THEGAYUK

Search results for: “ ”

  • OPINION | Stonewall got it wrong Again

    By now I’m sure many of you will have heard about the new anti-gay laws coming into effect in Brunei, the subsequent condemnation around the world and boycott of hotels owned by the Sultan of Brunei, and then Stonewall’s refusal to back such a boycott. I must say I was hugely disappointed with Stonewall… And I still am.

    Acting CEO of Stonewall, Ruth Hunt, has now released a statement saying that the organisation will no longer be using the Dorchester hotel for events and she has apologised for their initial position on this issue. Although I think that Stonewall are now doing the right thing, I feel that it shouldn’t have come after outrage from their supporters. Stonewall is meant to be the leading LGBT charity in the UK, but it has become clear from this incident that they may not necessarily be best placed to be that leading charity. In fact it is my opinion that they have followed where others have led on this issue.

    Stonewall have been holding events at the Dorchester for some time now and that is something that has always bothered me, before the disagreement over boycotting Sultan of Brunei owned hotels. Firstly because only people with a large income can afford to attend anything at the Dorchester, but also because I feel it’s inappropriate for a charity to put on events at such costly venues in the first place. I run my own LGBTQ charity, Push Projects, and would never consider putting on an event at such a place.

    Everything is done at a low cost and takes place at affordable venues. The expense of putting on an event at such pricey places would be better spent directly helping the people the charity exists to represent. But I digress…

    I believe the boycott of hotels owned by the Sultan of Brunei is a positive thing. Although I am all for conversation and working things out by talking, I also feel that boycotts can send powerful messages. This particular boycott is not on a small scale; it is a worldwide campaign that many high profile people and organisations are supporting. With so much backing for a boycott, Stonewall got it completely wrong by stating they would not support it. It demonstrates that they do not represent the majority or LGBT people and their allies. It shows that they are out of touch. The superior tone of Ruth Hunt’s article in the Telegraph certainly gave that impression.

    Today’s announcement that Stonewall will no longer be using the Dorchester hotel is a case of too little, too late. It feels more like damage limitation rather than a sincere gesture. Something appears to be wrong at Stonewall and it’s clear they need to take a hard look at themselves and how they represent the LGBT community. Perhaps a change at the top is in order. They claim to be listening. Will they listen to this?

    Opinions expressed in this article may not reflect those of THEGAYUK, its management or editorial teams. If you’d like to comment or write a comment, opinion or blog piece, please click here.

  • Could Bad Smells Be Causing Homophobia?

    With Northern Ireland’s LGBT fight for marriage equality still hanging in the balance an interesting culprit is being eyed up.

    Last month the same-sex marriage motion was defeated 51-43 in Northern Ireland, but there maybe more than just religious traditions and conservativism that is stopping the UK from becoming entirely same-sex marriage equal. Sewage and Bad Smells.

    According to a new report, a team of psychologists and political scientists headed by: Thomas G. Adams, John C. Blanchar and Patrick A Stewart, from the University of Arkansas have found that people are less likely to support gay marriage if they’re in a smelly enviroment.

    According to the results which were published in the PLOS ONE journal, ‘Disgust is increasingly seen as playing an important role in the formation and maintenance of political and social attitudes’.

    ‘Self-reported socio-political attitudes were compared between participants in two experimental conditions: 1) an odorless control condition, and 2) a disgusting odor condition. In keeping with previous research, the present study showed that exposure to a disgusting odor increased endorsement of socially conservative attitudes related to sexuality. In particular, there was a strong and consistent link between induced disgust and less support for gay marriage.’

    779 people took part in the experiment, the majority of participants were Caucasian/white self-described Christian and heterosexual.

    Time to get the JPG out boys…

  • Nearly Half Of America Disapproved Of The Michael Sam Kiss

    According to polls and surveys America has never been readier for gay marriage, gay sportsmen – just plain gayness, that is until they kiss.

    Huffington Post has revealed stats that show 47% of Americans thought that EPSN broadcasting the now famous kiss between Michael Sam and his boyfriend Vito Cammisano was inappropriate, even though players kissing their girlfriends and wives is commonplace.

    Up to 20% of people polled would disapprove of their sports team hiring an openly gay player.

    Michael Sam made history last week when he became the first openly gay footballer to be drafted into the NFL.

    The article at Huffington Post goes onto explain:

    “Americans under age 30 had no problem with coverage of the kiss, by a 55 percent to 29 percent margin. Those between ages 30 and 44 were evenly divided: 40 percent said it was appropriate; 39 percent said it was inappropriate. And a majority of older Americans said it was inappropriate, including 52 percent of those between ages 45 and 64, and 69 percent of those 65 and older”.

  • Former Big Brother Star In Coma

    A former contestant of Big Brother in 2009, Rebekah Shelton is currently in a coma, following the discovery of a brain tumour.

    Rebekah Shelton who took part in the tenth series of Big Brother as Rodrigo Lopes is in hospital after doctors found a brain tumour her family have said.

    The Brazillian student, started living life as woman in 2012 two years after starring in the reality show, as has used Twitter to show her transition.

    Taking to Shelton’s official Twitter her family tweeted, ‘The doctors found a head tumour and she is in come [sic]. We cannot speak anymore. Please just pray for our Rebekah’

    In 2012, speaking to Heat Magazine she said, ‘I’ve always felt like I had a woman inside of me, always, but I used to hide it. I’ve always liked make-up, treatments and other womanly things, and I was 18 when I first started experimenting. But early this year I told my best friend Andrea how I was really feeling.

    ‘She encouraged me. When I came back to the UK I started wearing my friends’ clothes first, then I began shopping for them. People in the shops were surprisingly normal about it. Now I go out with a transvestite I made friends with. She’s very glam. We go to straight clubs and get a lot of attention.’

  • Stonewall To No Longer Use Dorchester Hotel

    Stonewall acting Chief Executive has announced that the charity will no longer use the hotel owned by the Sultan of Brunei.

    The UK’s largest LGB charity, Stonewall, was criticised heavily last week after its acting CEO Ruth Hunt said it would not back the boycott on The Dorchester Collection group of hotels owned by the Sultan of Brunei, Hassanal Bolkiah.

    The Sultan of Brunei, has confirmed that he will continue his adoption of a Sharia criminal code in his country.

    This law carries harsh penalties for adultery and sodomy – which could includes death by stoning for homosexuals.

    SHARIA WHAT DOES IT MEAN:
    Islam’s legal system, derived from the Koran
    Informs every aspect of Muslims’ lives
    Islamic jurists issue formal guidance through fatwas, or religious edicts
    Sharia law includes provisions for capital and corporal punishment but modern scholars say getting to that stage can be difficult
    Marriage is treated as a contract in Islam
    From The BBC

    Writing for Pinknews, Hunt said,

    ‘I can confirm that we will not be using the Dorchester for our future events. We simply do not need this distraction from the vital work of promoting respect for the human rights of LGBT people the world over,” she writes.

    Ms. Hunt also apologised on behalf Stonewall, writing:

    ‘We’re sorry that we didn’t anticipate the strength of feeling in the LGBT community, and beyond, and take longer to talk to you about our position and ask what you think. That was a mistake on our part.’

    The boycott on the group, is backed by several high profile people including Ellen DeGeneres, Jay Leno and Richard Branson. The collection includes locations such as London’s The Dorchester and Los Angeles’ The Beverly Hill’s

  • COLUMN | Dying to talk

    I’m afraid that I’ve got some really bad news for you. I’m not usually so blunt but there’s something that I need to tell you. You’re going to die one day. Sorry about that. I know it’s not palatable but it’s going to happen. No one has, as yet, escaped the inevitable. It’s an uncomfortable fact for most of us and one which we, generally, try to avoid thinking about.

    The organisation Dying Matters has been promoting talking about death, forward planning and trying to break down taboos surrounding death. Their recent survey findings are fascinating. Only a third of people have made a will, half of people don’t know what their partner’s funeral wishes are and over 70% of people haven’t given any though to what would happen to their on-line legacy. Future care planning is important too. How can medical professionals decide what treatment to give us if we haven’t made our wishes clearly known about what kind of treatments we’d like to have carried out?

    There are a whole host of additional issues that can present themselves for LGBT people. If you’re in a relationship, is your partner the person nominated to be your next of kin, your advocate or your beneficiary? There are whole hosts of horror stories about bereaved partners who are left homeless, cut out of funeral plans and denied the place they should be entitled to in the pecking order of mourners by resentful and bigoted families. I certainly wouldn’t want that to happen to mine or anyone else’s partner.

    The digital legacy frightens me. I hate the idea that my social media accounts would linger on with mawkish pictures of sad kittens and inept tributes after my death. That’s not my style at all. It may suit some people but isn’t for me. My partner has strict instructions to close the accounts down the minute I croak. He just has to look in the bureau and find the folder marked “Death” to find the will, passwords, explicit instructions and funeral plans. Maybe I’m an extreme example of a control freak but is that so bad?

    Naturally, LGBT people have their own special issues. No one wants a Grindr account loitering in the ether with their preference for ‘hard tops’, after they’ve been hit by a car. What about your collection of European twink porn? Is that something you want your mum to have to sort out for the charity shop along with your barely worn Aussie Bums? Does anyone know which Britney song you want at the funeral and which ex shags you definitely don’t want there?

    Flippancy aside, it’s something that’s worth thinking about. Anyone who’s had an unmarried or non-civil partner-shipped relative or friend die intestate will tell you just how much easier it would have been to sort the post mortem affairs out with a sturdy will in place. Anyone left with a dying relative or friend who has had no idea about what their care or funeral wishes are will tell you how hateful and hard that can be.

    It’s definitely worth checking out the Dying Matters website. It’s not as bleak or painful to read, as you’d think and it’s bloody important. Seriously.

    Read more here: http://dyingmatters.org/

  • GARDEN | May Gardening Tips: May The (Ground) Force Be With You.

    It’s the cusp of summer so now’s the time to go for it! May is a great month, warm breezes herald the coming summer and you’ve probably had your first BBQ by now (albeit wrapped up warm and heading inside as soon as it gets too cold!) Your garden loves this time of year and any early crops you’ve sown may even be ready for your first harvest. Yum

    Don’t sow in one go– Now’s the time to plant in earnest, as always keep an eye on temperatures and uses clouches if necessary. The main thing to remember here is: don’t sow everything at once. Stagger your planting of the same crop, especially if you’re going to be eating it all yourself. Plant a few of each thing you want to grow and then a few more two or three weeks later. This helps to avoid gluts and means you can be eating an interesting and varied diet for the rest of the year.

    Water, water, water – If young plants dry out they can easily die. May can be a deceptively dry month, cloudy and misty days can make you forget to water the plants. The best way I’ve found is to have a watering schedule – I water twice a day, in the morning and evening. Even if there have been showers during the day – just in case. You can usually tell by looking and feeling if the soil is damp enough. Just keep on top of it and everything will be fine.

    Keep on top of your weeding – Weeds grow just as fast as your crops *shakes fist at sky* so make sure you keep getting rid as soon they appear. As with watering get yourself a weeding schedule. Try and get out there as often as you can as the weeds are always competing with your plants for the nutrients in the soil.

    Thinning – Everything you’ve been starting off indoors may now need thinning out. It’s tempting to keep as many sprouts as possible but bear in mind how large the plants can become. If they end up competing for space that will only end up being detrimental to the yield you end up with.

    Sowing seeds outdoors – There are so many great crops that can now go in the ground including – spinach, peas, kale, spring onions, lettuces, carrots, cauliflowers, rocket and runner beans.

    Sowing seeds indoors – Your early batches of indoor sown seeds should mostly be outside now, so clean up those trays and get a new batch on the go. It’s time to get those summery foods in the windowsill. Summer cabbages, chillies, peppers and runner beans will all be ready to go!

    It’s full steam ahead now. This is the time to start marking pages in your recipe books and Googling “things to do with runner beans” because the garden explosion is about to happen and you won’t want to waste a thing.

  • FILM REVIEW | Concussion

    This is the story of a mid-life crisis where a marriage between a lawyer and an ex-real estate house flipper turned housewife who live with their two kids in a comfortable affluent NY suburb starts to get stale. ★★★★

    The housewife busy with running the home, taking Pilate classes with her friends, and hanging out with the other soccer kids’ mums doing the daily school runs etc., is bored out of her head. The same head that gets hit very hard one day when her son accidentally manages to throw a ball at it causing some bloody damage.

    It results in not just concussion but some sort of epiphany that she needs to make some changes to her life.

    The edge that this story has over similar tales of marriage woes is that this couple are lesbians which doesn’t alter the reality of marital disharmony but it makes it take on a whole different resonance.

    Abby goes back to work and buys a Loft in the city to refurbish and flip throwing all her energy into the project. It’s a start, but she is still sexually frustrated as her wife Kate, a divorce lawyer, seems to prefer celibacy. So Abby hooks up with hooker, but the woman she picks from a newspaper ad turns out to be dishevelled drug user and the experience is far from happy, something she confides to Justin her contractor/friend who is working on the loft with her. Justin’s girlfriend just happens to run a call-girl service out of her college dorm and so she insures that Abby gets a very hot date for her next encounter.

    It whets her appetite for sex, but at $800 a pop this is more than she can afford on a regular basis so Justin suggests that maybe the answer would be for her to turn tricks herself. Evidently there is a need for a beautiful older woman… Abby is 42… especially to service young wealthy women looking for an experienced lesbian. It takes time to persuade Abby to decide and even then when she accepts she insists on doing it in her own terms i.e. meeting clients in a coffee shop first. And thus ‘Eleanor’, Abby’s new persona, is born.

    At the beginning most of the clients are indeed young but when Eleanor gets one who is even older and sexually more experienced, she really starts to relish her new role. And then to top it all one of her new clients turns out to be Sam, a married ‘straight’ woman friend from her own town who she has always quietly lusted after, the fantasy of her new life becomes very real indeed.

    Abby insists that ‘Eleanor’ only has a few clients a week so that she can maintain all her usual routines at home, and very conveniently now that the loft is finished she even has a place for her assignations. Her wife Kate is so wrapped up in her work and being the ‘other’ mother at home that she is completely unaware that Abby has created this other life just to get some sexual fulfillment, and even when the penny eventually drops, she really doesn’t want to accept when she sees.

    It’s an intriguing drama that is primarily convincingly real because of exceptional and sensitive performance by Robin Weigert as Abby/Eleanor. She insures that we empathise with her from the very beginning, and although it is essentially all about satisfying her needs there is something very laudable about Eleanor as she goes out of her way to insist that the other women get the fulfillment they are craving too.

    It is an impressive writing/directing debut from Stacie Passon, and it was very beautifully filmed so that the sex scenes were never explicit but extremely erotic. The plot started to waffle slightly towards the end as if it was unsure of how to resolve the drama, but that still doesn’t stop it from being an extremely watchable fine piece.

  • GALLERY: Men Of Tahiti, by Verner Degray

    Noted French photographer Verner Degray shares some intimate photographs of men from Tahiti.

    Verner Degray, 38, born in France, settled ten years ago in Tahiti. Struck by the beauty of the Tahitian boys, he decided to immortalise it on glossy paper, offering artistic nudes of Polynesian men.

    These photos of muscular Tahitians are usually taken in chaotic universes, abandoned hotels, warehouses or garages, to play the contrast between the ugliness of these places and the beauty of the models.

    This photographer is involved in the fight against homophobia and he believes that ‘it is not easy in Tahiti, where religion has a huge influence’. According to him, ‘despite what you may think of this island where you can live in “pareo”, with the myth of the”vahine” here , the nude is “tabu” (Tahitian word by the way…)’ .

    After François Rousseau, Verner Degray was the official photographer for Mister Tahiti 2014 Calendar. He is now making his work known internationally.

     

    To see more of his photography: www.verner-degray.com

    and his making of:

    http://youtu.be/KFWJjmoRa4k

    http://youtu.be/MdE4yQZcAhY

     

  • Gay Country Singer Steve Grand Delays On Album

    US Singer Steve Grand, has delayed his debut album launch.

    The singer who hit fame after releasing single All American Boy has announced that his debut album, funded by a Kickstarter programme, will be delayed for a couple of months.

    Grand managed to raise $326,593 to independently record his album – he initially asked for just $81,000.

    Taking to Facebook the singer said to his fans,

    ‘From day one, I have promised to only give you my best, most honest work, and I intend to uphold that promise even if it means delaying the release of the record to make sure I get it just right,’

  • ALBUM REVIEW | Do It Again – mini album collaboration by Röyksopp and Robyn

    ★★★★ | Do It Again – mini album collaboration by Röyksopp and Robyn

    Do It Again is a superb mix of tracks from the brilliant Norwegian group Röyksopp and the chanteuse from Sweden, Robyn.

    Put the two together and you get a soaring synth soundtrack, interspersed with Robyn’s unique vocals. Röyksopp’s electronic background instantly takes you back to the 80’s, using beats reminiscent of New Order to create tracks that then marry with Robyn’s Metropolis style of vocal to create what feels like a unique experience.

    Monument is nearly 10 minutes long, and uses repetition to great effect, repeating vocals again and again while subtly changing the background beat and chords. Sayit does something similar, melding techno voices with Robyn’s to great effect.

    Do It Again sounds very like old school Robyn – pared back chords, simple but very effective – and her soaring vocals, emphasising lyrics, and making you tap the odd toe along the way. 5 minutes of pure club joy.

    Every Little Thing slows things down, but from the first chord, you know this is pure joy. Robyn’s voice used to great effect, moody and very New Romantic in sound – or maybe thats just me?

    The final track on this mini album is Inside The Idle Hour Club, and again, we return to the nearly 10 minute track, slow to start, mixing sounds as it builds, it is almost orchestral, so many different sounds but with a distinct lack of Robyn’s signature vocals here – she doesn’t dominate, this is a showcase of the music and Robyn takes a back seat.

    Taken as a whole, its a little prog rock at times, a little too earnest maybe as a project – but for all that, it is one pretty brilliant collaboration.

    What could make it better? Why a tour of course – keep your eyes peeled for a joint tour shortly, part Robyn showcase, part Röyksopp showcase, part joint venture.

    As for the album – treat yourslef, and make this part of your collection. I give it 4 stars!

More posts