An Attack on Abortion Rights is an Attack on Queers
May your memory be a blessing, Sondheim | #TC116
Welcome to Third Cultured, a newsletter covering all things cannabis, queer, and world politics from Kyle Borland. My goal is to highlight all the ways today is different (and not so) from yesterday.
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This edition:
Essay/Opinion
Links, Quotes & Things
Essay/Opinion
When SCOTUS guts Roe v Wade, I don’t know how much longer the Union can hold.
Conservatives had their test run with 2010’s Citizens United v. FEC – confirming corporations as equal to a person – and then solidified their tactics when gutting the Voting Rights Act in 2013’s Shelby v Holder. Now, with the solid 6-3 conservative majority, the Court is prepared to do the same to women’s reproductive rights.
Only a willful fool couldn’t see that the insatiable beast of Christian Fascism will target LGBTQ+ rights next, chipping away at marriage and nondiscrimination with carveouts for religious liberty. Unfortunately, there are groups of people determined to tear down down any progress Black people, women, and queer folks have won for themselves in this nation built for property-owning, cis, straight, white men.
I’m lucky enough to afford San Francisco and to have a career that can keep me safely within Blue State metropolises but that doesn’t change the tens of millions of people who will live in a regressive society with no end in sight. A swath of 25-30 states dedicated to convincing themselves they live on a small white island rather than a continent of 1.1 billion people. That delusion is an infection that makes it so even in “safe” places like California, we aren’t safe from the violent forces rising all over the country and world that wish to reinstate strict traditionalism onto every person’s life.
These people even think teaching about Dr. King is “critical race theory.”
There’s no reasoning with people who live in a reality that’s facts change by the day.
Here’s the reality: Alabama is third nationally in infant mortality. We have the highest child poverty rate in America. We have the second highest maternal mortality rate, with our mothers dying at a rate more than twice the national average. We rank fifth in gun deaths per capita. We rank second in COVID deaths per capita. And we rank ninth in prison deaths.
Last year, more Alabamians died than were born. First time that’s ever happened.
So what lives are we standing for, exactly?
Thanks for reading, and Roll Tide.
Kyle (@kgborland)
Links, Quotes & Things
6 LGBTQIA-Friendly Small Towns You Need to Visit (thrillist)
"A Strong Left Messaging Department": The Necessity of Solidarity In Progressive Media (The Flashpoint)
Amy Schneider has made ‘Jeopardy!’ history — and helped the show find calm after chaos (The Washington Post)
“As the writer Valentine Hooven notes, ‘For much of the fifties . . . physique magazines were not just an aspect of gay culture; they virtually were gay culture.’”
– Macho Macho Men: The queer history of pumping iron (The Baffler)
Australia: LGBTQ advocates blast religious discrimination bill (BBC)
Botswana appeals court upholds ruling that decriminalised gay sex (Reuters)
Canada's House of Commons approves bill to ban LGBT conversion therapy (Reuters)
Chile lawmakers set to approve same-sex marriage bill (France24)
For the same amount of money, investing in healthcare creates twice as many jobs as the military (Speaking Security)
From Zoom latkes to a sold-out drag show: How the queer Jewish community is celebrating its second pandemic Hanukkah (Toronto Star)
Google erases part of LGBTQ+ community in new online glossary project (LA Blade)
Hungary parliament clears way for government's LGBT referendum as election nears (Reuters)
I have never mourned a famous person’s death quite like Stephen Sondheim. I don’t think I processed just how much of his work had filled in the darkest holes of my life. Here are some of my favorite tributes from the past week:
10 Stephen Sondheim songs we'll never stop listening to (NPR)
6 by Sondheim Is One of the Best Films About the Artistic Process I’ve Seen (Vulture)
A Song All By Himself (Forever Wars)
Stephen Sondheim made art that made life more real (Washington Post)
Stephen Sondheim, Titan of the American Musical, Is Dead at 91 (NYTimes)
There will never be another Stephen Sondheim (Washington Post)
Inflation exposed: The REAL reason prices are going up (Popular Information)
Many Older Queer Adults Face Abuse Yet Rarely Report It, Study Says (Advocate)
Missouri school returning LGBTQ books to shelves (AP)
PA commissioners called LGBTQ gathering a ‘hate group’ and denied funds to library where it was to meet. So citizens stepped in. (Washington Post)
Pokémon and the First Wave of Digital Nostalgia (The New Yorker)
Pokémon has never really gone away. Nintendo has maintained a steady stream of re-releases, including, in November, a version of Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, from 2006. But the original games, with their telegraphic pixel art, are right on time for what the writer Carl Wilson once called the “20-year cycle of resuscitation” of popular culture—a generational revival of bygone styles and ideas. By that calculation, we have reached the first wave of nostalgia for early digital life, a longing for our first digital worlds, onscreen spaces in which we could act, create, and communicate.
RNC pushes back against call for chair's resignation over LGBT outreach (The Hill)
Russian Interior Ministry launches probe into Netflix’s ‘LGBTQ’ content (LA Blade)
Seeing the Blob Through Its Own Eyes (Foreign Exchanges)
Since 2005, about 2,200 local newspapers across America have closed. Here are some of the stories in danger of being lost — as told by local journalists. (The Washington Post)
Sotomayor Says Abortion Case Imperils LGBTQ Rights (Bloomberg)
The American Prison System’s War on Reading (Protean)
‘The Schools Clearly Aren’t in Control’: Inside College Football’s Wild Week (SI)
The U.S. economy is booming. (Letters from an American)
The Year of the Black Queer Revolution (Rolling Stone)
This Year’s Forbes '30 Under 30' List Is Full of Queer Excellence (Out)
What does the word “queer” mean to you? The Internet sounds off… (Queerty)
Why workers are quitting their jobs, after the trauma of the pandemic (American Prospect)
Years of Delays, Billions in Overruns: The Dismal History of Big Infrastructure (NYTimes)
