KAOS: July 2011

review

Finding Me: Truth

There's a lot to like about Finding Me: Truth, although this sequel to 2009's Finding Me isn't without its problems.

We rejoin Jersey City friends Faybien (RayMartell Moore), Greg (Eugene E. Turner), and Amera (J'Nara Corbin), all of whom are struggling with romantic issues of one kind or another. Added into the mix is toxic Jay, Greg's unwelcome roommate, played by Maurice Murrell.

Murrell, of course, died suddenly earlier this year, aged just 32, so it's nice to be able to report he's one of the best things in this film - shamelessly stealing every scene, as a poisonous bad boy bent on taking everyone in his path down with him.

Moore is cute as pretty boy toy Faybien, and, when he's given enough to do (blowing his top with Jay comes to mind) proves he can act. Eugene E. Turner is fine as Greg, but Corbin's Amera grates: she caterwauls her way through the movie with a voice like fingernails on a blackboard, bulldozing her way through every scene like a drunk drag queen in a funeral parlour. Turn it down a bit next time love - sometimes, less is more.

Similarly, it's a shame that the two white characters who appear are so deliberately distasteful, particularly Jay's friend Neal. Intriguing that each and every one of the black actors are more or less dazzlingly attractive, whilst Neal looks like an anemic weasel. God bless America!

Still, it falls to Neal to deliver one of the movie's most apt lines. "I feel like I'm watching three different TV shows," he remarks during a disastrous dinner party. You are, Neal, and they all air in the daytime.

Look, this isn't cutting edge, arthouse cinema, it's soap, of the E. Lynn Harris variety. If endless deliberations about feelings and relationships are your bag, this is for you. Just don't take it too seriously: enjoy the cute boys, and enjoy an easy ride.

*The DVD is available in the UK now. US audiences have to wait until 20th September.

MORE reviews

a news compendium

with a gay bias

issue 101 | July 2011 | FREE

<<< Meet Teagen - and friend - looking dangerously like an interracial couple. Jesus H. Christ, somebody do something! Teagan gets top marks from me, just for having no tattoos. More mannequins later...

...But first, the past month's good, bad and indifferent bits - after a little announcement...

||| Welcome to the very last edition of the ka-os|theory news compendium.

For the past two and a half years, I've been "curating" the best - and worst - of global GBLT and pop culture news. I'm a news junkie, and it seemed like a good way to keep up with what's going on. My friend Trev was working for BBC News at the time, and described working on a "news playlist" TV news picked from. Ah ha, I thought! But it's incredibly time consuming - increasingly so - and sadly I also have a day job to clock in with. So I've decided to do other things (like catch up with those friends who haven't been driven off by a cry of "No, I've got to finish the blog!") and stop the news round-ups for now.

Thanks go to everyone who's spent a minute on these pages, and extra thanks to those who took the time to comment - it means a lot.

I couldn't have done it without the daily, hourly work of sites like Towleroad - and particularly UK Gay News - to name a few, who everyday tirelessly bring us the GBLT news that mainstream outlets ignore. ka-os|theory was never intended to replicate what those sites do; rather, to bring together a balanced, informative, fun, weekly review of stories that reflects the global GBLT experience, regardless of who or where you are.

And then there's Taylor Siluwé. It would be disingenuous to claim I was stopping because Taylor is gone - in fact, I'd planned on wrapping things up with issue 100 some months back - but the fact is his absence has left a huge hole. Taylor was hugely supportive of ka-os|theory from early on; his encouragement, and his approval, was crucial to me. Role model, peer... Call it what you will: what he thought mattered. I have lost a friend, and ka-os|theory has lost a great ally. It just doesn't really feel the same anymore.

It is to him that this 101st - and final - edition is dedicated.

Thank you, and goodnight. It's been fun.

Jai (aka Liberator Émigré Éire)

NORTH AMERICA & CANADA

||| The death of gay culture. Again. Sort of. (MOC Blog)

||| Gay people affirmed to be human by United Nations.

<<< 36 pro-GBLT billboards appear in New York. (The New Civil Rights Movement)

>>> Human Rights Campaign store vandalised; radical queer group claims responsibility. (Washington Blade)

||| Game over: Gay marriage will eventually be the law of the land. (Boston.com)

<<< New York victory: Gay marriage victory sees New York become largest state to pass law.

||| New York victory: How it happened.

||| New York victory: The scene outside Stonewall.

||| New York victory: Euphoria in the West Village.

<<< The Empire State Building is seemingly in on the celebrations.

||| New York victory: Gay Pride marchers look forward; video. (NY1)

||| New York victory: How the gay marriage debate exposed the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of old-time religion. (The Huffington Post)

||| New York victory: A victory – but not an end to the equality battle... (The Independent)

...Because it's a bittersweet victory: Why gay marriage still isn't marriage.

||| New York victory: Couple can finally marry after 60 years. (The Independent)

>>> New York victory: Not everyone is celebrating, however. Timothy Dolan, the Archbishop of New York, fears the law will "lead to polygamy, infidelity, and 'the churches, and believers' being 'hauled into court for their conviction that marriage is between one man, one woman, forever, bringing children into the world.'" (The New Civil Rights Movement)

<<< New York victory: Bronx GBLT community celebrates big F**K YOU to Sen. Ruben Diaz.

||| New York victory: Victor Hoff at MOC Blog has a different take on things - and a stark warning.

||| Obama's still on the fence on gay marriage... (Los Angeles Times)

...even as he defends his record on gay equality progress... (POLITICO)

...But it's time for him to stand up for gay marriage. (The Washington Post)

||| So how does gay marriage play as a political issue? (TIME)

||| What does the Bible actually say about gay marriage?

<<< The separation of church and hate, by Rev. Dr. Cindi Love. "For those who insist that we are and must be a Christian Nation, may I suggest that the current 'Kill the Gays' strategy of Engle and his cohorts (sadly, even the Governor of the Great State of Texas) is not only flawed, it is anything but Christ-like." (The Huffington Post)

||| The intensity of whatever opposition remains to marriage equality is rapidly dissipating. (The Washington Post)

||| Palm Springs has highest concentration of gay couple cohabitation in California.

>>> Meet Michele Bachmann, "fundamentalist Christian zealot, paranoid isolationist, lowbrow conspiracy theorist, heavily shellacked automaton, anti-choice anti-gay anti-everything neo-Stepford throwback and easily the flat-out nuttiest female ever to raise a hugely depressing $13 million for her clumsy campaign launch, Michele wants to lead us all to salvation". (SFGate)

||| Bachmann: Homophobe-in-chief? "As she moves from Tea Party fringe to Republican presidential contender, her horrible anti-gay record deserves exposure." (The Guardian)

<<< LZ Granderson: Michele Bachmann? I just don't get it. "We now know that Bachmann's not interested in cleaning up Washington. She wants to baptize it with her theology and half-truths. She wants to get rid of the Environmental Protection Agency [and] rid the country of porn." (CNN)

||| Hidden camera finds "reparative therapy" at Bachmann's clinics...

...And: How I went undercover at Bachmann's clinic. (The Advocate)

||| Bachmann mutes the anti-gay hate - for now...

...Unlike Presidential hopeful Rick Santorum. He has told supporters gay marriage will "cheapen" straight marriage, and "devastate" children.

||| Children like Indiana high school students, perhaps? GBLT kids are victims of "high rates of harassment", research shows.

||| Fox News uncovers how Gays ARE INDOCTRINATING YOUR KIDS!

Queer Youth Advocacy Day, back in April.

<<< California Governor Jerry Brown signs the FAIR Education Act, which requires schools to add GBLT History to their curriculum. (Towleroad)

||| After the News of the Word, could Fox News come under scrutiny next?

||| Gay professors face discrimination from students. (USATODAY)

||| Why gays should come out at work. (CNN)

||| Microsoft removes store from Christian Values Network after connection to anti-gay groups revealed. (Change.org)

||| BBC America follows suit.

>>> Meet the new faces of gay activism. Right, 23-year-old Tyler Johnson.

||| Atheists should study gay political playbook. (The Washington Post)

||| Bradley Manning: I was bullied in the military for being gay. "New online conversations allege the suspected WikiLeaks source was mocked and physically attacked." (The Guardian)

||| Don't Ask, Don't Tell: The seemingly never ending story of the death of DADT.

||| Don't Ask, Don't Tell: 3 gay Air Force members request discharges months before the ban's repeal.

||| But the Pentagon has now instructed the military "to stop removing personnel who are gay from service and to begin accepting applications from homosexual recruits who are otherwise qualified to serve". (New York Times)

<<< Soldier leaves legacy much larger than "he was gay". "Cpl. Andrew Charles Wilfahrt, 31, is believed to be the first gay U.S. soldier to die in battle since President Obama signed the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell." (CNN)

||| Anti-gay black conservative Herman Cain says President Obama is not a "real black man". Most telling is the following statement: "It is documented that his mother was white and his father was from Africa. If he wants to call himself black, fine."

||| Eddie Long and the Don't Ask, Don't Tell pall over the black church. (COLORLINES)

||| Why Muslims and the GBLT community should be allies.

||| New York Gay Pride 2011: Kevin Cole's fantastic pictures here.

||| New York Gay Pride 2011, in pictures. More sets here, here, here, and here!

||| Queens Gay Pride 2011, in pictures:

||| San Francisco Gay Pride 2011, in pictures:

||| Seattle Pride 2011: Anarchists riot over "assimilation of gay pride into the commercial mainstream":

||| An Arkansas newspaper that omitted the name of a gay man's surviving partner from his obituary has apparently gone back on its promise to reprint the obit with the partner's name included. (The Advocate)

<<< Larry King murder trial: Brandon McInerney, who was 14-years-old when he shot King in a classroom, "faces 1st degree murder and hate-crime charges. The defense will argue for voluntary manslaughter, saying he was young, immature and provoked". (Los Angeles Times)

||| Larry King murder trial: Former classmates of the 15-year-old recount details of the morning he was killed and the months leading up to it. (Los Angeles Times)

||| Larry King murder trial: Teacher describes teen's changing gender identity before slaying. (Los Angeles Times)

>>> After 13-year-old Seth Walsh's suicide, Central California district to revise harassment policies.

<<< This is 4-year-old Jadon Higganbothan. He was shot dead by Peter Lucas Moses - a religious leader - because he might have been gay.

||| In Chicago, 25-year-old Rubin Robinson was attacked and stabbed by a mob. All of the youth involved were black and apparently GBLT.

>>> Rubin is recovering and his attacker has been arrested.

||| Photographer John Gress: Stabbing exposes racial rift in Chicago's Boystown.

||| Six Atlanta police officers fired for 2009 raid on Atlanta Eagle gay bar.

||| Southwest pilot's homophobic tirade caught on tape. (Raw Replay)

||| Gay man's bank card cancelled because he sounds like a woman. (Xtra!)

||| My ex-gay friend.

||| The hidden history of homosexuality in the US. "The gay and bisexual community of America pre-dates Columbus – and continues to shape the nation. Why isn't it acknowledged?" (The Independent)

<<< CANADA: One million turn out for Toronto Pride 2011. In pictures.

>>> Our history: The first gay protest in Canada. Forty years ago, gays and lesbians rallied in Vancouver. (Xtra!)

UNITED KINGDOM

||| London's oldest gay charity saved. (Pink News)

||| Former Mayor of London Ken Livingstone has attacked current Mayor Boris Johnson's commitment to gay equality.

||| Johnson misses another London Gay Pride. Despicable.

<<< The Pride Power List 2011: The 100 most influential LGBT people in the UK. ka-os|theory favourite Kele Okereke, but the list is mostly notable for who isn't on it.

||| Former Doctor Who, Queer As Folk writer Russell T Davies has "launched an outspoken attack on [Prime Minister] David Cameron and Nick Clegg", branding the leaders "savage and evil people" and claiming the Conservative Party was "buffoonish" but "lethal as a laser".

||| David Cameron's rhetoric on GBLT equality in Africa could backfire.

>>> And it is just rhetoric. Case in point: Deportation of gay Ugandan - and torture victim - Robert Segwanyi stopped at last moment.

||| David Cameron's cuts, and how they affect us.

||| London Pride 2011: Gay firefighters boycott parade.

||| London Pride 2011: in pictures. More sets here, here, here, here, here, here, and here!

||| London Pride 2011: So So Gay's photos, part 1 and part 2.

||| Transgender woman calls for Pride drag ban. Boo!

||| Two men arrested after man's body found on gay cruising spot Clapham Common. (PinkPaper)

<<< Oh-oh. The Equality and Human Rights Commission has done a U-turn on religious beliefs, saying that judges have interpreted equality law too harshly against Christians...

...Stonewall says it is "deeply disturbed" by the news. (PinkNews)

||| The Equality and Human Rights Commission must not fall for this religious victim narrative – its role is to protect all our rights. (The Guardian)

||| Asian gay couples: adoption still a challenge. (BBC News)

||| East London Mosque breaks promise to ban anti-gay hate clerics...

...On the bright side, British Muslims apparently strongly support gay equality, according to a new poll.

||| Al-Qaeda fanatics taught to avoid intelligence honeytraps by pretending to be gay.

||| Now terrorists want to surgically implant bombs in their bodies to avoid detection.

>>> Soho nail bomber David Copeland loses sentence appeal. (BBC News)

||| Hideously diverse Britain: when liberalism needs to be more muscular. "A man in east London was fined just £100 for putting up stickers proclaiming the area to be a 'gay-free' zone. That doesn't reflect well on anybody involved." (The Guardian)

<<< Being "gaysian".

||| Commonwealth must put gay rights on its agenda, says Peter Tatchell.

||| Who's who in the News International scandal. (Telegraph)

>>> News of the World: Murdoch's malign influence must die with the News of the World. "The scandal over phone hacking has exposed a rotten empire and the urgent need for stronger press regulation." (The Observer)

||| News of the World: What was it like on the inside? A "pressure cooker of fear and rivalry". (BBC News)

||| For years, fear of the tabloid sting kept politicians in line.

<<< Charlie Brooker on the last edition. "Today I bought the News of the World. Having fashioned a disguise from dirt and wool, I cycled to the newsagents at 7.30am. Having secured a copy, I made my excuses and left – after hiding it inside a necro-zoophiliac porn mag, so any passers-by outside wouldn't judge me too harshly."

>>> Iconic homeware chain Habitat collapses into administration; all but three of its London stores are closed. Video. More at The Guardian.

||| The collapse of Habitat: Rise and fall of the empire that shaped Britain's habitat. (The Independent)

||| The collapse of Habitat: "The stores appeared to have been on a life support machine for a number of years, flattened by IKEA and myriad imitators. Habitat... somehow became caught in its own time warp." (The Observer)

||| The collapse of Habitat: "Habitat showed us the way – and then we moved on." (The Independent)

||| The collapse of Habitat: How Habitat revamped Britain's home. (BBC News)

EUROPE

>>> IRELAND: Dublin Gay Pride 2011 attracts 25,000; in pictures. More shots here.

||| IRELAND: Concern at rate of illness among gay population. (Irish Examiner)

||| FRANCE: Why France lags behind New York in recognising gay marriage. (TIME)

<<< SPAIN: Accused of being gay, priest challenges Church to measure his anus. (The Free Thinker)

||| MALTA: Gay Pride 2011, in pictures.

||| CROATIA: Zagreb hosts 10th Gay Pride Parade without incident.

||| BULGARIA: Sofia hosts 4th Gay Pride Parade.

||| ICELAND: 7000 turn out for Helsinki Pride 2011.

>>> RUSSIA: Authorities ban gay pride parade, okay anti-gay rally.

||| RUSSIA: Activists attacked by mob in St. Petersburg.

<<< In London, protesters demand Council of Europe suspends Russia over gay pride bans.

||| AUSTRIA: Nazis' gay victims commemorated in Vienna, and 98-year-old Rudolf Brazda - a gay concentration camp survivor - shares his story.

>>> GERMANY: Berlin Gay Pride 2011 - Christopher Street Day - turns its sights on homophobia in sport. In pictures. Video here.

||| ITALY: Meet Nichi Vendola, the "Italian Barack Obama", an openly gay politician who has "mobilised his country's youth in an Internet-driven movement of hope and change".

<<< TURKEY: Thousands march in the Turkish Gay Pride Parade, "the only march of its kind in a majority-Muslim country".

LATIN AMERICA

>>> MEXICO: Tijuana's 16th GLBTI Pride attracts 1000.

||| BRAZIL: 4 million (yes, FOUR million) turn out for São Paulo Gay Pride. In pictures; more here.

||| But the country's gay rights progress also highlights deep division; there were 260 murders of gays, lesbians or transvestites in Brazil last year, and around 65 killings so far this year.

This is 14-year-old Alexandre Ivo, who was beaten and strangled to death by skinheads - who suspected him of being gay - in Rio de Janeiro. (BBC News)

||| And the Christian right want a "Heterosexual Pride" day, or "Orgulho Hetero" in Portuguese.

||| BRAZIL: Watch out Sao Paulo - Rio de Janeiro aims to become world capital of gay tourism. "Diversity week follows series of gay-friendly government schemes to capitalise on growing market." (The Guardian)

||| But Rio faces stiff competition from Buenos Aires and Mexico City.

||| BRAZIL: 50 couples try to set new mass gay wedding record.

>>> CHILE: 50,000 take part in Gay Pride in Santiago de Chile.

||| DOMINICAN REPUBLIC: Santo Domingo Pride 2011. In pictures:

<<< PUERTO RICO: The deadly assaults targeting the GBLT community. Left, 19-year-old Jorge Steven López, who was decapitated, dismembered and set ablaze in November 2009.

||| CUBA: Havanna gay pride parade has big debut, but few marchers.

||| CUBA: Is this Cuba's Stonewall moment? "Last week the streets of Havana witnessed their first ever gay pride march. Gianluca Mezzofiore talks to those on the front line of the island's equality movement." (The Independent)

<<< NICARAGUA: A tranvestite poses during a gay pride parade in Managua on June 28. (PhotoBlog)

||| JAMAICA: Homeless street youth more tolerant of homosexuality than their counterparts living at home.

||| JAMAICA: Discrimination against gays: A great folly. Editorial.

||| JAMAICA: Governments have failed to mitigate risks of homophobia. (Jamaica Gleaner)

||| JAMAICA: Police Chief apologises over senior commander's claim that gays were to blame for organised crime.

||| JAMAICA: Forced values have no value. A response to The Gleaner's Letter of the Day titled "Don't force gay values on others". (Corve DaCosta)

AFRICA

||| Gay campaigners are changing Africa. "Contrary to what might be expected, gay people in Africa are actively challenging the status of LGBT rights across the continent – and winning." (Pink Paper)

||| It's time to See Africa Differently!

||| UGANDA: Beyond the anti-gay bill: The difficult truth about Museveni's government.

>>> UGANDA: "Kill The Gays" bill author David Bahati's star rises in Uganda's ruling party, and is "named chairman of the Ugandan Fellowship, a branch of the US-based secretive group known as the C Street Fellowship or The Family". (Box Turtle Bulletin)

||| ZIMBABWE: A backlog of prisoners is building up on Zimbabwe's death row because the authorities are struggling to recruit a new hangman. (Telegraph)

||| SOUTH AFRICA: Gay refugee programme launched in Cape Town. "The programme will advocate for the rights of LGBT asylum-seekers and refugees, assist with paralegal advice and aims to empower this group by building a support network." (MambaOnline)

ASIA-PACIFIC

<<< BURMA: "Lustful gay" at fault for his own murder, police say of 32-year-old man stabbed 72 times.

||| JAPAN: Fukushima much worse than you think. "Fukushima is the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind."

||| CHINA: Beijing's gay community fights censorship; Douban, "ostensibly one of China's most liberal social-networking websites", has been cracking down on the GBLT community.

||| The true cost of being gay in Beijing. (TIME)

||| CHINA: Police harrassment forces Beijing Queer Film Festival to return underground. (The Shanghaiist)

||| SINGAPORE: Pink Dot rally draws record turnout of 10,000.

||| TAIWAN: Massive store name fail.

||| SAMOA: Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele praises transsexuals as "miracles of God".

>>> AUSTRALIA: This is 29-year-old Aaron James Johnstone, who has been jailed for 18 years for dropping an 8kg concrete platypus on his gay housemate.

||| Gay marriage support unstoppable, say Green Party. Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has stated that marriage should be between a man and a woman.

||| Gay equality group GetUp! wins charity auction for dinner hosted by Gillard at her official residence in Canberra.

||| How Gillard has gone out of her way to pander to the Christian right.

||| Has Melbourne lost its gay precinct on Commercial Road?

<<< Virgin Blue has a unique way to show us how excited it is to be sponsoring Sydney's Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras.

SOUTHERN ASIA

||| A bad week for gay rights on the subcontinent.

>>> INDIA: Health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad brands homosexuality " a disease which has come from other countries".

||| INDIA: Ghulam Nabi Azad says, "I was quoted out of context."

||| PAKISTAN: Religious groups condemn US embassy gay event. (BBC News)

||| PAKISTAN: Has the time come for GBLT equality?

<<< PAKISTAN: A boy and his horse wait to go to work in Karachi. (PhotoBlog)

MIDDLE EAST

||| Melody Moezzi: Muslim states must support GBLT equality.

||| Iran wants to ban "the public appearance" of dogs. Does that include Iran's President, anti-gay Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?

BODY & MIND

||| WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE! Boffins discover antibiotic-resistant "super gonorrhea".

|||Flesh eating cocaine hits the street.

>>> Fried Kool-Aid, anyone? Fried anything...?

||| Why do Americans die younger than Britons? (Er... see above)

||| Drinking eight glasses of water daily is nonsense. Plus more health myths about water.

<<< Our sexual desires exposed by neuroscientists' porn study. "Straight men are as aroused by penises as homosexuals and have fantasies of their wives sleeping with other men, but any fears about the negative or corrupting influence of pornography are misguided." (Sydney Morning Herald)

||| A quarter of all gay couples in the US are raising children...

...And with more same-sex celebrity couples proudly parading their children, is life getting easier for these unconventional set-ups? (The Independent)

<<< But the Family Research Council wants the public to believe children are traumatised by images of loving gay couples, and have issued a DVD to spread the lie.

||| Pleasure Rush, a new project sponsored by Philadelphia's The Gay and Lesbian Latino AIDS Education Initiative (GALAEI), "[seeks to] capture the attention of individuals who are desensitized to current HIV prevention messages that focus solely on getting tested or knowing your status."

THE NATURAL WORLD

<<< Animal pictures of the week (33 pictures). Left, a Geoffroy's spider monkey in China.

>>> The penguin who took a wrong turn.

||| London to host first gay dog show. (Pink Paper)

||| A puppy learns about physics.

<<< Donkey overload in Pakistan.

||| Monkey marriage in India.

||| SINGAPORE: The rise of the super trees.

WEB & GADGETS

||| MySpace finally sold for paltry $US35 million.

>>> Don't be evil? Uh huh... Google "hides" Gay Pride feature, which was designed to counter allegations it doesn't do enough for the GBLT community.

||| Yahoo! Mail users warned over privacy.

<<< Another sad day: Sony announces the end of the MiniDisc walkman.

||| This is cool. Change trains - whilst they're still in motion. File under: "It's Never Happen." Still, there's a video of the idea here.

PRINT & VISUAL

||| Remembering Taylor Siluwé. Friend and fellow writer Nathan James: "[He] was one of the most beautiful human beings I've ever known. He was one of my best friends, and a gifted writer, as well." (Lambda Literary)

||| Gay activist and author Rev. Kevin E. Taylor says, "Taylor was a gifted, searingly honest, sincere writer who wasn't afraid of his own voice."

||| ka-os|theory: "To those of you who didn't know him, or hadn't read his blog or his books, or heard his dreams or ambitions, it's hard to desribe him. Razor sharp and one of the smartest people I've been lucky enough to meet, he was sexy (hell, have you seen those lips? They're a work of art!), and ambitious, a dreamer, and brilliant. He had a heart of gold. He was one of us. He was my friend."

||| MOC Blog: "Taylor was one of those people for whom the expression, 'He can disagree with you without being disagreeable' was meant. He will be deeply, deeply missed."

||| Taylor's partner Martrel writes poignantly about his lover's last months, and posts pictures of their garden at SGL Café.

||| SGL Insider reprints an interview with Taylor.

||| Taylor Siluwé: The Food and Drug Administration releases graphic new warnings for cigarette packages. When he announced his illness, Taylor wrote this: "I discovered smoking at the age of 19 because I was on a boring job and wanted to be rebellious. Twenty-four years later, after quitting off and on repeatedly I'd finally managed to do it for good. I was quite proud of myself. Then came the swollen limp glands, the back pain, and the irony."

<<< Review: The Last Deployment: How a Gay, Hammer-Swinging Twentysomething Survived a Year in Iraq, by Bronson Lemer. "Regardless of how you feel about the war, this memoir is well worth reading."

||| Review: A Queer History of the United States, by Michael Bronski. "Bronski appears to assign a 'role' to LGBT people as subversives throughout American history, simply by their existence."

>>> Review: Ambientes: New Queer Latino Writing, edited by Lázaro Lima and Felice Picano. "The stories presented in Ambientes are as varied as their authors, but the over-arching theme is one of otherness within our own communities."

||| Review: The VIPs, by Scott Poulson-Bryant. "Is the novel high-art? No. But it stands on its own well-constructed melodramatic merits."

||| Review: Remembrance of Things I Forgot, by Bob Smith. "A delightful, moving portrait of a man who is given the rare opportunity to literally revisit his past, and the novel will likely be considered one of this year's best."

||| Review: A Twist of Grimm: Erotic Fairy Tales for Gay Men. "William Holden has brought the Brothers Grimm's fairy tales forward several generations and tweaked them for our erotic pleasure."

<<< Review: Black Fire: Gay African-American Erotica, edited by Shane Allison. "I dare you to find a more nuanced, or a sexier, exhibition of black male bodies, desiring one another."

>>> Review: Leche, by R. Zamora Linmark. "Leche educates and entertains in equal measure."

||| Review: The Empty Family, by Colm Tóibín. "A careful, almost classical style that eschews linguistic pyrotechnics in favor of a moment-by-moment accounting of detail and emotion."

||| Review: The Stranger's Child, by Alan Hollinghurst. "He transcends what might have been a purely backward-looking project, a filling in of the gay blanks..." (The Guardian)

||| Alan Hollinghurst: Sex on the brain. "He had trouble publishing his explicit first book, but by 2004 he'd won the Booker prize. Alan Hollinghurst talks about living alone, the allure of the upper classes and why he's not just a gay writer any more." (The Guardian)

||| Lambda Literary rounds up July's new GBLT book releases.

>>> Meet William Johnson, Lambda Literary's new Managing Editor.

<<< Back in 2010, we heard about Queer Kids, a project by Brooklyn-based photographer Michael Sharkey. Here's an update. Left, Tanner and Andy - both 16 - go to their prom.

||| A new look for the till receipt.

>>> The Fox Is Black - an art and design blog - debuts new GBLT creatives series. Right, the work of Atherton Lin.

<<< This is the nearly complete New York by Frank Gehry, the eighth tallest building in NYC, and the tallest residential building in the Western Hemisphere. Stunning.

>>> And here's the Tour Végétale de Nantes, by Edouard François, in France. Its facade will be covered by plants adapted to thrive in rocky crevices.

<<< Oh, this is beautiful. The Kanazawa Umimirai Library, by Kazumi Kudo and
Hiroshi Horiba/Coelacanth K&H Architects, in Kanazawa, Japan. It's exactly like the interior Doctor Who's TARDIS circa 1981 - and how the ship should have looked in the 21st century. British fail, Japanese triumph.

STAGE

>>> A younger generation reacts to the fear and terror in The Normal Heart.

||| Review: The Temperamentals. "The play, whose three-theatre run finished in Greenwich last week, tells the little-known story of the formation and ultimate decline of the world's first gay rights organisation... Two decades before the 1969 Stonewall riots."

<<< Boy Culture wraps up everything you need to know about Broadway Bares XXI. WOOF!

CINEMA

||| JAPAN: The Asian Queer Film Festival opens Tokyo up to brave new experiences.

||| Derek Jarman's time comes round again. "Maddening, sexy, disorientating – the work of the late Derek Jarman is as breathtaking and relevant as it ever was." (The Guardian)

||| Ian McKellen: Why I never came out to my parents.

||| Daniel Radcliffe dedicates Trevor Project Hero Award to "real heroes"; the actor was honoured for being an inspiration to GBLT youth.

||| James Franco talks about those gay rapist rumours.

<<< Twilight star Kellan Lutz - looking like a rent boy from around 1983 - strips off for some tennis. I've no idea why.

>>> Angelenos had the chance to see Rikki Beadle-Blair's jaw-dropping third feature film, Bashment, on Thursday at Outfest.

||| Francois Sagat's L.A. Zombie is also screening at Outfest. Reviews are mixed.

<<< Eating Out: Drama Camp is the fourth instalment in the Eating Out franchise (and a fifth comes out next year). It screens on Sunday 17th July at LA's Outfest. Stills and trailer here.

||| In the UK, Peccadillo Pictures steps in to tour GBLT films.

||| Trailer: The Lavender Scare, a new documentary documenting the US government's "gay witch hunts" in the 1950's, 60's:

TELEVISION

||| Russell T. Davies (Queer As Folk) is behind new drama Cucumbers, about "older gay men and some of their jealousy to the types of characters that would've been found in the original Queer As Folk."

||| Another Davies show - Torchwood - is back, and its star, John Barrowman, has warned fans to expect "man sex and nudity".

||| Barrowman claims "half of Hollywood actors in the closet".

>>> Cathode Ray Tube pays a visit to the Doctor Who Experience.

<<< Joe Manganiello. Joe Manganiello. Joe Manganiello. Joe Manganiello...

||| True Blood's creator Alan Ball says Season 4 was "really tough"; negotiates for Season 5 - which could be the last.

>>> Joe Manganiello. Joe Manganiello. Joe Manganiello. Joe Manganiello. Joe Manganiello... (Sigh)

||| Tudors star Jonathan Rhys Meyers hospitalised after apparent suicide attempt.

<<< Here's something to have certain separatist bloggers who hate interracial couples foaming at the mouth. It's from new Channel 4 comedy/drama Sirens.

<<< Coronation Street's "gay agenda": Art critic Brian Sewell asks, "What HAVE they done to Corrie? Is it true that the lives of heterosexual Mancunians are haplessly intertwined with transvestites, transsexuals, teenage lesbians and a horde of homosexuals across the age range." (Mail Online)

>>> Coronation Street's "gay agenda": Coronation Street actor Charlie Condou hits back: "Brian Sewell's criticism of Coronation Street threatens to take us back to the bad old days."

||| Coronation Street's "gay agenda": Is Manchester the Sodom of the north? "Brian Sewell's anti-gay diatribe shows how little he knows about Coronation Street – or Canal Street, for that matter." (The Guardian)

||| Coronation Street's "gay agenda": Could straights be the real problem? "If there’s one thing I’ve noticed on't cobbles at the moment, it’s the disproportionate amount of heterosexuals there are. We’re overrun with ‘em! They hang around in gangs – sometimes in public places like the Red Rec, The Rovers or on the bench outside Audrey’s Salon, drinking, smoking and fighting!"

<<< Actress Pam St Clement, who has played Pat Evans for more than 25 years, is to leave EastEnders. (BBC News)

||| Pat, in pictures.

>>> New EastEnders boy Tony Discipline strips off in the Vic.

<<< A new series of EastEnders spinoff E20 will go ahead. One of the new actors is Samuell Benta, who readers may remember homophobic rapper with a secret past Switchblade in Hotel Babylon. More E20 pics here.

<<< Hollyoaks' Keiron Richardson covers the latest issue of GT.

>>> Meet the new - gay! - Days of Our Lives character.

>>> The battle for Ewing Oil and Southfork is back on! TNT orders full season of

Dallas - and it looks fantastic! Official site here.

>>> But as one TV legend rises from the ashes, another slips away. Peter Falk, the actor best known for his role as Columbo, is dead. He was 83. There's obituaries at The Guardian, The Independent, New York Times, TIME. Peter Falk, in pictures.

MUSIC

<<< Openly gay singer Ari Gold told to get to the back of the bus for holding hands with boyfriend.

||| Lady Gaga denies using the GBLT community to sell records. "[It's] one of the most ridiculous statements anyone can make about me as a person," she tells The Advocate. Well gee, I'm convinced.

||| Buju Banton is jailed for 10 years. Banton's "1988 hit Boom Bye Bye appears to incite the burning, shooting in the head and pouring acid over the faces of gay people".

||| Anti-gay hate peddler Capleton - the Jamaican dancehall artist - has had a concert moved out of Toronto following protests from gay equality groups.

>>> Ricky Martin: I hated it when people tried to force me to come out. "The Puerto Rican singer talks about his struggle with his sexuality, his happiness at having finally come out and the 'very erotic' show he is bringing to London." Martin promises "an onstage orgy involving him and his eight dancers". (The Guardian)

||| "They will cry soon because you're dead." Ricky Martin calls in police over sinister Tweet.

||| Cher destroys Marcus Bachmann on Twitter. "He has a Christian clinic where he de-programs gay Boys & Girls! I'm gonna strangle him with my Boa!"

||| Another week, another homophobic slur from Chris Brown...

...Followed rapidly by a Tweeted apology ~~from his PR team~~...

...Followed by another homophobic rant during a basketball game. What's that they say about dumb animals not learning from their mistakes?

||| Meanwhile backward has-been 50 Cent is to "write" (hehe...) a "book" for teens. About bullying. Really.

<<< Lil B drops I'm Gay album - but references to homosexuality are absent, despite the record's title.

||| Homophobia in hip-hop. "The hypermacho world of hip-hop is notoriously homophobic. But as times change, so does rap. XXL takes a look at the issues." (XXL)

>>> No homo: Hip hop's last taboo. Meet openly gay spoken-word poet Dean Atta "as he takes the first steps to becoming an accepted and respected player on the UK hip hop scene". (BBC 1Xtra)

||| Ouch! Justin Bieber's Vanity Fair cover was the title's third-lowest-grossing cover in 12 years.

||| Maybe some head can fix things, eh Justin?

||| Meanwhile, the "The Ghost of Justin Bieber's future", Aaron Carter, has "opened his mouth on the face that meth built about his time with Michael Jackson, and what he said made the glass on Detective La

Toya's monocle fog up and crack. Daphne Barak from OK! Magazine Australia alleged that Aaron told her the late Michael Jackson fed him wine and cocaine when he was 15. But wait, Aaron tells TMZ that he never claimed that MJ sedated his 15-year-old body with the bad shit and dropped a red wine waterfall down his froat." (Dlisted)

<<< "VADGE is stiiiiiiiiiiilllllllll sucking on the pacifier known as Baby Brahim despite prior reports of her dropping him off at the orphanage," Dlisted reports. And who can blame her?

>>> Aston Merrygold strips off in new JLS video. The video's here!

||| Remember when R&B bands used to sound like this? It's Rough Copy - Express Train, with a video by Urban Shotz Photography.

THE SEX BIZ

||| The AIDS Healthcare Foundation loses latest bid to mandate condoms in porn.

||| Fratmen.com launches EbonyU.com because, well, hot black men deserve to be segregated. (MOC Blog)

||| Chi Chi LaRue on why Johnny Hazzard left, why Brent Everett came back, and why she had gastric bypass. (The Sword)

<<< More interesting is Chi Chi find Jonny Rock. WOOF!

||| Diesel Washington lashes out at porn stars who don't (or claim they don't) escort.

>>> The Sword wants to know: When was Matthew Rush hotter? Now or then? (Personally, I'll take him any way I can get him.

||| The bizarre spectacle that's Sausage Party.

||| Gay Porn Times takes us inside Hustlaball, where Rafael Alencar offers attendees the opportunity to...

<<< Plenty of pictures - and video! - of the depravity can be found here.

>>> Bel Ami boys sign up for Fleshjack duty. Brave little soldiers - it brings a tear to the eye!

||| Chris "LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!" Crocker signs up for a Chi Chi La Rue porn flick, and gets naked on Tumblr.

<<< Storm, the porn star, is dead. Storm first appeared for Falcon Studios in 1990, alongside the also deceased Joey Stefano.

MANIKINS

||| Leo Neves and Antonio Bevilacqua, by Terry Richardson:

||| Hassan Harris sizzling Bath Hass. Below left, Davion Taylor. Below right, Gary Winfield:

||| More? Okay! How about Gary Winfield and Alex Garibyan (below left). And Gary Winfield with Lason Marable, below right:

||| Men In Italy, by Giovanni Squatriti:

||| Anthony Gallo by Rick Day; Misa Patinszki by Sam Scott Schiavo; and Têtu Beauté by Thomas Paquet:

||| Rael Costa, by Antonella Baldassarre; Christian Ragin at Milan Fashion Week; and Isa Rahman by Brian Kaminski:

||| Thai model and actor Metha Chularp; Ryan Bertroche, by Saverio Cardia; and Freddy, by Urban Shotz Photography:

||| Zach Tartabull, by Brian Kaminski; Will Markiewicz by Hareth Tayem; and Pistol Pete's summer collection:

||| Kharl, by Eric Ganison; Patrick O’Donnell, by Haruki Horikawa; and Luis Borges, by Richard Pier Petit:

||| The photography of vishstudio; Diego, by Gil Menezes; and Ramon Mattos, by Fernando Cysneiros.

||| Parasuco Spring/Summer 2011 campaign, by Tony Duran:

||| Jack Mackenroth, by Ray John Pila; new Thai magazine Dark; and Mattia Regonaschi, by Alvaro Beamud Cortes.

||| Zack Clark, by Gregory Vaughan; Zack & Jordan Stenmark, by Julian Hargreaves; and Santiago Cabezas, by Gastohn Barrios:

||| The Office - a story of "scanning bodies & printing sin" - by An Le:

||| Kevin Baker, by Tony Duran; and Taylor Simmons, by Sean P Watters:

||| Thai actor Chaiwat Thongseng; Shaye Love, by Moja Ma’at; Elijah Johnston, by Zeko Eon.

||| Dionisio Heiderscheid, by Thomas Synnamon, and again, by Diego Lema.

||| Joshka Nets, by Enzo Laera:

||| New face Fraser Barke; Top of the Watermarke, by Scott Hoover; promo shot for Infinita Gay Week 2011, Spain; and Roman Ivancic, by Jannis Tsipoulanis.

||| Jeans Army, for Xizel Jeans, Brazil:

<<< Backstage at Men's Fashion Week.

SPORT

||| Boys play "mud handball" Zhejiang province, China, on July 7:

<<< Rugby star Ben Cohen marches at Pride London gay rights parade. (Metro)

||| Former Dallas Cowboys wide receiver Michael Irvin covers OUT's "straight ally" issue, talks about his gay older brother.

||| John Amaechi: Boardrooms to blame for lack of openly gay footballers.

>>> Meet Akil Patterson, whose "career with the Terps football team was derailed by alcohol and partying as he struggled with his sexuality". Patterson is now openly gay.

||| "I don't want my kids to think homosexuals are normal." NOM spokesman, former NY Giant and convicted felon David Tyree gets his own back for being everybody's bitch in jail.

>>> Tyree is praised by a white supremacist talk show host for his anti-gay marriage stance. What's that they say about the company you keep?

<<< DeSean Jackson brands radio caller a "gay ass faggot". The apology.

||| Three straights and you're out in gay softball league. (New York Times)

<<< Rugby star Ugo Monye accuses London police of racial profiling. In fact, what this story is actually about is a rich jerk-off bitching about having to do something he doesn't want/like. As he says, "I'm furious. Wasting my time." Anyway, happy endings for him - the spoiled crybaby had his PR people call the police PR people, who realised what an important celebrity is. Great Britain: It's who you are and how much you've got that counts!

>>> James Ihedigbo strips for Essence.

||| David Oliver takes third 110-metre hurdles title at the USA Outdoor Track & Field Championships.

...AND FINALLY

||| Is the gay bar dying?

||| Gay is the new straight. "Straight men are bending the rules of traditional masculinity and metrosexualizing themselves beyond recognition, while the last thing the modern gay man wants is for people to think he looks gay. What is going on here?" (Xtra!)

||| The "daily deal" site aimed at gay men.

<<< Global view: A gallery looking at GBLT equality in 42 nations, based on data from the International lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex association. Left, men pose with a gay pride flag during the opening of the gay and lesbian community's summer at a beach on the outskirts of Havana, Cuba, on 14th June 2008.

||| The Rainbow flag: Artist Gilbert Baker of San Francisco was the first to appropriate the rainbow for this purpose in 1978. (New York Times)

||| Get your gay card! (Your correspondent scored a low 20. Guess I'm just too damn butch, bitches!)

||| Words gay boys need to stop using immediately. Just sayin'!

||| Chris "LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!" Crocker and his (cute) boyfriend talk PDA. As my friend Oura says, "WTF - they both have the same voice!!!"

||| Ah, what could have been: "I want to start a chain of restaurants for other people like me called Andy-Mats. The restaurant for the lonely person. You get your food and then take your tray into a booth and watch television." Andy Warhol's never-was international chain of fast-food restaurants.

||| Andy would have loved this: The Arty Bollocks Generator.

<<< The feminist wedding dress.

||| Cocktail time!

||| And finally, the hottest boys from GuysWithiPhones from the last few weeks - plus a couple of tasty TubeCrush lads!

Issue 101: 17 June-15 July 2011

||| Read the last edition.

||| Remember what was going on this time last year? No? How about a reminder? Read Issue 70.

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