Gay Icon Cyndi Lauper On Childhood, Sexual Assault & Support For LGBT Community

The Huffington Post reports:

“That was shocking — that was very shocking,” pop icon Cyndi Lauper said, candidly discussing a sexual assault she experienced by a male member of her band in the ’80s — and by two women who restrained her during the assault — an incident which she recounts for the first time in her frank new book, “Cyndi Lauper: A Memoir.”
The singer and performer also talked about her tough childhood and several other sexual abuses she experienced, including as a teen by her stepfather; leaving home at the age of 17, hitchhiking and often finding herself in dangerous situations; becoming pregnant early on and getting an abortion, though she wanted to have the child; contemplating suicide after the pressures of fame and the recording industry escalated; and beating back the negativity and becoming inspired by the cause of LGBT rights, for which she’s become a leader with her True Colors Tour and True Colors Fund.
“I tried to write an honest story about how I felt as an honest woman who went on to live her life on her terms,” Lauper said in an interview on my SiriusXM OutQ radio program on Monday. “I wanted to have my sound. I wanted to have my look. I wanted it to be about me and what I wanted to contribute.”
Lauper left home at 17 after her “creepy” stepfather, who threatened to rape her and her sister, had been spying on her while she was taking a bath. She took various jobs, including as an IHOP waitress, and pursued her musical career. She often didn’t have enough money to eat, she writes in the book, and traveled by hitching rides, which sometimes put her in threatening situations, such as when a man forced her to perform a sexual act.
“Sh*t happens and then, you know, what are you going to do?” she said, reflecting on the incident. “I just wanted to be able to live through it, get to the other side of it.”
In the book Lauper also tells the story of a male member of a cover band she worked with in the 80s, while performing in the clubs on Long Island, who sexually assaulted her with a dildo.
“He grabbed it, and then two other people grabbed me,” she writes. “I ran away from them. They caught me and pulled my pants off. And that guy took the dildo and used it on me…I was being held down by his girlfriend and her sister — and she was a big girl. I was stunned, in shock.”
“That was shocking — that was very shocking,” Lauper said, recalling the harrowing scene. “It wasn’t just a guy. It was women too. When that happened, I realized [that], okay, you have to look at this thing as it’s not a male thing against women — I mean, it is — but it could also be women against women.”
She stayed in the band.
“I did,” Lauper explained, “because after I talked to everybody, I realized, in a way, it was just a power struggle. And the band had shifted and I became the lead singer. I wasn’t marrying these people. I was just going to remain singing in the band because I wasn’t going to let that stop me. After that I found another band. These were just cover bands. I had my eyes set on something much larger.”
She became pregnant with one of her first boyfriends in those early years, after previously being told by doctors she could not conceive children. She wanted to have the baby, she said, but her boyfriend wanted her to have an abortion, a decision she made but which she still thinks about.
“Nobody wants to run in and do that,” explained Lauper, who is today married to actor David Thornton (since 1991), with whom she has a 15-year-old son. “It’s just that I didn’t want to have a kid that I love come into the world and not be able to share the kid with a dad. He didn’t want to have a baby. Why have a human being feel not wanted? I felt strongly about not bringing a person into the world who was not wanted.”
About becoming famous, Lauper said, “You think it’s redemption but it’s not permanent.” She was particularly demoralized by the pressures of the recording industry when she didn’t meet its expectations, and at a low point she thought of taking her own life.
“It was very disappointing to me,” she said, “and then when everything fell apart and fell to shit, I was sitting with complete idiots [in the recording industry], who were telling me, ‘Why do you have to dress like that?’ I didn’t want to hang. I didn’t want to stay. It was a big mess. And then it took a minute for me to realize that, first of all, I wasn’t going to let go of everything. There were too many people who were going to take what I did and make it mean nothing. I wasn’t going to let everyone say, ‘Girl just wanted to have fun — but just didn’t.’”
Lauper took up the cause of LGBT rights in recent years, and particularly the plight of homeless LGBT youth, co-founding the True Colors Tour to raise money and, later, the True Colors Fund.
“Harvey Fierstein was very inspirational, because I heard him speak before we started the True Colors Tour,” she explained, “and that really made me understand that maybe, possibly, there was something I could do.”
Lauper is passionate about the cause, which for her is very personal.
“Because I’m a friend and family member, okay?” she responds when asked what inspired her. “Because I’m not gonna stand by one of my best friends and watch them be discriminated against and have all their civil liberties stripped down — or my sister or my cousin or whoever — and just stand there and shut up. Up to 40% of the kids on the street are gay or transgender and they’re only on the street because they’re gay or transgender. We figured that is fixable. We could fix that. We could get that better.

Gore Vidal Dead At 86

Joe.My.God. reports:

Legendary and pioneering gay author, actor, atheist, playwright, screenwriter, failed Senate candidate, Tony nominee, and all-around badass Gore Vidal has died at the age of 86. Vidal was preceded in death by Howard Austen, his partner of 53 years, and will be buried next to him in Washington DC’s Rock Creek Cemetery.

Vidal died Tuesday at his home in the Hollywood Hills of complications of pneumonia, said nephew Burr Steers. Vidal was a literary juggernaut who wrote 25 novels, including historical works such as “Lincoln” and “Burr” and satires such as “Myra Breckinridge” and “Duluth.” He was also a prolific essayist whose pieces on politics, sexuality, religion and literature — once described as “elegantly sustained demolition derbies” — both delighted and inflamed and in 1993 earned him a National Book Award for his massive “United States Essays, 1952-1992.”

Threaded throughout his pieces are anecdotes about his famous friends and foes, who included Anais Nin, Tennessee Williams, Christopher Isherwood, Orson Welles, Truman Capote, Frank Sinatra, Jack Kerouac, Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Eleanor Roosevelt and a variety of Kennedys. He counted Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Al Gore among his relatives. He also wrote Broadway hits, screenplays, television dramas and a trio of mysteries under a pseudonym that remain in print after 50 years.

With his famously unrepentant pomposity and his ever-present sneering smugness, it was sometimes quite hard to like Gore Vidal. But the man was never ever boring and he was open and unapologetic about his sexuality at a time when few others dared to do the same. That’s a pretty great epitaph. Below I’ve cited a few of Vidal’s most famous stage, screen, and television moments from the earlier times in his more than six decades in the spotlight.

Vidal Vs Buckley
In 1968 douchebag columnist William F. Buckley called Vidal a “queer” and threatened to “sock you in your goddamn face” on national television. The next year Buckley and Vidal traded libel suits after exchanging a flurry of insults and accusations in the national press. Vidal’s suit was dismissed, but Buckley won a large (for its time) settlement for his legal fees and a retraction from Esquire, who had published Vidal’s claim that a youthful Buckley had burned a church in retaliation for its pastor selling a house to a Jewish family. Buckley successfully sued again in 2003 when Vidal republished the same essay in an anthology. Below is the clip from the above-mentioned talk show incident, which remains one of the most famous incidents in live television history.

Nora Ephron Dead At 71

ABC News reports:

Nora Ephron, the writer, producer and director of such American film classics as “When Harry Met Sally” and “Sleepless in Seattle,” died today. She was 71.
Ephron died in a New York City hospital after a long battle with leukemia and taxing chemotherapy treatment, friends of hers told ABC News.
Her family released this statement, “Nora Ephron passed away June 26, 2012 at 7:40 p.m. at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center surrounded by her family. The cause of death was acute myeloid leukemia. She was 71. Donations can be made in her honor to The Public Theater and The Motion Picture and Television Fund. We thank you all for your thoughts.”
The three-time Academy Award nominee was a prolific author, screenwriter, playwright and director who was a pioneer in Hollywood, where she was one of the first women to write and direct her own films. She contributed essays and reporting to outlets including the New York Times and the Huffington Post, for which she last wrote a story in June 2011.
Numerous notables, including New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, are mourning Ephron’s passing.
“The loss of Nora Ephron is a devastating one for New York City’s arts and cultural community,” Bloomberg said in a statement. “From her earliest days at New York City’s newspapers to her biggest Hollywood successes, Nora always loved a good New York story, and she could tell them like no one else.”
Ephron had most recently written the play “Lucky Guy,” a drama based on the life of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Mike McAlary, which was expected to open on Broadway in 2013 with Tom Hanks as its star.

Ephron left an indelible mark on the field of romantic comedy. Icons like Hanks, Meryl Streep, and Meg Ryan, often fronted her films. Streep starred in Ephron’s first hit, 1983’s “Silkwood,” which was directed by Mike Nichols and earned Ephron her first Oscar nomination for screenwriting.

Richard Dawkins At The Jaipur Literature Festival 

Islamic Extremist Call For Lesbian Author Irshad Manji’s Death

LGBTQ Nation reports:

An Islamist group called for a Muslim lesbian author to be killed and invaded a discussion on Islam in Amsterdam last week.
A December 8 debate, which included the Canadian Muslim lesbian author Irshad Manji and MP Tofik Dibi on a panel, was disrupted when extremists from the group Sharia4Belgium stormed the event, held at the De Balie theater in Amsterdam. The mob threw eggs and called for Manji’s neck to be broken.
The group of about 20 men and boys arrived halfway through the evening, chanted slogans and pelted the audience with eggs. A police mobile unit had to be called to eject the rioters, and two Belgian men aged 19 and 22 were arrested.
The people who disrupted the debate were members of the Belgian group Sharia4Belgium, an offshoot of Sharia4Holland. Irshad Manji has experienced death threats for several years since her outspoken attack on traditional Islam in her book, “The Trouble with Islam Today.”
Dibi is a young, gay Dutch-Moroccan GreenLeft (GroenLinks) MP. In September, he launched a campaign calling on Muslims around the world to stop blindly following decrees issued by a handful of extremists, and to start thinking for themselves.
Manji was in Europe to promote her new book, “Allah, Liberty and Love.” She says that the key teaching of the book is “moral courage, the willingness to speak up when everyone else wants to shut you up.”
The mob made clear that they felft that Dibi and Manji had no right to talk about Islam because they were too liberal, said Dibi. When the riot started, the audience made efforts to protect both speakers.
“What was really nice to see, and I have never seen, was that the whole audience stood up for us. And we have said, while they were shouting: ‘We will not move. We do not go off the stage, we continue to stand here. You only have to listen to us. And if you do not like to hear us speak, then you zapping’” said Dibi.
Manji said, “I never felt afraid. Not once. Neither did Tofik. In fact, all of us refused to leave, even when police asked. We wouldn’t play on Jihadi terms. Some things are simply more important than fear.”
Said Dibi, “The disruption shows that even in the Netherlands it is necessary to continue the debate on reforming Islam.”

You know, as an Atheist, I have so much material to go against any kind of religious people, specially Muslims, but man, I do have a lot of respect for those who are trying to reform Islam (which is needed if Muslims are willing to live up to Western standards on Human Rights matters) specially if they’re women and/or LGBT activists, cause they sure have a lot to lose if defeated. 

Mexico Spelled With A J: A History Of Gay Culture

The Bilerico Project reports:

In Mexico, the fiesta de Quinceañera marks a girl’s fifteenth birthday and is often celebrated with her first application of make-up, permission to dance, and an elaborate party. According to the panel of writers speaking at the King Juan Carlos Center at New York University on Sept. 21, 2011, Mexico’s LGBT community is enjoying a similar transition, but any celebration marking the huge strides in legal equality should be a careful one because the safety of those who are out in Mexico is not yet guaranteed.
The subject of the evening was the recent publication of a book celebrating the contributions of gay artists and writers to Mexican culture. The title of the book, México se escribe con J (Mexico spelled with a J), was explained by one of the panelists, Michael Schuessler, Professor of Humanities, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Mexico City, who is also the book’s co-editor.

“It’s a play on words that has to do with the historical argument about the spelling of the word ‘Mexico.’ Some reactionaries wanted the j instead of the x. The letter j or jota is also a pejorative term for gays in Mexico. Supposedly, this comes from the time of the Bal (an infamous 1901 gay party, at which half of the men were dressed as women, raided by the police of Mexico City.) When all the attendees were brought to the jail, they were imprisoned in the “J” wing. Some disagree with this explanation and say that the “jota” refers simply to the Jack in a deck of cards.”
Schuessler also spoke about the gay symbology of the number “41” in Mexican culture. He said: “According to urban legend, there were 42 attendees at the Bal, but the one not arrested was discovered to be the son-in-law of the police chief. Other reports say that the one person not imprisoned was found to be a woman and therefore released. ‘41’ became the equivalent of ‘fag.’ There was no 41st Division in the military, no room number 41 in a hotel, and you never turned 41 - you simply skipped it and turned 42.”
Schuessler and the other speakers, author Nayar Rivera and Alejandro Varderi, CUNY Professor of Hispanic Studies, acknowledged the fact that the 1901 Bal is frequently referred to as Mexico’s Stonewall, but they said that the comparison is not accurate. The 1901 Bal served to make the gay community in Mexico finally visible, but it did not usher in a liberation. Those among the arrested who could not buy their way out of prison were sent to the Yucatán (supposedly for military service), where they were forced to labor as ditch diggers.
The panel was emphatic about the purpose of the book, México se escribe con J regarding the role of gay artists and writers in Mexican culture. Professor Varderi said, “Even in the Mexican literature of the 19th century, you will find gay themes and gay characters. It’s time to appreciate the contributions of gay writers fully. Progress has been made, but there is much to accomplish in terms of recognition. Look at Mexican TV. There have been many gay characters, but they are still most often depicted as inferior people.” Schuessler agreed, as did Rivera, who added, “Recently, there have been more and better gay characters on Mexican TV.”
The panelists also spoke of Mexico’s moving beyond a time of seeing gay men only as “muxe” [men who preferred to take up the typical household roles of women] who were expected to take care of their mothers in the context of the traditional Catholic family.
The panelists agreed that there is a significant difference between Mexico City and most of the other parts of Mexico, at least with regard to LGBT rights. Same-sex marriage became legal in Mexico City in August of 2010. On the books, Mexico City has become surprisingly liberal in terms of marriage and adoption rights, the decriminalization of gay sex and marijuana, and the equalization of the age of consent. On the other hand, while there is no official prohibition of gays in the Mexican military, Mexico is not listed among the countries that permit equal service because Mexican soldiers face seriously negative consequences if they are identified as gay. Also, Mexico has the second highest rate of hate crimes - Brazil is first - in the world.
The panel acknowledged that the book México se escribe con J arrives at a time when Mexico is experiencing what Rivera called a “queer boom,” but it also covers the reality that this is not the end, but rather the beginning, of the road to LGBT equality for a country steeped in the homophobic traditions of machismo and Roman Catholicism. In a phrase, “cautiously optimistic and diligently working for equality” seems to best describe the LGBT community of Mexico.

Conversations With Great Minds - Richard Dawkins

Homecoming Project: Oscar-Winning Screenwriter (Out & Proud) Dustin Lance Black Goes Back To His High School

Debate: Christopher Hitchens VS Barry Brummett

Christopher Hitchens: The Three New Commandments 

Here Christopher Hitchens, a hero of mine and mind emancipator, gives a lecture at Royal Ontario Museum entitled “The Three New Commandments” in conjunction with the exhibit of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

 Enjoy! 

Ayaan Hirsi Ali On Islam

For me, there’s no braver person than Ayaan Hirsi Ali. To be a woman, an atheist/ ex-muslim,  a feminist and very outspoken about it, it tells you this: she has balls.

She talks about Islam on various points, but here’s 2 of them that might interest you the most:

• Women’s role within Islam at 28:50.
• Islam’s stand on the Gay Community at 30:00.

Thou if you’ve got an hour to spare, spending it on watching the while clip is more than worthy.

Gay Pakistani Muslim Writer Ifti Nasim Dead at 64

The Advocate reports:

Ifti Nasim, the gay Pakistani Muslim poet who authored Myrmecophile (in English) and Narman(mostly in Urdu), died Friday following a heart attack.
According to the Associated Press, ”Nasim was a fixture in Chicago’s South Asian community, known for his activism, flamboyant fashion and touching poetry that dealt with themes including homosexuality, politics and his native Pakistan.” The founder of SANGAT/Chicago, a South Asian LGBT organization and former president of South Asian Performing Arts Council of America, Nasim was inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame in 1996.
His first book, Narman, was believed to be the first book of gay-themed poetry to be published in Urdu. It told the story of his transition from immigrant (30 years ago) to all-American gay writer and activist, tackling tradition, religion, and gay desire.
Nasim, who wrote in Punjabi as well as Urdu and English, was 64.

The Intelligence² Debate - Christopher Hitchens On The Catholic Church

One of Hitchens’ best rants, here he is talking about the Church’s positions on women’s rights, homosexuality, the AIDS epidemic and about what the Church should apologized for. And he does it in front of Archbishop John Onaiyekan and Catholic MP Ann Widdecombe.

(Via The Richard Dawkins Foundation)

Christopher Hitchens: Michele Bachman, A Small-Town, Small-Minded Isolationist 

Via Slate:

That was actually three dripping custard pies, rather than just the one, with which Rep. Michele Bachmann assailed her own face by bragging to Fox News about her small-town Iowa roots. Having hymned the incomparable Dairy Queen and Wonder Bread facilities boasted by the sturdy small town of her girlhood, she went on to claim that “John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa,” adding, “That’s the kind of spirit that I have, too.”John Wayne was from Winterset, Iowa, which can be found about 150 miles to the southwest of Waterloo. It was his namesake John Wayne Gacy, serial rapist and killer of 33 teenage boys and young men, whospent time in Waterloo. (I long ago pointed out that having “John Wayne” in your lineup of given names is a bad predictor: John Wayne Bobbitt was reduced by an infuriated partner to hunting in the weeds for his abruptly severed penis.)Traditionally, the phrase “to meet your Waterloo” means to encounter a final and unarguable defeat. Perhaps it’s too early to say that, but really. In one stroke, Bachmann shows that she can’t tell one folksy Iowa town from another. Then she compounds the error by confusing a folk hero with a villain and psycho. Finally, and having never done or said anything that would stand a second’s comparison to the spirit of The Duke (whatever you may think of him), she tries to borrow the mantle of a husky gunfighter in the very week that she is pathetically advocating that we leave Col. Qaddafi alone. The old parochialism meets the not-so-new isolationism. A very shaky start…

… Meanwhile, Qaddafi’s sick intransigence in Libya threatens the local population, the evolving neighboring countries of Tunisia and Egypt, and—by a potential crisis of emigration and refugees—the stability of Europe’s southern frontiers. This is why we have had such frank appeals, from Europe as well as from the Arab League, to contribute more to what is in any case ineluctable—a post-Qaddafi future. For Bachmann to choose this moment to say that the loony of Libya poses no threat is to disqualify herself from any consideration for high office. She evidently knows nothing about the four decades of dictatorship and depredation that have led up to this. But then, when you come to notice it, she doesn’t seem to know her Iowan derrière from an artesian well, either.

Eloquent as always. Hitchens points out something I’ve been asking myself for a while now: Why do people consider that being from a small town is a qualifier to govern, specially at the federal level in any western country. 

Christopher Hitchens VS William Lane Craig - Does God Exist?

Spare a couple of worthy hours to watch this great debate.