California Won’t Push Gay Conversion Therapy Ban

This is dismal. I find it hard to believe that gay conversion therapy even exists in the first place.

A California lawmaker said Friday he is ending his effort this year to pass a bill declaring gay conversion therapy a fraudulent practice.

Here’s more. 

Apple Blocks Gay Pride Watch Face In Russia

I wish I could say that things like this surprise me, but the truth is they don’t anymore. In fact, I expect them. Companies like Apple get away with anything they want these days, because they know they can.

The self-censoring of the gay pride watch face on the Apple Watch is a shocking discovery considering how big a supporter Apple is of LGBTQ rights. Yet iOS developer Guilherme Rambo found evidence that the pride Apple Watch face is “hardcoded to not show up if the paired iPhone is using the Russian locale.”

You can read this, here. 

The Briggs Initiative: Gay History

Being that it’s so hard to find any gay history anywhere, I jump at the chance to link to these things. I think this is an excellent example of the battles we’ve been fighting for years. And I also learned a few things I didn’t know before. 

In 1978, State Sen. John Briggs put an initiative on the ballot that would have mandated the firing of any gay or lesbian teacher in California public schools, or any teacher who supported gay rights (the term LGBT wasn’t used back then). Thanks to a Herculean effort by California grassroots activists — Harvey Milk, Cleve Jones, Sally Miller Gearhart, hundreds of others — Briggs’s Proposition 6, popularly known as the Briggs Initiative, was resoundingly defeated, by more than a million votes. It was the first time voters had rejected an antigay measure.

Here’s the link to this one. I find it interesting to note that one of the people who helped defeat the Briggs Initiative was former President Ronald Reagan. He actually published something in the newspaper that denounced the measure. It’s a fascinating article. You should check it out.