Delicious LiveJournal Links for 1-8-2009

[andrewducker]

• US porn barons appeal for $5bn bailout to boost limp industry
  Nice bit of attention-grabbing
  (tags: usa economics marketing porn)
• Rejecting Homosexual Children Results in Disastrous Health Outcomes
  The odds ratios reported indicate that a homosexual youth experiencing high levels of rejection by family have a risk of attempting suicide as much as 8 times more than those experiencing little or no rejection by family. Looking at the raw numbers, this means as many as 67 percent of study subjects in the high rejection group had attempted suicide by age 25! Illicit drug use, substance abuse disorders, and risky sexual behaviors are also similarly increased in this group. The apparent effect of family rejection is devastating.
  (tags: homosexuality children parenting)

Comments

[communicator.livejournal.com]

I am glad that the finding on rejection has been confirmed and communicated, though it's not exactly a shock revelation. I think there is a similar effect on heterosexual girls, particularly but not exclusively in religious communities, because they too can be rejected and condemned for their sexuality. The difference is that unlike homosexual youngsters there is an 'acceptable' route they can take (see Bristol Palin and her new baby). But I think for many girls, being married off as a teenage mum would be as painful as being forced into the closet.

[cdave]

It's after the twelfth night. Take off that hat.

[andrewducker]

Can't make me :->

[cdave]

Wikipidea says that it's considered bad luck in some cultures.

Which is better than what someone else told me last year.

They said that since I'd left a card up past twelfth night, I had to leave it up all year. Which I did. Finally took it down last week :)

[andrewducker]

If the wind changes your face will stick like that!

This means war.

[cdave]

Weather must have been changeable where you grew up.

Re: This means war.

[andrewducker]

I have to grow up now?

Re: This means war.

[cdave]

Well you'd better stop growing outwards.

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

Though the porn barons appeal for $5 billion is attention grabbing, I do think there's a serious point to be made about the bailouts to US auto manufacturers when they're making a product that consumers don't particularly want and when much of their business isn't even about cars any more. Why should one industry be more worthy of another of subsidy, when neither makes a genuinely essential product? It's all about pork barrel politics as far as I can see.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

It's all about money eventually. If say Ford went bust, they would lay off tens of thousands of staff, who would then have to claim benefits at a massive cost to the government. There is an argument that says it is better for the government to give Ford a far smaller sum of money to keep employing them.

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

Although this will only push the same problems into the future unless Ford - or whoever - and the population as a whole are encouraged to think differently about their dependence on the car and on oil. Which, as it would be politically undesirable, will just get avoided and avoided until eventually the shit hits the fan.

Making these staff unemployed might encourage them to retrain, to do things that there's a rising demand for, and thus be better in the long run.

Of course, in the long run we are all dead, but our children and grandchildren will still be picking up the tab...

[andrewducker]

I did read an interesting article recently saying that the big car manufacturers were fairly fucked due to the labour contracts they had left over from the 60s/70s - and that in three/four years enough of the old retirees would have died to allow them to become profitable again.

[laserboy.livejournal.com]

The research findings are sadly not surprising at all. I've heard more than a few horror stories from gay male friends and, while I cannot say my own experience was fun, I was so much better off than many others.

You may be interested in the collection of interviews with gay men which I've been reading: some positive, others very bleak.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

I don't want to jump all over your point here because I don't think that any stories about gay men's experiences should be left unheard, ever, it's all good. But it does continue to sadden me that there's rarely the same focus and very little of similar types of literature for gay women - somehow because there's a perception that our experiences are less horrific or high-impact (which may or may not be true depending on how you look at it) they aren't worth investigating or writing about or dwelling on. This is true not just of literature but also most academic, psychological, and genetic studies. It worries and irritates me, but I'm not sure there's anything I personally can do about it without altering course a little..

[laserboy.livejournal.com]

To be honest I didn't want to comment about the female side of things because I don't have any real experience of that and didn't want to come across as arrogant. However I've talked about growing up with lots of gay men and I was shocked by some of the things that have happened to people. That's not intended to take anything away from homosexual women's experiences; it's just a comment on what various male friends have told me personally.

The book was very hard to track down and I lucked into it by chance on the trip to London - it's the only book of that type I'm aware of too; specifically gay men in the midwest.

Sadly, from what I can tell, most books about gay experiences/lives are porn or near as much. I guess sex sells.

[pizza.maircrosoft.com (from livejournal.com)]

what book is it, please?

No problem.

[laserboy.livejournal.com]

"Farm Boys: Lives of Gay Men from the Rural Midwest" by Will Fellows. ISBN-10: 0299150844