Report: Just One Accepting Adult Can Save an LGBTQ Young Person’s Life
Acceptance is shown to dramatically reduce the risk of a suicide attempt, according to the Trevor Project.
www.advocate.com/youth/2019/6/27/report-just-one-accepting-adult-can-save-lgbtq-young-persons-life
This man hopes to make history as the first out gay Black congressman in Mississippi
Carlton Smith hopes to make history this November by being elected to the Mississippi State Senate. If he does, he would become the first out LGBTQ person ever seated to the state legislature, as well as the first Black representative in his district’s history.
“Knowing what it’s like to be marginalized from an early age has made me a stronger and a bolder person,” 55-year-old Smith, who grew up in the small town of Holly Springs, Mississippi (pop. 7,621), tells New Now Next in an incredible new interview.
“It’s given me an additional level of creativity, perseverance, and belief in myself, in spite of what other people think or believe is possible for me and other LGBTQ people.”
View this post on InstagramSeason’s Greetings from the campus of Rust College in Holly Springs #MS01 #daretobelieve18 #carltonforcongress To support our campaign for a better Mississippi and a better nation, please visit www.carltonforcongress.com/donate. Thank you!
A post shared by Carlton E. Smith (@carlton.e.smith19) on
But Smith knows he has a tough fight ahead of him.
Not only is he currently competing against four other candidates in the Democratic primary, which will be held in August, but if he gets his party’s nomination, he’ll be going up against a Republican incumbent, Rep. Neil Whaley, in the general election this November.
Then, of course, there’s the fact that Mississippi isn’t exactly known for being the most gay-friendly place.
The state has passed numerous “religious freedom” laws granting businesses the legal right to discriminate against people LGBTQ, and it offers no statewide discrimination laws based on gender identity or sexual orientation.
And New Now Next notes:
Gaining his party’s official endorsement would be a profound reversal from 2018, when U.S. House candidate Michael Aycox was reportedly told by a representative for the Mississippi Democratic Party that the state would “never” have an openly gay Congressman. Aycox, who married his husband six years ago, was ultimately trounced in the primaries by a nearly 40-point margin.
View this post on InstagramI just love this! #hollyspringsms , we need to take some notes from #senatobiamainstreet and create more cool outdoor gathering/performance spots like this. As the next State Senator for District 10, I’ll sponsor and support legislation that funds revitalization of our small-town Main Streets. #tatecountymississippi #smithforstatesenate #carltonesmith
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But Smith, an eternal optimist who has been an ordained minister for 24 years, believes he can win voters over.
“I’ve really learned how to listen deeply to people,” he says, “their wishes, dreams, fears, and concerns.”
It is something Smith says he has done his entire career as a minister, and something he hopes to continue doing in the state legislature.
Related: Michael Aycox discovered the travails of coming out while running for Mississippi House seat
Exclusive: Check out the World Video Premiere for morgxn’s New Single “A New Way”
This Pride month, GLAAD is honored to showcase the world video premiere of queer singer-songwriter morgxn’s new single, “A New Way.” Check out the exclusive video below:
Presented by Wxnderlost Records, the “A New Way” video features several cast members, including Sarah Montaz, Ryan Walker, Yarixa Ferrao, Bomme, Nicole Leave, and many more. The video was directed by Matt Delisi, with creative direction by Moses. It was produced by Gabrielle Woodland and executive produced by Robert H Dyar Jr. The video will be made available on all digital platforms on June 28.
The song “A New Way” is the follow-up single to morgxn’s chart-topping hit “home (ft. WALK THE MOON),” which went top 10 at both alternative radio and Adult Alternative.
It was recently announced that morgnx will be a performer at London Pride on July 6th, followed by a live performance on Good Morning America on July 16th. The singer-songwriter also just announced his first US headline tour, which kicks off on September 9th in Salt Lake City. Check out the full list of dates below:
homosexuelle-paare-fotografie-nuernberg-oberasbach
menturia posted a photo:
Jede Liebe ist besonders. Wir lieben euch alle :-* <3
www.freund-foto.de/paar-fotoshooting/ Nick Freund
Airman posts series of deeply disturbing videos of himself shouting homophobic vitriol into camera
The Air Force says it is investigating an airman who posted a series of videos of himself calling gay people “cockroaches,” “pedophiles,” “sodomites,” and “vermin scum,” among other antigay slurs.
“The sodomites, the homos, they do all their filthy acts in the dark of night where no one can see them,” the airman, who has not been identified but who was wearing his uniform in the videos, said.
“When you get these perverts on their own, they flee like cockroaches, like the roaches they are, the vermin scum, the pedophiles that they are.”
The airman posted the videos to YouTube under the username “Baptist Dave 1611” last week before taking them down a few days later.
In one of them, he voiced his support for Grayson Fritts, the cop/Baptist preacher from Knoxville, Tennessee who was caught earlier this month advocating for police to kill gay people.
In that video, the airman claimed most Christians agree with Fritts, but are too afraid to say anything for fear of the “homo mafia.”
In another video, he attacked parents who bring their children to “drag queen story hour” events at public libraries, accusing them of child abuse.
“If you’re making your son, for example, dress up as a woman and go dance at a sodomite bar, that’s hip, that’s cool, that’s trendy,” the airman said. “But if you just believe the Bible, and you take your kid to church, that’s child abuse, right?”
Air Force spokesperson Ann Stefanek issued a statement confirming the situation is being reviewed by the airman’s command team.
“The Air Force considers diversity to be one of our greatest assets; therefore, every airman is expected to treat each other with dignity and respect,” said Stefanek. “We do not tolerate behavior that is contrary to those values.”
Meanwhile, the Modern Military Association of America, a non-profit that advocates for LGBTQ service members and veterans, issued a statement calling the videos “alarming” and “dangerous” and demanding the Air Force hold him fully accountable for his actions.
“This alarming call for the execution of LGBTQ people by a service member in uniform no doubt adds fuel to the fire of those who wish us harm,” said MMAA Executive Director Andy Blevins.
“What this airman did is blatantly illegal under the [Uniform Code of Military Justice], and he has disrespected his uniform, the United States Air Force, and the military as a whole.”
Blevins continued, “The dangerous message this hate speech sends to those he serves with, including service members who may be LGBTQ, is completely unacceptable and could have severe consequences.”
Related: Cop caught on camera calling gay people “freaks” and “animals” who should be “put to death”
This Activist Has an Emotional Story to Tell About Discovering Gay Life in NYC in 1969 Just After the Stonewall Riots, and the Years Since: WATCH
This is the story of Bill McCallion, and everyone should watch it. It’s one of the recorded histories that are so necessary from gay men of this generation. It is beautiful, heartbreaking, and extremely moving.
McCallion grew up as a working-class kind in the north Manhattan neighborhood of Inwood and read about the Stonewall riots in the newspaper the summer he graduated from high school.
When he realized that the “Christopher Street” mentioned in the article was the same one that was on the same 1 train that ran through his neighborhood, it led McCallion to his new community, activism, and his first lover. His life in LGBTQ culture spans the 50 years we are recognizing this weekend as the anniversary of those riots, and he has seen it all, including an AIDS crisis that all but decimated that community.
His ex, John Voelcker, enlisted filmmaker Sam Hampton to capture the stories he had heard first-hand from McCallion. Watch them encapsulated in this stunning piece, which is edited down from over 90 minutes of footage.
The post This Activist Has an Emotional Story to Tell About Discovering Gay Life in NYC in 1969 Just After the Stonewall Riots, and the Years Since: WATCH appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.
A Stonewall Veteran Remembers: Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt on the Fight For Equality
For artist Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt, a “gay street kid” in New York City in 1969, the Stonewall Inn was an escape — a place where he and his friends could be fully themselves.
Even though Stonewall wasn’t much to look at back then, Lanigan-Schmidt and his friends couldn’t afford to sit at the bar. So, to look like customers, they’d scrounge empty beer cans and fill them with water so they could listen to Motown and dance.
Lanigan-Schmidt who was at the Stonewall Inn during the riots, explained in a recent interview with HRC that, while there were many elements to what caused them, the desire to listen to music together and dance was at the heart of it.
“Generally, me and my friends — the other street kids — we would go there just to dance with each other because it was the only place we could really feel free dancing with each other and not have to worry about getting harassed or anything. And we could dance slow with each other,” he said.
Lanigan-Schmidt said that dancing slow “added a ritual to our lives that straight people had that we didn’t have. Dancing slow is when you feel affectionately, fully human — and that was denied to us.”
This connection with others, this chance to fully be yourself, were “what the police were trying to annihilate … and that really outraged everyone because in there,” he said, “we felt like we were safe, we were untouchable by the usual things.”
As Lanigan-Schmidt recounted in “Mother Stonewall and the Golden Rats,” his handwritten account of the events leading up to and on the night the riots started, it was a night that “Betty Badge got carried away.” The police, he wrote, came in with nightsticks raised, the juke boxes were broken, and “the dancing stopped.”
But that night and those that followed, LGBTQ people came together to resist police violence and oppression.
For Lanigan-Schmidt, the riots represented not just one moment of resistance, but rather a coalescing of a resistance that was happening all across the U.S., including on the street outside Stonewall.
“All the different stoops on Christopher Street were full of people socializing, young people exchanging ideas very much in the spirit of the 60s, within the civil rights movement way of thinking — all about hope for our rights,” he said.
“I was 21, but there were people there as young as 14,” he said. “They were full of hope for better lives — but no hope of going back to their families.”
Lanigan-Schmidt, fellow Stonewall veterans and other early activists were part of an LGBTQ rights movement being built with daily acts of resistance across the country, in the connections and conversations happening in spaces like Stonewall and along Christopher Street “cementing together a movement that was organic, but not called a movement yet,” he said.
Fueled by the energy and focus of the riots, the LGBTQ movement got going very quickly after Stonewall, Lanigan-Schmidt said. It was a movement that “always had a diversity — there were all different kinds of people coming together.”
Fifty years later, Lanigan-Schmidt wants to make sure that the equality movement is doing all it can — all we can — to support LGBTQ young people, including strong messages of love and affirmation from parents.
Lanigan-Schmidt has his own message of resistance, resilience and celebration for activists carrying the fight for LGBTQ equality forward: “Things are fought very hard for, and certain things are gained, but they have to keep being fought for because they can easily be lost.”
“Keep at it and, most of all, keep on dancing.”
I Have Pride Exhaustion
It’s ok to live a bit of life out from underneath the rainbow, writes Amanda Kerri.
www.advocate.com/commentary/2019/6/27/i-have-pride-exhaustion
DJ Casey Spooner is over the commercialization of pride
On Friday night—the first night of NYC’s historic World Pride weekend—the city’s glitterati will gather for a black-tie gala at Rockefeller Center’s iconic Rainbow Room.
Hosted by BD Wong, Kate Walsh, and Born This Way Foundation president and co-founder Cynthia Germanotta, the affair known as the Love Above All Ball will benefit Gaga and her mamma’s philanthropic org and feature fabulous live performances by Betty Who and Marina, among others.
Warming the crowd up with a sexy, optimistic disco set will be Casey Spooner. The singer-musician-performer-DJ is looking forward to a jam-packed pride weekend that will include a lot of drag, a lot of marching and a lot of music.
Ahead of Friday night’s glam event, Queerty chatted with Spooner about the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, the state of Pride and the importance of working with organizations like the Born This Way Foundation.
Oh, and did we mention he’s planning to run for president?
Talk to me about the Born This Way Foundation. What’s your understanding of what they do?
What I like is their focus on youth and their combination of pop music and philanthropy. It seems like a cool way to help a vulnerable audience. And as I’m getting older, I’m starting to really feel like my audience are my children. So you feel a responsibility for educating and taking care of people.
You’re DJing the Love Above All Ball on Friday night. What are you going to play? What’s the vibe?
Well, I’ve been living in Paris and I’ve been listening to a lot of disco. Disco really makes sense in Paris. I want to play that. You know, it’s a black tie gala and I’m playing the early set. I can’t go hard and dark, backroom set immediately. I was raised on disco and I think there’s an inherent optimism and euphoria in it, coming out of the golden age of gays. I mean, what a dream: to play a disco set in the Rainbow Room for World Pride? I’ll do it!
What’s your personal WorldPride soundtrack right now?
I have a disco playlist on Spotify that I listen to a lot. “Spooner Juner.” It’s all my favorite disco tracks I’ve been listening to.
Are you particularly excited to see any of the other acts at the Love Above All Ball?
I’ll stick around to see Betty Who and everyone on the roster. I mean, I’m a little bit worried how I’m gonna get through it because Friday I’m gonna do Drag March. Drag March is my favorite march, period. We gather in Tompkins Square Park in drag and then we march to Stonewall. I might have to do it in black tie! I have a fitting today at Prada and I requested a dress, so I may be doing Drag March in Prada. And then I’ll run up to Rainbow Room.
How are you feeling about pride this year?
I’m exhausted. I’m over it.
Already?
A little bit. It’s a little aggressive. I’m all for visibility and I’m super excited that everyone’s excited. But I have to say, the commercialization of queer culture has been fatiguing. To go to Target and Lysterine has a rainbow on it, every shampoo has a rainbow on it. Everyone’s shoveling rainbows!
I definitely got offers for several Pride campaigns that I turned down because I thought the offers were…hypocritical. It’s all about visibility, but the rates were very low. And I was very uncertain how the financing actually impacted the community. Last night I DJed a benefit for the Queer March that’s happening, retracing the original steps of the first Pride March. So, I’ve been focused a little more on the philanthropic and the underground.
You’re doing the Queer March instead of the NYC Pride March. Talk to me about that decision.
I’ve been working a lot with Rise and Resist. They’re a lot of the people from the original ACTUP. I just love everything that Rise and Resist does. So, they reached out to me and said they’re doing the Queer March, and basically, I’ll consistently do anything Rise and Resist asks me to do.
I don’t want to diminish the main march. I think it’s great. I’ll do both. There’s no reason why you can’t do both. I can show my support for responsible corporations that support the community and I can show my support for grassroots organizations that need more visibility.
It sounds like you try to be really mindful of the pride gigs you take. What’s your criteria?
I just try to focus on things that are philanthropic and benefit-based. It’s got to have a good aesthetic, and it’s gotta have a good political intention, whether it’s a foundation or someone who needs support. I’m DJing a party called Barba on Saturday at Three Dollar Bill. It’s a queer techno party from Australia. I like the queerness of it, I like that it’s not sort of trapped in a toxic masculinity.
The other thing I’m doing this season is I’ve partnered with Nike. Their collection is all in partnership with the Gilbert Baker Foundation. They’ve gone back to the original Pride flag. I like that they’re educating people on the history of the flag and Gilbert Baker.
This year’s Pride is historic. What does the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riot mean to you?
I mean, it’s amazing. I think what’s most important is educating people on what actually happened: what that event was and how it was started by the trans community and people of color. I mean, I’m still discovering more information about that moment.
And it’s important right now because of the general political climate, to kind of refresh ourselves on what it means to be politically active, to protest, what it means to go against the status quo. That’s what confusing about this pride. There’s a lot of acceptance and inclusion, but we’re trapped in this capitalistic system. Just because you’re selling something doesn’t mean it’s going to have a positive impact on the community.
So, there was a long wait between FischerSpooner albums. Are we going to have to wait another nine years for your next one?
Warren is very particular, and he prides himself on his slowness. Also, we are both artists who don’t work only in music. So a lot of times I’m moving between different projects. Right now I’m working on a film. I can’t even remember everything I’m working on. But I don’t think it’ll be a decade. I’m pushing to do a few more singles. People don’t make albums anymore—which is kind of unfortunate. But to make a great album you have to have a lot of time or a lot of money. But I’m getting ready to release two singles this summer under my own name. We’re preparing that now.
And also, I’m running for president. I’m making my official announcement on the Fourth of July.
Ok. I don’t know how seriously to take you.
Well, there’s a history of artists running for president. That’s part of the tour also, I’m trying to tie that into the presidential campaign.
What’s your platform?
The thing that I’m trying to reconcile is the conflict between capitalism and democracy. It relates to campaign finance and immigration. We keep voting these people into office who want to run the government like a business but they’re not thinking about how that impacts people on a very human level. There has to be a paradigm shift in terms of how money and democracy interact.
Also, we have more and more gay candidates, but they have to be desexualized in order to be appealing. I think it’s very important to have a queer candidate who is unabashedly sexual. Especially when we have someone in office who is known for saying, “Grab ‘em by the pussy.”
I’ve been thinking about pride resolutions. So every June, we celebrate pride, and then we resolve to accomplice specific things for the LGBTQ community in the year ahead. So, what would your pride resolutions be this year?
I had this crazy experience where I went to a gay bathhouse in Paris. I met this guy, we had sexual relations and then we started talking. He was from Kurdistan. Someone had drugged him and filmed him having sex and they were threatening to release the video on Facebook and send it to his family. If his family saw that, they would be morally obligated to murder him. So, he had to leave his job, his family, his home. He had to take all the money and everything he could carry and just leave.
I would like to find a way to help people who are in these other places in the world find a way to find safety.
Max Emerson Took Shirtless Selfies While the Titanic Sank: WATCH
In one of history’s forgotten chapters, social media personality Max Emerson went down with the Titanic.
How might our knowledge of that tragic night been different had influencers been on board to record all the swag on board, including an unboxing video of The Heart of the Ocean, shirtless selfies with the crew, the “killer content” moment when the ship struck the iceberg, and an Instagram live video of the violinist’s plaintiff melodies. Now we know.
The post Max Emerson Took Shirtless Selfies While the Titanic Sank: WATCH appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.
Max Emerson Took Shirtless Selfies While the Titanic Sank: WATCH
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