Camp comic Rip Taylor dies, aged 84

The US comic and actor Rip Taylor had died, aged 84. He died yesterday in Beverley Hills, West Hollywood, according to his publicist, Harlan Boll.

Taylor was a US TV and comedy club regular for more than six decades. Born in Washington DC, he served in the Korean War. It was during his time in the army that he began his stand-up career, playing in clubs abroad.

He got his big break after being invited to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show. One of Taylor’s trademarks was pretending to cry whilst pleading with the audience to laugh, and Sullivan named him the “crying comedian.”

Related: Supermarket ALDI insists their mincing stereotype is totally straight

Countless further appearances followed on TV, including The Jackie Gleason Show, movies such as Wayne’s World 2, and on Jackass in the mid-90s. He toured with Judy Garland in the 1960s and frequently appeared with Debbie Reynolds during her Las Vegas shows.

He was popular as a voice actor, and also occasionally took more serious roles: he played Demi Moore’s boss in the 1993 movie, Indecent Proposal.

Taylor was known for his flamboyant style, large mustache, toupees and showering his audiences with confetti. Like his friend, Liberace, he maintained a silence around his private life. Early in his career, he married a showgirl named Rusty Rowe, but they divorced a short time later.

In later life, many assumed he was gay, even if he never said so. In 2005, Taylor was one of the Grand Marshals of the Washington DC Pride Parade.

However, in 2008, when described as “openly gay” by the author Brent Hartinger, he reacted with annoyance. Hartinger recalls receiving a message from Taylor saying, “You don’t know me to summarize I am openly gay. I don’t know you’re not an open heroin user. You see how that works? Think before you write.”

Reporting his death, Boll says Taylor is survived by his longtime partner, Robert Fortney.

Among those to pay tribute to Taylor was Billy Eichner.

“RIP, Rip,” tweeted Eichner. “I can’t imagine how much bullshit you had to deal with in an industry that decided it was finally cool to be a gay man in comedy, like, a year ago. Nevertheless you ignored all that and delighted people for decades. RIP.”

RIP, Rip. I can’t imagine how much bullshit you had to deal with in an industry that decided it was finally cool to be a gay man in comedy, like, a year ago. Nevertheless you ignored all that and delighted people for decades. RIP. t.co/uhtoxnNLGa

— billy eichner (@billyeichner) October 7, 2019

www.queerty.com/camp-comic-rip-taylor-dies-aged-84-20191007?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+queerty2+%28Queerty%29

SCOTUS to Hear Arguments on Whether it’s Legal to Fire Someone for Being Gay or Transgender

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday will start its term off with LGBTQ rights, hearing cases on Tuesday regarding whether someone can be fired from their job for being gay or transgender. Anthony Kennedy, who served as the swing vote on many LGBTQ rights cases over the past few decades, is no longer on the court.

The Washington Post reports: “The issue for the court is the reach of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which, besides protecting against workplace discrimination because of race, also prohibits discrimination ‘because of sex.’ For 50 years, courts read that to mean only that women could not be treated worse than men, and vice versa, not that discrimination on the basis of sex included LGBTQ individuals. The Trump administration says that is what the Supreme Court should find as well.”

The justices will hear arguments in three cases, including R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

The ACLU on that case: “Aimee Stephens had worked for nearly six years as a funeral director at R.G. and G.R. Harris Funeral Homes when she informed the funeral home’s owner that she is a transgender woman. Her employer fired her, and the EEOC sued on her behalf. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Aimee’s employer engaged in unlawful sex discrimination when it fired her because she’s transgender. R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes is asking the Supreme Court to review the case. The ACLU represents Aimee Stephens.”

The other two cases involve sexual orientation: Altitude Express v. Zarda from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and Bostock v. Clayton County from the Eleventh Circuit.

Zarda and Bostock will be argued together.

SCOTUSblog reports: ‘ Zarda (who died in 2014, and who is represented in the Supreme Court by the executors of his estate) was a skydiving instructor who sometimes told female clients that he was gay to make them feel more comfortable when they were strapped to him for a jump. Gerald Bostock received good performance reviews while working as the child-welfare-services coordinator for Clayton County, Georgia, for over a decade. Both men were fired – according to them, because they were gay. Zarda and Bostock went to federal court in New York and Georgia, respectively, where they argued that firing them because they were gay violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination “because of sex.” The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ruled that Bostock’s case could not go forward, because Title VII does not apply to discrimination based on sexual orientation. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit reached the opposite conclusion: It reasoned that discrimination based on sexual orientation is a “subset of sex discrimination.”‘

SCOTUSblog adds: ‘In their briefs in the Supreme Court, Bostock and Zarda argue that the text of Title VII clearly applies to discrimination based on sexual orientation: Someone who is fired or otherwise the victim of discrimination because of his sexual orientation – in their cases, for being men who are attracted to men – is undoubtedly a victim of discrimination because of his sex. After all, they reason, a woman would not have been fired for being attracted to men. Moreover, Title VII also bars employers from discriminating against individuals who do not conform to conventional gender stereotypes such as the idea that women should be attracted to men and men should be attracted to women.’

The post SCOTUS to Hear Arguments on Whether it’s Legal to Fire Someone for Being Gay or Transgender appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

SCOTUS to Hear Arguments on Whether it’s Legal to Fire Someone for Being Gay or Transgender

LGBTQ Activism Is the New Communism, Catholic Archbishop Says

Archbishop Marek Jędraszewski of Kraków calls the LGBTQ movement “totalitarian” and a “great threat to our freedom.”

www.advocate.com/religion/2019/10/07/lgbtq-activism-new-communism-catholic-archbishop-says