Author: Randy Slovacek

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Don Lemon hosts The Joy Behar Show on LGBT acceptance

CNN’s Don Lemon, (a guest speaker in Philadelphia this weekend for the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association) recently guest hosting an LGBT issues episode of the Joy Behar Show, interviewed guests who are exploring Christianity’s view of being gay. His conversation featured Randy Roberts Potts, grandson of televangelist Oral Roberts, and Jay Bakker, a New York City-based pastor.

The conversation took on a personal tone, established by Lemon’s first sentence, “It’s usually not easy to come out as a gay man, I know.” Lemon publicly came out in May. Potts has only recently started speaking out publicly about his family and experience growing up and coming out. I follow Randy Roberts Potts on Facebook and his posts are often quite inspirational to read.

A major portion of the conversation centered on Potts’ family. His grandfather, Oral Roberts, was a high profile Pentecostal televangelist. He is credited with bringing Pentecostalism into the American mainstream. Additionally, he was a pioneer of televangelism and founded a university that still bears his name.

Potts discussed the pressure that he received from his family, even before coming out, partly due to his uncle’s death. After Potts came out to his family, he lost most contact with them.

“I feel like they`re trapped in a lot of fear. I think they really are legitimately afraid that I am going to hell. And they are too scared to look beyond that. And so it hurts me, but I also feel badly for them to be trapped or feel trapped in a place like that.”

Fear was also a prominent theme in the follow-up conversation with Jay Bakker, pastor of Revolution New York City and son of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker.

Bakker said that Jesus’ actions and teachings always pointed clearly toward expressing love and hospitality, and spending time with people who need more grace. He remarked that the Christian church has, over its history, completely reversed the teachings of Jesus, setting up restrictions and disassociating with whole populations.

Bakker noted that now there are more and more LGBT-affirming churches, but it is still a struggle.

“I almost went bankrupt when I said I love everybody. You know, this wasn’t a popularity contest. This was just me following a deep conviction. And it all came from understanding god’s Grace and god’s love, you know. They say—I’ve always had people say, you know, Jay, too much grace, it’s a slippery slope. And it is a slippery slope to loving everybody. I’m glad I got to slide on down it.”

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Wine preparedness in NYC. These are my people.

Parts of New York City are under evacuation orders, with more than 370,000 people ordered to leave low-lying areas as Hurricane Irene approaches the city. But on Saturday afternoon, at least, some residents were making the most of it.

NPR’s Jim Zarroli reports for All Things Considered that “Frankly Wines, a small shop just outside the evacuation zone, was doing a pretty brisk business today. Owner Christy Frank lives around the corner. Late August is normally a slow time, she says, but Irene has been great for business.

“We’ve been calling it the ‘hurricane stimulus package,'” Frank said. “It’s definitely been good for business. I have a number of other friends who own wine stores elsewhere in the city, and after yesterday, we were all just beat. It was like the day before Thanksgiving, or New Year’s Eve.”

These are my people.  Let’s get the important things taken care of.

Amen.

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Time Square’s Naked Cowboy prepares for Hurricane Irene

If you’ve spent any time in Times Square, you know “The Naked Cowboy” – who has become a kind of urban celebrity of sorts.  Thank goodness he’s playing it safe in advance of Hurricane Irene and donning a smart life preserver.  Just in case.

Thanks to Michael Halden for sharing this pic.

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FOX News: “Poor people lack a richness of spirit”

Stuart Varney, who hosts a show on the Fox Business Network, began a rebuttal of Jon Stewart skewering him for his comment that poor people aren’t that bad off because “99.6% have a refrigerator” by saying poor people “have things – what they lack is a richness of spirit.”

SRSLY.

No words left for that.

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Ron Paul – “We Don’t Need FEMA”

Via CNN: As Hurricane Irene barrels along the U.S. East Coast, Rep. Ron Paul of Texas said the nation would be much better off without the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“I live on the Gulf Coast. We put up with hurricanes all the time,” the GOP presidential candidate told an NBC News reporter Friday at a New Hampshire campaign event. “There’s no magic about FEMA. More and more people are starting to recognize that.”

Paul has long been a critic of the agency, which he calls a “great contributor to deficit financing.”

Citing the Galveston hurricane in 1900 that obliterated much of the Texas coast, the libertarian-leaning congressman said Americans were able to rebuild their cities and put up a seawall without the federal government’s help.

“FEMA is not a good friend of most people in Texas,” Paul said. “All they do is come in and tell you what to do and can’t do. You can’t get in your houses. And they hinder the local people, and they hinder volunteers from going in.”

The agency received wide criticism in 2005 after failing to respond in a timely, organized manner to the vast destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina.

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“Hotel Room Portraits” By Richard Renaldi

New York-based Richard Renaldi is a gifted photographer whose work is exhibited internationally and has been published in The Advocate, GQ, Out, Time and Vogue.

One of Renaldi’s ongoing projects is the series of intimate portraits he shoots of himself and partner Seth Boyd in hotel rooms around the globe. This stylish, playful and fascinating body of work is also a document of Renaldi and Boyd’s longtime relationship.

Btw – you may notice – they are very easy on the eyes.

Some of my favorite images from the couple’s travels below.  I’m not sure why, but the Missoula, Montana, pic is my favorite.  Maybe because of all my traveling.

Click on a picture to see a larger version.

Or even better, to read and see more about Renaldi and his work, make sure you go to his website – www.renaldi.com.

Livingston, Guatemala

Washington, D.C.

Etosha National Park, Namibia

Turin, Italy

Missoula, Montana

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‘Ab Fab’ is filming again! Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley

It’s been way too long since we’ve seen fabulous Eddy and Patsy crack a bottle of Bolly.

Shooting new episodes for the first time since 2004, Joanna Lumley and Jennifer Saunders are filming scenes for an all-new ‘Absolutely Fabulous Christmas special.’

The Daily Mail UK snapped “the pair parading up and down Bond Street laden with designer bags from the likes of Louis Vuitton, The Kooples and Lanvin, in the never-ending quest to stay hip and cool.”

Last year, creator/writer/star Saunders fought and won a battle with breast cancer and announced the return of the series was coming.

Sweeties, dahlings, you look still absolutely fabulous!

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Puerto Rico’s Sen. Roberto Arango posts naked pics on Grindr

UPDATE: Sen. Roberto Arango, a Republican who represents the capital of San Juan for the island’s governing party, presented his letter of resignation after a weekend meeting, Senate President Thomas Rivera Schatz said.

Schatz did not release the lawmaker’s letter, but said the circumstances that led to the resignation “are very lamentable.”

Local news media published photos from the application showing a man’s nude upper body with a cell phone obscuring his face. Another photo showed a rear view of a nude man on his hands and knees. Another showed a fuzzy image of a face that seemed to match Arango’s.

Arango has neither confirmed nor denied suggestions by local media that the photos might be of him and apparently was not asked if he had posted them. During a recent interview with WAPA TV in Puerto Rico, the senator said he has taken pictures of himself with a cell phone to document his recent weight loss.

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ORIGINAL POST: Puerto Rico’s ‘Anthony Weiner’ is much more exciting than ours: Last week, images from Puerto Rican senator and GOP cheerleader Roberto Arango’s alleged profile on gay hook-up app Grindr surfaced.

Puerto Rico’s Sen. Roberto Arango, who chaired the local 2004 campaign to reelect George W. Bush, has been found showing his anus (NSFW) on the gay hook-up site Grindr.

Arango acknowledges that the photos are of him, but says he was merely posting images to show off his recent weight loss.  IN HIS ANUS.

“You know I’ve been losing weight. As I shed that weight, I’ve been taking pictures. I don’t remember taking this particular picture but I’m not gonna say I didn’t take it. I’d tell you if I remembered taking the picture but I don’t.”

Prior to this scandal, Arango was mostly known for the ridicule he endured after publishing a grammatically disastrous letter demanding statehood for Puerto Rico because (among other reasons) so many fast food restaurants have outlets there.

In 2009 he voted in favor of Resolution 99 which would have amended Puerto Rico’s constitution to ban the recognition of same-sex marriages (it didn’t pass).

He has been opposed to civil union bills and in 2004 he used a rubber duck and made it quack to make fun of an opponent (in Puerto Rico, the word for duck, “pato”, means faggot.)

SRSLY people – how many ‘holier than thou’ – ‘I just want to keep my money and be rich’ closeted Republicans can there be?

Via JoeMyGod