Prostitots - Kiddie Beauty Contest Kids Dressed Like Hookers

And we wonder why our culture sexualizes children?

StoryCorps Animation - 9/11 Stories

It is not often that a piece of animation will make you cry, but this StoryCorps interview set to animated images is very moving.

High School Students Confront Fred Phelps Cult - With Song!

This story made be feel great. I wish things had been this way when I was in high school. It is a sure sign things are getting better.

When the Kansas hate group known as the Westboro Baptist Church announced they would picket Bay Area schools and Jewish institutions, students at Gunn High School decided they could not sit by quietly. Learn more and get involved: http://www.niot.org .

Flash Mob for Trevor Project in LA

I love these things!  Great fun and get a lot of attention.  This one is for the Trevor Project and happened at Universal Studios CityWalk in Los Angeles.



And for more information about the teen suicide and the Trevor Project watch this informative video as well. Far too many LGB youth are at risk of suicide - 4 times more likely than their straight counterparts.

Paige Elliott Phoenix - Transgender Performer Has The X Factor - Australia

Thanks to Towleroad for finding this clip. Really cool video clip of Paige Elliott Phoenix on X Factor Australia. He comes out about his transition from female to male just prior to knocking the judges over with his great performance.

Happy Labor Day - Time to Thank Unions for What They Have Given America

Contrary to the crap the Tea Party will tell you we have lots to be thankful in this country for unions.  Here are a few examples:

1. Unions Gave Us The Weekend: Even the ultra-conservative Mises Institute notes that the relatively labor-free 1870, the average workweek for most Americans was 61 hours — almost double what most Americans work now. Yet in the late nineteenth century and the twentieth century, labor unions engaged in massive strikes in order to demand shorter workweeks so that Americans could be home with their loved ones instead of constantly toiling for their employers with no leisure time. By 1937, these labor actions created enough political momentum to pass the Fair Labor Standards Act, which helped create a federal framework for a shorter workweek that included room for leisure time.

2. Unions Helped End Child Labor: “Union organizing and child labor reform were often intertwined” in U.S. history, with organization’s like the “National Consumers’ League” and the National Child Labor Committee” working together in the early 20th century to ban child labor. The very first American Federation of Labor (AFL) national convention passed “a resolution calling on states to ban children under 14 from all gainful employment” in 1881, and soon after states across the country adopted similar recommendations, leading up to the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act which regulated child labor on the federal level for the first time.

3. Unions Won Widespread Employer-Based Health Coverage: “The rise of unions in the 1930′s and 1940′s led to the first great expansion of health care” for all Americans, as labor unions banded workers together to negotiate for health coverage plans from employers. In 1942, “the US set up a National War Labor Board. It had the power to set a cap on all wage increases. But it let employers circumvent the cap by offering “fringe benefits” – notably, health insurance.” By 1950, “half of all companies with fewer than 250 workers and two-thirds of all companies with more than 250 workers offered health insurance of one kind or another.”

4. Unions Spearheaded The Fight For The Family And Medical Leave Act: Labor unions like the AFL-CIO federation led the fight for this 1993 law, which “requires state agencies and private employers with more than 50 employees to provide up to 12 weeks of job-protected unpaid leave annually for workers to care for a newborn, newly adopted child, seriously ill family member or for the worker’s own illness.”

So next vacation or next weekend even, sau thank you to a union member for giving you the day off!