National Portrait Gallery Adds First Transgender Person to Collection
This week, the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery added a photo of transgender Latina activist Sylvia Rivera to its collection. This is the first transgender portrait to be added to the museum’s collection.
HRC.org
Clothing-Optional Gay Retreat To Open Near George W. Bush’s Ranch In Crawford, Texas – VIDEO
Plans for a clothing-optional retreat for gay and bisexual men are stirring controversy in ultraconservative Central Texas, less than 2 miles from President George W. Bush’s ranch in Crawford.
Rob Snowden and Mark Mattlage, a couple of 35 years, plan to open the retreat later this year on their farm in Prairie Chapel, not far from Waco.
The Homestead at 3218 will feature “a primitive campsite, outdoor pool, climate-controlled accommodation options and indoor/outdoor playground for gay/bisexual men,” according to the website. In addition to an exercise room, steam room and game room, the site invites people to “explore the dark play spaces in the tool shed or outside in the pig pen.”
“There’s nothing here that we’re doing I think that would be considered illegal,” Snowden told KWTX-TV. “There really is not place for gay and bisexual men to gather in a social setting. There’s just nothing around here.”
Customers at a restaurant in Crawford reacted harshly to the couple’s plans.
“Really, in Texas? In my mind, it’s the last place that a ranch like that would actually show up,” one man told KWTX.
“It’s sickening,” another said.
“Nothing surprises me,” a third man told the station.
Snowden responded to the locals’ concerns.
“It may be a conservative community, but it’s still going to be a conservative community. That’s not going to change,” he said.
Watch KWTX’s report below.
The post Clothing-Optional Gay Retreat To Open Near George W. Bush’s Ranch In Crawford, Texas – VIDEO appeared first on Towleroad.
John Wright
Clothing-Optional Gay Retreat To Open Near George W. Bush’s Ranch In Crawford, Texas – VIDEO
Why Is The Vatican Okay With Unmarried Straight Couples And Not Married Gay Ones?
Is the pope Catholic? Apparently, a lot of bishops don’t think so. The just-finished Vatican synod on the family harkened back to the good ol’ days of the Borgias in terms of intrigue and (at least metaphorical) back-stabbing. The main target was Pope Francis, who had the temerity to suggest that the Catholic Church may want to check the calendar to see what century it’s in.
When the idea of the synod was first floated last year, it seemed as if the Vatican might be very slowly thawing its attitude toward LGBT people. After all, last year’s run up to the current synod featured a devout, married heterosexual couple giving the pope a lecture about the importance of gay rights. Plus an early draft of the synod document suggested that there might be real progress in the offing.
So where did we end up after the 270 bishops were done their work? A tiny opening for heterosexual couples who live together on the grounds that their “lasting” and “reliable” relationships may eventually lead to marriage. As for gay people, a reaffirmation that we should be treated with respect, which of course does not extend to marriage equality or, for that matter, nondiscrimination protections.
The synod’s tight-fisted approach to empathy comes as no surprise. After all, Francis has largely acquired his reputation as the lovable pope by changing the Vatican’s tone even though he shows no signs of disagreeing with its policies.
But even the tone change is threatening to the hard-liners, who pulled out all the stops during the synod. Rumors appeared that Francis has a brain tumor, implying that his judgment was impaired. An African cardinal said that Islamic terrorists and western liberal cultural (including marriage equality) were the twin “beasts of the Apocalypse.” Another unnamed bishop said that the synod had the “whiff of Satan.” Thirteen bishops, including New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan and Houston Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, wrote a confidential letter to the pope (promptly leaked) complaining the Francis’s decisions leading up the synod would not end up “reinforcing the dignity of marriage and family.”
In short, Pope Francis has his own version of the Republican Freedom Caucus in Congress: a group of extremists who are so focused on doctrinal purity (as they define it) that anyone who deviates one degree is anathema. Even the pope.
It’s not as if Pope Francis was ever going to embrace marriage equality. But even acknowledging the validity of gay people in any meaningful way is so threatening to a faction of the hierarchy that they would gladly take down the pope for his extraordinarily modest remarks. So if you thought change was coming, think again. The Church is in a battle among ultra-conservatives and not-so-conservatives. Whoever wins, it’s not likely to mean a lot.
JohnGallagher
Saudi actor arrested by religious police 'for being too good looking'
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Saudi actor arrested by religious police ‘for being too good looking’
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Wednesday A.M. News Brief: GOP Debate, Dennis Hastert, Cassini, Adele, Twitter, Royals
POLITICS: The CNBC Republican Presidential Debate: Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, Lindsey Graham, Bobby Jindal, John Kasich, George Pataki, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Rick Santorum, and Donald Trump assemble for the latest circus act. “CNBC’s Carl Quintanilla, co-anchor of ‘Squawk on the Street’ and ‘Squawk Alley,’ Becky Quick, co-anchor of ‘Squawk Box’ and Chief Washington Correspondent John Harwood will moderate ‘Your Money, Your Vote: The Republican Presidential Debate’. The RNC sanctioned debate will be held at the Coors Events Center at the University of Colorado Boulder and broadcast live on CNBC.” Stay tuned to Towleroad for clips and highlights tonight.
CRIME: Former U.S. Speaker Dennis Hastert is expected to plea guilty today in federal court over sexual abuse of student when Hastert was a wrestling coach and teacher at Yorkville High School: “Hastert, 73, is scheduled to walk into federal court in Chicago on Wednesday and plead guilty to a bombshell indictment that alleges he was making the withdrawals as part of an agreement to pay a total of $3.5 million to a longtime acquaintance, identified only as Individual A, to cover up wrongdoing from years ago.”
SPORTS: The Royals beat the Mets in Game 1 of the World Series last night 5-4 in 14 innings: “The game had lasted 5 hours 9 minutes, and it had featured so many twists and turns that whoever lost would feel more disappointed for having played so long and having had the efforts wasted.” The games also included a fourth inning power outage.
MUSIC: Adele’s “Hello” to become the fastest selling single of 2015: “The video has already clocked up 107m YouTube plays, 27m of which occurred on its first day of release, breaking all existing records.”
SPACE: NASA’s Cassini spacecraft will make a dive today through one of the plumes of water vapor erupting from the crust of Saturn’s moon Enceladus: “The flyby will be Cassini’s deepest-ever dive through the Enceladus plume, which is thought to come from the ocean below. The spacecraft has flown closer to the surface of Enceladus before, but never this low directly through the active plume.”
FOOD: Hot dogs contain human DNA: “Clear Food reported that it found human DNA in six of the 345 samples, or 2 percent of all samples tested. Four of the six samples that tested positive for human DNA were vegetarian products. Other ingredients such as chicken, lamb, turkey and beef showed up in samples that were not listed on the product’s packaging, according to Clear Food, which did note that no pork was found in the “100% Kosher” products it tested.” Plus, of course, they cause cancer.
TRAVEL: How Thailand became the world’s top gender-change destination: “The surgery can be done for probably a third in Thailand of what it can be done for here,” says Curtis Crane, a San Francisco plastic and urological surgeon, who spent six weeks in Bangkok in 2009 learning from Preecha Tiewtranon, the pioneer of Thailand’s SRS industry. “For some people who have no insurance and who need to have the surgery, it’s the only option.”
FUTURE: Prototype of Elon Musk’s Hyperloop Transportation System to begin construction in 2 to 3 weeks: “You can substitute the entire flight industry from Los Angeles to San Francisco with one tube, four times. Now if this will not disrupt the air industry I don’t know what will.”
AFRICA: Another 22 elephants have been poisoned with cyanide by poachers in Zimbabwe: “The grim discovery brings to 62 the number of elephants poisoned by poachers in this southern Africa country in October. ”
BUSINESS: Apple recorded its largest annual profit in history: “The world’s biggest company surpassed the $45.2bn made by ExxonMobil in 2008, after the release of its latest smartphones increased profits by 31pc in its fourth quarter.” Twitter shares crashed after reporting disappointing user growth.
SEX: A gay adult film written by the late Sir John Gielgud has finished production: “Trouser Bar is set in a menswear shop where an orgy takes place and stars Nigel Havers and Julian Clary as passersby. The screenplay was secretly written by Gielgud – known for his roles in Julius Caesar and Arthur – for Peter de Rome, the grandfather of gay porn. The script was never used by de Rome but David McGillivray, who recently produced a documentary about him, has turned it into a full-length feature. It’s a decision which has angered The Sir John Gielgud Charitable Trust.”
OREGON: A naked burglar was chased at gunpoint down a Portland street after climbing in bed with a couple and kissing the man:”The victim woke up and the suspect was sitting on top of him holding a knife,” Portland Police Sergeant Pete Simpson said in a written statement. “The victim pushed the suspect off of him as the victim retrieved his handgun and began giving the suspect commands to stop.”
The post Wednesday A.M. News Brief: GOP Debate, Dennis Hastert, Cassini, Adele, Twitter, Royals appeared first on Towleroad.
Andy Towle
Wednesday A.M. News Brief: GOP Debate, Dennis Hastert, Cassini, Adele, Twitter, Royals
Carlo Cremona 1972 posted a photo:
#sonodis3guale e #menevanto #gay #bear #napoli #naples #dad #lgbt @carlocremona @Omovies_it #selfie #popey“>
#sonodis3guale e #menevanto #gay #bear #napoli #naples #dad #lgbt @carlocremona @Omovies_it #selfie #popey“>
The Right-Wing Plot to Overturn Marriage Equality
Some social conservatives are still holding on to hope that they can reverse marriage equality. The thinking goes that if Republicans keep control of the House and Senate plus win the presidency in 2016, their next target becomes the Supreme Court.
With Ruth Bader Ginsburg turning 83 next year and two other justices turning 80, court watchers expect that whoever is our next president will be picking replacements for some of the nine on the high court. Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton all selected two justices during their terms. Ronald Reagan had three picks.
And if any of the next president’s nominees replace justices who voted in favor of marriage equality, expect to see an immediate effort from the right wing to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges — which was a 5-4 ruling.
Maybe that sounds far-fetched. But even Hillary Clinton has warned LGBT people about this scenario, saying, “The stakes in this election are high.”
“They’re high, for so much of what we believe in and the progress we want to continue to make; it can be undone,” Clinton told volunteers at the Human Rights Campaign during a widely publicized speech earlier this month. She explained, “The next president may get three Supreme Court justice appointments. We could lose the Supreme Court, and then there’d be a whole new litigation strategy coming from those who oppose marriage equality. We have got to stay focused, stay united.”
That litigation strategy is no secret. Rick Santorum has more than once explained exactly how Republicans would try to overturn Obergefell. The former senator and current presidential candidate first shared the plan with Rachel Maddow during an interview on her MSNBC show in July. He even reiterated his plans during the first GOP debate on Fox News — at least, during the “undercard” debate that he was allowed into.
Santorum insisted to Maddow that the Supreme Court is “not a superior branch of government.”
“If the Congress comes back and says, ‘We disagree with you,’ and were to pass a law and get it signed by the president saying the courts are wrong—”
Then an incredulous Maddow interrupted, “You could not pass a law that could contradict the constitutional ruling of the Supreme Court. You can amend the Constitution.”
“Why?” asked Santorum, to her surprise.
“Because they are ruling on the constitutionality of that law,” continued Maddow, expressing what most LGBT people have banked on, which is the idea that if people like Santorum want to roll back marriage equality they’d first have to complete the impossible task of winning a two-thirds majority vote of the House and Senate plus three-fourths of state legislatures. That’s what it takes to revise the U.S. Constitution, which is the basis for the Obergefell ruling.
Maddow kept explaining, “They decide what’s unconstitutional,” referring to the Supreme Court. “That’s how our government works.”
“That’s not necessarily true,” insisted Santorum, who then detailed his plan to find a loophole. Santorum’s plan isn’t to amend the Constitution, though he’d happily try. His plans are more fast-acting.
After winning the presidency, plus retaining control of Congress, Santorum would hope to have his pick of Supreme Court justices. Then he’d push through Congress a law that bans same-sex marriage. Because that law would be unconstitutional, it would get challenged in the courts, all the way up to the new Supreme Court.
“What I’d like to see as president is a whole new group of justices,” Santorum said. “And if you have a new group of justices, you might very well get a different decision.”
With the Republicans having picked the new justices, Santorum predicts, Obergefell would be overturned and the new law upheld.
Santorum isn’t the only GOP presidential candidate who has signaled support for this sort of approach. Mike Huckabee has called the Obergefell ruling “judicial tyranny” and blamed Congress for not countering it. He was asked during the CNN Republican debate in September how he’d go about picking justices and quickly threw out any modicum of nonpartisanship in picking a court.
“I’m tired of liberals always having a litmus test and conservatives are supposed to pretend we don’t,” said Huckabee, implying prospective justices would have to line up with his socially conservative beliefs. Huckabee, a former Baptist minister, said he’d ask each of them about abortion and about so-called religious freedom. “I’d want to know, Do you believe in the First Amendment? Do you believe that religious liberty is the fundamental liberty around which all the other freedoms of this country are based?”
In some ways, social conservatives are correct. It’s technically possible to overturn a Supreme Court decision. It’s even happened before, on abortion no less.
In 2003, Congress passed the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. The law was a response to a Supreme Court case, Stenberg v. Carhart, in which a partial-birth abortion ban in Nebraska had been ruled unconstitutional and then applied nationwide. The high court had cited both Planned Parenthood v. Casey and Roe v. Wade as precedent. But Republicans in Congress went ahead with passing their federal version under the guise that it wasn’t bound by the court’s findings because of “the moral, medical, and ethical” concerns associated with partial-birth abortion.
The constitutionality of the law was inevitably challenged in what became Gonzales v. Carhart. The Supreme Court heard arguments November 8, 2006, and ruled April 18, 2007, to uphold Congress’s Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act.
A major sticking point of the Nebraska law had been that it made no exception for the life of the mother, and congressional Republicans made no exception either. But their version of the legislation simply stated the procedure is never used to save a mother, so no exception is necessary.
One important thing had changed, though. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor had been replaced on the bench by the more conservative Samuel Alito.
In the first ruling, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the dissent. This time, with Alito on his side, he got to write the majority opinion, saying “compared to the state statute at issue in Stenberg, the Act is more specific concerning the instances to which it applies and in this respect more precise in coverage.”
Still, experts say it’s highly unlikely, even if Republicans swapped out multiple seats on the Supreme Court, that it would overrule itself on marriage equality if given the opportunity.
“Theoretically, decisions get made at the Supreme Court by 5-4 a lot, and technically speaking, you need five votes to win a case,” said Roberta Kaplan, the attorney who successfully argued Windsor v. U.S. at the Supreme Court, winning one of those 5-4 votes. “But do I think that even a very conservative court, a far more conservative court, would overrule Obergefell? The answer to that has to be no.”
For starters, and as LGBT activists have been pointing out throughout the fight for marriage equality, the country is only growing more accepting.
“This country does not grant equality, has never granted equality, to large classes of Americans, and then subsequently taken their equality away,” said Kaplan. “That’s not the arc of this country’s history, and it’s not going to happen here.”
But it’s more than a moral question. There’s also legal reasoning on why it’s unlikely the high court would reverse itself on something as consequential as marriage equality.
In 1992, in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the decision included a lengthy explanation of the doctrine of stare decisis — the importance of sticking by precedent in all decisions by the Supreme Court. Justice O’Connor outlined why Roe v. Wade can’t be overturned in total, and it would be easy to substitute “Obergefell” for “Roe” to understand why marriage equality can’t easily be taken back.
“The Constitution serves human values,” wrote O’Connor for the majority, “and while the effect of the reliance on Roe cannot be exactly measured, neither can the certain cost of overruling Roe for people who have ordered their thinking and living around that case be dismissed.”
So many same-sex couples have already been married, have already adopted children, have already made plans for their lives around the fact that getting married is legal, it would be disruptive to upend that fact.
“I don’t think there’s any question that basically telling the children of gay parents that even though they thought their parents were married but they’re not married anymore — or that no other gay parents in their state can get married — would have precisely the kind of adverse impact and adverse consequences the Supreme Court was concerned about,” Kaplan explained.
What activists agree on, though, is that Clinton is right about the persistence from opponents of marriage equality.
Even if this particular strategy for scaling back full marriage equality isn’t successful for the right-wing, Clinton cautioned LGBT activists during her HRC visit that they can’t become complacent.
“I know from my own personal experience, the folks on the other side, you’ve got to give them credit — they never quit,” she said. “Their persistence is admirable, although it is hard to believe what they use it for.”
RAFFY ERMAC contributed to this report.
Lucas Grindley
www.advocate.com/election/2015/10/28/right-wing-plot-overturn-marriage-equality
Aluminum Zinc posted a photo:
19 Songs for Your Halloween Playlist
With Halloween just around the corner, these songs will get you in the mood for a ghoulish good time.
1. Rihanna, “Mad House” (2009)
Come on in!
2. Michael Jackson, “Thriller” (1982)
The classic.
3. Beyoncé, “Haunted” (2014)
This video is Halloween, basically.
4. “Exorcist Theme” from the Exorcist soundtrack (1973)
“Mother, what’s wrong with me?”
5. Natalia Kills, “Zombie” (2011)
His heart is cold because he’s dead!
6. Sharon Needles feat. RuPaul, “This Club Is a Haunted House” (2013)
A little something from Drag Race‘s creepiest queen.
7. Madonna, “Candy Shop” (2008)
What’s Halloween without candy?
8. Lady Gaga, “Monster” (2009)
He ate her heart and her brain? This boy was made for Halloween.
9. Bette Midler, “I Put a Spell on You” from the Hocus Pocus soundtrack (1993)
Three of our favorite witches.
10. Rihanna, “Disturbia” (2007)
#Ghouls.
11. “Rosemary’s Lullaby” from the Rosemary’s Baby soundtrack (1968)
Sung by Mia Farrow herself.
12. Janet Jackson, “Black Cat” (1989)
Don’t cross this cat’s path.
13. Book of Love, “Witchcraft” (1989)
We still love this synth-pop tribute to Bewitched and Dark Shadows.
14. Shakira, “She Wolf” (2009)
Shakira’s wolf howl is more adorable than frightening.
15. “Halloween Theme (Main Title)” from the Halloween soundtrack (1978)
Composed by the film’s director John Carpenter.
16. Dusty Springfield, “Spooky” (1968)
For all the spooky little boys (and girls) at the party.
17. Bauhaus, “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” (1983)
A goth classic from the opening credits of the 1983 vampire flick The Hunger, starring David Bowie, Catherine Deneuve, and Susan Sarandon.
18. Ministry, “(Every Day Is) Halloween” (1984)
Another goth classic.
19. “Time Warp” from the Rocky Horror Picture Show soundtrack (1975)
The iconic movie celebrated misfits and freaks. It’s perfect for Halloween.
Gina Vivinetto
www.advocate.com/music/2015/10/28/19-songs-your-halloween-playlist
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