Rentboy CEO Breaks Silence, Begs For Help On Facebook

Nearly three months after Homeland Security raided his company’s offices in Manhattan, arresting him and six others, the CEO of rentboy.com is finally breaking his silence.

Jeffrey Hurant and six of his employees were arrested and charged in late August with operating what attorney Kelly Currie called an “internet brothel.” If convicted, they each face a maximum of five years behind bars and fines up to $250,000.

Related: RentBoy CEO And Six Others Arrested In Prostitution Ring Bust

Since the raid, Hurant has been laying low. Until now. He just posted a desperate message on both Rentboy.com’s official Facebook page and his own his personal page, as well.

The message reads:

I realize that I have been very quiet on Facebook since my arrest on August 25th. I have been advised by legal counsel not to make any public statements about the case. As any of you who know me can guess, this hasn’t been easy for me.

This ordeal has been devastating for me, my family, my ex-employees and all the people my company has helped through the years. I am very grateful for all the support I have gotten from friends far and wide throughout the crisis. I count my blessings every day.

The brilliant team at Sher Tremonte, LLP has been working tirelessly preparing my defense. Even though I have not been proven guilty of committing any crime, the government has seized all the assets that I can use to defend myself, so I am here asking for your financial help to insure that this case has the best legal minds working on it.

Please consider donating to the www.rentboyfund.org/ Legal Defense Fund.

Hurant’s statement comes just days after Rentboy.com published a post on Craigslist advertising an office liquidation sale, in which the company is selling everything from furniture to office equipment to Rentboy.com memorabilia in an effort to raise money to pay for its mounting legal fees.

So far the company appears to have raised a little over $5,000 of a needed $250,000.

Related: Here’s Your Chance To Own A Piece Of Rentboy.com

h/t: Gay Star News

Graham Gremore

feedproxy.google.com/~r/queerty2/~3/AKzcTLnK0UQ/rentboy-ceo-breaks-silence-begs-for-help-on-facebook-20151029

This Gay Former High School Football Player Has a Powerful Message for LGBT Youth

Gay former high school football player Harrison Wilkerson wants LGBT youth struggling with depression and anxiety to know they are not alone.

In a post published on OutSports, Wilkerson opens up about his own battle with depression and social anxiety in hopes that his story can help others. Though Wilkerson seemingly had it all in high school–student body president, varsity football player, loving family and friends–he was in turmoil, “coping with suicidal thoughts –something no one would have known just by looking at him from the outside.

Wilkerson grew up in a small town in North Carolina where “Every fall is consumed by football, every spring by baseball and every Sunday by church.” When he was younger, his passions were chiefly in the arts. But as he grew up, he took to sports, ultimately landing a spot as kicker on his high school’s football team. Though he excelled on the field, off the field he says something wasn’t “clicking”:

While all my teammates were talking about girls in the locker room I couldn’t have been more uncomfortable. I had no interest in the topic whatsoever. As a high school boy, this was not the norm, and a few guys began to notice. Not knowing the answer myself, I denied many times having any interest in guys, but the denials weren’t enough to quiet the questions. […]

Through that season I slipped into the darkest time of my life: Deep down I knew I was gay, and there was nothing I could do about it. I wanted so badly to be straight, but I knew there was no more denying who I was.

Unknown to anyone at the time, I struggled daily with anxiety and severe depression. I wrestled privately with suicidal thoughts for months. Bullying and harassment increased at school. People in passing cars screamed homophobic slurs at me. At one point another vehicle literally ran me off the road. All of it was because I was coming out of my cocoon, finding the need to be my truth. Yet simply because I was different, life was becoming a living hell. Loneliness took hold.

Wilkerson says that, “[O]ne of the darkest memories I have is sitting in my bedroom floor in the pitch black night crying out for God to please end my life.” Yet despite the immensity of his struggle, “No one at school knew I was having these thoughts.” Adding to the burden of his depression was Wilkerson’s feeling that it wasn’t “ok to be depressed.” This led him to become convinced he was alone.

Finally, Wilkerson reached a breaking point and could no longer deny who he was:

Eventually I began to see the light at the end of the tunnel. The day came when I was able to finally look myself in the mirror and say “I am gay.” I soon confided in one friend that I was in fact gay, like so many had suspected. From there my confidence grew. I began to tell my closest friends, then a few more. Eventually it became the worst-kept secret in town. […]

The more people I told, the better I felt. The truth did set me free.

Wilkerson stresses that the struggle for acceptance is still one being faced by LGBT today. His story happened only last year. He writes, “In 2014, loneliness nearly took my life.” It is the immediacy of that struggle which motivated Wilkerson to share his story,

“For a long time I have debated writing my story publicly. I don’t want to seem self-indulgent, or that I am sharing this for attention. However, I can’t live in fear any longer. I am willing to deal with people’s false assumptions if it means somewhere out there some kid knows it’s perfectly OK to not feel 100% all of the time. I am doing this piece because I can’t get another text, see another Facebook post, or read about another person in the news who ended their life because they had no one there for them.

We have to talk about mental health issues, the stigma that is associated with being depressed, or having anxiety, has to be eliminated. It is OK to be gay. This is literally a life or death issue. No you aren’t alone, and no you aren’t any different than the varsity football player who looks like he has it all together. We need to know that we are here for each other.”

Bravo, Harrison!

The post This Gay Former High School Football Player Has a Powerful Message for LGBT Youth appeared first on Towleroad.

Sean Mandell

This Gay Former High School Football Player Has a Powerful Message for LGBT Youth

WATCH: Transgender Girl Kicked Out of Home, Makes Cheerleading Squad

After her second year of tryouts, a small-town California girl was accepted by her high school’s cheerleading squad as its first transgender member, Sacramento TV station KTXL reported Wednesday. 

Anry Fuentes told the station that her mother kicked her out of the house because of her gender identity but she found support in her central California community. Denair is a town of about 4,400 people less than two miles wide. Students and teachers at her high school took up a collection to help pay for her $600 uniform, according to the station.

Aaron Rosander, the school district superintendent told the station Denair values its students. “We’ve dealt with Anry like we’ve dealt with all students: we welcome them all, we support all the kids on their journey through life,” he said.

Many schools have become increasingly accepting of transgender students. Recently in Missouri, one transgender teen was crowned homecoming queen. However, in other schools fights have erupted over which restroom transgender students may use. Another Missouri school staged a walkout when a transgender girl used the bathroom of her choice. 

While coming out to her classmates was difficult, Fuentes said it was easier than the alternative. “It’s so much harder to hide than to come out and be yourself,” she told a reporter. “Like, I found it really hard to, like, say the words you know … them actually coming out of my mouth, but once they’re out, they’re out. That’s it.”

Watch the report from KTXL below.

 

Elizabeth Daley

www.advocate.com/transgender/2015/10/29/watch-transgender-girl-kicked-out-home-makes-cheerleading-squad

Ben Carson Says He’s Not A Homophobe. Ben Carson Disagrees.

Ben Carson says it’s a “myth” that his opposition to same-sex marriage makes him homophobic. Oh really?

The post Ben Carson Says He’s Not A Homophobe. Ben Carson Disagrees. appeared first on ThinkProgress.

Zack Ford

thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2015/10/29/3717304/ben-carson-homophobia/

Is Zola's Epic Twitter Story Empowering Or Disturbing Or Both?

On Tuesday morning, Twitter user _zolarmoon, who also goes by Aziah King, used her account to write an epic story in 150 tweets.

Her first tweet, posted along with a photo of herself and an unnamed white woman, reads, “Y’all wanna hear a story about why me & this bitch here fell out? It’s kind of long but full of suspense.” 

What followed was a story with countless twists and turns, in which King relayed the time that she and the woman (named Jess) met at a Hooters, discovered a shared enthusiasm for stripping, and decided to go on an impromptu weekend trip to Florida to make money dancing.

To record the entire sordid tale here would be pretty much impossible, but during the course of the very NSFW story King crosses paths with a whole host of characters, including pimps and gangstas. What should have been a harmless trip results in Jess being kidnapped and beaten by a rival pimp until Zola is forced to intervene. 

Black Twitter ate up the wild story (which King has insisted via Twitter is completely true), and its humorous, irreverent tone. The story, which has since been deleted from King’s account but is preserved via Storify and screencaps, went viral, with thousands of retweets and reblogs on Tumblr. 

King has been described as Twitter’s answer to the urban erotica writer Zane, and social media users are demanding that she gets a book or movie deal to tell more stories. Choice lines from her tweet essay are being quoted, retweeted, and turned into memes. 

When I first encountered the story via a Tumblr meme, I enthusiastically reblogged it. “This is WILD, this is HILARIOUS.” I wrote. “I’M SCREAMING.”

And then I got called out.  

Some social media users have questioned why people were finding Zola’s story entertaining, when in fact so many of its key details are pretty disturbing. “I get that the Zola story is ‘wild’ but it isn’t funny,” one Tumblr user wrote me anonymously. “Jess gets beaten and almost killed. Z is a child sex trafficker. How is any of that funny?” 

It seems reactions to the meme have been split into two camps of “this is totally juicy and hilarious,” and “this is totally horrifying.”

The reaction to Zola’s story is vaguely reminiscent of the reaction to Rihanna’s video for “BBHM.” Like Rihanna, who directed the controversial video, Zola has taken full ownership of her identity as a sex worker and her story, telling it unapologetically and on her own terms. And like the Rihanna video, much of the supposed “humor” in her story is derived from the brutalization of another woman, specifically that of a white woman. 

What King describes happening to Jess (forced prostitution, kidnapping, physical abuse) isn’t funny, and a woman who is allegedly Jess from the story posted on Facebook that to be reminded of the ordeal “honestly freaking hurts.” The idea that her real name has been used and that people are entertained by a story that involves a dark period in her life is disturbing. 

The fact that King, a sex worker herself, is being hailed as a new kind of literary voice for adapting a medium often viewed as the antithesis of literary, is exciting. The reaction to King’s story proves the power of social media to give an elevated platform to people who otherwise wouldn’t have one. It’s great that King is getting attention, but it’s unfortunate that her popularity is at someone else’s expense. 

So how do we reconcile these two things? How do we praise one woman for empowering herself through telling her own story, when that story also trivializes the abuse of another woman? Is that even possible?

We may not have an easy answer to those questions, but that’s exactly why we should be asking them. Being captivated by the story is a normal response, but feeling no level of discomfort about who we’re laughing at and why should give us pause. And while, at the end of the day, this meme is being treated as nothing more than another funny Internet sensation, it’s important that we think about why exactly we are so entertained.

Also on HuffPost: 

 

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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Open Question: LGBT, what would argue is the root to hatred towards homosexuals?

answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20151029062442AAvro4m

NEW MUSIC: Tracey Thorn, Dave Gahan & Soulsavers, Gun Outfit, Here We Go Magic

This week in new music: a 34-track solo Tracey Thorn retrospective, Dave Gahan comes over all gospel on his second collaboration with Soulsavers, Gun Outfit go on an indie rock road trip through bluegrass country and Here We Go Magic channel John Cale and – apparently – Brian Eno on album number four.

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Tracey Thorn – Solo: Songs and Collaborations 1982-2015

With sporadic solo work – 1982’s A Distant Shore was promptly followed by Out of the Woods in 2007 – and legendary output with the sadly defunct Everything But The Girl, Tracey Thorn (above) has forged for herself a position as one of England’s best songwriters and performers in a career that has spanned 35 years.

This collection of 34 tracks includes songs from her entire solo career including the stunning 2012 Christmas album Tinsel and Lights, her work with Massive Attack, the Style Council and Hot Chip, as well as a selection of her always perfectly chosen covers (most recently Kate Bush b-side “Under the Ivy”).

An essential collection for fans obviously, but also a perfect introduction to a “half wallflower, half freedom fighter,” as described by husband and fellow EBTG Ben Watt.

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Dave Gahan & Soulsavers – Angels & Ghosts

With a career spanning more than thirty years – all the more impressive given their expected demise following the departure of Vince Clarke in 1981 – Depeche Mode have become if nothing else a dependable voice in electronic(ish) music.

Lead vocalist Dave Gahan has in that time been happy enough to give voice to other people’s songs with some forays into solo work (2003’s Paper Monsters and 2007’s Hourglass).

His latest effort and his second with Soulsavers marks a change of direction for Gahan and a welcome one at that.

On paper Dave Gahan doing something verging on gospel rock – complete with choirs sent from heaven – may seem at best ridiculous but in reality Angels & Ghosts is an excellent collaboration perfect for him to tear through with gusto.

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Gun Outfit – Dream All Over

On album number four, massively underrated Los Angeles-based indie rock act Gun Outfit have perhaps reached pay dirt with a collection of songs that could well put you in mind of Yo La Tengo on a road trip through Alabama.

If the very idea of Tom Petty via touches of bluegrass and echoing sitar makes you ill, Dream All Over might be a stretch too far into the outreaches of indie but repeated listening is recommended to appreciate the delicacy of a collection that takes in references to the Velvet Underground, The American Analog Set and many more.

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Here We Go Magic – Be Small

On album number four – and their first since 2012 Nigel Goodrich collaboration A Different Trip – Brooklyn’s Here We Go Magic has been pared back to core duo Luke Temple and Michael Bloch for a collection of self-produced tracks “inspired by Brian Eno and John Cale’s Wrong Way Up and Robert Wyatt’s Shleep.”

Not being familiar with either, I can’t comment on that. However, if it’s John Cale they want to emulate it’s possible they were listening to 2003’s Hobosapiens.

Despite their protestations of a new approach, in reality Be Small skips over A Different Trip, hearkening back to their earlier work on The January EP and Pigeons.

It’s a relentlessly bubbly affair with “overtly major and optimistic” songs best heard in lead track “Falling.”

 

The post NEW MUSIC: Tracey Thorn, Dave Gahan & Soulsavers, Gun Outfit, Here We Go Magic appeared first on Towleroad.

Michael Fitzgerald

NEW MUSIC: Tracey Thorn, Dave Gahan & Soulsavers, Gun Outfit, Here We Go Magic

Gay Adult Film Written By Late Actor Sir John Gielgud Creates Row In U.K.

A pornographic gay film based on an original screenplay by the late actor Sir John Gielgud has wrapped production, but it still faces tremendous opposition from his estate.

Set in a men’s clothing store where an orgy takes place, Trouser Bar stars Nigel Havers and Julian Clary as passerby who spy the proceedings fondly.

Gielgud, one of the most celebrated stage actors of his time, but best-known for his Oscar-winning work as Dudley Moore’s butler in the film comedy Arthur and for his turn in the TV drama Brideshead Revisited, wrote the screenplay in secret in 1976 and intended for Peter de Rome, who’s considered the grandfather of gay pornography.

De Rome never used the script, but it fell into the hands of David McGillivray, who recently produced a documentary about the pornographer.

Now, McGillivray has turned the script into a feature, much to the chagrin of The Sir John Gielgud Charitable Trust.

“Earlier this year, the trustees decided not give their permission for it to be produced because they didn’t think it was appropriate,” trust member Ian Bradshaw told the Daily Mail. “They didn’t have to go into detail because they own the copyright.”

The film has entered the editing stage, and McGillivray staunchly defends his decision.

“Pornography is still a stigma in this country, but Sir John loved porn and, in his letters, he talks about visiting gay cinemas,” he says. “I was shocked when the trust didn’t give me permission. We stuck to Sir John’s script very tightly when we made the film a couple of weeks ago. He was very specific about the clothes he wanted the actors to wear.”

“They have come down heavily on me,” McGillivray says. “They are using intellectual copyright as an excuse.”

In an interesting side note, Gielgud starred in a pornographic film himself. In 1979, the veteran thespian appeared clothed in Caligula, the super-controversial epic about ancient Rome that was penned by Gore Vidal and spiced up with graphic sex scenes. Gielgud’s biographer Sheridan Morley later referred to it as the actor’s “most embarrassing professional appearance.”

Jeremy Kinser

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A guy at my school organized an LGBT club and hung up posters for it. Another guy thought it would be funny to take pictures while ripping them down and to post it to Twitter. This was the best response.
submitted by yoku651
[link] [1 comment]

A guy at my school organized an LGBT club and hung up posters for it. Another guy thought it would be funny to take pictures while ripping them down and to post it to Twitter. This was the best response.
by inlgbt

RNC Chair Reince Priebus Blasts CNBC, Moderators After GOP Debate: WATCH

RNC Chair Reince Priebus was furious at CNBC after last night’s debate, accusing the network of providing a “hostile” environment for the candidates.

“I was pretty disappointed in the moderators, I’m disappointed at CNBC. I thought maybe they would bring forward a pretty fair forum tonight, but it was one gotcha question, one personal low blow after the other. It’s almost like they tried to design a Rubik’s Cube for every question, to try to take the worst element I think of what the moderators and what the media bring to the table, and all I can tell you is that while I’m proud of our candidates for pretty much sticking together, I’m very disappointed with the moderators and I’m very disappointed with CNBC.”

Watch:

Priebus also tweeted:

CNBC should be ashamed of how this debate was handled. #GOPDebate

— Reince Priebus (@Reince) October 29, 2015

And the RNC released this statement:

WASHINGTON – Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Reince Priebus released the following statement at the conclusion of the CNBC Republican Primary Debate:

“While I was proud of our candidates and the way they handled tonight’s debate, the performance by the CNBC moderators was extremely disappointing and did a disservice to their network, our candidates, and voters. Our diverse field of talented and exceptionally qualified candidates did their best to share ideas for how to reinvigorate the economy and put Americans back to work despite deeply unfortunate questioning from CNBC,” said Chairman Priebus.

“One of the great things about our party is that we are able to have a dynamic exchange about which solutions will secure a prosperous future, and I will fight to ensure future debates allow for a more robust exchange. CNBC should be ashamed of how this debate was handled.”

What did you think about the debate?

The post RNC Chair Reince Priebus Blasts CNBC, Moderators After GOP Debate: WATCH appeared first on Towleroad.

Andy Towle

RNC Chair Reince Priebus Blasts CNBC, Moderators After GOP Debate: WATCH