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Bernie Sanders Opens Up Huge Lead Over Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire Poll
Sen. Bernie Sanders continues to widen his lead over Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire, according to a new CNN/WMUR poll.
46% of Democratic primary voters in the Granite State now back Sanders, compared to 30% support for Hillary Clinton and 14% for Vice President Joe Biden.
The New York Times breaks down the poll’s findings:
There does not appear to be a groundswell of support in New Hampshire for a Biden run — 37 percent said he should run, but 32 percent said he should not.
Mr. Sanders has a strong lead over Mrs. Clinton among men and is nearly tied with her for support among women. He also bests her in personal traits: Voters view her as the least honest and least likable of the major candidates.
Voters are nearly evenly split over who they think will win the New Hampshire primary — a question that pollsters say often gives a good feel for the dynamics of a race.
Still, more of those polled said they thought Mrs. Clinton would win the general election in November (51 percent said she would win, while 19 percent said Mr. Sanders would).
More on the poll here.
The post Bernie Sanders Opens Up Huge Lead Over Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire Poll appeared first on Towleroad.
Kyler Geoffroy
Bernie Sanders Opens Up Huge Lead Over Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire Poll
Why Aren't We Inspired By Hillary Clinton?
It was an unseasonably warm night in Chicago. On Tuesday, November 4, 2008, nearly a quarter of a million people — young and old, men and women of almost every racial and ethnic background — streamed into Grant Park. The crowd was peaceful and somewhat subdued, filled with a jittery anticipation about how the night would likely unfold. Shortly after 10 P.M.Central Standard Time, television networks announced that Barack Obama had been elected the forty-fourth President of the United States. For a few seconds, the crowd stood still, in a stunned silence. Then, the crowd let out a collective and euphoric scream. There was joy, relief, and disbelief. Tears flowed freely, strangers hugged for several minutes, others knelt and prayed. Senator John McCain’s concession speech put Obama’s election into its historic context by reminding Americans that just a century ago President Theodore Roosevelt had been vilified for inviting Booker T. Washington to dine at the White House. Obama’s victory speech took the high-spirited crowd even higher: “If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.” I called my cousin, who was too filled with emotion and too mystified to complete her thought: “This country . . . This country . . . This country . . . ” she said quietly, as her voice trailed off.
If Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic nomination and the national election, can we expect the same gathering of crowds and the same emotional outpouring? Would the historic election of the first woman President evoke a similar thrill and sense of wonderment at the leaps that this country is capable of making?
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This gay student is fighting back after being told he can’t bring a boy to his homecoming dance
All Lance Sanderson wants to do is dance with a guy at homecoming, but officials at his all-boys Catholic prep school in Memphis, Tennessee are refusing it due to ‘logistical’ reasons.
The 18-year-old gay student, a senior at Christian Brothers High School, wants to take a boy from another school to an event tomorrow (26 September).
According to school policy, students ‘may attend the dance by themselves, with other CBHS students or with a girl from another school’. Boys from other schools cannot attend ‘for logistical reasons’.
Sanderson had spoken to an official last year to make sure it was ok, and was told the school wouldn’t discriminate. But when that official left, he has been facing ‘harsh opposition’ from the school.
‘I was given several examples of statistics like they said gay couples have higher divorce rates, and that they’re violent; just different things that didn’t make sense, and I’ve come to find aren’t true,’ Sanderson told WHBQ-TV.
‘They said specifically as a Catholic school, they couldn’t support that… and that they struggled with the idea of me taking a guy to homecoming or prom.’
The school has issued a statement, claiming the reason why they do not accept boys from other schools is because it could cause ‘problems’.
They will stand by the policy and insist homophobia is not tolerated at the school.
But Sanderson is fighting back, urging the school to rethink its policy. He launched a Change.org petition to fight for the right to attend prom and homecoming with who he chooses.
So far, nearly 11,000 people have signed the petition.
‘I just want to bring a date of my choice to homecoming like the rest of my friends and classmates,’ Sanderson added. ‘I’m not asking for special treatment. I’m just asking for respect, and the chance to make my last homecoming a truly memorable experience.’
The post This gay student is fighting back after being told he can’t bring a boy to his homecoming dance appeared first on Gay Star News.
Joe Morgan
Vice President Joe Biden to Deliver Keynote Address at the 19th Annual HRC National Dinner
Ellen Page to receive Vanguard Award; Allison Janney to present; Jason Collins and Blossom Brown to speak; Grammy nominated singer and songwriter Carly Rae Jepsen, Grammy award-winning A Great Big World – joined by Hip-Hop artist Futuristic – will perform at sold-out event.
HRC.org
John Boehner to Resign from Congress
House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) will step down from Congress and give up his House seat at the end of October, the NYT is reporting.
Boehner broke the news in a Friday meeting of Republicans at the Capitol.
“He didn’t give anyone a heads up. This was a complete surprise to all of us,” said Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.)
Republicans are reportedly in a “state of shock” over the announcement.
NBC News reports:
A Boehner aide told NBC News that the Speaker “believes putting members through prolonged leadership turmoil would do irreparable damage to the institution. He is proud of what this majority has accomplished, and his Speakership, but for the good of the Republican Conference and the institution, he will resign the Speakership and his seat in Congress, effective October 30.”
Boehner has been under prolonged pressure from conservatives in his party, who have accused him of failing to fight the Obama administration on issues important to the GOP.
Foes within his party had been pushing to oust him if he presented any legislation that would continue to fund the government and avoid a government shutdown without stripping federal funding for Planned Parenthood.
More:
“Speaker Boehner believes that the first job of any Speaker is to protect this institution and, as we saw yesterday with the Holy Father, it is the one thing that unites and inspires us all,” a Boehner aide said.
Developing (refresh for updates)…
The post John Boehner to Resign from Congress appeared first on Towleroad.
Andy Towle
David Cameron’s mother told him to not support gay marriage, book claims
UK Prime Minister David Cameron ignored advice from his Conservative colleagues, many religious leaders and even his own mother on same-sex marriage, a book has claimed.
According to Lord Ashcroft’s biography, Call Me Dave, he ignored ‘universal advice’ to stop his support for same-sex marriage.
The marriage bill was initially suggested by the Liberal Democrats, supported by Cameron and a minority of the Conservative party, and passed in parliament thanks to overwhelming support from Labour. The first gay couples got married in England and Wales in March 2014.
Mary Cameron, the Prime Minister’s mother, has apparently said that even she tried to tell her son to drop the issue.
When asked about the negative reaction to the idea from Tory voters, she said: ‘I know, but David just won’t be told’.
Former Conservative donor Lord Ashcroft’s Call Me Dave has been making headlines ever since it started being serialized in the Daily Mail.
Previous revelations include a claim that Cameron stuck a part of his anatomy into a dead pig’s mouth while he was a university student. However, this claim has been highly contested and not proven. The prime minister’s spokesperson has refused to comment on any of the allegations in Ashcroft’s biography.
The post David Cameron’s mother told him to not support gay marriage, book claims appeared first on Gay Star News.
Joe Morgan
www.gaystarnews.com/article/david-camerons-mother-told-him-to-not-support-gay-marriage-book-claims/
Stonewall Might Be The Year’s Most Insulting Film, But Not For The Reasons You Think
To note that Roland Emmerich’s Stonewall, a heavily-fictionalized (i.e., factually dubious) retelling of the events that took place leading up to the historic queer-led Christopher Street protests in 1969, has been met with controversy would be an understatement as riotous as the events depicted in the film. You likely already know the film’s sad path to theatrical release. The trailer dropped in early August to much dismay over its focus on a fictitious white, blond twink savior protagonist (Jeremy Irvine), rather than any of the real-life heroes who were there during the watershed moment. There were threats of protests and boycotts, particularly from notable trans activists outraged that the contributions of trans pioneers and people of color had been downplayed, or as the media described it, “whitewashed.” The filmmakers (Emmerich and screenwriter Jon Robin Baitz) and cast (Irvine), sensing a disaster worthy of Emmerich’s oeuvre, stepped up to attempt damage control, suggesting people wait until they saw the entire film to form their opinions.
Roland Emmerich
That’s when the real problems fun began. As soon as the film was screened for critics and folks in the media during the past weeks, word quickly spread about audience laughter during the film’s pivotal dramatic moments. Early reviews began to trickle in and, as Emmerich instructed, critics offered their informed opinions. Most agreed that Emmerich and company not only neglected to create a politically correct or historically accurate account of the riots, but their film epically failed as entertainment. Stonewall currently has a 7% rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.
Earlier this week, Emmerich delivered what is likely the final blow to potentially friendly queer audiences when he stated during an interview with BuzzFeed, “You have to understand one thing: I didn’t make this movie only for gay people, I made it also for straight people. I kind of found out, in the testing process, that actually, for straight people, [Danny] is a very easy in. Danny’s very straight-acting. He gets mistreated because of that. [Straight audiences] can feel for him.”
Aw, Roland, how gentlemanly of you to rewrite our history as a concession to for hetero audiences and to make their comfort your priority. Now it’s our turn to respond in kind and avoid your stink bomb, which should work no hardship on anyone.
Scroll down for a smattering of reviews from writers around the nation who lob critical bricks at the catastrophe Emmerich has unleashed upon movie audiences.
In a piece aptly titled “There Aren’t Enough Bricks in the World to Throw at Roland Emmerich’s Appalling Stonewall,” Gawker’s Rich Juzwiak offers:
Rather than choose something debatable, the filmmakers created something definitively untrue. Rather than exploring the conflicting stories of what sparked the riot (was it Marsha P. Johnson’s shot glass, a high heel, a brick, or what?), which could have made for a fascinating formal exercise, they just credited the white guy. Rather than really examine Stonewall, a place obviously brimming with unheard stories of extreme living, Emmerich and company decided to center their narrative on a dude who drops by the bar a few times while floating through the city (only to settle uptown at Columbia when the summer ends). Imagine, just one time, an ensemble led by a character who isn’t white and “straight-acting.” Imagine people of color being used for more than just support.
MetroWeekly‘s Randy Shulman shared his outrage:
Stonewall is a defamation not just to our community, but to moviegoers of all genders, sexualities, race, creed, you have it. A vanity project of astonishingly huge proportions, it’s the deeply misguided work of a white, gay, obscenely privileged man thumping his chest and proclaiming, “This is how I see our history.”
Vanity Fair‘s Richard Lawson took the shoddy screenplay to task:
Stonewall is, plain and simple, a terribly made movie, with an alarmingly clunky script by acclaimed playwright Jon Robin Baitz (“I’m too angry to love anyone right now” is one howler—of course delivered by Danny to poor, still pining Ray) and a production design that makes late 1960s Christopher Street look like Sesame Street.
Alonso Duralde from The Wrap added:
Stonewall somehow manages to be simultaneously bloated and anemic, overstuffed and underpopulated. It’s a story about a true historical event that spends way too much time on its fictional lead character; the tone is so erratic and artificial that it wouldn’t feel surprising if the movie suddenly became a musical. And as the film gets duller and duller, you find yourself wishing these characters would break into song, just for variety’s sake.
Comic Guy Brannan reviewed the film on his blog:
As Roland Emmerich, the director of The Day After Tomorrow and Independence Day, takes on the challenge of representing the transformative moment in queer civil rights, the one task he is tireless in attending to is making sure we all know where our hero’s suitcase is. At a key perilous moment in the film, when our hero has just been kidnapped and all of the West Village is in turmoil, the camera slowly pans over to Danny’s beloved suitcase so we can see it rescued by a man title cards will later inform us is a real life civil rights hero. Successfully tracking that luggage is the film’s only success.
Michael Wilmington took aim in his review for Chicago Tribune:
Somehow, director Roland Emmerich has made a movie even less historically accurate than 10,000 BC, the one depicting Egyptian-style pyramids being constructed with the help of woolly mammoths.
New York Post‘s Lou Lumenick lamented the misfire:
Roland Emmerich’s seriously misjudged Stonewall turns the transgender drag queens who helped change America into dress extras in what’s basically a Big Apple retelling of The Wizard of Oz revolving around a Caucasian gay man’s coming of age. … Emmerich — a hugely successful director of disaster movies who happens to be gay — deserves credit for trying to call attention to the plight of gay homeless youth in this self-financed, if seriously flawed, labor of love. But with thinly drawn characters, uneven performances and tin-eared dialogue, Stonewall plays at best like a musical without the songs.
As BuzzFeed’s Alison Willmore succinctly put it:
Feels like a musical with all the songs stripped out so what’s left are broad archetypes who keep ending up in tableaux.
In an essay for PBS’ Art Beat column, Mark Segal, who was actually at the 1969 riots, offered perhaps the most-telling criticism of all:
The most disturbing historical liberty, one brought up again and again in the film, is that Judy Garland’s death had something to do with the riots. That is downright insulting to us as a community, as inaccurate as it gets and trivializes the oppression we were fighting against. (Full disclosure that I had reached out to the film’s producers earlier in the process, offering to give them my account of what happened at Stonewall. They did not take me up on it. But it is clear that they must not have taken anybody else up on this offer, either.)
So if you’re going to avoid seeing Stonewall this weekend, you can do so with a clear conscience. You won’t just be striking back for the real-life queer pioneers who came before you, you’ll also be avoiding the year’s biggest turkey.
Jeremy Kinser
Dear White LGBT People, Prove Black Lives Matter
The Advocate asked us to write about the contributions white LGBT people can make to support African-Americans in our mutual struggle against HIV and AIDS, which remains a critical issue for black people and LGBT people of all colors throughout the United States and worldwide.
Although HIV has become an increasingly manageable disease for people with access to effective treatment, it continues to ravage black communities. African-Americans are more likely to be newly infected with HIV, are diagnosed later, and often receive a lower quality of care. While many LGBT activists and organizations have turned their attention to same-sex marriage and other issues, we cannot let HIV and AIDS fall off our radar.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, African-Americans are eight times more likely than whites to become infected with HIV. More than 40 percent of all new infections in the U.S. — and 29 percent among women — occur among black people, who account for 12 percent of the total population. Young black gay and bisexual men have the highest rate of infection, and transgender people of color are also heavily affected. If these trends continue, it is estimated that black gay and bi men have a 60 percent chance of becoming HIV-positive by the time they reach age 40.
African-Americans, on average, are diagnosed with HIV when they have more advanced disease and are less likely to get appropriate care, start antiretroviral treatment, and reach an undetectable viral load. As a result, blacks have disproportionately high rates of progression to AIDS and HIV-related death.
How is it possible that in 2015 people are still coming to the hospital only after they develop symptoms of AIDS? One answer is lack of access to care. The AIDS Drug Assistance Program, which has been a lifeline for uninsured and underinsured people with HIV who cannot afford the medications they need — has been the least well-funded in states, especially in the Southeast, that have a large proportion of black and poor residents. While the Affordable Care Act has improved health care coverage for millions of Americans, many of these same states have refused to expand their Medicaid programs to cover vulnerable populations.
The biggest HIV breakthrough in recent years has been the advent of pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP — the daily dose of a medication that can dramatically reduce the risk of HIV infection. But here too, black gay and bi men and transgender people are not beneftting as much as others from this advance.
We have lived through the most devastating years of the AIDS pandemic, lost many friends and colleagues, and witnessed the destructive power of social stigma. But in those days, the stigma and shaming came mostly from the outside world — from people who already hated us for being queer or black or poor.
Today, much of the shaming comes from our own LGBT community — from people we hope would have more empathy and a sense of solidarity. It comes from those who regard newly infected people with smug contempt, who wag their fingers and say “You knew the risk!” or “You must be on meth!” or “You should have used a condom!” We need to stop shaming people — we need to stop talking at them and start listening to them.
HIV in African-American communities is a big, complicated, and painful issue, but there are many ways white LGBT people can act in solidarity as allies. We can start by speaking out and by showing up at rallies, fundraisers, protests, and vigils. We can join the Black Lives Matter fight against police abuse, mass incarceration, and the criminalization of HIV.
We can demand that school districts educate their students about sexual health and end “abstinence-only” policies that deny young people the information they need to protect themselves and their partners. We can fight for reproductive rights regardless of income and defend Planned Parenthood, which is the primary source of health care for many low-income Americans.
We can advocate for housing policies that protect poor, working-class, and middle-class people from displacement in the face of rising housing costs, which impacts health care for both the LGBT and African-American communities.
We can lobby for increased funding of ADAP, Medicaid, and ultimately universal health care, including strengthening mental health and substance use services. Failure to fund these critical services reflects institutionalized racism and marginalization of poor people. We need to stop blaming disadvantaged people for the shortcomings of the for-profit health care system.
We can insist that black people be fully represented in decision-making on the boards of directors of AIDS service organizations. We can urge national LGBT organizations to work in coalition with African-American leaders to address HIV in the black community, violence against trans women, and other critical issues.
The LGBT community has focused so many resources and made so much progress in efforts to win marriage equality and the right to serve in the military. But some of us have been left behind — and they see little evidence that “it gets better.”
We must do whatever we can, wherever we live, to send a message to the young people at greatest risk. We must tell them that they are beautiful and that we love them and that they deserve to be healthy and happy and safe. We must tell them that yes, their black lives do matter. And then we need to listen.
CLEVE JONES is the originator of the Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt and a cofounder of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation.
LIZ HIGHLEYMAN is a medical journalist and former ACT UP member who has been covering and fighting HIV for nearly 30 years.
Cleve Jones and Liz Highleyman
www.advocate.com/6in10men/2015/9/25/dear-white-lgbt-people-prove-black-lives-matter
Taiwan presidential hopeful says he would treat gay child with ‘tolerance, respect’
Taiwanese presidential candidate has said if he had an LGBTI child he would treat them with ’empathy, tolerance and respect.’
James Soong Chu-yu, chairman of the People First Party, was asked what he would do if he had a gay child in a Facebook Q&A with ETtoday readers on Wednesday (23 September).
At first, it would definitely be unexpected,’ he said.
Then he added: ‘[My late wife] once said they deserve empathy, tolerance and respect.’
In the latest polls, Soong is second with 17% of the vote, behind the Democratic Progressive Party’s Tsai Ing-wen, who has also spoken out for LGBTI rights.
The post Taiwan presidential hopeful says he would treat gay child with ‘tolerance, respect’ appeared first on Gay Star News.
Darren Wee
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