Pulse Shooter's Ex-Wife Says He Was Gay, Targeted Club to Impress Father

The FBI, however, has not characterized the act as a hate crime.

www.advocate.com/crime/2016/9/22/pulse-shooters-ex-wife-says-he-was-gay-targeted-club-impress-father

Troye Sivan Launches Unisex Underwear Line in Response to Nude Leaks

Singer, actor and YouTuber Troye Sivan has responded to nude photos of himself being released online without his consent by creating a line of unisex underwear. 

Sivan made the announcement on Twitter on Tuesday.

as a response to my nudes leaking I made a line of unisex undies :// t.co/BzUD4yCv3v pic.twitter.com/Z9GlJJkuTw

— troye sivan (@troyesivan) September 21, 2016

The boy briefs come in black only and feature Sivan’s name on the waistband along with a rosebud logo.

Sivan indicated that the undies are limited edition so anyone looking to snag these has impetus to move fast.

they’ll be up for like a week

— troye sivan (@troyesivan) September 21, 2016

Sivan previously responded to the news of his nude photos leaking first by joking that he looks good in the photos but then adding that having his privacy invaded “sucks.” He asked that his fans not share anything that they think Sivan “wouldn’t want the world to see.”

when ur almost nudes leak and ur talking to management pic.twitter.com/MYrdHZYB5l

— troye sivan (@troyesivan) September 14, 2016

Oi jokes aside, this sucks. Nothin I can do now but please don’t share anything you think I wouldn’t want the world to see

— troye sivan (@troyesivan) September 14, 2016

The post Troye Sivan Launches Unisex Underwear Line in Response to Nude Leaks appeared first on Towleroad.

Troye Sivan Launches Unisex Underwear Line in Response to Nude Leaks

Catholic Church in Mexico Accuses Government of ‘Persecution’ Over Gay Rights

Father Hugo Valdemar, the spokesperson of Mexico’s Catholic church has accused the country’s anti-discrimination watchdog, Conapred, of persecution.

Conapred has requested that clergy abstain from making comments following the constant attacks by Catholic organizations since Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto submitted a proposal that would legalize same-sex marriage nationwide.

Valdemar was responding to a Conapred statement which said that a series of rallies last week opposing same-sex marriage were “absolutely discriminatory.” The cleric also attacked Conapred for taking a stance against an article in the Catholic outlet “Desde la Fe” entitled “No one is born gay” which claimed that ex-gay Dr. Richard Cohen of U.S.-based Positive Approaches To Healthy Sexuality has been successful in his use of conversion therapy.

RELATED: 12-Year-Old Mexican Boy Attempts to Block Thousands of Anti-Gay Protesters

According to Telesur, Valdemar said:

“There is persecution against the Church.

“It is something very serious, the state now determines the sexual behavior of citizens and forbids any attempt to return to normalcy…

“The state prohibits parents from helping their children to solve their sexual doubts and prohibits homosexuals from changing, but if they want to change their sex they fund that atrocity, it’s something diabolic.”

Same-sex marriage has been legalized in Mexico City and 9 of the nation’s 31 states. There are challenges in the 22 other states underway.

In Mexico, the Catholic Church is challenging the legalization of gay marriage. t.co/WFlld7ZhvB pic.twitter.com/vmfEtIVMT3

— PRI’s The World (@pritheworld) September 14, 2016

Anti-gay activists are planning a mega-rally this Saturday in Mexico City.

Below, watch a video of a march in Celaya, Guanajuato, last weekend during which a 12-year-old boy was photographed in the middle of the street trying to block the path of 11,000 demonstrators.

Young boy protests crowd of thousands against gay marriage in Mexico. #PowerOfOne 💥 #loveislove #justiceisjustice pic.twitter.com/iU3FBNQAto

— Sally Kohn (@sallykohn) September 14, 2016

(Image via Facebook)

The post Catholic Church in Mexico Accuses Government of ‘Persecution’ Over Gay Rights appeared first on Towleroad.

Catholic Church in Mexico Accuses Government of ‘Persecution’ Over Gay Rights

Matthew Dempsey Explains Why Gay Men Fear Aging – WATCH

Psychotherapist Matthew Dempsey is back and in his latest video he’s talking about why gay men, and also women for that matter, fear aging.

The root cause, Dempsey explains, is that we live in a culture driven by, more than anything, consumerism and marketing. The emergence of youth culture and a youth market meant that companies and corporations could easily identify who they wanted to sell things to. Which meant they could figure out a way to target buyers and turn a profit more easily.

The problem with youth-obsessed culture is that we unwittingly internalize the message that youth is the most important thing in life. Dempsey explains that we often find ourselves buying into the notion that, “When you’re younger, you’re more valuable”, because “it’s where more attention and money goes.” The end result? “[We] want to reflect what we believe is most valuable because it’s just human nature. We want to fit in. We want to belong. We want to know that we connect with others and that other people will see us valuable too.”

PREVIOUSLY: Matthew Dempsey and Broderick Hunter Find Out If ‘Masculinity’ Makes a Man More Attractive – WATCH

Of course, Dempsey calls bulls*t on the idea that youth is the most important thing in life. The way to counterbalance the instinct to devalue ourselves as we age, he says, is to focus on “our passions, the relationships in our lives, because those are the things that actually make us light up so we can then cast away the dark fears that we’re going to somehow age out of the ability to be loved.”

Watch, below.

The post Matthew Dempsey Explains Why Gay Men Fear Aging – WATCH appeared first on Towleroad.

Matthew Dempsey Explains Why Gay Men Fear Aging – WATCH

Hillary Gets Last Laugh in Incredible 'Between Two Ferns' Q&A (Video)

The presidential candidate’s well-regarded, but little known, sense of humor shines in the Zach Galifianakis clip.

www.advocate.com/comedy/2016/9/22/hillary-gets-last-laugh-incredible-between-two-ferns-qa-video

Get To Know Bob Mizer, The Physique Photog Behind America’s First Gay Mag

The name Bob Mizer may not mean anything to you, but his story is the stuff of legend. In 1945, the 24-year-old spent his time lurking around California’s Muscle Beach, convincing its bulky, bikini-clad denizens to participate in provocative photoshoots and short films, wearing tiny posing straps (an early ancestor of the g-string, each sewn by Mizer’s surprisingly supportive mother out of tube socks and thin strips of elastic.)

Related: Bel Ami Helps Preserve The Beefcake Legacy Of Athletic Model Guild’s Bob Mizer

That same year, Mizer opened the Athletic Model Guild as a means to market his photography, inadvertently inventing “physique photography” as we now know it. Although bodybuilders had certainly been photographed before, it had never been with such a slyly seductive lens aimed at a gay audience. In 1951, he launched Physique Pictorial, which was the very first gay magazine to ever be released to the public worldwide.

Related: PHOTOS: First American Museum Exhibit Of Bob Mizer And Tom Of Finland’s Physique Art

As The New Yorker reports in its excellent piece on the late Mizer, he’d “produced more than a million negatives and some three thousand hours of film and video” by the time of his death in 1993. He previously highlighted some of his strongest work 1968’s “Thousand Model Directory,” which Taschen Books is now re-releasing  in two volumes that will instantaneously transform any coffee-table into a beefcake table.

Related: Stroke Artwork Goes From Under The Mattress To Out In The Open

The original copies were little 98-page books and the images were so tiny — 12 to a page — that they were as infuriating as they were seductive. Fortunately, Taschen used the original 4 x 5 negatives to present these male specimen in all their glory — or at least as much glory as was legal in 1968.

You can get order both volumes for $99, and the collection includes an hour-long DVD featuring 18 of his erotic black-and-white films, which range from simple posedowns to campy “sword and sandal” male burlesque.

Here are some highlights from the collection: 

www.queerty.com/get-know-bob-mizer-physique-photog-behind-americas-first-gay-mag-20160922?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+queerty2+%28Queerty%29

Gay Teen Sues High School After He Couldn’t Bring Boy To Dance

A former student is suing his Memphis, Tennessee Catholic high school under Title IX for refusing to let him take a male date to his homecoming dance, arguing it unlawfully discriminated against him on the basis of his sexual orientation.

Lance Sanderson, 19, asked permission to bring a male date to an upcoming dance during the end of his junior year at Christian Brothers High School (CBHS), an all-boys private school. He was told via email by his principal that he “really struggle[d]” with allowing Sanderson to bring a boy to the dance. When Sanderson posted the email to Twitter, he was reprimanded and told he could no longer be a school photographer, as he had been, even though he was not accused of violating any rules.

Related: Gay Man Fired By Catholic Diocese Files Federal Lawsuit

The school had no rules against bringing another male to a dance. Their code of conduct still states, “All CBHS students should feel safe, secure and accepted regardless of color, race, background, appearance, popularity, athletic ability, intelligence, personality, sexual orientation, religion or nationality.”

Sanderson felt anything but safe, secure and accepted.

He put up a petition on Change.org, which received support from tens of thousands of people, but it was ultimately not successful in changing the school’s mind.

In the petition, Sanderson states that he had been out at his school since freshman year and that when he first brought up the idea of bringing a same-sex date to homecoming a school official told him they didn’t discriminate.

“But when that school official left over the summer, I was met with harsh opposition by my school,” he wrote. “One administrator told me that even though some people interpreted Pope Francis’s teachings on the issue as meaning they should support same-sex couples, these people are, ‘not the authority to which Christian Brothers High School is accountable.’”

Related: Pope Francis Clarifies Earlier Remarks About Gay People

In the days leading up to the dance, the school began to broadcast daily messages over the intercom that students were not allowed to bring boys from other schools as dates.

The lawsuit states that this left Sanderson feeling “bullied by both the school administration and by some of the students.”

“As a private school, CBHS held itself out to be nondiscriminatory with regard to sexual orientation,” Sanderson’s attorney, Manis, told NBC. “In our eyes, it seems very clear those were hollow words…They were not interested in treating [Sanderson] the same as other students.”

He chose not to attend the dance, and CBHS sent him home for a “cooling off” period of indeterminate length. When he returned a week later, he says he felt unwelcome.

“Everyone thought I had been expelled,” Sanderson said. “It was pretty clear that I wasn’t welcome on campus…I was sure it wasn’t going to be good for me to be there for the rest of the year.”

“I was very active at school,” he said. “It was a big part of my life, and it was all of a sudden gone. I was alone 24/7.”

Sanderson and the school worked out an agreement where he would finish his senior year with online classes and at-home study. He received his diploma that spring but did not attend the graduation ceremony.

With his lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Circuit Court, Sanderson is seeking up to $1 million from CBHS.

Related: LGBTQ Rights Groups Ask Big 12 Not To Include BYU Over Discriminatory Policies

“We have confirmation that CBHS receives federal funding and also potentially state funding for certain programs at the school,” Howard Manis, one of Sanderson’s lawyers, said. “That makes them responsible for following the letter of the law under Title IX.”

While Title IX does not specifically include LGBTQ persons in its language concerning protection against sex discrimination in federally funded education programs and activities, recent court rulings have set precedent that they are to be protected under the law.

This includes a ruling by a federal judge in California who sided with two lesbians who sued Pepperdine, a private Christian university.

“I hope they don’t do this to anyone else in the future,” Sanderson, who now attends DePaul University, said of CBHS, “and that other schools that try to abide by similar philosophies don’t do this to their students. I really don’t want anyone else to go through what I went through this year.”

www.queerty.com/gay-teen-sues-high-school-couldnt-bring-boy-dance-20160922?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+queerty2+%28Queerty%29