WORLD OUTSIDE MY WINDOW

THE WEEK
ACCORDING TO
GARÇON STUPIDE

• Who will win the Hottest NYC Bartender Contest? Kairi, left, gets my vote.

• What's wrong with being gay?

• The Inaugural GLAAD Media Awards in Advertising were held on 27th October. The awards honour "individuals and projects in the advertising and marketing industries for their fair, accurate and inclusive representations of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community".

• NOTHING CAN STOP ME NOW! Kind of: "We own pretty much the entire media for the gay marketing space." Stephen Jarchow, Supreme Emperorchairman of Here Media Inc, talks about his acquisition of gay.com.

• On the other hand... Queerty take a look at what's really happening at Here Media, and the demise (kind of) of The Advocate.

• US Army Secretary says military is ready to lift gay ban.

• Straight couple want to divorce - to support gay rights.

• US man says Brazilian husband denied asylum by Obama Administration.

• The American Family Association (altogether now - BARF!) claim the the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act (see last week's edition) is "un-American". That's apparently because it "normalises homosexual behaviour".

• Sigmund Freud himself thought conversion therapy was a nonsense. Now, can that be the end of the matter? (Nah, thought not.)

• "They had everything out there naked, and you can see it plain as day. What I witnessed there and what you saw on that camera is no different than pornography." A concerned American dad talks about a gay Rodeo held on his street. It was never like this at Southfork.

• He's got the kind of scary jaw and chin that only American soap stars have, but let's face it - who wouldn't have a go on Brandon Beemer? The Bold and The Beautiful modelactor has been lensed for Adam Bouska's NoH8 campaign (left) and will teaseappear in next month's Cosmopolitan. Via Towleroad.

• Oh dear. It was all going so well. In previous weeks we've heard positive, supportive statements from (straight) NFL stars, like Scott Fujita and big, lovely Brendon Ayanbadejo. Then along comes Larry Johnson with a dose of reality.

• My Boyfriend Turned Out To Be A Girl. And my magazine turned out to be a piece of-

• Seattle Lesbian and Gay Film Festival award-winners announced; Best Feature Film award goes to The Man Who Loved Yngve.

• The divas who helped gays out of the closet.

• Why is white collar's Matthew Bomer's sexuality such a secret?

• Lance Bass has finished dinner - now it's on to desert! As Mae West said to the waiter...

• Gay police - on horses!

• The (infamous) White Party will celebrate its 25th anniversary this month.

• The Golden Girls made us gay. According to ChristWire.

• Golden Girl Bea Arthur leaves the Ali Fornay Center $US300,000 in her will; the group helps homeless gay youth.

• Scholastic censors Luv Ya Bunches.

• Scholastic not censoring Luv Ya Bunches.

• King & King - the gay-themed children's book - in glorious live action Technicolor!

• Paul Haggis, director of Crash, has quit the Church of Scientology - due to religioncult's position on LGBT issues. Not because of the aliens and spaceships, then...

• Watch Scientology spokesman Tommy Davis throw his toys out of a pram in this ABC interview. Freaky midget Tom Cruise pops up a lot too:

• Irene Monroe (one of the smartest voices in the LGBT community) writes about the growth of Evangelical Christianity and its persecution of supposed "witch children".

• On the other hand, here's one backward heffer if ever there was one. Andy Towle writes at Towleroad, "One of Bishop Harry Jackson's disciples apparently got the final slot in yesterday's testimony before the D.C. Council on marriage equality, and took the opportunity to sermonize the chamber on God, reproduction, Sodom and Gomorrah, the devil, same-sex unions and slavery, and morality."

• "As far as with gay rights, yeah, [Obama is] failing on that... The LGBT community doesn't really want to be at the back of the line, but as long as we're in the line... To me, he's doing a great job. I really believe that eventually he'll get to the other issues with gay rights." Wanda Sykes on Obama.

• The Westboro Baptist Church are at it again. And they've got it in for the Jews too. Six of the jokers turned up to wave their humourous placards about. Oh, and they're still encouraging people to eat their babies. Ya gotta love 'em!

• "Women, from the way I see it, have become too complicated and unattractive in marriage. You don't provide what God intended you to give in marriage. You have frustrated the men so much leading them to trying among themselves whether they will get the joy that comes with marriage". A priest explains the real reasons behind the marriage of Kenyan gay couple Daniel Chege Gichia and Charles Ngengi. It didn't go down too well.

• Why Chege and Ngengi are considered accidental gay rights trailblazers.

• And Cabral Pinto thinks It's healthy for a country to debate thorny issues: "Does one have to be gay to suuport the rights of gay people? Of course, not!"

• Remember that teacher whose gay porn shoot photos leaked? (Gee, was any other outcome ever likely?) He's resigned. A career on reality TV beckons, me thinks.

• The funeral of Stephen Gately, and sportsman Donal Óg Cusack's decision to come out, marks a watershed for gay Irish people.

• So why is hurler Donal Og Cusack's coming out so crucial for gay pride in Ireland? The announcement brings the idea of being gay as close to home as you can get, writes Donal Lynch.

• Cusack (left)appeared on The Last Late Show; the interview is here, in three parts.

• And following Cusack's decision, has anything really changed?

• Openly gay rugby referee Nigel Owens talks about his struggle with his sexuality.

• Off-duty trainee police officer James Parkes (right) was left with multiple skull fractures (and other injuries) after being set upon by a group of young boys in Liverpool.

• Following that incident, Kirsty Wark discusses the rise of homophobic hate crime in Britain with anti-gay columnist Anne Atkins and gay columnist Johann Hari. Must-see clip.

• A Metropolitan Police sergeant has been convicted of sexually assaulting a colleague.

• London: Around 4,000 people filled Trafalgar Square for a candle-lit vigil honouring hate crime victims; organiser Mark Healey said: "If we forget about these victims we could become complacent and fail to learn from the past." (Pictures by Flickr user Zefrog.)

• Towleroad has a round-up of YouTube clips from the evening.

• Prime Minister Gordon Brown sent a letter of support to the organisers of the vigil: "I wanted to send my appreciation to you for having the courage to act even in the midst of your sorrow."

• Where was Mayor Boris Johnson during all of this? Former Mayor Ken Livingstone would have been there supporting us.

• A "Christian woman" is considering whether to sue the police for investigating her over a "gay hate crime letter".

• But homophobia is a right, argues the Telegraph's Ed West. The same paper's Andrew Pierce chimes in with, It has gone too far – gays don't need state censorship.

• Ian McKellen talks about being a second-class citizen: "[It's] the scar that I and so many others bear – we believed ourselves to be second-rate citizens for so long, the idea of being able to say 'This is my husband, these are my children' was not an option."

• "You would think from television that life is just about straight white people having affairs." Why are we ignored by British television? Left, gays representing on this year's Big Brother.

• More on that Stephen Gately column: In defence of Jan Moir.

• Lifting the ban on gay men donating blood: a five year exclusion instead of a lifetime ban?

• Thousands of gay people are not reporting domestic abuse because they fear being outed in the courts.

• Bisexuals are excluded by lesbian and gay colleagues.

• GFest, a festival celebrating LGBT arts in the capital, has been officially launched at the Houses of Parliament in London.

• London LGBT Tourist Office has welcomed its 100th visitor.

• The former chief executive of LGBT Youth Scotland, James Rennie, is convicted of a "catalogue" of charges, including the sexual abuse of a baby, the possession and manufacture of abusive images and conspiracy to commit sexual assault on children. This disturbing story makes for grim reading. LGBT Youth Scotland say there is no evidence he abused any children whilst at the charity.

• Berlin remembers Nazi persecution of gays.

• Brotherhood, a film about a gay love affair between two neo-Nazis, won best picture at the Rome Film Festival.

• The Czech gay film festival, Mezipatra Queer Film Festival, has launched in Prague and Brno.

• The Church of Sweden (which recently voted to allow gay weddings) isn't really gay-friendly after all.

• U.N. Human Rights Committee concerned about the "systematic discrimination against individuals on the basis of their sexual orientation" in Russia.

• Another gay murder in Jamaica?

• Kenya is to launch a census of its gay population. "Kenyans cannot actually afford to say that the gay community are isolated somewhere in the corner - they are part of our lives," says Nicholas Muraguri, head of Nascop (Kenya's AIDS prevention programme).

• We would do best accommodating gays, writes Ugandan student Princess Ikatekit.

• Uganda's toothless battle on gays.

• Is Body 2 Body, a "queer anthology", the first of its kind in Muslim-majority Malaysia?

• Gay slang in Burma.

• Gay cinema is helping to change attitudes in China.

• Hong Kong's gay scene, a night-life institution.

• Saturday, 31st October will see Taipei's annual Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender parade. But organisers are disappointed with politicians who've promised the earth and delivered little.

• Jewish settler comes to the aid of a gay Palestinian in West Bank.

• Will Argentina be the first Latin American nation to legalise gay marriage?

• Mr. Gay Rio de Janeiro, Anderson Soares (right), poses for G magazine. Rio hosts its 14th Annual Gay Pride Parade on Sunday 1st November.

• The Big Picture: Conflict in Pakistan (36 pictures).

• Premier League footballer Marlon King has been found guilty of sexual assault and is jailed for 18 months.

• Plastic boy slut massacressings Amor mio for Portuguese bank Banco Espírito Santo. It's preferable to Shakira, at any rate.

• The death of Venice; funeral to be held on 14th November.

• The world's smallest working model train. "It is going to be a model train village inside a model, so it is very postmodern."

• McDonalds packs up it's deep fat fryer and goes home.

• Leaders of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints have gone on trial for sexually abusing underage girls.

• Up to 10 teenagers gang raped a 15-year-old girl at a California high school; the incident was witnessed by two dozen passers by who "laughed and took photographs".

• Remember Jahmal Mason-Blair (right)? A court has heard the 17-year-old was killed "by mistake".

• Giant Mona Lisa!

• London boy Stephen Wiltshire drew a 18ft picture of New York from memory. He'd spent just twenty minutes in a helicopter flying over the city.

• Land of the giants: French photographer Vincent Bousserez's stunning world in miniature (above and below).

• Oxford Circus - better known (by me at least) as hell on Earth - has taken some advice from the Japanese. Left, the new Tokyo-style crossing, and right, how it looked before.

• The Circle line isn't circle anymore.

• The Surreal Line.

• WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE! Asteroids over Indonesia.

• End of the road for GeoCities.

• Curry kills cancer.

• Mobile phones cause cancer.

• What other countries say about mobile phone use.

• Date-rape drink spiking merely an excuse by women who drink too much.

• Boffins have discovered that some of us are "genetically programmed to get greater pleasure from drinking than other people". That would be me, then.

• Faces of Meth. (This ain't pretty.)

• Could the super wealthy evolve into a separate species? An American futurologist thinks so. I think some already have (left).

• Animal pictures of the week, above and below.

• Grieving chimpanzees watch as a deceased family member is wheeled away.

• The wisdom of boybands: "five boyband stars talk about the highs and lows of life in the spotlight".

• JLS: 'We became an unshakable force'.

• JLS: top the, er... sex charts. (Well, this one's from News of the World. Apologies in advance.)

• JLS: Popjustice takes a look at the packaging for the JLS album. You'll laugh. Honest.

• JLS: Blue's Simon Webbe (sigh) says, "I don't think an all-black boyband like JLS would have been signed in the days when we were starting out." Er, has he never heard of MN8, Ultimate Kaos and Damage? Cha...

• This week's Gays of our Lives, with Anthony D Langford. Left, German soap Good Times, Bad Times.

• Popjustice explains Glee to UK viewers.

• Noah's Arc/Dante's Cove actor Jensen Atwood turns up in a music video. With his shirt off. I really don't see the appeal, but plenty of you seem to like herhim.

• More appealing is former co-star Wilson Cruz; here he is talking about coming out in Hollywood...

• NOOOOOOOOO!!! Barbara Windsor is quitting Eastenders.

• ...but some of the Jackson family are returning to the Square.

• He hasn't even appeared on screen yet, but showrunner Steven Moffat says Matt Smith is the best Doctor yet. Well, he would say that, wouldn't he...

• Mario Lopez in dominatrix gear (and make-up). So wrong, yet so right...

• Daxx Reed, the porn model, has died.

• What every boy wants for Christmas: Tiger Tyson lip servicebalm.

• Or how about a Count Cockula?

• No? Then how about some naked Brazilians, maybe?

• Model Thyago Alves makes his cinema debut in Italian flick Il Compleanno. Made in Brazil promise a "gay twist".

• Men on a Mission, a calendar of former Mormon missionaries, and more calendars for next year.

• And lastly, the Top 100 defining cultural moments of the noughties... and a word from Timaya:

This (delayed) edition of
World Outside My Window (The Week According To Garçon Stupide)
was built from articles collated during the week
24th-30th October 2009.

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