the destination for the
week's essential news
and pop culture stories,
with a gay bias.
Ponder This
||| 10% of the world is now living in a place where marriage equality
is legal.
||| Should hypocritical politicians
be outed?
U.S. & Canada News
> Gay man killed, and his husband critically injured
in high rise Manhattan fire. 27-year-old Daniel McClung and 32-year-old Michael Todd Cohen were found in a stairwell near the 31st floor of The Strand condominium.
> Openly gay New York philanthropist Robert W. Wilson
commits suicide. "A friend suggested that he jump into the courtyard of his apartment — a 'beloved, art-filled, $20 million-plus apartment overlooking Central Park' that he considered 'his refuge from a sometimes unfriendly city' — so that he wouldn't land on anyone. He apparently took her advice."
> This is 32-year-old Bresnniel Jansen, a Miami teacher
accused of exchanging nude pictures with a 17-year-old student, who also performed oral sex on him in a classroom.
< Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity chapter placed on probation
for rejecting pledge Brian Stewart because he's gay.
||| Utah Mormon Trestin Meacham
starves himself in fight against marriage equality...
> Openly gay Yale University professor Samuel See died from a drug overdose after an altercation with his husband, report
reveals.
||| "I feel like he always gets off." The
chilling video of Trayvon Martin killer George Zimmerman's girlfriend.
U.K. News
> The escorts who want to rebrand male prostitution
as a business.
||| London counselling centre
reports almost a 400% increase in gay couples seeking its services.
> London Mayor Boris Johnson's call for water cannon
shows a contempt for the people. "Further evidence that police and government see the public as little more than dirt to be cleansed from the streets."
Europe News
< ITALY: Former Vatican guard claims cardinals, priests and bishops
asked him for sex at least 20 times during his time serving the Vatican.
||| RUSSIA: The powerful Orthodox Church
is demanding a public vote on banning. Meanwhile, Orthodox Deacon Andrei Kurayev
claims he has been sacked as a professor at the Moscow Theological Academy for speaking out against what he says is a powerful "gay lobby" within the Church.
||| RUSSIA: Arkady Gyngazov, the manager of Central Station - Moscow's biggest gay club -
seeks asylum in the U.S.
< RUSSIA: Maxim Martsinkevich, leader of the anti-gay vigilante group "Occupy Paedophilia" that has lured and tortured a number of gay teens in Russia,
has fled to Cuba.
Latin America News
<
Talking to Jamaican gay equality activist Maurice Tomlinson.
Africa News
> UGANDA: "I write these words with a heavy heart, an inability to understand nor comprehend the actions of the Ugandan Parliament, and a sense of depression, following my rejoicing in response to the accomplishments of Nelson Mandela,"
writes Rev. Gilbert H. Caldwell. "I share this as an 80-year-old African-American who was active in the Civil Rights Movement, as a Christian, and as one who had the honor and joy of being a participant in the film
Love Heals Homophobia."
> UGANDA: Chris Mubiru, former head of the country's soccer team,
has been charged for alleged gay sex with one of his team players last year.
||| GHANA: Gays are "sick" like witches, Presbyterian leader Reverend Prof Emmanuel Martey
announces.
||| SOUTH AFRICA: Is gay quality
in danger now Nelson Mandela is gone?
Asia News
||| INDIA: Anti-gay hate
has seen a resurgence since the Supreme Court's decision to recriminalise homosexuality.
||| INDIA: Change.org
takes down anti-gay petition.
||| INDIA:
A dystopia of extremes. "Neoliberalism has failed the vast majority of India's people. But the spirit that gave the nation independence is stirring."
||| HONG KONG: Majority support
some rights for gay couples, but support for same-sex marriage
remains low.
Middle East News
< ISRAEL: Tel Aviv commemorates gay Holocaust victims with a monument in the form of a pink triangle
unveiled in Meir Park.
In pictures.
Planet Earth
> Fishermen
found these conjoined whale calves alive in Mexico, but they only lived a few hours.
Body, Mind & Soul
||| Why the latest Centers for Disease Control (CDC) HIV report
is so alarming.
||| It's time to
give yourself a photo detox. "We'll take a trillion photographs this year. But the promise of preserving the past may be an illusion."
> Broken Escalator Phenomenon: Your brain is what makes stationary escalators
dangerous.
||| Why we need to sleep in total darkness.
||| Can being cold make you sick?
Work!
Inside The Spaceship
< Facebook
admits removing a picture of two men kissing was an "error".
Art, Design & Culture
<
Looking back at the art of Hugh Steers. "Painting in a spare style reminiscent of the American Regionalism painters of the '20s and '30s, Hugh Steers renders the mood surrounding AIDS in the '80s and '90s."
Word!
< Armistead Maupin
calls time on his San Francisco chronicles.
||| Talking to Sean Strub - gay activist, the founder of POZ Magazine and the first HIV-positive candidate for Congress - about his memoir
Body Counts: A Memoir of Politics, Sex, AIDS, and Survival.
||| "Trying to make categories is very American, very stupid, and very dangerous..."
Why Gore Vidal refused to identify as gay. "Gore Vidal's refusal to identify as gay was consistent with a man who worshipped ancient Greece, but was out of step with the times in which he lived."
> John R. Gordon's writer's diary:
that awful extra something. "We all know this: a story can make sense and be fairly true to life but who cares? We need it to have that elusive extra something for it to matter. Style is a part of it – a curiously large part – but style is ultimately only the byproduct of putting words down according to the writer’s own feeling for language in an attempt to convey the meaning he or she is trying to convey. This ultimately lays bare that cruel quality Truman Capote called 'lift': the awful extra something a writer either has - or hasn't."
At The Movies
...And
the problem with Netflix's goofy sub-genre algorithms.
> Do not miss Todrick Hall's hilarious gay take on Mean Girls.
||| Not everyone is as big a fan as we are here at
kaos. Is
Mean Boyz just mean? asks Slate. Queerty
wonders if it's offensive to feminine gays.
||| 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."
T.V.
<
Queer as Folk's Gale Harold
reflects on his iconic role, and on making love scenes real: "Kiss well and passionately, and move like you mean it."
||| Teen Wolf is back on American T.V. Meanwhile: "It was a really fun couple of days,"
says Charlie Carver of his gay sex scenes. I bet.
||| New Netflix sci-fi series
Sense8 will include gay and trans characters.
< James Avery, the actor best known for his role as Uncle Phil in
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,
is dead. He was 68.
||| Gays of our lives: The latest from our favourite gays in soaps, with Anthony D. Langford.
...But Danny Dyer's response to anti-gay viewers
is just brilliant. Fellow cast member Gary Lucy
also hits back at homophobes, saying "Get with the times!"
||| So just why is the kiss
so controversial - twenty years after the show's first gay snog?
<
Celebrity Big Brother puts idiot rapper Dappy
in a diaper.
||| Lego The Simpsons.
Beats, Rhymes & Life
> "I've been with a man,"
confessses Blue's Lee Ryan. Fellow Blue boy Duncan James (pictured here with Ryan) came out in 2009. My question is when will Simon Webbe "open up".
||| Ricky Martin
splits from long-time partner, Carlos González Abella. Watch out, Tom Daley!
||| Amsterdam venue
cancels concert by dancehall star Sizzla over anti-gay remarks.
<
Talking to Zeke Thomas, gay DJ and son of NBA Hall of Famer Isiah Thomas.
||| Holler If Ya Hear Me, a musical based upon the life of Tupac Shakur,
is set to open in May.
> The Eurythmics
are to reunite for a Beatles tribute concert. Lennox and Stewart last toured together in 2000.
<
Meet Madonna's new plaything, 26-year-old back-up dancer Timor Steffens.
Sex
...And Diego Lauzen does Leo Domenico
in a lift. But when will we see Rubi and Lauzen (both
kaos favourites) together?
Arena
< Former Premier League footballer Thomas Hitzlsperger
comes out: "I finally figured out that I preferred living with a man". a career,
in pictures.
And Whilst You're Thinking About
That, Think
About This
< Abandoned prisons,
in pictures.
Left, Croatia's Goli Otok (Barren Island).
||| And finally, Keanu Williams
bakes his parents an "I love dick" cake; Walter explains why it's time "to stop blaming white folks for the problems we are having"; Andrew discusses sperm banks; and Rogue "Marbie" Scott breaks down friend types...