STUDY: One-Third of Israelis Are Bisexual
New research suggests there are 10 times as many bisexuals in Israel as gays and lesbians.
Eliel Cruz
www.advocate.com/world/2015/08/31/study-one-third-israelis-are-bisexual
Daily Archives: August 31, 2015
Transgender Healthcare Equality (VIDEO)
Transgender Healthcare Equality (VIDEO)
Healthcare access issues for trans people are largely overlooked — often because healthcare isn’t a sexy topic for the media, but it’s an increasingly important part of the LGBTQ movement. Transgender people in particular rely on healthcare and medical support just to live as who they truly are. This film highlights the current issues trans people face in obtaining quality healthcare in America.
— 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.
Candis Cayne reveals why she walked out of audition for Curb Your Enthusiasm
Candis Cayne reveals why she walked out of audition for Curb Your Enthusiasm
A guest spot on the comedy series Curb Your Enthusiasm would have been a big career boost for transgender actress Candis Cayne.
But Cayne, who has appeared in several episodes of I Am Cait, took herself out of the running once she saw the script.
‘The part was for a trans woman who had to go to the bathroom really bad and decided she was going to go in the men’s line because it was quicker,’ Cayne recalls in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
In front of the show’s creator and star Larry David, Cayne decided to gracefully bow out.
‘I said, “Thank you for writing a trans part, but I can’t audition because a trans woman wouldn’t do this. I have to honor my community,” and I walked out of the audition, exiting with, “But I love the show!”‘
Cayne says another trans actress, Alexander Billings, was also set to audition for the role and had the same reaction.
The scene never made it into any episode of Curb.
Roles in mainstream projects have been far and few between for Cayne since her breakthrough back in 2007 as William Baldwin’s mistress on the ABC drama Dirty Sexy Money.
So this was not an easy job possibility to walk away from.
‘You’re always fighting this because you want to work,’ she says, ‘but you also want to be honest.’
The post Candis Cayne reveals why she walked out of audition for Curb Your Enthusiasm appeared first on Gay Star News.
Greg Hernandez
Another Kentucky Clerk Vows To Die Fighting Against Gay Marriage
Another Kentucky Clerk Vows To Die Fighting Against Gay Marriage
Scoot over Kim Davis and make room for another hater. Casey County, Kentucky clerk Casey Davis — who is not related to the charming Kim — recently appeared on The Tom Roten Morning Show to discuss his aggressively antigay stance on marriage equality, going so far as to say he’d happily die fighting against the Supreme Court’s ruling, reports Right Wing Watch.
Railing against Gov. Steve Beshear for respecting the Supreme Court’s decision, Davis said:
“I think that’s a travesty to think that just because he don’t see it this way or his opinion is to let same-sex marriage go and it’s all right that us as Christians, we as Christians just don’t have rights anymore? That’s wrong, sir. That’s not right… It’s a war on Christianity. There is a travesty taking place with that Supreme Court ruling was completely unconstitutional, completely unconstitutional. They have no right to tell us, the state of Kentucky, that our law that was voted with what was 70 percent of the people that it was wrong, they had no right.”
Related: Kim Davis Breaks Pact With God By Unwittingly Issuing Marriage License To Trans Man
Then Davis started to become even less coherent:
“Our law says ‘one man and one woman’ and that is what I held my hand up and took an oath to and that is what I expected. If it takes it, I will go to jail over — if it takes my life, I will die for because I believe I owe that to the people that fought so I can have the freedom that I have, I owe that to them today, and you do, we all do. They fought and died so we could have this freedom and I’m going to fight and die for my kids and your kids can keep it.”
Listen to the yadda-yadd’ing below.
Jeremy Kinser
South Dakota Lawmaker Proposes Genital Inspection Policy to Determine a Student’s Gender Identity
South Dakota Lawmaker Proposes Genital Inspection Policy to Determine a Student’s Gender Identity
A South Dakota lawmaker proposed an atrocious genital inspection process to determine a person’s gender, including high school students joining sports teams.
The issue was brought up in the 2016 legislative session after a group of lawmakers became upset with a high school athletic group that enacted a trans-inclusive policy, reports The Rapid City Journal.
Rep. Roger Hunt (pictured) introduced the proposal which would strip students from declaring their own gender and would require official birth certificates and “visual inspections,” to determine a person’s gender. Hunt blames gay marriage for spurring the transgender debate:
“This is South Dakota. We haven’t adopted the East Coast culture. We haven’t adopted the West Coast culture. We maintain our own culture.”
The South Dakota High School Activities Association’s policy managed to stave off legislators who attempted to overturn it last winter however, the attention direction at the policy by lawmakers is causing the association to revise pieces of the policy.
Sen. Craig Tieszen cited that a survey finds four in five schools support the association’s authority to determine its own policy with Tieszen agreeing stating “I believe they have the best interest of children as a whole in their hearts.” Despite Hunt’s attempt to derail the association’s progressive policy, other states are introducing transgender protections including a Kentucky school district that overwhelmingly voted to grant protections for its transgender students and employees last week.
The post South Dakota Lawmaker Proposes Genital Inspection Policy to Determine a Student’s Gender Identity appeared first on Towleroad.
Anthony Costello
South Dakota Lawmaker Proposes Genital Inspection Policy to Determine a Student’s Gender Identity
9 Outrageous Things Donald Trump Has Said About Latinos
9 Outrageous Things Donald Trump Has Said About Latinos
Donald Trump’s affront against the Latino community reached new heights last week after Mexican-American journalist Jorge Ramos was forcibly removed from the presidential candidate’s Iowa press conference. But it wasn’t the first time Trump has offended Latinos.
His anti-Latino remarks have cost him several business partners since the launch of his campaign in June, including NBCUniversal, which aired Trump’s reality show “The Apprentice” and co-owns the Miss Universe Organization. Several prominent figures in the Latino community have also spoken out against Trump; actress America Ferrera and singer Ricky Martin published scathing op-eds condemning Trump’s actions and rallying Latinos to unite against him.
Even though only 18 percent of Hispanics take Trump seriously as a presidential candidate, the Republican has vowed that he “will win the Latino vote” if nominated.
If Trump wants to win the Latino vote, he might want to learn from past mistakes. Here are 9 of the most outrageous things the presidential candidate has said about Latinos.
— 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.
Meet Zackary Drucker & Rhys Ernst of “Transparent,” Two Trans Role Models Changing Media
Meet Zackary Drucker & Rhys Ernst of “Transparent,” Two Trans Role Models Changing Media
Back in March of last year, Zackary Drucker and Rhys Ernst had their photography exhibit — “Relationship” — at the Whitney Biennial in NYC. The photo series explores their individual gender transitions, what that meant for their relationship and how their love evolved and transitioned alongside them.
Related: Meet Five Transgender Babes Helping Pop Culture Evolve
At the time, we noted that they were working as consultants on a new show, Jill Soloway’s Transparent.
Then season one happened to major audience and critical acclaim (season 2 comes out December 4 — we can’t wait), and these two artists and collaborators find themselves even more on the forefront of the gender conversation.
Below, YouTuber Raymond Braun interviews Zackary and Rhys about their roots and what it means to be trans role models in today’s media:
Dan Tracer
Gays Are Trying to Ruin the Boy Scouts for U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions, But He Won’t Leave
Gays Are Trying to Ruin the Boy Scouts for U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions, But He Won’t Leave
Texas Republican Congressman Pete Sessions, an Eagle Scout, says he disagrees with the Boy Scouts of America’s recent decision to lift its ban on gay adult leaders, but plans to remain part of the organization anyway.
Presumably referring to LGBT advocates, Sessions says the policy change was the result of “outside factors trying to literally ruin the Boy Scouts of America.” He also blamed the decision on nondiscrimination laws designed to allow people to file lawsuits against the Scouts and “take us to our knees.”
Sessions, who represents a Dallas-area district, told NBCDFW.com:
“Let’s put it this way: I disagree with it, but I’m sticking with Scouting. … Scouting is there for the young man and the boy, and there are outside factors trying to literally ruin the Boy Scouts of America over something they don’t understand. We are an organization that is about taking young boys and getting them prepared for their future. … I disagree with it. I would not have done it, and I think if we keep dwelling on this inside the organization, we do ourselves harm. We now need to move forward. It was done because of a series of laws across the United States that were designed to sue the Boy Scouts of America and take us to our knees. I think we’ve better alive even if I disagree with exactly what that policy is.”
As Think Progress notes, the Scouts’ decision to lift the ban on gay adult leaders had little, if anything, to do with nondiscrimination laws. Rather, the policy change was the result of pressure from corporate donors and leaders such as President Barack Obama, as well as rapidly shifting public opinion on LGBT equality.
Nevertheless, on the shock meter, Sessions’ statements about the Boy Scouts seemingly pale in comparison to the one he made last week about gun violence, which he blamed on “diversity in America.”
Watch Sessions’ remarks about the Boy Scouts beginning at about the 5:28 mark in the video below.
The post Gays Are Trying to Ruin the Boy Scouts for U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions, But He Won’t Leave appeared first on Towleroad.
John Wright
Gays Are Trying to Ruin the Boy Scouts for U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions, But He Won’t Leave
Women Are Prizes In Video Games — And That Should Bother You
Women Are Prizes In Video Games — And That Should Bother You
Swelling breasts, revealing costumes, wet turtle smooches: These are the rewards you may be used to seeing in your favorite video games.
A new entry in Anita Sarkeesian’s “Feminist Frequency” series released Monday explores the many ways women in video games have been treated like a gold star stuck onto a filled-out worksheet.
None of it will come as a surprise to anyone who’s remotely familiar with video games. For decades, players have been rewarded with flesh, sex and innuendo for progress in games spanning the original “Metroid” to the most recent “Grand Theft Auto.”
The video is worth watching in large part because seeing so many examples of women-as-reward in rapid succession is dizzying — taken in isolation, especially as one component of games that take more than 20 hours to complete, these moments might be easy to ignore or diminish. But they are part of a massive trend, one that diminishes an entire half of the human race to little more than a husky voice emanating from heaving cleavage.
It practically goes without saying why this is a problem. Video games are supposed to be art — or entertainment, at least — for everyone, but some of the most popular, multimillion-dollar franchises on the planet communicate, full stop, that women are worth less than men. They are prizes to be claimed through feats of gameplay: Mario beats Bowser and Princess Peach kisses him. They’re treated like power-ups: Watch a prostitute perform oral sex on your character in “Grand Theft Auto V” and your character’s attributes improve.
It all reinforces the idea that men are supposed to — even entitled to — claim women after overcoming some challenge. Perhaps as a tangential concern, it also communicates a heteronormative status quo — sex and relationships in video games are too often exclusively for a man and a women. They’re quite frequently also just for white people.
To clarify, here’s what this video is not saying: That sexuality in video games is inherently a problem, that women gamers can’t enjoy a sexy portrayal of a female character, that every popular video game is masculine dreck and that games with problematic portrayals are automatically “bad.”
Responses to the video on KotakuInAction, the main GamerGate community on Reddit, have actually been pretty reasonable. While Sarkeesian has been targeted by GamerGate proponents over her views before– with death threats and harassment — the few people weighing in on Reddit Monday morning found little to complain about:
Of course, some were worried about how the media would portray the video. They wonder, does it makes sense for gaming to be called out for negative representations of women when, you know, movies and books and stuff can be awful, too?
The answer is “yes.” Video games are still a relatively nascent art form — one that’s recently become the subject of serious critical reflection. You may not be a gamer yourself, but you should care about the media that our young people are raised on and that our adult professionals spend so much time with. If we can challenge pop culture to be better, why wouldn’t we?
— 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.
Australian Footballers Show LGBT Support Before Getting Muddied Up
Australian Footballers Show LGBT Support Before Getting Muddied Up
One of Australia’s oldest football teams, the University Blacks, decided to forego tradition and change up their uniforms to show support for LGBT people.
Related: Former Australian Footballer Comes Out After Long, Dark Stint In The Closet
As you can see, they opted for a classic rainbow look. The move was part of a a broader “gay, that’s ok” campaign in which the team also painted its 50-meter line with rainbows.
The initiative was inspired by former player Lachlan Beaton, who lived in the closet for decades before coming out.
Other teams are already planning similar actions of support, but they’re going to have to get a bit more creative now that the “let’s put rainbows on our jumpers” idea has been taken.
Related: Australian Rugby Star Takes A Mid-Game Stand Against Homophobia
h/t: PinkNews
Dan Tracer
