Walt Disney World's recent designation as a no-fly zone has had an additional
consequence: Christian extremists can no longer harass gay tourists from above.
posted by donkeyschlong
on Jun 3, 2003 -
28 comments
Gay Pride events are taking place worldwide this month, and
PlanetOut has got a number of interesting features to mark them: most fascinating to me are a series of coming out stories from other, mostly third world, countries. The first a tale of someone growing up gay in
Bosnia, and today from someone in the
Phillipines, with more to follow each day this week. There's also an article commemorating the
25th anniversary of the rainbow flag (which is getting back in the
pink). Good, if not terribly in-depth, stuff. Be careful when following the links, you might run into some gay/lesbian/non-vanilla NSFW stuff.
posted by WolfDaddy
on Jun 3, 2003 -
10 comments
One of the more interesting Senate races in 2004 is shaping up in Florida, where
everyone but the electorate appears to know that Republican U.S. Rep. Mark Foley is gay. This open secret -- which would help explain how a "dream come true" right-wing politician has a strong gay-rights voting record -- calls into question whether respecting a person's right to "stay in the closet"
perpetuates the idea that homosexuality is abnormal. (Via
Eschaton).
posted by rcade
on May 9, 2003 -
80 comments
The Kids Are Alright, A Documentary (Warning ~60 MB Quicktime download. Worth it.) A bit of strange luck led me to this documentary, in which several teenagers discuss frankly and openly what it's like to be a queer kid in North Carolina. Contrast and compare their experiences with that of 14 year old
Thomas McLaughlin in Arkansas. I wonder what
Aaron Fricke would think about the last 20-odd years.
posted by WolfDaddy
on Apr 10, 2003 -
2 comments
Since 1996, the
Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network has sponsored an annual national
Day of Silence event to help create safer schools for all students, "regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression". Today is the
7th time such an event has been held across the country. Are you participating? What is school like for you in this context?
posted by WolfDaddy
on Apr 9, 2003 -
22 comments
The Supreme Court is currently hearing arguments about the constitutionality of homosexual sex. While this may not be news, just listening to some of the comments by the conservatives on the court can be a chilling experience, whether you are straight or gay.
Is it possible that there can be supreme court justices, supposedly the best of the best, who are
really this ignorant?
posted by eas98
on Mar 27, 2003 -
68 comments
Sticking to the gay stuff: The ACLU is threatening legal action against a middle school in Arkansas whose administrators have gone to extraordinary lengths to punish a student for being gay, including outing him to his parents, forcing him to read passages of the Bible, calling him "abnormal" and "unnatural," and disciplining him for mentioning between classes to a female friend that he thought another boy was cute.
(via CalPundit) [more inside]
posted by grrarrgh00
on Mar 16, 2003 -
29 comments
Fifty years ago this month, then-19-year-old George Mansour was
arrested for having sex with a sailor at a private party -- his name was published in the paper and his acceptance to Boston University was revoked. This fascinating slice of recent history (don't miss the hilarious interview) coincides interestingly with current privacy-related news
at home and
abroad. [via
uffish]
posted by RJ Reynolds
on Mar 10, 2003 -
13 comments
Parts of Bible ruled hate speech in Canada. Frankly, I've always found it odd how easily the gay and lesbian community lives with what can best be described as thinly-veiled death threats like in this ad.
"If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads."
posted by skallas
on Feb 23, 2003 -
34 comments
Are Jazz And Gay Culture Antithetical? When an American friend of mine told me recently that gay men hate jazz, although that's not my experience in my part of the world, it got me thinking. But the article I found, by Francis Davis, only added to the mystery. Is the audience for Jazz overwhelmingly and creepily white, bourgeois, straight, macho and middle-aged (
which, embarrassingly, just about describes this Jazz fan...)? If it is, why the hell is it? Why are there so few outed
gay Afro-American musicians, for instance? Is there still a "
Don't Ask, Don't Tell" mentality? Or, more interestingly, does it have something to do with Jazz itself? Or even being gay? And what about the other
musical stereotypes (Garland, Streisand et al.) used in caricatures of gay men? Is there anything in them? [
NYT reg. required for main link; atrocious text garbling in the second.]
posted by MiguelCardoso
on Feb 22, 2003 -
31 comments
These two blogs were created by the "peers" of gay, lesbian, bi, and straight kids in Kentucky who
have been struggling for their right to a safe space.
They had a sponsor, Kaye King, who is an English teacher and a certified counselor. They did research and learned that there were 1,200 such clubs nationally. Tyler McClelland, a senior, says they just wanted a supportive group, where no one whispered "queer" behind their backs.
Bill O'Reilly has
called the ACLU terrorists for taking on the case, which is
currently in federal court.
posted by djacobs
on Feb 9, 2003 -
48 comments
There is a conspiracy theory that has been making the rounds on the net for quite
some time now. In it, the actor
Elijah Wood (Frodo) and
Dominic Monaghan (Merry)
are a gay couple that have been together since the filming of The Lord of the Rings.
And they want to come out...but contracts and a whole lot of money at stake are keeping
them in. So what do they do? Start testing the waters by infiltrating a gay gossip site
called
Data Lounge. Test the waters. Get media attention brought to them so they can out
themselves as smoothly as possible and not get in trouble. Going on for some time now,
the saga is up to
thread 14 and shows no sign of slowing down. There are cryptic posts,
shoutouts through clothing,
PR beardings,
interviews, sheep,
photographs, insiders and trolls. And
the strangest thing of all is that some of the proof is strangely compelling. Examples of all this
and the "proofs" can be found
here.
So after looking at many of the "facts", do you think it possible that two young actors might be
trying to test the waters to come out in a novel fashion? And more importantly this all raises
the question; do you think mainstream America (and the world in general) is ready to accept
young openly gay men in cinema as leading men? Or is it career suicide?
posted by Windigo
on Feb 4, 2003 -
54 comments
Dan Savage takes on the Rolling Stone "bug chasing"/HIV+ gay sex story in his column today, and lambastes one of his favorite sacred cows,
Gay Men's Health Crisis and other outreach groups that seem to have a lackadaisical attitude towards their clients' risky behavior. He's
written about this
before, in the case of Seth Watkins, an HIV+ sex education worker who admitted in the NYTimes he has unprotected casual sex at clubs. Does any of this coverage increase awareness of the still-plenty-big threat of HIV, or does it just make gay men look bad? Respectful discussion within...?
posted by serafinapekkala
on Jan 29, 2003 -
42 comments
Angie was a marked woman , paying her own ransom with a body none could resist.
Someone has spent an incredible amount of time and energy scanning in lesbian pulp fiction covers from the 50's and 60's. An interesting look into what was considered titillating 40 years ago.
posted by patrickje
on Jan 8, 2003 -
21 comments
An AIDS timeline from 1981-2001. As part of an exhibition by the Museum of the City of New York on
Gay Men's Health Crisis, one of the first service organizations created to help fight the disease, a very simple interactive timeline was created--just pick a year or browse through them all...from a "Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals." (NYT-1981) to "15,000 new HIV infections a day in 1999".
posted by amberglow
on Dec 1, 2002 -
0 comments
TV night or a drag show? Gay retirement homes are
starting to open as the Stonewall Generation grows old.
A study by the Brookdale Centre on Ageing at Hunter College in New York found that fewer than one in five elderly gays have a life partner and only one in ten has children. By contrast, nearly half the overall general senior population has a spouse and four in five have children. America’s first, of course, was in
Florida.
posted by gottabefunky
on Nov 22, 2002 -
13 comments
Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Matter If You Are Fluent In Arabic, Despite Our Serious Need For That.... This story hits very close to home. This is a friend from college (Emory) who was just thrown out of the army when they discovered he had a boyfriend. Particularly ridiculous is the fact that he had just achieved fluency in Arabic and would have been (among other gay soldiers) extremely useful to the cause at present. Apparently, heterosexual couples discovered coupled in their rooms at the same inspection were given 10 days restriction and extra duty.
posted by adrober
on Nov 13, 2002 -
66 comments
How gay panic gripped 1960s Royal Navy One sailor reportedly picked up a prostitute who he believed to be female. Realising he wasn't who she appeared to be, the sailor reportedly declared: "Blimey, you're all there!" Nevertheless, he apparently became "infatuated".
This kind of incident led admirals to argue that most of the men accused were only inadvertently homosexual, rather than dangerous "perverts".
Just-released documents from the UK
Public Records Office show some interesting attitudes among the Navy hierarchy at the time. The rationalising of the various activities uncovered is actually quite creative, and weirdly more tolerant than that in subsequent decades, when gay activity got people summarily thrown out of the forces. Even this particular 'crisis' eventually triggered a new 'education' programme on the evils of homosexuality though. In this instance, the pendulum seems not so much to have swung as to have careered wildly in all directions. A bit like the sailors.... (sorry).
posted by jonpollard
on Oct 31, 2002 -
11 comments
Vatican to test if trainee priests are gay. As if the Catholic Church doesn't have bigger concerns. They seem to be trying to throw dirt onto their own graves. Organized religion is SO last millennium. If a gay person really wanted to be a priest, wouldn't it be simple to "pass" a psychological screening? And what self-respecting gay person would want to be a part of something that seeks to exclude him?
posted by archimago
on Oct 25, 2002 -
77 comments
Mark Bingham, 9/11 'hero', honoured by San Francisco. "His presumed actions to thwart the terrorists' activities on board flight 93 helped derail the plan to crash that plane into a target in Washington, D.C."
On August. 15, the
San Francisco Recreation and Park Commission voted to name the gym at the Eureka Valley Recreation Center in the city's Castro neighborhood after Bingham, a former nationally ranked rugby player.
Mind you, it's a good job he didn't want to serve his country as a lawyer for the US Army, where gay heroes are not allowed - not even in the front line of
Judge Advocate General's Corps of the United States military.
In the gay community, there is some dissent about the meaning behind a
'gay hero': would
you have made assumptions about him, or other 'heroes', had you not known?
posted by dash_slot-
on Sep 10, 2002 -
36 comments
Texas singer asks lesbian fans to not show affection at her shows A budding folk-rocker who also happens to be a
high school PE teacher has created a stir with an
Aug. 12 email to her fans. "I have had several complaints from bar owners, friends, fans, and potential fans regarding the outwardly show of affection that has taken place at my shows," writes
Michelle Mayfield. "This type of behavior, right or wrong, reflects on me as the artist who has brought you to that club...Please be respectful of the places where I am performing by being aware of the actions that can possibly turn potential fans away from my music or from my future shows." The resulting flap, and Mayfield's
apology, is made more interesting by questions about Mayfield's own sexual preference, which she called "no one's business in the first place."
posted by mediareport
on Aug 26, 2002 -
107 comments
The old battleaxe is back. Impressed with his performance at the New School,
Camille Paglia and the
Blog Queen seem to have a bit of a partnership.
I post a link about the conflict in the Levant with fear, loathing, and asbestos, but nonetheless, this mini-article is a well thought-out piece.
posted by goethean
on Aug 15, 2002 -
8 comments
As a lifelong
DC Comics fan, I think I can truly state that Dr. Fate's
fabulous blue and gold costume made me the gay man that I am today. Likewise,
Element Lad's admitted shyness towards women (and pretty pink outfit) helped me identify with him as a gay teen. Until now, though, I didn't know where I could find others whose gayness was so closely intertwined with a love of comic books. The
Gay League changed all that. Warning, some of the fan-submitted artwork, featuring generously overendowed (even by superhero standards) men and women is probably a little risque for work. We're here, we're queer, we love the
Legion!
posted by WolfDaddy
on Aug 13, 2002 -
24 comments
Do you, Adam, take this man Steve, to be your lawfully wedded husband ... "... a panel of Ontario judges ordered Parliament to broaden its definition of marriage to include gay men and women, the first decision of its kind in Canada. " Rulings on cases in BC and Quebec to follow.
Good news for the Canadian Tourist industry, at any rate. So far the only heartbreak in all this is the utter lack of Crate and Barrel, Williams Sonoma, and Pottery Barn stores in Canada for these people to register at.
posted by kristin
on Jul 14, 2002 -
13 comments
Even Ocicats In Hats Do It! How does this extraordinary woman know her cat is gay? Well:
People ask me why I think my cat is gay, and it's really hard to explain in words. If you hang out with him at all, it becomes obvious. His effeminate, overdramatic affectations speak volumes. He will go from languid, swishy posturing to screaming hysterics for no apparent reason, and then will fall over in an apparent swoon. If he is, he's certainly not
alone (predictably, even
Guinean cocks-of-the-rocks do it).
Giraffes are thought to be the gayest of all mammals but
cheetahs seem to run a close second.[
Please scroll down a bit. Requires Real or QuickTime. First link via Andrewsullivan.com.]
posted by MiguelCardoso
on Jul 5, 2002 -
21 comments
Mike Ovitz uncovers a sinister organization! He claims to be the latest victim of the "gay Mafia." By most accounts, he would also be the first. Is this simple bellyaching from a man who once dominated Hollywood? Or maybe, just maybe, we’re witnessing the birth of a new crime syndicate, and with it, fresh takes on the shopworn mob movies? LA Times link (sigh, registration req.)
posted by herc
on Jul 2, 2002 -
17 comments
Nickelodeon is airing a special tonight on families that have same-sex parents. The concern of some is that this show: "proves that this network has been co-opted by homosexual activists who are targeting children. Sodomy is not a family value. Nickelodeon has now lost the trust of parents."
My issue with it is that it appears that they are not publicizing the fact that they are showing this to the parents to allow them to decide if their children should watch it or not... I couldn't find anything on their website, except the
listing in the schedule for "Nick News Special Edition" (MORE INSIDE)
posted by darian
on Jun 18, 2002 -
67 comments
The Gay Right. Richard Goldstein argues (accurately, I think) that the Right has come to dominate gay and lesbian politics. Even when I don't agree with them, I've always enjoyed reading Andrew Sullivan and Norah Vincent -- but where are their progressive counterparts?
posted by MikeB
on Jun 17, 2002 -
21 comments
The Prom is On for a gay teen who wants to take his boyfriend to his prom at a Roman Catholic school, as ordered by the court. This dispute has been making news in Canada for a few weeks. I thought it an interesting story because it touches on sexuality, morality, law, the church and education all at once. I wasn't out when my prom came around, so I went with a friend who knew about me. We had a blast, but a more romantic date would have been nice too.
posted by holycola
on May 10, 2002 -
31 comments
