You Said It: Every American Deserves the Right to Marry

An email was received regarding our post on the recent victory for the LGBT community in California, saying that denying lesbians, gay, bisexual and transgendered people the right to marry was unconstitutional.

In Every American Deserves the Right to Marry, a news article of the Million for Marriage petition put together by the Human Rights Campaign, received some negative feedback that I feel the need to address, especially considering the woman who sent this email did not leave her correct email address in order for me to reply personally and so, Letter to the Editor was born!

This, in conjunction with our first edition of You Said It, is an open call for letters from you, the readers, to express your positive and negative thoughts on anything that is posted or discussed on Woman Tribune.

Name: Denise
Subject: Protest!

Wow. You just lost me as a subscriber over your article about everyone having the right to be married in America. I can’t be a supporter of gay marriage or support anyone who does. I think we’re missing the bigger picture here. Yeah, it’s great that we have freedom in America but we’re still supposed to abide by God’s laws. He’s probably in heaven shuddering over what a mess this world is making of his intention for marriage. The Bible clearly states that “man” and “woman” should unite. Nothing else.

Denise,

I am very sorry that you feel the need to email me and express your outrage over the recent article on Million For Marriage. I am even more sorry that you are insanely close-minded and are not willing to give every American the basic right to marry the person whom they love and want to spend their lives with.

The aim I have always had for Woman Tribune, as a blog and as a community, is that it appeals to all women and that includes lesbian, bisexual and transgendered women; all of whom exist in America. If your god was so unhappy about this, why would he make such people to begin with?

Marriage, as it exists now, has changed a bit since the times of dowries and marrying a person whom your parents chose for you. Marriage today has a lot of other factors to take into consideration such as your life partner being in a hospital and you not being able to know about their condition or see them because you are not “family.” The same applies for funeral arrangements, tax purposes, health care benefits, and before you go getting your panties in a bunch over these facts–A man and a woman walk into marriage with the same intentions in mind.

Furthermore, I am not sorry in the least to have lost you, or anyone for that matter, as a subscriber. Woman Tribune is intended for all women and all women should benefit from the articles that are posted; however, I for one will never condemn a woman or tell a woman that she is wrong for simply loving and wanting to marry another woman.

Your god is most likely shuddering in whatever heaven you believe exists by the true hypocrisy that is coursing through the veins of his so-called followers; those who are Sunday believers or are religious when it is convenient as well as those who hold up a book that was written and can be closely compared to the telephone game–What once were “facts” passed down again and again and suddenly what was written may not even closely resemble the history. Thank you for your email, for you have just given me the satisfaction a million times over for simply expressing not only my views, but the views of so many other Americans today in posting that article.

Sincerely,
Holly Ord

Every American Deserves the Right to Marry

America came one step closer to achieving equal rights for all people when California declared that refusing gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people the right to marry was unconstitutional. Since this remarkable day in LGBT history, many couples have been married and have shared in the experience of vowing to love and to cherish each other in front of their friends and families and for the first time in California, their marriage will be legal in the eyes of the law.

With every day that we celebrate this victory for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered couples, anti-LGBT have been working to deny benefits to LGBT couples on both state and federal levels. In order to make sure that ignorance and hate doesn’t win this battle over true equality for all Americans, the Human Rights Campaign has set up a petition with the hope of getting over 1 million names from people who believe in marriage equality for everyone.

The petition states:

“I do support the right of every American to marry, including gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender couples. I believe that marriage and other civil rights protections are essential to making all families safer and more secure.

By signing this petition, I agree to support efforts to make marriage equality a reality in our country, and to oppose any attempts to discriminate against LGBT couples and individuals.”

With 988,902 signatures so far, HRC needs more people to stand up for marriage equality. Sign the petition here.

Billy Ray Cyrus Clears Up Some Controversy

Just about everyone who hasn’t been living under a rock for the past few months have heard about the Miley Cyrus controversy when it came to her photo shoot for the June issue of Vanity Fair, photographed by Annie Leibovitz.

Many people were outraged by the sexuality implied in Miley Cyrus’ famous picture of her wrapped in a sheet and her back bare. While many (including myself) see nothing wrong with the picture itself, the incident is still receiving mass attention and the masses want to know what her father, infamous Achey Breaky Billy Ray Cyrus, who co-stars with Miley on the hit Disney television show Hannah Montana, has to say about the picture and how it has been received.

On NBC’s Today show, Billy Ray was asked about the controversy involving his daughter and the pictures that had appeared in Vanity Fair. He says that while he wasn’t there at the time, but Miley’s publicist was and it seemed as if everyone was in control of the situation. Miley was not subjected to anything that the people speaking for her were not aware of and in my opinion, they changed their tunes as soon as the picture leaked and so many other people seemed to be offended by the images. Disney is, after all, a wholesome television channel for children and Miley Cyrus’ success has erupted and she has built a solid fan base of a great deal of young girls. After all, we don’t want Miley to end up like another Britney Spears case, do we?

Regarding the image of Miley in a black tank top that shows her midriff and in her father’s arms, Billy Ray says that that is simply “A daddy that loves his daughter a whole lot.” He also says that he and his daughter “got caught up in this adventure that we’ve gone through with this dream, and what we do for a living. We both love acting, we love making music and we love each other. I’m her dad and she’s my daughter, so if a daddy hasn’t hugged his daughter recently, I’d recommend he does.”

Costumes for Every Party and Occassion

While Halloween is still a few months away, it is never too early to start planning; whether it’s costumes, party planning or home decorating, Halloween is the best time of the year–Or so was the motto where I was raised with a Halloween-obsessed grandmother that passed her love of Halloween onto me.

One key note about Halloween is that once September hits, all party stores go all out with decorating, carrying house decorations that by the time October rolls around, they don’t work anymore because of everyone “testing” the product out to see if it talks, plays spooky music, growls or cackles. To ensure that everything works and you get the costume, decorations and party favors and decorations as well as the time to effectively put everything together, a lot of people have turned to shopping online.

One of the most important things to take into consideration when buying anything online is price, especially when shipping and handling is involved. A great site that offers not only an extensive amount of Halloween costumes is Buy Costumes, a known and trusted retailer for all baby, child and adult costumes, party favors and decorations. Best of all, Buy Costumes doesn’t just specialize in Halloween items, but for all celebrations and parties including favors and costumes for the 4th of July, which is just around the corner.

Mischa Barton and Her Many Ruffles

Mischa Barton strolled into the premier of M. Night Shyamalan’s newest movie, The Happening, wearing a silver, multi-tiered dress of ruffles and a pair of black one-strap heels.

All I can say about this frightening look is Mischa, please fire your stylist, you will excel in the long run, and while you’re at it, if you did your makeup yourself, stop and if your makeup artist did it, fire them too. As a woman who is usually dressed to impress, you can tell something is terribly wrong when she goes out in public to something she knows will be a photo op to begin with, wearing a dress that she could easily fit two other women into it with her and yes, a lot of ruffles. The dress makes her look as if she is trying to cover her torso up and show off her legs, but it makes her legs look foreign on her body and it definitely makes her look as if she has gained over 50 pounds. This is a big time fail for Mischa Barton, especially since any woman seeing her and thinking she looks good in it, may go out and buy a dress of 300 ruffles.

For more information on the movie The Happening, out in theaters tomorrow, Friday June 13, go to the official movie site where you can also view the trailer.

Babeland Knows Women

When you think of sex shops, most often you’re probably thinking of shady-looking shops off the corner of a highway with a large “Do not come in here unless you are over 21 years of age” sign on the front of an entrance that looks more like a garage door. These shops are also the ones that have those creepy private booths in the back that most definitely cannot be too hygienic, given what men do in there. These are the sex stores that are targeted more towards men and of course, are the standard because only men like sex, right? Wrong!

The success of these types of shops can only be measured by the amount of competition surrounding them, which in most cases aren’t many, if any at all. If you live in a suburban neighborhood, you most likely have one sex toy store in your area or even one shop for several areas and of course, these are the “male-ego” shops; the shops with jizz rooms, blow up dolls and many, many videos all building up the fantasies that women enjoy sex with their twin sisters, having cum adorn every inch of their faces and several, several different men at the same time.

As a woman who lives in a town with no sex toy shops whatsoever and having to drive an hour to the nearest one, which of course is a disgusting-looking shop catered to men, I wondered, isn’t there a place out there that doesn’t objectify women? A place that celebrates the libido and doesn’t treat it like something dirty that women should be ashamed of, but for men, it’s the standard? I wanted a place that had the nerve to treat me as sexual being and as a woman without objectifying me.

Because of the status of the standard shops, I normally look online for any bedroom toys I may be interested in purchasing and because of that, I stumbled upon Babeland.

The title alone may lead men to think “Oh wow, hot sexy babes? I’m in!” and for women, it could make you think “Babeland! Woman land! My land!” which is what is what I first thought. Their website alone is very woman-oriented. It’s sleek, shiny, it doesn’t have ads or pictures of women dressed in bondage and being treated purely as sex objects so their man can have a good time. It’s straight forward, but has a womanly touch, which is to be expected since Babeland was founded by women for women with the motto Sex toys for a passionate world.

With their fifth store opening nation-wide in Brooklyn, New York, positioned in between a maternity store called Bump and an organic restaurant that sells an herbal formula to boost your libido, Babeland gave the press a deeper look into what Babeland is all about.

They are a woman-friendly store where strollers are welcome, there is a baby changing station in the restroom, kids are more than welcome, the founder being a mother herself, since the store is set up so nicely and so friendly that kids are welcome due to the inconspicuously detailed products. They also have events scheduled which include seminars for women on sexuality and body image, private workshops and parties. It does not get any better than Babeland.

Season 2 of Army Wives

Season 2 of the Lifetime show Army Wives premiers June 8 at 10pm!

“The critically acclaimed drama series details the lives of five women trying to stay connected to their military husbands while adapting to turbulent life on a strict US Army post”

I don’t watch television personally, but a lot of other people out there do, so what do you think of Army Wives? Have you ever seen it? Are you looking forward to the second season? Leave your thoughts in the comments

Emerita Knows Women’s Skin Care

I have spent the last few years of my life fighting with my fickle skin. The slightest things can make my skin turn from the pure complexion I had all through my adolescence into a horrifying Halloween mask-like state that leaves me adopting an “Oh well, I’m just not leaving the house–Ever, if need be!” philosophy. I have tried a downright impressive amount of over-the-counter skin care products and even some infomercial “miracle” collections that left my face incredibly dry and did not help clear acne, but aided in the process of making more! Sadly, me and my complexion had given up, especially since most of the skin care products I had tried made my complexion far worse than it was when I had started using them.

After giving up on skin care products that seemed to work for whoever this company was testing to prove their product worked, as well as for the models and actresses who already had perfect complexions to begin with, my skin was in an absolutely horrific state. My acne stayed, my skin was incredibly dry and it felt as if my face itself just was not fitting into my skin and I had also developed a problem with blackheads that never wanted to go away, no matter what face scrub I massaged into my face. Then it hit me; these companies were interested in one thing–Money. Most companies will say and do anything to pull one over on consumers and as long as they are making their millions, they really don’t care about women at all or if their product had even helped someone.

I recently had the opportunity to give skin care another go–With Emerita. Emerita is a woman-owned business, which of course gets a thumbs up in my book. I am all about supporting any business owned and run by women, especially since most products made for women are made by men, and obviously, men know very little about how women work. Emerita started as a family business and has been helping women over 40 with their extensive line of personal health and beauty products since the 1970s. While Emerita may target women over 40, they are not only for women of that age group since they helped the complexion of a 21 year old woman and most likely many other younger women who refused to accept that there were no skin care products that would work for them.

The Emerita microdermabrasion face scrub is made with all organic and botanical ingredients. It exfoliates your skin, leaving it the smoothest my face has ever been. It is a smooth exfoliate unlike any other I had tried before; it doesn’t hurt when massaged into your skin and it leaves your skin feeling warm and refreshed. The scrub is unscented and contains no artificial colorings, which is great because what most companies don’t realize is that it doesn’t take a fruity smell and a pretty color to make women continue to buy their products, it takes the product to actually work–And Emerita does!

If you are interested in Emerita, but don’t want to spend your money on products that you don’t know for sure will work for you, they also offer two different sample packages of five different skin care products for just $2.00 and they also ship for free!

I have personally found that the balancing toner used after the microdermabrasion scrub and combined with the night cream works famously. It works so great, in fact, that I saw results with using their skin care products in just a 24-hour period, which if you’ve used most other products, you know is astounding!

I would most definitely tell any women looking to clear their complexion and be left with a warm, glowing and refreshed face to check out the products that Emerita offers; they are great quality and above all else, they work.

Emerita is currently running three different giveaways. I’ve already decided that Emerita is the skin care for me and I will be continuing my skin care with them and now I want you to enter to win your own Emerita collection to try.

Skin Care Products Giveaway

Enter to win a basket of Emerita’s best selling skin care products, such as the microdermabrasion scrub reviewed here, moisturizing face cleanser, night cream and balancing toner. You can also use the code SC105 for $5 off.

Sexual Vitality Products Giveaway

Enter to win a basket of Emerita’s best selling sexual vitality products, such as lubricant, massage oils and response cream. Use code SV35 for $1 off.

Menopause Products Giveaway

Enter to win a basket of Emerita’s best selling menopause products, such as Pro-Gest, person moisturizer, menopause plus formula and Phytoestrogen cream. Use code PM35 for $1 off.

The giveaway drawings will be held July 31 and the winner will be contacted by email within 24 hours.

Good luck with the giveaways and your skin care future.

Never Lose Another Magazine Article Again

I used to be a big magazine junkie. I used to work at Borders Books & Music and would find myself constantly grabbing magazines, buying the ones that looked interesting through my extensive task of putting all the magazines people took off the racks and left wherever they felt like it at the end of the day and for the entire time I worked there, I just found more and more magazines that I had to read. The only problem with having so many magazines with so many fabulous articles that I just had to read was that I wound up with a stack of magazines and any time that I had thought back to the articles that I wanted to re-read or needed for research for an article, I had to sift through several different issues of several magazines. Another problem I had continuously ran into was the fact that my stack of magazines were starting to fall apart after a while and in some cases, the articles I had been cherishing in those magazines, were also starting to fall apart.

Apparently quite a few other people were running into these same problems when it came to the magazines they love and because of the flimsiness of magazines and the impossible task of keeping them all cataloged and in good shape, Scanalog was born.

Scanalog is a magazine cataloging system that runs on your computer. The process is extremely simple and if you are a magazine lover, you are going to wonder what you did without it. The program is beautiful, first of all, its interface is self-explanatory and so easy that someone who knows very little about computers to begin with will be able to use it hassle-free. By simply scanning your magazine articles and cataloging them using the Scanalog program, you will have every magazine article that you had been saving whole magazines for at your fingertips. You will never find yourself searching through the stack of magazines that are taking over your book shelf or desk or having to say in the middle of a conversation “I remember reading an article about that in a magazine, but I can’t show it to you because I completely forget where I put that magazine.”

The system comes with 11 master categories as well as stickers for each category that you can use to organize your magazine articles before you scan them. Scanalog also supports retrieving your articles from your hard drive or digital camera. At the present moment, Scanalog covers a wide range of women’s interests such as parenting, home decoration, gardening and traveling, but since Scanalog has been so widely accepted, they are currently working on other systems tailor made for those with different interests.

Scanalog is not only a lifesaver when it comes to all the magazines you may have laying around, but it’s a fun project finding all the articles you have saved, scanning and cataloging them. It would also make a great gift for anyone you know who buys and saves magazines or other media sources.

To order your own Scanalog, visit the website or call 1-866-849-SCAN for more information.

Carnival of the Recipes

I am very honored to be hosting the Carnival of the Recipes and would like to thank everyone for submitting their posts. Enjoy the recipes and also don’t forget to take a look around the sites themselves.

Batya presents Happy Birthday To Me — KCC #30 posted at me-ander, saying:

“Lots of recipes for your cooking pleasure.”

Bill presents Loaded Baked Potato Salad posted at Food and Cooking Blog.

Bill presents Chocolate Caramel Pie posted at World Famous Recipes.

Bonnie presents Football Appetizer – Party cheese straws posted at Phoenix Arizona East Valley Living Blog.

Diabetic Recipes presents Apple-Cheddar Popovers posted at Diabetic Recipes – Diabetic Meals.

Elisson presents Le Gateau en Rose posted at Blog d’Elisson.

Eric Koshinsky presents Dry Rub for Ribs posted at Meat Smoking.

Famous Recipes presents Yogurt Chicken Curry posted at Famous Recipes.

Karen Weideman presents Thrifty Chicken Tex Mex Taco Recipe posted at Thrifty Mommy, saying:

“With the rising price of groceries, we all could use some inexpensive recipes for our families. This is a slow-cooker recipe and it is great because it is easy, tasty, healthy, and inexpensive! Score!”

Kathee presents Turkey Stuffed Peppers Recipe posted at Famous Recipe Blog.

Kerry presents Seasonal cooking: Spring – Bok Choy posted at A Ten O’Clock Scholar, saying:

“In the garden now: Bok Choy – A few recipes.”

Marsha Hudnall presents Healthy Recipe: Cherry Quinoa posted at A Weight Lifted.

Matthew Stevenson presents Slow roasted gammon, with port & garlic sauce posted at The Chef’s Day Off.

Shawn presents Indoor S’mores posted at Everything And Nothing.

Slow Cooker Recipes presents Crockpot Recipes: Savory CrockPot Roast Recipes posted at Crockpot Recipes.

Stephanie presents Crockpot Mexican Lasagna posted at Stop the Ride!.

Thelly presents Chicken Salad Casserole posted at Chicken Recipes.

Thelly also presents Thai Ginger Chicken posted at Recipes for Chicken.

World Famous Recipes presents Microwave Marmalade Drumsticks posted at World Famous Recipes.

World Famous Recipes also presents Zucchini Bread posted at World Famous Recipes.

That’s it for this edition of the Carnival of the Recipes. To submit your recipes for the next edition, go here.

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