Mad Driver in Australian Road Rampage Described As Raging Homophobe (Video)
Dimitrious “Jimmy” Gargasoulas, 26, stabbed his gay brother in a fight over his sexuality, and hours later crashed his car into a crowd, killing 5 people including two children. Fifteen were injured.
www.advocate.com/world/2017/1/25/mad-driver-australian-road-rampage-described-raging-homophobe-video
It’s happening: Major LGBT march on Washington set for D.C. Pride weekend
Drawing inspiration from last weekend’s Women’s March on Washington, a gay activist in New York City has announced plans for the National Pride March, a “mass” LGBT protest at the nation’s capital on June 11.
David Bruinooge, 42, of Brooklyn, N.Y., announced the plan on Facebook and created an event page for those interested in keeping up with the progress of the protest.
“We urge all supporters, friends, and family to descend on DC for the Pride 2017 weekend (June 8-11th) to make sure our voices are heard,” part of the post reads.
The march will coincide with Capital Pride, D.C.’s annual pride celebration, and organizers hope to draw big numbers to send a clear message to Washington’s powered elite that LGBTQ rights are not to be threatened.
Related: Press Secretary has no idea whether Trump will roll back LGBT protections
“I was watching the events [of the Women’s March] unfold on TV and I was very proud and inspired by all the women, the strong women in our country who were kind of taking this to the street and getting their voices heard,” Bruinooge told the Washington Blade. “And in the back of my mind as an openly gay man I thought the gay community should be doing something like this to follow up on the momentum,” he added.
Ryan Bos, executive director of the Capital Pride Alliance, has been in touch with Bruinooge and is expected to work to bring the march into the fold of official Capital Pride events.
Related: Report: Trump closes down White House Office of AIDS Policy
Bos has already made one smart call, urging Bruinooge to change the name of the event, originally “Gays on the Mall,” to the inclusive “National Pride March.”
“This will be an ALL-inclusive and peaceful event,” reads the announcement on Facebook.
We will be following this story as it develops, and if the fates allow, you’ll know where to find us on June 11.
The last major LGBT protest in D.C. was the National Equality March in 2009, which called for full equality for LGBTQ people in all matters of civil law, in all 50 states. At that time, only five states had legal same-sex marriage. It drew participants in the hundreds of thousands.
Will Trump Use Bogus Voter Fraud Investigation to Push Voter Suppression Nationwide?
Donald Trump will use his bogus voter fraud claims to launch an investigation that will then be used to justify voter suppression, say political leaders and journalists, including John Bussey from the Wall Street Journal and Ari Berman of The Nation.
1. Trump’s lie that millions voted illegally in 2016 is prelude to massive voter suppression by GOP t.co/Y7TUmy7zMX pic.twitter.com/ogp7TmJ9RX
— Ari Berman (@AriBerman) January 24, 2017
The great political crisis we face is not voter fraud, which barely exists. It’s voter suppression and the denial of voting rights.
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) January 25, 2017
FOX News anchor Shep Smith made note of it in a newscast today calling out Trump’s blatant lies about fraud:
“John Bussey from the Wall Street Journal suggests that the big picture is here, start an investigation, find some incidents here, there, and yon of voter fraud, get people whipped up, and then put in rules to suppress the vote across the country, a pattern that we’ve seen in state after state over the past four or five years.”
Watch:
And check out the interview Trump did with ABC News anchor David Muir, in which Muir questions Trump about his claims, and the Pew report that Trump holds up as evidence.
When presented with the fact that the Pew report Trump is holding up so far has been “debunked,” that Muir called its author who told him that “they found no evidence of voter fraud,” Trump then attacks the author in an attempt to discredit:
“Really? Then why did he write the report? Excuse me? Then why did he write the report? According to Pew report, then he’s — then he’s groveling again. You know, I always talk about the reporters, they grovel when they wanna write something that you wanna hear but not necessarily millions of people wanna hear or have to hear.”
President Trump to launch investigation into alleged voter fraud: “I want the voting process to be legitimate.” t.co/zjjJ6vMqXU pic.twitter.com/Spb3a9ScQf
— ABC News (@ABC) January 25, 2017
Trump then says they’ll be pursuing an investigation into people registered who are “dead, illegal and two states, and some cases maybe three states.”
Incidentally, both Trump’s senior advisor Steve Bannon and his daughter Tiffany Trump are registered to vote in two states.
The post Will Trump Use Bogus Voter Fraud Investigation to Push Voter Suppression Nationwide? appeared first on Towleroad.
Will Trump Use Bogus Voter Fraud Investigation to Push Voter Suppression Nationwide?
Why Is Peter Thiel a Citizen of New Zealand?
The gay billionnaire and Trump supporter may consider the island nation an escape hatch in case of political or natural disasters.
www.advocate.com/people/2017/1/25/why-peter-thiel-citizen-new-zealand
Being president is really messing up Donald Trump’s TV watching
This just in: Donald Trump is adapting quickly to being POTUS. For the most part, things are going OK, though he’s not happy about how how much the job is cutting into his TV time. Also, he would like to take a vacation soon.
The New York Times got a behind-the-scenes peek at Mr. Trump’s daily life in the White House and it’s about as fascinatingly boring as you might imagine.
Related: Donald Trump just issued a press release boasting about how great he is; internet begs to differ
Here are a few facts we learned about Donald’s day-to-day routine:
Related: Activists climb crane near The White House to deliver not-so-subtle message to the masses
Other facts glimpsed from the article include:
As for his family, Donald says Melania and Barron are back in New York recouping from last weekend’s exhausting inaugural festivities. They’ll return to Washington, D.C. for the weekend. The family is already planning a vacation. They’re eyeing a getaway to Mar-a-Lago the first weekend in February, just two weeks after Donald started his new job.
Remember when he said Hillary Clinton didn’t have the “stamina” to be President?
Related: Trapped in a glided cage: Does Melania Trump deserve our sympathy?
Student Director Rips School District’s Cowardly Parents After Play is Cancelled Over Gay Character: VIDEO
A high school in Fresno, California has denied claims that a student production of Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit was cancelled because the play features a gay character.
The play includes a lesbian postal clerk who turns a woman against her husband.
According to the Fresno Bee, Buchanan High student Jared Serpa (right), who directed the play, has claimed that school administrators shut down the production because an audience member said it could force parents to have uncomfortable conversations with their children.
Plays with gay characters isn’t the only thing that makes Clovis Unified uncomfortable…#bringbacknoexitt.co/tuioOM5XUZ
— The Fresnan (@thefresnan) January 24, 2017
This obviously has to do with CUSD catering to homophobic ideology and rhetoric. We realize Buchanan’s a good school. Please dig deeper
— Nicholas Crespin (@CrespinNicholas) January 21, 2017
In a video posted on Twitter, Serpa said:
“No. That just shows how cowardice the parent is for not talking to their child about reality and telling them that the world that they live in isn’t perfectly heterosexual like they want it to be.
“Talk with your children about reality. Don’t put them in this bubble and darkness…because you couldn’t find the courage to talk to your own child about the fact that people are different.”
Watch:
a main point… pic.twitter.com/8Eb7Jf5jrC
— Jared Serpa (@shortclayton) January 21, 2017
A petition on Change.org states:
“The reason we were given for the cancellation was something along the lines of there’s a lesbian character and some parents may have to explain to their child that some women love other women. That our audience doesn’t approve of homosexuality, and we should be playing to our audience.”
However, Clovis Unified School District spokesperson Kelly Avants said that the production was pulled because of sexual themes and other mature content.
“We own the fact that it should never have even been approved as a senior production in the first place. Being a K-12 institution, the expectation of our drama programs is that every production they do is to be age-appropriate content,” said Avants.
She added that the district has “done multiple other shows at the high school level that includes lesbian, gay or questioning characters. We would never think that that was reason to cancel a play, and certainly not after the play’s already going.”
The petition has been signed by close to 3,500 people.
A crowdfunding campaign to allow students to host the play off campus has raised more than $1,000.
The Fresno Art Museum has offered to stage the play in its Bonner Auditorium. However, no decision has yet been made on that offer.
(Jared Serpa image via Twitter)
The post Student Director Rips School District’s Cowardly Parents After Play is Cancelled Over Gay Character: VIDEO appeared first on Towleroad.
Feminist Icon Mary Tyler Moore Dead at 80
The beloved actress passed away Wednesday morning in Connecticut.
www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/2017/1/25/feminist-icon-mary-tyler-moore-dead-80
Former intern claims Piers Morgan used him to try to frame gay youth group for pedophilia
Author and journalist Benjamin Myers has claimed that as a News of the World intern, Piers Morgan tried to use him to help frame a gay youth group for pedophilia.
Myers made the claims on Twitter, where he said that as a teen he was paid to spy on the group for gay teens, as Morgan was convinced there must be something more sinister going on than just offering support to vulnerable LGBTQ youth.
Related: CNN gives Piers Morgan the boot, a look back at the host’s most memorable LGBT moments
He said Morgan assumed they must be involved in a child sex ring, despite having no evidence.
“And so that night I found myself in a youth club playing the role of a sexually confused 16-year-old who had just moved into the area and was seeking some friendship and, hopefully, according to my new reporter friend, the advances of some predatory nonce,” Myers wrote on Vice. “Ideally they would want to pass me and – fingers crossed – some of the younger members of the youth club into the grubby mitts of a child abuse ring.”
When Myers returned, assuring that the lesbian couple who ran the group were good people, Morgan was apparently unconvinced.
“No, no, no, I said. They’re good people. Really nice. Well-meaning,” Myers wrote. “You’ll have to go back next week, I was told. There must be something shady going on. We’ll find something. Don’t you worry. We’ll find something on them.”
Myers continued:
“Like a young eager news hound out to make his name I went back again. When the night was over and the reporter and photographer had enjoyed another curry, we met in the nearby pub…Was there even a hint of underage gay sex, they asked again. Can we frame the lesbians? No, I said. And by this time I had decided that even if there was anything dodgy I was not about to tell these cretins so that they could splash it all over the pages of a newspaper that would be read by three million people come Sunday. That would help nobody but them and Murdoch’s accountants.”
It was at that point that Myers decided he wanted nothing to do with the paper.
While the tweets appear to have been deleted, Pink News grabbed screenshots before they were taken down, which you can see below.
Morgan is upset at Ewan McGregor for skipping out on an interview with him, hence Myers’ last tweet about him being “one of the good guys.”
McGregor backed out of an appearance on “Good Morning Britain” when he realized Morgan was the presenter, objecting to his calling those at the recent Women’s March on Washington “rabid feminists.”
Related: Is a bread roll the source of Piers Morgan’s feud with Madonna?
Years after Myers realized Morgan’s willingness to sink low to get a story, Morgan would be forced to admit to having knowledge that he ran stories based on phone hacking while working as the paper’s editor, a scandal which ultimately shuttered the 164-year-old publication for good.
TV Icon Mary Tyler Moore Dead at 80
Television and cultural icon Mary Tyler Moore has died at the age of 80, the Washington Post reports:
Mara Buxbaum, a representative of Ms. Moore, announced the death in a statement. The actress, who had a home in Greenwich, struggled with diabetes much of her life and underwent brain surgery in 2011 to remove a benign tumor from the lining tissue around her brain.
Ms. Moore, who played the spunky housewife on “The Dick Van Dyke Show” in the 1960s and an idealistic career woman on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” in the 1970s, was an actress of dynamic range and accomplishment. She won a 1980 Tony Award for playing a quadriplegic sculptor in “Whose Life Is It Anyway?” and an Emmy for her role as a villainous orphanage director in the TV production “Stolen Babies” (1993). She was nominated for an Oscar as the frosty matriarch in “Ordinary People” (1980), Robert Redford’s directorial debut.
Photo: Mary Tyler Moore by Ben Merk/Anefo via Nationaal Archief is licensed under CC 3.0 unported.
The post TV Icon Mary Tyler Moore Dead at 80 appeared first on Towleroad.
Comcast's Xfinity On Demand to feature GLAAD Media Awards nominees
Comcast just announced partnership with GLAAD to curate more than 100 titles of GLAAD Media Awards-related content on Xfinity On Demand. Starting on January 31, in conjunction with the announcement of this year’s 28th Annual GLAAD Media Awards nominees, newly announced nominees, as well as previous award recipients will become part of the growing list of titles within the recently created Xfinity LGBTQ Film & TV Collection.
“Through this partnership, we’re giving these LGBTQ storytellers access to a platform that has the potential to reach tens of millions of viewers,” said Sarah Kate Ellis, GLAAD President & CEO. “We applaud Comcast for creating an experience that puts a spotlight on LGBTQ content and we’re proud to add our GLAAD Media Awards-related titles to their growing library of shows and movies.”
The Xfinity LGBTQ Film & TV Collection is available on the television, web and mobile devices. The new GLAAD content can be accessed by saying “GLAAD Media Awards” into the voice remote. The collection will include: Milk, Carol, Tangerine, The Imitation Game, The Kids Are Alright, Concussion, Beginners, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Bound & Gods and Monsters, and Brokeback Mountain.
The 28th Annual GLAAD Media Awards will take place on April 1 in Los Angeles and on May 6 in New York. The GLAAD Media Awards recognize and honor media for their fair, accurate, and inclusive representations of the LGBTQ community and the issues that affect their lives. The GLAAD Media Awards also fund GLAAD’s year-round work to amplify stories from the LGBTQ community that accelerate acceptance.
www.glaad.org/blog/comcasts-xfinity-demand-feature-glaad-media-awards-nominees
