I Didn't Say It ....

Tom Payne, whose Walking Dead character Jesus came out as gay last March, but whose sexual orientation was dropped after that:

“It’s been so amazing to be a part of that community and to give visibility as a gay character on one of the biggest television shows ever. It was an amazing responsibility, and I was happy to take it on. But I was disappointed it wasn’t in there more. It wasn’t ever even explicitly mentioned. [Jesus’ sexual orientation] was just one scene with Lauren in season seven. The right people picked up on it; they did recognize it. But you can find people who still don’t realize Jesus was gay. I think they could have been a bit more up front about that. [But] while you’ve lost Jesus, you still have Aaron and Tara, and now Magna and Yumiko, so there’s still representation on the show. But it’s a shame. He was such a badass character. They could have made more of it. It’s really Robert Kirkman who was so amazing to do it in the comic books. I was super excited to play that. I wish they made a bigger deal of it. But other storylines take precedent, I guess.”

You don’t score points from me by announcing that a character is gay in one episode and then effectively putting them back into the closet the next.

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Hugh Jackman, and his huge ackman, on those rumors that he’s gay, and how he thinks they started when he played singer-songwriter Peter Allen in The Boy from Oz:

“I was literally just locking lips [with a man on stage] … I started to laugh so hard. So I stay kissing him, because I thought, ‘I’m just going to laugh. I’m going to stay here until it subsides’ and it never subsided and the whole audience could see my body shaking, so they started [laughing as well].”

Nice story, Hugh, but I heard the gay rumors long before Oz came out.

I’m not saying you’re gay, though one part of me …which part is that? … wishes you were.

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_____, on what he was thankful for on Thanksgiving:

“For having a great family, and for having made a tremendous difference in this country. I’ve made a tremendous difference in this country. This country is so much stronger now than when I took office you wouldn’t believe it. I mean you see it, but so much stronger that people can’t even believe it.”

For having a great band of criminals, grifters, cheats, frauds, adulterers and liars to follow in Daddy’s footstep.

And he has changed the country; people laugh at us now; people hate us now; we’re falling by the wayside, so he and his mob family can enrich themselves.

I want prison for all of them … except maybe Barron and Tiffany.

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Hillary Clinton, on how _____ uses Fox News to create the alternative realities—the actual Fake News—that his minions believe:

“One of the ways you do that is by consistently attacking the press. Now [Trump] doesn’t attack Fox News, because they’re like a wholly owned subsidiary of Trump and the Republican party now. So he attacks the press and the broadcast media that raise questions about him, that don’t give him fidelity and loyalty. That he was on the front page of the New York Times is more important to him that any substance because he thinks he can defeat substance, which he has proven successful in doing. You watch Fox News, it’s always, ‘Something terrible is about to happen’, ‘Something terrible did happen’, ‘These people are doing all these awful things’. It is totally divorced from reality, but it is superb propaganda. I don’t know the best way to puncture that. You have to hope that reality catches up with politics and entertainment at some point.”

I’ll give him that much; _____knows how to work his little lapdog, Fox News, to enrage his base about whatever, or whomever, he’s pissy about at any given moment.

Too bad Hillary let a lot of that slide during the campaign.

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Leah Remini, who is taking on the Cult of Scientology, on the group’s golden boy, Tommy Cruise, and how he isn’t so innocent when it comes to the brutalities of that cult:

“Where Tom is concerned … He is very aware of the abuses that go on in Scientology. He’s been part of it. He’s best friends with David Miscavige, so he’s privy to the punishments that David Miscavige doles out, and I’ve been told by a senior executive of Scientology, who was there, that David Miscavige constantly threatened the staff at Gold Base with bringing Tom Cruise to Gold Base to kick their fucking asses.”

Leah ALLEGES that a Scientology official told her that Tommy once “personally administered” punishment on a high-ranking member of the church, all because David Miscavige told him to, and I’m sure it boosts the little man’s ego to kick someone around for pleasure.

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Nicolle Wallace, political commentator on MSNBC and NBC News, on Ivanka and her emails:

"So, in politics, karma kicks in more quickly than in other walks of life. And it turns out that 'lock her up' chant for Hillary Clinton's use of a personal email account just might backfire on the _____ family, specifically on Ivanka."

Wouldn’t it be loverly?

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Ivanka _____,  on her own email scandal:

“People who want to see it as the same see it as the same. The fact is that we all have private emails and personal emails to coordinate with our family. We all receive content to those emails and there’s no prohibition from using private email as long as it’s archived and as long as there’s nothing in it that’s classified.[And] in my case all of my emails are on the White House server. There’s no intent to circumvent and there were mass deletions after a subpoena was issued. My emails have not been deleted, nor was there anything of substance, nothing confidential that was within them. So there’s no connection between the two things.”

Except, the feckless lying …used her personal email to send hundreds of messages involving government business in a violation of federal rules.

So, yeah, you con artist grifter criminal liar, it is the same thing, and with the Democrats coming to Congress your days are numbered.

Feckless lying …

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Lloyd Russell-Moyle, member of the British Parliament, announcing to the House of Commons that he is HIV-positive  ahead of the 30th anniversary of World AIDS Day, December 1:

“Such events are also deeply personal to me. Next year I will be marking an anniversary of my own—10 years since I became HIV positive. It has been a long journey, from the fear of acceptance and today, hopefully, advocacy, knowing that my treatment keeps me healthy and protects any partner that I may have. When you get that call from the clinic and they just say: ‘You need to come in.’ They don’t tell you the details, and you know immediately that something is going to be wrong … So all the different worst case scenarios flash through your mind… At the same time you are working out all the ways that this is some joke, some technical error, some tiny thing that they’re going to tell you that you’re going to be laughing about later on … and then they tell you and it hits you like a wall…Nothing quite prepares you for when they say those words … You walk out feeling totally numb, with a million things going through your mind, and at the same time a sense of absolute nothingness. [So] wanted to be able to stand here in this place and say to those who are living with HIV that their status does not define them. We can be whoever we want to be, and to those who have not been tested, maybe because of fear, I say to you: it is better to live in knowledge than to die in fear.”

Funny, nearly forty years in and we still have this kind of stigma with so many men, and women, living, and thriving, with HIV.

Good on Russell-Moyle for speaking out.

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Bobservations

You’d think after eighteen years together, I’d be able to understand Carlos; not so much. This is an actual conversation:

Carlos: “I remember when I was a kid and my mother wanted to take me to the boat show. She told my father he was taking us on Saturday, which was the night my father always saw his mistress, so he wasn’t happy. And he wasn’t happy wearing a suit and tie—”

Bob: “A suit and tie? At a boat show?”

Carlos: “Yes. And he really didn’t want to see the dancers at the boat show.”

Bob: “Dancers? What the hell kinda boat show is that?”

Carlos: “What boat show.”

Bob: “You said your mother wanted to take you to the boat show.”

Carlos: “Not the ‘boat show,’ the Bolshoi! The ballet.”

Bob: “Oy.”

Boat show, Bolshoi. Po-tay-to, Patata.

Sorry, not sorry.

Rider University, a private university in central New Jersey, asked students last spring which fast food franchise they would like to see on campus. The results showed a preference for Chick-fil-A, so in the fall, when the final survey was taken, the university removed the restaurant as an option because Chick-fil-A is “widely perceived to be in opposition to the LGBTQ+ community.”’

Yassssss.

In other great news, the NRA saw its income dip by $55 million last year, after a record-breaking 2016.

Again, sorry, not sorry,

Just to prove gays can be asshats just like straight folk, I give you Bill White and his husband, Bryan Eure. The two were former Clinton supporters who turned tail and ran to the _____ rally on election night when it was clear Hillary was losing. White says:

“I didn’t want to be part of that misery pie; I’m not a wallower in self-pity. I really believe that once that decision is made, you have to get behind your president.”’

The couple has other reasons for justifying their allegiance to _____; they got all kinds of pissy when Chelsea Clinton didn’t recognize them at Ralph Lauren’s Polo Bar in Midtown Manhattan but say Donnie Junior always takes their calls.

Seriously. These two can f**k off.

We haven’t had any snow yet this year in Smallville, but when we do, I’ll know how to measure it.

Just sayin’.

Iowa? Really?

Iowa is granting permits to allow people who are legally or completely blind to be able to buy or carry guns in public because state law does not allow sheriffs to deny an Iowan the right to carry a weapon based on physical ability.

Even better; while Iowa requires training for anyone who is issued a permit to carry a weapon in public, that requirement can be satisfied through an online course that does not include any hands-on instruction or a shooting test.

Seriously, Iowa?

It costs a lot to bed Melanie.

Apparently the bills for Melanie’s day trip—she did not stay the night—to Toronto last year cost the American people $174,000. Add that to the $95,000 it cost to get Melanie a room at the InterContinental Cairo Semiramis, where she stayed for less than half a day at the end of her tour of Africa last month and you can see she’s as bad as that husband of hers when it comes to spending our money.

Melanie’s spokes-tool implied that the “advance team” was responsible for some of the costs, BUT federal expense documents reported separate, additional costs for the advance team that added up to $18,000.

Melanie is a pampered little liar like her Fat Husband; just sayin’.

Your eyes aren’t deceiving you; this is an actual set of floating stairs in a private home. 

Gorgeous, but, yeah, a few glasses of wine later, I’d be falling down those stairs into the cellar and …wait, if it was a wine cellar?

Win win.

Take a good look at the photo. That is every single politician who voted to repeal Obamacare.

And every red X denotes a politician who was voted out of office in November.

See, voting matters.

An ISBL Public Service Announcement:

With the holiday season upon us, those red Salvation Army donation buckets are out again. And while I am only too happy to help when I can, I avoid giving to the Salvation Army because of their, voraciously denied by them, anti-LGBTQ stance.

For example: In 2008, trans woman Jennifer Gale was found dead outside a homeless shelter run by the Salvation Army. The reason she froze to death on the street? The Salvation Army refused to shelter her with the other women due to her genitalia.

In in 2016, the Salvation Army refused to back a Safe Schools initiative, which was meant to combat anti-LGBTI bullying.

Most recently, a gag order was put on Salvation Army employees forbidding them from talking about LGBTI issues.

So instead of donating money or old clothes to the Salvation Army this year, try one of these non-religious, pro-LGBTI charities.

Foundation Beyond Belief

The Ali Forney Center

The Sylvia Rivera Law Project

Housing Works

The Audre Lorde Project

TGI Justice

The Trevor Project

And thank you.

I am not usually attracted to the dirty blond, blue-eyed types, but then along came former football turned model Heath Hutchins and I became a convert. Heath dropped fifty pounds from his college football playing days to become a rather hot model with icy blue eyes.

A real dreamboat, I must say; and now I have another ‘type.’

Architecture Wednesday: La Cabañita ... The Little Cabin

The fascinating thing about this gorgeous home in the woods outside Guatemala City is that when it was originally built in 1965 it was a one-bedroom hut and now it’s a 4500 square foot retreat of glass and steel in the wilderness.

But, after fifty years of rough living, the owners decided to renovate, creating a larger home, with more entertaining space, and more outdoor space to take in the surroundings. The architect, Alejandro Paz, extended that small cabin by flanking the existing structure with two additional volumes connected by a terrace and a glass walkway.

Two new volumes were built on either side of the original hut. One contains the master suite with its own bathroom and a walk-through closet, while the other, referred to as the "social module", includes a generous open-plan kitchen and dining room that overlook the landscape. The original bedroom is now a generous guest room with a view.

Paz took the original gable roof and inverted it—creating a ‘butterfly house—to allow more light into the interior spaces through high, operable clerestory windows beneath the eaves.

The three volumes that now make up the not-so-little cabin remain separate but are connected by a glass walkway that runs along the back of the property and serves as their main access point. On the opposite side of the home is a massive deck that juts out over the hillside and joins the various interior spaces.

Old and tiny becomes sleek and large and gorgeous; it was quite the facelift.

Click to emBIGGERate ...

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ISBL Asshat of the Week: Republican Charles ‘Racist’ Younger

Just when you thought Mississippi couldn’t offer up a more racist candidate for public office than Cindy Hyde-Smith—and sadly, the racist won last night in Mississippi—I offer up Republican state senator Charles Younger, who decided to support #RacistCindy.

In response to the backlash Hyde-Smith received by saying she’d sit in the front row of a public hanging, Younger said such public hangings were a "style" of execution and believes that is hanging was still legal, it would deter a lot of crimes today.

Clearly, the idea of a public hanging doesn’t deter ignorant asshats from pulling the corn cob pipe outta their mouths and raising the Confederate flag and acting the fool.

"It wasn’t 'lynching. It was a public hanging where it had to pass through the courts and it wasn’t a color or a race issue. It was just a means of punishment."—Charles Younger

Younger then tried to turn the table against Democrats and failed miserably. While he admitted that Hyde-Smith "said something out of jest that wasn’t the most politically correct thing to say” he added that most Democrats would vote to execute the young man that killed the nine black people in the church in South Carolina.”

Um, Charlie Bob Ray Billy, that isn’t the point, you asshat; it isn’t about executing someone guilty of mass murder, it’s about an elected official gleefully sitting in the front row of a public ganging.

It is of note to remind folks that both Cindy Hyde-Smith and Charles Younger attended "segregation academies," schools designed to avoid allowing Black people to attend.

Racists stick together like feces to toilet tissue.

Harvey Milk Died Forty Years Ago Today

There are just a few people I think of as heroes.

I know some people feel policemen, firemen, nurses, are heroes, but that’s their job, their chosen career; I appreciate what they do, but it was their chose. For me a hero is just an ordinary person who does the extraordinary and I can think of two that I would call heroes:

Rosa Parks, who was tired of standing, and

Harvey Milk who was tired of being less than.

Harvey Milk was assassinated forty years ago today. Far too soon, I think. I often think, with every stride the LGBT community makes, how Harvey would feel about it, what Harvey might say.

DOMA and Prop 8 are gone; Harvey would have loved that.

Marriage equality is legal now; Harvey would have loved that.

We’ve seen a sweep of LGBT candidates into local, state and national offices; Harvey really would have loved that.

Forty years gone and his words still echo........

“My name is Harvey Milk and I’m here to recruit you.”

“Burst down those closet doors once and for all, 

and stand up 

and start to fight.” 

“Every gay person must come out. As difficult as it is, you must tell your immediate family. You must tell your relatives. You must tell your friends if indeed they are your friends. You must tell the people you work with. You must tell the people in the stores you shop in. Once they realize that we are indeed their children, that we are indeed everywhere, every myth, every lie, every innuendo will be destroyed once and all. And once you do, you will feel so much better” 

“I know that you cannot live on hope alone, but without it, life is not worth living. And you...And you...And you...Gotta give em hope. Hope will never be silent.” 

“I cannot prevent anyone from getting angry, or mad, or frustrated. I can only hope that they’ll turn that anger and frustration and madness into something positive, so that two, three, four, five hundred will step forward, so the gay doctors will come out, the gay lawyers, the gay judges, gay bankers, gay architects … I hope that every professional gay will say ‘enough’, come forward and tell everybody, wear a sign, let the world know. Maybe that will help.” 

“All young people, 

regardless of sexual orientation 

or identity, 

deserve a safe 

and supportive environment 

in which to achieve their full potential.”

“If I turned around every time somebody called me a faggot, I’d be walking backward – and I don’t want to walk backward.”

“It takes no compromise 

to give people their rights ... 

it takes no money to respect the individual. 

It takes no political deal to give people freedom. 

It takes no survey to remove repression.” 

“All men are created equal. No matter how hard you try, you can never erase those words.”

“The fact is that more people have been slaughtered in the name of religion than for any other single reason. That, that my friends, that is true perversion!” 

“If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door.”

Harvey Milk. 

He was the first gay person that, for me, wasn't a caricature, and wasn't a victim. He was the first gay person, for me, that made me see that I wasn't a stereotype, that I wasn't less than; that I mattered.

I remember, as a young queerling, hearing the news that he'd been shot and, not being out quite yet, feeling numb and feeling scared. I remember mourning silently that Harvey was gone and wondering what might happen to 'us'.

I think Harvey would be beaming, today, knowing how far we've come, and then he'd tell us to keep working, we still have a ways to go.

The march goes on ….