I had so much fun writing about a breaking news story in my last column, I decided to spout opinions about a few more recent GLBT-related headlines. This time, in the interest of not sky-rocketing my blood pressure too much about one issue, I offer you a smorgasbord of GLBT news and opinion, instead of a single dish. These days, newspapers, television, and the Internet are virtually soaked with GLBT issues, and even if you don’t agree with my opinions on these issues, I hope they’ll spark debate inside your mind and among your friends and acquaintances. I will not opine on Paris, Nicole, Lindsay, or Britney. Instead, I’ll stick to real issues that relate to our real lives. My one pop culture guilty pleasure is a weekly dose of Kathy Griffin’s My Life on the D-List, and as much as she speaks of her love for "the gays," I like to consider my support of the show a Nielsen ratings-related non-violent political protest.

Here’s an interesting recent news item about one of our gay sisters. According to gay.com, an African-American lesbian recently won a $6.2 million lawsuit against the Los Angeles Fire Department. The firefighter alleged that she had been harassed repeatedly due to her race and sexual orientation. She reported that her superiors made derogatory comments about her and forced her to perform strenuous exercises without proper safety precautions, and she even found urine mixed in with the mouthwash she kept at the fire station. It could be viewed as a sign of progress that the woman did not experience harassment based specifically on her gender, but it’s certainly a discouraging sign that she did experience harassment based on her race and sexual orientation. Los Angeles City Councilman Jack Weiss labeled the verdict "very alarming to anyone who has a fiduciary responsibility over the city budget." I agree to a point, but it is also alarming that someone as selfless as a firefighter can still be harassed for her race and sexual orientation. Councilman Wiess went on to comment, "There’s new [fire department] leadership. Hopefully, that will prevent these sorts of lawsuits." I find it curious that, per his comment, the Councilman’s concern is with preventing future lawsuits, not more harassment. It sounds like the Councilman’s message here is, "If you are harassed due to your race and sexual orientation, please consider the financial state of the city before you report it."

In transgender news, also according to gay.com, the Pakistani Supreme Court recently ordered the release of a transsexual man and his wife who were jailed in May 2007 for perjury. A lesser court had ruled that the Pakistani transsexual, who now identifies as a woman, is still legally a man despite several surgeries. The judge charged the couple with perjury because they declared in court that the man is a woman. The wife testified that she had wed to avoid an arranged marriage, still a common practice in Pakistani culture. The judge also declared their entire relationship "un-Islamic." There are so many things wrong in this situation, I don’t where to start. The practice of arranged marriages seems archaic and almost laughable to most Americans.

Heterosexuals in this country enjoy virtually complete freedom regarding marriage and divorce, even if we still fight for our marriage rights as GLBT citizens. In my opinion, it is archaic that most people—including most Americans—still do not understand the difference between sex and gender.

Your sex is labeled at birth in a deceivingly simple manner. If you have a penis, you are a male. If you have a vagina, you are female. Heaven help you if you are born as a hermaphrodite with a physically unclear sex. It is still common practice to "fix" the problem surgically and assign you a sex, never mind that you may never identify with the concurring gender. Also, the judge’s declaration that the whole relationship is "un-Islamic" may seem disturbingly foreign, but it raises an equally disturbing question about our own culture. How many judges and politicians make decisions and declarations every day based on how "Christian" an idea, law, or situation is perceived to be?

In other GLBT international news, TheAdvocate.com recently reported that Croatian police arrested eight people at a pride march through the Croatian city of Zagreb. The good news is, those arrested were on-lookers protesting the pride march, not marchers. The protestors became violent and attacked marchers. One of the attacked marchers was an Italian senator. Ten victims were injured and two needed medical treatment.

According to police, five protestors carried what appeared to be Molotov cocktails, dangerous homemade bombs. As a side note, the Croatian parliament granted limited recognition to gay unions in 2003. Several thoughts popped into my head after reading this story. First, it was refreshing to read a news story about a pride march where the protestors were arrested, and not those assembled to peacefully assert their humanity, dignity, and rights as GLBT citizens. Lately, GLBT news has been saturated with stories about governments banning pride celebrations, or doing everything in their power to discourage them, or refusing to protect GLBT demonstrators. This story also made me question why we are not further ahead on GLBT rights than Croatia. I do not claim to know much about Croatia. I’m sure I couldn’t pinpoint it on a world map. Still, I know that Croatia is no world superpower—probably not even close. How depressing is it that the Croatian national government has legally recognized gay unions, even if the recognition is limited, while America, the self-proclaimed "leader of the free world," won’t make a meaningful move toward freeing its GLBT people from the shackles of oppression, dehumanization, and second-class citizenship?

To confess, I have not been my usual news-junkie self lately. I’ve had too much on my plate to spend a lot of time surfing the wonderful waves of the Internet, which is how I usually get my news. Also, the older I grow, the more I find the news depressing, not to mention ridiculous. If I have to witness Britney’s blacked-out crotch or a country bumpkin being pulled from a drainage ditch one more time, I’ll lose my mind, go postal, and end up as a news story myself. Even CNN seems to be bowing to the beasts of trite topics and corporate advertising pressure. I am often disturbed by the irony of watching beautiful talking heads behind desks recount real-world death and destruction, their voices lilting up and down dramatically as they read from a state of the art teleprompter. Kathy Griffin commented in one of her stand-up routines that she loved how Anderson Cooper reported live about the devastation of Hurricane Katrina…while wearing Prada. Still, I feel it is my duty as a citizen and a human being to keep up on current events as much as possible, even if I sometimes feel that I’m almost powerless to change a damned thing about them.