Towleroad's Welsh rugby obsession Gavin Henson pissed off "Voice of an Angel" girlfriend Charlotte Church when he told her that she'd be "the AbFab mother from hell," referring to Jennifer Saunders' overcocktailed character Eddie Monsoon. Church was holding a glass of champagne and a cigarette at the time so her protest didn't carry much weight.

Singer Damian Marley says references to "burning" homosexuals in reggae lyrics are metaphorical: "When they speak of fire, part of it comes from the deejay battling culture and trying to get an immediate crowd response at the dance. But another part comes from faith. The churches all speak against homosexuality. But you don't walk around Jamaica and see homosexuals hanging from the lampposts. It's a spiritual burning."

Don't miss Best Week Ever this weekend for an appearance by our blog peep Trent over at Pink is the New Blog! Pink is like a good shot of tequila every day. Congrats Trent!!

Arjan tunes us in to a free track from Norwegian pop princess Annie.

Does Apple have its own iPhone in the works?

The latest military recruiting bait: iTunes.

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Friday Trip into the Pacific

Baily & Sargent, U.S.S. Cuyama 1934

Towleroad correspondent Alan L. wanted to share these photos he dug up in the closet, so to speak.

Alan writes: "I was going through a box of old photographs that belonged to my grandparents and found some Navy pictures from 1932 and 1933 that set my gaydar off. The photos were in a scrapbook made by my grandmother's second husband (Jerry), who died about ten years ago. When he was alive, I always sort of wondered about him. Finding these photographs makes me wonder even more."

Since Gerald isn't here to confirm or deny, we'll just enjoy the photos for what they are, a glimpse back into the early 20th century, in the company of sailors. Captions were printed on the backsides of the photos.

Rosco 1934

More photos after the jump...

Waikiki Beach 1933

Waikiki Beach 1933

Waikiki Beach 1933

Jerry, Waikiki Beach 1933

U.S.S. Cuyama 1934

1932

Cuban Jungle 1934

Thanks, Alan, for these great photos! Towleroad loves old photos. If any other readers have vintage photos (especially gay-related) they'd like to share, please send them along.

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Knoxville Gay Group Embraces Censorship

A Knoxville, Tennessee community paper (which in this case should be translated as right-wing bigot rag) agreed to run an ad for a National Coming Out Day event called "Come Out Knoxville" only after the words "gay" and "lesbian" were entirely removed from the ad.

Wow. Perhaps the "community" should ban gays and lesbians from appearing at the event as well!

Publisher Steve Hunley released a statement saying "The Fountain City Focus is a community newspaper. Our focus is on the positive aspects of community. We choose not to involve ourselves in controversial social, cultural or religious issues. We prefer to leave that to the mainstream media." The positive aspects.

Here's the kicker. Gary Elgin, director of the Rainbow Community Awareness Project, actually thanked Hunley for allowing the censored ad to be run. Said Elgin: "Steve Hunley is a very kind man and I think he has made steps to embrace us as a community. He's not going to run the ad as we had designed it, but he has agreed to run an ad of one of our events and that's a step. That's building a bridge, board by board."

What steps has he made to embrace us? As far as I can see, he's a right wing bigot who'd rather we all disappeared. I understand it must be tough-going in Knoxville but thanking Hunley? It's like thanking the bully on the playground who just punched you in the face.

Newspaper agrees to run watered-down ad promoting gay event [wate]
Video on the site as well.

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Censorship Money Rejected

A Texas couple who donated $3 million to St. Andrew's Episcopal school were released from their donor agreement after their demands that a teacher drop Brokeback Mountain from a non-mandatory reading list were not met.

This opinion piece in The Daily Texan is right on: "'Books and ideas are the most effective weapons against intolerance and ignorance,' [Lyndon Baines Johnson] once said. Unfortunately, this idea seems to lack prevalence in America's relationship with 'deviant' ideas - and by deviant, we mean anything straying a hair from the Christian right 'norm.' Teenagers are free to watch educationally-valueless MTV videos with nearly naked actors all but having sex on the screen - but give them access to a Pulitzer Prize-winning author's emotional short story on gay love, and all of a sudden it's "pornographic" and morally-corrupting."

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American Roman Catholic leaders plan pilgrimage to Rome to voice concerns in person about the Vatican's plans to exclude gay men from the priesthood. Rev. Gerald J. Chojnacki: "We know that God does not discriminate. We know that gay men who have responded to the call have served the church well as priests and religious - and so why would we be asked to discriminate based on orientation alone against those whom God has called and invited?"

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Will & Grace Giggle Fest

I sort of skipped out on the last four seasons of Will & Grace but thought I would tune in for last night's live premiere, which was worthwhile because of all the line-dropping and giggling that ensued between Debra Messing and Sean Hayes. There were a few points where Megan Mullally almost lost it as well but held her composure. After seven seasons she and Hayes are still the stars of the show. The Malcontent has posted a clip of highlights.

One hilarious line is omitted from the clip though. After Alec Baldwin's passionate kiss with McCormack, Baldwin stood there with his bag of melting ice cream sandwiches at his side and McCormack looked down at that area and said, "Your package is dripping."

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