New doc ‘Making Montgomery Clift’ settles the question of the troubled star’s sexuality
The movie legend’s nephew & niece-in-law aim to address Monty’s sexuality, demons, and family secrets.

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Fury as China Reverses 25-Year Ban on Rhino Horn and Tiger Bone for Useless Medicine

China has reversed a 25-year ban on the use of rhinoceros horn and tiger bones for use in medicine, alarming conservationists and placing a bigger target on the back of already threatened species.

The NYT reports: ‘The State Council, China’s cabinet, said in a policy directive that it would legalize the use of rhino horns and tiger bones for “medical research or in healing,” but only by certified hospitals and doctors, and only from rhinos and tigers raised in captivity, excluding zoo animals. While such remedies are highly profitable, they have no proven benefits to humans.’

Fewer than 30,000 rhinos and 3,900 tigers exist in the wild, according to the paper.

The WWF’s Margaret Kinnaird released a statement: “It is deeply concerning that China has reversed its 25 year old tiger bone and rhino horn ban, allowing a trade that will have devastating consequences globally. Trade in tiger bone and rhino horn was banned in 1993. The resumption of a legal market for these products is an enormous setback to efforts to protect tigers and rhinos in the wild. China’s experience with the domestic ivory trade has clearly shown the difficulties of trying to control parallel legal and illegal markets for ivory. Not only could this lead to the risk of legal trade providing cover to illegal trade, this policy will also stimulate demand that had otherwise declined since the ban was put in place. With wild tiger and rhino populations at such low levels and facing numerous threats, legalized trade in their parts is simply too great a gamble for China to take. This decision seems to contradict the leadership China has shown recently in tackling the illegal wildlife trade, including the closure of their domestic ivory market, a game changer for elephants warmly welcomed by the global community.”

Anger at developments in China as they legalise domestic trade in rhino horn and tiger bones for medical research and healing. This decision seems at odds with the recent ban on domestic ivory sales. t.co/J1Jul3weIE pic.twitter.com/9rvKQdIQup

— Helping Rhinos (@HelpingRhinos) October 29, 2018

A rhino calf tries desperately to wake her dead mother who has been butchered for her horn.

This will be happening much more frequently if @China does not reverse their decision to legalise rhino horn & tiger bone on the premise that they provide medicinal value.

They don’t! pic.twitter.com/AFKKKhmd28

— Bella Lack (@BellaLack) October 30, 2018

The post Fury as China Reverses 25-Year Ban on Rhino Horn and Tiger Bone for Useless Medicine appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

Fury as China Reverses 25-Year Ban on Rhino Horn and Tiger Bone for Useless Medicine

“The Vice President Should Know Better”: Rabbi Discusses Pence’s Disgraceful Response to Pittsburgh

When Mike Pence brazenly took the stage yesterday with Loren Jacobs, an anti-LGBTQ faith leader of a Messianic synagogue, to offer a prayer for the victims of the anti-Semitic mass shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, he revealed once again that the Trump-Pence administration and its allies do not speak for our communities.

Jacobs’ presence at the Grand Rapids rally, a stop on Pence’s anti-equality campaign tour of Michigan, drew outrage from advocates and faith leaders across the U.S., many of whom took to social media to spread messages of solidarity for the grieving Jewish community.

Jacobs is not an ordained rabbi in the Jewish faith and has said that “homosexuality is a sexual perversion, harmful to those who engage in it and destructive to the society that encourages it.”

HRC spoke with openly gay Rabbi Gil Steinlauf, a member of HRC Foundation’s Religion Council, director of the Hineni Fellowship for LGBTQ Jewish Leadership and longtime faith leader in Washington, D.C., about the impact of Pence’s disgraceful appearance with Jacobs on our communities.

1. Can you share some of your thoughts around yesterday’s appearance of Pence with Loren Jacobs?  

I am deeply saddened by Vice President Pence’s insensitive and, frankly, abusive act of inviting a messianic “rabbi” to speak on behalf of the Jewish people. “Rabbi” Loren Jacobs is not a Jew;  he is a fundamentalist Christian who appropriates superficial trappings of Jewish tradition.

Our Jewish community is reeling and in much pain after the attack in Pittsburgh. We bear the collective memory of centuries of persecution at the hands of Christian leaders and governments. We are no strangers to those who, either through deceit or in brazen openness, seek to undermine, attack and destroy our people. By lifting up Messianic Judaism at a time like this, Pence has shown his agreement with its pernicious goals — and this, just after a white-supremacist has murdered our people with shouts that “all Jews must die.”

2. What have you heard from other community members about how they’re feeling since yesterday?

Mike Pence is a known Christian fundamentalist who is also a political leader. As such, he bears a special responsibility to demonstrate respect, sensitivity and understanding of our people during this crisis. But his actions have done the opposite: he has added to our pain and aggrieved us further with this betrayal.

The feeling in the Jewish community is that, even if this act were merely one of tone-deaf cluelessness, the vice president of the U.S. should know better. Through this, he has shown that he is no true friend of the Jewish people.

3. What is your message to Jewish and LGBTQ communities in the wake of yet another display of the administration not having their backs?

As a member of the LGBTQ community, I have long been aware of Pence’s bigotry under the guise of religious piety. Time and again, his actions betray his true colors: Mike Pence’s goal is to create nothing less than a fundamentalist, white, Christian theocracy. Pence has demonstrated that his America is one where LGBTQ Americans are nothing short of criminals and where Jews, Black people and other minority groups are second-class citizens.

In both the progressive Jewish and LGBTQ communities, we have come too far in our struggles for real democracy and justice to allow such bigotry to rob us of the America that our ancestors struggled to create. We must get out and vote to restore this country to its path of justice and compassion for all.

In 2016, HRC Foundation released Coming Home to Judaism and to Self, a guide that challenges individuals to engage more deeply with their faith and offers strategies for the LGBTQ faithful seeking enriching and meaningful lives in the Jewish faith.

For more information, as well as other faith based resources, visit www.hrc.org/religion.

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