WATCH: Michiganders Plan to Counter Antigay Billboards
The anti-marriage equality billboards proclaim, ‘Homosexuality is a behavior. Not a civil right.’
Trudy Ring
Daily Archives: May 8, 2015
God Is Trans: The Extraordinary Spirituality Of Transgender Lives (PODCAST)
God Is Trans: The Extraordinary Spirituality Of Transgender Lives (PODCAST)
Welcome to ALL TOGETHER, the podcast dedicated to exploring how ethics religion and spiritual practice is informing our personal lives, our communities and our world. You can download All Together on iTunes, or Stitcher.
During this week’s segment you will hear from a Christian, a Jew and a Buddhist about their lives as trans people, and the surprising and instructive ways religious figures acted with compassion as they transitioned to presenting as their authentic selves. Their journeys invite new understanding of spirituality by urgently presenting the deeply religious question: “Who Am I?”
Recently Bruce Jenner spoke on national television about life as a trans person, ushering in a new era of visibility of trans people. My hope is that the stories of Joy, Taj and Ellie will be cause for further celebration, and that their spiritual stories will offer all of us lessons for discovery about self, others and even God.
GUESTS:
Prof. Joy Laden made history when she became the first trans woman to teach at an Orthodox Jewish university. In addition to her position at Yeshiva University, she is a contributor to the website TransTorah, and has recently published a book of poetry with the title: Impersonation.
Taj Smith is a second year student at Harvard Divinity School who is on ordination track in the United Church of Christ.
Ellie Krug is the executive director of Call for Justice, an organization that connects low income people with the legal services they need. She is the author of Getting to Ellen: A Memoir about Love, Honesty and Gender Change.
You may also be interested in this earlier All Together podcast that features Sister Monica who ministers with the transgender community:
— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
Miley Cyrus says she's not hiding her sexuality – she just doesn't like labels
Miley Cyrus says she's not hiding her sexuality – she just doesn't like labels
‘There are times in my life where I’ve had boyfriends or girlfriends’
gregh
Would You Rather Date A Guy With A Big Unit Or A Great Personality?
Would You Rather Date A Guy With A Big Unit Or A Great Personality?
Most guys know the socially approved answer is “great personality.” But is that how they show up in life? When we conducted a 4,000 person study on how gay men behave on dating apps we were surprised to learn that 59% admitted to asking other guys about the size of their penis while 83% actually sent dic pics.
That’s not exactly a win for the “great personality” column.
Still, that’s probably not a fair indication of what gay men prefer given that the apps are engorged with shirtless pics, which heightens sexual not romantic desire. To get at the real answer the question has to make a distinction between dating and sexing. The truth is most of us want it all–a big unit WITH a great personality but since few men have both the question remains: If you had to choose between what’s in his pants and what’s in his heart what would your answer be?
Keep coming back to this page to see how the votes populate.
Michael Alvear’s book, How To Bottom Like A Porn Star has been on Amazon’s Top 10 Gay Nonfiction Best Seller List for 24 months in a row.
mikealvear
Pennsylvania Students Suspended After Calling Out Homophobes for Wearing Chick-fil-A T-Shirts During School GSA Event
Pennsylvania Students Suspended After Calling Out Homophobes for Wearing Chick-fil-A T-Shirts During School GSA Event
Two Allentown, Pennsylvania students attending Bangor Area High School decided to wear t-shirts bearing the Chick-fil-A logo as a means of protesting their Gay-Straight Alliance’s pro-LGBT demonstration. The GSA’s week-long event encouraged students to show their support for a wide spectrum of minorities by donning differently colored shirts. It’s thought that the Chick-fil-A wearing students were using their shirts to echo the social views of the company’s conservative CEO Dan Cathy.
While the pride week appears to have been a general success, some students, interpreting the Chick-fil-A shirts as a slight, took to Twitter, calling out their classmates for their perceived homophobia. While the students-cum-watchdogs intentions may have been pure, their actions were not well received by school administrators. Fifteen of the students have since been suspended with even more receiving detention. The students were told they were being punished for tweeting during school hours, as well as due to the fact that some of their tweets contained obscenities and were seen as threatening.
“Shout-out to the [expletive] in the Chick-fil-A shirts,” read one suspended student’s tweet after seeing the two students on his homeroom’s television last Friday morning.
“I wouldn’t be upset if they did it on a different day, but it was a day to not discriminate against LGBT students, and that’s what they were trying to do,” Jeff Vanderpool, a Bangor Area student, explained to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
According to the two Chick-fil-A supporters, the online barrage lasted well into the weekend. Neither of the two boys wearing the shirts were reprimanded. The ACUL of Pennsylvania is investigating the situation and called the suspensions a “pretty harsh punishment.”
Charles Pulliam-Moore
Family Used in Irish Antigay Ad: We Support Equal Marriage
Family Used in Irish Antigay Ad: We Support Equal Marriage
The U.K. family say they were ‘surprised and upset’ to see their image used to oppose marriage equality in Ireland.
Sunnivie Brydum
www.advocate.com/world/2015/05/08/family-used-irish-antigay-ad-we-support-equal-marriage
Don't Miss Provincetown's Film Festival, An Unofficially Queer Cultural Event By The Beach
Don't Miss Provincetown's Film Festival, An Unofficially Queer Cultural Event By The Beach
Unassuming is the name of the game in P-town, a quirky beach community at the tip of Cape Cod. But the Provincetown International Film Festival, now in its 17th year, consistently delivers one of the finest cultural events in the region. As always, a delightfully queer lineup underscores the outstanding selection of narrative features, documentaries and shorts.
The festival kicks off on June 17 with writer-director Leslye Headland’s “Sleeping with Other People,” exploring the complexities of monogamy. From James Franco, “I Am Michael,” the dramatization of a buzzy 2011 New York Times article about gay activist Michael Glatze, closes out the week on June 21.
“The independent filmmaking community continues to produce remarkably high quality work, here and abroad, and our feature lineup is a testament to that!” said Connie White, artistic director of PIFF. “We are thrilled to welcome these new films and filmmakers to Provincetown in June, and we know that filmgoers will be engaged and entertained by these adventurous, thought-provoking and accomplished films.”
The lineup for PIFF 2015:
Opening Night Selection
“Sleeping with Other People” — directed by Leslye Headland
Closing Night Selection
“I Am Michael” — directed by Justin Kelly
Spotlight Selections
“The End of the Tour” — directed by James Ponsoldt
“Grandma” — directed by Paul Weitz
“Tab Hunter Confidential” — directed by Jeffrey Schwartz
Narrative Features
“99 Homes” — directed by Ramin Bahrani
“Beatbox” — directed by Andrew Dresher
“Breathe” — directed by Mélanie Laurent
“Fresno” — directed by Jamie Babbit
“Funny Bunny” — directed by Alison Bagnall
“Learning to Drive” — directed by Isabel Coixet
“A Little Chaos” — directed by Alan Rickman
“Meet Me In Montenegro” — directed by Alex Holdridge and Linnea Saasen
“Nasty Baby” – directed by Sebastián Silva
“The New Girlfriend” — directed by François Ozon
“People, Places, Things” — directed by James C. Strouse
“Radiator” — directed by Tom Browne
“The Second Mother” — directed by Anna Muylaert
“Shaun the Sheep” — directed by Mark Burton and Richard Starzak
“The Stanford Prison Experiment” — directed by Kyle Patrick Alvarez
“The Summer of Sangaile” — directed by Alanté Kavaïté
“Tangerine” — directed by Sean Baker
“Ten Thousand Saints” — directed by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini
“Those People” — directed by Joey Kuhn
“Tired Moonlight” — directed by Britni West
“Wildlike” — directed by Frank Hall Green
“Yosemite” — directed by Gabrielle Demeestere
Documentary Features
“Alentejo, Alentejo” — directed by Sérgio Tréfaut
“The Armor of Light” — directed by Abigail E. Disney
“Best of Enemies” — directed by Robert Gordon and Morgan Neville
“The Birth of Saké” — directed by Erik Shirai
“Call Me Lucky” — directed by Bobcat Goldthwait
“City of Gold” — directed by Laura Gabbert
“Clambake” — directed by Andrea Meyerson
“Danny Says” — directed by Brendan Toller
“Do I Sound Gay?” — directed by David Thorpe
“Harry & Snowman” — directed by Ron Davis
“In My Father’s House” — directed by Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg
“Larry Kramer In Love with Anger” — directed by Jean Carlomusto
“Listen to Me Marlon” — directed by Stevan Riley
“Live From New York!” — directed by Bao Nguyen
“Love Between the Covers” — directed by Laurie Kahn-Leavitt
“Out to Win” — directed by Malcolm Ingram
“Outermost Radio” — directed by Alan Chebot
“Packed In a Trunk: The Lost Art of Edith Lake Wilkinson” — directed by Michelle Boyaner
“Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict” — directed by Lisa Immordino Vreeland
“The State of Marriage” — directed by Jeffrey Kaufman
“The Wolfpack” — directed by Crystal Moselle
The 17th annual Provincetown International Film Festival takes place June 17-21 in Provincetown, Massachusetts.
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Sam Smith is 'very upset' that he needs surgery for vocal cord hemorrhage
Sam Smith is 'very upset' that he needs surgery for vocal cord hemorrhage
Resting has not been enough to heal damage – will be out for 6-8 weeks
gregh
www.gaystarnews.com/article/sam-smith-very-upset-he-needs-surgery-vocal-cord-hemorrhage080515
UK Court Rules In Favor Of Gay Dads in Surrogacy Battle
UK Court Rules In Favor Of Gay Dads in Surrogacy Battle
A High Court in the U.K. has ruled that a baby girl conceived through surrogacy will be removed from her biological mother and live with her father and his same-sex partner, reports Reuters.
The decision follows a legal pursuit over the nature of the parents’ agreement when the child was conceived. The father said the mother had agreed to be a surrogate but she said they had agreed that she should be the baby’s main parent.
Ms Justice Alison Russell ruled that the mother had misled the two men and had always intended to keep the baby, rather than changing her mind during the pregnancy.
Russell said:
“Very sadly this case is another example of how ‘agreements’ between potential parents, reached privately to conceive children to build a family, go wrong and cause great distress to the biological parents and their spouses or partners.
“[The mother] has consistently done all she can to minimize the role that [the father] had in the child’s life…Far from being a child that she conceived with her good friend, as she describes it, her actions have always been of a woman determined to treat the child as solely her own.”
The woman also made a deliberate attempt to discredit the two men in “a homophobic and offensive manner”, according to the judge:
Natalie Smith, a trustee of Surrogacy UK, said:
“A contract which forces a woman to give up the right to make decisions about her body as part of a paid-for service would be a move towards a commercial model. This raises a raft of ethical questions… and the risk of surrogates being coerced through financial gain.”
Surrogacy in Britain is legal but it is a crime to advertise for a surrogate, to offer your services as a surrogate or to pay a surrogate a direct fee. The birth mother remains the legal mother of the child and is not obliged to give the baby up once it is born.
Jim Redmond
www.towleroad.com/2015/05/uk-surrogacy-battle-rules-in-favor-of-gay-parents.html
Castro Street 2_Night
