Pink Everest: Nepal appeals for gay tourists

(Katmandu, Nepal) Nepal wants to paint Mount Everest pink.

It wants gay honeymooners trekking through the Himalayas.

It wants to host the world’s highest same-sex wedding at Everest base camp.

But mainly, the conservative Hindu nation wants a chunk of the multibillion dollar gay tourist market to help pull it out of poverty.

That …

KRXQ Sacramento Radio Hosts Have History of Obscenity Involving Children: FCC Report

In the wake of the media and Internet firestorm which followed a call to action by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) and coverage in The Huffington Post, which broke this story nationally, ten major American corporate advertisers have pulled their accounts from Rob, Arnie & Dawn in the Morning on KRXQ 98.55 in Sacramento.
For its part, the station has taken the May 28th broadcast down off the station’s public website and removed its list of advertisers and sponsors.
On the day in question, two of the show’s three hosts, Rob Williams and Arnie States, spent approximately thirty minutes of the segment berating transgender children as “idiots,” “freaks,” and “freaks of nature,” who were “just out for attention.” They compared the children to “fat bastard kids on Maury” who just needed to be put in their places with verbal abuse and even physical punishment if necessary. States said that if he had a male child who put on a pair of high heels, he would discipline him by striking the little boy with his own shoe.
“I’m going to go, ‘You know what? You’re a little idiot! You little dumbass!” he seethed, later addng, “I look forward to the day when [the transgender children] go out into society and society beats them down. And they wind up in therapy.” If the transgender-identified child “gets to eighteen,” States urged, throw them out of the house. “You say, ‘Get out! Go be a freak! And understand, SON, that society will never accept you because we will have some moral judgment.”
Apparently a significant chunk of corporate America also has “some moral judgment,” and, in this case, they decided that Rob, Arnie & Dawn’s in the Morning’s abusive tirade against transgender children, some as young as five, crossed the line.
As of this writing, at least ten national companies have withdrawn, cancelled, or decided not to renew their advertising contracts with KRXQ. They include Chipotle restaurants, the Dr. Pepper Snapple Group, SONIC, Verizon, the Carl’s Jr. restaurant chain, Wells Fargo, Nissan, AT&T, and McDonalds. Citing the depravity of the content, spokespeople for the various companies were united in their disgust with KRXQ and Rob, Arnie, & Dawn in the Morning.
A statement sent to GLAAD from the Dr. Pepper Snapple Group read, “We found the segment to be offensive, and as a result we are pulling our Snapple advertising from the station.” The sentiment was echoed by SONIC, who asserted flatly that “SONIC in no way condones violence toward children and does not wish to be associated with media content that condones or promotes such activity in any way.” See KRXQ Sacramento Radio Hosts Have History of Obscenity Involving Children: FCC Report
Michael Rowe, 06.06.2009
Award-winning journalist and author of Other Men’s Sons

* Tags = gay men gay news lesbian news transgender bisexual

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Five stories from five years of same-sex marriage

Cambridge, Mass. - Susan Shepherd looks up at the rough-hewn pink granite of City Hall, just across the Charles River from downtown Boston. An American flag ripples in the wind. Inside the building, a plaque commemorates Cambridge as America’s birthplace of legal same-sex marriage.

“I can’t believe it’s been five years,” Shepherd says, hugging her wife. “I feel like I just met her yesterday.”

Nor can gay marriage opponents believe what’s happened in Massachusetts since, in their view, traditional marriage came to an end.

Yet in the past five years as same-sex marriage became part of Massachusetts’ landscape, many Bay Staters say something unexpected has happened: Life is as it always was.

Just after midnight on May 17, 2004, Shepherd and Marcia Hams, a Cambridge couple who’d been together three decades and raised a son, became Massachusetts’ first same-sex couple to get a marriage license. They had waited 24 hours in rain and cold, and by the time they got the license, 10,000 supporters gathered on the front lawn of City Hall.

Five years later and 1,300 miles away, Iowa on Monday will allow same-sex marriages. As Iowa enters into uncharted territory for the Midwest, the Bay State may serve as a sign of what may come.

Since same-sex marriage became legal in Massachusetts, about 12,000 same-sex couples have applied for marriage licenses. Gay marriages now comprise about 4 percent of all marriages performed in the state, meaning there are about 1,500 a year.

There have been some same-sex divorces, too, most notably by the couple whose name was on the court case that legalized same-sex marriage.

To be sure, a sizable chunk of Massachusetts’ 6.3 million residents remain opposed to same-sex marriage, mostly on religious grounds. Some say legal same-sex marriage has led to censorship of those who remain opposed, to infringement on the rights of parents who object to same-sex marriage being taught in schools, and to Catholic Charities of Boston ending adoption work because it refused to allow same-sex couples to adopt.

But polling results show a shift toward acceptance of gay marriage. A 2004 survey by the Suffolk University Political Research Center in Boston found the state split: 42 percent supported gay marriage, 44 percent opposed it. A similar survey in 2008 found 59 percent in support of gay marriage, 37 percent opposed.

As Iowa enters a new era, a drive through Massachusetts and into Maine shows how same-sex marriage has changed life – for better, for worse or, as many say, hardly at all.

See Five stories from five years of same-sex marriage
DesMoinesRegister.com – Des Moines,IA,USA

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Businessman offers $100M toward AIDS vaccine research

The hunt for an AIDS vaccine, a scientific quest that has stumped infectious disease researchers for two decades, is receiving a $100 million boost from a Massachusetts technology magnate, whose gift will create a Boston institute fusing the expertise of doctors, engineers, and biologists.

Stunned by scenes of desperation he witnessed in HIV-ravaged South Africa, Phillip Terrence Ragon is spending a considerable chunk of his fortune to accelerate research for a vaccine that would slow the relentless spread of the virus that causes AIDS and now infects more than 33 million people worldwide.

The money, $10 million a year for the next decade, will go to Massachusetts General Hospital but be shared with other research powerhouses, including Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. An announcement of the gift, the largest in Mass. General’s history, is expected this morning from Ragon, 59, the founder and sole owner of InterSystems, a Cambridge company that provides database software to hospitals and other industries.

See Businessman offers $100M toward AIDS vaccine research
The Boston Globe

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Retired captain focuses documentary lens on gay and lesbian …

One captain in the Marine Corps had to sign the confining orders to send a lesbian to jail, but was so disturbed that the next day the officer, who was also gay, submitted his resignation papers. Another man, from the Naval Academy Class of 1958, was kicked out of the military because his name was found in the address book of a “known homosexual.” Other gay men and lesbians left the service because like Steve Clark Hall, a nuclear submarine captain who retired after a 20-year Navy career, they could no longer bear the burden of harboring an enormous secret about their identity. “I was tired of being single and not being able to live life the way I wanted to,” said Hall, 54, who has begun gathering these stories for Out of Annapolis, the documentary film he is making about gay and lesbian alumni of the Naval Academy.

Like many of his fellow academy graduates, Hall is devoted to the institution he says deeply shaped him morally and intellectually: He is part of the “President’s Circle” of donors, which requires a minimum annual gift of $2,500 to the academy’s foundation. He talks in glowing terms about his time in Annapolis, the lightweight crew team, the friendships he made and the mentors who guided him. He rarely takes off his class ring.

This clean-cut Navy booster who still has trouble putting his hands in his pockets – something Mids were not supposed to do – might not seem like an obvious candidate to undertake a project sure to thrill some and outrage others. But though he insists that making waves goes against his relatively conservative nature, he is pouring his time and a good chunk of his money into documenting what he sees as an important, and all too often invisible, part of military history.

“When I was a midshipman, there were no gay or lesbian role models,” he said. “All we ever heard was when someone was kicked out.” See Retired captain focuses documentary lens on gay and lesbian …
Baltimore Sun, United States