Hillary Clinton Declares 'History Made'

The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, the first woman to head a major party’s ticket, has added to her delegate count.

www.advocate.com/election/2016/6/07/hillary-clinton-declares-history-made

Why the Latest Amber Heard Revelation Is Relevant

The bisexual actress was once arrested for domestic violence against her girlfriend — why this matters has nothing to do with Johnny Depp.

www.advocate.com/love-and-sex/2016/6/07/why-latest-amber-heard-revelation-relevant

Hillary Clinton’s Historic Night Shatters Barriers, Marks Milestone for Equality in America

HRC hailed Hillary Clinton’s historic win, following news of her victory in the New Jersey primary and reports that she has secured enough delegates to become the first woman nominated for president by a major party.

“Hillary Clinton made history tonight in more ways than one,” said HRC President Chad Griffin. “As the first woman to secure the nomination of a major political party, she has shattered barriers that have persisted since this country’s founding. She has also laid out the most ambitious agenda for LGBTQ equality that our nation has ever seen from a presidential candidate. With Donald Trump threatening to roll back all the progress our community has made under President Obama, the stakes for millions of LGBTQ Americans couldn’t be higher in this election — and our choice on November 8 couldn’t be clearer.”

The Human Rights Campaign endorsed Hillary Clinton in January at an event in Des Moines, deployed staff to organize in early states like Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina and following those states, mobilized members and supporters across the country.

Secretary Clinton has made LGBTQ equality a pillar of her campaign and unveiled the most robust and ambitious LGBTQ plan any candidate for president has ever laid out. She has vowed to fight for the Equality Act — a bill that would finally offer explicit, clear, and permanent non-discrimination protections for LGBTQ people at the federal level — and her detailed LGBTQ policy platform specifically calls for dropping the ban on open transgender military service, outlawing dangerous “conversion therapy” for minors, ending the epidemic of transgender violence, and supporting HIV prevention and affordable treatment, among other proposals that would advance equality and support the LGBTQ community.

Clinton’s agenda and record of achievement starkly contrasts against Donald Trump, who has vowed to roll back and block LGBTQ equality at every turn. Trump has vowed to appoint Supreme Court justices who would roll back nationwide marriage equality, has said he would sign a bill that would bring Kim Davis-style discrimination to all 50 states, and sided with Pat McCrory in his vile maneuver to write anti-LGBTQ discrimination into state law. Trump has also vowed to repeal President Obama’s executive orders. Beyond Trump’s hateful opposition to LGBTQ equality, he has attacked, belittled and maligned anyone and everyone he considers different. The LGBTQ community is as diverse as our nation, and includes  women, immigrants, Muslims, people of color, people living with disabilities, asylum seekers and others Trump has attacked for political gain.|

With 1.5 million members and supporters nationwide, HRC is planning an unprecedented organizational effort to register and mobilize the nation’s pro-equality majority, and elect pro-LGBTQ candidates up and down the ballot. In 2016, HRC expects that the pro-equality vote will be larger, stronger, and more energized than at any point in history.

Exit polls show that in 2012 at least six million LGB Americans voted in an election decided by less than five million votes. Today, in key states like Ohio, North Carolina, and Florida, the population of LGBTQ adults is greater than the average margin of victory in the last three presidential elections.

Polling done by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner for HRC shows that a 55 percent majority of voters are less likely to support a candidate for president who opposes allowing same-sex couples to marry. This majority includes Independents, married women and white millennials — all groups which voted Republican in the 2014 midterm elections.

www.hrc.org/blog/hillary-clintons-historic-night-shatters-barriers-and-marks-milestone?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss-feed

It’s OK, Mom. You Don’t Need To Understand Public Cruising.

Despite proof that the so-called “sex sting” operations carried out via local police departments across the country are rooted in homophobia and the targeting of gay men, and are illegal, Momzette writer and self-proclaimed “rational conservative” Deirdre Reilly seems to think it’s all the fault of those nasty gays for being so “lewd.”

In her op-ed Lewd Behavior Gets Pass by LGBT Crowd she writes:

…law enforcement has employed stings in areas known to be frequented by gay men in order to target lewd conduct, indecent exposure, and sex in public places. These activities, unfortunately, often happen in restrooms of family-friendly areas such as parks, seaside areas, and wooded hiking and camping areas. Not so fast — say some who see bias everywhere. These stings may be discriminatory against LGBT individuals. Just call it the ‘they can’t help it, they’re LGBT’ defense.

OK well, we’ll just stop right there.

The gay men (and it is primarily gay men, not “LGBT people”) who claim they’ve been unfairly targeted all tell similar stories about being baited into behavior by undercover cops. These weren’t men who were just “caught in the act,” they were led into it by cops.

The proper word for that is entrapment…

Related: Long Beach Police Accused Of Illegally Targeting Gay Man In Bathroom Sex Sting

OK, so Reilly speak to some actual gay people as well:

“Nobody is going to defend lewd conduct, but there is a qualitative difference between sexual predators and people who engage in boorish behavior,” Los Angeles County Assessor Jeffrey Prang told the Los Angeles Times. “Criminalizing them isn’t really justice. You just want them to stop.” Prang is gay, and has worked as a special assistant in the sheriff’s department on the LGBT advisory council.

But ultimately she devolves into shrill, pointless “hetero families are the real victims” babble.

She mentions Long Beach case where a gay man was coerced into behavior and the practice was later found to be discriminatory, then works herself into a lather about “families’ rights”:

Yet this begs the question: How is this a question of discrimination, and not of catching and punishing illegal behavior? And where are families’ rights in all this? They’re undoubtedly the majority of the people who use these recreational public spaces.

Dear Mrs. Reilly: The vast majority of LGBT people are not into public sex, and realize that those who engage in such and are caught are, in fact, criminals.

BUT illegally targeting these men is as illegal as their behavior.

That cannot be ignored, certainly in the name of “families’ rights.”

Related: Judge Rules Long Beach Police Illegally Targeted Gay Men In Sex Sting Operations

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‘Bacon’, Lindsey Graham, Illegal To Be Gay, ABBA, Black Holes, Elon Musk: NEWS

QUEEN. Dame Helen Mirren isn’t a fan of the Kardashians, except for one redeeming quality they seem to have.

MUSIC VIDEO. Nick Jonas serves up “Bacon.”

ELECTION THROWBACK. John Legend performs “If You’re Out There” at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. 

“MEXICAN HERITAGE.” Donald Trump says his racist remarks about a federal judge were “misconstrued”: “It is unfortunate that my comments have been misconstrued as a categorical attack against people of Mexican heritage. I am friends with and employ thousands of people of Mexican and Hispanic descent. The American justice system relies on fair and impartial judges. All judges should be held to that standard. I do not feel that one’s heritage makes them incapable of being impartial, but, based on the rulings that I have received in the Trump University civil case, I feel justified in questioning whether I am receiving a fair trial.”

NEVER TRUMP. Lindsey Graham says he won’t vote for Donald Trump, encourages Republicans to unendorsed Trump: “If anybody was looking for an off-ramp, this is probably it.” Illinois Senator Mark Kirk refuses to endorse Trump, says Trump’s most recent racist remarks were the straw that broke the camel’s back: “It is absolutely essential that we are guided by a commander-in-chief with a responsible and proper temperament, discretion and judgment. Our president must be fit to command the most powerful military the world has ever seen, including an arsenal of thousands of nuclear weapons.”

ANTI-GAY. Every country in the world that criminalizes homosexuality in one map.

RED PLANET. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says company could send astronauts to Mars as soon as 2024: “‘The basic game plan is that we’re going to send a mission to Mars with every Mars opportunity from 2018 onwards,’ Musk said. Launch windows for Mars missions open every 26 months, with the next opening in the spring of 2018. ‘We’re establishing cargo flights to Mars that people can count on,’ he said. ‘I think if things go according to plan, we should be able to launch people probably in 2024, with arrival in 2025.’”

O, CANADA. Our neighbors to the north look to make their national anthem gender neutral: “Bill C-210, which passed 219 to 79, proposes to switch just two words in the lyrics of ‘O Canada’ — changing “in all thy sons command” to “in all of us command” in one verse. The simple substitution is meant to do away with the exclusively male phrasing in part of the song, but it’s also causing an uproar among some conservative members of Canada’s government.”

MUSIC. ABBA reunites for rare performance together: “ABBA officially split up in 1982, but the last time they had performed together before last night was in 1986.”

PROM SEASON. Johnny Depp’s daughter Lily-Rose Depp went to the prom with Kevin Smith’s daughter, as one does.

BLACK HOLES. Stephen Hawking makes significant addition to his work on black holes: “Working with two colleagues, he found that the essential properties of whatever falls into these cosmic pits may, after all, survive. Or, as he put it recently, black holes ‘are not the eternal prisons they were once thought.’”

GAME OF THRONES. New hints about what to expect in next week’s episode.

TOO HOT FOR TUESDAY. Ali.

The post ‘Bacon’, Lindsey Graham, Illegal To Be Gay, ABBA, Black Holes, Elon Musk: NEWS appeared first on Towleroad.

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Who Do Gay California Voters Favor? Scruff Makes a Prediction

Tuesday has been dubbed Super Tuesday 5 with California, New Jersey, New Mexico, Montana and the Dakotas going to the polls. And while Hillary Clinton was characterized as the presumptive Democratic nominee by the AP and NBC News on Monday, neither she nor Bernie Sanders were too thrilled about that bulletin, fearing it would suppress voter turn-out on Tuesday.

California polling has been neck-and-neck as of late, but which Democratic candidate will win the gay vote? According to a(n incredibly unscientific) poll from gay dating app, Scruff, gay Californians overwhelmingly favor Clinton.

NBC News reports: 

According to Scruff, the popular dating app for gay and bisexual men, nearly 60 percent of the 1,011 “likely voters” who responded to the survey are throwing their support behind Clinton, compared with 34 percent who support Sanders.

One sub-group Sanders did do particularly well with in the survey was younger gay and bisexual men. Seventy-six percent of 18-24 year olds surveyed said they support the Vermont senator.

Polls close in California at 11 PM EST / 8 PM PST. If you live in one of the states voting today be sure to get out and vote!

[h/t Instinct]

The post Who Do Gay California Voters Favor? Scruff Makes a Prediction appeared first on Towleroad.

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This Stunning Dance Video Explains How a New, Groundbreaking Vaccine Could End AIDS: WATCH

Thirty-five years ago, on June 5, 1981, the Center for Diseases Control (CDC) reported that five unrelated young men were diagnosed with pneumocystis carinii pneumonia in three Los Angeles area hospitals. Two of them had died.

The report noted that the occurrence of pneumocystis was highly unusual for “patients without a clinically apparent underlying immunodeficiency,” and suggested  “an association between some aspect of a homosexual lifestyle or disease acquired through sexual contact.” A year later, the CDC started referring to the disease as AIDS. Three and a half decades later, a cure is yet to be found.

But we are getting closer.

Dr. Sudhir Paul

The difficulty of finding a cure for AIDS exists because HIV is constantly mutating and changing faster than the antibodies our bodies produce to fight it. Dr. Sudhir Paul, director of the Chemical Immunology Research Center at the University of Texas at Houston, says that  “in the case of HIV, traditional vaccine paradigms simply do not work because the virus mutates pretty rapidly and the body is fooled into making anti-bodies against changeable parts of the virus.”

In 2008, Dr. Paul came up with a new technology, the E-Vaccine, that infuses a non-mutating part of the virus with an electrical charge. The charge allows the body to finally see and destroy the protein HIV uses to infect human cells. In his words, it is a “way of chemically activating the body’s immune system to produce large amounts of the protective anti-bodies against a small area of the virus that is mostly unchangeable and that we’ve called the ‘Achilles heel’ of the virus.” He has been working on the E-Vaccine for over 15 years. The next step is testing.

Dr. Paul partnered up with the Abzyme Research Foundation and together they started the #endHIV campaign, to fund the final manufacturing and FDA proposal and start human trials by next year.

Zachary Barnett, founder and executive director of the Abzyme Research Foundation, says that “the vaccine represents an entire new way to activate the immune system against the weak spot on HIV’s outer coat.”

Earlier this month, #endHIV and Greater than AIDS launched #HIVBEATS, a series of videos with some famous YouTubers and even America’s reigning drag superstar talking about HIV awareness, prevention and treatment. The campaign aims to bring HIV education into the digital age, and it is a “millennial response from a generation that has never lived without HIV/AIDS,” says Barnett.

On Sunday, #HIVBEATS posted a stunning dance piece choreographed by Ryan Heffington (who choreographed Sia’s award-winning “Chandelier” video), with music by Grammy Award-nominated composer Lucian Piane and narration by Oscar-winner Julianne Moore.

The 7-minute long video is inspired by the battle between HIV and the body’s immune system. It shows the chaotic and disorderly HIV infection cycle; only this time, the narrative has a happy — and hopeful — ending.

Check out the video below:

The post This Stunning Dance Video Explains How a New, Groundbreaking Vaccine Could End AIDS: WATCH appeared first on Towleroad.

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