Author: Randy Slovacek

Posted on

Peter Fox, popular Washington DC singer, passes away from cancer

Many in Washington’s gay community are reeling from the death of Peter Fox, a well-liked local singer who died Monday after a short battle with central nervous system lymphoma.

Fox studied business and music at Pennsylvania State University and had been in Washington more than a decade where he’d worked several jobs. He worked full time as director of credentialing at the American Academy of HIV Medicine and in recent years had pursued a singing career that found him releasing an eponymous album, giving local performances at the Kennedy Center, Signature Theatre and more, and making charitable appearances for local gay causes. He was also a long-time member of the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington and sang in its Potomac Fever ensemble.

Fox is survived by three brothers and a sister. He had a good relationship with his family and attested to it in a Washington Blade Pride-related coming out story he participated in last June.

“‘Wow, what’s that like,’ exclaimed my mom when I came out to her (and the rest of my family) in my early 20s,” Fox wrote. “Just the nature of her question to me describes their love for me and their trust that I am exactly who I am meant to be. I just don’t think my clan was genetically wired to feel as though I or they had done anything ‘wrong.’”

Read more at the Washington Blade

Posted on

Rick Santorum insists on comparing marriage equality to polygamy

Rick Santorum’s social conservatism took center stage in New Hampshire today, as a group of college students booed him for comparing gay marriage to polygamy during a town hall in Concord.

“So if you’re not happy unless you’re married to five other people, is that OK?” Santorum asked one student. “Reason says that if you think it’s okay for two [individuals to marry], then you have to differentiate for me why it’s not okay for three,” he argued later.

To be clear, Santorum’s offensive and circuitous responses are all meant to reject the natural desire of two same-sex individuals to join in a union and enjoy the same rights as heterosexual couples.

His tactic of comparing apples to oranges is a squirrelly move.  Apples to apples would be one person to one person, which he quickly takes off the table.

Me thinks the New Hampshire crowd is not so “evangelical-Santorum-friendly” as Iowa.

Posted on

TeaParty.com domain up for sale

From NPR: If you direct your browser to TeaParty.com, you will not find a site devoted to the political movement of the same name. What you will find is the Internet home of The Tea Party, a Canadian rock band that has owned the domain name since the early ’90s.

Now, with seemingly no shortage of would-be buyers, the band is hoping to cash in.

The Tea Party may not be well-known in the U.S., but they’re pretty big in Canada. They got started in Toronto in 1990 and by the early 2000s, The Tea Party had recorded eight albums, toured the world and sold 1.6 million records. All along, the band got offers to sell its website.

“There [were] a bunch of small people kicking the tires and seeing if we’d be interested,” says Tea Party bassist Stuart Chatwood. “But the first real political offer came in this summer.”

Chatwood doesn’t want to say who made that offer, but he will say it was “significant.”

“It had a mid-seven-digit back-end to it, and it was like, whoa — all of a sudden we realized that, you know, our little house that we had built happened to be sitting right on top of a gold mine.”

Chatwood won’t say much about his politics, except that he’s very happy with his Canadian socialized medical care.

They hired domain-name broker Sedo, which sold Sex.com for $13 million in 2010, to help them out. Sedo spokeswoman Kathy Nielsen says she doesn’t think TeaParty.com will fetch as much as Sex.com did, but — between its traffic numbers and its search value — it could still be worth more than a million dollars.

“Say it’s a Tea Party group that needs it for fundraising,” Nielsen says. “They can make a business case out of it.”

The Tea Party’s broker expects a deal to close in the next few months, so the next time you click on TeaParty.com, the site could be singing a very different tune.

Posted on

A brother stands up for his younger bro

I found this on another blog and had to share it.

The blog is by Kristen Wolf and it’s called  “Up and Down We Go“.

Yesterday I had a pair of brothers in my store. One was maybe between 15-17. He was a wrestler at the local high school. Kind of tall, stocky and handsome. He had a younger brother, who was maybe about 10-12 years old. Thy were talking about finding a game for the younger one, and he was absolutely insisting it be one with a female charcter. I don’t know how many of y’all play games, but that isn’t exactly easy. Eventually, I helped the brothers pick a game called Mirror’s Edge. The youngest was pretty excited about the game, and then he specifically asked me.. “Do you have any girl color controllers?”

I directed him to the only colored controllers we have which includes pink and purple ones. He grabbed the purple one, and informed me purple was his FAVORITE.

The boys had been taking awhile, so their father eventually comes in. He see’s the game, and the controller, and starts in on the youngest about how he needs to pick something different. Something more manly. Something with guns and fighting, and certainly not a purple controller. He tries to convince him to get the new Zombie game “Dead Island.” and the little boy just stands their repeating “Dad, this is what I want, ok?” Eventually it turns into a full blown argument complete with Dad threatening to whoop his son if he doesn’t choose different items.

That’s when big brother stepped in. He said to his Dad “It’s my money, it’s my gift to him, if it’s what he wants I’m getting it for him, and if your gonna hit anyone for it, it’s going to be me.”

Dad just gives his oldest son a strong stern stare down, and then leaves the store. Little brother is crying quietly, I walk over and ruffle his hair (yes this happened all in front of me.) I say “I’m a girl, and I like the color blue, and I like shooting games. There’s nothing wrong with what you like. Even if it’s different that what people think you should.”

Big brother then leans down, kisses little brother on the head, and says “Don’t worry dude.”

They check out and leave, and all I can think is how awesome big brother is, how sweet little brother is, and how Dad ought to be ashamed for trying to make his son any other way.

Posted on

Pat Robertson calls President Obama a “dictator”

Pat Robertson accused President Obama of being a “dictator” today on The 700 Club for his recess appointment of Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau after Senate Republicans refused to confirm anybody to the position.

Robertson and other critics claimed that the Senate is actually not in recess because of pro forma sessions, but legal experts and even Republican legal advisers have argued that such appointments are constitutional because pro forma meetings where no work is being done are not the same as a Senate sitting in session.

Past presidents have also made such appointments. Robertson, who is certainly not the first Religious Right leader to call Obama a dictator, said that Obama “is power-hungry and he wants to take it all,” lamenting, “I didn’t know we were electing a dictator.”

For the record, President George W. Bush made 170 recess appointments; President Reagan made 240 recess appointments; President Obama?  Only 30.

I wonder if Pat Robertson considers Ronald Reagan a “dictator?”

I wonder if Pat Robertson is even relevant?

Posted on

Gareth Thomas to join Big Brother UK series

Gareth Thomas, retired gay rugby icon, will appear on the Channel 5 reality show Big Brother which starts tonight.

Mr Thomas, 37, who had been married to his teenage sweetheart Jemma, announced he was gay in December 2009, breaking one of the major taboos in sport.

He told the Daily Mail: ‘Just because you are gay, it doesn’t mean you fancy every man who walks the planet.

‘I don’t want to be known as a gay rugby player. I am a rugby player first and foremost. I am a man.’

Posted on

Poll: Mitt Romney still ahead by large margin in New Hampshire

A new survey indicates that Mitt Romney remains the overwhelming front-runner in New Hampshire.

According to a Suffolk University/7 News two day tracking poll, the former governor of neighboring Massachusetts has the support of 48% of likely Republican New Hampshire primary voters.

Rep. Ron Paul of Texas is a distant second, at 18%.

The poll indicates that Santorum is at 8%, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman at 7%.

According to the survey, a rather large 17% are undecided.

The survey, released Thursday morning, was conducted Tuesday and Wednesday, meaning that about half of the people were questioned after Tuesday night’s Iowa caucuses, where Romney edged out former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania by 8 votes to won the contest.