Today In Gay News

Just thought I would mention a few interesting tidbits from todays news.

Ohio state senator Robert Hagan proposed a bill to prevent Republicans from adopting. It is a tounge in cheek bill poking fun at the Republican bill to prevent gays from adopting. Three cheers for Robert Hagan!

There are a lot of lunatic lawmakers in Utah, but not all of them.
Utah legislators passed a bill that would ban gay-straight alliances in schools but Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. said he may veto the legislation.

Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson gave an executive order to provide benefits to the partners of gay city employees. The city council proposed a different version which the mayor says he will veto. The Utah house has passed a measure to ban cities & counties from using tax dollars from being used to fund benefits for anyone except traditional families.

Question for the day: What is a traditional family?

Gain Weight and be Straight

Wayne Besen of Southern Voice

http://www.southernvoice.com/blog/index.cfm?type=blog&start=2/7/06&end=2/25/06#5039

quotes John Paulk, the poster boy for the "ex-gay" movement as saying

"My weight started to increase, and I found little desire to keep on a strict diet in order to stay fashionably slim. My very appearance was changing; I was looking less and less gay. And I was perfectly happy about it."

I certainly didn't know that being chubby made one straight or that being skinny made one gay.

I did a google search on John Paulk and it seems that the ex-gay sites continue to list him as an ex-gay success story even though he as left the Love Won Out program and Focus on the Family after having been caught cruising at a gay bar.

I am sure that with the nature of the internet there are lots of sites that haven't been corrected when information was wrong, but I am quite amazed that FOTF would continue to lift up John Paulk and to put in their article that he resigned from FOTF to spend more time with his family.

Ice, Groceries & The South.

Friday, the forecast called for freezing rain and sleet with some snow for all weekend.

There is this Southern phenomenon of everyone needs to go to the grocery store and buy EVERYTHING when we have snow or ice forecasted. You don't have to need anything to do this, but with forecasted ice you go and spend your last penny on stuff.

At our house, we have 2 refrigerators both freezers are almost full and we have turned the hall closet into a pantry which is almost full. We could easily go for 2 weeks without going to the grocery store.

Friday after work, mom wanted me to take her to Kroger to fill her prescription. The prescription part is legitimate. We get to the parking lot and I let her out at the door and park in the only open spot about a 1/4 mile from the door. I find her pushing her cart in the vegetable department. The people are lined up at the registers almost all the way to the back of the store.

There is almost no bread in the store. The vegetable department is very low. In the Meats there is no ground beef or chicken. There is a limited smattering of steaks & pork. No whole milk but a little bit of 2% and plenty of skim milk. I am sure those were all gone when the 9-5 people showed up.

Now filling Mom's prescription only took a few minutes, but then we had to find a checkout for the 10 things she bought. We finally found a U-Scan line that only had about 40 people in it. I kept asking her if she was sure she really needed those 10 things. She swore that she did. When we got home she steadily complained that it took way too long at the grocery store.

Now of all the stuff that we bought at the store on Friday, the only thing we ate over the weekend was eggs & grapes. We could have functioned fine without eggs & grapes for 2 days. I wonder how many people have over full fridges, pantries & bellys from being snowed in for 2 days.

Wal-Mart & every day low prices

I avoid shopping at Wal-Mart for several reasons. I am not fond of fighting the traffic in the parking lot and don't care for poor service and long lines. I mostly don't shop at Wal-Mart because I don't like their labor practices and believe that they have lowered the bar for workers across the nation.

Because I avoid Wal-Mart, I do 99% of my shopping elsewhere and am quite price concious. I do take my Mom there 4 or 5 times a year and ocassionally purchase something else. Yesterday when I took her I did some price checking of my own.

I found that I knew someplace that had better prices for almost everything.
I didn't want to make an extra trip to the grocery store just for a loaf of bread. The brand of whole wheat bread I usually buy was $2.00 at Wal-Mart. I usually pay anywhere from $1.09 to 1.89 depending on whether it is on sale or not. Candy Bars were 48 cents +tax = 52 cents, in the vending machine at work they are 50 cents tax included. Most of the soaps & shampoos were a few cents more than at Family Dollar or Dollar General.

If you are a smoker you sure don't want to shop at Wal-Mart! Cigarettes there were about 20% higher than the local convenience store and 40% higher than the tobacco store.

You sure don't want to buy meat from Wal-Mart, thry union busted their meat cutters and no longer have butchers in the stores. With no butcher in the store, their meat is not as fresh. Furthermore, the meat they sell is USDA select which is one grade below the USDA choice which is what most grocery stores sell.

Now I keep hearing people say that they cannot afford to shop elsewhere.... I don't understand this. If they are spending more on these things or getting significantly lower quality of goods. I fear that there are a lot of brainwashed people out there.

Why ConRadical?
A. my name is Conrad
B. I am radical
C. way back when, the kids at church camp called me "Conradical"

I found the title "Rad's gay Methodist blog" to be too limiting and thus rarely made any posts. I will still post on it relative to Methodist & some gay issues and ideas but I think that I will have a lot more to say here where I am not so limited by religion & sexuality<