Antigay Pseudo-Historian David Barton Writing God-Filled Textbooks For Public Schools

David Barton. Via Vimeo.

David Barton has made a name for himself as an evangelical talking head and the author of factually inaccurate “history” books, including one that was recalled by its publisher over its loose relationship with the truth.

Now, if a Periscope from his son Tim of a meeting between Barton and representatives of Gateway Church is to be believed, students will be “treated” to his take on the world.

Related: Christians Who Posed As Gay Pothead Zombies To Spread Hate Hit With $104 Million Lawsuit

“I just contracted, about two weeks ago, we’re doing a government textbook, a national government textbook, but it will very much be in this vein. But it will meet all the Texas TEKS standards and all the national standards for any state. It can be used in any state. Except it will have a lot of God in it,” Barton says.

This is not particularly shocking to hear, coming from a guy who has called not allowing religion to influence the government a “twisted, perverted form of separation of church and state.”

“After we get done with this,” he continued, “our next project is to write a history curriculum. We’ve got these old history books and you cannot read an old history book without seeing God all over the place, because God was just involved.”

Barton is also staunchly antigay, comparing homosexuality to incest and has said he does not believe there will ever be a vaccine for HIV/AIDS because God is punishing gay people.

Related: After School Satan Club Coming To An Elementary School Near You

He was also one of the evangelical leaders at a rally Marco Rubio and Donald Trump attended in Orlando exactly two months after the shooting at Pulse, and was also on the Republican National Convention platform committee. Which, you might recall, was so antigay it even upset the Log Cabin Republicans.

Watch a video of Barton making his remarks about writing God-filled textbooks below, Via Right Wing Watch.

feedproxy.google.com/~r/queerty2/~3/46st4UKLPx8/antigay-pseudo-historian-david-barton-writing-god-filled-textbooks-public-schools-20160831

Dolly Parton Talks Gay Family Members, Helping People Come Out

Dolly Parton. Photo by Linda Stanley, CC 2.0.

Dolly Parton embraces the support she has received from the LGBTQ community, singing their praises in a new interview. She also revealed that she has gay and lesbian family members, although it took some years for that to become evident.

Related: Dolly Parton Hypes Her New Dance Track, “I Am A Wee Bit Gay”

“We were just mountain people, and I did not know at that time – I sure did not,” she told PrideSource when asked if she knew any gay people growing up.

She recalled hearing a couple of men downtown being called “queers,” as a teenager, which she thought just meant they were different.

“It didn’t take me long to know that people were different and that was always fine with me ’cause I was different too, and I embraced and accepted them and I knew them. I knew them well,” Parton remembered. “But no, in my early days I did not know. But I know a lot of them now! I have a huge gay and lesbian following and I’m proud of ’em, I love ’em and I think everybody should be themselves and be allowed to be themselves whoever they are, whatever they are.”

She said she would eventually learn that there were gay members of her own family.

“And later on, I did find out I have many gays and lesbians in my own family. We accept them, we embrace them. Oh, there are some in the mountains who still don’t know quite what to make of it or how they should feel about it, but they’re ours and they’re who they are and we know they’re wonderful and they’re like us. We love the fact that they are who they are and we nurture that. We don’t try to make them feel separate or different. We embrace it,” she said.

Related: Cher Laughs At Donald Trump’s Pledge To Protect The LGBTQ Community

She has even helped usher people out of the closet.

“I say, ‘You need to let people know who you are and you need to come on out. You don’t need to live your life in darkness – what’s the point in that? You’re never gonna be happy; you’re gonna be sick. You’re not gonna be healthy if you try to suppress your feelings and who you are,’” she recounted.

Parton also reported having transgender members of her staff.

“Whether it’s about being gay or whatever, a lot of people do me like they used to do my mama and come to talk to me about things. Hopefully I’m able to help. I think I have,” she said.

“They’ve had to go through so much that I think they’re very emotional and tenderhearted and more open to feelings, so I’ve just learned the same things I try to learn from everybody. I know they’re good people and I’ve tried to learn from that as well. They’re very creative, most of them. And I think that also comes from just embracing the fact that they’re different. Most of the gays I know just want to make the world a more beautiful place like I do,” she said when asked what she has learned from the gay people in her life.

Related: Dolly Parton Admits “Sometimes Drag Queens Look More Like Me Than I Do”

Parton is currently on tour supporting her album “Pure & Simple.”

feedproxy.google.com/~r/queerty2/~3/XZ9I6F-seGw/dolly-parton-talks-gay-family-members-helping-people-come-20160831

NEW MUSIC: Peter Broderick, Ólafur Arnalds, Eluvium

This week in New Music: Peter Broderick (above) returns with a mostly-solo-piano album based on the work of John Cage, Ólafur Arnalds shows his love for Iceland in Island Songs and Eluvium rounds off a perfect afternoon of music.

Peter Broderick – Partners

Partners is Peter Broderick’s…oh…maybe 20th album. Something like that. Officially it’s album number seven but when you add in soundtracks, collaborations, exhibition accompaniments, installations etc. it all adds up to a huge and hugely impressive body of work. And he’s still only 29.

One thing you’ll find with Broderick is that he never looks backwards, generally moves forwards, sometimes moves slightly left of center but is never, ever predictable.

Following on from last year’s brilliant Colours of the Night, Partners is a homage of sorts to John Cage and as such it’s a concept album in which Broderick – apparently – used Cage’s composition techniques to remove the composer’s presence. Or something. As the stated intent the album is a failure, opening as it does with a spoken-word/piano piece about…who knows…what’s going on in Peter’s mind and closing with a particularly heartfelt cover of Brigid Mae Powers’ “Sometimes.”

In between, you have a version of Cage’s “In a Landscape” along with four original piano pieces given warmth with Broderick’s background vocal accompaniment.

In Broderick’s oeuvre, Partners is a return of sorts to his earlier work on albums like Docile and Float. Alone, it’s too beautiful to be a detached experiment.

Olafur Arnalds – Island Songs

Which leads us on nicely to composer and sometimes Broderick collaborator Olafur Arnalds’ latest project Island Songs, a collection of seven tracks recorded over seven weeks in seven locations in Iceland.

You could see Island Songs as a companion piece Arnalds’ quite stunning 2011 album Living Rooms Songs but he has moved out of home in Reykjavik to explore the island.

Icelandic musicians seems to be in love with their island (in fairness, there is an awful lot to love) and they like nothing better than getting it down in sound. See “Óveður” by Sigur Ros as a recent example – the track was accompanied by a 24-hour “slow TV” event, essentially a drive around Iceland’s Route 1.

It’s hard to know what to say about Island Songs. Like everything Arnalds touches it is a thing of beauty. Every track more or less neatly fits into the “modern classical” genre but as collaborations they are given extra depth. The opening track “Árbakkinn” is a spoken word piece with Einar Georg, a poet and retired teacher. “Particles” features Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir from Of Monsters and Men on vocals and is, quite honestly, one of the most wonderfully quiet and affecting pieces of music you are likely to hear this – or any other – year.

Eluvium – False Readings On

Rounding off perfectly for this week we have a new album from Eluvium aka Matthew Cooper (like Peter Broderick, from Oregon). 2013’s Nightmare Ending was a double album, epic in scale for fans of experimental drone/classical/elctronica.

False Readings On is, according to Cooper, inspired by “themes of cognitive dissonance in modern society.” Right so. Based on the three tracks available prior to the album’s release this Friday it’s also the perfect ending to an afternoon preceded by Broderick’s Partners and Arnalds’ Island Songs.

The post NEW MUSIC: Peter Broderick, Ólafur Arnalds, Eluvium appeared first on Towleroad.

feeds.towleroad.com/~r/towleroad/feed/~3/-IoGdKXxhVY/

Boxers or Briefs? Guys With Hairy Chests Drop Their Shorts and Spill – WATCH

If you like guys with hairy chests you’ll likely enjoy the latest installment of The Underwear Expert’s popular web series, “Boxers or Briefs?”

For those unfamiliar, the series features host MarkEMiller interviewing various categories of men to find out about their underwear preferences. He also puts on a little bit of a peep show for viewers, having his interviewees strip down to their skivvies.

And this week it’s all about guys with fur.

Previously, UE has talked with cat lovers, Pokemon Go players, tatted up guys, hot yogis, shirtless fitness instructors, dog lovers, naked Tom of Finland models, shirtless parkour athletes, Democratic primary voters, dodgeball players, WeHo kickball players, DJs, dancers, CrossFit-ers, male models, and men on the street in Hollywood, WeHo, and Santa Monica about what they like to wear under their shorts.

Watch, below.

The post Boxers or Briefs? Guys With Hairy Chests Drop Their Shorts and Spill – WATCH appeared first on Towleroad.

feeds.towleroad.com/~r/towleroad/feed/~3/vpM2zo6TrkY/

Mike Pence Ran a Conservative Think Tank That Published Anti-Gay Articles

Mike Pence ran a conservative think tank and publication that published anti-gay articles and also denounced the presence of AIDS activists at the 1996 Republican National Convention.

As president of the Indiana Policy Review from 1991 to 1994, Pence implicitly sanctioned anti-gay articles that called on gay journalists to out themselves to expose their ‘bias’ and conflated homosexuality with pedophilia and disease. Right Wing Watch reports:

In one item titled “The Pinked Newsroom,” published in the December 1993 issue, the publication lamented that The Wall Street Journal took part in a job fair for gay journalists. The piece claimed that “gaydom” was a “pathological condition” and argued that LGBT editors and reporters should not keep their sexuality a secret because it might slant their coverage. “[T]he more extreme of the gay movement consider themselves members of a sexual determined political party,” the piece explained.

A few months earlier, in August 1993, the journal, with Pence on the masthead, published a piece objecting to the idea of gay people serving in the military. The article, written by Col. Ronald Ray, a senior fellow at the [name foundation], stated that “homosexuals are not as a group able bodied. They are known to carry extremely high rates of disease brought on because of the nature of their sexual practices and the promiscuity which is a hallmark of their lifestyle.”

The article went on to list what the author described as “‘gay’ sexual practices” in great detail. It then claimed that proponents of allowing gays to serve in the military ignore “counter-espionage case histories involving homosexuals who became traitors through blackmail.”

Finally, Ray attempted to link homosexuality to pedophilia by citing NAMBLA and quoting a publication which claimed that “the love between man and boys is at the foundation of homosexuality.”

Documents unearthed by RWW also show that Pence penned a piece back in the October-November 1996 issue of Indiana Policy Review in which he bemoaned that year’s GOP convention as being “an endless line of pro-choice women, AIDS activists, and proponents of Affirmative Action.”

RELATED – Matt Baume Gives Mike Pence’s Vile Anti-LGBT Moments the Reading They Deserve: WATCH

The “AIDS activists” Pence refers to were an HIV positive female former Ford administration staffer and a 6 year-old child who was born with HIV.

But as RWW notes, those were likely not the activists Pence was really referring to: “His objection was likely that at the time, HIV/AIDS was still viewed as a gay issue. Pence clearly did not consider LGBT individuals part of the “pro-family” party he envisioned the GOP to be.”

The post Mike Pence Ran a Conservative Think Tank That Published Anti-Gay Articles appeared first on Towleroad.

feeds.towleroad.com/~r/towleroad/feed/~3/5Ief0RCh0bQ/

Review: Summer Luk Presents Trans Talent spotlights trans performers

www.glaad.org/blog/review-summer-luk-presents-trans-talent-spotlights-trans-performers

Pulse Hero Who Saved 70 to Be Honored by LGBT Military Group

Imran Yousuf helped usher dozens of Pulse patrons to safety during the nation’s worst mass shooting, and now the American Military Partner Association will honor his heroism.

www.advocate.com/military/2016/8/31/pulse-hero-who-saved-70-be-honored-lgbt-military-group