The recent arrest and conviction of 9 men in Senegal for “unnatural acts” (read: gayness) is devastating to all those in support of equal rights. Prop 8 energy, are you listening? An NYTimes article summarizing the situation is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/09/world/africa/09senegal.html?ref=world

Many of them activists and educators working with HIV/AIDS populations in the country, these men have been sentenced to spend 8 years in jail for their “crimes.” You can read about the reactions to the Senegalese case in a BBC article here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7817100.stm

As someone who once lived in and now regularly travels to West Africa, I must first point out that the region is not just some wild quagmire of homophobic maniacs run rampant. We should all be angry and moved to action by the abuse of human rights that the Senegalese case highlights, but we should also attempt to understand the problem in its social context. West Africa (Senegal especially), according to our Western mores, can be called crazy liberal-tolerant and developed in a lot of ways, so let’s skip the overdone “uggh savages, we just can’t understand them” bullshit and move on to an actual conversation. We are talking an entire continent here, with nearly one billion people, 2,000 languages, probably the most diversity on the planet… OK preacher, point made.

Some of my best nights of dancing EVER were spent at parties in West Africa where a number of the guests were openly gay… at the party/club at least. When I spoke with these folks, it was clear that they kept things on the relative DL in everyday life. My extended West African family is worldly and loving and open. One time while we gossiped over tea and cake about a much-adored young neighborhood man with effeminate tendencies, my sweet host-grandmother said, with a hint of confusion in her voice, “Homosexuality is a DISEASE, no?” Her middle-class, high school-educated teenage granddaughter explained with conviction “No, Grandma, homosexuals are just like us. Maybe it is biology. Maybe God makes them that way. It is not a sickness; they are just born gay and want the right to live their lives without trouble as we do.” Grandma nodded and said “Then they should be left to do as they please. The baker I knew as a girl was said to be a homosexual. And he was a lovely man. And this boy is a very good boy. I do not want anyone to bother him.”

This type of discussion and expression of tolerance is not surprising at all, given that many parts of Africa have understood and accepted homosexuality historically and make a point of educating students about it in the present-day. Research on “traditional” African beliefs on homosexuality is unfortunately underdeveloped, but time spent perusing the Interwebs can somewhat enlighten the persistent. And South Africa presents a fine example of a country that is taking steps toward modern equal LGBT rights.

That said, homophobia is obviously still a dangerous problem in many parts of Africa. The Associated Press has reported that 38 countries in Africa criminalize homosexual acts. Some of the total nutjob African dictators have said insane, violent things about gays and lesbians (for example, Gambia’s president threatened to behead homosexuals in his country). Homophobia and sexual conservatism is certainly a contributing factor to an HIV/AIDS epidemic of terrifying proportions in many countries. But closer inspection reveals that much of this homophobia arises from religious extremism, authoritarian rule, and/or total lack of any discussion in African countries, rather than from some deep-seated historical hatred. Wouldja look at that, attitudes toward sexuality in Africa are characterized by the coexistence of contradictory or incompatible elements. Sounds a lot like US, doesn’t it?

We don’t even know how to fix it here and we want to fix it everywhere. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

At least someone’s trying. Check out the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission here: http://www.iglhrc.org/site/iglhrc/

OK, I am waaaaay behind the times, so many of you lieblings probably already know about the gay teen character, Luke, who featured prominently on As The World Turns around about 2007.  If I’m slow on the uptake, I promise it is NOT because I live in a closet (so to speak), but rather because I don’t have a lot of time to catch up on the daytime sterrrries.  When I were a baby gay on my grandma’s knee, we used to watch General Hospital together–but let me tell you, General Hospital never had nothin’ like this, m’kay!

For those of you who are new to all of this, here’s a recap of the storyline, which in its brevity may accentuate some of the absurdities of the soap opera plot twists–but in truth, it’s all pretty seriously improbable even as it unfolds in real time.

Luke is a gay teen with a penchant for falling in love with straight guys (and don’t we all know how THAT feels).  Along comes Noah, whom he meets while they’re interning on a local access TV show they’re making called Invisible Woman.  Noah is dating Luke’s best friend Maddie (a girl).  Luke, predictably, falls for straight Noah but then they develop kind of a bromance and it becomes obvious that straight Noah is not, in fact, straight.  This is made more complicated by the presence of Noah’s disapproving Army father, who has never been more delighted to discover that his obviously-faggot son has a girlfriend, Maddie.  Meanwhile, there’s some behind-the-scenes office romance and Noah kisses Luke, then pretends that he did it as a joke, then admits that it wasn’t a joke, then says it doesn’t matter because he’s moving in with Maddie and he’s going to become the son his father always wanted.  Maddie gets wind of these shenanigans, confronts Noah, Noah admits that he likes Luke, Maddie dumps him, after a lot of sturm-und-drang he makes his way back to Luke, and finally comes out to his bigot Army father, who pretends to be OK with it, but is actually just psychotic and devious.  You see, he lied to his son when he was only 3 and told him that his mother was dead, but in fact his mother wasn’t dead but his father didn’t like her anymore, which drove her into prostitution, but apparently this still wasn’t enough to ensure that she stayed away from Noah, so while Noah and Luke were getting their panties in a twist, Noah’s father shoots Noah’s ex-prostitute mother and then also shoots Dusty, an ex-con who is also secretly Luke’s mother’s lover with the plan of framing him for the murder.  Then, Noah’s father, the Colonel, pretends to be OK with his son being gay so that he can lure Luke into the woods on a fishing trip and shoot him.  But luckily Dusty is one tough S.O.B. and manages to drag his shot ass out to Luke’s house at which time he warns Luke’s mother that the Colonel is one crazy ass motherfucker.  Everyone except Dusty dashes out into the woods and a skirmish ensues, but unfortunately the Colonel is a mean shot even in a tussle and caps Luke, who doesn’t die but is paralyzed from the waist down.

Did you get all that?

Afterwards, Noah feels serious guilty and won’t even go to the hospital to see Luke because he thinks Luke will hate him but as it turns out, THEIR GAY LOVE IS THE ONLY FORCE IN THE UNIVERSE POWERFUL ENOUGH TO RESTORE LUKE’S LEGS AND NETHER REGIONS TO PROPER WORKING ORDER!!!!!!!

Yes, Lord.

Check out the following clip in which the power of Noah’s and Luke’s gay love confronts Noah’s evil bigot colonel father and results in the spontaneous and miraculous healing of Luke’s nether regions (of yeah, and his legs, too):

Now, this is some seriously wholesome stuff, folks.  I have never seen horny teens so apparently uninterested in macking on each other–the libido-cooling power of nether regions paralysis aside.  Everyone dresses in American Eagle (OK, so it’s not only wholesome, it’s middle America), and the boyos kiss about four times total.  When their romance first begins, Luke and Noah actually get off a few lusty kisses on-screen, but as their story progresses, the camera always manages to pan away before anything happens–which makes me wonder if As The World Turns was forced to back off the sexiness because of network feedback or pressure from advertisers.  Compare, for example, the differences in these two scenes.  The first is their first kiss; the second is the sweet Christmas episode during which Luke reveals that Noah’s gay love has healed his nether regions and legs and Noah writes Luke a card in which he says he loves him–then they presumably kiss under the mistletoe but all we get to see is a pan-up and fadeout.

Now granted, As The World Turns has presented a compelling coming out story which, in its details, will be recognizable to most of us: a psychotic father who attempts to murder our lover on an evil fishing expedition; an ex-con substitute father figure who, after surviving a gunshot wound inflicted by our real father, begrudgingly encourages us to be supportive of our paralyzed “friend”; and a prostitute mother, also murdered by our real father, who sends letters from the grave encouraging us, better late than never, to accept ourselves for who we truly are.  I think we’ve all been through this, and so its good to see daytime television telling our real stories so that people can see we’re just like them.

On the other hand, why is it still the case that all of our gay love has to take place off-screen?  Murder, mayhem, adultery, incest, shoulder pads, insane perms–sure, bring them on.  Two boys gettin’ some booty?  It’d be the end of civilization as we know it!

I stumbled on this while doing some research.  It isn’t gay, but it is hilarious….  ARRRRRR!!!!!

My Blackberry is such a fucking vulva. Observe:

How lez is this?! (image by funnybone)

Just when I thought I couldn’t love this little vibrating machine of infinite information anymore, I started rubbing its light-up clit… and… ohmygod… brb…

Penis Santa

Penis Santa wishes you a belated Merrry XXX-Mas!  He will soon be entering your chimney with his sack full of delights.

This holiday image was painted by a child in Port-au-Prince, Haiti named Papy.  Let’s hope his parents are not surprised….

Check out these completely awesome public service announcements starring Hilary Duff, Wanda Sykes and…. some other lady I should probably recognize but don’t.  They’re so gay!

The illustrious humorist Natalie Dee has introduced bear week.

Natalie Dee: It's bear week

I’ve never quite been able to understand precisely what constitutes a bear, or what exactly it is that differentiates a bear from a bear cub. While the taxonomy may be a bit fuzzy, we can all agree that bears deserve a week (at least!) of celebration. Fo grizzle.

Fuck you, Burger King. You have now reduced the beauty and hotness of man-man love to the most basic of cliches: man meat.

Burger King has created a fragrance called Flame. Not a relatively harmless J. Lo, Sean John, or Britney kind of fragrance. You know, the ones with the self-important, tormented pseudo-fantasy plot line commercials with the “artist” breathily whispering the silly fragrance name to the thud of a distant heartbeat. They make all your magazines sneeze-worthy. No, this is a fragrance that is billed as: “a new men’s body spray: the scent of seduction with a hint of flame-broiled meat.”

What would have possessed you and your advertising whores to do this, BK? Who the hell did you think would buy this shit? I would have loved to peeping Tom on that focus group…

Burger King has, one must assume, turned a profit on Flame, which cost $3.99 a spray bottle before it sold out in stores. According to the interwebs, it is now only available on Ebay, where it can be found for upwards of 30 bedonkadollahs! And, as Rachel Herz, a Brown University psychology professor and author of The Scent of Desire: Discovering Our Enigmatic Sense of Smell puts it, there is a market for this type of scent, though perhaps not the one Burger King might have expected (or maybe it was expected?). A Los Angeles Times columnist explains: “Herz points out, men who wear Flame are theoretically likely to be successful in attracting people to them — as long as those people are other men. ‘Meat is at the top of the list in terms of male-rated smell,’ she says. ‘Men rate the smell of meat the way women rate chocolate.’”

OMFG, a disgusting gay fragrance! With all the seductive power of meat-stinking perfume, why not skip the Barry White for a simple soundtrack of burps and farts? Instead of foreplay and soulful discussions, you can pound your chests and scratch your balls. You can make fast, humpy, meaty whoopie on a pile of dirty socks and skid-marked underwears then play boring and violent video games from the toilet seat all night long. Wait, my labia be still, do gay guys do that now?!

Be careful, boys. As the saying goes: one man’s meat is another man’s poison. One can’t be sure that wearing Flame will enhance one’s studly gravitas. On a bright note, it’ll be nice for the ladies not to feel like the only pieces of meat for a change.

If you can’t control your thirst for man meat, then check out what lies below.

Enjoy squirting your fragrant load on the Flame fragrance website, which was totally designed by a moronic/hilarious thirteen-year-old boy:
http://www.firemeetsdesire.com/

Uggggh, this ad is as retarded as that frikkin plastic Burger King head. Put some clothes on, idiot:

Less Tourism at Men’s Room in Craig Case - NYTimes.com.

For those of you mos who depend upon the Minneapolis airport men’s room to get your jollies, you’ll be relieved to know that tourism is finally dropping off in your hunting grounds, reports the AP.

Too bad.  It warms the cockles of my heart to imagine American families flocking to a public toilet to memorialize (and perhaps reenact) the delicate dance which leads to anonymous anal penetration or at the very least a handjob.

For you collectors out there, though, you’ll be disappointed to hear that the Minneapolis airport has already rejected an offer of $5000 to buy the stall because, and I quote, airport officials “don’t sell fixtures for novelty purposes.”

On the other hand, the drop in tourism and the tanking economy might make this the perfect time to float another offer!