American hero in French train attack is stabbed leaving gay club in Sacramento

One of the American heroes who helped thwart a gunman’s attack on a French train in August was stabbed multiple times in his upper body today after leaving a gay club in Sacramento.

US Air Force Airman 1st Class Spencer Stone is in serious condition at UC Davis Medical Center and is expected to survive his injuries.

Stone was bar hopping with three women and another man and had just left Badlands Dance Club when a confrontation occurred between his group and another group.

No one else suffered any injuries.

‘We firmly believe that this is not a terrorism related event and that it is in no way related to the incident that occurred in France.  The assault does not appear to be a random act and is believed to be a nightlife related incident,’ the Sacramento Police Department states.

Immediately after the stabbing, the attackers fled and remain at-large.

Security camera recordings from a nearby liquor store captured the altercation and was turned over to police.

‘It pretty much just shows the fight in the middle of the intersection,’ employee Bryan Romandia tells the Sacramento Bee. ‘It looks like it is one against six, but you can’t really tell. It looks like a big old scrum and then it looks like someone lunges and everyone disperses from there and there is this discoloration on his shirt and he just walks out of the camera.

‘He walks away from the intersection. I couldn’t see any weapon at all.’

The post American hero in French train attack is stabbed leaving gay club in Sacramento appeared first on Gay Star News.

Greg Hernandez

www.gaystarnews.com/article/american-hero-in-french-train-attack-is-stabbed-leaving-gay-club-in-sacramento/

A Tale of Two Pilgrimages

Autumn is a lovely time to visit the nation’s capital. Here I look at contrasting visits by two prominent faith leaders.

10.10.15 Justice or Else Gathering. Minister Louis Farrakhan has long been a figure of controversy. Of the Nation of Islam (NOI), which he leads, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) writes, “Its theology of innate black superiority over whites and the deeply racist, anti-Semitic and anti-gay rhetoric of its leaders have earned the NOI a prominent position in the ranks of organized hate.”

Farrakhan’s old provocations, however, are absent from the promotion for his October 10 gathering on the National Mall to mark the 20th anniversary of the Million Man March. The 1995 event was a peaceful call to unity and self-improvement whose proposed actions included harnessing black economic power and registering voters.

The 20th anniversary event invites men and women regardless of race or creed to demand racial justice from the federal government. The proposed action this time is withdrawal of black money from what it calls the commercialism and exploitation of the Christmas season. It also calls for an end to fratricidal violence within the black community.

The event’s website (justiceorelse.com) includes the directive “No Guns – No Alcohol – No Drugs.” Its text and videos carry a constructive message. Granted, when I hear “Justice or else,” I immediately ask, “Or else what?” The threat, however, involves economic action, not competition with gun-toting white supremacist groups like the Oath Keepers. My differences with NOI aside, its 10.10.15 gathering promises to be another peaceful public engagement. Unless you demand docility (in which case you should wake up), I see nothing to fault.

Pope Francis and gays. Turning from Islam to Catholicism, the bumpy aftermath of the Pope’s American visit appears to have resolved itself into a clearer message of welcome to LGBT people, though without any hint of doctrinal change. During his visit, Francis toned down the culture-war rhetoric. One positive gesture was having openly gay Mo Rocca do a scriptural reading during the Mass at Madison Square Garden. Less so was the sole gay speaker at the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia, Ron Belgau, who embraces celibacy in acceptance of the Catholic Church teaching that gay lovemaking is a sin. Mr. Belgau can suit himself, but demanding lifelong denial of intimacy is a prescription for misery.

On his flight back to Rome, Francis defended “conscientious objection,” which some interpreted as endorsing the refusal by Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis to issue marriage licenses that went against her faith. Mat Staver, the Liberty Counsel attorney for Ms. Davis, then claimed that Davis had met the Pope in Washington. The Vatican confirmed this, but said she was but one of several dozen people who were given a blessing and a rosary. The only real papal audience in Washington was with the Pope’s gay former student Yayo Grassi and his family, which included his 19-year partner Iwan Bagus. A video shows Francis warmly embracing both men and kissing them on their cheeks.

The papal nuncio who invited Ms. Davis, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, appears to be in hot water for marring the visit with a politically charged invitation that was inflated in importance by Staver.

No sooner had the flap over Davis begun to quiet down when Monsignor Krzystof Charamsa, an official with the Vatican’s doctrinal office, came out as gay and criticized the Roman Church’s homophobia on the eve of its Synod on the Family. Charamsa was quickly fired. This was a reminder that expressions of pastoral care erase neither the Church’s love of control nor its condemnation of gay folk. Indeed, notorious homophobe Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council was invited last November to a Roman gathering called the “International Interreligious Colloquium on the Complementarity of Man and Woman.” The notion of complementarity derives from Plato, except that Plato was gay-inclusive.

Francis, at the U.S. Capitol, asked people to pray for him, and urged those who could not pray to send him their best wishes. In that spirit, and despite our disagreements and my continued skepticism, I send him and Minister Farrakhan my sincere hope that their efforts will advance justice. Prayers avail nothing without action.

This piece originally appeared in the Washington Blade and Bay Windows.

— 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.

feeds.huffingtonpost.com/c/35496/f/677065/s/4a85f979/sc/7/l/0L0Shuffingtonpost0N0Crichard0Ej0Erosendall0Ca0Etale0Eof0Etwo0Epilgrimages0Ib0I8245480A0Bhtml0Dutm0Ihp0Iref0Fgay0Evoices0Gir0FGay0KVoices/story01.htm

Polish Parliament to Vote on Trans Rights Legislation

Polish parliament will vote on whether or not to override the presidential veto of the country’s first gender recognition legislation. 
HRC.org

www.hrc.org/blog/entry/polish-parliament-to-vote-on-gender-accordance-act?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss-feed

WATCH: Marriage Equality Almost Official in Ireland

Dawn Ennis

www.advocate.com/world/2015/10/08/watch-marriage-equality-almost-official-ireland

Renowned Feminist Filmmaker Chantal Akerman Dies at 65

Belgian director Chantal Akerman, known for her films’ intimate depictions of women’s lives, died Monday in Paris by suicide, according to Le Monde. She was 65 years old and suffered from depression, according to The New York Times. 

Akerman was the daughter of Polish Holocaust survivors and an out lesbian, but she resisted showing her work in Jewish or LGBT festivals because she said she did not want people viewing her films with preconceptions, according to Curve magazine.

Her work touched upon lesbian themes, but she made a name for herself as an experimental filmmaker at age 25, when she came out with the masterpiece Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles in 1975.

The entrancing minimalist film is more than three hours long, and follows a widow as she performs everyday tasks and chores, then sleeps with a man who pays her for sex because he assumes she needs money to support her son. The film has no score and few words, and the experience of viewing it is aptly described by Times film critic Denis Lim as “a matter of recalibrating one’s biorhythms.” 

Nicola Mazzanti, the director of the Royal Belgian Film Archive, told The Times he remembered asking Akerman how she edited Hotel Monterey, her 1972 silent film about a Lower Manhattan hotel.

“She said: ‘I was breathing, and then at one point I understood it was the time to cut. It was my breathing that decided the length of my shots,’” he recalled. “That’s Chantal Akerman. She breathed through the films. She was cinema.”

Akerman made more than 40 films throughout her career, and directors including Todd Haynes, Sally Potter, and Michael Haneke credit her as a major influence, according to The Times.

“Jeanne Dielman is a film that created, overnight, a new way of making films, a new way of telling stories, a new way of telling time,” Mazzanti told the paper. “There are filmmakers who are good, filmmakers who are great, filmmakers who are in film history. And then there are a few filmmakers who change film history.”

When Akerman made her 1974 film Je Tu Il Elle, which featured lesbian sex, she was breaking ground, as there were no lesbian sex scenes in mainstream filmmaking, notes Curve. “There were no scenes of raw female sexuality. The exposition of this by Akerman was new and different, feminist, and, for some, shocking,” wrote Victoria Brownworth in the magazine.

In her Curve obituary, Brownworth describes interviewing Akerman for her book Film Fatales: Independent Women Directors:

Akerman’s voice then was soft, vulnerable, her English heavily accented. She was, in a word, captivating. And somehow quite different from her films. Where the films are often filled with a calculated restraint, Akerman herself was intensely animated, her hands moving, her cigarette punctuating her comments, her face incredibly mobile, her words repeatedly accented with puffs of air or a dramatic eye roll.

Akerman joined City College in New York as a visiting lecturer in 2011, but was not teaching this semester, according to The Times.

“It’s almost impossible to imagine that woman, that vibrant, barely contained force, not just gone, but gone at her own hand,” Brownworth writes. “That is the power depression has over even the fullest of lives. And the many layers of female despair and elation and their counterpoints were always themes in her work.”

If you or someone you know is struggling with thoughts of suicide, contact The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255, which can be reached 24 hours a day by people of all ages and identities. LGBT youth (ages 24 and younger) can reach the Trevor Project Lifeline at 1-866-488-7386. If you are a trans or gender-nonconforming person considering suicide, Trans Lifeline can be reached at 877-565-8860.

Elizabeth Daley

www.advocate.com/film/2015/10/08/renowned-feminist-filmmaker-chantal-akerman-dies-65

Belgrade Gay Pride 2015

Photo Boban Karovic

The successful gay parade this year in Belgrade resulted in a rather dirty aftermath among the participants. 

I am pleased that this year this dangerous, always threatened event was a truly “gay” parade. People threw flowers at the participants instead of spitting on them or beating them.  I wasn’t there myself, but I saw the social media coverage, because various notable political and other stars marched along with the gay activists, attracting plenty of attention. The parade looked rather normalized, like a gay pride parade anywhere outside the Balkans. 

Normalized, that is, except for the presence of Women in Black.  Women in Black were, of course, the first group in Serbia that ever supported gay rights.  They sheltered draft evaders, especially gay ones, in their own homes.  But that was then, and this is now, so when a Woman in Black delivered an activist speech during the Pride Parade, she got as much sexist and offensive reaction as the gays used to get in the bad old days.

How did Women in Black became the new gays of the present season?  It’s ironic to see modern politicians, academics and intellectual stars in Serbian contemporary life hastily seizing credit for this long, bloody, twilight struggle, while Women In Black become objects of blame.

The pioneers, those who were prematurely correct, are often attacked by the new status quo they created themselves.  They get insults instead of public credit, while the usual boring limelight seekers sweep up whatever the situation offers in the way of political correctness and lucrative gain. 

This doesn’t surprise me, I’ve seen it happen everywhere.  So I said to myself: never mind it, this is the victory condition.   When you truly succeed in changing society, everybody steals your clothes. The dismal epoch of the Yugoslav 1990s is behind us.  A new generation has reached adulthood, new political styles have arisen.  It’s parochial to dwell on Yugoslav civil wars in an era when Ukraine and Syria are bleeding as badly, or worse.

These are new times, and there is a wrongness to clinging to the condition of warfare. Resolving a trauma needs the courage to accept the sad truth, to find value in the life after the suffering.

But on mature consideration, I was still angry and sad about the way Women in Black were disrespected by those they had always helped. I know that history was often written by the winners. I know that the first voices of protest are never heard.  I know that women who change history never got the public credit for the change. On the contrary: they would not be merely ignored, but harshly rejected. But this is not like that anymore.

Women who seek to serve the public good tend to choose a dignified and diffident form of activism. They don’t want fame, they want change.  I can remember Juliet Mitchell, a famous feminist activist and psychoanalyst writer, telling me how she avoided putting her name to her own writing; everyone in her group acted in public unity. 

Much the same went for “Women in Black:” they were never female stars dressed in fashionable little black dresses, they were women publicly united by the harsh reality of their grief. I know those humble, intelligent and shy faces of my friends.  They would never step out in the glare of limelight, unless to speak some unspeakable truth, or to protect those who needed help.
 
In 2001 I was one among those persecuted and assaulted in the streets of Belgrade for defending gays.  It was not a popular political position, so I was ostracized by the very same political factions and cynical celebrities who now so easily steal our clothes. Never satisfied with their own  fame and glory, they are driven to deny us the pioneer work we did with  insults.

Thank you, straight and fancy modern Belgrade, for not being brutally antigay anymore. It’s a modern marvel to see Belgrade as a moral exemplar compared to Damascus, Budapest and Moscow. Enjoy that, but you’d better watch your step, for the primrose path of opportunists and liars is beset with thorns. Those who dig a pit will fall in it, even when they try to rewrite history.  Beware, for women everywhere are forced to dress in black today.

— 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.

www.huffingtonpost.com/jasmina-tesanovic/belgrade-gay-pride-2015_b_8262390.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices&ir=Gay+Voices

Lance Bass Says He Was “Inappropriately Touched” As A Teenager

Lance Bass is opening up about being “inappropriately touched” by an older male back when he was a member of ‘NSYNC.

“When I was 16, 17,” Bass said on his Sirius XM radio show Dirty Pop, “someone we worked with definitely was touching me inappropriately.”

He continued, “I even knew at 16 and 17 that, you know, this isn’t right. No man should be, like, touching a teenager like this.”

Related:Lance Bass Says He’s Still Called The F-Word And Receives Death Threats For Being Gay

Bass, who did not reveal the identity of the man, claimed the older guy would “find ways” to touch him, usually by offering massages.

“He always did the whole thing, like, ‘Oh yeah, if I massage your bicep like this, it will look better,’ ” he recalled.

But he maintains he was not molested.

“There was nothing more than inappropriate touching,” he said.

Related: Lance Bass Feels Like A Whole Human Now That He Has A Husband

Bass went on to say that ultimately he “felt bad” for the man, who he believes was a pedophile.

“I kind of felt for the guy at the time because, one, I was in the closet and obviously this guy, probably, was in the closet,” he said. “I always felt bad. Like, aww this guy is just a sad person.”

“This is a serious thing, sexual harassment,” he concluded, “but I was lucky enough to be smart about it and just be aware.”

Related: Lance Bass Regrets How He Came Out But Now He’s “Walking On Air”

Graham Gremore

feedproxy.google.com/~r/queerty2/~3/vRpM6egTKNs/lance-bass-says-he-was-inappropriately-touched-as-a-teenager-20151008

News: Luke Gatti, Clinton Emails, James Franco, Michigan, Ben Carson, Jon Snow

> Jess Cagle, editorial director at People, uses editor’s letter to urge readers to contact 535 members of Congress on gun control, and provides the info to do so.

> Trevor Donovan has fallen and he can’t get up.

> Two drunk girls brawl on a river raft.

> Clinton email server reportedly targeted by China, Germany, South Korea. “While the attempts were apparently blocked by a “threat monitoring” product that Clinton’s employees connected to her network in October 2013, there was a period of more than three months from June to October 2013 when that protection had not been installed…”

> What it’s like to be a black gay pastor who came out on national television: “I have friends that are pastors who are gay and they wait till they go out of town, they find any reason to go out of town, or any reason to do anything, just so they can go and be gay and then come back and be miserable again. I said I didn’t want to do that. I kind of wanted, as an homage to my favorite pastor, to do what he wasn’t afforded the opportunity, which is to live in truth.”

> Stone Cold: Demi Lovato has released a brand new song.

> Ben Carson: “I never saw a body with bullet holes that was more devastating than taking the right to arm ourselves away.”

> Jon Snow is alive, according to James Franco.

> Diddy’s son Quincy Combs isn’t ready to play gay quite yet. “Probably not. It’s too early in my career. I’m not trying to explore that far, yet. I’m 23, you feel me?”

> State of Michigan pays legal fees for gay marriage case: “The state was on the hook for the legal bill of the Hazel Park couple, April and Jayne DeBoer-Rowse, who challenged the state’s 2004 ban on gay marriage in a landmark federal lawsuit brought in 2012. Michigan paid just over $1.9 million in fees as requested by their legal team. Officials for the state of Michigan signed a stipulation in the case in late August agreeing to pay the fees.”

> Are you ready for ‘Another Lonely Night’ with Adam Lambert?

> Contrary to rumors, homophobic jalapeño Mac and Cheese tantrum boy Luke Gatti has not been expelled from UConn: “He is currently listed as an enrolled student,” Reitz said. “Beyond that federal privacy law prevents us from discussing anything further on his case.”

> Charges dropped against Kentucky gay activists: “Prosecutors dismissed charges Thursday against three gay rights activists arrested this summer for standing silently in matching orange T-shirts in protest of an event at the Kentucky State Fair.”

> Kenya’s LGBTs at the mercy of the mob: “The state’s apathy – and often open hostility – towards LGBT people merely encourages the aggressors, who know they will face no adverse consequences if their victim does not appear to be straight. Criminalisation provides a licence for the perpetration of horrific crimes – even murder- against a vulnerable group.”

The post News: Luke Gatti, Clinton Emails, James Franco, Michigan, Ben Carson, Jon Snow appeared first on Towleroad.

Andy Towle

News: Luke Gatti, Clinton Emails, James Franco, Michigan, Ben Carson, Jon Snow

Kevin McCarthy Withdraws From Race to Replace John Boehner as House Speaker

Members of the House of Representatives just announced that current House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy has taken his name out of the running for the next speaker.

House Republicans were gathering to vote on their choice to replace John Boehner when the unexpected news hit the House floor, according to ABC News.

Boehner immediately postponed the election, which was to pit Rep. McCarthy of California against Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah and Daniel Webster of Florida. 

In the press conference announcing his withdrawal, McCarthy said the race needs a “fresh face” for Republicans to unite behind, The New York Times reports. He also said he would stay on as majority leader.

Even though he had been well-liked by House conservatives and is deeply conservative himself, McCarthy apparently lacked the trust of some of the party’s far right. Forty House members endorsed Webster yesterday, and various news reports say McCarthy appeared unlikely to win the 218 votes he would need to become speaker. The nomination goes to the full House after the Republicans make their choice.

McCarthy was likely hurt by comments he made recently about the investigation into the killings of U.S. diplomats in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012, appearing to say the Republican-led inquiry was a political strategy to hurt the presidential campaign of Democrat Hillary Clinton, who was Secretary of State when the attack occurred.

“Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right?” McCarthy told Fox news host Sean Hannity last week. “But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she’s untrustable. But no one would have known any of that had happened, had we not fought.”

A few days later, he was back on Fox backtracking. “This committee was set up for one sole purpose, to find the truth on behalf of families for four dead Americans,” McCarthy told Bret Baier. “Now, I did not imply in any way that that work is political, of course it is not. Look at the way they have carried themselves out.”

McCarthy, a four-term congressman from Bakersfield, Calif., one of the deep blue state’s more conservative areas, has a record of voting against LGBT rights. He has generally been circumspect in discussing LGBT issues, but his voting record shows a solid zero on every Human Rights Campaign Congressional Scorecard since he took office in 2007.

Whoever eventually becomes speaker is likely to be an equally staunch opponent of LGBT equality. Both Webster and Chaffetz have anti-LGBT records, and so do potential candidates being mentioned in the wake of McCarthy’s withdrawal, such as Jim Jordan of Ohio and Trey Gowdy of South Carolina. Some Republicans are also suggesting former vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan, who continues to say he doesn’t want the job. Read about them here.

Rep. Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania, a moderate Republican who supported marriage equality even before June’s Supreme Court ruling, said on CNN today that Republicans may have to form a bipartisan coalition with Democrats to choose the next speaker (the speaker is drawn from the majority party), and he denounced the “rejectionist wing” of the GOP. However, that wing appears to have the upper hand. 

This is a developing story. Keep checking in for updates.

Trudy Ring and Dawn Ennis

www.advocate.com/politics/2015/10/08/kevin-mccarthy-withdraws-race-replace-john-boehner-house-speaker

Holy Father, Please Forgive Me
Pope Francis, I am sorry that I had lost faith in you. After buying SEPTA passes and getting tickets to be up close on the Parkway for your World Meeting of Families Festival and concert in Philadelphia and walking miles just to get a glimpse of you and hearing your inspiring messages over the weekend, I was disappointed to hear that you had a private meeting with Kim Davis, the jailed Kentucky clerk who refused to issue same sex marriage licenses.

You were even quoted as saying you supported conscientious objectors (not mentioning any names) on your jet on your ride home. This all seemed to fly in the face of everything you had said during your visit to the USA about love, inclusion, caring for the poor and homeless and those in prison, being stewards of this Mother Earth by combating climate change, and following the Golden Rule of doing unto others as you would have them do unto you.

As a gay person I started to feel left out. You refused the invitation of Catholic LGBT folks to visit with them and then, it appeared, had a private meeting with this clerk who claims to be anti-same-sex marriage for religious reasons.

I could understand your wanting to be neutral and not bring up the LGBT issue at all as you are just one person and it is difficult to change centuries of Catholic dogma about gays and women. It also would have been an insult to Philadelphia Archbishop Chaput who had invited you here and is a strong traditional marriage advocate. But your past statements about “who am I to judge gays?” had given me hope that I was included in your love for humanity.

It had felt like a slap in the face to read from Davis that you had told her to be strong and pray for you. But now, from all accounts, it seems you had been blindsided by her lawyers and the US Vatican ambassador who is a holdover from Pope Benedict’s reign. Kim Davis was just one of a dozen passing visitors you had hosted in DC and you now claim you are not endorsing her or supporting her position on this issue.

You even put out photos of your meeting in DC with your gay former student and his partner as you greeted them with open arms. That was very heartening to me and it shows you do include us LGBT folks in your message of hope and love and acceptance.

Now I must apologize to you for ever doubting you. I should have known that a man who created the small miracle of uniting our American Congress by having both sides of the political divide stand and applaud your speech would not want to send a divisive message about religious freedom.

In fact, my interpretation of your talks about religion and liberty were in the general sense that we as a nation were founded on worshipping as a personal right. The phrase “God Bless America” takes on new meaning when you say it.

I want to thank you for truly being Christ’s representative as you visited prisons and schools and kissed babies and blessed children in wheelchairs here. I was honored to be in the crowd of people watching and hearing your every word and being moved by your uplifting talks of goodness, mercy, and kindness for all, including me, a gay woman.

The reason you are so loved as a spiritual leader by so many people of different religious persuasions is because your sincerity and humble nature is felt by those who are blessed to be in your presence. The closest I got to you was seeing you wave in a passing Pope mobile and the collective excitement and anticipation of the crowd was a wonderful thing to behold.

I felt we were united in a feeling of peace and goodwill created by your presence. I now know that universal connection we all made that day would not have been possible without sincere love and truth emanating from your soul. You are leading us by example and your constant plea to ask us to pray for you is a sign of your humility.

So, Holy Father, please forgive my lapse of faith. Your heartwarming visit to my country was inclusive and inspiring and united our nation if only for a few days. As you have asked, I will pray for you and am grateful for the serenity and joy you bring to a troubled world.

— 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.

feeds.huffingtonpost.com/c/35496/f/677065/s/4a84fe54/sc/3/l/0L0Shuffingtonpost0N0Cjoan0Ee0Edowlin0Choly0Efather0Eplease0Eforgive0Eme0Ib0I826440A80Bhtml0Dutm0Ihp0Iref0Fgay0Evoices0Gir0FGay0KVoices/story01.htm