Sanctuary

a news compendium

with a gay bias
issue 92 | April 2011 | FREE

<<< Stunning pictures of the intriguingly named Morthyn Roc, by the brilliant Joseph Bleu. More manikins later.

But first, everything you need to know from the last week or so, with bonus eye candy and harmless fluff...

||| How your favourite female artists are exploiting gay fans: And YOU are falling for it.

||| Sex in the park? Official police records debunk the media-driven myth of gay sex in public parks.

||| A black gay male escort's story: Drugs, AIDS and depression.

>>> Which gay clique are you? (No, I can't see where I fit in either.)

NORTH AMERICA & CANADA

||| Two Denver policemen fired over beating of gay man.

||| Remember Andre Cooley, the Mississippi Sheriff's Department officer fired for being gay? The good news is he's been reinstated.

<<< This is 26-year-old Damian Furtch, who was gay-bashed in New York City's West Village for being gay.

||| NY1 has video of the attack, and more.

||| Marc Jacobs executive sues fashion house over "oppressively gay" office.

>>> Westboro Baptist Church revisited. After tales of defections, Louis Theroux investigates what's up with America's most hated family. Watch it here.

||| Speaking of dumb bigots, Donald Trump says he just doesn't feel good about gay marriage. Because all his straight ones were so successful.

<<< Carl Siciliano, executive director of the Ali Forney Center - New York City's biggest GBLT youth homeless shelter - writes an open letter to Governor Andrew Cuomo about state plans to end funding for homeless youth shelters. Visit the Ali Forney Center here.

||| In (happier) related news, here's pictures (and video) from the Broadway Beauty Pageant, the annual fundraiser for the Ali Forney Center:

||| In California, a bill to teach students about "the role and contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans" faces an uphill battle - even with former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger now out of office.

||| Tyler Clementi's parents want roommate prosecuted, not severely punished.

||| Don't Ask, Don't Tell repeal facing no resistance from troops, military claims.

<<< Meanwhile, a print version of OutServe - a network for GBLT military personnel - has launched.

||| Fresh hope for ENDA - the Employment Non-Discrimination Act - which would ban discrimination based on sexual orientation.

||| Gay immigrants' emotional roller coaster over Defense of Marriage Act. Spouses of gay Americans told they can stay in US, but then reprieve is revoked.

||| Ezra Waldman analyses the situation.

>>> Don't shrink Detroit, super-size it.

||| New York City's gay equality silver anniversary. It's fifteen years since City Council signed into law a non-discrimination act.

||| Atlanta police undergo GBLT training.

<<< John Gruber, last member of the original Mattachine Society - one of America's earliest GBLT equality groups - is dead. He was 82.

UNITED KINGDOM

||| Gay sauna Chariots - one of London's busiest - is gutted by fire.

>>> 15-year-old schoolboy jumps to his death after "gay rumours".

||| Is there a gay serial killer on the loose in Edinburgh?

<<< Evangelical pastor Dr Albert Odulele - a "guiding light and a father figure" at his Glory House International Pentecostal church - has been jailed for indecently assaulting a teenage boy as he slept, and sexually assaulting a fellow pastor. Odulele said, "I am ashamed of my behaviour as homosexuality is at odds with my religious beliefs."

||| Meanwhile, Symon Hill - an associate director of Ekklesia - will make a "pilgrimage of repentance" for his former homophobic attitudes, walking from Birmingham to London this summer.

>>> "[Prime Minister] Cameron is like Flashman in the way he turns into someone very nasty. He looks like a privileged bully... you hear stories about how he treats people who he thinks don't matter." Former shadow chancellor Alan Johnson talks about chinless wonder David Cameron, who is handing Britain over to his wealthy friends.

EUROPE

||| IRELAND: Watch the new anti-homophobic bullying ad, "created as part of BeLonG To Youth Services annual Stand Up! LGBT Awareness Weeks. The campaign promotes friendship amongst young people as a way to combat homophobic bullying."

||| Religion may become extinct in nine nations; mostly European, but Australia, New Zealand and Canada are also throwing off the shackles of superstition.

<<< FRANCE: Gay couples condemn discriminatory laws, express anger about parental rights, adoption and marriage, saying country lags behind rest of Europe.

||| SPAIN: Could Benidorm become costa del cool? One of Spain's "most maligned resorts" is reinventing itself with help from the pink pound...

>>> Elsewhere, the nightmare for residents trapped in Spanish ghost towns. "Half-finished developments languishing amid dust and weeds reveal the scale of a burst property bubble Spain will take years to recover from."

||| RUSSIA: Pressure is mounting on the country's poor gay equality record.

||| RUSSIA: Chernobyl 1986, in pictures.

||| THE NETHERLANDS has celebrated the 10th anniversary of the world's first legally binding gay marriage.

LATIN AMERICA

||| HAITI: After the quake, anti-GBLT violence rises: "discrimination, violence and the rape of gay men, lesbians and transgender women" soars.

||| BRAZIL: What the world needs: another homophobic ad. Click to enlarge:

||| PANAMA: Gay couple jailed for kissing.

AFRICA

||| UGANDA: Government shelves its Kill Gays bill.

ASIA-PACIFIC

||| AUSTRALIA: PM Julia Gillard continues to speak out against gay marriage.

<<< CHINA: Police raid Shanghai gay bar.

||| SOUTH KOREA: Constitutional court upholds military ban on gay behaviour.

||| CAMBODIA: UK appoints openly gay ambassador to the Kingdom.

SOUTHERN ASIA

||| INDIA: Fury over "bisexual Gandhi" biography...

...But "My book doesn't say Gandhi was homosexual".

MIDDLE EAST

||| SAUDI ARABIA: British gay man arrested, beaten and threatened with beheading after "breaching" anti-homosexuality laws in that country.

||| AFGHANISTAN: March 2011, in 35 pictures.

BODY & MIND

>>> Masturbation calms restless leg syndrome.

||| New HIV diagnoses in the UK have doubled in the last 10 years; gay men still most at risk.

||| The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission classifies HIV as a disability.

||| The early days of AIDS, as I remember them. "In early 1981, when I was designated as surgeon general, I had never heard about AIDS. No one had heard about AIDS, and the handful of scientists who knew about immunodeficiency didn't even know what to call it, much less what it really was. AIDS entered the consciousness of the public health service quietly, gradually, and without fanfare."

||| The man who likes fat men. "To be gay was acceptable, but to be gay and into fat men? That was beyond weird."

||| Does size matter? If so, here's a map to help you plan your next holiday. Congo, Ecuador, Ghana, Colombia or Venezuela, anyone?

PRINT & VISUAL

<<< The Passion of Vito Russo. Michael Schiavi chronicles the emergence of an uncompromising activist and cultural warrior. "When Vito Russo died on November 1, 1990, after a long and torturously painful battle against AIDS, the author of the best-selling The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies was one of America's best-known gay activists and certainly its most famous radical queer. Yet he was only 41 years old when he left us."

>>> Archie comics' openly gay character gets his own spin-off.

||| Logo porn.

STAGE

<<< No rivalry between Mario Lopez and Broadway dancer Nick Adams.

||| Cutting diversity in the arts will cost Britain dearly. Topher Campbell writes for The Guardian, "Minority-led theatre is most at risk from coalition cuts, yet cultural diversity is key to reflecting a true portrait of our country."

||| Broadway's Will Swenson - star of the new musical Priscilla Queen of the Desert - to direct film version of Facing East, in which "a Mormon couple grapple with their faith after the suicide of their gay son".

CINEMA

||| Coming soon: A biopic about gay porn legend Joey Stefano, who died in 1994.

<<< Review: House of Boys. "Have you ever found yourself thinking, 'I wish someone would make a gay version of Coyote Ugly, throw in a bit of Showgirls, and use it to depict the horror of Aids'? Well, now you're in luck."

>>> Review: Children of God (DVD). "A seriously impressive debut from writer/director Kareem Mortimer..."

...Who is interviewed here.

||| Captain America, trailer. The Guardian: "If this superhero performs badly due to anti-American feeling it will be a pity, because it's starting to look rather decent."

||| Lindsay Lohan to play Sharon Tate?

<<< Elizabeth Taylor, the actress, is dead. She was 79.

||| Elizabeth Taylor: let the story melt away and just gaze. "The last film star and expert survivor – David Thomson celebrates the life of Elizabeth Taylor."

>>> Could Elizabeth Taylor's gay manager inherit her fortune?

||| Why we must never forget Elizabeth Taylor. "As we write the 30 year history of AIDS, this is a call to honor a lady who not only cradled us in her arms; she made damn sure the world did as well."

||| Elizabeth Taylor on her AIDS advocacy, James Dean and Montgomery Clift.

<<< Farley Granger, the actor perhaps best known for his role in Alfred Hitchcock's gay killer thriller Rope (1948), is dead. He was 85. Granger refused studio pressure to marry to conceal his sexuality, and came out in 2007.

TELEVISION

<<< Marc Williams - he of the body perfect - features on The Adonis Factor, a documentary examining "self-esteem and the struggle with weight and body image" on US network Logo.

||| Noah's Arc's Doug Spearman (Chance) joins US soap All My Children.

||| MTV's Teen Wolf gets out gay teen character.

||| Gay storyline coming to US soap Days of Our Lives?

>>> Review: Christopher and His Kind (DVD).

<<< Review: Doctor Who - Revisitations 2 (DVD). "It is a pretty hollow experience, often depressing in fact, and leaves you feeling rather sullied even though you may have enjoyed the aestheticisation of violence with the glorification of guns and explosions as a smokescreen to the real violence being inflicted on the moral core of the series."

MUSIC

||| UK record label Mercury stops releasing singles on CD and vinyl.

||| Homophobic rapper Ja Rule faces prison on tax evasion, weapons charges. Maybe he can make friends with Buju Banton inside?

>>> "Chris Brown learned that when your internal 9-year-old asshole gets mad over a mean lady asking you questions you don't like, you should reroute your fist from a person's face and aim for an inanimate object instead." Dlisted deconstructs Chris Brown's latest episode.

||| JLS hook up with former Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

<<< "I just want to be free. I can say, today I am free." Ricky Martin scoops the top award at the GLAAD Media Awards...

...Whilst simultaneously taking a paycheque from anti-gay US retailer Target. Towleroad writes: "At what point should musicians who present themselves as LGBT role models (and accept awards from GLAAD) turn their back on corporations that give to anti-LGBT causes, but whose support undoubtedly contributes to their bottom line? And what about celebrities who aren't seen as LGBT activists but have large gay fan bases?"

||| But then, Ricky is hell's ambassador, after all.

||| Gay rapper Cazwell is back, with more sexy dancers in Get My Money Back.

>>> Somewhat more appealing are Terrence "TTgotit" Wilson and Pierre "PrinceCharming" Phipps of Freaky Boiz. Hot hot hot!

||| Or maybe Nhojj is more your cup of tea? The openly gay R&B artist is back with He & Him.

<<< Loleatta Holloway, the singer whose vocals were endlessly sampled, on records such as Black Box's 1989 hit Ride On Time, is dead. She was 64.

||| Loleatta Holloway: more than a voice.

THE SEX BIZ

<<< Israeli porn star Avi Dar is spectacularly naked in a stunning photoshoot by Thomas Synnamon.

>>> Drunk gay porn stars at the Phoenix Forum! Heeeey.

||| Porn WikiLeaks: Stopping fags spreading HIV in straight porn.

MANIKINS

>>> Rob Evans strips JUST FOR YOU. He was photographed in this fantasy pose by Forte and Zachary for the 5th edition of Carbon Copy. Here's another new snap of the ka-os|theory favourite, by Fabien Montique (below left), and one of a few by the legendary Bruce Weber (below right):

||| Jeremy Williams has lensed Salieu Jalloh and Wendell Lissimore for Client magazine:

||| Aaron O'Connell, lensed by Mariano Vivanco:

||| Emilio Flores, beautifully shot by Paola Kudacki for the 10th issue of Hercules.

<<< Rick Day and Thomas Synnamon have both shot bodybuilder Ryan Hughes.

>>> Matthias Vriens-McGrath shoots a bevy of boy beauties in Rio de Janeiro for Numéro Homme.

<<< Kenneth, by Matthias Brandt.

>>> This shot, from XNOTDEAD – The Fagzine, is part of a spread by Arno Roca for trainers. See any feet?

<<< Nate Gill flexs for German GQ.

>>> Photographer Armando Branco has lensed several boy beauties for M Mensuel.

<<< Seth Kuhlmann, by Rick Day.

>>> Ricardo, by Jeff Slater.

||| And lastly, Shawn Sutton is naked for photographer Kai Z Feng...

THE NATURAL WORLD

<<< JAPAN: Dog found alive at sea on floating debris field three weeks after Japan's earthquake and tsunami.

||| Celebrity polar bear Knut died from drowning, experts say.

>>> Here's all the plastic they found in a dead turtle's stomach.

||| More oil, more dead wildlife. This time its hundreds of endangered penguins in the south Atlantic.

<<< Creepy (crawly)! Pakistan spiders flee floods in web-covered trees.

WEB & GADGETS

||| Is the .gay domain on its way?

>>> My new favourite blog: Tube Crush. Voyeurs rejoice!

||| MySpace loses millions of users in a few weeks.

||| More Facebook privacy red flags.

<<< My second new favourite blog: Sad stuff on the street!

||| Obscene beyond all comprehension: The iPad frame made from a 65 million year old Tyrannosaurus Rex's thigh bone.

||| Apple dumps "gay cure" iPhone app after 146,000 people sign online petition.

||| Amazon launches its iTunes (boo!) killer (hurrah!), the Cloud Drive.

||| Why I protested to Apple about the Exodus app. Gary Remafedi writes for The Guardian: "I was glad Apple pulled a Christian 'gay cure' group's iPhone app that misused my research, but it shouldn't have been in the store."

||| Sweden replaces stamps with text messages.

SPORT

<<< Brandon Knight and Darius Miller share a moment...

>>> ...While Justin Harper and Cedrick Lindsay also get close.

||| London gymnastics lovely Louis Smith takes gold at the Artistic Gymnastic World Cup in Paris. Full steam ahead for London 2012!

||| Peter Tatchell calls for renewed efforts from the Football Association (FA) to counter endemic homophobia in football.

||| An interview with newly out footballer Anton Hysen.

<<< Rafael Nadal flashes some booty cleavage for Armani.

||| Straight wrestler Hudson Taylor talks about Athlete Ally, a website he initiated to "encourage athletes, coaches, parents, fans and other members of the sports community to respect all individuals involved in sports, regardless of perceived or actual sexual-orientation or gender identity or expression."

...AND FINALLY

<<< Hot couples make bitchy queens angry.

>>> My high school boyfriend was gay!

||| Bangable Dudes in History!

||| Dogs MUST be carried.

||| Our favourite GuysWithiPhones from the past week, after the jump - enjoy!

Issue 92: 19th March - 03rd April 2011

||| Read the last edition.

||| Remember what was going on this time last year? No? How about a reminder? Read Issue 59.

Cover photo: Cavier Coleman, by Pieter Henket.

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© 2011