LGBTQ news and entertainment
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| Norm Lewis |
A little ‘Sunday Showtune’ time with Broadway’s handsome leading man, Norm Lewis.
Norm’s take on “Go The Distance” from Disney’s Hercules has been on my mind lately, not sure why.
Unknown roads, wanderings, journeys…
#ThingsThatMakeYouGoHmm
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| Madonna speaks onstage during the 30th Annual GLAAD Media Awards New York. (Photo by Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for GLAAD) |
It was a star-studded night at the Hilton Midtown in New York City as GLAAD – the world’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) media advocacy organization – honored Madonna, Andy Cohen, Don Lemon & CNN, the cast of FX’s Pose and more at the 2019 Annual GLAAD Media Awards.
For 30 years, the GLAAD Media Awards have honored media for fair, accurate, and inclusive representations of LGBTQ people and issues.
Introducing Madonna, CNN’s Anderson Cooper told the crowd, “No single ally has been a better friend or had a bigger impact on acceptance for the LGBTQ community than Madonna.”
Accepting the Advocate for Change Award from Cooper, Madonna said in her remarks, “As soon as you really understand what it means to love, you understand what it takes to become a human being and that it is every human’s duty to fight, to advocate, to do whatever we can and whatever it takes.”
Referencing her upcoming album, the Queen of Pop added, “MADAME X is a FREEDOM FIGHTER.”
“Madonna always has and always will be the LGBTQ community’s greatest ally and it is only fitting to honor and celebrate our biggest advocate at GLAAD’s biggest event ever,” said GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis.
“From the HIV crisis to international LGBTQ issues, she fearlessly pushes for a world where LGBTQ people are accepted. Her music and art have been life-saving outlets for LGBTQ people over the years and her affirming words and actions have changed countless hearts and minds.”
Following is a complete list of GLAAD Media Awards presented on stage or announced during the event in New York City:
• Advocate for Change Award: Madonna [presented by Anderson Cooper, Rosie O’Donnell & Mykki Blanco]
• Vito Russo Award: Andy Cohen [presented by Sarah Jessica Parker]
• Outstanding Drama Series: Pose (FX) [accepted by: creators Ryan Murphy and Steven Canals, and cast members including Billy Porter, Janet Mock, Mj Rodriguez, Indya Moore, Dominique Jackson, Angelica Ross, Our Lady J, Dyllon Burnside, Hailie Sahar, and Ryan Jamal Swain; presented by Rachel Brosnahan]
• Outstanding Variety or Talk Show Episode: “Trans Rights Under Attack” Full Frontal with Samantha Bee (TBS) [accepted by: Samantha Bee; presented by Adam Rippon and Lilly Singh]
• Outstanding TV Journalism Segment: “Same Sex Couple Reacts to Supreme Court Ruling” CNN Tonight with Don Lemon (CNN) [accepted by: Don Lemon; presented by Mj Rodriguez, Indya Moore, and Dominique Jackson]
• Outstanding Film – Limited Release: Boy Erased (Focus Features)
• Outstanding TV Movie or Limited Series: The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story (FX)
• Outstanding Music Artist: Janelle Monáe, Dirty Computer (Bad Boy Records)
• Outstanding TV Journalism – Newsmagazine: “Conversion Therapy: God Only Knows” CBS Sunday Morning (CBS)
• Outstanding Newspaper Article: “He Took a Drug to Prevent AIDS. Then He Couldn’t Get Disability Insurance.” by Donald G. McNeil Jr. (The New York Times)
• Outstanding Digital Journalism Article: “Bermuda Same-sex Marriage Ban Means Trouble for Tourism and Cruise Ships” by Ryan Ruggiero (CNBC.com)
• Outstanding Digital Journalism – Video or Multimedia: “March for Our Lives and LGBT activism. ‘They’re definitely linked for me,’ says Emma González” by Beth Greenfield (Yahoo! Lifestyle)
• Outstanding Blog: Pittsburgh Lesbian Correspondents
• Outstanding Scripted Television Series (Spanish-Language): Elite (Netflix) and Mi marido tiene más familia (Univision) [TIE]
• Outstanding TV Journalism Segment (Spanish-Language): “Primera Pareja Gay en Casarse en un Consulado Mexicano” Noticias Telemundo Mediodía (Telemundo)
Additional awards were announced earlier this year in Los Angeles.
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| CNN’s Don Lemon at the 30th Annual GLAAD Media Awards New York. (Photo by Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for GLAAD) |
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| Andy Cohen attends the 30th Annual GLAAD Media Awards New York. (Photo by Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for GLAAD) |
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| Billy Porter from the cast of FX’s Pose (Photo by Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for GLAAD) |
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| Janet Mock speaks onstage with the cast of Pose. (Photo by Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for GLAAD) |
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| Caitlin Kinnunen from the acclaimed Broadway musical The Prom performs. (Photo by Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for GLAAD) |
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| Chelsea Clinton speaks at the 30th Annual GLAAD Media Awards New York. (Photo by Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for GLAAD) |
It’s important to recognize that all of this doesn’t happen through magic. Corporations that choose to support celebrating positive media about the LGBTQ community are important to us.
Make sure you note the companies that join in celebrating us when you think about your consumer dollars.
The 30th Annual GLAAD Media Awards are supported by Presenting Partners Delta Air Lines, Gilead, Hyundai, Ketel One Family-Made Vodka, and Wells Fargo.
Additional partners include: Official Partners Bud Light and Google; Titanium Partner AT&T and WEN; Platinum Partners Comcast NBCUniversal-Telemundo, Creative Artists Agency, Disney ABC Television Group, Facebook/Instagram, HBO, Hulu, Kaiser Permanente, MetLife, NBA & WNBA, Netflix, Omnicom Group, PRG, Sheppard Mullin, Turner; Gold Partners CBS/Showtime, Nielsen, PWC, UM, Univision, and VER; and Silver Partners Allstate, Coca-Cola, Morgan Stanley, and Warner Bros.
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| Mayor Pete Buttigieg in Dallas |
During a speech to Democrats in Dallas, Texas, Mayor Pete Buttigieg was interrupted five different times by hecklers in a 10-minute period.
The group was organized by Randall Terry, who also followed Buttigieg in Iowa last month.
Pausing while one of the hecklers was escorted out, Buttigieg resumed speaking about his military career recalling “that moment when I was packing my bags for Afghanistan for the purpose of defending that gentleman’s freedom of speech.”
Fellow candidate Beto O’Rourke, who had a campaign appearance in nearby Fort Worth, denounced the hecklers, tweeting: “Texans don’t stand for this kind of homophobia and hatred. Mayor Pete, we are grateful you came to Texas and hope to see you and Chasten back again soon.”
Texans don’t stand for this kind of homophobia and hatred. Mayor Pete, we are grateful you came to Texas and hope to see you and Chasten back again soon. https://t.co/IhRDtIBREb— Beto O’Rourke (@BetoORourke) May 4, 2019
Here’s the report from the local CBS News affiliate:
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| Jair Bolsonaro (image via Flickr/Agência Brasil Fotografias – CC License) |
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has cancelled an upcoming trip to the United States, where he was to be honored as person of the year by the Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce, after growing outrage among LGBTQ activists and other groups.
The American Museum of Natural History last month announced it would no longer host the event with Bolsonaro.
Delta Air Lines, The Financial Times and Bain & Co are among the companies that pulled their sponsorship of the event because of Bolsonaro’s participation.
Otávio Santana do Rêgo Barros, a spokesperson for Bolsonaro, announced the trip’s cancellation due to “deliberate attacks from the mayor of New York and the pressure of interest groups on the institutions that organize, sponsor and host the event annually.”
Statement from the Brazil on the cancellation of President Bolsonaro’s trip to New York. pic.twitter.com/BjdW8hn3SO— Ryan Ruggiero (@RyanRuggiero) May 3, 2019
A former Brazilian Army captain and member of Brazil’s Congress, Bolsonaro took office on January 1 after waging a very anti-LGBTQ, anti-women and anti-indigenous campaign.
He’s publicly said that he’d rather have a dead son than a gay son.
When asked if he was homophobic, he not only answered ‘yes,’ but said he is ‘proudly’ homophobic.
Shortly after being sworn in, he ordered Brazil’s human rights office not to consider LGBTQ-specific issues.
Bolsonaro on March 19 stressed his government’s “respect of traditional family values” and opposition to “gender identity” as he spoke alongside President Trump during a press conference in the White House Rose Garden.
And last week, Bolsonaro announced he does not want Brazil to become a “gay tourism paradise.”
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| Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Chasten Buttigieg |
Ever since his husband, Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, announced his candidacy for president, Chasten Buttigieg has been charming many political followers either in person, on the campaign trail, or on social media.
But, in a new profile by the Washington Post on the man who hopes to become the nation’s first ‘First Gentleman,’ Chasten shares some of the challenges he’s faced in his 29 years.
Chasten has grabbed people’s attention not just because he’s the spouse of the first Democratic gay White House hopeful, although that does factor in. But he’s also a millennial married to a millennial. And, he and Mayor Pete have only been married less than a year.
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Chasten Buttigieg (@chasten.buttigieg) on Jul 23, 2018 at 9:34am PDT
According to the Washington Post profile, he grew up in a typical conservative Midwestern family. His parents, Sherri and Terry Glezman, worked hard to make ends meet while raising Chasten and his two older brothers, Rhyan and Dustin.
But, while his brothers liked to play sports and go hunting, Chasten admits he was happier “reading Harry Potter or singing Celine Dion” at the top of his lungs while helping his mother with housework.
By the time he got to high school, he realized there was something ‘different’ about him.
Although he didn’t come out at the time – he admits there were no openly gay students at his school – he was the target of bullies who called him homophobic slurs and would physically assault him.
So when the opportunity came up for him to spend his senior year of high school abroad in Germany, he took it. “The further away I could get, the safer I felt,” he told the Post.
It was during that year he began to confide his ‘secret’ to others in the exchange program. And by the time he returned to his home town, it was “his truth.”
Chasten shares that he opened up to some friends during the summer after graduation, receiving mixed responses.
Some said they loved him and it didn’t matter; but others told him while they loved him it did matter.
In recounting the coming out process, he shares that one friend brought up God and implored him to change his mind. “Like it was a choice,” says Chasten. “This thing I had decided to do.”
His family got the news last. He found he couldn’t say the words out loud, so he wrote a letter to his parents and handed it to them in their living room.
“I remember my mom crying,” he recalls. “And the first thing she asked me was if I was sick. I think she meant, like, did I have AIDS?”
Chasten recalls a silence loomed over home life, although he remembers at one point one of his brothers said, “No brother of mine…”
Feeling like an outcast, he decided to leave home.
With his packed bags, he bounced from one friend’s couch to another; sometimes he slept in his car in the parking lot of the community college he was attending.
After some months, though, his mother called and asked him to come home. He says, “I cried, and I went home immediately.”
Over time his parents came to terms with his being gay, and even walked him down the aisle at his wedding last summer.
But, his brothers were another story.
Rhyan Glezman, currently a pastor of a church in Clio, Michigan, told the Postthat Chasten’s coming out wasn’t a surprise, and that he loves his youngest brother. While he wants the best for Chasten, he admits, “I just don’t support the gay lifestyle.”
Chasten would go on to earn a degree from the University of Wisconsin in theater and global studies, eventually working at a youth theater academy in Milwaukee. But even with a full schedule he didn’t have benefits.
So, he got a second job slinging coffee and lattes 20 hours a week at a Starbucks to get health insurance.
The Starbucks gig led to his moving to Chicago. And it was while living in the Windy City that he met Mayor Pete on the dating app Hinge.
A few weeks of FaceTime chats with the young mayor convinced Chasten to make the drive to nearby South Bend, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Chasten says he laughed when Mayor Pete first broached the subject of running for president. But that quickly turned into total support for the idea.
He shares that the campaign trail is trying on many levels. Having lost 20 pounds since the holidays, he finds he’s worn out at the end of most days from what he calls “vulnerability fatigue.”
“You put yourself out there so much,” he admits. “And we’ve invited the world to scrutinize us.”
And while much of the country is interested in the first gay presidential contender with what looks like a decent shot, there are homophobic, nasty letters that arrive at their home.
But the Buttigiegs just keep moving forward.
“It’s just so important to go out there and do a good job right now,” he tells the Post. “Because for the first time in many people’s lives, they see someone on a national scale that makes them say, ‘Oh, that’s me, too.’”
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| Former Vice President Joe Biden |
The Hill is reporting that former Vice President Joe Biden holds a 30-point lead over Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the Democratic presidential field, according to a Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll.
• 44% Joe Biden
• 14% Sen. Bernie Sanders
• 9% Sen. Kamala Harris
All other candidates garnered 5 percent or less.
Biden also has the confidence of voters who were asked who would be the best choice to beat Donald Trump. Forty percent named Biden, while Sanders came in a distant 13 percent.
Online pornography giant Pornhub is “extremely interested” in buying the micro-blogging site Tumblr, reports Buzzfeed.
The blogging platform, which became a refuge for adult content, banned NSFW posts late last year after child pornography accidentally slipped through the site’s scanning software.
That led to Apple removing the app from its App Store.
Tumblr’s traffic has dropped an estimated 30 percent since the policy change.
But earlier this week, Verizon (which owns Tumblr) announced it was openly looking for a buyer for the blogging platform.
Pornhub Vice President Corey Price told Buzzfeed via email that should the transaction take place, Pornhub would restore Tumblr’s NSFW content.
“Tumblr was a safe haven for those who wanted to explore and express their sexuality, adult entertainment aficionados included,” Price wrote to BuzzFeed. “We’ve long been dismayed that such measures were taken to eradicate erotic communities on the platform, leaving many individuals without an asylum through which they could comfortably peruse adult content.”
“There are obvious synergies between the two brands and value Pornhub could derive from Tumblr,” he added.
“We’re extremely interested in acquiring the platform and are very much looking forward to one day restoring it to its former glory with NSFW content.”
Back in December, as the nudity ban took effect, Pornhub was openly trying to woo former Tumblr users to its own platform.
Tumblrs:Pornhub welcomes you with open arms. Join our amazing community of millions
Curators: Customize your personal feed, create playlists, generate gifs and more
Creators: Upload videos, photos, gifs & share text posts to a massive audience. Earn revenue on your content.
— Pornhub ARIA (@Pornhub) December 4, 2018
Verizon: get rid of all that porn it is bad for businessTumblr: …fine.
Tumblr users: WTF BOOOOOO.
Verizon: hmm. this seems bad. if only there was a way out.
PornHub: HELLO.https://t.co/gqpKCrvNL7
— Hayes Brown (@HayesBrown) May 2, 2019
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| Donald Trump |
Under the guise of “conscience rights,” the Trump Administration has officially granted doctors, nurses and other healthcare providers the right to deny care to people.
In a speech on Thursday, Donald Trump announced, “Today, we finalized new protections of conscience rights for physicians, pharmacists, nurses, teachers, students and faith-based charities.”
TRUMP: “Today we finalized new protections of conscience rights for physicians, pharmacists, nurses, teachers, students and faith-based charities.” (The subtext is that physicians will be able to discriminate against LGTBQ people.) pic.twitter.com/9JI5nbw7va— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 2, 2019
The new regulation, confirmed by the Department of Health and Human Services, allows providers to cite personal religious beliefs as justification to refuse a broad range of services.
Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center, said in a statement, “This rule allows anyone from a doctor to a receptionist to entities like hospitals and pharmacies to deny a patient critical — and sometimes lifesaving — care.”
Critics say the new regulation could put LGBTQ people at risk, such as those seeking HIV treatment or gender-confirmation procedures.
The Human Rights Campaign denounced the news as well.
“The Trump-Pence administration’s latest attack threatens LGBTQ people by permitting medical providers to deny critical care based on personal beliefs,” said David Stacy, government affairs director at the Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement.
“The administration’s decision puts LGBTQ people at greater risk of being denied necessary and appropriate health care solely based on their sexual orientation or gender identity,” he added. “Everyone deserves access to medically necessary care and should never be turned away because of who they are or who they love.”
San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera quickly announced he had filed a lawsuit in an attempt to invalidate the new federal regulation.
Herrera said in a press release that, if allowed to take effect, the rule would reduce access to health care, particularly for women, LGBTQ people, and other vulnerable populations.
“At its core, this rule is about denying people medical care,” said Herrera. “This administration is willing to sacrifice patients’ health and lives — particularly those of women and members of the LGBTQ community, and low-income families — to score right-wing political points. It’s reprehensible.”
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| (stock photo via Depositphotos) |
A new medical study in Europe adds to the growing body of evidence that people on antiretroviral HIV medications with an undetectable viral load cannot transmit the virus to sexual partners.
The eight year study of almost 1,000 gay male serodiscordant couples (one partner HIV positive, one partner HIV negative) found no cases of HIV transmission. None of the couples used condoms during sex.
Alison Rodger, a professor at University College London who helped lead the study, said in a statement, “Our findings provide conclusive evidence for gay men that the risk of HIV transmission with suppressive ART (antiretroviral treatment) is zero.”
The summary of the study read, in part, “Our findings support the message of the U=U (undetectable equals untransmittable) campaign, and the benefits of early testing and treatment for HIV.”
The focus of the study, which followed participants from July 2010 to September 2017, was to assess the risk of HIV transmission between serodiscordant gay male couples who do not use condoms.
The report, published in the medical journal The Lancet, did show 15 men (of the 972 couples who took part in the research) became HIV+ during the 8 year study. But genetic testing revealed their infections were due to HIV strains from other sexual partners.
An earlier phase of the study followed serodiscordant heterosexual couples, which also showed no transmission of the HIV virus between partners.
Reuters reports that since the worldwide epidemic began in the early 1980s, over 77 million people have become HIV+, and nearly half (35.4 million) have died from resulting AIDS.
Thanks to the success of antiretroviral treatment, the annual number of deaths from AIDS has been falling. But, medical professionals are concerned that the rate of new infections has remained high with nearly 1.8 million new diagnoses each year.
Madonna drops the second single, “I Rise,” from her upcoming album, Madame X.
Acknowledging the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots in New York City, the Queen of Pop dedicates the song to “all marginalized people who feel they don’t have the opportunity to speak their mind.”
In a statement, Madonna says the positive message of the track “encourages all individuals to be who they are, to speak their minds and to love themselves.”
The new track begins with a sample of openly bisexual high school student Emma Gonzales’s famous quote at a rally shortly after the deadly mass shooting at her school in Parkland, Florida.
“They say us kids don’t know what we’re talking about, that we’re too young to understand how the government works. We call BS!”
The single’s release comes just a day before Madge will be honored with the Advocate for Change Award at the 30th Annual GLAAD Media Awards in New York City on May 4. Madonna is the second person and first woman to ever receive this recognition, which is awarded to a person who changed the game for LGBTQ people around the world through their work.
“I Rise” follows the release of “Medellín,” Madonna’s collaboration with Latin pop star Maluma.
Before the album’s release on June 14, Madonna has announced three more tracks will drop: “Crave” on May 10, dance track “Future” on May 17, and “Dark Ballet” on June 7.