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#ThrowBackThursday: The Real Numbers From Obama/Biden Administration

L-R Former President Barack Obama, Donald Trump
I saw some folks trashing the results of the Obama administration years, so just a reminder here. For instance, unemployment dropped from nearly 10 percent o 4.7 percent. The current unemployment rate under Donald Trump is 10.2 percent. The Dow Jones had increased by 63.6 percent at the 43-month point in Obama’s administration, while the Dow has increased much less at 40.8 percent. Overall, by the time Obama left office, the Dow had jump 143.8 percent. We’ll have to see how that shakes out for Trump. Oh, and Obama was never impeached. There’s always that… More at FactCheck.org.

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Lesbian Baker Calls Hater’s Bluff After He Ordered Anti-LGBTQ Cake

April Anderson of Good Cakes and Bakes (images via Instagram)
Last month, the LGBTQ-owned bakery Good Cakes and Bakes, located in Detroit, Michigan, received an online order for a special Pride cake. Seeing the word ‘PRIDE’ in capital letters in the order’s message, co-owner April Anderson (who’s baked cakes for Oprah Winfrey and appeared on The Today Show) initially thought it was for a six-layer, red velvet rainbow-themed cake which had been offered in June.

 

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But then Anderson read the full message the anonymous customer wanted to be written on the top of the cake: “I am ordering this cake to celebrate and have PRIDE in true Christian marriage. I’d like you to write on the cake, in icing, ‘Homosexual acts are gravely evil. (Catholic Catechism 2357)'” The cake was paid for in advance ($40) and included a $10 tip. Anderson, who is openly lesbian and married, showed the order to her wife, Michelle, who was just as stunned. “Why would somebody order this from us?,” Anderson said to the Detroit Free Press. “They know our bakery. It’s not like it’s a secret. It says it on our about page and social media pages and very clear that this bakery is owned by two lesbian women.” Anderson shared the story of the hateful order with a friend who utilized reverse phone lookup services on the internet. Within an hour, the customer was identified as David Gordon, according to Pridesource. Gordon apparently works for a nearby alt-right religious organization named the Church Militant. But don’t be fooled by the name – the group isn’t a ‘church’ but an extreme-right 501(c)(3) owned by St. Michael’s Media. Gordon’s Twitter profile lists him as “a copyeditor @Church Militant, Lawyer, theology MA, author, sportsman, family man.”
David Gordon (via Twitter)
Sensing a set-up regarding some kind of reverse discrimination, religious freedoms, and free speech, Anderson decided to call Gordon’s bluff and prepare the cake, but without the icing message. The bakery’s website clearly states custom cakes have to be ordered either in person or over the phone. Pridesource spoke to attorney Jay Kaplan, of the ACLU of Michigan’s LGBT Project, who said under Michigan’s public accommodation laws “the bakery had to provide” the cake that was requested. However, under the doctrine of ‘compelled speech,’ the business couldn’t be forced to create a message that goes against their moral compass or religious beliefs. While this sounds vaguely familiar in comparison to the case of homophobic baker Jack Phillips of Colorado, who fought all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to not have to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple, there’s an important difference here. RELATED: SCOTUS RULES 7-2 IN FAVOR OF ANTI-GAY BAKER Phillips didn’t argue over messaging on a cake – he refused to make a cake for the gay couple because it was intended for a same-sex wedding celebration. The couple never asked for a specific message to be inscribed on the requested cake. Phillips eventually prevailed at the Supreme Court but not on the issue of anti-LGBTQ discrimination. Instead, the high court found the Colorado Civil Rights Commission appeared to have lacked “the religious neutrality that the Constitution requires” when considering the case against Phillip’s Masterpiece Cakeshop and sent the case back for review. In the end, Anderson did bake the cake with the requested rainbow theme on schedule – but sans icing message. She also included a note for Gordon explaining “what our bakery stands for, and who we are.” “We feel the only ‘grave evil’ is the judgment that good Christians, like yourself, impose on folks that don’t meet their vision of what God wants them to be,” the letter said. “We stand against hate; we will always fight for peace, justice, and inclusion,” she added. She closed her note with, “We wish you PRIDE, rainbows, fairy dust and a good GAY!” Gordon reportedly called the bakery the day before the scheduled pickup to confirm the order and was told, “Oh, yeah, we’re making the cake.” Word got out on pro-LGBTQ social media about the cake order and a group decided to organize a peaceful rally in front of Good Cakes and Bakes at the time Gordon was to pick up his special cake. Of course, Gordon was a no-show. Cowards always are.

“I think he was trolling us and he wanted me not to make the cake so that he would have an argument about us being discriminatory against him for not making a cake,” Anderson told Pridesource. Five days later, Gordon phoned the bakery regarding the cake and was told it had been discarded. Anderson told him she would be happy to make another cake but he would need to order the replacement in person or over the phone for any special message to be Contacted for comment by the Detroit Free Press, Gordon said in a Twitter message the bakery “never had any intention of serving me and making me the custom red velvet cake that I duly requested and paid for.” Wrong – the bakery made your cake, dude. You didn’t show up even after confirming the order. He also claims he was “denied the services I requested at a place of public accommodation on the basis of the content of my beliefs.” Michael Voris, founder and president of St. Michael’s Media / Church Militant, said in a statement emailed to the Free Press: “The incident was an action taken independently of the apostolate by an individual employee; Church Militant had no prior knowledge of it. The employee has been spoken to and has apologized for unnecessarily involving his fellow workers in a private endeavor.” But wait – there’s more! The postscript to this little tale is a local resident, Oscar Renautt, who launched a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for signs to be legally posted near the Church Militant offices. “I figured we need to do something to spread the awareness because our community should know one of our own was attacked this way,” Renautt told Pridesource. “But we are not ‘militant’ like these guys are. We are not militant as Church Militant. Our message is peaceful.” The campaign quickly surpassed its goal and plans to order lawn signs that read “We are not Militant!” in order to deliver a peaceful message of equality. The balance of donations will be given to Corktown Health Center, the LGBTQ health center where Anderson’s wife works. (source: Detroit Free Press, Pridesource)

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Biden/Harris Campaign Pulls In $26 Million In One Day

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris (via Instagram)
The Biden/Harris campaign scored $26 million in one day following the announcement of Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) joining the ticket as running mate. From Politico:

Joe Biden’s campaign raised $26 million in the 24 hours after he selected Sen. Kamala Harris as his running mate — an eye-popping total that shows the campaign’s growing fundraising strength as the election draws nearer.

Biden announced the fundraising total during the ticket’s first virtual grassroots fundraiser on Wednesday evening, immediately following Biden and Harris’ first joint campaign event in Wilmington, Del.

The massive cash haul, which included 150,000 first-time donors, is a signal of Harris’ ability to generate enthusiasm for the campaign and the history-making moment of her selection, as the first woman of color named to a major party presidential ticket.

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News Round-Up: August 12, 2020

Danny Jones (via Instagram)
Some news stories you might have missed: • InstaHunks: I gotta say, we’ve all been there Danny “Tree Man” Jones (above), who shares, “Took four scoops of pre-workout and ended up at In N Out.” When you need the In-N-Out burger, you need it. You still got it going. #AintMadAtYou • LGBTQ Nation: Police have arrested four teenagers – three minors and one adult – who they believe attacked a gay couple, broke into their house, threatened to kill them, and destroyed their home. • Page Six: RuPaul sent followers into a frenzy last month when his Instagram posts began mysteriously disappearing from the app. Many assumed the drag icon’s account was hacked, but Page Six reports Ru deleted posts because he wants to “disengage” and lay low. “The truth is things like Black Lives Matter is overwhelming for someone like Ru. He gets backlash for appearing to not … support the community and [he receives] a lot of negativity, so he disengages,” a source told Page Six. • LA Times: “I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s never even had her first kiss,” reveals Alex Borstein, who plays Midge’s outspoken manager on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, sharing her thoughts on her character’s sexual orientation:  She’s absolutely in love with Midge to some degree, but I think she falls in love with minds.” • Andrew Christian: Check out this (NSFW) essay on the reality of shower sex from the popular underwear/swimwear designer’s blog. • Washington Post: Conservatives can’t decide if newly-announced Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris is a liberal extremist or if she’s a snub to liberal extremism. • COVID World: The UK’s first socially distanced concert is happening now in Newcastle. Attendees have their own private viewing area with 6-feet of space between them.

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Reddit asks ‘What’s The Worst Sex-Ed Advice You Got In School?’

(images via Depositphotos)
A recent thread on reddit asked folks to chime in with “the worst sex-ed advice you received at school?” A lot of comments shared how little sex education was actually offered in their schools with many hailing the saving grace of the Google – “Thank God for the internet, seriously I don’t know what I would have done.” Abstinence made several appearances in the thread:

• “Don’t have sex or your penis will fall off.”

• “If you have sex, you will get gonorrhea, and you will die.”

• “Haha, we had an hour and a half long lecture about abstinence, in high school.”

• “Virginity is like a handkerchief. If you let some boy sneeze in it, do you think anyone else would want to use it?”

Of course, masturbation was a big topic:

• “Masturbation elongates your penis. Half of my class was just tugging their slugs for the rest of that afternoon.”

• “When I was homeschooled, my mom told me that masturbating caused cancer because you’d be too aggressive to your ballsack due to ‘the motion.’ I feel bad for my father now.”

• “In seventh grade we had a speaker come talk to the whole school in the auditorium. This motherf**ker told us that if we pleasured ourselves, we were statistically much more likely to be rapists and pedophiles. Every guy in that room including myself felt instantly ashamed. F**k that guy.”

Condom use was addressed from several angles:

• “Condoms are worthless so don’t bother.”

• “Wrap it twice, just as nice.”

• “What you do is you put one on and then ad hot-sauce and then put on the other one. You will notice if one of them breaks.”

Not quite advice, but one Redditor did share a fascinating sex ed ‘factoid’ we’ve never heard:

• “My sex ed teacher told us, ‘Ejaculate is the whitest substance on Earth.'”

Several remembered getting a sex ed/morality lesson using two pieces of tape, like this one:

• “My teacher took two pieces of tape and stuck them to her sleeves. She would then peel them off and re-stick them to her sleeves getting the backside of the tape more linty each time. She said that the pieces of tape were people and every time she put them on her sleeve it represented them having sex with a different person. Eventually, when she put them together, they didn’t stick very well from all shirt fibers and this meant they were so emotionally disconnected they couldn’t form a lasting bond. So don’t have sex or you’ll be a broken shell of a person unable to love.”

And then there are these random thoughts:

• “They didn’t tell us u need to use lube. They just said it’ll work out some way. Fun story: I’m gay sooooooo yeah, that hurt… Like, really really bad.”

• “That lubricants are not needed ‘if the man is doing his job right.'”

• “Not school but my mom told me that anal could get somebody pregnant. But since I’m gay this doesn’t matter.”

• “I was homeschooled. All my dad told me was “you stick it in, you jizz, then it’s over..” Thanks, dad.”

• “It was unsolicited sex advice from a psych TA. ‘Don’t go into dark alleys because you WILL end up having sex in there.’ With whom? No freaking idea. Maybe the weird alley sex goblins.”

• “We were told that a wet dream produced an amount of fluid tantamount to wetting the bed. They didn’t even tell us what fluid it was.”

• “That men had to be circumcised before having sex or the foreskin would rip, leading to all kinds of infections, permanent injury, or even death.”

• “‘Men are completely incapable of controlling themselves.’ Made it sound to everyone like we had no control over our bodies, thoughts, or actions, and that we spray urine and semen at everything that crosses our path.”

Click over to the AskReddit thread for more nuggets of sex-ed here.

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Meltdown: Tucker Carlson Can’t Pronounce Kamala Harris’s Name

Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson (screen capture)
Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson wet his diaper Tuesday night after a guest, political consultant Richard Goodstein, attempted to teach Carlson how to pronounce Sen. Kamala Harris’s first name. Goodstein began his appearance saying to Carlson, “Tucker, can I just say one quick thing because this is something that will serve you and your fellow hosts on FOX. Her name is pronounced ‘Comma’ — like the punctuation mark — ‘la.’ ‘Comma-la,’ okay?” Carlson, whose face is often the picture of confusion, shot back, “So what?” Explaining the obvious, Goodstein shared, “I think out of respect for somebody who is going to be on the national ticket, pronouncing her name right is kind of a bare minimum.” Considering Carlson is probably going to be saying Harris’s name quite a bit over the next several months (if not years), surely he can muster enough respect to pronounce the name of the first Black woman, and first Asian American woman to run for vice president on a major party ticket? Cue the predictable meltdown. “So I’m disrespecting her by pronouncing her name unintentionally?,” bellowed Carlson. “So it begins. So I’m not. You’re not about to criticize (pronouncing it wrong again) ‘Ka-MAL-a’ Harris or ‘CAMEL-a’ Harris or whatever.” “Okay look, I unintentionally mispronounced her name, but I love the idea that she is immune from criticism,” continued Carlson’s indignant rant. “On this show, nobody in power is immune from criticism. Our political leaders must be held to account. That’s our job.” Please note – being corrected on how to pronounce the name of a vice-presidential candidate is NOT the same as saying you can’t criticize them.  

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Dancing In The Rain Leads To US Scholarship

Anthony Mmesoma Madu (screen capture via Leap of Dance Studio – Nigeria)
Back in June, I shared a short clip of 11-year-old Anthony Mmesoma Madu (above) practicing ballet on a muddy street in his town of Lagos, Nigeria. After his dance in the rain went viral, Madu is now training with the American Ballet Theatre online and has been offered a scholarship to study with the acclaimed ballet company in the U.S. next year. #SoManyPossibilities

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What To Watch: Acclaimed Short Film ‘Requited’ Explores Holding On Versus Letting Go

The acclaimed gay-themed film short Requited is available to stream for free for the first time since it made a splash at film festivals in 2011. The 20-minute short follows a 20-something gay New Yorker, Nicholas (played by Chris Damon), who’s considering whether or not to attend the wedding of his unrequited high school crush, Aaron (Matthew Watson). Complicating the equation, attending the nuptials would mean missing the departure of his current boo, Gregor (Max Rhyser), who’s relocating to San Francisco. Shot in an intimate, unpretentious style, it’s easy to imagine Requited as a precursor of sorts of HBO’s LGBTQ series, Looking. With the short, Sal Bardo made his debut as both writer and director of a film project. He recently told HuffPost he was inspired to pen the short due to the dearth of good LGBTQ narratives in Hollywood at the time. “I wanted to write something for myself that depicted characters and stories I could relate to,” Bardo told HuffPost in a recent interview. Having based the story loosely on a real-life friendship he’d had as a young adult, he added, “It’s definitely a snapshot in time. Looking back, the film feels very cynical. I think maybe I’m a tiny bit less cynical now!” Premiering at the 2011 Seattle International Film Festival, Requited was well-received on the indie film festival circuit and was honored with the Audience Award: Best First Time Filmmaker at Washington D.C.’s International LGBT Film Festival, Reel Affirmations. Describing Requited as his “first pancake,” Bardo looks back fondly on his first film. “The first pancake is never as good as the rest ― you have to warm up the pan,” explained Buardo. “My work has gotten much better, but I’m still really proud of ‘Requited.’” Previously, the short was only available as part of the compilation Blue Briefs. Following the success of Requited, Bardo’s 2015 film Pink Moon scored the Jury Prize for Best Film Short at the Big Apple Film Festival, and his music video for Paper Ring’s “Great Escape” was nominated for the Iris Prize, the world’s largest LGBT short film award. You can watch the full 20-minute version of Requited for free below.

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Streisand/Summer’s ‘Enough Is Enough’ Is The Battle Cry For Getting Out LGBTQ Vote

The SuperPAC MeidasTouch, founded and funded by three brothers who consider themselves lifelong Democrats, has released its newest political ad video, which targets unregistered LGBTQ+ voters. The video announces a new partnership with Vote Proud, a voting initiative for the LGBTQ community. The group was founded by Bruce Roberts, Lisa Halliday, and Jake Resnicow with Sharon Stone, Billy Porter, Sean Hayes, Lisa Rinna, Elton John, and David Furnish among the many co-chairs.

It’s no coincidence the disco hit “Enough is Enough,” recorded by Barbra Streisand and Donna Summer in 1979, plays in the background of the video as Roberts penned the single for the two divas back in the day. In a statement, Roberts shared why he’s donating his song for the effort:

“There’s too much at stake for us not to reach and engage with the large part of the community that did not vote in 2016. I wrote Enough is Enough many years ago. Barbra Streisand & Donna Summer recorded it and had a global #1 record, selling millions. And all these years later it has become an anthem for change and equality in America today. I am proud to be working with MeidasTouch on this initiative to spread the message using my song.”

If you think the LGBTQ vote doesn’t matter, check out these stats comparing Donald Trump’s 2016 margin of victory in swing states versus how many LGBTQ Americans didn’t even bother to register and vote. While all of those unregistered LGBTQ voters wouldn’t have thrown their support to Hillary Clinton, a recent study by the Williams Institute shows half of registered LGBT voters (50%) are Democrats, 22% are Independents, 15% are Republicans,  and 13% said they identify with another party or did not know with which party they most identify. If the Democratic gays along with half of the Independents had shown up for Clinton…

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News Round-Up: August 11, 2020

Garrett Magee and his big…rooster on Bravo’s ‘Backyard Envy’
Some news stories you might have missed: • InstaHunks: Don’t miss Garrett Magee (above) and company in a new episode of Backyard Envy tonight. Garrett says “tune in for gardening tips, drama, and a big 🐓.” • Out: A 57-year-old man was disowned by his 90-year-old father after the dad discovered his son was gay. “It’s about this homosexuality,” McPherson recalled his father saying. “Your mother and I can’t condone that. You are not to contact us in any way ever again.” • Instinct Magazine: A gay man was denied entry to an Arkansas casino because he was carrying a bag the resort deemed a “purse.” Y’all, it wasn’t that big AND it was Louis Vuitton. They should welcome the guy – he has money to spend. • Tampa Bay Times: Florida logged a new record for the most coronavirus deaths announced in a day with 277 on Tuesday. Tuesday’s record brought the statewide death toll to 8,685 people, according to the Florida Department of Health. #SoMuchWinning • Edge Media: A British heterosexual couple was sentenced in connection with a plot to blackmail a husband and father who had been “struggling” with his sexuality. After extorting over £5,000, the victim went to the police. • Out Music: A new artist to me, London based pop singer Le Fil, drops his latest single and music video, “Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is.” The upbeat, colorful video pairs well with the catchy hook and 60s-inspired harmonies.