#104

a news compendium

with a gay bias
issue 104 | December 2011 | FREE

<<< Tarrice Love unleashes another stunning shoot, featuring model Jeremy Rosado.

||| The GBLT Mount Rushmore: The faces of the gay rights movement.

NORTH AMERICA & CANADA

>>> This is 18-year-old Jacob Rogers, who committed suicide on Wednesday after years of homophobic bullying. Gay blogs Towleroad, Dan Savage's Stranger and Joe.My.God raised $US5000 to pay for his funeral when Jacob's family were unable to afford it.

||| Students suspended following the suicide of bullied gay 14-year-old Jamey Rodemeyer.

||| Grieving parents urge quick passage of anti-bullying bill. (The Globe and Mail)

>>> Dharun Ravi, who recorded gay roommate Tyler Clementi kissing another man and uploaded it to the web, leading to Clementi's suicide, has rejected a plea deal. He faces 15 charges.

||| Jonah Mowry is not enjoying high school.

||| Porn star high school teacher: When is ambush TV warranted? "This was clearly not the reaction Fox 25 News was expecting... People from across the country - eager to defend the teacher, furious that a TV station has sullied his reputation." (The Boston Globe)

<<< Another teacher/porn actor, Conner Habib, asks, "Kevin Hogan may be fired from his teaching job for having a porn past. But is anyone clear why?" (The Advocate)

||| Teacher deletes the word "gay" from Christmas carol.

>>> The new mayor of Troy, Michigan, Janice Daniels, has one of those really dumb Facebook moments...

...faced furious City Council members in four hours of public debate from residents angry over her words...

...Insisted she's a good person, was upset that people were angry over "one word", and explained to everyone what "forgiveness" is. "True forgiveness means that you wipe the slate clean and allow the person to improve themselves from that point forward, so this is a very good lesson for all of us!"

<<< 8-year-old boy tells deranged rightwing harpy Michele Bachmann: "My Mommy's gay but she doesn't need fixing." (Towleroad)

||| Bradley Manning defense team to highlight WikiLeaks suspect's fragile mental state. (The Guardian)

>>> Oh dear. Eddie Long - who was accused of sexually abusing four young men in his youth ministry - is to take a break from his New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, following divorce proceedings initiated by his wife.

<<< GBLT activists have protested outside Nigeria House, New York, demanding Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan throw out his country's anti-gay bill.

<<< Hillary Clinton: Being gay is not "a western invention, but a human reality". (PinkNews)

||| Stony-faced Arab, African diplomats flee from the speech in Geneva.

||| GBLT activists from around the world react to Clinton's speech... (The Advocate)

... Whilst TV news programs in the US ignore the Administration's landmark GBLT announcement. (ThinkProgress)

||| Be warned, Nigeria: The US is to use distribution of foreign aid to promote GBLT civil rights abroad. (Star Tribune)

>>> In New York, activists delivered a petition to the Nigerian Mission to the UN, opposing the gay hate bill. In pictures.

Ex-gay group warns: Change or die. (Box Turtle Bulletin)

||| Marriage equality states are also the healthiest states. (Box Turtle Bulletin)

<<< Did this gay couple sexually abuse their adopted sons?

||| From the mouth of Anne Coulter: "The gays have got to be pro-life. As soon as they find the gay gene, guess who the liberal yuppies are gonna start aborting?"

||| 2012 Corporate Equality Index shows top GBLT employers.

||| The bomb buried in Obamacare has exploded. (Forbes)

>>> This is Thomas Haynesworth, who has been exonerated of sexual assault charges after 27 years in prison.

UNITED KINGDOM

<<< Homophobic bullying: this hate-filled playground taunting must be eradicated. "There's a casual tolerance that is leading to even harsher brutality. The tragedy of 15-year-old Dominic Crouch, driven to suicide last year after playground taunting that he was gay, was revisited last week when his heartbroken father, Roger, was found dead." (The Guardian)

||| Killers of transgender people to get longer sentences, with the minimum term doubling from 15 to 30 years. (BBC News)

||| Tory MPs threaten to derail plans for gay partnerships in churches...

...Whilst homophobic Tory James Malliff, right, who posted a message online saying, "We may as well legalise marriage with animals, crude I concede but no apology", has been welcomed back by the Conservative Party.

||| London nightclub admits ejecting gay couple for "over the top" kissing session.

|||The partner of a Turkish gay man shot in a so-called "honour killing" is to address a London audience at the SOAS university.

<<< The bendy bus makes its final journey for Transport for London.

||| Petition launched to pardon gay codebreaker Alan Turing. (PinkNews)

||| You know the recession is a real thing when even the Queen gets a pay freeze. "Prince Hot Ginge can no longer tiptoe into his grammy's bed chambers in the middle of the night to sneak a few quid (I'm speakin' British!) out of the pocketbook she clutches onto when she sleeps, because there's not going to be anything in there anymore!" (Dlisted)

||| British soldier fired for stabbing Afghan boy. "Grenadier Guardsman Daniel Crook jailed and dismissed from the army after bayoneting boy, 10, in kidneys for no reason." (The Guardian)

EUROPE

>>> Belgium's new socialist leader, Elio Di Rupo, is openly gay, and he's got a rags to riches story too.

<<< Serbia at a loss to stop population decline.

LATIN AMERICA

||| PUERTO RICO: Lawmakers to remove GBLT-specific protections from hate crime law.

||| PUERTO RICO: Ricky Martin slams the plan.

>>> CUBA: Remember Cuban raft survivor Elian Gonzalez? He's just turned 18.

||| CUBA: Yellow pages poised for a comeback.

<<< GUATEMALA: An effigy of the devil burns in Guatemala City during a Quema del Diablo ceremony.

AFRICA

||| NIGERIA: Here's a typically garbled report from a Nigerian "newspaper", apparently written by an excitable 8-year-old, about gay pastor Rowland Olajide Macaulay, who runs the House of Rainbow Ministry in Lagos.

||| NIGERIA: Western donors who give millions to fight the spread of HIV threaten to cut aid over law driven by religious homophobia. (The Guardian)

>>> NIGERIA: Rashidi Williams speaks about his experience of being an openly gay man in Nigeria. (BBC News)

||| NIGERIA: Richard Branson, the Virgin tycoon, has called on "all of us with influence in Nigeria must do what we can to stop this cruel law."

||| NIGERIA: The bill doesn't just criminalise gay people.

<<< UGANDA: Television report on US foreign policy initiative for GBLT human rights: "The report itself is very calm and measured. But it does reflect prevailing opinion not only in Uganda but through much of Africa when the reporter asks at the end, 'Will Uganda blink and bow to the pressure?' The image of bowing... has a very specific humiliative resonance that goes much deeper than much of the rest of the world." (Box Turtle Bulletin)

||| UGANDA: David Bahati attacks US over its new resolve to crack down on human rights abuses.

||| A gay Ghanaian refugee in Canada speaks out.

||| MALAWI: Government to review anti-homosexuality laws, in response to "public opinion", apparently. (BBC News)

>>> NAMIBIA: Last week we heard about the first ever Mr Gay Namibia, Wendelinus Hamutenya. He was beaten up during a robbery this week. There's more detail here, and O-blog-dee-o-blog-da talks to him here.

||| ZIMBABWE: GBLT activists donate to Bulawayo City Council - for recognition.

<<< ZIMBABWE: Famed colonial-era "Hanging Tree" falls after being struck by a truck in Harare on Wednesday.

||| ETHIOPIA: GBLT equality conference forced to change venue following condemnation from religious leaders.

ASIA-PACIFIC

>>> PHILIPPINES: Around 1000 Filipino GBLTs have marched for equality in Manila. (MiamiHerald)

||| SOUTH KOREA: Anti-gay art causes a stir at Seoul university.

||| JAPAN: Noisy gay orgy in Shinjuku prompts raid by the cops. (Now that's the kinda headline that gets our attention...) (The Tokyo Reporter)

||| AUSTRALIA: Julian Shaw, the star of Australia's beautiful marriage equality ad, speaks:

BODY & MIND

<<< What we've always wanted: the European Map Of Penis Size. Invaluable.

||| Do I really need a six-pack to make an impact? Why I'm sticking with the body I've got. (The Huffington Post)

>>> The Louis Vuitton condom: luxurious anal intercourse for only $US68. (Queerty)

||| We can win the AIDS war with drugs and vaccines. (New Scientist)

||| Abused children's brains work like soldiers' do.

THE NATURAL WORLD

<<< Rare shot of polar bear cannibalism pictured.

||| 257 bears killed on first day of hunt.

>>> The Texas drought leaves heartbreaking toll of abandoned horses.

||| Chinese zookeepers give gay penguin couple a chick. There's video here.

||| In New Zealand, 49 penguins are released back into the wild after rescue from oil spill.

PRINT & VISUAL

||| With World AIDS Day just gone, here's a look at how literary responses to the crisis destigmatise and humanise the syndrome. (The Hindu)

>>>Review: Remain in Light, by Collin Kelley. "Filled with what-will-they-say-next characters, a suspenseful pace, and intertwining plots... a wickedly fun read."

<<< Review: All Together, by Dirk Vanden. "A brilliant description of gay men in the United States of the 60s and 70s."

>>> Propaganda with style: public health posters from the past.

CINEMA

||| 100 cult films.

<<< Universal Studios to close Jaws to make way for new attraction.

||| Review: Uncle David. "Challenging, provocative and often agonising to sit through, this is a brilliant piece of work that leads you up the garden path before swerving off in a completely different direction."

<<< Andrew Embiricos, the gay grandson of Rita Hayworth, has been found dead in his Chelsea apartment. Embiricos "had been battling HIV, had been in and out of drug rehab and had attempted suicide before". (NY Daily News)

TELEVISION

<<< Doctor Who/Torchwood/Queer As Folk impresario Russell T Davies has halted his TV work after his partner Andrew Smith is diagnosed with brain cancer.

||| There's a full interview with the writer here, in which he talks about the diagnosis, and his much anticipated new gay series, Cucumber, and the future of Torchwood.

||| Neil Patrick Harris apologises for "tranny" slur.

>>> Australians slam new Indian family being introduced into the longrunning soap as "un-Australian". The soap has had virtually no non-white cast members over its 26-year run.

MUSIC

||| Remember 90s pop fad Hanson? The (all grown up) boys are launching their own beer. Called MMMHop.

<<< Here's a video of devastatingly sexy X Factor reject Marlon McKenzie, talking about his shoot for GayTimes' Naked Issue. I'm sold.

||| This cutey wants Justin Beiber to go to the prom with him.

THE SEX BIZ

||| Going gay for pay. "To fuel his meth addiction, a straight guy sold himself to other men. But it wasn’t just money he was after." (The Fix)

||| Erik Rhodes on barebacking, whores, and drugs in porn. (Piece features some terrifying fisting pics - you were warned!)

>>> New Race Cooper pics, anyone?

||| Here's a trailer for Francois Sagat's new Titan movie Incubus. But is it art?

SPORT

||| NBA bans discrimination based on sexual orientation. (On Top Magazine)

<<< NBA player Von Wafer comes out (on Twitter, of course)...

...Then cries foul. It was all a sick joke, apparently. Those crazy jocks!

||| NFL linebacker Scott Fujita records a video in support of the HRC's Americans for Marriage Equality campaign.

<<< FIFA 12 game shows football players getting to first base together. (Queerty)

>>> This is 26-year-old James Ellington, the third fastest man in Britain. He's put himself on eBay in order to raise £30,000 in sponsorship funds. Wanna piece of him?

||| Women's tennis champion Margaret Court slams effort for marriage equality.

...AND FINALLY

||| The truth about supermarket "bargains".

||| 10 uses for a lemon around the home!

||| The road sign: a design classic.

<<< Remember everything you ever wanted for Christmas as a kid? Take a look at the 1976 Argos catalogue for a glimpse of how we used to live. (Mail Online)

Issue 104: 3-9 December 2011

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For editorial reasons, the original cover for Issue 104 was redacted on 21 December 2016.