The face of evil

a news compendium
with a gay bias
issue 85 | January 2011 | FREE

<<< Tarrice Love has lensed Oraine Barrett, "One of the nicest guys I have ever photographed." More manikins later.

But first...

>>> Here's a story that will break your heart. It's the story of Maurice Mannion-Vanover, born with AIDS to a crack addict on 11th September 1990, and adopted by two gay men aged 3. Doctors told them he might live six months, but he survived, and thrived. Maurice died on 14th January.

Maurice Mannion-Vanover's funeral.
US & CANADA

||| Dan Choi refuses to pay for the privilege of being kicked out of the army. His letter to Barack Obama in full.

||| Obama vows to formally end Don't Ask, Don't Tell this year, ensuring "the state of the union with most LGBT voters - following a two-year rocky relationship - remains quite stable, although not entirely satisfying." But the President steered clear of gay marriage in his address, which will please some pundits.

||| But back in 1996, Obama pledged his full support for gay marriage.

>>> Pentagon to outline training for Don't Ask, Don't Tell repeal.

||| Our Stories Have Power: Prop 8 one year later.

||| When is it fair to call someone a homophobe? Rev. Candace Chellew-Hodge, author of Bulletproof Faith: A Spiritual Survival Guide for Gay and Lesbian Christians, tries to answer that.

Jack Evans and George Harris
||| Remember last week's story about same-sex parenting being more common in the South? Well, there's more: "Same-sex couples who are of African-American or Latino heritage are twice as likely to be raising children as their white counterparts. They are also more likely to be struggling economically, another contradictory finding to the stereotype of the affluent, white gay."

||| Meet Jack Evans and George Harris. They're celebrating their 50th anniversary. Just beautiful.

||| Exploding man holes!

>>> Obama's Reagan bromance.

<<< This week saw the 25th anniversary of the NASA Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. The video is still numbing, a quarter of a century later. The Big Picture has a gallery of 34 pictures on the subject.

||| Carolyn Wagner, a "mother whose struggle to stop gay and lesbian bullying in schools resulted in a landmark legal agreement and a national reputation as a tireless advocate for LGBT rights", is dead. She was 57.

||| Ruins of Detroit: Stunning - and deeply sad - photos of Detroit's decline.

<<< Poverty porn. Thank God it's not you.

UK

>>> Ruby Thomas given seven years for homophobic attack on Ian Baynham...

...But she'll serve just 2.5 years.

<<< Hysteria and hyperbole – the response to homosexuality in black churches. Topher Campbell writes in The Guardian, "I have always believed God is love, but being gay forced me to leave a church that treated my sexuality with disgust."

||| Islamic extremists first to be charged with stirring up hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation.

||| Another gay couple refused a room at the inn take Christian bigots to court...

||| Ah, but hell hath no fury like a Christian scorned! Hotel owners Peter and Hazelmary Bull are appealing their conviction for discriminating against Martyn Hall and his civil partner Steven Preddy. More detail on the case at UK Human Rights Blog.

||| Rightwing bible-thumper who links homosexuality to paedophilia appointed by the Government to the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs.

||| Conservative MP removes "gay lesson" blog entry after complaint. But the story raises the question...

...Why is it wrong to protect gay children?

>>> Answer: Because gay equality is a ruthless agenda to destroy so-called normality (according to the Daily Mail's Melanie Phillips).

||| And after the outraged reaction to her hatemongering, Phillips told Pink News: "I have nothing against gay people and would always defend them against true prejudice – as I did in my article, and as I often do when considering the threat posed to them by radical Islamism. What does concern me, however, is the 'gay rights' political agenda which, as activists have often made clear, aims to change the basic moral framework of society."

||| Gay bar sparks row over straight-only job advert.

EUROPE

||| FRANCE: Gay marriage ban upheld by constitutional court.

||| ITALY: Milan university offers first accredited gay studies course.

AMERICAS

||| BRAZIL: Gender-neutral toilets divide GBLT community.

<<< Cuba's split personality on GBLT issues: "There are times when Cuba uses gays, or certain gays, especially writers and artists, to show how things have gotten better. That's how they throw the focus off matters of censorship and repression, for sure. But that can't erase that there's real progress in this area, sometimes even more than the government bargained for..."

||| ARGENTINA: Bear club attacked.

AFRICA

<<< David Kato: World condemns killing. The Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA) and the Southern Africa Litigation Centre (SALC) similarly condemn the murder. European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek calls for investigation.

||| David Kato: Obituary for a "loud, proud, brave" man.

||| David Kato: Box Turtle Bulletin report and background.


Giles Muhame's Rolling Stone.
||| David Kato: BBC News report on his murder, with video featuring Kato speaking to the broadcaster in 2010. New York Times report here.

||| David Kato: It's time for the US to act, The Huffington Post demands.

||| David Kato: Even in death, the hate-mongers couldn't leave him in peace.

||| David Kato: The funeral. And Beyond - by GayUganda. "I was at David’s place last night, this morning. And, the police had just done a crime scene investigation, the one which was reported about, (and, I believe, for publicity’s sake.). I am told it was reported on NTV news last evening. Curious."

||| David Kato: UK Lesbian and Gay Immigration Group warn UK government not to deport GBLT asylum seekers back to Uganda.

||| David Kato: At a London vigil, held at the Ugandan embassy on Trafalgar Square, human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell said, "David will live on in our memories. He will also live on through the rights and equalities that LGBTI Ugandans will win eventually thanks to his many years of tireless groundwork and campaigning."

||| David Kato: Can we talk honestly about homosexuality? Uganda's Daily Monitor pleads for a "national dialogue on homosexuality in order to forge a consensus on the rights of those Ugandans who choose to be gay and those who oppose homosexuality as a lifestyle."

||| David Kato: Christian AID says attacks on gay people will lead to rise in HIV.

>>> IVORY COAST: Election stalemate (38 more pictures).

ASIA PACIFIC

||| Hong Kong NGOs campaign against homophobic bullying in schools.

||| CHINA: Gay rights defender to sue Beijing newspaper for inaccurate report on gay couple's wedding.

||| CHINA: Year of the homosexual? Literally.

<<< THAILAND: New airline P.C. Air recruits transsexuals as flight attendants

||| Phuket braces for 10th Phuket Gay Pride Celebration.

||| INDIA: Universities get gay-straight alliance.

||| INDIA: Queer Ink plans GBLT anthology to help understand "Queer India".

MIDDLE EAST

<<< IRAN: Three men hanged for allegedly raping a teenage boy.

||| In between brutal executions, that country's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has taken a moment to remind us all that homosexuality is "against human spirit."

>>> How Israel Gay Youth helps teens struggling with conflict between religion and sexual identity find peace.

<<< Meanwhile, Israeli parents lock their gay kids in their gay closets.

BODY & MIND

||| Transsexual differences caught on brain scan.

||| Rise in head, neck cancers tied to explosion in oral sex over the last thirty years.

||| Stroke rate in HIV-positive people climbing.

||| Kids with low self-control are less successful adults.

||| ka-os|theory favourite Taylor Siluwé is one of the subjects in Depressed Black Gay Men, a project by writer Antoine B. Craigwell.


ZOOLOGY

>>> If it walks like a man... The Gorilla that walks upright.

<<< Tiger vs. rabbit.

||| In Bangalore, a cow feeds on rubbish in the street...

PLANET

||| Record melt from Greenland icesheet in 2010.

WEB & GADGETS

||| The Facebook setting you should change as quickly as possible.

||| Ideas for blogs most people probably wouldn't have come up with: Hot Guys From The Price Is Right...

...Or how about the guy who wants 100 dates over one year?

PRINT

>>> It Gets Better: The Book.

||| Why Egyptian author Ahmed Saad has received threats from gays and straights alike since publishing his first book, Shab Takaya (English: Pillow Boy).

<<< This might have something to do with it: "What about homosexuals who refuse treatment because they do not wish to change or those who believe that homosexuality is their individual right? He said during the interview that there is no such thing as an individual right to homosexuality: 'I do not support homosexuals who do not want to change. I support those who do. I know that my view isn't Western and may seem backward to you, but it's my belief.'" Ouch.

||| Review: By Nightfall, by Michael Cunningham. "A story of midlife crisis averted, when Peter is sexually tempted by his brother-in-law."

||| And The Independent's take on the same book.

FILM

||| SPAIN: Bilbao hosts Basque gay cinema festival Zinegoak 2011.

>>> Ashton Kutcher's Top 10 Shirtless Moments. Just don't let Demi catch you looking.

TV

||| How Doctor Who turned gay.

||| Wonder Woman to be relaunched courtesy of David E. Kelly (The Practice, Chicago Hope).

||| And get ready for a gay version of reality TV trash Jersey Shore.

||| A forbidden kiss that all Brazil is waiting to see. "Love triangles, broken hearts and a reality TV star, accompanied by an upbeat samba soundtrack. It could only be one of Brazil's nightly telenovela soaps, the latest of which debuted last week. But Insensato Coração, or Foolish Heart, is set to break the mould by featuring at least six gay characters.

||| Isaiah Mustafa is back in a green screen bathroom. And those gay Superbowl ads: Controversial or cute?



MUSIC

||| Has pop gone posh? Writes Tom Bateman of the British music industry: "The majority of pop musicians are now privately educated, or went to stage school."

<<< Taylor Siluwé brings us up to date on Raz B.

||| Lil Wayne claims he went without sex in prison.

||| Puff Daddy, or Diddy (whatever) has been exposed as the mastermind behind 9/11. He also stole a poker chip worth "zillions" of dollars.

>>> Madonna's brother - and DListed - eviscerate her over her cradle-robbing. Hehe... funny. Let's look now at a picture of her latest boy toy, Brahim Zaibat. Mmm, yummy.

||| Why, Ricky - why?!

<<< Elton John and his missus are tucked safely away behind a "family shield" (only in America...), only to later be exposed in all their, er, glory...

||| Elsewhere, everyone's favourite lesbian lookalike is moaning about feeling like a 'second-class citizen'.

<<< This is New York City based recording artist Solomon, lensed by Jenn Hoffman.

>>> And Terry Richardson does Justin Bieber for LOVE Magazine.

SEX BIZ

||| How to manage a bareback gangbang. A taster: "AIDS is not the death sentence that it once was. On the other, have fun taking pills (and enduring the side effects) for the rest of your life."

||| Corbin Fisher offers amnesty to content traders.

||| And now... Diesel Washington vs. Tre Xavier vs. Chase Coxx vs. The Sword.

SPORT

<<< Gay boxing, anyone? It's not just the preserve of porn - Pink Collar Boxing will launch in London this April, before going on tour around the world. Fancy some? Visit the website.

>>> London's Evening Standard has an excellent interview with Aslie Pitter, the black, gay footballer set to receive an MBE for his work founding Stonewall FC - the country's first gay team - 20 years ago.

||| Kent's first gay football team launches with broadside at homophobic fans.

||| Ex-England rugby player - and BBC commentator - Brian Moore refuses to apologise after homophobic Tweet.

<<< Ready for more of Rafael Nadal's Armani whoring?

>>> And here he is with some penguins. Don't ask me what they're talking about.

MANIKINS

<<< Sam Glenn, lensed by Grant Adam.

>>> David Agbodji puts one foot in front of the other for Dolce & Gabbana in Milan. Spot the odd manikin out...

||| Rob Evans - who was the ka-os|theory Sexiest Man of 2010 - was there too, in a range of, er, interesting outfits.

<<< Jhanelle Castillo, lensed by Richard Pier Petit.

>>> Ben Lamberty has shot the jaw-droppingly pretty Philipp Jelenska for Coitus Magazine.

<<< Marlon Teixeira, lensed by Nicolas Valois.

>>> Elegant Tailoring, a story by Mikael Jansson for Interview magazine.

||| How about some new pictures of model/reality TV star/mercenary David McIntosh?

...AND FINALLY

||| Our favourite GuysWithiPhones from the past week - enjoy!



||| Remember what was going on this time last year?
No? How about a reminder? Read Issue 46.

||| 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 85: 22-28 January 2011

Cover photo: Giles Muhame proudly displays a copy of his newspaper, Rolling Stone.

ka-os|theory is not responsible
for the content of external websites.

© 2011

POSTSCRIPT
"You know, we might just as well not have bothered to come. The whole thing's been ridiculous."

4 comments:

Corve said...

Sad story with the gay activist murdered.

The Oraine story is great.

This week was mega. Happy u have the eye candies at the end.

Mike said...

Oh, it was P. Diddy/Dirty-Money who did it. I was wondering how those towers got knocked down.

John R Gordon said...

Thanks for the David Kato links: his courage was really humbling & he seemed a charismatic guy too. At least his murder has sparked international outrage, & I first saw the story because the Guardian made it front-page news, to the perplexity of homophobes in Africa. It tied in poignantly with Topher Campbell's speaking of the pain religion & the black church in particular brought him as a young gay man of a spiritual disposition.

It's interesting that homophobes in Africa tend to rail against so-called Western values (despite, as it turns out, sometimes being bankrolled by American fundamentalist churches). When they do so they're playing to the anti-colonial gallery, of course, (as quintessentially Mugabe often does), but it requires them to wilfully ignore significant changes in favour of gay equality that are happening in non-Western countries such as India & China.

Let's hope that just as the rest of the world's shifting attitude to racism ultimately made apartheid untenable in South Africa, greater tolerance of gay folks in more and more countries will make intolerance a failed mentality the preserve only of despots and crack-pots.

Cup-o-Noodles said...

Dan Choi needs to shut up and disappear. Nobody forced you to enter West Point and became a soldier!

And this coming from a gay servicemember. Thank god your crazy self weren't in my unit!

 
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