Bullycide, bishops, blue plaques and balloons

<<< Race Cooper was one of many porn pups at the GayVN Awards in San Francisco. Much more on that later on, but first...

US & CANADA

||| Don't Ask, Just Tell: Sexual racism is at the core of what many gay men believe to be 'preferences', Daniel W.K. Lee writes. "Gay men have become unapologetic sexual racists, gender purists and enforcers of a gay male body culture on par with the oppressive beauty myth that women have endured for decades, as manifested in the phrase, 'No fats, no femmes, no Asians'."

>>> Dallas 27th Gay Pride. The Dallas Morning News has pictures and video.

<<< Bishop Eddie Long: Victim says "Daddy" Eddie Long (left) demanded sex "in the church, before and after service". It's a scandal with all the ingredients we love: sex, lies and religion.

>>> A Gay Family Album: The triumphs and struggles of same-sex families. Cas Hyman and Ricky Rhoden with their daughter. Watch a video about the couple here.

||| Right-wing fruitcake Ann Coulter tells gay conservatives to align with the anti-abortion movement. "As soon as they find the gay gene, you know who's getting aborted." She also told a GOProud (gay conservatives) audience that "blacks must be looking at the [wealthy] gays saying, 'Why can't we be oppressed like that?'"

||| And as if that wasn't loopy enough, porn enterprenuer Michael Lucas was in the audience. Apparently he thinks she's "admirable" and "worthy of respect". He also says she looks "spectacular". His piece at The Advocate draws plenty of criticism from the GBLT community, with one reader branding them "two vile idiots". That's an understatement...

||| Coulter says everyone in America wants to be black (you know, for the civil right they get), and doesn't want Don't Ask, Don't Tell repealed.

||| The gay veterans ousted by Don't Ask, Don't Tell who want back in - but will they be allowed? Left, former Petty Officer 3rd Class Joseph Rocha.

<<< Where is Skanda Navaratnam?

||| District Judge Vaughn Walker - who last month struck down Proposition 8 - will retire early next year.

||| Tyler, Raymond (right), Seth, Asher and Cody: six teenage boys who have made headlines in the last few weeks for taking their own lives following homophobic bullying and abuse.

<<< "Jumping off the gw bridge sorry". The Facebook status update that signposted the suicide of 18-year-old hate crime victim Tyler Clementi (left).

||| Why did Tyler Clementi die? by Pam Spaulding, founder of PamsHouseBlend.com.

>>> On 29th September, openly gay 19-year-old Raymond Chase hanged himself in his dorm room on Rhode Island.

<<< 13-year-old Seth Walsh is another victim. He died on 29th September after hanging himself from a tree. He'd been subjected to sustained homophobic bullying.

>>> Asher Brown, another 13-year-old, shot himself in the head 23rd September. He to had been the victim of homophobic bullying.

<<< 17-year-old Cody J. Barker - openly gay - took his life on September 13.

||| Salon.com runs with: "Many are to blame. It isn't just a bullying roommate who caused the tragedy. As in other LGBT deaths, society's attitude looms large."

||| The New York Times has tools against homophobic bullying.

||| Gay teen suicides: A new online video channel - the It Gets Better Project - has a message for bullied gay teens. Life really does get better after high school.

||| Gay teen suicides: "It Gets Better"; wisdom from grown-up gays and lesbians to bullied kids.

||| Gay teen suicides: is there anything Pope Benedict could do?

||| Newsweek asks, Is the 'Bullying Epidemic' a media myth? Of course it is - it's not a new phenomena that appeared out of nowhere.

||| Judy Shepard - mother of Matthew Shepard - speaks out on the spate of gay teen suicides.

<<< Asher Brown is laid to rest.

||| Why anti-gay bullying is a theological issue: Cody J. Sanders writes, "And the moral imperative of anti-bullying preaching, teaching, and activism."

>>> 50 Cent says men who don't "eat pussy" should kill themselves...

||| ... But he didn't really mean it. It was just a funny! You guys!

||| The Fight 2 Live Campaign - an "initiative to stave off the growing number of suicides of LGBT youth" - is seeking submissions, in written or video form. Look here for more.

<<< He's black, gay, Christian and proud: Elder Rev. Kevin E. Taylor, pictured left, has a message for GBLT youth.

>>> Two years ago, 18-year-old Steven Parrish was stabbed to death by fellow gang members who suspected he was gay. Timothy Rawlings, the gang leader who ordered his murder, has been sentenced to life in prison. A Facebook memorial for Steven can be found here.

||| America divided: Maps show cities clearly segregated by race. See all Eric Fischer's maps here.

||| Barack Obama skips Australia for a third time - and who can blame him?

||| The night Jon Stewart turned on President Obama. The Daily Show host is spearheading "liberal discontent with the president's failure to deliver radical change".

||| Meanwhile, the rhetoric of the Tea Party uses the language of civil rights to manipulate America's white working class.

||| So - is anti-Obama rhetoric simply racism in disguise?

||| Barack Obama and our broken hope. Tamara Winfrey Harris writes in The Guardian: "Rather than blame the president, let's face it: change is our responsibility."

<<< Pumps bought secondhand from the construction of the Panama Canal in 1914 are keeping New York's subway dry. Just about.

||| Upper-case or lower-case? That's New York's $27 million headache...

UK

<<< Nipple-tweaking harassment of gay Chinese waiter in one of London's "best-known and award-winning Chinese restaurants", Soho's Yauatcha.

||| English couple Ted Spring, 73, and Paul Pollard, 72, have been together for fifty years. Who says gay relationships don't last?

>>> Human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell has been honoured with a blue plaque. The ceremony - in South London where Tatchell lives - was attended by Sir Ian McKellen, who said Tatchell was "my hero".

<<< New Labour party leader Ed Miliband has a 100% pro gay rights voting record. Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron barely has a 61% pro gay rights voting record, and famously went to pieces during an interview about gay equality.

||| Miliband, however, is proud of Labour's GBLT achievements.

||| The Office of National Statistics claims only 1.5% of the population is gay...

||| ...But the reality is only 1.5% of people identified themselves as gay to a stranger on their doorstep. It's a question your correspondent would simply refuse to answer.

||| Those percentages roughly translate as "480,000 gay men and lesbians in Britain, and 245,000 bisexual people". Gaydar, the gay dating website claims to have 2.2 million British users.

||| In any case, "gender, race and faith groups deserve equal treatment, large or small", Paul Vallely writes in The Independent.

||| Stonewall split by deepening row over its silence same-sex marriage support.

||| Peter Tatchell: Why can't we have marriage equality in Britain?

||| Sir Ian McKellen: Gay marriage has to be on Stonewall's agenda.

||| God's Country, a play about disgraced Irish politician Iris Robinson, is opening in Belfast. Robinson was famous for her homophobic rants, but was disgraced when it emerged she had an affair with a boy 41 years her junior. She had also been involved with him since he was a child.

||| New laws introduced from 1st October under the Equality Act prevent employers discriminating against someone they believe to be gay (even if they're not), whilst transsexuals are now protected even if they are not undergoing gender reassignment treatment. Right-wing tabloid The Daily Mail bemoans the fact that staff won't now be allowed to make racist and homophobic jokes.

||| Britain, Britain, Britain! The worst place to live in Europe - apparently.

>>> Did a wrong turn sink the Titanic?

||| A first class passenger's account of the Titanic disaster is published for the first time - nearly 100 years later. "When the ship had gone all was darkness. I did not hear any discussion or proposal about going back nor did I say anything about it."

EUROPE

||| SERBIA: Amnesty International warns the Serbian government against ignoring threats to Belgrade Pride. It will be the European country's first Pride since the inaugural event in 2001.

||| Mapping stereotypes.

AMERICAS

<<< JAMAICA: GBLT Jamaicans held a silent protest in Emancipation Park, Kingston, against the "corrective rapes" of two lesbians.

||| CUBA: A men's group, Hombres por la Diversidad (English: HxD, Men for Diversity), has been formed to promote the right to free sexual identity.

||| CUBA: Raul Castro signals the end of jobs for life.

AFRICA

>>> UGANDA: Moronic Ugandan tabloid Red Pepper sets out on the smear campaign to end all smear campaigns, twisting heroic Kushaba Moses Mworeko's interview with Washington D.C.'s Metro Weekly newspaper. Read the original interview here.

<<< MALAWI: In happier news, Tiwonge Chimbalanga  - one half of the couple sentenced to 14 years in prison after marrying partner Steven Monjeza - is to seek asylum in Canada.

||| KENYA: Special Programmes Minister Esther Murugi tells national symposium on HIV/Aids: "We need to learn to live with men who have sex with other men... we are in the 21st century and things have changed." Radical.

||| SOUTH AFRICA: Thousands turned out for "Africa's biggest Gay Pride event" (you mean there's others?!) in Johannesburg last week.

||| Dismantling the myth that homosexuality = Western culture. Lesbian journalist Val Kalende says, "Telling our stories is the biggest weapon against homophobia."

>>> ZIMBABWE: Prominent Zimbabwe-born actor Frank Malaba (right) plans gay marriage.

||| Nation-wrecker Robert Mugabe shops for lipstick in New York.

||| SOMALIA: A man carries a shark through Mogadishu, the "most dangerous city in the world", below.

MIDDLE EAST

||| IRAQ: The double lives of gays in Baghdad.

<<< AFGHANISTAN: An Afghan boy sells balloons in Kabul on 2nd October 2010, left.

ASIA PACIFIC

||| INDIA: Entrepreneurs are cashing in on Pink Inc.

<<< INDIA: India's first gay film, Dunno Y... Na Jaane Kyun, has fallen foul of censors...

||| ...And one of its lead actors has been disowned by his family for sharing the country's first gay kiss on screen.

>>> INDONESIA: The Q! Film Festival - the biggest gay film festival in Asia and the only one in the Muslim world - went ahead in Jakarta despite opposition. The festival was disrupted by protesters from the Islamic Defenders Front (right), who threatened to burn down theatres showing the films. Some screenings were cancelled.

||| SINGAPORE: The criminalisation of consensual gay sex is to be challenged in the High Court. Tan Eng Hong was charged for allegedly having oral sex with another consenting male.

<<< FIJI: A GBLT support group - the Drodrolagi (Fijian for rainbow) Movement has been formed at the University of the South Pacific.

>>> AUSTRALIA: Sydney's notorious Aboriginal ghetto to be demolished. "The Block" - Australia's first urban land rights claim - will make way for a $AU60m (£36m) redevelopment, in "an attempt to break the cycle of drug dealing, unemployment and endemic crime".

||| Australia's dark heart. Will Storr writes in The Observer: "When an Aboriginal man was killed by five white youths last year, it was the latest race-hate crime in an area plagued by violence. But the lenient sentences handed down have sparked alarm that there will be a racial backlash in the Australian outback."

||| Former Australian PM attacks multiculturalism.

BODY & MIND

||| 1 in 5 gay/bisexual men in American cities is HIV-positive - and around half of them don't even know it. 28 percent of gay black men are infected with HIV, compared with 18 percent of Hispanic men and 16 percent of white men.

||| Five hours sleep is enough, 14 year study finds.

||| Top foods to keep you young.

||| Are you unknowingly eating Halal?

||| The nasal spray that could cure shyness.

||| Holding your finger really does make pain go away, boffins claim.

||| Urban dwellers have evolved to develop immunity to disease.


ZOOLOGY

<<< Meet Zhu Jianqiang, the two-legged pig. Her owner, Wang Xihai, had been told by his wife to dump Zhu when she was a piglet, but the Buddhist refused. He said, "She proved to us that no matter what form life is it should continue to live on. I won't sell it no matter how much the offer is."

||| Proof that dogs really are better than cats.

||| The secret life of the harvest mouse (above right): Pictures by Jean-Louis Klein and Marie-Luce Hubert.

<<< This mouse ain't so cute.

>>> PERU: Vampire bats kill five children.

||| INDIA: A goods train crushed seven elephants to death in West Bengal. The adult elephants had been trying to rescue two calves who were trapped on the track.

||| Animal pictures of the week, part I (28 more pictures). Left, a black sheep in Italy. Right, a leopard and a monitor lizard fight it out in Kenya.

||| Animal pictures of the week, part II (24 more pictures). Right, lions fight in Madrid Zoo.

||| The secret world of the panda: Throw away everything you thought you knew about the mysterious black and white bear.

||| The Himalayas: Last chance saloon for the tiger?

<<< Insect macro pictures by Dutch photographer Leon Baas (9 more pictures).

PLANET

||| The Big Picture: Human landscapes in Southwest Florida, below (25 more pictures).

WEB & GADGETS

||| Google Street View now covers every continent - including Antarctica.

||| Introducing UEFI, the new start-up software that will allow PCs to start up in seconds.

||| Apple's iPad: the future of computing, or an over-sized iPod?

DESIGN

<<< This is the MAXXI National Museum of XXI Century Arts, by Zaha Hadid Architects, which has won the RIBA Stirling Prize for greatest contribution to British architecture in the past year.

>>> The House of Reticence. No, it's not connected to the ballroom scene - it's a house built on a sliver of land in Japan.

<<< Picture-frame offcuts on a staircase at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. It's an installation by designer Stuart Haygarth.

PRINT

||| Mind-boggling: Alyson Books will cease to publish books; market eBooks only. Alyson is the oldest GBLT publishing house in the US. Devastating news.

<<< In Paris? Why not pop along to Au Bonheur du Jour Gallery, where the work of Narcisse Davim is being exhibited until November.

||| Larry Kramer on his magnum opus, The American People, a national history of homosexuality 30 years in the works.

FILM

<<< Howl, the movie, is "as stunning for its intricate structure as the acting of James Franco, who plays the young Ginsberg".

||| Smut Capital, the documentary short that "proudly calls San Francisco the birthplace of hardcore pornography". John Waters features.

||| Professional gay Rupert Everett is working on a film about Oscar Wilde. I'd thought Stephen Fry had pretty much covered that in Wilde, but Everett says, "All the films about Oscar end when he goes to prison. For me, the interesting part is the last three years. Oscar was the last great vagabond of the 19th century."

||| A collection of Wilde's letters - written to a young male love interest - sold at auction for nearly £34,000.

||| Good news! Sex and the City franchise "is dead", Chris 'Mr Big' Noth declares. "It's like all the critics got together and said, 'this franchise must die.' Because they all had the exact same review. It's like they didn't see the movie." No Chris, they did see it. It's just that it was indigestible garbage.

||| Then again, the public will buy any old s**t.
>>> Now they're going to soil the memory of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? with an all-animation sequel. Which kinda defeats the purpose of the original....

||| ...And they're even reheating Bill & Ted.

<<< But even Hollywood wouldn't be so cynical as to remake a much-loved classic like Back To The Future. For its 25th anniversary, they've simply re-released it. Den of Geek has an excellent review.

||| Star Wars (all of it) is also getting a re-release - but in 3D.

TV

||| The BBC presents an extensive archive of documentaries and programmes stretching back 50 years, charting "the story so far for gay and lesbian equality in the UK". Utterly fascinating, it includes a 1992 interview with black, gay footballer Justin Fashanu, who took his own life in 1998.

>>> But a BBC survey claims one in five are unhappy, or uncomfortable, with homosexuality on TV.

||| It's not good enough, Peter Tatchell finds: "The report does not adequately address complaints that the BBC gives proportionately little airtime to gay people or issues, and that its news coverage of homophobic hate crimes and gay human rights violations is often patchy. In the name of balance, the BBC too often reports extreme homophobic views, whereas it would not give a platform to similar racist or anti-Semitic opinions."

<<< American television "getting more gay friendly". The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) reports 58 GBLT series regulars on screen this season - but none of them are black.

||| Modern Family's Cam and Mitchell kiss at long last.

||| Sesame Street does True BloodMud.

>>> Review: HBO's latest, Boardwalk Empire.

||| Coronation Street is crowned the world's longest running soap. The serial will be 50 on 9th December. Video.

||| The Flinstones are also 50, and The Huffington Post has collected together their best moments.

||| Build your own Dalek: DIY Dalek blueprints dating from the 1970s have been published online.

||| YouView vs. YouTube?

MUSIC

||| MUZU TV, the "world's first social network dedicated to music videos", has relaunched.

||| Mistrial declared in Buju Banton drugs case. Hate music peddler could be retried in December.

||| Annie Lennox unveils A Christmas Cornucopia cover art and track listing. Can't say I'm very excited.

||| Dean Atta: The Gil Scott-Heron of his generation. Get his new album, Missing Piece, at his website. Check his blog for news of forthcoming gigs.

||| We're all slightly less disinterested in Joe McElderry now he's officially A Gay. He says he's glad he came out.

||| More interesting is this lovely clip from Atlanta personality Anye Elite. It's the perfect antidote to the rash of teen suicides in recent weeks. We need more of this.

SPORT

<<< The Big Picture: India prepares for the Commonwealth Games (41 more pictures). Left, athletes practice Mallakhamb (a "combination of traditional Indian gymnastics and martial arts and it can be traced back to the 12th century").

>>> A family watches TV in the Indian town of Ayodhya, 30th September 2010.

<<< Naked sportsmen. Yes, it's the latest ESPN Magazine Body Issue. Left, Amar'e Stoudemire.

MANIKINS

>>> David Agbodji IS Grace Jones.

||| Here's a creepy digital version of the Vogue Homme Japan issue we saw last time.

SEX BIZ

<<< Understanding Castro: "Many of Castro's films end awkwardly, because it is clear that Castro's sexual response curve is not like most men's. Most men have a sexual "response curve" in which their arousal starts out low, stays low for a few minutes, quickly climbs, and then peaks immediately (orgasm). For many men, this occurs within five to 15 minutes. (Which is why gay porn scenes usually last 15 minutes.) Castro, because of the size of his enormous penis, has a sexual response curve that is much more drawn out. He doesn't take five to 15 minutes, he takes 45 to 60 minutes to reach orgasm. By the time Castro's bottom is worn out, exhausted, and drenched in his own semen, Castro is still in the early stages of his sexual response. For him to keep rudely violating his bottom looks like torture. And, for most men, it would be. No director wants to show his bottom actually writing in pain."

||| Porn star hair. Sadly, ka-os|theory favourite Jovonnie - who's modelled more than a few looks over the years - doesn't get a mention. As a public service, I've assembled a montage of our beloved's hairdos, for your viewing pleasure.

||| We've all heard about gay-for-pay. How about straight-for-pay? Well, it's only fair. Although you couldn't pay me enough to dive for oysters...

||| And the prize for raunchiest DVD cover goes to...

>>> SAN FRANCISCO: The GayVN adult video awards, in pictures, Pt. I. Race Cooper shared an award for Best Group Scene in Black Balled 7: Jail Slammed.


||| SAN FRANCISCO: The GayVN adult video awards, in pictures, Pt. II. Excellent gallery from MOC Blog.

||| SAN FRANCISCO: The GayVN adult video awards, in pictures, Pt. III. Another comprehensive gallery from MOC Blog!

||| And the worst awards show ever - plus Chi Chi LaRue's meltdown...

||| The Sword has two galleries from the Folsom Street Fair here, and here.

...AND FINALLY

>>> Rub-a-dub dub, just what were the butcher, the baker and the candlestick-maker doing in the tub?

||| This will make you flip. Sickening, beyond all belief...

||| And finally, visit my good friend Oura, who has decided that ranting to me and other friends just ain't enough - there's a whole world out there waiting to get it!

||| Read the last edition.

||| Remember what was going on this time last year?

No? How about a reminder? Read Issue 29.

||| Help me make next week's copy even better.

Contact me with tips and suggestions. If you're a model

or photographer, contact me about being on the cover.

Issue 78: 20th September - 3rd October 2010

ka-os|theory is not responsible

for the content of external websites.

© 2010

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POSTSCRIPT

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

to come. The whole thing's been ridiculous."