#107

a news compendium

with a gay bias
WEEKLY | Issue 107 | January 2012 | FREE | be.told.

OPENING SHOTS

< Meet the ka-os|theory sexiest male models of 2011.

||| LGBTQIAAP: Are we alphabet soup?

||| The Root asks, Do blacks sympathise with the gay-rights movement?

||| 2011: A good year for gay equality.

> The Kaleidoscope Trust issues report on worldwide GBLT equality.

US & CANADA NEWS

> Gay youth share their coming out stories. Right, 17-year-old Andres Garcia from California.

< A gay Ugandan locked up in a San Diego detention centre for two years faces deportation after legal bungling.

> A GBLT-inclusive Nativity scene in a Californian church has been vandalised.

< Bradley Manning pre-trial hearing: what we learned.

||| Don't Ask, Don't Tell repeal, one year later.

||| Out on the frontline, troops reflect...

...And the openly gay sailor dismissed under Don't Ask, Don't Tell who's been reinstated.

||| Boycotting the homophobic Salvation Army.

> John Geddes Lawrence, of Lawrence v. Texas, is dead. "He was 68. Lawrence and Tyron Garner were arrested under Texas's Homosexual Conduct Law after police entered Lawrence's home on Sept. 17, 1998, and saw them 'engaging in a sexual act.' The couple challenged the law as unconstitutional" and following a Supreme Court battle, sodomy laws were declared unconstitutional across the US in 2003.

||| Minnesota's gay community apologises to disgraced Senator Amy Koch for destroying her marriage.

||| Obama lets lieutenants lead on gay equality.

< OMG! Did Richard Nixon have a long-term gay relationship with a Cuban-American businessman called Bebe Rebozo?

|||  High school football coach arrested for secretly filming his naked athletes.

> Elijah Whitney Cohens II - an armed robber who met his victims on gay hook-up sites - has been sentenced to more than 14 years in prison.

< Detroit's crumbling Catholic churches.

UK NEWS

||| Mark Carter, the former Mr Gay UK and serving policeman, is back on the beat after being cleared of rape charges.

> Human rights activist Peter Tatchell needs your help. The Peter Tatchell Foundation helped save Iranian teenager Ebrahim Hamidi, supported Tiwonge Chimbalanga and Steven Monjeza in Malawi, and "continues to promote and support movements across countries such as Nigeria, Palestine, Iraw, Uganda and Russia which oppose human rights abuse for both LGBT and heterosexual individuals and groups".

||| John Bercow - the Speaker of the House of Commons - has talked of a "duty to campaign" for gay equality abroad.

< Boxing Day in London.

EUROPE NEWS

||| Gay travel firm Mantrav forced to merge after travellers were stranded without accommodation in Gran Canaria.

||| HUNGARY: Budapest mayor opposes city's Gay Olympics.

LATIN AMERICA NEWS

> JAMAICA: Portia Simpson-Miller, leader of the People's National Party, has publicly backed the repeal of anti-gay laws...

...Jamaica reacts...

...And the People's National Party wins a landslide victory, sweeping aside the virulently homophobic Jamaican Labor Party.

||| JAMAICA: The Jamaican Gleaner publishes an editorial dismissing the "vulgar fire bun rhetoric" of anti-gay politicians. "What has transpired in recent days on Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) campaign platforms with regard to gay rights is not only sad, but dangerous. Some might add cynical and vulgar."

||| CUBA: Roots of homophobia during the Revolution.

< MEXICO: Firefighters give toys to poor children.

> COLOMBIA: Favela escalator!

AFRICA NEWS

||| UGANDA: The day we said we're homosexual. Meet Kasha Jacqueline Nabagesera, for whom being a gay equality warrior is literally life and death.

< UGANDA: Gay and Vilified in Uganda, Frank Mugisha "There are encouraging times when my fellow activists and I meet people face to face and they realize we aren't the child-molesting monsters depicted in the media. They realize we are human, we are Ugandan, just like them."

||| UGANDA: Mysterious nodding syndrome spreads.

||| The hunt for Mokele-mbembe: Congo's Loch Ness Monster.

SOUTHERN ASIA NEWS

< INDIA: The childcatcher rounds 'em up in New Delhi. (No, not really.)

ASIA-PACIFIC NEWS

||| JAPAN: Fascinating pictures from inside Japan's nuclear exclusion zone, a world abandoned towns, roaming packs of stray pet dogs, and nature reclaiming the landscape from man. Above, dogs fight in the deserted streets of Okuma. Below, vines grow across an abandoned highway.

< HONG KONG: 25-year-old singer-songwriter Joey Basha (centre, left), a Canadian national based in Hong Kong, has been found dead after a period of being missing.

||| MALAYSIA: Human Rights Watch urge Malaysian government to repeal anti-gay laws.

< THAILAND: Honda begins scrapping over 1000 flood-damaged cars.

||| VIETNAM: VietNam News asks readers about discrimination against the GBLT community, and what measures should be taken to protect them.

> NORTH KOREA: Inside North Korea.

MIDDLE EAST NEWS

||| LEBANON: Beirut's burgeoning gay community goes online. Beirut's gay scene is burgeoning, despite homosexuality remaining illegal in Lebanon. Gay bars and clubs "are making a tidy profit, not just from Lebanese but from homosexuals who come to the city from other, less permissive countries in the Middle East."

||| ISRAEL: Psychiatry textbook slammed for calling homosexuality a disorder.

BODY & MIND

||| Megarich multinational behemoth Johnson & Johnson turns its back on people living with HIV in developing countries, withholds patents.

||| Australian contracts HIV through tattoo.

||| Does anal sex cause incontinence?

||| So what if pedophilia were a sexual orientation?

THE NATURAL WORLD

< Feeding time at the zoo!

WEB & GADGETS

> Inside Google's new London headquarters.

||| Why can't women have Grindr too?

PRINT & VISUAL

< Portland, Oregon's GBLT paper Just Out goes out of business after nearly 30 years.

||| Toronto's Glad Day Bookshop Inc. - thought to be the oldest GBLT bookstore in the world - is up for sale.

||| The long, sad, slow but inescapable end of the GBLT bookstore. "The passing of the Glad Day Bookshop Inc is a reminder of an era that has faded into the background and, with it, a small piece of our shared collective experience has died..."

> Swimming to Chicago, a new novel by David-Matthew Barnes centering on gay Armenian-American teen Alex Bainbridge. IANYAN Magazine talks to the author.

< Review: Brooklyn, Burning, by Steve Brezenoff. "Brooklyn, Burning finds compelling material in small details. Brezenoff creates kind, talented, and conflicted characters."

> Review: boneyard, by Stephen Beachy. "Alienating, even in parts grotesque. It is not an easy or even safe read; it is as troublesome, as real and repetitive, surreal and hypnotizing as a full blown case of post traumatic stress disorder."

< Review: Best Gay Stories 2011, edited by Peter Dubé. "The men portrayed in Best Gay Stories 2011 are wounded, real and above all very human. It is a valuable family portrait, a snapshot of our many different stories and many different lives."

||| Why are Amazon and Barnes & Noble selling a homophobic calendar by an anti-gay cartoonist?

> "Hoo-we! Hell hath no fury like a he/she scorned," the cartoonist in question, Joe King, wrote on Facebook following the ensuing uproar...

...And the decision by Barnes & Noble - then Amazon - to withdraw the calendar from sale. Hell hath no fury like a bigot scorned, eh?

< The Lambda Literary Best GBLT Books of 2011: Authors' Choice.

> Read Pavilion, a new short story by gay Somali-born British writer and artist Diriye Osman.

> James Rizzi, the American pop artist, is dead. He was 61.

CINEMA

< Hot Boy, Vietnam's first gay flick?

> TLA Video makes light of child rape to sell some movies. Or does it?

...Then takes it down, with an apology.

||| The BFI London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival is to go back to a 10 day run after last year's cuts.

> Here's a shot from the forthcoming male stripper flick Magic Mike, about Channing Tatum's former life as a stripper, and starring True Blood God Joe Manganiello, and CSI's Adam Rodriguez. Woof!

||| Why Steven Spielberg's War Horse is gay.

||| About Tom Cruise's "close friendship with renowned plastic surgeon Dr. Ivo Pitanguy"...

< Here's a look at Zac Efron in The Paperboy, a thriller based on a 1995 Pete Dexter novel...

...And here's 65-year-old Sylvester Stallone in forthcoming flick Bullet to the Head.

< Taylor Lautner ISN'T out and proud.

||| The best films of 2011, with an emphasis on the indie and the gay.

> Cheetah, Tarzan's chimpanzee, is dead. He was 80.

TV

||| The producers of The Last Closet, a web campaign and video project in progress, are searching for a young gay athlete who has dreams of becoming a pro. This young man should be 'out' to his friends, family and team.

< Don Lemon ponders his next move. "I don't know what will happen when my contract comes up."

||| Janet Hubert - the first actress to play Aunt Vivian in The Fresh Prince of Bel Air - dismisses reunion rumours; calls Will Smith an "a**hole" and "egomaniac".

> Pam St Clement prepares to hang up her earrings as Pat Butcher for the last time.

||| Review: Doctor Who - Invasion of the Dinosaurs; The Android Invasion. "The 1970s were a strange time and both Doctor Who stories featured on the latest DVD release capture something of that peculiarly paranoid decade."

MUSIC

< Lascel Woods confirms the release of his debut album in 2012. "Yes it will be including Use Somebody. Kings of Leon have agreed to let me reuse there song!"

||| Why Will Young hates his first ever single.

||| George Michael gives emotional statement outside his London home: "Pneumonia nearly killed me."

||| Marvin from JLS wants to be a thespian.

> Meanwhile, Simon Webbe wants to be a ballroom dancer. Or he did on Christmas Day, at least.

||| Lance Bass apologises for saying tranny; blames The Advocate, Queerty for having to apologise for saying tranny.

||| Janet Jackson (you remember the Jacksons, dontcha kids?) has gone and got herself a special tin of red PETA paint.

< Rhianna in your correspondent's very own local branch of a well-known fast-food takeaway. To think, I will once again queue in the same queue Rhianna herself once queued in.

||| The San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus Ambassadors perform the Home For The Holidays concert finale on tour at the First Congregational Church in Santa Cruz, California on Saturday, December 17, 2011:

THE SEX BIZ

||| HIV and me: Mason Wyler reveals all...

...So does Corbin Fisher's Connor, left - including why he prefers bareback sex.

||| Meet Dawgpound's Lorenz Taste. Well, it made me laugh...

> Why Johnny Rock (right, being manhandled by Trey Turner) is on his way to being one of the biggest, brightest stars of 2012.

...And here's new Australian porn star Mathew Mason (right). Fingers crossed he doesn't speak in any of his scenes.

> Marcus Mojo and Michael Vineland thrash it out for Jet Set Men.

||| Is this the most disproportionate penis you've ever seen? (Answer: yes.)

||| Which Sean Cody model was once a fatty?

< In other Sean Cody news: The studio releases its first bareback scene, making sure to tell us it's WRONG and BAD, and not to do it - even in your own home!

||| The Sword presents its best - and worst - of 2011.

SPORT

< Johnny Weir ties the knot with boyfriend Victor Voronov.

||| Gay photographer and artist Stuart Sandford to become bodybuilder for Olympics.

> Blake Griffin gets wet for Men's Health.

||| New Orleans Saints linebacker Jonathan Vilma in effemophobic Twitter controversy, or Jock Says Something Dumb, if you'd prefer...

...Candidate for Outsports' Jerk of the Year, do you think?

||| On a more pleasant note, vote for who is Outsports' Person of the Year.

< Novak Djokovic and brother Marko take on a Santa camel.

PARTING SHOTS

> Here's some new pictures of The Out NYC, Hell's Kitchen's "gay urban resort" and NYC's first gay hotel, apparently...

...So take a tour of Manhattan's new embarrassing gay hotel.

< This is a sculpture.

> This is a kite.

||| Ghost stations!

||| Would you take a replica cruise of the Titanic's maiden voyage?

||| Human zoos: When real people were exhibits.

< Gay coffee, kids?

||| Culture to look forward to in 2012: cinema, television, music and books.

||| The Top Ten Top Ten Lists of 2011!

> Celebrities on the subway!

< The year in Pictures: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. Left, people celebrate the death of Osama bin Laden in Times Square, New York, 2nd May 2011.

||| And finally, a word from our friend Justin, and "Shit Black Gays Say". Enjoy - or not.

Issue 107: 23-31 December 2011

Read the last edition.

Remember what was going on this time a year ago? No? How about a reminder? Read Issue 82.

Visit us on Facebook.

ka-os|theory is not responsible for the content of external websites.

© 2012