"Don't Say Gay" Bill

I found a video on CNN.com describing a bill that was passed in California by the Senate that is prompting that a similar bill be passed in Tennessee. The Bill is being referred to as the "Don't Say Gay" Bill and it states that: No public elementary or middle school shall provide any instruction or material that discusses sexual orientation other than heterosexuality.

I know that there has been a lot of debate about sex education in schools, but I thought that it was just about information such as whether or not birth control should be taught as opposed to abstinence. I didn't think that it would come down to not talking about homosexuality in schools!

Apparently this bill had already attempted to be passed in the House, but got denied so it is now being brought to the Senate. The reasoning behind why Senator Campfield thinks this should be passed? He says that parents should be the ones to decide when to talk to their children about this issue.

He also tries to say that this bill is neutral...it doesn't speak for or against homosexuality, but in a way doesn't it? If the bill is banning the topic from being even talked about in schools or the word homosexuality being mentioned...how is that not speaking against it?

Watch the video and decide for yourself!

What Gives Them the Right?

I turned 21 almost a year ago, so I have had my fair share of nights at a bar. I prefer to go to the bars close to campus because a majority of my friends hang out there. Last weekend however, my friends and I decided to venture out to the bars on Main Street to see if we could find a new crowd to hang out with.

(Image found on Google)

Our first stop is a bar that has a pretty good mixture of college students and also graduated college students who still hang out in Oshkosh. I was hoping that since the majority of the men there were older that they would be more respectful and mature I suppose...well I was wrong. One of my friends got hit on almost immediately by a man who was about 25 years old and he seemed like a nice guy until he started to ask her about what kind of things she liked to do in bed. I walked away and decided to head to the bar to grab a drink and I had not been standing there for more than two minutes when some drunk man walks up to me and decides that the best way to introduce himself to me is by grabbing my ass.

I really did not appreciate this, so I walked away and my friends and I decided to head to a different bar, hoping to not run into any more disgusting men like the ones we had encountered already. Once again I was wrong...we went to Mabel's which I consider to be a more low key bar where you can just sit, have a drink, and actually have a conversation because it's not too loud.

A man came up to the bar and sat down right next to me, introduced himself, and offered to buy me a drink. We had been talking for almost a half hour and he seemed normal and actually nice. Next thing you know, he pulls out his phone and shows me very graphic pictures that he had taken of a female friend of his at a strip club. I didn't know how to respond to this, so I told my friends that we were leaving.

After what seemed like the longest night ever, we went home and just vented to each other about how ridiculous the men we find in bars are. My question is, what gives them the right to act and talk like that to women and actually expect something from us? Why do men think that it is acceptable to grab women's body parts and have them find arousing? All I could think about after that night was...really?

State Criminal Codes

It was Social Justice Week a couple weeks ago here on campus and I went to an event titled: Heterosexism, Sexual Violence Between Women, and Secondary Victimization. The professor giving the talk described how the criminal justice system plays a role in deciding whether or not sexual violence cases get taken to court and how a victim is defined.

Now everything that I learned is by no means new, but it seemed that everyone in attendance at the speaker had no idea of certain states criminal codes, especially those dealing with rape and sexual violence so I thought I would share those!

(Image found on Google)

The reason that criminal codes dealing with rape were discussed was because anyone can experience sexual violence...whether it is between two males, two females, or a male and a female. However, in some states the code dealing with rape specifies sex in the description which would make it impossible for some victims to even take a case to court. For example, the following is Alabama's criminal code on rape in the first degree:

Rape in the first degree.

(a) A person commits the crime of rape in the first degree if:

(1) He or she engages in sexual intercourse with a member of the opposite sex by forcible compulsion; or

(2) He or she engages in sexual intercourse with a member of the opposite sex who is incapable of consent by reason of being physically helpless or mentally incapacitated; or

(3) He or she, being 16 years or older, engages in sexual intercourse with a member of the opposite sex who is less than 12 years old.

(Source) http://www.legislature.state.al.us/CodeofAlabama/1975/13A-6-61.htm

So in other words, in Alabama a man who is raped by another man would not be able to have a case because the code states that rape is between two people who are of the opposite sex. This is not just the case in AL, many other criminal codes on rape and sexual violence in different states say just about the same thing...some are even more explicit. This information gave me a lot to think about and I hope it will do the same for you!

Supreme Court Hears Wal-Mart Gender Bias Discrimination Case

I was talking to one of my friends the other day and he mentioned that there was a huge law suit dealing with gender discrimination in wages concerning women at Wal-Mart. I found a video on YouTube from PBS News Hour that I watched to learn more about what was going on with the courtroom and how the lawsuit was coming along. Apparently the first decision to be made wasn't whether or not to look into Wal-Mart's policies on discrimination and if there was actual wage discrimination against the women who worked for the company. Instead, they were deciding whether or not they were actually going to take on the case and advance it to the Supreme Court.

One woman brought forward her story and five other women joined her to file the lawsuit against Wal-Mart. They all felt that they should have been receiving raises and promotions to managerial positions before some of the men in the store because they had worked there longer and they were eligible for the pay increase. So now Wal-Mart could potentially lose billions of dollars if the case is picked up by the Supreme Court.

Apparently class action is the one way that helps these women actually have a case against Wal-Mart because if each woman was to try and file a worker's discrimination case on their own, it is very likely that it will be dismissed. Since there are so many different women who have come forward stating that they have experienced unfair pay at Wal-Mart, some people are saying that it is hard to pin just one policy that was being broken because these women are not all from the same store...they are from all over.

If you want to know more about this hearing...watch the video!

An article was published on www.nytimes.com titled When a Lawsuit is Too Big that describes the process of how the courts made their decision whether or not to take the case to the Supreme Court. Apparently it is too difficult for the courts to handle such a large and "improbable" claim, so it turns out that the case was settled for $3 billion. This just proves that we may not see any change in the wage gap, especially in companies such as Wal-Mart.

Here is the link to the article:

When A Lawsuit is Too Big