"When Tyler Clementi told his parents he was gay, two days before he left for Rutgers University in the fall of 2010, he said he had known since middle school.
“So he did have a side that he didn’t open up to us, obviously,” his mother, Jane Clementi, said, sitting in her kitchen here nearly two years later. “That was one of the things that hurt me the most, that he was hiding something so much. Because I thought we had a pretty open relationship.”
In her surprise, she had peppered him with questions: “How do you know? Who are you going to talk to? Who are you going to tell?” Tyler told a friend that the conversation had not gone well. His father had been “very accepting,” he wrote in a text message. “Mom has basically completely rejected me.”
Three weeks later, he jumped off the George Washington Bridge after discovering that his roommate had used a webcam to spy on him having sex and that he had sent out Twitter messages encouraging others to watch.
An international spotlight turned the episode into a cautionary coming-out story, of a young man struggling with his sexuality and the damage inflicted by bullying. . . . . "
It is unfortunate that the Climenti's were not aware of the 2009 TV film, "Prayers For Bobby". The true story of Mary Griffith, gay rights crusader, whose teenage son committed suicide due to her religious intolerance. Perhaps it might have made a difference . . . .
"Sometimes culture doesn’t help. Just as I sat down to write a few notes about something else, I learned that the writer and performer David Rakoff died last night, after a long struggle with cancer. I only knew David in the way some writers know one another in New York: at parties, across lecture halls. Our lengthiest conversations took place at a New Year’s party we attended each year. Once I ran into him at a performance of “Other Desert Cities,” and his e-mail to me about the production made me laugh so hard that there was no point in reviewing it.
But before all that, I met David at Columbia, when it was an all-boys school. We were both students then. This was in the early-to-mid nineteen-eighties, and to say that gay men were interested in, and terrified of, one another back then is to reduce the horror of the time: AIDS, parents checking out on their ill children, fear and loathing of other male bodies mixed in with desire. Back then, I stayed away from David, because of the sadness I saw in his eyes; I didn’t think I could take it. His sadness felt like the sadness I felt wandering through a world of broken bodies, dashed hopes, possibilities extinguished. ....."
Spectacular diving footage of Greg Louganis at the '84 Summer Olympic Games. Greg Louganis wasn't just a Gold Medal diver, he was an artist without equal and is an incredible human being.
"Greg Louganis is openly gay. After he tested positive for HIV in 1988, he recounted his story in a best-selling autobiography Breaking the Surface co-written with Eric Marcus. The book spent five weeks at number one on the New York Times Best Seller list. His story was also documented in the 1996 Showtime movie Breaking the Surface: The Greg Louganis Story"... [Wikipedia]
"Moisés Kaufman and members of New York's Tectonic Theater Project went to Laramie, Wyoming after the murder of Matthew Shepard. This is a film version of the play they wrote based on more than 200 interviews they conducted in Laramie. It follows and in some cases re-enacts the chronology of Shepard's visit to a local bar, his kidnap and beating, the discovery of him tied to a fence, the vigil at the hospital, his death and funeral, and the trial of his killers. It mixes real news reports with actors portraying friends, family, cops, killers, and other Laramie residents in their own words. It concludes with a Laramie staging of "Angels in America" a year after Shephard's death."
The next time you encounter a news report about some 'Christian' preacher ranting about gay people, remember the events portrayed in this moving film. 'The Laramie Project' is about American intolerance, fear and hatred. A cultural hatred based on their narrow, warped interpretation of christianity.
On a technical note, this HBO production is a seamless and near perfect blending of professional actors and TV clips from the time of the incident. Powerful and thought provoking film.
Nearly 60 years have passed since I was first introduced to the poster art of Théophile Steinlen and 'Le Chat Noir' [The Black Cat], an event which I had fogotten until today when I received an email from a friend in California with a link to a video on Youtube.
The year was 1953 and I was stationed at an Army Intelligence school about 40 miles from Boston, Mass. Upon arriving at Fort Devins and being assigned to a two man room for my six months of schooling there, I soon realized that I had fallen in love with my roommate. Fortunately it was mutual.
I was only 19 years old and had never been in a gay relationship before. Completely new territory. As a part of my introduction to the world of gay men, one night Gregg took me to a gay bar in Boston, 'The Black Cat'. Over the large bar was an enormous poster of 'Le Chat Noir' by Steinlen.
Memory and recall is such an odd quality of human beings. Although I haven't thought about this incident of the past for nearly 60 years, it was suddenly as vivid as if it had happened yesterday. . . . . .
..."I made this video 4 months ago just before school was about to start. I was 13. It was a very emotionally dark time in my life. I made the video at 4:00am in the morning; I hadn't been sleeping at night for a long time, too many things going on in my head. I was dreading going back to school and I had not come out to my family yet. Only my closest friends knew. I didn't know how to say what I needed to say. All I could think about were all the bad things that had been happening at school last year, every year for that matter. I just couldn't bare to go through that anymore. I was done being fake happy, pretending hateful words didn't hurt, done hiding it from my family.
So this video was made for my friends that had moved on to High School who were worried for me, to say to them that I was going to take a stand, and to the haters at my middle school that I'm not going anywhere. I am who I am. I posted the video here and told people were to find it. That was it. . . . "
Thank you all, Love and peace to all who are hurting. Jonah Mowry
From the Republican Presidential Debate at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida. a YouTube question regarding 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' from Stepehen Hill, a soldier serving in Iraq, was directed at Rick Santorum.
Hill asked Santorum: “Do you plan to circumvent the progress that has been made for gay and lesbian soldiers in the military?”
[Then, Hill's video was booed by some members of the GOP audience at the debate. It was a disgusting response to a member of the military in Iraq, but what many have come to expect from Republicans.]
Then Santorum answered:
"Any type of sexual activity has absolutely no place in the military. And the fact that they are making it a point to include it as a provision within the military - that we are going to recognize a group of people and give them a special privilege, I think tries to inject social policy into the military and the military's job is to defend our country. We need to give the military, which is all volunteer, the ability to do so in a way that is most efficient and protective of our men and women in uniform and I believe this undermines that ability."
Santorum is so fixated on sexual activity that he doesn't seem to realize that the repeal of DADT was about basic HUMAN EQUALITY. The miliatry should not be discriminating on the basis of sexual ORIENTATION. This DOES NOT mean soldiers can fuck in the barracks or whatever. It doesn't give any gay soldiers free license to molest or sexually harass fellow soldiers. All it does is allow them to SERVE OPENLY.
Why is this so difficult for Rick Santorum to understand? [Of course he is an advocate of teaching 'Intelligent Design' in schools, which is an indication that his mental facilicties are not too well honed. . . . . ]
A very special moment when the 'faceless' military member of the YouTube channel Are You Surprised shows his face for the first tiime, and calls his father in Alabama to tell him that he has a gay son. [He is currently stationed in Germany.]
During the phone call, I was most impressed by the father's immediate and unconditional love for his son, gay or straight. I also suspect that the father already had an inkling that his son might be gay. Parents somehow just know these things . . .
I also know that 'coming out' to one's parents can be very diffucult. I recall that I attempted to have this conversation with my mother [my father had died when I was seven years old] for some time after I suspected / knew that I was gay, but was never able to do so.
Then I entered the military when I was 18 with that particular subject never having been discussed. I guess I sort of hoped that the 'gay' portion of my personality would just disappear of its own accord while in the military. Quite the contrary, in that rather soon after enlisting, I fell in love with Gregg, the fellow who was to be my roomate during my training at Ft. Devins, Mass. Fortunately it was mutual and we decided to spend the rest of our lives together when we were discharged form the military.
After our schooling at Ft. Devins we were sent to the National Defense Language school in Monterey, California for a year of language study. Though we had known each other for nearly a year, I finally took Gregg home to meet my mother towards the end of our language training. It was one of those fortunate experiences in that my mother and Gregg became instant friends.
On the second night home, we had gone to a Greek Restaurant and Gregg, with number of other men, was dancing a tradtional folk dance. My mother had been watching him dance, when she suddely leaned over and said to me, "I couldn't help but notice that you two are very much in love." In essence, I had just been 'outed' by my mother — and in the same breath she announced that she very much approved of my choice of a lifetime partner.
"Gay people still live in fear in many countries around the world – prejudice, torture and execution are common. Can two new legal and diplomatic campaigns change attitudes?
Last Thursday, three men were hanged in Iran for the crime of lavat, sexual intercourse between two men. The case is considered extreme even by Iranian standards, because while the death penalty is in place for homosexuality, it is usually enforced only when there is a charge of assault or rape alongside it; the accusations in these three cases were of consensual sex.
For lesbian and gay people who live in one of the 82 countries where homosexuality is criminalised, the world is not getting better: it is getting significantly, demonstrably worse. The irony – it's actually not an irony, it's a source of great shame, but it is also an unhappy coincidence – is that 40 of these countries are members of the Commonwealth, and this is a British export. Homosexuality was criminalised here in the 1880s, and was therefore part of our legislative package in the age of empire. By the time it was decriminalised in England and Wales in the Sexual Offences Act of 1967 (Scotland followed in 1980 and Northern Ireland in 1982), we no longer had any control over Commonwealth jurisdictions. The repeal came after a report by Lord Wolfenden in 1957; if its findings had only been enacted more swiftly, today unnumbered people across the Commonwealth – at an estimate, more than a million – would be living entirely different lives. Jonathan Cooper, CEO of the Human Dignity Trust, says: "The human misery that criminalisation causes can never be overestimated. The impact on lesbian and gay people growing up, you cannot overestimate what it does to people living under those laws, even if they're not being prosecuted. Just the fact that the rest of society is denied to them, they have no access to it."
...the Human Dignity Trust, is not a campaigning organisation either. It is not there to raise awareness and is not even there to put pressure on governments. It is setting out to change the law, in the Commonwealth and beyond, on the basis that it is a breach of international human rights to criminalise someone's sexual identity.
With a few exceptions – Saudi Arabia being one – all the countries that criminalise homosexuality are signed up to either the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights or they are bound by test case rulings in their respective courts. "This is a matter of law," Cooper says. "Once you're not following the law, you're undermining the rule of law." This is reflected in the list of the trust's patrons – the former attorney general of India; the former secretary general of the Commonwealth; Lord Woolf, former lord chief justice of England and Wales; and a former judge at the Intra-American court of human rights. "They are not pursuing this as part of a lesbian and gay agenda. It's an international rights law agenda," says Cooper..
,,,former attorney general of Belize, GodfreyPrice is quite cautious about the work he's taken on: he thinks the process will be slow, and its impact subtle. "If we can just begin to level the playing field a bit so that the other side is put, that will be progress. Because, at the moment, those who want to preach hate have pretty well got a free run.". . . "
I will readily admit to being Roger Ebert's number one fan of countless years. Occasionally he includes reviews written by correspondents from around the world. This is a review penned by Michael Mirasol, a fellow in Manila, and one of the most thoughful that I have encountered. [Also great stills in the review.]
"What's the last great love story you've seen on film? I don't mean your typical "rom-coms" with contrived meet-cutes that rely heavily on celebrity star power. I'm talking about a genuine romance between two richly defined characters. If your mind draws a blank, you're not alone. Hollywood, along with much of the filmmaking world, seems to have either forgotten how to portray love affairs in ways that once made us swoon. Whatever the reason, be it due to our changing times or priorities, we might not see any significant ones for some time.
If there is any love story of this kind worth revisiting, it is Ang Lee's BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, which just might be the most moving tale of star-crossed lovers for the past decade.
Not many people will remember the film this way, as its two lovers were hardly the kind seen before in major movie romances. Indeed, a story of two cowboys discovering a deep love for each other was bound to cause controversy. Who would dare take on such a subject? Were its motives exploitative? Political? A gimmick? Add in Ang Lee, the celebrated Taiwanese-born director known for ushering the new age of Sino-Cinema to Hollywood, and expectations could not possibly grow further.
But grow they did. Once the film won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, a prestige not taken lightly in film circles, interest surged. Countless raves and recognitions seem to follow, which should have been reassuring to the thoughtful moviegoer. But to many who still hadn't seen it, one could only wonder: Could a gay cowboy movie really be that good?
. . . There will always be people who will no doubt criticize "Brokeback Mountain" as having a homosexual agenda, forever labeling it "the gay cowboy movie." But they're missing the point. It cares much less about promoting gay rights than about telling the sad tale of two people who have discovered each other, that they're not alone, and that they can't live without each other. They just happen to be men. If that isn't star-crossed, I don't know what is."
"Pair this imagery with Gustavo Santaolalla's guitar score, and you have the makings of an emotional reservoir. His twangs are spare, but with the movie, they are nothing short of sublime. You can almost listen to his notes echo through the mountainside. I didn't realize how affected I was until the day after. I purchased the soundtrack, and in the shower while listening to "The Wings," remembering Jack and Ennis, I wept."
