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Appeals Court Rules Kim Davis Can Be Sued By Gay Couples

Bad news for homophobic former Kentucky County Clerk Kim Davis (above). Cue the sad trombone sound…womp womp womp An appeals court has ruled that Davis can be sued as an individual for refusing to issue marriage licenses to two same-sex couples after the historic U.S. Supreme Court Obergefell ruling in 2015. Reuters reports:

The Kentucky county clerk who in 2015 gained widespread attention for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples may be sued for damages by two of those couples, a federal appeals court ruled late on Friday.

In a 3-0 decision, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati said Kim Davis can be sued in her individual capacity, though sovereign immunity shielded her from being sued in her former role as Rowan County Clerk.

Davis claimed that Obergefell v Hodges, the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court decision recognizing a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, did not apply to her because she stopped issuing licenses to everyone regardless of sexual orientation, and the plaintiffs could have obtained licenses elsewhere.

Davis lost her reelection bid last year. She was represented by the virulently anti-LGBTQ Liberty Counsel law firm. Mat Staver, the organization’s founder told the press, “She had no hostility to anyone, given that she stopped issuing all marriage licenses.” Liar. In related news, the 6th Circuit Court also ruled that the state of Kentucky is on the hook for $224,000 in legal fees incurred by the couples who sued Davis when she refused to issue same-sex marriage licenses. According to the Lexington Courier-Journal, Gov. Matt Bevin fought the judgment saying Davis should be responsible for the fees, not the state of Kentucky. He lost. Hate doesn’t pay, kids.

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Indiana Teen Beaten In High School Locker Room

Video footage of a high school student in Alexandria, Indiana, being attacked and beaten in the boy’s locker room was widely circulated among students and even sent to the boy’s mother. The reason for the attack? Being gay. Speaking to local NBC affiliate WTHR the young man said, “I’m not ok, but I will be.” The assault took place following gym class after he’d gotten dressed “The guy who attacked me was standing next to my locker and wouldn’t stop staring at me, so I had a weird feeling that something was about to happen,” the student told WTHR. What ‘happened’ was the student began shoving the teen. “He kept pushing me, but then he stopped pushing me and everything got quiet, so I thought he walked out,” said the young man. But the attacker didn’t leave, he’d merely paused before he began punching his victim. “I felt him punch me a couple more times and I got hit my face on the mirror and then he punched me in the head twice,” said the student. “It happened so fast. I can remember them holding me against the wall,” he added, explaining that two other students helped restrain him so he couldn’t fight back. The boy says he knows who his alleged attackers are and that they’d teased him before about being openly gay. “I’ve gotten so used to it over the years that it doesn’t phase me much,” he said. Eventually, another student stepped in and stopped the assault. When the teen’s mother took him to the hospital he was told his nose was broken. “I just tell myself to forget what happened and try to act like it never happened,” he said. School officials and Alexandria police both say they are investigating the incident. The alleged victim calls what happened a hate crime and has a message for others students targeted because of their sexuality. His parents say they’re not going to let what happened to their son get swept under a rug. They’ve been told by school officials that two of the students involved have been expelled, but WTHR was unable to confirm that. (source: WTHR)

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CrossFit Athlete Comes Out On Social Media

Alec Smith, younger brother of CrossFit Games winner Ben Smith, is not only an athlete in his own right but has made a name for himself outside of his brother’s shadow in the CrossFit games as both an individual and as a part of the team/association CrossFit Krypton. Alec recently came out on Instagram through a video that he captioned, “My coming out story. Honestly one of the hardest things I’ve had to do.” Referencing a line from Lizzo’s hit song, “Truth Hurts,” the hunky athlete added, “Took a DNA test, turns out I’m gay.” “So I’m gay, and I’m at the point at life now where I’m ok with that,” shared Smith. “I’ve accepted it and I’m happy with who I am.”

 

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Took a DNA test, turns out I’m gay 🌈

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“It’s been a struggle, it really has. My whole life, I’ve known that I was different,” he continued. “When I was twelve years old, I knew that I was attracted to guys. And I hated myself for being attracted to guys, which led me to hide who I was. I hid who I was in high school, I hid who I was in college. I found myself playing sports. Doing all these things to distract myself from who I really was. It just got to the point where it was unhealthy and I decided to tell somebody. And after I told one of my closest friends, it just led me to telling more and more of my friends. And truly just talking about it helps so much.” He also had advice for others dealing with the idea of coming out: “When the time is right, the time is right… just focus on yourself and what’s important to you.”

 

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🤸🏻‍♂️ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Life’s short and it’s important for everyone to have a doctor that they connect with on their side 👨🏼‍⚕️ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ I chose @SteadyMD because I feel like my doctor is a friend. I know that I can get a response from him right away and he makes sure that I get everything out of training that I can since he’s a CrossFitter too. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Pretty soon I’m going to get some blood work done and I’m super excited to see what I need to change in my diet and lifestyle so that I’m the best athlete that I can be. @SteadyMD is awesome because I really have an on-going genuine relationship with my doctor and I can always text or call him when I need anything. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ I’m not one for waiting, especially in NYC, 🗽so give @SteadyMD a try (link in bio). Their concierge-style doctor app is really changing the way healthcare works in America! 🇺🇸 Click the link in my bio or visitsteadymd.com/alecsmith to get started! ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ 📷 @ericlagg

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World Premiere: ‘Novenas For A Lost Hospital’

Guest post by Lawrence Pfeil, Jr. of TheOUTFront.com It’s hard to imagine a place filled with more of life’s drama than a hospital, and when it comes to hospitals it’s nearly impossible to imagine one more filled with history’s drama than New York City’s shuttered, St Vincent’s Hospital. Such is the point of departure for Rattlestick Playwrights Theater’s Novenas for A Lost Hospital, an intimate theatrical experience taking audiences on a literal journey through the West Village, September 5 – October 13, 2019. Opening Rattlestick’s 25th anniversary season, the world premiere of Cusi Cram’s Novenas for A Lost Hospital stars Tony Award nominee (Angels in America) and four-time Obie winner, Kathleen Chalfant as Saint Elizabeth Seton. The production and cast of thirteen are under the direction of Rattlestick Artistic Director, Daniella Topol.  This unique walking theatrical production is presented in partnership with Village Preservation, The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, & Transgender Community Center, NYC AIDS Memorial Board, NYU Rory Meyers College of Nursing, St. John’s in the Village, and Visual AIDS. For the LGBT+ community, especially gay men, the connection to St Vincent’s Hospital runs deep and very personal. Located on the border of the Village and Chelsea, it was the community’s “go-to” hospital for decades. Injured protesters from the Stonewall Uprising fifty years ago were brought to St. Vincent’s Emergency Room for first aid. When AIDS grew into an epidemic twenty-five years later, far too many men were brought there one last time and their chosen families gathering there to bear witness endless times.  The one saving grace was the staff of doctors and nurses of the hospital-borne out of one plague having compassion on a community facing another. This is but one story in the 161-year legacy that was St Vincent’s Hospital.  Its ties to some of history’s most iconic moments are so much more.  As Dramaturg Guy Lancaster writes,

“St. Vincent’s Hospital was started inside a rented house on East 13th Street in 1849 during a cholera epidemic by four nuns from the Sisters of Charity. It was the first Catholic hospital in Manhattan. Survivors of disasters such as the sinking of the Titanic, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, and September 11th were treated at St. Vincent’s after it moved to its eventual site on 7th Avenue in 1856.

A devastating new plague, HIV/AIDS, would profoundly affect the institution and the surrounding neighborhood from the 1980s onwards as the hospital became a center for AIDS research and treatment. By the time St. Vincent’s closed its doors on April 30, 2010, 3,500 employees had lost their jobs. The last Catholic hospital in Manhattan was replaced by a luxury condo development.”

Times Square is called as the “Crossroads of the World,” but just a mile south of it, on the same avenue, St Vincent’s Hospital could be called the “crossroads of humanity.”  For five weeks, Novenas for a Lost Hospital will allow audiences to traverse time and tale, walking with compassion through the history of this storied house of healing. More information about Novenas for a Lost Hospital HERE  Previews begin September 5. Official opening night September 19, with performances through October 13. * Guests arriving at the 6:30 time will experience an extended prologue, and audiences at both check-in times will unite for the majority of the event. Due to its traveling nature, audiences are encouraged to wear comfortable shoes and to leave heavy bags at home. Coat check is not available. Purchase tickets HERE  More information about Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, their 25th anniversary season, and subscriptions HERE (photos: Mark Abrahams)

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Trump To Supreme Court: It’s Ok To Fire Employees For Being LGBTQ

The Trump administration, in its never-ending campaign against LGBTQ rights, has filed a brief in support of allowing private companies to legally fire employees based solely on their sexual orientation. The Trump administration, in its never-ending campaign against LGBTQ rights, has filed a brief in support of allowing private companies to legally fire employees based solely on their sexual orientation. From Dominic Holden at Buzzfeed News:

An amicus brief filed by the Justice Department weighed in on two cases involving gay workers and what is meant by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bans discrimination “because of sex.” The administration argued courts nationwide should stop reading the civil rights law to protect gay, lesbian, and bisexual workers from bias because it was not originally intended to do so.

That view conflicts with some lower court rulings that found targeting someone for their sexual orientation is an illegal form of both sex discrimination and sex stereotyping under Title VII. Those courts have found, to illustrate the point, that a gay man wouldn’t be targeted if he were instead a woman dating a man; thus he faced discrimination because of his sex.

But the administration said in its brief Friday that Title VII’s ban on sex discrimination only prohibits unequal treatment between “biological sexes,” as it argued last week in a related brief against transgender rights, in which the Justice Department said companies should be able to fire people because they are transgender as well.

Earlier this week, the Donald sidestepped a question about his administration’s position on the cases claiming he has deep support from LGBTQ Americans. “I think I’ve done really very well with that community,” said Trump citing his endorsement by the conservative LGBTQ group Log Cabin Republicans. “They like the job I’m doing.” The U.S. Supreme Court will hear the cases beginning October 8.

(lead image: public domain via Flickr/White House)

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#TBT: Life Is A Funny Thing…

Me and Vanessa Williams

So, life is funny, sometimes. As I arrived in Barcelona yesterday, I was reminded of this happy coincidence when I was here last year. In August 2018, while traveling on the Atlantis cruise from Rome to Barcelona, I got word that award-winning actress/singer/dancer Vanessa Williams would be the surprise guest star on the cruise ship. Longtime readers know I have been friends with the multi-hyphenate super-star since we were both freshman music theater majors at Syracuse University in the early 1980s. We quickly traded emails excited at the prospect of seeing each other live, in person. What happened was the bestest catch-up you can imagine as V and I, with my hubby Michael, spent just the most delicious hours laughing and smiling off the French coast near Nice, on the Atlantis cruise. We explored Mallorca together, and I even joined her onstage during her concert (more about that later). My apologies for the light posting today, as I was adjusting to the jetlag. But walking around Barcelona this afternoon, it was fun to remember the really wonderful company I got to keep just a year ago.

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Former Conversion Camp Scammers Arrested For Child Trafficking

Husband and wife who previously ran 'conversion therapy camps' have been arrested in Texas on child trafficking charges The ringleaders of a former ‘conversion therapy camp’ have been arrested in Texas on child trafficking charges. From local NBC News affiliate KXAN:

More than a year after boys were removed from a nonprofit in Burnet County, the couple who ran it are facing trafficking charges. A grand jury indicted Gary Wiggins, 49, and his wife Meghann Wiggins, 34, on Trafficking of Persons charges.

They are both accused of “knowingly” trafficking four underage boys and “through force, fraud or coercion” making them “engage in forced labor or services.” The two ran Joshua Home, which officials described as a place that “purports to be a residential home for troubled boys.”

According to the indictment, the trafficking allegedly occurred between May 17, 2018 and July 25, 2018. Eight boys between the ages of 10 and 17 were removed after a multi-agency investigation into allegations of abuse, neglect, labor violations, fraud, licensing violations and human trafficking.

Watch the report from KXAN below:

The Advocate reports the couple has hopped from state to state setting up so-called ‘conversion therapy’ camps where they tried to torture the gay out of young boys.

Before the Wigginses set up the home in Missouri, they ran the Blessed Hope Boys Academy in Robertsdale, Ala., where Wiggins was referred to as Brother Gary. The shuttered school was the subject of a 20/20 investigation in which boys who’d been sent there spoke out against the abuse that included forced exercise, solitary confinement, withholding food, and various conversion therapy tactics.

“He took off his belt and started swinging,” Lucas Greenfield whose mother sent him to Blessed Hope because he is gay, told 20/20 in 2017.

“I’m going to get the demon out of you and make you straight,” Gary Wiggins told the boys he terrorized, Greenfield told police in 2016.

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Teen Arrested After Making Threats To Shoot Gay Bar & Federal Agents

An Ohio teen From ABC News:

An Ohio teenager threatened to shoot federal agents, a Planned Parenthood and a gay bar and was found at a residence that had a gun vault and around 10,000 rounds of ammunition, according to police and court documents.

Justin Olsen, 18, was the moderator of an online chat where he made light of mass shootings and made the threats against all federal agents, the nonprofit, and an undisclosed gay bar, according to a police report from the Boardman Police Department.

After searching his father’s house in Boardman, a suburb south of Youngstown, FBI agents seized 15 rifles and 10 semi-automatic pistols, according to a criminal complaint. Investigators also observed an estimated 10,000 rounds of ammunition in one room and another 300 rounds of ammunition on the stairway leading to the second floor, according to the complaint.

When Olsen turned 18 in May, he apparently bragged online that he couldn’t “wait to start stockpiling weapons,” according to the police report. He also wrote that he was planning on buying an AR-15 parts kit after posting a photo of it, the police report said. The case began in February, when the FBI received a complaint about Olsen in Anchorage, Alaska, and traced his computer information back to Olsen’s address. Olsen is charged with aggravated menacing. He admitted the threats to the police, but said it was all a joke.

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Billy Porter On Breaking Through At 49 ‘I Do Not Take It Lightly’

Billy Porter, nominated for ‘Best Actor in a Drama’ at this year’s Emmy Awards for his star turn on the FX series, POSE, recently spoke to PEOPLE about the ‘moment’ he is currently in thanks to the groundbreaking TV show.

“I really had a hard time as an out, black, gay actor making any headway. I wasn’t having a great time living up to the heteronormative masculinity standard to get the straight male work. So I wasn’t really working in film and television. And it was just frustrating, you know? It was just frustrating to sort of feel ignored and feel dismissed, and dismissed for even the flamboyant things.

“I’ve been in the busy 30 years – I’ve never been the object of affection in anything. When you’re gay, they like to cut your dick off and make you asexual.

“The stories that get greenlit about black men are generally about us killing each other very often.

“And so, it’s nice, it’s beautiful, and it’s time to for the world to understand that there all types of people on the planet, we do different things AND we can honor each other’s humanity inside of that.”

“I choose joy, I choose life, I made that decision a long time ago.”

Watch more from the Golden Globe/Emmy Award-nominated Mr. Porter below.

(images via screen capture – People)

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Queer Eye’s Karamo Brown Calls Sean Spicer “Sweet” & “Nice”

  The new cast of Dancing with the Stars has been announced, and it includes Sean Spicer (below), who became famous as Donald Trump’s first White House Press Secretary, and Queer Eye‘s Karamo Brown (above). In a recent interview with Access Hollywood, his co-“star” Brown shared he thinks the man who repeatedly lied to the White House press corps and America “a good guy, a really sweet guy.” Check Brown’s kind words for Spicer in the tweet below:

“Sean Spicer and I have been talking. Yeah, like, literally, I was most excited to meet him because, like the thing is that people would look at us and think that we’re polar opposites but I’m a big believer that if you can talk to someone and meet in the middle that you can learn about each other and help each other both grow. So we have been chatting all day today. Like, he’s a good guy, a really sweet guy. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Karamo from Queer Eye saying Sean Spicer is a nice guy. I know. I know.”

Now, you may recall Spicer was the guy who frequently lied about Trump’s allegations that millions of people illegally voted in the 2016 presidential election. Then there were the lies regarding the firing of former FBI director James Comey. More on my coverage of Spicer here. But, hey, “really sweet guy.” Some fans were not up for the Brown/Spicer love.

Brown responded on Twitter, although he later deleted the tweets. He also, according to Newsweek, began blocking people and comments on his Twitter account. “First, I have no say who is on the cast and didn’t find out till this morning that he is on!” said Brown in the first tweet. “But I’ll tell you this… I’m excited to sit down w/ him and engage in a respectful conversations. Only way things get better is if we try to educate those who have different POV than us.” In a second tweet, Brown said how he “can’t stand people” who post things “just to flame the fire and get a reaction. We fight harder than your ass ever has for people of color and members of the LGBTQIA community” after someone else called him out.

By the way, DWTS host Tom Bergeron also shared HIS thoughts on the new cast via Twitter as well:

Dancing With the Stars returns for its all-new season Monday, Sept. 16 at 8 p.m ET/PT on ABC.