The Advocate, The Imitation Game, and Transparent Among GLAAD Award Winners

The Advocate, The Imitation Game, Transparent and more were among the night’s big winners at the 26th Annual GLAAD Media Awards in Los Angeles on Saturday.

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Jase Peeples

www.advocate.com/politics/media/2015/03/22/advocate-imitation-game-and-transparent-among-glaad-award-winners

Georgia School Official Confirms: 'I Am Gay'

Outed by reports he used Grindr at work.

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Dawn Ennis

www.advocate.com/lgbt/2015/03/22/georgia-school-official-confirms-i-am-gay

Fully Human
My name is Josephine Skriver, and I am many things.

I am human. I have the capacity to love and to be loved. I feel empathy. I have a mind that allows me to form opinions and to gain perspective on situations and the world around me. I am an opinion-former. I hurt. I feel joy. I feel gratitude. I am a daughter to two beautiful people, who both happen to be gay. I am a sister to a boy who is also human and who has the same capabilities as I do. I am a friend. I am a lover. I am a dreamer. I am certainly many things, but one thing I am not — is synthetic.

There is no such thing as a synthetic human. Every person, no matter their religion, background, skin color, opinion or sexual orientation, is part of our reality and deserves not only to receive love, but also to give love. I believe the ultimate gift of love is what brings life into this world and helps such lives grow. Helping them to understand, helping them to smile. Did my mother and father not deserve that joy because they are both gay themselves? Were they not allowed to feel the warmth of parenting? Were they not allowed the most basic of human rights — to create love? Of course they deserved — and deserve — those things. We all deserve those things. My parents had a burning desire to bring life into this world, which is why they came together through a life-giving process and gave my brother and I the chance to be a part of this universe. Two innocent children. Don’t we all start that way?

When we first arrive in this world we do not discriminate. We are innocent and do not hate. All we know is love and we love unconditionally, blindly, and without reason. I sometimes wish more of us could stay that way and remember how that feels like for as long as possible, that the world didn’t take this away from us as early as it tends to do. Because of this inevitability, I feel convicted to be on a mission to shine a light on everyone who has lost those feelings to darkness. To remind them that it still exists, whether it be out in the open or still hiding in a dark corner, waiting to revive again.

Some of my favorite memories in my life don’t involve much. Being held by parents and adored by them was always enough. I didn’t care or judge my parents by their sexual orientation, the color of their skin, or what they believed in. I didn’t look at my parents and see gay or straight – I saw passion and dedication. All I knew is that they loved me, and I loved them. Most importantly, I could not be more grateful. If anything, I will always admire my parents for not allowing their sexual orientation and all of the legal and social walls to prevent them from following their heart and dreams. The two of them, through the miracle of IVF, gave me a chance to live, to find a path, and to create a story of my own. Now, I intend to use one of the storybook’s pages to stand up for everyone out there who feels alone and scared, or are constantly told that they are in any way less than another human on this earth. I am here to remind you that you are equal — you are not a statistic nor a science experiment. You are strong. You are beautiful. And you are as real as anyone else. As humans, we are simply who we are and what we feel.

We have the right to free speech, and I will not take that away from anyone, because that would be both hypocritical and absurd of me. However, I can’t help but to feel sadness whenever I hear others use their voices to bring hurt, whether it be big or small. If a platform and voice exists, it should be used to bring positivity and togetherness — not to segregate, classify and tear people apart. I am not here to say that speaking your mind is not okay, because the ability to have our own unique perspectives and views is one of the beauties of being human. I just feel that often people say cruel or naive things simply because they simply do not know or understand, even if their intention was not to hurt. So I am here in an attempt to educate and to ask people to allow themselves to be educated. Ask questions, research, discover and learn things firsthand.

In the end, I can’t control what others feel or say, but I can control me. I will not mirror distaste and I will not judge by circumstance. If you are someone who has judged me or anyone else on how we were born and conceived, on how we were brought up, or for any other reason, I am here to say that we feel just like you. We hurt just like you. We love just like you — and those feelings are not something that can be disregarded as “synthetic.”

If I could ask for one thing, it would be to look at me as a “who” and not a “what.” I would request for everyone to get to know me and to have conversations with me. If you have the time, I would love for you to meet my parents, for I am sure they would brighten your life as I have witnessed them do for so many others. I would ask for you to hold my hand so you can feel that it’s not so different from your own. I have seen a lot of hate and cruelty lately, but another beauty of being human is that though we have the ability to hate and be cruel, we also have the ability to hope. And so I become that idealist and hope — that one day all in this world will look at each other as equals; that we will each learn tolerance and understanding.

In the end, I would be lying if I said that I haven’t been hurt by some of the recent comments and remarks that referred to my own life. But you know what? I forgive the people who said them and I will continue to love them, and I believe that I can help open eyes both today and beyond.

If that doesn’t make me biologically, emotionally…fully human, I don’t know what will.

www.huffingtonpost.com/josephine-skriver/fully-human_b_6912398.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices&ir=Gay+Voices

Idaho House Calls On Congress To Impeach Judges Who Rule In Favor Of Marriage Equality

John Wright

www.towleroad.com/2015/03/idaho-lawmakers-want-to-impeach-judges-who-rule-in-favor-of-marriage-equality-1.html

Trans Reporter Zoey Tur in Hot Water Over Remarks on Trans Bodies, Rights

Following contentious commentary, trans advocates are vocally questioning Zoey Tur’s recently established role as a media spokesperson.

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Mitch Kellaway

www.advocate.com/politics/transgender/2015/03/19/trans-reporter-zoey-tur-hot-water-over-remarks-trans-bodies-rights

<i>Pretty Woman</i> Turns 25
One of the most iconic scenes of ’90s cinema comes from the 1990 film Pretty Woman.

The legendary moment is when Julia Roberts, playing down-and-out LA sex worker Vivian Ward, walks into a Rodeo Drive boutique to buy an expensive and elegant evening gown. She is soon rudely asked to leave by the shop assistants. Her provocative attire and slap-dash look make both think that poor Vivian doesn’t have a cent to her name.

Loaded up with cash but unable to use any of her $100s, Vivian despondently exists the store, upset at how these women “wouldn’t let her shop”. (Memorably another ’90s movie, Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion, paid tribute to this scene. While watching Pretty Woman, Michele says to Romy, “I just get really happy when they finally let her shop.”) After later Vivian wins her way into respective Rodeo society, she returns to the scene of the (fashion) crime and dishes out some home truths to the snotty shop clerks.

Vivian is a local L.A. street girl whose roommate has used up all their rent money on drugs while Vivian is struggling to make ends meet working the streets. One night as Vivian takes a walk down Hollywood Boulevard a flash sports car pulls up and the dashing and debonair Edward Lewis (Richard Gere) pokes his head out the window. The sauve Edward asks her to help him with directions around Hollywood before Vivian soon slides inside.

Edward asks Vive to be his girl for a week-long rendezvous, with one condition — that she join him for dinner as his female companion for a business meeting. But after cruising through Beverly Hills with her hundred dollar bills trying to find an outfit appropriate to wear that night, Vivian is escorted out of the high-end stores because of her skimpy clothes and unrefined attitude.

As you can expect, emotions get mixed up in Edward and Vive’s transactional sexual arrangement and Edward must soon choose whether to stick to his cool cold business tricks or make this beautiful but uncultured woman his girl. Between expensive jewellery and limousine trips, Edward and Vivian work out their differences and happiness ensues by film’s end.

Looking back at Pretty Woman, it’s not hard to see the era it was made in. The film came out right at the end of the 1980s and that decade’s big business boom, high-end fashion culture, and obsession with luxury, wealth and coin. We see the glamorous hotel rooms, decadent and exotic meals, and the ravishing clothes and hats Vivian gets along her Beverly Hill shopping strips.

The film proved to be an enormous success when it was first released in 1990 and has since become one of the seminal movies of the romantic-comedy genre. It also helped launch Julia Roberts’s acting career and gave the Hollywood star her first Best Actress Academy Award nomination — a rare feat even by today’s standards since Roberts played a sex worker.

Of course, being an American film, Pretty Woman joins the mythology captured in cinema people trying to climb the social ladder out of the slums and into the mansions. Undoubtedly, many women have watched the film believing that a gallant and rich man could sweep them off their feet and make them his girl, too. Either way, Pretty Woman still offers an excitingly escapist tale. Many of us can believe that the handsome Gere will one day cruise up to us on a street corner somewhere and asks us to join him inside.

With her bad blonde wig and safety pins holding her imitation leather boots, Roberts still dazzles us with her earthy, warm, and self-deprecating Vivian 25 years on. She transforms from the anxious, risqué and cash-strapped Hollywood girl into a beautiful, assertive and self-aware woman after her windswept romance with Edward in their luxurious hotel room.

While 50 Shades of Grey has recently captured our attentions and titillated our imagination, it may be time to forget about the s-and-m kink and stripped back Beyoncé tracks and instead indulge in a Pretty Woman couch session. You’ll see Julia Roberts work the streets in black thigh-high pumps, a black American Express credit card, and, of course, encounter an intensely romantic fire-escape reunion that will leave you begging for more.

But we warned: you will be singing that title track by Roy Orbison for weeks afterwards. I know I still am.

www.huffingtonpost.com/nathan-smith/post_9212_b_6917972.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices&ir=Gay+Voices