SEE YOURSELF digital series contest now accepting pitches!

www.glaad.org/blog/see-yourself-digital-series-contest-now-accepting-pitches

Gay Syrian Refugee Murdered in Turkey

Muhammad Wisam Sankari was beheaded and mutilated in Tutkey, which has admitted many Syrian refugees but failed to protect the rights of LGBT ones.

www.advocate.com/world/2016/8/04/gay-syrian-refugee-murdered-turkey

'Good God': Megyn Kelly Now Fully Exasperated by Trump

Refusing to toe the corporate line, Fox journalist Megyn Kelly is gobsmacked — live on air — by the Republican candidate’s nonstop unforced errors.

www.advocate.com/election/2016/8/04/good-god-megyn-kelly-now-fully-exasperated-trump

Supreme Court Halts Virginia Trans Student's Bathroom Access (Temporarily)

Wednesday’s stay issued by the Supreme Court means that Gavin Grimm, a transgender high school student in Virginia, cannot use the boys’ bathroom at school.

www.advocate.com/transgender/2016/8/04/supreme-court-halts-virginia-trans-students-bathroom-access-temporarily

Gay, Bi Men Prefer Olympic Aquatics, Team GB Shows Why

Great Britain diving team for the 2016 Olympics, photos via Instagram.

A recent survey conducted by gay hookup site Squirt.org revealed that gay and bisexual men are most interested in swimming and diving at this year’s Olympic games in Rio.

Related: Attempts To Get Gay Hookup Ads Pulled From DC Metro Fail

The Great Britain diving team is a perfect example of why that is – I mean, would you look at these guys?!

They have been having fun and showing off on social media leading up to the games, and we count ourselves as a willing audience.

Related: Daley v. Laugher v. Mears: Which Team GB Diver Has The Best Ass? 

It helps that they are also such a pro-LGBTQ team. Tom Daley is an out gay athlete and he has received support from his straight teammates.

Both Jack Laugher and Chris Mears have posed for Gay Times magazine and spoken out for greater tolerance for gay athletes.

Related: Chris Mears Poses For Gay Times Nude Issue

The Great Britain team, which includes Daley, Laugher, Mears, Freddie Woodward and Daniel Goodfellow, appear to have made friends with Jamaican diver Yona Knight-Wisdom. He is representing his country as their first ever diver in Olympic competition and it appears the boys from Great Britain are making him feel welcome, as he has been appearing in many of their pictures.

Take a look at some of their most recent shenanigans, which they are sharing on their personal Instagram accounts.

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Tim Kaine Lays Into Pence, McCrory, Speaks Out For LGBTQ Rights

Tim Kaine speaking at a rally in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine appeared in Greensboro, North Carolina on Wednesday and LGBTQ rights were on his mind.

“In Philadelphia last week, there was a speaker, Sarah McBride, who made history. Some of you know her, she was the first transgender person ever to speak at a national convention. And she talked about the continuing battle we have in this nation to fight against discrimination,” Kaine said, referring to the 2016 DNC.

Related: Leaked DNC Email Calls McCrory “Moronic Little Bigot Of A Tarheel Governor”

“I know in North Carolina there’s been some pain over this issue,” Kaine continued. “They snuck through in the legislature this HB2, and they tried to introduce it kind of in the dead of night, and (thought), ‘Can we do an end run and make it happen really fast? And maybe people won’t notice, and maybe people won’t complain.’ But you all have stood up in a major way, and you’ve said, ‘This is not who we are, this is not who North Carolina is, these are not our values.’ And that’s one of the reasons North Carolina is so intensely focused on this race.”

Kaine shared that Roy Cooper, the state’s attorney general, who is running against Gov. McCrory in the gubernatorial race, told him he didn’t want people to think of North Carolina as going backwards.

“We gotta go forward, not backward,” Kaine said, which brought chants of “Forward together!”

Related: Donald Trump Promises To Protect LGBTQ People, Twitter Reacts

The North Carolina NAACP has been using the phrase. NC NAACP President Rev. William Barber II gave a speech at the 2016 DNC.

Kaine pointed out that Republican vice presidential candidate Mike Pence also tried to enact discriminatory laws and when businesses began to pull out of Indiana as a result he “had to do a u-turn.” Gov. McCrory and the Republican controlled North Carolina General Assembly have instead dug in their heels and watched companies such as PayPal pull out, and events like concerts, conventions and most recently the 2017 NBA All-Star Game hightail it out of the Tar Heel state as well.

“This is somebody who has said LGBT people would bring about a ‘societal collapse.’ That’s just not right, folks.” Kaine said of Pence.

HuffPost Pollster has Clinton holding a slight lead over Trump in the state, and Cooper with a slight lead over McCrory in the race for governor.

McCrory signed HB2 into law, which requires transgender people to use the bathrooms and locker rooms matching the gender on their birth certificate in public buildings, and allows private businesses to set their own rules around the issue. It also capped the state’s minimum wage, nullified any pre-existing discrimination ordinances passed by cities and municipalities in North Carolina and took away the right to sue for workplace discrimination in the state courts.

Related: 6 Times Hillary Clinton Stood Up For The LGBTQ Community

This last provision was changed, but LGBTQ people are still unable to sue for workplace discrimination in the state, as there are no protections for them and there are no protections federally, either. Clinton has pledged to work with Congress to pass the Equality Act, which would prohibit discrimination against the LGBTQ community in employment, housing, education, obtaining credit, federal funding, jury service and public accommodations.

Kaine also praised the recent court decision to strike down restrictive voting laws, which were passed after the Supreme Court, in 2013, made it possible for Southern states to change their voting laws without federal preclearance, which they had been required to do since the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

feedproxy.google.com/~r/queerty2/~3/3uf6-axNmZQ/tim-kaine-lays-pence-mccrory-speaks-lgbtq-rights-20160804

Tom Goss Reveals Some Raw Truths in His New Clip ‘All My Life’ – WATCH

Out singer-songwriter Tom Goss gets intimate in “All My Life”, the first release from his sixth album What Doesn’t Break.

Goss told Billboard:

“For [the video of] ‘All My Life’ I wanted to do something different. I wanted to be completely vulnerable. I wanted to strip away the Hollywood gloss and tap into the true emotion of the song and the experience of love. I booked a studio, camera and lights, then sat alone with myself. I shot, directed and edited the video. Honestly, I’m not sure I could have been as emotionally revealing had there been a dozen people in the room. I wanted this to be the most emotionally honest thing I’ve ever done. I believe I have accomplished that.”

He told WOW that the new tracks confront a different side of himself:

“I really was hesitant to release these songs. Not because I didn’t believe in their worth, but because I was afraid of the truth I was revealing. I’ve spent years releasing songs that projected the person I want to be, while neglecting the other person that sometimes shows up in front of me. This record speaks to my greatest failures and regrets, it acknowledges the darkest and least lovable side of me, and then embraces it, loving it all the same.”

Watch:

PREVIOUSLY: Tom Goss Gives Dusty Springfield’s ‘Son of a Preacher Man’ a Gay Teen Twist – WATCH

And click here for more Goss.

And you can also see him on tour in August and September when he hits, Arlington, VA, NYC, Hollywood, Orlando, and several other Florida cities.

The post Tom Goss Reveals Some Raw Truths in His New Clip ‘All My Life’ – WATCH appeared first on Towleroad.

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Chicago Fire Soccer Team Shuts Down Anti-Gay Chants

MLS soccer team the Chicago Fire has come out strongly against anti-gay chants, making it clear this week that the club will not tolerate fans shouting homophobic slurs during games.

General Manager Nelson Rodriguez took the field before a recent match to make the announcement. Rodriguez fittingly chose the club’s Pride Night to take a stand.

Chicago Tribune sports columnist and Fire fan John Kass was on hand for that game with his two sons and shared his reaction:

“An inappropriate and offensive chant has been used by some of our fans,” Rodriguez said. “It is unbecoming and certainly not reflective of the great city that we live in, and the best fans in major league soccer.

“Please be advised that if the chant continues and you are found to be participating, you are subject to removal. If you are near fans using offensive language, please advise stadium security so we can handle that as well.”

And all I could say was “bravo.”

There were a few boos. But most of us applauded him. And I didn’t hear that chant once during the game.

The chant that Rodriguez was referring to is one commonly used in Mexican soccer games. “Puto”, fans often shout, particularly singling out the opposing team’s goalie. For non-Spanish speakers, Kass explains that the term “means effeminate man whore. It is ugly and demeaning, directed at gay men in a macho culture…”

The chant has become deeply rooted in soccer culture and LGBT activists and allies have struggled to stamp it out.

While FIFA recently fined seven national soccer teams for fans using anti-gay chants, the organization has also favored hosting the world cup in anti-gay nations (Russia, Qatar) and historically has done little to discourage such chants.

Rodriguez told Kass in no uncertain terms, “This chant is offensive.”

He added,

“It’s vulgar, it’s inappropriate and it runs contrary I think — even in my short time here — to the spirit of Chicago, which at every turn I just find is warm and welcoming and friendly, and I’m of Latino descent.”

The chant, he said, “is not clever or creative, or catchy or appropriate in any way. Yeah, I’m not deaf. I heard a smattering of boos. But that’s a very small minority of fans, and I don’t care if they don’t return. In fact, personally, if they are booing the message as opposed to booing the messenger, go find another team to support.”

Watch video of Rodriguez making his announcement at Pride Night, here.

The post Chicago Fire Soccer Team Shuts Down Anti-Gay Chants appeared first on Towleroad.

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Gay Corrections Officer Says He Was Fired After Suing Texas County for Discrimination

Back in June, we told you about Derek Boyd, a gay corrections officer who sued Collin County, Texas, for alleged discrimination and retaliation based on his sexual orientation.

In his federal lawsuit, Boyd alleged that after he complained about two nurses referring to inmates as “faggots,” the sheriff’s department began to “egregiously harass” him. Rather than take his complaint seriously, jail officials pursued investigations against Boyd, and other officers would no longer even respond to his radio calls.

Now, Boyd says the county ultimately fired him in retaliation for the lawsuit, which he’s temporarily withdrawn while the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission investigates his original complaint. He also says the county is fighting his unemployment claim, leaving him unable to afford groceries, rent and his car payment.

“What they did was not right, what they’re continuing to do is not right, and I know they’re just going to do it to somebody else because they got away with it,” Boyd told The Texas Observer.

County officials, meanwhile, maintain that Boyd resigned and was not fired — even though he received a letter from their health insurance provider saying he’d been terminated.

Boyd told the Observer the retaliation continued after he filed the lawsuit, when he was assigned to an undesirable position in a control room known as “the glass box,” cut off from other employees.

“Nobody was allowed to associate with me, and nobody was allowed to talk to me, and when they would talk, they would share their personal feelings,” Boyd said. “I got things like, I don’t belong here, God has a special place for me in hell.”

Fearing that he won’t be able to get another law enforcement job in Texas, Boyd has launched a GoFundMe page to help make ends meet while he awaits the results of the EEOC investigation.

“I was terminated on June 30, 2016 because of my sexual orientation and also because I made the complaint of discrimination,” Boyd wrote on the GoFundMe page. “I have since been fighting with them trying to get unemployment which has been a constant fight because they dont feel they should have to pay since gay employment discrimination is legal in the state of Texas. I urge you to stand with me and fight this as this law has to be changed and there must be protections for everybody in Texas.”

Read the full story here.

The post Gay Corrections Officer Says He Was Fired After Suing Texas County for Discrimination appeared first on Towleroad.

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