These guys are all in ‘secret relationships,’ but they just can’t keep quiet

There are virtually no scenarios that make having a “secret relationship” anywhere near acceptable. Relationships work when they have room to breathe, to fume, to grow.

Keeping things secret — whether one party is in the closet or married or in another primary relationship — is like a pressure cooker of conflict.

It might not be today or tomorrow or even next week, but at some point, something’s gonna blow.

Below, guys let off a little steam about their secret relationship predicaments on Whisper:

www.queerty.com/guys-secret-relationships-just-cant-keep-quiet-20161218?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+queerty2+%28Queerty%29

Celebrities who came out in 2016

www.glaad.org/blog/celebrities-who-came-out-2016

Calvin Klein Would Design for Melania Trump Even If Others Won't

The fashion world is divided on whether to associate their brands with a Trump of any name.

www.advocate.com/business/2016/12/18/calvin-klein-would-design-melania-trump-even-if-others-wont

Behemoth Jason Momoa forgoes shirt; Why you must own a magnificent fan; and more

You may remember towering behemoth Jason Momoa from Game of Thrones, but he’s also appearing as always-shirtless Aquaman in the upcoming Justice League movie. The short film below will get you acquainted with his past experiences (and present physique.)

Be warned: It includes lines like “Acting found me… she seduced me…” :/

Do you know what you need when life starts losing its luster? A magnificent fan:

We still haven’t fully recovered from the original versions of Robyn’s “Hang With Me,” and now here comes Lorde and Jack Antonoff with their own heartrending cover — because they want to kill us:

What, not dead yet? In that case, here comes “Transparent” star Alexandra Billings, with her own heartrending cover of Radiohead’s “Creep,” which she dedicates to transgender youth.

Dead? No worries. The new video for Boy Radio’s “Let’s Go Party” will give you life, and all’s well that ends well.

www.queerty.com/behemoth-jason-momoa-forgoes-shirt-must-magnificent-fan-20161218?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+queerty2+%28Queerty%29

Former CIA Chief Calls Trump ‘Moscow’s Useful Idiot’

President Barack Obama says the US will retaliate against Russia for allegedly hacking and trying to influence the US election. But President-elect Donald Trump refuses to acknowledge the intelligence assessment that Putin’s Russia did anything of the kind.

The former head of the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency, Michael Hayden, told PRI’s The World that Trump and his team need to realize this is not about them.

“This is not about their legitimacy,” he says. “They got that. He’s going to be president, and that’s fine. That’s the way it is. It’s not about them.”

“It’s about us,” Hayden emphasizes. “It’s about our democratic processes. And we want to go about defending those processes by finding out exactly what happened and staring truth squarely in the face.”

“He just needs to get over the fact that some people on the fringe might use this to challenge his legitimacy, which the center of the country is not doing.”

Hayden is the only man ever to head both the NSA (1999-2005) and the CIA (2006-2009). He’s also a former four-star general in the Air Force. He was one of 50 senior national security officials who served in Republican administrations to sign an open letter earlier this year to say that Trump was not qualified to be president.

In an opinion piece in the Washington Post, just before the election, Hayden called Trump “Russia’s useful fool.” He says he came to that conclusion after analyzing what the Trump campaign had said and not said. The “polezni durak” or “useful idiot” was a concept from Soviet times, Hayden writes, some naïve soul who’s “manipulated by Moscow, secretly held in contempt, but whose blind support is happily accepted and exploited.”

“Since I wrote that five weeks ago,” Hayden told PRI’s The World, “the [Trump] campaign has still refused to utter any criticism of Vladimir Putin, and then reject[ed] the high confidence judgement of a pretty good intelligence community. So, if anything, that’s been reinforced.”

“I’m trying to be both respectful and understanding here, but my ‘polezni durak’ — useful fool, useful idiot — description, as I said at the end of my article, is actually the most benign explanation I can come up with.”

As head of the NSA when the intelligence community concluded that Saddam Hussein had programs to build weapons of mass destruction, Hayden is aware of the limitations of intelligence. He says that although the intelligence community likes to protect its sources, the current situation is one of those rare occasions where the public interest might make it necessary to reveal the evidence behind the assessment.

In terms of Russia’s motives, Hayden says “if their objective was to mess with our heads, this has got to be the most successful covert influence campaign in history.”

“I mean did they really expect that the president-elect of the United States would be condemning, criticizing, or at a minimum refusing to accept the high-confidence judgement of his intelligence community, 35 days before he enters office. That is amazingly disruptive.”

Hayden says he himself has high confidence in the intelligence assessment. “I don’t go back for briefings, but I do read what is publicly available and I know the words that are used, when they’re used, and what the people still in government mean. And when good senior public officials attach their reputations to a phrase like ‘we have high confidence that the Russian Federation did all those things that we’ve listed,’ I take away from it a high confidence that that is indeed the truth.”

Hayden has a bigger worry, though, than the allegations of Russian meddling in the election, and that’s the fear that Trump will continue to refuse to accept the assessments of the intelligence community.

Trump is taking only one intelligence briefing a week, while both Obama and Georg W. Bush took briefings daily.

“Look,” Hayden asserts, “good intelligence creates the left-hand and right-hand boundaries of logical policy discussion. … If we deny ourselves those boundaries that intelligence creates, we run a much higher risk of being very unwise in how we respond [to] or lead global events.”

Vice President-elect Mike Pence is receiving briefings six days a week, according to sources cited by Reuters. Hayden suggests Pence could act as a filter for the president in the same way Zbigniew Brzezinski did as national security adviser for Jimmy Carter.

Overall, Hayden says he is concerned about the next four years, “but I also know my country has very strong institutions.”

“I also know that the president-elect was elected by the American people. Sovereignty matters. He deserves a chance to govern.”

This article first appeared on PRI The World.

The post Former CIA Chief Calls Trump ‘Moscow’s Useful Idiot’ appeared first on Towleroad.

Former CIA Chief Calls Trump ‘Moscow’s Useful Idiot’

After 20 years in business, NYC gay bar “G Lounge” will be shutting its doors

The slow, steady dismantling of Chelsea as a Manhattan gayborhood continues.

After twenty years in business, “G Lounge” will be shutting down operations on New Years Eve.

The roomy lounge opened its doors in 1996, and helped usher in a micro-trend called “lounge chic,” which… we were never quite sure what that was supposed to be. Basically, it boiled down to drinking frozen Cosmos and wearing tight-fitting shiny shirts. Something like that.

Related: How Do We Love Chelsea? Let Us Count The Ways

At the time, it was a big deal for G to feature large open windows that allowed passerby to ogle the customers playing bingo inside. Prior to that, gay establishments were uniformly dark, windowless, and inconspicuous.

G Lounge follows a small militia of other Chelsea gay bars and clubs that have come and gone over the years, including Splash, Champs, Rome, King, The Break, XL, XES, The Roxy, View Bar, and Rawhide.

Related: There Goes the Gayborhood…

A note on their Facebook page reads:

I’m sad to say after 20 years G Lounge is closing its doors permanently.

We want to thank everyone for their patronage and express our gratitude and recognition of our team over the years.

Come join the staff on our final weeks.

We love you, and see you soon.”

Since hearing the news, fans have been saying goodbye on G’s Facebook page.

“This is the most depressing news of my day,” one regular writes.

“Wow,” writes another. “I’m mad can’t see the strippers no more it’s probably because of the high ass taxes.”

“Chelsea is officially dead,” decrees a third. “So sad. So many memories. This is something…”

www.queerty.com/20-years-business-nyc-gay-bar-g-lounge-will-shutting-doors-20161218?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+queerty2+%28Queerty%29

Brady Bunch’s Susan Olsen Speaks Out, Finds it ‘Hilarious’ That She’s Being Called a Homophobe

Susan Olsen (formerly Cindy Brady of The Brady Bunch), was fired last week after hurling homophobic slurs online at Leon Acord-Whiting, the actor/writer/producer and activist behind the web series Old Dogs & New Tricks.

RELATED: Susan Olsen, aka The Brady Bunch’s Cindy Brady, Spews Homophobic Hate Online

Acord-Whiting had criticized Olsen, a Trump supporter, for spewing misinformation and lies on her radio show at L.A. Talk Radio. Acord-Whiting posted the exchanges, in which Olsen called him “the biggest faggot ass in the world the biggest pussy,” among other things, to his Facebook account and called on the station to fire Olsen, which they did. Backstory here.

Said Olsen to Acord-Whiting in one exchange:

“Hey there little pussy, let me get my big boy pants on and Reallly take you on!!! What a snake in the grass you are you lying piece of sh*t too cowardly to confront me in real life so you do it on Facebook. You are the biggest faggot ass in the world the biggest pussy! My Dick is bigger than yours Which ain’t sayin much! What a true piece of sh*t you are! Lying faggot! I hope you meet your karma SLOWLY AND PAINFULLY”

Now Olsen is speaking out again on Facebook about the firing: “And by the way, how does one get fired from a job they were never paid to do?”

She claims she was fired because she’s a Trump supporter: “This is only about me supporting Trump. And I still do!”

And she finds it hilarious that she’s being called a homomophobe: “Somehow the actual apology that I made days ago did not get posted. I am very sorry for ever hurting the LGBT community that I love so much. For that, I am sorry and frankly find it hilarious that I am being called a homophobe. What could be more rediculous??? I think that the real LGBT community knows that I have and always will support them. I love you!”

And says she’s taking a break from social media.

The post Brady Bunch’s Susan Olsen Speaks Out, Finds it ‘Hilarious’ That She’s Being Called a Homophobe appeared first on Towleroad.

Brady Bunch’s Susan Olsen Speaks Out, Finds it ‘Hilarious’ That She’s Being Called a Homophobe

16 Inspirational Voices for LGBTQ Equality in 2016: North Carolina Advocates for Change

As 2016 comes to a close, there is no doubt that this year was difficult for many in the LGBTQ and allied community. After a year of such celebration and momentous progress in 2015, 2016 was a shocking wake-up call to many about the realities that LGBTQ people face. From the rise in anti-LGBTQ legislation to the horrific shooting at Pulse, from the incidents of anti-transgender violence to the election of a presidential ticket that threatened to undermine equality and justice, we know that our job is more important now than ever before.

However, through these difficult times, we witnessed countless moments of inspiration. Throughout the year, time and time again, we saw people stand up and do what was right. Whether they were celebrities, politicians, a friend or just an acquaintance, we saw people stand up for equality and inspire us all. Their stories made us cry, gave us hope and reminded us that love will conquer hate.

On March 23, North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory signed HB2 – an outrageous and unprecedented anti-LGBTQ law. While the North Carolina House and Senate rammed through  the law in one day, backlash to the discriminatory measure continued for months, leading to McCrory’s defeat on Election Day.

With the legislation rammed through the legislature in a special, single day session with little opportunity for debate, transgender North Carolinians immediately took action against the hateful law.  Madeline Goss, Candis Cox and Tina Madison White spoke at rallys and events and testified against this dangerous law.

“I am thankful to be a part of the movement towards justice for all trans-people,” Goss told HRC. “We will overcome this, no matter what the odds, and the greater LGBTQ community has our back.”

Lennie Gerber and Pearl Berlin, a North Carolina couple together for a half century, also spoke out against HB2, urging voters to make their voices heard on Election Day.

“HB2 is totally unconstitutional,” Geber said in an HRC video. “It has cost us millions and millions of dollars. Every single vote counts and you can’t say ‘Well my vote doesn’t count.’ It does.”

It wasn’t just fair-minded North Carolinians from across the state who rallied against HB2. Big companies and big names publicly condemned McCrory and the North Carolina General Assembly for passing HB2, making it clear that discrimination is bad for business.

More than 200 major CEOs and business leaders, including many of North Carolina’s largest employers, signed an open letter calling for the full repeal of HB2. Major film studios and corporations, from PayPal to Deutsche Bank, stopped investments in the state because of HB2’s threat to employees and consumers.

While McCrory continued to stand by and defend the discriminatory law, artists including Beyoncé, Bruce Springsteen, Dead & Company, and Cyndi Lauper spoke out. Conventions withdrew from the state, taking substantial revenue with them.

On July 21, the NBA stood up to North Carolina lawmakers who refused to repeal HB2 by pulling its 2017 All-Star Game from Charlotte. In September, the NCAA moved all 2016-2017 championship events out of the state due to HB2. Following the NCAA’s lead, the ACC (Atlantic Coast Conference) and the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association (CIAA) also moved its championship games to other states.

The outpouring of support for North Carolina’s LGBTQ community was simply inspirational. The overwhelming outcry from business leaders, celebrities, organizations and advocates made headlines across the nation and nation. These groups and individuals led by example, sending a clear message that hate and discrimination will not be tolerated. Their voices, spirit and dedication only made us stronger and for that, we can’t thank them enough. 

Follow along with HRC’s blog in the coming days as we recognize the people who inspired us and gave us hope, courage and strength in 2016.

www.hrc.org/blog/16-inspirational-voices-for-lgbtq-equality-in-2016-north-carolina-advocates?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss-feed