Issue 231: Marque Lynche, Derrick Gordon, Gaika, About Him, Arinze Kene, Joelma, Walk!, RuPaul, Zaha Hadid, and more...

the week's

news

& pop

culture,

with a

gay

bias.

left & found

The truth about racism in the gay community is that it's very true.

Ten topics gay guys never discuss with their parents.

No one will care for LGBT boomers but themselves.

Poppers: Indelible piece of gay culture or part of the past?

What it's like to be gay in prison.

Why is the bisexual label so daunting?

My art as a tattooist has become part of narcissistic, selfie-obsessed modern culture. "I fell in love with tattoos when they were exciting. Now studios have sprung up on every high street, they have lost their outsider status."

news - america

High school coach resigns after a 14-year-old was sexually assaulted with a broom handle by 17-year-old high school football players on "No Gay Thursday" - a team tradition when sexual harassment that players would normally call “gay” was deemed fine and then used to taunt each other.

Marque Lynche's cause of death last year officially ruled as "acute and chronic" alcoholism.

Death of a Mouseketeer: How a report filed by two NYPD officers stained Marque Lynche's name.

On the murder of gender-fluid teenager Kedarie/Kandicee Johnson.

On ending conversion therapy in Hawaii.

RuPaul defines drag vs. transgender.

Marcelas Owens, the "Obamacare kid", comes out as transgender.

Why experts think Trump could hand Democrats a House majority.

Meet a black, gay Trump supporter.

The Mayor of West Hollywood v. Trump.

Debra Messing and Susan Sarandon come to blows over Trump and Clinton.

This may shock you: Hillary Clinton is fundamentally honest.

How a queer undocumented student helped Chicago dump Trump.

#Twinks4Trump is a thing in the world.

On Donald Trump's long history of hate.

It's not the 1930s. But Donald Trump should scare us all the same.

Donald Trump isn't rich because he's a great investor. He's rich because his dad was rich.

WATCH  Gay twins come out to each other - then their mother.

The reckoning. "Fifty years ago, when Claire Wilson was eighteen, she was critically wounded during the 1966 University of Texas Tower shooting—the first massacre of its kind. How does the path of a bullet change a life?"

Massacre on Ninth and Main. "On August 13, 1903, Gilbert Twigg opened fire during a concert in Winfield, Kansas, killing nine and injuring dozens. There was no motive, and no one had ever seen anything like it before, or for decades after. Yet it’s the archetype for the kind of tragedy we see so frequently now."

news - world

SPAIN  This is Gordon Lake and Manuel Valero. They are locked in a custody battle with their Thai surrogate over Carmen, their 14-month old daughter.

ITALY  The Senate votes to approve a bill to legalise nonreligious civil unions for same-sex couples.

ITALY  Occupy Turin: refugees find a home in Italy's abandoned Olympic Village. "The 2006 winter Olympics was a symbol of Turin’s regeneration – but since then, many buildings have been left to crumble. Now migrants and refugees occupy the deserted athletes’ village, turning it into a ‘symbol of their protests’."

CUBA  The new gay paradise?

And this: Why Cuba's gay scene, HIV education are impressing Americans.

MEXICO  On the transgender tribes of the Colombian Amazon.

BRAZIL  The story of the Joelma Building disaster.

GUYANA  Support for LGBT equality grows in the only South American country with anti-laws.

NIGERIA  LGBT equality activist Ifeanyi Orazulike triumphs in lawsuit against Nigerian police.

KENYA  How the "gay love" video ban backfired.

ISRAEL  LGBT Rights Day marked by vetoing LGBT rights bills.

ISRAEL  Gay soldier Omer Nahmany asks why his country has abandoned him.

GAZA  Hamas leader Mahmoud Ishtiwi accused of gay sex, killed.

BIR TAWIL  Welcome to the land that no country wants.

arena

Amal Fashanu - niece of Justin Fashanu - knows seven gay Premier League players.

Why gay athletes are "out" before they're "in".

Derrick Gordon and Seton Hall destroy the ridiculous "gays as distraction" myth.

Thank you, Derrick Gordon. "Derrick Gordon has made it easier for other athletes, gay or otherwise, to be their true selves and know they can succeed in college basketball."

Gay college basketball player Nathan Fort survived rape, now proudly comes out.

Gay college volleyball player Vincent Magdaong comes out on Philippines team that had a "straight-only" policy.

How out athletes inspired this gay college volleyball player to be true to himself.

And this gay rodeo cowboy came out to open arms in rural South Dakota.

Bareback broncing at the gay rodeo. "Instead of a flashy, camp extravaganza, The Gay Rodeo is a more thoughtful, tight-knit affair with deep roots that go back to when athletes were routinely discriminated against. The rodeo has bull riding, steer wrangling, and a drag pageant."

MMA: Gay porn for straight guys.

Big boys in lycra: The NFL Combine, in pictures.

picture house

BFI Flare: tearing down the gay ghetto. "It started out as a film season in a Newcastle cinema, and has gone on to launch the careers of a number of Hollywood directors."

BFI Flare: KAOS attended eleven screenings this year. Read all my coverage of London's LGBT film festival here.

REVIEW  The Pass. "Russell Tovey gives a knockout performance as a closeted soccer player in this absorbing screen adaptation of John Donnelly's play."

INTERVIEW  Talking to Arinze Kene about being British Nigerian, the theatre, EastEnders and Langston Hughes. (February 2013)

INTERVIEW  Talking to Jesse Metzger, star of I Want Your Love.

INTERVIEW  Talking to Spanish director Antonio Hens about his film Door Cut Down.

On Hell or High Water, the forthcoming LGBT Nigerian film looking at "the reality of sexuality amidst spirituality, exorcism, blackmail, and family life".

On The Boy From Mushin, the new film documenting the story of activist Bisi Alimi, who came out on a Nigerian chat show - and was forced to flee his country.

And this: Inside the Chinese Closet, a new documentary on the rising phenomenon of fake straight marriages between LGBT men and women in China.

Carol, apparently, is the best gay film of all time.

Twenty reasons The Birdcage (which topped the KAOS Top 30 Gay Films of All Time list a few years back) is still hilarious twenty years later.

Hollywood's fatal attraction to TV: Why studios are turning to the small screen. "Paramount is the latest major studio to reboot its movies as TV series, with the likes of American Gigolo and Shutter Island to get the treatment along with Fatal Attraction."

Sixteen blockbusters you forgot were homophobic.

The Hollywood sequel must die before it's too late for all of us.

WATCH  Walk!, Nicolas Jenkins' film on how voguing and the New York ballroom scene have changed over the last few decades.

the box

American Horror Story is both a ratings success and one of the most LGBT-inclusive shows on television. Here's why that matters.

The LAD Bible apologises to Wentworth Miller for body-shaming meme.

RuPaul calls out Lip Sync Battle's cultural appropriation. "Straight pop culture has liberally lifted things from gay culture as long as I can remember."

RuPaul on the language police and tranny-gate. “It's stupid. They're dumb, and it's stupid.”

INTERVIEW  Talking to RuPaul's Drag Race's Naysha Lopez after she sashayed away.

Was Patty Duke a gay icon?

Binge-watching TV is making us depressed.

WATCH  Sizzling new web series About Him.

art + design

Meet Lambe Culo, the artist bringing queer and Chicano culture together in a glorious mashup.

Ten incredible LGBT museums and archives that are preserving our history.

Mark Cawson's photographs documenting the individuals, communities, dreams and realities of squat living in London. Above, Patrice (1980).

Decrepit European tourist destinations, in pictures.

Zaha Hadid, the architect, is dead. She was 65.

Zaha Hadid, obituary.

Zaha Hadid's ten best buildings, in pictures.

Zaha Hadid: Creator of ambitious wonders – and a fair share of blunders. "In her best buildings the laws of physics appear suspended, while other designs struggle when forced to meet reality."

word!

INTERVIEW  Talking to Victor LaValle about his new book In The Ballad of Black Tom, in which he repurposes H.P. Lovecraft's most racist story, The Horror at Red Hook.

READ  Stand By Me: The Forgotten History of Gay Liberation, by Jim Downs, which "reexamines gay culture in the 1970s and tells a much different story than one commonly accepted."

LGBT literary magazines: Ten for you.

The historic LGBT publications that paved the way for us all.

LGBT Ugandans debut second edition of Bombastic Magazine.

Yousef and Farhad, the groundbreaking graphic novel that highlights the struggle of being gay in Iran.

Get into the third issue of Brian Henderson's Stripling Warrior.

Batman v Superman: Eleven of their gayest moments.

beats, rhymes
& life

Azealia Banks takes a minute between court appearances to fire off some fresh homophobic slurs.

Fifteen LGBT-friendly rappers that are changing the game. Above, A$AP Rocky.

INTERVIEW  Talking to Gaika. "If you’re a black guy you’re supposed to make grime, reggae or coffee-table music.’ The Brixton musician is testing the confines of British black music with his high-concept image and futuristic beats. He wants to shift where ‘normal’ is..."

Can Washington D.C. be the new capital of rap?

Young Thug is an ATLien. "There’s nothing about Young Thug that’s not a paradox. He wears women’s Uggs but travels with AR-15’s everywhere he goes. He calls his friends, the same ones carrying the AR-15’s, “babe” and “lover” yet is from one of the toughest parts of Atlanta—the south side—where he is at once a hero and an outsider and a leader of the psychedelic fashion movement of rap hippies. Devin Friedman chases music’s most colorful enigma around the streets of Atlanta to answer one question: Exactly what planet is Young Thug from?"

Phife Dawg, a member of the pioneering hip-hop group A Tribe Called Quest, is dead. He was 45.

Phife Dawg: The socially conscious rapper who gave 90s hip-hop its good vibes. "A Tribe Called Quest represented scholarship, lyricism and philosophy, but the rowdy, bawdy, ever-quotable ‘5ft assassin’ never forgot his duty to entertain."

Phife Dawg: RIP to the Five Foot Assassin, my favorite underdog.

Why young and old rap fans need to get over hip-hop's generation gap.

Japanese photographer Taku Onoda's photos of the 90s New York hip-hop scene.

How it felt to grow up as a black indie fan in '90s Britain.

WATCH  Bobby Brando (aka out college rugby player Brandon Davis) - Unconditional Love; and Gaika (featuring Bipolar Sunshine) - Bohdy Knows At 90.

red light district

On Diesel Washington's Twitter war with deranged director Nica Noelle.

Has Diesel Washington left the building for good?

INTERVIEW  Talking to Rex Cameron about being the face of healthy HIV+ performers.

What if you started a sex cult and no one cared?

The twisted timeline of a racist porn couple’s breakup.

Batman V Superman: A Gay XXX Parody. Where was this when we were kids?

Michael Ariel Cohen, known as the Randy Blue model Xander Scott, is dead. He was 30-years-old.

médecins sans frontières

Here’s a good reason to use lube — and not saliva — for anal sex.

Is HIV mutating to become drug resistant?

Fifteen US AIDS activists who started a national conversation. Above, Arnold Jackson.

Twenty-three celebrities who lost their battle with AIDS. Above, Arthur Ashe.

44% of gay men are unhappy with their bodies.

Why are Cuban men putting pearls in their dicks?

Considering steroids when you're a queer man with body dysmorphia.

I own 51% of
this company!

UK department store BHS battles to stay on the high street. "After nearly 90 years of trading, the chain is seen as old-fashioned and needs millions to survive. Without support from its creditors, it could disappear."

A love letter to Brent Cross, London's least cool shopping centre.

The terrazzo jungle. "Fifty years ago, the mall was born. America would never be the same." (March 2004)

The Mall of America. "The warm oblivion and eternal present tense of the country's largest mall." (July 2002)

Scenes from a mall. "The soap opera of an off-brand mall in West Houston." (September 2002)

Inside the abandoned shopping centers that were once a beacon of the American Dream.

planes, trains
& automobiles

One day, 625 delays. "A mechanical failure at Union Square cascaded into hours of underground hell, revealing just how fragile the subway really is."

Retired London Underground Tube train cars in distress.

Pacers: The train that the UK has struggled to get rid of.

APT tilting train: The laughing stock that changed the world.

An ode to the 1972 Bakerloo line stock.

London's forgotten Tube line.

London's lost Tube map.

Johnston Sans: The Tube typeface that changed everything.

and whilst you're thinking about that, think
about this...

And finally, question time with Junior, Tochi, Kevin and Dammy; Walter on being accused of being anti-black; sexuality with Andrew; and the Baddie Twinz get scammed.

See you kids next week - it's been emotional! Zee Jai

Issue 231: 22 February - 31 March 2016

On the cover: Curtis Carter, lensed by Sitron Studio.

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Postcript

"You know, we might just as well not have

bothered to come. The whole thing's been ridiculous."

© 2016