Latvian foreign minister Artis Pabriks accuses Belarus of “aiming to humiliate” diplomat by broadcasting hidden camera footage of a gay sex tape found in the diplomat’s apartment. Pabriks: “It is in breach of the Vienna Convention, because it was a violation of the private space of our diplomat. I think that it is not clear what exactly the Belarussian position is at this moment, because they are avoiding to give us any explanation.”
Robert Mapplethorpe portrait retrospective opens at National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh. Guardian: “Photographers’ lives leak into their images, wherever they point the camera. In Mapplethorpe’s case, death and the diabolic were always there. Gleeful Mapplethorpe, demonic with a bull-whip up his arse. Mapplethorpe facing the camera and facing death, holding a walking stick topped with a skull. Mapplethorpe posing with a machine-gun, a cigarette, a flick-knife. A bound penis, with a little brass devil dancing nearby with a pitchfork. His art is always priapic. And, at its best, it is full of life, even if pain and death are never far away.”
Breaking away or breaking up: McConaughey rides solo.
Larry McKeon, an openly gay Illlinois lawmaker who helped write the state’s LGBT anti-discrimination law, is stepping down. Urges committee members to appoint another openly gay man as his successor: “I think if the community were to lose this seat, it would disenfranchise an entire community, not only here on the North Side of Chicago but throughout the whole state. I receive calls from people throughout the state who feel they have no representation with discrimination and health care.”
Young bigot Tyler Chase Harper, who caused an uproar in late 2004 by wearing a t-shirt with “homosexuality is shameful” scrawled on it to his San Diego school, will not be having his case reconsidered by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In April, the Court ruled that the school had the right to forbid Harper from wearing the shirt, saying that it might provoke attacks against gay and lesbian students.
Swiftboaters out to get Iraq war critic John Murtha and “‘Redeploy [him] From Congress’ to his backyard.”
Cher to auction Bob Mackie gowns, giant Gothic “things”: have loved everything I ever bought. I have loved them and kept them for all these years and now it’s time for them to go on.”
