Utopia High

Well, for this weekend's short blogging (cause I have a comprehensive exam next week and am studying up a storm) I wanted to mention a post by Berube who is now guest blogging at Pandagon. Bam. In this post he talks about prenatal testing etc. One of the things I noticed, however, was how much the commenters were discussing Down's Syndrom. My uncle has Downs, and is awesome, so I took special notice of MsKate's post, where she mentioned that there was a prom queen with down's. One google search later and I found this article which shows the very best of public education in a K-12 setting that seems to be increasingly Lord of the Flies and babysitting all in one. I give you Utopia High.

To summarize: Prom king is gay and Prom Queen has Down's. And they got that way, not in some lame ressentiment ala Carrie, but because their peers thought they were great people! Talking with Miss Kitten earlier about this led us to wonder about something like this being tokenism or contributing to it. Nonetheless, better that there is at least one shining example of our Brave New World than worry about it only being one example. Kudos to Murrieta Valley High School.

Is the gay mecca of the North as gay friendly as we think?

There was an article in the cbc that brought to light a report about homophobia still being present in Quebec. It is kind of a no-brainer, because homophobia still exists everywhere. But, it is still telling that in "San-Francisco North" we have a current of homophobia. I know this because a close friend of mine was gay bashed near Berri-Uqam metro last year. Another gay friend is experiencing domestic problems because his roomates got a another roomate, a "muslim" who declared literally won't speak to him or touch him. Cause he's gay. It is sad that the ignorant can hide behind the smokescreen of their religion to justify their bigotry. Since the other roommates feel that my friend should be more understanding about this homophobe's beliefs, my friend is moving out. For the second time this year. What also gets me is that this bigot decided to move into a place with a gay person, in a gay neighborhood, in a gay city--and the heteros stood by him. So lame.

So yeah, homophobia is well and alive even in the most accepting places. Sad isn't it?