As Transgender Teen Leelah Alcorn Is Laid To Rest, Her Death Begins To 'Mean Something' – VIDEO

John Wright

www.towleroad.com/2015/01/as-transgender-teen-leelah-alcorn-is-laid-to-rest-her-death-begins-to-mean-something-video.html

PHOTOS: Did Straight Dudes Rule Broadway in 2014?

From Hugh Jackman to Daniel Radcliffe, Hollywood’s hottest male stars did straight plays — and dazzled gay theatergoers.

read more

Brandon Voss

www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/theater/2015/01/03/photos-did-straight-dudes-rule-broadway-2014

Idaho Gay Marriage Fight Appealed To Supreme Court
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Idaho’s governor and attorney general have filed separate petitions to the U.S. Supreme Court, fighting against gay marriage and arguing that the state’s case has national consequences.

Same-sex marriage has been legal in Idaho since an October ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which has struck down bans across the West. Attorney General Lawrence Wasden’s filing Friday states that the issue is a matter of a state’s right to define marriage without the federal government’s involvement.

“This case presents the Court with the opportunity to resolve a divisive split on a question of nationwide importance: Whether the United States Constitution now prohibits states from maintaining the traditional definition of civil marriage, i.e., between one man and one woman,” Wasden said in the petition.

Gov. Butch Otter’s petition, filed Tuesday, states that the high court should review Idaho’s case alone or in addition to a pending case involving the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that upheld the right of Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee to decide whether to allow gay marriage.

Otter’s petition maintains that unlike in other states, Idaho’s public officials have not shied away from defending a broad definition of heterosexual marriage, specifically by arguing that children are better off when marriage is limited to opposite-sex couples.

He added that Idaho’s case addresses not only the question of in-state marriages, but also out-of-state same-sex marriage. Two out of the four lesbian couples who challenged Idaho’s same-sex marriage ban more than a year ago had been legally married in other states.

“It is important that at least one of the cases this court considers on the merits be a case in which the traditional definition of marriage has been defended with the most robust defense available,” wrote Otter attorney Gene Schaerr. “This is that case.”

Gay marriage supporters have until the end of the month to file responses, and it’s unclear whether the Supreme Court will step in.

Along with the 9th Circuit, three other appeals courts have ruled in favor of gay marriage. Only the 6th Circuit has sided with states seeking to preserve same-sex marriage bans. Because of the split decisions among the appellate courts, it is very likely the Supreme Court will intervene.

The high court justices could decide as early as Jan. 9 to add same-sex marriage to their list of issues to be decided by summer.

Gay marriage is legal in at least 35 states, with Florida expected to be the latest to begin issuing same-sex marriage licenses Jan. 6.

The 9th Circuit ruling that legalized gay marriage in Idaho on Oct. 15 declared that Idaho’s ban on same-sex marriage violated equal protection and due process rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. It overturned a constitutional amendment Idaho voters passed in 2006. The amendment, considered one of the strictest in the nation, prohibited gay marriage, civil union and any other form of state recognition of relationships that was not between a man and a woman.

Deborah Ferguson, the lead attorney who represented the four couples who successfully Idaho’s gay marriage ban, said she is willing to continue to defending the 9th Circuit’s decision.

“The 9th Circuit decided correctly,” she said. “We’ll now have to wait and see what happens next.”

Idaho’s gay marriage fight has cost taxpayers more than $400,000 so far. In December, a federal court ruled that the state must pay the attorney fees to the team of lawyers who defended the four lesbian couples fighting the ban on gay marriage. The state has also spent more than $80,000 on private attorneys.

www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/03/idaho-gay-marriage-supreme-court_n_6410106.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices&ir=Gay+Voices

The 116-Year Old Mystery Surrounding The Death Of Oscar Wilde’s Wife Has Finally Been Solved

There have been a number of speculations surrounding the death of Constance Lloyd, wife of playwright Oscar Wilde, who was famously tried and imprisoned for “gross indecency” (AKA being gay) in 1895.

Lloyd passed away three years after her husband was sent to prison. After falling down a flight of stairs and injuring her back, she underwent emergency surgery and died shortly thereafter. She was 39 years old.

For over 100 years, one of the common theories surrounding Lloyd’s death was that it was all the result of a weakened spine due to syphilis caught from her philandering gay husband. Now, Merlin Holland, Wilde’s grandson, has just discovered a trove of over 130 private family letters that clear up the mystery surrounding his grandmother’s death.

The letters reveal symptoms modern doctors commonly associate with multiple sclerosis, including losing the ability to walk, chronic gain, headaches, and fatigue. Lloyd, it now appears, was falsely diagnosed by not one but two separate doctors.

One of them was an unnamed German “nerve doctor,” whose treatments involved hot baths and electricity. The other was an Italian man named Luigi Maria Bossi who believed that Lloyd’s physical ailments could be cured with gynaecological operations.

After falling down the stairs and injuring herself, Lloyd went to Bossi for a gynaecological procedure, during which she slipped into a coma and died.

“People somehow never put two and two together and thought: ‘Why is a gynaecologist operating on her spine?’” Holland tells The Guardian.

The family never pursued legal action against Bossi because Lloyd had consented to the operation despite several warnings against it by other doctors.

“It cost her her life,” Holland says. “Ultimately, both Bossi and the hapless Constance met their ends tragically–he by the bullet of an assassin and she by the knife of an irresponsible surgeon.”

(Bossi was later shot and killed by a patient’s incensed husband some 20 years after Lloyd’s death when he was accused “unethical behavior and professional misconduct.”)

Lloyd married Wilde in 1884. After he was imprisoned for homosexual acts in 1895, she changed her and her sons’ last name to distance themselves from the scandal and fled to Genoa. She and Wilde never formally divorced.

Holland says he hopes this new evidence will bring an end to speculation over his grandmother’s untimely death.

“I rather feel it will put Constance to rest,” he says. “Poor thing.”

h/t: The Guardian

Related stories:

Now This Is What We Had In Mind for an Oscar Wilde Movie

Real Or Fake?: Woman Arrives Home, Discovers Gay Husband’s Secret Love Affair

How The UK Ruined Gay Sex For Everyone

Graham Gremore

feedproxy.google.com/~r/queerty2/~3/vaxuU_u1i_4/the-116-year-old-mystery-surrounding-the-death-of-oscar-wildes-wife-has-finally-been-solved-20150103

Get Ready for a Magical Midnight With Prince Charming in New 'Cinderella' Trailer: VIDEO

Kyler Geoffroy

www.towleroad.com/2015/01/get-ready-for-a-magical-midnight-with-prince-charming-in-new-cinderella-trailer-video.html

Sam Smith And New Boyfriend Jonathan Go Public With Enviable New Year’s Photos

A few weeks ago, Sam Smith said of his brand-new relationship with Jonathan Zeizel:

“It’s very early days. I’m talking very, very, very early days. But he’s really sweet… he was one of 20 extras [in the music video for “Like I Can”]. It’s a surreal thing to be talking about because I haven’t even confirmed with him that we’re officially seeing each other.”

But it’s a new year, and oh how things can change in two weeks.

The two traveled to Australia to celebrate New Year’s, and posted a whole crop of luxurious-looking vacation shots. Sam is singing a completely different tune now, which goes like this:

“I started my year so lonely and still fully in love with someone who didn’t love me back. Right now I feel so unbelievably loved back. You have all changed my life & I will forever be thankful. May we have many more New Years together. Can’t wait to see you all in 2015 and sing my ass off for you.”

Here’s the photos Sam shared:

h/t Frontiers Media

Dan Tracer

feedproxy.google.com/~r/queerty2/~3/9D5evi7Qiao/sam-smith-and-new-boyfriend-jonathan-go-public-with-enviable-new-years-photos-20150103