Category Archives: NEWS

NEWS: Darren Wilson, Ellen's Gardner, 'Love Is Strange', Laser Watch

NEWS: Darren Wilson, Ellen's Gardner, 'Love Is Strange', Laser Watch

Darren RoadDarren Wilson talks to George Stephanopoulos about shooting and killing Michael Brown: “The reason I have a clean conscience is because I know I did my job right…I’m sorry that [Michael] lost his life. It wasn’t the intention of that day, but it’s what occurred that day. There’s nothing you can say that would make a parent feel better.”

RoadMichael Brown’s father, Michael Brown Sr., calls Wilson’s remarks “disrespectful” and “crazy”: “For one, my son, he respected law enforcement. Two, who in their right mind would rush or charge at a police officer that has his gun drawn?”

RoadA lesbian couple challenging Michigan’s same-sex marriage ban, a case that may reach the Supreme Court, just adopted their fourth child yesterday. 

RoadTaylor Swift performs “Blank Space” (a.k.a. “Lonely Starbucks Lovers”) on The Voice and makes one superfan’s day. 

RoadMeanwhile, Chris Pine croons like Sinatra for a fan on Ellen.

Billy RoadSpeaking of Ellen, her hunky (former?) gardner Billy Reilich, smolders in a new photoshoot that puts his beefcake on display. 

RoadBette Midler backs off of Ariana Grande

RoadKevin Federline says that wasn’t him

RoadThe first tiny teaser for Game of Thrones Season 5 has arrived and it’s all about Arya

RoadFormer O-Town member Ashley Parker Angel strips down for OUT Magazine, talks playing Fiyero in Wicked on Broadway.

RoadJennifer Aniston pranks a BBC radio interviewer in a cringe-worthy video.

Road“Marlene Dietrich in a top hat” may be the best one on this list. 

RoadVending machines at bathhouses will offer HIV testing.

RoadLove Is Strange, starring John Lithgow and Alfred Molina as a gay couple faced with homelessness in New York, picked up four Independent Spirit Award nominations including Best Picture.

RoadSupermodel Miranda Kerr’s gay brother is getting married. 

RoadFeeling villainous? Watch inspired by retro James Bond films has laser attached that can cut through plastic. 

RoadThe Cambridges have a new family portrait


Sean Mandell

www.towleroad.com/2014/11/news-darren-wilson-ellens-gardner-love-is-strange.html

Dear Straight, White, Male New Friend

Dear Straight, White, Male New Friend
Dear straight, white, male new friend,

When you tell me you have confidence in yourself because you are a straight, white male, I am not sure if you are being sarcastic or if this is something you actually believe.

I would caution you, though, to be careful where and how you use that term, for others might find it off-putting or be confused by it at best. I have never heard it from any other straight, white, male colleagues or friends, so this is new territory for me.

Many people associate straightness, whiteness, and maleness with the best of the world’s historical progress: explorers, conquerors, inventors, builders, wealth creators. For others the use of these descriptors to define the essence of one’s self-confidence represents the most serious of insecurities, insecurities that have bred some of the most egregious acts of human history that I won’t rehearse here. Suffice it to say, it has not always been the case that straightness, whiteness, and maleness connotes confidence. My straight, white, male executive coach believes it is a heavy weight to bear because, he says, in the end, even straight, white men know they have to die. As a human being, I get it.

I have had many, many straight, white, male colleagues and have straight, white, male friends. Most have talked of their insecurities and their confidences — insecurities and confidences born of how they were raised, their faith (or lack of it) in God, their natural disposition, a love (or not) of life — the list goes on. I have heard the same from transgender youth of color — confidence expressed and shown in spite of the fact they are not white or male, or even straight in some cases. And I have heard them talk of insecurities that don’t always have to do with being transgender youth of color.

As we continue this journey together, and as you continue to grow, you may want to think about what it means for others to hear you say that you have no lack of confidence because you are a straight, white male. It could suggest just the opposite.

We are all children of the same creative source, fellow travelers on this journey, often feeling our way in the dark, who celebrate confidence when it is born of moments of clarity, of acts of charity, of genuine compassion for our creator, our neighbors, and ourselves.

You are a smart, caring, compassionate soul. That gives me confidence enough.

Fred

www.huffingtonpost.com/frederick-davie/dear-straight-white-male-new-friend_b_6203872.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices&ir=Gay+Voices

Pat Robertson Channels Your Bigoted Uncle With His Heart-Freezing Thanksgiving Message

Pat Robertson Channels Your Bigoted Uncle With His Heart-Freezing Thanksgiving Message

cbn_700club_media_141015c-800x430The holiday season is upon us, and families everywhere will gather around the table tomorrow and give thanks for one another.

But maybe there’s someone in your family who you’d really rather just not hear speak.

In Pat Robertson’s clan, that’d have to be Pat Robertson.

His show The 700 Club did a story about the religious faith of the pilgrims, and warned viewers that the progression of gay rights threatens everything they worked blood, sweat and tears for.

Funny how he doesn’t mention native genocide — what does Jesus think about that one, Pat?

He said:

“Ladies and gentlemen, our warning should be today, we can’t lose that. And when you have courts that are taking away the very essence of our democracy, the ground from which this great country came, when courts are saying that is unconstitutional, when they’re exulting aberrant lifestyles and saying that’s constitutional, when they’re defying the very essence of this nation, they are sowing the seeds, not of a new, prosperous nation but the destruction of the one that’s already here.”

Oh Pat, shut up and pass the string beans.

Here’s the clip:

Dan Tracer

feedproxy.google.com/~r/queerty2/~3/oCB8i_HjVoU/pat-robertson-channels-your-bigoted-uncle-with-his-heart-freezing-thanksgiving-message-20141126

Mississippi Says It Will Appeal Marriage Ruling As AFA Calls for Governor To Defy It

Mississippi Says It Will Appeal Marriage Ruling As AFA Calls for Governor To Defy It

Fischer.Bryan

Not surprisingly, and having barely waited for the ink to dry, Mississippi officials announced Wednesday they’ll appeal a federal judge’s decision striking down the state’s same-sex marriage bans to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. 

Jim-hoodMississippi Attorney General Jim Hood (right) also said he’ll ask the appeals court for a permanent stay of Tuesday’s decision from U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves, which Reeves put on hold for 14 days. 

From The Clarion Ledger

“The Office of Attorney General has a statutory duty to argue the constitutionality of our laws. We will appeal the decision to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and ask for a stay until that court decides the cases presently pending before it,” Hood said. 

The 5th Circuit is already scheduled to hear oral arguments in marriage cases from Texas and Louisiana on Jan. 9, but it’s unclear whether the Mississippi case will be heard on the same day.

Reeves’ 72-page decision has garnered praise from LGBT advocates, but isn’t going over well with the state’s Republican elected leaders: 

“One federal judge appointed by President Obama should not be allowed to overrule the will of the people of Mississippi,” Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves said. “I believe the Attorney General should appeal this decision to defend the 86 percent of Mississippians who voted for the Constitutional amendment in 2004.”‘

Speaker of the House Philip Gunn said today that he plans to work with Gov. Bryant and other state leaders to appeal Reeves’ decision to set aside Mississippi’s gay marriage ban.

“It is unfortunate that one judge has decided to ignore the will of the people of Mississippi,” Gunn said. “On Nov. 2, 2004, 86 percent of the citizens of our state voted to support the legislative amendment on the ballot defining marriage as occurring between one man and one woman. Judge Reeves has willfully defied this law. I will fight to uphold the rights of Mississippians to determine this issue.”

State Rep. Alyce Clarke, D-Jackson, who has a gay son, praised Reeves’ decision. Another Democratic state legislator, Rep. Steve Holland of Plantersville, said simply, “You can’t usurp a federal judge.” 

But Bryan Fischer (above), a spokesman for the Mississippi-based American Family Association, is calling for Gov. Phil Bryant to do just that:

Gov. Bryant should say, “I will fulfill oath I took before God. No same-sex marriage licenses issued on my watch. Period.”

— Bryan Fischer (@BryanJFischer) November 26, 2014

 

Watch Fischer’s rant today on AFA’s Focal Point here.

Read the state of Mississippi’s notice of appeal and request for a stay, AFTER THE JUMP … 

#31 on Scribd”>3:14-cv-00818 #31 by Equality Case Files

14-60837 – Motion for Stay by Equality Case Files


John Wright

www.towleroad.com/2014/11/mississippi-says-it-will-appeal-marriage-ruling-as-afa-calls-for-governor-to-defy-it-video.html

Why You Should Care That Tim Cook and Michael Sam Are Gay

Why You Should Care That Tim Cook and Michael Sam Are Gay
Have you heard the news that Apple CEO Tim Cook is gay? Are you thinking, “OK, was anybody asking?” or perhaps more pointedly, “Who gives a flying fuck?”? Then this blog post is for you!

First, I have two guesses about who you are:

  1. You are not gay.
  2. You have not dealt with scores of people assuming that you, a straight person, are gay.

How could I be so presumptuous? Actually, it’s easy:

  1. If you were gay, you would understand the importance of coming out.
  2. If you were straight but people were constantly assuming that you were gay, you would understand the importance of coming out.

I’m being snarky, I know. It’s just that I get frustrated when I hear people criticize public figures for making announcements about their sexuality with sentiments akin to “I didn’t ask, and I don’t care.” There was a whole lot of this when Michael Sam, the first openly gay player to be drafted by the NFL, came out prior to draft day.

To be fair, the media made a ridiculous spectacle out of this story. Even I got tired of hearing about whether he would get chosen by a team and what that might or might not reveal about the NFL, but that was the media’s doing, not Sam’s.

Which brings me to the reason I get so frustrated with people who feel that Sam and Cook didn’t need to make announcements about their sexuality. You see, there’s this thing that happens to gay folks who don’t fit the general stereotypes (i.e., the shaved-headed butch for women, and the dramatic, gesture-prone hairstylist or interior designer with a propensity for lilting Ss for men.) The thing that happens is that people assume we’re straight. I know because it happens to me, and I am neither particularly butch nor girly.

Which leads to my next question : If it happens to me, how often do you think it would’ve happened to a guy like Michael Sam? I can tell you how often: all the time. And each time it happened, Sam would’ve had to make a split-second decision to either correct the inaccuracy or keep quiet. My friend’s wife, who is a very feminine, Hilary Swank-looking lesbian, has to make this decision when her real-estate clients see the rock on her ring finger and assume that she has a husband at home. If she chooses to correct them, she might lose their business or face hostility, but if she chooses to keep quiet, things can get tricky.

Tricky how, you might ask? Well, imagine that you are conversing with someone and the person assumes that you live in a box. You do not, in fact, live in a box. You live in a house, but you don’t correct the person because, well, there are lots of people who don’t look kindly on houses, and besides, you had this same conversation yesterday with someone else, and you just don’t feel like doing it today. The next thing you know, the person begins asking you questions about the box you supposedly live in: Where did you get it? How do you like it? How long have you lived there? Do you and the box want to have kids? (OK, that last one only makes sense if the box is a husband, which it is in this analogy.)

So, while it may be true that you personally never asked whether Michael Sam was gay, the odds are that most people who looked at him would’ve assumed he was straight, which means that his options were to either come out or to live with droves of people presuming his heterosexuality. Can you imagine how many questions he’d have to answer about his box?

2014-11-22-photo.JPG

When I came out to my mother many years ago, she struggled with the news for a time. She was afraid for me, afraid of what I might face if I lived openly. At one point she told me that I ought to keep the details of my “personal life” to myself. My sexuality was my business, nobody else’s, she said.

In response, I asked her when was the last time she’d casually mentioned my father in a conversation. She did it all the time. “Nick and I went to the movies this weekend,” she might tell a co-worker on a Monday morning. Did she realize that she was talking about “her sexuality” every time she mentioned her husband? Of course not, because she was merely talking about her life, which is, like, a thing that people do, in case you hadn’t noticed.

In a perfect world, we wouldn’t need labels — straight, gay, bi, queer, trans — at all. Instead, people would just be people, but that’s not reality. We live in a world where individuals size each other up and make assumptions. As long as this continues, coming out is going to remain a necessity, especially for public figures.

If you yearn for the time where people announce that they are gay and no media outlet is interested in running the story because, yawn, who cares, guess what: You’re not alone. Plenty of gay people yearn for that time too. Michael Sam and Tim Cook probably yearn for that time. I know I do, but we aren’t there yet.

www.huffingtonpost.com/danielle-ariano/why-you-should-care-that-_2_b_6203596.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices&ir=Gay+Voices

Bar Goes Out Of Its Way To Declare Straightness After Stealing Gay Bar Logo, Gets Hilariously Shamed

Bar Goes Out Of Its Way To Declare Straightness After Stealing Gay Bar Logo, Gets Hilariously Shamed

A general rule in business is always alienate potential paying customers, and one Lafayette, Louisiana bar is really acing it.

Bar Code, a downtown lounge set to open soon in Lafayette, wanted to make it extra clear that they aren’t associated with a gay bar in Richmond, VA, also called Bar Code. See where the confusion could come from?

They took to Facebook to clarify:

1

But a name is just a name, right? Except here’s the gay bar in Richmond:

l

And here’s the definitely-not-a-gay-bar in Lafayette:

facade

Look familiar? 

Here’s the response the new bar received:

2

3

4

5

6

78

9

10

11

File this under the ‘social media fail’ category.

via IND

Dan Tracer

feedproxy.google.com/~r/queerty2/~3/jYqGsTAlb3Y/bar-goes-out-of-its-way-to-declare-straightness-after-stealing-gay-bar-logo-gets-hilariously-shamed-20141126

Postmodern Jukebox Turns Ariana Grande's 'Love Me Harder' Into A James Bond Theme: VIDEO

Postmodern Jukebox Turns Ariana Grande's 'Love Me Harder' Into A James Bond Theme: VIDEO

Post

Scott Bradley’s Postmodern Jukebox is back and this time serving up a sultry James Bond-esque version of Ariana Grande’s “Love Me Harder.” Cristina Gatti lends her vocals and channels the legendary Shirley Bassey. 

Watch it, AFTER THE JUMP…

And in case you’ve missed previous jams from Postmodern Jukebox, check out their retro-infused covers below: 

Ariana Grande’s “Break Free” Gets a Soulful Twist

A Jazz-Crooner Cover of David Guetta and Sia’s “Titanium”

Sam Smith’s “I’m Not The Only One” – New Orleans Style

Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off” Heads to Motown

A Vintage Latin Rendition of Calvin Harris’ “Summer”

Madonna’s “Like A Prayer”…If It Were a 40s Swing Song


Sean Mandell

www.towleroad.com/2014/11/postmodern-jukebox-turns-ariana-grandes-love-me-harder-into-a-james-bond-theme-video.html