adamfoxie*blog International: May 2010

June 19, 2010

Woman's Plea to Obama Ends in Husband's Arrest

, asking for help resolving her husband's immigration problem got a response she didn't expect: Federal agents turned up at her New York City home and took her husband to jail.

Officials tell The New York Times that Caroline Jamieson's letter to the president was mistakenly forwarded to an immigration

fugitive unit.

After the newspaper inquired about the case, the man, Herve Fonkou Takoulo, was abruptly released on condition he wear on electronic ankle monitor while the case is investigated.

Takoulo is an engineer from Cameroon. He came to the U.S. legally, but was ordered to leave when a judge rejected his application for political asylum.

Now he has a second green card

application pending based on his 2005 marriage to Jamieson. Thus far, the deportation order remains in effect.

"ICE has a zero tolerance policy for violations of civil rights," spokesman Brian Hale told the Times. Hale noted that if a review found "that appropriate separation between lawful correspondence and investigations was violated," Takoulo's case would be handed over to ICE's Office of Professional Responsibility and the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security

Betty White Outs Cary Grant..Like We did Not Know!

Betty White has spent eighty years on television, and that's a whole lot of years in the biz to collect trade secrets and industry gossip. Like the one about Cary Grant being a 'mo, which she accidentally revealed.

Chatting with the red-haired flame of The Joy Behar Show, White inevitably found herself discussing That Newsweek Article. And closeted gay Hollywood stars. Like Rock Hudson. And … Cary Grant? The blog Tabloid Prodigy caught the slip up.

BEHAR: But when it comes to a man, all those year, I don`t know that Rock Hudson, he was the heart throb. Let`s say he was out and everybody knew he was a homosexual, I`m not sure he would have had the career. That`s what the point of this article was.
WHITE: Actually it was his dear friend, his beloved friend Doris Day who inadvertently outed him. She invited him to a show she was doing up in Cacarmel (ph). So by then he had AIDS. So the minute he came on camera, then everybody knew. And Doris just couldn`t believe that she had been — you know, a party to that. But Rock was – was — everybody kind of knew his situation, but it didn`t seem to hold back his career.
BEHAR: No, no but –
WHITE: Cary Grant, the same thing.
BEHAR: Oh he was gay, too?
WHITE: Oh, I don`t know.
BEHAR: Yes, you know something, Betty.
WHITE: No, I don`t know. I never had him — I never had it.

Of course, Behar didn't let Grant's alleged romance with Randolph Scott go.

Anderson Cooper Is in a LTR. But He'll Never Talk About It. Is he Ashamed?

Anderson Cooper Is in a LTR. But He'll Never Talk About It

It's more than Summer Love for Anderson Cooper! Spotted in June biking with NYC's Eastern Bloc bar owner Benjamin Maisani, it appears the pair are still going strong. (Reader Rick says they began dating in December 2008.) Cooper, who once dated Real World's JD Ordonez, is spending part of the month in Jaipur, India, in a $3,200-a-night Rambagh Palace suite with Maisani. (Clearly, somebody there is leaking the info; Page Six reports, "Anderson's room has a large round bathtub. On the first night it was filled with bubbles and sprinkled with red rose petals.") All of this would actually be noteworth, were Cooper's sexuality much of a secret.

It's the embarrassingly obvious elephant in the room that's become a bore. As Brian Moylan notes, Cooper just wants to be a newscaster — who navigates between reporting on gay rights and chimps — and not "the gay newscaster." But by staying in the transparent closet, he continues making his sexuality a bigger issue than it has to be.

We're not saying Cooper has to be an advocate for gay rights. But we like our newscasters up front and honest. Cute and sparkly eyes don't hurt either. Cooper, meanwhile, has furnished a reputation of … let's say, a fickle lover, flitting between romantic interests. But here he is, in a long-term relationship with a fellow attractive guy, and we want that shit PUT ON DISPLAY. Instead, we'll get more gay-guy-straight-girl on-air flirting with Erica Hill.

(Photo: Pacific Coast News)by Queery

Is $449,437 Too Much Money To Study Bareback Flirting?

If you're like so many gay men, you've probably spent thousands on website memberships, gym fees, grooming products, tight clothes, sparkling alcohol, sex toys, and intensive psychotherapy to figure out the secrets of successful flirting. But if you were a Smart Homosexual, you would have simply applied for a grant like Brooklyn College's assistant professor of health and nutrition sciences Christian Grov did. Grov will get to blow $449,437 figuring out whether barebackers prefer nonverbal flirting in person or verbal flirting online. Silly professor, don't you know that horny web surfers spend more time jerking-off on camera than actually "talking" to each other?

The National Institute of Health awarded Grov a Support of Competitive Research grant to conduct his in-depth three-year study. He explains: "A study I published in 2007 found that bars/clubs, bathhouses and the Internet were the three most common venues that gay and bisexual men use to meet partners. In this new study for those venues, we will use time-space sampling, which involves the creation of a list of every possible place and then the random assignment of recruitment teams to each venue at random time intervals in order to avoid any bias."

So Grov will need to pay research volunteers to patrol bathhouses and barebackfuckslutz.net at all hours of the night, y'know, for science. But does he really need almost half a million dollars to do it? The average subscription price for a cruisy website is about $15 a month and a one-year membership to a bathhouse costs about $300 a year (uh… or so I've heard).

Assuming Grov's not buying sex toys and tight clothes for his bareback buddies, how the heck is he gonna burn through half a mil in three years? Where's the approval committee for his budgeting costs? And most importantly, does lube count as a research expenditure?

by Queery

Duke's Ousted College Republicans Chief Now A Target..

Duke's Ousted College Republicans Chief Still Being Targeted With Fun Campus Graffiti

"Lying Fag Robinette, DCR = Righteous, get AIDS in hell," read the graffiti left on a Duke University bridge, spray-painted a couple weeks ago, aimed at junior Justin Robinette, who was supposedly ousted as chairman of the College Republicans when his gayness become known. And that's not all Robinette says he's been targeted with since his unceremonious removal as head of the merry band of conservatives.

There's also the "e-mail he received from a Duke College Republican that he interpreted as blackmail, and an incident in which a former member’s dorm room name tag was overwritten with the word 'faggot.'" Duke University Police say they're investigating. And if authorities can find Sarah Palin's email hacker, surely they can find Robinette's email harasser.

by Queery

A New Zealand Airport Worker Enjoyed Male Searching Too Much!

Did A Gay New Zealand Airport Guard Enjoy Strip Searching Too Much?

Glenn Rankin and John Smith, two security officers with New Zealand's Christchurch International Airport, got sacked for allgedly talking to the press about a "flamboyant" gay co-worker who "sought more than his share of strip-search assignments, made lewd comments about male passengers… and used recreational drugs." Rankin and Smithdeny talking to the press and want their jobs back, but their former bosses aren't so agreeable.

Meanwhile the homo in question, who's also accused of using recreational drugs, still works at the airport. As for all the strip search notches: Customs manager Stuart Lumsden says they only seem high because he worked the busiest shifts and was often the only male officer available to conduct searches on men — and only did so with the approval of a senior officer. Can't a 'mo take a pleasure in his work without being labeled a perv?

by Queery

Philadelphia: Scouts Should Confront Anti-Gay Rule

Philadelphia: Scouts should confront anti-gay rule

by Maryclaire Dale

Associated Press

City lawyers called on local Boy Scout officials to muster "the courage of their convictions" and challenge their national group’s ban on gays as a trial over government funding opened Tuesday.

The city of Philadelphia wants to end its $1-a-year lease to the local Boy Scouts chapter unless it rejects a Boy Scouts of America policy banning "avowed" gays. The city says the national rule violates a local law banning discrimination on sexual-orientation and other grounds.

Local scout chapters, including the Cradle of Liberty Council in Philadelphia, have struggled in recent years to satisfy both public and private funders as well as their national leadership’s dictums. The Boy Scout oath calls for members to be "morally straight," which the national group interprets to mean that gays cannot participate.

In 2004, the Philadelphia chapter agreed to ban any "unlawful" discrimination. But the city said the policy didn’t go far enough, given that the U.S. Supreme Court in 2000 had said scouts and other private organizations can legally restrict membership.

"The city tried for years to get them to (muster) ... the courage of their convictions," lawyer David Smith, representing the city, told jurors Monday in opening statements. "You can’t go on speaking out of both sides of your mouth because we, the government, cannot subsidize that kind of conduct."

The Cradle of Liberty Council sued the city in federal court two years ago, on grounds the threat to rescind the 1928 lease violated its rights of free speech and freedom of association.

Chapter leaders also accuse the city of applying its lease rules selectively, since at least two other groups with limited membership rules - a Roman Catholic parish and a Colonial Dames of America chapter - also enjoy subsidized leases in city-owned buildings. Smith countered that those groups pledged to open the doors of those buildings to all.

"They want us to change the policy and they know they can’t make us do it. And the only leverage they have is this building," said lawyer Jason Gosselin, representing the Cradle of Liberty Council.

He did not shy away from the tension that has surrounded Boy Scouts since the 2000 Supreme Court decision.

Lead-off witness William T. Dwyer III, the now-retired director of the Philadelphia council, was expected to recount the challenges he faced.

"He’s going to talk to you about how he tried to walk that fine line," Gosselin told the diverse two-man, six-woman jury. "His focus all this time was the 75,000 kids who relied on these programs."

The Cradle of Liberty Council serves boys - and also girls in some of its programs - in Philadelphia and its suburbs.

The council under Dwyer never discussed anyone’s sexual orientation, Gosselin said. If boys brought it up, they were told to discuss it with their parents or clergy, he said.

But that apparent "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" approach no longer held in the wake of the 2000 Supreme Court decision, as funders and activists debated the national policy. In one case that drew headlines, the Cradle of Liberty Council forced out 18-year-old Eagle Scout Greg Lattera after he went on TV - in his scout uniform - to declare that he was gay.

"It’s because he wore his uniform and advanced his own agenda at the expense of the Boy Scouts. That’s why he was asked to leave," Gosselin said Tuesday.

Lattera is expected to testify for the city, which argues that the Boy Scouts have no inherent right to the sweetheart lease, even though they raised the funds to build the stately Beaux Arts building on the city site nearly a century ago. The fair-market rent is now about $200,000 a year, the city said.

The local council’s dilemma, Smith said, stems from it "giving in to heavy-handed coercion by the Boy Scouts of America" to force it to follow the national group’s views.

Fla. Jury Rejects ’Gay Panic’ Defense, Convicts Killer

by Kilian Melloy

Jurors in Florida rejected a "gay panic" defense, finding a 28-year-old man guilty of murder in the choking and stabbing death of a 60-year-old man.

Anibal Mayor’s defense for the 2008 killing of Dean Blietz was that he thought Blietz was going to sexually assault him, reported the Fort Myers News-Press on June 12. That fear, the defense claimed, had built up over time, with Blietz making sexual advances toward Mayor, with whom he shared a residence. Finally, the defense said, Blietz triggered a lethal panic response, fueled by the trauma of a prison rape that Anibal said he had previously endured.

But the prosecution countered that the story did not make sense, asking jurors to use their "good common sense" in weighing the likelihood that the then-26-year-old Mayor would have continued to live with Blietz if he thought that he was in jeopardy, and noting that Mayor’s story had changed over time.

Mayor had initially told police that he killed Blietz for money that Mayor wanted to use for the purchase of drugs. Blietz had taken Mayor is upon Mayor’s release from prison after serving a five-year term for burglary; he hadn’t even been out of prison for a month when Blietz was murdered in early July of 2008, the article said.

At his trial, Mayor’s defense argued that Blietz had put his hand on Mayor’s thigh. This, the defense claimed, sent Mayor into a panic. The defense also referenced a ring that was noted around Blietz’s genitals at the autopsy, and suggested that the presence of the ring indicated that Blietz was looking for a sexual encounter. In the end, jurors rejected the idea that "gay panic" justified the killing, and convicted Mayor of armed robbery and first-degree murder, the article said.

Fort Myers is on the Florida’s Gulf Coast, located between Naples and Sarasota. A June 8 article in the News-Press described Blietz, a Fort Meyers resident, as a "man of faith" who maintained a "ministry" for ex-convicts, taking them in to help them readjust to life outside of prison. In the wake of his death, the Lee County Homeless Coalition established an award in Blietz’s name.

A June 16 op-ed in the News-Press hailed the conviction. "This so-called ’gay panic’ defense is based on the reprehensible notion that mere sexual advances by someone of the same sex can justify harming or even killing him or her," the opinion piece noted. "The defense played upon what it hoped would be jurors’ anti-gay prejudices." Added the op-ed, "It is as abhorrent as appealing to a jury’s racism to let a killer off the hook because of the victim’s race or ethnicity."

The op-ed went on to recall, "When Matthew Shepard of Wyoming was killed in 1998, his murderers sought to use the ’gay panic’ defense, claiming he made passes at them. Shepard’s [name] is on the hate crimes bill, which became law in 2009 and now covers people regardless of sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or disability."

Kidneys Transplanted Between HIV+ Patients

Kidneys transplanted between HIV-infected patients

by Mike Stobbe

Associated Press

South African surgeons have transplanted kidneys between donors and patients who were both infected with the AIDS virus - a medical first that has some U.S. doctors buzzing about whether it could be tried here.

The first four of the transplants, which occurred in 2008, are described in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine.

Five more have been done since then at the same Cape Town hospital, Groote Schuur. It’s the only medical center in the world to have done them, said one of the transplant surgeons, Dr. Elmi Muller.

The United States bans transplants from HIV-infected donors out of fear they will spread the AIDS virus to recipients. Some have occurred by accident, however, when a donor’s infection was not detected beforehand.

Muller was in the U.S. last week and discussed the work at a National Institutes of Health meeting.

"We’ve been talking a lot about whether it makes sense to start doing this," said Dr. Peter Stock, a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, who attended the meeting.

HIV patients can survive decades with the help of medications. Now, many of them also struggle with kidney disease, which in some cases is a complication of their infection, and need dialysis.

But HIV patients suffer anemia more than other dialysis patients and face additional risks. The waiting list for a donor kidney is currently eight years in the United States. Allowing HIV-infected patients to donate organs might allow some patients with HIV to receive organs much faster, Stock noted.

U.S. doctors already transplant organs between donors and patients with hepatitis C, he added.

The early successes in Cape Town may be difficult to translate to America. Drug-resistant strains of HIV are more common in the United States: Doctors fear that an organ recipient with HIV will become infected with a strain more drug resistant - and dangerous - than the one they already have.

South Africa has an estimated 5.7 million people infected with HIV, more than any other country. But it has less of a problem with drug-resistant HIV, Muller noted. She said dialysis for HIV patients is extremely limited, leaving them in desperate need of a transplant.

"Rather than watch people die, (Muller) decided to use the organs she could," Stock observed.

In a letter in the journal, Muller and her colleagues tell how they took kidneys from two deceased patients and transplanted them in three men and a woman. Of the nine transplants done so far, eight have done well. A ninth also did well, but died from what appears to be an unrelated condition, Muller said.

1 Pic=1kWordsssssss

Image: To match Special Report OIL-SPILL/ANALYSTS

Travels In A Gay Nation: Portraits of LGBTQ Americans

by Lewis Whittington

EDGE Contributor

"We gays alone are the authorities on ourselves and our homosexuality, and others should listen to us." So says Frank Kameny the gay civil rights pioneer who marched in front of the White House in the ’60s.

Author Philip Gambone took Kameny’s advice andlistened to GLBTs for two years, traversing the US interviewing 200 people, 40 of whom are profiled inTravels in a Gay Nation. It is a look at where we’ve been, where we are, and where we need to go as a diverse national community.

Even though Gambone is an English professor at Boston University, his relaxed, unacademic prose style gets to the center of his subjects’ lives and their relations to the GLBT community. The interviews represent a socio- political cross section of GLBTQ life in 2010. Some stories are high profile and often told--Congressman Barney Frank and comedian Kate Clinton, for instance, and media superstars like humorist David Sedaris. Mostly, Gambone features lesser known artists, writers, academics, activists, and professionals making a difference in their chosen fields.

Some of the most interesting interviews are with activists like Christopher Barnhill, who was born HIV positive and is battling the rise of HIV/AIDS among young minority men as a coordinator of Metro TeenAIDS, or Carl Siciliano, who founded the Ali Forney Center in New York, where dozens of rejected queer youth are saved from ending up homeless, on drugs, working the streets.

Filmmaker Arthur Dong talks about growing up gay as an Asian American, dropping out of school, finding his own path as a filmmaker, and eventually making the groundbreaking documentary Coming Out Under Fire. Dean Spade, a transman, grew up a poor girl in the rural south cleaning houses with her mother. He went on to became the first professor to teach transgender law at Harvard. "I’m tired of journalists thinking that my breast reduction surgery was the defining moment of my life... it’s just one moment in my story." Dean uses the interview to talk about some entrenched inequalities in the national gay civil rights movement itself. Activist Urvashi Vaid echoes similar themes in her interview.

Opera singer Beth Clayton tells the author, "I have been given a gift to own my lesbianism and mylife through my art form." Writer Richard Rodriquez speaks to the importance of being distinct from the straight world: "I like the complications of it," he tell Gambone.

Travels is a keen reminder of how far we’ve come since Stonewall, and what we still need to do as gay Americans. Gambone devises a rich tapestry, without dogma, that celebrates the power of LGBTQ diversity.

by Philip Gambone