Each weekday, Xtra.ca tells you what stories have queer people talking.
Dec 21, 2007
Stephen Harper on the Dalai Lama: “He’s not a call girl.” Other end-of-year Harper insights that went unreported: The pope is not a toilet, George Bush is not soft-serve ice cream, and Tony Clement is not competent.
Brighton, UK bans songs with anti-gay lyrics from being played in public venues. Meanwhile, the BBC flip-flops on editing out the word “faggot” from the Pogue’s Christmas classic “Fairy Tale of New York.” Next year, they’ll bleep out the word “fairy.”
Merry Christmas everyone!
Dec 20, 2007
Britney Spears’ 16-year-old sister Jamie-Lynn gets knocked up. Coincidentally, Mama Spears’ forthcoming book on Christian parenting gets “delayed indefinitely”. Yes, at some point in the recent past, the mother of the girl who performed “Hit Me Baby One More Time” at age 15 had a Christian parenting book in the works. Possible chapters in Mama Spears’ book: “When is your daughter’s red leather catsuit is too tight?” “Staging your daughter’s first televised lesbian kiss,” and “Public nudity (NSFW), drug abuse, head shaving, drunk driving, child custody battles, quickie marriages,” and “K-Fed: How to know when your job as a Christian mother is done.”
Also, Lindsay Lohan’s a lesbian now? Um. OK. If this is true, she makes a hell of a poster child for the emotional anguish of life in the closet, I guess.
Vancouver DJ My!Gay!Husband! makes The Onion AV Club’s Worst Band Names of 2007 list. An honour well-deserved.
Dec 19, 2007
Saudi King Abdullah pardons a 19-year-old girl who was raped at knifepoint. What? Yes.
The girl was abducted last year along with a male companion and both were gang-raped at knifepoint by seven men. In Saudi law, rape is a capital offence, but in this case, everyone was guilty because the two victims were alone together and not related. The victims were sentenced to prison and 90 lashes, but the girl’s sentence was raised to 200 lashes as punishment for appealing the decision and alerting the international media to the case. The rapists were sentenced to between two and seven years in prison — the death sentence couldn’t be imposed because there were no witnesses to the rape.
Of course, the international media ate up the girl’s case, and even president Bush weighed in on the girl’s trial. Because if there’s anything politicians and media rush to protect, it’s the sanctity of teenage sexuality.
The BBC couldn’t even be bothered to find out about the male rape victim before going to press. (He too was pardoned).
So, just so we’re clear now, this is the current status of Saudi jurisprudence when it comes to homosexuality: consensual homosexual sex nets you the death penalty; homosexual rape gets the rapist a few years in prison, and the victim 90 lashes.
Dec 18, 2007
The federal NDP dumps transgendered candidate, lawyer Micheline Montreuil, from a Quebec City riding, claiming that she wasn’t a team player, but Montreuil contends that she was dumped because of her gender identity.
Montreuil was in the news last month when the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ruled that the Canadian Forces discriminated against her in 2003 by passing her up for a job.
But really, is this the web site of a professional person who aspires to be in government? It looks like a Geocities page from 1997. And, y’know, it’s one thing to see politicians let their hair down and be people — and to be fair, I mock them >even when they do that — but when your candidate is asking visitors to comment on her cleavage, it doesn’t bode well for a campaign.
Dec 17, 2007
An anonymous, whiny, mysogynistic Craigslist post about dating women prompts an equally bitchy sequel about dating gays. Hint: If you’re going to poke fun at people who slut around online, your most receptive audience probably won’t be on Craigslist.
Genre magazine fakes its cover story on successful gay couples by using a straight man as one of the cover models. Two possible interpretations related to the Craigslist post above: either there are no successful gay couples, or Craigslist has finally made it possible to have a long-term relationship with a “totally Str8 guy seeking discrete bud for J/O, maybe more.”
Ike Turner dies, but no joke I could write would top the headline the New York Post ran for its sheer tastelessness.
Dec 14, 2007
According to US Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, gay sex first happened in 1968. Prior to 1968, gays were trapped in sexless monogamous relationships similar to those found in the Huckabee family.
An exhibition of gay history is touring the Czech Republic. Mounting the tour had proved incredibly difficult, as an installation on Pavel Novotny’s penis (NSFW) had trouble fitting through some museum doors.
Disturbing: 52-year-old man successfully appeals a Georgia court’s lifetime ban on accessing pornography.
Dec 13, 2007
Pope says gay marriage is a threat to world peace on the scale of nuclear arms proliferation. Despite the world’s most fabulously accessorized Catholic’s fears, gay marriage seems to be advancing unabated.
California’s Supreme Court is backlogged in weighing a case to determine whether California gays have the right to marry because it’s received so many friend of the court briefs. The case will be determined in 2008.
Meanwhile, the Lutheran Church of Sweden approves allowing gays to marry in their churches, becoming the first major national Church in the world to do so. If you can’t afford to fly to Sweden for your wedding, you can always buy a Swedish Lutheran Church from Ikea. The quality isn’t top-notch and you have to put it together yourself, but you’ll save an arm and a leg.
Dec 12, 2007
Queen Latifah says she’s not getting gay married anytime soon, but doesn’t actually deny rumours she’s a lesbian. Frankly, I think the Chicago Sun Times was just being lazy on this one. What, was there no bathroom stall they could attempt to catch her soliciting lesbian sex in?
Australian actors — one of them was Crocodile Dundee back in the 80s when Australia was a fad — claim that Adam Sandler stole their idea when he made I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry. Can’t they just compromise and share the blame?
Robert Picton and Conrad Black both get sentenced to lengthy prison terms, in a rare case of good winning out over evil. Speaking of which, doesn’t “Lord Black” sound like a great supervillain?
Dec 11, 2007
Scientists find a way to turn the gayest insects in the world even gayer. Maybe my prediction about the party drug of ’08 was a little too early. Could we get human trials of this underway soon? Because there’s this guy in my spin class…
Some not so surprising news: Ricky Martin is gay, according to his skin specialist. You might be thinking, “how authoritative could Ricky’s skin care specialist be on his sex life?” but then you’ll remember you just said “Ricky’s skin care specialist.”
Meanwhile, in celebration of Christmas, a group of anti-gay carollers sang outside a Target in Sacramento, CA, just like they did in the Bible.
Dec 10, 2007
Sad but hilarious: Parkinson’s drugs turn a French man into a gay compulsive gambler. Here’s to the party drug of ’08.
Rhode Island is against gay marriage, but not too fond of gay divorce either. Christian rights groups celebrate the court’s ruling with confused applause. Apparently, protecting the sanctity of marriage has gone from preventing gays getting married to ensuring that lesbian senior citizens can eat the same pussy for the rest of their lives.
Oprah endorses Barak Obama for president, and everyone who votes for him gets a new car!
And, um, gay lions. Actual fucking lions. Maybe they’re fucking, maybe they’re not, but it’s still fucking awesome anyway.
Dec 7, 2007
Philadelphia city council evicts the Boy Scouts of America from a city-owned building, citing their policies of anti-gay discrimination.
Grenada decides to allow gay cruise ships to dock in their ports after pressure from Canadian activists and numerous hotel cancellations, although gay sex remains illegal on the island country. Said the minister of tourism (I’m paraphrasing): “As long as you’ve got cash, we won’t discriminate against your filthy, filthy lifestyles.”
In a surprise move that no one saw coming, Jodie Foster comes out of the closet.
Dec 6, 2007
NDPer Irene Mathyssen stirred up a minor frenzy after alleging in the House that she had seen Tory James Moore looking at pictures of “scantily clad women” on his laptop during a session of Parliament. She immediately denounced Moore as “disrespectful” to women, claiming that the pictures “objectify” women and that objectification leads to violence and abuse. Then she tacitly compared Moore’s looking at the picture to the Montreal massacre at the École Polytechnique.
Moore’s final explanation, that they were actually pictures of his girlfriend, elicited an apology from Mathyssen to Moore for claiming that he objectifies women. Because, according to her bizarre logic, looking at professional pornographic models is offensive and objectifying, but amateur softcore is A-OK.
That may settle matters for Moore, but Ms. Mathyssen, I’m still waiting for my apology. When you rise to apologize in the House to Mr. Moore, why don’t you apologize to the millions of other Canadians you insulted backhandedly?
Dec 5, 2007
Back to Bizzarro World: a Democrat gay sex scandal?
Gay hate group Americans For Truth About Homosexuality is hosting a video display of explicit erotic images they took at this year’s Folsom Fair in San Francisco, as part of a protest against US House speaker Nancy Pelosi. Apparantly, the truth about homosexuality is that it’s so compelling that even the haters want to film it. If you can’t make it to Washington, there’s even a round up of hot photos on their web site.
A NY court orders a sperm donor to pay child support to the lesbian couple he donated to. Let this be a lesson to you guys out there: J/O for a lesbian couple, and you could get stuck with a 21-year obligation if you don’t fill out the paperwork correctly; J/O on a web cam for me, and I’m done with you once I close the window. No paperwork, I promise.
Dec 4, 2007
After last week’s shameful revelations that Prime Minister Stephen Harper has cut funding to AIDS community groups in Ontario, we get some good news on the HIV front this week, from religious leaders in the Muslim world. It’s just one more blow to our sense of moral superiority.
Elsewhere, anti-gay graffiti appears around the University of Windsor campus.
Thank god there’s some depressing news in the US to put this all back into perspective: gay rights groups protest the 14th anniversary of Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell.
Dec 3, 2007
Mike Jones, the gay sex worker who outed anti-gay preacher Ted Haggard to the world, now claims he also had sex with Larry Craig, the bathroom-cruising anti-gay senator from Idaho. Married Republican senators and preachers cheating on their partners is one thing, but when you can’t trust that your sex worker is faithful to you, what’s this world coming to?
A moderate Fort Worth, TX Baptist church is trying to figure out whether or not to allow pictures of gay couples in its pictorial directory of church members. I get the gays’ arguments, but I still think they’d have more luck putting their pics on Squirt.org.
The Alberta Progressive Conservative party boots a nominated candidate from running under their banner over his anti-gay past. Craig Chandler was told to take a hike after an Alberta Human Rights Commission Tribunal rules that a virulently homophobic letter written by a member of a Christian group that he headed violated provincial law. The PC’s decision was more about optics than values, they admitted, so it seems the shame caused by the tribunal decision was worse than the homophobia itself. Nice one.
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November 2007
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