Twelve

don't
die
before
you've
lived

This is 18-year-old Seydou Diarrassouba, who was stabbed to death outside Footlocker on Boxing Day.

Eleven people, ranging from 16 to 22, have been arrested. Kanyangarara is the twelth teenager to be murdered in London this year.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservative government is closing projects designed to prevent young people joining gangs, The Guardian reports.

But Cameron and his government of millionaire public schoolboys needn't worry about their own offspring becoming victims of knife crime: their children will go to the very best schools, in the most privleged areas, well away from the rabble.


Note: Don't Die Before You've Lived is a series of ongoing entries recording the murders of teenagers in London. Although not necessarily GBLT-related, the desperately premature loss of these young boys deserves our full attention. Please remember the names and faces you see here, and spare a thought for kids who really did die before they lived.

ka-os|theory is a London-based blog.

#106

a news compendium
with a gay bias
issue 106 | December 2011 | FREE

<<< Isaiah, lensed by Rick Day.

||| The day I came out: Celebrities reveal their very personal moments of truth. (The Independent)

||| 8 stories buried by the corporate media that you need to know about.

NORTH AMERICA & CANADA

>>> For Harlem gays, change: but not enough. Openly gay East Harlem rapper Ruperto, aka Loco Ninja, says: "A lot of men don't flip out on us the way we used to get flipped out on or bashed. Like five years ago, it was such a bad thing. You couldn't even be friends with gay people. It was like we were aliens living on Earth." (WPIX)

<<< Homeless for the holidays: Portraits of New York City's homeless GBLT youth. Left, "Envy", who left home when he was 11.

||| Thousands and thousands and thousands of years of bullying. (MOC Blog)

>>> The Denver Arts Center gets shafted by its own nanny software. It doesn't think the word "gay" is obscene after all.

||| Republican Mississippi mayor Greg Davis forced to come out after expense receipt reveals charges to "gay adult products store". (The Advocate)

||| Bachmann and the myth of the Kinsey report.

||| New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez: Discrimination against same-sex marriages cannot be tolerated in our society as a matter of law... (NJ.com)

...Meanwhile, Bryan Fischer - the voice of the anti-​gay hate group the American Family Association - says, "All sex not between married people should be criminalised!"

||| Could support for gay marriage be Barack Obama's secret weapon for the 2012 election?

...Maybe. Obama sends letter congratulating gay couple on their marriage...

...At least he didn't send one of his "evil, dog-themed Christmas cards".

||| Nevertheless, would we be better off under President Hillary?

||| Newt Gingrich might look good among this line-up. But that's not saying much. "As the contenders outdo each other in pandering to the cranks, voters may decide Obama's not so bad after all." (The Observer)

||| "There's nothing humble, gentle or patient about the intolerance and out-right bigotry coming from some of the presidential candidates of the GOP, the Gay-Obsessed Party," Jonathan Capehart writes for The Washington Post.

||| Gingrich details his anti-gay views. (GayStarNews)

||| 48 states now have out GBLT elected officials.

||| NBC Nightly News talks to gay soldiers in Afghanistan.

>>> Bradley Manning hearing: Pre-trial opens; charge sheet includes 23 counts against the WikiLeaks suspect, including that he knowingly "gave intelligence to the enemy". (The Guardian)

||| Bradley Manning hearing: Live updates. (The Guardian)

||| Bradley Manning hearing: Defence lawyer turns fire on military accusers. "On first day of preliminary hearing, investigating officer rejects defence's demand that he recuse himself." (The Guardian)

||| Bradley Manning hearing: A "danger to himself and others". "Defence papers tell of alleged US whistleblower's stress, poor leadership by superiors, and serious security lapses." (The Independent)

||| Bradley Manning: Did he do it 'cos he's gay? (Salon.com)

||| Bradley Manning: Hero or villain? (BBC News)

||| Bradley Manning: Dan Choi ejected from Bradley Manning trial, thrown off base. (Towleroad)

||| No jobs for young veterans returning home from the war.

<<< Douglas Williams - a Texas high school principal - has been ousted from his position after admitting "pinching" the nipples of male students.

>>> Brandon McInerney sentenced to just 21 years for killing 15-year-old Lawrence King.

<<< The LA Times had this unfortunate juxtaposition, which says everything, really...

||| The pansies won't be converted!

||| How Ayn Rand seduced generations of young men and helped make the US into a selfish, greedy nation. "Thanks in part to Rand, the United States is one of the most uncaring nations in the industrialized world." (AlterNet)

||| Being old and gay in the Golden State. "GBLT seniors in California get tips in new guide on how to deal with discrimination and abuse and where to find services and benefits." (GayStarNews)

<<< Is this the latest in terrorist fashion?

>>> Man dies after eating cocaine from his brother's butt.

UNITED KINGDOM

<<< Gay student Matthew Banks has been jailed for missing jury duty in order to see the musical Chicago in London.

||| In London, prison officers at the Feltham Young Offenders Institute were found to have "refused official recommendations to display Stonewall posters to inmates".

||| The Christian Institute urges Tesco boycott after one of the supermarket's executive's posted on Flickr, "I'm campaigning against evil Christians (that's not all Christians, just bad ones) who think that gay people should not lead happy lives and get married to their same-sex partners."

||| Why does Peter Tatchell want to save a homophobe's job?

>>> A footnote to the July 2010 murder of 15-year-old Zac Olumegbon. Four teenagers have been jailed for life for his stabbing death.

EUROPE

||| IRELAND: Double lives for gay teachers in Ireland.

||| Northern Cyprus to decriminalise homosexuality.

||| Can a gay socialist save Belgium?

||| Institutional Dutch Catholic abuse "affected thousands". (BBC News)

<<< DENMARK: Hans Christian Andersen gay pride plans split Danish town. (PinkPaper)

LATIN AMERICA

||| Caribbean Christians attack gay law repeal. The growing "backlash against attempts to decriminalise gay sex in the Caribbean." (GayStarNews)

>>> Fear, squalor and horror in Guatemala City. Right, a woman touches the hair of an exhumed body in the main cemetery in Guatemala City. In Guatemala, bodies are exhumed six years after burial if relatives don't pay to renew the graveyard permission. (PhotoBlog)

<<< BRAZIL: Twins born with two heads, one heart. (BBC News)

AFRICA

||| KENYA: Are gay Kenyan men really being used as sex slaves in the Middle East?

||| Africa is rising - unequally. Six of the world's fastest growing countries, millions of highly motivated entrepreneurs and increasingly prosperous consumers: things are looking up, if you're one of the lucky ones.

||| ZIMBABWE: Gay rights at the centre of constitutional debate.

||| ZIMBABWE: MP arrested for saying Mugabe is gay.

||| ZIMBABWE: The rift over Bulawayo's gay pink litter bins.

ASIA-PACIFIC

>>> MALAYSIA: The wedding in Ireland between Ariff Alfian Rosli - a Malaysian national - and his boyfriend Jonathan has caused uproar in his native country.

||| THAILAND: New airline PC Air launches with "ladyboy" flight attendants. (Bangkok Post)

<<< BURMA: A peek inside a Myanmar monastery, finding solitude, studying and smiles. (PhotoBlog)

||| AUSTRALIA: 22-year-old Umit Sengoz has been jailed for 15 years for the murder of a man he met on gay dating site GayRomeo.

||| AUSTRALIA: The Board of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras apologise for not "adequately consulting" over dropping the whole "gay and lesbian" bit, but still don't think they did anything wrong. (SameSame)

>>> CHINA: What are the mysterious white lines in the Gobi Desert?

SOUTHERN ASIA

<<< INDIA: Cold weather in New Delhi.

||| INDIA: Old Delhi, a window on India. (PhotoBlog)

||| PAKISTAN: Railways driven toward ruin. "In the three years since the current government took power the railway has retired more than half of its trains, leaving just 100 to cover a country larger than Britain and Germany combined." (PhotoBlog)

MIDDLE EAST

||| IRAQ: Activists highlight gay killings. As US forces leave Iraq, a new film shows GBLT people are worse off than before the 2003 invasion. (GayStarNews)

||| ISRAEL: Gay film thrives in Tel Aviv. The Israeli government is keen to be seen promoting liberal policies.

BODY & MIND

||| HIV vaccine approved for human studies.

||| Planes: they're flying germ factories.

||| Eating less keeps the brain young. (Medical Xpress)

>>> The "I Just Made Love" app that lets you tell the world where and when.

THE NATURAL WORLD

||| Frankincense tree facing uncertain future. (BBC News)

<<< Why the Natural History Museum of Berne is sawing this rhino's horn off.

>>> Endangered jaguars in Bolivia captured on camera. (PhotoBlog)

WEB & GADGETS

||| GayStarNews - a new GBLT news, entertainment and lifestyle website - has launched, claiming to be the "first global 24-7 gay news site".

<<< ManHunt puts sexy gay billboard in Times Square for "annoying sexphobic mommy bloggers" to complain about.

||| YouTube's top political video of the year: Zach Wahls' speech about his gay moms.

>>> Facebook: What motivates us to add friends - and remove them?

||| People more likely to lie when texting, boffins claim.

PRINT & VISUAL

||| Homophobia in the Arts. "The issue of homophobia is not something you would expect in the art world, however a recent 'work of art' in America prove this is not the case."

<<< PhotoBlog talks to photographer Alex Webb about his new book, The Suffering of Light, and shares some of the stunning pictures contained therein. Left, baseball fans in Cuba (1993).

>>> Cardinal Sin, a new sculpture by Banksy. (My Modern Metropolis)

<<< Review: Halsted Plays Himself, by William E. Jones. "Los Angeles-based artist and experimental filmmaker William Jones has brought together a variety of materials that will help, hopefully, revive an appreciation both for Halsted’s work as well as of the man himself." (Lambda Literary)

>>> Review: Gay Porn Heroes, by J.C. Adams. "It's with great respect that I looked at this luscious coffee-table tome because [Adams is] a man who knows his gay porn."

STAGE

<<< Review: Accidentally, Like a Martyr. "As you enter the tiny Paradise Factory Theatre to see Accidentally, Like a Martyr, you may think, for a brief moment, that you’ve made a wrong turn and ended up in a gay dive bar. That’s because the performance space has been transformed into a convincing facsimile of a decrepit watering hole, complete with moldy disco music. And those shadowy male figures conversing and sipping drinks? They're actors." (Gay City News)

||| There's an interview with that play's author here.

CINEMA

||| This year's best GBLT characters.

||| Good news - Seed Money: The Chuck Holmes Story has reached it's $US25,000 Kickstarter goal.

>>> A feature length documentary is to examine the recently closed Starlite Lounge, the oldest black-owned gay bar in New York City, which opened in 1959. Right, former Starlite staff member Willie Rowe. Support the film here. Trailer.

||| Trailer: The Dark Knight Rises:


TELEVISION

||| Clues that lead to more clues that add up to nothing: How Lost continues to destroy television.

||| Jesus, Mary and Joseph - the empty, shameless narcissism of Essex and Jersey Shore is alive and well in Ireland. With added homo-eroticism, apparently.

||| And on that note... The Biggest TV Stinkers of 2011. (AfterElton)

<<< Is sitcom Work It insulting to trans people? (The Advocate)

||| GLAAD wants ABC to pull the new sitcom. (GLAAD)

||| Help get a new series of The DL Chronicles made.

||| Absolutely Fabulous is coming back, and Pats and Eddy have the Kardashians in their sights...


MUSIC

||| Rhianna's n***a bitch incident: lost in translation?

||| Is the music over for HMV? The UK's last major record store is in bad trouble.

||| Review: Rizzle Kicks live at Scala, London. "An ebullient, impossible to dislike set."

<<< Jordan Stephens from Rizzle Kicks shows us what he's working worth.

||| George Michael is home for the holidays.

>>> Why rappers are suddenly speaking out in support of gay pride. "Hip-hop and homophobic hate speech have long gone hand in hand—but now MCs from Fat Joe to The Game are changing their tune." Has hip-hop really reached a "gay-friendly tipping point". (The Daily Beast)

||| Drake set to take Jusin Bieber in hand.

THE SEX BIZ

<<< Falcon Studios signs up the (delightfully untattooed) Micah Brandt as an exclusive.

||| Porn star Harry Louis (Men At Play, Lucas Entertainment) is banging frock-maker Marc Jacobs. (Queerty)

>>> Trey Turner and Jessie Colter: Boyfriends, porn co-stars - now underwear models too! They're living the dream, kids...

||| Talking to ka-os|theory favourite Remy Mars.

||| Gay porn really is Wild.

SPORT

<<< The NFL's thickest necks!

...AND FINALLY

||| 2011: The year when a lot happened.

>>> Mermen Christmas decorations!

||| And finally, the best Christmas song: EVER!

The face of a lover is an unknown, precisely because it is invested with so much of oneself. It is a mystery, containing, like all mysteries, the possibility of torment

M A N N E Q U I N
M A N I A
men, in pictures

Tired old queen at the movies

review
The High and the Mighty

B
uckle your seat belt, grab a life-jacket and say your prayers as John Wayne and an all-star cast take an ill-fated flight across the Pacific in William Wellman's The High and the Mighty. Based on the bestselling novel by Ernest K. Gann, this was one of the first airplane disaster movies and set the standard for years to come.

A trans-Pacific flight from Hawaii to San Francisco runs into trouble past "the point of no return" and pilot (Robert Stack) along with his salty and veteran co-pilot (John Wayne), must decide if they can make their destination or down the damaged plane in the drink, risking the survival of everyone on board.

And what a passenger list! There's Oscar winner Claire Trevor as a good-time -gal whose time may be up; Phil Harris as a slob always looking on the bright side; and Jan Sterling as a woman trying to cover her tracks. Then there's the crew - Robert Stack, fighting both a fear of flying and of failure at the worst possible time; Doe Avedon as the stewardess who must keep the faith despite the circumstances; William Campbell as the smarmy assistant who sees too much and talks too often; and John Wayne fighting the ghosts of his dead family by returning to the cock-pit in an effort to regain and retain his dignity.

It's big screen adventure at it's best and believe me, when you fly, you won't forget The High and the Mighty!

Steve Hayes

(Syndication is with the kind permission of Steve Hayes.)

#105

a news compendium
with a gay bias
issue 105 | December 2011 | FREE

<<< Meet Brazilian twins Marcos and Márcio Patriota. Just because.

||| 2011: A good year to be gay. "From marriage equality to the end of don't ask, don't tell, this has been an extraordinary year. Here, Aaron Hicklin, editor-in-chief of Out magazine, looks forward to the end of gay culture." (The Guardian)

||| Can you be gay and Muslim?

NORTH AMERICA & CANADA

<<< Terrence Chappell on being young, black and gay in Chicago.

>>> Twin boys become brother and sister.

||| Tyler Clementi told his parents he had no friends.

||| Christie Blatchford, a columnist for Canada's National Post is aghast that boys are now hugging and attributes it to the push for anti-bulllying laws.

||| Johnny Robinson, a gay homecoming king, has a message for bullied teen Jonah Mowry.


||| Shelter for homeless GBLT youth launches in Philadelphia.

<<< Winners of the first annual "Out in the Silence" award for youth activism announced. Left, the Farrington High School Gay-Straight Alliance, Honolulu, Hawaii.


||| New Jersey's black churches open their doors to gay congregants.

>>> Westboro Baptist Church acolyte cluelessly protests in a Glee tee.

||| The Top 10 ex-gay stories of 2011. (Falls Church News-Press)

||| The theocratic gay-bashers behind the lawsuit against NY marriage equality. "The Plaintiffs seeking to have New York's Marriage Equality Law overturned on procedural grounds believe, in their hallucinating dementedness, that they have a constitutional right and a divinely-​inspired duty to impose their religious strictures against gay people on the whole population." (The New Civil Rights Movement)

<<< The anti-gay National Organization for Marriage (NOM) is funded (mostly) by just two donors.

||| News networks "regularly promote anti-gay Family Research Council on air".

||| Remember last week's stories about homophobic Mayor of Troy, Michigan, Janice Daniels? Here's an amazing video of a married lesbian couple and their daughters schooling the pickled harpy in love and tolerance.


||| Meanwhile on the campaign trail, gay equality questions won't go away.

||| The gay Republican challenging his party's hate.

>>> John Katehis has been sentenced to 25 years to life in prison for the 2009 murder of gay radio reporter George Weber.

<<< Asian students branded "Ching" and "Chong" by fastfood restaurant.

||| The gay soldier booed by Republicans says military has been "awesome about this".

>>> Sailor twice discharged under Don't Ask, Don't Tell is reinstated in navy.

<<< Time magazine's Person of the Year: The Protester.

UNITED KINGDOM

||| Metropolitan Police forced to apologise to and compensate a 15-year-old who one of their officers described as "running around being stupid and gay".

<<< London riots: Most wanted suspect CCTV images released.

||| Police test for riot laser that can temporarily blind.

||| Eyewitnesses tell how transgender lawyer Sonia Burgess was pushed under tube train in murder trial. (BBC News)

||| Senthooran Kanagasingham has admitted killing Burgess, but judges rejected his plea of diminished responsibility.

>>> Peter Tatchell: Rebel with many causes.

||| Divorce, civil partnership dissolutions on the rise.

||| Peers drop challenge to the lifting of a ban on gays and lesbians holding civil partnership ceremonies in churches.

<<< Meet Samuel Kneen, Mr Gay UK 2011.

EUROPE

||| U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights urges "countries to abolish legal discrimination against gays, including the death penalty for consensual sex."

||| GERMANY: Gay history of red East Germany revealed. "New book lifts lid on vibrant sexuality, including gays and lesbians, in the Communist GDR." (GayStarNews)

||| Norway tells gay Iraqi asylum seeker: "Go home and be discrete"

LATIN AMERICA

||| HONDURAS: 58 gays and lesbians have been murdered this year.

||| The mystery kidney disease sweeping across Central America; it's "the second biggest cause of death among men in El Salvador, and in Nicaragua it's a bigger killer of men than HIV and diabetes combined."

AFRICA

>>> South African-based human rights activist Joel Nana, of the African Men for Sexual Health and Rights, ain't impressed with British Prime Minister David Cameron's threat to cut aid over GBLT equality issues: "Cameron's statement was extremely dangerous to our movement. It re-emphasizes the notion that homosexuality is un-African or European. It shows that Great Britain will cut aid over LGBT issues and nothing else... We're also part of mainstream African society. They're also cutting aid to youth services and people living with HIV." Video.

||| Put railways before gays, Ugandan leader tells donors. "Before anyone gives me a lecture about homosexuals and their rights, first talk about railways. Homosexuals also need electricity, homosexuals also need roads, homosexuals also need railways," Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said.

<<< UGANDA: Politicians and newspaper editors advocate killing gay people. But they don't speak for everyone. (Mother Jones)

||| Malawi forced to review anti-gay laws.

||| ETHIOPIA: Gay and sex tourism growing, NGO claims.

ASIA-PACIFIC

||| CAMBODIA: The ancient city of Siem Reap is emerging as a travel hot spot for gay men.

>>> CHINA: Welcome to the ruins of Wonderland.

||| SINGAPORE: Manikins from across the globe go shirtless to open a clothes shop in the republic. Guess which one.


<<< VIETNAM: A mind-bloggling tribute to the September 11 atrocity? No, an oasis in the sky, apparently.

||| INDONESIA: Hard-line police shave punks' mohawks, throw them in pools, in "moral rehab" drive.


||| AUSTRALIA: Carmen Rupe, "transgender goddess and GBLT icon", is dead. She was 75.

SOUTHERN ASIA

||| INDIA: It won't be easy for a Bollywood celebrity to come out of the closet, but that day should be here soon. (Mumbai Mirror)

||| INDIA: Home to the greatest number of child laborers in the world.

<<< PAKISTAN: Police rescue chained students from seminary in Karachi.

>>> PAKISTAN: Schoolboys stand near burning fuel trucks on 12th December 2011.

BODY & MIND

<<< A spoonful of sugar helps your skin age prematurely.

||| Boffins prove ecstasy causes chronic - and permanent - changes in the human brain.

||| Pink v blue - are children born with gender preferences?

||| Gay culture and sex addiction: Coming out, acting out?

THE NATURAL WORLD

>>> The whole world.

||| There will be life on Mars.

||| Toronto's gay penguins split as one mates with female.

<<< 100 Beluga whales trapped in Russian Far East.

>>> This psychedelic gecko is one of 200 new species discovered in South East Asia.

||| Mystery of the male ostrich's underpowered erection solved.

||| The spider who's brain is so big it spills into its legs.

WEB & GADGETS

||| Are you ready for the coming .XXX shitstorm? (MOC Blog)

<<< The emails Facebook hides from you. (Yes, it really is frustrating. When I checked the "Other" folder, I discovered three very polite emails from a model asking me to take his pictures down from ka-os|theory. The messages were from October and I never received them.)

||| Twitter: It's 140 characters of hate.

||| Myspace drops out of UK top ten social networks.

||| Why the internet piracy bill is a free speech "kill switch".

||| Inside search engines' war on bad results.

PRINT & VISUAL

>>> New Beginnings LGBT Campaign, a calendar of homoerotic work, from Romania.

||| So - is Tintin gay or what?

||| The fairy palace made from baby teeth.

<<< Jerry Robinson, the comic book artist who created Batman's sidekick Robin, is dead. He was 89.

CINEMA

||| With just three days to go, Seed Money: The Chuck Holmes Story has almost reached its Kickstarter goal of $US25,000. Find out more about this fascinating slice of gay history here.

||| George Clooney: "Gay and lesbian people are born equal in dignity and rights".

>>> The Dark Knight Rises is coming.

||| Behold: The Spielberg Face.


||| Here's a look at Sacha Baron Cohen as Middle Eastern despot General Aladeen in his new film, The Dictator.


TELEVISION

>>> Two episodes of Doctor Who from the mid-sixties, thought to have been lost forever, have been returned to the BBC by a private collector. More than 100 episodes of 1960s Doctor Who are still missing, having been wiped by the BBC in the 1970s. More on that story here.

<<< Looking for new lodgings? The house from American Horror Story is up for grabs.

||| Chris Meloni officially part of True Blood.

||| Hulk Hogan files defamation lawsuit against ex-wife Linda Bollea, who claims he cheated on her with fellow wrestler Brutus Beefcake. Hogan says, "If any of that was true, I would admit it, and (if) I was a homosexual I would embrace it."

THE SEX BIZ

||| Red alert! Bel Ami's Peters twins AND Viking God Kris Evans? Yes, please... (More pictures here.)

>>> Important breaking news about gay-for-pay tease Cody Cummings. VERY IMPORTANT NEWS. Okay?

||| And there's more!

||| Spencer Fox returns to porn after anti-gay meltdown.

<<< Vote for your favourite Gay Porn Couple of the year! Left, Trey Turner and Jessie Colter.

>>> Meet Randy Blue's latest discovery, Christian Thorn. Oh, yes...

||| OMG! OMG! OMG! Stupidly beautiful all-American Ajay - one of Fratmen's twins - has graduated to oral scenes. Next stop...

SPORT

||| Tennis greats Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova blast homophobic Australian tennis legend Margaret Court.

||| Gay footballers should feel free to come out, say fans. New research suggests "more than 90 per cent of fans would approve of a gay player and say there is no place for homophobia in football."

||| Two out athletes tell students why they shouldn't say "that's so gay."

...AND FINALLY

||| Global cocoa shortage to send chocolate prices soaring.

<<< Magnetic man.

||| Boston's Santa Speedo Run, anyone?

||| I Saw Daddy Kissing Santa Claus...


||| Jonny McGovern is Dickmatized...


...And Nancy Dell'Olio is here to help!

 
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