LGBT Wellness Roundup: Jan. 9
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.
Category Archives: NEWS
Peter LaBarbera’s 10 Craziest Claims About Homosexuality
Peter LaBarbera’s 10 Craziest Claims About Homosexuality
Flop-sweating Peter LaBarbera has been spouting nonsense about LGBTs since the early ’90s, such as his recent and completely absurd Dr. Seuss-inspired poem about the danger of Michael Sam kissing his boyfriend on live television. Yet for some reason he hasn’t completely self-marginalized himself — or been completely marginalized by the media.
As evidenced by his ridiculous appearances on radio shows throughout last year, there are still bookers out there willing to put him on the air, as if he had some credibility as a speaker.
Poor Peter’s struggled to make a name for himself as a serious antigay critic ever since a friend at the Christian Coalition invited him to denounce gays in a publication called The Lambda Report. Since then, he’s snuck around at gay events with a camera and tape recorder, hoping to catch someone in the act of being lewd so he can crow about how gross gay people are. He’s also “researched” more gay porn than most gay men we know. And to think we don’t get paid to do it.
These days he runs Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, which is basically a stale blog where Peter & friends lament these troubling times. After refusing to provide required financial data to the IRS, the government revoked the group’s nonprofit status several years ago.
So let’s be clear: Peter LaBarbera has no idea what he’s talking about, makes stuff up, and is completely wrong about everything. Yet he still gets invited to appear on “mainstream” news and opinion shows.
Just to remind all those lazy television and radio producers out there, here’s a delightful walk down memory lane of some of his greatest (aka worst) hits:
Quote #1: When he saw happy gay soldiers reunited with loved ones, he had this to say: “Only a decaying society pretends that homosexual relationships are morally equivalent to normal, male-female couples.”
Rebuttal: This really gets to the heart of Peter’s problem, and why he’s just so irretrievably crazy: somewhere along the line, he’s become convinced that gays are just fundamentally bad, and the happier we are the angrier he gets.
Quote #2: Speaking to terrified wig-stand Janet Mefferd on her radio show last year, he said, “God detests homosexual practice and so we should expect that, since this is a sin movement, we should expect that they lie and are often nasty.”
Rebuttal: This was part of a long, rambling diatribe in which Peter presumed to know exactly what God thinks. The phrase “this is a sin movement” is particularly colorful.
Quote #3: He told an audience in Jamaica, where LGBTs are routinely beaten and tortured and killed, that they must retain laws criminalizing homosexuality.
Rubuttal: Good idea!
Quote #4: Complaining about his organization’s listing as a hate group by the SPLC in 2010, he claimed that most child molestation victims and abusers are male.
Rebuttal: That’s not true, obviously.
Quote #5: “It’s almost as if homosexual sodomy was created to spread disease,” he told another radio show.
This is a common religious right refrain, that gay sex is riskier than straight sex. Even if that were true, which is is most decidedly not, if he was really concerned about mortality, why not go after, say, cliff jumping or drunk driving or smoking?
Quote #6: When Ben & Jerry’s temporarily changed the name of “Chubby Hubby” to “Hubby Hubby” to celebrate marriage equality in Vermont, LaBarbera freaked out that the ice cream company was neglecting to “talk about the dangers of the lifestyle.”
Rebuttal: This is like expecting every commercial featuring a husband and wife to feature a warning about accidental pregnancy.
Quote #7: He asked of homosexuality, “More Dangerous than Smoking?” Presumably he did not ask this question because he thought the answer was “no.” Later, he clarified, “In fact, I think some ‘gay’ behaviors like sodomy are more dangerous than cigarettes.”
Rebuttal: We are delighted to hear him make this statement, because it is so completely false. Nope, not more dangerous than cigarettes. Not even close. Unless you are being sodomized by a giant cigarette, in which case, maybe.
Quote #8: He posted a claim from a woman saying, “From my work I have learned that repeated sodomy (or anal sex) results in a condition called anal laxity (looseness) that requires surgery or a colostomy bag in order for the bowels to function properly.”
Rebuttal: Right, and if you do too many bench presses your arm muscles will become lax, too! Can you even imagine if that was actually true?
Quote #9. Barack Obama is “anti-christian,” apparently, and gays Christians aren’t really Christians.
Rebuttal: Saint Peter gets to decide who can belong to what religion.
Quote #10. After Illinois passed marriage, he said, “No matter what happens through the law or what politicians do, two men will never really be married.”
Rebuttal: Haha, sorry, actually yes they are! Married married married. Look, it’s a piece of paper that says “married” on it. Guess what that means! (Hint: married.)
matt baume
A 'Massive' Look Inside the World of Gay Japanese Manga: VIDEO
A 'Massive' Look Inside the World of Gay Japanese Manga: VIDEO
To read most of the Western media’s coverage about LGBT rights in Japan, one might, understandably, get the impression that the country has all but suffocated its gay population. In reality that’s far from the case. Much in the same way that Tom of Finland helped define the artistic aesthetic of 70s-era gay erotica in the West, Gengoroh Tagame did the same for Japan in the mid-80s.
Though bara, the genre that Tagame primarily works in, is considered a separate artform, Tagame’s influence on the Japanese manga industry can be seen throughout some of the most popular yaoi manga titles today.
Here in the U.S. Tagame and other bara artists’ work has really only ever thrived in online enthusiast communities like those exist on Tumblr, DeviantArt, and certain message boards. In Massive: Gay Erotic Manga and the Men Who Make It authors Anne Ishii Graham Kolbeins interview some of the genre’s top artists for one of the first in-depth, English-language primers.
Massive, Kolbeins, and Ishii are currently touring across the U.S. promoting the book, but in case you can’t make it to a signing check out the epic launch party featuring an interview with Tagame and Gachimuchi go-go boys AFTER THE JUMP…(NSFW images)
Charles Pulliam-Moore
www.towleroad.com/2015/01/massive-prepares-its-first-english-primer-on-gay-japanese-manga-video.html
WATCH: Does Don Lemon's Question to Muslim Lawyer Reach New Insensitive Heights?
WATCH: Does Don Lemon's Question to Muslim Lawyer Reach New Insensitive Heights?
Out CNN reporter Don Lemon seems to be doing his best to secure a repeat of his 2014 victory, when he was named the year’s worst journalist.
Sunnivie Brydum
I'm a Lesbian Married to a Man
I'm a Lesbian Married to a Man
At 50, I was finally able to admit to myself that I was a lesbian. I have been married for over 25 years and have a daughter, 15. My marriage has been a martyrdom, as I have no desire.
I have always been attracted to women, but never had the courage to accept it. Then came the religious prohibitions that have caused distress to my sex life. Since adolescence, my first experiences with sex were with men, but they were never good. I thought it was because there was no passion. At 16, I had a different kind of relationship with a co-worker. She pleased me, we were always together, and there was a lot of affection, but we never touched each other. There was the desire, but there was also a great fear, because, in my mind, if you liked women you were a dyke, butch, and I’ve always been very feminine. I did not understand the lesbian world.
I ended up getting married, more for convenience than for passion. To have a little pleasure, close my eyes and imagine myself having sex with a woman. To dream often of being able to experiment, because just by looking at an interesting woman, I could tell the sex with her would be complete, fulfilling. My husband does not understand why I don’t seek him out or why I don’t feel joy in our sexual relationship. In the other areas of our life, we get along well. He is a great husband and I feel guilty for not being able to feel pleasure with him. But I don’t have the courage to speak up.
The only time I spoke with someone about this was on Brazilian blog BlogSouBi (Blog I’m bi), because I knew I would not be rejected there. I’m too scared to face the world, my family. I’ve thought about divorce, but the fear is too great and I end up just leaving things as they are. I wonder how long I will be able to bear this secret. Getting it off my chest feels good.
The fear, the impositions of family and the judgment of society can lead one to make that kind of choice: to pretend to be happy.
“The time of plural truths is over. Now we live in the time of the universal lie. We have never lied so much. We live a lie every day,” wrote the Portuguese writer José Saramago. And this “now” has already lasted a long time.
This article was originally posted in BlogSouBi and published on BrasilPost; it was translated into English.
Right-Wing Pundit Compares Gay Activists To French Terrorist Murderers
Right-Wing Pundit Compares Gay Activists To French Terrorist Murderers
You could see this coming. Right-wing pundit Erick Erickson, who never met a crackpot opinion he didn’t like, thinks that gay activists are the equivalent of the terrorists in France who murdered 12 employees of a satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and then engaged in a rampage in the Jewish neighborhood of Paris.
How do we rate this comparison? We objected to Kevin Cochran, the fire chief in Atlanta, for self-publishing a book that describes gay people as “vile,” “vulgar,” and “perverts.” Cochran was canned by Mayor Kasim Reed for violating city policy and proving that Cochran lacked the “judgment and ability to manage the department.”
Apparently, to Erickson that’s the equivalent of turning automatic weapons on innocent citizens.
Gay activists “believe that the views they want to silence are not worthy of ever being spoken…and so they must be punished, they must be vanquished, and everyone must know it’s going to happen to them as well,” Erickson said on his radio show, appearing to barrel toward a denunciation of the Paris attackers.
“And so they did the only thing they could do, the only thing they knew to do,” he continued. “They went to the mayor of Atlanta and demanded he fire the chief of the fire department for daring to mock them.”
Erickson explicitly linked the activists’ objections (otherwise known as the expression of free speech) to the terrorist activities in France (otherwise known as murder).
“The terrorists did what had to be done to publicly destroy and ruin the offender…and the terrorists won in Atlanta,” Erickson insisted.
Erickson is always looked for non-existent connections to stir up outrage. Not that long ago, he was blaming the lack of an Ebola vaccine on fat lesbians. He’s a little wobbly in his ideological understanding, though. He used to just compare us to Nazis. Only in Erickson’s imagination would Muslim terrorists and Nazis be one and the same.
JohnGallagher
Incarcerated Trans Woman Sues New York Prison Over Sexual Assault
Amazing New Technology Allows Guys To Photograph Their Penises In 3D
Amazing New Technology Allows Guys To Photograph Their Penises In 3D
At long last, the technology you’ve been waiting for has finally arrived.
Scanify’s handheld 3D scanner bills itself as “the world’s first point-and-shoot 3D scanner.” It allows users to take three dimensional photographs of anything — yes, anything – their hearts desire because, well, why not?
The device, which has only been made available to a small handful of people, is already causing a stir, mainly among men who have been using it to print 3D pictures of their penises. What they do with the pictures afterwards is anyone’s guess.
“When we set out to create Scanify, our goal was to democratize the 3D movement for consumers and, in particular, to allow for the personalization of their creations,” Fuel3C CEO Stuart Mead said in a press release. “Scanify allows consumers to transform highly-complex subjects — such as the human face — into high-detail, full-color 3D scans as quickly as they could take a photo using a digital camera.”
Using Scanify is easy. All a person needs to do is point the device at the subject they’d like to photograph (i.e. their penis) and rotate it around 360-degrees to capture every angle. Once the subject is “mapped,” it’s turned into an image that can then be shared online or sent to a 3D printer. The whole process takes less than one minute.
Here’s a slightly disturbing NSFW video that shows exactly how it’s done.
But don’t get too excited, fellas, because photographing your penis in 3D is going to cost you. Scanify starts at $1,490. It’s currently available for pre-order now from Fuel3D, and is expected to ship in the first quarter of 2015.
Here’s hoping that price drops by next Christmas.
Related stories:
Nude Pic Etiquette: Five Tasteful Tips For Photographing Your Junk
Olympic Pole Vaulter’s Leaked Nude Pics Reveal An Olympic Pole In His Pants
A Lot Of Men Are Unhappy With Their Penis Size, So Here’s What Can Be Done About It
Graham Gremore
LISTEN: Oral Arguments from Fifth Circuit Gay Marriage Cases
LISTEN: Oral Arguments from Fifth Circuit Gay Marriage Cases
Today’s oral arguments in the marriage equality cases from Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas are coming in. As we reported earlier, signs point to a 2-1 victory for marriage equality, with wild card Judge Patrick Higgenbotham (pictured right) appearing skeptical of state arguments in favor of bans on same-sex marriage.
Listen to the Louisiana and Texas cases, AFTER THE JUMP… (MS will be added here once it become available)
And stay tuned for our legal editor Ari Ezra Waldman’s analysis of what went down in the Fifth Circuit today…
Kyler Geoffroy
www.towleroad.com/2015/01/listen-oral-arguments-from-fifth-circuit-gay-marriage-cases.html
Reports: Fifth Circuit May Strike Down Marriage Bans in Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi
Reports: Fifth Circuit May Strike Down Marriage Bans in Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi
Initial reports from today’s hearing at the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans suggest marriage equality supporters could be in for good news.
Sunnivie Brydum
