GLBT NEWS
Babes with Badges: Hot Cops and FBI Agents Part II
Break out the big guns, the cuffs and the badges. It's time to take a look at television's hottest cops, detectives and FBI agents. From today's tough gals like Mariska Hargitay in Law and Order: SVU to groundbreaking tough broads, Cagney and Lacey's Sharon Gless and Tyne Daly. Throw in award-winners Glenn Close, Holly Hunter and Kyra Sedgwick with a dash of the hot Sarah Shahi, X-Files' Gillian Anderson and Cold Case's Kathryn Morris and get your Miranda Rights read.
A teachable moment As many as 60 students participated in the Monday protest, with some boys donning skirts and wigs, and some girls wearing sports jerseys and baseball caps.
ACLU Creates First-Ever HIV Education Curriculum For Homeless Shelters Nationwide NEW YORK -- At a time when cities across the nation are cracking down on increasing numbers of homeless people seeking refuge from the winter, the American Civil Liberties Union today released the first-ever hands-on policy and practice toolkit for homeless shelters, focusing on the connection between HIV/AIDS, homelessness, and shelters, which could serve as a model education program for shelters nationwide.
Guilty Pleasures: Wet Sex, On Fire
Sometimes in life you can have your cake and eat it too: Like with Jet Set's release of Wet Sex 1 and 2. Plus: Dean Phoenix and Jesse Santana are On Fire, Raging Stallion unleashes some Grunts and Titan begs us to peer down their Telescope.
A closer look at Azariah Southworth
Life before coming out. Azariah Southworth grew up in a Pentecostal home where Jim and Tammy Faye Baker, Paul and Jan Crouch and Oral Roberts were the standards in television viewing habits. According to Azariah, his parents were so strict, he couldn't...
Minnesota’s 2nd Annual Trans Community Health Wellness Fair Presented by the Minnesota Transgender Health Coalition – an event for trans & gender variant people, partners, family, allies, health care providers & the general community. Featuring key note speaker Surgeon Marci Bowers, MD of Trinidad, CO as well as special guest Surgeon Loren Schechter, MD of Morton Grove, IL.
May 9 – 10 • South [...]
Metal Head: Iron Man deserves better than iron, but not quite solid gold. Silver would be the most appropriate. Film: An early entry into the summer movie blockbuster race, Iron Man () holds its own as a big-budget action film, but would probably lose in a battle against most of the other movie superheroes. It would definitely be defeated by the first two Spider-Man movies, but could trounce Spidey 3. The Fantastic Four wouldn't stand a chance, but going one-on-one against the newest Batman might prove a disaster. Robert Downey Jr: Iron Man Adapted from the Marvel comic of the same name, Iron Man's human persona is weapons manufacturer Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), a man who has it all: lots of money, lots of brains, lots of girlfriends, lots of attitude. It's his brains and attitude that really save him when he's kidnapped by terrorists who demand he create a new missile for them. Iron Man has been updated to place Tony in Afghanistan, where he's held by a terrorist cell in a cave. Since we know how well the U.S. can find someone in this region, it's naturally up to Stark to save himself. The weapon that Stark builds is not a missile, but rather an armored suit that he uses to blast his way to freedom. Once home, Tony has a change of heart: both literally and figuratively. First, to prevent shrapnel from entering his heart, he creates an electromagnet in his chest that keeps him alive. Second, he vows to stop creating weapons until he can ensure they are used for protecting Americans, not attacking them. In order to correct his wrongs and destroy the weapons already out there, he creates a new version of his suit to help him fight for good. ...more
Hillary Clinton Vows to Continue Battle for White House Even as one of her longtime supporters, former senator George McGovern, begged Hillary Clinton to drop out of the presidential race, the former First Lady vowed to continue the fight on Wednesday. Reeling from a huge loss in North Carolina to Barack Obama and a narrow win in Indiana in Tuesday's primary contests, Clinton said that she will remain in the presidential race 'until there's a nominee.'
ACLU Takes On High School Principal For Discriminating Against Male Couple MEMPHIS ? A public high school principal who posted the names of two boys on a list of students believed to be couples, revealing their relationship to their parents as well as other students and teachers, violated the students' constitutional right to freedom of association, the American Civil Liberties Union charged today. In a letter to school board officials in Memphis, Tennessee, the ACLU demanded today that the school reprimand the principal and take steps to ensure such actions never happen again.
Iranian fears execution if sent home
(Mar 17, 2008) - Mehdi Kazemi fears he'll be executed if the United Kingdom forces him to return to Iran.
International News by Rex Wockner
(Mar 17, 2008) - Mehdi Kazemi fears he'll be executed if the United Kingdom forces him to return to Iran.
Kazemi went to London to study in 2005 and Iranian officials later arrested his boyfriend, Parham, charged him with sodomy and executed him, according to Kazemi's father.
Kazemi then sought asylum in Britain but was rejected. In 2006, he then fled to the Netherlands, which detained him and is now preparing to return him to the UK.
The UK had been planning to send Kazemi back to Iran when he returned to British soil but, on March 13, following extensive media coverage and political pressure, the Home Office agreed to review his case one more time before forcing him to go home.
"The Iranian authorities have found out that I am a homosexual and they are looking for me," Kazemi said in a recent letter to UK Home Secretary Jacqui Smith.
In a statement given to activist groups, Kazemi elaborated: "Around [the] end of April 2006, my uncle called me again and informed me that my father had informed him that the authorities had executed Parham and that I must not return to Iran as the authorities would do the same to me. ... Parham was charged with [the] crime [of] being homosexual and was executed."
According to Kazemi's father, Parham named Mehdi as his lover prior to his execution.
Leading British gay activist Peter Tatchell commented: "The Home Office decision to deport Mehdi back to Iran is shameful and reckless. ... Gay men in Iran are hanged from public cranes using the barbaric method of slow strangulation."
Tatchell said the UK government is "callous [and] more interested in cutting asylum numbers than in ensuring a fair, just and compassionate asylum system."
Britain's Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association also has taken up Kazemi's cause, saying that "deporting gay and lesbian people to Iran is akin to deporting Jews back to Nazi Germany."
Meanwhile, The Independent reported March 7 that an Iranian lesbian who fled to Britain after her girlfriend was arrested and sentenced to death by stoning also is at risk of being sent home.
Pegah Emambakhsh, 40, issued a statement March 6 saying: "I will never, never go back. If I do I know I will die."
Emambakhsh's asylum claim was rebuffed by the Court of Appeal in February. She now plans to ask the High Court to review the case.
Iran is known to have executed several teens and men accused of engaging in sodomy, although in nearly all the cases that have been publicized in recent years the individuals were accused of other crimes as well, such as rape.
The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission has said it suspects that other charges often are tacked onto sodomy cases to prevent the public outrage that would accompany executions carried out solely for the crime of consensual adult gay sex. The group also has said it believes executions solely for gay sex are taking place out of the public eye.
"[O]ur suspicions [are] that their current practice really is to rid society of lesbians and gay men," the organization said last year.
Human Rights Watch, on the other hand, has said it cannot fully document any executions in Iran in recent years carried out solely for the crime of consensual adult gay sex.
Last September, during a speech at Columbia University in New York City, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was asked about the nation's treatment of gay people.
He responded: "We in Iran -- we in Iran, firstly, we don't have hamjensbaz [a derogatory term for homosexuals meaning people with loose morals who chase people of the same gender for sexual pleasure] like you have in your country. In our country, there is no such a thing. In Iran, such a thing does not -- in Iran, in Iran, absolutely such a thing does not exist as a phenomenon. I don't know who told you otherwise."
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Resonating Voice: Eric Himan comes to town to promote his latest album
Music: A batch of new songs and unpredictable '80s covers is what you can expect to hear at Eric Himan's CD release party for his latest album, Resonate, at Solly's U Street Tavern on May 17. Eric Himan ''I'm just trying to be really upbeat,'' says the gay Tulsa, Okla., resident of his most recent shows. ''A lot of times people see 'singer-songwriter' and think it's going to be quiet, but I have a lot of energy. Just because I have an acoustic guitar doesn't mean I can't rock it out.'' Himan has been rockin' it out since ''accidentally'' discovering his voice as an adolescent. ...more
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Free the Sex Trade: Commentary: Center Field
Commentary: The recent suicide of D.C. Madam Deborah Jeane Palfrey, who faced a prison sentence for doing something that harmed no one, raises a question unrelated to those now swirling among conspiracy theorists. It is simply this: Who benefits from the criminalization of prostitution? A quarter-millennium ago, Samuel Johnson described the ills associated with prostitution -- crowding, intemperance, famine, filth and disease -- and assured his friend Boswell that ''severe laws, steadily enforced, would be sufficient against those evils, and would promote marriage.'' I think Jesse Ventura came closer to the truth in his rough-hewn way when he told Playboy in 1999, ''Prostitution is criminal, and bad things happen because it's run illegally by dirt-bags who are criminals. If it's legal, then the girls could have health checks, unions, benefits, anything any other worker gets, and it would be far better.'' Not just girls, Jesse. Camille Paglia wrote in Vamps and Tramps, ''The prostitute is not, as feminists claim, the victim of men, but rather their conqueror, an outlaw, who controls the sexual channels between nature and culture.'' Paglia has made a career out of archly stating ridiculous things. As an advocate of the legalization of prostitution, I think it needs neither sanitizing nor glorifying. It is a profession not filled exclusively with people who freely chose it from a host of other options. No doubt there are some in that category, like the college student turning tricks for extra cash. But too many turn to it by necessity. These include gay teenagers who have been thrown out of the house by their parents, and transgenders whom discrimination has left with few options. ...more
But must New Yorkers recognize out-of-state bias?
In regards to the news that New York state will continue to recognize same-sex marriages that were performed in other states, Focus on the Family's Bruce Hausknecht has a few thoughts. Unfortunately, "YAY! Fairness prevails! Mazel tov, gays!" is not...
Gay Marriage Returns To RI Legislature (Providence, Rhode Island) A House committee room was packed well into the night Wednesday in what has become an annual debate in Rhode Island over same-sex marriage.
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According to the National Sleep Foundation in the United States, I should be getting eight to nine hours of sleep every night. This is necessary to maximize alertness, memory and problem solving, and overall health. It even reduces the risk of accidents.
In winter, a tourist woman's fancy lustily turns to thoughts of sex. By the thousands they descend on the Caribbean every year, women driven by one urge: to spend a week or two sleeping with local "beach boys" and paying them back in drinks, meals, gifts and cash.
