Illinois Becomes Battleground for Gay Rights

The fight over same-sex marriage is taking on new meaning in Illinois. Civil rights organizations are working to protect gay and lesbian couples from discriminatory ballot measures and trying to obtain new rights.

read more | digg story

Sexual Orientation Chair For UCLA Law

The University of California-Los Angeles will establish a chair in sexual orientation law, using a donation of more than $1 million from a gay male couple. The gift is intended to help fund the research of a professor at the school's Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy.

read more | digg story

Hate Crime Against Gay Man At Wal-Mart

Two men, one in a black trench coat, walked up to a gay man and his partner in a Wal Mart in Monkey Junction, North Carolina and yelled “hey faggot, did you have a problem with my friend?” The men then jumped on top of him and began hitting him in the head in the middle of Wal-Mart.

read more | digg story

Gay Race Car Driver Featured on Gaywheels.com

One of the first openly gay race car drivers (SCCA) is featured on Gaywheels.com. Evan Darling is the latest featured out gay automotive professional on the site.

read more | digg story

Owners of Womens Pro Basketball Team Donate $1 Mil to Anti-Gay Fund

It is a fact of life that a lot of fans of women’s professional sports are gay, so it is dumbfounding that the owners of a women’s professional basketball team would donate over $1 million to a group whose sole purpose is to restrict the civil rights of gay people -- and yet that is exactly what the owners of the Seattle Storm did in 2004.

read more | digg story

Google Defends Decisions On Gay Hate Website

Google has confirmed that they removed a homophobic blog from their blogger.com service because it was in breach of their terms and conditions.

read more | digg story

On Again, Off Again Bill Regulating Gay Student Clubs Back On

(Salt Lake City, Utah) Legislation allowing schools the right to reject student clubs that threaten the "moral well-being" of students that less than a week ago was declared dead has been resurrected and passed by the Utah House.

read more | digg story

Congress likely to pass the first major federal gay-rights bills

Wary conservative leaders, as well as gay-rights advocates, share a belief that at least two measures will win approval this year: a hate- crimes bill that would cover offenses motivated by anti-gay bias, and a measure that would outlaw workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation.

read more | digg story

72-year-old BEATING VICTIM DIES

A 72-year-old man attacked last week outside his downtown Detroit apartment building and left paralyzed from the neck down died Friday.Andrew Anthos was on a city bus Feb. 13 when a man asked him if he was gay. The man followed Anthos off the bus at the stop in front of his building and beat him with a metal pipe.

read more | digg story

High School Newspaper Editorial on Gays Exposes Homophobic Principal

A student editorial in the Woodlan Junior-Senior High School newspaper calling for more tolerance for gays and lesbians sparked the principal to seek approval of each edition before it goes to print and issue a written warning against the journalism teacher.

read more | digg story

Super woof at Target

He was such a hottie. Too bad his bimbo was keeping such a close eye on him.

The Ex-Gay Courtroom Scene from Boston Legal

This is totally hilarious, and poignant in its Boston Legal sort of way. I love this show!

Gay couples in New Jersey start to file for civil unions

Hundreds of gay couples were granted the same legal rights, if not the title, as married couples Monday as New Jersey became the third state to offer civil unions. More than a dozen other couples applied for licenses for ceremonies later in the week. The civil unions, which offer the legal benefits but not the title of marriage, were granted aut...

read more | digg story

"Gender Study" Victim Boy-Raised-a-Girl Commits Suicide

At the age of 14, he was told of his true gender identity, at which time he rebelled, and lived as a boy. He eventually married and became a stepfather to three children.David's story became widely known after the publication of a book about his life by author John Colapinto, who wrote As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl.

read more | digg story

Mexico City gets gay wedding fever

More than 100 Mexican gay and lesbian couples celebrated their registrations for civil unions in the capital city's central plaza, wearing suits and wedding dresses and throwing rice in a scene akin to a mass engagement party. Argentina's capital of Buenos Aires and the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul have also legalized civil unions.

read more | digg story

Mr. Personality

I'm sure many of you have seen this. There's a cute snoopiebear over on YouTube who likes to lip sync songs.



So cute! More to cum!

AIDS Virus Weakness Detected

This is some interesting news about the HIV virus.

Scientists have captured an image of the AIDS virus in a biological handshake with the immune cells it attacks, and said on Wednesday they hope this can help lead to a better vaccine against the incurable disease.

This is great news. AIDS transformed the culture of gay men through its devastation -- it wasn't just about sex and hiding out in closets anymore. AIDS brought gay men into the light, and by the same virtue it brought out gay women, too. But AIDS has taken its toll, now on millions of straight people (and a smattering of others) as well as on millions of gay men. I, for one, will not be sad to see it go. Hopefully this is a step in the right direction for both sufferers of AIDS and for medical science in general.

read more

Tim Hardaway Hating on Gays: Channels Inner 13-year-old

During a radio interview with Miami Sports Columnist Dan Le Batard, former NBA forward Tim Hardaway let loose his inner feelings about gays when asked how he’d feel playing on a team with a teammate who was gay.

"You know, I hate gay people, so I let it be known. I don’t like gay people and I don’t like to be around gay people. I am homophobic. I don’t like it. It shouldn’t be in the world or in the United States."

Lovely! Say, doesn't that sound like something Ole Joe, the plantation owner who lived in Alabama, said back in 1864? Yah, I think so, too.

read more | digg story

Orbitz Launches "Gay Travel"

Orbitz launches a 'Gay Travel' site. Yay! I bet they don't have a "hot back alleys" section like the Damron catalog used to. Oh, well, I guess we'll just have to do it the "modern" way: on the internet!

read more | digg story

Russian Lawmakers Move To Recriminalize Homosexuality

Just like the US Congress, not every one of the lawmakers in the Russian parliament are idiots. But some Russian lawmakers move to recriminalize homosexuality. After the earlier news that some idiots in Nigeria want to do the same thing, I have to wonder if this is a trend or a coincidence.

The bill, introduced into Russia's lower house by Deputy Nikolay Kuryanovich, is nearly identical to the 1933 criminal code under Stalin, which made homosexuality punishable by five years of hard labor.

If passed, the legislation would also essentially ban gay Pride parades or meetings.

Gay sex was decriminalized in 1993 as a result of Communism's fall. Up until the 1980s, gays and lesbians were routinely committed to hospitals for reparative therapy, which involved taking psychotropic drugs.

Is this all because some people didn't want a gay Pride parage in Russia? People, change the channel if you don't like what's on.

read more

Naked Gay Bear Dances in the Snow

On the news during a blizzard in Cleveland, a news journalist trying to do an interview gets to see a dancing naked bear. Looks cold!

Gay Athletes Don't Pose a Real Problem to Straight Athletes

Last week, in reaction to John Amaechi's revealing his sexual orientation, I wrote a column suggesting, among other things, that an openly gay player in a major sport would not have as hard a time as some people think. While most of the e-mails I received agreed with the sentiment, I kept reading a variation of this question: How are straight players supposed to act with a gay teammate in the shower?

...

And the truth is men know men -- a straight guy in a locker room full of women is going to look, so it's safe to assume a gay guy in a locker room full of men is going to do the same.

Or not.

Meet Adam Goslin, a senior at Washington University in St. Louis. Goslin, a DL on the football team, is not on the DL -- he's openly gay. His family knows, his friends know, the entire football team knows. "Goose," as they call him, started telling folks on campus he was gay around his sophomore year.

read more | digg story

Nigeria Moves To Outlaw Gay Sex

And I thought it was just the US whose politicians pandered to peoples fears of those who are "different". The bill, which could become law before April's elections, proposes a five-year sentence for anyone convicted of being openly gay or practicing gay sex.

What idiots run that country?

read more | digg story

Rep. Ackerman: "A Platoon Of Lesbians" Could "Chase Us Out Of Baghdad"

Yesterday, during hearings on the State Department’s 2008 budget, Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-NY) slammed the U.S. military’s ban on gay servicemembers, saying the Pentagon “seems more afraid of gay people than they are [of] terrorists,” and that if the terrorists were smart, “they’d get a platoon of lesbians to chase us out of Baghdad.”

read more | digg story

Bear Culture Hits the Los Angeles Times

I wonder what the general population is going to do when they figure out that bears like to flock (yes, like birds in migration) to gigantic 3,000-men-orgies in over 100 locales across the world?

At a conference of literary scholars in December, a friend was interviewing a candidate for an academic position. After answering the usual questions about proposed courses, teaching loads and scholarly interests, the candidate volunteered,

"Oh, by the way, in addition to 19th century American literature, I work on bear studies."

The interlocutors were perplexed. "Bear studies?" one asked. "Do you mean bears in literature — say, William Faulkner's story 'The Bear' ?" Someone else suggested "Winnie the Pooh" — perhaps the candidate worked on children's literature?

It soon became clear, however, that the candidate had something else in mind. By "bear studies," he meant an area of academic research that explored the subculture of hirsute, usually heavy-set gay men — burly guys who identify with a masculine style and who shun the popular image of homosexual guys as smooth, hairless, Calvin-Klein-ish blond young men.

Read more Bear-y gay at the L.A. Times.

New House Effort To Overturn 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'

Rep. Meehan (D-MA) is planning to introduce a bill soon to repeal the Pentagon's controversial "don't ask, don't tell" policy, which prevents gays and lesbians from openly serving in the military - a policy that has seen more than 11,000 soldiers, sailors, and airmen and women kicked out of the military since 1993.

read more | digg story

1st Gay NBA Player

A former NBA center (John Amaechi?) who spent five seasons with four teams, on Wednesday became the first NBA player to publicly come out. The article doesn't "out" the player, so I don't know who came up with this person's name -- perhaps it's already a mainstream media news story.

read more | digg story

A Hidden Life: Being Gay in Rural China

Xiao Wang fondles the Pisces charm draped around his neck as he drags on his cigarette. "I gave the same one to my boyfriend," he says as he smiles and leans back in his chair in his dorm room.

Wang, a 21-year-old college student in a large sprawling city in south central China, chats comfortably and confidently about his life, his sexuality and his doubts and hopes for the future. But back in his small rural hometown, he lives with the burden of a secret that he must, at least for now, keep from his family.

"I cannot tell them," he explains. "My life, my money, my school -- it is all from my family. I have no job. My father gives me everything. When I get a job and can live on my own, then, I think I must tell them. I want to tell them."