LGBTQ news and entertainment
Meet Lejon and Jojo.
Lejon is Jojo’s adoptive dad. Jojo was adopted because his mother had an infection from the umbilical chord and couldn’t take care of him.
Now Lejon gets to take care of Jojo, with the help of a human caretaker who bottle feeds him. Lejon is more like a step-brother to Jojo.
How cute are these two?
More pics of the guys at Buzzfeed
Photos: Udo Richter/Barcroft Media/Landov
The Huffington Post is reporting that, according to Senator Harry Reid, Mitt Romney may not have paid any taxes for ten years and that may be the reason why Romney has only released one complete year of taxes.
According a Bain investor, Reid charged, Romney didn’t pay any taxes for 10 years.
Saying he had “no problem with somebody being really, really wealthy,” Reid sat up in his chair a bit before stirring the pot further. A month or so ago, he said, a person who had invested with Bain Capital called his office.
“Harry, he didn’t pay any taxes for 10 years,” Reid recounted the person as saying.
“He didn’t pay taxes for 10 years! Now, do I know that that’s true? Well, I’m not certain,” said Reid. “But obviously he can’t release those tax returns. How would it look?
If this is true, it’s no wonder Romney wouldn’t want to release his tax returns. It’s kind of hard to relate to middle America if you don’t pay any taxes at all.
Pia Zadora, veteran of Broadway, music and film, made her Smith Center debut in Las Vegas this weekend at the gorgeous Cabaret Jazz venue after a 15 year absence from performing.
This was my first opportunity to visit Cabaret Jazz at the Smith Center and I was not disappointed. Not only is the venue beautiful, but the entire experience was top rate due to the customer service provided by the entire staff. I encourage Las Vegans to look to Cabaret Jazz for a terrific night out.
With a career that began when she was 7, her career roles range from the original Broadway productions of “Fiddler on the Roof” to 1990s “Crazy For You,” from the 1964 movie “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians” to her 1981 performance in the film “Butterfly.”
In the 1980s, she began a music career that spanned pop, rock and standards, earning a Grammy nomination for Best Rock Vocal Performance Female for “Rock It Out” in 1984.
With video testimony by Grammy and Academy Award-winning legend Frank Sinatra praising Zadora, she made her entrance from the back of the audience. The audience made apparent its affection for the sunny, Golden Globe winner as she took the stage for the evening.
Often referred to as “the little lady with the big voice,” she made good on that title with several swinging arrangements of American Songbook standards like “Pick Yourself Up,” ” The Lady Is A Tramp,” and “I’m Beginning To See The Light.” With expert musical direction from Vincent Falcone (Frank Sinatra’s former music director) at the helm, Zadora delivered time and again with big voiced, crowd-pleasing selections of songs.
While she does well with big, powerful vocals, her voice demonstrates less color and expression during quieter passages. Like a expensive race car, she seems anxious to open the engine all the way up rather than cruise the side roads of personal lyrics, like those of the Michel Legrand hit “How Do You Keep The Music Playing?” Interestingly, she tacked on an awkward, big-voiced ending to the song that seemed out of place, although she clearly felt at ease in delivering the unexpected money notes at the end.
When it comes to lyric interpretation, Zadora takes most songs at face value. More big band singer than cabaret, she tends to play to the audience in a general manner, rather than exploring what may lie beneath the surface of the songs she sings.
Her encore – Jerry Herman’s gay anthem “I Am What I Am” – left the audience on a high note thanks to her light-hearted but full throated delivery.
Zadora delivered just what her fans anticipated — a dose of classic American songs in the terrific setting of the Smith Center’s Cabaret Jazz room.
2 out of 4 stars
With the Democratic Party officially adding a platform plank supporting gay marriage, a new poll by the Pew Research Center shows why such a move makes sense.
According to the new poll, 65% of Democrats now support same-sex marriage. This is an increase of 15 points from 50% in 2008.
The poll also shows Independents now support marriage equality to the tune of 51%, versus 40% who oppose equal rights for gays and lesbians. That’s a seven point move up in support from 2008’s 44%.
Just 24% of Republicans now favor allowing gays and lesbians to marry legally, which is only slightly higher than the percentage of Republicans who supported gay marriage in 2008 (19%).
The Pew poll used 2,973 live telephone interviews with American adults conducted June 28th to July 9th. It has a sampling error of 2.1 percent.
The Advocate is reporting yet another court has found DOMA to be unconstitutional:
Judge Vanessa L. Bryant ruled in the case, Pedersen v. Office of Personnel Management, that the 1996 law violates the Equal Protection Clause found in the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The plaintiffs are being represented by Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, while the House Republican-controlled Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group has intervened to defend DOMA.
In the ruling that ran more than 100 pages, Judge Bryant, a George W. Bush appointee, concluded that, “having considered the purported rational bases proffered by both BLAG and Congress and concluded that such objectives bear no rational relationship to Section 3 of DOMA as a legislative scheme, the Court finds that no conceivable rational basis exists for the provision. The provision therefore violates the equal protection principles incorporated in the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.”
The ruling comes as the Supreme Court is facing requests in several cases to decide the question of DOMA’s constitutionality once and for all.
Paul Clement, a very expensive, big-deal lawyer, was hired by Speaker of the House Boehner to defend the anti-gay law. Unsuccessfully.
Your tax dollars at work.
Tom Daley, UK Olympian, is practically the Justin Bieber of the 2012 Olympics. With the photographers following his every move, something like this was bound to be captured.
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Via: fmforums.co.uk
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This is what the TV audience saw….
And this was what he was actually doing….
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Image by Al Bello / Getty Images
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More at Buzzfeed
The US Supreme Court today received an appeal on the overturn of Prop 8. Chris Geidner reports:
Supporters of California’s constitutional amendment banning same-sex couples from marrying, Proposition 8, have asked the Supreme Court to hear the ongoing challenge to the law in order to reverse an appeals court decision from earlier this year that struck down the amendment as unconstitutional.
Specifically, they ask the court in a filing today to decide “Whether the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits the State of California from defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman.”
Arguing that “[u]nique recognition of a unique relationship in no way disapproves or dishonors other relationships that the State has chosen to recognize differently,” the Proposition 8 proponents ask the court to take the case to correct the “manifest errors” of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and “to return to the People themselves this important and sensitive issue.”
AFER has 30 days to respond to the filing.
The Supreme Court is currently on summer recess and will not announce which cases it will review until this falls.
(h/t JoeMyGod)
A Swiss footballer was expelled from the Olympics on Monday for his threatening and racist message on Twitter about South Koreans. The comments by Michel Morganella came hours after Switzerland lost to South Korea.
Morganella “discriminated against, insulted and violated the dignity of the South Korea football team as well as the South Korean people,” Swiss Olympic team chief Gian Gilli said through a translator at a news conference. He said the player was stripped of his Olympic accreditation.
He posted the message after playing in the 2-1 loss against South Korea on Sunday. He said in the tweet that South Koreans “can go burn” and referred to them as a “bunch of mongoloids.”
The 23-year-old player later released a contrite statement through the Swiss Olympic team.
“I apologize sincerely to the people of South Korea, to the players, but equally to the Swiss delegation and Swiss football in general. It’s clear that I’m accepting the consequences”.
So, one last postscript to my journey staging “Sweet Charity” this summer…
Two days after the show opened, for some inexplicable reason, the ladies of the Fandango Ballroom – after oozing their sexy selves backwards downstage at the start of the iconic “Big Spender” number – turned to face the audience for their introductory lines and found no bar on which to pose. Nothing. For reasons unknown, the bar did not come out onstage.
So the ladies, on the fly (so to speak), had to improvise the poses on the bar. Many of those poses required a bar on which to pose.
Word came back to me about the mishap AND that the ladies did a terrific job of getting through the number.
However, the men of the ensemble decided to have some fun reenacting the event – with a few modifications you might guess.
The beginning of the video is funniest just in how each “dancer” turns to find no bar, and how it affected what pose they would take…
You might have to know SWEET CHARITY well to get this, but I think you will all get the gist.
Thanks men for the laugh.