Videographer Refuses to Film Ohio Same-Sex Wedding
A lesbian couple say a videographer denied them services due to their sexual orientation.
Daniel Reynolds
Category Archives: NEWS
This Is What Happens When Art Students Recreate Famous Nude Masterpieces (NSFW)
This Is What Happens When Art Students Recreate Famous Nude Masterpieces (NSFW)
“Nudes are hot right now,” photographer Matthew Leifheitr mused in an email exchange with HuffPost. Leifheitr has many titles, among them VICE photo editor and editor-in-chief of MATTE Magazine. Recently, he’s taken on a faculty position at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, a role that’s allowed him to better explore the beautiful and nefarious world of naked art.
AFTER HENRI MATISSE. Photo by Noah Boskey, Erin Carr, Emma Castelbolognesi, Crystelle Colucci, Alberto Inamagua, and Allison Schaller.
The fruits of his labor are currently on view at SVA, in a pop-up exhibition titled “Artsy Nudes.” For the project, he gave his participating students a simple prompt: choose any nude work of art from all of art history and recreate it. From Henri Matisse’s “The Dance” to Diego Velázquez’s “Rokeby Venus” to Marcel Duchamp’s “Nude Descending a Staircase,” the appropriations breathed life into nude standards many hold near and dear to their hearts.
Some images appear remarkably similar to their historical antecedents, others take liberties to create a new photograph from an old painting. “I think reverse-engineering successful images to find out how they were made is a useful thing to be able to do,” Leifheitr explained. “My students are sophomores in art school, and I’d like them to be able to look at an image they like, be able to guess how it was made, and apply that knowledge to their own subject matter.”
AFTER MARCEL DUCHAMP. Photo by Anthony Costa, Jessica Frankl, Mikaela Keen Lumongsod, Frankie Mule, Gabrielia Priyma, Balazs Sebok, and Valeriya Vaynerman.
Leifheitr himself is no stranger to reconfiguring famous images. For example, he recently restaged a photo of Rudolph Nureyev taken by Richard Avedon, replacing the late dance icon with gay pornography giant Michael Lucas. He also photographed the contents of David Wojnarowicz’s “Magic Box” at NYU Fales Library, turning the results into a deck of oversized playing cards.
“I think there was something to be understood about the impossibility of true plagiarism in photography,” he wrote on VICE. “When I was in art school I remember becoming discouraged, believing any worthwhile image had already been made. The goal of this assignment was to teach that even if you try very hard to remake someone else’s work, your photographs can only be your own.”
“I’m interested in the stuff dead artists leave behind, and how those kind of archives can be reanimated or collaborated with,” he added over email.
AFTER DIEGO VELÁZQUEZ. Photo by Ebb Bayarsaikhan, Hannah Hurley, and Hayley Stephon; painting by Jake Kaplan.
“Artsy Nudes” is on its final leg at SVA (the show closes this weekend), though VICE fans can look forward to a 10-page spread of the works in this month’s magazine. You might have missed the show’s opening, which featured classical musicians performing in the nude, but it’s probably not the last figurative nude art show we’ll write about this year. Leifheitr cited Art F City founder Paddy Johnson in our e-conversation: “The figure is back.” Make that, the naked figure.
Before we ended our chat, we aksed Leifheitr about his show’s connection to the ever-present world of pornography, since he’s rubbed elbows with the industry before. “In my personal opinion, the line between porn and art is slippery, and ultimately unimportant,” he concluded. “It’s very dependent on context — if you’re in the office bathroom looking at the Matisse recreation my students made, and art historical pastiche makes you hot, I guess it might be porn in that context. If you’re in the gallery, it just looks like art.”
Well said, friend. Check out “Artsy Nudes” below.
www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/20/artsy-nudes-sva_n_6913694.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices&ir=Gay+Voices
Monica Lewinsky Offers Powerful TED Talk on Her Public Humiliation and Fight Against Cyberbullying: VIDEO
Monica Lewinsky Offers Powerful TED Talk on Her Public Humiliation and Fight Against Cyberbullying: VIDEO
Monica Lewinsky, the former White House intern whose affair with President Bill Clinton made her internationally famous overnight when its salacious details hit the internet in 1998, stepped into the spotlight at the annual TED Conference on Thursday in Vancouver.
I spent the week at TED and was in the room when Lewinsky stepped up in front of the receptive and curious audience to lead off a segment of the conference called ‘Just and Unjust’. Lewinsky has spoken about her experiences only a few times to date (she spoke at Forbes ’30 Under 30′ summit in October 2014).
Lewinsky talked of the mistake she made by “falling in love with [her] boss” and its “devastating consequences.”
“I was branded as a tramp, tart, slut, whore, bimbo and, of course, ‘that woman.’ I was known by many, but actually known by few. I get it. It was easy to forget ‘that woman’ was dimensional and had a soul.”
She added: “Not a day goes by that I am not reminded of my mistake, and I regret that mistake deeply.”
Lewinsky said that she was finally able to put some perspective on the public shaming she had endured 12 years later after her mother called her to discuss the death of Tyler Clementi, the Rutgers student who took his own life after being secretly filmed by his roommate have an intimate encounter with another man and then humiliated when the video was posted to the internet.
Said Lewinsky:
“Tyler’s tragic senseless death was a turning point for me. It served to re-contextualize my experiences and I then began to look at the world of humiliation and bullying around me and see something different.”
She added: “There is a very personal price to public humiliation and the growth of the internet has jacked up that price.”
Lewinsky, who also cited recent hackings of Snapchat, iCloud, and SONY pictures and the intent behind them to publicly embarrass celebrities and executives, said she has since been motivated to battle cyberbullying and encouraged people to be “upstanders” rather than “bystanders” on the internet, and battle trolling with positive comments.
Finally, she addressed accusations that her decision to step back into the spotlight might be politically motivated:
“In the past nine months the question I’ve been asked the most is ‘why?’ Why now? Why was I sticking my head above the parapet?’ You can read between the lines in those questions. And the answer has nothing to do with politics. The top note answer was, and is, because it’s time. Time to stop tiptoeing around my past. Time to stop living a life of opprobrium. And time to take back my narrative. And it’s also not just about saving myself. Anyone who is suffering from shame and public humiliation needs to know one thing. You can survive it. I know it’s hard. It may not be painless, quick, or easy, but you can insist on a different ending to your story.”
Watch, AFTER THE JUMP…
I’ll be sharing more videos from the TED 2015 conference on a variety of topics over the next few days and weeks.
Andy Towle
Business, Faith Leaders Oppose Indiana 'License to Discriminate' Bill
Business, Faith Leaders Oppose Indiana 'License to Discriminate' Bill
The bill may be on a fast track to passage, but some influential voices are registering their objections.
Trudy Ring
www.advocate.com/politics/2015/03/20/business-faith-leaders-oppose-indiana-license-discriminate-bill
FAMILY Act Will Benefit Workers and Families
FAMILY Act Will Benefit Workers and Families
Yesterday, Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), re-introduced important legislation to address the needs of working families across the country.
HRC.org
Sean Penn Got Into Character For Milk With Disco And Hot Wings
Sean Penn Got Into Character For Milk With Disco And Hot Wings
Sean Penn’s 2008 Oscar-winning performance in Milk as the titular gay rights pioneer Harvey Milk was nothing if not a proper salute to a fallen hero of the LGBT community.
But it’s his recent revelation on Conan about how he prepared each day of shooting in San Francisco that got us thinking about the film in a new way.
If this anecdote is to be believed, Penn prepped each morning with a plate of spicy chicken wings and a rousing jam sesh to The Weather Girl’s 1982 hit “It’s Raining Men” as he entered the Castro.
Or as he calls it, “homosexuality by musical hypnosis.”
Watch below:
Dan Tracer
This Video Makes A Powerful Case For Transgender Pronouns: WATCH
This Video Makes A Powerful Case For Transgender Pronouns: WATCH
Willfully misgendering someone who identifies as trans is one of the most common forms of transphobic violence. It robs a person of their right to assert who are and denies them agency merely because they don’t perfectly fit into preconceived notions about what it means to be a man, woman, or person living outside of the gender spectrum. In many ways accidental misgendering can wreak that same kind of havoc, but often times the very act isn’t coming from a place of intentional transphobia. Sometimes you just don’t know how to refer to people.
Adult film star Buck Angel, YouTuber Kat Blaque, author Kate Bornstein, and comedian Ian Harvie sat down with Buzzfeed to discuss why, in their opinion, there’s a pressing need for broader usage of transgender pronouns.
“For a long time a lot of people have felt like that they don’t fit into the mold of primarily he or primarily she or maybe they feel that they are a blend of both and that there’s not really a word for that,” Harvie explains. “Everybody else in the world out there can say ‘I am…’ and they identify themselves. Everybody believes them. But when I say ‘I am…’ I don’t know why people just don’t believe us.”
Check out the full video AFTER THE JUMP…
Charles Pulliam-Moore
www.towleroad.com/2015/03/making-the-case-for-transgender-pronouns-watch.html
Anti-Conversion Therapy Bills Advance in Three States
Anti-Conversion Therapy Bills Advance in Three States
Oregon, Iowa, and Colorado have all seen one legislative chamber approve such a bill; the chance of further progress appears best in Oregon.
Trudy Ring
www.advocate.com/ex-gay-therapy/2015/03/20/anti-conversion-therapy-bills-advance-three-states
Mary Lambert: I Thought Singing 'Same Love' Might Get Me Killed
Mary Lambert: I Thought Singing 'Same Love' Might Get Me Killed
Mary Lambert isn’t just open about being a lesbian. One spin of plucky single “Secrets” lays bare the singer/songwriter’s struggles with weight, bipolar disorder, a dysfunctional family and much, much more. Says Lambert with a laugh, “I’m severely out!” 
“There was a time in my life when I was starting out that I realized the people at my shows knew far more about me than my close coworkers did,” shared Lambert during a recent telephone interview. “I realized that was unique.”
Intimately confessional writing marks Lambert’s 2014 album Heart on My Sleeve. From past sexual trauma to bouts of self-harm, nothing was off-limits when writing the pop album, she said, because “it’s second nature to include pieces of [personal] history in my music.”
That much is clear. The singer’s lyrical honesty first gained mainstream attention on Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’ critically-acclaimed hit “Same Love.” There, Lambert provides the song’s yearning chorus, later extended into the even more autobiographical breakthrough solo single “She Keeps Me Warm.”
“I never thought I would hear a song like [‘Same Love’] on the radio,” admits the 25-year-old, who came out eight years ago. “I think that’s what was so emotional about the whole thing. I knew the implications of what we were going to do.”
Lambert relished Mackelemore & Ryan Lewis’ offer to honestly tell her story of being “hugely affected [growing up] as a Christian lesbian” — experiences she continues to process through in solo work. Still, in addition to being painfully aware of the potential impact “Same Love” might have upon release, she also knew its possible consequences.
“I’d never been anywhere, never been outside the metropolitan scene of Seattle, and didn’t know anything outside of it,” said Lambert. That meant she had no idea how others might respond to a song about same-sex relationships. As the time came to begin promoting it, she braced for the worst.
“The feeling of peace I got was knowing I was doing it right,” she said of accepting the possibility “Same Love” might evoke deadly backlash. “Knowing I was ok with that let me know I was doing exactly what I needed to be doing.”
According to Lambert, what happened next shocked her.
Not only did she not receive death threats, “Same Love” shot to No. 1 in countries around the world. With more than 136 million views-to-date on YouTube, the 2013 ode to same-sex marriage rose to No. 11 on U.S. pop charts and thrust Lambert into the international spotlight.
A “Song of the Year” Grammy nomination followed. Macklemore, Lewis and Lambert performed “Same Love” with Madonna at that year’s awards ceremony as Queen Latifah married 33 same-sex couples live on television.
“I thought I was going to be murdered,” Lambert half-joked, “But instead I got nominated for a Grammy!”
Her astonishment didn’t stop there, Lambert says. Performing “Same Love” live on Macklemore & Lewis’ sold-out, global stadium tour changed her life. The artist was overwhelmed with love each time she stepped onstage.
“They were cheering and crying…10,000 people chanting my name,” she recalled. “I had kids in rainbow shirts in front, looking at me… I couldn’t believe I was part of this thing that meant so much to so many people.
“All I wanted to do was make sure I was honoring it correctly and being a good representation,” said Lambert of the song.
“I couldn’t believe this was my life, especially after the shit show I’d been through,” she concluded, “It was really, really gratifying.”
Court Rules That Affordable Care Act Bans Gender Identity Discrimination
Court Rules That Affordable Care Act Bans Gender Identity Discrimination
LGBT advocates are cheering a court ruling this week that has important implications for transgender people seeking competent and appropriate healthcare.
HRC.org
