#114

a news compendium

with a gay bias
WEEKLY | Issue 114 | March 2012 | FREE | be.told.

 OPENING SHOTS 

< Let's kick off with new pictures of ka-os|theory favourite Micah Brandt. Oh, Micah...

||||| Black? Gay? The shared struggle for civil rights.

||||| OMG! Gays have more rights than Christians, say Christian politicians.

 US & CANADA NEWS 

> Fourth man charged in Brandon White gay-bashing case. 24-year-old Javaris Bradford has been indicted but remains at large.

< But was the he man heard yelling "faggot" at Brandon White during the attack actually the person recording the assault, and not one of the attackers? That's what the defense claims.

||||| Brandon White did not know his attackers, his attorney asserts.

||||| The man secretly filmed kissing Tyler Clementi has told a court he saw the webcam used to film them.

||||| Meanwhile, Molly Wei has also testified, describing Ravi as "freaking out" as he watched
Clementi kissing another man.

> This is 15-year-old David Levitt, a bullied gay teen who survived a suicide attempt.

||||| Did gay Republican sheriff Paul Babeau have a relationship with a 17-year-old student?

< Gay US Marine's photogenic homecoming goes viral. See Brandon Morgan and Dalan Wells speak out.

> New York's first straight-friendly gay hotel, The Out NYC, opens...

...And at the other end of the glamour scale, the city gets its first gay senior citizens centre.

||||| So, just how many people can Manhattan hold?

||||| Harvard asked to overturn gay expulsions of 1920.

< Inside a South Carolina plantation. Left, a grave stone with just the first name of "Jane" at the slave cemetery, Friendfield Plantation, South Carolina.

 UK NEWS 

> Gay-Straight Alliance club confronts homophobia at north London school. "Copland community school in Wembley imports US model in which gay and straight pupils join forces to tackle discrimination."

||||| Bank apologises after urging customers to call gay dating line.

||||| Cardinal Keith O'Brien, leader of the Catholic Church in Scotland, brands UK government's gay marriage plan "madness" and a "grotesque subversion of a universally accepted human right."

||||| Christian politicians want law change to allow abusive preaching. "Cross-party Christian committee complains religion is being squeezed by equality."

< Convicted: Victoria Osoteku found guilty for her part in the 2010 murder of 15-year-old Sofyen Belamouadden at a London Tube station.

> Kristy Bamu murder: Eric Bikubi, 28, and Magalie Bamu, 29, found guilty of Kristy Bamu's murder on Christmas Day in 2010.

||||| Kristy Bamu murder: Magalie Bamu, the woman who killed her brother.

|||||  Kristy Bamu murder: We turn up our music to cover the screams.

||||| Kristy Bamu murder: Kristy was killed because his attackers thought he was a witch, yet we should not view this abuse differently from other forms.

||||| Kristy Bamu murder: Witchcraft belief is a curse on Africa. "Kristy Bamu was killed because his sister thought him a witch. In Africa, Christianity has only added to the toxicity of such beliefs."

||||| Kristy Bamu murder: The barbaric torture of 83 children branded witches in a crimewave fuelled by medieval beliefs imported from Africa, Asia and the Caribbean.

||||| Kristy Bamu murder: Government urged to tackle witchcraft belief child abuse.

||||| The illegal immigrants desperate to escape squalor of Britain.

 EUROPE NEWS 

||||| UN Human Rights Council discusses discrimination and violence against gay people.

> IRELAND: Ghost towns tell the story of faded dreams.

< SPAIN: Student protesters and police play their usual roles as their political masters fiddle, pictured 29th February 2012 in Barcelona.

> FRANCE: For Sale: deserted French village, pool included.

 LATIN AMERICA NEWS 

< BRAZIL: Over 20 stories of homeless families in Sao Paulo building. "Prestes Maia building in downtown Sao Paulo has been ccupied since 2002 by about 350 homeless families. The building lacks electricity, elevators and running water."

||||| BRAZIL: Watch an incredible tilt-shift video of Carnival in Rio. Breathtaking.

||||| DOMINICAN REPUBLIC: Why Haitians living in Dominican Republic sugar plantations are forced to live anonymous lives.

 AFRICA NEWS 

> KENYA: Watch this wonderful video about David Kuria, the gay activist, who's runing for the Kenyan Senate.

||||| SOUTH AFRICA: Safety fears for Mr Gay World's first black Africans. Zimbabwean Taurai Zhanje pulls out, and Ethiopia's Robel Gizaw Hailu has received death threats.

< SOUTH AFRICA: In Johannesburg, Africa's first gay billboard has been unveiled.

||||| ZIMBABWE: Robert Mugabe celebrates turning 88 with a new anti-gay tirade.

||||| UGANDA: Resentment toward the West bolsters new anti-gay bill.

||||| ZAMBIA: UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has been asked to apologise after calling on Zambia to respect gay rights.

> SOUTH SUDAN: South Sudanese nationals arrive at train stations in Khartoum to return home to South Sudan with the help from the International Organization for Migration.

 SOUTHERN ASIA NEWS 

||||| INDIA: Government still fully behind 2009 decision to decriminalise gay sex.

< INDIA: Lathmar Holi celebrations, pictured 3rd March 2012. More.

 ASIA-PACIFIC NEWS 

||||| CHINA: Renowned sociologist Li Yinhe rallies for same-sex marriage bill.

||||| China announces plan to combat HIV.

||||| AUSTRALIA: Gay tea launched to benefit gay health charities.

 MIDDLE EAST NEWS 

||||| Letter from Islamic states reveals stark opposition to gay human rights. "Fifty-six Islamic states refuse to acknowledge gay rights are human rights in a letter to the UN."

> IRAN: KFC opens restaurant in Karaj. KFC denies opening restaurant in Karaj.

 BODY & MIND 

||||| The gay life coach who knows the secret to staying HIV negative FOREVER. Really.

||||| England opens up free HIV treatment for foreign nationals.

< British gays urged to quit smoking a figures show gay people smoke more than straights.

||||| Segmented sleep: Ten strange things people do at night.

 THE PLANET 

> This is a new species of leaf-nosed bat, discovered by boffins in one of Vietnam's national parks. Dlisted has plenty of celebrity plastic surgery jokes, for your pleasure.

||||| The astounding strength of bonds in homosexual Zebra Finches.

 WEB & GADGETS 

< WikiQueer - a gay online encyclopaedia - has launched. It's backed by The Aequalitas Project, a nonprofit organization "serving as an incubator for new progressive programs". Visit WikiQueer.

||||| Fleshbot relaunches under new ownership.

||||| Your next Gaydar IM: You've got the clap. "A new gay dating messaging service allows people to tell ex-partners if they have an STI."

 PRINT & VISUAL 

< Read If I Were A Dance, a brilliant new story from London-based Somali writer (and last week's cover star) Diriye Osman.

||||| 10 new must-reads for March.

> Cruising, by Chad States, an "art project and book focusing on public sex as a visual performance."

||||| Archie Comics CEO stands up to One Million Moms, says gay character will live "happy, long life free of prejudice, hate and narrow-minded people."

||||| And the gay marriage issue sells out.

||||| The 10 best fictional bookstores.

< Stunning portraits of extreme plastic surgery, by photographer Phillip Toledano. "I'm interested in what we define as beauty, when we choose to create it ourselves."

> Moments in Time, by artist Dominic Wilcox, currently showing at Phillips de Pury in London. Dezeen has video.

< Light Jars, by Norwegian designer Kristine Five Melvæ.

> Portraits of Russian old people. The series is by Anna Skladmann.

||||| Harrowing photographs of child miners in the early 1900s, in pictures:

||||| Snapshots of New York City street scenes (above) 1936-1951.

< Passengers on a train in India, in pictures.

 STAGE 

||||| Watch 8, the play starring George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Christine Lahti, and more, about the Proposition 8 trial's historic closing arguments.

 CINEMA 

||||| Why George Clooney will never deny rumours about his sexuality.

> The 26th BFI London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival programme is unveiled, heavily skewed towards lesbian and trans features.

||||| That the highlights include Patrick Ian-Polk's pointless The Skinny (more banal sub-soap operatics between hot! gay! men! in the city! and their lesbian sidekick) says it all. Pluses are Leave It On The Floor (above right - a movie with an idea) and Speechless (left).

||||| New film Goon sees hockey player beaten up for using gay slur.

||||| The Strange Decline of the English Cottage, a film project.

> Indian gay film festival Kashish launches poster contest.

||||| Check out this epic new Back To The Future poster set from Mondo... (So good they're already sold out.)

...And the beautiful pre-Code movie posters uncovered in a Pennsylvania Attic.

||||| Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho, a film about... Er, about that. It's going to star Anthony Hopkins as Hitchcock, Helen Mirren as his missus.

||||| Elizabeth Taylor's film roles, ranked from best to worst.

||||| 10 of the greatest movies never made.

||||| Ralph McQuarrie, the designer who created the look of Star Wars characters like Darth Vader, Chewbacca and R2-D2 and C-3PO, is dead. He was 82.

||||| Trailer: The Avengers.

 TV 

< Behind-the-scenes production stills from the long-awaited second season of The DL Chronicles.

||||| When a former child star grows up to become an evangelical homophobe.

||||| Here's the latest from gays in soaps around the world. Below right, British soap Emmerdale.

||||| Logo's de-gaying: Are women to blame?

||||| More ananlysis of Logo's decision: Why it might not be a bad thing for us.

||||| Richard Jasek, the new executive producer of soap Neighbours, has admitted Australian television "needs to reflect the diversity of the community more than it has in the past".

||||| TV's most racially stereotyped characters.

||||| The American TV dramas taking aim at the amoral super-rich elite. "New shows such as Revenge, Ringer, and Downwardly Mobile win viewers with stories of inequality, covering ground where US politicians fear to tread."

||||| 10 endangered TV shows that deserve another season.

||||| Little Britain comedian Matt Lucas leaves Twitter after comments about ex-partner's suicide.

||||| The BBC's The Tube reveals the abuse of London Underground's 19,000 staff. "It is appalling. Yes there's moments of outright violence and thuggery, but it's the subtle, relentless dehumanisation of anyone in a London Underground tabard that resonates... a whirlwind of passive agressive sniping and brash, misplaced entitlement from passengers."

||||| The strange stories behind TV shows that changed their titles.

 MUSIC 

> JLS' Aston Merrygold speaks out about his hell at hands of racist bullies.

||||| Straight and narrow: how pop lost its gay edge. "From the blues to the Beatles, from the Who to Nirvana, the biggest acts in pop have been hugely shaped by gay culture. Why has that spirit now disappeared?"

||||| Let's all watch the lesbeaver get a $US100,000 car for his birthday!

 THE SEX BIZ 

||||| How not to ask a blogger to take down your pictures.

< Justin Bieber is now 18, which means gay porn parodies ("Bustin Beeber") are now okay. It will definitely not be okay with Beliebers.

> An interview with highly combustible porn star Erik Rhodes, on "why he's really stayed with Falcon Studios all these years, why he really hates Diesel Washington, what really happened with his adult circumcision, how he's really handling the recent split with his boyfriend, and why there was blood pouring out of his asshole over the weekend." Very disturbing stuff.

||||| And here's the latest installment in the Erik Rhodes vs. Diesel Washington war of words. Grudge match, anyone?

||||| With tornadoes circling his house, Chris Crocker ponders his abandoned porn career.

< And Sean Cody's Danny - aka reality show Ultimate Fighter 15's Dakota Cochrane - has spoken out about his gay porn past. "Sitting on 8-inch cocks over and over and over and over again was a mistake," Zach writes at The Sword.

||||| It's come to this: Marc Dylan fucks Michael Lucas.

||||| Fleshlight opens Spanish production facility.

> Dror Barak, the porn star who performed as Roman Ragazzi, is dead. He was 38. A former Israeli military trainer, Barak's alternate career was revealed by a New York City tabloid in 2007, causing him to lose his job as an employee of the Israeli consulate at the United Nations.

||||| Collin O'Neal, former director of World of Men, remembers Barak.

||||| Dan Cross, a producer and director for All Worlds Video, is dead. He was 65.

 SPORT 

< Madame Tussauds have gone and made a waxwork of Tom Daley.

||||| Spanish insurance company Groupama pulls ad - starring footballer José Manuel Reina - depicting "black men as animalistic homosexuals".

||||| Footballers Nile Ranger and Manny Smith receive fines for homophobic tweets.

> Meanwhile, French footballers Mathieu Debuchy and Olivier Giroud celebrate a goal with a kiss.

||||| OMG! Is Viking sex God Freddie Ljungberg going into the Celebrity Big Brother house?

< Here's quarterback Robert Griffin III, doing what he's best at (running, fast) at the 2012 NFL Scouting Combine.

 PARTING SHOTS 

||||| Ooh and aah with me at the latest addition to Lego's Architecture Series.

||||| How jeans conquered the world.

> Bart Hess' bizarre and sinister body-modification fashion.

||||| And finally, here's Whitney Houston, live at the 1994 World Music Awards. Enjoy.

Issue 114: 26 February - 04 March 2012

Read the last edition.

Remember what was going on this time a year ago? No? How about a reminder? Read Issue 90.

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