Suspect of the Murder of Transgender Woman Victoria Carmen White Went to the Cops

On September 12, a transgender woman by the name of Victoria Carmen White was found dead in her apartment. The suspect that turned himself in on Saturday night is named Marquise L. Foster and he is 25 years of age. The night that Victoria was murdered, she was at a night club in which she met Foster, a person named Chambers, and two other people. According to all of the reports, Victoria took these people back to her apartment where she was shot and killed. This is Victoria Carmen White:

                                                          

I find it shocking that it is suspected that this man, along with Chambers, were also involved with another hate crime involving a 30-year-old gay man also from New Jersey.

Check out the news in advocate.com 

Yet Another Gay Teenage Suicide

I personally find it completely shocking the number of gay teenagers that have committed suicide recently. I was reading in 365: Gay News about yet another suicide from a 19 year old gay male. Apparently, Zach Harrington attended a city council meeting in Norman consisting of very anti-gay people. One of the members of the meeting actually said that the reason why he moved to Norman was because he was positive that it was a place that would not welcome gay or lesbian people. I find it crazy to think that Zach would even attend this meeting because he knew that it would consist of these kinds of people and he went through so much adversity in High School from being bullied because of his sexual orientation that someone would not believe he had any prior knowledge to the kind of people that were going to attend this meeting. I think that this is ridiculous that people can make these kinds of comments at a city council meeting and not take into consideration how it may make some people feel.

                                         

Marriage Used as a Method for Women Oppression

I recently read an article in the news portion of salon.com titled GAY MARRIAGE and found some interesting points that the author of the article had to say. I had never began to think about the origins of marriage as a practice, but Laurie Essig tells her readers that as much as we may enjoy thinking about marriage as being a natural and universal practice, it is just an invention to maintain women oppression. She implies that it is merely a way to justify for women's labor being "confined and unpaid." I do not necessarily agree with Essig on this point completely because there are many successful, married women that do not fit the stereotipical image of the "household wife" doing all the labor at home and letting the man get paid and bring home the money.

Another idea that I found particularly interesting about this article is how Essig talks about freedom to do as one pleases. She says, "In the past, we queers have had to beg, cheat, steal and lie in order to create our families. But it's exactly this lack of state and societal recognition that gave us the freedom to organize our lives according to desire rather than convention." She actually thinks on the opposite end arguing that it is best not to have state recognition because it take away some power to live how they please rather than how the state and public believe they should live. She makes an interesting comment at the end of her article that she does not want the state in her bedroom, family, and neither should you. This article was extremely interesting to me, especially because of how much of a strong-minded person Essig is. I recomend that people take a quik look at it.

http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2000/07/10/marriage/index.html?CP=USE&DN=310