The Boy Scouts of America have formally voted to lift the longstanding ban on openly gay scouts, according to a tweet from a delegate at the meeting where the vote took place. Openly gay scoutmasters and other paid adult staff, on the other hand, are still not welcome in the…
Man. We remember a time, long ago last legislative session, when all your state lawmakers wanted to do was talk about abortion and how much they hated it. They were super-duper against it, as they could not seem to stop talking about, so much so that they cheerily decimated the…
A Dallas County jury has found Donald Cuba not guilty of rape, The Dallas Morning News’ Melissa Repko is reporting. Cuba, a 20-year-old junior, was accused of raping a fellow student in a dorm room early on the morning of February 10, 2012. As we wrote this morning, the trial…
Last fall, 20-year-old SMU junior Donald Cuba was indicted on charges of raping a fellow student in a dorm room. He was one of two SMU students charged with sexual assault that year (both in the same month, in fact). The other student, J.D. Mahaffey, saw his charges dropped by…
John Carona, our Republican state senator from Dallas, learned some hard lessons this session about how his fellow lawmakers’ business interests tend to dominate the doings in the legislature. Last month, Carona’s bill to try to reform the incredibly predatory payday loan industry was picked down to its skeletal bones…
A 1-year-old child died after being left in a locked car in the parking lot of Frank Guzick Elementary School in Pleasant Grove. The child’s mother is a teacher at the school, according to a statement from Dallas ISD. A statement from the Dallas Police Department says that a witness…
Last fall, I drove down to the Calvary Church of Granbury, a Pentecostal congregation in the little town southwest of Fort Worth that was devastated by last night’s tornadoes. It’s a tiny building with vivid green carpet, next to an empty field and just up a narrow country road from…
This is a weird one. The story comes to us via Reddit (of course), where a resident of an apartment complex near State and Thomas streets in Uptown writes that he’s distressed by the appearance of a strange chalk marking on his door. “I noticed today that my door had…
If there’s one thing everyone in America can agree on this morning, it’s that Kermit Gosnell is disgusting and belongs in an especially dank and fetid section of some sort of subterranean prison. In a case that millions of talking heads have been shouting at you about from your TV,…
It was a really nice day yesterday, wasn’t it? Not too windy, not too hot, not too humid. Perfect Sunday weather, all the better to sit in the park, feel the fresh air, and, with any luck, not have some asshole come along and kick you in the face. See…
Updated below. Original story, 10:05 a.m.: An EMT and incident commander with West Emergency Medical Services was arrested early this morning on charges of possessing a “destructive device,” multiple media outlets are reporting. Bryce Reed, 31, is in federal custody. There are two different interpretations of the arrest being presented:…
This year, a group of parents and administrators at the Dallas Independent School District embarked on pretty much the most thankless task there is: finding a new sex ed curriculum for the district’s students. The job is thankless in large part because no matter what they do, someone’s going to…
Teenagers have a favorite word, one they deploy frequently. An easy way to ensure its arrival in conversation is to bring up sex education. “The abstinence stuff is awkward,” says a teenage girl, rolling her eyes. Whenever the teacher breaks it out in class, “everybody’s laughing.” It’s an overcast afternoon,…
It’s pretty frequent these days to experience Impotent Facebook Rage (IFR), in which the social media giant does something so profoundly irritating or angry-making that you immediately vow to get off the site altogether. And yet, you don’t cancel your account cold turkey (or at least I don’t), probably because…
The Dallas Voice is reporting that local LGBT activist C.d. Kirven was arrested in Austin today after a sit-in at the offices of Senators Bob Deuell and Brian Birdwell, Republicans from Greenville and Granbury respectively. Kirven is a core member of LGBT rights group GetEQUAL TX; we profiled her and…
Last year, the Arlington Police Department bought a pair of teeny tiny adorable drones, which the FAA gave them the go-ahead to fly back in March. The APD was stoked, dubbing their new toys their “Aviation Unit” and issuing an FAQ about how the drones would never be used for…
The 16-year-old girl who accused a former Highland Park baseball star of rape is now countersuing him in civil court. In March, after a grand jury declined to indict Ryan Romo on rape charges, the Romo family sued his accuser and her family, claiming, among other things, defamation and negligent…
Meet Linda Harvey, a talk radio host on a Christian station in Columbus, Ohio. In her free time, she’s the founder and main opinion-spewer behind Mission: America, which promotes itself as “Christian commentary on the culture.” Harvey is deeply concerned with pressing social issues like “paganism” (she means Halloween and…
Hang on to your hats, everybody, because I’m about to give you a super-duper exciting glimpse into the inner workings of the Dallas Observer. We get a lot of email from our readers. Some of it comes directly to our various email addresses, but a lot of it goes to…
Back in March, after a grand jury declined to indict him on charges of rape, former Highland Park High School student Ryan Romo sued his accuser and her family. The complaint alleged five separate counts of misconduct, leveled at different family members. Among them: malicious prosecution, negligence and vicarious liability,…
Are you excited about the George W. Bush Presidential Center? We’re so excited. Not quite excited enough to fight our way through the throng of ex-presidents and “Bush-Cheney Alumni” attending the dedication tomorrow, but pretty goddamn enthused nonetheless. So, it appears, are a few SMU students and some random non-affiliated…
Last week we told you about a group of activists who were suing the City of Dallas, claiming they’re being illegally barred from participating in a protest during SMU’s dedication this week of the new George W. Bush Presidential Center. On Friday, noting a “strong public interest in the freedom…
