruvians approved the idea of gay marriages and 7.2% did not speak on this issue. ”

The legislator Jose Vargas of the ruling APRA announced on 26 of July a bill to legalize gay civil unions, which provoked an intense debate in Peru, a country of mostly Catholics.

…The gay and lesbian groups in Lima reported that “Peru did not sign the Declaration of the General Assembly of the United Nations on Human Rights, Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity.”

• Our Wiener Story Of The Day: New York Daily News‘ Judge Rules Mets Can’t Ban Kosher Food Co. From Selling Snacks At CitiField During Jewish Sabbath:

A federal judge has ordered the Mets to stop banning a kosher food company from selling snacks at CitiField during the Sabbath.

“I cannot get involved in (a dispute) over rabbinical law,” Brooklyn Judge Jack Weinstein said with a smile during a hearing Friday.

…Kosher Sports says it doesn’t cater only to Jews, should be able to sell wieners any day of the week and was given the green light to stay open.

As always, “The weenie tempts you!”

So anywho…It’s an open thread! What are you thinking about today, or what books or articles have you been reading the past few days? Wanna share?

And again, please feel free to chat, blogwhore, and link-share in the comment thread because…it’s an open thread! Woo-hoo!