Gay Media: We Have Come To Wash Your Brains

Aren't endless stories about rich gay couples getting married ADORABLE?
And HEARTWARMING?
Or maybe you find them INSPIRATIONAL!
Have they posted a pukey video on YouTube?
That would be AWESOME!
And might BREAK YOUR HEART!
Maybe they have a kid!
He must be SO BRAVE!
I am so PROUD I'm going to start a stupid e-petition.
Take that homophobes!
Cause sentimental meaningless crap makes the gay media go round...

America: Unwanted And Forgotten

One out of every twenty people in the United States identifies as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender.
Among the homeless youth population, it's two out of five.
Forty percent of homeless youth are LGBT.*

Via Towleroad.

Towleroad also posts about what American LGBT activists are currently devoting their energy to... Russia!
Sorry gay kids in America, their hysteria just forgot your misery.

* I have no idea where these statistics are from.

Immigration: Us V Them

While they wait, some for up to 16 years, asylum seekers languish in housing condemned by the committee as, in some cases, "appalling". Not just a shambles, degrading also. The committee was rightly outraged by testimony from gay and lesbian asylum seekers, some of whom were required to go to extraordinary lengths to establish sexuality. Having exhausted all reasonable ways of making a case, a few resorted to handing over photographic and video evidence of "highly personal sexual activity". Is this a system we can be proud of? The anti-war slogan comes to mind: not in my name...

Hugh Muir in The Guardian, after the Tories announced they were "getting tough" on immigration and asylum, yet again.

Gulf states to introduce medical testing on travellers to 'detect' gay people and stop them from entering the country

Daily Mail, October 7th.

The Mail story was widely reported as above (their own has since been updated).

It is a gross distortion.

As Scott Long has reported, no-one in Kuwait - or Qatar - has proposed some new "gay test" for tourists.

Rather; "The Kuwait Ministry of Health has proposed tightening genetic tests for immigrant workers in order to prevent transgender migrants from entering the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] job market."

The "gay test" fiction was reported in the international LGBT media and elsewhere.

Please let Fagburn know of any you see who have published a correction or an update on the story, ie one that is actually accurate.

At the time of typing, despite polite requests from many individuals, I know of none.

[Edit: Towleroad gave the earliest and most transparent correction I saw. More usually, where the real story was printed, they were mendacious, and the fact that they had published a garbled version before disappeared down an Orwellian Memory Hole].

Thanks to @undersided

One Direction: Holy Twinks!

It's probably not a big surprise that there are gay men who lust after the guys in One Direction (who are all the ages of 18 to 20), but openly gay Bravo TV executive Andy Cohen, 44, may have gone too far by calling One Direction "a room of twinks." "Twinks" is gay slang for young, boyish-looking gay men, usually between the ages of 16 to 24, who are used as sex objects by older gay men. Because of the meaning behind the word, many young gay men find it offensive to be called a "twink." Cohen made the remark on live TV on November 13, 2012, while he was being interviewed in a celebrity gossip segment on NBC's Today... 

In his Today interview, Cohen described accidentally seeing One Direction in the Today green room: "This morning, I went into the normal green room that we typically go into. I barged in, there are all these people in front of us. Oh, it's all the leftover One Direction fans. I barged right into a room of twinks: One Direction! Security was not exactly too tight, with all due respect. I barged right in. It was crazy!"

In case he didn't make it clear enough that he sees One Direction as gay, Cohen tweeted on November 12, 2012, minutes before his "Today" interview: "No joke just walked right into One Direction greenroom!! The blond dude was shirtless #HolyTwink."

US website examiner.com via Towleroad - who notes wryly it's clearly a slow news day. It was soon picked up everywhere.

Does calling someone a twink mean you think they're gay? 

Probably not the best example, but the Bel Ami boys are twinks and, according to legend, most of them are straight.

It's a look, not a status.

Whatever it's a compliment, surely?

PS Cohen later tweeted; "Misused word earlier — I just meant they’re cute. #1D"

Update: Liked this - 'In defense of the word "twink"' Gay.net

Mariela Castro: Freedom

 

"If we don't change our patriarchal and homophobic culture, we cannot advance as a new society, and that's what we want, the power of emancipation through socialism. We will establish relationships on the basis of social justice and social equality. It seems like a Utopia, but we can change it." 

Mariela Castro, Cuba's leading LGBT rights advocate and the director of the Cuban National Center for Sex Education (CENESEX), is currently in the US speaking in San Francisco and New York, and meeting health workers and gay campaigners. 
It's quite a big deal, I guess. 
It was touch-and-go whether the land of the free would allow her in.
Interesting to note that for some American gay journalists the only story here is the predictable howls of outrage made by right-wing Cuban-Americans. 

Cuban-Americans Outraged by Mariela Castro Visit 
'Cuban-Americans are outraged that the niece of Fidel Castro is visiting the United States to talk about LGBT equality, given the history of repression in Cuba.'
The Advocate. 

Not All Gay Activists Cheering Mariela Castro's U.S. Visit
'Miami resident Pedro S. Romanach also voiced opposition*, saying that despite Castro's efforts, there are still fundamental rights that Cubans, gay and straight alike, lack: "She may be pro-gay marriage, but the very elementary rights Cubans don’t have — freedom of the press, freedom of assembly — gay people don’t have those rights in Cuba. Neither do straights."
'He went on, "She doesn’t represent anybody but herself. The real heroes in Cuba are the gay people who are pro-gay and pro-freedom and the anti-communists who aren’t getting any publicity."
Towleroad.

Snore!
Little parlour game: How many articles have you seen in the gay press about gay life in Cuba's neighbours - and presumably gay-loving capitalist paradises - Haiti or the Dominican Republic?
Like ever?
If the answer's none, then can all the negative coverage of Cuba be seen as anything other than crude propaganda against an Officially Declared Enemy of the USA?
It is surely beyond stupid for gay journalists to complain about the lack of freedom of speech in Cuba if every word they write just shows the lack of freedom of thought in their own.

• Two interviews with Mariela Castro from L'Humanité and from Der Spiegel.

* Wonder if it's the same Pedro who left this charming comment on Queerty; "This bitch needs to be taken down. Why is she even allowed on American soil? They all have blood on their hands!!"

Pink News: Oops!

Pink News - Europe's worst gay news service - led with this story over the weekend;
'Video: US student tells of ‘gay cure’ torture at hands of father'
"An American student has described how he was tortured for a month by his father in an effort to turn him heterosexual.
"Samuel Brinton, a student at Kansas State University, said his Southern Baptist missionary father beat him, burned him and shocked him with electric currents..."
It's moving stuff.
And as you can see from the 120-plus comments it's also the sort of sentimental guff that really moves apolitical simpletons who read Pink News.
Squish squish. *Makes sad face*.

American blogger Towleroad picked up the story - but then quickly had to run the following apology:

Astute commenters have pointed out that the video is old, even though it's suddenly the top story at Europe's Pink News today. Towleroad covered it in 2010, before I came on board.

Wayne Besen, founder of Truth Wins Out, writes in the comments field below:

Truth Wins Out has tried verify this story for more than a month. Our phone calls have gone unanswered. We hope that the full range of facts can come to light. For example, who was the specific therapist who performed these abusive actions? We are always pleased when "ex-gay" survivors are brave enough to come foward and share their experiences. We look forward to Samuel providing further information in the very near future.

And another comment, from Ninong: "Apparently his parents accepted him after that interview because he has a picture of the entire happy family at his college graduation ceremony, May 31, 2011 on his Facebook page."

In fact this was yet another story Pink News had stolen from the Daily Mail and not bothered to check.

Well done Pink News - another winner!

PS Competition time! Can anyone tell me of a single instance where Pink News's hopeless and lazy editor Jessica Geen has actually bothered to check a story?

Iran Stoning: What's Going On?

The reporting of the apparent case of two young Iranian men sentenced to death by stoning for allegedly raping a male youth has often been predictably unreliable (though noticably more cautious than before) - with some gay media playing down the rape charge.
Towleroad framed their report as 'Iranian Men to be Stoned to Death for Gay Sex'
But the charge is not "gay sex", it is "male rape" [This page has been deleted by Towleroad].
On Gay Middle East Paul Canning and Dan Littauer try and sift through the hysteria, stupid cliches and propaganda to find out what we can know - and explain why we can know so little; it is not even 100% certain that the case actually exists.
How can we be sure of anything about a case when we do not even know the mens' names?
Canning and Littauer note a Catch 22 in Iranian prosecutions for homosexual acts;
"As noted yesterday, the Iranian government, as reported by Human Rights Watch, maintains in response to international pressure regarding reported executions of homosexuals that they mostly involve “individuals [who] have been charged for forcible sodomy or rape”.
"But as noted yesterday by Soheila Vahdati, an independent human rights defender based in San Francisco: “They [the Iranian government] don’t differentiate between rape and homosexual acts."
And furthermore, they quote Hossein Alizadeh, Regional Coordinator for IGLHRC’s Middle East and North Africa Program;
“Iran has an impenetrable and opaque criminal justice system that makes knowing what is really happening inside the country impossible.”
One thing does seem grimly certain and undisputed;
"At this stage it is, however, believed that all sources concur on the fact of a death sentence."
A great crime.

Eminem Vs Anderson Cooper: Whatever

Eminem was gentled prodded by Anderson Cooper on US show 60 Minutes last night.
Mr Mathers was thrown slightly on the defensive due to the current shitstorm following the spate of gay teen suicides over there.
"That word was thrown around so much, you know? 'Faggot' was, like, it was thrown around constantly, to each other, like in battling, you know what I mean?"... I don't have any problem with nobody, you know what I mean. Like, I'm just whatever."
Whatever.
The poor diddums also tried to paint himself as the victim, part of a persecuted majority.
"I felt like I was being attacked. Is it because of the colour of my skin? Is it because of that you are paying more attention? Because there are certain rappers that do and say the same thing that I'm saying and you don't hear anyone saying anything about that. I didn't just invent saying offensive things."
You can watch it thanks to Towleroad.