Olympic diving royalty, past and present, came together this week in Rio when 4-time gold medalist Greg Louganis caught up with current diving phenom Tom Daley between events.
The two out athletes are just two of the many openly gay athletes competing at this year’s Summer Olympics.
Daley recently won bronze in men’s synchronized diving and is looking forward to the Men’s 10m platform event next Friday. He posted this pic with his fiancé, screenwriter Dustin Lance Black while celebrating the bronze.
In an eyebrow raising speech to the Liberty Counsel in Orlando today, virulently anti-LGBT Sen. Marco Rubio appeared to soften his rhetoric against gays and lesbians. His appearance had been criticized for the timing coinciding with the two month anniversary of the Pulse Nightclub shooting that left 49 LGBTs dead.
As many know, Rubio has been a devout opponent of LGBT rights including marriage equality.
Today, he told Christian conservatives that they should take note of the consequences of intolerance.
Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who has faced widespread condemnation for agreeing to speak at a conference alongside Christian conservatives who have denounced homosexuality and gay rights, used his speech to the group on Friday to warn of the costs of intolerance.
His remarks in Orlando, Fla., not far from the site of the massacre at a gay nightclub in June, were his most extensive yet in public on the subject of prejudice against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. And he struck a notably softer tone than during his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, during which he repeatedly reaffirmed his opposition to same-sex marriage.
While he repeated his belief that marriage should not be redefined to include same-sex couples, his speech touched on the history of discrimination against gays, which he asked his audience to consider.
“When it comes to our brothers and our sisters, our fellow Americans, our neighbors in the L.G.B.T. community, we should recognize,” he said, that American history “has been marred by discrimination against and rejection of gays and lesbians.”
He then walked through a list of examples that included discriminatory hiring practices by the federal government, raids of gay establishments by the police and the proliferation of anti-gay slurs.
I can’t imagine that this kind of speech is what the folks at the “Rediscovering God in America” conference were expecting from Rubio.
More good news for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton as NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist polls show her leading in the vital swing states of Florida, North Carolina, Virginia and Colorado:
In the key battleground of Florida, which President Obama won in 2008 and 2012, Clinton is ahead of Trump by five points among registered voters, 44 percent to 39 percent, with the rest saying neither, other or they’re undecided.
In North Carolina, which Obama won in 2008 but lost in 2012, the former secretary of state has a nine-point advantage over Trump, 48 percent to 39 percent.
In Virginia, Clinton’s lead is 13 points, 46 percent to 33 percent.
And in Colorado, the Democrat is ahead by a whopping 14 points, 46 percent to 32 percent.
Ed Demaria, of NBC News, points out that if you just add up the states where Clinton has a lead of 9 points or more, she’s already past the required 270 electoral votes to win the White House. That’s not counting states like Michigan or Wisconsin which are traditionally blue states; or Nevada or Florida with heavy concentrations of Hispanic voters which are breaking decidedly for Clinton.
"Go home! You are a traitor! I am an American Patriot!" Trump supporter screams at me and other journos in pen pic.twitter.com/Tg4oRoQ7UQ— Noah Gray CNN (@NoahGrayCNN) August 12, 2016
After an enormous uproar over The Daily Beast publishing a sleazy, unscrupulous article wherein a “reporter” fired up Grindr down at the Rio Olympics and attempted to schedule “dates” for what ended up being a mocking, homophobic and condescending result, the editors posted this message to readers announcing the article has now been removed.
Today, The Daily Beast took an unprecedented but necessary step: We are removing an article from our site, “The Other Olympic Sport In Rio: Swiping.”
The Daily Beast does not do this lightly. As shared in our editor’s note earlier today, we initially thought swift removal of any identifying characteristics and better clarification of our intent was the adequate way to address this. Our initial reaction was that the entire removal of the piece was not necessary. We were wrong. We’re sorry. And we apologize to the athletes who may have been inadvertently compromised by our story.
Today we did not uphold a deep set of The Daily Beast’s values. These values—which include standing up to bullies and bigots, and specifically being a proudly, steadfastly supportive voice for LGBT people all over the world—are core to our commitment to journalism and to our commitment to serving our readers.
As a newsroom, we succeed together and we fail together, and this was a failure on The Daily Beast as a whole, not a single individual. The article was not intended to do harm or degrade members of the LGBT community, but intent doesn’t matter, impact does. Our hope is that removing an article that is in conflict with both our values and what we aspire to as journalists will demonstrate how seriously we take our error.
We were wrong. We will do better.
The author of the piece, Nico Hines, has remained silent throughout the entire debacle.
Prepare to be utterly surprised – or not – at how far Trumpers will go in their quest to support their guy.
Clip description:
Triumph the Insult Comic Dog stages a focus group with Trump’s biggest supporters, presenting a series of increasingly outrageous and extremely fake campaign ads, to find out how far they’re willing to go in support of their candidate.
The Donald Trump campaign for president just gets stranger and stranger.
A couple of days ago, the Trumpster pumped up the crazy scale another notch when he said in Florida, with a straight face, that President Obama and Hillary Clinton “founded” ISIS. He repeated the claim several times during different appearances.
During an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, he even got a life line thrown his way when Hewitt said, “I know what you meant. You meant that he created the vacuum. He lost the peace.”
“No,” responded Trump. “I meant he’s the founder of ISIS. I do.”
Even Newt Gingrich was grasping at straws trying to help The Donald out of the hole he was digging. “He sometimes uses three words when he needs 10,” Gingrich told Fox News.
“When you instead comprise them into ‘Obama created ISIS’ – I know what Trump has in his mind – but that’s not what people hear,” said the former Speaker of the House. “He has got to learn to use language that has been thought through and that is clear to everybody and to stick to that language because otherwise the mainstream media is gonna take every possible excuse to pile on him.”
The story took a new twist today when Trump suddenly announced that his comment, which he said over and over he meant literally, was actually “sarcasm.”
Ratings challenged @CNN reports so seriously that I call President Obama (and Clinton) “the founder” of ISIS, & MVP. THEY DON’T GET SARCASM?
