Urban light, gay alcoholics, twincest and a porn chef

a news compendium

with a gay bias
issue 82 | January 2011 | FREE

<<< Carl Agapit, from the French Caribbean island of Martinique. More on manikins later on.

But first...

>>> NFL star Reggie Bush asks if "no homo" is offensive, later adding "I think if the 'no homo' comment offends anybody then it's most likely better left unsaid along with other degrading words...thanks guys!" All perfectly reasonable. What's really disturbing is the torrent of racist abuse unleashed by (I'd guess white American) Towleroad readers.

<<< London boy Aslie Pitter is "pinching himself" after being appointed an MBE. Pitter set up Stonewall Football Club 20 years ago.

US & CANADA

>>> Store pulls controversial "No Homo" T-shirts off shelves. Report includes video.

||| Florida couple Kevin Mark Powell, 47, and Steve Adams, 52, murdered in their own home.

||| Hate crime numbers up in New York State.

||| The anti-gay donations US retail chain Target apologised for? They never stopped.

<<< Parents of Tyler Clementi to sue Rutgers University for failing in its duty of care.

||| Gay coal miner subjected to sustained campaign of anti-gay harassment. Colleagues attached "I like little boys" sign to his car, exposed themselves, and made violent threats.

||| 30 witnesses stand by as two gay men are attacked in Texas.

>>> Friends honour Maj. Alan Rogers, the first known gay casualty in Iraq.

||| Don't Ask, Don't Tell: President Obama signs historic legislation repealing the ban; video. More at NYTimes.com.

||| Don't Ask, Don't Tell: "This is done." The official transcript in full.

||| Don't Ask, Don't Tell: Equal rights for gay service members the military's next step.

||| Don't Ask, Don't Tell: After fall of "Don't Ask," pushing for "I Do".

||| Don't Ask, Don't Tell: Eight out of nine countries allowing same-sex marriage first allowed gay soldiers to serve openly.

||| Don't Ask, Don't Tell: Last ban standing.

||| Don't Ask, Don't Tell: Repeal recalls 1948 decision on segregated military.

||| Don't Ask, Don't Tell: Active-duty gay officer reacts to repeal. Transcipt, and audio interview.

||| Don't Ask, Don't Tell: What a gay Marine taught me. "The tough, utterly selfless NCO embodied what every service needs in its ranks. But he left to be able to live openly. In losing many of its gays, the U.S. military lost preparedness, a retired lieutenant colonel says."

||| Don't Ask, Don't Tell: Billy Sipple, a Marine who happened to be gay, saved a president.

||| And now Obama faces pressure from his allies to move on a much tougher and divisive issue: gay marriage.

||| As gay becomes bourgeois: "With 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' repealed and gays seeking marriage equality, the homosexual bourgeoisie is emerging — a concept subversive to both liberals and conservatives."

||| Former closeted Republican says his party exploits gays to "gin up their base".

>>> Michael Lucas: Putin Serenades Hollywood Lefties. "Porn entrepreneur and Advocate columnist Michael Lucas says the celebrity embrace of the dictatorial Russian prime minister is disastrous."

||| Victory: The United Nations General Assembly votes to reinsert "sexual orientation" into a resolution condemning extrajudicial killings, following its earlier removal. 93 members countries voted for, 55 against with 27 abstained.

||| GBLT Person of the Year: Joel Burns. "Fort Worth's gay City Councilman put an 'everyman' face on the issue of bullying and teen suicide — and the world took notice," Arnold Wayne Jones writes in Dallas Voice.

||| Another gay bookstore closes its doors.

<<< Manhattan black gay bar Chi Chiz closes for good after long legal battle.

||| Who cares when you're old and gay? No one really, it seems.

>>> Something doesn't add up: African-Americans make up .6 percent of the entire world's population, but African-American males make up 8 percent of the entire world's prison population.

||| New York cabbies get bullet-proof vests.

UK

||| Why did the BBC call on a Christian who supports the execution of gays to comment on Sir Elton’s baby?

||| Answer: To provide "balance", of course.

||| Men with historic gay sex convictions to have "crimes" expunged: The move will benefit thousands of men who were prosecuted for gay sex with someone over 16 during decades when the practice was against the law.

||| Did the introduction of Civil Partnerships five years ago create a situation that is unfair and unsatisfactory all round? Joan Smith thinks so.

<<< David Cameron's Conservative's continue to show their true colours with homophobia seeping from the very top of Government.

||| Calling all cottagers: For sale, one disused public lavatory, a snip at £100,000.

||| Griff Vaughan Williams, who campaigned for the decriminalisation of gay sex in the 1960s, is dead. He was 70.

||| Shanta Gaury Pathak, founder of the Patak's food empire, is dead. She was 83.

EUROPE

||| IRELAND: Same-sex couples can now enter into Civil Partnerships in the Republic.

>>> SWITZERLAND: Repeal of "obsolete" incest laws on the cards. More from MOC Blog: "Speaking anecdotally, any gay porn with Elijah and Milo Peters, the identical Bel Ami twins who like to bareback with each other, are G*d damn money crappers for that studio. And that definitely says something."

||| SPAIN: Barcelona to honour GBLT community, "who have been persecuted and repressed throughout history", with "pink, triangular stone monument".

AMERICAS

||| JAMAICA: Student tricked into revealing his sexuality and fantasies to fellow student, who secretly recorded him, and disseminated the recording around campus via bluetooth.

||| MEXICO: Gay hotel to open at Riviera Maya.

||| Gay weddings boom under Argentina's new liberal laws.

<<< CHILE: Inmates gather on a roof of the Antofagasta city prison.

||| The Big Picture: A New Year rolls in (55 more pictures). Below, children pose for pictures as they celebrate before New Year in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.


AFRICA

||| MOROCCO: Novelist Abdellah Taia first Moroccan writer to come out in a country that bans homosexuality.

||| South Africa gets its own gay flag.

||| UGANDA: Anti-gay pastor Martin Ssempa charged with conspiracy. Another anti-gay pastor was arrested and Ssempa is one of a further six being sought by police.

||| MALAWI: Tiwonge Chimbalanga, one half of the couple arrested and imprisoned on homosexuality charges, is still waiting for a Canadian visa.

<<< BURUNDI: 17-year-old transgender girl tortured by nuns.

||| LIBYA: two men arrested for "indecent acts". The younger man was allegedly "dressed like a girl" and was wearing make-up.

ASIA PACIFIC

||| AUSTRALIA: Way back in 2007, we heard about the Peel Hotel in Melbourne, which had decided to ban heterosexual customers. Sadly, that ban has been overturned to comply with the Charter of Human Rights - meaning straight women can once again shop for new gay pets.

||| CAMBODIA: Tuk tuks, gay bars & chillin'. Homosexuality is legal, the annual Phnom Penh gay pride has been held since 2004, and King Sihanouk supports gay marriage.

||| Taiwan still has work to do on gay rights.

||| Azwan Ismail, a Muslim man who lives in Malaysia, has received death threats after revealing his sexuality in an online video.

>>> INDIA: The Registrar of Newspapers denies permission for popular GBLT e-magazine, Pink Pages, to be published in print. Get Pink Pages here.

||| INDIA: Gay pride only goes so far in India. Parvez Sharma writes, "Queer activists out and proud in Delhi and Mumbai have little connection with those forced to live in small-town secrecy."

||| India's curry crisis.

MIDDLE EAST

<<< Queer heart of the Middle East isn't hard to find.

BODY & MIND

||| Conservative? Right-wing? (If so you probably won't be reading this.) Never mind - you were born that way.

||| A new government inquiry into AIDS - reviewing prevention and treatment methods - is to be launched in the UK. Norman Fowler, heading the House of Lords investigation, said, "We're on the verge of having 100,000 people in the UK infected and we want to look at what we can do about it."

||| Did your father's diet affect your future health?

||| Secret to a smooth hangover – honey on toast.

>>> When does moderate drinking become a problem?

||| Yoga bad for your knees, Indian doctor warns.

ZOOLOGY

||| Japan's crow crisis.

||| Boffins breed mice that sing like birds.

<<< Rock-chewing sea urchins have self-sharpening teeth.

>>> Rare Saharan Cheetah photographed in the wild. It's thought fewer than 200 cheetahs exist in the entire Sahara.

<<< A German shepherd's head is stuck in a wall in California.

PLANET

||| Italy bans plastic bags.

WEB & GADGETS

||| Standard phone charger due soon.

<<< iPad magazine sales plummet after initial boom.

||| Net neutrality: what is it and what does it mean?

||| Net neutrality: internet 'rules' get go ahead in the US. Users could soon be paying more for higher bandwidth services like YouTube.

PRINT

||| How many e-books to spare a tree?

||| 2011's banned words: "BFF", "viral" and "man up".

||| The rise and fall and rise of "Gay".

>>> 2010 in Review: Best Book Covers.

||| 2010 in Review: Gays & the Military.

<<< Review: Double Bound by Nick Nolan.

||| Review: Match Maker by Alan Chin

||| Review: Teleny and Camille by Jon Macy.

||| Review: One of the Boys: Homosexuality in the Military by Paul Jackson

||| Review: Gay Shame edited by David M. Halperin & Valerie Traub.

FILM

||| Incest: A love story.

||| Richard Chamberlain advises actors to stay in the closet.

>>> White supremacists plan boycott of Thor over Idris Elba casting.

<<< Wilson Cruz flashes his extras in NYC.

TV

>>> Coronation Street's historic outdoor set is to be rebuilt in a brand new location.

||| Stuart Ross - the man who made a success of The Smurfs in the 1980s - has been found guilty of attempted grand larceny. But the 74-year-old won't do jail time.

||| Ofcom - the media regulator - has confirmed the introduction of American-style product placement on UK television, marking a new low for the industry. The move will fill the coffers of television stations, but watching TV will be more like the shopping channel. Free steak kinives, anyone?

<<< Kickboxer Iain Martell strips on ITV's Take Me Out.

>>> General Hospital actor KeiKabou Holland poses for GuysWithiPhones.

MUSIC

||| Now Raz-B - obviously out of B2K bandmates to throw under the bus, Taylor Siluwé notes, baits Chris Brown. And he takes it.

||| D'Geyrald, openly gay former member of French boy band G-Squad gets naked, for art.

<<< Jail bait boy candy Bow Wow strips on stage.

||| The Top 10 Gayest Songs of 2010.

SEX BIZ

||| Who pays for porn?

>>> AEBN acquires iconic powerhouse Falcon Studios, and merges it with Raging Stallion. In 2007, Falcon Studios celebrated its 35th year as one of the "founding fathers" of the adult film industry. Plenty of commentary at Gay Porn Times.

||| JC Adams pens a fascinating article about his month with Bel Ami's boy beefcakes. "There is an erotic fluidity to a large chunk of younger Eastern and Central European men that can be mind-boggling to an American who is accustomed to rigidly defined sexuality. It is this type of sexual freedom and fluidity that has turned many Bel Ami performers into icons."

||| Bel Ami goes 3D.

||| Brandon Lee: Porn star chef!

>>> A conversation with Angyl Valantino.

||| HIV in porn: the naked truth.

||| ICANN postpones decision on .XXX.

||| A few more of December's Guys With iPhones hotties...

||| In addition to the annual ka-os|theory list of those who died during the year, Gay Porn Times has a few more names, from the industry.

>>> Lindon Hawk, the former Falcon Studios performer, is dead. He was 34.

MANIKINS

||| Socialite Life wants you to chose your favourite model of 2010. They offer a bunch of white boys to chose from (luscious Nate Gill is their reluctant nod to, you know, "coloured folk"). You'll probably like ka-os|theory's selection better.

||| At Made In Brazil, readers voted the disappointingly bland Mateus Verdelho hottest Brazilian of the year (he wouldn't even get in my top 100).

<<< Chad White splashes JOOP!

>>> Jungle Fever, a story by Wander Aguiar for BELLO mag.

<<< Marlon Teixeira, by Andrea Vecchiato for Geil magazine.

>>> Bobby Roache, by Olaf Wipperfürth for GQ Style Germany.

<<< Daniel Garofali, by Emily Abay for fashion label Oscar Calvo. Homotography has video for you too.

>>> Manpreet Kahlon, by Ronald N. Tan for a project featuring East-Indian men.

<<< Roberto Pazos, by David Vance for that photographer's Jungle Book project.

>>> Michal Gajdosech by Salvador Pozo.

...AND FINALLY

<<< Chris Burden's "Urban Light," a collection of street lights from many eras, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

||| And finally, Israeli footballer Shlomi Arbeitman's hit YouTube clip, and one of the hilarious parodies it's inspired. Win win, step by step!

||| Read the last edition.

||| Remember what was going on this time last year?

No? How about a reminder? Read Issue 41.

||| Help me make next week's copy even better.

Contact me with tips and suggestions. If you're a model

or photographer, contact me about being on the cover.

Issue 82: 18-31 December 2010

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© 2010

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POSTSCRIPT

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

to come. The whole thing's been ridiculous."