Ragbag Headliners

Archaeologists Find First Known Gay Caveman Near Prague

An unusual burial may have outed the world's first known gay caveman, whose bones were discovered outside Prague in a grave that indicates he was homosexual or possibly transgendered.

During the Copper Age 5,000 years ago, men were traditionally buried facing the west, along with weapons and knives. But archaeologists in the Czech Republic say the skeletal remains of the newly discovered caveman were found facing the east, along with household items like water jugs and pots, funeral rites almost always reserved for women in the region during that time.

"From history and ethnology, we know that people from this period took funeral rites very seriously, so it is highly unlikely that this positioning was a mistake," archaeologist Kamila Remisova Vesinova told reporters Wednesday, according to London's Telegraph. "Far more likely is that he was a man with a different sexual orientation, homosexual or transsexual."

Researchers said they'd seen other graves from the period in which female warriors were buried using rites usually afforded to men, but never a grave in which a man was buried in the style of a woman. Katerina Semradova, another researcher, said the discovery is one of the earliest known cases of a "third-gender grave," according to the Daily Mail.

Archaeologists also found an oval-shaped pot near the man, an artifact generally buried with women. "What we see here does not add up to traditional Corded Ware cultural norms," Vesinova said.

The man, who lived sometime between 2900 and 2500 B.C., is believed to be part of the Corded Ware culture, which flourished in the area now known as Europe. –AOL News 

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N.C. House OKs Mexican ID Ban

House members voted 66-50 Wednesday to pass and send to the state Senate a bill that would bar local and state officials from accepting the Mexican government's matricula consular and documents like it as valid ID.

The margin was short of what supporters would need to muster to override a gubernatorial veto, should one be forthcoming if the bill clears the Senate.

Republicans lined up solidly in favor, but House Democrats were against it 50-1. A veto override takes three-fifths of the members present and voting, 72 votes in the House if all 120 members participate. The GOP in a full chamber is four votes short of holding a veto-proof majority.

Wednesday's vote came four months after Durham's City Council voted unanimously to endorse the city Police Department's practice of accepting the matricula. The bill's wording would explicitly override that decision.

Supporters of the anti-matricula bill discounted assurances from Mexican diplomats that the ID, issued to Mexicans living abroad, is reliable proof of the bearer's identity.

One of the bill's chief sponsors, N.C. Rep. Mike Hager, R-Rutherford, told fellow legislators that the FBI and U.S. Department of Justice regard the document as being "highly susceptible to fraud."

"Who do you believe is protecting American's values, the Mexican consulate ... or the FBI, the Justice Department or the TSA?" Hager said, including the federal Transportation Security Administration in the list of agencies legislators should look to for guidance.

Hager's mention of the FBI alluded to testimony a mid-ranking agency official gave to Congress in 2003.

The card is nonetheless accepted by a variety of government agencies in this country, including the Internal Revenue Service, Mexico's consul general for the Carolinas, Carlos Flores-Vizcarra, told members of a House committee earlier this month.

Opposition to the matricula is a major cause for groups who say they oppose illegal immigration, such as Americans for Legal Immigration, based in Raleigh. They contend that the card merely serves to legitimize illegal immigrants.

Democrats, however, said law-enforcement groups have been conspicuously silent about the bill. That, to them, lent credence to the idea that accepting it isn't really a problem.

"We ought to be hearing it from the horse's mouth, or 1/8GOP legislators3/8 ought to be giving us the documents they say support their arguments -- neither of which has occurred," said N.C. Rep. Bill Faison, D-Orange. "If all those folks show up and say this is a problem that needs to be addressed and this is a correct solution for it, I'll take the next step and vote for 1/8the bill]."

Faison tried to have the bill sent back to committee, but Republicans blocked that on a party-line decision. Come the final vote, the only legislator to cross the aisle was N.C. Rep. Tim Spear, D-Washington, who voted for passage.

Two Republicans, N.C. Reps. Jeff Barnhart, R-Cabarrus, and Danny McComas, R-New Hanover, switched positions on Wednesday. They'd voted against the bill in a preliminary ballot the day before.

That got them a denunciation from Americans for Legal Immigration, which on its website branded the pair "traitor Republicans." The group also lumped Spear in with Democrats it said had voted to stand "with illegal alien invaders."

One of the bill's opponents, N.C. Rep. Rick Glazier, D-Cumberland, blasted the group during Wednesday's floor debate. He termed its criticism of Barnhart and McComas "despicable" and "an attack from the very margins of society."

Glazier also denounced the bill in no uncertain terms, calling it an "ugly, ugly" piece of legislation. –The Times News