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Via Political Wire: a recent New York Times/CBS News poll found growing support in the U.S. for same sex marriage. 42 percent of Americans now say same sex couples should be able to legally marry - up 9 points from just a month ago.
There's also a widening age gap among respondents which isn't a huge suprise considering that the under 30 age block went 66 percent for Obama in last year's election.
31 percent of respondents over the age of 40 said they support same sex marriage while 57 percent of respondents under age 40 said they supported it. That's a 26-point difference, people.
I also wanted to share super interesting predictions from Nate Silver - the guy who called the electoral college break down in November - on when each of the 50 states will vote against a marriage ban on FiveThirtyEight, which was posted following the Iowa Supreme Court ruling earlier this month.
The Kerry-Lugar Amendment passed in the Senate today, restoring $4 billion in funding that had been cut from the international affairs budget, which includes crucial funding for diplomatic, health, and development programs.
Actual bipartisan cooperation that lead to a positive outcome. I'm happy.
In the midst of a global economic crisis, foreign assistance is important now more than ever. The world's weakest need support to prevent disease, provide education for their communities, and ensure essential health services.
We must keep moving forward in our efforts to lift up the nations most in need by both providing the resouces needed within communities to enable progress and by leading the international community by example in renewing the United States' commitment to global health and development.
It's great to see that Senators on both sides of the aisle can see the value of these investments.
On behalf of the member organizations of the University Coalitions for Global Health, I'd like to invite you to take part in the 2009 Global Health Week of Action, March 30 - April 3! There's still two weeks to plan an event to raise awareness and motivate action in your community!
More info after the jump.
Complications from pregnancy are the leading cause of death for young women ages 15 through 19 in low- and middle-income countries. Around the world, 200 million women wish to avoid or delay pregnancy but do not have access to modern methods of contraception. It is estimated that the unmet need for family planning among young women is twice that among adults.
Sign the petition to increase funding for U.S. international family planning assistance today!
...and fails.
But, thanks for playing (not).
Today, Sen. Martinez of Florida proposed an amendment to HR 2, the reauthorization of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), reinstating the global gag rule (Mexico City Policy) in spite of the memorandum the President issued last Friday repealing it.
The amendment sought to ensure that "no funds authorized under part I of Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 for population planning activities or other population or family planning assistance may be made available for any private, nongovernmental, or multilateral organization that performs or actively promotes abortion as a method of birth control."
Abortion as a method of birth control? I mean, come on people.
It was voted on just after noon.
He lost. 60 to 37. Complete roll call vote here. Ah, change in Washington...
January 6th, nine gay men were tried before a court in Senegal and sentenced to prison for eight years for "indecent conduct and unnatural acts." Consensual sex between men is illegal in Senegal (punishable by imprisonment from one to five years and a hefty fine) but, on top of that, the judge threw in three to five years on top of the original sentence claiming these men were also part of a criminal group.
Most of them belonged to an organization established to provide HIV prevention services to men who have sex with men.
Well. Hmm. There are just so many things wrong with this.
While it has long been apparent that most African governments prefer to deny the existence of men who have sex with men in their countries over providing them with the tools needed for effective HIV prevention, in the recent past, the environment in Senegal has become particicularly antagonistic to LGBT men and women.
More evidence to back up common sense-- no matter what they say at the VMAs, virginity pledges are just silly.
According to this study from the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,
This large federal study showed that while more than half of young people initiate sexual activity before marriage regardless of whether or not they've taken vows of abstinence until then, those who take virginity pledges are 10 percent less likely to use condoms consistently and 6 percent less likely to use any form of contraception than their non-abstinence-vowing peers.Teenagers who pledge to remain virgins until marriage are just as likely to have premarital sex as those who do not promise abstinence and are significantly less likely to use condoms and other forms of birth control when they do.
The researcher suggests that this might just be a result of the information left out of the abstinence-only-until-marriage programs funded by the federal government. "There's been a lot of work that has found that teenagers who take part in abstinence-only education have more negative views about condoms," she said. "They tend not to give accurate information about condoms and birth control."
Apparently Obama's a friend of his.
You may know Rev. Rick Warren as the friendly author of The Purpose Driven Life. The New York Times describes his Saddleback Church as "an evangelical congregation averaging 22,000 weekly attendees, a 120-acre campus, and has more than 300 community ministries to groups such as prisoners, CEOs, addicts, single parents, and those with HIV/AIDS." Seems lovely, right? BUT.... there are are a couple itty-bitty pieces which were left out of this inaugural announcement that I just can't get over.
He also urged this 22,000 person congregation to vote YES on Prop 8 and is fervently, fervently anti-choice.
This World AIDS Day, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon appointed Mr. Michael Sidabe as the new Executive Director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).
After 13 years of leadership since UNAIDS' creation, Dr. Peter Piot is now passing the position on to his colleague who currently serves as UNAIDS Deputy Executive Director– Programmes and Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations.
On November 20, as I joined up with many AIDS activists I have worked with at various points over the past four years, one friend greeted me with a hug and the exclamation which became the title of this post-- "First AIDS rally of the Obama era!"
