Read what this pastor says to Christians who spread gay hate to children
What happened after Pastor John Pavlovitz told the world what he promised to do if his kids were gay
trisrs
www.gaystarnews.com/article/read-what-pastor-says-christians-who-spread-gay-hate-children111114
Federal Judge Could Strike Down Mississippi's Gay Marriage Ban This Week: VIDEO
Mississippi’s gay marriage ban goes before a U.S. District Court Judge Carlton Reeves tomorrow morning. As we reported last month, the Court put Campaign for Southern Equality v. Bryant, which is being led by DOMA lawyer Roberta Kaplan, on a fast-track after it was filed in October.
Said Kaplan at that time:
“By setting the schedule that it did, the Court clearly appreciated the need for expedition on issues of such great constitutional and practical import. We look forward to presenting our arguments to Judge Reeves on November 12. We are confident that, having read the briefs and heard our arguments, the Court will grant the relief that our clients seek – namely, the right to be treated like all other Mississippi families who love and care for each other, pay their taxes, and do their best to raise their kids.”
Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant (pictured) and Attorney General Jim Hood filed papers on Monday asking Reeves to uphold the state’s ban, the AP reports:
Gov. Phil Bryant and Attorney General Jim Hood responded that the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which hears cases from Mississippi and two other states, has not recognized gays and lesbians as a group with specific civil-rights protections. Because of that, there is no reason for a federal district judge to give “heightened scrutiny” to claims of bias.
“Mississippi’s traditional marriage laws do not discriminate,” Bryant and Hood said in court papers Monday.
Jackson local news station WAPT filed a report on the hearing last night featuring interviews with two of the plaintiffs, Carla Webb and Joce Pritchett, who have a 6-year-old daughter and a 2-year-old son. Pritchett and Webb were married in Maine but Mississippi won’t recognize their marriage, endangering their two kids.
Rebecca “Becky” Bickett and her longtime partner, Andrea Sanders, who were denied a marriage license earlier this year, are also plaintiffs.
The best case scenario would be for the judge to agree with the plaintiffs and rule immediately, striking down the state’s ban. Advocates say they will be ready with officiants to begin marrying gay couples if that happens.
Watch WAPT’s report on what might happen, AFTER THE JUMP…
Read Kaplan’s “Reply memorandum of law in further support of plaintiffs’ motion for preliminary injunction” filed yesterday, below. Plaintiffs are also represented by Mississippi attorney Robert McDuff of McDuff & Byrd, based in Jackson.
Andy Towle
Kansas Watches Supreme Court Justice After Temporary Block On Gay Marriage Licenses
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas gay-rights advocates are watching the U.S. Supreme Court as they hope same-sex couples can get marriage licenses this week.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Monday temporarily blocked gay marriages in Kansas, but it wasn’t clear how long she or the high court would continue to do so. Sotomayor put on hold a federal judge’s injunction preventing the state from enforcing its gay-marriage ban. The lower-court ruling was to take effect at 5 p.m. CST Tuesday.
The judge’s injunction came in a lawsuit filed last month by the American Civil Liberties Union. Kansas wants to keep enforcing its ban while the lawsuit is reviewed.
Sotomayor directed the ACLU to respond Tuesday.
If the justice reconsiders, gay couples could head to Kansas courthouses Wednesday morning.
U.S. Bishops Declare Open War On The Pope As Too Soft On Homophobia
None of us needs to be reminded of just how homophobic the U.S. Catholic bishops are. But the bishops clearly feel a refresher is in order for Pope Francis. In what is close to becoming an open revolt, the U.S. bishops are letting the pope know in no uncertain terms that they believe homophobia = Catholicism and that they are more Catholic than the pope.
And the pope is letting them know who’s the boss.
The bishops are gathering in Baltimore for their annual jamboree, and while their ostensible agenda is, in the words of one journalist, “sleep inducing,” the actual agenda is the battle brewing between the bishops and Pope Francis. Following the Vatican synod last month, many of the bishops are fuming that the pope is abandoning the hardcore homophobia that has been their bread and butter.
“Many of the U.S. bishops have been disoriented by what this new pope is saying and I don’t see them really as embracing the pope’s agenda,” said John Thavis, a former Rome bureau chief for Catholic News Service, told the Associated Press.
And they’re not trying to hide their displeasure. Bishop Thomas Tobin of Providence, RI, said that the synod was “rather Protestant.” Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia, who won his position through homophobia, said that the synod created confusion about Church teaching and “I think confusion is of the devil.”
No one has been more hard core than Cardinal Raymond Burke, formerly the flame-throwing archbishop of St. Louis, whom Pope Benedict appointed the equivalent of chief justice of the Vatican court system. Burke has gone to far as to say that the Church is risking a schism by moving “contrary to the constant teaching and practice of the Church.” What he’s really talking about is softening the Church’s stance on LGBT issues, even if actual policies don’t change.
Pope Francis sent the bishops a strong signal about where he stands by formally demoting Burke just two days before the bishops met. The pope busted Burke to the ceremonial position of protectorate of the Knights of Malta. The move was a brutal reminder of just who holds the power in the Church.
Some of the bishops have been trying to paper over the differences by madly spinning the press.
“What I heard and read, the real synod was divisive, confrontational, partisan, and dwelt only on same sex-marriage, cohabitation and divorce,” New York’s Timothy Dolan said Monday. “In fact it was plodding, even at times tedious, but it was a synod of consensus.”
Dolan is going to have to revisit that statement in the confessional, because it’s clearly untrue. The document that the synod originally floated was much more pro-gay. It was watered down because the conservative bishops, many of them from the U.S., blew a gasket. That’s not the definition of consensus.
The fact is, the landscape for the U.S. bishops has changed, and they don’t know how to deal with it.
“It used to be your career in the church could be advanced if you took a hard stance on issues,” the Rev. James Bretzke, a professor of moral theology at Boston College, told the Boston Herald. “Pope Francis wants people who are more bridge builders instead of bridge burners.”
That won’t stop the hard-core homophobes from taking a few more bridges with them before they go. They’re probably hoping that the pope is standing on one of them.
JohnGallagher
'Go-Go Boy Interrupted' Shows You How To Deal With Your Arch-Nemesis at Work: VIDEO
Your favorite ex-go-go is back and, this time, returning to dance on a box just as he always wanted. However, when Danny returns to his former place of employment, he quickly finds out there’s a new twink in town.
Watch as Danny shows you how to deal with conflict in the workplace, AFTER THE JUMP…
And in case you missed them, check out Episodes ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR and FIVE of Jimmy Fowlie’s irreverent web series.
Sean Mandell
Op-ed: Pedro Zamora, Twenty Years Later
Twenty years after his death, HIV/AIDS activist Pedro Zamora’s legacy remains crucial in the the fight against the virus.
Eric Ciasullo
www.advocate.com/commentary/2014/11/11/op-ed-pedro-zamora-twenty-years-later
Eminem says he 'fights for gay rights', uses anti-gay slurs in new rap
Is he the Rap God or The Monster?
joem
www.gaystarnews.com/article/eminem-says-he-fights-gay-rights-uses-anti-gay-slurs-new-rap111114
Gay Legends And Homophobia Of Old Hollywood Revealed By Artist Don Bachardy
At 80, Don Bachardy has built a body of work that can only be described as staggering. With tremendous detail and nuance, he has drawn or painted the portraits of thousands of people, many of them noteworthy luminaries of the Hollywood star system. It was through his long-term relationship with the late author Christopher Isherwood — who methodically recorded the rise of fascism in Germany in his Berlin Diaries — that Bachardy was able to connect with what seems like everyone who was anyone in the American film business.
Bachardy’s latest collection, a stunning coffee-table book titled simply Hollywood (Glitterati; $50), features over 300 memorable portraits of various figures from California’s Dream Factory, including Bette Davis, Joan Collins, Katherine Hepburn, Robert Altman, Mia Farrow, Jack Nicholson, Ian McKellen, Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth, among many others.
Bachardy spoke to Queerty from his Santa Monica home about difficult subjects, star-filled Hollywood parties and the down side of a smile.
Queerty: How did you initially chose your subjects?
Don Bachardy: By being fairly all-inclusive. Anyone I could get at. You see, being a portrait artist, demands a certain road to be followed. I can do a perfectly good likeness of my next door neighbor, but only so many people will recognize their likeness. So I have to be a celebrity hunter — at least in my early years. That was facilitated considerably with my association with Isherwood. That did help hugely and he was very supportive and encouraging and helpful in providing me access to all kinds of well-known people to whom I would make my plea. With surprising good luck I got many of them to sit with me.
Your process involves sitting with someone for several hours. Was there someone you remember as being especially difficult?
Charles Laughton was difficult because he fancies himself such a knower of art, and how it’s done, he decided to be a restless sitter. He had me chasing after him with his pencil. I was very green at the time and awed by Mr. Laughton, not daring to tell him, ‘Please have a heart and help me by being still for a few moments!’ It couldn’t have been less helpful. He was really insufferable in many ways. He thought he was being a young artist’s friend by not making it easy for me. He was so patronizing. No young artist needs that.
I love the story about Joan Rivers looking at the portrait you did of her and saying, “You’ve made me look like my aunt.” What’s most surprising in terms of responses to your portraits?
What I hear most often, it’s quite predictable: “Oh, I look so sad.” Now why is that? There are very few artists who devote themselves to portraiture. Many of those who do work from photographs, which I call photocopying. The truth about sitting for an artist, the good sitter is a still sitter. The very best sitter is a concentrated sitter who is still. What you get then is a very good drawing or painting of someone looking serious, looking like they’ve got something going on in their heads. And maybe something grave. That, to me, is far more interesting, than looking at someone with a simpering smile on their face. Some people who sit for me think they’re doing me a favor. They’re doing themselves a favor, by trying to make me record what they want to look like, instead of leaving my profession to me. Let me decide what it is about you that is interesting and original. It doesn’t help, smiling at me. And yet how do I say to someone very famous, ‘Take that silly smile off your face!’ They think in those terms because that’s what photography has done to us. It’s given us maybe 200 choices from a single sitting. So many don’t look at the painterly technique, they say, “Oh, I look so sad.” What’s wrong with looking serious? Some people feel disappointed after the process.
When I did look at your portrait of Montgomery Clift, perhaps I’m reading into it because of what I know of his life, but he does look intensely vulnerable in that portrait.
You know why? Because he trusted me. He didn’t flirt, he wasn’t coy, he didn’t imitate a self-consciousness. He really looked at me, in a still and serious way. It was after his automobile accident, which changed his face radically. He was disappointed in me, because he saw what he didn’t want to see. He was hoping that I, being an artist, could restore his earlier, handsomer face, and of course I can’t. I can only record what I see, and that’s the whole point of working from life, is not tampering with what is there, not tampering with the truth. I did two drawings of him from that single sitting.
The book includes drawings you did for The Stepford Wives, which is such a great film.
The director, Bryan Forbes, was an early supporter of mine, an early sitter. He saw my first exhibition in London in 1961, and commissioned me to do his portrait and his wife and daughter’s portraits as well. He was an early believer in me. He was intelligent enough not to smile at me. When the film came along, he asked me to do the drawings. I’ve always been a huge moviegoer, and I think that going to the movies from such a young age is what made me a portrait artist. I got so interested in those giant close-ups of actors’ faces — at first I thought I wanted to be an actor, because I was identifying with those people on screen. Those images gave me my interest in faces, but also my natural inclination of imitating people internally. I unconsciously transformed that experience into identifying with the actor sitting in front of me. It took me years to realize what I was doing, because it was so instinctive. It was a seamless transition for me, from moviegoer to portrait artist. It took me years to realize that I was identifying with the people who were sitting for me. It was like going to the movies, but even better, because they were inches away from me.
Roddy McDowell
What’s your favorite memory of Roddy McDowall?
My favorite memory is what a charming, generous person he was. Not as a sitter, though. As a sitter he was wary of me. With actors, it is difficult, because the way they look is part of their profession. For them to protect their representation, photographs and paintings of them, they don’t want to come out looking older and grimmer than they are. I loved him, he was a dear friend, but not as a sitter. There was a certain rivalry between us. He was only a little bit older than us. He wanted to tease me, by being elusive. By smiling and moving around a lot. Our sittings were early on for me, so I hadn’t developed the ability to try to explain to my sitter what it was I wanted. He knew it, he just didn’t want to give it to me.
There was a bit of a scandal about you and Christopher, due to your age difference. Do you think that’s changed now?
Things are much more relaxed now, or so it seems. Chris was hired by David Selznick to do a film for him, and they got on very well. Chris started getting invited to their parties, at which just about every other person was a major Hollywood star. I was dazzled. It was like going to a kind of fantasy, dream party, with all these movie stars I’d grown up with, in the flesh! It was unbelievably exciting for me, and also, because I was with such a distinguished literary figure, I didn’t have to worry about making conversation, I could just stand close to Chris, who would do all the talking, while I did all the looking. And that was blissful. We were the only male couple in the whole party — the only two men together. Of course, there were people who were deeply shocked, but didn’t show it. The only person who made a comment that he intended me to hear was Joseph Cotten, who said he deplored “half men.” He said it with a real professional actor’s ability, to be sure that I would hear it but not Chris. I couldn’t have cared less about Cotten. It’s surprising, when I think of it now, that there wasn’t more difficulty at that time. Chris simply would not hide me away in the closet. He was British, not ashamed of himself for being queer, and taught me that there was no reason for me to be ashamed of either. I felt entirely fortified by his company, and that was wonderful, because I knew he wasn’t kidding. What luck I had to realize at age 18, what an amazing man he was.
Jeremy Kinser
Interview with Steve Snyder Hill, Author of Soldier of Change
Three years ago, he was booed at a Republican debate. Now he has a new book about the experience.
Matt Baume
www.advocate.com/politics/2014/11/11/interview-steve-snyder-hill-author-soldier-change
You must be 18 years old or older to chat
