Open Minded Initiate

that’s it. rosa’s feet were tired. 

You see, the actual, spontaneous, unplanned incident was done nine months earlier by a black girl named Claudette Colvin.  She was in the section designated for black people, however, the front became crowded and she was told to move to make way for a white woman (who was actually fine with standing as it turns out, to show how adamantly racist the bus driver was).  She refused and was arrested.

Rosa Parks was a secretary at one of many chapters of NAACP and they had seen the incident but they had multiple reasons for not wanting to publicize it when it happened.  One was that Claudette was a minor.  Another possibility is that Claudette had some marks on her past that could have been considered questionable or immoral and they wanted someone that white people couldn’t pick apart as a villain or a thug for when it happened.

"I wanted him to see the beauty of his country and its people."

This might be the most bizarre post in this Gay Icons tumblr - actor Raymond Burr

Many people know Raymond Burr from his television roles as the ace attorney in “Perry Mason” (1956-1966) and as the ace wheelchair detective in “Ironside” (1967-1975) as well as the multiple TV movies based on both in the 1980s and 1990s. And of course I have to mention he starred in the Americanized version of “Godzilla, King of the Monsters!” (1956).

But like his role as the killer in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rear Window” (1954), Burr had something to hide.

Like other homosexual actors of that era, Raymond Burr needed to keep his secret under tight wraps, otherwise his successes as Mason and Ironside would never happen.

Burr weighed 12.5 lbs at birth, and was a chubby child. He once said: “When you’re a little fat boy in public school…you’re just persecuted something awful.” He developed a knack for invented stories of a happy childhood.

He initially found success in radio, where it didn’t matter how he looked. When he ventured into movies, Burr weighed more than 300 lbs and he only got parts as thugs or villains. “I was just a fat heavy,” he said. To get the role of Perry Mason, he had to go on a crash diet and lose 60 lbs before the producers would give him the role.

At some point, to deflect any suspicion, Burr and his managers began telling stories of his heroic military career and tragic personal life.

Burr claimed to have served in the Navy and been injured in a battle at Okinawa (no evidence of this was ever found).

He claimed he was married to a Scottish actress named Annette Sutherland, who was killed on the same airplane crash as Leslie Howard in 1943 (there is no evidence an Annette Sutherland ever existed, and her name was not on passenger manifests for the flight).

He claimed that he had a son who died of leukemia in 1953 at the age of ten (there is no record or evidence of this).*

He claimed to have married again in the early 1950s to Laura Andrina Morgan, who died of cancer (there is no record of the marriage).

*As part of the story of the son, in 1991 Burr told Parade magazine in an interview that when he realized his son was dying, Burr took him on a one-year tour of the United States. "I wanted him to see the beauty of his country and its people.” But eventually his publicist confirmed that Burr worked in Hollywood the year that he was supposedly touring with his son.

"I wanted him to see the beauty of his country and its people."

But eventually his publicist confirmed that Burr worked in Hollywood the year that he was supposedly touring with his son.

In the meantime, Burr met actor Robert Benevides on the set of Perry Mason (1960). They became “friends” and eventually moved in together. Benevides soon quit acting but is credited as production consultant for 21 of the Perry Mason TV movies.

Burr & Benevides owned and operated an orchid nursery and then a vineyard in California. They were together for 33 years until Burr’s death in 1993. Burr bequeathed his entire estate to Benevides.

Here’s a quick handy reference list or anyone who isn’t sure:

Homosexuality does exist in almost all social species.

“Alpha males” are not a real phenomenon and in fact the most aggressive males tend to be the least reproductively successful.

“Survival of the fittest” simply means that the success of a species hinges on how well it “fits” its environment. It does not mean that stronger or smarter individuals are supposed to succeed. Those things can even be a detriment in nature by wasting too many resources.

“Race” is not a biological concept. Someone who looks different from you has the same human genes, just a different grab-bag of dominant traits.

Evolution is not a march towards higher complexity, more intelligence or even more adaptability. It’s just a fluctuation of characteristics dictated by environmental pressures and mutation. A slime mold isn’t “less evolved” than a hawk, just adapted for success under different parameters.

People didn’t evolve “from apes.” It’s more complicated than that. We are a category of ape, sharing a common ancestor with the other apes.

No human on Earth is “closer” to an evolutionary ancestor than any other. We all descended from the same one.

Neanderthals were also a “sibling” species of ours. We didn’t evolve from them.

Humans are actually more genetically homogeneous than most people suspect. This is possibly due to a population bottleneck at some point in our evolutionary past. Two chimpanzees from different sides of a jungle are likely more genetically different to each other than any two human beings in the world.

Our big brains may help us use tools, but what was really principal in their development was the need for empathy, communication, and cooperation.

Humans. Are. Social. So social it drove an incredibly energetically costly increase in our brain size.  Don’t believe anyone who says its our nature to fight “every man for themself.” We’re humans, not bears. We fight for each other.

And we always have. Fossil remains are found of ancient humans who bore signs of crucial mobility impairments that lived to notable ages. Some even have sticks or other mobility aids – community care and support is our way. We don’t cast off those with impairments, we stand by them.

Human sexual dimorphism is on a decreasing trend. Our ancestors had greater difference in canine size and overall size. Our dimorphism gap has gotten smaller.

Occam’s razor is the principal that whatever is the simplest explanation is probably the most likely one. Don’t believe someone who says the reason we evolved bipedalism is so that males could carry gifts to females to woo them. Yes, this is a real ‘theory’ on how bipedalism evolved.

Skin tone is an adaptation of UV levels vs vitamin D levels. Both come from the sun. UV is harmful, so where sun is plentiful populations develop a darker skin tone for more protection. The skin needs sun to create vitamin D, so where sun is scarce, the skin tone lightens to allow more sun in. This is literally all it is.

Final thing: No one’s mind is really equipped to fully understand how long a billion years is, or a million, or even tens of thousands of years. Evolution takes place over a loooong time. Its very, very, slow, slower than we can really comprehend. We can’t “stand in the way” of natural selection by caring for our ill. We don’t need to “help” evolution in any way. It inevitably happens, but not on any sort of timescale we could possibly affect, so don’t fall for anyone that tells you not to “stand in the way” of natural selection. That’s fascism, and its utterly pseudo-scientific.

A friend of mine posted this and tagged my old instagram account, asking me to share it. I figured sharing it here where I actually have a following, would be far better.

Please remember that just because the government is giving into pressure and greed, that doesn’t mean that any of this is getting any better, in a lot of ways it’s getting worse. And even if you yourself aren’t being as heavily affected anymore, there are people and communities that are.

Detroit teachers stage “sickout” over horrible conditions, force schools to close

Nikolai Astrup  (Norway, 1880-1928)