>> 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.
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 (10)
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 (16)
Teenaged hoods in a vanished Brooklyn.
New Jersey columnist asks 'phobic readers to explain how marriage equality will diminish the worth of heterosexual marriage. They can't quite do it.
Housing and Urban Development Secretary promises to ban anti-LGBT housing discrimination.
First, Newt was into pot. Then, he was into executing pot traffickers.
Gingrich, 1982: All too often the hysteria that attends public debate over marijuana’s social abuse compromises a clear appreciation for this critical distinction [between medical use and abuse] ... We believe licensed physicians are competent to employ marijuana, and patients have a right to obtain marijuana legally, under medical supervision, from a regulated source ...
Gingrich, 1996: If you import a commercial quantity of illegal drugs [including marijuana], it is because you have made the personal decision that you are prepared to get rich by destroying our children. I have made the decision that I love our children enough that we will kill you if you do this ... The first time we execute 27 or 30 or 35 people at one time, and they go around Colombia and France and Thailand and Mexico, and they say, ‘Hi, would you like to carry some drugs into the U.S.?’ the price of carrying drugs will have gone up dramatically.
Coulter and Bachmann witnesses in bizarre Tea Party scam case:
After no one took him up on his televised “lie detector challenge,” the man accused of scamming his co-investors in the failed television venture Tea Party HD is trying to make his case by calling a number of high-profile conservative witnesses like Michele Bachmann and Ann Coulter to his defense.
TPHD was founded in 2010 by Loiacono and Bill Hemrick, purporting to be the “world’s first HD provider of news about the Tea Party.” But Hemrick and the five other businessmen who invested in the company claim that Loiacono never put in his share of the funding, used the existing money as his “personal bank account,” and didn’t do the work laid out by the initial deal. “In reality it was an investment scheme to defraud politically conservative-minded citizens who support the Tea Party mission,” the suit said.
Ron Paul's probably not a racist. And yet ...
Alien from the perspective of Jonesy.
When pseudoscience kills:
Chantale Lavigne died in hospital after she and eight others in a personal-development seminar called Dying in Consciousness were covered with mud, wrapped in plastic, put under blankets and immobilized with their heads in cardboard boxes for about nine hours, under instructions to hyperventilate.
Lavigne was removed, unconscious and with a body temperature of 40.5 C, from the Ferme Reine de la Paix in the Drummondville, Que., area after a 911 call that Radio-Canada said had been made by Gabrielle Frechette, a self-styled therapist who was the seminar's operator."
Frechette, who claims that she channels Melchisedech, a Biblical figure, is denying that she has any culpability in Lavigne's death.
Does Yelp kill the fun of exploration?
“The efficiency that the Web has brought has downsides,” says Edward Tenner, a historian of technology and culture. “On balance, it works against happy accidents.” Tenner calls this counter-serendipity: when preconceived notions prevent lucky flukes. For instance, a poorly rated restaurant on Yelp might have a few die-hard fans — outliers who, for whatever reason, love the place. Their reviews might even be posted. But many of us go with the general consensus, writing off anywhere with a three-star ranking or less. “Is it possible that a place you really would have liked doesn’t have many positive comments, but you would have been one of the few positive ones?” asks Tenner.
How George Washington almost became a zombie:
The morning after Washington died, his step-granddaughter Elizabeth Law arrived with a family friend, William Thornton. History best remembers Thornton as the architect who created the original design for the Capitol building, but he was also a trained physician, having studied at the University of Edinburgh. Although he did not practice medicine for much of his life, Thornton always had a keen interest in the workings of the human body, and he suggested a novel method for resurrecting the fallen warrior. Thornton told Washington's wife Martha that he wanted to thaw Washington's body by the fire and have it rubbed vigorously with blankets. Then he planned to perform a tracheotomy so he could insert a bellows into Washington's throat and pump his lungs full of air, and finally to give Washington an infusion of lamb's blood.
Maryland's first lady sorry for referring to marriage-opposers as "cowards."
Madonna talks about new movie, W.E.:
Madonna said she hopes her movie will find its audience among women, who may relate to Wally's naive fantasies about Wallis' life, and the strength she draws from learning the more complex story. "There's three love stories in the film: There's Edward and Wallis, the blossoming love story between Wally and Evgeni, and there's the love affair between the two women," she said. "It's an important mythological story to tell ... of a woman helping another woman. I don't think it's something that we see very often in films. Mostly, we see women sabotaging other women."
Jeopardy contestants have no idea who Rachel Maddow is. Watch them stare blankly AFTER THE JUMP. (But most importantly: Read some of the vile things Breitbart readers have to say about it here.)
Continue reading "NEWS: Gangs, Gingrich, And A Ghastly Death At The Hands Of A Deranged New Ager"
Posted 7:16 PM EST by Brandon K. Thorp in 2012 Election, Ann Coulter, Gay Marriage, Maryland, Michelle Bachmann, New York, Newt Gingrich, Photography, Rachel Maddow, Tea Party, Zombies | Permalink | Comments (10)
Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings has been a proponent of marriage equality. He's marched in Pride Parades. But as Andy noted yesterday, Mayor Rawlings for some reason refuses to endorse the pro-equality pledge already signed by 100 of the nation's most important mayors. In fact, Mayor Rawlings is the only mayor of a city of Dallas's size that has thus far refused to sign. And as a result of his refusal, LGBT activists last night picketed his office.
This afternoon, Mayor Rawlings met privately with approximately 25 representatives from Dallas's LGBT community. From The Dallas Voice:
“To be a great city we have to have everybody feel a part of it,” Rawlings told a throng of news reporters as he left Resource Center Dallas, where the closed-door meeting took place. “Obviously, the LGBT community feels at times that they’re disenfranchised. They don’t have the civil rights that the rest of us have, and so it was a wonderful learning experience for me, listening to personal stories, listening to policy issues, and listening to strategies of how we can make make sure this community feels better next year than it does today. The arc of history is working for the rights of this community, and we as citizens and as the City Council want to support that.”
After the meeting, Mayor Rawlings wouldn't commit to never signing the pledge -- "I’m not going to take a pledge never to sign a pledge," as he put it -- nor would he commit to signing. He expressed a dislike of pledges in general, calling them "simplistic," but wouldn't say much more.
Daniel Cates, of the group GetEQUAL, which organized last night's protest, is planning another outside of City Hall on Wednesday morning.
Posted 5:44 PM EST by Brandon K. Thorp in Dallas, Gay Marriage, Texas | Permalink | Comments (3)
Last weekend, moderate Africans were scandalized when King Goodwill Zwelithini kaBhezkazulu, hereditary leader of the Zulus, said about gay relationships:
There was nothing like that [in traditional Zulu culture] and if you do it, you must know that you are rotten. I don't care how you feel about it. If you do it, you must know that it is wrong and you are rotten. Same sex is not acceptable.
The South African Human Rights Commission quickly condemned King Goodwill's remarks, as did South African president Jacob Zuma. (King Goodwill's position is primarily ceremonial, and he lives and conducts his duties of office within South Africa.) In the following days, representatives of the Zulu royal family insisted that journalists had misheard King Goodwill's remarks. Hoping for clarification, journalists today hustled to the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal to hear the King deliver his first address since the incident, spurred by a release from the South African Office of Traditional Affairs promising that the King would clarify his thoughts on homosexuality.
But the King made no reference to the controversy during his two-hour speech, which he used to stump for the preservation of Zulu history and culture. Which must lead one to consider: Maybe his remarks weren't misinterpreted after all. If not, the King's dislike for LGBT's probably has more to do with personal distaste than with concern for the traditional Christian family structure. Although the Zulus are overwhelmingly Protestant, King Goodwill has six wives.
Posted 4:58 PM EST by Brandon K. Thorp in South Africa | Permalink | Comments (10)
Earlier this week, Gawker's John Cook wondered whether Mitt Romney's father-in-law had been converted to Mormonism -- posthumously. Wrote Cook:
Edward Davies, Ann Romney's Welsh father, was an engineer, inventor, and entrepreneur who worked on designs for the Gemini space program and helped outfit aircraft carriers. He eventually became the mayor of Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. He was also a resolute atheist who insisted that his family be raised without participating in an organized religion. "He would say: 'I'm a scientist, show me the proof'," a former co-worker told the Telegraph. Davies thought of religion as "drudgery and hogwash," according to Boston Globe, and his son Roderick told the paper that Davies "considered people who were religious to be weak in the knees."
So it must have broken his heart when, after his only daughter began dating Mormon scion Mitt Romney, she converted to his religion with the help of Mitt's father.
The conversions didn't stop there. Mitt and his father, George, convinced Anne's younger brother to join the church, and then dispatched missionaries to convert her elder brother, who was then attending school in England. The mission was successful. And after Edward died in 1992, his wife -- Anne Romney's mother -- decided she, too, would become a Latter-Day Saint.
And so Cook asked:
Mormons, of course, are known for their habit of posthumously converting dead souls. They also believe that families are reunited in eternity after death. So the incentive for Ann Romney to convert Edward Davies in death so that they may one day frolic together in the interplanetary afterlife was presumably fairly powerful. Did she posthumously baptize him, despite his belief while he lived that such a baptism and the beliefs that undergird it are pure "hogwash"?
Cook contacted the Romney campaign and the Latter-Day Saints for info. Neither organization would comment, so Cook requested that any Mormon Gawker readers who might have access to the church's baptismal records please contact him. As it turns out:
Edward Davies, Mitt Romney's militantly atheist father-in-law, was indeed posthumously converted to Mormonism by his family.
... Davies was baptized as a Mormon at a "special family meeting" 14 months after his death: "All ordinances except sealing to spouse performed in Salt Lake Temple on 19 Nov 1993 in special family meeting."
That's Mitt Romney. Republican on Earth, totalitarian in eternity.
Posted 1:51 PM EST by Brandon K. Thorp in 2012 Election, Michigan, Mitt Romney, Mormon, Religion | Permalink | Comments (50)
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