Seriously, fuck you:

“An activist for a sub-group of the anti-gay group the National Organization for Marriage is speaking out against the use of the rainbow as a symbol for gay rights. ‘We are the real rainbow coalition. The gay lobby does not own the rainbow,’ she said.

Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse is the founder and president of the Ruth Institute, which describes itself as ‘a project of the National Organization for Marriage.’ On its site, the group describes its mission statement as ‘to promote life-long married love to college students by creating an intellectual and social climate favorable to marriage.’

Becky Yeh of right-wing American Family News Network’s OneNewsNow, a product of the American Family Association, writes that Morse says ‘the rainbow is a sign of God’s covenant with man.’ Morse told ONN: ‘Proposition 8 was passed by a great grassroots coalition that included people from all across the religious traditions, and also people of every race and color. We are the real rainbow coalition. The gay lobby does not own the rainbow.’”

Three things:

1) A handful of well-placed (and presumably well-compensated) Uncle Toms doesn’t exactly equal all-inclusive.

2) Why is it that every under-attended NOM rally this past summer featured only priests and the elderly?

3) Is there anything — freedom, guns, wedding rings, Christmas, the Presidency, the nation — that hasn’t been stolen from self-entitled Christians?

An iconic neighborhood famed for its swing loose cred now faces the same peril that claimed Times Square:

“In Chinatown, it may be the Year of the Tiger, but in the Castro, it’s almost always the Year of the Cock. Judging from a walk down Castro Street, cocks are the unofficial mascot.

Back in the heady ’70s and ’80s when gay men claimed the neighborhood formerly known as Eureka Valley as their own, guys stood with shirts off and tight Levis sanded at the crotch on ‘Hibernia Beach,’ the sidewalk outside the old Hibernia Bank at 18th and Castro streets. But in 2010, those guys have grown up, settled down, and had babies. Locals have noticed more lesbians and straight couples have moved into the neighborhood with babies of their own. The Castro has gone from edgy to twee and touristy. Strollers have rolled in like an invading army. (read the full article)

I think my cerebellum may’ve just fused:

“Chalk some of them up as victims of the cult of self-esteem. No one they have encountered in their lives – from their parents to their teachers to their president – wanted them to feel bad by hearing the truth. So they grew up convinced that they could become big pop stars like Michael Jackson. On American Idol, of course, these self-esteem-enhanced but talent deprived performers eventually learn the truth. After they’ve embarrassed themselves for the benefit of the producers, they are told in no uncertain terms that they, in fact, can’t sing, regardless of what they have been told by others. But in the wider world, these kind of instances of hard-truth-telling are increasingly rare. “

– more keen self-awareness from stage mother Sarah Palin via leaked excerpts from her latest book, all this despite the fact that her meritorious brood — including elder daughter, fleet-footed nymphette, and latter-day Pia Zadora, Bristol — has yet to meet a camera or magazine cover it didn’t condescend to grace.

I don’t want to live in a country where an average teenage unwed mother can’t profit from her horrible life choice, be patted on the head by a political party with a vested interest in insulating her from criticism, rake in the cash as an abstinence shill, dress up as a gorilla in a pink tutu, and turn even a content-free Z-grade TV celebrity employment project into an arbitrary popularity contest.

Dignity, folks. Dignity.

“They keep telling me ‘You’re overqualified. You’re under-qualified. We want someone who’s had this exact experience before. We want someone long term. We think you’ll take a better job when one comes along. This doesn’t seem like something you want to make a career out of. This is an entry level position, you have too much experience. If I hire you for this position, I’d have to promote you in a couple of months and I can’t do that. These fellowships are for people who are still in Grad/Law school. I’m sorry I’ve wasted your time. We can’t afford to hire a J.D. You don’t have the right transactional law experience. You’re incapable. You’re too capable.’ Etc. Ad nauseum.”

– comment via Gawker regarding a New York Times article on rampant unemployment among Millennials.

I’ll have everyone know that I would have made a perfect taint glazer.

Perhaps too perfect.

Have you ever wondered about the rampant gayface you see on professional homophobes?

Take a look at this gallery of “manly” faces — the simpering Gary Bauer, the Golly Gee eyed Peter LaBarbera, the pudding-faced Robert Knight — all of them spokesman for organizations that freak out regularly over gay civil rights — the so-called “gay agenda.”

In point of fact, it is these spokesman for Christian-front organizations with names like Americans for the Truth about Homosexuality (a one-man operation by nutjob LaBarbera) and Concerned Women for America (odd isn’t it, for a man — pudgy-wudgy Robert Knight — to be the head of a woman-specific organization)… it is these Concerned Morons for Homophobia that have the agenda — a theocratic one.

But that’s not all they have. These Prisoners of the Inappropriate Gayface also possess an oddly fine tuned gaydar that goes off — in full, flaming four-alarm mode — at the first breath of a whisper, at the teeniest hint of gender “confusion” in Barbie dolls, at the “blatant gay militancy” to be found on the cardboard cups at Starbucks , at the softest rustling in the bushes … (read the full article)

1. Turn Your Fetish for Rigid Members Into the Toast of Manhattan

Robert Mapplethorpe combined the shock effect of hardcore S&M porn with the fashion lighting and stagey compositions of George Platt Lynes, a photographer of artistic male nudes from the 40′s and, in many ways, Mapplethorpe’s gay herald.

But where Lynes had concentrated on elegant male forms, Mapplethorpe, an artist of the 70′s, focused on images of hard-ons, such as the monster cock at top. In his own way, Mapplethorpe’s boners were just as elegantly framed and fit in smoothly with the rest of his portfolio,vaguely glamorous shots of underground celebrities like Patti Smith, Grace Jones and Keith Haring. (read the full article)

Ah, frat boys. Consider the plight of young privileged males on the college campuses of America. More boy than man, these sturdy, somewhat elongated young stags are in the grips of what Tom Wolfe memorably called “the season of the rising sap.” Completely housebroken, of course, but pretending otherwise to impress their “Bros.”

Bros should not be confused with dudes. Bros are closer than dudes, but dudes can become Bros after some straight-boy ritual of male bonding like consecutive all-nighters playing Halo 3 and ordering out for Taco Bell or performing any of the American tribal stunts seen in the Jackass films — taking turns riding in a shopping cart, for instance, as it barrels down a hill into traffic, then putting the video up on YouTube or your Facebook page.

It’s the deep basso chuckle of collective Bro-dom that one hears in darkened movie theaters when the notice comes up before the Jackass films warning that the stunts they’re about to see are being performed by “professionals” and should not be attempted by the jackasses in the audience.

In a world where closet doors have swung open, guy-bonding must never be mistaken for gay-bonding. Thus the phenomenon of “the gay seat” — what the Bros call the empty seat that’s left between two friends who go to the movie together but who must never be confused with being together. To double insure this, the Bros are most likely to attend what they call “dick flicks” — movies characterized by car crashes, explosions and boobs — the very polar opposite of the romance-sappy “chick flick,” and peopled almost exclusively by other guys all separated by empty seats. (read the full article)

Macbeth in the buff — why hadn’t anybody thought of it before?

The idea was as natural as …well, as Mickey Rooney turning to Judy Garland and bubbling “I know! Let’s set Shakespeare to music!” And Judy bubbling back “But lets do it in Swing!”

When a theater company in Arlington, Virginia decided to put on a Macbeth for the 21st Century, director Jose Carrasquillo wanted something tribal and violent, something suggestive of “an animal-like clan and society.”

“Twenty minutes,” decided the critic for the Washington City Paper. “That’s about how long it takes to get used to the nudity in José Carrasquillo’s eerie, intelligent, and visually arresting Macbeth.”

A tad more skittish about the balls-out production, with its cast of mostly male actors (give or take a few witches), was the reviewer for the A.P. wire service: “Folks in the front sometimes cringe and move back a few rows during intermission,” the scribe reported sheepishly. “One man watched the play with a programme in front of his eyes, blocking out the lower half of his field of vision.” (Awwwww, the poor fragile darling. What? Were all the showings of Evening sold out?) (read the full article)