News: Starlight, 1600, Maine Marriage, Kurt Cobain
MetroWeekly has a great profile of Tammy Baldwin, the Wisconsin U.S. Rep. who will the first openly gay American elected to the Senate if she wins next week.
The White House complex is worth about $284.9 million, far less than has been spent on this presidential election.
A federal court in Illinois ordered a man to pay $1.5 million - $150,000 per movie - for the 10 gay porn movies he downloaded illegally.
The Obama administration is sending former President Bill Clinton to Pennsylvania.
Chelsea Handler and Kristin Chenoweth team up to fight for the underdogs, and make us laugh in the process.
Jon Hamm and Daniel Radcliffe will soon be seen in a tub together for the British mini-series A Young Doctor's Notebook. It will not be a romantic scene.
Always inflammatory and outlandish, NOM Rabbi Yehuda Levin says a vote for Mitt Romney is a vote for more storms like Sandy because Romney is gay friendly, or something. "The dirty secret they don't tell us is that Romney supports homosexual
adoption and Boy Scout leaders, homosexualization of the military," he said, perhaps speaking about a different Mitt Romney.
World record breaking skydiver Felix Baumgartner looks pretty nice in a bomber jacket.
The Bangor Daily News
says Mainers need to vote for marriage equality next week: "Permitting
gay couples to marry will uphold equal treatment required by
the U.S. Constitution, promote family values and protect religious
beliefs. The ballot initiative is a matter of fairness and, in the end,
care for one another."
Team USA does Gangnam Style.
UK gay rights group Stonewall named Scottish Cardinal Keith O’Brien its "Bigot of the Year"
French conservatives and the French Catholic Church are sharpening their attacks on marriage equality.
NOM is trying to derail campaigns with robo-calls.
You can finally own the guitar Kurt Cobain smashed in the "Smells Like Teen Spirit" music video.
Says Senate Majority leader Harry Reid: "Mitt Romney's fantasy that Senate Democrats will work with him to pass his 'severely conservative' agenda is laughable."
Wow: "Using NASA’s Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope, scientists were able to detect the light of the earliest stars, which are now long since gone."
Mainers United for Marriage have released their final ad.
Straight couples are increasingly incorporating a pro-equality message in their marriage ceremony: "The Vitts embody a movement within that movement. They are among the
increasing number of heterosexual couples who are using their weddings
to advocate for gay marriage. While much of the heat and light in this
election season has centered on four states with ballot measures on
same-sex marriage — Maine, Maryland, Minnesota and Washington — social
change is being advanced by newlyweds using the moral and religious
force of the wedding ceremony."




The Towleroad story above is not true. The guy was fined for UPLOADING 10 porn movies. He was not fined for DOWNLOADING them.
Posted by: Icebloo | Nov 2, 2012 6:43:39 PM
Towle Road has passed its' prime. Total makeover required. Lose the black. Make it easier for people to register. Don't censor. Grow up. To uptigt. Is it Andy? Hummm.....
Posted by: Gary | Nov 2, 2012 7:32:51 PM
Where's the story of Michelangelo Signorile telling a gay teen caller to his show who was voting for Romney that he should commit suicide and Andrew Sullivan taking him to task for it online writing if that was Rush Limbaugh saying that to a gay teen on his radio show he'd be screaming bloody murder and Signorile walking it back? KUDOS to those two for seeing some light, no matter how fleeting it will be.
Posted by: MarkUs | Nov 2, 2012 8:51:14 PM
What Icebloo said: "The Towleroad story above is not true. The guy was fined for UPLOADING 10 porn movies. He was not fined for DOWNLOADING them."
Posted by: Randal Oulton | Nov 2, 2012 9:44:21 PM
Gary: what are you complaining about? Or are you just one of the bi*chers?
Posted by: MATT | Nov 2, 2012 9:49:39 PM
"Make it easier for people to register."
Gary, WTF are you talking about?
Posted by: Mike in the Tundra | Nov 2, 2012 10:00:48 PM
Signorile didn't tell the caller to kill himself. He said that a gay person voting for Romney was the same as committing suicide and that it would be more efficient to just poison oneself instead. Of course, you would have to go and actually listen to the audio clip rather than just spout a talking point that's being passed around by gay right-wingers. It's funny that the gay right, such as it is, only gets really worried about gay teen suicide in the context of Romney's campaign efforts.
Anyway, here's the clip. Maybe Signorile is over-the-top, but he's not telling anyone to kill themselves:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=h_9r8b24SP4
Posted by: RyanInWyo (formerly RyanInSacto) | Nov 2, 2012 10:46:57 PM
GARY - GO AWAY.
Posted by: UFFDA | Nov 2, 2012 10:54:46 PM
In the Flava Works case, the punishment wasn't just for downloading or viewing, but also for apparently sharing the video with thousands of others, and for an incompetent defence in court.
Nevertheless, I'm not a fan of trying to bankrupt individuals via fines based on unprovable lost sales which were likely never going to happen anyway. I never heard of Flava Works before, but I'll be certain never to be their customer.
If manufacturing, service, and retail businesses had to adapt to 21st-century globalization and economies of scale, why are we exempting content owners from having to accept the same realities, when it comes to the Internet?
One last thing... how much money will the actual performers get from this verdict? Copyright is promoted as encouraging content creators, in this case the performers, so they keep getting it up for their fans. So these performers must be staying limp until they see at least a few thousand each (after lawyers' fees and such). Right?
Posted by: Randy | Nov 2, 2012 11:12:03 PM
Ryaninwyo,
Michael Signorile didn't use the words, "Kill yourself," but the sentiment is fairly clear. And Andrew Sullivan is correct, if Rush Limbaugh had said the exact same thing to someone, we would interpret it as "Kill yourself," and (rightfully) but upset.
My main problem is the condescension that Signorile displayed when talking to the caller. It is clear that the caller is uneducated about the issues. But instead of demeaning him, Signorile should educate him. Yes, Signorile did correct him, but only after ridiculing him and telling him that he shouldn't have the right to vote. People tend to get defensive and firmer in their beliefs when they are challenged in that manner.
Signorile would have been better off explaining that while Bill Clinton was the president who signed Don't Ask, Don't Tell, the Democratic Party's stance on LGBT has have shifted greatly in the last 20 years. When the caller said that he believes that Barack Obama is only saying he supports LGBT issues to get votes, he could have explained that Obama has passed a number of pro-LGBT laws and that the Department of Justice stopped defending the Defense of Marriage Act. He could have been a great deal more respectful of the caller.
Low information voters don't need to be ridiculed. They need to be educated.
Posted by: Matt | Nov 2, 2012 11:43:00 PM
NASA - thanks again for providing something for the science geeks here
straight allies - I do a side gig as a substitute organist. I have almost stopped playing for weddings because I find them abominable. Incorporating something gay-friendly is certainly an improvement.
Posted by: Diogenes Arktos | Nov 3, 2012 8:37:28 AM