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UNITED KINGDOM - A father criticised a police force today for launching an investigation after his ten-year-old son allegedly called a schoolfriend "gay" in an email.
Company director Alan Rawlinson said he was astounded after two police officers arrived at his home in Bold Heath, Cheshire, to speak to his son George.
The officers were called earlier this month after a parent complained that George had called her son a "gay boy" in an email.
Mr Rawlinson, 41, said: "I could not believe what I was hearing when the officers told me.
"They told me they considered it a very serious offence, I thought they were joking at first.
"I run a construction company and have to deal with problems of theft and the like everyday. My wife is a magistrate and sees serious crimes all the time so this just seemed like a huge waste of resources for something so trivial.
"I am furious about what has happened, it just seems the politically correct brigade are taking over."
Mr Rawlinson said his son, who is a pupil at Farnworth Primary School in Widnes, was terrified when police arrived and asked him if he would be arrested.
He added: "I think the police do a good job but I think their hands are tied by this political correctness.
"My son is not anti anybody, he is too young to have made judgments about people and we have always taught him to judge people as he finds them.
"There is no evidence he sent this email but even if he did I'm sure the words have been taken the wrong way.
"If somebody had called the police about something like this in my day they would have laughed - they certainly wouldn't have sent two officers out. It is completely ridiculous."
Inspector Nick Bailey, of Cheshire Constabulary, said: "The matter was reported to police as the parents of the boy believed it was more sinister than just a schoolyard prank.
"We were obliged to record the matter as a crime and we took a proper, and maybe an old fashioned, view.
"Going to the boy's house was a reasonable course of action to take. We do not feel this is something that should be pursued.
"My understanding is that this message was part of some behaviour that has been ongoing.
"The use of the word gay would imply this is homophobic but we would be hard-pushed to say this is a homophobic crime.
"This boy has not been treated as an offender."
from 24 Dash
MEXICO CITY - Ricky Martin defended the right of pop stars to come out of the closet, saying he felt solidarity with Christian Chavez of Mexican band RBD, who recently said publicly that he is gay.
"Life is too short to live closed up, guarding what you say," said Martin - whose sexual orientation has been the subject of speculation - in an interview with The Associated Press. Christian "has to be free in many aspects. I wish him much strength."
Martin, who was named person of the year in 2006 by the Latin Recording Academy, has hits including "Livin' la Vida Loca" and "Shake Your Bon-Bon."
He said his nonprofit Ricky Martin Foundation inspires him in his songwriting. One of the foundation's programs, People for Children, works toward the elimination of human trafficking, especially trafficking of children.
"When you start to work with social problems, it gets the attention of the media and people think it's a farce," the 35-year-old singer said. "It's a spiritual search. The philanthropic work helps me write music and the music helps me in the philanthropic work."
Martin said it was great that more celebrities are working with charities.
"If this is a fashion, then I hope a lot more fashions like this come along."
He will tour the U.S. in April and May.
RBD, which spun off Mexico's wildly popular soap opera, "Rebelde," has achieved success throughout Latin America and among Spanish speakers in the United States.
from The Associated Press
PALM SPRINGS - Local philanthropists Earl Greenburg and David Peet were honored Friday with the 283rd spot on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars, making them the first gay couple to achieve this recognition.
"It's particularly wonderful for me because I'm with (Peet)," said Greenburg, who already has a spot on the Walk of Stars. "That makes a difference."
The pair, known for making contributions to several local charities, such as the Desert AIDS Project, were honored during a ceremony held on Palm Canyon Drive outside the Mercado Plaza, where the Sonny Bono statue sits.
The star lists both men's names and identifies them as "humanitarians."
Family, friends and colleagues gave kind words to the newest inductees.
"The desert is a better place because of their compassion and kindness," said friend and philanthropist Harold Matzner, whose star is just a few feet from the one shared by Peet and Greenburg.
"It's a personal honor to call them my very best friends," he said Friday.
Peet expressed his thanks and gratitude during the ceremony. He called the experience "very, very humbling."
from The Desert Sun
FLORIDA - Six months after resigning from Congress, former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley remains under criminal investigation for sexually explicit Internet communications with underage boys but has not been charged, authorities said Wednesday.
"I can't really give any more detail other than to say we're still in the preliminary investigative stance and we are working with state authorities," said Debra Weierman, spokeswoman for the FBI's Washington field office.
Florida authorities announced their own criminal investigation in November but have remained tightlipped on the status since then.
Foley resigned Sept. 29 after being confronted with the lurid messages to male teenage pages who had worked on Capitol Hill.
He checked himself into an Arizona facility on Oct. 1 for what his attorneys said was treatment of "alcoholism and other behavioral problems." At the time, his attorney said Foley was gay, an alcoholic and had been molested by a priest as a teenage altar boy in Florida.
Attorney David Roth maintains Foley never had inappropriate sexual contact with the minors. He has declined further comment on any aspect of the case.
Federal law generally requires a person to meet or attempt to meet a minor for sex for it to be a crime. However, under laws in some states where the Florida Republican communicated with minors, an attempt to seduce the victim might be enough for a criminal case.
Under state law in Florida, where the age of consent is 18, a crime may have been committed if Foley is simply found to have seduced or attempted to seduce a minor using lewd or explicit language.
"It's definitely still an active investigation," Florida Department of Law Enforcement spokeswoman Kristen Perezluha said Wednesday.
Foley emerged publicly in West Palm Beach on Nov. 17 to attend a wake for his father, Edward, who died of cancer, but has rarely been seen in public since.
from The Associated Press
ATLANTA - An employee of Delta Air Lines has been suspended following his arrest on a sex charge at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
Atlanta police say 48-year-old James Edmond Westbrook of Long Beach, N.Y., was arrested late yesterday when he propositioned an undercover police officer at an airport bathroom.
At least 30 people have been arrested at the airport on sex-relate charges since December.
The police report says Westbrook was at a urinal when he turned and exposed himself to an undercover officer.
Delta issued a statement saying Westbrook has been suspended while the matter is investigated.
Westbrook's arrest follows the arrest of former MARTA board chairman Ed Wall earlier this month. Wall was arrested for public indecency, a misdemeanor, after police said he had oral sex with a man in an airport bathroom.
Wall, who maintains his innocence, has stepped down as chairman but remains on the MARTA board.
from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
SOUTH CAROLINA - A gay couple looking to rent a hotel room say they were turned away because of their sexuality.
"She wasn't discreet about it," said Jason Pickel, referring to a hotel employee. "She was not apologetic. She just said, 'We do not rent to gay people.'"
For the past two and a half years, Pickel and Darren Black Bear have been in a committed relationship. During a search for a temporary home, the couple says it went to Affordable Suites of America, a long-term stay hotel located on Gion Street in Sumter.
"We were inquiring about the price, deposits, extra person fee, and she asked who the room was going to be for, and I said for my partner and I,” Pickel said. “She said, 'Oh we don't rent to multiple people of the same sex.' I said, so you don't rent to gay couples? She said, 'No, we don't rent to gay people at all.'"
The website for Affordable Suites of America states the company does not allow children or pets in its suites, but there is no mention of same sex couples.
News19 contacted the hotel, posing as a potential renter, and inquired about two men staying in the same room. The receptionist who answered the phone told us the following: “Our policy is we don’t rent to two people of the same sex if we only have one bed.” “Is that your policy,” we asked. “That’s corporate policy because they only have one sleeping area.” We then asked, “Okay, but they can't share the bed?” "I suppose they could, but most men don’t want to," she said.
However, when News19 called the owner of the hotel, Carroll Atkisson, he says there had been some confusion. He says any couple can come to the place and they will rent to them, period. Atkisson says the policy was not mean to target homosexuals. He says they were just trying to stop two single people from being in the same bed.
Pickel and Black Bear say they still plan to seek legal action. "Everyone is floored, shocked and outraged," said Pickel. "We have contacted some of our friends who are activists."
Currently, there is no state law preventing a hotel from refusing service to a same-sex couple. However, it is illegal to discriminate on the basis of race, creed, color, national origin, gender, disability, or marital status.
"If they have a policy, it has to be maintained fair and equitably," says Tom Sponseller, President of the Hospitality Association of South Carolina. "At the beach, for example, because there are different bike weekends at the beach, that policy has to be enforced, and consistent."
There is currently a bill in the State Senate that addresses this issue. The measure, proposed by Charleston Democrat Robert Ford, would expand the Lodging Establishment Act to include prohibition of discrimination because of sexual orientation or gender identity.
from WLXT
thanks to Holly Bullies And Headless Monsters
TRENTON, NEW JERSEY - Former Gov. James E. McGreevey's estranged wife will take her turn telling tales of life with the closeted gay politician on the Oprah Winfrey show.
Dina Matos McGreevey's appearance on May 1 will coincide with the release her memoir, "Silent Partner," published by Hyperion.
Hyperion spokeswoman Beth Gebhard confirmed Matos McGreevey's upcoming chat with Oprah, as well as two-part "Good Morning America" exclusive on May 2 and May 3. The scheduled Oprah appearance was first reported Wednesday in The Star-Ledger of Newark.
Matos McGreevey's book follows by less than a year the splashy confessional written by her husband. His tell-all detailed his rapid political rise as a closeted gay man and his spectacular fall after being threatened with blackmail by a former male lover.
He kicked off his national book tour with an appearance on Oprah last September.
On the program, he shocked the studio audience by telling of an affair with a male aid that he said began while his wife was in the hospital recovering from the difficult birth of their child, now 5.
McGreevey recently filed for divorce, and has asked the judge for custody of their daughter and accompanying child support.
Matos McGreevey has never spoken publicly about her role as the gay governor's wife. Neither she nor her lawyer returned calls or e-mail requests for comment on Wednesday.
McGreevey also did not return a message for comment.
Matos McGreevey is remembered for the dazed look on her face and pasted-on smile she wore while standing beside her husband as he told the world he was "a gay American" in August 2004.
McGreevey now lives in Plainfield with his partner, Australian money manager Mark O'Donnell. Matos McGreevey lives in nearby Springfield with their daughter, Jacqueline.
from Newsday
Men whose mothers ate a lot of beef during their pregnancy have a sperm count about 25% below normal and three times the normal risk of fertility problems, researchers reported Tuesday.
The problem may be due to anabolic steroids used in the United States to fatten the cattle, Dr. Shanna H. Swan of the University of Rochester Medical Center reported in the journal Human Reproduction. It could also be due to pesticides and other environmental contaminants, she added.
If the sperm deficit is related to the hormones in beef, Swan's findings may be "just the tip of the iceberg," wrote biologist Frederick vom Saal of the University of Missouri-Columbia in an editorial accompanying the paper.
In daughters of the beef-eaters, those same hormones could alter the incidence of polycystic ovarian syndrome, the age of puberty and the postnatal growth rate, he said.
"It's a small effect, but it is a significant effect," said Dr. Ted Schettler, an environmental health specialist at the Institute for Global Communications in San Francisco. "It's not surprising. The more you look at dietary factors, the more you turn up interesting information about how diet during pregnancy affects lots of aspects of human health."
Six growth-promoting hormones are routinely used in cattle production in the United States and Canada: the natural steroids estradiol, testosterone and progesterone, and the synthetic hormones zeranol, trenbolone acetate and melengestrol acetate. At slaughter, not all of these hormones have been metabolized.
Diethyl stilbestrol was also used in this country from 1954 to 1979, when it was banned after tests showed that minks fed chicken waste containing DES became infertile.
The Food and Drug Administration limits how much hormone residue is permissible in beef. Those limits may need to be reexamined if Swan's findings can be confirmed, Vom Saal said.
The use of these hormones in beef was banned in Europe in 1988, and the United States has disputed the EU's attempts to ban imports of U.S. beef containing hormones.
Studies in rodents have shown that even a trace of estrogen in the uterus from food can affect an offspring's sperm count, but no one has previously tried to study the question in humans.
Swan and her colleagues studied 387 partners of pregnant women in five U.S. cities, including Los Angeles. Each man provided a sperm sample and his mother filled out a questionnaire about her food consumption during pregnancy.
Swan concedes that women may have difficulty recalling their diets more than two decades earlier, but pregnancy may be an exception. "When you are pregnant, you are very aware of what you eat," she said.
The mothers were asked how often they ate beef and other meats. On average, they ate beef about 4– times per week, and other meats much less frequently.
They found that, in general, the more beef a woman ate, the lower her son's sperm count. For women who ate beef at least seven times a week, the son's sperm averaged 24.3% below normal. And even though those sons produced a pregnancy, they were three times as likely to have consulted a fertility doctor.
The researchers found no link to the mother's smoking, employment outside the home or the number of children she had. There was not enough data on other meats to reveal a potential association.
Schettler noted that there was room for a lot of inaccuracies in the mother's recall of her diet, "but what that tends to do is bias the study toward not finding anything. So the fact that she found [a relationship] was kind of a surprise to me."
The finding applies only to North American women, Swan said, because beef-producing practices vary widely elsewhere.
Swan emphasized that the study needs to be confirmed, adding that it is too soon to recommend that pregnant women not eat beef. But if a pregnant woman wants to be cautious, she said, she could switch to organic beef or other high-protein food.
from The Los Angeles Times
CLEARWATER, FLORDIA - Lawrence Roach agreed to pay alimony to the woman he divorced, not the man she became after a sex change, his lawyers argued in an effort to end the payments.
But the ex-wife's attorneys argued Tuesday that the operation doesn't alter the agreement.
Less than a week after commissioners in nearby Largo drew national attention by firing the city manager after he announced he was a transsexual, lawyers for Roach and his ex-wife grappled in another transsexual rights case that delves into relatively uncharted legal territory.
Only a 2004 Ohio case has addressed whether or not a transsexual can still collect alimony after a sex change, those involved say.
"There is not a lot out there to help us," Circuit Judge Jack R. St. Arnold said.
Roach and his wife, Julia, divorced in 2004 after 18 years of marriage. The 48-year-old utility worker agreed to pay her $1,250 a month in alimony. Since then, Julia Roach, 55, had a sex change and legally changed her name to Julio Roberto Silverwolf.
"It's illegal for a man to marry a man and it should likewise be illegal for a man to pay alimony to a man," said John McGuire, one of Roach's attorneys. "When she changed to man, I believe she terminated that alimony."
Silverwolf did not appear in court Tuesday and has declined to talk about the divorce. His lawyer, Gregory Nevins, said the language of the divorce decree is clear and firm - Roach agreed to pay alimony until his ex-wife dies or remarries.
"Those two things haven't happened," said Nevins, a senior staff attorney with the national gay rights group Lambda Legal.
Arnold found fault with several of Roach's legal arguments and noted that appeals courts have declined to legally recognize a sex change in Florida when it comes to marriage. The appellate court "is telling us you are what you are when you are born," Arnold said.
An Ohio appeals court ruled in September 2004 that a Montgomery County man must continue to pay alimony to his transsexual ex-wife because her sex change wasn't reason enough to violate the agreement.
Roach, who has since remarried, said he has been unable to convince state and federal lawmakers to tackle the issue. He said he will continue to fight.
The case is the second transsexual rights showdown in Pinellas County in less than a week. On Friday, city commissioners voted 5-2 to fire Largo's city manager, Steve Stanton, after he announced he was a transsexual.
from The Associated Press
If you visit John McCain's MySpace page (as of 9am PST Tuesday morning), you will notice an interesting announcement from him. He's apparently reversed his position on gay marriage as well as revealed a bias towards attractive lesbians.
Why would a presidential candidate make such an important announcement on his MySpace page?
The answer? He wouldn't.
But I would.
You see, John McCain's people commandeered my world-renowned MySpace design template and did a few things wrong:
1. They did not credit me for the template, even though the template explicitly requested credit.
2. They used my own unmodified imagery, specifically for the "Contacting John McCain" table.
3. As if #2 wasn't bad enough, the McCain crew is actually pulling their image directly from my server on each page load. So every time someone visits the McCain MySpace page, my bandwidth is being used to deliver part of the page! Bad McCain!
So...
Numerous people have written me over the last few weeks to tell me that McCain has been using my code, but up until I realized he was pulling images from my server, I didn't really care. A lot of celebrities including Ryan "Van Wilder" Reynolds and the beautiful Nelly Furtado use my code and I'm totally cool with it.
But then I read the article in today's Newsweek about how politicians are all setting up MySpace pages in order to "connect" with younger audiences. McCain's MySpace page is listed, as are the pages from several other candidates. I think the idea of politicians setting up MySpace pages and pretending to actually use them is a bit disingenuous, so I figured it was time to play a little prank on Johnny Mac.
Luckily, I had already set up a special .htaccess rule on my server which served my real "contact me" image if the image was referenced from my own MySpace page, and served up a sample image if it was served from anywhere else. This is the whole reason I even figured out what was going on. I had my real image in cache and upon loading McCain's page, the real image showed up (including my special note that said "NO REQUESTS FOR DESIGN HELP PLEASE"). Thinking it was weird that McCain would get any requests for design help, I immediately realized what happened.
So, the only thing necessary to effectively commandeer McCain's page with my own messaging was to simply replace my own sample image on my server with a newly created sample on my server. No server but my own was touched and no laws were broken. The immaculate hack.
Abortion? The Iraq War? Probably too heavy to joke about. Gay marriage seemed like a more of a non-lethal subject to center the prank around.
So with a few minutes in Photoshop and a quick FTP, a new John McCain was born...
...and The Straight-Talk Express isn't just for straight people anymore.
from News Vine / Mike Davidson
Standing naked from the waist up, save for a borrowed cowboy hat, in front of a three-judge panel is not the way I would ideally spend a Saturday afternoon.
But it is, after all, Harlequin Enterprises first-ever open audition for cover models. And as one of the withered-looking guys who the romance novel company has been trying to avoid emblazoning on their books, I’ve decided to shoulder the responsibility of representing the bone racks of the world.
This is the second day of a two-day audition. The preceding afternoon, the judges had seen all professional models as is typical for Harlequin. Today marks the first time an everyday Joe like me could walk up and take a shot at being immortalized by the company’s creative design team.
Since I’ve proven immune to the effects of lifting weights time and again, and spend the bulk of my time writing rather than, say, chainsawing trees or building houses, at this point I hardly have a shot at being selected. But I stand here in the closed-off backroom of Powershouse Casting, posing with a cowboy hat and awaiting judgment on my 6-foot-two-inch tall, 160-pound frame nonetheless.
“This is so great, because you’re pretty much exactly what we were trying to avoid,” says Blake Morrow, one of the judges, and an art director with Harlequin, while choking back laughter. “Hit the gym man, and we’ll see.”
Apparently my efforts earlier in the day to disguise myself as one of the über-men the company is hunting for had been in vain. After adopting a disguise made of wool socks, my thickest sweater, frayed jeans, a GWG chord jacket and leather hiking boots, I prepared with some push-ups, and read the sports section of the newspaper while sipping an overpoweringly bitter cup of coffee.
Then on the drive to the audition, I blasted the Black Crowes Shake Your Money Maker, and wondered if any of these exercises would better my chances. Apparently not.
Another of the judges seated in the room is Deborah Peterson, Harlequin’s creative director, who has said her company is facing a “serious problem” with finding muscular guys to place on the company’s book covers, because the trend these days at modeling agencies is to staff teenage-looking clients, who are lanky like me.
“A guy I shot earlier this year, now is thinner,” Mr. Morrow recalls about one particular professional model.
“We didn’t even recognize him and we were shocked because he was so skinny,” Ms. Peterson added. “I mean he looked really good on his [modeling] card, but he’d probably lost about 20 pounds.”
“At times, we were digitally thickening guys up,” Mr. Morrow says. “You know, just taking the biceps and pushing them further.
“You know what? With a little bit of liquefying, I think that I could totally put you up,” meaning Mr. Morrow would have to essentially graft my face onto a completely fabricated, digitized body in order to cast me as a believable subject for one of his covers.
“Most of the heroes are actually older than you,” Ms. Peterson explains about the books’ lead male characters, since I’m 28. “Most of them are in their 30s, and they tend to be cowboys and construction workers.”
After putting my disguise back on and thanking the judges for letting me waste their time, I speak with Jennifer Terk -- a casting assistant at Powerhouse -- in the agency’s waiting room at the front of the building. She has greeted the 50 or so would-be models, some from as far away as St. Catherines, Ont., who have braved the rain to audition today.
“When you get the actual models coming in, they have a much different attitude than normal, everyday workmen, who have more personality,” she says. “Today’s been a lot more fun. People are just being who they are; it’s not so much of a cover.”
One of the dozen-or-so guys waiting to take their shirt off for the judges is Ken Dixon, 41. Built like a running back, he owns a local personal fitness business, probably outweighs me by 50 pounds, and will no doubt hear a much different reaction from the judges than the laughter I got.
“I’ve always trained. You know, love the working out thing. And I’ve always wondered why these guys who are the epitome of male just lack that physique?” says Mr. Dixon, who came to the audition on the advice of a female friend.
“I mean, it’s my business man, I love it. I think the more muscle the better, within reason,” he says, adding: “Having a neck too big so that blood doesn’t get to your brain, that’s never good either. Some brains are always an asset.”
from The National Post
here!, America’s premium gay television network, is pleased to announce the completion of principal photography on the upcoming feature Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven, a gothic, refreshingly alternative adaptation of the classic horror tale. The film, directed by cult horror icon David DeCoteau (The Brotherhood, Leather Jacket Love Story), makes its debut on here! this summer.
“With The Raven, we are excited to present an intriguing take on the classic poem,” said Stephen P. Jarchow, Co-Founder and Chairman of here! Networks. “The Raven takes the conventions of a genre in shocking and provocative directions.”
Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven, from a screenplay by Matthew Jason Walsh (The Brotherhood), puts a new spin on the gloomy and macabre proceedings of the classic Poe story. The film centers on a group of young men and women in Britain who throw an extravagant party at an eerie mansion said to be the site of an infamous mass-murder. When the festivities are cut short by an ominous visitor, all hell breaks loose. As the murderer begins picking off the party participants one-by-one, old grudges resurface and new suspicions arise, making the entire affair a deadly night to remember.
DeCoteau shot The Raven in Johannesburg, South Africa and London with well known cinematographer Vincent G. Cox, BSC (Hotel Rwanda, Creatures the World Forgot). The film features music courtesy of composer Richard Band (Puppet Master, Re-Animator). The film stars a cast of exciting young actors, as well as legendary British actor Richard Johnson (The Haunting, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider) as the voice of The Raven.
“South Africa is the only country in the world where protection of its LGBT citizens against discrimination based their sexual orientation is enshrined in its constitution. It was a thrill for me to make The Raven in this progressive country where same-sex marriage is now legal,” says DeCoteau.
DeCoteau’s Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven is the first in a series of Poe-themed films that DeCoteau will shoot for here!. Next up for the director is the adaptation Edgar Allan Poe’s House of Usher, based on the classic Poe story “The Fall of the House of Usher.”
Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven is part of a substantial rollout of original programming that here! will bring to its audience during the remainder of 2007. Recent and upcoming here! original films, series and specials include: The DL Chronicles, an award-winning series focusing on the diverse stories of men of color who by consequence and by choice, live sexually duplicitous and secret lifestyles; The Lair, a provocative and sexy vampire horror series; Dante’s Cove, ranked “Best Soap of the Year” by The Advocate; the critically acclaimed Shock To The System: A Donald Strachey Mystery, the second installment in the series of original films starring Chad Allen as a gay private investigator; the provocative six-part docu-series Lesbian Sex and Sexuality, an unblinking look inside the world of lesbian culture from award-winning producer Katherine Linton; and the original film Shelter, an indie romantic drama about love, family and trying to stay true to yourself.
from here!Network
CONNECTICUT - The director of a museum where "The Stepford Wives" was filmed is alleging that her gay colleagues created a hostile work environment, including one who poked her in the eye and another who showed her graphic pictures from a gay Web site.
Marjorie St. Aubyn, executive director of the Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum in Norwalk, says the incidents were part of a campaign to force her to resign. She also said her car was vandalized and she was threatened with poisoning.
St. Aubyn filed a discrimination complaint last month. The museum's board voted this month not to renew her contract, which ends Saturday.
"What appears to have happened is that once my client had some problems with one of the gay members of the staff, they all took umbrage at it," Craig Dickinson, St. Aubyn's attorney, said Monday. "It got very ugly."
Christopher Cooke, chairman of the museum's board of directors, denied the allegations.
"I am stunned by these things," Cooke said. "I have no knowledge of any of this being true."
Cooke said the decision not to renew St. Aubyn's contract was not related to her discrimination complaint. He declined to say how he voted, but said the decision apparently stemmed from St. Aubyn's lack of experience as a curator at a time when the museum plans renovations.
Experts say such a complaint is unusual.
"I think it tells us no person is immune and it's everyone's responsibility to be mindful of the work environment," said Paula Brantner, program director at Workplace Fairness, a nonprofit group that promotes employee rights.
St. Aubyn, a heterosexual who became executive director of the 62-room Victorian mansion in 2001, filed a complaint with the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities alleging age, gender and "sexual preference" discrimination.
St. Aubyn, 60, says she did a good job, attracting "The Stepford Wives" and other projects to film the site and boost its revenue. The "Stepford Wives" remake, starring Nicole Kidman, was filmed partly at the mansion in 2003.
But she says the museum took no action after one colleague showed her the graphic photos and the other assaulted her by poking her in the eye with his finger.
Telephone messages were left for her colleagues.
St. Aubyn accused Cooke of threatening to fire her if she did not withdraw the assault charges.
Cooke said St. Aubyn filed a police report three months after the alleged assault. He said the case apparently was dismissed, but Dickinson says it's pending.
"I did not interfere with any prosecution," Cooke said. "That's an absolute lie."
Dickinson said his client is seeking compensation. He said he believes the complaint played a role in the board's decision not to retain her.
from The Wilton Villager
An Army recruiter is in hot water after taking part in a war of racial and anti-gay words with a Jersey City resident who had simply posted his resume on a Web site in search of a job. Corey Andrew, an openly gay black man said the heated exchange began in late February after the recruiter responded to his resume displayed on CareerBuilder.com.
U.S. Army recruiter Sgt. Marcia Ramode wrote to Andrew from her official military e-mail address, but after Andrew said he wasn't interested in joining the Army, he did probe the recruiter on the Army's policy on gay and lesbian soldiers. The fireworks set off when he revealed he's openly gay.
Ramode told Andrew that being gay made him unqualified, and that it was "disgusting and immoral."
"In any other corporate structure in America, an e-mail like this going around in an office building would result in termination immediately," Andrew said.
But the message that struck the strongest chord with Andrew was when Ramode wrote: "GO BACK TO AFRICA AND DO YOUR GAY VOODOO LIMBO TANGO AND WANGO DANCE AND JUMP AROUND AND PRANCE AND RUN ALL OVER THE PLACE HALF NAKED THERE. ... THAT'S WHERE YOU BELONG"
To say Andrew, a musician who is a copywriter by trade, was shocked would be an understatement. "I thought she was absolutely out of her mind," Andrew said.
Andrew admits he lost his cool at times during the exchange and shot back at Ramode, taking shots at her for spelling and grammatical errors, but also told her after he'd found she was Native American to "take that to your next rain dance."
The spokesman for an advocacy group for gay members of the military told CBS 2 that action should be taken against Ramode. "She should be relieved from her duty. She was not just homophobic, she was also racist. And if that's the public voice the Army wants to put out there, then shame on them," said Steve Ralls, a director of communications for the Service Members Legal Defense Network.
Sgt. Douglas Smith, a public affairs officer for the Army said Ramode's comments are being investigated. "The command expects its recruiters to conduct themselves in a professional manner in all dealings with potential applicants and members of the public. We are ambassadors for America's Army," Smith added.
Officials say for now Ramode is still working in the military, but not in recruiting. Andrew is hoping she'll be removed from the post for good, especially for violating the Department of Defense's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy in which recruiters are barred from asking applicants about their sexual orientation.
"She's telling me that 'don't ask, don't tell' meant racism. It meant social injustice. It meant sexual discrimination and bigotry," Andrew said.
from WCBS
The bungalow at Pacific Coast Highway and Cress Street used to be a happy hour beacon in Laguna Beach. Young men holding hands, Will-and-Grace types, the occasional gaggle of curious straights, the random lesbian couple—all would gather on weekends at Woody's at the Beach, a cottage-y gay bar. By midnight, the party would spread down the block to the venerable Boom Boom Room, with its dancing and drag queens, and to Bounce, a smaller joint across the street.
Sometimes neighbors complained. Sometimes tourists gawked and hollered. But the scene, like the town's art galleries and surf shops, was part of the area's character and history. Before Laguna Beach was conjuring images of drama-prone TV teens and oceanfront mansions, it was the city that elected America's first openly gay mayor. Its incidence of AIDS was, for a time, among the highest per capita in the nation. The Boom Boom Room is where Rock Hudson and Paul Lynde and Bette Midler once partied. Woody's, under one owner or another, had been gay for two generations.
The block-long promenade between them was like a miniature West Hollywood in the heart of once-conservative Orange County, and locals insisted the town wouldn't be itself if it went away.
Then the Boom Boom Room was sold to a billionaire with plans to eventually turn the site into a boutique hotel. Within a year, the owners of Woody's got an offer to cash out. A family-owned Mexican restaurant took over the space. Down went the fence that hid the back patio. In came the highchairs. When the new Avila's El Ranchito opened last month, leaving the Boom, as it is locally known, to boom alone into an uncertain future on its side of the highway, the block took on the feel of both a beginning and an ending.
And now, though the margaritas at the new place are both popular and delicious, the talk of the town is what will become of the local gay scene. Or, as a quipster at a coffeehouse put it one recent morning: "Will the last gay man in Laguna please turn out the lights?"
Laguna Beach isn't alone in its evolution. From South Beach to San Francisco, progress and economics are creating similar debates.
Though gay neighborhoods are thriving in some cities—Houston, for example—other, more settled enclaves are changing fast. The Castro district in San Francisco has had to make room for more and more straight families. In West Hollywood, straight college kids have infiltrated gay bars, sometimes by the busload, and one of the biggest concerns is what a city official has termed "heterosexualization."
Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, has watched the development with mixed feelings. "The loss of these enclaves does hurt and is something to be deeply concerned about," he says.
On the other hand, much of the change is being driven by inexorable forces. The Internet, he explains, has made it less important for gays and lesbians to go to special bars and communities to meet each other. And the once-blighted neighborhoods that were settled by gays—often because they felt unwelcome elsewhere—now are so gentrified, in many cases, that younger people can't afford them.
"Property values go up and straight families move in and gay people move on," Foreman says, "either because they want to capitalize on their investment or simply can't afford to live there anymore."
And underlying it all may be an even bigger factor: the power of acceptance, says UCLA demographer Gary Gates. The post-HIV era and the debate over same-sex marriage, he says, have brought about a major shift in public attitudes and "a fairly big coming-out process."
As a senior research fellow at UCLA's Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy, Gates published an analysis of recent U.S. Census data. Between 2000 and 2005, he says, the census showed a 30% increase in the number of same-sex couples, and a big part of the reason appears to be that these couples felt freer to report their existence. In some states in the Midwestern heartland, for example, the increase was as much as 81%.
The data, Gates says, paint a more diverse picture than ever before of the nation's gay and lesbian population—and present a far more diverse map of where they are living. Among other things, the numbers show an apparent out-migration of same-sex couples from gay enclaves such as San Francisco into less expensive suburbs and nearby cities such as San Jose, Oakland and Berkeley.
In Orange County, gay organizations report similar movement: "The gayest town in Orange County is still overwhelmingly Laguna," says Jon Stordahl, vice chair of the board of directors of the Center Orange County, a gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender service organization. "But the second-gayest is Aliso Viejo, a new community just over the hill with more entry-level housing."
Gay night life has changed too, Stordahl says. Though several of the county's gay-only bars have closed in the last year, they have been supplanted by suburban clubs in Orange, Irvine and Costa Mesa that have reached out to their new market with special nights for gay patrons.
"Success comes at a price," he says, "and part of that success is that the old institutions that catered to us because we had no place to go—maybe we don't need so much anymore."
That's slim comfort for Fred Karger, who during a recent lunch hour sat in a booth at what used to be Woody's, eating a chicken quesadilla. No, he is not the last gay man in Laguna—the 2000 census shows only four cities in California with a higher proportion of same-sex households. But he's worried: "You're not going to have people moving in if there's no life here—no gay life."
Karger is a 57-year-old retired marketing and public relations consultant who has split his time between Los Angeles and Laguna Beach for a decade. When word got out last year that the Boom Boom Room might close, he founded an organization called Save the Boom!!! to do something about it. Last month, the group presented the City Council with nearly 6,000 signatures on a petition begging the city to intercede and keep the bar open.
The council expressed sympathy but took no action; the bar is expected to stay in business at least through this summer. The permitting for the new project could take several years, during which he hopes the new owner can be persuaded to keep the Boom Boom Room alive.
Still, Karger and others say, there is more at stake in Laguna Beach than buff guys and cold beers, and it's not a gay-or-straight worry. The fear of too much change too quickly has, in recent years, become a sort of official town motif. As recently as a decade ago, Laguna Beach could regard itself as a bohemian hangout, more Bolinas than Bel-Air. Now when tourists think of the town, they're more likely to picture rich reality-show kids than alternative lifestyles and artists.
The median home price has risen to $1.5 million. Boogie boards make way for Botox parties at the high school's annual silent auction. And the new Lagunans—the ones investing millions of dollars in their tear-down beach shacks—aren't as tolerant of bars in general as were the less uptight old-timers.
Joel Herzer, the former owner of Woody's, says a key reason he decided to sell—aside from his desire to spend more time in Palm Springs, where his partner lives and gay business is thriving—was a push by surrounding homeowners to ban nonresidential parking, which would have profoundly impacted his business.
"People move to this little beach community and say they don't want it to change, and then the first thing they do is try to make it into Mission Viejo," he says.
Thus, Karger's quest to save the granddaddy of Laguna's gay bars—an offbeat one maybe, but then again, his adopted community once was an offbeat place. And when a town like Laguna Beach loses its gay soul, he asks, who'll be left to save it from total straightness?
He pauses as the lunch plates are cleared by a young gay waiter who jokes that he hasn't been to the Boom Boom Room since the days when he'd sneak in as a teenager. In the background, a toddler shouts—"BABABABABA!!"—at his mother and father at the next table.
In the lunch-hour sunshine, it's hard to remember what this place looked like when it was still Woody's, before it became just a nice lunch spot somewhere between where we're going and where we've been.
from West Magazine
Mike Jones needs to go away. Fifteen minutes ago.
Has there been a more shameless grab for fame than the aging prostitute/masseur/drug liaison's ongoing effort to parlay his exposure of now-disgraced evangelist Ted Haggard for his own aggrandizement?
Jones has been on an ongoing campaign of self-promotion designed to paint himself as some kind of a hero/victim, when he could just as easily be seen as nothing but a hooker with a heart for gold.
Jones made the news three times just last week: First for appearing with sleaze-talker Montel Williams, then for auctioning the massage table on e-Bay that he used to oil up Haggard. Then for e-Bay's decision to yank the auction from its site.
To me, Haggard is the worst kind of religious hypocrite. The former head of a 14,000-strong Colorado Springs megachurch and president of the 30 million-member National Association of Evangelicals was a staunch opponent of the statewide referendum that would have provided basic legal rights for same-sex couples.
But Jones sent Haggard - and any chance of Referendum I's passage - down the toilet by accusing Haggard just six days before the election with paying him for three years of meth-fueled sex. (Haggard admits only to massages and buying drugs from Jones.)
Pro-I Mayor John Hickenlooper's election message of "It's not marriage, it's fairness" had been carefully tailored to emphasize equal legal rights and responsibilities, mostly to benefit long-term, monogamous, same-sex couples.
Jones thought shining a light under Haggard's bushel so close to the election would bolster I's chances, but it more likely torpedoed it: His tawdry tale introduced stereotypical images into voters' minds intertwining homosexuality with drugs and prostitution and seedy, back-alley sex. Goodbye, I. But at least Haggard had the decency to go away.
Jones hired a publicist.
I am not making this up: In December, I was pitched the chance to sit with Jones through a performance of Boulder's Dinner Theatre's "Crazy for You." Seriously: Offering up Jones to a theater critic is scraping the bottom of the barrel.
Then last month I was invited to a screening of the documentary "Conviction" at the Skylark Lounge. It tells the story of three Dominican nuns who staged a peaceful protest against the Iraq war and served federal prison sentences of up to four years.
"As an amusing bonus," the press release said, "Pastor Ted Haggard is featured throughout the film to explain why supporting war is the genuine Christian choice. Of course, nobody knew what the future held for him when the film was made."
And so who did they line up to host the screening and lead the discussion afterward? Mike Jones, described in the press release as "Ted Haggard's former 'business associate."'
That turned my stomach.
This film was the story of three courageous people imprisoned for acting on their beliefs - hosted by a man whose entire life had been conducted in opposition to the teachings of any church.
It's not that Jones is evil - he's just offensive. And icky.
This sordid affair has left a trail of victims, starting with Haggard's family and all those who put their faith in a flawed, tormented man.
The only decent thing Jones can do now is take a cue from Haggard and go away - before he proves to be the bigger hypocrite.
from The Denver Post / John Moore
ATLANTA - Sara Wheeler's life has become a contradiction.
Once a proud lesbian, she's now a pariah in the gay community.
Once in a committed relationship with a female partner, she's rethinking her sexuality.
And now she's doing something she once would have considered unthinkable - arguing that gays don't have the legal right to adopt children.
Wheeler is coming to grips with the fact that she's become an outcast for taking this step in a custody fight for her child. But she says that isn't what her fight is about: "It's about motherly rights."
Wheeler, 36, and her partner, Missy, decided to start a family together and share the Wheeler last name. In 2000, Sara Wheeler gave birth to a son, Gavin, through artificial insemination. Two years later, they decided Missy Wheeler should adopt the child and legally become his second parent.
Georgia law doesn't specifically say whether gay parents can adopt a child, so the decision was up to a judge in the Atlanta area's DeKalb County. After an adoption investigator determined that both partners wanted it, the judge cleared the request.
The couple's relationship later soured. Missy Wheeler wouldn't comment for this story, but her attorney, Nora Bushfield, said Sara became involved with someone else and wouldn't let Missy and Gavin see each other.
Sara Wheeler acknowledged the other relationship, saying "regardless of my action, it doesn't make me a bad mother."
Sara and Missy Wheeler had split by July 2004, and Missy was fighting for joint custody of the boy.
The two sides do agree about one thing: The case is about a mother's rights.
"Everybody seems to forget we're not talking about lesbian rights," Missy Wheeler's attorney says. "We're talking about a child who's been bonded with a mother."
Sara Wheeler made the legal argument that, since nothing in Georgia law specifically allowed gay adoption, the adoption should be tossed out.
Her first lawyers warned her the case could set gay rights back a century.
She hired a new attorney and asked the DeKalb County court to toss the adoption that she had previously pushed for, claiming it should never have been approved because it runs afoul of state law.
News of the tactic whipped up Atlanta's gay community, one of the largest in the South. Lambda Legal, a gay rights group, made a legal filing with the Georgia Supreme Court supporting Missy Wheeler. "There's something about this case that's just tragic," said Greg Nevins, a lawyer for the group.
Laura Douglas-Brown, editor of Southern Voice, the city's main gay newspaper, penned a column accusing Sara Wheeler of "self-hating."
"We owe it to each other not to lash out in ways that damage the entire gay community," she wrote. "Your own family may be destroyed, but don't destroy ours, too."
Sara said she felt like she had no choice.
"I'm not doing anything else a mother wouldn't do to fight for her son," she said. "Some people may think it's the unthinkable, but if they were put in my shoes, they'd do the same thing."
It didn't go so well. Her lawsuit seeking to throw out the adoption was rejected by the DeKalb County judge and then the state Court of Appeals.
Then the Georgia Supreme Court, in a 4-3 vote in February, declined to hear the case. Only months earlier the court had upheld the state's constitutional ban on gay marriage, which Georgia voters overwhelmingly approved in 2004.
Justice George H. Carley, who voted with the minority in the gay adoption case, declared he was "at a loss to comprehend" why the court refused to consider a case of such "great concern, gravity and public importance."
Sara Wheeler is asking the state Supreme Court to reconsider her case. Such a request rarely succeeds, but the narrow vote gives her hope that one justice might be swayed.
"There's nothing that states this is an acceptable adoption," she said. "If Georgia wants to allow it, it needs to make proper laws."
As the legal motions flew back and forth, the two women established a workable routine. The 7-year-old boy goes to Missy Wheeler's place every other weekend and on Tuesday nights. The rest of the time Sara Wheeler ferries him to karate practice, plays tag with him outside her apartment and takes him out for pizza every Friday.
The case has taken a toll on Sara.
Aside from a few gay friends, she has turned away from the gay community. She no longer dates, and doesn't go to gay clubs or events any more. She said she is rethinking whether she is still a lesbian or whether she should abandon dating for good.
"I just don't feel comfortable in that scene," she says. "I'm just trying to figure it all out."
She knows she's seen as a betrayer; but in a sense, she feels she was the one betrayed.
"Before I'm anything - gay or lesbian - I'm a mother," she says. "And the most important thing is to make sure my son has a relationship with his biological mother."
from The Associated Press
For one gay punk band, it's MySpace: the final frontier.
Like so many struggling, independent artists, Toronto-based Kids on TV can't live without this cyber-venue for the networking and freebie advertising it affords.
But, as with any relationship, dependence has its downside: the Kids have become slaves to MySpace. They're at the mercy of its sensitive cyber censors and are nervous their setup could be yanked at any time.
The band, which encourages a "pro-sex culture" without archaic 20th-century "hang-ups" about sex, has three pages up and running right now.
Band members are trying to triple their luck of staying alive on MySpace, after their flagship page was spontaneously deleted a couple of weeks ago. Kerr says the pages show the same material as the original.
They're plastered with pictures of band members wrapped in tin foil and men in tight underwear.
"We're afraid, we're nervous, but we need MySpace to survive," says band member Scott Kerr, also known by his stage name, Minus Smile.
"It allows us to reach people we would never normally be able to reach. Our label can't fund us. We do our own promotion, we don't have the budget for anything else.
"It's like an electric shock to find it's gone."
On March 1, on the eve of the band's six-week European tour, the Kids on TV MySpace page, which was up and running smoothly for two years, was taken down – just like that, out of nowhere.
"We got an email telling us it was gone," Kerr says. "We lost contact with everyone ... we were cut off from 14,000 friends. We had no way of contacting people we were doing business with. It was all gone."
Kerr says the page didn't have any nude pictures and wasn't doing anything other pages are, such as plastering pictures of young women making pouty faces and throwing alluring stares out at viewers.
He guesses it may have been deleted because of complaints by MySpace members viewing the page or because of the concept as a whole.
"People complain about the message of our page," Kerr says, noting the page celebrates gay culture and urges people to shed their sexual inhibitions.
After repeated attempts to find out why their page was trashed, the Kids set up a "censorship" page on MySpace, encouraging others who'd also been dumped to speak up.
"We were expecting to get all stripes of people," he says.
They only got stories of deletion and woe from gay artists. But Kerr believes that may be "statistical gay bashing," which isn't actually a crime. Some gay pages may have more "sexually suggestive" material, which is a no-no, according to the MySpace terms of use.
After repeated attempts by the Star to get in touch with MySpace, a communications official emailed a brief response, saying the Internet host is investigating the Kids on TV incident.
According to a form email sent to Kids in response to the band's repeated queries, MySpace says the page was deleted because it was in violation of the terms of use, which prohibits "sexually suggestive imagery," nudity, violence and "offensive subject matter."
Kerr is concerned about MySpace's procedures of pulling the plug on a page without warning.
The terms of use are broad, he says, and aside from publishing adult lyrics to songs such as "C--k Wolf," he hasn't crossed the lines of decorum.
Kids won't say what their next move is or whether they're considering litigation.
"We're no different than any other (page)," Kerr says.
"In our case, we did play by the rules. It's not to raise a fuss. It's just to survive."
from The Star
