the destination for the
week's essential news
and pop culture stories,
with a gay bias.
PONDER THIS
||| The seven big problems gay men have with gay men.
||| The case for hate speech. How Anita Bryant and Orson Scott Card have advanced the case for equality.
||| To the young gay kid stuck in a small town and feeling alone: hold your head up, young one.
...And how I am both black and gay at the same time.
||| The fifty most powerful gays in the boardroom revealed. Yes kids, gays do greed just as well as the straights!
> Could Russell Brand stop clowning around and be Britain's Beppe Grillo? "Like Italy's comedian-cum-politician, Brand is showing he has the political acumen and energy to lead a popular revolution – but he hasn't put the work in yet."
||| Wild emotions are all very well, Russell Brand, but then what? "Now, as in the 1920s and 30s, many Europeans agree with Brand that all politicians are crooks and democracy is a sham."
U.S. & CANADA NEWS
< This is 13-year-old "B.B." - a Louisville male cheerleader - whose mother is suing Thomas Jefferson Middle School after B.B. was subjected to a campaign of anti-gay bullying and harassment. WDRB has a video report.
> Meet Abdul Asquith, who was denied the rental of a laptop because the librarian at his college believed he was a woman and the ID card he presented depicted a man.
||| Tea Party Unity founder Rick Scarborough wants to sue all gays in class action suit.
< Jelly Belly chairman Herman Rowland Sr. donates to initiative to repeal California's new law protecting transgender students.
||| Why are so many gay families living in the hostile territory of states such as Utah, Texas, and Virginia?
||| Does the Stonewall commemorative plaque erase trans people's role in riots?
||| New York City to replace all of its streelights with LEDs.
 |
| THE BIG PICTURE: Sandy Hook Elementary school demolition begins, 25th October 2013. |
> CANADA: Priape - the country's biggest gay retailer - has closed all of its stores and filed for bankruptcy protection, blaming the on ban on popper sales.
U.K. NEWS
< This is Gavin Brewer, and his boyfriend Stuart Meads. They were found dead last weekend on a London building site after a freak accident.
||| One in ten men who call suicide helplines are gay, The Samaritans reveal.
> How London life dazzles your eyes. "The thriving capital can make you giddy and a little bit smug. Meanwhile just round the corner there are Londoners struggling to survive."
||| London's only lesbian bar closing down after its rent doubles.
||| SCOTLAND: Why Edinburgh police want bareback sex in saunas...
...So, why are Edinburgh's seamier saunas under attack? Even the Church of Scotland thinks the police are out of line.
EUROPE NEWS
< IRELAND: Cradle snatcher! 93-year-old Patrick Scott marries his companion of 37 years, 57-year-old Eric Pearce.
||| FRANCE: French-Moroccan gay couple win right to marry, overturns a decade old agreement between France and Morocco.
||| RUSSIA: Police who filmed an attempted rape between a man held for being drunk and another detainee escape prison sentence.
LATIN AMERICA NEWS
||| TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO: UN criticised for launching human rights book where gays are a "prohibited class".
> CHILE: This is Juán Fernando Vera Mejias, a 51-year-old gay man found naked, stabbed and choked in his own home. Video.
AFRICA NEWS
||| SOUTH AFRICA: Afrikaner group claims white people are victims of discrimination - in the land of white privilege.
||| SOUTH AFRICA: Anglican archbishop Thabo Makgoba calls for end to violence against gay people.
< ZIMBABWE: Annual ZimPride week ends with drag queen contest.
||| UGANDA: Police arrest abusive "sodomy video" gays, Sunday Pepper tabloid claims in typically salacious report.
ASIA NEWS
||| JAPAN: What happens to a country when its young people stop having sex? Japan is finding out.
> TAIWAN: Thousands march in Taipei for marriage equality.
||| AUSTRALIA: The Australian Capital Territory has become the country's first jurisdiction to allow same-sex couples to marry.
||| AUSTRALIA: The Progressive Atheists group campaigns to stop Nigerian gay hate preacher Enoch Adeboye entering Australia.
PLANET EARTH
||| Boffins claim bugs are having gay sex by mistake.
||| Moose face extinction in northern US forests.
BODY, MIND & SOUL
< Maybe not - US scientists have discovered it's going to be much harder than previously thought, because dormant HIV strains capable of spreading the virus hide in immune system cells like this one.
||| Why are Latinos at higher risk of HIV?
||| Making peace with HIV.
||| A brief history of painkillers (and how they work).
||| Baldness treatment a step closer.
||| A good many more people are same-sex attracted than willing to admit - if their answers can't be traced back to them.
||| Butter is bad – a myth we've been fed by the "healthy eating" industry. "Medics are saying saturated fat may not be the devil incarnate. Just don't expect an apology from low-fat food purveyors."
||| The slow metabolism obesity "excuse" is true.
< Boffins look inside chicken nuggets, are astounded. You'll be sick.
> When we deny our own vulnerability, we cope by being cruel to others. "If sadism is rooted in the fear of being human, what does it say about these cruel, unempathic times we live in?"
||| The open spaces where we played are cruelly lost to today's children. "Rickets is on the rise, but let's not consider it a Victorian throwback, more of a symptom of our airless lifestyle."
||| The worship of children brings only misery. "We revere our children as infants but neglect them as soon as they approach adulthood. No wonder they're miserable."
||| The "personal brand" myth.
INSIDE THE SPACESHIP
< Google's autocomplete spells out our darkest thoughts...
...as a new campaign by the United Nations for gay equality reveals what happens when you type the word "gays" into Google.
||| The phone you can build like Lego.
ART & DESIGN
> This is Clayton Pettet, a 19-year-old student at London's Central Saint Martins art school, who plans to lose his virginity as part of a live gay sex show - all in the name of art.
< Check out the work of Shungaboy this month and next at Washington D.C.'s Vitruvian Gallery.
> Capolavoro Publishing's new book Capolavoro di Uomo: Masterpiece of Man - Showcasing The Best Of The Diversity In Gay Erotic Art highlights why we need gay art.
||| Gerard H. Gaskin's new book Legendary: Inside the House Ballroom Scene.
WORD!
||| John Rechy's City of Night turns 50. More on that at Lambda Literary.
< Colour Scheme author John R. Gordon's writer's diary: the characters tell you.
< Colour Scheme author John R. Gordon's writer's diary: the characters tell you.
||| The joy of slang.
PERFORMANCE
||| Universal Studios claims its anti-gay Bill and Ted’s Excellent Halloween Adventure show is "satirical". Faced with mounting criticism, it axes the show.
> Gay Catholic schoolboys musical Bare returns to London for a limited run.
||| Gay theatre: coming out or going back? "Gay writing is at a crossroads – we've yet to produce a voice to match those who came before."
AT THE MOVIES
||| Netflix streaming is killing off physical media — and film fans should be worried.
> Chase Simmons new documentary Dear Dad: Letters From Same-Gender-Loving Sons explores relationships between black gay men and their fathers.
||| Another new documentary, God Loves Uganda, explores the American connection to the virulently homophobic climate in Uganda.
||| Does size matter? That's the question posed by Unhung Hero, "the world's first cockumentary".
||| Talking to director Ferzan Özpetek about his new film Halloween.
||| Cinema review: A Magnificent Haunting. "A rich and involving piece of work."
||| Watch Silver Creek, a beautiful short film by Salazar that benefits gay youth charities.
T.V.
||| Russell Brand reveals he once had gay sex on heroin for TV.
< Is Law & Order: SVU on its last legs?
||| No. Please God, no... CBS plans to reboot Charmed.
||| Sean Hayes blames NBC for his sitcom's low ratings.
||| Queer Eye for the Straight Guy was a better show than you remember.
> Gays of our lives: All the latest gay soap developments from around the world, with Anthony D. Langford. Right, German soap Among Us.
||| Ten bizarre television conspiracy theories.
Twenty amazing British TV shows that Doctor Who fans should watch.
< More new shots from the BBC's forthcoming drama An Adventure in Space and Time, which dramatises Doctor Who's earliest days.
MUSIC
> LastO returns to the rap game after a four-year hiatus, joining a growing raft of gay hip-hop artists.
||| Union J member Jaymi Hensley to marry his boyfriend Olly Marmon.
> Blue singer Simon Webbe declares himself bankrupt. If he needs a place to sleep for a few nights...
||| Tom Hardy to play Elton John in new film Rocketman.
||| Kanye West and the Confederate flag: why it's really hard to be a Kanye West fan at times.
||| Video: Night Cadet - Seaside.
EROTICA
||| At Fraternity X the line between fantasy and immoral hellscape is mighty thin.
< Former CocoDorm model Pimp suffers heart attack, survives.
||| Vito Gallo arrested for allegedly attacking producer Michael Lucas.
||| Diesel Washington announces his retirement.
> Don't miss Candis Cayne's hilarious cameo in Lucas Entertainment's new Kings of New York episode starring Sean Xavier and Duncan Black.
< Here's one last look at the 15th Annual Hustlaball New York.
> New kaos krush Marco Rubi has been hard at it, this time with Rogan Richards for Men at Play...
...And the delicious Tyson Tyler's also been busy, making Cheaters for Naked Sword, left.
||| But Bel Ami's plans for the biggest and most expensive bareback orgy scene ever produced surely top all that. Due for release next month, it will star Kevin Warhol and Jack Harrer, amongst others.
> Chase Carter is back in the CocoDorm, looking hotter than ever without the 'tach.
||| Take a trip to Fire Island with Nasty Pig; and what Patrick Cowley's electronic music gives us a taste of what a bathhouse would have sounded like in San Francisco in 1979.
IN THE ARENA 
> Gay sports leagues are replacing bars as the main meeting place for those seeking same-sex friendships.
< Meet Los Lobos ("The Wolves"), Mexico City's gay football team.
> The Warwick Rowers get naked to beat homophobia.
< Olympic gymnast Louis Smith is packing.
||| New Olympics chief Jean-Claude Killy claims Vladimir Putin "can't be evil as he wishes me happy birthday".
||| Johnny Weir to bend over and take Russia's anti-gay shafting while he's raking in the loot doing TV at Olympics.
AND WHILST YOU'RE
THINKING ABOUT
THAT, THINK
ABOUT THIS
< America's creepiest abandoned amusement park to open for one week only.
> A Lego record store!
||| Are people snobbish about frozen food?
||| Six tricks to revive old food.
||| And finally, Walter discusses those Barney store arrests in the way only Walter can; video stores explained to modern kids; dumb white girl Instagram tips; and an epic Halloween prank.
