Minister in Tory homophobia claim BBC News
Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw has said “a deep strain of homophobia still exists on the Conservative benches”.
Mr Bradshaw, one of three gay men currently in the cabinet, made the comments as a new poll suggested more gay people were turning to the Tories.
Chris Bryant, another gay minister, said: “If gays vote Tory they will rue the day very soon.”
But Tory frontbencher Alan Duncan said the two men’s comments showed Labour was “actually the nasty party”.
Being seen to be more “gay friendly” has been a key part of David Cameron’s mission to decontaminate the Conservative Party brand and make it more acceptable to young, socially liberal voters.
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NY Visitor from Boston victim of attack, slurs during Gay Pride weekend
A man visiting a friend on the upper East Side was robbed and pistol-whipped during Gay Pride weekend by a group of hoodlums yelling anti-gay slurs, the victim and cops said Sunday.
Joseph Holladay, 36, said he was set upon by at least three men on E. 85th St. about 4 a.m. Saturday.
“Out of nowhere, I’m being attacked,” he said from his bed at New York Presbyterian-Hospital Weill Cornell, a nasty gush visible on his forehead.
One of the robbers called out, “What are you looking at?” and used an anti-gay epithet, the Boston man added.
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New York Daily News
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Marriage no longer an issue for many in Massachusetts
WHITINSVILLE, Mass., – Twenty years after he met the love of his life, nearly five years after their wedding helped make history, it took a nasty bout of pneumonia for Gary Chalmers to fully appreciate the blessings of marriage.
“I was out of work for eight weeks, spent a week in the hospital,” Chalmers said. “That was the first time I really felt thankful for the sense of the security we had, with Rich there, talking with the physicians, helping make decisions. … It really made a difference.”
At stake was the most basic recognition of marital bonds — something most spouses take for granted. But until May 17, 2004, when Chalmers and Richard Linnell were among a surge of same-sex couples marrying in Massachusetts, it was legally unavailable to American gays and lesbians.
Since that day, four other states — Connecticut in 2008, and Iowa, Vermont and Maine this year — have legalized same-sex marriage, and more may follow soon. A measure just approved by New Hampshire’s legislature awaits the governor’s decision on whether to sign. But Massachusetts was the first, providing a five-year record with which to gauge the consequences.
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Do Obama and Miss California Have the Same Position on Gay Marriage? Sort of.
By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
I was at a, err, opposite-sex wedding
over the weekend when one of the guests asked me, presumably as the member of the MSM on hand, why Carrie Prejean, Miss California, gets lambasted for being anti-gay marriage, while Barack Obama
The answer lies in tone and nuance.
It is true that Obama’s position is that marriage is “between a man and a woman” and that he is “not in favor of gay marriage.” That said, he articulately advocates for the rights of gay couples on things like hospital visitation. See here, for example, starting at about 1:06: “When I sit down and read scripture and I think how would Jesus feel about somebody not being able to visit someone they love when they’re sick, I conclude that that is something that’s important.”
And it is possible that some portion of people suspect that Obama would favor gay marriage were it a politically viable position: He’s secretly with us, not like that nasty Miss California. And even if that’s not the case, he’s good on enough other stuff that he can get a pass on this.
Then there’s Miss California, whose now-famous answer to the question seems like instant, inadvertent beauty pageant satire. See Do Obama and Miss California Have the Same Position on Gay …
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Rudy Giuliani Skips Gay Friends’ Wedding
Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani was a last-minute no-show at the wedding of his former roommates — a gay couple — yesterday.
It was a disappointment for Queens car dealer Howard Koeppel and his longtime lover, Mark Hsaio, who tied the knot in a double-ring ceremony before 10 guests in Westport, Conn.
The couple famously let the ex-mayor crash at their luxury $2.37 million three-bedroom Manhattan apartment while he was going through a nasty divorce with Donna Hanover in 2001. Later, Giuliani married the “other woman,” Judith Nathan.
“Rudy and Judith were both invited with a beautiful written invitation by mail,” said Koeppel. “His secretary called Thursday and said he was not able to come to the wedding and wished us all the best.”
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Larry Kramer Blasts Yale’s ‘Conspiracy of Silence’ on Gay History
When more than 300 Yale alumni and their guests arrived at Yale for the University’s first-ever lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender alumni reunion this weekend, they found not only camaraderie, but also controversy.
The first-ever recipient of the GALA Lifetime Achievement Award, gay activist Larry Kramer ’57, harshly rebuked the University for its treatment of gay history as an academic field during the three-day reunion, which was jointly organized by the LGBT alumni association Yale GALA and the Association of Yale Alumni. At a dinner ceremony Saturday, Kramer said the University has wrongly relegated the study of gay history to LGBT studies, arguing that there is a significant semantic difference between gay “history” and gay “studies.”
Declaring that queer and gender theories are “relatively useless,” Kramer — who was among the first to call for action against the AIDS crisis — said gay history has been “hijacked” by queer theorists.
Kramer and Yale have clashed before; in the mid-nineties, Yale rejected a sizable gift from Kramer to create either an endowed chair in gay and lesbian studies or a student center for gay students. In 2001, Kramer’s brother, Arthur Kramer ’49, gave a $1 million gift in Larry’s name to found the Larry Kramer Initiative for Gay and Lesbian Studies, which was closed after five years when the gift was spent.
In order to demonstrate the importance of gay history, Kramer declared that he believes many prominent American historical figures were gay, including George Washington, the famous explorer Meriwether Lewis, Abraham Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth.
The study of gay history is therefore important as a means of promoting acceptance for LGBT individuals, Kramer said.
“The plague of AIDS was allowed to happen because most of the world hates us,” he said. “They don’t know we’re related to Washington and Lincoln.”
While alumni sat attentively throughout the speech and gave Kramer a standing ovation, some said afterwards that they were standing not necessarily out of agreement with Kramer, but rather out of respect for his activism in the wake of AIDS.
“He’s been a provocateur all of his career, since the AIDS crisis,” said Ken Demario ’64. “I don’t know if this was an appropriate forum for as nasty a broadside as his was against the University.”
In a brief interview after the speech, Provost Peter Salovey said he agreed that the study of LGBT history is important.
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Miss USA contestant Carrie Prejean defends anti-gay stand
Still the center of a raging debate two days after her anti-gay-marriage remarks at the Miss USA pageant, Miss California Carrie Prejean went on the “Today” show Tuesday and maintained she was proud of what she had said.
During Sunday night’s competition, Prejean was asked by openly gay celebrity blogger Perez Hilton, a judge in the pageant, if she felt all states should move toward allowing same-sex marriage.
She said, “I believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman … that’s how I was raised.” Besides setting off a firestorm of pro- and con-gay-marriage/freedom-of-speech twittering and blogging, the remark was widely believed to have cost her the crown. It also prompted Hilton to later post a nasty and unprintable rant about her on his massively popular Web site perezhilton.com.
“I was ready for my question, and when I heard it from (Perez), I knew at that moment after I’d answered the question, I knew that I was not going to win because of my answer,” she said. “Because I had spoken from my heart, for my beliefs and for my God. … It’s not about being politically correct, for me, it’s about being biblically correct.”
Earlier in the day Prejean went on MSNBC’s morning show, where she was asked about Hilton’s attack on her.
“I can only say to him that I will be praying for him. I feel sorry for him, I really do,” Prejean said. “I think he’s angry, I think he’s hurt.
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Backers Of Calif. Gay Marriage Ban Face Backlash
Since California voters passed a ban on gay marriage, some supporters of the measure have found themselves squarely in the bull’s-eye of angry gay rights activists.
It’s no secret who gave money for and against the controversial amendment to the state’s constitution, known as Proposition 8. California’s secretary of state publicized the lists of contributors, which were picked up by local media and Web sites.
And in the aftermath of a contentious campaign, protests followed. In Los Angeles, would-be patrons of a popular Tex-Mex restaurant were greeted by furious protestors like John Dennison.
“El Coyote — millions in gay margarita money funding hatred,” Dennison yelled during the protest. “Boycott El Coyote!”
The restaurant owner’s daughter, Margie Christofferson, a faithful Mormon, had made a modest $100 contribution to the “Yes on 8″ campaign — and the restaurant’s gay patrons, like Edward Stanley, felt betrayed.
“I won’t be eating here,” Stanley said.
Business dipped about 30 percent at the height of the protest, and it still hasn’t returned to pre-protest levels. Several members of the restaurant’s staff — including many of its gay employees — have seen their hours cut back in response. And Christofferson, who managed the restaurant, has resigned.
Others Feel The Heat
In Sacramento, the owners of Leatherby’s Family Creamery found themselves part of the backlash when The Sacramento Bee printed the list of contributors. Dave Leatherby, a devout Roman Catholic father of 10, says he was responding to a direct request from his bishop to give generously.
“We gave $20,000 for Yes on Proposition 8,” he says.
And once that was known, retaliation was swift. “We soon started getting very nasty e-mails and letters and phone calls by the hundreds,” he says.
Leatherby says he was mystified, because the Creamery had always enjoyed good relations with the gay and lesbian community.
And he says something interesting happened when demonstrators arrived outside his shop: Business went up, instead of down. “The day they picketed us, there were about 15 picketers, and that day we had people waiting two hours to get into our restaurant for four or five hours,” he says.
Not every backlash story ends that way.
Richard Raddon, director of the Los Angeles Film Festival, and Scott Eckern, director of the California Musical Theater in Sacramento, are devout Mormons. Both made contributions to Yes on 8, and both got demands for their resignations from gay rights protestors. They quit so their organizations wouldn’t face further controversy. Ironically, the film festival has been instrumental in introducing works by gay and lesbian filmmakers to a broader audience — and the musical theater included works by gay playwrights and composers.
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Judge issues stern warning in nasty lesbian custody case
(Rutland, Vermont) In a long-running legal dispute between two women over parental visitation rights, a Vermont Family Court judge Thursday issued a stern rebuke to a Virginia woman over her latest attempt to deny her former partner visitation rights to their child.
Judge William Cohen denied a new bid by Lisa …
