Arguably the most difficult facet of prosecuting a serial killer case concerns the issue of insanity, since anyone who commits unspeakable atrocities must, in some respect, be out of his or her mind—and thus potentially innocent of premeditation, or able to know right from wrong. That question was essential in the trial of Dennis Nilsen, a Scottish-born resident of London who, in early 1983, was arrested after human remains were discovered in the drains of the house at 23 Cranley Gardens where he was renting a flat. A subsequent investigation uncovered more human body parts, and once a positive ID of […]
Gay
19 posts
If you think same-sex marriage isn’t in danger of being overturned, Justice Clarence Thomas would like you to think again. Thomas, joined by Justice Samuel Alito, today published a blistering attack on the Supreme Court’s landmark case of Obergefell v. Hodges, which struck down state bans on same-sex marriage in 2015, arguing that it should be overturned. Thomas’s opinion is not a court decision, and has no legal impact. My husband and I are still legally married, and our daughter has not yet been taken away from us. But Thomas’s screed is a terrifying warning for the millions of LGBTQ Americans […]
Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito issued a broadside against the high court’s 2015 gay marriage decision on Monday when the court declined to hear a case brought by a Kentucky county clerk who refused to issue a marriage license for same-sex couples. The two justices agreed with the decision not to hear the case, but used the occasion to take a legal baseball bat to the court’s 2015 decision, Obergefell v. Hodges, which declared that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry under the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee to equal protection of the law. Writing for himself and […]
This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here. This week: Me: Cast gay actors in gay roles!!! Also me: Unless it is Stanley Tucci and Colin Firth in this movie that will absolutely destroy me!!! I can’t explain why the rules are such that The Tooch and Sir Firthy forever get a free pass in the debate over whether it matters that straight actors are constantly cast in gay romances while there is still […]
Introduction What’s a bisexual? Is it dating people like Epstein or Roy Cohn and then having sex with children as the New York courts imply? Do you hire models to accompany you around New York when you and Cohn or Epstein hit clubs or, as the photo below depicts, leave the girls behind when you don’t need them? VT interviewed a top New York model (now a Trump appointee to a key position in government) that accompanied Trump and Epstein until Melania came along. It was $10k, not to sleep with Trump but to sign a non-disclosure and provide cover. Along […]
by Fabio Giuseppe Carlo Carisio for VT Italy Versione Originale in Italiano «Usually, common cold is not a danger, but a new strain of coronavirus is killing man species. Why did this newcoronavirus, named at first 2019-nCoV and then re-named SARS-CoV-2, emerge without anybody being ableto identify neither the reservoir nor the vector? (…) This virus could not haveemerged spontaneously by natural mutations and wild strains recombinations, it is a genetic chimaera with artificial insertions of modified genes, an engineered genome of a coronavirus within a capsid of a Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). Couldn’t we protect ourselves from AIDS while risking […]
The restoration of director Claire Denis’ 1999 film Beau Travail, overseen by cinematographer Agnès Godard and approved by Denis, as well as its entry into the prestigious Criterion Collection, comes at a time when non-dominant visions of the world are still largely excluded from validating institutions. We hear these words spoken again and again, but they don’t seem to sink in. As marginalized groups see their images represented more and more as branding, their artistry is still often sidelined by those with major influence and money—John Boyega reminded us just how high up this practice goes in his recent GQ interview. […]
On a nondescript April night in 1990, 21-year-old Dale Wayne Sigler walked into a Brazoria County, Texas, Subway shop and robbed it of $400. When the man behind the counter, John William Zeltner Jr., attempted to flee into the back room, he was shot six times. The “overkill” nature of the crime implied that the two weren’t mere strangers, and the ensuing revelation that Sigler knew Zeltner helped convince a jury that not only was he guilty of the crime—to which he confessed, after being apprehended—but that the execution had been premeditated. For this senseless slaughter, Sigler received the death penalty, […]
Any ‘Gay and Lesbian History’ college course will dive into closeted white suburban gay male representations. In fact, this group of men, sneaking around in mid-century America, have received a fair bit of Hollywood attention in recent years. There was fashion designer Tom Ford’s adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s haunting novel A Single Man, Benedict Cumberbatch’s Oscar vehicle The Imitation Game, and Luca Guadagnino’s take on André Aciman’s Call Me by Your Name. Todd Haynes’s excellent Far From Heaven refocused the lens from a cheating closeted suburban husband to the wife’s own relationship with a Black man who works as her gardener, […]
Singer Madonna has boasted about an unpaid “one million dollar fine,” which she says the Russian government slapped her with for speaking in favor of gay rights at a concert. The only problem is, the story is completely false. “I made this speech in St. Petersburg eight years ago,” the musician posted to her social media this week. Included was footage from the 2012 concert where she says “gay people, here and around the world” deserve the “same rights” as everyone else. “I was fined one million dollars by The government for supporting the Gay community. I never paid,” she proudly […]
Remember that time Marvel boss Kevin Feige said we’d have a gay superhero within the next decade and we were supposed to clap? Or the time Marvel gave us a bisexual Thor: Ragnarok character but then failed to make her sexuality explicitly clear in the actual movie? Or the time DC made countless Batman movies that deny the obvious fact that the caped crusader and Robin are totally, completely, and gloriously gay? Superhero films have a long legacy of squeamishness when it comes to any whiff of queerness. In recent years, as viewers across all genres call for better representation of […]
Seven Russian senators have introduced a package of bills that would prohibit same-sex marriage, ban gay couples from adopting children, and prevent people from getting married after gender reassignment. Led by Senator Elena Mizulina, the head of the Senate’s committee on updating the country’s ‘Family Code’, the proposals follow in the footsteps of Russia’s constitutional amendments which officially defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman. In March, the country’s Constitutional Court deemed the changes to be lawful, but insisted that it does not remove the state’s obligation to respect differences, including in regards to sexual orientation. Also […]
People might debate whether The Old Guard is a superhero movie, what with its blessed existence outside the Marvel-DC dick-measuring contest and not a swatch of spandex to be found. To me, the film is as if the Avengers and the Justice League met up with the Fantastic Four and teamed up with the X-Men. It did the thing the superheroes movies are supposed to do—present a world where the best among us fight for what’s right—but which none had done before: present a world that feels like my own. The first time it’s acknowledged that the characters Joe (Marwan Kenzari) […]
The Stonewall Riots Didn’t Start The Gay Rights Movement By Greggor Mattson, JStor Daily. June 28, 2020 The Stonewall Riots Didn’t Start The Gay Rights Movement2020-06-282020-06-28https://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2017/12/popres-shorter.pngPopularResistance.Orghttps://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2020/06/stonewall_riots-e1593362906531.jpg200px200px Above photo: A Gay Pride parade in London, July 6, 1996/Getty. Despite what you may hear during this year’s fiftieth anniversary commemorations, Stonewall was not the spark that ignited the gay rights movement. The story is well known: A routine police raid of a mafia-owned gay bar in New York City sparked three nights of riots and, with them, the global gay rights movement. In fact it is conventional to date LGBTQ history into “before Stonewall” and “after Stonewall” […]
On Tuesday, Melissa Zarda was dealing with two things at home in Kansas City, Missouri: the loud barking and mischief of her new foster puppy Winnie, a cattle dog/pitbull mix, while—above the din—relishing the hard-fought, historic victory she had just won in the Supreme Court in the memory of her beloved, deceased brother Donald. His was one of three cases featuring LGBTQ people fired for their sexual orientation or gender identity that SCOTUS yesterday ruled, 6-3, were illegal under the sex discrimination provisions of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The ruling—embracing the cases of gay men Zarda and […]
While a picture of the popular Bikini Bottom dweller was attached to a tweet hinting he may represent the LGBTQ+ community, the channel did not say straight that he is gay. Nickelodeon thrilled netizens on Saturday after it posted a tweet to celebrate Pride month with the LGBTQ+ community and their supporters. Apart from SpongeBob SquarePants, the post featured Schwoz Schwartz from Henry Danger and Korra from Avatar: The Legend of Korra in a rainbow background. Netizens, many of whom having suspected SpongeBob might be gay for a long time, perceived this as confirmation that he actually is, according to hundreds of posts and […]
It was a milestone decades in the making. The entire history of film in the making, really. Love, Simon was the first gay teen romance ever released by a major studio. It had the budget of a major studio, the marketing arm of a major studio, and everyone was meant to see and swoon over it, not just the gay community. That was huge. It had an appealing protagonist, a fizzy cast of supporting characters, thrilling emotional highs, and an endearing, easy-to-root-for love story that culminated in one of those big, spectacular, only-in-the-movies grand romantic gestures: a fireworks-scored kiss at the […]
SEOUL—The message, accompanied by loud buzzing, flashes on the screens of millions of mobile phones, the headline in red letters in English—“Emergency Alert”—the rest in Korean: “Anyone who has been in Itaewon from April 21 to May 6 should be tested.” For thousands, it’s the next sentence that really counts: “We can test anonymously.” “Coronavirus strikes regardless of people or places.” — Lee Jung-geol, leader of the Rainbow Coalition Against Social Discrimination The reason for the guarantee of anonymity is clear to the hundreds in South Korea’s LGBT community who had flocked to clubs in Itaewon, an historic district of nightlife, […]
Police search a headland in Sydney, Australia, on Tuesday, following an arrest in relation to the death of a man in 1998. More than 30 years after Scott Johnson died after falling off a cliff in Sydney, authorities have charged a man with his death, in an apparent gay hate crime that police believe was one of many over several decades in Australia’s largest city. Dan Himbrechts/AP hide caption toggle caption Dan Himbrechts/AP Police search a headland in Sydney, Australia, on Tuesday, following an arrest in relation to the death of a man in 1998. More than 30 years after Scott […]