Jennifer Beals Gives Moving GLSEN Award Speech About LGBTQ+ Inclusion

The star of The L Word: Generation Q was honored with GLSEN’s Champion award for her activism and support of LGBTQ+ youth. 

www.advocate.com/television/2020/5/20/jennifer-beals-honored-glsen-gives-moving-speech-about-inclusion

This is where to visit the world’s oldest LGBTQ public monument first chance you get
It stands on the banks of the Keizersgracht canal, near the historic Westerkerk church.

www.queerty.com/visit-worlds-oldest-lgbtq-public-monument-first-chance-get-20200520?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+queerty2+%28Queerty%29

Todrick Hall Hosts Virtual Prom Benefit to Fight LGBTQ+ Homelessness

Jiggly Caliente, Matteo Lane, VINCINT are also coming together to support True Colors United. 

www.advocate.com/pride/2020/5/20/todrick-hall-hosts-virtual-prom-benefit-fight-lgbtq-homelessness

Daily Dose: A little culture at the bathhouse

Welcome to Queerty’s latest entry in our series, Queerantined: Daily Dose. Every weekday as long as the COVID-19 pandemic has us under quarantine, we’ll release a suggested bit of gloriously queer entertainment designed to keep you from getting stir crazy in the house. Each weekend, we will also suggest a binge-able title to keep you extra engaged.

The Steamy: The Ritz

We still mourn the loss of Terrence McNally, the great queer playwright who gave us Love! Valor! Compassion!, Ragtime and Kiss of the Spider Woman: The Musical. Unfortunately, though he penned dozens of acclaimed stage shows, only a handful have ever made it before the cameras.

With that in mind, today we suggest one of his film adaptations that mixes farce with gayness. The Ritz takes loose inspiration from the Continental Baths, the New York gay steam-o-Rama that helped performers like Bette Midler launch their careers. In this fictionalized version, the great Rita Moreno plays an aspiring singer named Googie with her sights set on Broadway glory. When a mobster (Jack Weston) decides to hide out in the baths, Googie and her fan club of wacky queers give him an experience he won’t forget anytime soon. Oscar-winner F. Murray Abraham, Treat Williams, Kaye Ballard and the late Jerry Stiller also star.

Abraham, Weston, Stiller and Moreno all reprise their performances from the original Broadway production, for which Moreno picked up a Tony Award. This kind of screwball farce is notoriously difficult to pull off on film (see also: movie versions of Noises Off and Beyond Therapy), but the game efforts of the cast and McNally’s sensitive writing make this one work at times it shouldn’t. Moreover, it offers a glimpse into the mythic world of gay bathhouse culture in the 1970s–something an increasingly few of us got to experience. Moreno also gives one of her best performances as the manic Googie, which makes this bygone bust-up fun enough for us.

Streams on Amazon, iTunes, VUDU and YouTube.

www.queerty.com/daily-dose-little-culture-bathhouse-20200520?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+queerty2+%28Queerty%29

Empathy and Gratitude: Ramadan Reflections and Call from an Ally Imam

By Imam Abdullah Antepli 

If you ask Muslims the very first word that comes to mind when they think of Ramadan, one of the top three words will be “community.” Ramadan 2020 is in full swing despite all the limitations and restrictions that the COVID-19 global pandemic has imposed on 1.8 billion Muslims around the world. However, in the time of COVID-19, all Muslims are asking ourselves, “How does one go through the holiest month of the year in social isolation, within the confines of their homes and often alone, especially when this is a time that most Muslims connect much more deeply with their local Muslim communities and cherish their collective spaces?” While learning how to observe Ramadan while socially distant from our communities, observing Muslims have been expressing spiritual joy and delight in finding God, community, meaning and purpose in many creative and unexpected ways during this Ramadan. 

One important aspect of Ramadan is taking on a list of observances throughout the month, including fasting. Non-Muslims may ask why Muslims choose to take on these observances every year. The Holy Qur’an and the blessed Prophetic tradition make it very clear in so many instances that the main wisdom behind rigorous and often challenging Ramadan observances is to encourage Muslims to slow down and center yourself around God and what is most important. Some of the many outcomes and measures of success of this internal and ethical growth are empathy and gratitude. 

Most Ramadan disciplines are designed to cultivate empathy toward those who are less privileged. With Ramadan coinciding with social distancing and isolation for so many across the globe, the month not only provides many creative and new ways of engaging with the Divine, but also forces us to see so many ethical and moral ills of our societies much more clearly than before. 

To me, one of the most important and most needed such growth of new and healthier  realizations is our, as Muslims, understanding and support to our LGBTQ siblings around the world, because this COVID-19 Ramadan potentially provides so many helpful insights into their suffering within Muslim majority and minority societies. Through the painful and often suffocating social isolation practices during this Ramadan, allied Muslims now have a better understanding of what it means to be alone, lonely and without a community. The loneliness and not having a communal space is a shared grief for so many members of our Muslim LGBTQ family. 

Through the social distancing practices made necessary by COVID-19, we have had a taste of how painful it is to live in hiding and fear. Living in a quarantine of self is a painful and often permanent reality for many LGBTQ Muslims, and can mean living a life without being able to pursue happiness or love, or live openly as who they are. 

As a result, so many mental health challenges, including addiction and suicide, homelessness and many other hardships are much higher occurrences among members of our LGBTQ family than in the rest of society. As an Imam and pastoral care provider for several decades, I have had my fair share of witnessing this tragic and morally indefensible suffering of many LGBTQ Muslims that I came in contact with. 

For straight and cisgender Muslims who are blessed with good health and loving families, we must learn to be much more grateful for the loved ones in our lives during this unique and unusual Ramadan of 2020 and be morally more motivated to help those who do not have these belssings. As we come to the end of this month-long spiritual and ethical journey, we must remember to welcome and make space for our LGBTQ siblings, and to be more effective allies moving forward. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic and observing Ramadan through it, we have experienced something similar to what many of our LGBTQ siblings who are not living openly experience every day. Much more empathy, understanding and appreciation for LGBTQ Muslims is called for as we go through these unique and extraordinary weeks and months, and after these times. 

I invite myself and those who pay attention to commit to removing all toxic and destructive religious, cultural and other elements within our societies that constantly dehumanize and harm the LGBTQ community. There is so much ethical, moral, spiritual, social and civic work that needs to be done, wherever possible, in this regard by committed allies around the world. May we be transformed by this unusual Ramadan more than ever before. I invite other believers to lend their compassionate ears to this goal. Inshallah.

www.hrc.org/blog/empathy-and-gratitude-ramadan-reflections-and-call-from-an-ally-imam?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss-feed

Lori Lightfoot is Cementing Her Place in Queer History

Chicago’s first out LGBTQ+ mayor to be elected is also one of The Advocate‘s Women of the Year. 

www.advocate.com/exclusives/2020/5/20/lori-lightfoot-cementing-her-place-queer-history

What happened to the gay sex scenes in ‘God’s Own Country’?!

Viewers watching the popular gay romance God’s Own Country on Amazon Prime noticed something odd: several key scenes of intimacy between the film’s two lead characters had mysteriously disappeared.

Amazon customers first noticed the cuts, making reference to them in several reviews. Word also gathered steam on Twitter, prompting Francis Lee, director of the film, to weigh in himself.

“Dear friends in USA,” Lee wrote, “God’s Own Country appears to have been censored on @PrimeVideo (Amazon Prime). Until this is investigated please do not rent or buy on Amazon Prime. It is not the film I intended or made. I will report back.”

God’s Own Country follows the romance between a British sheep farmer and a Romanian farmhand. The film debuted in 2017 at the Sundance Film Festival, where it picked up a directing prize for Lee’s work. The film also earned comparisons to Brokeback Mountain.

According to viewers, the Amazon version of the film cut two key scenes: one where the two lovers mud-wrestle before engaging in oral sex, and another where one of the lovers has a random encounter in a horse trailer with an auctioneer.

Related: Well, the full “God’s Own Country” sex scenes have arrived

Lee published a follow-up tweet questioning if Amazon had ever cut similar scenes of heterosexual intimacy in other films. “Dear friends in USA. I’m interested if any of you have evidence of@PrimeVideo (Amazon Prime USA) censoring naked women or intimate/sex scenes within heterosexual stories on their streaming service? Or if they just censor queer stories?” he asked.

www.queerty.com/happened-gay-sex-scenes-gods-country-20200520?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+queerty2+%28Queerty%29

HBO Unveils Trailer for Powerful David France Documentary on Chechnya’s Detention, Torture of LGBTQ People: WATCH

HBO has revealed the official trailer for Welcome To Chechnya, the powerful documentary by David France (How To Survive a Plague) which won the Documentary Film Editing Award at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year.

“With unfettered access and a commitment to protecting anonymity, this documentary exposes Chehnya’s underreported atrocities while highlighting a group of people who are confronting brutality head-on. The film follows these LGBTQ activists as they work undercover to rescue victims and provide them with safe houses and visa assistance to escape persecution.”

Writes Deadline: “The movie follows – frequently with hidden cameras and in dangerous situations – as a small group of Russian activists with a safe house in Moscow try to help stranded LGBT people escape, even as they are being actively hunted, tortured and even executed by the government. The filmmakers use ‘Deep Fake’ face-swapping technology to disguise their subjects. Public Square Films produces the feature, which won three awards in Berlin.”

The film premieres on HBO on June 30.

The post HBO Unveils Trailer for Powerful David France Documentary on Chechnya’s Detention, Torture of LGBTQ People: WATCH appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

HBO Unveils Trailer for Powerful David France Documentary on Chechnya’s Detention, Torture of LGBTQ People: WATCH