Beggin' After Dark

Garçon Reports
a news compendium
with a gay bias

||| Myth of the gay lifestyle justifies bias: "What" we are - be it gay, straight, black, white - is simply window dressing. "Who" we are is where the substance is, where the person is, where our humanity is.

||| "Supergays and superlesbians don’t like our diversity. They want to streamline us as gymgoing, straight-acting professionals, sanitized for your protection." Michael Lucas (left) on GLAAD.

||| NAACP President Benjamin Jealous blames the gay community for the lack of African American support.

||| If you could pop a pill to make you straight, would you? Around one in four gay men would.

||| Carl Walker-Hoover (right): 1 year on. Don't forget this little boy.

||| Puerto Rican gossip show Super Xclusivo attacked for repeatedly calling Ricky Martin pato (faggot). GLAAD have weighed in too.

||| Cyndi Lauper to open True Colors Residence, the first permanent housing for homeless GBLT youth in Harlem.

||| There's something truly sad about a hospital closing, and the news of St. Vincent's Hospital Manhattan's coming closure is particularly poignant. It was one of the first hospitals in the US with dedicated services for HIV and AIDS patients.

||| Gay soldiers are employees, too.

||| Another gay couple go to the prom. This time, with parental support.

||| I'm From Driftwood, a compilation of true stories by gay people from all over. Below, I'm From Madison, CT:

||| Band Fags, banned by Facebook...

||| ...And re-instated by Facebook.

||| Jim Carrey's I Love You Phillip Morris shelved indefinitely.

||| Is Hollywood gay enough?

||| Flipping The Script: Beyond Homophobia in Black Hollywood, a panel hosted by Writers Guild West in Los Angeles and moderated by Sheryl Lee Ralph. Wilson Cruz (sigh) was there too. EDGE has more, plus pictures.

||| Jamie Foxx, acting on the misapprehension that people either care, or believe him, or don't believe him: I'm not gay. (What man or woman would want to go near a mouth like that anyway?)

||| ABC admits gay storyline wasn't to the liking of its daytime audience.

||| St. Louis man claims he can't get a job - because he's gay.

||| A gay bourbon drinker tells all.

||| First gay marketed apartment building (left) in NYC?

||| Assinine double entendre alert!

||| Vancouver's Gay Top Model 2010 (check the cutey at 2:27 in this clip)...

||| Chris Kanyon, the openly gay wrestler, is dead. He was 40.

||| Get thee to a barber Tyson - you've got something on your face.

||| Gay Zimbabweans face widespread harassment, corrective rape.

||| It's been a while since we heard anything about Uganda's "Kill the Gays" Bill. Has it died a quiet death?

||| Malawi: The newly formed Anti Gay Movement (AGM) will conduct a "general referendum" to give Malawians a chance to choose if they want homosexuality or not. (Yes, really.)

||| Malawi: Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga's plight has driven gay men deeper underground.

||| Malawi: We can all still write letters of support to Tiwonge and Steven at: Chichiri Prison, P.O. Box 30117, Chichiri, Blantyre Malawi. Their trial started on Tuesday.

||| The South African government's double standards on hate speech.

||| Author and activist Thomas Glave, in collaboration with the Institute of Gender and Development Studies, St Augustine, will host a public lecture and book launch on 15th April. In the spotlight is A Reading from Our Caribbean: A Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writing from the Antilles.

||| 100 march in first Jamaican Gay Pride (left, and below right) without incident.

||| Jamaica: On tolerating homosexuals and such (editorial in the Jamaica Observer).

||| How is India dealing with the decriminalisation of homosexuality?

||| Brave and Heroic gay Iraqi activist, and former Baghdad safe house coordinator Anwar Basim Saleh (left), is in limbo in EU, faces destitution in Paris.

||| Hostility, not homosexuality, flies in the face of true Koranic teachings: Our society is... slipping into religious fascism, writes Bramantyo Prijosusilo.

||| Malaysia's first gay-themed movie, ...Dalam Botol (English: In A Bottle), could hit cinemas within months.

||| ...Dalam Botol, trailer:

||| Taipei City Council's homophobia clear to all.

||| Mexico City: 88 gay couples have married since new laws came into effect last month.

||| It's been a minute since we heard from our old favourite, plastic boy slut Cristiano Ronaldo. He's back, re-enacting your favorite poolside gay porno scenes - whilst on holiday!

||| Turkey's gays, transsexuals decry increasing homophobia.

||| Egyptian princes and a Nazi soldier: The inspiration for The English Patient had gay relationships.

||| Visit "bold and beautiful" Bulgaria.

||| Why sperm have skulls for heads at Rice & Fish, a Paris sushi restaurant.

||| My big failed gay exorcism: How I went from church to bathhouse.

||| The Equality Bill - which was passed by Parliament on Wednesday - will improve lives of HIV patients. Employers will no longer be able to demand pre-employment medical questionnaires.

||| Stonewall has launched Blow the Whistle on Gay Hate, a "plain English guide for victims of anti-gay hate crime".

||| One In Eleven, a blog penned by a closeted gay footballer. Outsports review.

||| Man sexually assaulted on London Underground train.

||| Farewell to a hero of the fight against HIV: Just 17 when he found out he had the virus, Clint Walters (left) spent the rest of his life fighting it.

||| The new East London line, in pictures.

||| The director of Liberty, Shami Chakrabarti, says courts are setting a dangerous precedent by making theological decisions about which faiths deserve legal protection.

||| Is this the shortest cycle lane in Britain?

||| Who says it couldn't happen again? The rise of Hungary's far-Right Jobbik party stirs disturbing echoes of the 1940s.

||| The rise of white Australia: The country built on genocide and a policy of whites-only immigration bans asylum seekers from Afghanistan and Sri Lanka.

||| The Big Picture: Unrest in Thailand, below (33 more pictures).

||| The Big Picture: Crisis in Kyrgyzstan, below (48 more pictures).

||| Julius Malema, the South African youth leader accused of inciting violence against white farmers, has visited Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe.

||| Elsewhere in the "rainbow nation", police have used barbed wire to separate blacks and whites. Delightful.

||| Help Haiti through art: 1000 pieces of Haitian art over 30 days.

||| Mexico earthquake shakes dust off a mountain range...

||| ...And the water out of a swimming pool (video).

||| Remember Elian Gonzalez? He's all grown up now (left). Ahem... I'm saying nothing.

||| Elian Gonzalez through the years: Cuba releases photos of Gonzalez, now 16, the one-time cause celebre of exiles.

||| Man free of HIV after stem cell transplant: The 42-year-old "continues to show no signs of HIV in his blood, two years after a stem cell transplant from a donor with a gene mutation that confers natural resistance to the virus that causes AIDS".

||| The man with half a body.

||| How to cure depression: with worry.

||| Japanese boffins find cure for Sick Building Syndrome.

||| Fast walkers at lower risk of stroke.

||| Five fruit and veg a day won't keep cancer away...

||| Wine bluffers exposed by research.

||| Animal pictures of the week, part 1 (30 pictures)... And part 2 (28 pictures).

||| "You can't shut down every zoo tomorrow, but we've got to set a point in the future where we don't bring in any more animals, then set another point saying this is the last zoo." Angela Smith, the charities minister, on phasing out zoos.

||| Oriental Yeti or sick civet?

||| We've heard all about the black sheep in the family - how about a white calf in a brown litter? (Hope Jill Scott doesn't hear about it, lest it cause another of her "little winces".)

||| World's biggest rabbit.

||| Self-shearing sheep.

||| Photographers and illustrators are the latest thorn in Google Books' side. The Huffington Post has a bit more on this.

||| "Twitterers seem to care not for their surroundings or even the people they’re supposed to be socialising with as they punch in those 140 characters telling whoever cares that they are ‘On the train now'." Joan Collins slams Twitter. Good for you missus! Here at ka-os|theory we remain resolutely firmly anti-Twitter.

||| 10 simple Google search tricks.

||| Apple iPad: roundup of reviews.

||| iPad killer: KILL THE iPAD! KILL IT! HIT IT!

||| Apple blocks iPhone app that warns users how much radiation they are exposing themselves to while on their phone.

||| Samsung is launching all-in-one PCs...

||| ...But how about the 20 most important computers of all time (real, not fictional...).

||| The wearable robot that lets internet users experience physical contact.

||| 52 percent of bloggers consider themselves journalists.

||| The controversial Digital Economy Act has passed into law. The Act forces Internet Service Providers to cap - or disconnect - illegal filesharers, and gives the Government the power to block websites suspected of carrying copyrighted material.

||| Digital Economy Act: What made it?

||| Digital Economy Act: Ministers accused of a stitch-up.

||| Digital Economy Act: Google could be blocked (yeah, right...), Wikileaks shut down.

||| Digital Economy Act: A nightmare of unintended consequences.

||| Digital Economy Act: Online commentators speak out, websites highlight clunky clauses within the "hurriedly passed bill".

||| Digital Economy Act: One ISP - TalkTalk - says it won't cooperate with the legislation.

||| Digital Economy Act: what next?

||| Why green light bulbs are a hazard to the environment.

||| The Big Picture: Signs of Spring 2010 (26 pictures).

||| Best sideboard designs (or buffets, as Americans apparently call them). 9 more pictures. My favourite of this lot is the very sexy Facet sideboard (below) - and it's only £700!

||| School of Technology and Management (right), by Portuguese architect Nuno Montenegro.

||| Marvin (left) out of JLS: I was bullied for wearing glasses. Poor baby. Report includes video.

||| JLS hail Gordon Brown's decision to call a General Erection.

||| Whatever happened to Sinead O'Connor?

||| Dizzee Rascal tops black Bond poll.

||| Trey Songz' homoerotic behind the scenes Vibe video.

||| Kele Okereke (right, centre) - the openly gay lead singer in Bloc Party - is to release his first solo album.

||| Chris Meloni shows he's just not a suit-wearin' kinda guy... He'll always be Chris Keller to me.

||| S. Epatha Merkerson to leave Law & Order at the end of its current season, its twentieth. She's played Lt. Van Buren since 1993. DONK-DONK!

||| New True Blood characters, in pictures.

||| "Vampires aren't just vampires. Y'know, a cigar isn't just a cigar, they're so useful as a metaphor for alienated minorities. In this case, I was thinking specifically of the gay community." Charlaine Harris, the author of the books on which True Blood is based, confirms what everyone suspected.

||| And whilst we're on the subject of True Blood, meet Alcide (right).

||| Hehe... From DListed: "Remember that episode of Desperate Housewives where the series creator Marc Cherry slappity slapped slapped Edie across the face after she sassed his ass one day?"

||| Most interesting about this case is this: "Cherry's treatment of Sheridan, including his physical assault and battery of her, occurred because he is a homosexual man and she is a heterosexual woman."

||| Middle class use comedy to assert cultural superiority.

||| The new series of Doctor Who, first reviews: Mail Online, Telegraph, Daily Mirror, Guardian.

||| Doctor Who 1963-2010: a mega-quiz.

||| Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? Not really - just Audrey slapping Rita in Coronation Street (right). There's nothing better than two old battle axes arguing about storylines from twenty years ago!

||| Could Chris Parker (left) return to EastEnders? The actor exited the show in 2005 following a failed suicide attempt allegedly caused by media speculation over his sexuality.

||| John Forsythe, the actor best known for his role as Blake Carrington in Dynasty, is dead. He was 92.

||| Noel Clarke will make a sequel to Adulthood - itself a sequel to Kidulthood - with the working title Hood3.

||| Baby Star (right) signs exclusively to Flava Works.

||| MormonBoyz.com owner receiving death threats.

||| Gay porn drama! Starring Falcon Studios!

||| Wet leisure assistant and modality manager: just two of most ridiculous job titles. What's your job title (and what would an idiot manager re-brand it as?)

||| Scrabble's makers to allow proper nouns.

||| Toy cars worth more than the real thing.

||| The 20 greatest children's books ever.

||| The Frida Kahlo painting unseen for 72 years.

||| A photo of Sarah Palin with 3 invisible dicks. You go, girrrlll!

||| And finally, New York performer Andrew Cristi's coming out story, in song. Absolutely superb.

||| LAST WEEK'S EDITION

||| GARÇON REPORTS, ONE YEAR AGO: 11.4.09

_____________________________________________________

Issue 60 of Garçon Reports covers the period

2-9 April 2010 - plus some stuff I missed!

(What do all the top headlines for each edition of

"Garçon Reports" have in common?)

ka-os|theory is not responsible for the content

of external websites.

POSTSCRIPT

"You know, we might just as well not have bothered to come.

The whole thing's been ridiculous."

© 2010