Senator Rob Portman Will Not Seek Republican Party's Nomination for President in 2016

Senator Rob Portman Will Not Seek Republican Party's Nomination for President in 2016

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Republican Senator from Ohio Rob Portman announced yesterday that he would neither seek nor accept his party’s nomination for President of the United States in 2016. Portman also made clear he was not interested in being considered as a Vice-Presidential running mate in this next national election cycle. Portman was considered on the short list to fill the VP slot in both 2008 and 2012.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Mr. Portman said he’ll seek re-election to a second Senate term, where his party has won a majority for the first time since he has been in the Senate. He served in a House GOP majority during most of his 12 years in that chamber.

“While I appreciate the encouragement I have received from many to run for president, my focus will remain on Ohio and running for re-election to the Senate in 2016,” he said in a statement. “I look forward to formally announcing my re-election campaign in the new year.”

Portman notably came out in favor of marriage equality after his college-aged son came out to him. Portman was the only serious Republican contender who had endorsed same-sex marriage. 

Portman was seen by many as an attractive candidate for the GOP because of his reputation as being one of the “Senate’s more deliberative center-right members”, according to the AP, and being from the crucial swing-state of Ohio. However, had Portman decided to make a run for the White House, his path to his party’s nomination would not have been unobstructed. Brian Brown and The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) announced they would go after Portman if he ran in 2016 because of his views on marriage equality:

“Rob Portman can forget about getting elected President of the United States,” Brown said. “If he runs we will make sure that GOP primary voters are aware of his desire to redefine marriage and his willingness to see federal judges set aside the votes of 50 million Americans who enacted marriage amendments across the country because his son is gay. Rob Portman’s son has a right to live as he chooses, but that does not give his father the right to redefine marriage.”

Portman himself made note of how difficult a national bid would prove for him, given his views on marriage equality:

“It puts me at odds with my party in many respects. I believe it’s a conservative position…I never really thought deeply about it [before my son came to me]. It seems to me to the extent that it’s not a choice, which is what believe. That is, Republicans ought to treat people as they are…It probably makes it difficult for me to win the primary election at a national election.”


Sean Mandell

www.towleroad.com/2014/12/senator-rob-portman-will-not-seek-republican-partys-nomination-for-president-in-2016.html

Meet Cassandro, Mexico’s Lucha Libre Drag Queen Superstar

Meet Cassandro, Mexico’s Lucha Libre Drag Queen Superstar

The exotico ? Knocked-out teeth are part of a long list of injuries for Cassandro. Photograph: FrantScreen shot 2014-12-02 at 9.53.37 AM“People know,” Mexican wrestler Cassandro tells The Guardian. “They know Cassandro, at least. They know Cassandro is not somebody to play around with. They know if they pay for a ticket, they’re gonna see Cassandro work his ass.”

At 5’5 and 44 years old, Cassandro, who is named after an infamous Tijuana brothel-keeper named Cassandra, has been professionally wrestling for the past 26 years and is somewhat of a celebrity in Mexico’s lucha libre culture.

He identifies as an “exotico,” which is a type of luchador that first appeared in Mexican wrestling in the 1940s. Luchadors are divided into two categories: “tecnicos” (good guys) and “rudos” (bad guys). Exoticos are effeminate men who fight in drag and are considered rudos.

“They were rudos because they were like the clowns in the circus,” Cassandro explains. “They were there to make people laugh. They weren’t really gay, unless they were in the closet.”

“We’re not transvestites,” he elaborates, “because I don’t do this out of the ring. I don’t do drag or anything like that. I don’t live as a woman. I’m gay, that’s it.”

In the wrestling ring, exoticos act as comic relief, but also as targets for abuse from the audience, who will yell slurs at them from the stands. This, Cassandro says, is all part of the game.

Screen shot 2014-12-02 at 9.54.30 AM“Lucha libre in Mexico is like a religion,” Cassandro says, “and Mexico is a very machista country. Homophobia is everywhere.” 

He explains that wrestling matches serve as a way for the working poor to let off steam.

“It’s like a free therapy session for them,” he says. “They will go and scream their lungs out, and all the anger about what’s been done to them during the week, they get it out on the exoticos.”

If having antigay slurs hurled at him on a regular basis upsets him, it doesn’t show.

“Yeah, we are gay,” he says, “but we do know how to wrestle.”

Cassandro was actually born Saul Armendariz in El Paso, Texas, just across the border from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Growing up, he spent much of his time on the Mexican side of the river attending lucha libre matches. At 15, he dropped out of school to apprentice with a lucha libre trainer in Juarez. 26 years later, he’s still at it. Though the physical toll it’s taken on his body is noticeable. 

“I just bought my teeth for the third time,” he says. “I’ve had four surgeries. I just had the last one 12 weeks ago on my knee, to remove a plate with eight pins.”

Cassandro has also suffered torn ligaments in both knees, a shin fracture, and five dislocated shoulders. In addition to that, he’s struggled on and off with depression and addiction throughout his life, though he’s been sober since 2003.

Screen shot 2014-12-02 at 9.54.21 AM“Wrestling has been the worst thing that ever happened to me,” he confesses, “because I had to discover first who I was not, and that I discovered in wrestling, through the drugs, the alcohol, the sex, the craziness back stage — just to be hard enough, just to prove to people that you deserve to be a wrestler.”

He blames much of his troubles on his his alter ego, Cassandro.

“That ego is not my amigo,” he says. “Because, you know, Cassandro is the one who is trying to kill me. And Saul is now the one who’s in charge and is trying to heal Cassandro: ‘You can be Cassandro, but leave that arrogance, that egotistic behavior, leave all that drama to the side.’ I have to find the balance between the two.”

But despite everything, Cassandro says he doesn’t plan on quitting anytime soon.

“If I would stop,” he says, “if I wouldn’t train, I would become a bitter motherfucker.”

Related stories:

A Close Look at Mexico City’s Naked Man Exhibition

10 Reasons To Be Happy Wrestling Is Back In The Olympics

Harassment, Abuse, And Extortion: The Everyday Struggles Of Gay Mexicans Revealed

Graham Gremore is a columnist and contributor for Queerty and Life of the Law. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter.

Graham Gremore

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Harlem Hate Pastor Doubles Down on Claims About Gay Semen In Starbucks' Lattes: VIDEO

Harlem Hate Pastor Doubles Down on Claims About Gay Semen In Starbucks' Lattes: VIDEO

Manning

Hate Pastor James David Manning of the ATLAH church in Harlem is back and this time he’s doubling down on his previous allegation that Starbucks puts gay men’s semen in its lattes. According to Manning, Starbucks is doing this because gays who frequent the popular coffee retailer believe semen “‘flavors up’ the coffee ‘and it makes you think that you’re having a good time drinking that cup of latte with the semen in it.'” 

Starbucks has been none too pleased with Manning’s remarks and sued Manning for making his false and defamatory statements. However, the legal threat from Starbucks does not worry Manning. If anything it only proves his assertions to be all the more potent, he insists:

They do put semen in their lattes. They do you know. Most of it is synthetic. It has a synthetic quality to it but they do. They haves tested out. And like any entrepreneur looking for an edge like Coca-Cola during the years of its early marketing of Coca-Cola put cocaine in its drinks and people loved that…Starbucks is on the ropes…I am floating like a butterfly and stinging like a bee. And I’m not going to let this story go. I’m not gonna let it go. 

As for the lawyers who issued the suit to Manning and Starbucks itself? “Go to hell. Or Let’s go to court. I’ve got Starbucks by the keisters.”

Manning closed his rant with a warning to women–don’t drink starbucks or you might get pregnant:

If you’re drinking Starbucks, watch out if you’re a woman. You might just get pregnant by drinking Starbucks. Because they’ve got some pretty potent semen in their drinks. And you will go home and tell your husband that you’re pregnant and he’ll say, ‘But we haven’t had sexual intercourse in years! Where did you get pregnant? Is it an immaculate conception?’ NO! It was one of Starbucks’ lattes that impregnated you! Me? I’m James David Manning, everybody. I’m the lord’s servant.”

Watch the video for yourself, AFTER THE JUMP…

[h/t Joe.My.God]


Sean Mandell

www.towleroad.com/2014/12/harlem-hate-pastor-doubles-down-on-claims-about-gay-semen-in-starbucks-lattes-video.html

AIDS: The Early Years

AIDS: The Early Years
I can barely remember a time before AIDS.

I graduated high school in May 1981 at age 17. (I’ll do your math. I’m 51. You’re welcome.) The day after graduation, I moved to Indianapolis to escape both farm life and parents unable to handle an out son.

Compared to life on the farm, Indianapolis was THE BIG CITY! And when I got there, I was shocked not only to discover so many others like me — but they were all having a hella good time!

The summer of 1981. The last few months before the spectre began to rise. It’s hard to believe, when you see Indianapolis now. Maybe it was the residual effects of the “sexual revolution” or the “disco era.” Or maybe it was because I was a naive former farm boy. But gay men were seemingly everywhere. They had their own neighborhoods. Businesses! Neighborhood societies!

Being out wasn’t an “alternative lifestyle” in those days. It was punk. You were a walking, talking political statement. We were beginning to get some acceptance, but we were still the mysterious “Other” to most. Yes, sex was omnipresent. But it was about more in those post-Stonewall years. It was the realization that, with self-acceptance, came great freedom. Yes, some of us chose to celebrate at bars and bathhouses. And others of us opened art galleries, restaurants, started magazines. Became designers. And writers. Or actors. But marriage?

Why would we want to do something stupid like that? We were thrilled to be exempt from society’s rules.

To the rest of the world, we knew how to be just quiet enough. We were still underground in most places, so we learned an unspoken code, a way of “knowing” when we found ourselves with our own kind.

To the straight urban crowd, we were chic. An asset at any party or office. Disco may be dying, but we were really beginning to thrive.

July 1981: New York Times:

Doctors in New York and California have diagnosed among homosexual men 41 cases of a rare and often rapidly fatal form of cancer. Eight of the victims died less than 24 months after the diagnosis was made.

I still remember my very first thought, flip though it was. “Of course, gays can’t just get some run-of-the-mill cancer! Oh, no! We have to get some ‘rare, tropical disease!'”

The gay guys I knew dismissed it, if they gave it any thought at all. If they had heard about it at all. How many conversations began those next few months with “Have you heard about this … gay thing?” Almost all of the guys in my circles felt insulated from it — it was happening in New York and San Francisco. Nobody knew anyone with this mystery disease.

I was a late bloomer. I had only been with two guys, both of which had been boyfriends, by 18. So maybe starting late saved my life.

Condoms? Hadn’t entered the discussion. Safe sex? The term hadn’t yet been coined. This disease didn’t even have a name! Hell, the President of the United States refused to even address the crisis.

AYDS was still just an over-the-counter diet supplement. Can you imagine, when someone might have actually said, “I’m gonna run down to the corner to get pick me up some AYDS”?

Fall 1982. Joan Collins appears on the cover US Magazine. But above, a banner headline:

“Mysterious Cancer That’s Killing Gay Men.”

It was absurd! You can’t “catch” cancer! I began to wonder, maybe gay people are defective, maybe something in our DNA is unbalanced… and I wasn’t the only one with a crazy theory.

“It’s guys who use poppers! That’s what causes it!”

“You only have to worry if you swallow.”

“It’s the government! They’re testing a new biological weapon!”

And those were the gay guys! Forget about the folks who claimed it was a curse from God.

Yet, most guys in Indianapolis still thought they were safe.

By 1983, AIDS had a name. I had a new boyfriend. But in Indianapolis, safe sex still hadn’t seemed necessary.

In 1984, we moved to San Francisco. There was no living in denial at Ground Zero. The camp-out protest of AIDS fighters in Civic Center. The zombies struggling to walk down Castro Street. The posters about safe sex in the subway stations. The seemingly endless obituaries in the Bay Area Reporter. For the first time in my life, AIDS seemed real. It was inescapable. And it was scary to be in a city where 75 percent of the men were believed HIV-positive.

But, it was also reassuring — almost comforting — to be someplace where AIDS was on the front-page of the newspaper and opened the local news almost every single day.

My new boyfriend? He couldn’t take it. Six months later, he moved back home.

About a year later, he learned that being back in Indiana didn’t make him safe. Two years after that, he was gone.

What would life be like now, if AIDS had never happened? I can’t imagine. You bet I practice safe sex now. In fact, I’m wearing a condom as I write this!

On a personal note: Despite being openly gay, my parents never addressed it after I came out. At most, my mom called it my “attitude” or being “that way.” But I’m from Kokomo, Indiana — Ryan White’s hometown. And when my aunt began raising money to have Ryan thrown out of school, my mom was incensed. She and I talked about AIDS for the first time. And that let to talking about being gay. And that led, eventually, to the totally cool parents I have today.

AIDS is no longer a death sentence. And it’s hard to believe the advances I have seen in gay rights in my lifetime. We’re living in a gay new world.

Those hundreds of thousands of men and women did not die in vain. They were martyrs. Would we be talking gay marriage if AIDS hadn’t forced gay issues onto the nightly news? If gay men hadn’t fought for the right to be at their lovers’ sides? It humanized us in the eyes of many, and reminded ourselves of our mortality. That the party ends for everyone, eventually, no matter what.

But you know what? I do really miss those early days, when we were more than an “alternative lifestyle.”

www.huffingtonpost.com/leon-acord/aids-the-early-years_b_6256798.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices&ir=Gay+Voices

Lisa Vanderpump Grills Andy Cohen On Having Sex With A Woman: VIDEO

Lisa Vanderpump Grills Andy Cohen On Having Sex With A Woman: VIDEO

Andy

The tables were turned on the Watch What Happens Live host last night when Real Housewife of Beverly Hills Lisa Vanderpump got her chance to put Andy in the hot seat and ask him anything. After covering some RHOBH business, Andy interjects to make sure Lisa knows she can ask him “anything [she] want[s].” With a devilish glean in her eye that seems to say, “challenge accepted,” she quickly fires back “When was the last time you had sex…with a woman?” 

“Never. Never full monty. I’m a gold star gay,” Andy retorts. Surprised by this revelation, Vanderpump then asks, “How do you know you don’t like it?” “Well, because I like dudes so much more.” Andy didn’t fully shut the door on the possibility of carnal relations with a lady, however: “I thought maybe it would be fun if I were in a throuple with a man and a woman.” Plot twist. 

Watch Lisa get up close and personal with Andy and discuss which one of the castmembers of Vanderpump Rules they think has done it with a dude, AFTER THE JUMP…


Sean Mandell

www.towleroad.com/2014/12/lisa-vanderpump-grills-andy-cohen-on-having-sex-with-a-woman-video.html

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