After the break-up, what about the lake house?
IT was a perfect party — vodka lemonade on a dock overlooking a lake, dozens of close friends, a cool misty night in the country a couple of hours north of New York.
Inside, the house spoke of a passionate interest in style, and of a committed relationship. Silhouettes of the couple who owned the house hung on a wall in the master bedroom; the couple’s nickname — Benford — was spelled out in large letters leaning against a wall in the kitchen.
But the couple, Benjamin Dixon, 31, and Bradford Shellhammer, 33, who had planned the evening as a commitment ceremony, had broken up three months earlier. Still, with airplane tickets purchased by some of the guests, a catering deposit paid and a house they haven’t been able to sell, they figured it made sense to go ahead and have a party anyway.
Their tale of lost love has a familiar arc — love sparks, then blooms; lives intertwine; moments are lost and misunderstandings creep in; eventually the two begin to live as strangers — and an epilogue that has become increasingly familiar as well, as unwanted houses become prisons rather than cocoons.
Rather than being a glossy testament to their taste and their partnership, their house in Stanfordville, in Dutchess County, is now a dead weight that entangles them and makes it impossible to move on. Having bought it and an apartment in Manhattan at the height of the real estate boom (and having made an agreement with a third partner in their lake house property not to sell it until December 2009), they are left with joint custody of two large mortgages. They are also left with two carefully decorated homes filled with one-of-a-kind accessories found on eBay and quirky furnishings by high-end designers like the Dutch collective Droog that are reminders of what came before and, Mr. Dixon said, “big reminders of what was supposed to be.”
See After the break-up, what about the lake house?
New York Times
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A Texas gay raid and Stonewall
The Fort Worth police have “some explaining to do,” said Jacquielynn Floyd in The Dallas Morning News. On June 28, officers raided a gay bar called the Rainbow Lounge, sending a patron to intensive care with a head injury. “In what I can only hope is a spectacularly infelicitous coincidence,” it took place on the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Raid, the gay-rights movement’s catalyst. The cops’ story—drunk gay men groped them—doesn’t add up.
Well, police chief Jeff Halstead is backing his men and their classic “Gay Panic Defense,” said Dan Savage in The Stranger, which goes: He made a pass at me, so I was justified in beating/killing him. That would still be illegal, but it’s also bunk. “I’ve been in a million gay bars” like the Rainbow Lounge, and “gay men don’t grope police officers when they enter gay bars.”
It is, “obviously, very sad” that one of the Rainbow Lounge patrons is in critical condition, said Rod Dreher in BeliefNet, but come on, the report that “cops who entered a gay bar were set upon by drunk, horny patrons who played grab-ass with them” is “hilarious,” and not at all far-fetched. Gay people, especially drunk gay people, can be “as stupid as the rest of us.”
Except that the hospitalized man was reportedly drinking bottled water, said Jeff Epperly in New England’s Bay Windows. But 40 years after Stonewall, this kind of gay harassment goes on all over the U.S., not just in Texas. The raid at Forth Worth’s Rainbow Lounge “was the work of a police department that wasn’t smart enough to hide its bigotry.” See A Texas gay raid and Stonewall The Week Magazine
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California gay marriage fight goes to Chinatown
The path to gay marriage in California may start in Chinatown.
After a double defeat at the voting booth and in court, gay advocates are reassessing their plans to push for legal same-sex marriage in the most populous U.S. state.
The new drive, focused on getting the issue on the ballot again as soon as November 2010, is more personal and reaches farther beyond the liberal confines of San Francisco’s Castro or Los Angeles’ gay heartland West Hollywood.
Lost in the 2009 election wreckage for gays was the marriage campaign’s relative success in Asian communities, which have swung toward support of same-sex marriage at a faster rate than the rest of California and have become a model for other groups.
Asian Americans have been building grass-roots support in Chinatown, Little Tokyo, Filipinotown for four years. Gays, lesbians and straight allies have talked about the often-taboo topic of homosexuality, set up booths at festivals, harangued non-English language media to change coverage and lobbied elected officials for support.
“What we felt we had to do is talk to people who aren’t on our side. So that’s why we do these crazy things like walk through the streets of Chinatown as part of the New Year’s Parade. That’s why we go out to festivals from Little India to Little Tokyo and talk to complete strangers,” said Marshall Wong, co-chair of Asia Pacific Islander group API Equality.
See
California gay marriage fight goes to Chinatown
Reuters
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How far New Hampshire has come
A photograph of state Rep. Jim Splaine of Portsmouth standing next to N.H. governor John Lynch Wednesday as he signed into law legislation legalizing gay marriage reminds me of an incident from the 1981 legislative session that serves as a dramatic example of just how much New Hampshire has evolved over the nearly three decades since then.The state has changed in so many ways I didn’t think would ever happen, largely because of my initiation into the “Live Free Or Die” view of life. My first months in the Granite State during the winter of 1979 were punctuated with periods of disbelief. Why would voters reject offers of federal grants to improve their communities? On general principal, that’s why. The phrase I heard over and over again seated on the sidelines of a million March town meetings was “We don’t want to become New York.”I didn’t take it personally. I don’t think anyone in Epping at the time knew I grew up on the shores of Lake Ontario. Still, there were moments when I felt like a stranger in a strange land. See How far New Hampshire has come
Foster’s Daily Democrat
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GLAAD Announces Launch of Advertising Media Program
Levi’s Brand and Wells Fargo Honored at Launch Reception
New York, NY May 08, 2009 – The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) today announced the launch of an Advertising Media Program as part of its national lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) media advocacy and anti-defamation work. The program will officially launch during a reception for LGBT advertising professionals and allies where GLAAD will honor Levi’s Brand and Wells Fargo for their commitment to LGBT-inclusive advertising. The reception will be held Monday, May 18, 2009 at the Alvin Ailey Dance Studio (405 West 55th St, New York, NY).
“Words and images matter and can shatter stereotypes. Fair, accurate and inclusive media images prove that we are connected through common, human experiences,” said Neil G. Giuliano, GLAAD President. “These are images that we – and advertisers – have a responsibility to share.”
Leveraging GLAAD’s media advocacy and anti-LGBT defamation resources, GLAAD’s Advertising Media Program will monitor all forms of advertising and work to ensure fair and accurate representations of the LGBT community or demand action when defamation occurs. Most recently, GLAAD successfully advocated that a Virginia used car company pull offensive ads that referred to same-sex flirting as “not smart” from the airwaves and their Web site. The Advertising Media Program will also proactively advance inclusion of the LGBT community in mainstream advertising through advocacy work at advertising agencies and corporate advertising departments. GLAAD will maintain the online library formerly owned by Commercial Closet Association of over 4,000 LGBT-inclusive ads.
“Advertising plays a vital role in how people view the world and our community,” said Rashad Robinson, Senior Director of Media Programs at GLAAD. “We are thrilled to expand our media advocacy work on behalf of the LGBT community to call for fair, accurate and inclusive advertising and hold advertisers accountable for anti-gay defamation.”
To celebrate the launch of the program, GLAAD will honor Levi’s Brand and Wells Fargo with Special Recognition Awards. GLAAD is also planning an Advertising Media Awards for later this year.
Levi’s Brand won the 2008 Images in Advertising Award for Outstanding Commercial for a commercial which depicts a young male pulling on a pair of Levi’s jeans as the street below him comes crashing through his floor, leaving him face-to-face with an attractive stranger in a nearby telephone booth. The two men walk off while holding hands. Levi’s has had a long involvement with the LGBT community as exemplified by the “Support of Gay Marriage” campaign, the “Inside Out” campaign and the recent “Logo Unbuttoned” campaign. Levi’s ads perpetuate the company’s history of LGBT inclusive business practices and marketing outreach. In 1992, Levi Strauss & Co. became the first Fortune 500 company to extend full benefits to the same-sex domestic partners of employees.
Wells Fargo has consistently supported the LGBT community by being one of the first financial institutions to reach out to the community with targeted advertising and sponsorship of LGBT causes and organizations. Wells Fargo has a long standing commitment to speak to our community through advertising for not only financial related products but also in company recruiting and fostering an inclusive workplace. As a result of its long standing support to LGBT causes, anti-gay activists initiated a boycott of Wells Fargo in 2005. In spite of anti-gay activists, the company remains a strong ally to our community.
Tickets for the reception are $25 and will be credited to tickets for the Fall 2009 Advertising Awards. They can be purchased at www.glaad.org/events. Sponsors of the event include ABSOLUT® VODKA, DRAFTFCB, Levi’s Brand and Wells Fargo. Media partners include Gay City News, Manhattan Chamber of Commerce, PinkBananaMedia.com and TheMenEvent.com.
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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CALIFORNIA FAITH LEADERS PROTEST INJUSTICE FOR GAY & LESBIAN FAMILIES ON TAX DAY, APRIL 15th.
“As we rush to the post office to send in our tax dollars today, let us remember those gay and lesbian families who pay their taxes lawfully and faithfully, yet have been denied equality under the law by a majority of voters in California,” said Samuel M. Chu, Interim Executive Director of California Faith for Equality and a Presbyterian pastor. “Our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters have equal responsibility under the law, but not equal rights. I speak on behalf of a diversity of faith leaders committed to equality and our respective faiths all agree that to take away the rights of any minority group, as did Proposition 8 here in California, is wrong.”
Rabbi Denise Eger, of Congregation Kol-Ami in West Hollywood and one of the founding members of California Faith for Equality said, “Gay and lesbian married couples face continued discrimination at both federal and state levels. While some couples can file in their states as ‘married,’ they are required to file on the federal level as ‘single’.
Eger, President of the Pacific Association of Reform Rabbis added, “Federal law treats same-sex couples as strangers, thereby denying them the 1,138 federal rights, benefits and protections available to heterosexual married couples. This is not only an affront to the dignity of their families, but to those couples who want to pay their fair share. They continue to be penalized and discriminated by this unequal treatment”.
“California Faith for Equality will continue to be a powerful and uniting force for equality for all LGBT persons,” said Chu.
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Dana White steamed over gay slur coverage
(Toronto, Ontario) No stranger to dropping the F-bomb, Ulitmate Fighting Championship president Dana White is still smarting over his use of the other F-word in a recent video blog.
He’s sorry he used the gay slur – and says he now knows better – but he’s not about to fade into …
Safer or Stupid? Some Gay Men ‘PrEP’ for Sex
More than two decades into the AIDS epidemic, the well-known conundrum of condom burnout among gay men has produced a highly controversial underground practice. “Pre-exposure prophylaxis,” or PrEP, involves taking a comprehensive anti-retroviral drug, usually tenofivir, before having sex.
Some men are actually doing this because they take safer sex seriously indeed. One doctor told me of two patients who took the drug before they had protected sex with strangers as an added preventative in case a condom breaks.
But for the vast majority of gay men, PrEP means a key to not using a condom. That’s what makes it such a hot-button issue among AIDS researchers, doctors and activists. The theory behind is that the anti-retroviral drug prevents HIV from grafting itself onto healthy cells and replicating. When HIV first enters the human body, there isn’t much of it; theoretically, if those few viruses swimming around the bloodstream don’t have anywhere to go, they’ll die out–just as do millions of germs we come across every day that don’t affect us.
One prominent doctor in Boston maintained that PrEP, despite its bad rep, is necessary as one more tool in the arsenal of AIDS fighters. But others see it as an enabler for those men who don’t want to bother using protection. See Safer or Stupid? Some Gay Men ’PrEP’ for Sex
EDGE Boston -
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Seattle gay bars threatened with ricin attacks
(Seattle, Washington) Seattle police say they are taking seriously threats of ricin attacks on 11 gay bars in the city.
The threats were made in letters received by the bars on Tuesday and have been turned over to police. Seattle weekly newspaper The Stranger received a 12th letter saying it should …
