Israel’s version of Dancing with the Stars is to feature a same-sex couple for the very first time in the programme’s history, this weekend.

 TV presenter and sports journalist Gili Shem Tov will be partnered with professional dancer Dorit Milman when the show’s sixth season premieres on Channel 2 in Israel on 1 November.
 
Shem Tov said: “I have realized that dance is about co-ordination and energy between two people, whether female or male. The challenge to dance with a woman in a public contest interested me because it’s unique and has never been done before.

“Because I share my life with a woman and have a family with her, to me this is the most natural thing to do.”
 
The couple will share the traditional male role of leading the dances.
 
Twelve celebrities will battle it out on the dance floor until the end of January 2011 when the winner will be selected by public vote.
 
Other celebrities taking part include Israel’s boxing champ Merhav Mohar, footballer Itzik Zohar, actor Aki Avni and singer and actress Sharon Haziz.
 
Producer of Dancing with the Stars in Israel, Asaaf Gil, said: “I’m extremely proud to have a same sex couple in our new season of dancing with the stars. Although this was initiated by the celebrity itself; I hope many other territories will follow.”

The hit BBC entertainment format has been licensed to more than 35 territories since its creation in 2003. The most recent countries to sign up to the glamorous entertainment format are Vietnam and Indonesia.
 
Dancing with the Stars was named as the world’s most successful reality TV format by the Guinness Book of World Records 2010.

Over the past two days, we have been treated to new evidence about the ever-mounting costs of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Yesterday, as reported in the Washington Post, the Palm Center released new Pentagon data which demonstrated the heavy burden that “don’t ask, don’t tell” places on women. What does this mean? It means a failed policy continues to fail us.

Although women comprise only 14% of the Army, the new data show that lesbians received 48% of the Army’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” discharges last year. In the Marines, women comprise just 6% of the force, but received 23% of discharges under the policy. In the Air Force, women comprise 20% of the service but received 51% of “don’t ask, don’t tell” discharges last year. Women comprise 14% of the Navy but received 27% of the discharges.

The new data also show that the military continued to fire mission-critical specialists for being gay last year, including 8 linguists, 20 infantrymen, 16 medical aides, 7 combat engineers, 6 missile artillery operating crew members, and one member of the Special Forces, among others. This pattern is consistent with a long-term trend of firing badly-needed talent. A 2005 GAO Reportfound that the military fired 757 mission-critical specialists, including 322 linguists, in the first decade of “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

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The American Bar Association on Tuesday unequivocally backed civil marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples.

In a resolution adopted less than one week after a federal judge in San Francisco struck down California’s Proposition 8 as unconstitutional, the group acknowledges that same-sex couples “are only seeking to participate in an equal basis in a foundational institution of our civil life,” former ABA president Tommy Wells told the organization’s house of delegates. “They simply want to share in the legal blessings that we give to married couples. It can only strengthen marriage.”

Text of the ABA resolution is as follows:

“RESOLVED, That the American Bar Association urges state, territorial, and tribal governments to eliminate all of their legal barriers to civil marriage between two persons of the same sex who are otherwise eligible to marry.”

If marriage is simply about legal rights, and therefore separate/equal domestic partnerships are sufficient, try this;

Stop telling people you’re married to your opposite-sex spouse. Don’t ever use the word married. Tell them you’re partnered. Don’t talk about your wedding day, talk about your commitment ceremony. Don’t invite people to your 40th wedding anniversary, invite them to your 40th civil union anniversary. Don’t call her your wife, call her your civil partner. Don’t call him your husband, call him your legal life partner. You’ll have to scrap your plans for ‘Loving Daughter, Wife, Mother’ on your headstone, you’ll have to go for ‘Loving Daughter, Partner, Mother’. Get ready for people to verbally assault you if you refer to your partnership as a marriage, when it legally isn’t. Be prepared to know that your relationship is looked down on every moment of every day. Be prepared to have that sitting in your mind when you’re lying in your spouse’s arms on a Sunday morning. Know that it will hurt. Be ready for people to dismiss how much it hurts.

I mean you’ve got all the legal rights, yeah? That’s all that matters, isn’t it?

PostSecret

Philip Spooner, veteran, speaks. www.EqualityMaine.org - Testimony given for and against Maine’s marriage equality bill on April 22, 2009. Nearly 4,000 people attended the hearing, with marriage equality supporters out-numbering the opposition 4 to 1. The son he mentions is deceased.

The freedom to love was still quashed, but I cannot help thinking if this video had been used as the official campaign advert, it would have simultaneously broken hearts and changed minds. Your time will come, Maine.

Regardless of how many homosexuals were killed in the holocaust (the number is debated), the rates of their survival were the lowest of prisioners.

“With regard to the homosexuals, there were many reports of how the SS deliberately treated them brutally and how the other prisoners looked down upon them.”

Can you imagine it? You’re in a concentration camp, and other prisoners treat you badly, too?

“There is a tendency of the literature to associate the pink triangle with the criminal green. The few surviving pink-triangle wearers were treated similarly by state and society after 1945, when cautious attempts toward compensation were finally and definitely rejected. Interviews with such survivors revealed that for many years they never told anyone they had been in a concentration camp.”

TRUTH re: fake prom fiasco.

I bet it was the “christian thing to do”.