what we think

Witness

2009-03-30T10:53:00.002-04:00

This entry is re-posted from Ben Masters' personal blog, http://letusbebread.blogspot.com. If you would like to submit your own experiences from the counter-protest against the hateful message of the Westboro Baptist Church, send in your account to pride@gmu.edu.

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Folks who follow me on Twitter will have already heard this, but I want to say it again: I am so proud, this morning, of the collective witness that George Masons students and staff and local community members gave against the message of hate proclaimed by the protesters from Westboro Baptist Chuch.

Yep, Fred Phelps' gang came to protest Mason for being the denizen of "fag enablers" as we began our week long celebration of Pride Week. Maybe they decided to stop by because of our homecoming (drag) queen, or maybe they were feeling the love and joy radiating from our campus as we prepared the honor the experiences and voices of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, queer and ally people. We got wind of the protest a few weeks ago, and a counter protest emerged from the student body instantaneously.

So, here's what I am proud of, at the beginning of this holy week before Holy Week. I am proud that so many people from the Mason community got up at seven in the morning and came to support their LGBTQ friends and fellow students. I am proud of the Mason police for keeping the peace. I am proud of the people who made signs and t-shirts and dressed in drag. I am proud of my friends, who stood at the front lines of WBC's abuse. And I am proud of and truly touched by all of the Christians who were there witnessing to the love of God that embraces all people, that calls us to care for and be responsible to all people. I wish I could remember all of the loving words on signs and shirts that my Christian friends displayed in solidarity with a community that many of the Christian groups on campus, frankly, do not support (the glowing exceptions, as far as I can see, at Lutheran Campus Ministry and United College Ministries, who will be having a Pride Week worship service on Wednesday). I was proud of all of the area churches who came to support GMU, especially proud of the wonderful folks from the Metropolitan Community Church of Northern Virginia, who preach good news and with whom I made signs yesterday after worship. Happy Pride Week, everybody!

May it be a week of blessings and peace for all people, at Mason and in all places, for those who can see the grace of God around them and for those who have different names for the gratuitous love of the One who is in covenant with all creation. AMEN.

And for a full listing of Pride Week events, check out http://pride.gmu.edu/ and http://lgbtq.gmu.edu/.

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Ben Masters is a senior at GMU and one of the social outreach chairs for Pride Alliance. You can follow him on twitter at http://twitter.com/lets_be_bread.

“Family” on ABC Family

2009-03-23T23:02:00.001-04:00

ABC Family has recently been rocking my world! They are a “family” channel with some great representation for the community.

Last year they got a lot of media attention with a big-deal, interracial gay kiss on their hit show Greek. Calvin, a main character in Greek, is a mostly open gay character with real stories about relationships and sex, which I think is great for ABC Family viewers to see, especially since he is not extremely angsty or victimized with regards to his homosexuality, but rather is coming to terms with everything in young-adulthood just like all the rest of the characters. The next season of Greek is premiering next Monday at 8 pm.

Tonight, ABC Family showed the season finale of The Secret Life of the American Teenager which also featured gay characters. The show is about a young teenager, Amy, who gets pregnant the first time she has sex, which is unprotected. Throughout the seasons she is trying to figure out what to do with the baby: keep it or give it up for adoption. She chooses to give it up for adoption and is looking for a family who wants a baby. Characters Donovan and Leon are a couple on the show who are friends with Amy’s father and ask him if they could be considered to adopt Amy’s baby. Every character on the show is pretty much absolutely fine with the idea of Donovan and Leon adopting the baby and Amy’s family is really rooting for it! They do not, however, end up adopting the baby but instead they take in siblings from foster care. They made an appearance tonight, on the season finale, when the baby was born with their family.

ABC Family also featured two new shows tonight: Roommates and Sophie. Both are basically sitcoms, with Sophie being more of a comedy-drama. So far Roommates has not had any out, gay characters on it yet but Sophie has. Sophie is about a young woman who “is about to have the worst year of her life” (according to a fortune teller in the pilot episode.) She is eight months pregnant, gets dumped by her boyfriend of 5 years who is cheating on her with one of her best friends, loses her highest-grossing actress who is also one of her best friends (she works at an inherited talent agency) to her ex’s new company, asks her gay best friend, Matt, to move in with her, has her baby, and realizes her ex-boyfriend that just left her is not the father! And this is all in the first episode! Although the character Matt is pretty stereotypical, there is definitely potential to grow since he is a very main character in this show and the only person that seems to truly care about her and knows her best. This is just another way ABC Family is bringing gay representation to mainstream U.S. television.

So this is why I am proud of ABC Family. Hopefully soon they will have more LGBTQ “family members” on their shows and not just gay men, but for now I am thankful for the characters we have!

Roommates and Sophie air on ABC Family Mondays at 9 and 9:30 pm, respectively.

-Shizrae

Why Metro Silver Diner No Longer Has My Business

2008-09-15T11:47:00.000-04:00

So...many of you may have seen the crop of new restaurants popping up in "Old Towne" Fairfax. Despite the image of the restaurants and shopping opportunities not really fitting into the historical image of Fairfax City, I was still able to have a rather pleasant dining experience at one new restaurant, Metro Silver Diner, until I was informed about some of their policies.

Purporting to be a new kind of diner, this fast casual establishment, in the vein of Panera and Corner Bakery, serve up a tasty selection of traditional American diner traditions at economical prices. Unfortunately, they're also serving a heavy dose of hypocrisy and gender discrimination. Even though the food was great, the information I learned while I was there more than made my skin crawl.

After a group of friends and I had finished eating and were preparing to leave, we struck up a conversation with our waitress, who was amazing. She commented on my industrial and said how she wanted to have one, but she couldn't because she worked at Metro. She then went on to say how it was even worse for guys though, because they weren't allowed to have any piercings at all. I was surprised that guys couldn't even have an earlobe pierced and when I inquired why, she said that Silver Diner didn't consider it "gender appropriate".

Of course, alarms went off in my head and I was quite angry that that would be given as a reason not to have piercings. I've heard that it doesn't look professional, but never "gender inappropriate". My friends said that maybe she was just misconstruing what the policy was; however, I found it hard to believe that a sixteen year old would use the term gender appropriate unless she heard it from someone else. Wanting to confirm my suspicions, I gave a call to Metro inquiring about employment opportunities and asked about their policy on piercings for men. I was told that it didn't fit into the image of what a male would look like in the 1950's.

Even though the manager didn't quite use the term "gender (in)appropriate", I was still disturbed and somewhat amused by this revelation. First, this is supposedly a new concept for diners, a sort of diner of the future. If that's true, shouldn't they be advocating modern principles and not advocating the gender binary of the 1950's? Secondly, his statement is just full of hypocrisy considering the composition and dress of the wait staff.

Suppose Metro Silver Diner did want to enforce the "look" of the 1950's for its employees. They might want to start by banning the pants all the female employees were wearing. I expect skirts, ponytails, and fully manicured hands. I should only see female waitresses and men should be the ones cooking behind the counter. Oh, wait. I forgot. 1950's atmosphere and we are in Virginia? Considering the likelihood that if this diner existed in the 1950's it would not be welcoming to people of color, they might want to bar people of color from working and dining at the restaurant, just for authenticity's sake. It's also unlikely that their General Manager would be a woman, as it stands now.

Seem ridiculous? A little. But I find it ridiculous that piercings on men aren't gender appropriate for a 1950's atmosphere, yet everything else is. I personally will not be dining at Metro Silver Diner anymore unless that policy is changed, or they give a better reason for it. This whole incident also emphasizes the need for laws protecting gender identity and expression, so this kind of reasoning could never be used anywhere.

Happy dining everyone!
Robert Crofton

a note

2008-08-06T10:45:00.001-04:00

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