the week's
Ponder This
||| The advance of gay rights is not solely the mission of enlightened white people –
so why do they get the HBO special? "Gay Inc just sold another convenient narrative to the masses. Here's the messy truth about America's same-sex marriage fight."
> How
The Case Against 8 and
Forcing the Spring distort gay rights history.
< Black gay men
in early AIDS activism.
||| Surprise! Religion
linked with higher gay teen suicide risk.
||| If you’re a man working at a school or daycare,
you’re a pedophile.
||| 23 questions and answers
with a man who had a relationship with his mother.
||| You can
go to more countries with a Swedish passport than an American one.
U.S. & Canada News
> 16-year-old openly gay Tyler Brandt
forced to wear "gaytard" namebadge by fastfood restaurant boss.
< The
gay roots of Habitat For Humanity. "A San Francisco native remembers the legacy of his late partner, Stephen Jacoby, a gay pilot who founded the San Francisco chapter of Habitat for Humanity before dying of an AIDS-related illness in 1991."
> Rob Smith (
above right) writes about
his first Grand Marshal experience, and the meaning of gay Pride. Here he is at NYC Pride:
< Sioux Falls Pride,
in pictures.
> Columbus Pride,
in pictures.
||| Albany Pride,
in pictures.
||| The Empire State Building
casts a rainbow over Manhattan for Pride.
||| The
30 best gay bars in Manhattan.
> The Supreme Court has ruled police
need a warrant to search your phone.
||| Canada:
115 couples marry at Toronto WorldPride's mass gay wedding.
In pictures.
U.K. News
< Pride in London, in pictures:
PinkNews;
Gay Star News; Pride in London
Facebook; Pride in London
Twitter;
||| Pride in London,
video.
||| London Mayor Boris Johnson
refuses to attend Pride in London. Johnson previously said that if marriage equality passed, it should also be legal for "
three men and a dog" to marry. On taking office he
slashed funding for Soho Pride.
< Rainbow crossing
unveiled in London's historic Trafalgar Square for Pride in London.
> Three men die
after taking drug at London gay sauna
Pleasuredrome.
||| London sees
"shocking" rise in anti-gay attacks.
||| The royal family value for money?
They aren't worth tuppence.
Europe News
||| All the countries
colonised by Europe. (Spoiler: pretty much all of them.)
< Spain: Men form a human tower (a "castell") during the Sant Joan festival at Plaza del Blat square in Valls, Spain, 24th June 2014.
||| Italy: Mob attacks gay organisation in Rome,
throws excrement at offices.
> Germany: They
just held the seventh European Gay Police Association conference in Berlin.
||| Germany: The young neo-Nazis
trying to put a stylish face on hate.
||| Finland:
No marriage equality as parliament votes against it, again.
||| Russia: The Human Rights Campaign
reports on one year without "gay propaganda".
Africa News
< Uganda: Outed activist Richard Lusimbo
vows not to flee his homeland despite the threat of death: "Leaving the country wouldn’t change the plight. Right now we have so many young people who are gay but can’t speak out. What’s going to happen to them if I left? It would mean no one would be representing them. The best way to contribute to my nation is to be there, and I feel as a citizen I have a right to be there."
||| Uganda: Hundreds of gay refugees
have fled to neighbouring Kenya in the wake of the Anti-Homosexuality Act.
||| Cameroon: Track star Thierry Essamba
suspended from national squad because of rumours about his alleged homosexuality.
Asia News
< Singapore:
Thousands turn out for the annual Pink Dot gay equality rally.
In pictures.
> China:
They ate 10,000 dogs at last weekend's Dog Meat Festival in Yulin. Warning: link contains distressing images.
Inside The Spaceship
||| YouTube
may be winning the world and losing its soul. "Advertising is the big theme at the unofficial YouTube conclave VidCon this year, eclipsing the fandom that makes YouTube special."
< The "right to be forgotten" doesn't mean
we should be censoring Google results.
||| Just how white and male ar the tech giants?
Very.
||| Could
clicking on familiar faces eventually replace passwords?
Art & Design
> Meet the man
who created the most iconic HIV and AIDS messages of all time.
||| Be sure
to check out Seva Galkin's exhibit
Russian Hooligans, at Galerie MooiMan in Brooklyn:
< Also in New York,
The Fairoaks Baths: Photographs by Frank Melleno,
fascinating polaroids from a San Francisco bathhouse in 1978. 12-13 July, at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art.
Word!
||| 10 gay books
everyone should read.
> Book review:
A Room in Chelsea Square, by Michael Nelson. "First published anonymously in 1958. It was reprinted in 1986 by Gay Modern Classics and
is now being re-introduced by Gregory Woods in a very recent — and very handsome! — reprint from Valancourt Books."
||| John R. Gordon's writer's diary:
The wellsprings feed the mainstream, not vice-versa.
||| One weird trick
for cutting down your novel.
< A history of
our obsession with the disease apocalypse.
Shouting In The Night
> The 24th annual edition of
Broadway Bares raises $US1.3 million for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.
In pictures.
||| Review: Tupac musical
Holler If Ya Hear Me, a "surprisingly stagnant and
flimsily strung together musical."
At The Movies
< Shia LaBeouf
arrested, calls police officer a "fag".
||| Ian McKellen on how Alec Guinness ‘begged’ him
not to fight for gay equality.
||| Remembering Peter de Rome: The maker of gay erotica
loved by Warhol, Gielgud and the BFI.
> Watching New York City
transform on film. "Films like
Taxi Driver and
Midnight Cowboy and
Shaft and
Pelham 123 aren’t just great, atmospheric New York movies; they’re accidental documentaries, capturing a specific moment in our city’s history that is long, long gone."
||| Are these the
10 best movies of 2014 so far?
< Review:
La Bare. "[It] doesn’t resolve... troubling thoughts — that’s why
it comes short of being great — but at least it raises them."
||| Trailers:
Documented, the story of Jose Antonio Vargas,
undocumented, gay, and excluded;
La Bare.
Telly Addicts
> So,
ESSENCE magazine
left the white guy off its
Think Like A Man Too cover.
< Brendan Fehr of NBC's
The Night Shift on filming a gay kiss: "It was uncomfortable for me... I don't like kissing guys, it doesn't do anything for me."
||| The cast of
Queer As Folk on
why the sex mattered to a movement.
<
EastEnders character Johnny Carter
is finally gonna get some.
>
EastEnders "
almost twice as white" as real East End.
<
Gays of our lives: The latest from our favourite gays in soaps, with Anthony D. Langford.
Left,
General Hospital.
> Tom Daley's
Splash! has been cancelled.
||| Caleb Bankston, the former
Survivor contestant,
is dead at 26. Bankston was one of long-running reality show's few gay contestants.
||| The
curse of the Power Rangers.
||| Free! Eternal Summer anime
to stream live in July.
< Watch new animated web series
Somewhere In Palm Springs,
about the "young, dumb and hungry... poolside in Palm Springs"; and the first episode of new web series
The Out Crowd.
Beats, Rhymes & Life
< Frank Ocean
fires management and publicist in advance of sophomore album.
||| R Kelly
has dismissed reports of his transgender son as "dumb s**t".
>
Read Tupac Shakur's heartfelt letter to Public Enemy's Chuck D.
<
The last days of Michael Jackson. "Frail, deep in debt and addicted to drugs, he was consumed by a single dream: to blow people's minds with the greatest concerts ever. Inside the comeback that almost was."
||| Could the Liberace Museum
be back from the dead?
<
Listen to new music from MNEK –
Wrote A Song About You.
> Sam Smith's debut album
In The Lonely Hour breaks U.S. sales records; he has sold more of his debut album in one week by any UK male artist, ever.
||| Talking to Sam Smith about being gay, famous, and single:
Sex
||| "Condom bill" AB 1576
passes California senate committee, porn stars lament.
||| Politicians who make porn stars wear condoms
ignore the real HIV fight.
<
Talking to former Flava Works model Brandon Long.
> Bel Ami
have released a new Jim Kerouac scene.
< Here's some
behind-the-scenes pictures from Falcon's forthcoming feature
Naughty Pines, starring Sean Zevran and Topher DiMaggio.
Arena
||| The flawed life of
a gay tennis icon.
||| The first nude photo of Cristiano Ronaldo
has been exposed on a U.S. talk show. Brace yourselves!
||| And now, the "assets" of Ivory Coast's Wilfried Guemiand Bony, who's competing in a minor sporting event in Brazil at the moment:
The Human Body
||| Why are we using 25-year-old technology to test for HIV
when there's a better option?
||| Is being too clean
making us sick?
||| Excessive drinking
causes 1 in 10 deaths among working-age adults.
< Is our protein obsession
out of control?
||| The
science of sunburns.
||| Five lessons I learned from
dealing with depression.
Planet Earth
> Don't fear the jellyfish –
these creatures are spellbinding.
||| The trouble with
Pablo Escobar’s hippos.
||| So, Earth just had
the hottest May on record.
||| America is
running out of water.
And Whilst You're
Thinking About That, Think
About This
||| 11 things
you didn't know you could eat.
||| What is
an unfair mark-up on a bottle of wine?
> Campaign group uses supermarket's own slogan
to draw attention to low wages.
||| And finally, Andrew discusses escaping the friendzone; Walter has 10 ways to get filthy rich off black Americans; and gay in the hood! Plus, let's talk some more about Jeremy Meeks, the hot mugshot guy.