In Honor of Her Birthday, Let's Revisit Cher's Hits
Raise a toast to one of our most beloved divas. It’s her 69th birthday.
Gina Vivinetto
www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/music/2015/05/20/honor-her-birthday-lets-revisit-chers-hits
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'Q,' Smartphone App, Aims To Build An All-Inclusive, Online Queer Community
'Q,' Smartphone App, Aims To Build An All-Inclusive, Online Queer Community
Queer community building in 2015 happens, more than ever before, in an online context.
In light of this, a new app called “Q” aims to create the biggest and most all-inclusive queer social networking platform that allows all people identifying as queer to connect, no matter what their gender. While other queer apps tend to be for specific kinds of bodies or meeting people for specific kinds of connections, “Q” aims to complicate the way that the queer community meets and interacts with one another in online space.
Creator Eric Cervini decided to build the app out of a frustration with how most apps made for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community tended to be for white, masculine gay men looking for sex.
“When we log on, we’re constantly told to be a man, to have a perfect body, to act or to talk a certain way, to be someone other than who we truly are,” Cervini said in a press release. “We deserve better. ‘Q’ is open to anyone who identifies as queer, and we rely on our members to tell us how we can be as inclusive and user-friendly as possible.”
Users on “Q” are required to display their first name and a photo, and are encouraged to share their stories through “memoirs” that have no character limit. As “Q” is currently in the early stages of development, Cervini emhpasized that changes and developments would be made based on the experiences and feedback of the “Q” community.
Want to learn more about “Q”? The app is currently engaged in a Kickstarter campaign. Head here for more information.
— 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.
Exclusive: New Trailer for Trans-Focused Documentary Series “Becoming Us”
Exclusive: New Trailer for Trans-Focused Documentary Series “Becoming Us”
Today, HRC is proud to release a new trailer for the ABC Family documentary series “Becoming Us.”
HRC.org
Chris Pratt Loves To Get Naked, Doesn’t Understand How Taking Out His Junk Could Offend
Chris Pratt Loves To Get Naked, Doesn’t Understand How Taking Out His Junk Could Offend
Don’t try to put Chris Pratt in a box. Not because he’s a multi-talented performer and comedian (which he is), but because when you come back to let him out, he’ll probably be naked.
On second thought, put Chris Pratt in a box.
The actor recently shed some insight on his propensity to shed his pants. He told GQ:
“I was a jokester, I had a dirty mind, and a dirty sense of humor. I was naked all the time. It was just recently, in the last few years since I’ve become an adult, that I’ve learned to keep my clothes on.”
Unfortunately, his lesson in staying clothed seems to line up chronologically with attaining that crazy action-star body.
But please, go on:
“I got suspended from the track team in high school for getting naked on the track bus,” he recalled. “I was always getting naked. I thought it was hilarious. I didn’t understand how somebody could be so offended by me just taking my junk out.”
We’re with you there, Chris.
He goes on to recall a scene in Parks and Rec in which he stripped down unscripted. He was asked to shock Amy Poehler, and shock her he did.
“HR sent me a letter. Someone obviously must have complained about it or something. I guess now that I don’t work for them, I can make fun of it, but part of the letter was saying, like, ‘Also, don’t mock this. Just so we’re clear, you’re being reprimanded, and don’t go around talking about how this is funny,’” Pratt revealed. “[It was] the take they f**king used, by the way, that made the air, and was hilarious, so I was totally right, but apparently if you want to get naked there’s certain protocols you have to take to prevent people from being offended — you have to give them the opportunity to not see it.”
But that’s just not the way Chris operates:
“But that’s how I was in high school, too,” he continued. “I remember walking into the coach’s office with just a sock on. Not on my feet. And I was like, ‘Hey, Coach, can I talk to you?’ And they were like, ‘Jesus, God!’ I liked making people feel uncomfortable.”
Dan Tracer
'Steven Universe' Creator Opens Up About Creating Gender-Fused Character, Stevonnie
'Steven Universe' Creator Opens Up About Creating Gender-Fused Character, Stevonnie
In the two seasons that Steven Universe has been airing on Cartoon Network, the show’s built up a solid base of fans who fell in love with the show for its strong, diverse cast of characters of color and various queer experiences. Steven’s three, alien guardians–collectively known as the Crystal Gems–raise him in a non-traditional family along with his father after his mother, another crystal gem, sacrifices herself to create the boy. A recurring plot device that runs through the show is the concept of gem fusion, a process where two gems fuse their bodies, minds, and identities to create a new, stronger person.
“Alone Together,” one of the more interesting episodes of the series centers around Steven’s first experience fusing with someone else–his friend Connie. The fusion was a first for the show for a number of reasons. Steven, who’s half gem, had never fused before, let alone with another human. It also bears mentioning that Steven and Connie explicitly identify male and female when separated. Their fusion, Stevonnie, deepened the way that many fans understood some of its core characters, something that Steven Universe creator Rebecca Sugar was keenly aware of.
In an interview with io9 promoting the upcoming Steven Universe Guidebook, Sugar shared some of her deeper thoughts about Stevonnie’s creation and impact on the show.
“Stevonnie is an experience,” she explained. “The living relationship between Steven and Connie. What I love about Stevonnie is that we are working with a metaphor that is so complex and so specific but also really, really relatable, in the form of a character.”
“Stevonnie challenges gender norms as an individual, but also serves as a metaphor for all the terrifying firsts in a first relationship, and what it feels like to hit puberty and suddenly find yourself with the body of an adult, how quickly that happens, how it feels to have a new power over people, or to suddenly find yourself objectified, all for seemingly no reason since you’re still just you… and they are still just them, they’re Steven and Connie who you already know and relate to, and if you do you can feel, for this episode, what all of those feelings are like.
And they feel it too and that stays with them. I knew that was bound to be interesting to people, for at least one of all those reasons!”
Charles Pulliam-Moore
Glass of Ice Water
Support For Same-Sex Marriage Reaches Record High
Support For Same-Sex Marriage Reaches Record High
Support for same-sex marriage has reached an all-time high, according to recent polls. A new survey from Gallup shows a record 60 percent of Americans now say they approve of legalized same-sex marriage.
The trend measured by Gallup closely matches results from other polls that have been measuring public opinion on same-sex marriage. An ABC/Washington Post poll conducted in April found that 61 percent of Americans approve. Similarly, a Quinnipiac University poll from the same month measured approval at 58 percent.
Approval of same-sex marriage has grown at a rapid rate in the last two decades. When Gallup first surveyed Americans on the issue in 1996, only 27 percent approved. Nineteen years later, that number has more than doubled, growing 5 points in the last month alone.
In fact, the shift in approval is one of the “fastest changes ever measured” by the General Social Survey, which has measured trends in American public opinion for the last 40 years.
Gallup finds that a majority of Democrats and independents favor legalizing same-sex marriage. Republicans are less inclined, with only 37 percent expressing support. Still, support among Republicans has been climbing within the last two decades, jumping 11 percentage points in the last three years.
The latest results come just one month before the Supreme Court is scheduled to rule on the constitutionality of same-sex marriage.
Gallup surveyed 1,024 adults via live telephone interviews conducted May 6-10.
— 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.
Insider's view: Mikey Wien reveals all on Austria's Pink Lake
Insider's view: Mikey Wien reveals all on Austria's Pink Lake
With all eyes on Austria for this weekend’s Eurovision Song Contest Final, Mikey tells GSN about the country’s other LGBTI calander highlight
jamiet
www.gaystarnews.com/article/insiders-view-mikey-wien-reveals-all-austrias-pink-lake200515
Born this Way: New Poll Finds Increase in Americans’ Understanding of Sexual Orientation
Sam Smith Celebrates His Birthday By Sharing Some Of The Wisdom He’s Acquired In His 23 Years On Earth
Sam Smith Celebrates His Birthday By Sharing Some Of The Wisdom He’s Acquired In His 23 Years On Earth
Sam Smith has turned 23, everyone. And he’s decided to mark the occasion by publicly sharing some of the wisdom he’s acquired over the past two decades with his 3.8 million Instagram followers.
“Prepare yourself for dramatic speech,” Smith, who was born in 1992, prefaced his post yesterday. “I’ve only lived on this earth for 23 years and I have so much more to learn and so many more mistakes to make. But there is one thing I’ve learnt in my not so many years.”
What is that one thing, you ask?
“That is love is the most important thing in life,” Smith wrote.
Related: Sam Smith OK With Being Called “A Faggot” Just Not “Fat”
The singer continued: “Surround yourself with family and friends and people who genuinely love you. I am so lucky and these past few years have been so amazing but also so challenging and I would definitely be in a world full of troubles right now if it wasn’t for … my family and friends who can’t be with me today.”
“Dramatic as fuck I know, but I thought I’d share my emotional but I hope wise words with y’all.”
Wise words, indeed. Thanks, Sam. And Happy Birthday.
Related: Sam Smith Isn’t Fat And Here’s The Shirtless Pic To Prove It
Graham Gremore
