Issue 127: Orlando Cruz, Flava Works, Jamaica, black gay heroes, disintermediation + more

a news compendium
with a gay bias

OPENING SHOTS

< Don't miss Polari's fascinating Queer History series. Part 1: From The First Written Words to Alexander the Great; Part 2: The Roman Empire Starts to Turn Against Homosexuality; Part 3: The Roman Empire Outlaws Homosexuality.

||| The truth about sexuality in ancient Greece and Rome.

> The 8 most important black gay heroes in history. Apparently.

||| Homosexuality un-African? The claim is an historical embarrassment. "It would be strange for basic human experiences to be so highly relative that same-sex attraction was time- or place-bound."

||| How US Latinos have changed their attitude to homosexuality.

||| Why corporates are ahead in the struggle for gay equality.

< Meet Eugen Sandow, the man with the perfect body.

US & CANADA NEWS

> Was 18-year-old murder victim Terrance "Jawan" Wright a casualty of homophobia, or just a robbery gone wrong?

< This is 16-year-old David Hernandez Barros, who was driven to suicide by anti-gay bullying.

||| Fire Island "devastated" by Hurricane Sandy.

||| Who couldn't see this coming? Jewish Rabbi calls Hurricane Sandy "divine justice" for New York gay marriage.

See photos of an eerily deserted New York subway system before the hurricane hit.

||| Brad Pitt pledges to double every dollar donated to marriage equality fights in Maine, Minnesota, Maryland and Washington.

< GLBT History Museum in San Francisco's Castro District reopens after being vandalised.

||| Has fast food chain Chick-fil-A's anti-gay marriage stance actually helped its bottom line?

||| Harvey Milk's nephew on the only choice in this election when you're Jewish and gay.

||| US election: 10 oddities explained.

||| Barack Obama's presidency: Why hope shrivelled.

||| Watch the Human Rights Campaign video highlighting Mitt Romney's anti-gay views:


> This is Eric Bodenweiser, a Republican candidate for the Delaware State Senate and a member of the anti-gay Delaware Family Policy Council. He's been indicted on multiple charges of engaging in unlawful sex acts with a 13-year-old boy.

||| Disintermediation: The end of black America.

UK NEWS

||| UK government slammed for breaking pledge not to deport gay asylum seekers.

< Murderer Mohamed Khaleel has sentence cut on appeal; Khaleel slashed the throat of 67-year-old Michael Zubrot in 2010.

> This is 19-year-old Bleddyn King, who's been jailed for 28 years for murdering a man he met on a gay dating website.

||| 14-year-old boy raped by two men in Manchester department store.

< This is 14-year-old Kevin Ssali, who was stabbed to death after getting off a bus in south London.

Brixton Batty Boy. "In a moving, and funny piece, writer and performer Menno Kuijper writes about standing up to the man who called him 'batty boy' on far too regular a basis."

||| UK Child Support Agency orders gay sperm donor to pay for daughters of lesbian couple.

||| Adoption agency Catholic Care loses fight to stop gays from adopting.

< UK human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell arrested at Westminster Abbey for unfurling a flag, shouting "Free West Papua", and pointing a finger at a police officer.

||| Media whore Louise Mensch, the former drug addict, has resigned as Conservative MP for Corby and East Northamptonshire.

||| Two men die at London gay sauna Pleasuredrome.

||| Londoners fight to save the 170-year-old Queens Head - one of the capital's oldest gay bars...

...And in another London borough, an offshore property developer has been shut down a popular gay bar because the landlord wouldn't evict his staff from the flats above it.

||| Could London get its own High Line park?

> Explorer Dwayne Fields on black youths in countryside.

||| Ikea at 25: How has flatpack giant changed the UK?

EUROPE NEWS

< FRANCE: Getting a guy has never been so easy. Please recycle the packaging.

||| FRANCE: The Minister for Women's Rights, Najat Vallaud-Belkace, announces plans to fight homophobia, including teaching schoolchildren about gay issues.

> GERMANY: The gay housing project uniting generations in Berlin. "Gay pensioners persecuted by Nazis live alongside young workers in pioneering community."

||| FINLAND: Ramadan fasting dilemma when sun never sets.

< ITALY: Gay Catholic priest Don Mario Bonfanti excommunicated after coming out on Facebook.

||| ITALY: Two out of three gay Italians are discriminated against, survey finds.

> GREECE: Porsches and police cars rust in Greek government scrapyard.

||| Gay Europeans (some of them possibly Greek...) spend up to $US65 billion on travel.

||| Watch "Everyone Is Different", a public service ad highlighting the challenges faced by gay youth:


LATIN AMERICA NEWS

||| BERMUDA: The Caribbean island state to amend its laws to ban discrimination against gay citizens.

||| JAMAICA: Activists launch legal action over island's homophobic laws. "Landmark case seeks to abolish colonial-era buggery laws and stop murders and violent attacks on Caribbean homosexuals."

||| JAMAICA: University of Technology student beaten by mob - including security guards - after allegedly being caught having sex with another male student.


||| JAMAICA: The two guards have been sacked.

< JAMAICA: "I saw my friends killed... There's no safe place in this country." Gareth Henry, the former leader of Jamaican gay and lesbian group J-Flag, on why police death threats forced him to seek asylum in Canada.

||| JAMAICA: TV stations sued for rejecting pro-gay ads. Watch one of the ads here:


> HAITI: The damaged National Palace in Port-au-Prince is demolished.

< CHILE: Meet Jaime Parada, the country's first openly gay councilman.

||| CHILE: Defence attorney Claudio Cofré abandons Zamudio case; judge assigns public defender to represent the four men charged with brutally attacking Daniel Zamudio in March this year.

||| ARGENTINA: Bringing the fight for gay marriage to you.

THE BIG PICTURE: Colombian boys receive free boxing lessons in Barranquilla, 5th September 2012.

AFRICA NEWS

< SENEGAL: Two men have been jailed for gay sex. Jupiter Tamsir Ndiaye and Matar Diop Diagne received sentences of four and three years imprisonment, respectively. Ndiaye is a journalist and employee of UNESCO.

> UGANDA: Parliament passes resolution supporting Speaker of the House Rebecca Kadaga calls for Anti-Homosexuality Bill revival.

< UGANDA: Giles Muhame now "regrets" his infamous hang gays story. "It was the youthful adrenaline that overrode our reason," he told students at the University of Victoria in Kampala. "It was not necessary to wage a campaign for the hanging of gays. I think we could have prepared a better story without jeopardizing the safety of a minority group."

||| ZAMBIA: Belgian pleads not guilty to sodomy.

||| MALAWI: President Joyce Banda's U-turn on gay equality.

THE BIG PICTURE: In South Sudan, boys wrestle in Yida refugee camp, 16th September 2012.

SOUTHERN ASIA NEWS

||| INDIA: Women would prefer a gay husband to a cheating husband, newspaper claims.

||| INDIA: McDonald's opens vegetarian-only restaurant.

> PAKISTAN: Gay Pakistanis, still in shadows, seek acceptance.

ASIA-PACIFIC NEWS

||| NORTH KOREA: Ryugyong "Hotel of Doom" may finally open next year - 26 years after construction began.

< CHINA: 24-year-old Lu Zhong marries his 20-year-old partner Liu Wangquing in the eastern province of Fuijan.

||| CHINA: Ghost towns and phantom malls.

> CHINA: Meet Xiao Liang, a HIV-positive orphan, and the only student in his school for eight years.

||| TAIWAN: Proposal for multiple person marriage law, with same-sex marriage and civil partnerships for all, gathers momentum.

||| TAIWAN: A progressive history of gay rights in Taiwan.

||| TAIWAN: Minister says men should sit down to urinate.

< TAIWAN: Tens of thousands celebrate 10th annual Taiwan LGBT Pride Parade.

> AUSTRALIA: Police reopen investigation into 1988 death of American Scott Johnson.

MIDDLE EAST NEWS

||| EGYPT: Seven men arrested in Cairo for running alleged gay sex "debauchery" party network.

||| IRAN: Speaker of parliament Ali Larijani condemns homosexuality as a modern western barbarism.

||| SAUDI ARABIA: Religious police arrest five gay men during a raid on a health club in the Kingdom's capital, Riyadh.

BOOKS, ART & PHOTOGRAPHY

||| Gay literature takes off in India.

||| American Psycho author Bret Easton Ellis spews more gay hate.

||| The 10 best closing lines of books – in pictures.

The truth about Danmei. Teen Chinese girl craze for homoerotic comic books giving gender and sexuality theorists something to talk about.

||| As comic books embrace gay characters with high-profile plot lines, readers wonder where the industry will go next.

> The Top 7 toon pornos every nerd should know.

||| 10 terrifying artworks.

CINEMA

< The most accurate synopsis ever for The Wizard Of Oz.

||| New-wave queer cinema: Gay experience in all its complexity. "A fresh crop of directors are rejecting stereotypical roles and predictable plots, creating films that deal with real life and rounded characters."

||| So, what's really the difference between art and porn? Shia LaBeouf must have the answer, since he will take part in real, unsimulated sex scenes in his new movie, The Nymphomaniac, which will also star Nicole Kidman.

> Mel Stuart, the director and documentarian perhaps best known for Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, is dead. He was 83.

||| Tony Scott, the director responsible for films like Top Gun and Crimson Tide, is dead. He was 68. Scott jumped to his death from Vincent Thomas Bridge in Los Angeles.

< Review: Keep The Lights On. "A mature piece of work about a torturous relationship between co-dependant partners that rings wholly true."

||| Review: Beauty. "Not a film anyone could actively enjoy. It's dogged, slow and on the surface quite empty."

||| Review: Suicide Room. "Dominik is such an obnoxious brat that it's difficult to care whether he slashes his wrists or not."

||| Review: The Secret Disco Revolution. "So it turns out that disco was actually a revolutionary tool that ended the oppression of women and black and gay people in the US. Who knew?"

> Review: Call Me Kuchu. "It tears at that heart... Such horror, such bravery."

||| Call Me Kuchu directors Katherine Fairfax Wright and Malika Zouhali-Worrall write for The Independent about the continuing battle against homophobia in Uganda.

||| Trailer: Call Me Kuchu, the new film on slain Ugandan activist David Kato. Official site.


TV

Meet the gay couple from that Barclays TV ad.

> Uh oh. kaos favourite Rob Evans wanted by police (and everyone else).

||| Why reality TV can be a path to acceptance for gays.

||| New gay sitcom starring Ian McKellen and Derek Jacobi as an elderly gay couple in the works.

> TV's disappointing gay dads...

...And how TV characters enforce stereotypes. "The majority of the gay characters on TV are stereotypical... depicted in a stable relationship or as the faithful, flamboyant side kick."

Gays of our lives: All the latest gay soap developments from around the world, with Anthony D. Langford. Left, Will and Sonny in Days of Our Lives.

||| Eastenders actor Marc Elliott feared being typecast as "the gay Muslim".

||| EastEnders plots inspired by the Bible, storyliner claims.

||| Gay character to return to Hollyoaks after four year absence.

||| Say what you like about American soaps (and believe me, I have) but their gays are just hotter than Blight's. Here's Will and Sonny on Days of Our Lives - twinktastic!


||| Michael J Fox to make full-time TV return in a new TV comedy based on his illness.

> Review: Doctor Who - The Claws of Axos. "The uneven quality is perhaps a result of overstretching ambition to transform the grim, adult world of season seven into something more family friendly. The problem is that the comic book broad strokes produce a story that does not belong to either camp, with the often excessive visuals being smothered in a relentless synthesiser score that is all too much, too soon perhaps."

||| Jerry Nelson, best known as the voice of Sesame Street's Count von Count, is dead. He was 78.

MUSIC

||| Will Young: I was ashamed of being gay and was addicted to porn. (That's a bad thing?)

< Chris Brown accused of using homophobic slur towards a "fan" (who freely admits to asking Brown if he was going to beat Rihanna again. Knob.)

||| It was a "fabrication", Brown claims. I believe him.

||| Everybody hates Madonna! "It seems these days that everybody hates Madonna. But do the critics reveal more about their assumptions and prejudices than they do about her?"

||| Former Pop Idol runner-up Gareth Gates gets his kit off.

> TJ Jackson - of 90s boyband 3T - has been granted co-guardianship of Michael Jackson's kids.

||| Bizzy Bone from Bone Thugs-N-Harmony not "fat ass" anymore.

||| Natina Reed, a member of the US R&B trio Blaque, is dead. She was 32.

SKIN

||| Erik Rhodes' identical twin brother releases his brother's unpublished blog posts. Incredibly moving.

< Abercrombie & Fitch models help open a new flagship store in Munich. Yum...

...Wonder if they were flown on the Abercrombie jet, where male models were told what underwear to put on.


> Flava Works forces FileSonic offline...

...And wins $US1.5 million damages for illegal gay porn sharing, in what is believed to be the biggest payout in such a case.

||| Obama, Romney, or someone else - porn stars speak out! (Prepared to be appalled.)

||| Talking to gay-for-pay model Gavin Sevin.

< OMG! D.O. bottoms for Hot Rod!

> Real life lovers Diego Lauzen and Wagner Victoria "make love" for Kristen Bjorn's camera, in one of the best scenes I've seen this year.

||| Justin Goble on why he broke up with boyfriend Chris "Leave Britney Alone!" Crocker - and their bareback fourgy with the Maverick Men.

||| More from Reese Rideout and wife Becky's strange, sad VH1 reality show.

||| Sebastian Young's mugshots through the years...

...And porn star baby pictures revealed!

Some pictures from last month's Hustlaball NYC.

> 10 Halloween-themed gay porn flicks.

||| WTF?

SPORT

> Orlando Cruz, the Puerto Rican featherweight ranked fourth in the world, comes out as gay. The 31-year-old said, "I've been fighting for more than 24 years and as I continue my ascendant career, I want to be true to myself. I want to try to be the best role model I can be for kids who might look into boxing as a sport and a professional career. I have and will always be a proud Puerto Rican. I have always been and always will be a proud gay man."


...And it wasn't long before Cruz won his first fight as an out gay boxer, against Jorge Pazos.

||| So, why the surprise when a gay boxer comes out?

||| "I wanted to take out the thorn inside me and have peace." Cruz on "his long and traumatic struggle against fear and prejudice and his fight to be true to himself."

||| Talking to gay Swedish footballer Anton Hysen.

Talking to Olympic medal winner Anthony Joshua.

||| After the Olympics, the Premiership footballer hatred vortex.

||| Rio de Janeiro builds for the Olympic: in pictures.

||| Gay community urged to try out basketball with London Knights.

||| First openly gay NFL player to enjoy biggest marketing opportunity in 50 years.

< Tom Daley as Clark Kent.

> Yeovil Town go shirtless in a bid to find a sponsor.

BODY & MIND

||| How HIV "made" a deadly new strain of Salmonella.

||| Boffins at the Center for the AIDS Program of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA) may have unlocked the key to a vaccine against HIV. Two South African women infected with HIV were able to produce antibodies that neutralized and killed 88 percent of known strains of the virus.

||| Boffins warn poppers may lead to eye damage.

< Boffins define sex addiction.

||| Boffins working on meth vaccine.

||| Sitting for long periods is bad for your health.

||| Cereal bars: Healthy image a myth.

||| What will we be eating in 20 years' time?

||| The power of intermittent fasting.

||| The new traffic-light blood test that shows hidden alcohol harm.

||| Bad sleep may predict Alzheimer's.

||| Creativity closely entwined with mental illness.

Why do we behave so oddly in lifts?

OUR PLANET, AND BEYOND

||| New human species identified from Kenya fossils.

< The poison Blue Lagoon where the water is as toxic as bleach.

||| Gay animals: the truth behind the cover-up.

||| Severe abnormalities found in Fukushima butterflies.

||| Shark falls from sky onto California golf course - and survives.

||| Bananas could replace potatoes in warming world.

THE LAB

||| Beware! Most file-sharers are monitored, study finds.

||| US resists control of internet passing to UN agency.

> Japanese electronics firm Sharp in trouble.

||| Coming soon: Super Hi-Vision 8K TV standard, offering a resolution of 7,680 by 4,320 pixels - roughly the equivalent of a 32 megapixel photo.

||| eBay unveils dreary new logo.

PARTING SHOTS

||| Why I secretly recorded my life.

||| 30 Britishisms used by Americans - you'll be gobsmacked, innit!

||| Watch Washington DC's annual High Heels Drag Race.

||| And finally, the things gay guys lie about, and how to speak gay English!


ISSUE 127
27 October - 3 November 2012
(with some additional material collected between our last issue 
on 28 July, up to 26 October 2012).


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kaos is not responsible for the content of external websites.

© 2012

2 comments:

John G said...

Love your cover image...

KAOS said...

It's a great picture, isn't it? What's disappointing is that Cruz seems to have been completely ignored, whilst queens are still fawning over Gareth Thomas (the white rugby player).

Disappointing, but not surprising.

 
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