KAOS: March 2011

review

The Spiral Staircase

t's a dark and stormy night! Hide under the bed! Don't look in the closet! Stay downstairs! He knows you're alone!

These warnings pop in and out of the heroine's mind as the tension runs rampant in Robert Siodmak's suspense classic, The Spiral Staircase.

But, Dorothy McGuire isn't listening. She isn't talking either and that's half her problem. She's a mute. And there's a psycho killer murdering women with handicaps who may be hiding somewhere in the old dark house where she works. Where is it safe? Who can she trust? What was that noise? Is it just her imagination, or was that window closed the last time she passed it?

Dorothy McGuire leads a top flight cast of character actors including: Ethel Barrymore, in an Oscar nominated role, George Brent. Elsa Lancaster, Rhonda Fleming and Sarah Allgood in what is probably the greatest "Where is he in the house?" movie ever made.

Your blood'll run cold, Your spine'll tingle. You'll want to run. You won't dare. Whatever you do, don't go down The Spiral Staircase.

Steve Hayes

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a news compendium

with a gay bias
issue 91 | March 2011 | FREE

<<< Jose Ortiz strips for ace shutterbug Eric Ganison. More manikins later.

But first, everything you need to know from the last week - plus bonus eye candy and silliness...

||| From one black man to the black community – stop the homophobic madness! Make sure to visit the author Alvin McEwen's blog, Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters.

||| More jurors excuse themselves from jury duty due to their unequal status as gay citizens. Could you do it?

NORTH AMERICA & CANADA

||| Dan Choi talks to PinkNews on direct action gay equality campaigning.

>>> NEW YORK: Irish Queers have led the 20th protest against the exclusion of Irish GBLT groups from the Fifth Avenue St. Patrick's Day Parade. Progressive politician New York politicians boycott the event but both Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly continue to support it.

||| In Queens, the 12th gay-inclusive St. Patrick's Day Parade was held on 6th March.

||| Yes, a tsunami could strike New York City.

<<< Student evicted from dorm for being gay.

||| In California, the teachers are getting in on the anti-gay bullying act too.

>>> Another victim of anti-gay bullying: 13-year-old Nicholas Kelo Jr.

<<< This is 18-year-old Anthony Collao, who was stomped to death in Queens, New York, by anti-gay party crashers.

>>> In LA, tutors from School on Wheels give homeless kids a helping hand. This is 10-year-old James, pictured on 16th March.

||| 28-year-old stones pensioner to death; claims Bible made him do it. More on this at NY Daily News.

<<< God bless America! Montana Republicans stop repeal of death penalty and keep anti-gay law.

||| How Mormon views differ on the use of "reparative therapy"...

...Which includes electric shock treatment and aversion therapy ("The nurse put a gay porn movie in the VCR and told the patients to watch it... Every time he became aroused, ammonia sprayed from the tube into his nose).

||| Nate Phelps - son of Westboro Baptist Church pastor Fred Phelps - has branded his estranged father evil and revealed how he beat his wife and children until they bled. Surprised?

>>> 21-year-old draws on chest, sues airport for strip search arrest.

||| CANADA: Gay rights referenced in new citizenship guide.

UNITED KINGDOM

||| Men arrested for sex in central London gym.

||| East London gay pride parade cancelled after organiser's ties to far right and anti-Muslim groups revealed. Human rights activist Peter Tatchell had previously withdrawn his support for the event.

||| British court to decide the fate of Ugandan gay equality activist Stephen Kalyango, who is threatened with deportation back to Uganda.

<<< How the media ignored gay youth in reporting the story about Owen and Eunice Johns, the Christian foster parents deemed unsuitable role models by the High Court.

||| Standard High: Like any other high school, but without bullies. "Mark McCormack spent six months researching teen boys in the U.K. What he found was a culture of acceptance that defied cultural expectations."

||| Government to make announcement on gay blood donation "soon".

||| Conservative Government withdraws Gay Police Association funding.

>>> Exploring 4,000 years of GBLT history at the British Museum in London.

||| ISLE OF MAN: Gay couples get right to civil partnership.

||| SCOTLAND: Scottish government advised to legalise gay marriage.

||| SCOTLAND: A wee visit to Glasgow's oldest gay pub, The Waterloo.

<<< NORTHERN IRELAND: Gay hate peddler Iris Robinson - formerly an MP - won't be facing charges over her financial dealings. The devout Christian, who branded homosexuality "abhorrent", had an affair with a 19-year-old with whom she had a mother-son relationship. She was 59 at the time.

||| The Right Rev. Derek Rawcliffe, the Anglican bishop, is dead. He was 89. Rawcliffe was "a supporter of asylum-seekers and others living in poverty [and] wrote eloquently and firmly in aid of the gay cause."

EUROPE

||| The rise of Europe's religious right. Sophie in 't Veld writes: "Women's rights, gay rights and healthcare are all under threat – the secular nature of the European project must be reaffirmed."

||| IRELAND: David Norris launches bid to become Irish president and world's first openly gay head of state.

<<< ITALY: Gay Ikea ad provokes Catholic outrage in devout Catania.

||| RUSSIA: Siberian city Novokuznetsk (try and say that after half a bottle of vodka) says no to anti-gay legislation; less than 1% favour banning same-sex relationships.

||| POLAND: Gay equality has become mainstream in the conservative Catholic country.

CARIBBEAN SOUTH AMERICA

||| St. Lucia defends hospitality after anti-gay attacks.

>>> CUBA: Taboos and truths on homosexuality. An interview with 20-year-old Angel Raicel Merencio Llanes.

||| PERU: Debate over civil unions for gay couples divides Peru's socially conservative electorate ahead of next month's presidential vote.

ASIA PACIFIC

||| JAPAN: GBLT community speaks out on coping with disaster.

||| JAPAN: Japanese GBLT organisation report in OK, but uncertainty remains.

<<< JAPAN: The heartbreaking story of 9-year-old Toshihito Aisawa, whose mother, father, grandmother and cousins were swept away in the tsunami. "Stumbling from shelter to shelter, Toshihito Aisawa clutches a handwritten sign with the names of a family he cannot find. For seven days the nine-year-old boy has toured rescue centres across the tsunami-ravaged port of Ishinomaki. For seven days he has left disappointed. [He visits] shelters holding a card emblazoned with his family's names that reads: 'I will come at 11 o'clock tomorrow, so please wait. I will come again tomorrow.'"

||| JAPAN: The canine tsunami victim who won't leave another dog's side. Incredible.

||| JAPAN: 20 unforgettable pictures.

||| JAPAN: Earthquake aftermath (44 pictures from The Big Picture). Above, children from the evacuation area near Fukushima nuclear plant are checked for radiation.

||| JAPAN: Vast devastation (51 pictures from The Big Picture). Above, a boat sits atop a building in Iwate prefecture on 14th March.

||| JAPAN: New fears as the tragedy deepens (52 pictures from The Big Picture). Above, a family of survivors carry personal belongings on 15th March.

||| JAPAN: Continuing crisis (28 pictures from The Big Picture). Above, the remains of Yamada town on 16th March.

||| JAPAN: Hopes fade for finding more survivors (27 pictures from The Big Picture). Above, family photo in Minamisanriku on March 17.

||| JAPAN: One week later (25 pictures from The Big Picture). Above, coffins in Miyagi prefecture on March 18.

||| JAPAN: A house floating in the Pacific Ocean off the Japanese coast begs the question, What happened to those who once called it home?

||| JAPAN: Earthquake porn? Now we watch Japan catastrophe as if it's just theatre.

||| JAPAN: Quake moved Japan coast 8 feet, shifted Earth's axis.

<<< INDIA: Indian Army displays their pole gymnastics skill in exhibition on 14th March.

>>> PHILIPPINES: Mr. Gay World 2011, in pictures.

||| NEW ZEALAND: Gay-hate killer Jason Meads released 11 years after beating 14-year-old Jeff Whittington in 1999.

||| AUSTRALIA: Author Armistead Maupin banned from using restaurant toilet, told it's "for real men". Those easy-going, friendly Aussies are a sport, eh?

AFRICA

||| BOTSWANA: New challenge to country's anti-gay law sparks debate.

||| SOUTH AFRICA: Government under fire for failing to publicly support United Nations Human Rights Council resolution on ending violence and human rights abuses against GBLT communities. More on that at The Advocate.

<<< SOUTH AFRICA: Parliamentary motion to congratulate Francois Nel - winner of Mr. Gay World 2011 - blocked.

||| MALAWI: Aid worth $US400 million withheld by foriegn donors as Malawi pays the price for its poor human rights record.

||| UGANDA: Anti-Homosexuality Bill still alive and well. Uganda should take heed of what's happened in Malawi: US legislators are pushing for aid to be cut for countries deemed to be persecuting people "on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity or religious belief."

||| UGANDA: Minister of "ethics and integrity" resigns; blames the gays. As well as having a tenuous grasp on reality, he also seems to have skipped biology lessons in school: "Homosexuality in Uganda and Africa as a whole is a taboo. How can a man sleep with a fellow man or a woman with a fellow woman. How can they produce children?" Answer on a postcard, kids!

MIDDLE EAST

||| BAHRAIN: A gay Bahraini speaks out.

BODY & MIND

||| Stonewall launch biggest ever survey of gay and bisexual men's health.

<<< In the US, the National Institute of Mental Health is doing a study of its own, "to gain a better understanding of relationship dynamics and the contextual factors that shape them in order to develop interventions to improve the sexual health of men in same-sex relationships." Find out more here.

||| An education on trans youth.

PRINT & VISUAL

>>> The UK's best-selling gay lifestyle magazine, Attitude, launches Thai language version.

||| Vanity Fair apologises for gay writer's "fags" slur.

||| The problem with Tennessee Williams: Too hot and too cool. How the playright ran into censorship in post-war Britain over his plays' frankness about sex and homosexuality.

||| 23rd Annual Lambda Literary Awards finalists.

<<< More titillation from Bruno Gmunder's new history of gay porn, Porn: From Andy Warhol To X-Tube.

>>> BBC Books announce the reissue of the iconic Target Doctor Who novelisations, with original artwork and new introductions.

MUSIC

||| Behind the scenes on Ricky Martin's album cover shoot.

||| Pet Shop Boys talk about their contemporary ballet, inspired by Hans Christian Andersen, The Most Incredible Thing. A review. Another interview here.

||| Malaysia radio cuts gay lyrics from Lady Gaga cynical ~~money-spinner~~ "anthem" Born This Way. Why not do everyone a favour and cut the whole song?

||| The best singers that cannot sing: They maybe tone deaf but we still love them!

<<< True love at last: Justin Bieber meets his waxwork - but which one's which?

||| In video, very gay-friendly Steph Jones debuts his new video, Southern Love...

...And Nate Dogg, the singer best known for singing the hook on Warren G's Regulate, is dead. He was 41.

TELEVISION

||| Gays of Our Lives: All the latest from gays in soaps across the globe!

<<< Who created evil genius Davros? That's a question the courts will have to decide. A Doctor Who fan says "he invented Davros for a competition run by the now defunct TV Action magazine in 1972."

||| Doctor Who lead Matt Smith goes gay in Christopher And His Kind. More at Cathode Ray Tube.

>>> Michael Gough, the actor, is dead. He was 94. Gough was Batman's butler in four movies between 1989-97, but will forever be fondly remembered as the Toymaker in the 1966 Doctor Who serial The Celestial Toymaker.

||| Video of The Real World Las Vegas' Dustin's gay sex past removed; bloggers asked to remove images. Well, you can ask...

||| Is Netflix the next HBO? The American DVD rental service is looking to remake the British political thriller House of Cards.

CINEMA

||| GBLT community and ethnic minorities still shown as outdated stereotypes in film; more than 4000 adults were surveyed for the study, Portrayal vs Betrayal?

<<< The revival of 1971's Pink Narcissus, and what became of its director James Bidgood.

>>> East Bloc Love, a journey through gay Eastern Europe, a documentary by Logan Mucha. View the trailer here.

<<< Malaysia's first film with gay lead characters breaks taboo. Dalam Botol shocks conservative politicians but is criticised by gay activists for negative ending. More about the film here.

>>> Ten surprising gay sex scenes.

||| Channing Tatum not just a pretty face. (But it helps.)

SEX BIZ

<<< Blatino Oasis names 2011 honorees, awards to be held in May. More here...

...And here's the 2011 Grabby Award nominees. Race Cooper and Brent Everett are nominated.

>>> Randy Blue's Cayden Ross strips off.

||| Lucas Entertainment has wrapped production on Assassin. Rafael Alencar and Rafael Carreras star.

<<< Bel Ami releases final scene from new 3D title (Kris Evans and Dario Dolce star) and announce porn's first Blu-ray 3D release. Trailer and more pictures here.

MANIKINS

>>> Christian Ragin is pretty as f**k in a BLEU editorial.

<<< New manikin Frank M, lensed by Michael Ching.

>>> Spread The Wings of Tolerance, a shoot by Susanne

Stemmer and Markus Morianz for Life Ball 2011.

<<< Russell Giardina, photographed by Sean Kilkenny.

>>> Thiago Santos, shot by Kirt Reynolds for Fiasco magazine.

<<< One of the boys from McFit MODELS, a new agency based in Berlin.

>>> Kortney William, by Tarrice Love. Check out the video at Tarrice's blog too!

||| Kaylan Morgan, by Rick Day.

<<< The Innovation of Youth, an editorial for Vogue Hommes Japan, by Frederik Heyman.

SPORT

||| Anton Hysen states case for coming out and for his father's speech.

>>> Elsewhere, Hysen decides to talk to The Scum comic The Sun newspaper about coming out. There's no accounting for taste, I suppose.

||| Football accepts gay-rights charter...

...designed to stop things like Meril Radoi - a "well-known Romanian player" - describing rival players as "gay". He was suspended by Saudi Arabia's football disciplinary committee and fined.

||| BBC apologises for Hugh Grant's gay rugby comment. Grant's remark is the latest anti-gay slur heard on the national broadcaster.

THE NATURAL WORLD

<<< It's Thai Elephant Day - time for a buffet!

||| Knut, the famous polar bear, is dead. He was 4.

WEB & GADGETS

||| Blogger announces plans for the future.

...AND FINALLY

||| Our favourite GuysWithiPhones from the past week, after the jump - enjoy!