March 2008

Hello Sweet Readers!
What has our world come to? In researching my article this week I have chosen a subject that saddened me and sickened me at the same time. While listening to my television the other day, I heard a word on there pertaining to pedophiles, NAMBLA (North American Man/Boy Love Association) , there is also one for women and girls. An open organization for pedophiles. So I began looking to see just how open these people really are, and how accessible these organizations are for people to join. The results of my search totally blew me away.
            I found that in the Netherlands there is a whole political party who is trying not only to get hard drugs legalized for people 16 or older and soft drugs for people 12 and older, they are also trying to get the voting age lowered to 12 and the age of consent lowered to 12 as well with hopes of eventually getting it eliminated all together. The PNVD, or Party for Neighborly Love, Freedom, and Diversity, was founded on May 31, 2006 by Ad van den Berg, Norbert de Jonge, and Marthijn Uittenbogaard. I can’t comprehend how they can believe that a 12 year old is not only old enough to know they want to have sex but also to know how to make an informed mature decision on political issues and drugs.
            There is no wonder that the straight community gets the wrong idea about gays and lesbians and thinks that they support or engage in pedophilia when all over the world they allow open pedophiles to join in gay pride parades and hand out flyers. That should be stopped, and the two factions separated. I am all for the community as a whole accepting diversity, but that is not a type of diversity that we as adults should condone. The more it is accepted and the lower the age of consent is lowered the less we are going to be able to protect our children from being taken advantage of and molested. If the age of con cent is 12 then how can a parent get justice for their 13 or 14 year old son or daughter when a teacher or other adult figure seduces them into bed? We can’t, we have then embraced diversity right into endangering our children who have been given to us to nurture and protect.
            In further research I came across organizations of gay and lesbian members who are pedophiles and have several web sites promoting it as well. I don’t care if you are straight, gay, black, white, or from the planet mars, sexual relations with a child is just wrong! There are even sites that instruct you how to get away with stalking children and not getting caught. This world saddens me and finding out all these things has given me a very heavy heart today.
            Below is a list of some of the worlds most famous pedophiles:
  •             Many ancient Greek poets and philosophers
  • Dante
  • Goethe
  • Pierre de Ronsard (1524-1585. French poet.)
  • Cellini (Autobiography reprinted by Penguin 1993)
  • Remy Belleaue (Fren ch contemporary of Ronsard)
  • Andrew Marvell (1621-78; famous metaphysical poet and satirist)
  • Samual Peyps
  • Novalis
  • Lord Byron
  • Lewis Carroll
  • John Ruskin
  • Edward Lear
  • Charles Kingsley
  • Edgar Allen Poe
  • Hugh Walpole
  • Anton Bruckner (1824-96; famous Austrian composer)
  • A.E. Houseman
  • Mark Twain
  • Walt Whitman
  • Gauguin
  • Benjamin Britten (see Faber’s 1992 biography and the letters)
  • E.M. Forster
  • Frederico Garcia Lorca (Spanish poet and playwright)
  • J.M. Barrie
  • Henry James
  • Andre Gide
  • Mogidliani (artist, fell in love with Jeanne H when she was 14)
  • Thomas Mann
  • Forrest Reid
  • W.H. Auden
  • Field Marshall Montgomery
  • Arthur Ransome
  • John Barrymore (actor)
  • T.H. White
  • William Carlos Williams (?)
  • Howard Hughes
  • Lord Baden-Powell (Founder of the Boy-Scouts, was definitely gay, and several biogs suspect attraction to young boys)
  • T.E. Lawrence
  • Sir Roger Casement
  • Anne Saxton (poet; had incestious relationship with daughter, according to biog.)
  • Charlie Chaplin
  • Errol Flynn
  • Lord Reith (founder of the BBC)
  • William Douglas
  • Jerry Lee Lewis
  • Chuck Berry
  • Roman Polanski
Here is one site that I got quite a bit of information from, if you are a parent or have children in your life who you love and want to protect, you might want to know just how easy it is for pedophiles to prey on your innocent angels. http://www.cerius.org/community/index.htm
      Until Next Week, Dear Ones, Love & Many Hugz! Leeza
sweetcinnyluvsu@yahoo.com
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Hello Sweet Readers!

 I’m sure you can already guess the subject of my column this week. The Terry Awards. It was a wonderfully exciting and humbling time for me. So many wonderful friends I already know coming up to give me a hug and say how happy they were to see me, and so many others who I met for the first time. It was nice to be there from the decorating and getting everything ready, to the Terry Awards and the pageant and afterward to see everybody having a great time.

     Terry works so very hard all year long to give us this one night of fun and community spirit. I have heard the phrase used about the Terry’s that they are the Gay Grammy Awards, it makes me giggle but you know it is pretty appropriate! After all what are the Grammy’s except, best writer, best actor, best actress, best screen play (column) and best director (Terry). We have all that and more, including couple of the year (and Robin, I don’t care what anybody says, we don’t need no stinkin’ trophy to know that we are the REAL couple of the year, *giggles*). We have a little of everything at the Terry’s. We have gays and lesbians, clowns, greeters, queens, kings, nice smiles, pretty eyes, best bodies, readers, writers, charities, bears, leathers, manly men and more manly women, and even a couple of us who are part of the non-gay community who you have adopted as just one of the boys.

     I was speechless (shut up Wes!) and humbled to be nominated for 11 awards and named winner of 5, plus being recognized for 2 years of service. To some people it’s just something funny to be nominated for these awards but to me it really means so very much because I am not gay or a lesbian, I’m not a drag queen or a tranny, I am a straight woman who writes her opinion about things to an all gay reader community and you have accepted me. Then to have the other writers nominate and vote for my article for article of the year and then to win that award. It was hard to fight back tears of appreciation and joy. I had so much I wanted to say about how I felt but I knew if I started to talk I would start to cry so I chose not to. The subject of my award-winning article was my reflections on my life and my pride of my son and my heartbreak of losing someone so very special to me that he was like another son.

     I thoroughly enjoyed all the performers and the pageant was above and beyond what I could ever have dreamed. Each of the contestants had something special and different about them and my job was in no way an easy one. The girls were all creative and talented and glamorous. I saw wonderful things about each girl and any one of them could have won the title, too bad we can’t name them all Miss WVasQueerNews for this next year. Just because they didn’t gain the title, I pray that each of the girls will help to continue to spread the news about the magazine and our reader base grows and expands. After all, isn’t that what this is all really about in the first place, unity in our community?

     Something I would like to see in this next year is, a section on drag kings. Do we even have any in this area? I would love to see some! And wouldn’t a section about them be nice? I would also like to see Martina be given her column in the magazine that she mentioned during the pageant, about the behind the scenes life of a drag queen. Personally, I would find that very interesting.

     In the past couple of years I have traveled to Morgantown, Huntington, Charleston, Pittsburgh, and Parkersburg to visit and meet you guys…how about you making a trip to Wheeling to visit me? I only live an hour’s drive away from there. Just a thought…. we could all meet at The O-Zone or Club Maxx some night. Think about it.

      Until Next Week, Dear Ones, Love & Many Hugz! Leeza

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We stand on the verge of a new beginning for our great country. We now have a decision on new leaders and those who will support them. We need to all be informed and make a decision based on not only promises we are being made but on past records and where the candidates have stood on issues that have already affected us.
     I am not here to tell you how to vote or who to vote for, I am only here pleading with you to take a step back, do a little research and then make an informed decision. Don’t just vote for who is making you last minute promises or who is saying everything you are wanting to hear, look into them and see what their policy has been for different areas in the past. Did they vote for something a year ago that they are now saying they are either for or against? Have they told the truth or have they lied and been caught at it? I am well aware that more than likely all the candidates have lied or will lie to us in the next year, but what you have to decide is, are they now saying something opposite of something they said just last week or last year and have they been caught lying about something small and seemingly insignificant that maybe hides a bigger lie?
     A lot of times we vote for who our family is voting for, or our friends, or we vote for someone just because they are of the opposing party of the person who is holding the position currently. None of those reasons is a very good one. When you make your decision of who to vote for it should be the candidate that best represents your personal thoughts or beliefs or who is best qualified for the job. When you vote, don’t pick the person by the party they are offiliated with or the color of their skin or their gender or their religion. Chose the person who says and does the things you would say or do if you were in that position.
     I am afraid that too many people are wanting a change so bad that they are going to be willing to just follow the pied piper and be lulled into a fantasy of promises only to awaken in a place where none of those dreams are a reality. It is completly amazing to me how some people will believe certain things they are being told by candidates who clearly had the exact opposite stand on the issue this time last year, or several years ago.
     Things in America are headed for a big change and our stand on world politics is going to have to change as well so we need a leader who is going to be able to guide us through the smoothest path they can and who will surround themselves with a cabinet and advisors who will best help them in this crutial time. The time of drawing the party lines and standing on either side of the divide and thumbing our noses at each other is over, it is now time to unite America and stand together.  Put everything aside and join together to make our nation strong and the powerful force that was once feared all over the world.
     Every American over the age of 18 should be registered to vote and do it, there are getting to be fewer and fewer excuses why you can’t, you can even vote absentee now no matter what reason and don’t even have to leave your home to do so. In Ohio you don’t even have to go to a polling place on the day of the election to cast your vote, you can go to the county elections board for several days before the election to make your voice heard. If you have trouble voting due to vision problems, there is a machine at the polling place that makes the print extremely large so you can see it or they will allow a friend or family member to read the ballot to you and mark it for you, as long as they are marking it how you are wanting it to be marked. If you are injured or elderly and cannot get out of your car easily or if the place you are to vote has stairs and you cannot climb them, you only need to have someone go into the polling place and inform them and they will bring your ballot out to you to vote in the comfort of your vehicle. So now tell me, what is your excuse?
     Until Next Week, Dear Ones, Love & Many Hugz! Leeza