Tag: Hungary

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News Round-Up: June 24, 2021

Bruno the wonder dog

Bruno the wonder dog Some news items you might have missed: • TBT: As I get to spend more afternoons at the cement pond these days, I do miss my bestie Bruno (above) who always made the sunshine that much brighter. Not sad – happy he happened 🙂 • The Hill: A new study shows 52% percent of LGBTQ adults say that someone had threatened them with violence since they were age 18. Sixty-seven percent of LBQ cisgender women, 75 percent of GBQ cis men and 70 percent of transgender people said they had been bullied often or sometimes before age 18. • Pink News: The crowd erupted into cheers at Wednesday evening’s football match between Hungary and Germany when a supporter ran out onto the pitch with a Pride flag as the Hungarian national anthem played. https://www.instagram.com/p/CQgWxFmL0DZ/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link • USA Today: Missouri is becoming a cautionary COVID tale for the rest of the country: It is seeing an alarming rise in cases because of a combination of the fast-spreading delta variant and stubborn resistance among many people to getting vaccinated. Intensive care beds are filling up with surprisingly young, unvaccinated patients. • CNN: In the new book, Frankly We Did Win This Election, Michael Bender of the Wall Street Journal reports that Donald Trump would highlight videos that showed law enforcement getting physical with protesters and say, “That’s how you’re supposed to handle these people. Crack their skulls!” Trump also told his team that he wanted the military to go in and “beat the f–k out” of the civil rights protesters. • ABC News: President Biden and a bipartisan group of senators on Thursday announced they had reached a framework $1.2 trillion infrastructure deal after a White House meeting. Biden emphasized that it all comes “without raising a cent from earners below $400,000.” https://www.instagram.com/p/CQhQirxL22S/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

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News Round-Up: June 15, 2021

(image via Twitter/RobertGarcia)
Some news items you might have missed: • Edge Media: Lawmakers in Hungary passed legislation Tuesday that prohibits sharing with minors any content portraying homosexuality or sex reassignment, something supporters said would help fight pedophilia but which human rights groups denounced as anti-LGBT discrimination. • NPR: The Senate unanimously approved a bill Tuesday that would make Juneteenth, the date commemorating the end of chattel slavery in the United States, a legal public holiday. The holiday is celebrated on June 19, and it began in 1865 when enslaved people in Texas learned (years after the fact) they had been freed under the Emancipation Proclamation. • Out Music: In a loving tribute to Provincetown, Seth Sikes releases his latest music video, The Trolley Song. Sikes, a longtime interpreter of the songs of the great Judy Garland, performs this signature Garland song from her classic film Meet Me in St Louis. Backed by a full cast Sikes performs the much-loved song on location in Provincetown on the local trolley car. Sikes will perform live in Provincetown in July with his new show Seth Sikes Sings Judy and Liza and Barbra, etc. at the just refurbished Post Office Café and Cabaret.

• OUT: Country music fans should check out veteran journalist Hunter Kelly’s Proud Radio, a monthly two-hour show on the Apple Music Country channel highlighting queer artists, their evolution, and their influence in country music. • The Advocate: Arby’s management fired an employee in Lafayette, Indiana last week after the employee allegedly wrote the homophobic slur “fag” on a gay couple’s receipt. • Pink News: Long Beach’s iconic rainbow lifeguard tower (above) has been reborn after the original was burned down in March by vandals. Robert Garcia, the city’s first openly gay mayor, said the new tower provides an “immediate sense of pride and inclusion” for the city’s LGBT+ community.

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News Round-Up: December 15, 2020

Riotron releases surprise holiday single, ‘Silent Night Angel’ (promo photo)
Some news items you might have missed: • Instinct Magazine: Hungary’s parliament has voted to amend the country’s constitution defining families as ‘the mother is a woman, the father is a man.’ This effectively bans LGBTQ people from adopting since queer people cannot marry in the conservative nation. • NY Times: A day after the U.S. surpassed 300,000 deaths due to the coronavirus, the FDA has confirmed Moderna’s assessment that its vaccine had an efficacy rate of 94.1 percent in a trial of 30,000 people. With expected approval on Friday, six million doses could begin shipping across the country. • Christmas Music: Canadian retrowave pop artist Riotron (above photo) returns with a surprise holiday single titled “Silent Night Angel.” Riotron’s Jeff Fettes says, “For me, the holiday season is magical, but also intense and full of surprises. This is my version of a carol.”

• Ipsos Polling: New polling shows more than one in four Americans (27%) say they plan to get the vaccine as soon as it’s available, more than double the number that said the same in mid-September (13%). Nearly two-thirds of Americans (64%) trust the FDA to look out for the best interests of their family. • USA Today: A judge in Phoenix jettisoned a lawsuit claiming widespread election fraud in Arizona, saying the plaintiff had no standing to challenge the state’s election results because she was not registered to vote. • The Advocate: Mike Pence is being mocked for his exuberant entrance to a campaign event where he “prance-clapped” across a tarmac in order to stump for Georgia Republican Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue. It’s like he was just called down on The Price Is Right.

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Anti-Gay Politician Busted Attending Sex Party During Lockdown

József Szájer (from official website)
A politician from Hungary’s anti-LGBTQ ruling party resigned from the European Parliament and apologized for breaking COVID lockdown restrictions in Belgium to attend what local news outlets have called “a full-blown orgy” attended by 25 people. News outlets say the Brussels orgy was attended by (cough, cough) mostly men. From Vice:

József Szájer, a longtime representative of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party, unexpectedly quit as a member of the European Parliament (MEP) on Sunday.

On Tuesday, it was reported in Belgium that police had broken up a sex party involving 25 people above a bar in the centre of Brussels, only several hundred metres from the Belgian capital’s main police station.

Like many countries, Belgium is in the midst of a second surge of the coronavirus pandemic. As such, restaurants and bars have been closed, a curfew is currently in place, and public gatherings are limited to four people. Apparently, a 25-person orgy violates every single one of these restrictions. Vice adds that Szájer reportedly attempted to elude police by climbing out a window. He then tried to claim diplomatic immunity. In a statement on his website, Szájer referred to the gathering “a house party.” He also acknowledged that while police say they found party drugs on the premises, he didn’t partake and offered to be drug tested. According to investigative journalist Szabolcs Panyi, Szájer “personally re-wrote Hungary’s constitution” to outlaw same-sex marriage: “Hungary shall protect the institution of marriage as the union of a man and a woman.”

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Podcast: A Cowboy Christmas Movie + News From UK, Norway, Poland & Hungary

The Randy Report podcast

The Randy Report podcast delivers the week's top stories in a quick, convenient podcast - 'the 60 Minutes of gay news - only shorter' In this week’s podcast: • HIV diagnoses in the UK drop to their lowest levels in 20 years • Norway expands hate speech laws to protect all LGBTQ citizens • Lawmakers in Hungary have drafted a constitutional change that effectively prohibits same-sex couples from adopting • A citizens’ petition in Poland proposes banning Pride parades • Sarah McBride is set to become the highest-ranking transgender legislator in the country • Out political journalist Steve Kornacki shines on Election Night on social media as ‘Korsnacki’ and ‘Map Daddy’ • Don’t miss the upcoming gay holiday romance movie Dashing in December on Paramount TV All that and more in this episode of The Randy Report

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News Round-Up: November 12, 2020

CNN’s Phil Mattingly (image via GregInHollywood)
Some news items you might have missed: • GregInHollywood: So, basically, everyone became pretty smitten with CNN’s Phil Mattingly (above) as he expertly handled ballot count recaps at the famed Magic Wall. Prior to joining CNN in 2105, Mattingly was at Bloomberg News where he was a national political correspondent. • Instinct Magazine: After being attacked for having a porn past during his race for New Mexico’s House of Representatives, Roger Montoya won the race for state District 40 with 56.8 percent of the vote against his Republican opponent Justin Salazar-Torrez (who received 43.2 percent). The 59-year-old Democrat addressed the accusations and confirmed he had appeared in two adult films in the 1980s when he was 22. • Out: Bi, trans, and nonbinary folks in Norway are celebrating a huge win after the country recently expanded its penal code that previously only protected lesbian and gay people from hate speech to include gender identity and all forms of “sexual orientation.” • HuffPost: The Trump campaign’s primary source of “evidence” of ‘voting irregularities’ in Detroit apparently consists of pages of affidavits and complaints from Trump supporters about social distancing measures, and some people in the polls were wearing “Black Lives Matter” face masks and shirts. A woman named ‘Karen’ was reportedly upset she parked in the wrong place. The white Republican poll watchers appear to have been ready to treat any and all actions by election workers as nefarious criminal activity. • Pink News: Hungary has announced it will move to ban adoption by same-sex couples claiming it’s ‘become necessary’ due to the coronavirus pandemic. LGBTQ Hungarians say the changes were deliberately drafted at a time when mass protests were not possible due to the coronavirus pandemic. • Reuters: News bureau fact-checks false allegations of voter fraud in a video clip showing workers picking up mail-in ballots from ballot drop boxes in Los Angeles “after Election Day.” Some users referring to the videos allege the scene is proof of “election fraud.” Mike Sanchez, a spokesman for the L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk (RR/CC) told Reuters the ballots shown in these videos “are valid ballots and will be processed and counted in our Official Election Canvass. All vote by mail ballot drop boxes were closed and locked at 8 PM on Election Day. Ballots from all boxes throughout the County were picked up the following day.”

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Podcast: HIV Charity Scammed, Coke’s Hungarian Backlash, Spacey Returns, Univision New Gay TV Series

In this week’s podcast:

• An Ohio Republican lawmaker faced backlash after she blamed gays, video games, drag queens and more for recent mass shootings

• A New York City pastor is accused of scamming over $600,000 from two charities that help HIV+ drug addicts

• Coca-Cola faces backlash for same-sex ad campaign in Hungary

• Kevin Spacey resurfaces for an impromptu performance in Italy

* Univision is about to premiere its first Spanish language broadcast television series featuring a gay couple as the lead characters

All that and more in this episode of The Randy Report

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Hungary Bans Same-Sex Marriage In New Constitution

Hungarian lawmakers approved a new constitution Monday that was blasted by rights groups and the political opposition for measures considered extremely conservative. Some of the changes to the current constitution include: * Ban on same-sex marriage * Protects the life of a fetus from conception opening the possibility to future ban or restriction on abortion * Ban on discrimination does not include age or sexual orientation * Tax and pension law changes require a two-thirds majority “We’ve just participated in a historical moment,” parliamentary speaker Laszlo Kover said moments after the bill was approved 262-44. “The new constitution is built upon our past and traditions, but seeks and contains answers to current problems while keeping an eye on the future.” Hungary’s current constitution dates from 1949, near the start of the communist regime but it was almost fully rewritten during the 1989 transition to democracy. Hungary assumed the six-month rotating presidency of the EU in January.