KAOS: September 2013

the destination for the

week's essential news

and pop culture stories,

with a gay bias.

PONDER THIS

||| Lesbians and gay men: one happy family, or worlds apart?

||| What's next for the gay equality movement?

||| Another bad week to be gay.

||| Has the gay community become mean?

> Why I'm not reading the "trutherism" about Matthew Shepard.

||| Gay Muslims, and the path to acceptance.

||| Why we must demand gun control now.

||| When will the US stop building more prisons?

||| Why we need Bi Pride Day.

||| How to introduce a married gay couple.

U.S. & CANADA NEWS

< This is 26-year-old Darron Brewer, who has been sentenced to ninety-nine years in prison for having his younger brother kill his wife, Kenyatae Collier-Brewer. After his spouse's death, Brewer came out as gay.

> This is 24-year-old Arron Keahey, who was left needing plastic surgery to restore broken facial bones after an app hook-up went wrong.

||| Could Jon Jones become the first black gay man elected to the Atlanta City Council?

||| Black gay judge's nomination blocked by Republican senator.

< Meet Steven and Roger Ham - and their fourteen adopted foster kids.

||| At Camp Starlight, kids affected by HIV can just be kids.

> Queer Nation NY activists disrupted the New York Metropolitan Opera's opening night gala performance of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin with a protest.

||| Colorado Republican Kent Lambert claims Democrats are using "mind control" to make people accept marriage equality.

||| The Matthew Shepard Foundation denounces the "re-telling" of the murder of Matthew Shepard.

||| Looking back at gay-friendly preacher Rev. Robert Cromey.

< The Upstairs Lounge fire, an inferno that claimed the lives of 32 mostly gay people, is now commemorated in an online museum exhibit.

||| CANADA: Slap visa ban on Russian polticians behind anti-gay laws, demands New Democrat Party (NDP) of Canada.

U.K. NEWS

||| London gay bar Comptons refuses entry to wheelchair user.

> Why was supermarket behemoth Tesco selling inflatable "gay best friend" dolls?

||| Prime Minister David Cameron announces £1000 tax break for married gay couples.

||| But "this Tory tax allowance is just a marriage of convenience. The party's real motive is to create a synthetic hierarchy of morals, and reward or punish people accordingly."

||| And the Conservative Prime Minister confessed privately that he regrets supporting marriage equality.

||| Police destroy DNA records of men convicted of historic consensual sex offences.

< Stop and search: Race and the politics of suspicion.

||| NORTHERN IRELAND: Man stands trial accused of raping a woman in gay Belfast nightclub The Kremlin.

EUROPE NEWS

||| IRELAND: Campaign launched to help gay people in rural, isolated areas.

||| RUSSIA: Ten gay activists arrested at Sochi Olympics HQ.

> RUSSIA: Lamp-post painted with rainbow colours not gay propaganda, prosecutors assure "concerned citizen".

< RUSSIA: Leading gay activist Alexey Davydov dead at 36. Davydov was the "first victim" of Russia's anti-gay laws.

||| SERBIA: Hundreds of gay activists defy gay pride ban in Belgrade.

> UKRAINE: Protesters challenge anti-gay laws in Kiev. In pictures.

||| GERMANY: Guido Westerwelle, the country's first openly gay Foreign Minister, fails to retain his seat in parliament.

< ITALY: "We won't include gays in our ads, because we like the traditional family," Italian pasta company Barilla announces...

...But the prejudice shown by Barilla isn't just intolerant, it's really bad business.

||| Here comes the grovelling apology. Don't choke on your pasta.

> ITALY: Gallery removes exhibition of Gonzalo Orquin's pictures of gay couples kissing in churches after Vatican threatens legal action.

LATIN AMERICA NEWS

< JAMAICA: Prime Minister Portia Simpson-Miller blew a kiss to anti-homophobia protesters outside the UN in New York. That protest, in pictures. More images here.

||| JAMAICA: Gay man escapes being stoned to death by mob in St Catherine.

||| JAMAICA: Letters to the editor: Homophobia is mass hysteria.

||| JAMAICA: Impoverished, Jamaica still rejects gay tourism dollars, Maurice Tomlinson writes.

||| Life in Jamaica as a gay, HIV-positive male.

||| BELIZE: Prime Minister Dean Barrow speaks out in support of equality.

> CHILE: Murder trial begins for Daniel Zamudio killers. Four men stand accused of torturing the openly gay 24-year-old, who died twenty-five days later in hospital.

||| COSTA RICA: Marriage equality loophole closed.

AFRICA NEWS

< KENYA: Westgate mall massacre, in pictures.

||| The victims.

< The aftermath, in pictures.

||| Kenyans deserve better answers about what happened at Westgate.

||| The gay victims of the Westgate massacre. But is it appropriate for gay news outlets to signpost the gay victims? Some commentators on the Gay Star News site didn't think so, forcing the site's editor to reply. "We do not report on 'gay issues' we report on LGBTQI people. Just as a French newspaper would highlight French victims, we have highlighted LGBTQI victims of this tragedy. We are not 'singling out' people – we care equally about everyone – but reporting on our community... our approach is pretty much standard for all media in the world, whatever audience they serve."

||| The deeper meaning of globalisation. "Nairobi's horror has transfixed us. But maybe it can break our inhumane habit of distancing ourselves from trouble 'over there'."

||| But behind the terror is rampant corruption, and the attacks should shatter the crude picture of Africa's future as one of crime v supermarkets.

||| Laying siege to architectural megastructures: What Nairobi tells us about the urban future of war.

||| The "white widow", like the black, looms larger in the imagination than in fact. "Samantha Lewthwaite is 'world's most wanted' despite any hard evidence. How Clouseau-like we must seem to al-Shabaab."

||| The "white widow": a Muslim convert "rebel in search of a cause"? "Samantha Lewthwaite's story may never be fully known, but I know from experience that some converts to Islam, desperate to prove themselves, end up radicalised."

||| CAMEROON: Gay activist Eric Lembembe's death his own fault, Cameroon claims. Lembembe was found horrifically tortured.

||| GAMBIA: President Yahya Jammeh says gays and lesbians are "more deadly than all natural disasters put together" in United Nations address, and "biggest threats to human existence."

ASIA NEWS

> PAKISTAN: Government bans country's only gay website, Queer Pakistan.

||| INDIA: First 24-hour gay phone counselling service starts up.

||| SINGAPORE: Naked man found dead in gay sauna after sex game went wrong.

< HONG KONG: Five finalists will vie to become Mr Gay Hong Kong on 19th October. Our money is on Anthony Pura.

||| AUSTRALIA: 30-year-old Daniel Savic convicted of the murder of his partner, 57-year-old Michael Goh.

||| AUSTRALIA: Sydney Police issue warning on criminals luring victims using gay dating websites.

MIDDLE EAST NEWS

||| YEMEN: Suspected homosexual gunned down in Huta.

||| QATAR: The building site from hell.

PLANET EARTH

||| Eighty elephants poisoned in Zimbabwe's largest game park after poachers dropped cyanide in their watering hole.

> Ten African animals we might never see again.

||| The intriguing difference between pet dogs and tame wolves.

||| The world's most venomous animals.

||| Are we facing mass extinction by 2100?

THE BIG PICTURE: The new island created by a huge earthquake that hit south-west Pakistan, 27th September 2013.

||| Our cities need to be more livable for everyone — not just middle-class artists.

||| The prospect of travelling used to excite me. Now it evokes a moderate dread.

BODY, MIND & SOUL

||| HIV epidemic over by 2030, predicts United Nations' UNAIDS program director.

||| HIV rates plummet in Washington D.C., and other countries.

||| The nail fungus drug that could kill HIV.

< The man with a nose growing out of his forehead.

||| The science behind power naps, and why they're so damn good for you.

||| How standing desks can make us more productive.

> 40% of gay young people believe they have mental health problems.

||| Is 25 the new cut-off point for adulthood?

||| Brain scans of porn addicts: what's wrong with this picture?

||| Five questions to ask before tying the knot.

||| The way America eats is killing us.

||| Five expired foods you can still eat.

||| So - what if you stopped sleeping?

INSIDE THE SPACESHIP

< Why is Apple so shifty about how it makes the iPhone?

||| Is Facebook sharing making us more vain?

||| Try googling "Google in 1998" and see what happens.

ART & DESIGN

||| The Masculin/Masculin exhibition has now opened at the Musee d'Orsay in Paris. Here's a video promo.

> The posters of San Francisco's Folsom Street Fair.

IN PRINT

||| Nine must-read gay memoirs.

||| "I'm the most famous writer nobody's ever heard of." Talking to Victor Banis, the grandfather of gay.

< Victor Banis' campy, queeny book covers.

||| When pink kryptonite makes Superman go gay.

> Book review: The Asylum, by Simon Doonan, "lovingly embraces eccentricity with cheekiness and sharp, observant descriptions."

||| Book review: Two Boys Kissing, by David Levithan. "An ambitious, humane, extraordinarily moving new novel."

> Book review: Intolerable: A Memoir of Extremes, by Kamal Al-Solaylee. "[This] searing multi-layered tale has resonance for all marginalized people."

PERFORMANCE

< Who's yanking Joe Manganiello's chain? The True Blood star is back on stage as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire. Last week (THE KAOS THEORY Issue 157) we saw a snippet from that show.

AT THE MOVIES

||| Film-maker Lee Daniels says he ran away from his gay identity because of dad's beatings.

||| Daniel Radcliffe thinks viewers may be "startled" by the gay sex scenes in the film Kill Your Darlings, about poet Allen Ginsburg. Co-star Dane DeHaan says he "totally fell in love" with Radcliffe during shooting.

||| Over half of gay actors in Hollywood have heard anti-gay slurs by directors and producers on set.

||| Ten bizarre movie conspiracy theories.

||| Is Don Jon the first truly honest movie about porn?

< Here's the poster for Divergent, an adaptation of the dystopian novel by Veronica Roth, in which society is divided up into five factions based on a test given to teens.

||| Ten things you probably didn't know about Star Wars: Return of the Jedi.

> Inside the abandoned Land of Oz theme park.

||| Watch The Language of Love, a short film about a 17-year-old schoolboy coming to terms with his sexuality while in the middle of a French exam.

< Film review: In The Name Of (W Imie). "A fascinating movie taking in complex themes about the church, celibacy, homosexuality, where the boundaries of intimacy should be and various other things too." And at So So Gay: "An elegant, poignant look at a controversial subject from a nation confronting the subject for the first time."

||| Ten supposedly rare movies you can watch on YouTube.

||| Trailers: Valentine Road, a new HBO documentary on the murder of Lawrence King; and Divergent.

T.V.

||| A gay couple will have sex live on national UK television as part of new Channel 4 series Sex Box.

> Meet the gay Russian who "loves Putin" as "he's not a homophobe".

||| The fifty (apparently) most interesting people on TV right wow

||| The Emmys were plenty gay, but not much else.

||| Why Mitch and Cam finally got engaged on Modern Family.

< Talking to Chris Carmack about playing Nashville's gay character Will Lexington.

||| Does the UK undervalue quality TV programming?

> Gays of our lives: All the latest gay soap developments from around the world, with Anthony D. Langford. Right, Christian and Olli in Germany's Forbidden Love.

< Coronation Street exterior set sold for £26.5 million.

> Check out the original floor plans from the very first Doctor Who episode.

||| Ten unsung heroes in the history of Doctor Who.

< Looking back at Doctor Who – The Caves of Androzani.

||| The top ten TV finales.

MUSIC

||| Justin Bieber gets a spanking.

> JLS announce final single Billion Lights.

||| The twenty all-time worst song lyrics about sex.

< Watch Madonna's new 17-minute short film, secretprojectrevolution.

||| Video: The Paisley Fields - Windows Fogged Up in Your Pickup Truck, a NYC gay love affair with a happy ending.

EROTICA

||| Talking to Hotrod about his new website, "retirement", and those ass enhancements.

||| Talking to CocoDorm model Kush.

< OMG! Helix twink Jessie Montgomery gets engaged to fellow Helix twink Jamie Sanders.

||| Matthew Rush returns in His Son's Boyfriend.

> Robbie R committed to mental hospital, has sex while inside.

< Scott Sewperman, the Treasure Island model, is dead. He was 30.

IN THE ARENA

> Orlando Cruz on his chance to become boxing's first openly gay champion.

||| Jason Collins still unsigned a week before NBA training camps start.

||| IOC "completely satisfied" with Russia's anti-gay laws. This doesn't impress the Human Rights Campaign.

||| Athletes competing at the 2012 Olympic Games had bad teeth.

< Wear (or do whatever you wish) with Cristiano Ronaldo's underwear.

||| Seven things I wish I knew when I started running.

AND WHILST YOU'RE

THINKING ABOUT

THAT, THINK

ABOUT THIS

> Beautiful destroyed structures of the modern age. Right, the original Penn station in New York City, demolished in 1963.

||| And finally, Rogue "Marbie" Scott's holiday from hell; Qaadir schools us on being single; Andrew explains how we might look like him (it ain't gonna happen); and Walter gets serious...