The deal for the city to sell the local Boy Scouts headquarters to the scouting group has fallen through, leaving it unclear how Philadelphia will pay an estimated $963,575 in legal fees and, at least for now, handing a temporary victory to those who had opposed the plan.
In a filing in federal court Friday, the Boy Scouts’ attorney, Jason Gosselin, said: “The parties concluded that the settlement agreement would never be approved by City Council.”
City Council legislation was required to sell the city-owned building to the Boy Scouts Philadelphia group, the Cradle of Liberty Council.
Legislation that Councilman Darrell L. Clarke introduced on behalf of Mayor Nutter to allow the sale went nowhere last year, after gay-rights advocates complained about the national Boy Scouts policy of not allowing membership by homosexuals.
The city owns the Boy Scouts building in the Logan Square neighborhood and tried to evict the organization over its national policy of excluding gays. That led to a federal lawsuit, which the city lost, forcing it to pick up the Boy Scouts’ bills.
City officials could not immediately say what they would do next. Options include appealing the case, which gay-rights advocates have long demanded.
In the meantime, the legal bills are mounting. Also in the Friday filing, Gosselin said that since the attorneys’ fees were initially awarded in July 2010, his firm, Drinker, Biddle & Reath L.L.P., had since done more work, bringing the total to about $1.04 million.
“We would be happy to have the old deal, but we can’t do it without the city,” Gosselin said, “so we’re at an impasse.”
The amount of the bills has been in dispute; Gosselin also filed exhibits detailing the work to explain the total.
The city had agreed to sell the 13,000-square-foot building to the Scouts for about $500,000 as payment for the legal fees, about half the property’s appraised value. Advocates for the gay community called it a sweetheart deal. The city has defended the decision as a reasonable compromise to avoid paying the higher amount of the legal bills.
Duane Perry, a former Eagle Scout and one of many civil-liberties advocates who had opposed the settlement, said he believed the city should continue to press the Boy Scouts to stop discriminating.
Clarke did not return a phone call seeking comment.
“This matter is in litigation,” said Mark McDonald, a spokesman for the mayor, “and I am unable to comment.”
Real estate investor Mel Heifetz has offered to pay as much as $2 million for the building, but the city has previously said it could not consider a competing offer while the old one was on the table.
from The Philadelphia Inquirer
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Fear Factor / NBC

Donkey semen will not be served on network TV tomorrow night — the”Fear Factor” episode featuring the stunt has been yanked … at least according to a website where NBC posts its media releases.
The controversial episode is entitled, “Hee Haw! Hee Haw!” An NBC media release teased it by saying the contestants will eat “the unimaginable.”
But the NBC website no longer lists that episode as airing tomorrow … and instead lists a repeat of an episode entitled “Snake Bite” — which first aired on January 2.
We also checked two channel guides — one in LA and one in NYC — and both now list the repeat instead of the one with the donkey semen stunt. Additionally, promos for the episode are no longer posted anywhere on the Internet.
TMZ broke the story … NBC had given ‘FF’ producers the thumbs up on airing the episode — but according to our sources honchos at NBC and its parent company, Comcast, started having second thoughts after TMZ published details of the challenge.
We’ve made several calls to reps at NBC, Comcast, and Endemol — which produces ‘FF’ — but so far … radio silence.
UPDATE
The good people at the peacock just got back to us — NBC Entertainment Chairman Bob Greenblatt says, “I reviewed the episode late last week and decided it was a segment we should not air.”
Sources at the network tell us Comcast was not involved in the decision.
UPDATE
One of the “Fear Factor” contestants who drank donkey semen is finally breaking her silence — claiming her spunk-chugging experience “was the hardest 15 minutes of my life.”
Twins Brynne and Claire Odioso — who competed on the episode — called in to the Cowhead Show in Tampa today, describing the donkey splooge-o-rama in graphic detail.
According to Brynne, the twins got to choose who downed the semen and who drank the donkey urine — Claire pulled the short straw.
According to Claire, producers left the semen sitting out all day in the hot sun — and by the time she got to drinking it, it was boiling hot … which made the smell unbearable.
Claire said it was extremely bitter going down … “with hints of hay” — and she vomited several times before successfully drinking the entire glass.
As for how the donkey stuff compares to the human variety — Claire added, “It’s a lot thicker.”
Not that she knows from experience or anything.
from TMZ

Governor Chris Christie

TRENTON, NEW JERSEY — Even though a famous civil rights leader came to Trenton to scold him, Gov. Chris Christie Monday unapologetically defended last week’s controversial remarks on civil rights, calling one his Jersey critics “numbnuts.”
Agitated and at times caustic, the governor went after Assemblyman Reed Gusciora, who had hammered Christie for saying that in the 1950s and 60s activists “would have been happy to have a referendum on civil rights rather than fighting and dying in the streets of the South.” Christie was trying to compare his call for a referendum on gay marriage to the civil rights struggle.
“What I said was I’m sure that civil rights advocates would have liked to have this as another option but it was not available to them,” Christie said at the Statehouse. “Yet you have numbnuts like Reed Gusciora who put out a statement comparing me to George Wallace and Lester Maddox.”
Cristie had nothing but praise, however, for legendary civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) who held his own Trenton press to condemn the governor’s remarks.
Calling gay marriage a civil right, Lewis said Christie apparently “has not read his recent history books.”
“People of color in the American South … could not register to vote simply because of the color of their skin,” he said. “Could not take a seat at lunch counters in restaurants. Could not take a seat in the front of the bus. Could not visit state capitals. If it had been put to a referendum, we would have never ever won.”
Lewis said it was congressional actions, court decisions and presidential executive orders that chipped away at segregation.
He applied Martin Luther King’s comments about interracial marriage to gay marriage: “When it came to the question of interracial marriage, (King) would say races don’t fall in love and get married, individuals fall in love and get married. If two men want to fall in love and get married, if two women – it’s their business. It’s not the role of the federal government or state government to intervene.”
Christie Monday called Lewis an “American hero” and said he would have cleared his schedule if the Georgia Democrat had requested a meeting with him.
“Any time he wants to come to New Jersey he will be welcomed with open arms because he led an extraordinary movement at great risk and sacrifice to himself,” Christie said.
The governor also said he had a pre-planned meeting Monday with local black officials and leaders who, after he explained himself, told him they don’t believe his words were racially insensitive.
Asbury Park Mayor Ed Johnson, who is African-American and openly gay, said he accepted Christie’s explanation after speaking with him. “He clarified it, I have to accept that,” said Johnson.
While conceding his statement may have been “inartfully” worded, Christie lashed out at Jersey Democrats for making political hay. He was especially bothered by Gusciora’s press release last week that said Christie “would have found allies” in former southern segregationist Govs. Lester Maddox of Georgia and George Wallace of Alabama.
Christie called the two “reprehensible people in America’s history” who would have never advocated for improving urban education, as he has.
Gusciora, the state’s first openly gay lawmaker, said in a statement, “If he doesn’t like the comparison, then he should change his position on marriage equality and sign the bill into law.” While his statement said Christie “reverts to name calling” when the facts aren’t on his side, Gusciora earlier said he wasn’t bothered by the governor’s comment.
“I’ll take the numbnuts comment as a compliment. It’s a term of endearment,” said Gusciora. “My college roommates used to call me that.”
from The New Jersey Star-Ledger
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Christie Wants Gay Marriage To Go To Ballot

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Cynthia Nixon & Christine Marinoni

Actress Cynthia Nixon is trying to clarify her earlier remarks that got her in hot water with some fellow gay rights activists.
The “Sex and the City” star’s personal life became an exercise in the politics of sexual orientation last week when The New York Times Magazine quoted Nixon saying that for her, being gay was a conscious choice. Nixon has been in a relationship with a woman for eight years. Before that, she spent 15 years and had two children with a man.
After some gay rights activists complained that Nixon’s remarks could be used to deny a biological basis for homosexuality, the actress on Monday released a statement to The Advocate magazine explaining she is technically bisexual, and not by choice.
Nixon told the magazine: “What I have `chosen’ is to be in a gay relationship.”
fromThe Associated Press

“My recent comments in The New York Times were about me and my personal story of being gay. I believe we all have different ways we came to the gay community and we can’t and shouldn’t be pigeon-holed into one cultural narrative which can be uninclusive and disempowering. However, to the extent that anyone wishes to interpret my words in a strictly legal context I would like to clarify:
“While I don’t often use the word, the technically precise term for my orientation is bisexual. I believe bisexuality is not a choice, it is a fact. What I have ‘chosen’ is to be in a gay relationship.
“As I said in the Times and will say again here, I do, however, believe that most members of our community — as well as the majority of heterosexuals — cannot and do not choose the gender of the persons with whom they seek to have intimate relationships because, unlike me, they are only attracted to one sex.
“Our community is not a monolith, thank goodness, any more than America itself is. I look forward to and will continue to work toward the day when America recognizes all of us as full and equal citizens.”
from The Advocate
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Related Post:

Cynthia Nixon Believes Being Gay Is A Choice

ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA – UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said yesterday that African nations should stop treating gays as “second-class citizens or even criminals.’’
Ban told African leaders who gathered in Ethiopia’s capital for an African Union summit that discrimination based on sexual orientation “had been ignored or even sanctioned by many states for far too long.’’
Ban said it would be challenging for Africa to confront this discrimination. There was no immediate response from African heads of states to Ban’s speech. Many African countries outlaw homosexuality, and many African churches preach against it.
Also yesterday, leaders at the summit urged member countries to boost intra-regional trade to help accelerate economic growth and development on the continent.
“African countries do not trade enough among themselves,’’ said Jean Ping, chairman of the African Union Commission. “The growth of intra-African trade would lay the foundations for a stronger and more sustainable economic growth.’’
Trade among African countries accounts for 11 percent of the total, compared with 47 percent in Asia and 70 percent in the European Union, according to the African Union. Increasing that percentage may help offset the impact of a slowdown in the euro region and other Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries, the Economic Commission for Africa said last Thursday. Growth on the continent slowed to 2.7 percent last year from 5 percent in 2011.
Ping urged faster economic integration on the continent and endorsed a plan by African ministers to create an economic bloc for central, western, and northern Africa that would resemble a proposed free-trade area in southern and eastern Africa.
The African Union summit is being held at the 54-nation body’s new $200 million headquarters. It was built by China State Construction Engineering Corp. on the ruins of Ethiopia’s former maximum security prison, known as Alem Bekagne, which in the Amharic language means “I have given up hope on this world.’’ The Chinese government funded construction, according to the African Union.
from The Boston Globe

SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA – The San Diego mayoral campaign illustrates how much voters’ attitudes have shifted focused on pensions, civic projects and budget woes — is drowning out the fact that the winner could make San Diego one of a few major U.S. cities with an openly gay mayor.
Two high-profile candidates — Councilman Carl DeMaio and District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis — are gay Republicans who, if elected, would represent the culmination of an LGBT movement that emerged in the 1970s from the neighborhood of Hillcrest.
The possibility that the region’s most visible political figure could be a homosexual person has been met with a collective shrug from San Diegans, illustrating how much attitudes have changed as more and more gay politicians rose to prominence during the past two decades.
“It’s a great progression by voters in San Diego,” said Delores Jacobs, chief executive of The San Diego Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center. “It’s a great story to talk about the ways that the politics of the past are no longer acceptable. It doesn’t mean they don’t occasionally happen in different corners with using sexual orientation in one way or another subtly, but it’s not the body politic’s fight.”
As mayoral candidates jockey for position ahead of the June primary, the topics of sexual orientation and same-sex marriage have received nary a mention in forums and debates. The emphasis has been on public employee pensions, the city’s fiscal challenges and major infrastructure projects such as the proposed Chargers stadium and convention center expansion.
That wasn’t the case five years ago when Mayor Jerry Sanders reversed course and began to support same-sex marriage as his re-election neared. He gave an emotional speech saying he could no longer in good conscience deny that right to his lesbian daughter and gay staff members. The local Republican Party reconsidered its endorsement of Sanders; he barely held on to the endorsement and later won the race handily.
“The Republican Party wasn’t tremendously pleased with my stance in 2007 and now they’re very accepting of both (gay) candidates,” Sanders said. “I think that means San Diegans are judging people on the quality of leadership, the qualities that they provide, rather than any other type of characteristic.”
Another reason is that all four major candidates, which also include Democratic Rep. Bob Filner and Republican Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher, are considered gay-friendly. They profess support for same-sex marriage, leaving the LGBT community to make its decision based on other criteria.
None of the candidates can lay claim to being the gay community’s preferred choice. That was made abundantly clear in October when Fletcher won the backing of the Log Cabin Republicans San Diego, a group that supports the party’s principles and pushes for gay equality. The organization picked Fletcher, who is straight, over the two gay candidates from their party.
DeMaio, who has been in a committed relationship with San Diego Gay & Lesbian News Publisher Johnathan Hale for three years, said the mayor needs to be a leader for the entire city and focused on the fiscal crisis, not gay-rights issues.
“I made it quite clear that I’m running on an agenda of fiscal reform, job creation and infrastructure improvement,” he said. “These other issues are just simply not relevant. I don’t think voters care one way or the other.”
Dumanis, who married wife Denise Neleson in 2008 when same-sex marriage was briefly legal in California before voters enacted a ban, said she is standing on the shoulders of those who came before her and changed hearts one at a time.
“In my view, if you feel comfortable in your skin, then people will feel comfortable with you,” she said. “You don’t have to make a big deal out of it. You just do your thing and people respond to that. And as more people have been more comfortable being openly gay, then more people see that there’s somebody in their life that … they now know is gay and it changes views.”
Filner has a long track record in Congress of voting for gay-rights issues, including the repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that banned gays from serving openly in the military. He has been endorsed by the pro-gay San Diego Democrats for Equality, which gave him a 100 percent positive rating.
Fletcher, a former Marine, made headlines in 2010 when he delivered an impassioned speech on the Assembly floor to repeal the military policy. He was the first sitting Republican legislator in the state to call for its end.
Fletcher said the mayoral candidates will be judged on their ideas and abilities, not on sexual orientation. “I think it is a good sign that it’s not an issue and it shouldn’t be,” he said.
The city didn’t have its first openly gay politician until Christine Kehoe was elected to the City Council in 1993 to represent the Hillcrest area. She was followed by Toni Atkins and current Councilman Todd Gloria. DeMaio won election in 2008 to represent northern San Diego’s mostly Republican neighborhoods by running as a fiscal hawk.
Kehoe, now a state senator, considered a run for mayor last year before declining. Had she joined the race, three of the top five candidates would have been gay.
The Gay & Lesbian Victory Institute, which tracks gay leaders around the world, lists 10 current elected officials representing all or part of San Diego as openly gay. The list includes Superior Court judges, a school board member and state legislators.
Dumanis, who won her first judicial election in 1994 before becoming district attorney eight years later, said it wasn’t always easy for gay candidates. She recalled one opponent running against her on a “family values” platform, hinting she didn’t have such values as a lesbian.
At the LGBT center, Jacobs said evidence of progress is that such tactics don’t appear on the horizon in this mayor’s race.
“Some of the old-fashioned subtle digs or what some people would call gay-baiting are really not an acceptable part of the politic,” she said.
The candidates are competing in the June 5 mayoral primary for two spots in a November runoff, which will decide the ultimate winner. Should DeMaio or Dumanis be victorious, San Diego would rank second to Houston as the largest U.S. city with an openly gay mayor. The mayor of Portland, Ore., also is openly gay.
from The Union-Tribune
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San Diego Considers An Openly Gay Mayor

Babylonia Aivaz

SEATTLE, WASHINGTON – A beaming bride, a crumbling warehouse – Babylonia Aivaz said it’s a love that will never die, as she exchanged wedding vows with the Seattle building on Sunday.
Aivaz and the 10th and Union warehouse entered into a self-described “gay marriage,” surrounded by friends singing of love and united against displacement in their neighborhood by means of new development.
Aivaz told the crowd of approximately 50 people about her relationship with the building, which is slated to be demolished in a week to make way for a new apartment complex.
In December, she said, she and 16 Occupy Seattle activists linked arms and occupied the warehouse to fight against gentrification and for community space.
“I was transformed by the event,” she said.
Despite demolition beginning earlier than expected Friday, the ceremony went on without a hitch, as Aivaz untied a banner on a fence surrounding the warehouse that read “I DO.”
When the minister asked if she would “love and cherish and protect this warehouse,” Aivaz responded in song.
“Come with me my love, to the sea, the sea of love. I want to tell you how much I love you,” Aivaz sang, quoting “Sea of Love” by Cat Power.
“Do you remember when we met? I cleaned your rooms and washed your floors, built community, opened some doors. You changed my life. I’ll never forget the day we met. I’ll cherish your community sprit until the day I die,” she said, adding her own verses.
The ceremony continued with the calm but ecstatic guests singing “Lean on Me,” laughing at children blowing bubbles and enjoying a neighborhood potluck with a vegan cake.
While the majority of the crowd cheered for the love between the woman and the building, some disagreed with how Aivaz described it as a “gay marriage.”
“With the delicate nature of Washington state and the attempt to legalize gay marriage, I find her saying it’s a gay marriage disrespectful,” said Phoenix Lopez.
Lopez and others who held signs reading “This is not a gay marriage,” quietly stood in protest.
“Her saying it’s a gay marriage sets the community back with Christians and politicians and gives them a chance to say, ‘See, we told you, they’re going to want to marry everything if we give them the opportunity,’” said Johnny McCollum-Blair. “Having compassion against something you love, I understand, but to call it a gay union is irresponsible.”
Aivaz didn’t reflect on the building’s chosen gender, but reiterated the ceremony was in honor of her fight against gentrification.
“Gentrification is happening,” Aivaz said. “It’s a serious issue that affects poor people and especially people of color and this is just the beginning of the fight.”
With her new bride’s imminent demise, Aivaz said she would continue to work with the community to develop and create more ways to fight against unaffordable neighborhoods. She already has plans to fight for a neighboring community.
“My heart is in Yesler Terrace, that place is going to get gentrified really soon, so I’ll follow my heart there next,” she said.
from KOMO News
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Straight actors who wanted to pay for sex in the 1990s had Heidi Fleiss. Gay ones during the late 1940s and beyond apparently had Scotty Bowers.
His story has floated through moviedom’s clubby senior ranks for years: Back in a more golden age of Hollywood, a guy named Scotty, a former Marine, was said to have run a type of prostitution ring for gay and bisexual men in the film industry, including A-listers like Cary Grant, George Cukor and Rock Hudson, and even arranged sexual liaisons for actresses like Vivien Leigh and Katharine Hepburn.
“Old Hollywood people who have, shall we say, known him would tell me stories,” said Matt Tyrnauer, a writer for Vanity Fair and the director of the 2008 documentary “Valentino: The Last Emperor.” “But whenever I followed up on what would obviously be a great story, I was told, ‘Oh, he’ll never talk.’ ”
Now, he’s talking.
Mr. Bowers, 88, recalls his highly unorthodox life in a ribald memoir scheduled to be published by Grove Press on Feb. 14, “Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars.” Written with Lionel Friedberg, an award-winning producer of documentaries, it is a lurid, no-detail-too-excruciating account of a sexual Zelig who (if you believe him) trawled an X-rated underworld for over three decades without getting caught.
“I’ve kept silent all these years because I didn’t want to hurt any of these people,” Mr. Bowers said recently over lemonade on his patio in the Hollywood Hills, where he lives in a cluttered bungalow with his wife of 27 years, Lois. “And I never saw the fascination. So they liked sex how they liked it. Who cares?”
He paused for a moment to scratch his collie, Baby, behind the ears. “I don’t need the money,” he continued. “I finally said yes because I’m not getting any younger and all of my famous tricks are dead by now. The truth can’t hurt them anymore.”
Twenty-six years after Hudson’s death from AIDS and more than four decades after “Hollywood Babylon” was first published, it will come as a surprise to no one that the images the movie factories created for stars of the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s — when Mr. Bowers was most active — were just that: images. The people who fed the world strait-laced cinema like “The Philadelphia Story” and perfect-family television like “I Love Lucy” were often quite the opposite of prudish in private.
At the same time, a lot of what Mr. Bowers has to say is pretty shocking. He claims, for instance, to have set Hepburn up with “over 150 different women.” Other stories in the 286-page memoir involve Spencer Tracy, Cole Porter, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and socialites like the publisher Alfred A. Knopf. “If you believe him, and I do, he’s like the Kinsey Reports live and in living color,” said Mr. Tyrnauer, who recently completed a deal to make a documentary about Mr. Bowers.
“Full Service” at the very least highlights how sharply the rules of engagement for reporting celebrity gossip have changed. The sexual shenanigans of movie stars were a currency for tabloids stretching back to Hollywood’s earliest days, but studios and, subsequently, squadrons of privately hired public relations experts could usually keep all but the most egregious behavior out of the news media. Secrets were kept.
A degree of that still goes on, of course, but it’s much harder to keep details as salacious as the ones Mr. Bowers outlines under wraps. Now all it takes is one pair of loose lips for TMZ to beam all manner of embarrassing information around the globe.
The people behind the memoir, including Mr. Bowers’s agent, David Kuhn, and Morgan Entrekin, the publisher of Grove/Atlantic, insist that “Full Service” is not a prurient tell-all, but instead provides a window into an erased, forgotten and denied past of Los Angeles. In his pitch to publishers, Mr. Kuhn positioned it as no less than a tale about “the complex and conflicted psychosexual history of America’s soul.”
A lot of big publishers didn’t agree, or at least were not willing to risk the bawdy stuff to get to any larger point. (Yes, the book was offered to Knopf.) Mr. Entrekin said he decided to publish “Full Service” partly because “there seemed to be nothing meanspirited about it at all.
“You don’t get the sense that this guy is trying to exploit these experiences,” he said.
The heirs and estates of some of the people mentioned in the book are bound to feel otherwise. Fans, too.
“He needs to brace himself for attacks,” said William J. Mann, the author of celebrity biographies like “Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn,” which details what he says was Hepburn’s lesbianism and Tracy’s bisexuality, using Mr. Bowers (identified as Scotty) as one of several sources. “Some of the pushback is going to be homophobia,” Mr. Mann added. “But there will also be people who say he’s making it up to sell books and others who say why can’t you let these people rest in peace.”
(more…)

Just One Look... #208

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justonelook@garibaldi-gay.com

QUITO, ECUADOR – Ecuador will investigate and act forcefully against any clinics found to be trying to force homosexuals to change their sexual orientation, a Health Ministry official said Thursday.
Gay rights activists in the South American country say four clinics that engaged in coercive practices, three in the capital, have been shut down in recent months but that others still to operate clandestinely.
“Sadly, authorities have not yet taken the corrective measures necessary to regulate the work of clinics that offer ‘de-homosexualization’ treatment,’” said Efrain Soria, director of Fundacion Equidad, an anti-discrimination group.
Health Ministry official David Troya told The Associated Press the agency will deal firmly and drastically with any clinics that offer such treatments, which have been denounced by critics as abusive.
Newly named Health Minister Carina Vance, who studied at the University of California and has publicly defended gay rights, is hiring someone to work exclusively on the issue, said Troya, an adviser to Vance.
“We are going to take the necessary measures in a firm and drastic manner as regards this subject,” he said.
The ministry is “clear and emphatic” that in line with the World Health Organization findings, “homosexuality is not an illness and that as such a cure can’t be suggested, so that whoever offers treatments is deceiving people and acting illegally,” Troya said.
Paola Concha told the AP that her family sent her in 2006 to a clinic to “cure” her of homosexuality.
“I received physical and verbal aggression during the 18 months I was interned in one of these centers,” she said. “Nearly daily they beat me, and many times I was handcuffed to a pipe.”
Concha said the women’s ward of the clinic where she was held was later closed. She said other women who were “treated” along with her are afraid to go public with their stories.
Troya said the few clinics offering “de-homosexualizion treatment” that were shuttered by authorities were closed not because they offered such services but for other reasons, such as failing to meet sanitary standards.
Soria, the anti-discrimination activist, said complaints had been filed in courts against all of the closed clinics.
He said the clinics running “de-homosexualization” programs camouflage themselves by advertising that they treat such disorders as substance abuse.
from The Associated Press

After promising to create a base of operations on the moon if elected, Republican Presidential Candidate and Former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, is now comparing same-sex marriage to paganism.
For those of you who are unsure of the antiquated term, according to Merriam-Webster dictionary, a pagan is one who has little or no religion and who delights in sensual pleasures and material goods, an irreligious or hedonistic person.
This latest revelation came about after the thrice married Gingrich took part in a mass conference call involving a large number of Florida’s evangelical and religious right-wing, conservative voters.
The New Civil Rights Movement quoted Gingrich as saying, “It’s pretty simple: marriage is between a man and a woman. This is a historic doctrine driven deep into the Bible, both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, and it’s a perfect example of what I mean by the rise of paganism. The effort to create alternatives to marriage between a man and a woman are perfectly natural pagan behaviors, but they are a fundamental violation of our civilization.”
Mr. Gingrich was invited to participate in the conference call Wednesday involving more than 125,000 Florida evangelicals, including 2,400 pastors from around the Sunshine State. The reason why, perhaps, Gingrich participated in the phone call could be contributed to the fact that as many as a third of the votes to be cast in next Tuesday’s Florida primary may come from evangelicals.
In South Carolina last week, where born-again and evangelical voters represented two-thirds of the vote, Gingrich more than doubled Republican rival candidate Mitt Romney’s totals with 44 percent of the evangelical vote to 21 percent for Romney, despite questions raised about the former Speaker’s private life, extra-marital affairs and multiple marriages, as reported by the Washington Times.
This, despite Gingrich’s second wife, Marianne, who publicly announced last week just before the South Carolina primary that her husband had asked her to participate in an “open marriage” while still carrying on an affair with his now third wife, Callista.
When asked if his third wife would make a good First Lady during a debate, Gingrich said he would be “thrilled to hang out with her at the White House,” adding she’s artistic and plays the French Horn.
Just last month, the Huffington Post reported that Gingrich defended marriage between a man and a woman to Iowa conservatives when asked to sign a marriage vow pledge by influential Iowa social conservative, Bob Vander Plaats.
According to the Family Leader’s “Marriage Vow” pledge, Gingrich wrote:
I appreciate the opportunity to affirm my strong support of the mission of the Family Leader by solemnly vowing to defend and strengthen the family through the following actions I would take as President of the United States. As President, I will vigorously enforce the Defense of Marriage Act, which was enacted under my leadership as Speaker of the House, and ensure compliance with its provisions, especially in the military. I will also aggressively defend the constitutionality of DOMA in federal and state courts. I will support sending a federal constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman to the states for ratification. I will also oppose any judicial, bureaucratic, or legislative effort to define marriage in any manner other than as between one man and one woman. I will support all efforts to reform promptly any uneconomic or anti-marriage aspects of welfare and tax policy. I also pledge to uphold the institution of marriage through personal fidelity to my spouse and respect for the marital bonds of others.
Unlike the fiery South Carolina debate where observers gave Gingrich the thumbs-up, political pundits on both sides agree Gingrich suffered from a lack-luster, “flat” performance during Thursday’s CNN debate where he once again tried to blast the media for digging up dirt from his past, however this time, he was swiftly shot down.
When CNN Moderator Wolf Blitzer asked Gingrich whether he was happy with Romney’s disclosure of some of his tax returns, Gingrich recoiled, “This is a nonsense question,” and went on to argue, “I’m perfectly happy to say that in an interview on some TV show, but this is a national debate, where you have a chance to get the four of us to talk about a whole range of issues.”
Romney’s on-key response, “Wouldn’t it be nice if people didn’t make accusations somewhere else that they weren’t willing to defend here?
According to CNN, with just four days to go before the Florida primary, a new poll indicates Mitt Romney has opened up a nine point lead over Newt Gingrich.
A Quinnipiac University survey released Friday morning found 38 percent of likely Florida Republican primary voters as saying they would back the former Massachusetts Governor for their party’s presidential nomination, with 29 percent supporting the former House Speaker.
from The New Jersey Newsroom
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Katie O’Malley

ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND – Moving swiftly to stem potential damage to same-sex marriage legislation in Maryland, first lady Katie O’Malley said Friday she regretted her choice of words at a national conference when she said gay marriage legislation in the state failed last year because “there were some cowards that prevented it from passing.”
Her comments, which were first reported by The Associated Press on Thursday evening, were the talk of the statehouse Friday, as some lawmakers from both parties did not appreciate being referred to as cowards for their political views.
“I let my feelings get the better of me,” the first lady said in a statement. “I deeply respect that there are strongly held and differing views on marriage equality in Maryland, but hope that our state’s elected officials will come together to fairly address this important issue for our families and children.”
O’Malley gave a welcoming speech at the 24th National Conference on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Equality in Baltimore on Thursday night. Before a crowd, she talked about gay marriage legislation that passed the state Senate but stalled in the House of Delegates last year, when the measure was sent back to committee without a vote due to insufficient support.
She said the bill’s failure to advance “brought tears to my eyes when it happened.”
“We didn’t expect the things that happened to the House of Delegates to occur, but sadly they did, and there were some cowards that prevented it from passing,” O’Malley said.
It’s unclear how much damage may have been done by the remark.
Delegate Curt Anderson, a Democrat who chairs the Baltimore City delegation in Annapolis, described the comment as a distraction in a sensitive debate.
“I don’t think anybody on our delegation likes the comment, and they’re thankful that she has retracted it,” Anderson said.
Sen. Nathaniel McFadden, D-Baltimore, said he understood that the first lady takes the issue very seriously, and he believes her statement expressing regret will mend some fences. However, he noted that the comments were not helpful to drawing people who are on the fence.
“I think it’s going to cause a distraction,” McFadden said, “but in the final analysis, individuals will vote their conscience.”
Delegate Don Dwyer, an Anne Arundel County Republican who strongly opposes the legislation, said one Democratic lawmaker approached him Friday morning to sign on to his proposed constitutional amendment to define marriage as strictly between a man and woman. Dwyer said he believed the first lady’s remark has hurt the same-sex marriage bill’s chances.
“Obviously, they think it’s hurt them, too,” Dwyer said. “Otherwise, she wouldn’t have issued a retraction.”
Gov. Martin O’Malley, a Democrat, has made same-sex marriage legislation a priority this legislative session in what could be a very close vote in the House. His aides have worked carefully to draft legislation that will put an emphasis on protecting religious freedom in hopes of winning over not only a handful of delegates, but also members of the public. That’s because it’s widely believed a same-sex marriage bill, if passed, will be petitioned to the ballot for voters to decide in November.
In the first lady’s speech at the conference, she also focused on the importance of passing a bill for the sake of children who grow up in same-sex households, and she reiterated that point in her statement on Friday. The governor also has underscored the point.
During her speech Thursday night, O’Malley, who is a judge in Baltimore District Court, said she did not believe that religion should pay a role in the laws of the state.
“We’re all very diverse, and that’s what makes us so strong, but religion should never play a part in what the laws of our state are, and that’s what we’re trying to convey to religious leaders who are opponents of the bill that believe that for some reason — for some reason — religion has some role to play in this, and quite frankly we believe that it doesn’t,” the first lady said. “We believe that this is a civil rights issue — very, very much strongly believe in that.”
For the most part, Katie O’Malley, who keeps busy with her work as a judge, has avoided the political fray in Annapolis since her husband became governor in 2007. However, she does occasionally champion issues, such as reducing school bullying.
Her predecessor, Kendel Ehrlich, also ended up backtracking from a highly publicized comment she made at a domestic violence prevention conference, when she said she would “shoot” pop singer Britney Spears if she had the opportunity for sending a poor message to young girls. In 2003, she talked during a radio program about the need for “educating our women to get as much schooling as possible, to not become dependent on anyone else.”
A spokeswoman for Ehrlich at the time said she made “an inadvertent figure of speech.”
from The Associated Press

TENNESSEE – State Senator Stacey Campfield (R-Knoxville) is making national headlines for an interview he gave on Sirius XM radio.
On the Michelangelo Signorile Show, the Knoxville senator said that homosexuality is harmful and that the HIV epidemic came from a single gay airline employee having sexual relations with a monkey.
He explained that he believes that HIV was started by the homosexual community.
“My understanding… is that virtually, if not completely impossible, to contract AIDS outside of blood transfusions through heterosexual sex. It’s virtually impossible,” Senator Campfield said on the show.
The Knox County Health Department Director, Dr. Martha Buchanan, and AIDS educator Wayne Smith both said his comments have been proven false. Smith called them “archaic.”
“It increases the confusion and the fear when people are giving the wrong information. People need to know the facts and understand the facts,” Dr. Buchanan said.
“It’s hard to believe that anybody could say those things, believe those things to be true when we know they’re not. Especially an elected official,” said Smith.
10News sat down with the senator where he confirmed his statements, but said it was taken out of context. He said that he acknowledges that heterosexuals can contract the virus. He meant that certain groups are at much higher risk for AIDS.
“A lot of people trying to gloss over and say it’s an every person disease but really it’s just those high risk people that are most likely to contract or spread that disease The odds of a regular man getting it from a regular woman are very low,” he said.
We asked, “What do you mean by ‘regular?’”
He said, “someone who is not from Africa, someone who is not a homosexual, someone who is not an IV drug user, someone who is not sleeping with someone who is one of those things.”
Senator Campfield sees nothing wrong with his answers.
“I didn’t say I was a gay/AIDS historian. I didn’t say I know the facts backwards and forwards I just said what I’ve heard and the facts back me up,” he said.
AIDS Educator Wayne Smith says the facts do not back him up. He’s taught classes to take away the stigma of the disease for 15 years and calls Campfield’s comments a setback.
“Until things like this happen, then I get in this mode where I feel like we’ve made a lot of progress,” Smith said.
Dr. Buchanan said anyone having unprotected sex can contract HIV.
“In other countries where the virus is much more prevalent, you see just as many cases in heterosexuals as you do in homosexuals,” she said.
While the virus did originate in a monkey, the CDC and World Health Organization confirm people contracted the virus through hunting.
Sen. Campfield went on the radio program to talk about his also controversial “Don’t Say Gay” bill which would make It illegal for teachers to talk about homosexuality to students.
from WBIR 10

Margaret Court

AUSTRALIA – Amid a growing backlash over her opposition to same-sex marriage, the three-time Wimbledon champion told The Sunday Mail “many, many” gay and lesbian people she knew of had “been abused” and this had led to their sexual orientation.
Court, a senior minister at Perth’s Victory Life Centre, has already sparked fury among gay and equal rights activists for recent comments, including that the push for gay marriage was trying “to legitimise what God calls abominable sexual practices”.
Mental health advocate Chris Tanti accused her of “spreading misery” and putting young gay people at risk of suicide with what he called her anti-gay comments, amid calls for her name to be removed from centre court at Melbourne Park.
But Court said: “We get them (homosexuals) in (at church) and you’ll find that many, many of them have been abused”. When asked if she felt such abuse led people to homosexuality, Court said: “Yes. You look at a lot of them, that’s happened.”
She would not be drawn on whether she felt same-sex abuse was specifically to blame, saying, “We’ll start another can of worms if I start talking on all this.”
Peter Rosengren, editor of the Catholic Church’s The Record newspaper, batted away her claims, saying he had “never heard of any scientific study” linking abuse and homosexuality, and that “everyone has to be respected”.
In a wide-ranging interview, Court also said:
“The word of God is our TV guide to life. It’s not the fear book, it’s a love book and it tells us how to live our lives.”
“I would have won six Wimbledons not three . . . if I’d known what I know now from the scriptures, on the area of the mind.”
Many migrants expected Australians “to change our laws to embrace what they have and I don’t feel that’s right”.
“Christianity is a way forward” for Aboriginal people.
Court also said she did not regret speaking out against same-sex marriage. “I say what God says and that’s why I’ve spoken out,” she said. “I believe marriage is between a man and a woman.
“I have a right as a minister to say that. You look at the decline in the world today. I think it’s so important for values and morals and righteousness to come forth like never before.”
from The Herald Sun
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Martina Navratilova Makes Her Point On Margaret Court’s Anti-Gay Comments

Margaret Court Defends Her Views On Gay Marriage

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Neil Patrick Harris

There’s still a celluloid closet in Hollywood.
Gay actors are far more open about their sexuality with friends and co-workers, than their agents, according to a new survey by the British trade union Equity.
Only 57 percent say that they are openly gay with their agents. Despite the success of gay and lesbian actors like Neil Patrick Harris, Jane Lynch and Ian McKellen, the indication seems to be that actors and actresses fear that their choice of roles will be affected if they come out of the closet publicly.
Rupert Everett, once eager to become the next James Bond, has for years spoken frankly the price he’s paid for being openly gay, lambasting Hollywood as “very, very conservative” in a late 2010 interview.
He said that he didn’t blame those who chose to remain in the closet, calling it “very sensible.”
McKellen, Lynch, Harris and others have made great strides for the gay community and frequently play straight people on television and in movies, but there are no A-list film stars who are openly gay. Rumors have swirled for years about the sexuality of major stars such as Jodie Foster, but so far the actress has avoided any explicit public declarations.
At this year’s Golden Globe awards, host Ricky Gervais riffed on the those rumors, and the title of Foster’s recent film, “The Beaver.”
“I haven’t seen it myself,” Gervais said. ‘I’ve spoken to a lot of guys — they haven’t seen it either, but that doesn’t mean it’s not good.”
Beyond a reticence to broadcast their sexuality, 35 percent the actors surveyed said they have experienced homophobia in their professional lives.
“I have never felt that being gay has worked against me but the finding in Equity’s own survey that just under half of all gay performers are not out to their agent in the U.K. is worrying,” Malcolm Sinclair, actor and president of Equity, said in a statement. “But then work is scarce and, whether sexuality is a barrier or not, people may just err on the side of caution. They don’t want to test the water to see if it’s all right.”
The same anxiety does not appear to exist among co-workers. Ninety four percent of those polled said they are honest about their sexuality with their fellow performers and 81 percent were out in their professional lives.
from Reuters