Today is the International Day Against Homophobia, or IDAHO. Do your part in fighting it. The National AIDS Trust in the UK has focused on bullying in schools, saying they are "failing" young men: "We need schools to not only have policies of zero tolerance to homophobic language and behaviour but also to address sexual orientation and HIV in the curriculum. Homophobia should be as unacceptable in schools as racism." Amen. Other events to mark the day are taking place in France, Peru, Uganda, Ivory Coast, Sri Lanka, Hong Kong and Brazil.

Meanwhile, in Idaho, they're obsessed with getting The Joy of Sex and The Joy of Gay Sex off library shelves.

Rocker Dave Navarro has an enlightened attitude toward sexuality. Other celebrities who seem obsessed with denial could learn a few lessons in PR from him: "I’ve come to realize through my experimentation over the years that I’m not gay, nor am I bisexual. But at least I know that in the sense that I’ve never been aroused by a man, but I’ve been in situations where I could potentially be aroused. Since it didn’t work, I know I’m not gay. So I was open to it working, let’s just say that."

Georgia judge rules gay marriage ban unconstitutional. According to an attorney with Lambda Legal Defense, the measure was struck down because it violates Georgia's "single-subject rule" which prohibits voters from deciding more than one issue in a single amendment. Georgia's Governor Jack Perdue pulled out the wingnut talking points again. Said Perdue: "This decision highlights the effect activist judges can have on our system of governance."

Mark Wahlberg: "Acceptance is the Key"

The source of this quote is unclear, but Mark Wahlberg's gay uncle taught him tolerance of homosexuality according to a report by Contact Music: "My uncle was gay and he was a teamster and a truck driver and he was a guy's guy, but he kept this secret his whole life. Imagine how hard that must have been for him. I feel so bad. Every time my dad brings it up, he cries because he loves his brother more than anything. He doesn't care what it was. He was born that way. Acceptance is the key. The only way you're gonna succeed in life and really grow as a human being is through acceptance."

Newsom and Selvin: San Francisco's Gay Guns

The SF Chronicle interviews newly single Mayor Gavin Newsom and Planet Out honcho Lowell Selvin, both advancing the cause in various ways from the Bay Area. Some choice quotes:

Gavin Newsom:

"Since becoming mayor at 36, four acts have defined him in unexpected ways. Marrying men to men and women to women; joining a picket line of locked-out chambermaids and busboys; spending his weekends hanging out in Bayview and Hunters Point; and tackling the city's most intractable problem, homelessness, with his controversial Care Not Cash program.

You could be cynical about any of Newsom's actions, and notice that the constituencies to whom he has been appealing -- African Americans, labor, gays -- are those he did not do well with in the 2003 election. But every political moment is an opportunity and all political acts are opportunistic. What matters is which opportunities a politician chooses to seize."

Lowell Selvin:

I was born in the projects in Brooklyn, N.Y., and mostly raised outside of Washington, D.C., in suburbia and then outside Chicago for high school in Des Plaines, Ill. I then went to University of Illinois, where I studied sensory perceptual psychology and aeronautical astronautical engineering.

That's where I met my partner in 1979. I'm one of those who didn't understand my gayness until much later in life. My partner would argue that as soon as he opened his eyes, he knew he was gay.

I didn't realize that I was gay until I looked across a crowded room and saw someone that my soul fell in love with before I did. And that was my partner.

The Gay Media: Cock-Out Colin Farrell Confesses

Colin Farrell explains to Chris Heath in the November issue of GQ why kissing men just isn't his cup of tea:

"I was very uncomfortable doing it [in A Home at the End of the World]. As much as I love Dallas [Roberts] — and I got on great with him—I didn't enjoy it. As I said, I don't enjoy going to the fucking gym, and I'd prefer to lift weights for twenty minutes than kiss a guy for two seconds. That two seconds is longer by a long shot...

It taught me what I knew already: I don't like kissing boys. When you feel his stubble against your lip, it's repulsive to me, as repulsive to me as for a lot of gay men the idea of putting their tongue near a pussy is—something that, for me, is akin to heaven sometimes. So I just freaked out."

Sexually ambiguous roles don't bother the actor, however much they might bug his reps, Farrell continues: "...If I picked another character that even seemed like he was potentially partial to having a cock in his hand that didn't belong to him, my agent would have a heart attack. But apart from making light jibes like that, I wouldn't have given a fuck."

Farrell also admits to being quite the flasher on the set of the upcoming Oliver Stone film Alexander, earning him the nickname of Cock-Out Colin.

Meanwhile, from the gosh that would never have occurred to me department, Details finally jumps the shark this month with their "Gay or.....?" series as they draw the earth-shattering and uncanny similarities between gays and hairstylists. Gay or hairstylist? Now that they mention it I have noticed something rather fey about Marcellus down at the salon!

Condé Nast better ready the barricades. I'm sure the straight hairdressers will be picketing in droves.

Gay Divorcees

There are two really funny "gay" pieces in this month's Details magazine, whose focus on homosexuals of late is singlehandedly challenging the need for specifically gay-oriented publications. One piece notes the "gay" look of the Democratic front-runner, and the other is a hilarious look at why "Gay Men Definitely Shouldn't Get Married." Two dire predictions:

"Chelsea, West L.A., South Beach crammed with Auschwitz-thin chain-smoking Yorkie-in-the-handbag gay divorcees d'un certain age, swilling Chardonnay while desperately competing for the very, very few well-heeled silver-haired stud muffins who might want to chaperone them through the golden portals of, um, maturity."

"Gay marriage, currently a middle-to-upper-middle-class thing, trickles down society, creating trailer parks where 90 percent of the occupants are either blousy castoff lesbian wives in dirty pink muumuus watching tapes of Ellen or scrofulous castoff gay husbands who live off Bud and whatever they can lap up at the truck-stop glory hole."

Bush Gets Gored

Gore Vidal rips Bush in the latest issue of the L.A. Weekly. Controversy has never been something Gore Vidal has shied away from, and this interview certainly sticks with that tradition.

On the chances that Bush has to get re-elected:

"[Not] if there is a fair election, an election that is not electronic. That would be dangerous. We don’t want an election without a paper trail. The makers of the voting machines say no one can look inside of them, because they would reveal trade secrets. What secrets? Isn’t their job to count votes? Or do they get secret messages from Mars? Is the cure for cancer inside the machines? I mean, come on. And all three owners of the companies who make these machines are donors to the Bush administration. Is this not corruption?"

"If we use old-fashioned paper ballots and have them counted in the precinct where they are cast, he will be swept from office. He’s made every error you can. He’s wrecked the economy. Unemployment is up. People can’t find jobs. Poverty is up. It’s a total mess. How does he make such a mess? Well, he is plainly very stupid. But the people around him are not. They want to stay in power."

On the Patriot Act:

"The USA PATRIOT Act is as despotic as anything Hitler came up with — even using much of the same language. In one of my earlier books, Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, I show how the language used by the Clinton people to frighten Americans into going after terrorists like Timothy McVeigh — how their rights were going to be suspended only for a brief time — was precisely the language used by Hitler after the Reichstag fire."

"The Founding Fathers would have found this to be despotism in spades. And they would have hanged anybody who tried to get this through the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. Hanged."

Vidal may be shrill but he sure gives a good interview.