blackwhitegrey250.jpg” title=”blackwhitegrey”>blackwhitegrey250.jpg” alt=”blackwhitegrey” align=”right” hspace=”5″ vspace=”5″ />Gay culture in New York during the 1970s and ’80s is not easy to summarize these many decades later, but “Black White + Gray: A Portrait of Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe,” an interesting new documentary focusing on the infamous photographer, does a good job of trying.

There was so much of it, for one thing, from lower East side party kids to the (Fire) Island-hopping jet setters, the beautiful people and the Larry Kramers that sourly trashed the beautiful people . . . and, of course, eventually there was AIDS.But New York is, most of all, the ultimate hi-low mix-master city, where just the right wildly diverse group of people can converge at just the right wildly chaotic time, and the results can outdo your most fevered fantasies of glamorous living.

James Crump’s documentary tries mightily to convey some of that glamour in the retelling of the star-crossed love story between photographer Mapplethorpe and his devoted benefactor, the moneyed collector Wagstaff.

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FAMILY First Senator Steve Fielding has apologised for comments by one of the party’s Queensland candidates, who urged his Liberal opponent to come clean over her sexuality.

Senator Fielding has reprimanded Ben Jacobsen, who is running for the far north Queensland seat of Leichhardt.

Mr Jacobsen is running against former government staffer Charlie McKillop, who is hoping to succeed retiring Liberal Warren Entsch.

In Brisbane’s Courier Mail newspaper today, Mr Jacobsen said voters in Leichhardt had a right to know if Ms McKillop was gay.

“The voters might not give a rat’s if a candidate is gay,” he told the newspaper.

“But they have a right to know who you’ll bat for.”

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A fundamentalist church which celebrates the deaths of soldiers in Iraq as God’s punishment on America for tolerating homosexuality has been ordered to pay £5.5 million in damages to a bereaved family.

Members of the virulently anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church attend servicemen’s funerals across America, standing on US flags and holding placards with messages such as “God hates fags”, “Pray for more dead kids” and “You’re going to hell”.

But after they picketed the funeral of Marine L/Cpl Matthew Snyder in Maryland last year his father, Albert Snyder, sued the church.

A federal jury in Baltimore decided that the Kansas-based church and three of its leaders had invaded the family’s privacy and inflicted emotional distress.

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A Christian magistrate who felt forced to resign because he opposes adoption by gay couples has lost his appeal but vows to fight on.

Andrew McClintock told an employment appeal tribunal earlier this month that he had suffered discrimination because the courts refused to allow him to opt out of cases involving such adoptions.

He also argued that placing children with gay parents was an “experiment in social science” that was not necessarily in their best interests.

But the Department for Constitutional Affairs, which is responsible for magistrates courts, said that judges could not pick and choose which cases they heard.

Mr McClintock, 63, from Sheffield, said that he was “deeply disappointed” with the tribunal’s decision, but said that he would now go to the Court of Appeal.

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Croatian prosecutors on Tuesday indicted a 25-year-old man on hate crime charges for allegedly attempting to attack a gay parade in Zagreb earlier this year.The man, identified only as Josip S., is charged with endangering lives and property by an act of hatred toward the participants of the Gay Pride parade in July, the Zagreb district prosecutors’ office said.

The man is the first person in Croatia to face hate crime charges since it was introduced into the Penal Code last year. If convicted, he faces up to eight years in prison. No date for a trial was immediately set.

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J K Rowling’s recent announcement that Albus Dumbledore, one of the most beloved characters in the blockbuster Harry Potter series, was gay has created an uproar in the English-speaking world. While many have hailed the announcement, it has given a fillip to Christian Evangelists who decried the books as instruments of Satan. Others have criticised Dumbledore’s outing as editorialising after the fact, and that if Rowling really wanted to make a point about homosexuality, she should’ve done so in the books. But Rowling has been diligent in portraying all manner of characters in her narrative, be it ethnicity, culture, race or physical appeal.

Indeed, it would’ve been a remarkable omission if none of her characters were homosexual. In a world where gay rights are still a matter of intense debate, to have a character as well-loved and admired as Dumbledore be revealed as gay is indeed a Big Deal. The Harry Potter series has been a publishing phenomenon, with almost half a billion books sold to date. The movies have done extraordinarily well at the box office, earning $4.5 billion worldwide. As far as popular culture goes, it doesn’t get more mainstream than Harry Potter.

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The problem of domestic violence involving women is well-known and extensively studied, but the problem is just as bad with another less studied group: gay men.

So says a study conducted by two researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

In fact, they found that 1 out of every 3 men in a same-sex relationship has been abused. That is similar to what studies of battered women have found.

“If you project that out to the entire gay community in the country, that’s a lot of guys,” said David McKirnan, an associate professor of psychology and co-author of the study.

The study is published in the most recent edition of the Journal of Urban Health. McKirnan and graduate student Eric Houston studied surveys filled out by 817 men through the Howard Brown Health Center, which primarily serves the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community from its North Side location.

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>A gay rights group in Greece has asked for help to stop the deportation of a 40-year-old Iranian man.

GHC-EOK say that the man, known as Alex, was arrested, beaten and tortured in his home country because he is gay.

Two separate applications to remain in Greece have been rejected and his case is due to be discussed before the country’s Supreme Council.

A spokesman for GHC-EOK said:

“Alex’s deportation to Iran will constitute a violation of the articles 3 and 15 of the International Convention of the Human Rights, co-signed and validated by Greece.

“We need your strong support in order to prevent the Greek state from violating the international law and the human rights of a person whose life is in danger because of his sexuality.”

The organisation says that Greece will be committing a serious miscarriage of justice and a gross violation of human rights if they return Alex to Iran.

Gay and lesbian people in the Islamic Republic of Iran face the death penalty.

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In the recent months, GXR News has become a valuable source for the community and we currenly have more than 1000 subscribers to our news feeds.  As something that started out as a hobby, this project has turned into a passion for me.

To give the community the best news we can, I’m looking for contributors that can post news stories to the site on a regular basis.  This is important because currently I alone can only do so much.  If you’re interested in becoming a contributor please contact me at keith@avksoftware.com and I’ll set you up.

World peace and pride!

Keith Manheim

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STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Oct. 28 (UPI) — The Moderate Party in Sweden backed a proposal for same-sex marriages Saturday, leaving the Christian Democrats as the lone holdout.

The plan would create gender-neutral national regulations on marriage, allowing local parishes to unite same-sex couples if they wish, The Local reported. It would also give gay couples the right to adopt children and allow gay women to have children by artificial insemination.

The Christian Democrats have pledged to continue to oppose gay marriage.

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