#100

a news compendium

with a gay bias
issue 100 | June 2011 | FREE

<<< Zack Clark, lensed by Cliff Watts. More mannequins later...

...But first, the week's good, bad and indifferent bits.

||| Gay: Born this way? "The debate about what makes people gay has been raging for decades. Now scientists aim to settle it for good." (The Independent)

||| Tracy Morgan: Don't fight bigotry with bigotry. "I knew better than to click and read the comments on PinkNews.co.uk's Facebook page regarding the original story. Something in my mind said someone would be ignorant enough to make a racist comment... Surely we know that Tracy Morgan represents the African American community just about as much as Perez Hilton represents us."

||| How making a career out of playing the race card brings race relations into disrepute.

NORTH AMERICA & CANADA

||| Chris Rock: Tracy Morgan "is a tad off".

||| Wanda Sykes: "For a youth in TN or any other numerous place, Tracy just yelled, 'Fire,' in a crowded theater."

||| Tina Fey: Tracy Morgan's rant violent, disturbing.

||| Human Rights Campaign: You must do more than apologise.

||| Family rejection of GBLT youth is no joke, writes Carl Siciliano, founder and executive director of the Ali Forney Center.

>>> Morgan meets with GLAAD, GBLT youth. More, plus video.

||| Could this be why Morgan is so full of gay hate?

||| Probably nothing is more "abusive" than homophobia, Tracy Morgan concludes. (GLAADBlog.org)

<<< Why Lt. Dan Choi will go on trial in August.

||| Obama's relationship with gay equality advocates thaws in time for 2012. (The Huffington Post)

||| Obama urged to speak out on gay violence in Puerto Rico. He didn't. (AMERICABlog)

||| The future of Proposition 8 moves closer to the US Supreme Court, "where any decision on its future would be likely to have an impact on every US state." (The Independent)

||| Dan Choi rips up Obama flyer: "If Obama doesn't endorse my full marriage equality and my personhood in this country, then I have no business supporting him."

||| US Bankruptcy Court declares the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) unconstitutional. (Box Turtle Bulletin)

>>> Meet multiple marriers Paul David Wadler and Rick Brown. They have married or received a civil union in Canada and every US state where the ceremony is legal.

||| The case for outing closeted politicians. (Salon.com)

<<< Overcoming the black church's tradition of homophobia, by Bishop Carlton Pearson. (CNN)

||| Birmingham Church: Sexual misconduct lawsuits "will not effect" relationship with Eddie Long.

||| Starbucks to investigate apparent firing, humiliation of gay employee...

...Whilst supermarket Safeway fires employee for "Oh God, they're faggots" slur.

||| Disabled gay men driven from public pool by attendant quoting the Bible...

...For which the city's Mayor, 83-year-old Nan Gorman, apologises. "I've had people call from everywhere," she said. "You'd think we've had a murder scene up here, a massacre."

>>> "I have gay friends," rabidly anti-gay former Senator Rick "Frothy Mix" Santorum tells CNN's (newly out) Don Lemon.

<<< Labour unions, GBLT solidarity a "natural alliance": civil rights and environmental activist Anthony K. "Van" Jones speaks out.

>>> Gay Philly cop Lee Marrero shares his story. (Philadelphia Weekly)

||| Conservatives, rightwingers, claim they're victims of gay intolerance and bullying.

||| East Village Historic Area could include birthplace of drag. More. (DNAinfo)

<<< Hangar 17, home to what remains of the World Trade Center. A damaged fire truck, bicycles still locked to a bike post, and left, an intact sign are some of the haunting artifacts held on site.

>>> Dezeen has a whole gallery of gorgeous pictures from the newly opened section 2 of the High Line.

UNITED KINGDOM

||| Some of Britain's most prominent gay commentators are "homophobe collaborators", betraying "the gay community with a drip feed of their internalised homophobia, splattered across the public domain". (GayTimes)

||| Gay Free Zone conviction is disturbing. Peter Tatchell writes, "Why did a few anti-gay stickers in East London provoke an outcry by gay groups, while far worse homophobia passed without protest?" (New Statesman)

<<< Former Mr Gay UK - and serving police officer - Mark Carter is cleared of rape and sexual assault charges.

||| Police "covered up" violent campaign to turn London area "Islamic". (Telegraph)

||| Stonewall chair David Issac and forer NBA basketball star John Amaechi each awarded Order of the British Empire (OBE).

||| LONDON: Gay couples urged to become foster parents to halt care crisis. (Evening SubStandard)

||| Tory Government still keen to ban gay men from donating blood, despite a shortage of donors.

>>> Gay British cop Oliver McNally beaten by homophobic thugs whilst on a stag weekend in Slovenia with heterosexual friends.

||| Protest planned at Russian Embassy in London for 1st July.

||| NORTHERN IRELAND: Protesters picket "gay cure" event.

||| 30-year-old lesbian jailed for grooming underage girls online by posing as teenage boy. (PinkPaper)

<<< Oxford Gay Pride, in pictures.

EUROPE

||| IRELAND: New HIV cases lowest for 10 years. (Independent.ie)

||| FRANCE: Parliament rejects gay marriage bill.

||| Belgium marks a year without a government. (Telegraph)

>>> SPAIN: Gay protestors upset the Mayor of Madrid whilst walking his dog...

...Whilst gay pride upsets Chueca residents, who claim it's too noisy.

<<< ITALY: Hundreds of thousands parade for gay equality in Rome. More pictures here.

||| CROATIA: President, Prime Minister condemn violence at Gay Pride Parade. (The New Civil Rights Movement)

||| UN lags far behind some of its own member states on GBLT equality.

||| Meanwhile, the UN Human Rights Council has passed a "historic resolution" that seeks equal rights for everyone regardless of their sexual orientation - despite strong Arab and African opposition. The "emotional debate" saw African states "accusing South Africa of breaking ranks with the region and siding with the West after it introduced the issue." (Radio Netherlands Worldwide)

>>> TURKEY: A sea of Syrian children and bricks at a Turkish refugee camp. (PhotoBlog)

AFRICA

KENYA: Clerics seek Shariah law to deal with "rising cases" of homosexuality.

ASIA

||| Hong Kong government hires gay conversion expert. (Radio Netherlands Worldwide)

<<< JAPAN: Three months after the quake (29 pictures).

||| AUSTRALIA: A HIV-positive Melbourne man who deliberately infected countless other men with the virus, through unprotected sex and conversion parties, has been sentenced to 14 years in jail.

||| Monsoon rains in Kolkata, India, below. (PhotoBlog)

MIDDLE EAST

||| IRAN: Necklace ban for men as Tehran's "moral police" enforce dress code. "More than 70,000 trained forces sent out to streets as part of effort to combat western cultural invasion." (The Guardian)

||| Underground and in the closet. The state of the gay Middle East. (Foreign Policy)

||| What life is really like for gay Syrians. (PinkNews)

||| A taste of Al Qaeda's new leader, Ayman al-Zawahri: "One dark tale from Mr. Zawahri's past is recounted in Growing Up Bin Laden, a 2008 memoir by Bin Laden's son Omar bin Laden. He describes an episode in Afghanistan in the 1990s when a friend — a teenage boy — was raped by several men in the camp where they lived. The men snapped photos of the abuse and circulated them as a joke. Mr. Zawahri was incensed by the photo, believing that the young man was guilty of homosexual activity, Omar bin Laden wrote. Mr. Zawahri had the teenager put on trial and condemned to death. 'My friend was dragged into a room with Zawahri, who shot him in the head,' he wrote." (NYTimes)

BODY & MIND

||| Watching television for two hours a day increases one's chance of dying prematurely. (Telegraph)

||| Boys as young as 10 are turning to bulimia.

THE NATURAL WORLD

<<< Animal pictures of the week (28 pictures).

||| JAPAN: Rabbit with no ears born close to Fukushima nuclear plant. (Telegraph)

>>> Swan vs. truck.

||| Boffins create cow that produces human milk. Nice.

||| Meet... COW-DINI!

WEB & GADGETS

<<< Grindr hits 2million users...

...Whilst Facebook usage drops in Britain and US...

...And yet Facebook users "have a higher level of well-being".

||| Facebook: Five things to avoid.

PRINT & VISUAL

>>> Meet Steven Brawley, who's made it his mission to document the history of the St. Louis GBLT community.

<<< Superman switches to jeans.

||| Review: The Stranger's Child, by Alan Hollinghurst. "There is a controlled anger at the careless cruelty of this way of living; all the wasted love and life that's gone before." (Telegraph) "Alan Hollinghurst's new novel is undoubtedly one of the best this year." (The Guardian) "A remarkable, unmissable achievement." (The Independent)

||| Review: The Intimates, by Ralph Sassone. "With Ralph Sassone's first novel, the story attempts to show the delicate intricacies between friendship and romance between a gay man, Robbie, and a straight woman, Maize. Since it is understood that their relationship will not be sexual in nature, the narrative then shifts to show how 'romance' goes beyond physical intimacy." (Lambda Literary)

CINEMA

>>> Development begins on the big screen adaptation of E. Lynn Harris's debut novel, Invisible Life.

||| X-Men: First Class subtext "totally intentional", screenwriter Zack Stentz confirms.

||| "Dumb, pointless, ugly, moronic and incomprehensible jumble of botched effects, technical blunders, and cluttered chaos." The Green Lantern gets a critical mauling.

||| Scissor Sisters to write soundtrack for new Fraggle Rock movie.

||| How Hollywood is forcing actors to play gay roles. Really.

<<< Review: All Boys. "...a massively missed opportunity."

TELEVISION

||| True Blood: Major heterosexual character to enter into gay relationship in forthcoming season. Let's hope it's a boy.

>>> Meet Elliot Knight, star of forthcoming fantasy series Sinbad, currently being filmed in Malta.

||| US soap Days Of Our Lives to get gay storyline.

||| Watch a trailer for a new TV pilot, Half-Share, about a summer share on Fire Island:

>>> The BBC responds to complaints over gay couple in bed together. "We approach our portrayal of homosexual relationships in exactly the same way as we do heterosexual relationships, ensuring depictions of affection or sexuality between couples are suitable for pre-watershed viewing..."

...Which is word for word the same statement issued over yet more complaints over a gay kiss in hospital soap Holby City.

||| The EastEnders furore shows gay equality is still a long way off. "It's like doing maths for homophobes as broadcasters try to calculate what level of offence two men in a bed might cause." (The Guardian)

||| BBC drama boss defends adult soap storylines, claiming they teach children about the world. (The Guardian)

||| Doctor Who: BBC1 will not screen a full series in 2012. "Series will be split between next year and 2013 due to Steven Moffat's writing commitments [on Sherlock Holmes]."

Pretty Ricky: Selling music, or sex?

||| Salman Rushdie: TV drama is the new literature. "Television drama has taken the place of film or even the novel as the best way to communicate ideas." (Telegraph)

MUSIC

<<< Music's "unmistakable descent into pornography". Mike Stock, part of the Stock, Aitken Waterman hit songwriting team of the 1980s and 1990s, says: "Pop music in this country is almost completely dominated by American acts who have taken sexualised imagery, dance moves and lyrical content way beyond the limits of decency."

>>> Soulja Boy claims his Facebook page was hacked, and the homophobic/racist remarks were not left by him. Another case of, "I'll say/do what I want and apologise later if/when I get caught/offend someone"?

<<< Lil B releases the cover art for his album, I'm Gay. "People use evil words, money, separation, stuff like that. I just wanted to make this to show words don't mean anything," Lil B says.

||| Hip hop legend Darryl 'D.M.C' McDaniels (of Run DMC) joins NOH8 and calls on fellow hip hop artists to speak out against homophobia.

THE SEX BIZ

>>> LA Pride: The porn edition. There's more here, plus some shots from UK Hustlaball.

<<< Wow... Just look at Chris "Leave Britney Alone" Crocker now.

||| Bel Ami launches seventh and final issue (for now) of KinkyAngels. (The Adams Report)

>>> Gay porn does its bit for the civil rights movement: "[Gay Creeps convert] their straight, financially and emotionally troubled roommates, showing them how to suck a real cock."

||| Also out now is Falcon's What Goes Around, starring "Erik Rhodes' new dick and Topher DiMaggio's eyebrows". (The Sword)

<<< Ten gay porn star hookers who you (yes, you!) can have sex with for under $350. (The Sword)

MANIKINS

||| Borgy Manotoc, above, by Lope Navo.

||| Mikael Jasin, by Luki; 3 MEN, by Scott Hoover; and new face Oliver Krohn Sandahl:

||| Sadik Hadzovic, by Thomas Synnamon; and David Agbodji, by Albert Watson:

||| Zack Clark, by Syed Zazmi; new face Marlon Verdam; Aaron, by Dylan Rosser:

||| Jason Morgan, by Bruno Rand; Rick Day releases Players 2; and Tiago Pettersen - also by Rick Day!

||| Emilio Flores, by Paola Kudacki:

||| Introducing TMF Magazine; Zack Clark, by Justin Violini; and Texan Ben Nelson in INSTINCT magazine. (Depressingly, he's a "management consultant" in real life. Now if that's not a turn-off, I don't know what is....)

||| Abdelilah, by Mano Martinez:

SPORT

<<< Meet the King's Cross Steelers – rugby union's oldest gay team.

||| CNN's Kyra Phillips hammers former NFL player David Tyree over anti-gay marriage slurs. (Towleroad)

...AND FINALLY

||| Airbus unveil the transparent plane we'll be flying around in come 2050. (Mail Online)

||| 7 things fast food restaurants won't tell you.

<<< This is an advert for beer.

>>> This is a cookie. An afro cookie, in fact. Er... yum?!

||| South Africa uses racism to sell matches.

||| How to make the perfect cup of tea.

||| And finally, our favourite boys from GuysWithiPhones this week, after the jump!

Issue 100: 11-17 June 2011

||| Read the last edition.

||| Remember what was going on this time last year? No? How about a reminder? Read Issue 67.

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© 2011