Laurie and Debbie say:

As is becoming an annual habit, we’d like to take advantage of the American Thanksgiving holiday to list some things in the world to be thankful for.

We spend a lot of time blogging about what makes us angry, unhappy, dispirited. We think that makes it important to spend a moment looking at what’s worth being thankful for. Here’s another random, off-the-top-of-our-heads list, this year with links. Please help us add to it.

The Congress in Colombia granted the same rights to social security benefits to gay couples as to straight couples. Gay marriage remains legal in Spain, where our friend Lawrence Schimel married his sweetheart Isma this year. Also, an international group led by Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay is lobbying the U.N. to embrace the Yogyakarta Principles, a set of principles on how to apply international law to sexual orientation and gender identity. The principles were drafted in 2006 in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.

Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize, and Doris Lessing won the Nobel Prize for Literature. (To entertain yourselves, watch how excited she wasn’t at this link.) She deserves it.

After years and years of low-impact news about the health benefits of fat, this large study made the front page of most American newspapers.

Alberto Gonzalez is no longer attorney general of the United States.

An African-American man, a woman, and a known cross-dresser are serious candidates for President of the United States. Obama and Clinton are both being subtly attacked for those characteristics, but at the same time there’s a clear a national consensus that they are real potential candidates. Giuliani’s penchant for dresses and chorus-line outfits is drawing remarkably little attention.

A group of New Zealand scientists have found a treatment that seems to really make a difference in the great amphibian die-off.

In Brazil, sexual reassignment surgery is free.

The Republicans are having to spend time not only trying to justify their vastly unpopular war, but also defending themselves from all kinds of sex scandals.

After his death and the end of the series, Albus Dumbledore has been outed by his creator, J. K. Rowling.

The Mars rovers are still wandering cheerfully around the surface of a strange planet.

If you need something like this every week, one good source is the Friday hope blogging at Bouphonia. Have a great holiday; we’ll be back early next week.

gay rights, gay marriage,fat, size acceptance, body image, transgender, sex reassignment surgery, politics, sex, cross dressing, Dumbledore, J. K. Rowling, Mars rovers, amphibians, Doris Lessing, feminism, sex scandals, Body Impolitic