LGBT Wellness Roundup: Dec. 5
Each week HuffPost Gay Voices, in a partnership with blogger Scout, LGBT HealthLink and researcher Michael G. Bare, brings you a round up of some of the biggest LGBT wellness stories from the past seven days. For more LGBT Wellness visit our page dedicated to the topic here.

www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/07/lgbt-wellness-dec-5_n_6278680.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices&ir=Gay+Voices

Favorite Moments of 2014: Selfies for Equality

In our continued quest to stay at the forefront of digital marketing, HRC made its mark in 2014 as the first LGBT organization and one of the first non-profits to launch on the fastest growing social media application among teens.
HRC.org

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Queerty Readers Recommend More Must-Read Gay Memoirs And Biographies

Winter is upon us, which means it’s the perfect time to curl up with a blanket, a steaming hot mug of cocoa, and a good book.

Last week, we shared a list of 15 must-read gay memoirs and biographies, and in response we were inundated with comments, tweets, and e-mails from Queerty readers with even more great recommendations. So, without further ado, here they are.

Check out these gay memoir and biography recommendations from Queerty readers.

Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, Professor, Tattoo Artist, and Sexual Renegade by Justin Spring

Nominated for the 2010 National Book Award, Secret Historian recounts the life and times of gay novelist, poet, and university professor Samuel M. Steward, who left the world of academe to pursue a career as a tattoo artist in Chicago, then as a writer of gay smut books. Through secret diaries, never-before-seen journal entries and sexual records, Secret Historian offers a moving portrait of homosexual life long before Stonewall and the gay liberation.

Fire Shut Up In My Bones by Charles M. Blow

In his new book, bisexual writer Charles M. Blow talks about growing up in a African-American town in Louisiana, his mother, and the secret abuse he suffered at the hands of his older cousin. After several years, Blow escapes to a nearby state university, where he joins a black fraternity after a passage of brutal hazing, and then enters a world of racial and sexual privilege that feels like everything he’s ever needed and wanted, until he’s called upon, himself, to become the one perpetuating the shocking abuse.

Some Assembly Required by Arin Andrews and Rethinking Normal by Katie Rain Hill

These are two separate memoirs written by transgender teens Arin Andrew and Katie Rain Hill who made headlines last year when they shared their story on 20/20. 19-year-old Hill was in the process of transitioning from male to female when she fell in love with 18-year-old Andrews, who was undergoing his own transition from female to male. The book was originally going to be a shared memoir, but their editor, Christian Trimmer, said in a press release, “It quickly became clear that the world needed to hear their individual stories.”

Prick Up Your Ears by John Lahr

Prick Up Your Ears is the biography of playwright and novelist Joe Orton, whose public career spanned only three years, but who’s work made a lasting mark on the international stage. A rising star and undeniable talent, Orton left much undone when he was bludgeoned to death by his lover, Kenneth Halliwell, who had educated Orton and also dreamed of becoming a famous writer.

Beyond Paradise: The Life of Ramon Novarro by André Soares

Ramon Novarro first arrived in Hollywood in 1916 as a refugee from the civil wars that rocked Mexico in the early twentieth century. By the mid-1920s, he had become one of MGM’s most important leading men. Today, his most enduring claim to fame is his tragic death — his bloodied corpse was found in his house on Halloween in 1968 in what has become one of the most infamous scandals in the vast lore of Hollywood. Through original interviews with Novarro’s surviving friends, family, coworkers, and the two men convicted of his murder, Beyond Paradise presents a full picture of the man who made motion picture history — from his amazing rise to stardom to the destructive conflicts faced by this traditional Catholic Mexican man who was also a gay film star.

Assisted Loving by Bob Morris

Subtitled “True Tales of Double Dating With My Dad,” Morris is a gay son who gets to tag along with his 80-year-old father Joe, who is now single and still plenty horny. At the same time, Morris obsesses with his own problems as a flabby, middle-aged guy looking for love in Manhattan’s youth-obsessed gay scene, while also turning into a bit of a yenta for fun-loving dad. This breezy memoir will get you thinking about how much your own perceptions of Dear Old Dad are colored by your own expectations — and why parents aren’t the only ones who feel disappointed when their family member doesn’t quite adhere to those psychic constraints.

The Naked Civil Servant by Quentin Crisp

Quentin Crisp not only came out as a gay man in 1931, when the slightest sign of homosexuality shocked public sensibilities, but he did so with grand and provocative flamboyance, determined to spread the message that homosexuality did not exclude him or anyone else from the human race. His hilarious descriptions of encounters with parents, friends, employers, soldiers and sailors, and the law reveal the strength and humor of an honest man, determined to face the world with the uncensored, unapologetic truth about himself.

Eminent Outlaws by Christopher Bram

Winner of the 2013 Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction, Eminent Outlaws examines the group of gay writers who established themselves as major figures in American culture — Truman Capote, Gore Vidal, James Baldwin, Christopher Isherwood, Tennessee Williams, Allen Ginsberg, and more. With authority and humor, Christopher Bram weaves these men’s ambitions, affairs, feuds, loves, and appetites into a single sweeping narrative that chronicles over fifty years of momentous change — from civil rights to Stonewall to AIDS and beyond.

All I Could Bare: My Life in the Strip Clubs of Gay Washington, D.C. by Craig Seymour

All I Could Bare is the story of a mild-mannered graduate student who “took the road less clothed” and became a male stripper. Craig Seymour embarked on his journey in the 1990s, when Washington, D.C.’s gay club scene was notoriously no-holds-barred, all the while trying to keep his newfound vocation a secret from his parents and maintain a relationship with his boyfriend. Along the way he met some unforgettable characters — the fifty-year-old divorcé who’s obsessed with a twenty-one-year-old dancer, the celebrated drag diva who hailed from a small town in rural Virginia, and the many straight guys who were “gay for pay.”

In the Life: A Black Gay Anthology edited by Joseph Beam

29 black authors explore what it means to be doubly different — both black and gay — in 1980s America. These stories, essays, verses, and other works of art voice the concerns and aspirations of an often silent minority. They range betwen poignant, erotic, resolute and angry, but always reflect the affirming power of coming together to build a strong black gay community. In the introduction to the original 1986 edition, editor Joseph Beam wrote, “The bottom line is this: We are Black men who are proudly gay. What we offer is our lives, our love, our visions…We are coming home with our heads held up high.”

Fosse by Sam Wasson

The only person ever to win an Oscar, Emmy and Tony awards all in the same year, Bob Fosse revolutionized nearly every facet of American entertainment. His signature style would influence generations of performing artists. Yet in spite of Fosse’s innumerable achievements — which include directing Cabaret, Pippin, All That Jazz and Chicago, one of the longest-running Broadway musicals ever — his offstage life was shadowed by deep wounds and insatiable appetites. Bestselling author Sam Wasson draws on a wealth of unpublished material and hundreds of sources — friends, enemies, lovers, and collaborators, many of them speaking publicly about Fosse for the first time — to offer readers the definitive biography of one of Broadway and Hollywood’s most complex and dynamic icons.

The Mayor of Castro Street by Randy Shilts

Known as “The Mayor of Castro Street” even before he was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Harvey Milk’s personal life, public career, and death reflect the dramatic emergence of the gay community as a political power in the 1970s America. Randy Shilt’s biography offers a story full of personal tragedies and political intrigues, assassinations at City Hall, massive riots in the streets, the miscarriage of justice, and the consolidation of gay power and gay hope.

 Related stories:

15 Must-Read Gay Memoirs And Biographies

PHOTOS: Sexy Men Reading Make Us Want To Bury Our Faces In Their Books

Anticipation Over Jennifer Lopez’s Book Has Us Salivating For Memoirs From Other Divas

Graham Gremore

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Taylor Lautner Spotted Hanging Out At Gay West Hollywood Club With Underwear Model

Kyler Geoffroy

www.towleroad.com/2014/12/taylor-lautner-spotted-hanging-out-at-gay-west-hollywood-club-with-underwear-model.html

PHOTOS: Sexy Men In Sweaters And Long Johns Keep Us Cozy This Winter

Burrrrr! It’s cold out there.

Blizzards and ice storms and rainstorms, oh my! We’ve already seen below freezing temperatures and record snowfall this year and technically winter hasn’t even officially begun. (The astronomical winter in the Northern Hemisphere begins on December 21.) So to help keep your body temperatures up on these chilly days and frigid nights, we’ve compiled sexy photos of guys looking warm and cozy in sweaters and long johns.

Scroll down to see them, drive safe, and stay warm!

Photo source: daviddust

Photo source: ilmutandone

Photo source: Pinterest

Photo source: Beefysocks

Photo source: Guys in Long Johns

Photo source: Guys in Long Johns

Photo source: Guys in Long Johns

Photo source: Muchpics

Photo source: Beefysocks

Photo source: Guys in Long Johns

Photo source: Tumblr

Photo source: insideinsight

Photo source: Symbear

Photo source: Tumblr

Photo source: adoradordepelos

Photo source: cykeem

Photo source: Guys in Long Johns

Photo source: hotbabybear

Photo source: jayjaycgn

Photo source: ilmutandone

Related stories:

PHOTOS: Yummy Guys Show Off Their Tasty “Manspreads” Just In Time For Thanksgiving

PHOTOS: Hot Homoerotic Twins Have Us Seeing Doubles

PHOTOS: These Men’s Sexy Calves Make Us Say “Moo!”

Graham Gremore is a columnist and contributor for Queerty and Life of the Law. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter.

Graham Gremore

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The Firestorm About Chris Hughes And The New Republic Isn’t Just About The Magazine. It’s Really About Hughes

Chris Hughes has had better autumns. First the Facebook co-founder saw his husband, Sean Eldridge, lose a pricey race for Congress. Now Hughes is the target of irate journalists for the way he’s handling changes at The New Republic, the liberal policy magazine that he bought two years ago. From the outpouring of outrage, you’d think that Hughes had committed the publishing equivalent of tearing down the White House to put up a strip mall. The fury of so many big-name journalists can’t be misplaced, can it?

Actually, in this case, yes.

Hughes deserves a chunk of the blame for the mess he finds himself in. He’s the one who brought in Guy Vidra as CEO, who seems to have all the diplomatic skills of Kim Jong-un. Vidra clearly had it in for TNR editor-in-chief Franklin Foer, who was widely respected by staff and peers.

This week, Vidra announced that Gabriel Snyder, a former editor at the Atlantic Wire, was replacing Foer, who apparently learned through the grapevine that Vidra was replacing him. To add insult to injury, Vidra didn’t even know how to pronounce Foer’s name, getting it wrong at the 100th anniversary celebration for the magazine last month.

Foer’s resignation opened the floodgates. So far about a dozen of the magazine’s staff of 54 have quit in protest, as have a large number of the occasional contributors whose names pad the masthead.

The dismissal of Foer was just one part of the changes taking place. The magazine will be cutting its print schedule from 20 issues a year to 10 and moving the bulk of its operations to New York from D.C.

From the uproar, you’d think that Hughes had strangled the crown prince of liberal journalism in the cradle. “Hughes and Vidra have provided no reason at all for anybody to believe they have a plausible plan to modernize The New Republic,” Jonathan Chait, a former TNR staffer, complained.

The problem with angering journalists is a) they have plenty of outlets to express their anger at you and b) they have plenty of friends who think trade gossip is as newsworthy as nuclear nonproliferation pacts (actually, more so).

Hughes’ greatest sin is that he has never been a member of the club. He brings a Silicon Valley sensibility to his work. He’s never really tried to make himself part of The Village, that closed circle of the D.C. elite that fancies itself the repository of all wisdom. As Bloomberg political columnist David Weigel notes, “The knives were out for Chris Hughes from his first weeks.”

Hughes’ biggest sin seems to be that he is looking at The New Republic as a business and not a charity. He certainly has the money to keeping sinking into the magazine as a kind of non-profit project, and no doubt many of his current critics would have been happy if he kept signing big checks and kept silent.

But at some point, Hughes seems to have concluded that the course TNR was on would doom the enterprise. Trying to make a go in the dead-tree industry these days is like choosing a career as the town blacksmith. Think of our own late, great Advocate magazine. Hughes seems to want to make TNR more web oriented, with the kind of stories that will drive traffic. (Although that’s not the easiest business model, either. Ask the publisher of any online magazine.)

For all the eulogies about how Hughes has killed TNR, the reality is that the magazine has been flat-lining for years. With the advent of blogs, the monopoly that the D.C. policy magazines held on political discourse is long gone. (Queerty.com, founded in 2005, has approximately the same daily audience as the online site, newrepublic.com, of the century old magazine.)

Hughes’ critics seemed convinced that TNR is one step away from running endless videos of cats playing in paper bags as clickbait. But they seem to forget that the magazine has a long, ignoble history of clickbait before it was known clickbait. The most notorious example: In the 1980s, the magazine, under Andrew Sullivan’s editorship, was a chief promoter of The Bell Curve, a scientifically questionable “study” of why blacks had lower I.Q.s. Back then, this type of outrageous contrarianism was called buzz.

Maybe Hughes handled the shift in strategy all wrong. (Vidra certainly looks like he did.) After all, he got rich very young, and lacks experience in journalism. But that doesn’t mean the strategy itself is wrong. Maybe the guy who saw the future of social media knows a thing or two about the internet.

JohnGallagher

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