Bendy boys, girly-boys, Grindr panic and redemption

||| This (left) is the picture that caused a tsunami of hate on gay-baiting black gossip blogs. The image - apparently on Atlanta's MARTA - appeared on Twitter entitled "No Excuse: I Don't Give a F**k How Sleepy You Are."

||| The beautiful men of gay male pornography: Fascinating look from Psychology Today at how gay porn reflects the changing ideal of male beauty.

||| Breaking the taboo over the mental health crisis among Britain's gay men: Why so many of us suffer self-loathing, isolation and depression. "There are... far higher rates of depression, anxiety and suicide than among straight men; far higher rates of self-destructive behaviour; substance abuse and sex addiction; and high levels of issues around intimacy and forming relationships. Evidence shows that gay men are more than twice as likely to attempt suicide."

||| 30 dates in 30 days in 30 cities: one man's quest for the love of his life.

US

||| Jersey City Pride Festival 2010, in video.

||| Meet Lorenzo, a girly-boy we should all look up to.

||| Durand Robinson - an Atlanta Black Gay Pride organiser - was shot dead on 25th August. Durand's Facebook page is here. Additional coverage at The GA Voice.

||| More on the murder of DeFarra Gaymon - CEO of Credit Union of Atlanta - who was shot dead by police in New York in July. The New York Times has also published a detailed account of the incident.

||| Remembering Jorge Steven López Mercado, who would have been twenty last month.

||| St. Vincent's Remembered: "Patients having threesomes, tranny Santa and Mrs. Claus stringing Christmas tree lights, doctors smuggling experimental drugs, Ed Koch dropping by - all were part of St. Vincent's Hospital, the ground zero for AIDS and one time home to survivors of the Titanic, the Stonewall Riots, and 9-11."

||| Detroit: Fire has destroyed the R.E.C. Boyz Center; the project targeted young black men between the ages of 13 and 24. Visit the project's MySpace page to see some of their work.

||| A San Francisco bathhouse - closed for more than 20 years - is to reopen as a "doggy day care center". Imagine what must have gone on their in those heady pre-AIDS days... and everyone who was lost because of it.

||| Who lived in a house like this? Allen Ginsberg, of course! The apartment where the writer lived from 1975-1996 is on the market.

||| The New York subway gets "seatless" subway cars... Or rather, it doesn't.

||| The threat of closure of Christopher Street bar Chi Chiz, "the only black gay bar in New York City", puts the spotlight on race and class. As one former resident comments at Towleroad: "If you aren't white, married and have 2.2 kids... [there's] the we don't want you here attitude. NY is nothing but a sterile playground of corporate bullshit, resting on its laurels of what it used to be."

||| Taylor Siluwé also writes convincingly about the issues surrounding the closure: "Once again forces are gathering to shut down a symbol of Black Gay New York. Love it or hate it, that's what Chiz Chiz is, a symbol, though one of many."

||| Don't quit your gay job: Straight bartenders work in Boystown, too.

||| If you're going to drug and rape your frat brother, don't video the attacks and leave them around for him to find.

||| Meet the amazing bendy boys!

||| Orthodox attitudes to gay people shift. Mordechai Beck writes, "A statement on homosexuality that has garnered more than 100 rabbinic signatures is a watershed for Orthodox Judaism."

||| What Christians don't want to know about Jesus.

||| Young, gay dreams of matrimony: For 20-somethings, Proposition 8's demise is a barometer of equality, not a path to the altar.

||| The real reason the right is terrified by the Proposition 8 case.

||| What does Obama really think about gay marriage? A timeline.

||| No justice: "Watch this gay man's story about being denied his late partner's Social Security benefits, funds that are automatically transferred to any straight spouse that has been married for ten minutes." Via Joe. My. God.

||| Activist group Queer Rising commandeers US supermarket Target's tannoy system, provoking the ire of two Chipmunk-voiced managers with delusions of grandeur. Sorry, whose building is it, love?

||| Homophobia will thrive in sports as long as hyper-masculinity prevails...

||| ...But whilst the world of sport remains unmoved by progress, Hollywood is finally opening its arms to gay characters.

||| The NCIS is investigating a marine for allegedly appeating in gay porn. Sgt. Matthew W. Simmons is said to have appeared as Christian Jade (far right) for WayBig.com.

||| Now the Pentagon is asking military spouses to appeal a "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" repeal.

||| Code words, secret societies, covert meetings, fake identities: Gay cadets put in the spotlight at West Point.

||| Repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell: Pat and Wally Kutteles, the parents of Pfc. Barry Winchell (left), murdered 11 years ago after suffering harassment over rumours he was gay, on why the rule must go.

||| The Navy is discharging Jarod McIntosh because it found photos of his boyfriend on his phone. This is his story:

||| The end of combat operations in Iraq leaves the local GBLT community even more vulnerable than ever. Filmmaker Jennifer Utz is behind From Baghdad to Brooklyn, a film "that takes place amidst the Iraqi refugee crisis, told through the story of Mohamed, a gay Iraqi refugee. It chronicles his quest for a better life amidst persecution, and his unlikely friendship with an American journalist who advocates for his asylum in the United States. But this is not a typical “westerner saves the day” portrait, as we learn that all is not what it seems with Mohamed. The film will shatter stereotypes of Iraqis, challenge preconceived notions of victimhood, and examine the real reasons behind selfless actions."

||| The ex-gay industry hits the skids: Exodus International, Focus on the Family, and Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality (JONAH) all cut jobs, beg supporters for donations.

||| The Kentucky Farm Bureau hates gays.

||| McNugget rage!

||| Canada: Residents of a leafy Toronto street have confronted evangelists preaching outside a gay couple's home, eventually driving them out...

||| ...But is there more to this story than meets the eye?

||| Ever wondered what JonBenet Ramsey would look like? The tragic child beauty queen would have been 20 last month. Disturbing.

||| Everything you needed to know about American Islamaphobia, but were too afraid to ask:

||| Remember the hoo-ha over the user details of members of defunct XY magazine? There's been a happy ending.

||| Welcome to the Out NYC Urban Resort, a hotel for gays in Manhattan.

||| Let's check in with Doug Quint and his Big Gay Ice Cream Truck!

||| Wanted: ebonics translators.

||| Abercrombie & Fitch to close 60 US stores; American Apparel also on the slippery slope to ruin.

||| Empire State Building: I'm the only big swinging dick in this town!

||| The Big Picture: Remembering Katrina, five years ago (47 more photos). Above, prisoners are penned on a highway. Below, the ruined Metropolitan Hospice, pictured less than two weeks ago.

UK

||| This is Rev Colin Coward, 64, a priest at St John the Baptist church in Devizes, Wilts, and his boyfriend Bobby Egbele, 25, who's the fashion designer behind online clothing shop Bobafrique. The couple are planning a civil partnership in October, and the Coward refuses to promise he'll be celibate afterwards.

||| Sex in Soho is more likely to leave you with a dose of gonorrhoea. The borough of Westminster - in which the gay playground is located - is one of the top 10 STI hotspots in England. The rest of the list is filled out with other London boroughs, with gay satellite city Brighton the odd one out.

||| Homophobic Conservative Minister Crispin Blunt has announced that he is gay, and is separating from his wife of 20 years. He's the second Government minister to come out since the coalition came to power. Blunt is 50-years-old.

||| His fellow Tories have turned on him, now he isn't part of a "nice, compact, family unit".

||| Blunt is, of course, a typical hyprocritcal Tory bigot. He once said, "It is... clear that there is a much greater strand of homosexuality than of heterosexuality which depends for its gratification on the exploitation of youth."

||| So, should MPs have the right to keep their sexuality secret?

||| Meanwhile, Labour MP David Miliband - a leadership candidate, and possible future Prime Minister - attended Lo Profile, one London's most popular gay venues - on Wednesday.

||| The Conservative government has scrapped the Annual Report on Human Rights, signposting its abandonment of the fight against of human rights abuses in countries like Zimbabwe, Saudi Arabia and Russia.

||| Staff in a Westminster pub refuse to serve a gay man after they spot him kissing another man.

||| Thousands took to the streets of Manchester for that city's 20th annual gay pride parade; Sir Ian McKellen was Grand Marshall. In pictures.

||| But gay rights group Reclaim The Scene claims Manchester Pride has "dumbed down".

||| Women's Aid Leicestershire has set up the Adam Project (Action against Domestic Abuse for Men). Police believe Wmen were the victims in up to one fifth of the 15,000-plus reports of violence" last year.

||| Refugee Action - one of the UK's oldest refugee campaigning groups - has launched a campaign to support GBLT asylum seekers.

||| London: Homeless Poles are living on barbecued rats and alcoholic handwash.

||| What does it mean to be gay and middle aged? Julian Clary investigates.

EUROPE

||| Ireland: Thousands march for civil marriage rights for same-sex couples in Dublin.

||| Ireland: "Homosexuality brought down the ancient civilisations of Rome, Greece, and Egypt. It will be our downfall too." That's Reverend Jonathan Campbell, condemning Derry Pride - the county's first - held on Saturday.

||| Netherlands: Same-sex couples to feature in school textbooks.

||| Germany: A year on from the fatal attack on a GBLT community centre in Tel Aviv, teens injured in the incident visit Berlin.

||| Poland: Gay rights group the Association for Diversity has hit out at a new textbook that portrays homosexuality as a curable illness.

||| Russia: Former billionaire German Sterligov (left) calls for all gays and lesbians to be put to death. Because the bible says so, of course.

||| This photo of a boy in Samarkand (present-day Uzbekistan) was taken around 1910. It's part of an extraordinary series of photos over at The Big Picture: Russia in color, a century ago. As they say, "The high quality of the images, combined with the bright colors, make it difficult for viewers to believe that they are looking 100 years back in time."

||| A Spanish Air Force pilot was forced out of his Sevilla base by "threats, abuse and propositioning". He married another airman from the base in 2006. ¡Viva España!

AMERICAS

||| Mexico: The battle over gay rights - with the Catholic Church on one side, and the Mayor of Mexico City on the other - has swept into the Supreme Court.

||| Argentina: Nestor Berchot (left) died shortly after marrying longterm partner Gustavo Garcia. They were the first gay couple to wed in the city of Mar del Plata.

||| Argentina: What's a boy to do in Buenos Aires? Your questions answered!

||| Is Colombia next for gay marriage?

AFRICA

||| Uganda: A bile of prejudice is hindering progression.

||| Uganda: Gay Ugandan in exile calls on Anglican leaders to denounce Uganda's anti-homosexuality Bill at the All African Bishops Conference.

||| Above: Breaking The Chains: A short film in which Ugandans talk about GBLT People.

||| Uganda: First Lady Janet Museveni on homosexuality: "In God's word, homosexuality attracts a curse, but now people are engaging in it and saying they are created that way. It is for money The devil is stoking fires to destroy our nation and those taking advantage are doing so because our people are poor."

||| South Africa: OUT, the health services provider focusing on GBLT community, is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year.

MIDDLE EAST

||| Israel: 19-year-old Angel - who performs as a drag queen - was twice kidnapped by family members to 'set him back on right path'. This is his story.

||| Gay, straight, or just Lebanese? An intriguing look at sexuality in Lebanon.

||| Being gay in Iran: Meeting in secret, living in fear. Members of Iran's GBLT community tell of arrests, beatings, rape – and escape to the West.

||| Meet Rami, a gay Palestinian boy who was convicted of being gay at 12-years-old. He fled to Israel after three years in jail and became a male prostitute. Video:

ASIA PACIFIC

||| Nepal: 2,000 people turn out for Kathmandu's first large-scale gay pride parade (pictured above left).

||| The Big Picture: Continuing Pakistani floods, above (35 more pictures).

||| The Big Picture: Landslides strike Zhouqu County, China, above and below (39 more pictures).

||| China: A look at the life of one male prostitute in Hong Kong.

||| North Korea comes out as gay.

||| Australia: Prime Minister Julia Gillard cements her position as an anti-gay bigot, citing the country's "Christian heritage" as the reason for her opposition to gay marriage. Australian Marriage Equality National Secretary, Peter Furness, says, "How far... will [Gillard] go in the name of our 'Christian heritage' – will she outlaw divorce and interracial marriages, re-criminalise homosexuality and abortion, suppress atheism, and remove herself and all other women from leadership roles?"

||| Is the drive to out gay football players putting the lives of gay youth at risk?

BODY & MIND

||| WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!

||| Health advice you should ignore.

||| Boffins have discovered a protein (with the catchy name TRIM5a) that destroys HIV in rhesus monkeys.

||| Stop, or my HIV will shoot... Ari Ezra Waldman looks at HIV as aggravated assault.

||| 26-year-old Christopher Everett was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon — a first-degree felony — for having unprotected sex with a 16-year-old male without disclosing his HIV-positive status. The pair hooked up using Grindr.

||| What kind of guy gets a genital piercing? Not the type you might think, apparently.

||| Why I got the male Brazilian wax.

||| A bit scary up close, aren't they? This is the human eye, one of a series of astonishing images by Suren Manvelyan.

||| The new kind of sex party sweeping the US: "Expectant couples are holding celebrations at which they reveal the sex of their baby. Yuk!"

||| Be afraid: McDonald's hamburgers don't age. Proof.

||| How about a 2,500-calorie pizza burger?

||| Top 10 healthy breakfast options.

ZOOLOGY

||| An alligator in Queens!

||| Tiny frogs!

||| White jackdaw!

||| White whale!

||| This one is guaranteed to make you weep: A baby humpback whale has died after mistaking a marker buoy for its mother.

||| Penguins vs. butterfly:

PLANET

||| Indonesia: A volcano quiet for 400 years has erupted in the North Sumatra province. Maybe it'll blow an ash cloud across the Indian ocean and keep the Aussies grounded for a bit.

||| Oops, BP's spilt oil isn't all gone. In fact, more than three quarters of it is still down there.

||| Not to be outdone, the Atlantic now has an unimaginably huge floating rubbish patch to rival that of the Pacific.

||| It all looks so much better from far off. How about a distance of 114 million miles away? Yes: that is the Earth and the Moon, above left.

WEB & GADGETS

||| British tabloid The Daily Telegraph has woken up to the terrifying threat to civilisation presented by Grindr, the iPhone application. It's strange, lonely and troubling, apparently.

||| Highly self-promoting Facebook users, who are highly narcissistic with low-self esteem, tend to spend the most time on Facebook, boffins claim.

||| 12 ways to get fired for Facebook.

||| A look at the Facebook, Twitter's policies on dealing with the accounts of the deceased.

||| How the Google/Verizon proposal could kill the internet in 5 years.

||| Introducing Shuffler.fm, the service that lets you discover new music blogs while you listen.

||| Hungry? How about some AquAdvantage® salmon? Gawker writes: "AquAdvantage® salmon grows twice as fast as regular (boring) salmon, thanks to a neat bit of DNA from an "eel-like creature" called the ocean pout that's been grafted onto a chinook salmon's growth hormone gene. The gene is then injected into the eggs of North Atlantic salmon, where it is taken up into the genome." Yum.

WORDS & BOOKS

||| Review: The Cross of Redemption, a new collection of previously uncollected writings by James Baldwin.

||| Top 10 Most Memorable GBLT Teen Fiction Characters... according to 15-year-old Brent.

||| G-Kenya Trust, a member of the Gay and Lesbian Coalition of Kenya, has published My Way, Your Way or The RIGHT Way?. The book aims to impart the Yogyakarta Principles, a set of guidelines for applying international human rights law in relation to sexual orientation and gender identity.

||| Want a really good reason to buy a proper book, instead of an eBook? How about ads, specifically targeted to you personally.

FILM

||| Jim Carrey's I Love You Phillip Morris has finally found a distribution deal, with December the new release date. The film initially premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, and has already been released on DVD in international markets.

||| DVD extras that don't suck.

||| Bow Wow forced to work in Foot Locker!

||| Watch: A never-before-screened scene cut from Return of the Jedi.

||| The film posters that lost the plot. A look at postwar Polish film posters, and how they differed from the West's originals.

||| Was Vivien Leigh bisexual?

||| Oh, daddy... Dwayne Johnson struts his stuff on the set of The Fast and the Furious 5 (I know, there's at least one thing seriously wrong with that sentence.

TV

||| Gay.com web series The Queens of Drag: NYC is to make its debut on 8th September. The reality show focuses on "the lives of New York City's most fabulous and ferociously funny drag queen divas". Check out the trailer.

||| Anyone else think the Rolling Stone True Blood cover could have been... better?

||| Let's catch up with The Wire alumni. Where are they now?

||| Nelsan Ellis - LaFayette to you and me - doesn't want his character to be tied down for too long.

||| Golden Girls nesting dolls, anyone?

||| 90210 producer Rebecca Sinclair talks about the forthcoming outing of Teddy, played by Tervor Donvan.

||| 19-year-old Danny Miller, who plays British soap Emmerdale's gay teen Aaron, has been attacked by two male youths in his home town.

||| A special Coronation Street float - carrying the Queens of the Rovers, no less - was paraded in Manchester Pride. Rovers Return legend Beverley Callard shared a kiss with Kym Marsh (right).

||| Adam - what went wrong? The former Coronation Street star, left and below right, famed for his nude 90s music video, looks at least 10-years older than his actual age of 32.

||| Snoop Dogg: I want affair with Deirdre.

||| EastEnders: Behind the scenes on the Queen Vic inferno, in pictures. More.

||| Big Brother: the series that made surveillance acceptable. "It was the TV show billed as a social experiment. But as Big Brother draws to a close, John Walsh argues that it has made Britain more like Orwell's dystopia than we could have imagined."

||| The sexy BBC weatherman who stripped for Attitude, takes another mistep, below. And is this Coca Cola ad (from Egypt) homoerotic? You decide:

MUSIC

||| No Angels singer Nadja Benaissa (left) has been given a two-year suspended sentence, following her conviction for having unprotected sex with three male partners without revealing her HIV-positive status.

||| Annie Lennox signs with Universal; her album A Christmas Cornucopia will be released 22nd November through Universal's Island Records UK.

||| Gratuitious Marvin from JLS shot.

||| Lil Romeo's all growed up...

||| Irene Monroe (always a favourite in these parts) explains why Queen Latifah's outing is a sad affair: "Those perceived stolen moments when you think no one's watching, especially far out in the waters, are really when you're most vulnerable. And it's not because someone snapped a photo of you, but rather because you thought you could hide."

||| Nelly gets hot and sweaty with celebrity fitness trainer Donta. St. Louis Sports has more.

||| Terrence has two dads, and what better way to show his love and appreciation than to sing a song about it on national TV?

||| Bless. He means well, but Terrence's effort won't be soaring to the top of my playlist. On the other hand, this mesmerising cover (by UK synth-pop duo Hurts) of Kylie Minogue's one really good song, Confide In Me, most definitely will be...

||| ...No? How about this one then, from OMD. Three cute boys (and some intrusive females) writhe about in the video - works for me!

||| With that in mind, is pop music sexualising children?

||| Ricky Martin autobiography, anyone? It's out 2nd November.

||| And this week in Popstars Come Out... It's Jon Lee! Who, did I hear you say? It's the gay-looking one from S Club 7. Silly you! The years ain't been too kind to him either...

||| Steph Jones slams homophobia in a new video blog. Watch, plus his new song about beauty and body image.

SEX BIZ

||| Mike Verdugo - the Florida cop fired for not disclosing his background in gay porn - has been allowed to keep his police certification.

||| Mason Wyler (far left): I'm HIV-positive and it sucks.

||| Channel 1 Releasing has announced an eight-episode soap opera, to air on the official C1R website.

||| More twincest - the trouble is, this pair don't come close to Bel Ami's ripped Peters twins.

||| Producer/performer Collin O'Neal has opened up about his battle with depression.

||| David Toussaint interviews Colt model Dean Phoenix.

||| The confessions of a New York rent boy.

||| Inches, Mandate, Playguy magazines to be relaunched. The question, why? Why would anyone buy a porn magazine (at least in the form they used to take).

SPORT

||| Anybody catch the Singapore 2010 Youth Olympic Games? Babacar Cisse and Brandon Arends looked good in the Judo, and China's Qiu Bo is spectacular at the 10m Platform preliminary. The boys also did a little basketball, volleyball, gymnastics, rowing, and athletics.

||| Terrell Owens and Chad Ochocinco are Batman and Robin!

||| More Ochocinco? How about that time he wrapped a big dick around himself?

||| Gimme some Kerron Clements (below left, in a new Twitter profile picture) instead. Olympic athletes really are the Supermen.

||| Kansas City Chiefs' Thomas Jones (right), on the other hand, is a bit meaty and ill-defined for my liking. He's stripped down for Men's Exercise. Might wanna do some work on those tits, love.

||| The Johnny Weir Spectacular: "Dressed in silk and false eyelashes and heels, he wants to go beyond skating, beyond masculine and feminine, to a kind of stardom that's entirely his own."

||| Plastic boy slut takes his shirt off to flog us some watches.

||| And the news we've all been waiting for: Cristiano's peen is "RIDICULOUS... intimidatingly so".

||| Sadly, it was only her shirt that came off after his late free kick (huh?) saw Real Madrid win some match or another.

...AND FINALLY

||| Brazilian beauty Arthur Sales in 3D for Armani.

||| Instinct's swimwear spread features Wendell Lissimore and Henry Watkins, lensed by Vincent Dilio. More.

||| Fire-fighters. Calendar. Nuff said.

||| The FDNY effort is here.

||| Take a tour of Tokyo's 9h Pod Hotel.

||| And finally, The Majestic Plastic Bag - A Mockumentary...

||| COVER MODEL: MALE VISION PHOTOGRAPHY.

||| READ THE LAST EDITION: ISSUE 73

||| READ ka-os|theory, ONE YEAR AGO: 30.08.09

||| READ any back issue of the ka-os|theory news compendium
from the backissues menu in the sidebar.

||| Contact me with tips and suggestions for next week's copy! _____________________________________________________

Issue 74 covers 09-29 August 2010

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POSTSCRIPT

"You know, we might just as well not have bothered to come.

The whole thing's been ridiculous."

© 2010