As House Speaker, Paul Ryan Will Be as Antigay as John Boehner

U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, who now says he’ll accept the post of House speaker if his fellow Republicans unite behind him, promises to be no improvement over the outgoing speaker, John Boehner, where LGBT issues are concerned.

Ryan, who had said he didn’t want the job, today said he’ll take it if certain conditions are met, The Washington Post reports. “If you can agree to these requests and I can truly be a unifying figure, then I will gladly serve,” he said at a press conference after meeting privately with House GOP Conference.

Ryan apparently wants “a free hand to lead without a constant fear of intra-party reprisals” and “to delegate some of the job’s travel and fundraising demands,” the Post reports, based on information from Ryan’s allies.

House Republicans have been divided over the choice of a new speaker, who is drawn from the party holding a majority in the chamber. Boehner, a staunch conservative who is nonetheless mistrusted by the far right, is leaving the speakership and Congress altogether at the end of this month. Kevin McCarthy of California, the majority leader, was for a time the front-runner for the speakership, but he withdrew from the race October 8, to the surprise of many.

Ryan has a conservative record that might be expected to make him a unifying candidate, but some of the farthest-right House members are still skeptical. “There’s still a race for the speakership,” Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado, a member of the ultraconservative Freedom Caucus, told the Post. And a fellow Freedom Caucus member, Rep. Daniel Webster of Florida, said he’s still in that race.

However, Utah’s Jason Chaffetz, another representative who had sought the speakership, today threw his support behind Ryan.

While Boehner has been no friend to LGBT Americans — among other things, he’s refused to bring employment nondiscrimination legislation to a vote — Ryan will likely be no better and could be worse. Ryan, who was first elected to the House in 1998 and was Mitt Romney’s running mate in 2012, has often emphasized his conservative approach to economic matters, but his record on LGBT concerns and other social issues is just as far to the right.

He voted twice to amend the U.S. Constitution to ban same-sex marriage, voted against LGBT-inclusive hate-crimes legislation, voted against repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell,” and voted to ban adoption by same-sex couples in the District of Columbia, over which Congress exerts some control. An exception to his general record: In 2007 he voted for a version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act that would have banned discrimination based on sexual orientation but not gender identity — but earlier he had tried to kill the bill.

In 2013, he reversed course somewhat, saying he had come to support gay couples’ right to adopt and would probably vote for ENDA (now replaced by the more comprehensive Equality Act) but would need to do further study of transgender-inclusive nondiscrimination legislation.

Quotes from Ryan on some key issues:

On marriage equality: “Marriage is not simply a legal arrangement between individuals. The institution of marriage is an integral part of our civil society and its significance goes well beyond eligibility for benefits and similar considerations. Its future should not be left to a few overreaching judges or local officials to decide.”  

On the DADT repeal: “I talked to a lot of good friends of mine who are combat leaders in the theater, and they just didn’t think the timing of this was right to do this when our troops were in the middle of harm’s way in combat.” However, after the repeal, Ryan conceded that it was a done deal and there was no point in trying to reverse it.   

The speaker generally does not vote on legislation or sponsor it, but he or she sets the agenda for each congressional session, and is next in line after the vice president to become president, should the president die or become unable to perform the duties of the office.

Trudy Ring

www.advocate.com/politics/2015/10/20/house-speaker-paul-ryan-will-be-antigay-john-boehner

Open Question: Ahmed the Clock Boy complained about intolerance, does he realize Qatar is one of the most intolerant states regarding LGBT rights?
Talk about a self centered, egotistical “liberal” who really doesn’t mind seeing intolerance directed towards others as long as he doesnt suffer.

answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20151020175443AAP0ONf

Chris Zylka Got His Pants Pulled Off; Paula Deen Tried And Failed To Out-Vogue Madonna

Bless her racist misunderstood Southern heart. Cooking guru Paula Deen gave it her all but was sent home from Dancing With the Stars last night after her interpretation of Madonna’s VMA performance of “Vogue” (perhaps the VMA’s all-time greatest performance) failed to impress the judges and the home viewers.

Who says blonds have more fun? The character played by Chris Zylka on HBO’s end-of-days drama The Leftovers was put through the ringer this week and got carted off wearing just a T-shirt. Crazy has never looked so hot. OMGBlog has the NSFW gif here.

The video interview shot in the NFL locker room that caught some of the players stripping down for the showers excited a lot of people but not the wife of Cincinnati Bengals quarterback AJ McCarron, who said she’s unhappy her hubby’s penis is all over the internet. You know, we’re pretty good at spotting peen (see above) but we can’t find AJ’s in the video, can you?

John Boyega might not be a household name yet, but that’s likely to change when Star Wars: The Force Awakens opens in December. Watch the handsome actor, reportedly the lead in the movie, react to watching the trailer for the first time.

THE TRAILER IS JUST EEEEPPPPPPPIIIIICCCCCCC! Star Wars is back! gaaaaaad laaaaard! You know what! Let me just relax because this kind God oooo! Lmao! Seriously congrats to everyone ! December 18th!

A video posted by @john_boyega on Oct 20, 2015 at 12:02am PDT

We’ve told you about the amazing Hollywood Museum before, but the Los Angeles cultural landmark is now hosting special events like last night’s live reading of Georgia, a new trans-themed screenplay by Joseph Perales that featured an incredibly eclectic cast of acting talent such as soap opera stud Kevin Spirtas and Glenn Scarpelli (remember him from the classic sitcom One Day at a Time?). Watch Spirtas discuss the reading below.

Jeremy Kinser

feedproxy.google.com/~r/queerty2/~3/5vzoGF-aDWc/chris-zylka-got-his-pants-pulled-off-paula-deen-tried-and-failed-to-out-vogue-madonna-20151020

This Country Is Apparently Still Not Ready for Gay Parents

In a couple of weeks, our nation will turn to celebrate the 20th anniversary of National Adoption Month. It’s a time of year marked with an annual proclamation by our president, special events, family gatherings, and mass adoption finalizations. Television and radio programs will burst with stories both heartwarming and horrifying in an effort to draw attention to the glaring need to find homes for the 400,000 children that linger, on average, for nearly two years in the foster care system.

As someone who’s lectured at the university level about this system, of which I am a product, I have to admit I’ve never understood why so many of my foster care brothers and sisters continue to languish in the foster care system. In truth, they should have found homes a long time ago. At this very minute, there are an estimated 2 million LGBT adults who want to parent children, many of whom would love to do so through adoption. Research also shows that children growing up with LGBT parents fare as well as children raised by heterosexual parents. That means that in the LGBT population alone there may be more than enough ready and capable parents to provide families for our nation’s foster children.

And yet 11 states continue to bar same-sex couples and LGBT individuals from adopting. That means we have enough children needing homes to fill a city the size of Cleveland or Minneapolis. We have a surplus of parents who would like to adopt them. But we’re still seeking ways to prevent them from finding each other. That makes no sense. 

It makes even less sense when you consider that foster care programs cost American taxpayers $22 billion each year. That’s about $68 out of the pocket of every one of the estimated 320 million people in the United States every year.

This is but one of the many ways that nation’s love affair with homophobia is devastating our nation’s foster children. And it gets worse when we consider the effects of homophobia on LGBT children in foster care. Consider this:

• LGBT children are overrepresented in the foster care system. In Washington alone, an estimated 19 percent of foster children identify as LGBT — a figure that is nearly double that of the general LGBT population.  
• Once in foster care, LGBT children often receive worse treatment than their non-LGBT peers. A recent study in Los Angeles County found that LGBT children experience more foster care placements and are three times more likely than non-LGBT foster children to have been hospitalized for emotional reasons. 
• Many foster care caseworkers and LGBT children report that foster care is not a safe place to question your orientation, and many foster homes and families are not thoroughly assessed to see if they can support LGBT children. 
•In some areas, an estimated 56 percent of LGBT children end up running away from foster care when they encounter violence and rejection. Some have even been forced to endure so-called conversion “therapy” and exorcisms.

These are also some of the reasons that it’s critical that more adoptees, like me, stand up in support of same-sex adoption. Many people think that LGBT people adopting children will hurt them. It’s not surprising that many people have this view, including some adult children of same-sex couples who have spoken out against marriage equality. After all, institutionalized homophobia affects us all. It fools us into cherry-picking nonrepresentative examples in order to support a particular bias or agenda. It also fools us into buying our nation’s homophobic narrative in the face of a growing chorus of contradicting research and the real life experiences of many happy and well-adjusted people who have been raised by LGBT families.

As an adoptee and survivor of childhood abuse and neglect, I can tell you from personal experience a fact overlooked by too many people who oppose same-sex adoption: A parent’s sexual orientation has nothing to do with the love and care they give their children. My parents’ being straight did not prevent them from abusing and neglecting me any more than being LGBT would somehow cause other parents to abuse and neglect their children. Because of this, I see no reason why LGBT people shouldn’t be able to adopt. Being in LGBT homes isn’t what hurts children. What hurts many children is the homophobia that subjects them to unfair treatment and prevents them from finding loving homes in the first place.

Just a few short months ago, President Obama remarked that “all young people, regardless of what they look like, which religion they follow, who they love, or the gender they identify with, deserve the chance to dream and grow in a loving, permanent home.” But until we can overcome the homophobia that is hurting our nation’s foster children, those forever homes will remain forever out of reach. And until we can put the needs of our children above our bigotry and hate, our celebrations of National Adoption Month will ring forever hollow.

DASHANNE STOKES is an Eagle Scout, writer, commentator, civil rights activist, and member of Scouts for Equality. Follow him on Twitter @DaShanneStokes.
DaShanne Stokes

www.advocate.com/commentary/2015/10/20/country-apparently-still-not-ready-gay-parents

Watch This Clueless White Dude Realize How Privilege Works

In less than three minutes, Sasheer Zamata explained just how problematic privilege is. 

In a new video from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), SNL comedian and ACLU ambassador Sasheer Zamata takes a walk with a white, male co-worker whose misguided perception of equality prompts her to explain how deep sexism and racism still run in American culture. 

The pair cover topics including street harassment, diversity in Hollywood, white privilege, police brutality, sexism in the workplace and feminism.

“Sean,” a white male who clearly forgot to check his privilege that morning, offers his point of view. “In my experience everybody here in this country is treated fairly,” he says to Zamata as a police officer stops and frisks her.

In another scene, Zamata’s fictional colleague is given the key to the city because he declared he’s a feminist. Surprisingly, Zamata does not receive the same rewards.

But, as Zamata says towards the end of the video: “You just need to realize that you have privilege. Because of your race and your class and your gender and a bunch of other factors that you can’t control, but that’s O.K. What you can control is how you use that privilege.” 

Yep, it’s that simple. 

Head over to ACLU to learn more. 

Also on HuffPost: 

— 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/4ad581dc/sc/7/l/0L0Shuffingtonpost0N0C20A150C10A0C20A0Cwatch0Ethis0Eclueless0Ewhite0Edude0Erealize0Ehow0Eprivilege0Eworks0In0I83415520Bhtml0Dutm0Ihp0Iref0Fgay0Evoices0Gir0FGay0KVoices/story01.htm

Open Question: Can people who are not LGBT still go to LGBT school clubs?

answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20151020170141AAPOdjo

Ever Wonder What Your Balls Would Say If They Could Talk?

You’ve heard of The Vagina Monologues, so consider this The Testicle Dialogues.

It shouldn’t surprise you that the imagined conversation of two balls is a little shallow — top concerns include sexual prospects and personal comfort. Sounds about right.

Still, theres something oddly charming about ‘ole lefty and righty going about their day, but maybe it’s just because they’re Australian.

Watch below:

H/T AccidentalBear

Dan Tracer

feedproxy.google.com/~r/queerty2/~3/B0LmpTTOipc/ever-wonder-what-your-family-jewels-would-say-if-they-could-talk-20151020

NEW MUSIC: Mercury Prize 2015, Courtney Barnett, Merchandise (ft. Dum Dum Girls), Eluvium

 

This week in new music, the obscure meets the almost-mainstream (and includes two Towleroad favorites) in the Mercury Prize 2015 nominations, Courtney Barnett returns with two Jack White-produced tracks, Merchandise team up with Dum Dum Girls for a frankly brilliant single and ambient genius Eluvium preps a collection of everything Matthew Cooper has released under the name since 2009.

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Mercury Prize Nominees 2015

Always divisive at best, with winners including Speech Debelle (who?) in 2009, the Mercury Prize is nonetheless seen by legions as the most important award in music.

This year’s nominations include mainstream artists like Florence + the Machine along with likes of relative unknowns such as Benjamin Clementine.

Also among the nominees are two reviewed by Towleroad – SOAK and C Duncan.

Here’s what we had to say.

C Duncan – Architect

“A delicate collection that comes across like a stripped back Sin Fang Bous, Architect may well be one of the best folk pop albums since Home by Peter Broderick.”

SOAK – Before We Forget How To Dream

“A talent spewing to be heard with nary a spare moment and a sense that SOAK knows exactly how she wanted this record to sound and won out to present her music in the purest form…with a truly distinctive voice and unusual ability for one so young to stand apart from the realities of youth and slowly pick them apart and you have one of the most precocious young folk pop talents since Laura Marling.”

The Mercury Prize winner will be announced on November 20th.

Our likely winner? Ghostpoet with Shedding Skin.

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Courtney Barnett – “Boxing Day Blues (Revisited)”

A Towleroad favorite and a relatively rare mainstream crossover (her debut album Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit reached number 16 in the UK charts), Courtney Barnett has released her second Jack White-produced track “Boxing Day Blues (Revisited).”

The new track sees Barnett back in laid back mode, so more classic track “Depreston” than indie stomper “History Eraser.”

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Merchandise (ft. Dum Dum Girls) – “Red Sun”

After signing with 4AD last year, Texas-based outfit Merchandise – apparently purposefully so obscurely named – released their best album to date (After The End) along with mesmerizing 14-minute psych out “Begging For Your Life / In The City Light.”

Teaming up with goth pop act Dum Dum Girls, just out is new track “Red Sun,” one of best and oddest combinations since The Jesus and Mary Chain got their hands on The Sugarcubes’s “Birthday” back in 1988.

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Eluvium – Life Through Bombardment Vol. 2

As the title would suggest, Eluvium’s forthcoming Life Through Bombardment Vol. 2 is a complete collection of everything released by ambient wunderkind Matthew Cooper, this one covering the last six or so years (volume 1 collected everything up to 2009).

Released on Temporary Residence in a limited edition of 1,000 “library-style clothbound” hardcover books “with seven distinct sleeves,” Eluvium is certainly not for all but if you fancy the best that contemporary ambient electronica has to offer, Cooper is your man.

Have a listen to “Don’t Get Any Closer” from the hypnotic, epic and sprawling Nightmare Ending below.

 

The post NEW MUSIC: Mercury Prize 2015, Courtney Barnett, Merchandise (ft. Dum Dum Girls), Eluvium appeared first on Towleroad.

Michael Fitzgerald

NEW MUSIC: Mercury Prize 2015, Courtney Barnett, Merchandise (ft. Dum Dum Girls), Eluvium

WATCH: Pat Robertson Claims 'Organized Thrust' by LGBT People Will 'Stick It to the Christians'

Pat Robertson is continuing to rant against the “tyranny” of LGBT people and their supporters who expect elected officials and businesses serving the public to refrain from discrimination, saying, “They want to stick it to the Christians.”

“Believers should not be forced to do something they don’t believe in,” the right-wing televangelist said Friday on his TV show, The 700 Club. “It is tyrannical to force somebody to give money and pay taxes for something they abhor. … The homosexuals don’t just want to be left alone, now they want to come out and stick it to the Christians. They have made it clear and it’s an organized thrust throughout this nation to force conformity.”

Friday’s episode of The 700 Club also carried a story spotlighting some of its favorite “persecuted” conservative Christians, such as Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis and Washington State florist Barronelle Stutzman, both of whom refuse to serve same-sex couples.

In a pretaped interview that was part of the segment, Davis’s lawyer Mat Staver, leader of the right-wing Liberty Counsel, rejected calls for Davis to resign her elected position if she won’t comply with the law. “If Kim Davis resigns, not only does she lose her voice, but it sets a precedent,” claimed Staver. “If you’re a Christian, and you believe in marriage that people have believed in through millennia of human history, that Jesus himself spoke about, then you ought not to run for office.”

Referring to the segment, Robertson said of LGBT Americans, “These people say, ‘Not only do we want to practice our sinful ways like Sodom and Gomorrah, we’re going to make you like it and we’re going to make you participate whether you like it or not.’ … That is absolute tyranny and it’s high time we call it what it is and we stand up for freedom.”

Robertson was really on an antigay roll on Sunday’s show: The same day, he also praised a viewer who wrote in saying he wouldn’t let his gay grandson bring his partner to Thanksgiving dinner. “Otherwise you become an enabler, and you’re condoning that,” Robertson said. “The chances are there’s a real good chance that he might come out of that so-called lifestyle, but if you’re going along with it, he says, ‘Well, Mom likes it, so it’s OK.’”

Watch both clips below, courtesy of Right Wing Watch.

Trudy Ring

www.advocate.com/religion/2015/10/20/watch-pat-robertson-claims-organized-thrust-lgbt-people-will-stick-it-christians