Stunning New Pictures from Violent Clash at LGBT Rally in Moscow
Moscow police intervened to help embattled LGBT demonstrators.
Dawn Ennis
www.advocate.com/world/2015/06/02/stunning-new-pictures-violent-clash-lgbt-rally-moscow
Category Archives: NEWS
12 Gay Male Pop Stars and Their Long-Term Partners
12 Gay Male Pop Stars and Their Long-Term Partners
Cheers to these out musicians and they men they’ve loved for years.
Gina Vivinetto
RuPaul’s Drag Race Top Three Finalists Premiere New Music Videos
RuPaul’s Drag Race Top Three Finalists Premiere New Music Videos
Another season of RuPaul’s Drag Race comes to an end, and the release of a new batch of music from its queens begins. Season 7 contestant, Miss Fame already released a song last month titled “Rubber Doll,” and tonight, the final three, Ginger Minj, Pearl, and Violet Chachki, have premiered music videos for their debut singles.
Ginger Minj’s “Ooh Lala Lala” is a big-band song about ignoring what the haters say while doing what makes you happy. Ginger was a stand out this season when it came to the acting and comedy challenges and has proven to be one helluva performer. Opting not to travel down the same pop/dance music route that most of the Drag Race alumni go in is slightly risky, but the style suits her vocal chops — not to mention the message of the song makes us love the Minj even more. Ginger was the winner of the “Divine Inspiration” challenge earlier in the season, and she clearly took some inspiration from the drag legend and incorporated it into this video.
Violet Chachki continues to channel her vintage pin-up doll look in the video for “Bettie.” Equal parts Marilyn Manson and Dita Von Teese, Violet serves up a happy housewife and a saucy dominatrix who knows her way around whips, chains, ball gags, and a Jello Mold. While Violet’s vocals are heavily autotuned, it works for the dark and edgy tone of the song. “Bettie” will be in heavy rotation at all the sex clubs this summer for sure. Keep your eyes peeled for a cameo from fellow Drag Race top three finalist Pearl in the video.
Speaking of Pearl, “Love Slave” is a four-minute EDM track that is as hypnotic as it is catchy, but will probably go down in Drag Race herstory as being the song with the least amount of vocals in it. Pearl has been a fan favorite throughout the entire season, and at this point, she can do no wrong. “Love Slave” is the first track from the debut album, Pleasure, which already holds a spot in the top dance albums chart on iTunes in its pre-order format. The video is a trippy visual experience and will probably make you want to pop some “E” and hit the dance floor. If you’re looking for some simulated kai kai action, you’ll enjoy the scenes between Pearl and season five queen, Detox. Flazéda!
Jeremy Kinser
WATCH: The Right-Wing Dissing of Caitlyn Jenner Begins
WATCH: The Right-Wing Dissing of Caitlyn Jenner Begins
The Fox empire, The Daily Caller, and other conservative types misgender or otherwise disrespect Jenner, and one claims she’s under Satan’s control.
Trudy Ring
www.advocate.com/politics/transgender/2015/06/01/watch-right-wing-dissing-caitlyn-jenner-begins
Activist Punks Saudi Arabia With Gay Rights Party
Activist Punks Saudi Arabia With Gay Rights Party
“Prosecuting and imprisoning people for homosexual conduct are flagrant human rights violations,” remarked Scott Long, of Human Rights Watch in April of 2005. “Subjecting the victims to floggings is torture, pure and simple.”
His remarks came after the government of Saudi Arabia sentenced dozens of men to 14,200 lashes for “behaving like women” at a birthday party.
Yet nearly 10 years since Human Rights Watched flagged this heinous incident, little has been done to free the LGBTQ population located in Saudi Arabia. For the most part, the mainstream media has ignored the systemic human rights abuses. Even human rights organizations and gay rights groups have often elected to focus on the domestic challenges within the American LGBTQ community.
Western governments are often so focused on geopolitical concerns that domestic issues, such as gay rights, often go overlooked.
Traditional human rights groups have long documented the repression of LGBTQ activists in the Middle East. These efforts, unfortunately, have not translated into the improved status of innocent men and women who dare to openly acknowledge their sexual orientation.
One human rights activist has taken a different approach.
When the Saudi Arabian Cultural Mission announced that their annual job fair would be taking place at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center over Memorial Day Weekend, David Keyes, the Executive Director of Advancing Human Rights, knew that the chance to draw attention to the oppressive Saudi Arabian regime was too good to pass up.
“This writes itself,” Keyes tells me. “A country which lashes and murders gay people chose the Gaylord to host their event. I knew what I needed to do. I rented a party bus, invited friends and threw an awesome gay party in the same place at the same time as the Saudi event.”
In just a few hours since posting the video of his stunt, tens of thousands of people have seen the prank across social media.
This wasn’t Keyes’ first time pranking a dictator. Weeks ago, Iran’s foreign minister came to NYU to give a speech. Keyes greeted Mr. Zarif with a satirical ice cream protest “celebrating” 1,000 hangings in Iran in the past year and a half. He rented an ice cream truck and approached two of Iran’s deputy foreign ministers offering them free ice cream to celebrate the hangings. “What’s your favorite way to hang gay people,” Keyes asked the diplomats. Within days, millions saw the video on Facebook and television.
Keyes remarked how incredible it is that pundits like Bill Maher are routinely protested when they speak on campus but literally no one shows up to protest when the foreign minister of a regime which hangs gays, jails bloggers and tortures human rights activists comes to an American campus.
The White House has long declared their support for gay rights, but this has not translated into real pressure on allies like Saudi Arabia which supply oil and buy enormous amounts of arms from the American government. Keyes thinks a lot more pressure needs to be brought to bear against countries that murder and lash gay people, deny women basic rights and routinely jail human rights activists.
As Keyes has proven, satire is a powerful tool against oppressive regimes. Soviet activists used to tell jokes in the gulag. Egyptian satirists like Bassem Yousef were silenced and cartoonists like Ali Farazat had their hands broken by Syrian regime thugs. The reason? “Dictators fear humor,” Keyes says. “They can’t handle a joke because it unmasks the absurdity of these regimes. Try as they might, not even dictators can stop a joke.”
A former president at Lionsgate is reportedly shopping Keyes’ pranking dictator approach as a new TV show to major networks. Just maybe, Americans will see the truth about tyrannical regimes throughout the world.
— 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.
Celebrate the End of 'Drag Race' Season 7 With Debut Music Videos from the Final Three Queens: WATCH
Celebrate the End of 'Drag Race' Season 7 With Debut Music Videos from the Final Three Queens: WATCH
To coincide with the end of this season of RuPaul’s Drag Race, the top three ladies released music videos for their debut singles showcasing each finalist’s signature flair.
Watch Pearl’s EDM track “Love Slave,” Ginger Minj’s brassy “Ooh Lala Lala” and Violet Chachki’s BDSM-inspired “Bettie,” AFTER THE JUMP…
What’d you think of tonight’s finale?
Kyler Geoffroy
www.towleroad.com/2015/06/celebrate-final-three-queens-videos.html
Gay High School Valedictorian Silenced and Outed by Principal
Gay High School Valedictorian Silenced and Outed by Principal
After a Colorado principal silenced a gay valedictorian who hoped to come out at graduation, the teen got a second chance.
Glenn Garner
www.advocate.com/lgbt-youth/2015/06/01/gay-high-school-valedictorian-silenced-and-outed-principal
8 Conversations You Need To Have Before Marrying Again
8 Conversations You Need To Have Before Marrying Again
Frank Sinatra once crooned that love is lovelier the second time around but Ol’ Blue Eyes wasn’t telling the whole story: when you remarry, love is also a whole lot more complicated.
The best way to stave off a second (or third) divorce is by addressing challenges as early as possible. Below, relationship experts weigh in with eight pressing conversations you need to have with your S.O. before giving marriage another shot.
1. Talk about what you did wrong in your last relationships.
If you want a strong second or third marriage, you need to look inward and take full ownership of the mistakes you’ve made in the past. You played a part in the downfall of your last marriage, now put that knowledge to use to make this one go the distance, said therapist Heather Gray.
“Ask yourself how you hold yourself accountable for your divorce,” Gray suggested. “Your response can’t be a job interview kind of answer, where you spin a strength inside out to make it sound like a weakness; this is real, honest communication about what you could have done better and why you didn’t do it the first time around. If one or both of you can’t transparently answer, you haven’t done enough work on yourselves to be ready to commit again.”
2. Talk about what your exes did wrong in your last relationship.
Owning up to your own marital mistakes doesn’t mean your ex is entirely off the hook. Talk to your current S.O. about what was missing in your last marriage and discuss any lingering feelings you may have about your ex’s failings as a partner, said Mark Banschick, a psychiatrist and the author of The Intelligent Divorce.
“We bring wounds of the past into the present. In the new marriage, you need to let your spouse know that you get a bit undone when he fails to respond to a text or when she stonewalls you during an argument,” Banschick said. “The advantage of a second or third marriage is that you can dispassionately share these issues with each other because there’s no requirement of perfection — you know that no marriage is perfect.”
3. Make a plan to fight fair.
Chances are you had some downright ugly fights with your ex toward the end of your marriage. While you might be inclined to leave those arguments in the past (who can blame you?), it’s worth using those negative experiences to establish ground rules for how to fight fair, psychiatrist Mark Goulston said. He used a couple he knows to illustrate his point:
“The husband, who I’ll call Frank, is on his third marriage and she’s on her second. Frank once told me: ‘We are living proof that having to win and having to be right at all times can win an argument and destroy a marriage.'”
Nowadays, Goulston said Frank and his current wife have come up with ground rules that they both follow and respect — like not using the words “always” or “never” during arguments and saying, “We’ll figure this out tomorrow, but know that I love you” if they go to bed without resolving the issues.
4. Thoroughly discuss your financial expectations for the marriage.
With a marriage (or two) behind you, you’re probably well-acquainted with how ugly arguments over money can be. (You’re not alone; researchers at Kansas State University recently found that finance-related arguments are the top predictor of divorce.) This time around, sit down and have an honest discussion about your financial expectations, said financial advisor Gabrielle Clemens.
“Before the wedding vows, take the time to discuss your separate assets, your separate liabilities and create a household financial plan to set forth exactly who pays for what in the relationship,” she said. “This is especially necessary if one person has significantly more assets than the other. The bitterness that can develop due to what is perceived to be a lack of commitment or loyalty to a spouse in favor of the kids can affect even the happiest of newlyweds.”
5. Ask yourselves: How will we integrate our two families?
Face it: You’re not just marrying your partner. You’re marrying their entire family, from their kids to their exes-turned-co-parenting partners. Put effort into making one another feel like part of the family while recognizing that it’s not necessarily going to be easy, Gray said.
“Blended families aren’t the Brady Bunch. They sometimes require patience and hard conversations,” she said. “Couples can’t ignore this reality just because they want a life together. And it’s not always realistic to say, ‘You deal with yours and I’ll deal with mine.’ Doing that oftentimes creates a divide before you’ve even become a union. You’re ready to commit to a person; Are you ready to commit to their family? Are they ready to commit to yours?”
6. If you have kids, lay down some parenting rules.
Your S.O. may have high hopes for being a bonus parent but a stepparent-stepkid relationship can’t be forced. If your partner comes off too strong — asking to be called “mom” or “dad” early on, for instance, or disciplining in a heavy-handed way — address the issue right away, said Banschick.
“This is not an easy conversation because hopefully, your soon-to-be spouse is in love with you and loves your kids just as much,” he said. “Your S.O. wants a family, but whether he or she likes it or not, this package deal has its own set of rules. The title of mom or dad generally belongs to your ex-spouse. You don’t want children to have to choose and feel disloyal in the process.”
He added: “Work together so your partner has a say in the house. Make sure he or she is valued. Children benefit from secure, loving and strong adults in their lives.”
7. What are your non-negotiable needs in a relationship?
Compromise and open communication are the cornerstones of any good relationship, but compromise too much and resentment is bound to fester. If you tried to silence your core needs in your previous marriage, speak up this time around, Gray said.
“We tend to negotiate important needs away and tell ourselves we don’t need them, especially when our partners fail to meet them over and over again,” she said. “Being clear with your new love about who you are includes being clear on what you need and asking your new partner if they are willing to meet those needs.”
8. And finally, talk about your hopes for the future and recognize this as your chance to do it right.
When you’re done tackling those weighty conversations, Goulston suggests you both embrace this second chance — and recognize that things could be a lot worse.
“The most comical — and probably the best marital tip I’ve ever heard — comes from a couple who were previously both divorced. After 15 years of marriage and very few arguments, the husband told me with his wry sense of humor, ‘Marry someone where both of your exes were off-the-charts difficult. That way, every time you have a disagreement with your current spouse, you get flashbacks from the awful marriage and you just start giggling together because you realize you escaped that!'”
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— 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.
As Mean-Spirited S.B. 2 Clears Senate Hurdle, All Eyes Are On the House
As Mean-Spirited S.B. 2 Clears Senate Hurdle, All Eyes Are On the House
After Governor McCrory’s veto, a handful of members—including the Speaker—must decide whether to set North Carolina back
HRC.org
Ryan Phillippe Takes It Off In The Restored Version of “54”
Ryan Phillippe Takes It Off In The Restored Version of “54”
You’ve waited 17 years to watch Ryan Phillippe make out with Breckin Meyer, so what’s a few more hours? The two actors shared a passionate kiss as thirsty young men on the make at Manhattan’s most notorious nightclub in the 1998 drama 54, only to have it end up on the cutting room floor. Now the make-out sesh is back, along with approximately 40 additional minutes of footage that compromised director Mark Christopher’s cinematic vision when the film was initially released.
54: The Director’s Cut will be available on Digital HD tomorrow but whet your appetites with the trailer below.
Jeremy Kinser
