Kid Rock: Twitter is gay
Quote of the day, from Kid Rock, to Rolling Stone, via Page Six, about Twitter:
“It’s gay. If one more person asks me if I have a Twitter, I’m going to tell them, ‘Twitter this [bleep], mother[bleep]er.’
“I don’t have anything to say, and what I have to say is not that relevant. Anything that is relevant, I’m going to bottle it up and then squeeze it onto a record somewhere.”
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HBO RANKS HIGHEST IN THIRD ANNUAL “GLAAD NETWORK RESPONSIBILITY INDEX”
ABC Leads Broadcast Networks for Third Year in a Row; NBC and CBS Receive “Failing” Grades for Lack of Inclusion of the LGBT Community
Los Angeles, CA, July 27, 2009 – The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) today released its third annual Network Responsibility Index, a report that maps the quantity, quality and diversity of images of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people on television. Primetime programming on the five broadcast networks was evaluated as well as original primetime programming on 10 of the highest-rated cable networks.
HBO scored the highest rating of the 15 networks evaluated with LGBT characters on shows including True Blood, The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency and Entourage that reflect the ethnic and racial diversity of the LGBT community. Of HBO’s 14 original series, 10 included LGBT content and 42 percent of the network’s total programming hours included LGBT representation.
“This year programming was not only inclusive of LGBT people, but networks like HBO are beginning to reflect the broad diversity within our community,” said Rashad Robinson, Senior Director of Media Programs at GLAAD. “With upcoming fall programming and new storylines there is a tremendous opportunity for networks to share the stories of all members of our community including lesbian, bisexual and transgender people as well as LGBT people of color, all groups which continue to be underrepresented across all networks.”
GLAAD reviewed a total of 4,901 hours of primetime programming for inclusion of LGBT characters or issues on the five major networks (ABC, CBS, The CW, Fox and NBC) from June 1, 2008 to May 31, 2009. GLAAD also examined 1,212.5 hours of original primetime programming on 10 highly-rated cable networks. Each hour was reviewed for on-screen LGBT representations. Based on the quantity, overall quality and diversity of these representations, a rating was assigned by GLAAD’s Entertainment Media Program to each network: Excellent, Good, Adequate, or Failing.
Additional findings from the GLAAD Network Responsibility Index:
Good
- HBO and Showtime received grades of Good, with HBO leading with 42 percent of programming hours featuring LGBT representations.
- ABC, with shows including Brothers & Sisters, Grey’s Anatomy and Ugly Betty, again received the highest ranking of the five broadcast networks, earning a Good grade with 24 percent of their primetime programming hours including LGBT representations.
- The CW also received a grade of Good, with 20 percent of their primetime programming hours including LGBT representations.
Adequate
- While Fox received an Adequate, rising from last place and a Failing grade in 2008; 11 percent of its programming hours were LGBT-inclusive, yet some of those hours included problematic content.
- Among cable networks evaluated, TNT showed the largest growth, jumping from one percent of LGBT inclusive primetime programming hours last year to 19 percent. FX posted the sharpest decline, dropping 32 percent over the previous season. Both were graded
Failing
- NBC and CBS received Failing grades, for their 8 and 5 percent, respectively, of programming hours with LGBT images. CBS moved down from third place in last year’s GLAAD Network Responsibility Index to last among the five major broadcast networks.
- A&E, Sci Fi and TBS received grades of Failing.
“Television shows that weave our stories into the fabric of the series present richer, more accurate representations and are the kinds of images that help Americans understand and embrace their LGBT family members, friends and neighbors in a more meaningful way,” said Robinson.
The third annual GLAAD Network Responsibility Index was delivered to programming executives at the 15 graded networks, and GLAAD’s Entertainment Media Program will continue discussions with them to advocate for improvements in the quality, quantity and diversity of their LGBT representations.
The Executive Summary of the report can be viewed online at GLAAD.org. A PDF of the full report can also be downloaded at GLAAD.org.
The 14th Annual GLAAD Where We Are On TV report on diversity will be issued in September 2009. This analysis will examine LGBT inclusion as well as the gender and race/ethnicity of all scripted characters scheduled to appear during the 2009-2010 season.
About GLAAD
The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) is dedicated to promoting and ensuring fair, accurate and inclusive representation of people and events in the media as a means of eliminating homophobia and discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation. For more information, please visit www.glaad.org.
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Metro is playing catch-up, say supporters of gay protections
The argument that protecting Metro government’s gay employees would force the private sector to follow suit is all backward, supporters of a new anti-discrimination measure say.
Around the country, 90 percent of Fortune 500 companies’ anti-discrimination policies include sexual orientation or gender identity. In Nashville, some of the city’s largest private employers — http://www.vanderbilt.edu/“>Vanderbilt University and http://www.hcahealthcare.com/“>Hospital Corporation of America — put similar policies into place.
Against that landscape, the new measure’s supporters say, it should have a better chance of passage than a similar one proposed in 2003. But opponents say following the private-sector pack isn’t the way to go.
“Just because someone else does something doesn’t mean it’s right, and we learned that when we all took off from kindergarten,” said David Fowler, a former state senator and president of the http://www.factn.org/“>Family Action Council of Tennessee. “So unless we are going to act like lemmings and just blindly do what everybody else is doing, we need to stop and think before we make this a law.”
The city already has protections based on race, sex, religious affiliation and national origin in place, Fowler said, and protection based on sexuality is incongruous. He also said such a law could expose the city to lawsuits by people who feel it was broken.
See Metro is playing catch-up, say supporters of gay protections
The Tennessean
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Daniel Radcliffe graces the August 2009 cover of the UK’s biggest gay magazine
Harry Potter himself, newly 20 year old Daniel Radcliffe graces the August 2009 cover of Attitude Magazine, the UK’s biggest gay magazine. Aside from lending his magical good looks to the cover, Daniel sat down for an interview, where he talked a lot of politics with the mag.
He said that he’s not a fan of the Conservative or New Labour parties. At only 20 years old, Daniel is not yet old enough to vote, but says that next year he will cast his ballot for Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrat party. On voting turnout, he said: see Daniel Radcliffe Attitude Magazine
Right Celebrity
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International gathering of gay activists kicks off in Copenhagen
COPENHAGEN — Music and aerial acrobats are kicking off the second edition of the World Outgames - nine days of sports, cultural and human rights events for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.
Some of the 5,500 participants from about 100 countries are marching in a parade of nations on Copenhagen’s City Hall Square. Artists, suspended in wires above them, are performing spectacular acrobatics to deafening music and a frenzied light show.
See International gathering of gay activists kicks off in Copenhagen
The Canadian Press
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bout 17 percent of gay men in Chicago are…
bout 17 percent of gay men in Chicago are HIV-positive — and half of them don’t know it.
That’s according to authorititative new estimates from the Chicago Public Health Department.
In particular, black men who have sex with men have double the HIV infection rates of white and Hispanic men, even though they don’t appear to engage in riskier behavior, Chicago health officials said today.
Their report was based on data collected last year from 570 Chicago men in the National HIV Behavioral Surveillance system.
It’s the first time Chicago health officials have used blood-testing to determine HIV infection rates in this high-risk population, said Christopher Brown, assistant commissioner of the health department’s STD, HIV and AIDS division.
Past estimates have relied solely on interviews with gay and bisexual men about their HIV status.
“What we found out pretty much confirms what we’ve known for a while,” Brown said.
See Study: Half of HIV-positive men in Chicago don’t know it
Chicago Sun-Times
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Law Extends Parental Rights for Gays
Lesbians in the District no longer will need the written consent of their partners to adopt children born to their partners through artificial insemination, under a new law that took effect Saturday.
The name of a consenting spouse or unmarried partner will appear on the child’s birth certificate as the legal parent, a status that previously had to be obtained by same-sex parents through a complicated adoption process.
The Domestic Partnership Judicial Determination Parentage Act of 2009 puts the city out front when it comes to children born of same-sex parents, according to the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR), the Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance of Washington (GLAA) and American University law professor Nancy Polikoff.
See Law Extends Parental Rights for Gays
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See Rockstar Announces Ballad of Gay Tony to Hit October 29
1UP.com
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McEntee: Discrimination is still with us
o Salt Lake City is stepping out, urging a new anti-discrimination law that actually includes sexual orientation and gender identity in the traditional list of those affected by housing and employment discrimination. Take that, all you legislators who have squashed any such thinking on the state level, arguing disingenuously that “choosing to be gay” is not grounds for civil rights protection. Mayor Ralph Becker, a Democratic representative for 11 years, knows all about that ruse. And one of the most fascinating things is how the city’s Human Rights Commission got there: Its members sat down and talked to people in five “dialogues on discrimination” late last year. No lectures, no surveys. Just conversations about classism/poverty, people with disabilities, racism, faith and sexual orientation. Kilo Zamora, whose nonprofit Inclusion Center trained the commissioners, says the opener was, “How’s the city doing, and do you think there’s discrimination here?” As people talked, it became evident that race, gender, class, income and religious biases “we thought we had buried in the ’60s were much alive in our communities,” he says. People were shocked. “Are you sure?” they would ask. “I never knew racism was still alive!”
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San Jose’s Billy DeFrank Center embarks on ambitious fundraising campaign
For 28 years, the Billy DeFrank LGBT Community Center has been the go-to place for Silicon Valley’s diverse gay community. But on Tuesday, interim executive director Paul Wysocki sent out a desperate plea: the DeFrank Center will close its doors unless it raises $50,000 by Sept. 1. “Our government funding has ended, and in today’s economy, we can’t count on corporate support,” read a weekly newsletter that is e-mailed to supporters. “Our current income from memberships and events no longer meets even the most basic level of Center operations.” The DeFrank Center has three main programs: support services for youth, another for seniors, and an HIV/AIDS testing program. But funding for the HIV testing from Santa Clara County and for the senior program from the city of San Jose have dried up as both the county and the city struggle with their own budget deficits. The Center has cut expenses and now has an annual budget of $310,000, down from $800,000 a few years ago. Wysocki became interim executive director four months ago after former executive director Aejaie Sellers and former board President PJ Matarese were ousted amid internal power struggles over the center’s long-term vision and escalating financial problems. “I have a lot of empathy for Barack Obama,” said Wysocki. “You inherit a situation where a lot of things were done poorly.”
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Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/07/san-joses-bil…
