Muhammad Ali has walked on.

It’s a sad day. Growing up, Muhammad Ali was one of my first windows into thinking outside the white, Catholic box I had been stuffed in, and was being raised in. I owe him a great deal of thanks.

Statement from President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama on the Passing of Muhammad Ali.

Muhammad Ali was The Greatest. Period. If you just asked him, he’d tell you. He’d tell you he was the double greatest; that he’d “handcuffed lightning, thrown thunder into jail.”

But what made The Champ the greatest – what truly separated him from everyone else – is that everyone else would tell you pretty much the same thing.

Like everyone else on the planet, Michelle and I mourn his passing. But we’re also grateful to God for how fortunate we are to have known him, if just for a while; for how fortunate we all are that The Greatest chose to grace our time.

In my private study, just off the Oval Office, I keep a pair of his gloves on display, just under that iconic photograph of him – the young champ, just 22 years old, roaring like a lion over a fallen Sonny Liston. I was too young when it was taken to understand who he was – still Cassius Clay, already an Olympic Gold Medal winner, yet to set out on a spiritual journey that would lead him to his Muslim faith, exile him at the peak of his power, and set the stage for his return to greatness with a name as familiar to the downtrodden in the slums of Southeast Asia and the villages of Africa as it was to cheering crowds in Madison Square Garden.

“I am America,” he once declared. “I am the part you won’t recognize. But get used to me – black, confident, cocky; my name, not yours; my religion, not yours; my goals, my own. Get used to me.”

That’s the Ali I came to know as I came of age – not just as skilled a poet on the mic as he was a fighter in the ring, but a man who fought for what was right. A man who fought for us. He stood with King and Mandela; stood up when it was hard; spoke out when others wouldn’t. His fight outside the ring would cost him his title and his public standing. It would earn him enemies on the left and the right, make him reviled, and nearly send him to jail. But Ali stood his ground. And his victory helped us get used to the America we recognize today.

He wasn’t perfect, of course. For all his magic in the ring, he could be careless with his words, and full of contradictions as his faith evolved. But his wonderful, infectious, even innocent spirit ultimately won him more fans than foes – maybe because in him, we hoped to see something of ourselves. Later, as his physical powers ebbed, he became an even more powerful force for peace and reconciliation around the world. We saw a man who said he was so mean he’d make medicine sick reveal a soft spot, visiting children with illness and disability around the world, telling them they, too, could become the greatest. We watched a hero light a torch, and fight his greatest fight of all on the world stage once again; a battle against the disease that ravaged his body, but couldn’t take the spark from his eyes.

Muhammad Ali shook up the world. And the world is better for it. We are all better for it. Michelle and I send our deepest condolences to his family, and we pray that the greatest fighter of them all finally rests in peace.

The Big Gay Hindu Wedding

Rishi Agarwal and Daniel Langdon, right, pictured here with Agarwal’s parents, Vijay and Sushma. Agarwal’s parents have come a long way since Rishi came out in 2004 and hope sharing their story can help other South Asian parents who may be struggling with supporting their LGBTQ children. (Vince Talotta / Toronto Star)

Rishi Agarwal’s story is nothing especially new, but his happy ending is one that’s spreading a message of tolerance and acceptance within a community that desperately needs it.

Agarwal was raised in a devout Hindu home in suburban Toronto by his parents Vijay and Sushma, who both emigrated there from India over 30 years ago. When Rishi came out to them in 2004, they were initially shocked and devastated.

But after opening themselves up and doing some research, the parents changed their opinion.

“There is a cultural kind of a stigma,” Vijay told The Toronto Star. “This is strictly our baggage, what we bring from India,” said Rishi’s mother Sushma. When their son asked them if he should move out of the house after coming out of the closet, they told him absolutely not, and that they still loved him.

Even though his parents’ mother country still frowns heavily on homosexuality—it is illegal to be gay in India and the topic is considered shameful in traditional Indian families—Vijay and Sushma not only learned to embrace their gay son, but also threw him a classically opulent Indian wedding when he decided to marry his boyfriend, Daniel.

Vijay told The Star of the struggle they faced in trying to make the wedding happen, in all its traditional pomp and circumstance. He says he was turned down by seven priests before finding one who would perform the ceremony. “They initially said yes,” he says, “and as soon as they found out that it was a gay wedding, they turned away.”

In spite of this, the wedding was a huge and beautiful bash, replete with all the colorful rituals: matching turbans, the grooms circling a sacred fire, exchanging flower garlands, and getting matching henna tattoos of each other’s initials.

[…]

Now, the Agarwal family is publicizing its story. They have spearheaded their chapter of PFLAG outside of Toronto, which specifically targets South Asian parents of gay children, and Sushma has even written a book about her experience, called Loving My Gay Child: A Mother’s Journey to Acceptance.

Agarwal and Langdon are cheered after exchanging flower garlands at their wedding. “The purpose of that is to welcome each other into each other’s lives,” said Agarwal. “The second that garland has been placed, it’s kind of like the point of no return.” (Photos by Channa Photography)

Via Out, The Star, and Metro.

Eliminating Conflict by Design.

Alamo Drafthouse founder Tim League shared a potential design for a gender-neutral restroom that the theater chain hopes to build at its new location. (Courtesy of Alamo Drafthouse)

While activists and officials on both sides of the debate are lawyering up, the founder of a popular Austin movie-theater chain has unveiled plans for his business to sidestep the debate altogether, before it’s had a chance to fully take root in Texas.

The idea, outlined on Facebook by Alamo Drafthouse Cinema founder Tim League, is to design a restroom that is “comfortable for all genders.”

“Instead of taking sides on whether or not sexual predators will be invading the restrooms of our stores or public schools, we’ve been thinking about what an inclusive commercial gender-neutral restroom design might look like so that these challenges are not even part of the dialogue,” League’s post says. “The consensus was that we’d have a room with ‘standing’ toilets (heck, we’re even looking at those all-gender urinals) and individual rooms with sinks, mirrors and trash cans in each room, our ‘seated’ toilet area.”

“I don’t want to have any ‘men’ or ‘women’ signs in the building,” the post adds.

[…]

The restroom would be placed in the next Alamo Drafthouse location, League said, noting that he has been working with an architect.

His Facebook post includes a drawing of the evolving design that he hopes will meet city code.

What exactly a gender-neutral urinal looks like remains an open question, even for those involved in designing one.

“It’s new territory,” Alamo Drafthouse architect Richard Weiss told NBC affiliate KXAN. “It’s something we’re looking into. It’s essentially a urinal that has a throat that comes out, it’s a deeper stall.”

“The ultimate goal,” he added, “is that everybody should be able to do what they want to do where they want to do it.”

[…]

In a subsequent Facebook post, League clarified his position on transgender people and restrooms.

“My intent on the previous post was to discuss architectural design details for the proposed bathroom,” he wrote.

But, he added, he does not consider himself a neutral voice on the issue. Instead, he’s taken a side.

“My side is that bigotry and the associated violence and/or shaming stemming from your choice of stall is unacceptable,” he wrote. “But changing that mindset is likely going to take a long time. My hope is that by changing the design of restrooms we can in the meantime avoid some potential violence.”

He told KXAN that he was moved to take action by stories of young people becoming targets of violence.

“It’s the stories you hear of transgender kids getting beat up in high school bathrooms,” League said. “That’s a real problem and like I say, you can’t necessarily change everybody’s mind immediately on these issues, but you can hopefully by design eliminate conflict.”

Full Story Here. And a Way to Go! to Tim League, for being thoughtful, for listening, for caring, and for seeking a solution.

The religion of fundamental social justice…

Student activists during a nationwide “Hands up, walk out” protest at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.
Photo: Reuters/Adrees Latif.

Another day, another screed. This one certainly gave me a good laugh, as it seems I now have a religion. I guess we SJWs are upsetting everyone these days. Tsk. Be sure to put your melodrama meters away, critical levels here, of the “I’m a libertarian, of course I’m right!” kind.

NEW YORK — There’s a new religion exploding on the campuses of American universities and colleges, says Thomas Cooley professor of ethical leadership at New York University, Jonathan Haidt. And if it isn’t stopped, it might just be better to shut them all down in the next 10 or 20 years.

The religion of fundamental social justice sweeping across college campuses is so alarming, intense, and dripping with such extreme liberal fundamentalism, says Haidt, it has created an existential crisis for American academia while punishing heretics with public shame.

“There is an extremely intense, fundamental social justice religion that’s taking over, not all students, but a very strong [space] of it, at all our colleges and universities. They are prosecuting blasphemy and this is where we are,” Haidt warned an audience about the religion at a lecture billed “The American University’s New Assault on Free Speech,” organized by the Manhattan Institute in New York City this week.

[…]

When social issues like racism or sexism are treated as sacred, he says, it becomes difficult to have honest conversations about them.

“So if that’s the basic psychology and as religion itself has been retreating and kids are raised in a more secular environment, then what takes the place of that? There are lots of sacred spaces. Fighting racism, a very, very good thing to do, but when you come to sacred principles, sacred, this means no tradeoffs,” Haidt said.

“There is no nuance, you cannot trade off any other goods with it. So if you organize around fighting racism, fighting homophobia, fighting sexism, again all good things, but when they become sacred, when they become essentially objects of worship, fundamentalist religion, then when someone comes to class, someone comes to your campus, and they say the rape culture is exaggerated, they have committed blasphemy,” he said.

This religion of fundamental social justice is so frightening, even liberals are worried about it. But they aren’t speaking up, says Haidt, who describes himself as a libertarian.

“The great majority of people are really alarmed by what’s happening. There is a small group on campus of illiberal people. The illiberal left against the liberal left. The liberal left is uncomfortable but has so far been silent,” Haidt said. It is this illiberalism on campus that has given rise to groups such as Black Lives Matter where “nobody can say no to them.”

[…]

Haidt, however, doesn’t think life will continue down this road for American academia pointing to a growing counterculture movement involving projects such as the Heterodox Academy. […] So we are doing all these projects to use market forces to swamp the illiberals and basically take advantage of people’s disgust with the current situation.”

The two page screed is here.

Second Skin

Second Skin (2015), Esmay Wagemans. All images courtesy to the artist.

Instagram itself is quite clear about it: nudity is in no way allowed. Yet there’s still a lot of discussion going around this policy. A question that often arises, for example, is: Why are male nipples allowed while female ones aren’t?’ Last year, the #freethennipple movement unexpectedly took surface. Woman from all around the globe took to Instagram and Facebook, and shared selfies of their nude bodies. They still got censored, but the motivation was clear. Advocates of the movement accused the Western world in general (and the platform itself) of a sexist double-standard. Instagram subsequently defended their policy by stating they wanted their platform to be suited for all age groups (the app has a 12+ rating in the App Store). And children, so it seems—according to their general opinion—shouldn’t see any female nipples.

If it’s up to Esmay Wagemans, a fourth year at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam, this will soon change. For her project Second Skin, she worked out a way to bypass Instagram’s nudity censorship. By using a self-developed special kind of latex, she actually managed to show her nipples without showing any skin.

I spoke to Wagemans about the creation of Second Skin, how people reacted on it, and why she thinks it’s important to revolt against any patronizing platform.

[…]

Why do you think it’s important to put your breasts on Instagram?

To me, Instagram is a very important platform to share my work as an artist. And I’m not going to change the essence of my work just because it would be too shocking for other people, or because it wouldn’t fit the social norms. Sure, I get that pornographic images shouldn’t be on it, but then again Instagram should focus on creating a different, less sexist and more refined nudity and censorship policy. Apart from all of this though, I do think Instagram’s strict nudity policy is sustaining the idea of a woman’s body as a sexual object.

How do you mean, “sustaining the idea of a female body as sexual object?” Don’t you think it’s a good thing children are restricted from seeing naked breasts?

I myself don’t think nudity should be such a taboo, because it feeds objectification. Look, if you’re not portraying breasts in an erotic or pornographic way, I think everyone should be able to see them, even children. By withholding those kinds of “normal” nudes from young teenagers, you’re still presenting the female body as something sexual. That’s simply not beneficial for anyone. Within that abstinence, the idea of the body starts being seen as something separate from the woman. It’s right there, where the objectification starts.

Satire is Dead

Who is going to profit?

Targeted Individuals II

Exodus of ob-gyns from Texas

New on OnlySky: The end of the road for AI

Invasive but Cute

Shellshocked

I Guess I Use Social Media After All

International Mens' Day?

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