the destination for the
week's essential news
and pop culture stories,
with a gay bias.
PONDER THIS 
||| The world map of marriage equality.
||| It takes more than law-making to shift cultural contempt towards gay people. "Gay marriage is sanctioned from next year and legal protections are mostly in place, but it may take another generation for minds to slowly change."
||| Why gay Millennials should care about adoption. "LGBT equality is on the fast track in the United States, but if you think that adoption rights for gay and lesbian Millennials will just fall into place, think again."> The true stories of 2013's trans murder victims.
||| Where are all the lesbians? "Is the decline in lesbian bars and clubs because they are falling for clichés and stereotypes, rather than offering great service?"
||| The rich pretend the option is the status quo or outright communism, but charity can't justify gross inequality.||| An alternative to the American "customer service" system of treating human beings like shit. Thank f**k for Europe.
< Materialism: a system that eats us from the inside out. "Buying more stuff is associated with depression, anxiety and broken relationships. It is socially destructive and self-destructive."
||| Why we're so materialistic, even though it doesn't make us happy.
||| Black, white or imaginary? Santa's race has the U.S. in a Christmas kerfuffle.
||| Christmas is ruined by children. "Our over-indulgent society has turned children into greedy little emperors."> Personalised Christmas cards: twee and narcissistic, yet we're all succumbing to holiday PR rituals.
||| How photographing events stops us living them.
U.S. & CANADA NEWS
< This is 24-year-old Derrick Burden. He has been sentenced to two life sentences without the possibility of parole after he murdered Calvin Streater and Samuel Blizzard (right), who were in Atlanta for Black Gay Pride 2010.
< These are the faces of the three homeless men who murdered 71-year-old David Maurer, after he met one of them, 20-year-old Rikky Ranger, on Grindr.
||| Hundreds of students protest gay Vice Principal's dismissal. Mark Zmuda was forced to resign after his marriage to his partner.||| Confronting the "Glitter Mafia". A story of small town infighting worthy of a miniseries!
> Pope Francis is The Advocate's Person of the Year. Who'd have thought? These were the other finalists.
||| His selection has drawn criticism, ire, gratitude, and in some cases, consternation.
||| Federal judge Robert J. Shelby strikes down Utah's gay marriage ban...
...And marriage equality also reaches New Mexico.< Delta Air Lines apologises for "H8GAYS" boarding pass.
||| CANADA: Sadly, Rob Ford epitomises what Canada has become. "With his crack smoking and drunken misbehaviour, Toronto's mayor personifies our crude, swaggering, bungling New Canada."
U.K. NEWS > Ricardo Pisano (far right) acquitted of murder, jailed for eighteen years for the manslaughter of 62-year-old Michael Polding in Brighton last year.
||| Prime Minister David Cameron's promises on gay asylum in the UK can't be trusted.
||| Evangelist Andrea Minichiello Williams condemned for suggesting that Tom Daley is gay because his father died.
EUROPE NEWS
||| RUSSIA: Sochi's gay scene has all but disappeared as the Olympics draw nearer...
...But check out these pictures (left) from inside the Mayak.
||| RUSSIA: In Moscow, a mob of one hundred "dismantled" the roof of the city's largest gay club, Central Station.
LATIN AMERICA NEWS > JAMAICA: Meet the homeless gay youth forced to live in New Kingston's sewers.
||| JAMAICA: Dwayne's House - named after murdered 17-year-old Dwayne Jones - is reported as the salvation not for the boys, but for the great and good of New Kingston, who the homeless youth are accused of terrorising.
||| JAMAICA: Health Minister Fenton Ferguson is in favour of a review of the island's colonial buggery laws.
||| JAMAICA: Dwayne's House - named after murdered 17-year-old Dwayne Jones - is reported as the salvation not for the boys, but for the great and good of New Kingston, who the homeless youth are accused of terrorising.
||| JAMAICA: Health Minister Fenton Ferguson is in favour of a review of the island's colonial buggery laws.
AFRICA NEWS
||| UGANDA: Anti-Homosexuality Bill has now been passed by parliament - the death penalty has been dropped, but life in prison remains. UK and US governments, as well as charities across the world, react. How gay Ugandans can stay safe. Edwin Sesange of the African LGBTI Out and Proud Diamond Group calls for action.< UGANDA: Chris Mubiru, the former head of the country's football team, has been arrested after graphic photos were published in the notorious anti-gay tabloid Red Pepper, allegedly showing him having sex with a young player.
||| NIGERIA: "Jail All the Gays" bill approved by parliament, set to be signed "any day" by President Goodluck Jonathan.
||| Nigeria and Uganda plotted to pass their anti-gay bills together. "I wonder why the West is not concerned about the development of my country. They are only concerned about gays," says Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.> NIGERIA: Video appears online, seemingly showing two men beaten to death as a crowd watched and did nothing, chanted "homo!"
||| DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO: One of the few African country's not to explicitly ban homosexuality - but that could all change with the introduction of new anti-gay legislation.
< NAMIBIA: McHenry Venaani, the leader of Democratic Turnhalle Alliance, has spoken out for gay equality.
||| SOUTH AFRICA: The story of Nelson Mandela's "courageous gay white ally".
> SOUTH AFRICA: The fake slum for luxury tourists who don't want to see real poverty.
ASIA NEWS > PAKISTAN: TV news hands over "gay couple" to police, calls for stoning.
||| INDIA: Government calls on the Supreme Court to review gay sex ban judgement.
||| INDIA: The Bharatiya Janata Party - the country's largest opposition party - has "unambiguously" endorsed the re-criminalisation of gay sex.
< INDIA: The gay sex ban is against our tradition of tolerance, says bestselling novelist and poet Vikram Seth.> CHINA: This building transformed into a real life towering inferno in the city of Guangzhou, 15th December 2013.
||| AUSTRALIA: Indigenous gay Australians form Black Rainbow group to fight anti-gay hate in the Aboriginal community.
||| AUSTRALIA: Is racism worse in Australia than in the UK? "Boat race protester" Trenton Oldfield believes it is - he appealed against his deportation by claiming that his native Australia was too racist a country.
MIDDLE EAST NEWS < ISRAEL: First memorial to gay Holocaust victims unveiled in a Tel Aviv park.
||| ISRAEL: 70% of Israelis support gay equality, but the bill threatens to "divide Jerusalem" as the opposition urges Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to openly take a stand.
||| ISRAEL: 70% of Israelis support gay equality, but the bill threatens to "divide Jerusalem" as the opposition urges Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to openly take a stand.
PLANET EARTH > This pig was born with two mouths, two noses and three eyes.
< DIRDS!> Do not miss these evocative images of shelter dogs on their way home for the first time.
< Dog rescued from flood returns to guard his master’s house despite the risk of drowning.||| Dogs recognise their owners' faces - but prefer looking at other dogs...
...And they can now also predict and understand human behaviour better than ever - and future generations may not need training.> The sick truth about "purebred" dogs.
< The story of the heroic parachuting dogs of D-Day.||| The mystery of zebra stripes has been solved.
> Three cheetahs corner a baby antelope. And then...
< This, allegedly, is a picture of a python in India, who has just swallowed a man whole. Said man was - allegedly - passed out drunk in front of a liquor store when it happened. Take it with a large pinch of salt.||| Stock up now on bananas - boffins are "incredibly concerned" as plagues and fungus infections spread across world's supplies.
||| Is it right to waste helium - a finite resource that will one day run out - on party balloons?
||| Our electronic waste is creating a toxic wasteland – often in the poorest countries.
BODY, MIND & SOUL
> Gay men and our obsession with muscle.
||| U.S. boffins discover the secret to reversing the aging process.
< Here is your first look at the atomic structure of the HIV capsid.||| How a HIV-positive man was sent to prison for having sex - with a condom.
< How do you save a severed hand? Graft it to its owners ankle.
||| Why are we more scared of raw egg than reheated rice?
> Christmas: A social anxiety minefield.
||| Does supporting the right to die always run the risk of diminishing the right to live? In some countries, there is euthanasia for "psychological suffering".
< No matter how good your recall is, you still have false memories.
||| The human brain is hard-wired for rural tranquillity, and struggles to process complex urban landscapes.
||| Why are more men speaking in "girls' dialect".
||| A map of the weirdest sex laws in the United States.
BETTA WORK! ||| The workforce is rising in some countries and falling in others. Why? Economists are puzzled.
> We're expected to feel sorry for the white collar "victims" of the economic downturn, apparently...
...But, in fact, the middle class has taken over, and the price we're paying is the destruction of all we hold dear. Britain will pay the price for shafting the working class.
INSIDE THE SPACESHIP ||| Cables, cables, everywhere... Wireless charging can't come soon enough.
< Facebook forced to reinstate Indian gay kiss protest picture after uproar.
||| Introducing PinGay, the new "social pinboard" that is like a gay, adult content version of Pinterest.
||| Why Google's driverless car is evil.
||| Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon are quietly going to war with the telecom giants for control of the Internet's backbone.||| The Guardian's 10-year blog project: cringe with us. "Bloggers of yore, show us your poetry, prose and political screeds from a decade ago (or longer) for a new feature."
ART, DESIGN & CULTURE
> Was Norman Rockwell gay? "Celebrated as a painter of American ideals, he was actually craving male beauty."
< Art & AIDS: Perceptions of Life, has opened at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, and runs until 5th January 2014.> Blake Little: Photographs from the Gay Rodeo, a new exhibition at Indianapolis's Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, opens 1st February 2014.
||| 2013 Year in Pictures: Part I, Part II, and Part III. People take cover behind a counter at the Westgate shopping mall, right, in Nairobi, Kenya, 21st September 2013.
 |
| Trayvon Martin supporters rally in Times Square, 14th July 2013, after George Zimmerman was acquitted of all charges. |
 |
| Oscar Pistorius faces court in Pretoria, 19th February 2013, after being charged in court with shooting dead his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp. |
||| Sign of the Times, Andres Serrano's collection of 200 signs from homeless people in New York City.< Why are we so fascinated by photographs of decaying buildings?
> The world beneath the sidewalk.||| The best toons, comics and art of 2013.
< Check out François Sagat's beautiful 2014 calendar, lensed by Exterface Studio.
> Or maybe the Vatican's Hottest Clerics Calendar 2014 will get you pulse racing?
||| Apollo theatre collapse: London's West End theatres were simply not built for the 21st century.
WORD!
||| What word originated in the year of your birth?
> John R. Gordon's writer's diary: sincerity and realness are not transparent. "Back in the Nineties I wrote – very quickly – three erotic novels. To the extent these had artistic and literary concerns I became intrigued by the idea of using the rhythms of the sentences to reflect and amplify the rhythms and building excitement of the sex-acts I was describing as lividly as possible..."
||| London's Time Out magazine axes its gay section, in an act that is short-sighted and a huge loss to the capital.< Ten magazines that give us hope for print in 2014.
> Book review: We Are Water, by Wally Lamb. "A page-turner... this winter's summer read."
AT THE MOVIES
||| Fairyland: A Memoir of My Father - the coming-of-age story set in San Francisco before and after the AIDS epidemic - is headed to the big screen.
> Massimadi - Montreal's black gay film festival - needs your help.
> Massimadi - Montreal's black gay film festival - needs your help.||| Taylor Kitsch "had no idea about the whole AIDS epidemic" before filming The Normal Heart.
||| Was new film G.B.F. unfairly slapped with an "R" rating because of its gay theme? Director Darren Stein thinks so.
||| "No animals were harmed"? Don't believe it.
< Blockbuster U.K. closes all its remaining stores after failing to secure a buyer.||| Goodbye, Blockbuster. "Seeing the empty shell of a shop last weekend felt like a genuine punch in the gut. Another iconic brand gone from the high street, another facet of the film experience consigned to history. And where the hell are the filmmakers of tomorrow going to waste their early 20s working now?"
||| Blockbuster is no more - but independent DVD rental shops are still alive and kicking.
||| Saving Mr. Banks: Walt Disney Pictures' nauseating Walt Disney propaganda film.
> This is the Italian poster for 12 Years A Slave. Really.||| Brad Pitt is fifty!
< Twenty surprising facts you might not know about Home Alone.
||| Why Brazil is a better Christmas movie than Die Hard.
||| The twenty-five best films of 2013.
||| Trailers: Watch Kellan Lutz ripple in The Legend of Hercules; Dawn of the Planet of the Apes; and, of course, G.B.F.
T.V. ||| New gay web series Mollies and Tommies needs your help.
||| What it's like to be young, gay and male today? That's the question asked by new web series Male Gays.
||| Homeland isn't just bad TV, it peddles the worst lies about US foreign policy.
||| Lego The Golden Girls!
> Does the world really need Ja'mie: Private School Girl? (Answer: YES!)
< Gays of our lives: All the latest gay soap developments from around the world, from Anthony D. Langford. Left, Hollyoaks.
> EastEnders: the year in pictures.
< Coronation Street: the year in pictures.||| Coronation Street films final scenes at Quay Street set.
< Don't miss former Coronation Street actor Lucien Laviscount's naughty naked Skype show.> You could have owned one of the worst Doctor Who monster costumes.
||| Homes, hotel planned for iconic BBC Television Centre site.
BEATS, RHYMES & LIFE
||| Some further thoughts on Beyoncé, and Beyoncé. "I wrote a piece about the new Beyoncé album, under the rather ill-advised headline Why ‘Beyoncé’ Makes Me Want to Die. The piece cataloged my frustrations with the record, and especially with Beyoncé’s brand of feminism. It’s fair to say that it’s has been rather controversial — the responses I’ve received so far have ranged from the positive to the very, very negative."
||| A look at hip hop's moral compass in 2013.
||| Why sexed-up music videos are everyone's problem. "This isn't just about girls thinking they have to be 'hot and sexy'. It's about the pernicious effects on people of all ages, genders and ethnicities."
||| Don't miss Joe Jonas' essay on the toxic reality of Disney stardom.
> Sam Callahan (The X Factor) strips for Gay Times magazine.
||| The "Respectful Rappers" Tumblr that everyone loves is racist and stupid.
< Talking to Cakes Da Killa. "I actually get more respect from straight audiences than gay audiences because I could do a gay, white party at like Westgay and they just want to hear a beat. They don’t care about rap."||| Cakes Da Killa – Goodie Goodies, one of Spin's 50 Best Rap Songs of 2013.
||| The top ten mixtapes of 2013.
> The ten most over-rated albums of 2013.
||| Video: The Younger Lover - Get Up Get Up (Brontez Purnell talks about his dreams "of an all-fag skate crew" here).
SEX
||| The year in porn, in numbers.
||| What is it about priests and sex? "As the 'hot priests' calendar suggests, many people find male priests sexy – perhaps because spirituality has a charge even for those who reject belief."
||| Because we can't talk about this enough: is internet porn destroying our sex lives? This time there's a very detailed infographic to help us understand.< Race Cooper talks about his forthcoming movie The Mix, a "romantic comedy that's also a porn movie".
> Topher DiMaggio finally bottoms on screen - but no one seems to be happy with the guy who tops him.
||| Controversial Michael Lucas on why he's decided to go bareback - after years spent claiming he never would.
> kaos favourite Marco Rubi takes time out at the gym in Madrid for a sexy selfie. And his latest Men At Play appearance, in pictures.
< Watch the trailer for the upcoming porn series The Asiancy Season 6.
> More Marco Rubi? Well, you ain't complaining, are ya? Here he is with a friend at Dramatic Club in Zagreb.
< Talking to HotRod.||| Talking to porn veteran JC Carter.
> Talking to Jordano Santoro.
||| Talking to CocoDorm model Reeko Dunn.
< Thirteen mugshots of the hottest guys ever arrested.
||| Brent Corrigan: being pretty is nothing.
||| And now, some sex siren realness...
ARENA
||| Seventy-seven people who came out publicly in sports in 2013.
||| Barack Obama, Joe Biden won't be attending the Sochi Olympics. French President Francois Hollande is staying home too.||| 1988 Olympic figure skating gold medalist Brian Boitano, selected by President Barack Obama to be a part of the US delegation at the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, comes out as gay.
> Saunders boys basketball players wear #BeTrue shirts in support of their gay coach.
||| Dennis Rodman is "having fun" in North Korea at the expense of human rights.
||| Robbie Rogers says not a single player has contacted him since he came out in February.
AND WHILST YOU'RE
THINKING ABOUT
THAT, THINK
ABOUT THIS
||| Wanna get high? Try out the Chamonix Skywalk, a glass box in the French Alps with a 1,000 meter drop directly below.< What's it look like inside Amazon? This.
||| Ten dangerous things in Victorian/Edwardian homes.
> Inside the abandoned Belgium mansion brimming with expensive furniture and half full glasses... as if the owners just upped and left.||| The ten worst taxi cab horror stories ever.
||| The twenty most annoying things people do on planes.
||| Professional sports teams or gay porn studios? Take the test!
||| Brent Corrigan and friends try out idiotic new "penis sling", and wander around West Hollywood like jackasses.
||| The most hated pop cultural icons of 2013.
||| 2013's cultural ups and downs.
||| And finally, let's spend some quality time with Andrew. Meanwhile, Walter talks about the effect "friends" have on a relationship, Rogue "Marbie" Scott on how to be a better top, and Justin stops drinking!
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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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