BENT! The Gay News Blog

UK: Controversial gay rights charity video gets over 45K views on the net!


Sourced from:

Emily Chan
14th July 2012
Abridged

The ‘Imagine if it were illegal for you to be you?’ campaign is making an impact


What would it be like if it were illegal to be blonde? Or if it were illegal to have blue eyes? Or be bald? Or be taller than 5’10”?

These are the questions asked by LGBT charity The Kaleidoscope Trust in a new video campaign called ‘Imagine if it were illegal for you to be you?’

The Kaleidoscope Trust’s new campaign was launched last Wednesday by Torchwood star and TV presenter John Barrowman, who staged a mock protest in Parliament Square in Westminster while wearing a t-shirt printed with the words “Blue-eyed freak”. Since then, the video has received over 45,000 views on *******. Other celebrity supporters include Elton John, Stephen Fry and Boy George.

It is currently illegal to be gay in a total of 78 countries around the world, and in five of these countries – Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Yemen and Mauritania – the maximum sentence is the death penalty. Ho.mos.exual acts are also punishable by death in some parts of Somalia and Nigeria.

The video, which runs for one and a half minutes, features abusive terms such as “blonde pig” and “blue eyed bitch”, “disgusting” and “it’s not normal”. The film finishes with sounds of physical violence as the police enter a man’s house. We are told at the end: “It should never be a crime to be gay.” These words were used by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a speech delivered last December.

The Kaleidoscope Trust was founded in September 2011 and was the official charity partner of World Pride 2012. The organisation works to promote diversity and to challenge the discrimination and persecution of LGBT people across the world.




USA: Bisexuality of James Dean imagined in provocative new film.



Sourced from:

Greg Hernandez
13th July 2012
Abridged

‘Joshua Tree, 1951: A Portrait of James Dean’


Movie icon James Dean died at 24 without anyone, except those very close to him, knowing very much about his personal life.

'Filmmaker Matthew Mishory has imagined what the star's life was like before he became a household name with the release of Rebel Without a Cause. He has written Joshua Tree, 1951: A Portrait of James Dean which screens at LA Outfest Film Festival on Monday (15 July).

Mishory says he has not made a conventional biographical film.

"Our film has nothing to do with any other film that has been made about James Dean,' he tells Gay Star News. 'As the title suggests, it is a portrait, a moment in time. Our approach was to find the antecedents to a remarkable life and career and to tell that story not by using the language of conventional Hollywood filmmaking but instead by using the language of memories and of dreams.'

The black and white film stars James Preston, best known for the ABC series The Gates. It is set in Los Angeles and has Dean living with a male roommate with whom he is romantically involved. He is also involved with female classmates and older benefactors - all of whom grapple with their inability to hold on to this shooting star.

The writer-director says viewers may be surprised by the Hollywood that is depicted in the film. It was a time, he says, in which the 'Hollywood elite' lived perhaps even more freely than they do now. 'The difference, of course, is that in the early 50s, privacy still existed,'




Ireland: Prime Minister refuses to take view on equal marriage


Sourced from:

Stephen Gray
11^th July 2012
Abridged

The Irish prime minister, the Taoiseach Enda Kenny has said he will not be drawn into taking a position on whether marriage should be available to gay couples before a constitutional convention examines the issue.


Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin had pushed the prime minister for his view after the deputy prime minister made his support for gay marriage rights public earlier this month.

Mr Gilmore is the leader of the Irish Labour Party and serves as Deputy Prime Minister in a coalition government with Mr Kenny’s Fine Gael party.

But responding to the Fianna Fáil leader’s question, Mr Kenny said: “Deputy Martin will not pressurise me as a citizen, or as leader of the Government, into a box-ticking exercise.”

The Deputy Prime Minister Eamon Gilmore had said: “I believe in gay marriage. The right of gay couples to marry is, quite simply, the civil rights issue of this generation, and, in my opinion, its time has come.”

A constitutional convention, which will meet to examine potential changes to the Irish Constitution, will report to the government on the question of marriage rights for gay couples.

1,468 gays and lesbians in Ireland have taken advantage of the country’s new civil partnerships law, which came into force in 2011 gay civil partnerships make up 2.6 percent of registered relationships 448 of the 734 couples who have entered civil partnerships are gay men, 286 lesbian 50 percent of the unions have taken place in Dublin but every county in the country, which has a population of 4.4 million, has had at least one gay partnership.

LOL!

It’s A Quote!

“Can you imagine what it would be like to wake up one morning to discover that it was suddenly illegal for you to be you? That the law said because you had blue eyes, or were short or because you wrote with your left hand you could go to jail.”
~ John Borrowman



LOL!

It’s A Myth!

Myth

Gays and lesbians are primarily white and Anglo-Saxon

Fact

In reality, lesbian, gay and bis.exual people are found among every racial, ethnic, religious and cultural group, at all economic levels of society and in all jobs and professions (Herdt, 1989). The LGBT community is the only "minority that includes all other societal subgroups".

And Finally!