the destination for the
week's essential news
and pop culture stories,
with a gay bias.
||| There are now eighty-three countries where homosexuality is illegal.

||| Marriage equality: one step forward, two steps back. The evolution of marriage continues in England and Wales, but hits a brick wall in India and Australia.

||| Why gay women need more celesbians.
< As a black feminist, I see how the wider movement fails women like my mother.
||| The cutesification of everything makes me want to strangle an elf. "The recent Twitter conversation featuring big brands trying to out-LOL each other is not funny. No, it's part of a trend that will bring about the downfall of society."


||| Christmas cards, like social media, have become all about us.
> Kele Okereke wonders, can Pope Francis, the great reformer, make things better for gay people too? "It looks like Pope Francis is preparing the ground for change in the Catholic church. Let's hope where he leads, others will follow."
||| An atheist utopia? Talk about a nightmare. "Too often aggressive atheists, perhaps rhetorically competing with the most militant religious fanatics, argue that religion is a disease that needs a cure. They are wrong."

||| Why I ditched God for good.
||| Maybe we need to have less "faith in humanity". "Plenty of internet posts try to tell us that humanity is good. But what we really need is to evaluate our own actions and decisions."
< Calling Ian Watkins evil absolves us of the need to try to comprehend what he did. "Trying to understand evil as something of this world locates it dangerously close to all of us as human beings. Ian Watkins from the band Lostprophets – no, I had never heard of them either - pleaded guilty to 13 sexual offences, including two of attempting to rape a baby. The prosecuting barrister told the court that the two women standing beside him in the dock had also 'sexually abused their own children and made them available to Watkins for him to abuse.' Watkins had sent a text to one of the women: 'If you belong to me, so does your baby'. Now, I have no interest in trying to enter into some sort of crass competition over outrage. Or, at least, I wish I didn't. For there is a part of me that now wants to write something like this: "Ian Watkins is a walking advertisement for the death penalty. But, the thing is, I don't believe in the death penalty. Thinking about this level of evil it is easy to be lost for words."

||| A fecund bone-yard of gossip, poison and lies. Do not miss Russell Brand's incisive piece about those who head up governments, newspapers and big businesses.
||| When will we acknowledge that asylum seekers are human beings?
U.S. & CANADA NEWS


> Tarence Mitchell, a High school football player, stands trial for allegedly stabbing his male lover, Ronald Taylor, Jr. (far right).

||| Why the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormon church) recently reneged on its commitment to stay out of the marriage equality fight.
||| The latest Zimmerman arrest is a reminder of just how broken US justice system is. "There's a presumption of white innocence. It reflects a society rife with institutional racism and prejudice against people of color."

||| CANADA: Gay Muslims plan to open an affirming mosque in Nova Scotia.
U.K. NEWS
> This is 14-year-old Ayden Keenan-Olson, who committed suicide after enduring a sustained campaign of anti-gay abuse at school. The news comes as a new schools campaign shows 99% of gay teens are subjected to homophobic language.




||| Senior college academic Dr Mark Walcott suspended after secret recording emerges in which he compares "gayism" to Nazism.
||| London Mayor Boris Johnson's philosophy isn't just elitist – it's sinister. "London's mayor opened his mouth and wrote off a whole swath of the populace. Yet he's just spelling out the ideology of the ruling class."
||| Yet Johnson spectacularly failed an IQ test live on the radio.
||| London is a property developers' paradise. And ordinary people are being priced out.
||| How London's East End is being threatened by a "creeping and ghastly greed".

EUROPE NEWS
< RUSSIA: Maxim Marcinkiewicz - the Russian thug who humiliates gay men on film - is now wanted in two countries.

||| RUSSIA: How gay and human rights are sacrificed for Putin's empire.
||| RUSSIA: Vladimir Putin names journalist who said "gay people's organs should be burned" as media chief.

||| RUSSIA: New biography claims Putin is gay.
< RUSSIA: A UK ad agency is to send the Kremlin a set of nesting dolls, based on Elton John, Stephen Fry, George Michael, Tom Daley.

||| SWEDEN: First gay retirement home opens in Stockholm.
||| CROATIA: "Yes" Croatians say to ballot question banning same-sex marriage, in an economic own goal. But Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic "is determined to bring in more rights for gay couples".

LATIN AMERICA NEWS

> PERU: Celebrities pose as gay couples for acceptance campaign.

||| JAMAICA: Tom Daley is gay because his dad died and he is looking for a strong father figure, anti-gay activist claims.

AFRICA NEWS

||| How can so many African leaders ignore Mandela's legacy? "Nelson Mandela stood down after five years, but a number of his peers, including Uganda's president Yoweri Museveni, still cling to office."

||| SOUTH AFRICA: Mandela championed the decriminalisation of homosexuality, enshrining equality in law. South Africa's constitution states: "Everyone is equal before the law and has the right to equal protection and benefit of the law. Equality includes the full and equal enjoyment of all rights freedoms," and goes on to list "sexual orientation" discrimination as specifically banned by both the state and individuals.
||| SOUTH AFRICA: Mandela has been sanitised by hypocrites and apologists. "The ANC liberation hero has been reinvented as a Kumbaya figure in order to whitewash those who stood behind apartheid."
||| SOUTH AFRICA: Repetition, not veracity, was my gripe with this week's Mandela mourning. "My distrust of being told what to think and feel by the media has made the unrelenting Mandela fest hard to bear."
||| UGANDA: Minster for Ethics and Integrity outraged by plans to roll out a series of HIV clinics targeting the needs of LGBTIs and sex workers.
||| NAMIBIA: Young gay people forced out of their family home "to escape eating from garbage bins".
||| NIGERIA: Seven youths arrested on "suspicion of homosexuality" in Jigawa State.
![]() |
THE BIG PICTURE: A French soldier speaks to suspected Christian militia member Sincere Banyodi, 32, after he was wounded by machete blows in the Central Africa Republic neighbourhood of Bangui, 9th December 2013. |
< INDIA: The Supreme Court sets aside the 2009 Delhi High Court ruling that legalised homosexuality, in a major setback for gay equality. There is a global outcry.
||| INDIA: The Supreme Court argues that it shouldn't uphold the striking down of the country's colonial era anti-sodomy law because it had not been proven that gays are discriminated against in India.

> INDIA: Thousands of Indians, both straight and gay alike, change their Facebook profile to a picture of them kissing someone of the same gender, as India "goes gay for a day" to protest gay sex ban.


||| AUSTRALIA: The High Court annuls the first legal same-sex marriages on Australian soil, striking down the Australian Capital Territory's gay marriage law.

||| AUSTRALIA: Cruelty? It's part of the Australian experience. "Our treatment of refugees is barbaric in an authentically Australian mode, given our early history of penal settlements. Cruelty is a product of our loyalty to the current political order."
||| AUSTRALIA: Deformed children found in remote farming community after generations of inbreeding.
||| AUSTRALIA: Are men truly "under attack"? "There are real problems facing men, but blaming feminism will not solve them. To the contrary, the men’s rights movement makes these issues worse."
MIDDLE EAST NEWS
||| LEBANON: TV show targets gay drag "perverts" in tabloid sting.
PLANET EARTH
![]() |
THE BIG PICTURE: A puffin feeds its chick on the Farne Islands. |

> Don't miss photographer Tim Flach's pictures of horses in the womb.
||| Dogs are a woman's best friend too. "Ben Fogle's article extolling dogs and their affinity with so-called masculine traits bothers me. Women don't just pop puppies into pink handbags."

< How the caveish lost its eyes.
||| New York's High Line hit by hardy cockroaches never before seen.

||| The supervolcano beneath Yellowstone National Park is even more colossal than we ever thought.
||| So the universe might be a hologram...
...or be about to collapse (right).
BODY, MIND & SOUL
||| Were you told you were HIV-positive by Brooklyn's Kings County Hospital Center? They might have got it wrong.

||| The eleven biggest HIV and AIDS myths busted.
||| Could cancer treatment could be the key to ending HIV?
||| The US Center for Disease Control reports a 20% jump in unprotected sex among gay and bisexual men since 2005.
||| The graphene condom: a new hope for safe sex.
||| The male pill? Here are some grim side-effects to expect. "Pill-induced emotional outbursts may no longer be the preserve of women if hormonal contraception for men becomes a reality."
||| 40-year-old foetus found in 82-year-old Colombian woman.

> How much gay sex is the UK actually having?
||| Is technology stopping us having sex?
||| Why the only shameful thing about sex is justifying outdated views with science. "A study argues evolution is why women are more likely to regret casual sex. It ignores the cultural norms we're enshrouded in."
||| So, men and women's brains are wired differently – but it's not that simple. "Reducing a scientific study about mental illness to pop psychology suggesting men and women are from different planets does us all a disservice."

< Smarter people drink more, and there's "a strong correlation between high IQ in young adulthood and preference for wine over beer later in life". Bottoms up!
||| Why Americans are eating more meat.
||| Why dieting is a life sentence. "Fewer than 10% of diets work. That's because diets, in the sense that we know them, imply there is an end to the process. There isn't."

||| Why you think you're better than everyone else.
||| Horoscopes "bad for you" say scientists, warning obsession with starsigns can cause indulgent and impulsive behaviour.
||| Contrary to popular opinion, gay and bi singles are individuals, too.
||| And now, the fascinating truth about sphincters...
< I've worked at McDonald's for 5 years and have 4 kids. Any questions for me?
||| Walmart, rampant inequality, and detachment from reality. "The Walton family's modern day aristocracy is anything but charming."
||| Poverty wages in the land of plenty. "The holiday season is upon us. Sadly, the big retailers are Scrooges when it comes to paying their workers."

> The myths about working retail.
||| Technology didn't kill middle class jobs, public policy did. "The story is that innovation rapidly reduced the need for factory workers and other skilled labor. The data just doesn't support it."

||| Twitter revises its blocking policy, confuses everyone.
> Chinese gay dating app Blued gets two million users in first year.
||| What human experiences are we missing by adopting new technologies?
||| Amazon to deliver by drone? Don't believe the hype. "Jeff Bezos's 'plan' for drone deliveries is little more than a publicity stunt – timed for the biggest online shopping day of the year."

||| Why the Elan Gale internet hoax sums up all that is rotten about our online lives. "When I was a teenager, I thought it would be great to be an adult and be surrounded by people who weren't mean to each other all day. Enter stage left: the world wide web."

||| Why buying technology gadgets on Black Friday usually isn't a great deal.
< Indonesian artist Ferdi Rizkiyanto makes sculptures out of lit candles.

||| Marvel reveals new gay, gender-bending X-Man Benjamin Deeds, a brand new superhero with the power to shape-shift into any person - man or woman - at will.
< With your eyes, look upon this Hobbit fan art.
||| One entire day in gay America, in pictures:

WORD!
||| Children's fiction is not great literature. "Kent University was right – the best children's books are better written, but only adult literature confronts the range of human experience."
||| Slate's "minutes to read" feature dumbs down journalism.
< New York magazine scales back, goes biweekly.

> Book review: The Passion Of Gengoroh Tagame: Master Of Gay Erotic Manga, by Gengoroh Tagame. "When I first flipped through this collection of Gengoroh Tagame’s erotic manga, which is obsessed with the domination and torture of burly, hyper-masculine men, all of it depicted in sexual explicitness, my reaction shifted quickly from cringing shock, to fascination, to something like amazement."



AT THE MOVIES

> Forthcoming gay Muslim picture Naz + Maalik explodes stereotypes. "While deciding whether to tell their community about their homosexuality, Naz and Maalik's ambiguous and secretive relationship unknowingly sets an FBI agent on their trail. As the agent grows convinced that the boys are engaged in 'violent radicalism,' her pursuit becomes increasingly menacing and the stakes surrounding the boys' hapless hustling and lies grow." Watch the trailer here.

||| Gay actor Ben Whishaw to star in a new film about the legendary Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, to be directed by Dexter Fletcher (of cult teen drama Press Gang).
> What in the world possessed USA Today to describe The Best Man Holiday as "race-themed"?

< Prop of statuette of the Maltese Falcon - from the 1941 picture of the same name - sells for $US4m.
||| It's a Wonderful Life to get sequel sixty years on. Why?
||| Fortunately, Paramount - who control the rights to the original - will fight the proposed follow-up, scheduled for 2015. And here's three reasons why we shouldn't worry.
> Talking to director Travis Mathews about Interior. Leather Bar, which "saw James Franco having to get serious actors to have real gay sex on screen".

||| Film review: Kill Your Darlings. "This is a portrait of the artists as young men with a murder story tagged on a little clumsily, almost as an afterthought. The energy of the performances and Krokidas’ flashy directorial style paper over the cracks in the plotting." (The Independent); "He never quite makes sense of the relationship between the psychological intrigue of the narrative and the characters’ future poetic importance." (So So Gay)
> Film review: Snails In The Rain. "[A] myopic focus somewhat undermines the film."
||| Film review: Geography Club. "After a slew of pretty dark gay teen films that may reflect some of the unhappiest experiences for some LGBT youths, it’s great to have a film that’s fun and sweet, and which suggests there’s always a way through and that while it might sometimes seem lonely, you will indeed find people who think the way you do and accept you for who you are."

< DVD review: Boys on Film X. Big Gay Picture Show; "As a collection, it’s the least cohesive yet, but as a summation of what the series represents, it’s an ideal anniversary celebration." (So So Gay)


> DVD review: Floating Skyscrapers. "The location and filmmaking techniques hold your interest, but the plot... is a bit of a well-worn tale."
||| DVD review: Undressing Israel: Gay Men In The Promised Land. "[It] sets out to challenge stereotypes about gay right in Israel, but does so in a rather basic way, coming across as much as an advert for Tel Aviv as a documentary."


> DVD review: The Falls: Testament Of Love. "Moving, entertaining and sometimes a little sexy, [it] may not be perfect, but thanks to its strong central romance and characters, it’s a successful follow-up to a good gay-themed film."


||| The "vast majority" of Hollywood silent films are lost forever, according to a new study by the US Library of Congress..
> Paul Walker, the actor best known for the Fast & Furious movie series, is dead. He was 40.
||| And what he secretly did in 2004 is just now coming out.
||| Watch Jackpot, a short by Adam Baran.
||| Trailers: Family Secrets; and Paul W.S. Anderson's Pompeii, which stars Oz legend Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje.
< Glee star Alex Newell calls Fox News anchor Bill O'Reilly out on transphobic slurs; speaks out on people wrongly assuming that he too is transgender (he's actually gay).

||| Graham Norton warned by BBC for wearing AIDS ribbon.
> Tim Campbell - the first winner of The Apprentice - on his battle with testicular cancer.

< Gays of our lives: All the latest gay soap developments from around the world, from Anthony D. Langford. Left, German soap All That Matters.


||| Gay actor Charlie Condou to exit Coronation Street in "explosive" storyline.
||| Russell T Davies - who created Queer As Folk and reimagined Doctor Who for the 21st century - has written two new gay drama series, Cucumber and Banana, to be screened in 2014.
||| Gay web series Hunting Season seeks funding for a second season.
||| New York-based web series The 3 Bits teams up with porn studio CockyBoys, who have loaned three of their exclusives (Levi Karter, Max Ryder and Colby Keller) to appear in upcoming episodes.
||| HBO's Looking not a gay Sex and the City or a gay Girls, creators Michael Lannan and Andrew Haigh insist. Trailer:
||| Guy Pearce to guest on Sean Saves the World as a romantic interest for Sean Hayes' single-dad character.


< The Only Way is Essex star Dan Osborne strips for Cosmopolitan.
||| Do you ever give up on TV shows mid-season?
||| Watch episode three of director Eddie Griffith's new web series KEN.
||| Doctor Who at 50: This brilliant interactive graphic shows fifty years of time travel in the TARDIS.


< Doctor Who at 50: The fourteen strangest moments in Doctor Who alt-history.
||| Doctor Who at 50: Google unveils its largest ever doodle to celebrate the 50th anniversary.

||| Doctor Who at 50: Why does Doctor Who escape modern scepticism in a way the Bible doesn't?

||| Doctor Who at 50: How once despised series has become a global cash cow.
> Doctor Who at 50: The story of the first Doctor: How illegitimate thief and womaniser William Hartnell became the original Time Lord.
||| Doctor Who at 50: The assistants - where are they now?
< Doctor Who at 50: Louise Jameson saved my life. "Suicide is the number one exit strategy for troubled gay teens. It was nearly mine. Looking back, I know what - and Who - saved my life."
||| Doctor Who at 50: For the love of Dodo! "Everyone has their own favourite Doctor Who companion. But no one, it seems, likes Dodo."
> Doctor Who at 50: The Doctor Who Restoration Team discusses the process used to bring the newly discovered missing episodes back to life.
+Doctors+-+Protest.jpg)


< Doctor Who at 50: T.V. review: An Adventure in Space and Time. "I expected lots of magic and nostalgia. But I wasn't prepared for how emotionally intense An Adventure in Space and Time actually is." (Observation Deck); "a triumph. Beautifully shot and edited, visually a treat for the eyes and it is especially effective in recalibrating Hartnell's contribution to the series." (Cathode Ray Tube); "An absolute labour of love that will delight the aficionado whilst also being accessible to the casual viewer. Outstandingly researched, funny and genuinely touching." (So So Gay)
BEATS, RHYMES & LIFE
||| Why Beyoncé makes me want to die. "Beyoncé is not an avatar of perfection; she is a cashed-up diva with a temperature-controlled personal archive and a penchant for making propaganda films (and trampling people in her way). BUT! I listened to Beyoncé with an open mind. I tried. I really did. This is what happened."


< Brand Nubian's Lord Jamar rants about the "gay agenda" and "alpha males".

||| Britney Spears on her gay fans: "They're somewhat girls".
||| Lady Gaga was "obliterated drunk" on day their friendship ended, says Perez Hilton.
> Madge has let go of Baby Brahim's toddler leash forever.
||| Liberace's ex Scott Thorson is back in jail.

||| Could the decline in album sales push pop forward?
< Kele Okereke's new single Down Boy is the first 3D printed vinyl.
||| Videos: The Christmas Song, by DWV (drag trio Willam Belli, Detox, and Vicki Vox); and Burning Up, by Milan Christopher.
||| The Top 15 U.S. cities by average penis size.
||| How to take flawless phone pictures of your naked body.
> Tate Ryder retires, returns to Oz.

< The drama on both sides of the camera at NYC porn powerhouse CockyBoys.




||| Pictures from some live sex shows around Europe, featuring the likes of Donato Reyes and Damien Crosse.



||| Condoms aren't sexy. This is how porn stars would fix them.
||| Bareback porn, and testing.
||| Gay Porn Times pays tribute to the male performers and other members of the adult industry community we've lost to AIDS and over the past thirty years. It's a long list. Left, Joe Simmons (died 1995).
||| The eleven most sexually depraved things the Roman emperors ever did.
ARENA
> High school basketball coach Anthony Nicodemo came out to his team. Here's what happened.

< "It really was love at first sight," Tom Daley says of his new boyfriend. And just how cute do the boys look together?

||| Lady Gaga urges Tom Daley to boycott anti-gay countries ahead of Russia Winter Olympics.
||| Why are the media labelling Tom Daley as gay?
> Boxing hunk Orlando Cruz marries José Manuel Colón in New York.


> Coca-Cola refuses to help gay Russians at Olympics.
||| Russia will create "protest zones" at 2014 Sochi Olympics.
||| Watch Swedish wrestlers wrestle naked - covered in frosting - in the name of HIV testing.
||| And now some pictures of six-foot-five Kenyan rugby player Daniel Adongo:
AND WHILST YOU'RE
THINKING ABOUT
THAT, THINK
ABOUT THIS


< This spectacular Lego recreation of Rivendell...
...Is much tinier than the world's biggest sculptures, right.
||| Urban explorer Bradley Garrett's trespassing gallery.
||| And finally, Rogue "Marbie" Scott confesses, "I'm a toneist!" Plus, Walter admits he was wrong about HIV, Andrew's back home and naked, and Martin talks about insecurity.
18 November - 13 December 2013
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© 2013
Postcript
"You know, we might just as well not have
bothered to come. The whole thing's been ridiculous."
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