Sunday is a close friend of mine’s birthday, but we are having the party for her tonight.  She generally cooks for me, so tonight as a treat for her, I am cooking a real Italian feast.  Italian food is one of my specialties, so I am cooking chicken piccata as the main course.  I think she will enjoy it. So I’m going shopping in the morning, spending the afternoon with her “partying” and then cooking in the evening for all the guests.  I love to cook for people, so this will be a lot of fun for me, and I hope yummy for the guests.  I think it will be a fun day, and I hope that she will enjoy it. She does so much for me, that I just want to do something special for her.

LGBT rights in Iran since the Iranian Revolution of 1979 have come in conflict with the penal code, with international human rights groups claiming floggings and death sentences of lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals. Homosexuality is a crime punishable by imprisonment, corporal punishment, or in some cases of sodomy, even execution of the accused is legal under the laws of this country’s theocratic Islamic government. Iran insists that it does not execute people for homosexuality, and those executed had either committed rape, murder, or drug trafficking.

In 2007, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, speaking to Columbia University, said, “In Iran we don’t have homosexuals like in [the US]. In Iran we do not have this phenomenon. I don’t know who has told you that we have it.” A spokesperson later stated that his comments were misunderstood. In January 2012, Mohammad Javad Larijani, the secretary-general of the Iranian High Council for Human Rights, described homosexuality as a “disease,” and said that same-sex marriage was “immoral”.

Any type of sexual activity outside a heterosexual marriage is forbidden. Transsexuality in Iran is legal if accompanied by a sex change operation; however, transsexuals still report societal intolerance as in most societies.

Although it has some of the strictest laws on sexuality and same-sex relations in the world, Iran also has a reputation for an extremely liberal sex-change operations industry.

According to the BBC, the Iranian regime recently made sexual reassignment even more accessible by announcing that health insurance companies must cover the full cost of sex-change operations, which can cost upward of $3,000.

According to the BBC, Iran performs more sex-change operations than any country in the world except for Thailand; the surgery industry has attracted patients from all over the Middle East and as far away as Eastern Europe. Official statistics for 2007 put the number of transsexuals in Iran between 15,000 and 20,000 people, with unofficial estimates suggesting many more — up to 150,000, the Guardian reports.

In a country where same-sex relationships are punishable by execution, sex-changing surgeries may mean the difference between life and death.

Iranian-born filmmaker, Tanaz Eshaghian, who brought attention to Iran’s transgender community in her award-winning 2008 documentary film,“Be Like Others,” illustrates the logic behind the law. In one scene of the film, a Muslim cleric explains how Islam supports sex-change surgery. “An action is allowed unless it states specifically in the Quran that an act is a sin. Why is adultery one of the seven deadly sins? Because it specifically says so in the Quran. Because it does not specifically state that sex change is a sin, therefore, we cannot call it a sin.”

Yet while the freedom to change sex might come as a relief to some, Eshaghian also draws attention to the pressure felt by gay men and women in Iran to have sexual reassignment surgeries as a means of legitimizing their sexual orientation. As gay individuals, they are committing a crime. As transsexuals, they can exist under Iranian law.

Ali Askar, a male-to-female who underwent surgery, told the BBC, “If I didn’t have to operate, I wouldn’t do it. I wouldn’t touch God’s work.”

Gender theorist Afsaneh Najmabadi adds: “For legal and medical authorities, sex change surgeries are explicitly framed as the cure for a diseased abnormality, and on occasion they are proposed as a religioegally sanctioned option for heteronormalizing people with same-sex desires or practices.”

Teachers work harder than anyone else for nine months out of the year, we deserve our vacation.  There’s only one problem though: everyone has something for us to do. And it’s all just because they think we have planned nothing ourselves for the summer but to be lazy.  I’m here to tell you that we put off stuff for those nine months (vacations, sleep, house cleaning [at least I do for the most part], just getting some freaking rest, reading books we haven’t had time for, finishing a dissertation, and the list goes on…..).  No one seems to get that.  Just like last summer, I am being pulled in a dozen different directions.  Will people ever understand?  I doubt it, but thanks guys for reading my rant.

BOSTON—An appeals court ruled Thursday that the heart of a law that denies a host of federal benefits to gay married couples is unconstitutional.

The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston said the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman, discriminates against married same-sex couples by denying them federal benefits.

The law was passed in 1996 at a time when it appeared Hawaii would legalize gay marriage. Since then, many states have instituted their own bans on gay marriage, while eight states have approved it, led by Massachusetts in 2004.

The appeals court agreed with a lower court judge who ruled in 2010 that the law is unconstitutional because it interferes with the right of a state to define marriage and denies married gay couples federal benefits given to heterosexual married couples, including the ability to file joint tax returns.

The court didn’t rule on the law’s other provision, which said states without same-sex marriage cannot be forced to recognize gay unions performed in other states.

During arguments before the court last month, a lawyer for gay married couples said the law amounts to “across-the-board disrespect.” The couples argued that the power to define and regulate marriage had been left to the states for more than 200 years before Congress passed DOMA.

An attorney defending the law argued that Congress had a rational basis for passing it in 1996, when opponents worried that states would be forced to recognize gay marriages performed elsewhere. The group said Congress wanted to preserve a traditional and uniform definition of marriage and has the power to define terms used to federal statutes to distribute federal benefits.

Since DOMA was passed in 1996, many states have instituted their own bans on gay marriage. Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Iowa, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maryland, Washington state and the District of Columbia have approved it, but Maryland and Washington’s laws aren’t yet in effect and may be subject to referendums.

Last year, President Barack Obama announced the U.S. Department of Justice would no longer defend the constitutionality of the law. After that, House Speaker John Boehner convened the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group to defend it.