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.
||| Exploring the hidden gayness of our cities...
...And 2014's gayest cities in America.
||| Bisexual: a label with layers.
||| Should hypocritical politicians be outed?
||| What happens when gays join right-wing survivalists?
||| How white, black and brown students learn the language of racist bullying.
> Amiri Baraka and the black power movement deserve more credit. "It wasn't just militancy. The black power movement acutely questioned American society's failures, and still inspires today."||| Who needs facts? We appear to be in the Post-Information Age now. "Evidence? Ha. That's for humanists, scientists and who knows what other dangerous–ists. It's all about how we feel now."
< Don't shop at Urban Outfitters. Their "Depression" shirt is latest controversy. "The retailer has proven yet again its desire to offend simply to be 'edgy'. Like clickbait, we need to stop feeding the beast."Finance's hold on our everyday life must be broken. "The rampant capitalism that has brought the market into every corner of society needs to be reined in."
||| What happens if authorities seize your laptop?
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.
< Meet William, one of the estimated 22,000 homeless children in New York. "It's impossible to succeed unless you can escape being homeless. My grades went kaputz when I lived in the shelters."
> 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."
||| All eyes on New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, America's leading progressive. "De Blasio is to the left of America's Democratic party, but he's no Marxist. Instead, he'll likely usher in progressive policies..."
< Anti-gay Congressman Aaron Schock outed by journalist?
> 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.
||| Investigating the unsolved murder of Malcolm X’s grandson.
||| Utah Mormon Trestin Meacham starves himself in fight against marriage equality...
...Whilst the Supreme Court halts gay marriages in Utah. But the federal government will recognise gay marriages performed there, even if state won't.> 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.||| The U.S. declared war on poverty fifty years ago. You would never know it.
U.K. News
< Manchester man dies in gay sauna, discovered lying in own excrement.
> The escorts who want to rebrand male prostitution as a business.||| The Conservatives want to withdraw Britain from the European Convention on Human Rights - but that could have serious repressions for the gay community.
||| London counselling centre reports almost a 400% increase in gay couples seeking its services.
< London is running out of houses. Where will we live? And if we don't want to live in shoeboxes, we need to bring back housing standards.||| Now there is no denying Margaret Thatcher's failings in 1984 and beyond. "Documents released by the National Archives show just how well the former prime minister was served by the spin machine."
> The allure of abandoned Tube stations.
< Nissan unveils new taxi for London to rival traditional black cabs. Ghastly.
> 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."||| The immigration invasion that never was. "No extra flights, empty seats – the lack of stampeding Bulgarians and Romanians shows the rightwing hysteria for what it was."
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.
||| ITALY: Pope Francis warns church to be sensitive in ministering to children of gay couples.
> ITALY: Deputy Prime Minister Angelina Alfano threatens to pull his party out of coalition if equal marriage is proposed.
< ITALY: This is 28-year-old Daniele Fulli, who was raped, murdered, and thrown in a ditch in Magliania, near Rome.||| LUXEMBOURG: The European country with both a gay Prime Minister and a gay Deputy Prime Minister is set to pass marriage equality.
> FRANCE: Far right youth leader Julien Rochedy calls for gay propaganda ban.
||| 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: Actor Ivan Okhlobystin asks Putin to reinstate a Soviet-era law that made same-sex sexual relations punishable by imprisonment.
< 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.
||| CUBA: Are the island's classic cars icons of oppression that deserve scrapping?
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: The anti-gay bill is a self-contradictory mess, and President Yoweri Museveni is playing both sides, seeking domestic support without alienating international opinion...
...But is the bill in trouble?< UGANDA: Parliament speaker Rebecca Kadaga warns Western countries, "Do not bully us on anti-gay laws."
> 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.< NIGERIA: The anti-gay bill will hinder the fight against AIDS, warns activist Stephen Chukwumah.
||| 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: Gay artist Balbir Krishan vs. India's "moral police".
||| 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.< AUSTRALIA: Gay Pakistani Ali Choudhry wins temporary reprieve from deportation, which he faces despite having a long term Australian partner.
||| AUSTRALIA: How convoluted visa laws force committed gay couples apart.
||| AUSTRALIA: Anti-gay senator Cory Bernardi said to be obsessed with gay people.
||| AUSTRALIA: If Australia is plagued by violent machismo, it starts from the top. "A moral panic over drunken violence is a convenient smokescreen for the real brutality taking place in Australia."> AUSTRALIA: Goodtime Burgers decides to promote its products by picturing a woman's buttocks in an innovative way. It's truly revolting.
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.
||| YEMEN: Al-Qaida executes another man suspected of being gay. 25-year-old Waleed Saleh Awedan is at least the 35th suspected gay person killed by militants in the last two years.
Planet Earth
||| A life with less plastic: you know it makes sense.
||| The world is losing its large predators - and that's a big problem.
> Fishermen found these conjoined whale calves alive in Mexico, but they only lived a few hours.
||| Dogs align their bodies along a North-South axis when they poop.
||| Cats still don't quite "get us" the way dogs do - and perhaps never will.
> Will NYC send horses-drawn carriages to glue factory?
Body, Mind & Soul ||| Let's say HIV is cured today — what would it be like tomorrow?
||| Why the latest Centers for Disease Control (CDC) HIV report is so alarming.
< What's really behind the high HIV rates for black gay men?
||| What kills HIV? Five new ingredients.
||| Why are gay men resisting PrEP?
||| When it's time to go, let me go, with a nice glass of whisky and a pleasing pill. "Advances in science are keeping us alive for longer and longer, but we are denied the right to die with dignity. It is grotesque."
||| 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.
||| We must end this sweet madness of excess sugar consumption. "Eating too much sugar is damaging our health, but the food, drink and farming industries are blocking change."
< What's the word for an almost-alcoholic? And how to tell if you drink too much.
||| Slim, unfit men are "less likely" to suffer heart attacks than fit obese men.
||| Why we need to sleep in total darkness.
||| Can being cold make you sick?
Work! ||| The lasting harm for America's temporary workers.
> The number of Americans looking for work is at its lowest since the 1970s.
||| Stress test: Are you fit for work?
Inside The Spaceship < Facebook admits removing a picture of two men kissing was an "error".
||| Smartphones aren't necessarily the death of humanity. "Think our anxiety about the dehumanising effect of technology is a new thing? It's been a concern since the invention of writing."
||| Five ways to curb your internet use and get your life back.
||| Tech companies promote the "internet of things" where our homes, cars and selves are wired, but that has consequences. ||| How the NSA almost killed the internet.
> Samsung unveils its Bendable TV.
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."
||| Richard Rothstein's Tarzan in New York...
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."
||| Isaac Asimov predicts in 1964 what the world will look like today — in 2014.
> 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."
||| Falling into, and getting out of, the homophone trap.
||| This should be a golden age for readers, but it feels like the end of days. "As technology makes book-reading a specialist activity, more should be done to keep literature at the heart of our national life."
||| Eliot Glazer's guide to modern gay vernacular.
At The Movies ||| How Netflix reverse engineered Hollywood...
...And the problem with Netflix's goofy sub-genre algorithms.
< How the MTV generation turned movies into long music videos. "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is beautiful... and quite forgettable. That's what you get from directors who grew up watching MTV."
||| Gay iconography: Was Mean Girls too gay to function?
> 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.
||| Twenty-five great '80s movies time has forgotten.
||| 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."
> Chozen is more than offensive stereotype.||| 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.
||| James Avery: Uncle Phil's best angry moments.
||| Gays of our lives: The latest from our favourite gays in soaps, with Anthony D. Langford.
> EastEnders' latest gay kiss provokes torrent of anti-gay abuse on Twitter...
...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?
< T.V. review: Birds of a Feather - Slave. "This was another warm and enjoyable outing by our favourite Essex girls and now that they've properly re-established themselves, they've hit their stride."
> Tom Daley supervises Keith Duffy in Splash!< Celebrity Big Brother puts idiot rapper Dappy in a diaper.
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.
> 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
> Peter Le on redefining the Asian male as a dominant sexual force to be reckoned with.||| Talking to Manny Baby.
< Marco Rubi and Donato Reyes do it in the shower...
...And Diego Lauzen does Leo Domenico in a lift. But when will we see Rubi and Lauzen (both kaos favourites) together?
Arena < Brazilian diver Ian Matos comes out as gay.
> Olympic medalist Louis Smith undertakes public work-out to beat the bulge.
< Former Premier League footballer Thomas Hitzlsperger comes out: "I finally figured out that I preferred living with a man". a career, in pictures.
||| Thanks to Thomas Hitzlsperger, young gay athletes know they're not alone, writes Robbie Rogers.
||| Peter Tatchell thinks Hitzlsperger may have turned tide of homophobia.
> Football Association's new Equality Adviser Michael Johnson apologises for calling gays "detestable". Despite this, he's still been booted out.
< Tom Daley posts first picture with boyfriend Dustin Lance Black. Towleroad readers react. And why their age gap is none of our business.> Wide receiver Victor Cruz gives a bullied gay teen a tour of the New York Giants locker room.
||| Straight ally Brendon Ayanbadejo not cut from NFL because of activism.
||| NFL player Torrey Smith posts anti-gay "slur" on Instagram. But is his use of "queen" (directed at his own brother) really homophobic?
||| Evander Holyfield: Being gay is a choice and can be fixed like having a bad leg.
||| Dennis Rodman's trips to North Korea are all about ego, not diplomacy.
And Whilst You're Thinking About
That, Think
About This
||| Fourteen things we hope we've seen the end of in 2014, from Miley Cyrus's tongue to Vladimir Putin.
< 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...
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© 2014
Postcript
"You know, we might just as well not have
bothered to come. The whole thing's been ridiculous."
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