This Time, ISIS Beheads 'Gay' Men in Iraq
Islamic State militants have reportedly murdered two more men for the ‘crime’ of being gay in an unnamed town in Iraq’s Nineveh province.
Thom Senzee
www.advocate.com/world/2015/03/13/time-isis-beheads-gay-men-iraq
How I Learned to Embrace the Future
(Diriye Osman is photographed by Bahareh Hosseini)
In E.E Cummings poem, “Love is a Place,” he writes: “yes is a world/ & in this world of/ yes live/ (skilfully curled)/ all worlds.” It is a reminder that some of the most moving and meaningful experiences occur when we embrace new and unexpected possibilities.
I say this because saying yes to life is frightening, filled with all kinds of booby-traps, laced with rejection or indifference to one’s attempts to be daring. No-one walks around hoping to have their heart broken, no-one dreams of having their hopes invalidated: it’s simply not how we’re wired to function. Irrespective of where we’re coming from, we want to experience love and be respected. We yearn for success in our personal and professional lives. We want our realities to matter, to be validated by others.
I have been going to my doctor’s office every fortnight for the last decade to have an injection. This injection contains an anti-psychotic medication called Risperidone. Without this medicine, I struggle to see sense. Day-to-day activities assume an irrational intensity, hallucinations kick in and my appetite plummets or balloons. There is no shame in stating this because it’s simply a small fact in the larger scheme of my existence. It would have been incredibly easy for me to reject this medicine and even deny the fact that I suffer from a mental illness. The medication comes with its own long list of side-effects, but if I had declined to take it, I would have engaged in an act of denial and deliberate self-sabotage that would have harmed me and my loved ones.
By taking ownership of my life in this way, by effectively saying yes, I have gone on to achieve things that I never dreamt I was capable of. With my health in check, I have put myself through university and developed a burgeoning career as a writer and visual artist. The truth of it is that saying yes may be challenging but it’s also infinitely more rewarding than saying no. Saying yes to new friendships, to new creative paths, to new career-goals carries its own risks but it’s the equivalent of embracing one’s personhood. It’s the equivalent of developing a robust sense of pride.
My future sometimes feels hazy and, like most people, I’m afraid of failure. I say no to potentially exciting new ventures more often than not. But this is changing. I’m teaching the small, scared animal within to emerge from its burrow and greet the sun.
My last project was a collection of short stories called Fairytales For Lost Children, which focused on issues of sexuality, family, faith and freedom. Although I love the short form, after the book was published I wanted to push against my own parameters. I’m now in the planning stages of a novel that simply refused to be contained by my beloved short form. The subject matter is visceral, intimate and poignant and I love working on this project. I don’t know what will come of it. I don’t know whether it will be published or whether it will live up to my expectations. All I know is that I intend to have fun writing this book. All I know is that I intend to keep taking chances on myself. All I know is that I intend to keep saying yes to the future.
Diriye Osman is the Polari Prize-winning author of “Fairytales For Lost Children” (Team Angelica Press), a collection of critically-acclaimed short stories about queer Somali youth living in London, Nairobi and Somalia. You can purchase the book via Amazon and you can connect with Diriye via his website.
CSI: Cyber star James Van Der Beek recalls being discovered with gay porn by airport security
Dawson’s Creek alum had been given VHS copy of Dawson’s Crack and wanted to share it with his co-stars
gregh
HRC Offered Testimony in Two Hearings to Support Maryland Birth Certificate Bill
SB 743/ HB 862 is a vital measure that will ensure that transgender people born in Maryland are able to change their birth certificates to reflect their correct name and gender without unnecessarily expensive and invasive obstacles.
HRC.org
Christian College Cancels Bake Sale For Gay Youth, Students Raise $10,000 Anyway
All students at Andrews University in Berrien Springs, MI wanted to do was hold a bake sale to help Fierce Chicago, a non-profit organization that assists homeless LGBT youth. But when college administrators learned about it, they demanded the sale be cancelled. Evidently, helping disenfranchised gay children is in direct “conflict” with the university’s “mission and practices.”
The bake sale was being organized by AULL4One, the university’s unofficial gay-straight alliance, which has approximately 80 members, but is forbidden from advertising on campus due to the school’s affiliation with the antigay Seventh Day Adventist Church.
In an e-mail to the students, AU Dean of Student Life Steve Yeagley said the university was forbidding the bake sale because “funds may be raised for non-profit organizations ‘whose mission and practices do not conflict with those of the University.’”
Yeagley continued by saying that there was “a perceived conflict between the mission and practices of Andrews University and those of Fierce Chicago — certainly not in their efforts to aid homeless youth, but in their approach to the LGBT issue, at large.”
“As a result,” the e-mail concluded, “we can and will support LGBT homeless youth through organizations whose mission and purpose clearly align with the religious mission and purpose of our university and its sponsoring church.”
In other words: Andrews University is happy to help raise money for homeless youth, just so long as they’re not gay or being served by an organization that doesn’t take a proactive stance against “the LGBT issue.”
So instead of a bake sale, students at Andrews University have created an IndieGoGo page to send donations to Fierce Chicago. They hoped to raise $2,000. So far, they have raised nearly $10,000 with 26 days to go.
Sorry, administrators, you lose.
Related stories:
College Bans Gay Sexing Because It’s Icky And “Destructive To The Parties Involved”
Christian College Tells Lesbian Student To Go Back In The Facebook Closet
Christian College Confiscated Every Copy Of Their Newspaper For Being Pro-Gay
Graham Gremore
Tim Cook Offered Dying Steve Jobs His Own Liver According To New Biography
In the last days of his life while struggling with an aggressive form of pancreatic cancer, Steve Jobs learned that Tim Cook, who would eventually become Apple’s next CEO, was a potential blood match. That match meant that in theory Cook could have donated part of his liver to Jobs, which might have prolonged his life.
This new information is detailed in Becoming Steve Jobs, Rick Tetzeli and Brent Schlender’s new book about Jobs as he planned to hand over control of his multi-billion dollar company to Cook. Though Jobs would eventually accept another liver transplant two years later, he initially turned Cook down, resolute in his decision to ride the disease out:
“Somebody that’s selfish,” Cook continues, “doesn’t reply like that. I mean, here’s a guy, he’s dying, he’s very close to death because of his liver issue, and here’s someone healthy offering a way out. I said, ‘Steve, I’m perfectly healthy, I’ve been checked out. Here’s the medical report. I can do this and I’m not putting myself at risk, I’ll be fine.’
And he doesn’t think about it. It was not, ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ It was not, ‘I’ll think about it.’ It was not, ‘Oh, the condition I’m in . . .’ It was, ‘No, I’m not doing that!’ He kind of popped up in bed and said that. And this was during a time when things were just terrible. Steve only yelled at me four or five times during the 13 years I knew him, and this was one of them.”
Charles Pulliam-Moore
www.towleroad.com/2015/03/tim-cook-offered-steve-jobs-his-own-liver-according-to-new-biography.html
Tim David TV | "Faizal, from India | Racism & Discrimination within the LGBT community
Today I am reading to you a letter from Faizal from India, who had experienced Racism & Discrimination on his first day in America.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=uegWF92nRU4&feature=youtube_gdata
How Madonna Brought These Two New Yorkers Wedding Bliss
Toby and Brian share memories of a proposal in Europe and marriage on the New York stage.
Aaron Drake
All Women’s Lives Matter
The facts laid out in a report about LGBT women and poverty released earlier this week were as startling as they were distressing.
HRC.org
www.hrc.org/blog/entry/all-womens-lives-matter?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss-feed
