Op-ed: Weddings Are About Love, Not Cautious Marketing
Two wedding photographers noticed an absence of LGBT-friendly messaging at a wedding expo. Here’s why that’s harmful.
Caroline Hart
www.advocate.com/commentary/2015/02/12/op-ed-weddings-are-about-love-not-cautious-marketing
Indiana Queen, Queer Alt-Country Band, Releases 'This Is Me Trying' (VIDEO)
Queer alt-country band Indiana Queen just released a music video for the song “This Is Me Trying” from their upcoming new album. The video is a melancholy love story shot in black in white and directed by Jeff Swafford of the web-series Three.
“We are writing songs from an openly gay perspective,” says lead singer Kevin Thornton, “but the story of ‘This Is Me Trying’ is something anyone can relate to. It’s a sort of damned if you do, damned if you don’t love story.”
The new album by Indiana Queen takes country roots and spins them from an usual perspective. “I have no interest in pretending to be someone else. I don’t care if Nashville isn’t ready for it,” says Thornton in reference to his sexuality. “The album is country, but let’s be serious there is nothing traditional about Indiana Queen.”
There are traces of Hank Williams. The pulse of “Jolene.” Chord progressions that originated in the Baptist Hymnal. However, these influences meet at an unexpected crossroads with Antony and The Johnsons, Roxy Music and Tom Waits.
Check out the video above and for more on Indiana Queen, head here.
West Virginia Town With Five Residents Votes For LGBT Anti-Discrimination Order
Thurmond, West Virginia has become the smallest town in the United States to pass an order banning discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, reports WVPV.
In a unanimous vote on Monday night, Thurmond’s five residents approved employment, housing and public accommodation protections to a new town-wide Human Rights Act.
Andrew Schneider, Executive Director of statewide advocacy group Fairness WV, said the Thurmond ordinance is stronger than current protections in West Virginia’s Human Rights Act.
Although attempts to extend protections have failed in the West Virginia Legislature for years, towns including Charleston, Huntington, Morgantown, Athens, and Harpers Ferry have adopted similar ordinances banning discrimination against LGBT people.
Despite progress, politicians around the United States continue attempts to repeal non-discrimination orders.
Jim Redmond
5 Reasons to Be Optimistic for Marriage Equality at SCOTUS
It’s difficult to interpret the signals from the Supreme Court as anything other than good news.
Matt Baume
Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee To Appear In Anti-Gay Documentary
WASHINGTON — Two possible GOP presidential contenders and four congressmen are slated to appear in a new documentary that claims the push for gay rights threatens Christianity.
“What kind of freedom of speech do we have if a person who expresses a biblical viewpoint about marriage is told they can’t open their businesses in a location?” asks Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and prospective 2016 presidential candidate, in the trailer for the documentary “Light Wins: How To Overcome The Criminalization Of Christianity,” which was first reported by Right Wing Watch.
The film is a project by socially conservative activist Janet Porter, who plans to release it later this month.
According to an email Porter sent to supporters last week, the documentary also features Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), as well as Reps. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.) and Steve King (R-Iowa).
None of these lawmakers were featured in the trailer. Their offices did not return requests for comment on their participation and whether they agree with the direction of the documentary.
“If homosexual activists get everything they want, it will be nothing less than the criminalization of Christianity,” argues an unidentified man featured in the “Light Wins” trailer. A second trailer, also posted by Right Wing Watch, argues that the Boy Scouts of America “needlessly caved to a dark sexual agenda that violates the safety [and] innocence of our children” perpetrated by the “homosexual lobby.”
The Human Rights Campaign, which advocates for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality, is calling on Huckabee and Paul to renounce their involvement in the film. It’s the group’s first major action targeting a potential 2016 candidate.
Particularly troubling to group is the appearance of a radical pastor named Scott Lively in the film. Lively has pushed an anti-gay agenda internationally, and is widely seen as a leader in fanning the flames of hate in Uganda that led to legislation criminalizing homosexuality. (The measure was ultimately struck down in court.)
“Hate is not an American value, and we urge Senator Paul and Governor Huckabee to renounce their affiliation with this film as well and categorically reject Scott Lively’s horrendous exportation of anti-LGBT bigotry abroad,” said JoDee Winterhof, the Human Rights Campaign’s vice president for policy and political affairs. “It would be unconscionable for any American, let alone one who seeks the presidency, to affiliate with such venomous and dangerous extremism.”
Huckabee’s appearance in “Light Wins” is not entirely out of character, since he’s been known as more socially conservative than many potential candidates. Last month, he argued that states could have the final say on marriage equality, regardless of whether the Supreme Court rules that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry.
“I may be lonely, I may be the only one, but I’m going to stand absolutely faithful to the issue of marriage not because it’s a politically expedient thing to do because it isn’t,” Huckabee said. “I’m going to do it because I believe it’s the right position, it’s the biblical position, it’s the historical position.”
Paul’s involvement in the documentary is more surprising. When asked about same-sex marriage recently, he affirmed that he favors so-called traditional marriage, but believes the Republican Party should tolerate different views.
“If you tell people from Alabama, Mississippi or Georgia, ‘You know what, guys, we’ve been wrong, and we’re gonna be the pro-gay-marriage party,’ they’re either gonna stay home or — I mean, many of these people joined the Republican Party because of these social issues,” Paul said in an interview last summer.
“So I don’t think we can completely flip,” he added. “But can we become, to use the overused term, a bigger tent? I think we can and can agree to disagree on a lot of these issues. I think the party will evolve. It’ll either continue to lose, or it’ll become a bigger place where there’s a mixture of opinions.”
In another interview a couple months later, Paul acknowledged that “society’s changing” and becoming more accepting of marriage equality.
“The bottom line is, I’m old fashioned, I’m a traditionalist,” he said. “I believe in old-fashioned traditional marriage. But, I don’t really think the government needs to be too involved with this, and I think that the Republican Party can have people on both sides of the issue.”
NYC Mayor Bill De Blasio to Boycott St. Patrick's Day Parade Over Gay Group Exclusion: VIDEO
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio (right) is likely to boycott the city’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade again this year because of the lack of LGBT groups taking part, reports Irish Central.
It has also been confirmed that a majority of City Council members, including Speaker Melissa Mark Viverito, will not take part. The council boycotted last year’s event and withdrew its banner in protest.
Council member Daniel Dromm said:
“I won’t march until an Irish gay group can march. And there will be no council banner in this year’s parade – of course there won’t.”
Dromm added that the decision to allow non-Irish LGBT group OUT@NBCUniversal to take part in this year’s parade came about purely for corporate reasons.
Council Majority Leader Jimmy Van Bramer joined Dromm in highlighting the parade’s non-inclusive stance:
“Once again I will not march in the St. Patrick’s Day parade. This parade is still not fully inclusive of the thousands of New Yorkers who have been turned away for decades from representing their heritage.
“Until all New Yorkers are able to represent themselves freely and march as proud members of our city’s vibrant Irish and Irish American LGBT community I will continue to boycott this parade.”
De Blasio will march in the St. Pat’s for All parade in Queens on Sunday, March 1st. Brendan Fay, a co-founder of the alternative parade, welcomed the decision to allow OUT@NBCUniversal to take part in the main parade but agreed with Dromm that it “is looking increasingly like a trick to maintain the parade’s corporate sponsors and ensure that NBC continues to broadcast the parade.”
Ireland’s Prime Minister Enda Kenny will not be taking part in this year’s New York parade.
Following a boycott by several of NYC’s prominent gay bars, last year Guinness announced that it had dropped sponsorship of the parade.
Watch a report on LGBT protests at the 2014 parade, AFTER THE JUMP…
Jim Redmond
#TBT: Carl Van Vechten and the Harlem Renaissance
Carl Van Vechten’s photographs of the key LGBT figures of the Harlem Renaissance make that period come alive.
Christopher Harrity
Lord Browne invests in Gay Star News
Former CEO of a multinational company wants to help improve the environment for LGBTI people in the business world
joem
www.gaystarnews.com/article/lord-browne-invests-gay-star-news120215
CBS News Correspondent Bob Simon Dies in Car Accident at 73
CBS News foreign reporter Bob Simon died in a car accident tonight on Manhattan’s west side. Simon was riding in a livery cab when it was rear-ended and slammed into a median on the West Side highway.
Said 60 Minutes Executive Producer Jeff Fager:
“It’s a terrible loss for all of us at CBS News. It is such a tragedy made worse because we lost him in a car accident, a man who has escaped more difficult situations than almost any journalist in modern times. Bob was a reporter’s reporter. He was driven by a natural curiosity that took him all over the world covering every kind of story imaginable. There is no one else like Bob Simon. All of us at CBS News and particularly at 60 Minutes will miss him very much.”
An emotional Anderson Cooper broke the news on CNN, calling Simon “the best in the world,” a “warrior poet.”
Watch his tribute, AFTER THE JUMP…
Our thoughts go out to Simon’s family, friends, and colleagues.
.@andersoncooper pays tribute to Bob Simon – t.co/U6X7rYFpY2
— Gabriel Kinder (@gkinder) February 12, 2015
Andy Towle
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