News: Tesco's Pride, Ellen Barkin, Marriage Licenses, Koch

Actress Jamie Anne Allman says frustrated viewers will be satisfied with season two of AMC's The Killing. I'll believe it when I see it.

Marc Jacobs and ex Lorenzo Martone show off their beach bodies during a New Year's swim in St. Barts.

Lady Gaga and boyfriend Taylor Kinney rang in 2012 together.

There's no way of knowing, but New York State officials believe marriage equality is responsible for a 14% increase - 4,042 - in the number of marriage licenses issued over the past six months.

CBS News' Brian Montopoli offers thoughts on the "overhyped, unrepresentative" Iowa caucuses: "The press' focus on every twist and turn of the Iowa horse race takes the focus away from the candidates' positions on issues and creates a distorted narrative in which candidates are often forced to spend weeks focused on winning a few thousand votes in an effort to win a trumped-up expectations game and avoid a flood of negative headlines."

UK retailer Tesco denies it has pulled gay pride support after criticism from a conservative Christian group. It remains "fully committed" to the cause.

Spanish activists hoping to create that nation's first LGBT retirement home have finally found land to start building their dream. "Homosexuals who go into homes often also have to go straight back into the closet," said one of the organizers, Federico Armenteros. "This will be a place that is open to everyone and where no one will have to hide their sexuality."

Benjamin Colton Barnes, an Iraq veteran accused of killing ranger Margaret Anderson at Mount Rainier, is believed to be dead after aircraft spotted a body in a secluded part of the park. (Update: Confirmed.)

Ellen Barkin claims she fell after being "shoved" by a New York police officer after haranguing them for Occupy Wall Street arrests on New Year's Eve.

ABC's cross-dressing "comedy" Work It, already being protested by gay groups GLAAD and HRC, is getting predictably bad reviews: "The show’s comedy is predicated on the fact that none of Lee’s female co-workers seem able to discern the obvious (she’s a man, baby), probably because they are too busy living down to every lame stereotype associated with office women, up to and including the itty-bitty salads they nibble at lunch."

A number of LGBT-inclusive laws, including the "Gay History law" and "Seth's Law," which combats anti-gay bullying, will be officially enacted this week.

Dee Rees, who used her experience coming out as inspiration for her movie Pariah, discusses how Spike Lee influenced her work.

Rick Santorum's daughter offers her thoughts on her father's opposition to gay marriage. "It's a policy thing, he thinks this is the right thing for America and the foundations of our country," said Elizabeth Santorum. "People are entitled to live the way they want, but to project those values and say those are the best values for our country are a different thing."

Former New York City Mayor Ed Koch thinks Ron Paul is "the candidate of the white supremacists, Jew haters, and gay bashers."

James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald and other famous writers have joined the public domain.

Newt Gingrich is doing some pre-caucus damage control in Iowa. "I don't think I'm going to win," he said today, hoping to tamp down expectations ahead of New Hampshire's primary.

Glee actor Darren Criss makes his Broadway debut tomorrow.

Not too late: 101 movies from 2011.

The show’s comedy is predicated on the fact that none of Lee’s female co-workers seem able to discern the obvious (she’s a man, baby), probably because they are too busy living down to every lame stereotype associated with office women, up to and including the itty-bitty salads they nibble at lunch

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/01/01/3345090/abcs-vapid-transgender-take.html#storylink=cpy

The show’s comedy is predicated on the fact that none of Lee’s female co-workers seem able to discern the obvious (she’s a man, baby), probably because they are too busy living down to every lame stereotype associated with office women, up to and including the itty-bitty salads they nibble at lunch

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/01/01/3345090/abcs-vapid-transgender-take.html#storylink=cpy

The show’s comedy is predicated on the fact that none of Lee’s female co-workers seem able to discern the obvious (she’s a man, baby), probably because they are too busy living down to every lame stereotype associated with office women, up to and including the itty-bitty salads they nibble at lunch

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/01/01/3345090/abcs-vapid-transgender-take.html#storylink=cpy

 

Gay Kissers Upstage Al Jazeera News Report About Conservative Victory in Spain: VIDEO

An Al Jazeera reporter covering the victory in Spain's election by the right-wing People's Party was upstaged by a gay couple who ran into the frame and began passionately making out. As I mentioned earlier, Prime Minister elect Mariano Rajoy's win puts marriage equality at risk.

Check out the kiss, AFTER THE JUMP...

Marriage Equality in Spain Threatened by New Conservative Leadership

Progressive Spaniards fear for what will happen to marriage equality and other laws under Prime Minister-elect Mariano Rajoy's conservative government.

The PP has challenged in the Constitutional Court a 2005 law allowing gay marriage. Rajoy (pictured) has said he supports civil unions for homosexual couples but does not think they should be called marriages.

Many gay and lesbian couples are rushing to marry, The Telegraph reports:

In Campillo de Ranas, a tiny hamlet in the Ocejon valley 80 miles north of Madrid, there are very real fears of what the future may bring under the new conservative government of Mr Rajoy, 56. The picturesque village has carved out a reputation for holding the record in Spain for the number of gay weddings since the Socialists legalised same-sex marriages in 2005.

The socialist mayor Francisco Morato has reversed the fortunes of the once-dying community by welcoming gay marriages and bringing a much-needed boost to the local economy, but he now fears the good times are over. "I get the feeling that there is a lot of concern," said Mr Morato. "I have been holding marriages every weekend – sometimes as many as three weddings in one day – I simply haven't stopped."

"A lot of people tell me they fear that Mariano Rajoy will revoke the law, so there has been a rush to go ahead with their weddings before it is too late," he said.

Rajoy won a landslide victory, with his party taking 186 of 350 parliamentary seats.

The Stolen Babies Of Spain

Over five decades, as many as 300,000 newborn babies were stolen and sold in Spain, primarily by the Roman Catholic clergy administering the nation's hospitals. At first, the clergy thieved at the instruction of Spain's fascist leader, General Franco, who sought to remove newborns from the homes of politically suspect parents. Explanations vary as to why the thieving didn't stop after Franco's death in 1975. In some cases, it was the profit-motive. (You could get a lot of pesetas for a healthy newborn.) In other cases, clergy sought to help the children by removing them from heathen mothers and planting them in good, Catholic homes. The epidemic of baby-theft ended only after the Spanish government wrested control of adoptions from the churches and hospitals in 1987.

The racket went like this: A woman gave birth, the baby was removed from the room, and some time later the mother was informed of the baby's death. Often, the mother was denied permission to view her child's body. Other times, the doctors presented her with a prop corpse they kept in the hospital's freezers. As grieving parents attended funeral masses dedicated to empty coffins, a loose affiliation of priests, doctors, nuns, and nurses colluded to deliver the baby to eager adoptive parents. The crime was repeated in hospital after hospital, city after city.

This bizarre story of Spain's stolen babies went largely untold until March of this year, when victimized parents first addressed the Congress of Deputies in Madrid. The precise details of the en masse abductions still aren't widely understood, despite a cover story in Time and a flurry of shorter print articles last spring.

That'll change a little come Tuesday, when BBC2 airs This World: Spain's Stolen Babies. According to the Daily Mail, the doc focuses primarily on a woman named Manolo Pagador and her search for her son, who may or may not be a 40-year-old Texan named Randy Ryder. That's him at the top of this article, in a BBC2 photo borrowed from the Daily Mail. There, the caption reads: "Randy Ryder as a baby being cradled in a Malaga hospital in 1971 by the woman who bought him."

The doc airs at 9 p.m. in Britain, and will live on the internet thereafter.

Gay Activists Plan Kiss-In For Pope's Spain Visit

Pope Benedict XVI will get his very own gay show when he arrives in Madrid on Thursday, because hundreds of gay activists are planning a kiss-in to protest the Catholic Church's tenacious homophobic discrimination.

The kiss-in is being organized on Facebook by gay groups including Asamblea Transmaricabollo de Sol, which was set up during popular "indignant" protests that erupted May 15 over Spain's economies woes.

The kiss-in is aimed at protesting the Roman Catholic Church's "moral condemnations of sexuality," a spokesman for the Transmaricabollo group, Jaime del Val, told AFP on Wednesday.

On Facebook, organizers are calling for a gay-lesbian kiss-in "dedicated to an educational, lewd, and (r)evolutionary celebration of the arrival of the Holy Father Benedict XVI."

Nearly 300 people had signed up for the protest, the exact site for which had not yet been chosen.

A similar protest was held during the Pope's 2010 visit to Barcelona.

Exclusive: Memorial to LGBT People Dedicated by Barcelona Mayor

Story and Photos by WILL SHANK

Will Shank lived many years in San Francisco, where his day job was head of conservation at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and he is widely published on matters of culture, art and how to take care of it. He married his husband, American sculptor U.B. Morgan, in Barcelona, where the couple and their daughter Anastasia have lived since 2006.

You can visit him online at WillShank.com.

On Sunday morning, March 20, Mayor Jordi Hereu of Barcelona dedicated a granite triangle framed in pink in the city's central Ciutadella Park. The location was a compromise after the Roman Catholic church raised a ruckus over the proposed installation of the memorial in the immediate vicinity of Antoní Gaudi's famed Basilica of the Sagrada Familia, which is also the city's number one tourist attraction.  

In a dignified ceremony under sunny skies in front of hundreds of supporters, the mayor spoke of the history of Barcelona as a haven for persecuted groups and individuals, and for the city's respect for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people.

Hereu, speaking to members of the press.

Only Amsterdam has a similar such visible statement, literally carved in stone, among gay-friendly European cities.

The triangular slab slants slightly upward toward the observer, with an inscription in Catalan that reads, "In memory of the gays, lesbians and transexual persons who have suffered persecution and repression throughout history, Barcelona 2011."

After the ceremony, which featured show tunes in several languages from the local gay men's chorus, (all dressed in black except for their boas, in one ABBA number), local GLBT groups left bunches of flowers around the monument, whose resemblance to a tombstone was hardly coincidental.

Correction:  The author inadvertently overlooked the many European monuments to the queer victims of the holocaust in Europe in Berlin, Frankfurt, the Hague, and in several other European cities, as well as the sites of concentration camps.  Thanks to all of the sharp readers who pointed them out!