News: Alan Cumming, Taxis, Esquire, Booker Prize, Sarah Palin

While Palin was mayor, Wasilla billed victims for their rape kits.

Taxi service for gays to launch in St. Petersburg, Russia?

Pete Wentz: I once almost put a bullet through my head.

Gay softball team disqualified from world series for having too many straight players: "D2, a team from San Francisco, beat the Atlanta Mudcats in the series to qualify for the A Division championship game against the Los Angeles Vipers. But the Mudcats filed a protest, alleging that six of D2’s players were straight. North American Gay Amateur Athletic Alliance (NAGAA) rules state a team in the series may have no more than two straight players on its squad."

Some guy relieved himself next to David Beckham and confirmed previous reports from Posh.

Marc Jacobs closes New York show in a skirt.

Barbra Streisand to sing for Obama: "Streisand will perform at a $2,500-per-person reception and concert fund-raiser at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, with upwards of 700 people expected to attend. Among the co-hosts of the event are DreamWorks partners Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen, as well as political consultant Andy Spahn. It'€™s being organized with Obama's Southern California finance team."

UK Booker Prize shortlist announced: Aravind Adiga The White Tiger: A Novel, Sebastian Barry The Secret Scripture, Amitav Ghosh Sea of Poppies: A Novel, Linda Grant The Clothes on Their Backs, Philip Hensher The Northern Clemency, Steve Toltz A Fraction of the Whole.

Kevin and Scotty pics from the new season of Brothers and Sisters.

"No on 8" office opens in SF's Castro: "Activists have already been working for months to build up a grassroots operation to defeat the anti-gay constitutional amendment, but now they will have a spacious centrally-located office to organize. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, Assemblyman Mark Leno, Supervisor Tom Ammiano and Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums worked up the crowd with reminders of this historic struggle--and how a defeat by the radical right would be a huge setback for the LGBT community."

Esquire celebrates 75th anniversary with E-ink cover.

Alan Cumming becoming U.S. citizen to vote for Obama.

Living strong: Lance Armstrong to come out of retirement for Tour de France?

UFC fighter Evan Tanner found dead after walk into desert.

WSJ's Kirchik claims GOP is kissing gay-bashing goodbye: "...it was refreshing to see that gays were not part of the agenda this year. Indeed, the only speaker to make mention of them was the former Arkansas governor and Baptist preacher Mike Huckabee, and he did so only tangentially, stating that Mr. McCain "doesn't want to change the very definition of marriage from what it has always meant throughout recorded human history." (The same, of course, could be said of the supposedly gay-friendly Barack Obama, who also opposes marriage equality for gay couples). The absence of antigay rhetoric has much to do with Mr. McCain; he is comfortable around gay people, and his old-fashioned sense of honor proscribes against making them pariahs for political gain."

Katy Perry-hating church hit with 'God loves gays' vandalism.

McGreevey's partner Mark O'Donnell offers to pay for daughter Jacqueline's school: "O'Donnell's offer was disclosed in a letter filed Friday in Union County Family Court by McGreevey lawyer Stephen Haller, who called it 'an incredibly generous gesture.'"

Gay porn killers to be tried together...

News: Howard Dean, iPhone, Lance Armstrong, Reggae, Ryan Gosling

Russian gay activists to picket Iranian Embassy in Moscow. Nikolai Alexeyev: "We need to continuously remind the state authorities that the death penalty must be abolished."

Line forms a week early for 3G iPhone...

Ryan Gosling makes an excellent case for the white T-shirt.

Larry Craig's bathroom stall to return to spotlight: "Thousands of members of the international media will have to walk past it when they land at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport for the Republican National Convention in St. Paul at the end of the summer. Many will feel obligated to stop and file a story. For the party that bills itself as stronger on family values than the Democrats, it likely will prove an unwelcome distraction."

UK Study: employees who are "out" at work perform better.

Half Blood Prince: First look at new Harry Potter film.

Lance Armstrong gets a beard.

Signorile on Arthur Finkelstein, the gay Republican behind Jesse Helms: "Conservative, then-closeted, Republican political operative Arthur Finkelstein helped engineer Helms' racist campaign against African-American Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt in 1990, as Helms was vilifying gay sexuality, blocking AIDS funding, stalling prevention and attacking queer artists. (See the ad below that was aired at the height of the campaign and which resulted in Gantt going from a a lead in the polls to defeat on Election Day). Had Jesse Helms not had the handiwork of Finkelstein, who worked for Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and various right-wing senators, he might have lost that race. Instead, we had another decade of his antigay grip on the Republican Party, as he blocked HIV prevention measures and thousands more died."

SALON: Transgender man delivered a baby, but failed to deliver respect.

Nicole Kidman gives birth to a Sunday on a Monday.

Obama campaign plane makes emergency stop due to mechanical problems.

"No Homo" the latest catchphrase to sweep NFL locker rooms: "LenDale White says to Vince Young: 'Vince, you’ve got great nips. No homo.' Did you catch the subtle twist there? LenDale has said something that on any other day might be considered gay, but, and this is key, he’s inoculated his heterosexuality by appending, no homo at the end. No homo also works at the front of the phrase but then it’s much less enjoyable because the other party has been keyed into the homosexuality of the statement that’s to follow. Hence, 'No homo. Vince you’ve got great nips.' No dice there."

Reggae music label plans "Straight Pride Parade" in Brooklyn to protest ban of gay murder music artist Stapler.

Howard Dean holds holiday fundraiser in Provincetown: "From a small podium Dean spoke of the enormous progress that has been made in terms of civil rights — for instance, the number of states that have had referendums on gay marriage — despite eight years under 'one of most oppressive presidents' the country has ever known and a Supreme Court he characterized as 'a disgrace. It’s interesting,' he said. 'Sometimes you have to just sit back and look. The grassroots have changed dramatically.'"

NBC to buy The Weather Channel for $3.5 billion. Hurricane Bertha forms in the Atlantic...

Matt Damon checks into the Green Zone.

Michael Ausiello: Hit TV show planning big gay twist.

Getting away with it: Kylie Minogue breaks royal protocol as she is bestowed with the Order of the British Empire...

Jake Gyllenhaal Lives Strong

Nothing attracts a crowd like Gyllenhaal in spandex. These shots from the Lance Armstrong Foundation's Ride for the Roses bike-a-thon in Texas in mid-October recently surfaced. Even if Jake's not playing Lance in a movie, he's still down for the cause. One more shot after the jump...

Lance Armstrong on Matthew McConaughey: We're Not Gay.

Lance Armstrong clears the air on a few rumors in the new issue of Details, according to TMZ.

Armstrong insists that (despite the spandex, bike training, and the Tour de France buddy vacation) Jake Gyllenhaal will not be playing him in a new biopic.

Armstrong also talks about his close relationship with Matthew McConaughey, with whom he started to bond, the Tour de France champ says, when their relationships went sour: "Our friendship just kind of developed. I think people see pictures and they think we're these over-grown frat guys."

Rumors of something more between the two were also defused: "Lance says that the BFFs call each other 'LiveStrong' and 'J.K. Livin,' and when asked whether they're gay, he jokes: 'We tried it. Wasn't for us.'"

Below, Lance and Jake Gyllenhaal share a whisper at the Americans for the Arts event where Gyllenhaal received an award over the weekend.

(photo source)

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Jake Gyllenhaal Receives Young Artist Award

Although many of you may consider him the work of art rather than the artist.

Jake Gyllenhaal hobnobbed with future biopic subject and BFF Lance Armstrong and Zodiac co-star Robert Downey Jr. at an Americans for the Arts event where Jake was awarded the Young Artist Award for Artistic Excellence.

Jake was honored alongside Jeff Koons, Kitty Carlisle Hart, Aretha Franklin, and Sheila Johnson by the arts advocacy group at Cipriani in New York.

In somewhat related news, Brokeback director Ang Lee has joined the team creating the opening and closing ceremonies for the 2008 Beijing Olympics: "Interestingly, Chinese media reporting this appointment refer to Lee as the 'internationally renowned' director without referring to his nationality. China regards self-ruled Taiwan as part of "one China" and censors any reference that suggest its autonomy."

Click to enlarge. Two more Jake shots after the jump...

News: Penis Transplant, Polar Bears Drowning, Mario Lopez

First penis transplant reversed: "The patient finally decided to give up the treatment because of the wife’s psychological rejection, as well as the swollen shape of the transplanted penis."

Global Warming: Polar bears drowning due to melting Arctic icepack; Gore says tax pollution, not payrolls; Bush officials tried to suppress federal scientist from discussing link between global warming and hurricanes.

New York Survey says there are lots of "straight" men having gay sex: "The findings are based on a 2003 health department survey that included 4,193 men age 18 and up. Respondents were asked about their sexual behavior and their sexual orientation. Almost 4 percent said they were homosexual, while 91 percent described themselves as 'straight.' The rest said they were bisexual, 'unsure,' or declined to answer. But of men who considered themselves heterosexual, nearly 10 percent had had sex with a man, but no woman, in the past year, Pathela's team found. And of the 337 survey respondents who'd had sex with another man, almost 73 percent identified themselves as straight.

Jake and Lance hypnotized by John Mayer's see-through shirt.

German art student disguises himself as Chinese terra cotta warrior, jumps into exhibit. Guard: "I got to the area where he was supposed to be, looked around and didn't see him - he looked too much like a terracotta warrior." (via raw story)

The Nip/Tuck shower scene clip: How does Mario Lopez get those abs? He doesn't eat.

New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark has hit out at a campaign by a Christian fundamentalist sect targeting her husband of 25 years: My husband isn't gay.

(thanks tyler)