West Virginia, Zayn, Joe Biden, North Carolina, PrEP, Ryan Gosling’s Suit: NEWS

PRIMARY. Bernie Sanders wins the West Virginia primary: “The win comes one week after Sanders prevailed in Indiana’s Democratic primary and two weeks after Clinton dominated a series of contests in the northeastern United States. Democrats also voted on Tuesday in a presidential “beauty contest” in Nebraska, although the delegates from that state were all previously assigned during a March 5 caucus. In that contest, Sanders won 15 pledged delegates, compared to 10 for Clinton.”

HIV/AIDS. Australia becomes the latest nation to approve preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP) as a means to prevent HIV transmission: “For most local gay men on PrEP, the most viable way of sourcing the pill is to order it online from overseas, however this costs upwards of $100 per script and is a time-consuming process. Now that the pill has been approved by the TGA, doctors will be far more inclined to prescribe it, however this won’t affect its cost. For it to be cheap, Truvada will now need to be placed on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS), which will bring it down to around $38.80 per script.”

MUSIC VIDEO. Zayn releases his latest, a Tron-inspired, laser-filled fantasia.

TOYS. Gwyneth Paltrow and GOOP do a sex toys issues, which of course includes a $15,000 gold dildo. 

HAIR. Is that what Harry Styles looks like with a shorter coiffure? 

NOT QUITE AN ENDORSEMENT. Joe Biden says he believes Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee and the next president. 

NORTH CAROLINA. Governor Pat McCrory says he’s “extremely sensitive” on the issue of gender identity.

LATE NIGHT. Ryan Gosling’s suit was way too tight on Kimmel. 

BATHROOM POLICING. Looks like HB 2 isn’t being enforced. And that’s a good thing.

We called ten police departments around North Carolina about how #HB2 is being enforced. It turns out, it’s not. pic.twitter.com/58P2RsiwTn

— AllThingsConsidered (@npratc) May 10, 2016

GAY MARRIAGE. Bahamian Prime Minister vows that there will not be legalized gay marriage on the island nation in his lifetime: “I don’t believe in it and my government doesn’t believe in it so it’s nonsense to speak about backdoor entry to same-sex marriage.”

PHILIPPINES. Nation elects first openly transgender person to public office: “[Geraldine] Roman is running on a Liberal Party ticket and is gunning for the congressional seat in the province of Bataan previously held by her mother, Herminia Roman. Roman has been a popular candidate, especially among low-income voters. Her planned policies include an expanded infrastructure and updated medical equipment at local hospitals in Bataan.”

GAY RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS. Scotland is the best place in Europe for LGBT rights according to new survey: “The Rainbow Europe Index 2016 measures progress in 49 European countries on LGBTI equality against a 52-point criteria that includes legal protections from discrimination in employment and services, measures to tackle hate crime, rights and recognition for transgender, non-binary and intersex people, and equality in family law including same-sex marriage and parenting rights. Scotland rose to the top of the Index last year following the passage of the SNP Scottish Government’s equal marriage legislation.”

DISCRIMINATION. Catholic school reaches settlement with teacher fired for being gay: “The settlement follows a first-of-its-kind ruling from the Massachusetts Superior Court in December 2015. The court found that Fontbonne [Academy] discriminated against [Matt] Barrett on the basis of sexual orientation and sex, in direct violation of Massachusetts non-discrimination laws, and rejected Fontbonne’s claims to an exemption based on its religious beliefs.”

INSTASTUD. Meet jaidus.

 

The post West Virginia, Zayn, Joe Biden, North Carolina, PrEP, Ryan Gosling’s Suit: NEWS appeared first on Towleroad.

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North Carolina Dems Introduce LGBT Non-Discrimination Bill That Would Replace H.B. 2

Democratic lawmakers in North Carolina’s House of Representatives have introduced a new LGBT rights bill that, if passed, would replace the state’s anti-LGBT ‘bathroom law’, H.B. 2.

The bill faces an uphill battle, however, as Republicans dominate the state’s lower house.

From the Human Rights Campaign Blog: 

Today, HRC commended North Carolina Representatives Chris Sgro, Pricey Harrison, Susan Fisher, and Kelly Alexander for introducing a comprehensive LGBT non-discrimination bill in the North Carolina General Assembly.  This bill would be a companion to HB 946, sponsored by Representatives Jackson, Meyer, Hamilton and G. Martin, and SB 784, sponsored by Senators Van Duyn, J. Jackson, and Woodard.

“Rather than wasting taxpayer dollars defending an indefensible attempt to defy federal civil rights laws, Governor McCrory and the General Assembly should repeal HB2 and replace it with this common sense LGBT non-discrimination bill,” said JoDee Winterhof, HRC Senior Vice President for Policy and Political Affairs. “This bill is an important step forward that would ensure that everyone, including LGBT people, can live free from fear of discrimination.”

“We have always known, and come to understand even more urgently during the HB2 debate, the incredible need for non-discrimination protections for LGBT and other North Carolinians,” said Representative Chris Sgro, one of the sponsors of the legislation. “This bill, along with the repeal of HB2, is the important next step that this General Assembly and Governor McCrory must take in order to make North Carolina a true state of equality and help heal our national reputation.”

The post North Carolina Dems Introduce LGBT Non-Discrimination Bill That Would Replace H.B. 2 appeared first on Towleroad.

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State Leadership Proves Transphobia Is Bigger in Texas

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and beleaguered Attorney General Ken Paxton are both backing North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory’s efforts to defend his state’s transphobic House Bill 2. 

www.advocate.com/transgender/2016/5/10/state-leadership-proves-transphobia-bigger-texas

Rachel Maddow Supports Drag Queen for Alabama Governor

With the state’s leadership in turmoil, the MSNBC host says activist Ambrosia Starling might be the right drag performer for the job.

www.advocate.com/media/2016/5/10/rachel-maddow-supports-drag-queen-alabama-governor

Another Suit Takes Aim at Mississippi's Anti-LGBT Law

This one specifically challenges the provision allowing public employees to recuse themselves from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

www.advocate.com/marriage-equality/2016/5/10/another-suit-takes-aim-mississippis-anti-lgbt-law

Daniel Radcliffe’s New Film “Swiss Army Man” Also Features A Magic Wand, But This One’s In His Pants

When your name is synonymous with the two words “boy wizard,” it’s got to be difficult to shake your magical beginnings.

This is a problem that only affects Daniel Radcliffe, and there is no known cure.

Related: The Most Realistic Gay Sex Scenes In Film

Perhaps he thought his role in the upcoming Swiss Army Man would ensure the furthest thing possible from his Harry Potter identity — he is, after all, playing a corpse.

Well as luck would have it, his rigor mortis erection acts as something of an imaginary magic wand for costar Paul Dano to find his way home in the just-released red band trailer.

It’s giving us Weekend at Bernie’s meets Cast Away, with a dash of Brokeback Mountain:

feedproxy.google.com/~r/queerty2/~3/fH_QGJ7K-KU/daniel-radcliffes-new-film-swiss-army-man-also-features-magic-wand-ones-pants-20160510

Woman Who Attacked Trans Woman On NYC Subway Speaks Out: “Don’t Judge Me”

feedproxy.google.com/~r/queerty2/~3/yWEBIGlL01o/

NEW MUSIC: ANOHNI, Radiohead

This week in New Music, 2016 kicks fully into gear with major releases from former Antony & the Jonsons/Antony Hegarty now Anohni and middle-aged legends Radiohead (and Beyoncé).

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ANOHNI – Hopelessness

The artist formerly known as Antony & the Johnsons / Antony Hegarty has been quiet in the way of new material since 2010’s somewhat disappointing Swanlights. A change of outlook was perhaps required and you won’t find a bigger progression than on Hopelessness. No, not the fact that Antony is now Anohni. That’s a bit annoying for Last.fm obsessives but otherwise irrelevant.

Replacing the delicateness of the Johnsons, part of Anohni’s oeuvre is a collaboration with electronic producers Ross “Hudson Mohawke” Birchard (Kanye West) and Oneohtrix Point Never (no, me neither on the latter).

For me, the thought of Anohni dumping the orchestrated emotion of early albums Antony & the Jonsons, I Am A Bird Now and 2009’s stunning The Crying Light was a bit of a concern. What could wunderkinds like Birchard possibly add to one of the most original voices in music today? It would appear that Anohni has ditched the introspection for a protest album and the electronica is, as it should be, a pumping backing to her mad as all hell outburst against everything that’s wrong with the world.

Seriously, you wait for a decent protest album for an age and then two come along at once. But while PJ Harvey is just plain angry on The Hope Six Demolition Project, Anohni is really quite heartbroken.

When “4 Degress” was released last year it wasn’t too much of a departure musically but lyrically ANOHNI was out for blood.  “I want to see the animals dying in the trees,” she sang attacking climate change. But that song doesn’t prepare you for Hopelessness. “Drone Bomb Me,” the second album teaser plays that role. “Let me be the one you choose tonight,” she sings, taking on the voice of an orphaned Afghan girl.

If you were to think “Watch Me” is a love song or perhaps an updated Sting stalking some unfortunate woman on “Every Breath You Take,” you’d be sadly mistaken. Anohni’s concern here is global surveillance ( “I know you love me/ ‘Cos you’re always watching me”) perfectly employing her inimitable vocals and underscored by a pulsating electronica pandora’s box.

Watch me in my hotel room

Watch my outline as I move from city to city

Watch me watching pornography

Watch my talking to my friends and my family

Protecting me from evil

Protecting me from terrorism

Protecting me from child molesters

Protecting me from evil

Watch me in my hotel room

Watch my iris as I move from city to city

Watch me watching pornography

Watch my medical history

I know you love me

‘Cause you’re always watching me

‘Case I’m involved in evil

‘Case I’m involved in terrorism

‘Case I’m involved in child molesters

‘Case I’m involved in evil

Her concern is not only general and perhaps meets its greatest statement on “Obama,” in which Anohni growls at the outgoing president’s seedier side:

When you were elected

The world cried for joy

We thought we had empowered

The truth-telling envoy

Now the news is you are spying

Executing without trial

Betraying virtues

Scarring closed the sky

Punishing the whistle blowers

Those who tell the truth

Do you recognize the yellow

Staring back at you?

All the hope drained from your face

Like children we believed

All the hope drained from your face

Obama

A potential concern with Hopelessness is that existing fans will be put off by her rage against the machine. Please don’t be. Hopelessness is not just a stunning indictment on the lies and deceit of the world in which we live, it’s also without a doubt her best album to date and one of the first event albums of the year, along with PJ Harvey and…..

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…Radiohead – A Moon Shaped Pool

Honestly, new albums by Anohni and Radiohead in one week?

As someone pointed out the other day on Twitter, a new album from Radiohead is like the straight white middle aged male version of Beyoncé gifting the world with Lemonade. I tick three of those boxes so a release last Sunday night at 8 p.m. of their ninth album A Moon Shaped Pool was a major life event. Tie that in with the 2 a.m. showing of Game of Thrones on Irish TV on Monday morning, it’s been a long and exhausting night.

When Radiohead last week deleted their social media presence before unleashing a video for album track “Burn the Witch,” most of the world was confused. Fans in the UK and Ireland at least got the visuals – an homage (or something) to 1970s tv show Trumpton which has previously only bated music fans on Half Man Half Biscuit’s seminal The Trumpton Riots. Pitchfork called the video “a pointed critique of nativism-embracing leaders across the UK and Europe.” Yeah maybe, or perhaps – and what do I know? – it’s just Thom Yorke and co sticking a thumb up to a world which has always accused them of being up their own arses.

What is clear from the video is that – like the aforementioned PJ Harvey – in their exalted position that they can do what the hell they want. Many fans have steadily fallen away from Radiohead since they disavowed the student rock of 1993’s “Creep” towards an experimental aesthetic that perhaps reached its culmination with Hail to the Thief in 2003.

Since then, Radiohead have released two albums entirely on their own terms. 2007’s In Rainbows (one of their best) was free if that’s what you wanted (I threw them a few euros). Slightly less meaty was 2011’s The King of Limbs. But Radiohead don’t give a damn what I or anyone else says. Their fans are legion and A Moon Shaped Pool has racked up more interest than any other release so far this year (ok, apart from Beyoncé) with absolutely no marketing necessary.

Whatever the levels of excitement/disdain on Twitter, one thing you can be assured of with Radiohead is that – while retaining the glum outlook and understated instrumentation that often seems at odds with Yorke’s vocals – they will always strive for something different and that’s certainly the case with A Moon Shaped Pool.

Perhaps because King of Limbs was a bit dodgy, the lads have put their musical differences aside (literally differences in this case) and worked hard to combine Jonny Greenwood’s successful career as a soundtrack composer with Yorke’s often ice cold electronica. That coming together is possibly best heard on “Desert Island Disk,” the closest to a pop song you’ll get here. “Ful Stop,” meanwhile harkens back to the glory days of the unstoppably urgent Amnesiac.

An instant favorite for fans will be closing track and actual tearjerker “True Love Waits.”

“These Are My Twisted Words” they told us back in 2009. These ones really are but it’s not just the words, it’s the message: We are Radiohead. We thank you.

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Four Reasons Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s Speech is a Milestone for Transgender Equality

U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s powerful and impassioned remarks Monday about the rights of transgender Americans stand as a seminal moment in the long struggle for full LGBT equality. Lynch could have simply announced that the U.S. Department of Justice had filed a lawsuit against her home state of North Carolina declaring the state’s HB2 law “impermissibly discriminatory.”

But she used her national platform to not only place the transgender rights movement in the context of  civil rights struggles of the past, but also to speak directly to transgender Americans.

Here are four reasons her historic speech is a milestone for transgender Americans:

1. She unequivocally assured transgender people that they deserve the respect and dignity afforded all Americans, as well as full protections of the law.

“This action is about a great deal more than just bathrooms. This is about the dignity and respect we accord our fellow citizens and the laws that we, as a people and as a country, have enacted to protect them – indeed, to protect all of us.  And it’s about the founding ideals that have led this country – haltingly but inexorably – in the direction of fairness, inclusion and equality for all Americans.”

2. She put  the anti-transgender HB2 in context drawing on other lamentable chapters in our nation’s history, when the inexorable march toward full equality prompted other harsh and discriminatory responses.

“This is not the first time that we have seen discriminatory responses to historic moments of progress for our nation.  We saw it in the Jim Crow laws that followed the Emancipation Proclamation.  We saw it in fierce and widespread resistance to Brown v. Board of Education.”

3. She exposed North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory’s lies about the transgender community and HB2.

“You’ve been told that this law protects vulnerable populations from harm – but that just is not the case.  Instead, what this law does is inflict further indignity on a population that has already suffered far more than its fair share.  This law provides no benefit to society – all it does is harm innocent Americans. “

4.  She referenced shameful moments of state-sanctioned discrimination in North Carolina’s recent past, and the pain – and regret – it inflicted.

“Instead of turning away from our neighbors, our friends, our colleagues, let us instead learn from our history and avoid repeating the mistakes of our past.  Let us reflect on the obvious but often neglected lesson that state-sanctioned discrimination never looks good in hindsight.  It was not so very long ago that states, including North Carolina, had signs above restrooms, water fountains and on public accommodations keeping people out based upon a distinction without a difference.  We have moved beyond those dark days, but not without pain and suffering and an ongoing fight to keep moving forward.  Let us write a different story this time.”

Send a message thanking Attorney General Lynch for her unwavering support for equality in the Tar Heel State.

 

www.hrc.org/blog/four-reasons-attorney-general-loretta-lynchs-speech-is-a-milestone-for-tran?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss-feed

North Carolina Legislators Introduce Bill to Replace HB2 with Full Non-Discrimination Protections

Today, HRC commended North Carolina Representatives Chris Sgro, Pricey Harrison, Susan Fisher, and Kelly Alexander for introducing a comprehensive LGBT non-discrimination bill in the North Carolina General Assembly.  This bill would be a companion to HB 946, sponsored by Representatives Jackson, Meyer, Hamilton and G. Martin, and SB 784, sponsored by Senators Van Duyn, J. Jackson, and Woodard.

“Rather than wasting taxpayer dollars defending an indefensible attempt to defy federal civil rights laws, Governor McCrory and the General Assembly should repeal HB2 and replace it with this common sense LGBT non-discrimination bill,” said JoDee Winterhof, HRC Senior Vice President for Policy and Political Affairs. “This bill is an important step forward that would ensure that everyone, including LGBT people, can live free from fear of discrimination.”

“We have always known, and come to understand even more urgently during the HB2 debate, the incredible need for non-discrimination protections for LGBT and other North Carolinians,” said Representative Chris Sgro, one of the sponsors of the legislation. “This bill, along with the repeal of HB2, is the important next step that this General Assembly and Governor McCrory must take in order to make North Carolina a true state of equality and help heal our national reputation.”

The non-discrimination bill introduced today comes after Gov. Pat McCrory said on Fox News’ “On the Record” that he did not believe that companies should be able to fire someone because of who they are or whom they love. Not only does North Carolina lack such explicit statewide LGBT non-discrimination protections, but among other things, HB2 also eliminated the ability of North Carolinians to be able to sue if they experienced discrimination in the workforce, including on the basis of race, religion, national origin and sex.  

Yesterday, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced that the U.S. Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit against North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory, the state’s Department of Public Safety, and the University of North Carolina and Board of Governors of the University of North Carolina.  The Justice Department had previously put Governor McCrory and state officials on notice last week saying North Carolina’s discriminatory HB2 violates federal civil rights law — including Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972 — and asked them to address the situation “by confirming that the State will not comply with or implement HB2.” But in response to that notice, Gov. McCrory announced he is filing a lawsuit in an attempt to recklessly defend his discriminatory law. Senator Berger & Speaker Moore also filed their own lawsuit.

North Carolina has already lost more than a half billion dollars — and counting — in economic activity just from companies canceling or reconsidering plans to come to the state, and in cancelled conventions, concerts, and other lost tourism dollars. That doesn’t even include potential economic development that now just won’t happen in North Carolina because of McCrory’s radical law, or the potential catastrophic loss of federal funding for schools, roads, bridges, and other essential services.

Lawmakers passed HB2 in a hurried, single-day session, and McCrory quickly signed it into law in the dead of night. Since then, nearly 200 leading CEOs and major business leaders have signed onto HRC and Equality NC’s open letter urging McCrory and the state’s General Assembly to repeal HB2.

HB2 has eliminated existing municipal non-discrimination protections for LGBT people and prevents such protections from being passed by cities in the future. The legislation also forces transgender students in public schools to use restrooms and other facilities inconsistent with their gender identity, putting 4.5 billion dollars in federal education funding alone at risk. It also compels the same type of discrimination against transgender people to take place in publicly-owned buildings, including in public universities, convention centers, and airports.  

www.hrc.org/blog/NC-legislators-introduce-bill-to-replace-discriminatory-hb2?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss-feed