Op-ed: How San Francisco Is Beating HIV
After a frustrating, decades-long stagnation in rates of HIV transmission, there’s a breakthrough in San Francisco. With information and strategy we can overpower HIV.
Brenden Shucart
www.advocate.com/print-issue/current-issue/2015/08/27/op-ed-how-san-francisco-beating-hiv
Texas couple claims homophobic hotel chef refused to cater their wedding
Daren Merchant and Rick O’Connor decided to get married after 24 years together.
But they say they were in for a rude awakening when they picked for their reception the Hilton Garden Inn just north of Dallas where Merchant’s daughter is an employee.
Merchant took to Facebook to complain that his daughter overheard the hotel chef voicing his opposition to the event.
‘The chef was refusing to do the dinner for the reception,’ Merchant tells KDFW-TV. ‘He had major issues with us being a gay couple,’ said Merchant. ‘…About us having the right to be married, about it creating the apocalypse, about it causing all sorts of other issues, comparing us to Caitlin Jenner.’
Merchant complained to Hilton management but said he was not taken seriously until he shared the incident on social media.
‘I tweeted a short sentence about the issue and all of the sudden Hilton took notice,’ he wrote on Facebook.
Still, he wrote that it took more than a week for the hotel manager to contact him and received further run around’ and was ‘passed back and forth.’ It was then that he wrote about the incident, in detail, on his Facebook page.
‘I am actually shocked that in the day and age that something like this still happens as in the 24 years Rick and I have been together we have never had to face this from any corporation in any industry,’ he wrote.
The story quickly spread and on Thursday (27 August), Merchant finally felt like he was being taken seriously.
He posted an update on Facebook saying he had received a call from the President of Texas Hotel and Lodging Association calling on behalf of the hotel and they had ‘a very long conversation.’
Merchant wrote that the two had discussed ‘a very agreeable solution’ but did not share specifics. He did say he was assured there had been a ‘staffing change.’
‘I do feel that his intentions are honorable and both Rick and I agreed to take his resolution to heart and seriously consider it.,’ he wrote.
Merchant thanked everyone for their support but wants hotel management to be left alone at this point because they have ‘come across to me as being very sorry that the situation occurred and they truly understand and are sorry for the stress this has caused us.’
The post Texas couple claims homophobic hotel chef refused to cater their wedding appeared first on Gay Star News.
Greg Hernandez
WATCH: Donald Trump Still Can't Explain His Marriage Equality Opposition
The top-polling Republican presidential candidate avoided answering a direct question like a political pro.
Sunnivie Brydum
With kids grown, Caitlyn Jenner ready to display Olympic gold medal again – her ‘most prized possession’
Caitlyn Jenner is ready to dust off the gold medal she won as Bruce in the decathlon at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal.
The victory led to Jenner being declared ‘The World’s Greatest Athlete,’ scores of endorsement deals and being featured on a box of Wheaties breakfast cereal.
But the parent of six and stepparent of four reveals in a new video that she put away her gold medal long ago and currently keeps it in the bottom drawer of a vanity where she keeps her make-up.
Why has Jenner, 65, been hiding it what she calls ‘my most-prized possession’ for so long?
‘I’m so proud of it,’ she says in a new WhoSay video. ‘However, I never wanted my kids to feel like they had to have a gold medal in order to be considered a success. I didn’t want them to constantly compare their own achievements to my time in the Olympics, so I haven’t displayed my medal.’
But that is about to change.
‘Now that all of my kids are adults and out of the house, I think it might be time to put this baby up,’ Jenner says.
The post With kids grown, Caitlyn Jenner ready to display Olympic gold medal again – her ‘most prized possession’ appeared first on Gay Star News.
Greg Hernandez
Antigay Activist Josh Duggar Checks Into Rehab To Control His Sexual Urges
It’s been one hell of a summer for reality TV star/antigay activist Josh Duggar, and not in a good way.
Trouble for the married father-of-two began back in May when he confessed to molesting two of his sisters in their sleep, resulting in a media superstorm that ultimately cost his family their TLC reality show. Last week, “family man” Duggar again made national headlines when it was revealed he had not one but two profiles on Ashely Madison, a dating website that helps facilitate extramarital affairs.
Now, the former executive director of the FRC says he’s checking into a “treatment center” after admitting he was “unfaithful” to his unsuspecting wife, Anna, while she was busy carrying his children.
In a statement, Josh’s parents, Jim Bob and Michelle, said they were “deeply grieved” by Josh’s actions but “thankful for the outpouring of love, care and prayers for our family during this most difficult situation.”
They also said they predict a “long journey toward wholeness and recovery” but they believe that with Jesus on his side, Josh will be OK.
“His wrong choices have deeply hurt his precious wife and children and have negatively affected so many others,” the statement said. “During this time we continue to look to God—He is our rock and comfort. We ask for your continued prayers for our entire family.”
We’re pretty sure it’s going to take more than a few extra prayers to fix this mess.
Related: The Antigay Duggars Are Officially 19 Kids And Canceled
h/t: Pink News
Graham Gremore
Texas Values President Jonathan Saenz: Gay Army Has Occupied America And Is Coming For Your Pastor
Gay people are like an Army that has occupied America, and now they’re about to start targeting pastors and churches, according to one Texas-based anti-LGBT hate group.
Texas Values President Jonathan Saenz, whose wife famously left him for a woman, wrote in a fundraising email Thursday:
America today is occupied territory. The enemies of religious freedom occupy every power center from government to academia. Everyone (SIC) except its spiritual core. Thank God, that power isn’t centered in Washington. It flows from the faith and values of its people, from a thousand churches and faith-filled homes across Texas and beyond.
That makes our pastors the Leaders of the Resistancee (SIC).
How does an invading army break the will of an occupied people? First, it identifies its Resistance Leaders. Next, it isolates and demoralizes them, making them think they’re alone and powerless. Then it breaks them––before the people can rally to their defense.
This is why your pastor is truly in the cross-hairs. Armed with not only the recent egregious Supreme Court same-sex ‘marriage’ decision but a host of lower-court rulings and guidelines, the pro-homosexual left is scouring Texas—America’s last stronghold of resistance—seeking “weakest link” communities and churches for a pre-emptive strike.
Thankfully, pastors can save us from the gays, according to Saenz, but only if Texas Values can raise $25,000 to educate them about the so-called “Pastor Protection Act.”
The law, passed earlier this year, is designed to protect pastors and churches from being forced to participate in same-sex weddings. As such, it merely reaffirms existing protections under the First Amendment, and Texas’ two openly LGBT lawmakers both voted in favor of it. But don’t tell that to Saenz:
So it’s not enough for only a few well-informed pastors to know about our state’s new Pastor Protection Law. Every member of the Texas clergy and every Texas church must know they’re shielded against being forced to solemnize, perform, or celebrate a same-sex ‘marriage’ in violation of their beliefs.
Does your pastor know? What about other pastors and churches in your community?
I have been through a lawsuit for my First Amendment rights before, as a law student defending the rights of the campus pro-life group I was leading. It’s no picnic. If more people know about the Pastor Protection Law we can help keep pastors out of court or jail and in the pulpits, and out in their community where they do their best work!
The post Texas Values President Jonathan Saenz: Gay Army Has Occupied America And Is Coming For Your Pastor appeared first on Towleroad.
John Wright
Texas Values President Jonathan Saenz: Gay Army Has Occupied America And Is Coming For Your Pastor
Why This Latina Photographer Documented the Moment She Came Out to Her Parents
Paola Paredes traveled to her native Ecuador to come out to her parents, and took photos of the emotional moment for a project she calls ‘Unveiled.’
Yezmin Villarreal
Stop Looking For A Single Reason Men Commit Public Shootings
Shock. Horror. Debate. Exasperation. Ignore. Repeat. This is the cycle we go through each and every time a public, violent tragedy strikes.
December 14, 2012 was supposed to be a good day. The Huffington Post’s yearly holiday party was that evening, and most of the office arrived at work in the morning thinking more about free food and booze than what news we’d cover that day. Then, at around 9:35 a.m., Adam Lanza shot his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School and slaughtered six adults and 20 children before turning a gun on himself.
It was a devastating thing to witness and cover, even from miles away in a crowded, safe newsroom. The pain among my colleagues was palpable as we all sought details about who Lanza was, how he came to murder first-graders and why. The “why” was most haunting.
Unfortunately, we’ve asked “why?” more times than I can remember off the top of my head during the four years I’ve worked at HuffPost.
We asked “why?” when Wade Michael Page shot up a Sikh temple.
We asked “why?” when James Holmes opened fire on a movie theater in Aurora, Col.
We asked “why?” when Elliot Rodger went on a went on a shooting spree near UC-Santa Barbara.
We asked “why?” Dylann Roof murdered parishioners in cold blood at a church in Charleston.
We asked “why?” when John Russell Houser opened fire on the audience of “Trainwreck” in Lafayette.
Yesterday we, yet again, asked “why?” when a man killed two of his former coworkers, Alison Parker and Adam Wade, on live television.
The reality that mass gun violence has become a cornerstone of American culture feels inconceivable.
It makes sense why we focus on the why — and hope for an easy answer. We grapple with this question, especially in cases of public violence and tragedy, because without a clear answer, the reality that mass gun violence has become a cornerstone of American culture feels inconceivable. We want someone or something to blame, because the idea that we could be complicit in fueling a society that hasn’t gone more than eight days without a mass shooting in 2015 is completely terrifying.
Plus, the real “why” is complicated, not easily solved with one new law or by writing off each shooter as an isolated, mentally ill madman, or the rallying cry of “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”
“Why” involves our cultural ideas about masculinity and what makes a “real” or “good” or “worthy” man. Mass murderers are nearly always (white) men. Men who feel wronged — either by society or their colleagues or their classmates or their ex-lovers or all of the above. It’s about the entitlement to success, women’s bodies and attention men have been taught they deserve.
As Josie Duffy wrote at Gawker of WDBJ shooter Vester Flanagan: “This guy reminds me of many other men who kill — off the top of my head I can think of at least five mass murders where the killer was fired from a job, dumped by a girlfriend, or rejected. Ending lives essentially because they didn’t feel like they were getting what they deserve. Entitlement.”
We are stuck in a vicious cycle of unfathomable violence, and if we don’t start implicating ourselves, we may never escape.
It’s often about institutional racism. “It must be acknowledged that there are more Dylann Roofs out there, and they exist because we let them,” wrote HuffPost’s Zeba Blay after the Charleston shooting.
In the wake of the UCSB shooting in 2014, Tiffany Xie took a closer look at the research on similar public massacres — specifically at the pattern of white, middle-class men as the people most often behind the gun. “This ‘suicide-by-mass-murder’ is a reflection of a combination of both White and male privilege,” she wrote, “the ideology that White males have social, economic, and political advantages granted to them solely on the basis of their sex and race.” Flanagan was not a white, straight man. But, unfortunately, men of color are not exempt from misogyny — it just plays out differently for them.
It involves easy access to firearms, a conversation we seem doomed to put off indefinitely, as it’s never “the right time” to discuss it. As though grieving parents who spend their mourning days going on television to plead with the American public and politicians to do something are just “pushing an agenda.”
Searching for a “why” brings up important conversations about mental illness treatment — greater access to health care is always a good thing! — but it also encourages us to scapegoat mental illness, when mentally ill individuals are far more likely to be the victims of crimes than commit them.
We seek to distance ourselves from those that commit these horrors. We aren’t “crazy.” We use guns responsibly and it’s our right to carry them. We couldn’t possibly raise a son or befriend a man who sees those guns as his public way out, taking others — often women and children — with him in a blaze of media coverage.
— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
Venice Mayor Plans To Ban Gay Pride, Calls It “Farcical” And “Kitsch”
The mayor of Venice wants to ban gay pride parades in the city, reports The BBC .
“There will be no gay pride in my Venice,” Luigi Brugnaro told La Repubblica newspaper, before describing the event as both farcical and kitsch.
In the article, he claims that he’s not homophobic and, in fact, has gay friends.
Flavio Romani, the head of Italian gay rights group Arcigay group, criticized the mayor’s statement and suggested he come visit the Pride parade in Venice.
“We will be back next year and we invite the mayor to march at the head of the parade with us,” he told AFP news agency. “That way he will see what gay pride really is.”
Romani also accused Brugnaro of trying to impose his rigid viewpoints on a “cosmopolitan city.”
Brugnaro is adamant about his opposition to the event, and certainly the idea of hosting the event.
“Let them go and do it in Milan, or in front of their own homes,” he said.
Jeremy Kinser
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