Football and art against homophobia T
The Justin Campaign will be making a stand against homophobia in football on Trafalgar Square’s fourth plinth this Wednesday the 22nd July 2009.
Over the summer, sculptor Antony Gormley has been inviting people to help create an astonishing living monument as part of his “One & Other” exhibition.
Every hour, 24 hours a day, for 100 days without a break, a different person will make the Plinth their own. And on Wednesday the plinth will be the Justin Campaign’s.
Campaign founder and Brighton-based artist Jason Hall will be donning the Justin Fashanu All-stars strip and creating a top-secret installation atop the plinth between 7:00 am and 8:00 am.
The campaign was founded in memory of Justin Fashanu, the first openly gay professional footballer, who committed suicide on 2nd May 1998.
The aim of the Justin Campaign is to demonstrate the prevalence of homophobia in football and show how damaging the consequences of this can be on a society that holds the sport in such high regard.
Through art, events, education and football the organisation hopes to persuade the football authorities in England to observe Saturday 2nd May 2009 as Justin Fashanu Day and more generally, want 2nd May to become the annual international day of protest against homophobia in sport.
Campaign Founder Jason Hall said: “I wanted to use my hour on the Plinth to highlight the fact that gay and bisexual men are equally passionate about both playing and supporting ‘the beautiful game’, whilst increasing awareness as to how absurd it is that there have been no other ‘out’ gay players since Justin Fashanu.”
Like Hall maintains, “gay and bisexual men are equally passionate about playing and supporting” football, as are many lesbian and bisexual women and people in the trans community.
No doubt all LGB&T football and sports fans will be supporting Jason in challenging homophobia tomorrow night.
See Football and art against homophobia
The Lesbian and Gay Foundation -
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IML’s (International Mr. Leather) executive…
IML’s (International Mr. Leather) executive committee has banned vendors at the group’s annual convention from displaying or selling any pornographic photos and videos which portray or promote unprotected sex, also known as barebacking.
A statement released on International Mr. Leather, Inc. letterhead and signed by Chuck Renslow, President of IML, reads as follows: @ IML bans material promoting unsafe sex
ChicagoPride.com
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Another “DOMA GOP” politican has zipper trouble: Sen. Paul Stanley Caught in Sex Scandal
Well, it was only a matter of time, wasn’t it? According to authorities, one of our own social conservative Republicans has been caught cheating on his wife, and he was doing it with a young legislative intern. At this juncture, we’re going to resist the temptation to make a joke about family values. That’s getting so old it’s not funny anymore.
Suffice it to say that like John Ensign, Mark Sanford and all the rest on the national stage lately, this one is really rich–with a little homemade porn and a bumbling blackmailer tossed into the story to make it even spicier. Ensnared in Tennessee’s own sex scandal tonight is Sen. Paul Stanley, the wingnut from Germantown who has crusaded to ban gay adoption of children and who once made the really stupid mistake of saying: “When you’re married, there’s a commitment there.”
According to court documents, here’s what happened: Stanley, who is married with two children, was having an affair with his 22-year-old legislative intern, McKensie Morrison. Morrison’s boyfriend, Joel Palmer Watts. 28, discovered a computer memory disc with sexually explicit photographs of Morrison that appeared to have been taken in Stanley’s apartment. Watts then blackmailed Stanley, demanding $10,000 in return for keeping quiet about the senator’s relationship with his intern.
See Sen. Paul Stanley Caught in Sex Scandal
Nashville Scene
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Margaret Cho: First Woman to Appear in Gay Adult Mag
Comedian Margaret Cho has been a pop culture pioneer for many years. She has raised the profile of Asian-Americans and women in entertainment, and has been a tireless campaigner for gay rights.
Tonight, Cho is guesting on E!’s Chelsea Lately to spread the word about her latest first: premier female cover model for the newest issue of gay adult magazine Unzipped. See video from the photo shoot below.
See Margaret Cho: First Woman to Appear in Gay Adult Mag Gay Wired
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So gay, so what! Melbourne
GLHV is in the process of developing an anti-homophobia poster and needs models.
The idea behind the poster is a montage of photographs of lesbian and gay people of all ages being out and proud with the tag line ‘So Gay, So What!’
Apparently women have been coming forward, but it seems the boys are still a bit shy, says coordinator Sunil Patel.
See So gay, so what!
Melbourne Community Voice
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India: Legal gay sex ruling challenged
A landmark ruling that legalized gay sex between consenting partners in India was challenged Thursday in the country’s high court, lawyers said.
Activists protest against the ruling to decriminalize gay sex in New Delhi on Sunday.
The supreme court issued a notice to the nonprofit Naz Foundation that had won a lower-court verdict after a seven-year legal fight to decriminalize gay sex.
Notices also were issued to the federal government and the New Delhi high court, which ruled last week that consensual sex between partners of the same gender was legal.
An astrologer filed a petition challenging the ruling. The petitioner argued that no constitutional right is violated by the Indian penal code’s Section 377, which had outlawed gay sex, said his lawyer Praveen Agrawal.
The petition also cited Indian culture and health as grounds for seeking a stay on last week’s ruling, he said.
The supreme court posted the next hearing for July 20.
Last week’s ruling meant the law — Indian penal code section 377, which had previously criminalized consensual homosexual acts between adults — was partly struck down but remains in place as far as forced homosexual acts are concerned.
The verdict affects law enforcement all around India because it deals with a law enacted by the federal parliament.
See India: Legal gay sex ruling challenged
CNN Internationa
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Closet Case: How Intolerance Fuels Africa’s AIDS Crisis
New research has challenged the long-standing belief that HIV and AIDS in Africa primarily affect heterosexuals. A study published on the website of the British medical journal Lancet found that men who have sex with other men are up to 10 times more likely than their heterosexual counterparts to be infected with the virus — which suggests that the fight against AIDS on the continent may be undermined by widespread homophobia.
Researchers from Oxford University, the Population Council of Ghana and the Kenya Medical Research Institute reviewed AIDS studies conducted over the past few years and concluded that male-male sex was a major blind spot in AIDS research and policy in Africa. Men having sex with other men is far more common in Africa than is socially acknowledged, owing to widespread hostility toward homosexuality, and the phenomenon there is underreported in research and largely ignored in public-health responses to the pandemic. The researchers compiled statistics from a small but growing number of studies conducted in various African countries in recent years that included estimates of HIV prevalence among men who have sex with other men. (See pictures from Africa’s AIDS crisis.)
See Closet Case: How Intolerance Fuels Africa’s AIDS Crisis
TIME
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Friends Campaign to Find Man Lost in ‘Ex-Gay’ Netherworld EDGE Boston – Kilian Melloy – 3 hours ago A young gay medical student named Bryce Faulkner
A young gay medical student named Bryce Faulkner had made plans to move from Arkansas to be closer to his boyfriend, Travis Swanson, who lives in Wisconsin. But now Bryce has vanished–into a 14-month program meant to “convert” him to heterosexuality, it is thought.
A July 20 Sky News article reports that Swanson last heard from Faulkner, 23, when the two spoke via telephone on June 15.
Faulkner’s friends and advocates fear that the young man may have been pressured by his parents into signing up for a program with Exodus International, a group that claims that gays can be “cured.”
It is thought that Faulkner might be at a center run by the religious group in Florida.
A page dedicated to supporting efforts to locate and “rescue” Faulkner at GLBT equality advocate Rev. Brett Harris’ Ergonomical Ministries outlines one possible scenario leading to the young man’s abrupt loss of communication with friends and with Swanson.See Friends Campaign to Find Man Lost in ‘Ex-Gay‘ Netherworld.
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‘I am a gay American, and I am a second-class citizen’
Courtney Deckard | IDS
Members of the Bloomington Gay Recruiters group conduct a marriage equality sit-in on Thursday morning outside the Monroe County Justice Building. Along with signs, the group also chanted “1,138 federal rights denied. I am a gay American and I am a second-class citizen.”
Honoring the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots in New York City on June 28, 1969, Bloomington residents Lillie Aydt and her group Gay Recruiters led Bloomington’s first-ever sit-in for marriage equality Thursday at the Monroe County Justice Building downtown. The Stonewall riots occurred when members of the LGBT community in Greenwich Village at the Stonewall Inn fought back against the
oppression they faced from various government-sponsored systems.
Gay Recruiters was formed in response to the Proposition 8 Supreme Court decision, which upheld the illegality of same-sex marriage in California and thus established what Aydt called “an Orwellian precedent, allowing certain gay citizens more rights than others.” See ‘I am a gay American, and I am a second-class citizen’
Indiana Daily Student
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Google marches along with gay pride
”Google is a company that supports its LGBT employees, taking a public stand stand on issues that are important to our community. This is not the first year that Google has supported Pride, and it will certainly not be the last.”
on issues that are important to our community. This is not the first year that Google has supported Pride, and it will certainly not be the last.”
From a posting by Cynthia Yeung on the official Google Blog which features a series of photos of LGBT employees marching with Google/YouTube banners in several major US cities including San Francisco, New York and Chicago as well as some European cities. (Google Blog)
See Google marches along with gay pride
Metro Weekly
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