Flying, Lunching, and Working Out: Your Diary Entries for #DayInLGBT
The first part of our diary series, capturing the #DayInLGBT.
Advocate Contributors
Category Archives: NEWS
The State Of Alabama Is Now Issuing Personalized Antigay License Plates
The State Of Alabama Is Now Issuing Personalized Antigay License Plates
Well, this is just lovely.
The great state of Alabama has issued the owner of a shiny black Ford Mustang a vanity license plate that displays the words “No Homo.”
The plate reads “N0H0M0,” with zeroes instead of letter o’s. According to Gay Star News, “No Homo” is a term used in hip hop culture by someone who wants to distance himself from something he said that may give the impression he’s gay.
“In a sense,” music journalist Nick Catucci explains in New York Magazine, “‘no homo’ is just a more evolved way of calling someone a faggot.”
The plate was first noticed by Paul Fulton Jr. earlier this week. He told ThinkProgress that he was “first shocked, then angered” that the state had issued a blatantly homophobic plate.
“How could they allow outright discrimination to be published on a state license plate?” he said.
Of course, Alabama has a lot of work to do with it comes to how it treats gay people. The state does not recognize marriages between same-sex couples. On top of that, it has no nondiscrimination ordinances or hate crime laws that protect LGBT people. And up until 2003, sodomy was still illegal. Even today, despite the U.S. Supreme Court striking down all state sodomy laws in Lawrence v. Texas, lawmakers in Alabama have yet to actually remove the unconstitutional, unenforceable sodomy law from the state’s books. So we can’t say we’re totally surprised it issued this license plate like this, though it’s still disappointing.
Amanda Collier, a spokesperson for the Alabama Department of Revenue, told ThinkProgress that there was a process is in place to monitor personalized license plates.
When a driver files a request for a vanity plate, she explained, a three-person review panel considers each application, sometimes offering alternative lettering for the requested message.
“There is a list of more than 6,000 plates that are strictly banned and will not be allowed on any tag in the state,” she said, including “anything explicit, any profanity, or vulgar language.”
Evidently, antigay messages don’t quality as explicit, profane or vulgar.
Related stories:
Gender-Bending, All-Male Dance Troupe Causes Outrage And “Disgust” In Alabama
Apple CEO Tim Cook Reads Alabama’s Anti-Gay Governor to Filth
Alabama Woman Charged With Murder After Shooting Son’s Boyfriend In The Back
Graham Gremore
We Must Do Better
We Must Do Better
Devestating news about 12-year-old boy’s death by suicide in Northern California’s Sacramento County.
HRC.org
www.hrc.org/blog/entry/we-must-do-better?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss-feed
Daddyhunt Launches Mobile App To Help With Issues of a Certain Kind – WATCH
Daddyhunt Launches Mobile App To Help With Issues of a Certain Kind – WATCH
Have you ever found yourself in need of a hirsute, muscular, mature man to help you pry open that pesky lock in the locker-room? Daddyhunt is banking that you have with its recently launched ad campaign for its new mobile application designed to connect older men with the guys that love them. Similar to other mobile applications like Grindr, Scruff, and Growlr, Daddyhunt gives its users a grid of user profiles organized according by geolocated proximity.
Daddyhunt’s primary online web community was founded in 2005 and aimed at creating a community for older men. As time has gone on the website has expanded beyond a being a singles’ dating portal and become more akin to a social network, encouraging users to maintain online presences and interactions:
“When gay dating apps began replacing bars as the main point of interaction, our community lost some important things — social interaction, casual conversation, the ability to flirt over common interests,” Daddyhunt CEO Carl Sandler said in a press release. “I realized that many people yearn for something more than a string of “hey” pings from thumnail torsos. The Daddyhunt app is a way to bring a sense of shared experience back to gay culture.”
As the market for mobile dating applications becomes increasingly saturated, product developers are being pushed to differentiate themselves from one another by targeting different demographics within the gay male community.
Older members of the LGBT community are often marginalized within mainstream depictions of queer lives in ways that erase the very real difficulties they face on a day to day basis. How Daddyhunt plans to effectively market to the salt-and-pepper set beyond its steamy pederast commercials remains to be seen, but in the meantime the application is available for download in both the Apple App and Google Play stores.
Watch clips from Daddyhunt’s #ExperienceMatters campaign AFTER THE JUMP…
Charles Pulliam-Moore
Op-ed: On Kate Pierson, and How Cultural Misrepresentation Hurts Trans Women
PHOTOS: Santas In Speedos Let Loose On Boston
PHOTOS: Santas In Speedos Let Loose On Boston
This post can be found in the GayCities galleries.
Gabe Cooper
HRC Arkansas Remains Committed to Advancing Equality in the Natural State
HRC Arkansas Remains Committed to Advancing Equality in the Natural State
Following a vicious, months-long campaign by anti-LGBT activists, a citywide non-discrimination ordinance that was recently passed by the Fayetteville City Council was repealed.
HRC.org
Is There A Whiff Of Homophobia In The Attacks On Chris Hughes?
Is There A Whiff Of Homophobia In The Attacks On Chris Hughes?
The brouhaha over Chris Hughes and The New Republic continues unabated. Hughes remains the subject of vituperative attacks that are amazingly and uncomfortably personal. And at some point you have to wonder if there isn’t just a wee whiff of lingering discomfort about Hughes’ sexuality playing into the attacks.
Now, this isn’t Westboro Baptist Church “God Hates Fags” homophobia. These writers to a man (and, one might add, to a white man) have been supporters of LGBT rights. They have risen to the community’s defense on numerous occasions.
But there’s something about the way that Hughes is being portrayed as the “other” that gives you pause. A lot of it has to do with the loathing Hughes’ critics have toward Silicon Valley. Some of it has to do with Hughes’ age–31. Some of it has to do with what seems a lot like resentment over Hughes’ fabulous wealth.
And then there’s a little something else. For example, in his nuclear-tipped column attacking Hughes, Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank keeps talking about Hughes’ in ways that make him less than a man: “lost boy,” “childish,” “moist-eyed.” He also alleges that Hughes killed a story unfavorable to Apple proposed after its CEO Tim Cook came out.
Milbank’s postscript?: “R.I.P., TNR. You deserved better than Chris Hughes.”
Nice touch.
Yes, it’s the gay Mafia come to smother the rich journalistic heritage of The New Republic, which includes supporting the war in Iraq, questioning the IQ of black people and ensuring that Clinton’s health care plan died.
More to the point, there have been few openly gay editors and writer at The New Republic over the years. Former Editor Andrew Sullivan is, of course, the notable exception, but Sullivan’s conservative politics, often hostile to the gay rights movement, helped him meld into the boys club that has always run the magazine.
The attacks have also come to encompass Sean Eldridge, who happens to be married to Hughes, as if Eldridge wasn’t his own person. No question that Eldridge’s failed run for Congress was an exercise in chutzpah enabled by Hughes’ money. But what does Eldridge have to do with the changes at The New Republic? Try imagining this story with a straight couple in which the other spouse is suddenly dragged into a workplace controversy. Or a story in which the couple’s photo is the one repeatedly used to illustrate the attack.
Of course, the attacks aren’t just coming from the straight world.
“[Hughes and husband Sean Eldridge] are little more than entitled brats who, like most fabulously wealthy arrivistes who attain their fortunes through sheer luck rather than hard work, are used to getting everything they want, when they want it, and throw temper tantrums when they don’t,” writes James Kirchick (not surprisingly a former New Republic writer) on The Daily Beast. (The headline of his story dubs the couple “America’s worst gay couple.” We could introduce him to some folks who have a better claim on that title.)
Remember these are the very same people who were praising Hughes when he was spending his money the way they wanted him to. Now that’s he’s making his own decisions, well, all bets are off.
Of course, Hughes is nothing like the previous owner of The New Republic, Marty Peretz. Peretz attained his fortune through hard work. He married an heiress. And Peretz upheld the highest standards of journalistic excellence, writing, among other things that, “I wonder whether I need honor [Muslims] and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse.”
At this point, Hughes is a blank slate upon which people project all their strongest feelings. He’s mild-mannered and low-keyed, in a milieu not noted for a surplus of modesty.
“Chris Hughes is history’s greatest monster,” Washington Post columnist Chris Cillizza wrote, making fun of the viscous tone of the coverage. Cizilla also argues that Hughes is essentially right to try to change The New Republic.
“Hughes told the dirty secret of modern journalism,” says Cillizza. “That secret? That it’s, you know, a business.” Cillizza also notes that “largely left out of the debate about what ring of hell Hughes should be relegated to is the idea that maybe he has correctly diagnosed what ails TNR.”
In fact, Jeff Bezos, the non-gay Amazon.com founder who now owns The Washington Post, has embarked on his own re-imaging of a journalistic institution. No one suggested that he’s singlehandedly destroying American journalism.
Could Hughes have handled the changes at The New Republic better? Without a doubt. It was a particularly graceless transition. But the exodus that followed the dismissal of two editors raises an interesting question, which Hughes himself pointed out in an op-ed Sunday. If people were so committed to The New Republic, why did they leave so fast? Not just that, but by declaring it dead, they were doing their damnedest to ensure the magazine dies.
You can disagree with what Hughes did. You can disagree with the way Hughes did it. But perhaps the critics could do with a little more self-awareness. Yes, Hughes isn’t like them. That doesn’t make him a lesser person. But then again, if you ever wanted proof that the Washington elite is a giant club, here’s it is. And the less you’re like the other members of the club, the less welcome you’ll be.
JohnGallagher
These Stars Want LGBTQ Youth to Know Their Lives Matter
These Stars Want LGBTQ Youth to Know Their Lives Matter
Stars including Paul Wesley, Dan Bucatinsky, Matt McGorry, and more shared why they’re passionate about LGBTQ youth and the battle against bullying on the red carpet of TrevorLIVE L.A.
Jase Peeples
The Golden Girls Xmas Drag Show Is All Sorts Of Holiday Magic
The Golden Girls Xmas Drag Show Is All Sorts Of Holiday Magic
The holiday season is all about traditions that bring us closer together, and while there are plenty of intimate celebrations we share with our relatives or close friends, it’s rare to find an event that leaves you feeling connected to total strangers. That’s what makes San Francisco’s ninth annual Xmas all-drag Golden Girls show so extra special.
Four formidable queens bring to life two full episodes of The Golden Girls on stage, proving definitively that Dorothy, Sophia, Rose and Blanche were made to be played in drag (as if there was any doubt).
This year, the girls chose “From Here To The Pharmacy” in which Blanche has no memory of her former lover who’s returned home from the Persian Gulf and “Journey To The Center Of Attention” which pits Dorothy against Blanche as the most popular patron of Blanche’s favorite bar, The Rusty Anchor. Meanwhile, Sophia decides to throw a living wake for herself. Hilarity naturally ensues.
And while the performances were rock solid, the laughs constant and uncontrollable, and the costumes justly fabulous, the real magic of the show was the audience.
The crowd packed every seat of the cozy 500-seat Victoria Theater in the Mission District, painting a picture of something that’s not always easy to find — a real community. Straight, gay (OK, mostly gay), young and old all shuffled in with the only clear intention being to have a damn good time.
Between scenes, pianist Tom Shaw played Christmas classics, and without fail, the audience burst into impromptu singalongs each time, belting out the words to Rudolph and White Christmas like it was the first chance they’d ever had to sing them.
It’s the fans who’ve made the event what it is, supporting the show since its 2006 inception in the front parlor of a Victorian Mansion in the Western Addition through increasingly larger venues.
And it’s never too late to jump on the bandwagon. Last year every show sold out, and this year won’t be any different. But you’ve still got time to get last minute tickets — the show runs Thurs-Sun through December 21st.
If you’re tired of the same old holiday mush, get your ass in one of those seats and pass the cheesecake.
The Golden Girls: The Christmas Episodes runs through Dec. 21 at the Victoria Theater and stars Pollo Del Mar (Rose), Cookie Dough (Sophia), Heklina (Dorothy) & Matthew Martin (Blanche). For tickets, click here.
Dan Tracer
