Washington man gets 30 months for chasing three gay men with knife

A man who yelled anti-gay slurs and chased three men with knife through the streets of Seattle was sentenced to 30 months in prison on Monday (9 November), according to the justice department.

Troy Deacon Burns, 38, from Bremont, Washington pleaded guilty to violating the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr Hate Crimes Prevention Act in August.

In his plea agreement, he admitted to coming up behind the men and shouting homophobic slurs while they were walking in the gay-friendly Capitol Hill neighborhood in January.

Burns then raised a knife over his head in a stabbing position.  The men started running, but Burns caught up to one of them tried to stab him.

One of the other men was able to pull his friend away from Burns while the third man found a police officers, who took Burns into custody.

While inside the police vehicle, Burns yelled out ‘faggots.’

Burns also said he was under the influence of drugs and alcohol at the time and claimed not to remember his actions.

‘The Department of Justice will continue to vigilantly protect the rights of victims who are targeted simply because of their sexual orientation,’ said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta in a statement.

‘Six years have passed since the enactment of the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, and it continues to serve as an important tool for federal law enforcement.’

The post Washington man gets 30 months for chasing three gay men with knife appeared first on Gay Star News.

Darren Wee

www.gaystarnews.com/article/washington-man-gets-30-months-for-chasing-three-gay-men-with-knife/

WATCH: Rachel Maddow Breaks Down Pastor's 'Kill the Gays' Rally Attended by GOP Candidates

Rachel Maddow focused Monday night on a tale of two forums this past weekend: one she hosted in South Carolina featuring the three major contenders for the Democratic party nomination, and an Iowa conference featuring three antigay Republican candidates for president hosted by a right wing pastor who declared “it’s not a gay time!” 

“It really was a ‘kill the gays’ call to arms,” said Maddow on her MSNBC program.

She introduced video of Kevin Swanson, a virulently antigay preacher from Colorado, who organized the event in Des Moines. In one clip, Swanson told the National Religious Liberties Conference he believes that churches should have sackcloth and ashes at their entrances for Christian families whose “sons are rebelling, hanging out with homosexuals, and getting married, and their parents are invited.”

“And I would sit in cow manure, and I would spread it all over my body.”

Swanson, who preaches that homosexuality should be punished with death, drew more than 1,700 to his ”religious freedom” conference, including Republicans Mike Huckabee, Bobby Jindal and Ted Cruz. 

Maddow played a series of excerpts of Swanson’s speech, in which he quoted from the bible in calling for the death penalty for gays and lesbians, and then declared that was not as high a priority as giving homosexuals, and all of America, time to repent. 

“This was a Republican presidential candidates event,” Maddow told viewers. “These were not the ‘kill the gays’ ravings of the guy hosting this event from some time in his past. This was not something we dug up that he said a long time ago, that maybe these presidential candidates didn’t know about.” Maddow suggested the might be a good topic for the moderators from Fox Business Network who will put questions to Cruz and the other Republicans running for president Tuesday night. 

And lest viewers think the Iowa event was nothing but boring politics, Maddow mentioned how pop culture came under fire from Swanson as well:

“There were denunciations of Harry Potter. There was a big, long soliloquy of a movie called How to Train Your Dragon. There was a big, screaming denunciation of how country music radio stations need to repent, repent, repent because they’ve gone over to the gay side.”

Watch Rachel Maddow break down the Swanson event in the clip below. 

Dawn Ennis

www.advocate.com/media/2015/11/09/watch-rachel-maddow-breaks-down-pastors-kill-gays-rally-attended-gop-candidates

Open Question: What are strengths of the lgbt community?
I am a social work student doing a topic presentation on working with the lgbt community and I am stuck =[ Please help

answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20151109223206AAXyjZn

Passion Pit’s Michael Angelakos comes out as gay
submitted by cloudfill
[link] [1 comment]

Passion Pit’s Michael Angelakos comes out as gay
byu/cloudfill inlgbt

Aisle View: 'Dada' in the Nursery

Peter Parnell’s enigmatically-titled Dada Woof Papa Hot — the new Lincoln Center Theater production at the Mitzi Newhouse — turns out to be yet another one of those upper-middle-class-New-Yorkers-with-kids-in-preschool plays which turn up occasionally nowadays, one in which (no surprise) a parent from Couple A has an affair with a parent from Couple B. The difference, here, is that the four parents in question are all men.

“A topical gimmick?” you might ask, “just another variation on the same old tale?” Well, no; while a play of this sort could be contrived by taking a dusty comedy from thirty years back and changing the gender of the two moms, that is not what Parnell has done. The dynamics of the couples — as well as the actions and choices of the straying partners — are very different than they would be in one of those heterosexual-adultery plays. Thanks in part to an especially well-drawn central couple — and a typically excellent performance by John Benjamin Hickey in the main role — Parnell (of Romance Language) has given us a provocative and enjoyable topical comedy for today.

Struggling novelist Alan (Hickey) and breadwinner/psychiatrist Rob (Patrick Breen) — with their heard-but-not-seen three-year-old Nicola, offstage — find their social circle enlarged by parents of other preschoolers. The action begins as they have dinner with another such couple, corporate raider Scott (Stephen Plunkett) and painter Jason (Alex Hurt). While the friendship is child-based, there are clear undertones — from the start — of sex. This, naturally enough, plays out over the course of an hour-and-a-half. Parnell also gives us a third couple, Michael (John Pankow) and Serena (Kelli Overbey); Michael is a composer in a tailspin, having just suffered through a major Broadway flop. (How refreshing, and perhaps drawn from personal experience: Parnell’s one Broadway musical was the misguided, gender-mangled libretto for the 2011 Harry Connick, Jr. revisal of On a Clear Day You Can See Forever.)

Michael, on the heterosexual side, goes off to have an affair with yet another parent, TV actress Julia (Tammy Blanchard); her unseen photographer husband — not surprisingly, given the setup – -turns out to be gay. All through this, mind you, everybody keeps talking about their kids; you know how those upper-middle-class-New-Yorkers-with-kids-in-preschool are.

Parnell brings our attention to another, relatively new source of potential parental friction. There are plays by the dozens — or more likely hundreds — in which the husband thinks that he is not really the baby’s father, or knows that he is not really the baby’s father; or has been told he is not really the baby’s father when he actually is, or has been told that he is when he actually isn’t. In Dada Woof Papa Hot, Alan knows he is not the biological father, having been convinced that Rob likely had healthier genes. Parnell gives us a father who thus feels apart from his child — or more properly, feels that the child senses that he is not the real papa/dada. (“Dada woof papa hot” signify Nicola’s first words, which make sense from a toddler but don’t work quite so well as a play title). This adds yet another layer of confused anguish to Alan’s conundrum, one that is well illustrated by Mr. Hickey; and one that, he comes to realize, is in his mind, not the child’s.

Hickey — a Tony winner for The Normal Heart — is paired with Breen (who also appeared in The Normal Heart) as the more fatherly of the couple. Standing out among the others is Pankow, as the normal (i.e. straight), philandering musical comedy composer. Scott Ellis, a Roundabout regular, does his most impressive job of direction since Twelve Angry Men back in 2004. There is also a highly effective set — consisting of many moving parts, on interlocking platforms which slide on and off in different wedge-like combinations — by John Lee Beatty.

In Dada Woof Papa Hot, Parnell combines characters we know pretty well — and a situation we know pretty well — in a manner which makes it all seem fresh, involving and convincing. And enjoyable.

Dada Woof Papa Hot opened November 9, 2015 and continues through January 3, 2016 at Lincoln Center Theater’s Mitzi E. Newhouse

— 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.

feeds.huffingtonpost.com/c/35496/f/677065/s/4b5f3b4a/sc/38/l/0L0Shuffingtonpost0N0Csteven0Esuskin0Caisle0Eview0Edada0Ein0Ethe0Enu0Ib0I85174360Bhtml0Dutm0Ihp0Iref0Fgay0Evoices0Gir0FGay0KVoices/story01.htm

Review: ‘Dada Woof Papa Hot,’ About Gay Men and Parenthood
In Peter Parnell’s new play at Lincoln Center, gay couples with children learn about having (or not having) it all.

Open Question: LGBT+ rights activists, please sign this petition i posted?
www.change.org/p/president-of-the-united-states-united-states-congress-enact-a-law-allowing-people-to-legally-be-their-gender-identity?source_location=petitions

answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20151109171851AAS9mUG