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Mississippi: Starkville City Council Denies Permit For Pride Parade

With no explanation offered, the aldermen of Starkville, Mississippi, voted to deny organizers of a proposed Pride Parade a permit for the event.

The city council voted 4-3 against granting the permit to Starkville Pride even though 16 citizens showed up to speak in favor of the event.

“It’s unfortunate that you go through the process, you do everything you’re supposed to do and you get denied, really without any explanation as to why,” alderman Jason Walker, who voted to approve the permit.

Only two spoke against allowing the event.

Resident Dorothy Isaac said she was against the parade because “God created Adam and Eve.”

“Do not turn our city into a sin city,” Isaac said. “It should not be this.”

Starkville is a college town home to Mississippi State University. You can imagine there might be several LGBT students who would have liked to take part in a Pride event.

Starkville’s mayor, Lynn Spruill, denounced the decision saying “I think it sends a message that we are not the inclusive community that I believe us to be.”

With Starkville being home to Mississippi State University, Mayor Spruill noted that Oxford, Mississippi, where the University of Mississippi is based, has held gay pride parades for several years.

(source)

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The Unwitting: Trump Supporters Refuse To Believe They Were Played By Russian Disruptors

In light of the facts laid out in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment of 13 Russian activists meddling in the 2016 election, CNN went out to speak to Trump supporters whose Facebook pages actually interacted with identified Russian “fake Trump” social media accounts.

It will come as no surprise that no amount of evidence will convince these “geniuses” that they were played by the Russians.

From CNN:

Florine Gruen Goldfarb runs the Team Trump Broward County Facebook page, which posted numerous times about events that were promoted and encouraged by the Russians. Speaking to CNN on Sunday, she said she didn’t believe she was influenced by the Russians and said she thought that Friday’s indictment was a ploy to distract from the FBI’s mishandling of tip-offs it had received about the Parkland, Florida school shooter.

One reason Goldfarb was skeptical about the claim of Russian involvement goes back to the Russians’ tactics: They were not faking rallies or supporters, but trying to prompt real Americans who already backed a cause to turn out in support of it. Goldfarb attended the Fort Lauderdale “Florida Goes Trump” event. She told CNN that she knew all of the people there, “they were at my meetings. They’re all Trump supporters.”

Watch below as Goldfarb absolutely denies the possibility that she might have communicated via Facebook with Russian disruptors.

And yet – she did.

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Conservative Extremists Whine Over Russian Bot Purge #TwitterLockOut

Conservative Twitter users are crying foul as overnight Twitter seems to have done a purge of thousands of accounts that might have been deemed “bots” or fake automated accounts.

Such accounts were mentioned in the recent indictment against 13 Russian actors by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

While Twitter has made no announcement as to the nature of the “purge,” far-right conservatives are calling the action the work of “communists” and “fascists.”

I’ll be curious to see what Twitter has to say when they finally come forward with some explanation.

As with all tragedies, I want to make sure I send my “thoughts and prayers” to those affected. I’m sure that will make it all better 😉

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Out Olympic Speed Skater Brittany Bowe & US Speed Skating Women Win Bronze Medal In Team Event

Out U.S. Olympian Brittany Bowe, our top female speed skater at the PyeongChang Olympics, had had enough with the close calls.

Two fifth place finishes and one fourth place showing that was only 2 hundredths of a second from podium position was not going to be the end of Bowe’s Olympic journey.

But – Bowe and her teammates Heather Bergsma, Mia Manganello and Carlijn Schoutens from the United States showed up at their final race determined to beat Canada for the bronze medal

And that’s just what they did edging out the Canadians by 0.45 of a second.

The team had lost to the Netherlands in the semifinal earlier in the day.

The final standings for the event:

Japan – Gold medal
Netherlands – Silver medal
United States – Bronze medal

Congrats ladies!

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Out Music: Chase Sansing “Begins With You”

Chase Sansing

Rising young country artist Chase Sansing has released the music video to accompany his single “Begins with You.” 

The Mississippi native shot the video at various locations throughout Nashville and incorporates footage from gay pride festivals in Louisville, Chicago, Murfreesboro and Nashville.

“I wrote this song two and a half years ago after coming out,” mentions Sansing. “After coming out, I felt like I could finally sing the songs I really wanted to sing. I grew up struggling with balancing being a country singer and also being gay because I knew the two didn’t mix that well.”

Sansing follows in the footsteps of fellow out country singers Patrick Masse, Drake Jensen, Chely Wright, Billy Gilman and Ty Herndon, who each faced their own challenges as they chose to pursue their musical passions while living their authentic lives.

Over the years I’ve interviewed several out musicians who have all mentioned the struggles of coping with the country music industry which not been as accepting of LGBT as the rest of the music world.

Sansing, now 24, wrote “Begins with You” a few days after coming out, and recorded it at Prime Cut Studio in Nashville. “I began traveling to pride festivals to interview and film people who struggled just like me. It took me two years to finish the project because I wanted to do it right.”

Not only do the shots of folks celebrating pride resonate, Sansing includes terrific scenes of giraffe shot as the Nashville Zoo. Who doesn’t love giraffe???

“This song is basically my new start to being the singer I’ve always wanted to be because country music is about singing the truth and if I’m not singing the truth and what I’m truly feeling then I’m not singing country music.

“I wrote this song specifically to reach out to kids that are like me and are growing up in a small town thinking they are different and that there’s something wrong with them and that it’s a bad thing. I hope this song shows them that it’s not and they are perfect the way they are.”

Sansing offers an additional word of encouragement: “The most important thing I’d say about this song is that I hope it reaches a kid who feels like I did when I was keeping my secret from everyone. I hope it tells them that it’s okay.”

For more info, head over to ChaseSansingMusic.com.

And check out the music video for “Begins With You” below.

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New Trailer Celebrates 40th Anniversary Of GREASE

The most successful movie musical of all time – Grease – turns 40 this year and it’s easy to imagine a huge reunion must be in the works.

The film helped propel Grammy Award-winning pop-star Olivia Newton-John into a new stratosphere, and John Travolta, fresh off of, became a bona fide movie star.

According to reports, the 1978 blockbuster has been fully restored and given an extra twirl of hair grease to ensure it’s still the groundbreaking, uplifting, tuneful, systematic/hydromatic throwback to 50’s fun we’ve all come to know and love.

Word is the flick will be released across 94 Cineworld cinemas across the U.S. in April just in time for more “Summer Lovin.'”

So, who’s still “Hopelessly Devoted” to the massive retro-musical that never tires of reminding us “we go together?”

Watch the new trailer below.

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News Round-Up: February 20, 2018

Great Britain’s bob sled team

Some news items you might have missed:

• Kenneth-in-the-212 points up that Great Britain’s bobsled team (above) has a lot to offer both on and off the track 😉

• Newly-installed Army Secretary Mike Esper says the issue of transgender soldiers serving in the military “hasn’t come up” when he talks to American soldiers.

• South Carolina lawmakers have filed legislation that would define marriage as only between men and women, and deem same-sex unions as “parody marriages.” One of the authors of the bill calls same-sex marriage “an impersonation of actual marriage.”

• The latest Quinnipiac poll shows a staggering 97% of Americans support requiring background checks for all gun purchases.

• The Department of Defense’s new policy on service by transgender troops is due tomorrow. Does Defense Secretary James Mattis have a plan?

• Out UK singer Calum Scott covers Gay Times Magazine. In his interview, Scott explains how his songwriting changed after coming out: “When I was honest about myself and my feelings and especially my sexuality, it started flowing out of me like a river.”

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Trump Administration Is Methodically Dismantling LGBT Protections

During the 2016 election cycle, Donald Trump promised he would be “better for the gays” than Hillary Clinton.

Instead, his health department is slowly but surely rolling back efforts to protect LGBT patients.

From Politico:

The nation’s health department is taking steps to dismantle LGBT health initiatives, as political appointees have halted or rolled back regulations intended to protect LGBT workers and patients, removed LGBT-friendly language from documents and reassigned the senior adviser dedicated to LGBT health.

The sharp reversal from Obama-era policies carries implications for a population that’s been historically vulnerable to discrimination in health care settings, say LGBT health advocates. A Health Affairs study last year found that many LGBT individuals have less access to care than heterosexuals; in a Harvard-Robert Wood Johnson-NPR survey one in six LGBT individuals reported experiencing discrimination from doctors or at a clinic.

The Trump administration soon after taking office also moved to change the agency’s LGBT-related health data collection, a window into health status and discrimination. Last month it established a new religious liberty division to defend health workers who have religious objections to treating LGBT patients.

The changes at the Department of Health and Human Services represent “rapid destruction of so much of the progress on LGBT health,” said Kellan Baker, a researcher at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health who worked with HHS on LGBT issues for nearly a decade. “It’s only a matter of time before all the gains made under the Obama administration are reversed under the Trump administration, for purposes that have nothing to do with public health and have everything to do with politics.”

Politico breaks down all the various steps the Trump administration is against LGBTs.

Definitely head over there and read the full article.

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White House Lies: “The President Hasn’t Said That Russia Didn’t Meddle”

Proving that the White House staff lives in a bizarro/other dimension where up is down and down is up, Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders denied that Donald Trump ever said Russia didn’t meddle in the 2016 presidential election.

Sanders told reporters at today’s press briefing:

“One of the places where you guys seem to get very confused––and it seems to happen regularly––the President hasn’t said that Russian didn’t meddle. What he’s saying is it didn’t have an impact and it certainly wasn’t with help from the Trump campaign. It’s also very clear that Russia meddled in the election. It’s also very clear it didn’t have an impact on the election, and it’s also very clear the Trump campaign didn’t collude with the Russians in any way.”

Watch Ms. Sanders literally lie through her teeth below.

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Adam Rippon & Leslie Jones Win Gold For Figure Skating Commentary

Leslie Jones and Adam Rippon

Olympic bronze medalist Adam Rippon and Saturday Night Live‘s Leslie Jones dropped by the NBC Olympic studio last night to help out with some additional commentary alongside Scott Hamilton on gold medalist Canadians Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir’s free dance.

You may recall NBC Sports flew Jones to Rio in the middle of the 2016 Summer Olympics when her Twitter commentary took over the Twitterverse.

And, of course, we know NBC Sports had hoped Rippon would join their team for the remainder of the PyeongChang games as a correspondent, but the charming Rippon decided against taking the offer choosing to remain an Olympian and marching in the closing ceremonies.

Via Twitter, Rippon shared: “I am flattered that NBC wanted me to work as a correspondent for them here in PyeongChang. Doing this would require me to leave Team USA and move out of the Olympic Village. I don’t want to do that so I had to declined the opportunity.”

He added, “I love being on Team USA and representing our country. My teammates were there for me during my events, and now I NEED to be there for them. I look forward to being with them, and I’m very excited for the rest of the competition. Go Team USA!!!”

But at least we got a taste of what could have been 🙂

Watch Jones and Rippon in action with Scott Hamilton below.