Peter Tatchell responds to attacks after signing the 'free speech' letter
Tatchell was among 130 who opposed the ‘no platforming’ of feminist speakers, some of whom have offensive views on trans people. Trans activists were not happy with Tatchell for appearing to support these people
joem
www.gaystarnews.com/article/peter-tatchell-responds-attacks-after-signing-free-speech-letter180215
HRC Arkansas to Governor Asa Hutchinson: Veto SB202 Now
Anti-LGBT Senate Bill 202 undermines local control by denying municipal government’s ability to pass civil rights protections for people in their cities.
HRC.org
Goldie Hawn Reveals Why ‘The First Wives Club’ Sequel Didn’t Get Made
We were all women of a certain age, and everyone took a cut in salary to do it so the studio could make what it needed. We all took a smaller back end than usual and a much smaller front end. And we ended up doing incredibly well. The movie was hugely successful. It made a lot of money. We were on the cover of Time magazine. But two years later, when the studio came back with a sequel, they wanted to offer us exactly the same deal. We went back to ground zero. Had three men come in there, they would have upped their salaries without even thinking about it. But the fear of women’s movies is embedded in the culture.”
— Goldie Hawn, who hasn’t starred in a film since 2002, speaking with Harvard Business Review on how the entertainment industry has changed since her hey day
Jeremy Kinser
Gay Catholic Group: Vatican Welcomed Us With Open Arms for First Time
Sister Jeannine Gramick (pictured) of the American gay Catholic group New Ways Ministry tells Reuters that when she brought her group of 50 gay Catholics to an audience with the Pope on Wednesday, they were not shunned as they had been before, but given prime seats with all the other groups.
Reuters describes it as ‘VIP treatment’.
They told Reuters in an interview afterwards that when the group came to Rome on Catholic pilgrimages during the papacies of Francis’s predecessors John Paul and Benedict, “they just ignored us.”
This time, a US bishop and a top Vatican official backed their request and they sat in a front section with dignitaries and special Catholic groups. As the pope passed, they sang “All Are Welcome,” a hymn symbolising their desire for a more inclusive Church.
A list of participants released by the Vatican listed “a group of lay people accompanied by a sister” but did not mention that they were a gay rights organization.
Gramick sees the move as a sign of movement within the Church.
While Pope Francis gave signs early on in his papacy that the Church would be more open to gay people, asking “who am I to judge?” at an audience with reporters, there have been no official signals from the Vatican that any policies are changing.
In fact, Francis recently endorsed Slovakia’s referendum to ban gay marriage and adoption rights for same-sex couples, and has warned of “insidious attacks” against the family, in Manila, saying gay marriage threatens to make family “disposable.”
Andy Towle
www.towleroad.com/2015/02/gay-catholic-group-vatican-welcomed-us-with-open-arms-for-first-time.html
10 Oscar-Nominated LGBT Roles
Thirty-seven actors have been nominated for playing LGBT characters. These 10 are close to our hearts.
Adam Sandel
www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/film/2015/02/18/10-oscar-nominated-lgbt-roles
Gay asylum seekers in the UK will no longer have to answer questions about their sex lives
New instructions rule out ‘sexually explicit’ questioning of those fleeing persecution
reporter2
If Cupid Passed You By Take A Look At This Heartbreaker
Thank goodness Marek + Richard is throwing everyone living in Singlesville a bone! The U.S.-based brand knows that sometimes love sucks on Valentine’s Day. Sometimes what you really want is pizza and a blow job. Or if love was really hurting this year, a line of crushed candy hearts and Grindr might do the trick.
The Marek + Richard Valentine’s Day lookbook release, entitled Heartbreaker, shows off looks with a hilariously bitter (or honest?) outlook on V-Day. The LUX SUX Drop Crotch Joggers take the cake — or rather, the first line of sugar. The trendy pants have a statement to make and they make it. In athletic letting and fortune-cookie wisdom, “LUX SUX” is written across the front of the pants.
The Suck Itself Racerback Tank states pure fact rather than opinion. This look reads “It ain’t gonna suck itself.” The Marek + Richard Valentine’s Day lookbook also includes snapbacks. One reads “himbo,” and another has 2.5/3 video game hearts.
Notice: No teddy bears were harmed in the photographing of this promotion.
You can see more of this photo shoot on The Underwear Expert.
Photo Credit: Marek + Richard
Underwear Expert
13 LGBT Heroes Who Need Their Own Hollywood Biopic
Harvey Milk, Mark Bingham, and Alan Turing all had great films made about their lives. Here’s who should be next.
Erin Wilson
What Do You Think Is The Best Part About Being Gay?
As the gay community gains momentum both politically and socially, there’s a lot to celebrate. Just last week, Alabama of all places began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. (Of course, not without a few naysayers throwing temper tantrums first.) And come June, the Supreme Court is expected to rule on marriage equality for the entire country.
Of course, our struggles extend beyond the right to marry and are far from over. There is still much work to be done when it comes to things like non-discriminations laws, bullying and the like. But the light at the end of the tunnel is definitely burning brighter.
Yesterday, we gave you our reasons. Now we want to hear from you. What do you think is the best part about being gay?
Sound off in the comments section below.
Graham Gremore
I Never Asked His Name
(Diriye Osman is photographed by Bahareh Hosseini)
I spent the summer of 2004 in a secure psychiatric institution in London. I had experienced a horrific psychotic episode and as a result I stopped my studies and embarked on a leave of absence from university. Traumatized by the aural and visual hallucinations I was experiencing, I stopped speaking altogether. There were no beds at my local, low-security mental hospital so I was shipped off to an institution that was reserved for men who had committed horrendous crimes, many of whom had to wear handcuffs when in the communal areas. Isolated and in a state of over-medicated stupefaction, I wandered up and down my assigned ward as though it were a desolate dreamscape, a subterranean enclave within my muddled mind. I watched in disengaged silence as grown men were tackled to the ground, stripped and injected with tranquilizers as they howled for God. I watched in disengaged silence as poverty-stricken patients picked up cigarette butts from the ground and tried to light them up. I watched in disengaged silence as starving patients sprinted to join the daily lunch queue, desperate for food. I carefully parceled up my humanity and locked it up in the attic inside my head, hoping to be able to retrieve it in the future.
I spent six months in that mental hospital, and during those six months I considered the fact that I might not survive this experience. For the first time in my life, I faced up to the fact that this was a fight I might not win. Up until then, I was so used to winning in the face of extraordinary circumstances that the realization that I might lose on this occasion turned me to stone.
There were three men sharing my hospital room with me and one of them was a teenager. At night this young man made disturbing sounds: a sonic halfway-house between choking, drawing up phlegm and howling. Unable to sleep, I would sometimes go over to his bed to see if he was OK only to realize that he was dreaming and was not, as I feared, dying. In the morning I would see him eating his breakfast in the dining-room, quietly going about his day, his tinny stereo playing Adina Howard’s “Freak like Me” on loop.
The only time this young man would speak to me was when we were in the smoking room together and he needed to borrow a cigarette. I would always oblige but I did not want to make conversation. I didn’t ask him what his name was. I didn’t ask him what his life was like outside of the hospital. I didn’t ask him about his night terrors. I was afraid, in that callous way that ignorant people are afraid of difference, that his madness was contagious and incurable. I still harbored hopes that I would recover, and this young, vulnerable boy whose mental illness manifested in giveaway physical markers, tics, was simply a minor signpost on the map of my journey to well-being.
Many years later I was waiting for the bus, my completed dissertation in my bag. I was heading to university to hand it in and at the bus-stop decided to spark up a cigarette. A young man with a familiar face walked up to me and shyly asked me for a cigarette. It was my former roommate from the mental hospital. He now walked with a lurch to his gait and his hands trembled. He was making the same feral sounds he used to make in his sleep but he was no longer asleep. I handed him four cigarettes to assuage my guilt. He smiled and thanked me. I asked if he remembered me. He shook his head.
“We were in the same room in the hospital,” I said.
“You were in the hospital?” he said, sizing me up. “Rah, you’re doing well. Where are you off to now?”
“I have to go to uni to hand in my dissertation,” I said.
“Congrats, man. Boy done good. Rah!”
My bus came into view and I said goodbye. As I got on the bus and sat down, the young man smiled and waved at me. I waved back and wondered what his life would have been like if he had received the kind of support and opportunities I was lucky enough to have obtained. I wondered what would have happened if I had lost the will to survive my time in the mental hospital. I wondered if I too would have been standing on the street begging for cigarettes. I wondered if the young man had a family. I wondered if he was happy.
As I contemplated these things and secretly congratulated myself on a successful life, I realized that I didn’t even ask the young man the most basic question: his name.
Diriye Osman is the Polari Prize-winning author of ‘Fairytales for Lost Children (Team Angelica), a collection of acclaimed short stories about the LGBT Somali experience. You can purchase Fairytales for Lost Children here. You can connect with Diriye Osman via Tumblr. He will be performing at The Huddersfield Literature Festival, The Polari Salon and The London Short Story Festival.
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