This gay Instagrammer loves Trump and wore blackface for Halloween, insists he’s not racist
The old “I’m not racist, I love black people” excuse.

www.queerty.com/gay-instagrammer-loves-trump-wore-blackface-halloween-insists-hes-not-racist-20171101?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+queerty2+%28Queerty%29

Chuck Schumer, Tonya Harding, Gay Lions, Brett Ratner, Papadopoulos, Casey Affleck, Instagram: HOT LINKS

WHERE IS YOUR LEADERSHIP? Chuck Schumer fires back at Trump on Senate floor: “President Trump where is your leadership? The contrast between President Bush’s actions after 9/11 and President Trump’s actions this morning could not be starker.”

GEORGE PAPADOPOULOS. Plea reveals more evidence that Jeff Sessions lied under oath: ‘According to numerous reports and former campaign adviser George Papadopoulos’ guilty plea for making false statements to the FBI, Sessions and Trump participated in a March 2016 conversation about whether Trump should meet with Putin — a meeting in which Papadopoulos made clear he could arrange a Trump-Putin rendezvous because of his “connections.”

INSTAMEDDLING. Facebook details Russian meddling via social photo app: “Facebook detailed the extent of Russia’s election interference campaign on Instagram today during its second congressional hearing. Facebook general counsel Colin Stretch said that 120,000 posts by Russian election attackers reached 16 million Americans from October through the election, and the posts reached an additional 4 million Americans prior to October. That’s on top of the 126 million Americans reached by Russian election propaganda on Facebook.”

BRETT RATNER. Six women accuse director/producer of sexual harassment. “In interviews with the Los Angeles Times, Henstridge and five other women accused Ratner of a range of sexual harassment and misconduct that allegedly took place in private homes, on movie sets or at industry events.”

CASEY AFFLECK. Barred from Oscars over sexual harassment? “Now there is a petition circulating — with around 6,000 signatures as of writing — asking the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) not to invite Affleck back to 2018’s Oscars, which will be held on March 4. And the voices on Twitter are even louder.”

DUSTIN HOFFMAN. Actor releases statement in response to sexual harassment allegations.

JEREMY PIVEN. CBS exploring groping allegations from actress who appeared on Entourage.

ANIMAL KINGDOM. Gay lions spotted love-making in Kenya.

UTOPIA. Bjork shows off cover art for latest album.

BACKWARDS SONG OF THE DAY. “Gone Been U Since”.

FAKE APPLE STORE OF THE DAY. This NYC subway station.

TRAILER OF THE DAY. I, Tonya.

HUMP DAY HOTTIE. Ahmad.

The post Chuck Schumer, Tonya Harding, Gay Lions, Brett Ratner, Papadopoulos, Casey Affleck, Instagram: HOT LINKS appeared first on Towleroad.

Chuck Schumer, Tonya Harding, Gay Lions, Brett Ratner, Papadopoulos, Casey Affleck, Instagram: HOT LINKS

Secret Brexit Impact Papers MUST Be Published By Government, Commons Decides

Ministers are to be forced to publish secret papers on the impact of Brexit on the UK economy after a landmark Commons defeat for the Government.

Labour hailed a major “victory for Parliament and democracy” as MPs passed an Opposition Day motion demanding that the confidential documents be handed over to a select committee.

Commons Speaker John Bercow ruled that the vote was binding on ministers and insisted that they had to respond as soon as possible.

He said that ministers could find themselves in contempt of Parliament if they refused the expressed will of the Commons.

After hours of passionate debate, Brexit minister Steve Baker decided against putting the motion to a vote amid fears that Tory rebels were set to side with Labour to demand publication.

On Monday the government published the list of 58 sectors that have been looked at, ranging from aerospace and aviation to tourism and legal services.

But it has argued that releasing them would undermine its negotiating position with the EU.

Labour used an archaic Parliamentary tactic, called ‘an Humble Address’, to force a binding vote to demand the hand-over of the confidential papers.

During the debate, Tory MPs Anna Soubry, Sarah Wollaston and even Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg called for the documents to be sent to the Brexit Select Committee.

www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/secret-brexit-impact-papers-s-must-be-handed-to-mps-commons-decides-landmark-vote_uk_59fa1abee4b0b0c7fa37a5a7

HRC Celebrates the Start of National Adoption Month

Post submitted by Jean-Phillipe Regis, Senior Manager, Children, Youth and Families

Today begins HRC’s annual celebration of National Adoption Month, a nationwide effort to bring awareness to the more than 400,000 children and youth waiting for a permanent family.

Here are some ways you can celebrate National Adoption Month with HRC’s All Children – All Families Project:

• Check out our tips for finding an LGBTQ-friendly adoption or foster care agency
• Search for adoption or foster care agencies that have received HRC’s Seal of Recognition for supporting and serving LGBTQ families
• Subscribe to All Children – All Families’ newsletter for the latest resources and best practices in child welfare
• Watch and share our webinar for foster parents and caregivers for tips on being affirming to LGBTQ youth

This year’s celebration shines a light on the thousands of teenagers in foster care — many of whom are LGBTQ — and their struggle to find loving, permanent families. Most recent data shows that there are over 12,000 young people between ages 15 and 17 waiting to be adopted. Researchers have found that up to 20 percent of youth in foster care identify as LGBTQ. This means as many as 2,500 of these teenagers waiting to be adopted could be LGBTQ.

As agencies recruit and license more homes for these young people, HRC helps them recognize that LGBTQ households are an important component of the diverse spectrum of prospective families in this country. Research in the field has long confirmed the significant number of LGBTQ families across the nation and has identified a large pool of LGBTQ adults interested in becoming adoptive parents.

For these reasons, HRC Foundation’s All Children – All Families Project has worked over the past decade to provide support, resources and tools to increase the capacity of child welfare agencies to better assist LGBTQ adults interested in becoming adoptive parents and LGBTQ youth in foster care. The project has worked with more than 90 participating agencies and 60+ have earned HRC’s “Seal of Recognition.” These agencies are working to ensure more LGBTQ youth in foster care have access to competent and affirming support services and LGBTQ families are considered as potential forever homes for children and youth awaiting adoption.​

Learn more about All Children–All Families’ work to promote LGBTQ cultural competency in adoption and foster care at hrc.org/acaf.

Want to stay up-to-date on All Children – All Families resources and activities? Subscribe to “Field Forward,” the program’s monthly e-newsletter at hrc.im/field-forward.

www.hrc.org/blog/hrc-celebrates-the-start-of-national-adoption-month?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss-feed

Neil Patrick Harris’ adorable family wins Halloween again
Their costume game is strong.

www.queerty.com/neil-patrick-harris-adorable-family-wins-halloween-20171101?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+queerty2+%28Queerty%29

The First Teaser from ‘Love, Simon’, a Greg Berlanti-Directed Gay Coming Out Love Story: WATCH

Greg Berlanti (Dawson’s Creek, Brothers & Sisters, Green Lantern, Everwood, Political Animals, Arrow, The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow) is directing Love, Simon, the film adaptation of Becky Albertalli’s “coming-of-age coming-out” novel Simon vs The Homo Sapiens Agenda.

The film is due for release in March, but Warner Bros. just released the first, Halloween-themed, teaser along with some images you can view over at EW.

The first poster art was revealed earlier this month.

Watch:

Love, Simon stars Jurassic World‘s Nick Robinson and also features Katherine Langford, Josh Duhamel, Jennifer Garner, Miles Heizer, and Tony Hale.

The film’s synopsis:

Everyone deserves a great love story. But for seventeen-year old Simon Spier it’s a little more complicated: he’s yet to tell his family or friends he’s gay and he doesn’t actually know the identity of the anonymous classmate he’s fallen for online. Resolving both issues proves hilarious, terrifying and life-changing.

Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger , who co-exec produce the new NBC show This Is Us, wrote the script. The film is being produced by Wyck Godfrey and Marty Bowen of Temple Hill and Pouya Shabazian.

Said Berlanti to EW about choosing to direct the film: “There’s this one section of the film where Simon imagines this one boy and imagines them kissing underneath the mistletoe at Christmas. In every other major studio film, it’s always the guy and the girl. And there was something so powerful about it being just a guy imagining himself with this other guy in a film again that was going to be marketed and sold as a mainstream romantic comedy.”

The post The First Teaser from ‘Love, Simon’, a Greg Berlanti-Directed Gay Coming Out Love Story: WATCH appeared first on Towleroad.

The First Teaser from ‘Love, Simon’, a Greg Berlanti-Directed Gay Coming Out Love Story: WATCH

A Glacier That Could Add 11 Feet To The Sea Level Is Dangerously Close To Melting

Totten glacier, the largest in East Antarctica, is being melted from below by warm water that reaches the ice.

Up until now it wasn’t entirely clear what was pushing this warm water towards the glacier however a research team at the University of Texas has made the worrying discovery that it is in fact intense winds that are to blame.

While in the past this wouldn’t be as much of a problem, climate change is expected to see the intensity of these winds increase significantly in the future.

That turns it into a very big problem because Totten just so happens to contain enough ice to raise the global sea level by a staggering 11 feet. It’s also considered the plug that locks in the ice of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet.

“Totten has been called the sleeping giant because it’s huge and has been seen as insensitive to changes in its environment,” said lead author Chad Greene, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics (UTIG).

“But we’ve shown that if Totten is asleep, it’s certainly not in a coma ― we’re seeing signs of responsiveness, and it might just take the wind blowing to wake it up.”

The team discovered that the glacier speeds up its flow towards the sea when winds over Antarctica’s southern ocean are particularly strong.

What happens is that the wind pulls warm water up from the deep ocean and onto the continental shelf in a process that’s called upwelling.

Once the warm water reaches the coast it then starts to circulate under the floating ice portion of the glacier and in turn cause it to melt into the sea.

“It’s like when you blow across a hot bowl of soup and little bits of noodles from the bottom begin to swirl around and rise to the top,” said Greene.

The reason Totten is a cause for such concern is because of the fact that much of the ice that would be melting would be land-locked, so ice that traditionally would never have entered the ocean. Of course climate change is changing that.

“Ice sheet sensitivity to wind forcing has been hypothesised for a long time, but it takes decades of observation to show unequivocal cause and effect,” said Donald Blankenship, a senior researcher at UTIG who contributed to this study and Roberts’ study.

“Now we’re at the point where we can explicitly show the links between what happens in the atmosphere, what happens in the ocean, and what happens to the Antarctic Ice Sheet.”

www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/glacier-that-could-add-11-feet-to-the-sea-level-is-dangerously-close-to-melting_uk_59f9ed14e4b00c6145e3373b

Egypt and Russia Must Not Be Allowed To Remove Inclusive Language from UN’s Olympics Resolution

In advance of each Olympics, the United Nations General Assembly passes an “Olympic Truce Resolution” to pledge support for the Olympic spirit, for the athletes and for the host country. The resolution includes a reference to “Principle 6” of the Olympic Charter, which commits the Olympics to not discriminate on the basis of a number of factors, including sexual orientation. This year, however, Egypt and Russia are working to remove all references to Principle 6 from the resolution, because of the language on sexual orientation.   

“Russia and Egypt – two of the world’s worst violators of LGBTQ human rights – are trying to spread their hatred and intolerance and undermine the Olympic spirit,” said HRC Global Director Ty Cobb. “This is not just a fight over words on a piece of paper, this is an attempt to spread their anti-LGBTQ views all around the world, and even into the Olympics, which are supposed to be about equality and inclusion. The UN must stop this and stand for inclusion and tolerance.”

Earlier this month, Egyptian authorities arrested at least six men for “promoting sexual deviancy” after waving a rainbow flag at a concert in Cairo. These arrests have led to a crackdown on LGBTQ people in Egypt, with a group of Egyptian lawmakers proposing a broad anti-LGBTQ law last week which criminalizes LGBTQ people and even speech about LGBTQ issues.

In the Russian republic of Chechnya, authorities have rounded up and detained more than 100 men in secret prisons, under suspicion that they are gay or bisexual. Chechen leaders have denied these accusations, going so far as to deny the very existence of LGBTQ people in Chechnya. It is not clear that the Russian government has done anything to stop the violence,  while there have been numerous verified reports of torture and at least three and possibly as many as 20 men have been killed.

The 2016 Games in Rio were noted for being the most LGBTQ-inclusive Olympics in history, with a record number of openly lesbian, gay and bisexual competitors taking part. This was in stark contrast to the 2014 Sochi Olympics held in Russia, where a hateful “anti-propaganda” law targeted Russia’s LGBTQ community and prohibited public support for equality in the country.  

While Egypt rounds up LGBTQ people for flying rainbow flags and Russia turns a blind eye toward Chechnya’s LGBTQ ‘purge,’ they are attempting to bully the UN into supporting their discriminatory actions. The world community must denounce Egypt and Russia for their actions, and not acquiesce to this hatred.

The United Nations is set to vote on the Olympic Truce Resolution in the coming weeks.

www.hrc.org/blog/egypt-and-russia-must-not-be-allowed-to-remove-inclusive-language-from-uns?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss-feed