Chicago Public Schools Meet Needs of Transgender Students (Video)

www.advocate.com/transgender/2016/5/03/chicago-public-schools-meet-needs-transgender-students-video

High School Footballer Arrested For Exposing Himself In Yearbook Already Has An Offer From Playgirl

A high school senior who got his whole school laughing for months after he exposed himself in a varsity football yearbook photo isn’t laughing now that police have charged him with 69 counts of indecent exposure and one count of furnishing harmful items to minors. Or perhaps he is since Playgirl has stepped in to make an offer.

OK, but really — 69? It couldn’t have been 68 or 70?

19-year-old Hunter Osborn of Red Mountain High School in Mesa, Arizona, says a teammate dared him to flash the camera on picture day. His goal post was circulated for months in football game programs and the yearbook before the school realized what happened.

The school was understandably upset they’d been duped, but Osborn surely never thought the prank would land wearing an electronic monitoring bracelet under house arrest.

Students at the school were also surprised at the harsh reaction from law enforcement.

“When people told me about it I thought it was a big thing, but when I looked at it like you cant really tell, it’s kinda hard to see,” said student Zach Anthony.

Related: PHOTOS: 19-Year-Old UK Footballer Has Secretly Been Showing Off His Goal Post On Tumblr

At first, it was kind of like a joke, but then once we found out the consequences he has to face for this, we all feel really bad for him, and we don’t think it’s very fair,” said Brooke Bodrero, another student.

Osborn told Mesa police he is “disgusted by what he has done,” but we’re more disgusted by the immense overreaction to the — shock! — tiny bit of pixelated nudity.

Even as part of the school’s official statement admonishing the prank, they admit, “the small size of the photograph as published makes the details difficult to discern.” It’s not like there was a crotch closeup giving parents heart attacks.

The local Fox station that reported the story previews their post by warning readers in bold red letters: [WARNING: Graphic content]. A blurred-out photo of nothing is graphic? We’d hate to see the warning they’d give the Statue of David.

At least one organization is taking the incident in stride — Playgirl. The blog Naughty Gossip is reporting the magazine has already put in an offer to Osborn.

“We’re trying to reach this kid to get him in Playgirl. We want to support him as this was a hilarious prank, and people are too tightly wound. Playgirl.com would like to have him pose naked and pay his legal bills,” a spokesperson said.

Osborn’s preliminary hearing is set for May 20.

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Anti-Gay Jehovah’s Witness Cartoon Tells Kids That LGBT People ‘Can Change’ – WATCH 

A new animated video posted on the official Jehovah’s Witnesses website has an anti-gay message for kids: gay marriage goes against God’s will and LGBT people “can change” who they are.

The video is part of a series of web videos called Become Jehovah’s Friend. The video is titled, “One Man One Woman.”

In it, a little girl sees a drawing at school of a family with two moms.

When the little girl brings this up to her own mother, she replies,

“People have their own ideas about what is right and wrong. But what matters is how Jehovah feels. He wants us to be happy and he knows how we can be happiest. That’s why he invented marriage the way he did.”

The video walks right up to the line of “God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.”

The mom then gets really jazzed about the fact that Jesus talked about marriage between a man and a woman. Never mind the fact that Jesus never said anything about same-sex love or same-sex unions (let alone the fact that he never condemned either).

Then mom busts out a simile on why we can’t reach paradise if we’re gay married:

“It’s kind of like going on an airplane. What would happen if someone wanted to bring something on the plane that wasn’t allowed? It’s the same with Jehovah. He wants us to be his friend, and live in paradise forever, but we have to follow his standards to get there.”

Just saying, a “paradise” that requires you to deny who you are and repress your true self is no paradise.

The little girl then panics because she wants everyone to get to paradise, even her friend with the deviant two mommies. But luckily, her mom points out, “People can change.” Duh.

Watch the video, below.

[h/t NNN]

The post Anti-Gay Jehovah’s Witness Cartoon Tells Kids That LGBT People ‘Can Change’ – WATCH  appeared first on Towleroad.

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A School Board’s Defense Of Its Anti-LGBT Bathroom Rules Could Backfire Hilariously

Lawyers try to defend discrimination. Could wind up making civil rights law even stronger. Sad!

The post A School Board’s Defense Of Its Anti-LGBT Bathroom Rules Could Backfire Hilariously appeared first on ThinkProgress.

thinkprogress.org/justice/2016/05/03/3774998/a-school-boards-defense-of-its-anti-lgbt-bathroom-rules-could-backfire-hilariously/

Rockwall Mayor’s Proposed Anti-Trans Ordinance Unanimously Defeated

A Texas Mayor’s attempt to push an anti-transgender ordinance drew a sizeable crowd Monday — making clear their resounding opposition to his efforts. Rockwall Republican Mayor Jim Pruitt proposed an ordinance that would have mandated transgender people use bathrooms that correspond with the sex listed on their birth certificate, rather than those consistent with their gender identity, and violators could have been fined up to $500.

The night clearly didn’t go quite as Mayor Pruitt had planned, as not a single Rockwall City Council member seconded his proposal and it was stopped in its tracks.

“It was a great crowd,” said Lou Weaver, an HRC board member and Transgender Programs Coordinator at Equality Texas. “There were business owners, health care providers, parents of trans youth and non-LGBT allies advocating for equality and a welcoming town. Not one of the Council Members agreed with the mayor. It was a good night indeed.”

The New Civil Rights Movement reported that about 100 activists protested outside, then moved inside to the meeting and contributed to approximately four hours of citizen testimony.  The ordinance’s defeat was followed by cheers and applause from the crowd.

“Quite a night here. After nearly four hours of public debate, the proposed bathroom ordinance failed in a way that I don’t think anybody expected it would fail,” Fox4’s Richard Ray said. “The mayor here, Jim Pruitt, made his motion but no one on the city council would second that motion, so it fails. And the crowd went wild.”

According to Fox4, several people spoke out expressing the ordinance would be bad for business as well as damaging to the state’s tourism, despite Mayor Pruitt’s claims that he didn’t foresee economic backlash.

This denied proposal comes on the heels of a national debate surrounding the wave of anti-LGBT bills introduced across the country. As states continue to pass these types of discriminatory legislation, they are met with adverse and critical reactions. In North Carolina alone, nearly 200 major business leaders and CEOs have spoken out against the state’s hateful H.B. 2 and urged for its repeal, while 75 have demanded the repeal of Mississippi’s H.B. 1523.

HRC reported this year that more than one-third of Americans now say they personally know or work with someone who is transgender and that this historic level of visibility is accompanied by increasing acceptance of transgender people.

One thing is certain, fair-minded citizens nationwide are taking a stand for equality and speaking out against these heinous and harmful pieces of legislation.

www.hrc.org/blog/rockwall-mayors-proposed-anti-trans-ordinance-unanimously-defeated?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss-feed

2016 Bisexual Book Awards announced

www.glaad.org/blog/2016-bisexual-book-awards-announced

Boston Raises Transgender Pride Flag

Boston’s mayor raised the flag in a show of support for the trans community in Massachusetts.

www.advocate.com/transgender/2016/5/03/boston-raises-transgender-pride-flag

“Gigolos” Reality Star Insures His Biggest Work Asset For $1 Million

Gigolos star Nick Hawk just insured his penis for $1 million because, hey, you can never be too careful with your moneymaker, amirite?

Cosmopolitan caught up with the ripped reality star and asked him the questions that would be on our minds if we interviewed him: namely why, how, and…what about theft?

Why did you need to insure your penis, especially for $1 million?
Fifty Shades screwed me. Most people are inexperienced [in bondage] and just getting into it, so they’re a little too rough. Everybody wants to beat each other up now, and not everybody knows how to do it effectively. It also doesn’t help that I took on this “bad boy” image, so I decided to get the insurance. We called Lloyds of London first because they were the most well-known one for insuring celebrities’ body parts, but they were not interested.

Why do you think they weren’t interested?
Business ethics, morals, values, I don’t know. Who knows? They’re probably haters. We found another insurance company though, Geldin insurance. They were cool with it but they weren’t sure what to think of it at first. We actually did an episode ofGigolos around getting the insurance too. It was good TV.

How expensive was it?
It wasn’t that bad, because it’s very unlikely that something crazy is going to happen to my penis, but it is a possibility for sure. I’m this big sex symbol now with the sex toy line and the TV show. If anything happened to my penis, that would take a big stab at my career for sure.

And of course we wouldn’t want anything to happen to his penis, now would we? The conversation took a kinky turn when Hawk got into the, um…mechanics and necessity of penis insurance:

What does the insurance cover?
Everything is covered, including theft.

Theft??!
Yeah. “Anything that contributes to the direct dysfunction” I believe is how it’s worded. So it could be some kind of an injury from, you know, anything. My main concern is women getting wild with me because they think that I’m the person that they can get wild with. I’m always worried when sex gets going hard and fast that, you know, my penis will flip out and bend back. I’ve heard some horror stories about them breaking.

When did it finally occur to you that you really needed to insure your penis?
This last year, but it’s been in the back of my mind for a while ever since I started doing the gigolo thing. I like doing rough stuff with hair-pulling and scratching and all that, but it also can be done too hard and inexperienced people seem to tend to be a little more abusive and go a little too hard.

Seems like this guy is really putting the work into sex work. We wish him the best of luck, and…be careful with that thing!

feedproxy.google.com/~r/queerty2/~3/cDQmy-8TPcg/gigolos-reality-star-insures-biggest-work-asset-1-million-20160503

Trump Supporter Assaulted Artist Who Created Probably Realistic Nude Portrait Of Donald

Well, we probably should’ve seen this one coming: the artist who created an illustration of a nude Donald Trump, including a very minuscule penis, says that she’s been assaulted by a Trump supporter.

“Today I was punched in the face by a man who got out of his car and yelled, ‘Trump 2016!’ in Los Angeles, just days after I returned home from London just down the road from my house,” she wrote on Instagram, along with a picture of her bruised eye. “To live in a place where Facebook has given my address to an anonymous third party makes me feel like I am homeless again.”

That’s a little hard to follow — Facebook gave her address to someone? What? But okay, maybe that makes sense, maybe her address was available somewhere on her profile, somehow.

“No, they have not been caught, and the men drove off laughing. A detailed police report has been filed,” she concluded.

So a man (or men) found her address on Facebook, decided that they support Donald Trump so strongly that he or they need to find her, punch her, yell a slogan and then laugh as they drive away.

It’s absolutely unbelievable that such a thing could happen.

When last we checked in with Illma Gore, she was about to sell her illustration of Trump for around $140,000. Barraged by what she described as messages about rape and death, she took the image to England to sell it at a gallery there.

Gore also said that someone from Trump’s legal team threatened to sue her if she sold the painting. That would be a hard lawsuit to win, since Trump is clearly a public figure and her illustration is clearly protected speech. It’s weird that a Trump lawyer would even attempt to fan the flames of the story by contacting her at all.

But hey, stranger things have happened. In fact, stranger things may be unfolding right at this very moment.

Photo: Instagram

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