Friday, June 13, 2008

Tim Russert Dies Of Heart Attack

Breaking news:
Tim Russert, NBC News’ Washington bureau chief and the moderator of “Meet the Press,” died Friday after a sudden heart attack at the bureau, NBC News said Friday. He was 58.

Russert was recording voiceovers for Sunday’s “Meet the Press” program when he collapsed, the network said. He and his family had recently returned from Italy, where they celebrated the graduation of Russert’s son, Luke, from Boston College.

No further details were immediately available.

Russert was best known as host of “Meet the Press,” which he took over in December 1991. Now in its 60th year, “Meet the Press” is the longest-running program in the history of television.

But he was also a vice president of NBC News and head of its overall Washington operations, a nearly round-the-clock presence on NBC and MSNBC on election nights. He was “one of the premier political journalists and analysts of his time,” Tom Brokaw, the former longtime anchor of “NBC Nightly News,” said in announcing Russert’s death. “This news division will not be the same without his strong, clear voice.”

In 2008, Time Magazine named Russert him one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

I only really started watching Meet The Press once Russert took over. Sad.

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Special Swag Friday

Courtesy of Fly Life Inc, today we have a special swag giveaway: two tickets to any show (except Toronto) on George Michael's North American tour.
The North American leg of the 25 LIVE tour will kick off in San Diego on June 17th and will continue through San Jose, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Seattle, Vancouver, Minneapolis, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, New York and several other major cities. The tour will incorporate 22 shows over the course of seven weeks and Michael will perform material taken from the entire span of his career, including some classic Wham! tracks. Michael has recently teamed up with iTunes and Ticketmaster to produce an innovative media package which allows fans rare access to Michael’s videos, songs, and tickets to one of his North American 25 LIVE concerts.

George Michael has enjoyed one of the most successful and enduring careers in the history of pop music, selling more than 85 million records globally and encompassing seven US No. 1 singles, two Grammy awards, three American Music Awards, an MTV Video Music Award and two prestigious Ivor Novello awards for songwriting. His record "Faith" has sold over 20 million copies alone. In addition, Michael has garnered 11 British No. 1 singles and seven British No. 1 albums. He recently was declared the most played British artist on radio over the course of the last 20 years.
OFFICIAL 25 LIVE CONCERT DATES:

6/17 San Diego/San Diego Sports Arena
6/19 San Jose/HP Pavilion
6/21 Las Vegas/MGM Grand
6/22 Phoenix/US Airways Center
6/25 Los Angeles/Great Western Forum
7/2 Seattle/Key Arena
7/4 Vancouver/General Motors Place
7/7 St Paul/Xcel Energy Center
7/9 Chicago/United Center
7/13 Dallas/American Airlines Center
7/14 Houston/Toyota Center
7/17 Toronto/Air Canada Centre
7/18 Montreal/Bell Centre
7/21 New York/MSG
7/23 New York/MSG
7/26 Philadelphia/Wachovia Center
7/27 Boston/TD Banknorth Garden
7/29 Washington DC/Verizon Center
7/31 Atlanta/Philips Arena
8/2 Tampa/St Pete Times Forum
8/3 Fort Lauderdale/Bank Atlantic Center

Enter to win by commenting on this post. Only comment once and please remember to leave an email address that you check frequently. Entries close at midnight Sunday, EDT. Purchase tickets here. George Michael's new double album TwentyFive is now available at retailers and at iTunes.

UPDATE:
Here's a clip of George Michael talking about the tour and some bits of previous shows.

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Jeebus, Take The Wheel

South Carolina will become the first in the nation to issue Christianist license plates.
South Carolina's lieutenant governor announced Thursday that he is willing to put up $4,000 of his own money so his state can become the first in the nation to issue "I Believe" license plates with the image of a cross and a stained glass window.

The legislation allowing the plates was one of several religious-themed bills to became laws in the closing days of the state's legislative session. The bills mean South Carolinians attending local government meetings could soon see the Ten Commandments and the Lord's Prayer posted on walls, pray without fear of being sued and drive home in cars with the "I Believe" plates.

Civil rights groups are considering lawsuits. An attorney for the New York-based American Jewish Congress, Mark Stern, said the bills are an obvious endorsement of religion by legislators in an election year. His group is looking to sue over the plates.
According to the rules, the state must receive a $4000 deposit or get 400 pre-orders in order to produce specialty plates. I certainly hope that the atheists in South Carolina band together and demand Flying Spaghetti Monster plates.

(Via - Pam's House Blend)

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HomoQuotable - Joseph Couture

"The religious right is in no position to talk about seedy lifestyles. How many of them have gotten caught with their pants down with some hooker (female or male) over the years? People who live in glass brothels shouldn't throw stones. As for gays who want to get married, I call them Borg homosexuals. They want to assimilate us, destroy individual choices and turn us all into drones. Or should I say hypocrites? Do you know how many straight married men I’ve done at the baths? And do you have any idea how many of the authentic straight men have affairs or cheat on their wives? Soon I can look forward to a little adultery with the gay married ones, too. They’re the ones who should be embarrassed. At least we sluts have the courage to be proud about whom we are without wearing that breastplate of righteousness." - Author Joseph Couture, talking to the New York Blade about his new book, Peek: Inside The Private World Of Public Sex.

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Broadway Friday

- Over "200 of Broadway's hottest bodies" will be on display when the 18th annual installment of Broadway Bares takes place Sunday, June 22nd at the Roseland Ballroom. Benefitting Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, this year's show stars Cheyenne Jackson, Nathan Lane, Andrea Martin, Matthew Morrison, NateKid, AntiGravity, and the Living Art of Armando. Showtimes 9:30pm and midnight. Tickets $55 - $650. Get tickets here.

- Big Time, a new musical with book by Douglas Carter Beane (Xanadu, The Little Dog Laughed) is scheduled to open on Broadway in 2010. Composer-lyricist is Douglas J. Cohen.

- Dates and cities for the national tour of Spring Awakening have been announced.

- Tony winners Michael Cerveris and Julie White will host the pre-Tony awards show, the Creative Arts Awards, prior to the TV broadcast from Radio City Music Hall. Watch the Creative Arts Awards online here.

- A Tale Of Two Cities: The Musical opens at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre in September. Expect the worst of times.

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The "Fag Bomb"


A cute bit on internet discourse, sent to us by its creator, Kirby Ferguson.

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Naked Filth

Joe Birdsong and the folks at the late great Rapture Books have found an interesting venue for their Reading For Filth series - the West Village loft where scenes from Cruising were filmed. At the new venue, the performers read naked. Oh, and if you attend, you can be too.
On Saturday, June 28th, the folks from Rapture present another edition of their long-running and acclaimed queer literary series where both budding young and well-seasoned pornographers will be baring both their bodies and their souls for their art in another all-naked edition of Reading For Filth. Audience members may also check their clothing and go bare if they so choose.

The evening also marks the 25th Anniversary of the often-maligned William Friedkin cinematic period piece, Cruising, which includes scenes shot in the very loft where the readings will take place. Do you think Karen Allen will be in attendance?

Starring: Dominic Cloutier, Dominick, Mark Sam Rosenthal, Jack Doroshow (aka Flawless Sabrina), and Amber Martin. 24 Ninth Avenue, 5th Floor, $5.
Yeah, I won't be doing any of these shows. Maybe we can talk Eric Leven into it.

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Paraskavedekatriaphobia

Supposedly the U.S. economy will lose $800M -$900M today because of it. Probably less than John Carpenter has made from it. Bah.

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BiQuotable - Tila Tequila

"It is because of me. I definitely think my show has helped the movement. Before it came out, everyone was still a little apprehensive about it. Then they realized, ‘Wow, everyone is really into this stuff, and it is fine.’ The next thing you know, gay marriage is legal." - Reality show star Tila Tequila, taking credit for the legalization of gay marriage in California.

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The Fundies Are Getting Desperate

Check this out:
A conservative Christian legal group on Thursday made a last-ditch effort to stop gay marriage from becoming legal in California by asking a midlevel appeals court to temporarily prohibit county clerks from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

The Virginia-based Liberty Counsel, in a petition with the 1st District Court of Appeal in San Francisco, argued that the wording of the California Supreme Court ruling legalizing gay marriages allows the lower court to set the terms and schedule for implementing the decision.

Liberty Counsel argued that the high court's May 15 ruling put dozens of state laws addressing marriage into conflict and that the Legislature needs time to address those issues.

Barring any further legal intervention, gay couples will be able to start marrying in California at 5:01 p.m. Monday, when the Supreme Court's decision becomes final. The ruling to legalize gay marriage overturned a decision by the Court of Appeal, which is therefore required to issue an order consistent with the high court's 4-3 opinion.

San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera called Liberty Counsel's filing "absurd." "I am not aware of a process in American law that enables parties to effectively appeal a higher court ruling to a lower court," Herrera said.
Bwah ha ha.

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Morning View - Tom Otterness' Life Underground

The whimsical sculptures of Tom Otterness' Life Underground installation are scattered throughout the subway station at 8th Avenue and 14th Street. They always make me smile.

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Thursday, June 12, 2008

Fox News Hits New Low (And You Thought It Couldn't Be Done)

Via Pam Spaulding comes word of the latest racist outrage perpetrated by Fox News: calling Michelle Obama "Obama's Baby Mama!" Unfuckingbelievable.

Oliver Willis:
So here’s the thing (because during this campaign I’m apparently learning that we black people have our own secret code and hand signals so this stuff has to be explained like you are speaking to a child at times), using the phrase “baby mama” to describe this woman implies that like too many people in the black community, she is a mother on her own with no man around doing his job. Except, Barack and Michelle Obama are the exact opposite of this, and that is one of the reason America - especially black America - are so proud of them.
Pam Spaulding:
It's high time that Fox News just stop with the pussyfooting around with these games and run the more direct "ni**er" on any Chyron running over video of the Obamas.
Fox News says a producer used "poor judgment" in writing the caption. For those who've been living under a rock during the hip-hop years, here's how Urban Dictionary defines "baby mama":
A term used to define an unmarried young woman (but can be a woman of any age) who has had a child. As mentioned before in another definition, most of the time it is used for when it was simply a sexual relationship, compared to ex-wife or girlfriend. Usually this has a negative connotation, a lot of baby mamas are seen as desperate, gold digging, emotionally starved, shady women who had a baby out of spite or to keep a man. Sometimes they may act like this because of missed child support payments, unfulfilled promises by the father, or convenient sex by the father. Either or both may exist in any situation.
The caption ran during an interview with the usually loathsome Michelle Malkin, who at least in this incident is distancing herself from the situation, saying, "I did not write the caption and I was not aware of it when it ran (the Baltimore studio doesn't have a monitor). I don't know if the caption writer was making a lame attempt to be hip, clueless about the original etymology of the phrase, or both."

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Karma Chameleon

Boy George will be performing a free concert for the New York Department of Sanitation at their Family Day event on August 17th as thanks for their kindness to him during his court-ordered stint with them last year. George: "The people I worked alongside showed great kindness to me at a very difficult time, and I wanted to thank them all in a way that would show my appreciation." The Sanitation Department is thrilled. No, they really are.

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NYPD Considers Tasers For Cops

The NYPD is considering equipping all cops with Tasers. However:
Four days before a consultant suggested the NYPD expand its use of Tasers, the country's biggest stun gun manufacturer was hit with a $6 million verdict for the death of a California man. A federal jury found that Arizona-based Taser International should have better warned Salinas, Calif., police that the weapon's shocks were potentially dangerous.

The jury held Salinas police financially blameless in the death of a 40-year-old drug user whose enlarged heart gave out after repeated shocks. Just Tuesday, Suffolk County cops reported that a 26-year-old man died Monday after being shocked twice with a Taser while trying to swallow a bag of cocaine.

Such deaths are why the American Civil Liberties Union and Amnesty International USA have called for a moratorium on Tasers, and why Rand Corp. recommended that the NYPD try a pilot program to test wider use.

Retired NYPD Lt. Alexander Lombard is one of those who say some cops authorized to carry the Tasers misuse them. Lombard's son Alexander 3rd, 18, was Tasered four times and hit with a nightstick when cops responded to a disturbance at a Harlem barbecue last August, according to the teen's lawsuit against the city. NYPD officials declined to comment.

The NYPD has about 500 Tasers in use, assigned to supervisors and specially trained Emergency Service Unit officers. A pilot program would put Tasers on the hips of rank-and-file cops in targeted police precincts, and results would be monitored. Rand Corp. estimated that 25 of the 455 police-related shootings it reviewed might have been prevented if cops had Tasers.
I think I'd side with Amnesty International and the ACLU before the NYPD.

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Daily Grumble

Doesn't it piss you off when lottery winners say they're going to keep their crummy jobs?

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HomoQuotable - Katherine Patrick

"Because, of course, he didn’t know that I was gay then. So, for someone so publicly to fight for something that doesn’t even affect him was just like, ’That’s my dad,’ you know? That’s all I could think. I was very, very proud to be part of this family, and this state in general." - Katherine Patrick, 18 year old daughter of Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, coming out of the closet today in Boston's LGBT newspaper, Bay Windows.
Katherine had already come out to her friends, her sister Sarah and a maternal aunt with whom she is close, Lynn Prime. She says she waited for an opportunity to come out to both parents at the same time - a difficult task given their busy lives - so as not to make either of them feel that she was more comfortable with one parent over the other. So when the moment came, she just decided to go for it. Walking into the kitchen, she asked her parents to stop what they were doing and she asked her aunt Lynn to leave the room because she wanted to talk with her mother and father alone. Her parents turned to her and she said, "I’m a lesbian."

"And I’ll always remember the first thing my dad did was, [he] wrapped me in a bear hug and said, ’Well, we love you no matter what,’" Katherine recalls. Diane Patrick moved in for a group hug. After a moment, Katherine, in what she describes as typical teen behavior, asked her hovering parents to step off. "I said, ’Okay, okay,’" she laughs. "I was like ... ’Okay, thanks.’"

Diane Patrick received the news with a mixture of happiness and relief. She says that after Katherine had asked her aunt to leave the room because she needed to talk with her parents, she had no idea what her daughter was going to say. "I often think the worst when I get that kind of build-up. And so I was thinking, ’Oh my goodness, she failed something or she did something really bad’ - not that she has a habit of doing those things - but I worried." When her daughter made the big reveal, Diane almost burst out laughing out of sheer relief.
Welcome, Katherine.

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Spiteful Rhinoplasty

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V For Victory

Viagra appears to be on its way to becoming the drug of choice for athletes looking to enhance their performance on the playing field - not just in the bedroom. The Olympics are looking into adding Viagra to the list of banned substances and it's even been found in race horses.
It wasn't so long ago that the only person in sports who wanted to publicly discuss Viagra was Rafael Palmeiro - and Pfizer had to pay the slugger a reported $500,000 to pitch its product. But the little blue thrill pill became the talk of the sports world yesterday after the Daily News reported that Roger Clemens and other athletes have turned Vitamin V into one of the hottest drugs in locker rooms.

The World Anti-Doping Agency is trying to determine if Viagra can be used to cheat in the Olympics. Major League Baseball and the National Football League will also try to determine if the erectile-dysfunction drug aids training and improves performance. "As we do on a regular basis, we will review and consider new substances that are recommended for further discussion by our scientific and medical advisers," NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said.

MLB vice president for labor relations Rob Manfred said baseball officials are gathering more information on the topic. Neither sport could ban Viagra without the consent of the players unions. Bodybuilders, weightlifters and other athletes have turned to Viagra because they believe it helps dilate blood vessels and delivers oxygen, nutrients and steroids to various muscle groups more efficiently. Other athletes use Viagra to treat impotence - a side effect of steroid abuse.

Jocks who participate in aerobic sports - cycling, marathons, cross-country skiing - say Viagra, which went on the market in 1998, increases stamina at oxygen-poor high elevations. Not everybody is convinced. Dr. Lewis Maharam, the medical director of the New York Marathon, said, "I don't think there is any evidence it's a performance enhancer, except in the bedroom."

Jonathan Vaughters, the sport director of the Tour de France cycling team Slipstream-Chipotle, said he thought it would only work at the highest altitudes. "I haven't heard of it being used in cycling," he said. Viagra has already become a problem for four-legged athletes. Dan Toomey, a spokesman for the New York State Racing and Wagering Board, said at least three horses have tested positive for Viagra here since 2000. The pill is believed to boost a horse's cardio-respiratory functions
According to another story on the topic, San Francisco Giants star Barry Bonds (who is currently under investigation for steroid use) tried Viagra as a playing enhancer as well, but complained that it left him congested. That's always been my complaint.

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The American Exception

Today the New York Times continues its American Exception series of articles on ways that the American justice system is unique in the world. And with excellent timing (considering Tuesday's heated conversation on the issue here on JMG), today they discuss freedom of speech in an article titled Freedom To Offend.
A couple of years ago, a Canadian magazine published an article arguing that the rise of Islam threatened Western values. The article’s tone was mocking and biting, but it said nothing that conservative magazines and blogs in the United States do not say every day without fear of legal reprisal. The British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal will soon rule on whether the cover story of the October 23, 2006, issue of Maclean’s magazine violated a provincial hate speech law.

Two members of the Canadian Islamic Congress say the magazine, Maclean’s, Canada’s leading newsweekly, violated a provincial hate speech law by stirring up hatred against Muslims. They say the magazine should be forbidden from saying similar things, forced to publish a rebuttal and made to compensate Muslims for injuring their “dignity, feelings and self-respect.”

The British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal, which held five days of hearings on those questions here last week, will soon rule on whether Maclean’s violated the law. As spectators lined up for the afternoon session last week, an argument broke out. “It’s hate speech!” yelled one man. “It’s free speech!” yelled another.

In the United States, that debate has been settled. Under the First Amendment, newspapers and magazines can say what they like about minorities and religions — even false, provocative or hateful things — without legal consequence.

The Maclean’s article, “The Future Belongs to Islam,” was an excerpt from a book by Mark Steyn called “America Alone” (Regnery, 2006). The title was fitting: The United States, in its treatment of hate speech, as in so many other areas of the law, takes a distinctive legal path.

“In much of the developed world, one uses racial epithets at one’s legal peril, one displays Nazi regalia and the other trappings of ethnic hatred at significant legal risk, and one urges discrimination against religious minorities under threat of fine or imprisonment,” Frederick Schauer, a professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, wrote in a recent essay called “The Exceptional First Amendment.”

“But in the United States,” Professor Schauer continued, “all such speech remains constitutionally protected.” Canada, England, France, Germany, the Netherlands, South Africa, Australia and India all have laws or have signed international conventions banning hate speech. Israel and France forbid the sale of Nazi items like swastikas and flags. It is a crime to deny the Holocaust in Canada, Germany and France.

Earlier this month, the actress Brigitte Bardot, an animal rights activist, was fined $23,000 in France for provoking racial hatred by criticizing a Muslim ceremony involving the slaughter of sheep. By contrast, American courts would not stop a planned march by the American Nazi Party in Skokie, Ill., in 1977, though a march would have been deeply distressing to the many Holocaust survivors there.

Six years later, a state court judge in New York dismissed a libel case brought by several Puerto Rican groups against a business executive who had called food stamps “basically a Puerto Rican program.” The First Amendment, Justice Eve M. Preminger wrote, does not allow even false statements about racial or ethnic groups to be suppressed or punished just because they may increase “the general level of prejudice.”

Some prominent legal scholars say the United States should reconsider its position on hate speech. “It is not clear to me that the Europeans are mistaken,” Jeremy Waldron, a legal philosopher, wrote in The New York Review of Books last month, “when they say that a liberal democracy must take affirmative responsibility for protecting the atmosphere of mutual respect against certain forms of vicious attack.”
Read the entire article, it's excellent. Unlike some of the "prominent legal scholars" quoted in the article, I don't think we should emulate Canada or Europe.

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Open Thread Thursday

Which gay rights or legal advocacy groups do you support?

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Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Marriage Equality For Norway

Norway, which first granted its LGBT citizens the right to civil unions way back in 1993, today legalized same-sex marriage.
Members of Parliament in Norway today approved a bill that will allow same-sex couples to marry by 84 votes to 41. The new law will make marriage gender neutral. The Scandinavian country already allows gay and lesbian couples to enter into civil partnerships, but LGBT rights groups had long complained the law does not go far enough.

In 2004 a similar law, which proposed to abolish the system of civil partnerships and replace it with one single gender neutral marriage law for all citizens, was rejected by the Norwegian parliament. The new legislation, while not full equal marriage, amends the definition of civil marriage in Norway to make it gender neutral.

It will replace a 1993 law that gives gays the right to enter civil unions similar to marriage, but refuses them the right to church weddings or to be considered as adoptive parents. As well as more equal partnership rights, it would expand the provision of parenting rights.

Family Issues minister Anniken Huitfeldt, introducing the bill in March, called it "an historic step towards equality." She also had a message for some members of Parliament who claimed the bill would weaken tradition marriage. "The new law won't weaken marriage as an institution," Huitfeldt told Parliament. Rather, it will strengthen it. Marriage won't be worth less because more can take part in it."
And the dominoes continue to fall.

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Betting On Obama

According to Intrade.com, an online futures trading (betting) site:
The electoral map is a forecast for the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election in which the presumptive nominees are Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama. The electoral vote value for each state is shown, and the states are shaded according to the probability of a win.

The data for this map comes from the Intrade prediction market where there are real-money contracts for each individual state based on how it will award its 2008 electoral votes. Traders who predict the outcome correctly are rewarded with the money of those who don't. For more information visit Intrade.com. This map is updated at least weekly.
If you play on the Intrade site, you can also bet on the price of gasoline, how bad the recession will get, and the date that the U.S. and Israel will launch a joint air strike against Iran. As far as the election, so far the bettors have Obama winning by 13 electoral votes.

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The Case Of The Insulted Lesbians

Those unhappy Lesbians began their court case yesterday.
Three islanders from Lesbos told a court Tuesday that gay women insult their home's identity by calling themselves lesbians. The plaintiffs - two women and a man - are seeking to ban a Greek gay rights group from using the word "lesbian" in its name.

Also known as Mytilini, Lesbos was the home of the ancient poet Sappho, who praised love among women. It is a major travel destination for gay women. The Homosexual and Lesbian Community of Greece "causes confusion by using a geographic term in connection with (the group's) special character and social action," said Dimitris Papadelis, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs.

A spokeswoman for the group accused the plaintiffs of homophobia. "I believe ... the other party's intentions were purely racist," Evangelia Vlami said. "They showed that what bothers them is a specific sexual orientation."

"What will they do next, sue the United Nations? They, too, use the term lesbian," Vlami said. Plaintiff Dimitris Lambrou has insisted the lawsuit "is not an aggressive act against gay women." Lawyers from both sides are to submit written arguments on Wednesday, and the court is expected to issue its decision in the next six months.
Next up: the case of the outraged Transylvanians.

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More On The "Don't Sue" Memo

Many of you were puzzled or angered by yesterday's joint statement from a broad coalition of LGBT groups who are asking that out-of-state gays that marry in California not return to their home states and begin filing lawsuits requesting recognition. Today's Los Angeles Times sheds some light on the story.
The memo cautioned that the U.S. Supreme Court has traditionally refused to embrace major social change until many states have already acted and that the battle for marriage must be orchestrated strategically, state by state, court by court. "Bad rulings will make it much more difficult for us to win marriage, and will certainly make it take much longer," the memo said.

Legal experts said the statement appeared to be an effort by groups who have successfully fought for gay marriage in California to maintain control of the litigation and reflected a fear that much of the rest of the country is not yet ready to embrace marriage for gay men and lesbians.

The memo "is a stark recognition of how their efforts have fared in the rest of the country any time the issue has been taken up in the ballot box," said John Eastman, dean of the Chapman University School of Law. "It is a tactical call that they are not quite ready yet in other states and not even in California to deal with the federal issue."

Twenty-seven states have passed constitutional amendments banning gay marriage, and only the high courts of California and Massachusetts have approved it. A ballot measure to reinstate California's marriage ban is headed for the November ballot.

"Eventually the U.S. Supreme Court is going to have to rule on whether states have to recognize same-sex marriages from Massachusetts and California," said Duke University law professor Erwin Chemerinsky. "What they want is to postpone that as long as possible because attitudes are changing quickly, and the more marriage equality gets entrenched, the more it is going to be widely accepted."

If the U.S. Supreme Court considered the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which permits states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriage in other states, the current court would likely split 5 to 4, with Justice Anthony M. Kennedy being an unpredictable swing vote, some scholars believe.

Gay rights groups aren't ready yet to take that risk.

Jon W. Davidson, legal director of Lambda Legal, called the joint statement "unprecedented," particularly since it came from so many groups. The memorandum says marriage rights should be tackled first in state courts, and only in states with courts "that may be ready to do the right thing." Marriage cases are pending before the high courts in Iowa and Connecticut, and gay rights groups are hoping the legislatures of New York and New Jersey will eventually remove bans on gay marriage.

Advocacy groups were largely successful in discouraging lawsuits by couples who wed in Massachusetts and then sought to have their marriages recognized elsewhere. One same-sex couple from Massachusetts filed suit in Florida and lost. Now Florida voters are being asked to amend the state constitution to limit marriage to opposite-sex couples.

Unlike Massachusetts, California has no residency requirements for couples wishing to wed, and tens of thousands of same-sex couples are expected to travel to the state to marry. Experts believe that at least some will return home and bring legal actions.

Asked whether the memo was likely to prevent lawsuits, Davidson said: "I guess we'll just have to see whether it is successful or not." The statement said that "early and unnecessary" court losses over marriage rights in Arizona and Indiana "hurt our other cases." Courts in New York, Washington state and Maryland narrowly rejected same-sex marriage and adopted some of the "contorted reasoning" from those decisions, the memo said.

"Because so far, more marriage cases have been lost than won, taking on a principled but long-shot case and racking up more losses now just makes it harder to convince other courts and legislatures," the memo said.

Mathew Staver, found of Liberty Counsel, which opposes same-sex marriage, predicted that once weddings start in California, the groups "won't be able to control the agenda anymore and there will be somebody, somewhere, not associated with the normal groups, that will file suit with the federal government."

Hoping to forestall such lawsuits, the advocacy groups promised that in a few years, same-sex marriage "won't seem like such a big jump" for courts and legislatures. In the meantime, the groups warned that court losses in marriage cases could reverberate into employment, adoption and custody law for gay people.

Instead of suing, same-sex couples should work against the California anti-gay marriage ballot measure and promote marriage rights in conversations with friends, co-workers, neighbors and employers, the statement said. "With the victories in Massachusetts and California, we should be able to win marriage more quickly in other states," the statement said. "But we have to lay the groundwork."
This make perfect sense to me.

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Still Dead Judy Garland To Perform With Boston Pops

If you're looking for the absolutely gayest thing to do this Pride season, get this:
It turns out the immortal Judy Garland never really croaked (but please don't tell that to the gays who rioted all those years ago at Stonewall, making history partly because they were pissed that Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz was gone. They'll feel used.) On June 28, Judy Garland in Concert will premiere in Boston, and as the release informs me, "This is not a tribute show. This is not a Garland lookalike. This is Judy herself returning to the stage for the first time in 40 years—singing the great American songbook with America's greatest orchestra, The Boston Pops.

"Cutting-edge technology unavailable just a few years ago has enabled NY-based production company Running Subway to present Judy's larger-than-life passion and personal story to 21st century audiences in what can only be described as the greatest Judy Garland concert ever."

This sounds absolutely amazing—but I bet she's still as drunk as a sailor on leave!
Get your tickets here. I wonder if she'll take requests?

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Spin Rage

This wacky story has been playing out in the New York tabloids for months, but now there is finally a verdict - and of course, since this is NYC, now comes the lawsuit.
A Manhattan hedge fund manager is suing Equinox health club and the stockbroker who slammed him off a stationary bike and into a wall for whooping it up during a spin class. Stuart Sugarman's lawsuit contends he was a victim of Christopher Carter's "spin rage" when he was tossed into a wall following an August 2007 confrontation at an upper East Side Equinox.

A Manhattan jury last week acquitted Carter of assaulting Sugarman, who set off the stockbroker by grunting loudly and hollering "You go, girl!" to psyche himself up for the spin class. The suit, filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, says Sugarman suffered permanent injuries, humiliation, damage to his reputation and mental and physical anguish as a result of the spin class showdown. It seeks an unspecified amount of money for his alleged back and neck injuries.
According to previous reports, Sugarman yelped, yelled, and hooted continuously during his spin classes until another gym member blew his top and knocked Sugarman off his bike. Sugarman finished the class, but later claimed neck and back injuries.

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Keyboard Tricks

A few keyboard tricks for Firefox users that I didn't know:

CTRL-L: Jump to URL box
CTRL-K: Jump to Google search box
CTRL-T: Open a new browser tab

You got any more?

(Via - Andrew Sullivan)

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Barack Obama's Gay Pride Message

On Saturday, Barack Obama issued a message to the gay community.
"I am proud to join with our lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered brothers and sisters in celebrating the accomplishments, the lives and the families of all LGBT people during this Pride season. Too often, the issue of LGBT rights is exploited by those seeking to divide us. But at its core this issue is about who we are as Americans.

"It's time to live up to our founding promise of equality by treating all our citizens with dignity and respect. Let's enact federal civil rights legislation to outlaw hate crimes and protect workers against discrimination based upon sexual orientation and gender identity or expression. Let's repeal 'don't ask, don't tell' and demonstrate that the most effective and professional military in the world is open to all Americans who are ready and willing to serve our country. Let's treat the relationships and the families of LGBT Americans with full equality under the law.

"We are ready to accomplish these goals because of the courage and persistence of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people who are working every day to achieve equal rights -- the gay couple who demands equal treatment in our family laws as they raise their children, the lesbian soldier who wants nothing more than to serve her country openly and honestly, the transgendered workers who ask for the simple dignity of being judged by the quality of their work.

"Generations of LGBT Americans, at once ordinary and extraordinary, have made possible this moment in our history. With leadership and hard work we can fulfill the promise of equality for all."
Will he appear at any of the parades?

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The McCain Loyalty Oath For Gays

Amusing, but you'll have to embiggen to read it. From the 23/6 blog.(Via - Queerty)

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OK Governor Vetoes Sally Kern's Bill

Oklahoma's Gov. Brad Henry has vetoed state Rep. Sally Kern's "Religious Viewpoints Antidiscrimination Act."
Henry vetoed House Bill 2633, called the "Religious Viewpoints Antidiscrimination Act," by Sen. James A. Williamson, R-Tulsa, and Rep. Sally Kern, R-Oklahoma City.

The bill state that "students may express their beliefs about religion in homework, artwork and other written and oral assignments free from discrimination based on the religious content of their submissions. Homework and classroom assignments shall be judged by ordinary academic standards of substance and relevance and against other legitimate pedagogical concerns identified by the school district. Students shall not be penalized or rewarded on account of the religious content of their work."

Henry said students are already allowed to express their faith through voluntary prayer and other activities. He said the legislation was well-intended, but vague and "may trigger a number of unintended consequences that actually impede rather than enhance such expression."

Schools could be forced to provide equal time to fringe groups that masquerade as religions and advocate behaviors such as hate speech. "Additionally, this bill would presumably require school officials to determine what constitutes legitimate religious expression, subjecting them to an explosion of costly and protracted litigation that would have to be defended at the taxpayers' expense," Henry said.

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Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Carl Simons, 44

Carl Simons, a Los Angeles-based attorney, blogger, and longtime participant in the JMG community, passed away late last month. Simons began commenting here four years ago (when this blog was still mostly personal short stories) and his kind messages and supportive attitude encouraged me greatly.

When readership grew and several other readers named Carl began commenting regularly too, Simons began signing his posts as "Carl (the muscular lawyer one)." That's probably how most of you would remember him.

I haven't found an online obituary and don't know the circumstances regarding Carl's death. Today JMG reader and fellow blogger Jeff sent us this scan from LA's Frontier Magazine which notes Carl Simons' passing. My condolences go out to Simons' loved ones. We will all miss Carl's wit and compassion here on JMG.

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"Make Change, Not Lawsuits"

A broad coalition of nine major LGBT rights and legal groups have issued a joint statement asking out-of-state gay couples married in California NOT to then sue the federal government, their home states, or their employers for recognition of their marriage status.
Four lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) legal organizations and five other leading national LGBT groups today issued a statement entitled "Make Change, Not Lawsuits."

The statement explains that while couples who go to California to marry should ask friends, neighbors and institutions to honor their marriages, they generally shouldn't file lawsuits to have their marriages recognized. The statement says that ill-timed lawsuits risk creating additional barriers to marriage for gay couples.

"Make Change, Not Lawsuits" was signed by four LGBT legal groups – the ACLU Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Project, the Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD), Lambda Legal, and the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) – and five other LGBT organizations: the Equality Federation, Freedom to Marry, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), the Human Rights Campaign, and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.
View the entire joint statement here. (PDF.)

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No Fruitful Multiplying = No Marriage

Well, at least the Catholic Church isn't using the procreation argument just against gays.
A paraplegic man was recently denied a church marriage by a bishop in Italy because he was impotent, say reports. The 26-year-old man ultimately had to go for a civil marriage on Saturday in Viterbo.

"No bishop, no priest can celebrate a wedding when he knows of admitted impotence as it is a motive for annulment (of the marriage)," the
Australian quoted Salvatore de Ciuco, spokesman for Bishop Lorenzo Chiarinelli of Viterbo in central Italy, as telling SkyTG24 television.

The groom has been paraplegic since he was involved in a car accident, said the television report. His fiancee was aware of his impotency, the report added. The curate of the parish, who was banned from marrying the couple, was present at their civil ceremony.
Even the Freepers are puzzled by this one. Is it because really because they can't have kids? Or is it because they can't fuck?

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DADT Setback

The Federal Court of Appeals has issued a setback to the fight to repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell.
A federal appeals court has upheld a lower court ruling that the military did not violate the constitutional rights of 12 gay and lesbian servicemembers when it discharged them. The First Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Boston, had been told that under the landmark Supreme Court sodomy ruling that said gays are entitled to equal protection under the law the 12 should be reinstated.

The former servicemembers, all of whom had served during the current war on terror, were represented by the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network. “’Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ punishes gay, lesbian and bisexual service members . . . for their sexual orientation and for their private, constitutionally protected conduct," SLDN told the court when it heard arguments in the case last year. "As a result, it has denied and continues to deny them several Constitutional rights, including the right of privacy, equal protection of the law, and freedom of speech.”
Legislation to repeal DADT is currently before Congress, but a vote is not expected on the issue during this session.

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PFLAG At The Ex-Gay Conference


Check out the sweet PFLAG parents and supporters protesting at last week's "Love Won Out" conference of "ex-gays" in Orlando.

(Via - Queerty)

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A Historic First, For The Second Time

This time, it will be legal.
When same-sex marriages start at 5 p.m. June 16, San Francisco will stage a repeat of the ceremony that started the 2004 Winter of Love, when thousands of gay and lesbian couples married at City Hall.

This time, though, Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon's wedding will be legal.

Mayor Gavin Newsom said Monday that the ceremony, which he will officiate, will be the only one held in City Hall that day. Martin and Lyon have been together more than five decades, and they were the first couple to marry four years ago. Marriages will begin en masse the next morning. So far, 128 same-sex couples have made appointments to obtain marriage license on Tuesday, June 17.

"What we want, the narrative coming out of it, is about them and what they represent - their story, their history. This is really where it all started," Newsom said of the couple. After the private ceremony, a reception will be held at City Hall for the couple's friends and family, and members of the media.

The couple's first wedding ceremony was very much a below-the-radar affair. City officials rushed to marry them - and eventually, thousands of other same-sex couples - before the courts could order the city to stop.

The photograph of Lyon and Martin's wedding, at which Newsom officiated at City Hall, has been credited by some as being an iconic image that has influenced how people across the country perceive same-sex marriage. The two also were plaintiffs in the recent case in which the state Supreme Court ruled same-sex marriage legal.
Lyon and Martin have been together for 58 years and are among the co-founders of the Daughters of Bilitis, the first lesbian rights organization in the United States. Del Martin was their first president.

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Brazil's President Denounces Homophobia

Calling opposition to homosexuality a "perverse disease", Brazil's President Luiz Lula launched that country's first ever national convention on LGBT rights.
Brazilian President Luiz Lula had the First National Conference of Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals, Transvestites and Transsexuals (GLBT), inaugurated by presidential decree, and called for "a time of reparation" in Brazil.

Accompanied by six ministers, Lula exhorted all those opposed to the gay-rights movement to "open and purify their minds." Lula then announced his complete support for the homosexual movement, saying that he is "going to do all that is possible so that the criminalization of homophobia and the civil union may be approved."

After calling for a universal embrace of the homosexual movement, the president affirmed that "homophobia" is perhaps "the most perverse disease impregnated in the human head."
Parabéns Brazil!

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Faster, Smaller, Cheaper

The faster, smaller, cheaper iPhone:
Steven P. Jobs, chief executive of Apple, introduced a new cheaper iPhone model on Monday that navigates the Internet more quickly, expanded its distribution overseas and displayed a range of new applications and services in order to establish Apple as a major player in the cellphone industry.

Apple, the maker of consumer electronics and computer equipment, had set a goal of selling 10 million iPhones in 2008, which would establish it as one of the major smartphone makers in the less than two years since it began shipping the original iPhone. Apple has sold six million phones globally since its introduction.

Analysts said that Mr. Jobs, one of the world’s best product marketers, had largely accomplished what he set out to do and they welcomed the moves he outlined in a presentation before software developers on Monday. “This is the phone that has changed phones forever,” Mr. Jobs said.

Mr. Jobs said the new iPhone 3G, to be available in the United States through AT&T beginning on July 11, will sell for $199 for the 8-gigabyte model and $299 for a 16-gigabyte model. He said the biggest barrier to people buying the phone had been price.
Want.

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Dangerous Precedent: Canadian Pastor Censored And Fined For Anti-Gay Letters

After publishing a letter to the editor that compared gays to pedophiles and drug dealers, a Canadian pastor has been found guilty of violating human rights laws and must pay $7000 in fines. The pastor must also stop publishing any attacks against gays.
A former pastor will appeal a human rights ruling that orders an apology and the payment of thousands of dollars in fines for an anti-gay letter published in a central Alberta newspaper. The Alberta Human Rights Commission issued a written order on May 30 stating that Stephen Boissoin and the Concerned Christian Coalition must pay former Red Deer school teacher Darren Lund $5,000 in damages.

Boissoin's letter to the editor was published in the June 17, 2002, edition of the Red Deer Advocate. In it, he compared homosexuals to pedophiles and drug dealers. "We will be filing our appeal this month and then it will be heard before a Court of Queen's Bench judge sometime over the next 12 months,'' said Boissoin's lawyer, Gerald Chipeur.

Chipeur said Boissoin will appeal both the commission's ruling last November that the letter violated human rights law, and its most recent order which stipulates restitution. Lund filed a complaint with the commission, arguing that Boissoin's letter represented a hate crime after a gay teen was attacked in Red Deer shortly after it was published.

Last November, the commission ruled in favour of Lund, saying Boissoin and the coalition violated human rights law because the letter likely exposed gays to hatred and contempt. "I think the ruling seems quite fair to me,'' said Lund, who now lives in Calgary. "I just hope there will be some educational value to the community -- that we can develop a society where everybody enjoys the same freedoms.''

Boissoin, who was the executive director of the Christian Coalition at the time the letter was published, has a web-site that discusses a "gay agenda'' in Canadian schools. The May 30 order states that Boissoin and the coalition must stop publishing in all forms of media any "disparaging remarks'' about homosexuals. Similar remarks cannot be made against Lund and his witnesses, and another $2,000 must be paid to Janelle Dodd, one of Lund's witnesses who spoke at an earlier commission hearing.
This stifling of free speech in Canada has many on the right and left greatly concerned - and justifiably so. The order against Pastor Boisson reads: "Mr. Boissoin and The Concerned Christian Coalition Inc. shall cease publishing in newspapers, by e-mail, on the radio, in public speeches, or on the Internet, in future, disparaging remarks about gays and homosexuals." Boissoin must also apologize in a public letter to the original newspaper.

What Boissoin and his ilk say is obviously repugnant and should be loudly denounced. But the conservative Christian group Real Women Of Canada is right when they say, "People in a democracy should be able to have an opinion on homosexuality or on gardening or on anything without being charged or paying money out to protect oneself."

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Swag Tuesday

Courtesy of the Saint-At-Large, today's swag giveaway is two tickets to their official post-Pier Dance party at Pacha featuring DJs Stephan Grondin, Jonathan Peters, and Junior Vasquez.
The Saint At Large, gaydom’s premiere dance party for over 28 years, presents CHAMPIONS - The Official Afterparty for Dance on the Pier. Heritage of Pride, the non-profit organization founded to produce New York City’s Gay Pride events including The Rally, The March, Pridefest, Dance on the Pier (for men) and Rapture on the River (for women), will benefit from the proceeds.

Due to the overwhelming praise lavished on the DJ talent introduced at this year’s Black Party, The Saint At Large is pleased to announce the return of both Stephan Grondin and Jonathan Peters who will join living legend Junior Vasquez to round out the Pride Afterparty musical lineup. The theme of ‘CHAMPIONS’ was chosen to pay respects to the 2008 Olympic Games and because everyone in the gay community is a champion during Pride.
As a special bonus, today's winner will also receive the two disc CD set, Music Of The Saint: 1980-1988, just released the celebrate to 20th anniversary of the closing party of the original Saint. You can listen to streaming DJ sets from past Saint parties here. Tickets to the Champions party are $50 advance, $60 at the door. Advance tickets are available online or at four retail locations in Manhattan.

Enter to win the Champions tickets and Music Of The Saint CDs by commenting on this post. Only comment once and remember to leave an email address that you check frequently. The winner may transfer the prizes to another person if unable to be in New York City for the party. Publicists: if you'd like to take part in Swag Tuesday on JMG, please email me.

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Monday, June 09, 2008

HomoQuotable - David Benkof

"The Human Rights Campaign, America's largest gay-rights group, recently announced plans to spend at least a half-million dollars to defeat the California Marriage Protection Act. What a waste; gays and lesbians have far more urgent needs. The Golden State constitutional amendment poses no substantive threat to them - it will take nothing away from same-sex couples but the word "marriage." Even if HRC wants Californians to vote no on the initiative, $500,000 is a lot to spend on a struggle to retain an unpopular court victory that's only semantic and symbolic.

"Instead, some of the cash (say, half) should go to achieve rights for same-sex couples who live in states that are much more hostile to gays and lesbians than California. A third of the US population lives in the 18 states that have passed constitutional amendments barring same-sex marriage and any other kind of recognition similar to marriage for gay and lesbian couples.

"(That these states passed these measures as a reaction to the gay community's drive to sue its way into "marriage equality" is another sign that campaign isn't such a great idea.)

"HRC is pushing for gays in San Francisco to be able to use their favorite term for their relationships. Meanwhile, gay and lesbian couples in Dallas and Ann Arbor and Norfolk have no way to make sure hospitals let them visit each other when one is sick and have to hope a judge won't prevent them from inheriting each other's property - and custody of their children - should one of them die.

"Constrained by one such constitutional amendment, advocates for fairness in the most unlikely of places - Salt Lake City - have come up with a creative solution that is both constitutional and alleviates the distress of nonmarried couples. Salt Lake couples who share a "mutual commitment" - whether their relationship is conjugal or not - have a set of rights, including insurance and workplace benefits.

"The gay movement should use the cash wasted on the California battle to try to achieve as many rights as possible for same-sex couples in states like Georgia, Ohio and Wisconsin. The other quarter-million dollars should be spent in California - but to help gays and lesbians facing much more pressing needs than the ego boost of having the government tell them they're married instead of in a domestic partnership." - Gay conservative David Benkof in an opinion piece in today's New York Post.

Benkof writes columns for several gay newspapers and blogs at Gays Defend Marriage, which bills itself as "a website for LGBT folks who support marriage as the union of husband and wife—and getting the gay leadership to return to more pressing LGBT issues for our community."

While I don't disagree that marriage equality shouldn't be our number one issue (longtime readers of this blog will know that I am much more passionate about ENDA), Benkof is apparently willfully ignoring the national ramifications of the California ballot fight. What happens there will affect the battle for marriage equality nationwide for years and years to come. Everybody knows the old saying "goes California, goes the nation." Everybody except David Benkof, that is.

I'd rather we had a unified gay leadership pouring tons of money into a completely inclusive ENDA, but that battle is over for the time being. The California marriage fight is here, it is now. On this, the HRC is doing the right thing.

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Brokeback Mountain, The Opera

Yup.
New York City Opera has commissioned American composer Charles Wuorinen to write an opera based on "Brokeback Mountain," a love story about two U.S. ranch-hands that won three Oscars when it was turned into a movie.

The opera house's spokesman Gerard Mortier said in a statement on Sunday that Wuorinen had accepted an invitation to compose an opera based on Annie Proulx's short story. It is slated to premiere during City Opera's 2013 spring season.

This would mark New Yorker Wuorinen's second world premiere at City Opera. He also composed "Haroun and the Sea of Stories," an adaptation of a Salman Rushdie novel which opened in 2004.

"Ever since encountering Annie Proulx's extraordinary story I have wanted to make an opera on it, and it gives me great joy that Gerard Mortier and New York City Opera have given me the opportunity to do so," Wuorinen, 70, said in a statement.
I imagine one of the numbers will be titled I Wish I Could Quit You. What else?

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Who Still Dies Of AIDS And Why?

New York Magazine has posted an excellent dissection of "who still dies of AIDS, and why."
By the time [Mel] Cheren learned he had AIDS [in 2007], he was already suffering from a rare, drug-resistant pneumonia, what infectious-disease specialists refer to as an opportunistic infection, and he had lymphoma, an AIDS-related cancer that had spread to his bones.

Within a month of his diagnosis, Cheren was dead. The official cause was pneumonia, although, as his cousin Mark Cheren points out, cause of death in these cases is a moot point. “Infection from pneumonia was probably the culprit,” he says, “but only because that acts quickest when you don’t stop it.”

Dying from AIDS, or dying with an HIV infection, which may not be the same thing, is a significantly less common event than it was a decade ago, but it’s not nearly as uncommon as anyone would like. Bob Hattoy, for instance, died last year as well. Hattoy, 56, was “the first gay man with AIDS many Americans had knowingly laid eyes on,” as the New York Times described him after Hattoy announced his condition to the world in a speech at the 1992 Democratic National Convention. Hattoy went on to work in the Clinton White House as an advocate for gay and lesbian issues. In the summer of 1993, he told the New York Times, “I don’t make real long-term plans.” But the advent of an anti-retroviral drug known as a protease inhibitor, in 1995, and then, a year later, the multidrug cocktails called HAART—for highly active anti-retroviral therapy—gave Hattoy and a few hundred thousand HIV-infected Americans like him the opportunity to do just that.

If the pharmaceutical industry ever needed an icon for evidence of its good works, HAART would be it. Between 1995 and 1997, annual AIDS deaths in New York City dropped from 8,309 to 3,426, and that number has continued to decline ever since. The success of HAART has been so remarkable that it now tends to take us by surprise when anybody does succumb, although 2,076 New Yorkers died in 2006 (2007 figures are not yet available). Though many of the most prominent deaths, like Cheren’s and Hattoy’s, tend to be of gay men, the percentage of the dead who contracted the disease through gay sex is now reportedly as low as 15 percent (with a large proportion still reported as unknown). Intravenous-drug users make up the biggest group, 38.5 percent, and women account for almost one in three of total AIDS deaths.
Mel Cheren, the founder of famous dance music label West End Records, was a well-known and highly-regarded HIV/AIDS activist who provided the Gay Men's Health Crisis with their first office back in 1982. Yet somehow he had stopped testing himself for HIV in recent years. The virus was full-blown before he realized he'd been infected.

The article also makes several references to "sins of the past" patients, people who have been living with HIV since before the advent of HAART, but are now suffering the ill effects of the pre-HAART monotherapies like AZT. The treatment kept them alive, but allowed their virus to mutate to be resistant to today's front-line drug arsenal. Says one doctor: "I still expect most of my patients to live a normal life expectancy, but they may do so with a bit more nips and scrapes.” Nips and scrapes like heart, liver, and kidney disease.

Test, test, test. There is no excuse not to do so. Not everybody goes on treatment right away and some don't begin for many years. But constant vigilance as to how your body is handling the infection right now will pay off in ten, twenty, or thirty years.

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Cuba To Offer Free Sex Reassignment

Continuing its expansion of LGBT rights, Cuba has announced that it will pay for sex reassignment surgery for any citizen that qualifies.
The move is the latest in a series of changes implemented by President Raul Castro since he succeeded his elder brother, Fidel, in February. Raul Castro's daughter, Mariela, heads Cuba's National Center for Sex Education, which strongly backs the new policy.

Health Minister Jose Ramon Balaguer signed a resolution approving sex-change surgery that was posted on the Internet over the weekend. The procedure would be available to Cubans for free as part of their country's health-care system. The sex education center has said previously that 28 transsexual Cubans have asked to undergo the surgery and that Cuban doctors have trained with physicians from Belgium to prepare for the procedures. According to the center, a clinic for transsexual health will be created to perform the procedures, but it was not clear when it will start operating.
When will the United States end its cruel embargo of Cuba?

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Cyndi Lauper - Into The Nightlife


Colton Ford lends his bod to Cyndi Lauper in this video shot at NYC's Splash Bar. Meanwhile on the dance chart, Lauper's collaboration with Rich Morel rockets into the top five. Will this be Morel's 6th number one as a remixer/producer? The highlight of last week's True Colors show at Radio City for me was Lauper's performance of Set Your Heart, which was co-written and co-produced by Morel. Runner-up was Lauper's duet with John Cameron Mitchell on Midnight Radio from Hedwig. Here's a great review of Lauper's new album, Brink Ya To The Brink.

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WHO: AIDS Is Over (Except For Africans And Gays And Sex Workers And...)

Via the Independent (UK):
A quarter of a century after the outbreak of Aids, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has accepted that the threat of a global heterosexual pandemic has disappeared.

In the first official admission that the universal prevention strategy promoted by the major Aids organisations may have been misdirected, Kevin de Cock, the head of the WHO's department of HIV/Aids said there will be no generalised epidemic of Aids in the heterosexual population outside Africa.

Dr De Cock, an epidemiologist who has spent much of his career leading the battle against the disease, said understanding of the threat posed by the virus had changed. Whereas once it was seen as a risk to populations everywhere, it was now recognised that, outside sub-Saharan Africa, it was confined to high-risk groups including men who have sex with men, injecting drug users, and sex workers and their clients.

Dr De Cock said: "It is very unlikely there will be a heterosexual epidemic in other countries. Ten years ago a lot of people were saying there would be a generalised epidemic in Asia – China was the big worry with its huge population. That doesn't look likely. But we have to be careful. As an epidemiologist it is better to describe what we can measure. There could be small outbreaks in some areas."

In 2006, the Global Fund for HIV, Malaria and Tuberculosis, which provides 20 per cent of all funding for Aids, warned that Russia was on the cusp of a catastrophe. An estimated 1 per cent of the population was infected, mainly through injecting drug use, the same level of infection as in South Africa in 1991 where the prevalence of the infection has since risen to 25 per cent.

Dr De Cock said: "I think it is unlikely there will be extensive heterosexual spread in Russia. But clearly there will be some spread."

Aids still kills more adults than all wars and conflicts combined, and is vastly bigger than current efforts to address it. A joint WHO/UN Aids report published this month showed that nearly three million people are now receiving anti-retroviral drugs in the developing world, but this is less than a third of the estimated 9.7 million people who need them. In all there were 33 million people living with HIV in 2007, 2.5 million people became newly infected and 2.1 million died of Aids.

Aids organisations, including the WHO, UN Aids and the Global Fund, have come under attack for inflating estimates of the number of people infected, diverting funds from other health needs such as malaria, spending it on the wrong measures such as abstinence programmes rather than condoms, and failing to build up health systems.
Stories like this will further the increasingly loud calls to reduce spending on HIV research and treatment and to redirect funds to other diseases.

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It's A Girl

World famous pregnant man Thomas Beattie, now in his 8th month, has revealed that he and wife are expecting a girl - and that the couple plans on having more children.
"I'm 36 weeks now and almost due but I feel fantastic. Every day Nancy and I think about how we just cannot wait to hold our daughter for the first time, to finally get to touch her and see her face. We have her nursery ready and her diapers are lined up in her bedroom. Everything is ready to go.

"We have even picked a name which we both love—although we're waiting until she is born before we tell anyone. All the people who really know us and love us, our friends and family, have been incredibly supportive.

"So much so we might even have more children. We will just see what the experience is like with our daughter's arrival first and then give it some thought."
Many more photos here, including some previously unseen photos of Beatie from when he competed for Miss Teen Hawaii prior to his transition.

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