News: South Carolina, Mormons, Driving Test, Rafael Nadal, Atlanta

Italian man wins $157,700 in damages in driving test lawsuit: "When 26 year-old Danilo Giuffrida told doctors he was gay at his medical examination for military service, they passed the information to the transport ministry, who told him he must repeat his driving test or have his license withdrawn due to his 'sexual identity disturbance.' Giuffrida agreed to re-take his test, passed it for a second time, but the ministry renewed his license for just one year rather than the usual 10 years because of his homosexuality."

Man who created 'Men on a Mission' Mormon beefcake calendar faces excommunication from the Church of Latter Day Saints by council of elders...

Mayor of Nice, France holds press conference to show off birth certificates of the latest members of the Brangelina Bunch, Knox and Vivienne.

Carry on: The new season of Project Runway has eight out gay men.

Report: Retailers shunning Victoria Beckham's men's jeans line. "The delay comes just months after the denim range was relegated to the bargain basement bins of several US boutiques while many announced they would no longer carry it because of poor sales."

Gay Atlanta upholstery/design store owners targeted by vandals: "Beginning late last month, someone has returned to the couple's upholstery and design business in Buckhead over and over, using spray paint or permanent markers to write anti-gay messages on their windows, according to an Atlanta police report."

South Carolina has pulled a gay tourism campaign created by an overseas contractor unaware of the state government's homophobia. Agency investigating ways to discipline employees who signed off on it. Greenville County GOP State Sen. David Thomas: "From my own perspective, it's bad for the state to make such statements about the state, to assert that South Carolina has gay beaches. . "I think that sends a cross message when we're saying, 'Come to South Carolina for its family-friendly beaches.'"

The L.A. Times takes a look at the L.A. Gay and Lesbian Center's HIV/AIDS web soap meant to educate young men about prevention.

Apple claims sales of one million iPhone 3Gs in first weekend, 10 million downloads from App Store.

Australia: Pope to apologize for sex abuse by priests.

Rafael Nadal: buff on the beach.

HGTV Design Star host Mikey Verdugo is an out gay police officer with a gay bondage porn past. Here are the photos (very NSFW)...

Prince Harry following in the footsteps of Diana...

120,000 take to the streets for Gay Pride in Vienna: " Thirty-degree heat and sunny weather ensured record attendance for the 13th edition of the march, which like almost all other events this year in Austria had a football theme, even two weeks after the end of Euro 2008. 'No more offsides!' organisers urged, calling for legalised gay marriage and an end to discrimination, although daring high heels, rather than soccer boots, were the choice of footwear on the Ring boulevard where the Fan Mile recently stood."

Ewan McGregor out of Africa.

The world's oldest known blogger, 108-year-old Olive Riley, died on Saturday: "An Australian woman described as the world's oldest Internet blogger has died at the age of 108 after posting a final message about singing "a happy song" in her nursing home. Olive Riley 'passed away peacefully on July 12 and will be mourned by thousands of Internet friends and hundreds of descendants and other relatives,' a note on her website said. Riley had posted more than 70 entries on her blog from Woy Woy on the east coast since February last year, sharing her thoughts on modern life and her experiences living through the entire 20th century." Watch a video of Riley here.

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News: Ugly Betty, Morehouse, Boyzone, Latvia, Sharon Stone

Meet Ohio's Sally Kern...GOP Representative Jeff Wagner: "As much as some people would have us to believe otherwise, this country was founded on Christian principles. One of those long honored principles is the tradition of holy matrimony. One man and one woman joined together in a union that goes as far back as Adam and Eve. As our society has gotten further from that standard (not just homosexuality, but easy divorce, cheating on a spouse, etc.) we see a continued collapse of the basic building block of society the family unit. As that traditional family erodes, we see more sexually transmitted diseases, kids without parents, heartbroken people and I believe a host of mental and physical illnesses..."

Ugly Betty headed to Broadway?

High-profile Canadian murderer of gay man Jeffrey Lalonde commits suicide in prison.

Batman gets a milk moustache...

Roman Catholic Cardinal Jānis Pujāts calls on Latvian government to declare gay pride marches unlawful, compares gays to drug addicts and alcoholics...

Following last week's eulogy in the NYT, New York magazine weighs in with its final words to meatpacking restaurateur Florent Morellet.

Gay couple receives $15,000 in damages from homophobic teen: "Five years ago, the 17-year-old, who can not be named because he was a juvenile at the time, threw a roll of toilet paper and a firecracker on the couple's lawn. In a related incident, the teen also threatened the couple by saying he would like to 'wreck his fist' on their faces. The boy was arrested, but police never charged him. He was instead asked to apologize to the couple and seek psychiatric help. That didn't satisfy Wouters and Thibault who felt the boy's apology was made only to keep him from being charged in criminal court. They took the case to the rights commission."

Black, all-male Morehouse College battles homophobia from within: "Brewer, 22, didn't come to Morehouse with the intent of changing it. But he found that he had no choice. He had arrived here from Oklahoma City pretty comfortable with himself: outspoken, proudly smart and, at 5 foot 9 and 300 pounds, hard to miss. Early on, he decided he wouldn't water down his gay identity. And that, historically, has been a problematic strategy at Morehouse. The 141-year-old college has played a key role in defining black manhood in America. But with a past steeped in religion, tradition and machismo, it has struggled to determine how homosexuality fits within that definition."

Texas high school criticized for putting photos of gay couples in the yearbook.

Sex and the City publicity juggernaut achieves orgasm in Manhattan.

Boyzone performs the Full Monty...

Cyndi Lauper, Charo, and the nephew of Harvey Milk to grand marshall San Francisco gay pride parade.

McCain commercial features woman wearing Barack Obama t-shirt.

Chinese not happy with Sharon Stone's statement that the earthquake was "karma": "That prompted the founder of one of China's biggest cinema chains to say his company would not show her films in his theaters, according to a story in The Hollywood Reporter...Ng See-Yuen, founder of the UME Cineplex chain and the chairman of the Federation of Hong Kong Filmmakers, called Stone's comments 'inappropriate,' adding that actors should not bring personal politics to comments about a natural disaster that has left five million Chinese homeless, according to the Reporter. UME has branches in Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, Hangzhou and Guangzhou, China's biggest urban movie markets."

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Towleroad Guide to the Tube #260

ATLANTA TORNADO: Inside the Georgia Dome during Friday night's storm which spawned an F2 tornado in downtown Atlanta.

APARTMENT BOMB: An Air National Guard jet mistakenly dropped a 22-pound BDU-33 dummy bomb on an apartment complex in Tulsa, Oklahoma late last week.

JOHN MCCAIN'S BAGDHAD MARKET: Too dangerous to stroll through now

A GAY AMERICAN IDOL: CNN explores the possibility.

Check out our previous guides to the Tube here.

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News: Heath Ledger, King Lear, Thailand, Jodie Foster, Beefeater

New York magazine talks to Keith Olbermann, who believes Elizabeth Edwards should be our next president.

As the historic Hawthorne School of Art risks death by development, artists are fighting for their way of life in Provincetown: "Generations of artists flocked there each summer to study with Hawthorne and the artists who later taught in his hilltop barn, including the influential modernist painter Hans Hofmann. Illustrator Norman Rockwell and abstract expressionists Franz Kline and Lee Krasner were among those shaped by lessons in the blazing light of the dunes."

Condom Nations: Some interesting findings from a recent Durex Global Sex Survey.

Nicole Kidman reveals to Vanity Fair that she miscarried Tom Cruise's baby when she was 23: "From the minute Tom and I were married, I wanted to have babies. And we lost a baby early on, so that was really very traumatic. And that's when it came that we would adopt Bella. There's a complicated background to that, given that I never speak much about many things. One day maybe that story will be told. My mother has an adopted sister, so it's been part of our family, and I knew it would probably play out somewhere in mine. I didn't think it would happen so early, but it did."

Ian McKellen brings his naked, buff King Lear to New York.

"Gay war" reportedly erupts in Pattaya, Thailand over sex trade: "Police arrested two young men after one bar was set ablaze and another was completely ransacked in the Thailand resort of Pattaya. Foreigners including British tourists fled the area, 100 miles east of Bangkok."

The oldest photograph ever taken of Tokyo, Japan.

Brokeback break-up: Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams find they can quit each other.

AmericaBlog's John Aravosis recently went visiting his family in Greece, and shot some fascinating footage of destruction from the recent fires that burned for miles and miles, threatening ancient ruins and creating smoke plumes that coule be seen from space.

Karl Rove advised Bush against picking Cheney as VP, new book reports: "The Washington Post reported Monday that in the book -- 'Dead Certain: The Presidency of George Bush' -- journalist Robert Draper reveals that Bush was intent on picking Cheney as his running mate, despite his warnings against it. 'Selecting Daddy's top foreign-policy guru ran counter to message. It was worse than a safe pick -- it was needy,' Draper quotes Rove as saying. Once he took office, the president 'saw no harm in giving his VP unprecedented run of the place,' Draper wrote."

22-year-old Indian man confesses to murder of gay partner and partner's grandmother: "Arun Prasad Dora, a resident of Dhenkal town and a Master's student at an institute in the city, told the police he killed his friend Debabrata Pani, 22, for forcing him into a homosexual relationship for the past one year. On Monday night Debabrata, who lived in the staff quarters of Orissa University Of Agriculture Technology (OUAT), tried to force Arun to sleep with him when Debabrata's parents were away. 'The youth protested and in a sudden rage stabbed Debabrata to death,' Inspector-in-charge of Khandagiri police station, S.P. Satpathy told IANS. Arun also killed Debabrata's grandmother, Suna Pani, 78, as she witnessed Debabrata's murder, Satpathy said."

First female Beefeater takes her spot at the Tower of London.

50 marchers wrap up Atlanta Black Gay Pride weekend with march from the King Center to the state Capitol: "People are here, and they are proud of who they are. It gives us a chance to show people what's happening with us."

Jodie Foster declines to respond to OUT magazine treatment on closeted celebrities to Entertainment Weekly: "Over the next two hours, there's only one subject that she firmly swats away. A recent Out magazine cover featured two models holding up pictures of her and Anderson Cooper's faces in front of their own, under the headline 'The Glass Closet: Why the Stars Won't Come Out and Play.' When asked if she has any response, Foster says, 'Was that the one with the Popsicle sticks?' Her thin lips tighten into a calm half smile of reproach: 'No, I have no response.'"

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News, Montana, Anderson Cooper, MLK Parade, Lutherans

LGBT marchers battered with insults at Atlanta MLK day parade: "Y’all gay? OK, alright," one man shouted before backing away and turning around. "You can look at them and tell [they’re gay], they don’t need no signs."

Go west: gays buying up property in Red Lodge, Montana.

Nigeria is about to have a major crackdown on gays: "Though presented as a simple ban on marriage, the long-winded 'Prohibition of Relationships Between Persons of the Same Sex, Celebration of Marriage by Them, and for Other Matters Connected Therewith' will bar all expressions and endorsements of homosexuality."

Six Feet Under's Lauren Ambrose is the proud mother to a baby boy.

Jim McGreevey's wife is "eager to counter the version of events the ex-governor offered in his own memoir" according to the New York Daily News. Dina McGreevey: "I've had a lot of requests for interviews and appearances, but thought it best for my daughter and myself to stay out of the public maelstrom. But two years have passed and still I am the subject of much speculation as to the nature of my relationship with my husband. Enough is enough."

Just an itty bitty correction: David Beckham's L.A. Galaxy contract is worth $50 million, and not $250 million as first reported.

Because he announced he has found a lifelong male partner, openly gay Rev. Bradley Schmeling must face trial by a Lutheran committee who may defrock him: "The ELCA maintains it is simply following its own rules, which bar unmarried clergy — whether gay or straight — from having sex. The denomination believes that sex is reserved for marriage and marriage for heterosexual couples. Still, many Lutheran churches support ordaining partnered gays and perform same-sex blessing ceremonies despite the policy."

REPORT: Anderson Cooper renews his contract with CNN for more than $4 million a year.

Britney Spears has been busy checking out the gay nightlife in L.A. and Vegas.

Liza Minnelli and David Gest are finally ready to divorce...in Tennessee: "Before filing for divorce, Gest sued Minnelli for $10 million for assault, claiming that his wife had beaten him so badly during alcoholic rages that she caused him nerve damage and caused him to be hospitalized for five days. Minnelli countersued, claiming that Gest had stolen at least $2 million she earned while performing in shows he had produced. Lorraine Nadel, Gest's lawyer in the assault lawsuit and in the Minnelli countersuit, confirmed that legal battle was over. She said the settlement terms were confidential and would not say whether either paid the other any money."

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