Is It That Hard to Believe Donald Trump Sexually Assaulted This Woman?
In an interview published by The Guardian, Jill Harth defends her honor and insists Donald Trump groped her.
www.advocate.com/politics/2016/7/21/it-hard-believe-donald-trump-sexually-assaulted-woman
Break Out The Bolly: Here Are Twelve New “Absolutely Fabulous” GIFs That Give ‘Til It Hurts
Any self-respecting gay male homosexual already has an arsenal of Ab Fab-themed GIFs at the ready — and for any occasion — but you can always do with more. Cribbed from the long-awaited Absolutely Fabulous full-length feature (for your convenience and at great personal expense to us), here are twelve delirious highlights pitting perpetually drunk duosome Patsy Stone and Edina Monsoon against Kate Moss, unsuspecting bottles of Bolly, and the dictums of good taste.
Enjoy a bottle of champs, stare muchly, and don’t say we never did nothing for you.
Oh, and P.S.: “Quick shower, quick shower… Wash and go. Sandpaper, exfoliant, cellulite breakdown, tone and perm, auto-bronzer and birch twigs! Shall I have soap? No, no soap.”
Now that that’s out of the way:
8 Things We’d Like To See (Or Not See) On Logo’s Fire Island Show
Prepare to feel validated, every Pines Boy who has ever looked around at the shenanigans going on at Low Tea and thought, Why isn’t anyone filming this shit for a reality show?
Piggy backing on today’s news that Logo has renewed RuPaul’s Drag Race for a ninth season, the cable network also announced upcoming “docuseries” Fire Island. The show, from producers Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos, will reportedly follow a group of New York gays sharing a house in The Pines. And if there’s any truth to that old joke about Pines place settings — fork on the right, spoon up your nose, knife in the back — this show should be a gift from the reality TV gods to rival Logo’s other upcoming masterpiece of unscripted faggotry.
So, what should we expect in between generic interstitial shots of buff boys on the beach and mangy deer crawling with ticks? Here’s our list of Fire Island traditions and events that we’d like to see Fire Island feature — and a few that probably shouldn’t make the cut.
All of the Teas
The Pines is all about Tea. High Tea, Low Tea, Middle Tea, and various other “Tea” parties punctuate the evening in Pines Harbor. Low Tea at The Blue Whale tend to be the busiest event, attracting boys from all over the Pines and even from The Grove for a pre-dinner kiki. It’s like the watering hole where all the animals—bears, otters, pigs, gym bunnies, chickens—converge, and with so many gay boys getting drunk in one spot, it’s the perfect breeding ground for camera-ready drama.
The Invasion
This annual event is possibly the centerpiece summer season on Fire Island. Each year on July 4, the boys of summer get all gussied up in synthetic wigs, acrylic heels and spirit gum and take a boat from The Cherry Grove to The Pines. The event hearkens back to the decades when the more flamboyant denizens of The Grove would defy the then more conservative community standards of The Pines. Nowadays, it ain’t nothin’ to see a queen strutting down the boardwalk snapping a fan in heels and a jockstrap, but The Invasion is still a must-see spectacle for a show looking to document the gayest summer destination on earth.
The Meat Rack
For better or worse, Fire Island’s most famous gay cruising ground will almost certainly be featured on the show. On the one hand, how can you do a show about this gay Mecca and not include the Meat Rack? We’ll probably see one of the show’s stars gay-splaining the swampy wooded area that separates The Pines from neighboring queer hamlet Cherry Grove for the kids at home. Maybe a few of the boys will share their innuendo-heavy, TV friendly stories about misadventures and secret assignations in those winding, wooded footpaths intercut with B-roll footage of the trees and the dunes. On the other hand, no one wants a cock-blocking camera crew to go traipsing through the Meat Rack. That would seriously fuck up the atmosphere.
The Dick Dock
Generally considered to be more of a Ptown thing, there are what we’ve heard described as “Dick Docks” in the Pines. Except they’re not really docks. Savvy Pines Boys know about the two boardwalks leading down to the beach near the center of town, and the fact that they can get pretty frisky into the wee hours of the morning. Much like The Meat Rack, however, no one wants cameras trained on these cruisey spots.
Reflections
One of the most notable houses in The Pines, the bayside palace known as Reflections often plays host to some of the most high-profile parties of the summer. Something tells us the boys of Fire Island will make their way to this gorgeous house.
Cherry Grove
While Logo’s docu-show will be based primarily in The Pines, it would be a damn shame if the cameras don’t make their way over to neighboring Cherry Grove. Pines Boys tend to look down their noses at the more diverse, less Chelsea-fied community, but they all make the trek through the Meat Rack or via water taxi every Friday night for Daniel Nardicio’s infamous underwear party at The Ice Palace. Plus, the weekend drag pool shows at the same venue feature some of the most fabulously messy and hilariously entertaining queens on the island — and they are ready for their reality TV debut, trust!
The Meat Rack Raves
Every now and then on Fire Island you’ll get word of a fabulous party happening…in the Meat Rack. Brooklyn electro-pop duo The Swimming Pools threw these renegade parties semi-regularly for a few years, lugging a generator out to the sandier part of the Meat Rack closest to the dunes where some of Brooklyn’s hottest underground DJs would spin disco and dance beats for barefoot boys. Of course, there’s no telling when or if another one of these events will happen. Plus, we’ve already discussed our misgivings about camera crews filming in the Meat Rack — see above.
That Ice Cream Truck at the LIRR Station
Beach bods be damned! The train ride back to the city can be rough after a week — or just a weekend — partying in the sun and sand, but that ice cream truck that’s always waiting at the Sayville LIRR station with its trove of sweet treats makes the journey bearable. It’s one of those often-overlooked quirks that makes the trip to and from Fire Island so special, not to mention an incredible potential meet-cute for a couple of reality TV stars…
h/t: Vulture
Peter Thiel: Billionaire RNC Speaker, Gay Man, and Guest of Neo-Fascist
Peter Thiel, the gay tech billionaire who sits on Facebook’s board, will soon address a gathering of elderly white people as the guest of a pontificating neo-fascist. We refer not to Donald Trump’s Republican National Convention, though Thiel will also be speaking there – on its final night, right after Jerry Falwell Jr. and an hour or so before Trump. Rather, this is the annual conference of the Property and Freedom Society, taking place in September in Bodrum, Turkey.
The Southern Poverty Law Center highlighted Thiel’s speaking slot there last month. Crickets from the media, even though the Property and Freedom Society is a frankly terrifying place to find one of the most important men in Silicon Valley. And Thiel’s importance is difficult to overstate. He is, among many other things, the co-founder of PayPal, the original Facebook angel investor, and the founder of a massive, super-secretive surveillance firm called Palantir, which helps the government sift through petabytes of raw data in search of terrorists (or whatever). He is also a member of the very small group of people midwifing humanity’s rebirth as a race of immortal cyborgs. He’s probably the most successful enemy of the free American press. And he’s a Trump delegate.
As the SPLC details in its report, the gatherings of the Property and Freedom Society are salons for white supremacists and their fellow travelers, and for libertarian extremists whose ideology creeps right up to crypto-Nazism. These are not the fun, pot-smoking libertarians with the ponytails. These are paleo-libertarians, so far to the right they think Milton Friedman’s a socialist. They long for the freedom to discriminate at will, for reasons racial, religious, aesthetic or capricious. They yearn for the abolition of the state, and the supreme and eternal reign of whoever’s smart, strong, rich, or talented enough to hoard all the resources when it’s gone.
Hans-Hermann Hoppe (Henrique Vicente – Flickr – cc-by-2.0)
The group’s founder and Thiel’s host is Hans Hermann-Hoppe, an anarcho-capitalist former professor at the University of Nevada. Hoppe sets the tone for these gatherings. In his book Democracy: The God That Failed, he envisions a stateless “libertarian order” that purges homosexuals and literally anyone who believes in democracy. “They will have to be physically separated and expelled from society,” Hoppe writes, referring to “advocates of parasitism, homosexuality, or communism,” among other undesirables.
Why is totally-gay Thiel associating with such a person? Set aside questions of Thiel’s possible self-hatred, legitimate though they are. (Thiel has been waging a successful proxy war against Gawker Media as revenge for its reporting on the then-open secret of his homosexuality; and twenty years ago a more closeted Thiel co-authored a book that took special issue with gays seeking domestic partner benefits. On the other hand, Thiel intends to tell the RNC that he’s “proud” to be gay, so maybe he’s feeling better now.) The people with whom Thiel shall rub elbows in Turkey believe in radical intellectual freedom, which implies a certain tolerance for kooky and unpleasant ideas. (Though one wonders if it’s difficult to valorize freedom in the same breath with which one calls for a purge.) Perhaps Thiel is merely an idealist; so committed to the un-encumbered intellect that he flies happily on the winds of freedom, even when they blow him onto stages full of Nazis.
Well, no. Thiel isn’t merely tolerant of kooky and unpleasant ideas. He’s an incubator and promulgator of kooky and unpleasant ideas. In an essay in 2009, Thiel argued that democracy and capitalism are “incompatible,” and have been ever since women got the vote. (It’s a wonder that Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s COO and author of the privileged-feminist manifesto Lean In, didn’t deem Thiel incompatible with the company.) Thiel is an outspoken proponent of the notion that democracy is antithetical to true freedom, and he believes that American economic instability will eventually give rise to either a Marxist dystopia or a libertarian paradise. To escape our crumbling matriarchy, Thiel has funded a so-far unsuccessful effort to build new, libertarian nations on artificial islands in international waters. The media has tended to paint the venture as romantic or quixotic, but one shudders to imagine what Hoppe would do with an island of his own.
At the PFC conference in September, Thiel will give a speech titled “In Praise of Free Market Monopoly.” Other speakers include a German author, Gerd Schultze-Rhonhof, who will hold forth on “the many fathers of World War II.” Schultze-Rhonhof is a leading proponent of the theory, popular with Holocaust denialists and neo-Nazis, that the Allies, not Hitler, provoked WWII. Also onstage will be Heiner Rindermann, who is deeply concerned that brown immigrants with low IQs will bring about the downfall of European society.
Gerd Schultze-Rhonhof
Even a casual survey of the news suggests such ideas are becoming less and less distressing to more and more people, and Peter Thiel’s new political prominence, evident from his prime slot at the RNC, could bespeak a mainstreaming of anti-democratic sentiment. At least, it would have been difficult to imagine an avowed foe of democracy taking the stage at past Republican National Conventions.
In September of last year, the young critic Park MacDougald published an excellent, alarmed essay on the ascendant “alt-right,” in which he imagined an “alliance of convenience between the tech elite and an intransigent white identity politics [that] begins to look a lot like the Nazi coalition of German industrialists and a downwardly-mobile middle class.” It’s ten months later, and no such alliance yet exists. But the beginning of one might look something like this.
*Thiel actually calls himself a friend of the free press, and is a contributor to the Committee to Protect Journalists. He claims his proxy lawsuits against Gawker Media, which have led to the company’s imminent auctioning-off, are due to Gawker’s unique awfulness. But Gawker’s rarely very awful, and Thiel has funded and defended the career of “citizen journalist” James O’Keefe, whose manipulation of video led to the destruction of ACORN, the loss of hundreds of jobs, the ruination of dozens of careers, and the withholding of needed aid (and voter registration) from countless citizens. So Thiel’s probably just sore that Gawker outed him.
The post Peter Thiel: Billionaire RNC Speaker, Gay Man, and Guest of Neo-Fascist appeared first on Towleroad.
Gay Kiss Cut from ‘Star Trek Beyond’, Says John Cho
An “intimate,” “welcome-home kiss” between Sulu and his husband was cut from Star Trek Beyond, says actor John Cho, who earlier this month made headlines after revealing that Sulu was gay in the latest film.
In a new interview with Vulture, Cho talks about the character development and some of the concerns he had.
Said Cho:
I was concerned also that there might be Asian-American backlash. There has been this feminization of Asian men, so I thought this might be seen as continuing that lineage, which I disagree with personally, but I brought it up. I was also concerned, scientifically speaking [laughs], that we’re in an alternate universe but I’m assuming that Sulu is the same genetic Sulu in both timelines, and I thought we might be implying that sexual orientation was a choice. Does this sound super overthought?
Cho said that Takei’s first reaction was not an objection to the sexual orientation of the character but that it “wasn’t canon.”
He also talked about how it came about that screenwriter Doug Jung ended up playing his husband.
Early on I said to Justin, “Dude, it would be important to me to have an Asian husband.” … We were in Vancouver first and we finished up the production in Dubai and that scene was in Dubai and I was like, “Hey, so who’d you get?” They were like, “We can’t find anybody! Doug may have to play him!” It started out as a joke. I was like, “Haha.” And then at some point they were not joking. We definitely had trouble finding East Asians first off, and then actors willing to play gay. We had a guy and then his parents really objected.
Cho wanted to prove a point about cultural shame in the Asian community and give a nod to his gay Asian friends, and show that being gay would “seem really normal in the future.I thought that would be the most normal thing, that there was zero shame in the future.”
Unfortunately, however, a kiss between Cho and Jung was cut:
“There was a kiss that I think is not there anymore….It wasn’t like a make-out session. We’re at the airport with our daughter. It was a welcome-home kiss. I’m actually proud of that scene, because it was pretty tough. Obviously, I just met the kid, and then Doug is not an actor. I just wanted that to look convincingly intimate. We’re two straight guys and had to get to a very loving, intimate place. It was hard to do on the fly. We had to open up. It came off well, in my view.”
Read the full interview HERE.
The post Gay Kiss Cut from ‘Star Trek Beyond’, Says John Cho appeared first on Towleroad.
First Lady Michelle Obama Joins James Corden for a Full Round of Carpool Karaoke: WATCH
As we previewed earlier in the week, Late Late Show host James Corden picked up First Lady Michelle Obama at the White House for a round of Carpool Karaoke — and it was amazing.
Corden got a tour of the White House grounds (followed by the Secret Service the entire time) and a listen to some of FLOTUS’ favorite collection: Stevie Wonder “Signed Sealed Delivered”, Beyoncé’s”Single Ladies”, and “This Is For My Girls”, for which they were joined by Missy Elliott.
They also threw down “Get Ur Freak On” and got their interview on.
“What are you going to miss and what are you going to accidentally slip into your bag?”, Corden asked FLOTUS.
“I’m going to miss the people,” said The First Lady. “[And I’ll enjoy] the freedom that we’ll get in exchange for the luxuries…I can make my own grilled cheese sandwich.”
We also found out about the trip Obama is planning to Liberia, Morocco, and Spain for her “Let Girls Learn” program, for which she hopes to use Snapchat as a tool to get them interested.
“So much could be corrected in the world if girls were educated and had power over their lives.”
Indeed.
Watch:
The post First Lady Michelle Obama Joins James Corden for a Full Round of Carpool Karaoke: WATCH appeared first on Towleroad.
American Federation of Teachers Passes Resolution in Support of LGBTQ Students and Staff
On Tuesday, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) passed a landmark resolution in support of LGBTQ students and staff at their biennial convention.
“WHEREAS, the American Federation of Teachers and its locals and state affiliates have played a critical and historic role in fighting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression, and have a long institutional history of leadership in securing better educational and working conditions and better lives for members of all groups facing stigma and pervasive discrimination,” the resolution explained. “RESOLVED, that the American Federation of Teachers and its affiliates will support adoption, implementation and enforcement, at the district, institutional and state levels, of policies that support the safety and educational achievement of LGBTQ students”
The resolution also offered support for the Office for Civil Rights’ recent guidance to protect transgender students.
The move comes just weeks after the National Parent Teacher Association (NPTA) and the National Education Association (NEA) established formal policies of LGBTQ-inclusion.
“The AFT has been well ahead of the curve in advocating for LGBTQ students, and with this powerful resolution they will help to close the safety gaps for LGBTQ students in our country’s largest public school systems,” said Ellen Kahn, Director, Children Youth and Families Program. “Teachers are now empowered to set a tone of inclusion and respect in their classroom, changing the landscape for literally millions of students every year. Bravo to the AFT for standing up for all youth.”
AFT is made up of 1.6 million members, including pre-K through 12th-grade teachers; paraprofessionals and other school-related personnel; higher education faculty and professional staff; federal, state and local government employees; and nurses and other healthcare professionals.
Randi Weingarten, the president of the AFT, is openly lesbian.
HRC commends the AFT for taking this bold in step in support of LGBTQ youth nationwide. To learn more about how you can support LGBTQ youth, click here.
PHOTOS: Take a Look at What's Going on Outside the Republican Convention
www.advocate.com/politics/2016/7/21/photos-take-look-whats-going-outside-republican-convention
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FunnyTshirts101 posted a photo:
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