Author: Judge Michael Boyajian

Do We Need Gay Bars?  Do We Need Black Churches?

By Michael Boyajian

I had written recently about an LGBT get together at Bethel Woods and in that article I quoted Stephen Hengst of Big Gay Hudson Valley who postulated whether we need gay bars anymore.

Shutter Island Comes to Fishkill

By Michael Boyajian

The Fishkill Town historian Willa Skinner once tried to explain the mentality of Fishkill to a local newcomer and activist, Mara Farrell, as being something based on the society that once surrounded what was the largest facility for the criminally insane in the country and the town’s largest employer.

I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends

By Michael Boyajian

Ron Zacchi of Marriage Equality New York recently asked me to join up with Hudson Valley Out and About and distribute MENY cards to their members at a Bethel Woods concert featuring the Boston Pops and Idina Menzel Broadway star of Wicked and Rent.  Needless to say I jumped at the chance to see the famed Pops while helping the marriage equality movement on a splendid summer evening.

The New Neanderthals:  America’s Captains of Commerce

By Michael Boyajian

Bob Herbert reports in the New York Times that corporations laid off far more workers than were necessary during the recession and although they are now reporting record profits they are not hiring anyone back choosing to sit on immense piles of cash.

Gianna:  Peruvian Immigrant American Hero

By Michael Boyajian

When Gianna was teenager twenty two years ago in her native Peru she knew one thing and that was she wanted to go to America to make something of herself.  Knowing no English she paid thousands of dollars to get to the U.S. knowing nothing of the risks involved like violent assault and rape.

Memo to the Governor of Arizona and other faux patriots

Please memorize the following translation for future reference:

Prometo lealtad a la bandera de Estados Unidos de América, y a la república para que se para, una nación bajo Dios, indivisible, con la libertad y la justicia para todo.

Credit Report Abuses Hurting Middle Class Workers

By Michael Boyajian

Credit reporting organizations are trying to expand their businesses by scaring consumers and by expanding into other facets of American business life.  One of particular harm is the use of credit reports in making a hiring decision.  This has a disparate impact on the middle class which is experiencing extreme hardship during the current economic crisis.

Theater:  A Ticket To Peace

By Michael Boyajian

The movies can be quite inspirational but in between great movies you see a lot of B movies that are not bad but just OK.  And when you’re in a movie theater most of the people’s faces are blank and expressionless absorbing the shock which is screaming out at them in the form of hyper violent action movie trailers.

Guns or Butter

By Michael Boyajian

I had an acquaintance when I worked in state service, a fellow judge.   You would come back from your weekend and meet him by the cooler Monday morning and tell him how you had dinner and a movie with the wife over the weekend and he would tell you he had dinner, purchased a gun and went to the shooting range.

Peace Through Music

By Michael Boyajian

My dad gave me one really great gift.  Though he himself was tone deaf he conveyed to me a great appreciation for music by providing me with audio equipment at my earliest of ages.

I remember the first piece of equipment was a portable Hi Fi phonograph that I would play 45s on.  My favorite single was Love Child by the Supremes a choice that probably perplexed my parents.  He then gave me an AM/FM Cassette player that I would take everywhere with me recording my favorite songs directly from the radio station I was listening to or playing the cassettes I had made of those songs.  I once tuned into WNEW and recorded the opening show in D.C. of a Who concert tour sitting in the back of our station wagon as we drove back from my uncle’s house in New Jersey.