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Cartier Straight-Washes Ad Campaign

Cartier is being accused of straight-washing a Chinese ad.

In a new campaign for its classic Trinity ring you see several of people, like a man and woman dancing on a rooftop, two women holding hands, and two men bicycling and embracing one another. The advertisement ends with a question: "How far would you go for love?"

The ad clearly shows a straight couple, a lesbian couple and a gay couple, but shoppers at Tmall—China's premiere digital shopping marketplace—say that the same-sex couples in the video are also featured as still-image ads … with captions claiming their relationships are strictly platonic. 

Under the image of two women it says:

"Mutual understanding beyond words. Witness our everlasting friendship."

Under the two men it reads:

"Father and son are also friends—happily sharing life's journey."

When users pointed out that the two men seemed quite close in age, the text was altered:

"Father and son are like brothers."

Wait, so women who are “just friends” buy matching rings? And fathers and sons buy matching bands, too. C’mon Cartier. The Trinity band, designed in 1924, is actually three bands that symbolize different aspects of a relationship, but is often used as a wedding ring and almost always associated with lovers.

In a statement responding to the confusion, Cartier stood by the gifting of the ring, which can retail over $3,000, for friendship and "family love."

Nice try. We know that same-sex relationships in China are not illegal but remain culturally taboo, and censorship of LGBTQ-inclusive media, such as the queer kiss scenes in Bohemian Rhapsody, is common, but then maybe don’t air your clearly meant to be gay men and women ads in China. Shell out some extra coins for a new, straights only campaign.

Don’t erase gay people. It’s demeaning, degrading and just plain wrong.

The Advocate

The Height of Stupidity: Gay People Posting Photos Of Gay People On Facebook Is Christian Persecution

Okay, so we all know that Tony Perkins, the wingnutted, asshatted, goose-stepping president of the anti-LGBT hate group the Family Research Council [FRC] is a loon, right?

Well, last week on his little radio hatefest he tried to calm down an irate caller who had seen a photo of "two naked guys sitting on each other" on Facebook., Now, rather than simply clicking the ‘Hide’ feature, or simply deciding to unfriend, or unfollow, the person responsible for The Gay Photo, the caller told Perkins he reported the photo to Facebook "in a nice, respectful Christian way."

Of course, Tony Perkins responded with:

"Jesus said that we are to pray for our enemies, for those who persecute us, that would be those who mock and ridicule us, absolutely we should pray for them. … This is being shoved into people’s faces, and if, like you, they say, I don’t want this on my Facebook page, I don’t want this, I don’t want to see this, look, do whatever you want to do but don’t involve me in that – that’s not good enough, there’s this effort of forced acceptance and affirmation, and we just can’t do that."

See, putting a photo on Facebook of a gay couple, or just a gay person, is Christian persecution. My wedding picture with Carlos is persecuting the Christians. Any gay person’s new photo is an attack on religion if posted to Facebook.

Perkins went on to call the posting of ‘gay pictures’ — though he never did detail exactly what a ‘gay picture’ was — as a "lack of tolerance" from gay people though he has no problem with Bible thumpers putting their Jesus pictures everywhere. I find it the height of stupidity that Tony Perkins says posting a picture on Facebook is persecution of Christians, when Perkins has said, of The Gays:

“They are intolerant. They are hateful. They are vile. They are spiteful”

He also said that LGBT activists are going to "start rolling out the boxcars" and carting away Christians a la the Holocaust.

He’s said that pedophilia is “a homosexual problem” and has used the FRC to distribute a pamphlet that claims gay men are more likely to molest children.

Funny, that he calls The Gays murderers and pedophiles, and even like the Nazis, but it's The Gays that are doing all the persecuting because we put our pictures on Facebook.

Sit down Tony. And stop looking at ‘gay’ pictures on Facebook. There are whole websites devoted to that and, besides, everyone knows that Facebook is for Cat Videos and pictures of what you had for dinner last night and vaguely passive-aggressive status updates.

Sit down, and be quiet.

via NCRM

Random Musings

Okay, so while I’m still on a high from yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling striking down the Defense of Marriage Act and dismissing Prop H8 I found a truly wonderful story about the impact of the decisions.

Steven and Sean Brooks, a binational gay couple, were in court yesterday, in front of an immigration judge, whose ruling could have split up the couple because of DOMA.

According to Lavi Soloway, who represented the couple: “A copy of the 77-page Supreme Court decision in United States v. Windsor was delivered to the court by our summer intern, Gabe, who ran five blocks and made it in time for the decision to be submitted to the Immigration Judge and to serve a copy on the Immigration & Customs Enforcement Assistant Chief Counsel.”

‘DOMA is DEAD’ it announced.

The judge threw out the case against Mr. and Mr. Brooks because they are a legally married couple in America, entitled to all the rights of legally married couples.

I’m still grinning.

That Woman, fame-whoring, daughter pimping, sex tape fronting is getting a talk show this summer.

Since all Kris can do is talk about her daughters, I’m wondering how long it will take her to whore our her latest grandbaby meal-ticket, and then how long before the show is cancelled.

In the words of Margaret Cho, “This is gonna be a Kardastrophe!”

We had a Free HBO weekend a couple of weeks back, so I went mad DVRing movies from that channel.

One was, of course, Behind The Candelabra, about Liberace’s love affair, and bad breakup, with Scott Thorsen.

I found it good, but sad; it wasn’t until Liberace’s mother passed away that he felt he could truly be free as a gay man, though he remained deeply closeted until his death, and even afterwards.

That said, the shallow part of me, which I love, is beginning to run an ad campaign to see that Matt Damon’s Ass gets an Emmy nod.

It was real, and it was spectacular.

A little more on DOMA? Okay.

Some who are much more familiar with the rulings are looking very closely at the decision, for clues on how the court might rule on future challenges to state laws barring gay marriage. And they think they’ve found something ….

Buried in the decision is a reference to the Supreme Court’s decision in Loving v. Virginia, in which SCOTUS struck down a state law against interracial marriage as unconstitutional. To LGBT advocates, that reference looks as if it might signal a readiness on the Court’s part to do the same to state laws banning gay marriage.

In Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court ruled that the Virginia law outlawing interracial marriage was unconstitutional on the grounds that it violated the equal protection clause in the Fourteenth Amendment, ruling that the freedom to marry must not be limited by discrimination and that the Virginia law had no legitimate purpose other than maintaining discrimination.

And that’s exactly the argument that lawyers in the Prop 8 case made in asking the Court to strike that law down. Now, SCOTUS declined to take a position on Prop 8, invoking standing issues, and it did not directly address the question of whether states could or couldn’t continue to refuse to marry gay and lesbian couples, and it did not declare a constitutional right to marriage.

But the DOMA decision made an expansive case against discrimination based on sexual orientation, and more specifically, the citation of Loving v. Virginia which could be an encouraging signal.

Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

So, the other day I’m watching TV and one of those wacky commercials came on, this time for something called the Air Curler. It’s an attachment to a blow dryer that looks like it has a plastic pitcher on the end of it. You, um, insert your hair into the pitcher, turn on the blow dryer, and your hair is magically spun into delightful curls.

Stupid? Of course. But then I saw something else when they removed the Air Curler from the blow dryer.

To put it bluntly, it looks like one of those Cock Sleeves that some men—and I ain’t naming names—slip over their penis and then proceed to, um, jack off pleasure themselves, until they cum into the patented Cum pitcher.

Sorry for the mental image, but it had to be said.

But … speaking of that device, Carlos and I have started watching Hannibal, having DVR’d the season.

It’s quite gruesome, so far—but I expected no less—and really interesting.

It doesn’t hurt that it stars the Pia Z’adorbale Hugh Dancy. Oh, he’s not Hannibal—that would be –he’s the FBI investigator who begins working with Dr. Lecter.

But he’s a delightfully cute man.

In Light of the deaths of DOMA and Prop H8, here's a little refresher course on what to say, and not say, to The Straights.

I got caught up in the Jodi Arias movie on Lifetime the other day.

Back story: I had the shingle on my face about three years ago. Shingles affects the nerves and, in some cases, the sufferer endures constant nerve pain for the rest of their lives. I do not; I do, however, get very bad, very bad, headaches located in the same spot where I had the shingles. I used to get them about once a month, and then less often and less often, to the point where I’d forgotten about them, Until Monday night when one struck, turning me into a light-sensitive vampire, who sits in a dark dark room until the pain subsides, generally 24 hours later.

Which was why I was channel surfing and came upon the Jodi Arias Lifetime movie.

All I gots to say about that is: Bitch was cray. Way cray.

So cray I am surprised that her attorneys didn’t use the insanity defense.

Cray.

Gee, ain't it funny? 

Just when you think things have changed .... The more things change, the more they stay the same, eh?

Paula Deen. Her restaurants are packed, her books are flying off the shelves, but she’s losing some big deals, y’all. And I kinda wish I had a Way Back Machine, so I could travel back in time and apply for a job as one of Paula Deen’s minions and tell her, as nicely as I could, to STFU before she opened her yap.

The Food Network said Pack her knives and go … literally … and now Smithfield, whose products Paula used to hawk, have canned her ham … see what I did there? … and rumor has it that QVC will quickly follow suit.

There is also talk that Deen’s publisher, Random House, may close the book on her, and diabetes drug makers Novo Nordisk and Sears Holdings are said to be “monitoring the situation.” Then, let’s toss in Harrah’s Hotels and Casinos, which have Paula Deen Restaurants in their casinos, who have decided to rebrand her restaurants as something other than Paula. Even WalMart … Wal-freaking-Mart … has decided to take Paul’s dishware and cookware off their shelves.

Now, you can say that this is all a lot of Who shot John? over words Paula Deen may have used decades back, but it’s also about a history of Paula Deen and her treatment of African America employees at her businesses.

I recently caught sight of a video from 2012—last year—and taped by the New York Times, where Paula was asked about her ancestors who were slave owners and the story of her great-grandfather who killed himself when his slaves were set free: “Between the death of his son and losing all the workers, he went out into his barn and shot himself because he couldn’t deal with those kind of changes…Back then, black folk were such an integral part of our lives. They were like our family, and for that reason we didn’t see ourselves as prejudiced.”

Trouble is, after that bit, she then tells the interviewer and the audience that she has black people in her employ who are just like family. One, and I think she said his name was Hollis Johnson, was a particularly dark-skinned man, or, as Paula put it, pointing to a black wall behind her, “He’s as black as that.”

Yes. She did. And then she dug herself in deeper. When asked if Hollis was there with her that day, Paula looks around and asks, “Hollie? Hollie? Where are you? Oh, get away from that black wall, we can’t see you.”

Yes. She did. I was all about giving Deen the benefit of the doubt for her use of the n-word, thinking about when she said it, where she lived and how she was raised, and that she said it, apparently, so long ago. But, while she may not toss about the n-word as handily as those old days, the way she speaks of African Americans—even the ones she considers “like family’”—and the way she treats her African American employees, makes me hope that everyone cuts ties with Deen. And fast.

Like I said, though, I would have liked to have access to a Way back Machine and given Paula, and anyone else who thinks and speaks like she does, a heads up about their future. Maybe then they’d think twice, and speak less.

Soon Every Day Will Be A Gay Day

Several years ago--many, actually--after I moved to Miami, Carlos and I went to Disney World. I'd been to Disneyland but not yet to the World. So, we did the Magic Kingdom and Epcot and had a really great time. Our last night, wee stayed late for the fireworks and found a beautiful spot beside a pond to watch the night sky light up.

As we were leaving, feeling all aglow, I took Carlos' hand in mine as we walked out of the park. Just ahead of us, a Lesbian couple was doing the same. Just ahead of that couple was, well, this guy, who looked back at The Lesbians and The Gays holding hands and said, "What do you think this is? Gay Day?"

To which one of the Lesbians replied, "Every day is gay day."

And the guy smirked, but kept moving. I like that story because it could have gotten ugly, but it just turned into a giggle and a smile.

Joel Diaz and his friend, Ethan, after a night out, decided on getting some people together and going to a popular spot in their Columbus, Ohio neighborhood. As they stood in line at Mikey's Late Night Slice--apparently the pizza is that good--Joel and Ethan began holding hands.

Gay day, though not so much. At first.

A customer in front of the two men turned around and told the men to, ahem, cut that "gay shit" out.

There weren't a couple of Lesbians standing by to utter the line, "Every day is gay shit" or something, but something else, quite lovely happened that night. Almost every single person in the line that night made it clear to that guy to cut that Homophobic shit out.

And while Joel and Ethan, and another gay friend of theirs, stood up for themselves, and told the man that he couldn't speak to them like that and they wouldn't take his bigoted remarks at all, it was the straight people in line who stood up the loudest.

Of course, as bigots do when they get called on their hate, he continued spewing venom, ignoring the entire crowd. And that was when the people working at Mikey's shouted to the man that they would not serve him because he was spewing hate. They said they support everyone in our community and that he should get out of line because they would not be serving him. He begrudgingly got out of line and walked away escorted by a friend who had been hanging back.

How simple is that? Stand up against hate. Say something, do something, non-violent, and the hate has no place to go, except home.

Joel wrote up his story for a Facebook post and shared it with friends, who, of course, shared it with friends and so on and so on. Suddenly the post had gone viral and people everywhere--even in a small town in South Carolina--began telling the story of standing up against hate.

And the more it’s shared the more people stand up. The more people realize it was just a couple standing in line for pizza and holding hands against the cold. And what's not to like about that?

Stories like this give me hope for the future--especially as more states fall into the Equality Column. People, straight people, are beginning to finally realize that being gay isn't "shit" it's just being gay. And two men, or two women, holding hands in Columbus Ohio or in the Happiest Place On Earth should be treated no differently than any other couple anywhere else.

Read Joel Diaz's tale at HuffPo Gay Voices

Random Musings

I sometimes wonder if there are any new ideas left in Hollywood. all those old TV shows are being remade, and there are "reboots" of movies that are scarcely older than a toddler.

Now, Marc Cherry, the man behind Desperate Housewives--which is ending it's run this season--has come up with a 'new' idea. or a reboot of some other show. Or, simply, Desperate Housewives 2.0.

Cherry has a new hourlong soap coming to ABC called Devious Maids; hmmm, "desperate" to "devious" and "housewives" to "maids". Sounds like the same thing in a different package.Oh, except that this show, an adaptation of a Mexican telenovela called The Disorderly Maids Of The Neighborhood, will center on a group of Latina women who are maids in Beverly Hills. It seems that these women, all maids at the same residential condo community, where life is very Wisteria-Lane-like, until a body is discovered in a pool, and all the maids find themselves in the middle of it. kind of like how Susan, Bree, Gabby and Lynette, found themselves in "the middle of it" when they neighbor, Mary Alice, killed herself.
Perhaps Cherry should have called it The Real Maids Of Beverly Hills and co-opted another show in the process. [source]

A lot is being made of a kiss between ALLEGEDLY straight actors, Ashton Kutcher and Jon Cryer, on 2.5 Men this week. I didn't see it because, well, I loathe Cryer, and I like Kutcher only scarcely better than I like Charlie Sheen. But what gets me is all the fuss about "The Kiss". Two straight male characters kissed? 
Woo-freakin'-hoo.
I wanna see a show with fully formed gay characters that kiss, and where the kiss isn't used for shock value or to get a laugh, it's just affection shown between two men. Save that phony Ratings Kiss for someone else.

Marco Rubio, GOP and Tea Party darling, lied. I know. Big surprise. i think the bigger surprise will be when a politician doesn't lie, but I digress.
See, Rubio, a Republican senator from Florida, has long loved telling the story of being the “son of exiles,”Cuban Americans forced off their beloved island after “a thug,” Fidel Castro, took power. Oops, except that's not really accurate. 
A review of documents--including naturalization papers and other official records--shows that Rubio has, um, embellished the facts. In fact, those documents show that Rubio’s parents came to the United States and were admitted for permanent residence more than two-and-a-half years before Castro’s forces overthrew the Cuban government and took power on New Year’s Day 1959.
Well, maybe his parents were psychic and they saw it coming? Or maybe Rubio is simply a liar. And someone who has thrown his own parents under the bus, claiming he's just telling the stories his parents told him, and that he knows nothing of those documents. [source]

I love me some Dexter.
Which is kinda weird to say that one loves a show about a serial killer killing serial killers, but it's very well written and acted, and has some fascinating characters.
And now it has a new, very hot character in Mike Anderson, a new detective on the show.
And he's played by the delicious Billy Brown.
Good writing.
Good acting.
Billy Brown.
What's not to love.

Stand Up Please; One Of Our Straight Allies Has Passed

She was a housewife; she was a mother. She was raising her children like all mothers do. But then, in 1974, back in the days when being gay was considered a mental illness, Adele Starr's son came out, and everything changed.

For the better.

See, even though, back in the 70s, and before that, and, sadly, still today, parents often blame themselves when a son or daughter comes out as gay, or even bisexual or transgender. There's a lot of speculating about what was done 'wrong' to make their child so very different. But Adele Starr wasn't having that.

Instead, Adele Starr founded a new group in Los Angeles, a support group, for parents of gay children, friends of gay people. Her group became known as PFLAG [Parents and Friends of Lesbians And Gays] and she was that group's first national president.

Adele Starr, that mother for all gay men and women whose own mothers pushed them away, died last Friday night in Santa Monica at age ninety.

It was just two years after her son came out to her that Adele Starr founded the group, then known as Parent FLAG, and now as PFLAG, a gay rights and acceptance organization. And Adele worked hard for the group, even speaking on the steps of the US Capitol, way back in 1979, at a march for gay rights. Two years later she became PFLAG's first national president, serving in that position until 1986. After that she continued to work for gay rights, marriage rights, equal rights.

We have our gay heroes, whose names we all remember, but sometimes we forget our straight allies who have marched with us and fought with us, along the way.

So, take just a moment, today, to bid farewell to Adele Starr and thank her for being a mother to those of us who may have lost ours the day we said those three words.

"Mom, I'm gay."

Adele Starr Obituary

Another Politician Outed

It's getting old, these folks living in the closet and running for office, pretending to be something they're not in order to win an election. And this one especially has me riled up. See, Gregg Kravitz has been outed by his opponent, Babette Josephs, as, I know it hurts, a straight man.

Yes, the thought of those people running for office makes my blood boil, too. I mean, why would someone choose to hide their heterosexuality? It's okay to be straight. Really. Lot's of folks I know are straight. Um, my own parents, for example, are lifelong members of the heterosexual community. It was a cross to bear growing up, but I stood by them, proud of their decision to be openly opposite-sex partners.

But I digress.

Up in Philadelphia last week, Babette Josephs accused her primary opponent, Gregg Kravitz, of pretending to be bisexual in order to pander to LGBT voters, a powerful bloc in the district.

"I outed him as a straight person," Josephs announced at a fund-raiser, leaving some in the audience to gasp or laugh. "[N]ow he goes around telling people, quote, 'I swing both ways.' That's quite a respectful way to talk about sexuality. This guy's a gem."

Kravitz, for his part, tried to "in" himself, by saying that he is sexually attracted to both men and women. "That kind of taunting is going to make it more difficult for closeted members of the LGBT community to be comfortable with themselves. It's damaging."

Wow, who ever thought we'd see such a thing in this day and age. outing heterosexuals. Or, is it called "inning"? No, that's baseball, I think. But still, open heteros running amok in our streets, pretending to be gay? Why not just ban them all together, or give them plaid triangles to wear so we'd know who was straight, and then could know for whom we should be voting.

On a serious note, if Kravitz is actually straight, he is one of the most reprehensible people I've ever heard about. To pretend to be anything to win votes is disgusting. And, if Josephs is saying he's lying about being bisexual when he is, in actuality, a two-way street, then she's just as disgusting. I tell ya........

But, how about this for a thought? People should be themselves and be open about themselves and then we wouldn't have closets for people to come out of or go into as their mood and/or situation changes. How about that?

Who's Normal?

Oy! All this hubbub about men's figure skating and who's manly and athletic and who's flamboyant [read: gay] and out there.
I mean, here we are in the 21st century for crying out loud and we're caught up in gender-identity issues and who's a real man and who maybe isn't. Haven't we moved beyond the Marlboro image of he-manlyness? Or, is a man really a man if he's tough and rugged and, well, doesn't ice skate with a pink tassel on his shoulder?

NBC and the Olympics have pissed me off with their continued discussions of athletic, traditional Evan Lysacek [read: hetero] and the flamboyant Johnny Weir [read: homo]. They act as though Evan is more of a man because, while he wears feathered gloves and sequined body stockings on the ice, he doesn't wear corsets and tassels, and primp and pose, and skate around with a tiara of roses. And you get the feeling that the judges scores are not based solely on artistic and technical merit, but costumes, hair and make-up, with a little, life off the ice thrown in.

So, did Johnny place so low in the standings because people don't like his brand of skating; or did Evan place so high because he's the safer, man's man choice?

I think it's fear.

Fear of saying, Wow, Johnny is flamboyant and wild and marches to his own drummer, but, damn, he can skate! Fear of looking a little too gay, whatever that means, if you happen to enjoy the athletic prowess and in-your-face razzle-dazzle of a man who doesn't say he's out, but isn't really in, either.

And it's also fear of guilt by association. I know first hand, because people have been asking me for a week how I feel about Johnny Weir. It's like they all gather around and talk about him, and then, as a group, vote to bring the discussion to the in-house queer.

Do I like Johnny Weir? Hell yeah. He skates to his own drummer, he wears whatever the hell he wants, and he acts how he chooses. His skating, his personage, his life, are a big Fuck you to anyone with a hang-up about what makes a man a real man.

So, then I don't like Evan Lysacek? No, I like him too. He is a bit more traditional, if we forgive the feathered gloves and sequins; he does seem a bit more athletic. But that doesn't make him a man.
Last I checked, having a penis makes you a man.

Johnny Weir scares people because he's Johnny Weir; he's this year's Adam Lambert. He doesn't fit the mold of ice skaters of years past. He doesn't talk of athleticism and quads, he talks about "rockin' the tassel." As for Evan Lysacek, he doesn't scare people; he'll do fine as 2010's Kris Allen on ice. He's the guy next door who, because he doesn't tassel and corset, must work harder at being a manly-man skate. A lot of folks like the Kris Allens and Evan Lysaceks because they seem so normal. But normal isn't all it's cracked up to be. I imagine Michelangelo wasn't normal; or Da Vinci; Gertrude Stein wasn't normal. k.d. lang, who blew the roof off the place during the opening ceremonies, isn't what people might consider normal.

Which is another way of saying there is no such thing as normal.

Johnny Weir is normal for Johnny Weir; flashy costumes, over-the-top quotes, flourishes, are normal. Evan Lysacek is normal for Evan Lysacek; athletic, good looking, a few feathers in Johnny Cash black.

Neither is bad. They're both just different.
And different is good.
And it's normal.