KAOS: Issue 182: Jovonnie, House of Brag, David McIntosh, Mel Boozer, Bruce LaBruce, Le1f, Pride, Pier kids, Brad Steele, Seinfeld, and more...

the week's

news

& pop

culture,

with a

gay

bias.

Ponder This

> Meet the Pier kids.

||| Children raised by same-sex parents are "healthier and happier".

||| Where you can and can't be fired for being gay.

||| LGBT info on resume means fewer responses.

< Pride around the world, in pictures.

||| Should gay men and lesbians be bracketed together?

||| Can gay men and straight women really be friends?

||| Gay and bi men twice as likely to be depressed than straights.

||| We didn’t queer the institution of marriage. It straightened us. "Marriage isn't an option for gay couples – it's the option, and it forces us to defend non-traditional relationships."

< It’s 2014. Why can’t interracial relationships just be “relationships”?

> Here's an essay on that tired old myth, why gay relationships don't last.

||| 25 signs you might be racist.

||| What's the worst thing about cycling? Other cyclists.

U.S. & Canada News

||| New York governor Andrew Cuomo's plan to end AIDS.

< More than 1 million turn out for New York’s annual LGBT Pride parade. In pictures:

||| More than 1 million turn out for the 45th Chicago Pride. Video. In pictures:

< San Francisco Pride, then and now:

||| Marriage equality is a “plot” conceived by the New World Order to impose communism, claims Fox News pundit Ben Carson.

||| 11 major obstacles to equality that gay Americans still face in 2014.

||| World Health Organization urged to remove sexual orientation "disorders" from disease classifications.

> This is Ali Muhammad Brown. He is wanted by police over the 1st June murder of two gay men in Seattle. The American born Muslim extremist gunned down Ahmed Said and Dwone Anderson-Young (left).

< Jeremy Meeks: Hollywood hunk or a very, very bad boy?

||| Was one of the Founding Fathers gay?

||| Tyler Clementi's parents denounce overturn of New York's cyberbullying law.

>Remembering Mel Boozer (1946-1987), former president of the Gay Activist Alliance.

< 13 facts that help explain America's child-migrant crisis.

||| 10 New York things I learned after a month in the city.

||| I loathe cars, so why do I live in LA?

> The 25 cities nobody wants to live in.

< Inside Florida's space shuttle ghost town.

||| Who stole the water? "How greed, drought, and rampant overdevelopment are sucking Texas dry."

||| Canada: Toronto WorldPride festival attracts 12,000. In pictures.

||| Canada: 7 ways Canada is better than America.

U.K. News

< House of Brag - a squatter-run “queer social centre” - opens in Brixton, in protest at the commercialisation of LGBTQI events.

> Domestic abuse charity Broken Rainbow celebrates 10th anniversary.

||| The Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime launches consultation to reduce anti-gay hate crime.

||| Darren Douglas, a murderer who stabbed a man for being "queer" on the run from prison.

< This is Orashia Edwards, a bisexual 32-year-old who the Home Office is trying to deport back to Jamaica.

||| Christian "gay cure" London bus ban probed by High Court judge.

||| The VICE guide to London 2014.

||| Average person knows 8 gay people, survey says.

> Young men in crisis may not be crying out for help. But it's desperately needed.

||| So, what are we going to do about Britain's lost boys?

||| Why are so many prisoners killing themselves?

||| Where did all the bank robbers go?

< You can tell the nature of the Tory party by the company it keeps. "Mainstream business and finance were absent from the Conservative fundraising ball. It was full of the new seekers of risk-free profit."

||| How the Tories chose to hit the poor.

Europe News

||| Ireland: Referendum on marriage equality to be held in spring of 2015.

||| Ukraine: Kyiv Pride cancelled over fears of anti-gay attacks.

> Turkey: Tens of thousands march for Pride in Istanbul. In pictures.

< Italy: New video shows inside the wrecked Costa Concordia.

Latin America News

||| Brazil: The lack of black faces in the crowds shows Brazil is no true rainbow nation.

> Cuba: Gay kissing sit-in held to celebrate Pride in Havana.

||| Jamaica: 25,000 rally in support of anti-gay law.

Africa News

< Zambia: Philip Mubiana and James Mwape have been acquitted of charges of violating the law against homosexual activity. They spent more than a year in jail awaiting trial.

> Uganda: Around 100 people gathered on a beach to celebrate Kuchu's Day Out last weekend, in a celebration of gay solidarity.

||| Uganda: Turns out that America and Great Britain had a lot to do with the anti-gay law.

< Kenya: A cargo plane crashed into shops in Nairobi, 2nd July 2014. Four crew were killed.

> Nigeria: Transition, an African and African-American studies journal, is devoting its next monthly issue in part to the experiences of gay Nigerians.

Asia News

||| China: A great power we can't trust.

||| Taiwan: Christian, Taoist and Buddhist groups form alliances to oppose marriage equality.

||| Australia: Primer Minister Tony Abbott airbrushes Aboriginal people from history, claiming Australia was "unsettled" before the British arrived. Here's just how "unsettled" it was.

< Australia: The latest racist video recorded on public transport.

||| Australia: Why are there so many racist outbursts on public transport?

Planet Earth

||| Why are the bees vanishing?

> The discontent of zoo animals.

||| In Liberia, there's a place called Monkey Island, inhabited solely by former lab-tested chimpanzees who survived disease and two civil wars.

||| Japan is building nursing homes for its aging pet population.

||| Can plants actually "hear" predators?

< The year they turned off Niagara Falls.

Inside The Spaceship

||| Do you want to live in a world run by Amazon? "Their plans for domination of the digital world are deeply concerning."

||| No Facebook, no iPhone, no problem: How I declared my digital independence. "Why pledge allegiance to the united tech giants of America – and the surveillance for which they stand? I am one man, relatively invisible, with liberty and justice online."

||| Time for the emperors-in-waiting who run Facebook to just admit they're evil.

> Grindr rolls out new look for summer - with "gay porn twin" Kyle Goffney the new face of the brand.

||| Plasma TV is dead: Samsung to end production later this year.

||| Why you should either buy this T.V. right now or wait two years.

||| Is the landline dead?

Word!

< Couple publish The Book of Mormon Missionary Positions, which depicts them engaged (fully clothed) in simulated sex positions, to mock the institution that they were brought up in.

> John R. Gordon's writer's diary: Clarity. "We’re all told that subtlety is a good thing in a writer: the opposite of crassness, obviousness and the hackneyed. And it’s true these are things we should all avoid. However..."

||| 11 words that are much older than you think.

||| As Amazon slugs it out with the big publishers, authors are left cowering.

< Former gay trolley dolly Owen Beddall's Confessions of a Qantas Flight Attendant: True Tales and Gossip From the Galley.

||| Why hasn't Brad Steele of Kyle's Bed & Breakfast come out yet? His creator explains why.

At The Movies

||| The Normal Heart's Matt Bomer wants to play closeted screen icon Montgomery Clift but only "if it's done right".

||| Rupert Everett claims "there just isn’t very far you can go" in Hollywood as an openly gay actor.

||| Queer As Folk creator Russell T.Davies wants to know why aren’t there gay characters in Star Wars?

> Talking to Canadian queercore auteur, writer, photographer, and artist Bruce LaBruce.

||| New film Same Difference, from filmmakers Joshua Sweeny and Kyle Wentzel, sheds light on the powerful effects that school environments have on LGBT youth.

< Do the Right Thing’s 25th anniversary: What the hell happened to Spike Lee?

||| Trailer: Pride, the unlikely but true story about a group of gay activists who join forces with a small mining community in Wales in 1984; and looking back at everything that was wrong with Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes.

Telly Addicts

> Remembering the real world of Pedro Zamora.

||| What's it like working behind the scenes on a "reality" T.V. series? Pretty grim, it turns out.

||| Talking to Peter Paige, the man "who’s pushed the boundaries of gay representation for two decades".

||| Law & Order star Ice-T: "The gay male is gay and I have no problem with that."

||| RuPaul foreshadows a UK version of Drag Race.

||| America is getting really tired of singing competitions. What should networks do now?

||| How about Zoo, a show about animals planning a global attack against humans?

||| Iran remakes Modern Family - minus the gay characters.

< A breakdown of Seinfeld pilot 25 years after its premiere.

||| All the anxieties I picked up from watching Seinfeld.

||| How Seinfeld paved the way for Tony Soprano.

||| 10 ordinary things that always make you think of Seinfeld.

||| Breaking down the multi-billion-dollar Seinfeld economy.

> What's your favourite Seinfeld moment?

< Meshach Taylor, the actor best known for his role as Anthony Bouvier in gay favourite Designing Women, is dead. He was 67.

||| Gays of our lives: The latest from our favourite gays in soaps, with Anthony D. Langford.

||| Britain's soaps are in trouble, warns Queer As Folk creator Russell T. Davies.

> Laura Palmer's Twin Peaks house is for sale.

||| Josh celebrates his gay birthday in the latest episode of Steam Room Stories; and Judge Judy discovers Grindr...

Beats, Rhymes & Life

< Talking to Le1f.

> Justin Bieber: A case study in growing up cosseted and feral.

||| Watching teenage car crashes in slow motion: Is Justin Bieber doomed?

||| Christ Bearer, the rapper who cut his penis off while high on PCP wants to do porn.

< Get Fly Young Red's Pretty Boy Realness EP.

> Album review: Trey Songz - Trigga. "Trigga does hang together, and has a seductive power."

||| 5 songs released last week you need to hear.

||| 50 pop songs from the '90s that will instantly make your day better.

< Inside Neverland Ranch.

||| New from Fly Young Red - Make Me Know It.

Sex

> François Sagat gets naked for Out.

||| Talking to pioneering director Wakefield Poole.

< Talking to the ever popular Jovonnie.

||| Talking to the sizzling Seduction.

||| What is it like to have sex with one of your favourite porn stars?

> Where are the gays in People Magazine's Hottest Bachelors issue?

< SEXCIRCUS 2014 happened in London during Pride, in pictures.

||| Gay pool party Temptation Sundays, in pictures.

> BLOW on Fire Island, in pictures.

< Mr. Dominican Republic 2014, in pictures.

||| 5 questions to ask yourself before banging your ex.

||| What it feels like to have an affair.

||| David McIntosh goes for a ride on his bike. He's got his bicycle with him, too.

< He also found time to strut on stage at the BET Awards in tight-fitting leather trousers...

...Do a little shopping in tiny shorts...

...And make an appearance at gay party called #TemptationFridays, where he was "very friendly and sweet with his gay admirers and didn't mind a lil drunkin' touch and feel action from them either"...