Gay Penguins
On this program we talked about what we're allowed to talk about in the face of FCC Regulation §399. We talked about the death of a gay penguin and the reaction of his mate and the rest of the penguin colony at the Sydney Aquarium. R. Paul also talked about seeing an openly gay man on TV who was a featured speaker at a major convention that was covered nationally, and the gay male speaker's speech was televised live to the entire country on multiple TV networks and radio stations. It was something that some people would have thought was impossible 50 years ago. I have just run into a problem with my software that I write Web pages with, so I need to stop at this point. I am hopping that I'll be able to fix this rather old software soon and get an update posted. So you might check back for that update.
You can now listen to this program on the official WBAI Archive.
The next regular WBAI LSB meeting will be held on Wednesday September 11, 2024, at 7:00 PM. That meeting will be held on ZOOM, even though ZOOM compromises privacy and security.
Some years ago the WBAI LSB voted to hold its regular meetings on the second Wednesday of every month, subject to change by the LSB, so we have the following schedule:
These meetings are set to begin at 7:00 PM.
WBAI has a program schedule up on its Web site. The site has gotten many of the individual program pages together to provide links and such, so check it out.
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Here is WBAI's current Internet stream. We can no longer tell if the stream is working without testing every possible stream. Good luck.
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WBAI is archiving the programs! WBAI has permanently switched to yet another new archive Web page! This one is more baffling than the previous one. For some time I was unable to post archive blurbs, then I could, and then I couldn't again. Now I can again and there are a whole bunch of archive blurbs up there now.
This is a link to the latest version of the official WBAI archive. The archiving software appears to have been at least partially fixed. To get to the archive of this program you can use the usual method: you'll have to click on the drop-down menu, which says Display,
and find Back of the Book on that menu. We're pretty early in the list, so it shouldn't be too difficult. Once you find the program name click GO
and you'll see only this Back of the Book program. Management has fixed some problems that we'd been having with the archives.
For programs before March 23, 2019, we're all out of luck. The changes that took place once WBAI Management took control of the WBAI archives seems to have wiped out all access to anything before that date in March. You'll have to click on the same drop-down menu as above, which says Display,
and find Specify Date
, it's the second choice from the top. You are then given a little pop-up calendar and you can choose the date of the program there. Then click GO
and you'll see a list of programs that aired on that date. For those previous programs you can get the audio, but nothing else, since I can't post anything to those pages anymore. Good luck.
Since the former General Manager banned Sidney Smith from WBAI he's not alternating with us on the air. As of November 2020, Back of the Book airs weekly.
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Program Note:According to FCC regulations §399. Support of political candidates is prohibited on WBAI, No noncommercial educational broadcasting station may support or oppose any candidate for political office.
Yeah, this is a problem, and that's why we are not able to mention things like the political conventions that have gotten a ton of attention all over the world. We can't even suggest that certain politicians should go to jail. If we're still around on November 9, 2024, we'll be able to mention all of this political stuff again.
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Gentoo penguins are usually found in the Antarctic and around the south Atlantic Ocean. A pair of male Gentoo penguins had been residing in the Sea Life Aquarium in Sydney, Australia as a part of the aquarium's exhibit for some years, as part of an entire colony of such penguins. This pair, named Sphen and Magic, became famous a few years ago when it became obvious that they were a couple. They were referred to as gay penguins and were celebrated by people promoting rights for LGBT+8 humans. The two penguins were even celebrated in a float in the Sydney Mardi Gras Pride parade.
Staff at the aquarium had noticed that the two penguins had gotten together during one mating season and collected pebbles to create a nest together. They stayed together even after mating season was over. Workers at the Sydney Aquarium noticed this and for the next mating season they gave the pair a trial run with a dummy egg, and after that the two male penguins were given a real egg to incubate. The penguins hatched eggs and raised two penguin chicks. That got the attention of a lot of people. Not all of that attention was favorable. Right-wing Australian lawmakers criticized the New South Wales state teachers federation for encouraging teachers to include lessons on diverse LGBTQ families. And so a pair of inflatable penguins were included on the Union's float in Sydney's Pride parade.
We'll also note that same-gender relationships between penguins has been observed in the wild and at other zoos, including at the Central Park Zoo, which inspired a children's book called And Tango Makes Three.
Well, earlier this month one of the penguins, Sphen, died in his old age. He was probably close to 12 year old. When his mate Magic saw this he began to sing, and the entire penguin colony at Sea Life Sydney Aquarium joined in. Mating season is about to start and the workers at the Aquarium will be keeping an eye on the widowered Magic, who is also a pretty old penguin. AWWWW.
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A couple of days ago I was thinking about how we were watching an openly gay man speaking to a big deal convention in prime time. I was also thinking about how 50 and more years ago we would have been floored by that news.
Fifty years ago I was in the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) and, looking at my notes from back then, I can see that I was one of the people amending the GAA constitution and I was busily running off a 33 page pamphlet I had mostly written called The Fight for a Gay Civil Rights Law in New York City.
On the program I described using a mimeograph machine and getting and correcting what I was told were called electrostencils
which involved painstakingly putting a fluid on each hole in the stencil to make the output look better.
Back then some of us knew that we had to make the gay liberation movement something ordinary people could do. One of the goals was to change society to the point where an openly lesbian or gay person could be in a position to be a featured speaker at a big, national convention that was being shown on national TV. Well, part of what we'd aimed for is happening. We just have to keep pushing things to make sure that the bad people don't roll back those gains.
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There are a lot of issues that are considered hazardous to talk about on the air at WBAI, even though the gag rule was lifted in 2002. However, there is the Internet! There are mailing lists which you can subscribe to and Web based message boards devoted to WBAI and Pacifica issues. Many controversial WBAI/Pacifica issues are discussed on these lists.
One open list that no longer exists was the WBAI-specific Goodlight
Web based message board. It was sometimes referred to on Back of the Book as the bleepin' blue board,
owing to the blue background that was used on its Web pages. This one had many people posting anonymously and there was also an ancillary WBAI people
board that was just totally out of hand.
In June 2012, I ended up having to salvage the bleepin' blue board, and so I was the moderator on it for its last seven years, until it got too expensive.
Sometimes we used to have live interaction with people posting on the Goodlight Board
during the program.
Our very own Uncle Sidney Smith, whose program Saturday Morning With the Radio On used to alternate with us, has a blog these days. You can reach his blog here.
There used to be a number of mailing lists related to Pacifica and WBAI. Unfortunately, they were all located on Yahoo! Groups. When Yahoo! Groups was totally shut down in December 2020, all of those mailing lists ceased to exist. One year earlier their file sections and archives of E-mails, had been excised leaving only the ability to send E-mails back and forth among the members. Now it's all gone. Older Back of the Book program Web pages tell a little more about those lists.
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