Twitter Tweets
@LukeVernon my favourite song ever, and its my alarm on phone. Wakes me up in a good mood!2 weeks ago from Twitter for iPhone
@LukeVernon gimme shelter gives me the urge to watch my favorite film #goodfellas2 weeks ago from Twitter for Android
Or GLASTONBURY even. Not sure where Galstonbury is, but Im sure it doesn't have the worlds biggest festival. Sounds Texan.2 weeks ago from txt
In a restaurant in the middle of the US and the song with the best intro ever came on, Gimme Shelter. Which reminded me, in 3 weeks....2 weeks ago from txt
I shall be seeing one of the greatest live acts of all time, The Rolling Stones, @ THE greatest festival ever, GALSTONBURY! Yes, Im shouting2 weeks ago from txt
Miley Cyrus: ‘We Can Love Who We Want, Screw Who We Want’
I want to make this song the biggest song in the world." How about the biggest song of Pride?
Check out the track below and let us know if you want to love it too.
Continue readingDominique Venner: Pour Encourager Les Autres
No great loss to the world.
Let's hope this selfish act inspires more of his kind to kill themselves in similarly futile gestures. Continue reading
This one time in Paris
So, my best frand and I got drunk on cherry wheat and bought tickets to Spain one fateful evening.
We had a mutual friend who was living in England ... Continue reading
Ian McKellen: I m accepted as a gay man and as happy now as I ve ever been
That was compounded by the fact that being gay was illegal in this country until I was 28 years old. That doesn t do much for your self-confidence. He added: Now I m in a country where the laws don t discriminate any longer.
I feel accepted and about bloody time, frankly. That plus the fact that I m still working and still have my health means I m as happy now as I ve ever been. In an interview last year, Sir Ian spoke of how difficult it had been growing up while homosexuality was illegal: There was nothing positive about homosexuality in the newspapers and it was against the law to make love.
I knew people my age who d been sent to prison for doing it! When I tell schoolchildren that, they can t believe it. Sir Ian still has an active working life, and will star in an upcoming sitcom on ITV from 29 April, which is set to feature him alongside Sir Derek Jacobi as an elderly gay couple.
The series, titled Vicious, will feature both actors as an elderly gay couple living in London s Covent Garden. Although still in good shape, Sir Ian said he was more aware of his own mortality now. In December he revealed that he had been living with prostate cancer for several years, but said that thanks to early diagnosis it was no big deal .
Do I think about death? Yes, every day. People of our age, when we get together, talk about decrepitude all the time.
We know we ve got our lives behind us now, he said. Friends keep dying, or get very ill. I ve got a lot of young friends that s how I bolster myself against the inevitable.
I ve just arranged my house so that I ll still be able to live in it when I can t walk, so now there s a lift in it. A patron of anti-homelessness LGBT charity the Albert Kennedy Trust, Sir Ian appeared at their fundraiser in March and said cruel religious leaders should feel responsible for gay teens living on the streets. Earlier this month he said Baroness Thatcher misjudged the future with her support for Section 28, following her death on 8 April.
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Marc Almond: Why would gay couples want to get married in a church that thinks you are a sinner?
So you have something in law that means that when you die some greedy relative doesn t come out of the woodwork and grab your chattels. But I m not an advocate of marriage. I grew up as a child of an unhappy marriage so I know it is not always best for children.
And why, as a gay man, would you want to get married in the house of a religion that doesn t welcome you with open arms, that thinks you are a sinner? To be blessed by a supernatural deity? The 55-year-old said it was a mistake to expect religion to modernise: It is what it is, a set of rules, and you either adhere to it or you don t.
You can t say, Well, I want to invent a new kind of Christianity where you invite all sorts of other people in : that s a different sort of cult. In 2004, Almond was almost killed in a motorcycle accident and the last few years have been a struggle for him. I have a liver disease, a progressive sclerosis, which I usually keep controlled, he said to the Standard.
But I had to have a spleenectomy and my gall bladder removed over the course of last year, which put me out of action for about three months. I had been ill before that. My health was quite depleted and I was kind of swollen.
I was very tired and anaemic. The past few years have been a bit of a struggle but I have never stopped working. I m a great believer in getting on with things.
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Hommen: Shirtless French Dudes In Masks Handcuff Themselves Together To Protest AGAINST The Gays!
Hommen staged its biggest protest so far outside Paris busy Saint-Lazare train station on Tuesday evening. A group of shirtless, masked men waved the tricolour and chanted outside the major rail hub in the French capital, to both applause and booing from passersby. Their torsos painted with messages such as Freedom , Protect Kids , and Free Speech , some chanted Democracy!
while others were symbolically gagged by a suited man bearing a Fran ois Hollande mask. At our first event, there were 20 of us. On Tuesday April 3rd at Saint-Lazare, there were 30, said Henri.
Our goal is to oppose gay marriage. The French people have expressed themselves with historic demonstrations against it, and the government s only response has been violence, he said, referring to the use of tear gas at protestors during a rally in the capital last month... TheLocal.com, Paris.
I have no idea if this is a joke or not - I'm happy either way, to be honest.
PS Thanks to @spitzenprodukte.
Nancy Reagan supports same-sex marriage says daughter Patti Davis
But Patti Davis hit back. She claimed the former president would have supported equal marriage if he d been alive today. Davis never discussed the issue of equal marriage with her father when he was alive, but said he conveyed, without using the words homosexual or gay, the idea that some men are born wanting to love another man, when she and her father were watching a film featuring the late Rock Hudson kissing a female co-star.
In her most recent interview Davis accused her eldest brother of being in denial about the family s acceptance of gay people. Michael came to live with us for a while when he was a young teenager and he knew the same people that I knew, she explained. And he knew the tolerance.
And he knew the two aunts that babysat us. He knew they were around. They were around at holidays and it was completely accepted that they were a couple.
And in a further swipe at Michael Reagan, Davis said if her mother had disagreed with her recent comments about her father she would have said something publicly. President Reagan infuriated the LGBT community with his slow response to the AIDS epidemic. Part of the reason I thought it was important to say that about my father, Davis said regarding her belief that he would support equal marriage, is that he was late in addressing the AIDS issue.
I wished I d asked him that before the Alzheimer s, if he d regretted that he was late in addressing the epidemic. I m quite certain he would have said that yes he was. You know, my father s flaw was not that he was intolerant.
His flaw was that he trusted the people around him. And I m not excusing him. I m just saying this as a fact.
He trusted people around him to tell him what was going on in the country that he needed to address. There were people around him that did not want him to deal with any issue that had to deal with gay people. Nancy Reagan, 91, a close friend of Margaret Thatcher, announced she was heartbroken at the death of the former prime minister last week, but confirmed ahead of today s funeral that she would be unable to attend because of her frail health.
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US: Ohio Boy Scouts donors urged to push to allow gay members
Earlier in February, it delayed a vote on whether or not to lift the ban until May due to the complexity of the issue . Scouts for Equality is using the time the BSA is gearing up for its final vote on the issue, by writing to philanthropic foundations such as Nationwide and American Electric Power, to start a discussion on how the BSA s anti-gay policy may clash with their own nondiscrimination policies. Dave Bernard, an Eagle Scout, told Dispatch.com that he wanted the BSA to lift its discriminatory ban.
He said: This is clearly something that s important to a lot of companies, and they take pride in being open and inclusive, But then to go ahead and support an organization that is, for the time being, very staunchly anti-equality is something they need to account for. Some organisations which currently donate to the BSA, including The United Way of Central Ohio, and the Nationwide Insurance Foundation, have said they are watching for the outcome of the BSA s vote in May. Scouts for Equality have insisted that their aim is not to deprive the BSA of its funding from philanthropic groups, but to push the organisation to be accepting of gay volunteers, members and staff.
The Boy Scouts have lost funding from several large corporate donors over the policy, including UPS, back in November, who had given over $150,000 ( 95,000), Intel, another of the scouts largest donors, ceased funding back in September, and the Merck Foundation in December. Verizon, a US communications company, has been one of the top donors to the BSA in recent years, but a recent petition urged bosses to cease the funding because of the policy. A synagogue in California also recently became the latest in a list of religious groups to reject the Boy Scouts of America s policy, described as damaging .
A California bill which would remove the tax exempt status from youth groups such as the Boy Scouts of America, if they uphold policies excluding gay members, underwent its first committee hearing last week. A new poll released earlier in February found that a majority of US voters thought the Boy Scouts of America should drop its ban on gay scouts, volunteers and staff. Discuss this Get the latest LGBT headlines in your inbox with our free daily newsletter!
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Australian PM refuses to support equal marriage despite New Zealand victory
Gay rights campaigners in Australia have praised New Zealand after it became the 13th country to legalise equal marriage. On Wednesday, MPs voted in support of New Zealand s Marriage (Definition of Marriage) Amendment Bill with a majority of 33. Seventy seven MPs voted in favour 44 voted against.
Rodney Croome, national convener of Australian Marriage Equality, said: The majority of Australians who support marriage equality will be happy for New Zealand but deeply embarrassing their own country is lagging so far behind. This will be a game changer in Australia because of the close links between our two countries. New Zealand shows how reform can be achieved when national leaders put politics aside and work together, unlike Australia s leaders who are still playing politics with marriage equality.
Along with Julia Gillard, Australia s opposition leader Tony Abbott continues to oppose equal marriage and refuses to allow his MPs a conscience vote.
Efforts to legalise the measure failed in the Australian Parliament last year.
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UK: Thatcher opponents stage funeral protests
One read: Rest in Shame! another said: Over 10m of our money for a Tory funeral. The funeral service of Thatcher, who died last Monday at the age of 87 from a stroke, has taken place at St Paul s Cathedral in central London.
The 2,000 congregation included Thatcher s family and all surviving British prime ministers, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Sir John Major, the current cabinet and surviving members of Thatcher s governments. Both the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh were present. Speaking on BBC Radio 4 s Today programme, Prime Minister David Cameron said it would have been seen as extraordinary not to commemorate her life.
I think it will be quite a sombre event, but it is a fitting tribute to a great prime minister respected around the world, and I think other countries in the world would think Britain had got it completely wrong if we didn t mark this in a proper way, Asked about those who wanted to challenge his view of Thatcher s legacy, the prime minister said: Of course people have the right to disagree and take a different view. But when you re mourning the passing of an 87-year-old woman who was the first woman prime minister, who served for longer in the job than anyone for 150 years I think it s appropriate to show respect. Gay Conservative MP Conor Burns, a friend of the former PM last week said: Her enduring legacy is not just in what she achieved and the fact the Labour Party has not reversed much of it.
While she was divisive to some degree, controversial certainly, she was an inspiration to many people way beyond these shores. Since her death, Thatcher s attitude to the LGBT community chiefly centred on Section 28 has been the subject of renewed debate. Introduced during the AIDS epidemic as part of the Local Government Act in 1988, Section 28 stated that a local authority shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality and that schools could not promote of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship .
Earlier this week, Sir Ian McKellen said Margaret Thatcher misjudged the future with her support for Section 28. Lest we forget, this nasty, brutish and short measure of the third Thatcher administration, was designed to slander homosexuality, Sir Ian wrote on his blog. Section 28 was repealed in 2003, and in 2009, David Cameron apologised on behalf of the Conservative Party, saying it was a mistake to introduce the legislation.
Last week, a video of Margaret Thatcher delivering a speech against homosexuality went viral, receiving more than 180,000 views. In the speech she gave at the Conservative Party Conference in 1987, Thatcher said it was the plight of girls and boys that worried her the most. Children who need to be taught to respect traditional moral values are being taught that they have an inalienable right to be gay.
All of those children are being cheated of a sound start in life yes cheated. In recent years, several conservative political commentators have argued that in private Thatcher could show a greater understanding towards homosexuality on an individual level than she would ever allow in her public persona. Former Conservative MP Matthew Parris, an aide to Thatcher while she was leader of the opposition, said the former prime minister knew he was gay and showed kindness when he confirmed it to her on leaving the House of Commons in 1986.
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