a news compendium
with a gay bias
WEEKLY | Issue 113 | February 2012 | FREE | be.told.
OPENING SHOTS
< Let's kick off with Al Odusanya, lensed by Sean Gomes.
||||| The Gay Reflex Moment: Why gay men hate each other.
||||| The rise of interracial marriage.
||||| So So Gay explores sexual racism.
US & CANADA NEWS
< Three men have been arrested for the gay-bashing of 20-year-old Brandon White. Christopher Cain, Dorian Moragne and Dareal Damare Williams are all charged with robbery and aggravated assault.
||||| But activist group Change Atlanta claims White knew his attackers, and the attack was actually revenge for him threatening to expose down low goings on...
< Openly gay senator Rashad Taylor to introduce hate crimes legislation in response to the attack on White.
> Tyler Clementi trial: "These acts were purposeful, intentional, planned. I would suggest to you beyond that mean spirited, malicious, and criminal." Prosecuter Julie McClure tears into Dharun Ravi.
Watch a CBS Miami report on homeless gay youth.
< Asian men with balls: The sociosexual implications of Linsanity.
||||| Federal Court rules DOMA unconstitutional: Analysis of the ruling.
> This is Dallas County Judge Tonya Parker, the first gay person elected judge in Dallas County, and the first openly gay African-American elected official in Texas history. She's refusing to marry straight couples until she is also able to marry.
||||| The AIDS Quilt, 25 years on:
UK NEWS
< Gay black police officer wins discrimination case. Detective constable Kevin Maxwell had sued the Metropolitan police for race and sex discrimination; another officer deliberately leaked a distorted account of the case to rightwing tabloid The Sun.
||||| Coalition for Marriage, a "Christian" group opposing gay marriage, has launched.
> This is Colin Ireland, a serial killer who murdered five gay men in London in the early nineties. Ireland has died in prison.
< London's new bus, in pictures.
EUROPE NEWS
> RUSSIA: Stay away if St Petersburg censors gay!
||||| SERBIA: Safe house for gays to open.
||||| MOLDOVA: City bans "gay propaganda".
LATIN AMERICA NEWS
||||| Sambadrome showdown: Inside Rio carnival's big battle.
AFRICA NEWS
< Mr Gay World gets first black African finalists. Taurai Zhanje, left, will represent Zimbabwe. South Africa, naturally, will be represented by a Caucasian.
||||| UGANDA: President Yoweri Museveni clarifies his country's position on those pesky homosexuals. "Homosexuals - in small numbers - have existed in our part of black Africa. They were never prosecuted, they were never discriminated, but the difference between us and... Western Europe is the promotion of homosexuality, as if it is something good." W**ker.
||||| UGANDA: Do ordinary Ugandans care less about the behaviour of gay people than about the behaviour of government?
> UGANDA: Children afflicted by the mysterious "nodding syndrome".
< SENEGAL: Protesters and police clash in Dakar.
||||| KENYA: Mob attacks HIV training meet, branding it "gay training".
ASIA-PACIFIC NEWS
< CHINA: Wives of gay men speak out about "tragic lives".
||||| AUSTRALIA: Prime Minister Julia Gillard still opposes gay marriage, but says it's "inevitable".
BODY & MIND
> The last of the glass eye makers.
||||| Don't eat for up to two days a week to protect against brain diseases, boffins claim.
||||| HIV drug tenofovir increases risk of kidney damage.
||||| HIV poor get help with Hardship Fund. "Terrence Higgins Trust helps Britain's HIV-positive poor with emergency cash grants."
||||| The myth of the eight-hour sleep.
THE NATURAL WORLD
< INDIA: These legless amphibians are called chikilidae, and they're a new discovery.
||||| GEORGIA: Meet the world's deepest land animal.
> CHINA: Collecting bear-bile, 22nd February 2012. Guizhentang allowed the media access to one of its (no doubt cleaned-up) bear farms.
||||| SWEDEN: A tale of a "bisexual" boar's lust for a breeding bull. "The bull was very embarrassed," farmer Magnus Nyman says.
||||| Watch dis yung pup getting gansta on sum bad broccoli. YES BLUD! FUK IT UP! FUK DAT RASCLAAT BROKLI UP! My man is brukking it!
||||| Does the Earth might have a "pulse" that causes extinctions every 60 million years?
||||| Water world!
WEB & GADGETS
||||| The Top 10 Grindr-Induced Psychological Maladies.
||||| Premier gay news destination Towleroad has been nominated for the About.com 2012 Readers' Choice Awards for Best Gay Blog. ka-os|theory friend Blabbeando also makes the list. Voting closes 21st March.
PRINT & VISUAL
< Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys, by D.A. Powell.
> Review: For the Ferryman: A Personal History, by Charles Silverstein. "Silverstein's 'personal history' gives the reader a different tale: twenty years of dark and stormy nights between a modern-day Magnus Hirschfeld and a tragic beloved... What's most disturbing is that even a shrink of Silverstein's stature can be sucked into a tumultuous psycho-dependent relationship."
||||| Picasso's Guernica gets a robot health check.
CINEMA
||||| Watch: Got 2B There, a 1998 documentary about the history of gay circuit parties.
< Andy Warhol was much more than an icon of modern cool. "25 years after his death, a new online film reduces Warhol to trashy cypher – but his art was subtle and profound."
||||| Leonardo DiCaprio helps buy Dorothy's ruby slippers for Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.
||||| Trailer: The Bully Project.
TV
> American daytime soap Days of Our Lives screens its first gay kiss. (It comes at the end of the clip, around the 10:30 mark.) The show has been airing since 1965.
||||| Here's the latest from gays in soaps around the world.
||||| Brandon Routh and Michael Urie to play gay couple in Partners, a new sitcom from the people who gave us Will & Grace.
||||| Logo abandons gay programming in favour of mainstream reality shows.
||||| Talking to True Blood's Joe Manganiello, the "theater-loving jock who defended the arty kids in school".
< Degrassi star Neil Hope's death confirmed four years later. "Family only just told by police in Hamilton, Ontario, that actor from groundbreaking TV show had solitary death and burial."
MUSIC
||||| Media regulator to assess why Jazz FM aired five minutes of gay porn.
||||| Aargh! Justin Timberlake to take title role in Elton John movie?
> Whitney Houston: Family, friends and fans gather for funeral.
||||| Whitney Houston laid to rest next to her father in New Jersey.
||||| Whitney Houston: "We're coming up on hour three of Whitney Houston's Going Home memorial and I don't know how my eyelids are still able to open after sitting through Kevin Costner talking for 35 million minutes about himself, himself, himself, himself, Jesus, himself, himself and how he himself put Whitney in The Bodyguard when nobody else wanted her in it. Oh, and he talked about himself and how Whitney is auditioning before God now (or something like that). The dozens of people taking a nap with their eyes open should've been the choir's cue to sing Kevin off the stage, because DAMN. Dances with Woofs was shorter than Kevin's speech."
THE SEX BIZ
< Sizzling Peter Le gives a politician's answer to the question: when will he finally graduate from solo scenes?
||||| Why does everyone keep raping Johnny Rapid?
SPORT
||||| Real Madrid coach José Mourinho's gay slur to be investigated by UEFA.
||||| Another footballer, another homophobic Tweet. Yawn.
> Here's one footballer we're glad to welcome back: our very own plastic boy toy! Where've ya been?
||||| Out, former NBA basketball star John Amaechi brands the leadership in sport as "stupid". Amaechi was appearing on a panel at Student Pride in Brighton.
||||| Chris Morgan wins British powerlifting championship. "Gay Games champion is on track for the world powerlifting contest later this year."
< Tom Daley. Push the towel down a bit more, Tommy. Please?
PARTING SHOTS
||||| Coming soon: The test-tube burger.
> The museum that never opened.
||||| And finally, what's Christopher Street doing tonight?
Issue 113: 18-25 February 2012
On the cover: Konstantin Suslov has lensed London-based writer Diriye Osman.
Read the last edition.
Remember what was going on this time a year ago? No? How about a reminder? Read Issue 88.
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