It is a tolerant remark from Minnesota’s liberal democrat Senator: Al Franken. The statements in the image above came from an interview in The Harvard Crimson which is posted here. His full statement reads as follows

It’s not preppies, cause I’m a preppie myself. I just don’t like homosexuals. If you ask me, they’re all homosexuals in the Pudding. Hey, I was glad when that Pudding homosexual got killed in Philadelphia.

The man who programmed the games M.U.L.E. and Seven Cities of Gold in the early days of home computing had some good advice for those who are considering a sex change: Don’t do it. His name was Dan Bunten, and he made some piquant observations about the consequences of the operation and the culture surrounding it. Those who are considering it should heed his warning.

Dan knew what he was talking about because he had actually undergone the procedure and had become Danielle Berry. After a string of personal tragedies, Dan became depressed and disoriented. His confusion led him to make a huge life-changing mistake that he realized too late; he wished that someone would have warned him. Later, he used his personal struggles to help persuade others against the procedure and warn them against the false cheerleading that he experienced. As others sought his advice, he compiled a general message from the emails that he had sent out. The text is given below.

Special Note to Those Thinking About a Sex Change,
by Danielle Berry

Compiled from a number of emails I sent in response to requests for input from those considering their own change.

Don’t do it! That’s my advice. This is the most awful, most expensive, most painful, most disruptive thing you could ever do. Don’t do it unless there is no other alternative. You may think your life is tough but unless it’s a choice between suicide and a sex-change it will only get worse. And the costs keep coming. You lose control over most aspects of your life, become a second class citizen and all so you can wear women’s clothes and feel cuter than you do now. Don’t do it is all I’ve got to say.

That’s advice I wish someone had given me. I had the sex change, I “pass” fine, my career is good but you can’t imagine the number of times I’ve wished I could go back and see if there was another way. Despite following the rules and being as honest as I could with the medical folks at each stage, nobody stopped me and said “Are you honest to God absolutely sure this is the ONLY path for you?!” To the contrary, the voices were all cheerfully supportive of my decision. I was fortunate that the web didn’t exist then – there are too damn many cheerleaders ready to reassure themselves of their own decision by parading their “successful” surgeries and encouraging others.

I can speak the transgender party line that I was a female trapped in a male body and I remember feeling this way since I was 4. But, it’s never that easy if you look at it sincerely and without preconception. There’s little question that a mid-life crisis, a divorce and a cancer scare were involved in at least the timing of my sex-change decision. To be completely honest at this point (3 yrs post-op) is not easy, however, I’m not sure I would do it again. I’m now concerned that much of what I took as a gender dysfunction might have been nothing more than a neurotic sexual obsession. I was a cross-dresser for all of my sexual life and had always fantasized going fem as an ultimate turn-on. Ironically, when I began hormone treatment my libido went away. However, I mistook that relief from sexual obsession for validation of my gender change. Then in the final bit of irony, after surgery my new genitals were non-orgasmic (like 80% of my TG sisters).

So, needless to say, my life as a woman is not an ultimate turn-on. And what did it all cost? Over $30,000 and the loss of most of my relationships to family and friends. And the costs don’t end. Every relationship I make now and in the future has to come to terms with the sex-change. And I’m not the only one who suffers. I hate the impact this will have on my kids and their future.

Anyway, I’m making it sound awful and it’s not. There are some perks but the important things like being comfortable with myself and having a true love in my life don’t seem like they were contingent on the change. Being my “real self” could have included having a penis and including more femininity in whatever forms made sense. I didn’t know that until too late and now I have to make the best of the life I’ve stumbled into. I just wish I would have tried more options before I jumped off the precipice. I miss my easy access to my kids (unlike many TS’s I didn’t completely lose access to them though), I miss my family and old friends (I know they “shouldn’t” have abandoned me but lots of folks aren’t as open minded as they “should” be … I still miss them) and finally, I hate the disconnect with my past (there’s just no way to integrate the two unrelated lives). There’s any number of ways to express your gender and sexuality and the only one I tried was the big one. I’ll never know if I could have found a compromise that might have worked a lot better than the “one size fits all” sex-change. Please, check it out yourself before you do likewise.

In this funny clip, Steven Crowder explores the mind of a pothead (or what is left of it). It seems there is little there as they explain their desire to ban Big Gulps and legalize pot on the grounds that people should be able to do whatever they want with their own bodies. The interspersing of the remarks from the psychologist and the delusional pothead is a stroke of genius.

Just when you thought Sesame Street was safe again, you find out that Elmo’s insatiable hunger for the flesh of little boys will not be quenched as a fresh homosexual, pedophilia charge emerges.

This time, the accuser has come out openly making charges directly at Elmo puppeteer, Kevin Clash. The new accuser is Cecil Singleton and he claims that Kevin Clash molested him when he was 15 years old. Specifically, TMZ reports that

According to Singleton, his sexual relationship with Clash began when he was 15 and Clash was an adult … and initially lasted for 2 weeks. But they picked things up a while later.

Singleton claims that while they never had sexual intercourse, the two did engage in several sexual activities together … including “groping, masturbation, intense kissing, dry-humping.”

Singleton says they had sexual intercourse years later … when Cecil was an adult.

Furthermore, E! is also reporting that Singleton is suing Clash for more than 5 million dollars in damages: psychological and emotional. A very detailed report of Cecil’s charge and accusation is here.

As we reported before, the first accuser was Sheldon Stephens, who claims to have signed a deal to keep quiet for a mere $125,000. It seems Stephens now claims that he signed the agreement under duress and no longer wants to honor it.

As all of this has emerged, it looks like the Sesame Workshop has decided that Kevin Clash has molested enough children on Sesame Street and has thrown him overboard. As reported in The Telegraph, PBS should be recognized for writing the kindest firing speech for a pedophile ever:

In a statement on Tuesday, Sesame Workshop, the non-profit organisation behind the show, said: Kevin Clash has helped us achieve that mission for 28 years, and none of us, especially Kevin, want anything to divert our attention from our focus on serving as a leading educational organisation.

Unfortunately, the controversy surrounding Kevin’s personal life has become a distraction that none of us want, and he has concluded that he can no longer be effective in his job and has resigned from Sesame Street. This is a sad day for Sesame Street.

With all of this, you would think that Sesame Street would have had enough of Elmo, but that does not seem to be the case. As E! reports, Sesame Street plans to continue the muppet’s career on the show.

It appears that the identity of the man who accused Elmo puppeteer, Kevin Clash, of pedophilia is no longer a secret. According to TMZ, he is Sheldon Stephens, and he was paid $125,000 to drop his charges and keep quiet.

In the past few days, stories have run that reported that Sheldon Stephens had recanted the charges against Kevin Clash (AKA “Elmo”). That appears not to be the case. As TMZ is reports,

We’ve learned although Stephens signed the document, he continues to insist Clash had sex with him when he was a minor and was pressured into signing the settlement.

One source privy to the negotiations tells TMZ … Stephens was crying during final negotiations and repeatedly insisted he didn’t want to sign.

We contacted Clash’s lawyer, but he had no comment.

In recent days, the press has been full of articles designed to destroy the reputation of accuser, Sheldon Stephens. Everywhere you look, they are running stories to discredit him in order to save “Elmo.” It is a disgusting silence and destroy mission.