Quickies: No ‘Gay Gene’, Anti-LGBT Violence Protests, National Coming Out Day

• “No, Scientists Have Not Found the ‘Gay Gene’” – “What we have is an underpowered fishing expedition that used inappropriate statistics and that snagged results which may be false positives. ” The researchers used a tiny sample sized and tested a huge variable set. Using those methods, they were bound to come up with some sort of correlation. We have no reason to believe the weak correlation they found was anything more than random chance.
• Philadelphia Trans Marchers Protest Murder – “The 5th Annual Philly Trans March took place Saturday afternoon at Thomas Paine Plaza, less than a week after Kiesha Jenkins, a 22-year-old transgender woman, was killed by a group of men in Philadelphia.” At this point, police have no leads, and are not yet calling the murder a hate crime.
• LGBT Activists Protest Dallas Hate Crimes – Dallas LGBT activists held a rally yesterday, on National Coming Out Day, to protest a wave of attacks that have recently swept the Oak Lawn gayborhood.
• “They Came Out This Year” – In recognition of National Coming Out day, the Advocate profiles celebrities who came out as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender this year.
• “This Is What It’s Like Coming Out When You’re Disabled” – “’In day-to-day life,’ he says, ‘bisexuality is invisible, so one side of my identity is invisible – although often hyper-sexualised – and on the other side there is this very visible physical disability, but disabled people are desexualised.’”
• StoryCorps Animated: “The Saint of Dry Creek” – “Patrick Haggerty grew up in the 1950s the son of a dairy farmer in rural Dry Creek, Washington. As a teenager, he began to realize he was gay—something he thought he was doing a good job of hiding from others. One day after performing at a high school assembly, his father Charles offered his son some advice that showed Patrick he knew his son better than he ever realized.”
• After Vatican Rejected France’s Gay Ambassador, France Goes Without – France will go without an ambassador to Vatican City rather than chose a replacement for Laurent Stefanini, a practicing Catholic who the Vatican refused to recognize simply because of his sexual orientation.
• “Blue is the Warmest Colour” Actress calls film “Male Fantasy” – “Actress Léa Seydoux has continued to vent about her ‘awful’ experience filming lesbian drama Blue is the Warmest Colour.”
• Malaysia Upholds Crossdressing Ban, Criminalizing Trans Women – Malaysia, which is a majority Muslim country, does not recognize transgender women as women and has jailed them for wearing their own clothes. Also illegal in Malaysia: sodomy and oral sex between same and opposite sex partners.

Featured image via The Advocate