Dan Savage On the GOP Field

Dan Savage On the GOP Field

"America is waking up to the fact that we're not bogeymen, and we're not coming to do any harm, and that we're your daughters and sons and neighbors, sometimes your parents, your co-workers, friends, colleagues. The Republican party, in this desperate [nod] to its dying evangelical base, is just ramping up the homophobia, and they're doing themselves real long-term damage.

"What's interesting is that, you look at who's been doing the most hate speech: Bachmann? She's out. Herman Cain? He's out. Perry? He's all but out. Santorum? He's running fourth, he's trailing even in conservative South Carolina. It's not winning them the election anymore. It's not 1992; Pat Buchanan can't get up and give a 'gay rights never, family values forever' speech at the Republican National Convention anymore. Times have changed." - Dan Savage, speaking to MTV News.

Meet The Brothers Mueller: Brooklyn’s Highbrow Answer To The Peters Twins

 

Everyone is in love with the Mueller Brothers, those snazzy gay twins who are designing apps and sites for some of the biggest media entities around. They’re not your run-of-the-mill twinsies, though, who may just look or maybe talk alike. Nate and Kirk Mueller are eerily identical in almost every conceivable way. As the New York Observer notes:

The twins, who are 27 and stand 5’5″, share the same bank account. They share the same calendar. They share the same curriculum vitae. The same sexual orientation (gay), brownstone (Prospect Heights) and taste in boyfriends (“over 30”). They share the same profession, and the same specialty (interactive design). They even, in a manner of speaking, share an identity. Email the Brothers Mueller at their shared account, and the only way to tell which Mueller is responding is by whose name shows up first in the signature: Nate & Kirk versus Kirk & Nate.

While we lust for carbon-copy siblings like the Peters Twins in a carnal way, our inclination toward the Muellers is more highbrow.

We envy their successful careers designing award-winning iPad apps (for clients like Martha Stewart, The New Yorker and the Guggenheim), their natty, matchy-matchy sense of style and their utter commitment to Brooklyn (our borough of choice, too).

But which Mueller to pine for? Are you into slight, gayfaced twinks? Ask for Kirk (at right). Deeper-voiced otters with a little bit of facial hair? You want Nate (below).

And yes, the brothers even addresses the subject of twincest, albeit in their own twee way:

“It used to upset us a little at first,” Kirk said. “But now we’re very playful with it.”
“My favorite is using ambiguous language,” Nate added.
“They’ll ask questions about us, like do we date the same guy or do you sleep with the same guy,” explained Kirk. “So we’ll purposefully answer, like, ‘Not usually,’ or ‘I don’t know,’ at the same time. Nate will say, ‘Not really,’ and I’ll say, ‘I don’t know.’ It’ll explode their head.”
“And then we walk away,” finished Nate.
Later, they offered a less ambiguous answer by email: “We don’t think there is a need to experiment with something like that when there’s a whole city full of beautiful people.”
As for whether they would date the same man simultaneously, however, they added dryly, “I think it’s the German in us that seeks out efficiency, so what would be more efficient than the both of us dating one person?”

Hear that, men of New York? You can have both of them at once, especially if you are a well-dressed thirtysomething German with a sly sense of humor.

Funny as Hell: Robin are you GAY?

The Morning After

The Morning After from Bruno Collins on Vimeo.

"The Morning After" is a short British film starring Joshua Berg as a young gay curious man who wakes up to find he's hooked up with a guy for the first time."

Funny as hell: Teddy Porn

Being Gay Is A Gift From G-d! So says Oprah!

New Book Reports That Richard Nixon Had A Gay Mafia Love Afffair With Bebe Rebozo

Richard Nixon, who held the title of “Worst United States President” before George Bush came along was known for his lies, corruption, semitic slurs and ruthless ‘dirty tricks’ campaigns.
But now in a new biography by Don Fulsom, a veteran Washington journalist who covered the Nixon years, Fulsom suggests that Nixon also had  a serious drinking problem, beat his wife and had links going back two decades to the Mafia, including godfather Carlos Marcello, then America’s most powerful mobster.
But wait.  That’s not all.  Fulsom also says that Nixon may have had a homosexual love affair with his best friend and confidant, a Mafia‑connected Charles ‘Bebe’ Rebozo who was even more crooked than Nixon himself.

Rebozo was a short, swarthy,  good-looking Cuban-American businessman and Fulsom uses recently revealed documents and eyewitness interviews, including with FBI agents to point out that Nixon may have been more than just good buddies with Rebozo.
Fulsom quotes a former Time magazine reporter who, at a Washington dinner, bent down to pick up a fork and saw the two holding hands under the table. It was, the reporter judged, sufficiently intimate to suggest ‘repressed homosexuality’.

Another journalist related how, loosened up by drink, Nixon once put his arm around Rebozo ‘the way you’d cuddle your senior prom date. Something was fishy there’
The book, Nixon’s Darkest Secrets, is due out next month.

Tell-All Book Alleges Rick Perry Has Gay Sex among other accusations

Head Figure Head: The Search for the Hidden Life of Rick Perry was born out of a national news outlet’s summer spent collecting evidence for a piece about Rick Perry’s long-rumored gay sex life.
The unnamed publication killed the story without running it - perhaps because “he had a little dick” isn’t the sort of copy one normally reads in The New York Times or hears Anderson Cooper assert on CNN. Though a boy can dream, can’t he?

The book is now available for sale, and while we won’t be purchasing it ourselves – we’ve had quite enough Rick Perry gay talk to last a lifetime, thank you – we thought we’d share one of the dalliances as told by one of Rick’s alleged flings:

The posting asked for someone willing to unlock the door, turn off the lights, and lie face-down on the bed, legs spread. James replied to the ad, and did as instructed. As he lay on his bed in the dark, James heard someone struggling to open the door. Shielding his eyes, he ran out and opened the door…. “He jerked down his shorts,” [James said], “It lasted about a minute. He had a little dick. It was the worst fuck of my life. And on top of it all he stunk because he had been jogging. He then pulled up his shorts and put the used condom in his pocket.”

As the mystery man tried to leave James’ apartment, he struggled with the front door, which had a tendency to jam. The man started yelling for James to help him…. As James opened it…his face was illuminated, and seen by James for the first time.

“Oh my God,” thought James. “I just got fucked by Rick Perry!”

Whoa. So…uh…whoa.
But that fairytale romance is hardly the most damning interview in Head Figure Head. No, for that we turn to former Secretary of State Geoff Connor, whom Perry allegedly was caught in bed with by wife Anita Perry. When asked to comment upon the long simmering story, Connor simply replied, “I’m no longer a public official and I don’t care to comment on that. I suggest you ask Rick Perry.”

One imagines that a high profile Texas politician accused of a gay sexual relationship with the governor who doesn’t want the world to know of said gay sexual relationship with the governor might respond with a curt denial instead of a coy, “ask Rick” and a giggle. But hey, that’s just us.

In any case, this photo from Gawker pretty much sums it all up in a nutshell, don’t you think?

Do you think that Rick Perry is a secret self-hating homo?

Exhibitions: HIDE/SEEK: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture

Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture,” running at the Brooklyn Museum through February 12, is not a retrospective of gay and lesbian artists in the 20th century.Rather, its a first-rate examination of the canon of 20th century art through the lens of homosexuality and homoeroticism.

Instead of  scraping the barrel looking for out painters before Stonewall, the curators considered the “long-ignored or suppressed subject of the role of sexual difference in the depiction of modern Americans,” as the exhibit catalog explains, “How major themes in modern art—especially abstraction—were influenced by the position of gay and lesbian artists.”

Visitors are treated to works by some of the most famous artists of the last century—Thomas Eakins, John Singer Sargent, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Jasper Johns, Alice Neel, Robert Rauschenberg David Hockney, Andy Warhol, Nan Goldin, Robert Mapplethorpe, Annie Leibovitz among them. Some were out, some were closeted, some were straight and some were sexual cyphers—but all provide vital information about queer life and culture before it was allowed to be discussed in polite company

In the clip below, exhibit co-curator David Ward discusses David Hockney’s We Two Boys Clinging Together, just one of gems in this seminal show.


 

Originally organized by the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, the show has had some controversy attached to it—quite unnecessarily—mostly because of the inclusion of David Wojnarowicz’s video installation, A Fire in My Belly. The film, which includes a brief clip of ants crawling over a crucifix as an AIDS allegory, outraged Republican and Catholic officials and was removed from the original Portrait Gallery exhibit. (It is on view here).

Of course, as curator Jonathan Katz points out, the degradation and suffering of Christ has been a common theme in Christian art for over a millennium. At a press preview, Katz joked, “if the Bishop of New York would like me to educate him about the iconography of his faith, I’d be more than happy to.”
We’re pretty sure His Eminence has plenty to learn about a lot of things.

More photographs of this incredible show can be seen at:
http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/hide_seek/

Belgium to Get a Gay Prime Minister

Since my family came from Belgium to the Unites States prior to 1915 I was thrilled when I heard that "my motherland" was getting a gay Prime Minister.  There is only one thing that would make it better in my opinion and that is if this fellow was also Jewish to boot.

Belgium's national election was last summer, but it was only this week that the European debt crisis finally forced the formation of a coalition government. And leading that coalition will be the quietly gay head of the Socialist Party, Elio Di Rupo. In 1996 journalists demanded to know if Di Rupo was gay. His famed response: "Yeah. So?"

Judging by media reports, the real problem Di Rupo will face is that he doesn't speak Dutch.

Mr. Di Rupo, the son of an Italian immigrant, will take office committed to cutting 11.3 billion euros (about $15.2 billion) from the national budget. He has also promised to improve his spoken Dutch, which is glaringly weak in a country where officials and politicians routinely are fluent in both of the country’s main languages, and in English, another tongue that gives Mr. Di Rupo trouble. “If you’re looking for public support for a government, it may be a problem when the leader of that government has difficulty speaking the language of the majority,” Yves Leterme, the caretaker prime minister who will yield to Mr. Di Rupo on Monday, said on Dutch television.

The Guardian also worries about Di Rupo's language skills.

At 60, he will be Belgium's first French-speaking prime minister in 30 years, a rare centre-left voice in a European Union that has veered right, and one of few proudly gay world leaders. He's also the first Socialist to take the premiership in Belgium since 1974. But he speaks poor Dutch. This is a serious problem in a country where language is so important and so fiercely protected that, in areas of Dutch-speaking Flanders, town council meetings can find their decisions annulled if anyone is heard to utter a word of French.

Gay Baby---Short Film Award Winning

Winner of Audience Award - Best Overall Short at FilmOut San Diego.

What if you found out your unborn son is GAY? An expectant couple learns their unborn son is gay. Can a young gay store clerk change the father's reaction from disappointment to excitement?

GLAAD Campaign: "Make Aunt Betty Feel Awkward"

In a campaign they're calling "Awkward Thanksgiving," GLAAD suggests you not just sit there at the family table this Thursday.

The LGBT community has a ton to be thankful for from the past year. But we also have a long way to go. And believe it or not, putting down that forkful of stuffing for a minute and just talking about yourself (if you're able to) this Thanksgiving can make a huge difference. We've all had those Thanksgiving dinners where Aunt Betty decides this is the perfect time to discuss a year's worth of ailments and medical treatments. Well, you know what? If she can talk about her polyp, you can talk about your partner.

The fact is, while you're scarfing down mashed potatoes and staying silent while everyone else at the table is freely speaking their minds, you're missing a golden opportunity to make real, honest progress by talking about your life, and the things you care about. It's okay if Aunt Betty feels a little awkward at first, it's important for her to know that someone she loves cares deeply about LGBT equality. And the more we all talk about what's important to us, the less awkward those conversations will become

Michigan Passes “License to Bully” Law. Exempts Religous and Moral Bullying From Being Punished

The Michigan GOP controlled Senate has passed a piece of “supposed”anti-bullying Legislation that exempts statements based on moral convictions of any school related person from being charged as bullying.
The amended bill, SB 137, which does nothing advocates have pushed for — including reporting requirements and enumeration, or listing, of protected classes. “This section does not prohibit a statement of a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction of a school employee, school volunteer, pupil, or a pupil and parent or guardian.”
In other words the law is a joke and it actually provides protection for children and adults to abuse and harass gay kids
Senate Gretchen Whitmer (D-East Lansing ) slammed the Republicans over the amended language.

“Here today you claim to be protecting kids and you’re actually putting them in more danger,” Whitmer said. “But bullying is not OK. We should be protecting public policy that protects kids — all kids, from bullies — all bullies. But instead you have set us back further by creating a blueprint for bullying.  You may be able to pat yourselves on the back today and say that you did something, but in actuality you are explicitly outlining how to get away with bullying,” she said. “Your exceptions have swallowed the rule. As passed today, bullying kids is OK if a student, parent, teacher or school employee can come up with a moral or religious reason for doing it.”

Kevin Epling, an East Lansing parent whose son committed suicide as a result of bullying stated:  “I am ashamed that this could be Michigan’s bill on anti-bullying, when in fact it is a ‘bullying is OK in MI’ law,”

Artist Spotlight: Wes Hemphill: Last Part

Adam #1

Joe Mostly Recovered From the Accident, 2011 (study)

 

 Tell us more on this one.
The model, Joe M., was a student at the University of Arizona in Tucson, where Jack and I spend winters. He’d recently been in an accident, the nature of which I should leave to him to disclose. I thought this image conveyed something of his climbing out of that circumstance and of his natural beauty, which, as the viewer can see, remains intact

Hardly Boys: Still Waters (#511), 2010, a collaboration between Wes Hempel and Jack Balas

 

How About Now? (study)

Camping on Vermeer. Tell us more on this.
I was initially drawn to the Vermeer interior because of the extraordinary quality of light. But I’m also playing around with the contemporary painter George Deem’s campy idea of How to Paint a Vermeer (title of a book of his paintings). So the piece may be humorous on various levels. And yet I think there’s a poignancy lurking underneath that has to do with the portrait on the wall (the same person as a boy?) and the way the young man presents himself now.

Decision, 2011

So what is the decision here, and can you talk about the pre-Raphealite influences?
The female figures are taken from Maxfield Parrish’s 1912 illustration for the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale. In the original story, the prince kisses Sleeping Beauty and awakens her from her trance. But this particular “prince” (our model Sye), having arrived late on the scene, seems to have trouble making up his mind what to do next. A decision seems to be in order, but it’s left to the viewer to imagine what is going through the young man’s mind as he squints into the distance, clenching his hands.

 

Artist Spotlight: Wes Hemphill: Part 2

Magnolias, 2011

Hempel: A take on a painting by the same name by Venezuelan painter Pedro Centeno Vallenilla (born: Barcelona 1904, died: Caracas 1988). As part of my ongoing project of reenvisioning art history from a gay perspective, I’ve replaced the nude female in the original (lying on the branch to the left) with a nude male.

 

Farewell #5

Birthday, 2005, a collaboration between Wes Hempel and Jack Balas

 

 Can you tell us a little about working in collaboration with your partner, Jack Balas?
I usually work out my ideas fairly comprehensively before committing paint to canvas, but occasionally I run into problems. Living with another artist means I have someone to consult with, and Jack is often more inventive visually than I am and more adventurous when it comes to imagery. He can think spontaneously in spatial terms, which means he has a fuller visual vocabulary than I do. Sometimes his ideas are so good, it makes more sense for him to just take over the painting. The canvas then goes from my studio to his (we never work on a piece together in the same space), and I relinquish control to him, which I admit is scary. Almost always, though, I’m delighted with the end result.

Artist Spotlight: Wes Hemphill: Part 1

Playing around with paint and brushes given to him by his partner, artist Jack Balas, launched his career. This writer-turned-artist's first gallery show sold out. Understandably so.

By Christopher Harrity

Farmboy Idyll

For decades, Wes Hempel has been committed to reenvisioning the depiction of masculinity in contemporary art. By setting psychologically acute portraits of modern-day men against backdrops appropriated from such disparate sources as neoclassical history painting and Dutch golden age landscapes, the artist’s works forge provocative dialogues between the exigencies of the present and its endowments from the past.

Joining the mythic allusions and technical fluency of classical art together with the ideas of personal narrative and social content of postmodern art, Hempel’s paintings explore the divide between the ancient and modern, reason and passion, august ideals and the profoundly individual. The artist recasts modern male figures in historical and culturally iconographic settings, provoking both a rethinking of assumed narratives and mythic themes and inviting a similar reconsideration of contemporary life, masculinity, and sexual norms. Hempel’s societal investigations are rendered in sensuously modeled flesh tones, gleaming marble surfaces, and the immersive depth of Arcadian landscapes — proving as visually seductive as they are conceptually rigorous.

Hempel’s art has been the subject of more than 80 solo and group exhibitions and is included in a growing number of esteemed private and corporate collections, including the Denver Art Museum, the Columbus Museum, the Arnot Art Museum, Microsoft Corp., the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, and the New Britain Museum of American Art.


The Advocate: Why are you an artist?
Wes Hempel: I always wanted to be a writer, but in graduate school, I began playing around with some old brushes and paints that my partner, Jack Balas, had given me. I was mesmerized. I completed my degree in creative writing and began teaching at the University of Colorado in Boulder, but I had fallen in love with art. Jack showed some of my early pieces to his gallery in Denver, Robischon. They gave me a show, which sold out. I’ve been painting ever since.

What catches your eye?
There is something specific I’m always looking for, though it’s hard to put into words — the visual equivalent of a deftly turned phrase or the unexpected image in poetry. In painting an emotional quality can arise from the interplay of composition, color, and value, regardless of subject matter.

Tell us about your process or techniques.
It’s a very traditional technique. These days I do a full-color underpainting in oils — sometimes with the help of an assistant — on gessoed canvas, then apply one or more top coats, making adjustments to form and to heighten the richness of hue and quality of light. I also use glazes to add surface depth and to complicate the coloration. I have a few tricks I’ve developed along the way — I suppose most painters have these — that I hold close to my chest.

How do you choose your subjects?
One of my ongoing projects is a reenvisioning of what art history might have looked like had homosexuality not been vilified in the culture. The paintings one sees in museums are revered in part because they enshrine our collective experience. But it’s a selective past that gets validated. By presenting contemporary males as objects of desire in borrowed art historical settings, I’m able to imagine — and allow viewers to imagine — a history that includes rather than excludes gay experience — and thereby ride the coattails, as it were, of art history’s imprimatur.

What artists do you take inspiration from and why?
This changes all the time for me. When Jack and I first moved to Boulder, I took a year off from working and went systematically through the art library at CU, taking down each book and carefully going through it. It took me the entire year to work my way through the shelves. I used to joke that my faulty knowledge of art history is the result of the books that were checked out.
 

With DADT Gone, Pentagon Decides Military Chaplains May Perform Gay Marriages

The Pentagon on Friday announced it would allow military chaplains to officiate the marriages of gay service members, including on a military installation, the AP reported.

Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Clifford Stanley issued the ruling in a memo released this morning.

“A military chaplain may participate in or officiate any private ceremony, whether on or off a military installation, provided that the ceremony is not prohibited by applicable state and local law,” Stanley wrote.

The ruling comes 10 days after the military ended an 18-year-old policy that banned gay and bisexual troops from serving openly, known as “Don't Ask, Don't Tell.” Full story here via On Top Magazine!

15yo CA teen Larry King Provoked His Killer?!

Larry King, who was 15 when he was shot to death by Brandon McInerney, harassed and provoked his killer, according to Save California’s Randy Thomasson. Thomasson appeared on the Janet Mefferd Show yesterday, and denigrated not only King, but his teachers and parents.
Thomasson, the creator of “Protect Your Children From Harvey Milk Gay Day In Schools” — a lie– and hate-​filled campaign against the LGBT icon and his memory – also said that anti-​bullying campaigns are “indoctrination,” and warned parents to get their kids into good “godly schools,” or their children were — get this — “going to become liberal adults and call you bigots.”
In other words, indoctrinate your children now, or they will learn the truth about you.
Could he be any more transparent?
Transcript and audio via Brian Tashman at Right Wing Watch:

The homosexual activists are saying, ‘well we have to do this so that we won’t have another Larry King,’ now we’re not talking about the old former talk show host from CNN, we’re talking about a kid in Oxnard, California, who was about fourteen years-​old and he was shot dead by a classmate. Now Larry King was saying he was homosexual but he also was a cross-​dresser and he had a bad teacher who actually got him a girl’s dress and taught him how to put makeup on. And it came out in court that this boy was parading around in makeup and high heels in front of a classmate outside on a bench and the fifteen year-​old Larry King was walking back and forth and saying, ‘you know you want me, you know you want me.’ And there was a lot of anger that another teacher saw on the boy’s face who was being tautened, I mean who’s harassing whom?
This was a very disturbed boy who was being harassed, who was sitting on the bench, so when he was being harassed by King he went home and he got his dad’s gun and he came back the next day and he killed Larry King. But the whole point is, why in the world would you let two wrongs to be done? Murder is wrong, but allowing reverse harassment to be done and allowing teachers to actually dress up boys as girls, this is causing tension, it’s causing sexual tension, it’s causing emotional tension and this is not anything that goes along with the purpose of academics. This is social engineering. So whenever you hear ‘bullying’ from the homosexual activists, think indoctrination. And it’s coming to all fifty states, I’m sorry but it is one way or the other, get your kids into godly schools and do the sacrifice of time or money and realize that you only have a few years with your children, otherwise they’re going to become liberal adults and call you bigots.

Thomasson is also hard at work campaigning to repeal California’s FAIR Education Law, which he calls, “the most in-​your-​face sexual brainwashing yet.”

Aiden Shaw bookcovers

Gay Activist Arthur Evans Dies At 68

Arthur Evans, one of the nation's earliest and best-known gay activists, has died of a heart attack at the age of 68. During the Stonewall era, Evans was a member of the Gay Liberation Front, a group he later left to co-found the Gay Activists Alliance.

Based in New York, the alliance became a model for gay rights organizations nationwide, pushing in New York for legislation to ban discrimination against gay men and lesbians in employment, housing and other areas. Mr. Evans wrote its statement of purpose and much of its constitution, which began, “We as liberated homosexual activists demand the freedom for expression of our dignity and value as human beings.” To attract attention the alliance staged what its members called “zaps,” confrontations with people or institutions that they believed discriminated against gay people. Among other incidents, they confronted Mayor John V. Lindsay of New York, went to television studios to protest shows perceived as anti-gay, demanded gay marriage rights at the city’s marriage license bureau, and demonstrated at the taxi commission against a regulation, since abolished, requiring gay people to get a psychiatrist’s approval before they could be allowed to drive a taxi.