Billy Eichner just had an epic Twitter throwdown with Meghan McCain over Streep speech

Who knew Billy Eichner was such a badasss?

Related: Would You Have A Threesome With Billy Eichner And Jon Hamm?

The Billy on the Street star effortlessly eviscerated Meghan McCain after the Republican talking head (who’s Senator McCain’s daughter) opined that “this Meryl Streep speech is why Trump won,” recommending that “people in Hollywood” need to “start recognizing it.”  

Related: Is Billy Eichner Underappreciated By The Gay Community?

Eicher wasn’t having none of that, responding:

Um she asked him not to make fun of disabled people and advocated for the freedom of the press and the arts you f–king moron…”

And it only gets more ruthless from there:

This Meryl Streep speech is why Trump won. And if people in Hollywood don’t start recognizing why and how – you will help him get re-elected

— Meghan McCain (@MeghanMcCain) January 9, 2017

Um she asked him not to make fun of disabled people and advocated for the freedom of the press and the arts you fucking moron t.co/IzZexd7Bb4

— billy eichner (@billyeichner) January 9, 2017

.@billyeichner calling republicans like me “fucking morons” is a great way for Hollywood to bridge the cultural divide. Enjoy your bubble.

— Meghan McCain (@MeghanMcCain) January 9, 2017

.@MeghanMcCain I rather live in a bubble than live with people who don’t feel a need to respect the disabled, freedom of speech & the arts!!

— billy eichner (@billyeichner) January 9, 2017

.@MeghanMcCain Oh & another message from my bubble-can u ask dad to give back the MILLIONS he’s received from the NRA? MERYL FUCKING STREEP!

— billy eichner (@billyeichner) January 9, 2017

Love being told I live in a bubble by the daughter of a millionaire politician who sometimes guest co-hosts Hoda and Kathie Lee.

— billy eichner (@billyeichner) January 9, 2017

And I have no desire to “bridge the cultural divide” with ignorant voters who don’t respect other cultures!

— billy eichner (@billyeichner) January 9, 2017

And now if you’ll excuse me I’m late for the Weinstein/Netflix party.

— billy eichner (@billyeichner) January 9, 2017

It doesn’t matter what Trump thinks of Meryl. What matters is he’s ignoring American intelligence agencies, which is a threat to our…

— billy eichner (@billyeichner) January 9, 2017

…nat’l security, pushing a racist to be Attorney General & Congress sidestepping standard ethics reviews of cabinet members. FOCUS ON THAT

— billy eichner (@billyeichner) January 9, 2017

“Never get in a wrestling match with a pig because you both get dirty and the pig likes it”. Done talking Hollywood and d-list comedians.

— Meghan McCain (@MeghanMcCain) January 9, 2017

www.queerty.com/billy-eichner-just-epic-twitter-throwdown-meghan-mccain-streep-speech-20170110?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+queerty2+%28Queerty%29

Laverne Cox, Betsy DeVos, Julian Assange, Trevor Noah, Joan Collins, Meryl Streep: HOT LINKS

A LOOK pic.twitter.com/ZlIEMCP5z2

— aaron (@lustdad) January 6, 2017

FIERCE FASHION. High schooler’s T-shirt goes viral.

JULIAN ASSANGE. The Wikileaks founder did an AMA on Reddit.

BETSY DEVOS. Confirmation hearing for anti-gay billionare Secretary of Education pick delayed a week: “The move comes after Democrats had raised concerns about the wealthy philanthropists’ incomplete financial disclosures and unfinished ethics review, as Politico reported last week. The top Democrat on the HELP committee asked for a rescheduled hearing, saying she was concerned about “extensive financial entanglements and potential conflicts of interest,” Politico says.”

TRIFECTA OF GLAMOUR. Joan Collins, Donna Mills, and Naomi Campbell join forces.

STEPHEN COLBERT. Let’s have a ‘Million Meryl March’.

STREEPED. Committee to Protect Journalists gets 140x more donations than usual after Meryl Streep speech: “A typical Sunday evening brings in about five donations, said Courtney Radsch, the group’s a dvocacy director. However, in the wake of Streep’s comments, the non-profit received about 700 online donations on Sunday night, or 140 times the typical amount for that time. The CPJ has yet to calculate the total amount raised since Streep’s speech, but Radsch said most of the gifts were small. Streep’s nod to the organization also brought increased traffic to the group’s website and social media pages.”

DENVER. Police horse dies after officer forgot he had no food or water.

TWIN PEAKS. The David Lynch reboot finally got a premiere date: “Network president David Nevins announced the news at the Television Critics Association 2017 winter press tour, revealing that the long-in-the-works new season will debut with a two-hour premiere on Sunday, May 21 at 9 p.m. Additionally, the third and fourth episodes of the new season will be available on Showtime’s streaming and on demand platforms that same night. The 2017 season will be 18 hours in total.”

BYSTANDERS OF ATROCITY. On recognizing everyday authoritarianism.

BRACE, BRACE, BRACE. LGBT activists prepare to resist Trump administration: “They view President-elect Donald Trump and many of his Cabinet selections as disinterested — and in some cases hostile — when it comes to the various issues of civil rights and anti-discrimination protections that concern lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans.”

LAVERNE COX. It’s “really special” to be playing a black trans woman in Doubt.

CHARLOTTE. Human Rights Campaign appears to have pulled its award from the City Council: “On the HRC Charlotte website, hrccarolina.org, the page dedicated to this year’s awardees still shows the transgender activists as the Person of the Year winners, but the Organization of the Year is noticeably absent…A Google search for “hrccarolina.org charlotte city council awards” brings up the result hrccarolina.org/awards-2, which when clicked takes you to a 404 page, with text reading, ‘This is somewhat embarrassing, isn’t it? It seems we can’t find what you’re looking for.’”

DAILY SHOW. Trevor Noah comes down on Meryl Streep for criticizing football and MMA fans: “I understand what Meryl Streep was trying to do, and I don’t know if I could have done better, but here’s the thing I feel like we could all learn as people,” Noah said. “You don’t have to make your point by shitting on someone else’s thing, because a lot of people love football and the arts.”

TOO HOT FOR TUESDAY. Donovan Michaels.

The post Laverne Cox, Betsy DeVos, Julian Assange, Trevor Noah, Joan Collins, Meryl Streep: HOT LINKS appeared first on Towleroad.

Laverne Cox, Betsy DeVos, Julian Assange, Trevor Noah, Joan Collins, Meryl Streep: HOT LINKS

Gay men, please stop using the term “BBC,” It’s racist, blogger says

“Size generally matters in the gay meat market,” author Jeremy Helligar writes in a new op-ed at Honey9, “regardless of racial considerations, but the curiosity and expectations so often attached to dark meat raises the ick factor to a level of grotesque.”

Related: Is It True What They Say About Black Men?

Helligar is the author of the humorous travelogue Is It True What They Say About Black Men?, which examines how gay black men are viewed, and often objectified, in countries all around the world.

“Lately, though, I’ve noticed a shift, especially on Grindr,” Helligar writes. “Guys rarely ask me if it’s true what they say about black men anymore. That’s so 2011. Now they often send me messages that say, simply, ‘BBC’, or occasionally, ‘BBC?’–and not because they’re confusing me with the British broadcaster.”

BBC, for those of you know may not know, is internet shorthand for big black c*ck. And, in Helligar’s opinion, it’s kinda racist. Here’s why:

“It’s basically saying that as a black man, that is my primary value,” he says.

“I haven’t figured out if the gay white men who use it do so because it’s easier to write,” he continues, “or if it’s just too embarrassing to spell out ‘big black blank.’ Whatever the reason, the implication is the same: I’m no longer a three-dimensional person. I am my big black blank.”

Related: The “Black Men Are Bigger” Myth Just Got Debunked

As a result of constantly being asked about his BBC, which Helligar says has quickly become “the new bane of my gay existence,” it’s opened his eyes to another problem in our society: the crap women have to put up with when it comes to being objectified.

“Would you want your sister to get involved with a guy who refers to her as ‘BB’ for ‘big breasts’?” he asks. “The sad thing is, most women probably hear far worse on a regular basis. I sympathize. I empathize. I know how it feels.”

“I’m certain that I haven’t seen the last of ‘BBC,’” Helligar adds, adding that he’s sure “my protestations [over the term] will likely be met with shrugs.”

“In a world where a rich white man can be caught on tape boasting about sexually assaulting women and still be elected leader of the free world, no one’s going to get too worked up over a little ‘BBC’…except for the men it objectifies.”

“And ladies,” he concludes, “we feel your pain.”

Related: A Black Man Answers: “Are Black Men Really Bigger?”

www.queerty.com/gay-men-please-stop-using-term-bbc-racist-blogger-says-20170110?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+queerty2+%28Queerty%29

Twins of a Gay Couple Born to Same Mother Are Not Brothers, Judge Rules

In a complex case where the law surmounted biology, an Italian judge ruled that twins born from the same mother are not brothers.

The ruling from an appeals court in Milan reversed an earlier determination that the boys, born from a surrogate in California via in vitro fertilization at the behest of a gay couple, could not be claimed by the men as their legal children. Since they each used separate semen samples, according to the ruling, each man could claim the corresponding boy as a child. But although this process made them fraternal twins, each sharing the same genetic mother, the ruling further specified that they could not be brothers in the eyes of the law.

Despite this confusing caveat, the couple—who have wished to remain anonymous in Italian media—welcomed the development that allowed them to confer their Italian citizenship upon the children, previously denied them in an earlier attempt to register their births with officials in Milan.

An organization that was helping the men in their court case did likewise:

Famiglie Arcobaleno, a nongovernmental organization advocating the rights of same-sex parents and their children, has hailed the court’s decision as a “positive step.” “It’s the first time that an Italian court has established that a child’s best interest comes before [the legality of] how he or she was born”, the NGO’s president, Marilena Grassadonia, told The Washington Post in a telephone interview. . . . . NGOs such as Famiglie Arcobaleno . . . are working to help gay couples find surrogates in countries “where the rights of surrogates are respected,” Grassadonia said. “California and Canada are our preferred destinations.”

While the same-sex nature of the boys’ parentage further complicated the matter, surrogacy remains a barely-accepted concept in Italian law, especially when third-party countries where exploitation is suspected are involved:

Surrogacy itself is stigmatized and referred to by the local media by the derogatory term “utero in affitto,” or “womb for rent.” Even after a child is born, there’s no guarantee that its best interests will be more important than adhering to the ban. Italian authorities have gone so far as to take children away from their parents. Three years ago, a court in Cremona, a town in northern Italy, took a toddler away from his parents, a straight married couple, after it was discovered he was born in Ukraine to a surrogate mother. Another child born in Ukraine via a surrogate was separated from his family in the town of Brescia and was declared “adoptable” by the country’s rough equivalent of the Supreme Court in 2014.

But the case further serves to highlight that Italy remains less progressive in the area of both same-sex marriage equality and parenthood than much of neighboring Europe. Limited civil partnerships still make no provision for adoption, which is why neither man can simply adopt the other man’s child. The curious nature of the court’s attention-grabbing ruling would ideally spur on legislation that could begin to acknowledge the reality on the ground of contemporary families.

Baby Twins by David Gerstein is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license via Wikimedia Commons.

The post Twins of a Gay Couple Born to Same Mother Are Not Brothers, Judge Rules appeared first on Towleroad.

Twins of a Gay Couple Born to Same Mother Are Not Brothers, Judge Rules

Guest Post: That time Attorney General nominee Sessions celebrated a homophobic singer

www.glaad.org/blog/guest-post-time-attorney-general-nominee-sessions-celebrated-homophobic-singer

13 Reasons You Should Be Single

www.advocate.com/love-and-sex/2017/1/10/13-reasons-you-should-be-single

Unprecedented: Sen. Cory Booker to Testify Against Sen. Jeff Sessions at Confirmation

Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) plans to testify against Attorney General nominee Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) at today’s confirmation hearing, the first time in history a senator has testified against another sitting senator for a Cabinet post, according to CNN:

“I do not take lightly the decision to testify against a Senate colleague,” Booker said. “But the immense powers of the attorney general combined with the deeply troubling views of this nominee is a call to conscience.”

Sessions’ confirmation hearings, which begin Tuesday, are expected to raise additional questions on old allegations of racism from his past. When Sessions was a 39-year-old US attorney in Alabama, he was denied a federal judgeship because the Senate Judiciary Committee heard testimony during hearings in March and May 1986 that Sessions had made racist remarks and called the NAACP and ACLU “un-American.”

Booker called Sessions’ record “concerning in a number of ways,” citing his opposition to bipartisan criminal justice reform and immigration reform, criticism of the Voting Rights Act and his “failure to defend the civil rights of women, minorities, and LGBT Americans.”

If you need a reminder, Sessions has been a vocal opponent of marriage equality. He also grilled then Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan on her opposition to ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell during her senate confirmation hearings and said he would do crack cocaine at Sonia Sotomayor’s hearings. He also opposed the Matthew Shepard hate crimes act and supports the First Amendment Defense Act, the heinous bill that would allow businesses to cite religious beliefs as justification to discriminate against LGBT people. In 1996, as Alabama’s attorney general, Sessions fought tooth and nail to stop the Southeastern Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual College Conference from meeting at the University of Alabama but did not prevail.

Sessions’ confirmation hearing begins at 9:30 am. We’ll post a live stream.

The post Unprecedented: Sen. Cory Booker to Testify Against Sen. Jeff Sessions at Confirmation appeared first on Towleroad.

Unprecedented: Sen. Cory Booker to Testify Against Sen. Jeff Sessions at Confirmation

15 Reasons to Go to HustlaBall This Weekend

www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/2017/1/10/15-reasons-go-hustlaball-weekend