Roadside Attractions
Roland Emmerich insisted that all the riot extras were LGBT. “Montreal has a big gay population, and I insisted that everyone who is part of this riot has to be gay, and there was some real anger there. For two or three days they were pumped. A couple of times we said ‘stop’ with a megaphone and it took a while to stop them.”
Alabama Probate Judge Nick Williams wants to be the next Kim Davis, obviously not realizing she’s not getting rich like most bigots. He’s filed an for an order of protection from the Alabama Supreme Court to not have to issue marriage licenses. “The jailing of Kentucky clerk Kimberly B. Davis put at immediate risk the liberty interest of all faithful and religiously sincere public officials in Alabama whose office has responsibility for making decisions as to whether to give sanction and honor to homosexual relationships to include the issuance of a license to engage in sodomy.” I hate to tell you, but I don’t need a license to engage in sodomy. I can do it anywhere. And I probably have.
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We’ve always heard that Disney goes out of their way to say that Gay Days isn’t an official event, and Gay Days Anaheim promoter Eddie Shapiro says that’s true. And false. “They are both very involved and not at all. On the one hand, all of the programming decisions are done by me, but on the other, I couldn’t make most of them work without Disney’s facilitation. They are very cooperative as long as we stay respectful of their mission, which is to provide a great Gay Days experience while at the same time not disrupting the resort for the non-Gay Days guests. That doesn’t mean that we have to “tone it down” or anything, but it does mean that we don’t own the park. We all wear our red shirts, but we don’t walk down Main Street chanting or anything.” He also notes that Disney’s Fairy Tale Weddings will have a booth in the Welcome Center, marketing same-sex weddings in the parks.
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Can you guess the celebrity from the VPL? I only got 5 of 10 right.
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A campaign has been launched by U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) along with activist Martha SHelley to have a national park designation to honor Stonewall. A national park can be created by Congress or by the President under the Monuments Act, but only if the federal government owns the land, so the plan is to convince New York City to turn over Christopher Park to the federal government.
DC Comics
The Eighth Circuit of Appeals has ruled that the Affordable Care Act’s clause that requires religiously affiliated organizations to provide contraceptive care even though they don’t pay for it violates their religious freedom. There’s now a circuit split on the issue, which will send it to the Supreme Court, which could use Hobby Lobby to make a bad decision. This could extend to things like PrEP and HIV care if left unchecked.
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Demand for the expensive iPhone is so strong that some Chinese citizens have been contacting the black market to sell a kidney to get the new device. An innovative hospital is instead advertising for them to sell sperm instead. Still sounds more fair than the NEXT plan AT&T forced me to take.
In an attempt to spur conversation around PrEP, posters have appeared around Melbourne stating “You can fuck raw. PrEP works – no more HIV” The group behind the campaign, SEEITCLEARLY2020, says “Our current poster campaign is designed to shock, it is designed to start a conversation and it has been implemented across Melbourne because of the lack of education and the lack of awareness by existing public health authorities. So we are taking it into our own hands, and we are talking about bareback sex when no other group will.” While I don’t advocate that, it does seem to have gotten everyone’s attention.
The three defendants in the Philly hate crime beating that captured everyone’s attention last year are expected to take a plea deal. No details have been made public but the district attorney’s office says “I do expect them to plead guilty.” If you recall, one was the daughter of a suburban police chief who liked to brag online that her father let her get away with anything.
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Jennifer Lopez
There are very few occasions that I will encourage people to listen to bagpipes. But this is one of them. When a preacher was spewing anti-gay hate in the village of St. Andrews, the best remedy was for a bagpiper to come and drown him out, at least until the police arrived to deal with him more permanently.
Pixar movies are amazing, you laugh, you learn, you are definitely going to cry. But just how are they so good at making you cry? That comes down to the folks at the Pixar SadLab, where they study people’s reactions to sad things, and how to make them sadder. Because you never know how good a laugh can feel until you’ve been sobbing uncontrollably about a miscarriage and a death in the first ten minutes of a children’s cartoon.
Aydian Dowling sat down to talk about the challenges of dating in the trans community. As if dating wasn’t already hard enough, here you have to worry about a whole host of new issues that I’d never even think about.