KAOS: April 2011

review

Funny Face

t's delightful, it's delicious, it's de-lovely, when Fred Astaire, Audrey Hepburn and Kay Thompson hit the streets of Paris singing Gershwin in Stanley Donen's classic Funny Face.

Audrey plays a seemingly ugly duckling transformed into a swan when she becomes a fashion model who's taken under the wing of fashion photographer Astaire. Playing a character based on Richard Avedon, who over saw the production and filled it with his classic images, he teams up with Thompson, in her screen debut as a powerful fashion editor, based on Diana Vreeland. Shot in Technicolor, on location in New York and Paris, it's a glorious, music filled eyeful. Hepburn more than keeps up with Astaire. Thompson commits grand larceny by stealing the film from under both their noses. You'll be swept away with the singing, dancing and the magic of April in Paris when you see Funny Face.

Steve Hayes

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a news compendium

with a gay bias
issue 93 | April 2011 | FREE

<<< Rick Day has shot an insanely sexy editorial, featuring Murilo Rezende and Pablo Moraes, for Rufskin's new swimwear campaign.. More manikins later.

But first, everything you need to know from the last few weeks - with bonus eye candy, and extra silliness...

||| The new backlash against gays: Patrick Strudwick writes, "You're a bully. You're violent and threatening. You want to silence your opponents and stamp out freedom of speech. This is precisely how gay people today are being portrayed. This is the new backlash. And the queen of this dirty campaign? Melanie Phillips. The Daily Mail columnist recently described gay people who believe in equal rights not just as 'bullies' but as 'totalitarian' 'McCarthyites' who subject their opponents to 'victimisation' rendering them 'petrified' and who are guilty of 'bigotry in reverse'."

<<< Wilson Cruz celebrates Miami Beach Gay Pride 2011.

||| For gay men, the White Party is their place in the sun.

||| Was Jesus openly gay?

||| Don't use Bible as guide for sexual morality, scholar says.

||| Gay bishop: Bible is silent on homosexuality.

NORTH AMERICA & CANADA

>>> Bishop Eddie Long "close" to settling sexual coercion lawsuits.

<<< Jesse Jackson denies former gay employee's harassment claims.

>>> Dharun Ravi - the student who used a webcam to spy on a homosexual encounter involving his roommate (who committed suicide when he found out) - has been indicted on 15 charges.

||| His indictment "spells out cold and calculated acts," say Tyler Clementi's parents.

<<< The boy with pink toenails, and the rightwing crazies.

||| Malcolm X was "gay-for-pay", writes Rev. Irene Monroe.

||| Of course, the claims are disputed by his daughter.

||| Welcome to the Second Chance Prom, where you don't have to be straight to dance.

||| Masons hand indefinite suspension to openly gay member.

>>> Carl Lewis to rub for New Jersey Senate. Will he address his sexual orientation?

||| Anti-gay Bush official sentenced to jail.

||| Renowned bigot Maggie Gallagher wins the "First Annual Anita Bryant Award".

||| Sarah Palin and the biggest hoax in American political history.

||| Donald Trump says he has a great relationship with "the blacks". But he finds it tough being anti-gay in New York, poor dear.

||| How social conservatives will defeat The Gay Agenda by inventing new words...

...In other words, Conservatives have declared war on the word "gay".

<<< Republican National Committee removes anti-gay page criticising President Obama's pro-gay stance.

||| The Right warns of "homosexuals skipping hand in hand to adoption agencies".

||| Why Mike Huckabee can't run for president. Fred Karger writes at The Guardian, "The former Republican governor released a criminal who went on to kill

four cops. He never apologised – nor for anti-gay slurs."

>>> US retailer Target pulls out all the stops to prove it loves the gays.

<<< National Organization For Marriage activist switches sides.

||| No attention paid to the violent, sexual abuse of GBLT refugee detainees.

||| The religious right's hollow family values agenda: Wayne Besen writes, "In 2011, the Religious Right has been reduced to angry people in weird hats that embrace multi-divorced politicians, cheer anti-intellectual candidates, stubbornly refuse to learn about LGBT people even as mainstream conservatives increasingly support equality, disdain compromise, demand tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, and bash victims of pedophile priests."

||| Obama: Doing the right thing for 2012. "Should we sublimate our intrinsic desire to continue advocating for full equality to the urgency of reelecting a man who has presided over some of the greatest advances in the history of the LGBT movement?"

>>> Irene Monre on America's gay Confederate and Union soldiers: "Lowry references a ball put on by a Massachusetts regiment stationed in Virginia in 1864 about young drummer boys dressed as women. One man wrote to his wife: 'Some of the real women went, but the boy girls were so much better looking that they left. ...We had some little Drummer Boys dressed up and I'll bet you could not tell them from girls if you did not know them. ...Some of [the Drummer Boys] looked good enough to lay with and I guess some of them did get laid with. ...I know I slept with mine."

||| Catholic group claims children raped by priests were "homosexual" participants, not victims.

<<< The military's secret shame. "When men in the military rape other men in the ranks, no one wants to talk about it. Why the sexual assault of males in the service is finally being confronted."

||| 9 million Americans estimated to be gay or bisexual.

||| Has your state banned sodomy?

||| CANADA: Jewish Defense League likens gays to Nazis.

UNITED KINGDOM

>>> London's very own Bishop Eddie Long: Meet Pastor Albert Odulele, who has admitted assaulting a 14-year-old boy, and a 21-year-old youth pastor.

||| Gay couple on their first date ejected from Soho pub for kissing...

...But they should have left after warning from landlord, an ex-president of the Federation of Licensed Victuallers Associations claims.

<<< 300 turn out for a kiss-in outside the pub. Video here (ka-os|theory's very own Oura gets some tongue action with a hottie at the end of the clip!)

Oura does his bit for equality!

||| Williams and Bull call the response "magnificent and overwhelming".

<<< The pub was forced to close again last week when a second kiss-on was staged.

||| Gay marriage rally at Buckingham Palace planned for Monday.

||| Britain's Conservative-led government consults on scrapping the Equality Act, which covers all anti-discrimination legislation.

>>> Ian McKellen enlisted by Stonewall to take anti-homophobia campaign to schools.

||| Teen faces jail time over attack on gay man.

||| BBC news editor sacked for subjecting junior colleague to a campaign of gay sexual harassment.

<<< 14-year-old London boy dies in fall from tower block.

||| Is Britain to blame for many of the world's problems?

EUROPE

>>> FRANCE: The remains of Air France Flight AF447 - which disappeared over the Atlantic en route to Paris from Rio in 2009 - have been found. 228 people were killed.

<<< ITALY: "The collapse of the Roman Empire and the arrival of the Barbarians was due to the spread of homosexuality." Professor Roberto De Mattei, vice-president of Italy's Centre for National Research, latches onto a familiar scapegoat.

||| GERMANY: Openly homophobic imam expelled.

||| NETHERLANDS: Government pledges to get tough on anti-gay violence.

||| RUSSIA: The European Court of Human Rights has rejected Russia's appeal of Moscow Pride Ban.

>>> RUSSIA: Gay activist suffers second assault by fascists, police refuse action.

||| SERBIA: Anti-gay parade rioters get jail time.

||| ROMANIA: Teenagers widely intolerant of gays, people with AIDS and Gypsies.

<<< CZECH REPUBLIC: Archaeologists unearth 5,000-year-old remains of what they believe may have been the world's oldest known gay caveman.

LATIN AMERICA

>>> COLOMBIA: 19-year-old Jhoncito Arango has created a web series about gay youth, Yonkis. Visit the Yonkis YouTube channel. Visit the Yonkis blog.

||| Brazil at a crossroads for GBLT rights.

||| URUGUAY: Legislators introduce marriage equality bill.

||| MEXICO: Drug wars (36 pictures). Below left, a policeman looks at a dismembered corpse in Acapulco.

||| JAMAICA: Developing World Bioethics Journal - one of the world's leading bioethics publications - says Jamaicans are stopping their GBLT community being monogamous.

||| Cuba looks back - and forward (31 pictures).

AFRICA

||| African gay equality activists stand strong as brutality rises.

||| ZIMBABWE: President Robert Mugabe condemns gay "filth" in Europe.

<<< Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe (GALZ) respond: "The President needs to provide leadership in overcoming Zimbabwe’s challenges in areas such as violence, unemployment, education and health rather than fostering antipathy and intolerance."

||| UGANDA: David Kato should share responsibility for his murder, Uganda Ambassador asserts in shocking letter to European Parliament.

||| UGANDA: Cabinet suggests alternatives to anti-homosexuality bill.

>>> UGANDA: Unprecedented gay hate campaign unfolding; leading anti-gay activist Martin Ssempa has presented a petition (supposedly signed by two million people) to the Speaker of the Ugandan Parliament.

||| UGANDA: Join The Homosexuals, get paid a salary!

||| MALAWI: Government threatens pro-GBLT activists over foreign aid withdrawals.

||| BOTSWANA: Landmark sodomy decriminalization case begins.

<<< NIGERIA: Nigerian gay man Uche Nanbuife faces deportation from Britain.

ASIA-PACIFIC

||| MALAYSIA: 66 "effeminate" teenage boys sent to anti-gay training camp.

>>> MALAYSIA: Anti-gay camp violates law says woman's minister.

<<< Being gay in Burma.

||| CHINA: AIDS deaths hit "peak" as 7,700 die.

>>> JAPAN: One month later (36 pictures).

||| JAPAN: Remember the dog found floating in the Pacific from last issue? The story had a happy ending.

||| AUSTRALIA: Anti-gay Prime Minister Julia Gillard flees activists.

||| AUSTRALIA: Military threatened with mass sex abuse lawsuit. 10 former servicemen have filed complaints of sexual, physical and psychological abuse dating back to the 1970s and 80s.

||| AUSTRALIA: Military failed to discipline dozens of personnel linked to online gay-hate campaign.

SOUTHERN ASIA

<<< INDIA: Minister predicts future where all men are gay.

||| INDIA: TV channel TV9 outs members of gay social netork PlanetRomeo.

||| INDIA: There are many reasons why Bangalore can claim to be one of the better cities for gay rights [in India], Vinay Chandran writes in The Hindu.

MIDDLE EAST

>>> SAUDI ARABIA: Mile high tower twice the height of Burj Khalifa planned.

BODY & MIND

||| Highly contagious "AIDS-like" disease spreading in China.

||| Don't worry though, it's not an apocalyptic virus, it'a all in the mind. It's actually "AIDS phobia", the government claims. (That's alright, then.)

<<< UNITED KINGDOM: Conservative government's pledge to end ban on gay men giving blood rings hollow.

||| Peter Tatchell: Ten-year gay blood ban is unjustified. There's an interview with Tatchell here.

||| Dr. Alfred M. Freedman, "the psychiatrist and social reformer who led the American Psychiatric Association in 1973 when, overturning a century-old policy, it declared that homosexuality was not a mental illness", is dead. He was 94.

||| What happens when the drugs don't work anymore?

||| Scientists study belly button bacteria.

>>> What's wrong with her face?!

||| Cheap wine good as pricier bottles, blind taste test reveals...

...But don't get too carried away. Drinking over the recommended limit "raises cancer risk".

||| HOWEVER! Alcohol helps ours memories, boffins at the University of Texas believe. "Repeated ethanol exposure enhances synaptic plasticity in key brain area."

||| Is your caffeine craving in the genes?

PRINT & VISUAL

<<< And Tango Makes Three (by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell) - the gay children's book - is again the "most challenged book", according to the American Library Association.

>>> As A Different Light gay bookstore in Castro closes, so too does the expertise "expertise that they brought to bookselling..."

...But could GBLT burnout be to blame for the closure?

<<< New magazine for gay youth launching next month: B.

||| Sex and the Vatican: A Secret Journey in the Reign of the Chaste, an Italian book by Carmelo Abbate, exposes Rome gay priest scene.

||| Why the decision to include "the role and contributions" of gay Americans in textbooks should be left to educators and textbook writers, not politicians.

>>> Last gay Holocaust survivor celebrated in book, Happiness Always Came To Me.

||| "LOL" is now in the Oxford English Dictionary. But where did the term originate?

||| Was Gandhi queer?

||| Dick attack!

CINEMA

||| Here's a trailer for Call Me Kuchu, a film seeking funding on Kickstarter: "We've been documenting the lives of Uganda's LGBT activist community for more than a year. Now we need your support to help us start editing this important film and bring their stories to as wide an audience as possible.

Take a look at the video above, which provides a taster of Call Me Kuchu using footage from our very first shoot in Uganda." Pledges start at $1.

<<< The 50 worst movie taglines.

||| Gay: Russian cinema's last taboo.

||| Sony joins James Bond rescue.

||| An "edgy, adult prequel to The Wizard of Oz"? Yes, please!

||| Marvel confirms Thor, Captain America sequels.

>>> Taylor Lautner does acting in John Singleton's Abduction. See the trailer.

<<< Maybe The Devil's Double is more your cup of tea? The indie "apparently is as epic as Scarface and Lawrence of Arabia, as it's about the real life 'crazy motherfucker' Uday Hussein, son of Saddam".

<<< Review: KickOff. "A fantastically feelgood dramedy that, to use footballing parlance, really hits the back of the net." Elsewhere, there's an interview with one of the film's stars, Craig Storrod.

||| Review: KickOff. "As the first gay football movie it definitely scores."

>>> Review: Judas Kiss. "Flawed but its heart is in the right place... Gay cinema is finally going places, like magical realism, where few have thought to take it before."

<<< Review: Boys On Film 6 - Pacific Rim. "A cover-all-bases collection that showcases short filmmaking at its absolute best and looks set to only further cement the Boys on Film franchise's rep for packaging up top-drawer work..."

||| Sidney Lumet, the director best known for films like 12 Angry Men, Dog Day Afternoon, and Network, is dead. He was 86.

TELEVISION

>>> Elisabeth Sladen, the actress best known for her portrayal of Sarah Jane Smith in Doctor Who, is dead. She was 63.

||| Elisabeth Sladen: Former co-star Tom Baker writes movingly for The Sun about their time together. "SARAH JANE dead? No, impossible! Impossible! She can't be dead. But she is. Cancer. I had no idea she was ill - she was so private, never wanted any fuss. Now, gone..."

||| Elisabeth Sladen: Cathode Ray Tube remembers her.

||| Elisabeth Sladen: Just what the Doctor ordered (Belfast Telegraph).

||| Elisabeth Sladen: More than just a fantasy mother; In praise of Elisabeth Sladen; Obituary; (The Guardian).

||| Elisabeth Sladen: Obituary (Telegraph).

||| Elisabeth Sladen was who I wanted to be when I grew up (PopMatters).

||| Elisabeth Sladen: Ten things you need to know.

||| Elisabeth Sladen: In pictures (BBC News).

<<< Elisabeth Sladen: Coronation Street blog remembers her time on the cobbles (in the comments, a 10-year-old writes: "I enjoyed watching The Sarah Jane Adventures. I wanted to be one of the gang when I grew up. I am in tears writing this because i am her Number 1 fan).

>>> Review: Doctor Who - Planet of the Spiders. "A symbolically rich soup, Planet of the Spiders is a fitting coda to the Pertwee era..."

||| EX-TRA-PO-LATE! Moral philosophy and the Daleks. "They’ve had viewers cowering behind the sofa since Doctor Who began – but what exactly is it that makes people so frightened of the Daleks? A new study by a Cambridge researcher claims to have the answer."

||| Chris Meloni is a New Yorker for Marriage Equality...

<<< American network ABC cancels daytime soaps One Life To Live and All My Children after more than 40 years on air; falling ratings and cheaper "reality" shows to blame.

||| And TV's changing landscape is washing soaps away, too. "High production costs, prime-time dramas lead networks to search for cheaper shows."

||| But soaps matter, Lesleyann Coker writes at The Huffington Post.

||| The boss of Hoover would agree, it seems: He's pulled the firm's ads in protest at the cancellations.

||| Does it spell doom for Britain's soap giants? No, says Gillian Reynolds at the Telegraph. "America may be seduced by reality television,

but in Britain we have higher standards."

<<< In happier news, Absolutely Fabulous is to return for a new series.

||| EastEnders to have its first gay wedding as Christian proposes to Syed.

||| Stranger than fiction: Former Brookside actor charged with murder.

||| Meet TV's first gay skateboard champ - and his ambitious mom.

MUSIC

>>> Rapper Lil B to title his new album I'm Gay. "I'm going to do the most controversial thing in hip hop... i'm gonna show you that words don't mean s**t. I'm gonna make an album called "I'm gay."

||| Nhojj does his bit for marriage equality - and interracial love - with Amazing Grace. The clip, featuring a white model, doesn't go down too well on sites like Living Out Loud with Darian. "A beautiful song and video only to be marred by having a white man in the video. With all the beautiful men of color out there, why him? This video could have really been powerful if it were a black/latino man," one reader complains.

||| Lady Gaga tears into the disabled with "retarded" slur.

<<< Craig David: What went wrong?

||| Toddler upstages Justin Bieber; strays somewhat on rap lyrics.

THE SEX BIZ

<<< How Raging Stallion star Logan McCree hoped to be the only gay porn star in a Scottish village.

>>> Falcon Studios returns - post merger - with the sixth installment of The Other Side of Aspen. Roman Heart stars.

<<< Brent Everett gets on the twincest train. Elsewhere, Brent was Performer of the Year at the 2nd Annual TLA Gay Awards.

>>> Bel Ami kicks off South American talent search.

||| How MTV's The Real World managed to disappear every trace of their "straight" star's gay porn past.

<<< Meet Marcello and Enrico: married, and yours to own (by the hour).

||| Frontiers magazine celebrates 30 years of AIDS with muscle queens and cake!

MANIKINS

>>> Rob Evans, photographed by Christian Oita, for Johnson Magazine.

<<< Justin Borbely shoots "Raymond" for i-D online.

<<< Seth Kuhlmann, by Rick Day.

>>> Models Juan Manuel Arancibia and Kieth

Hernandez, by Matthew Stone.

>>> Gabriel Jackson shoots "Joey" for TheMaleForm.

<<< A beautiful young love editorial, by Sean and Seng, shot in Bangkok for Arena

Homme+.

>>> Markus Ricci is an All American Guy.

<<< Mariano Vivanco shoots "When The

Real Me Comes Alive", for Hercules magazine, featuring model Travis Cannata.

>>> Jian Yee, by B.

Charles Johnson.

<<< Marlon Teixeira, by Terry Richardson, for Diesel Fragrance, unveils his fuel for life.

>>> Vin Martinez, by Bryan Taylor Johnson. The story is "The Majestic Warrior".

<<< Nate Gill, by Xevi

Muntané, for GQ Style Germany.

>>> Photographer Ivan Hidalgo has shot the XTG Swimwear and Gymwear 2011 campaign.

<<< Gustaw, by Dylan

Rosser,

for TheMaleForm.

>>> Jean-Noel - editor of Pink Alert News - by ace photographer François Rousseau.

||| And lastly, Chris, shot by Rick Day, Pedro Arnon by Didio, and Russian artist Kai Karenin renders Brazilian model Mattheus Lian.

THE NATURAL WORLD

||| Ozone layer faces record 40% loss over Arctic.

<<< China's barbaric live animal key chains take mindless consumerism to a new low.

||| New York rats "out of control".

||| Cat vs. treadmill...

WEB & GADGETS

>>> Queerty - the sometimes controversial gay blog - has closed.

||| Is Apple prepping a YouTube killer?

||| Sinister: How Apple is keeping track of your every move.

||| Facebook's censorship problem.

SPORT

>>> Phillips Idowu: My jump out of poverty.

||| Outsports: Confronting an enduring taboo.

||| Brazilian volleyball team shows love to openly gay player after fan taunts.

<<< Plastic boy slut goes commando!

||| Kobe Bryant fined $US100,000 over anti-gay slur.

||| Openly gay former baller John Amaechi reacts: "I'm surprised that people are surprised."

||| Lakers, NBA to work with GLAAD to address anti-gay slur.

>>> Homophobic backlash after Toronto Raptors' Leandro Barbosa and Reggie Evans hold hands.

...AND FINALLY

||| SPAIN: Gym offers naked workout...

...Whilst in the US, women march for the right to dress like sluts.

||| 10 places it's (almost) impossible to visit.

||| Meet the new Old Spice guy, and pay a visit to China's brand new ghost towns...