>> OUTREACH: WHITE HOUSE TO HOLD LGBT CONFERENCES AROUND THE COUNTRY <<
MOVIES: Glenn Close in Albert Nobbs.
VIDEO: A day at the dog park, from the dog's perspective.
Maryland First Lady calls anti-gays 'cowards', apologizes.
MUSIC VIDEO Manila Luzon from RuPaul's Drag Race: Hot Couture.
Journalist Ronen Bergman gets the most incredible access to the Israeli military apparatus and reports a very long, very compelling, and very grim story for the Times, in which he discusses the assassination of Iranian scientists, the secrets of the Mossad, the build-up to war, and a whole lot of unknown history. The story's too big to meaningfully excerpt here. Just pour a drink, take a deep breath, and read.
Pictures of poverty; shades of Walker Evans.
Secretary General of the UN Ban Ki Moon exhorts African leaders to respect LGBT rights:
“One form of discrimination ignored or even sanctioned by many states for too long has been discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity,” Ban said.
“It prompted governments to treat people as second class citizens or even criminals,” he added.
First he contracted HIV. Then he developed brain cancer. Now Richard Brodsky is running for his life.
Bigoted Australian tennis legend still clutching her Bible, still smiling like somebody's benign grandma, still talking:
"We get them (homosexuals) in (at church) and you'll find that many, many of them have been abused". When asked if she felt such abuse led people to homosexuality, Court said: "Yes. You look at a lot of them, that's happened."
... "The word of God is our TV guide to life. It's not the fear book, it's a love book and it tells us how to live our lives."
"I would have won six Wimbledons not three . . . if I'd known what I know now from the scriptures, on the area of the mind."
Parents and grandparents of LGBT folk to run a TV ad in Australia:
The advertisement, organised by the Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, is designed to increase the pressure on Mr Abbott to grant Coalition MPs a conscience vote on same-sex marriage. The group's spokeswoman, Shelley Argent, said Mr Abbott was out of step with public opinion on the issue, citing a Galaxy poll from November which showed 76 per cent of Coalition voters supported a conscience vote on same-sex marriage.
... ''This is a country where we all have only one vote each," [said Ms Argent.] "Why does Mr Abbott think he has the right to the votes of half the federal MPs, namely the entire Coalition? He knows and we know that many are in favour of marriage equality and this is what he fears.
''As parents we want our same-sex-attracted sons and daughters to have the choice and right to celebrate their relationships exactly the same as their straight siblings and extended family members, and to have these same relationships validated in the eyes of the law.''
More fun with Sen. Stacey Campfield, a lawmaker utterly undone by Facebook byzantine privacy settings.
Mitt Romney will probably win Florida on Tuesday.
Barney Frank's loving tribute to his political mentor, former Boston Mayor Kevin H. White, who died on Friday:
"He was an enormously important figure for the city, for many of the values I cared about and, in my case, really made a great difference in my life," Frank said. "I was still, when I met him, planning on an academic career, figuring I would dab in politics. He was the one who persuaded me to try fulltime government political work."
"He is the reason I've done what I have done for the past 40 years," Frank said.
White also was the first major state-level political figure to open up the political system to new people, including African-Americans and gays, Frank said.
"He was just the first modern mayor," Frank said.
If Xtina's version of "At Last" didn't do it for you, maybe this will. A big voice and a lot of class, AFTER THE JUMP ...
Posted 7:16 PM EST by Brandon K. Thorp in Africa, AIDS/HIV, Australia, Barney Frank, Boston, Christina Aguilera, Cyndi Lauper, Florida, Iran, Israel, Margaret Court, Mitt Romney, United Nations | Permalink | Comments (5)
I haven't smiled this big in weeks. This a video of Dicken, featuring Milah and Korben -- which is to say, it's a video of what appears to be a really excellent dad covering Depeche Mode with his two surpassingly adorable kids. "Everything counts in large amounts," as they sing, and it's totally true -- especially rocking out with pops.
Watch AFTER THE JUMP ...
Continue reading "WATCH: Dad And Kids Do Depeche Mode"
Posted 2:33 PM EST by Brandon K. Thorp in Depeche Mode, Music, Music Video | Permalink | Comments (22)
Russia's so homophobic, it won't even tolerate gay flight attendants.
Maxim Kupreev is a 25-year-old flight attendant employed by Aeroflot, Russia's largest airline. In order to change the prevailing anti-gay atmosphere in his workplace, Kupreev decided to organize a group of LGBT Aeroflot employees. In response, his bosses commanded him: Marry a woman or you're fired.
From GayStarNews:
The creation of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender group in Aeroflot was announced on 20 June 2011. At this time, Kupreev, the founder of the group said it would fight for the direct inclusion of discrimination ban on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity into internal documents of Aeroflot. His group also planned to fight for the recognition of same-sex partners of the employees.
The next day the official spokesperson of the airline, Irina Dannenberg, told the French news agency AFP that there was no LGBT group in her company. According to her, ‘one should separate personal and professional life,’ AFP reported.
And yet:
Kupreev was given an ultimatum late last year to enter into heterosexual marriage or to lose his job. At the end of 2011 he married his school friend Sofia Mikhailova who got the right to fly Aeroflot for 10% of the fare – and other company privileges.In order to register marriage with Kupreev, Mikhailova had to dissolve her real marriage to Grigoriy Andreykin. The divorce was finalised on 11 October last year.
‘Aeroflot effectively broke a real marriage and created a sham one,’ [said Nikolai Alekseev, founder of Moscow Pride.]
Alekseev and other Russian activists have organized a boycott of Aeroflot, which shall begin on February 9th at a protest outside Aeroflot's Moscow offices.
Posted 2:09 PM EST by Brandon K. Thorp in Discrimination, Moscow, Russia | Permalink | Comments (9)
The Concord Monitor has a detailed story out today about the various forces arrayed for and against the repeal of marriage equality in New Hampshire. Interestingly, the decisive votes are likely to arise from within the state's Republican party. Despite a veto-proof majority in both houses of the state legislature, and despite an official party-line definition of marriage that exludes same-sex unions, Republicans are worried -- indeed, seem almost certain -- that the repeal's a no-go. From the Monitor:
"It is certainly disappointing to me," Sen. Fenton Groen, a Rochester Republican who has been vocal in his support of the repeal, said last week. "I think that, in the House particularly, we have a significant libertarian caucus within the Republican Party. . . . And there are some Republicans who differ on that within that caucus."
In order to repeal marriage equality in New Hampshire, anti-marriage Republicans would have to bring to bear 2/3 majorities against a veto by Democrat governor John Lynch, and it looks very much like libertarian Republicans may keep that from happening:
"I'm for liberty and freedom, leaving people alone so long as they don't harm or defraud other people," said Rep. Steve Winter, a Newbury Republican who opposes the repeal.
Winter, a 73-year-old retired airline captain, was Senate clerk under Republican former Senate president Tom Eaton from 2002 to 2006. He considers himself a "fiscal conservative and a social libertarian."
"I believe what people do with their lives, how they select their mates, is none of my business and none of the state's business," Winter said.
Rep. Seth Cohn, a Canterbury Republican who moved here as part of the Free State project, a libertarian movement to relocate to New Hampshire, is also against repeal. Cohn and others believe the bill may pass the House but does not have the two-thirds majority to override a potential veto by Democratic Gov. John Lynch, who signed the bill three years ago legalizing same-sex marriage.
There are some pro-repeal voices among the libertarians, too. The head of New Hampshire's Republican Liberty Caucus, Carolyn McKinney, worries that failure to repeal could result in the curtailment of religious liberties, and (in a uniquely New Hampshire/libertarian twist) that the erosion of traditional families might lead to dependence on government and the consequent expansion of the state. Other libertarians voice similar concerns, but probably not enough. From the Monitor:
"I know for a fact, based on people I've talked to, that if Gov. Lynch vetoes it, that veto is not override-able," Cohn said.
Posted 1:03 PM EST by Brandon K. Thorp in Gay Marriage, Law - Gay, LGBT, New Hampshire, Religion, Republican Party, Tea Party | Permalink | Comments (6)
This was yesterday in LA. On the one hand: Very impressive, in an athletic way. On the other: Just because you can sing a note, must you? Watch AFTER THE JUMP ...
Continue reading "WATCH: Christina Aguilera Sings "At Last" At Etta James's Funeral"
Posted 11:10 AM EST by Brandon K. Thorp in Christina Aguilera, Deaths, Music | Permalink | Comments (41)
AFTER THE JUMP, watch a video of The Young Turks discussing Tennessee state Sen. Stacey Campfield's regrettable Sirius Radio interview last week, in which Sen. Campfield asserted that:
Most people realize that AIDS came from the homosexual community. It was one guy screwing a monkey, if I recall correctly, and then having sex with men. It was an airline pilot, if I recall.
As Andy reported Friday, Campfield went on to assert that heterosexuals are virtually immune to HIV/AIDS.
I took a look at what appears to be Sen. Campfield's blog -- the link to which was helpfully supplied supplied by a Towleroad reader last week -- and it seems Campfield has actually read And The Band Played On. Campfield wrote:
The research on sex with a monkey being the first transmitter of AIDS has not been proven nor firmly dis proven. It is one of about 5 theories I was able to find on the source of AIDS. No credible source said any one was clearly definitive one way or the other.
It was first published I think in a book which documents the history of the AIDS epidemic is entitled "And the Band Played On." The author of "And the Band Played on" was appalled by the unsanitary and degrading behavior of homosexuals. He died of AIDS a year after his book was published. The homosexual pilot comment was first printed in the American Journal of medicine article about "Patient 0". His name was Gaeton Dugas. While possibly not the first person with AIDS he is still widely considered the person who widely transmitted the modern outbreak of the disease.
This is a remarkable document, and not only because it demonstrates that at least one American legislator is unable to spell "disproven." (I don't think it's a fluke, for Sen. Campfield demonstrates similar difficulties with prefixes elsewhere on his blog.) Mostly it's remarkable for demonstrating a terrifying absence of reading comprehension on the part of a man who makes laws regulating the behaviors of people he reads about. As even the most casual AIDS scholars surely know, Gaetan Dugas was no pilot, and it's never been suggested that he had sex with monkeys. (And some would say that Randy Shilts was anything but "appalled" at the excesses of gay life in the 1970s, but that's another matter.) And it's not just "possible" that Dugas wasn't the first person with AIDS. Unless the tweenaged Gaetan Dugas spent the mid-1960s trafficking diseases between Africa and Missouri, it's a fact.
No one can know everything, and nothing can be known by everybody. But Sen. Campfield is the author of Tennessee's "Don't Say Gay" bill -- which he defends, in the very same blog post, by stating that:
- While there is a scientific and educational need to mention the basics of heterosexuality when teaching the basics of reproduction (XY chromosomes, etc.) there is no scientific need to mention homosexuality as homosexuals do not naturally reproduce.
- We are falling behind the rest of the world in math, science, and English amongst other things. Tennessee ranks about 46th in most areas. Social engineering is just one less issue teachers should have to worry about teaching as part of their curricula.
-- and so it shouldn't be too much to hope he'd attempt to understand the populations he means to rule. But he won't. It's a testament to Sen. Campfield's incuriousness that he doesn't bother to wonder why, given his own standards, prepubescent children should know about "natural reproduction" but not plain-old sex; or what positions vis a vis sexuality are taken by those countries which have eclipsed the United States in "math, science, and English amongst other things."
Continue reading "Homophobic Sen. Campfield Confused About AIDS, Education, And Everything"
Posted 9:43 AM EST by Brandon K. Thorp in AIDS/HIV, Education, Michelangelo Signorile, Stacey Campfield, Tennessee | Permalink | Comments (25)
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