The six-time Tony Award winner Audra McDonald knew the multi-award winning playwright Terrence McNally—who died this week at 81 of coronavirus-related complications—as both a close friend and professional collaborator since 1994. McDonald worked on three of McNally’s shows on Broadway: Master Class (1995), about Maria Callas, the musical Ragtime (1996), based on E.L. Doctorow’s 1975 novel, and the odd-couple comedy drama Frankie and Johnny in the […]
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On May 30, 1593, the playwright and poet Christopher “Kit” Marlowe was found brutally murdered. According to an autopsy report and several eyewitness reports, Marlowe had spent the day at the house of Mrs. Eleanor Bull in Deptford, South London, before being fatally stabbed in the eye. The dagger struck slightly above his right eye and drove two inches into his brain. Though he was not […]
Another crisis, another urgent call for blood donors, and another probably futile call on the Food and Drug Administration to fully lift the ban on gay men giving blood. Since the coronavirus crisis began, 2,700 blood drives have been cancelled and there have been 86,000 fewer blood donations as of March 16, the American Red Cross reports. Gay men were, until 2015, forbidden from donating blood. […]
Filling in for President Trump’s most recent Medal of Freedom honoree Rush Limbaugh on Tuesday, conservative radio host Mark Steyn claimed that the reason why San Francisco announced a “shelter-in-place” order to contain the coronavirus outbreak is because it’s a “big gay town.” On Monday, Northern California officials revealed that the nearly 7 million residents in the Bay Area would be required to remain in their […]
Perhaps it was clumsy language and an even clumsier tone, but speaking clumsily and looking giddy when invoking the 1980s, when so many gay men died of AIDS—in the midst of massive governmental homophobia—is jarring, particularly for a health official who lived and knows that history. On Friday, President Trump’s White House coronavirus press conference featured the highly respected Dr. Deborah L. Birx—the State Department’s U.S. […]
New York Times editorial board member Mara Gay fired back at a “racist Twitter mob” that reacted to a math gaffe she and MSNBC’s Brian Williams made on air last week. During the MSNBC segment they both flubbed the math on how much money Michael Bloomberg could have given every American instead of running for president. Gay and Williams were then relentlessly mocked over the flub. In response, […]
Pop quiz: What’s one million divided by one million? If you answered: “one,” congratulations, you’re officially better at math than a MSNBC anchor and a New York Times editorial board member. That’s the takeaway from a bizarre moment on Thursday nights’ The 11th Hour, where host Brian Williams and his guest, Mara Gay, both failed to see the faulty math in a tweet that incorrectly claimed Mike Bloomberg could […]
Former Republican congressman Aaron Schock (R-IL), who resigned from the lower chamber in 2015 after being charged on 24 felony counts for the reckless use of campaign funds to buy Katy Perry tickets and massages, came out as gay Thursday in an Instagram post. Schock opened up on his sexuality and votes against the LGBTQ community in the past while serving in congress. “I am gay,” Schock penned […]
The opinion pieces, the social media fracas, the intra-LGBTQ disagreements over Pete Buttigieg and what he meant as a gay presidential candidate have spanned the months of his history-making run for office, which ended on Sunday night. It has been, simply put, exhausting and not-a-little depressing, with Buttigieg’s candidacy seen in starkly polarized terms: a celebration of progress or an indictment of heteronormativity; a gay man […]
UK 14:20 GMT 28.02.2020Get short URL When a pregnant woman in London was killed with a crossbow in November 2018 her local MP was promised by the government they would look into toughening up the laws on owning the lethal medieval weapons. But as a second crossbow killer is sentenced, why has the government not taken action on the weapons? A martial arts expert who lured […]
A major Bollywood gay film has been banned in the conservative United Arab Emirates (UAE), home to a sizeable South Asian community, the director said on Friday as his new movie hit theatres in India, reported the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Touted as India’s first gay male romantic comedy, “Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan” (“Be Extra Careful About Marriage”) stars popular actor Ayushmann Khurrana as an openly gay man, who battles traditional attitudes to be […]
Mark Wilson/Getty Images President Donald Trump celebrated the release of a Bollywood gay romance movie, Friday, the day after he trashed South Korean director Bong Joon-ho’s movie Parasite for winning Best Picture at the 92nd Academy Awards. Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan, which is reportedly “hoping to win over older people, following the decriminalisation of homosexuality” in India in 2018 by featuring a romantic plot between two […]
Veiled opportunism is the latest iteration of celebrity scandal, and if you spend any of your life online it’s impossible to look away. Recently, this new scandal has seen wealthy and attractive famous people make suspiciously timed claims to marginalized identities as an escape route from valid criticism. Case in point are Jameela Jamil—a self-appointed body-positivity movement spokeswoman and regular on the TV show The Good […]
During a Las Vegas CNN town hall, 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg fired off a zinger aimed directly at the White House when asked how he would deal with potential “family values” attacks against his marriage with his husband, Chasten. At one point, Buttigieg was asked by a sympathetic voter how he would deal with attacks on his homosexuality. CNN moderator Erin Burnett then followed […]
US 04:00 GMT 14.02.2020Get short URL The US president’s comments come as Democratic presidential hopeful and former Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg has risen to second place in his party’s nomination race, following Senator Bernie Sanders in Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary. US President Donald Trump on Thursday during an interview on Fox News’s “Roadkill With Geraldo” podcast said by phone that he would give his voice to […]
At least 50 Indian business executives based in New Delhi were tricked into an elaborate extortion set-up, ‘honey trapped’ on LGBT dating app Grindr and then blackmailed with their own intimate, and often embarrassing, photos. Targeting wealthy individuals in Delhi, Gurugram, Noida, and Ghaziabad, a gang of extortionists sought to bilk everything from cash, laptops, and watches from the corporate bigwigs, among them CEOs. Some 150 […]