Happy New Year to all our readers!

Passing the Buck: Many if not most readers have noticed that this site has been down a number of times. We do not have the full picture yet, but I wanted to share what we do know and how we are investigating. The problem is that organizations (like the Canadian Centre for Child Protection) or individuals make a complaint and because we are being accused of promoting something heinous, the natural inclination is to err on the side of conservatism and shut us down without investigating. Most people cringe at having to look into this deeper in fear of what they might see or learn. Naturally, there is nothing really to fear in our case but someone in the internet chain is shutting us off without due process. Getting information has been difficult because each actor in this drama is in the uncomfortable position of being accused of either censorship or child abuse. In any event, Pigtails in Paint is switching to a different data center hosted in another country and see if that works better. Meanwhile, we will continue to investigate to work out the weak links in the chain.

Journeys of Gender Identity: Pip brought to my attention a graphic novel meant to help young people in the LGBT community to feel less alone. However, conservative communities have raised an uproar about the fact that this material is openly available to young people in a public school. You can read more here.

Tongue in Cheek: A reader brought to my attention a song featured in the film Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life (1983). Like all films of this ilk, everything in it is meant to be a parody. But I had forgotten about this one song called “Every Sperm is Sacred”. In it, there are some fairly young performers singing the lyrics to this facetious work. It seemed hardly worth mentioning but I can’t help but wonder what the auditioning process was for getting young people to appear in this kind of scene.