Over 250K sign pledge to boycott ‘Homo Depot’

Over 250,000 people have signed an online pledge to boycott The Home Depot for its "sponsorship and participation in homosexual events," according to the American Family Association (AFA).

In July of 2010, the AFA announced it was launching a nationwide boycott of The Home Depot.

The AFA is a non-profit organization that advocates traditional family values and the reform of American culture "to reflect Biblical truth on which it was founded."

With nearly 200 radio stations and over two million online supporters, the organization prides itself as the largest and most effective pro-family group in the United States.

"The Home Depot, through any number of its affiliates, has given its money and its name to gay pride parades and festivals," said AFA president Tim Wildmon. "We've appealed to them to stay neutral in the culture wars, but they are determined to keep using their influence to push the normalization of homosexual behavior. Everyone of these pride events pushes the recognition of homosexual marriage, so The Home Depot has clearly chosen sides on that issue."

By Eric W. Dolan
Wednesday, September 29th, 2010

Will Cameron and Mitchell finally kiss on Wednesday’s “Modern Family?”

BY 

CHARLES WINTERS

 – SEPTEMBER 29, 2010POSTED IN: ENTERTAINMENT, TELEVISION

On the same day that GLAAD calls United States television more gay friendly, ABC’s “Modern Family” is evidently going to back-up those findings with a big ole kiss between their two gay characters.

During Wednesday’s episode properly titled “The Kiss”, Cameron and Mitchell (played by Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Eric Stonesteet) will exchange their first gay kiss on television.

Here’s the official episode description from ABC: MODERN FAMILY “The Kiss” Season 2 Episode 2 – In honor of her late grandmother, Gloria decides to cook more traditional Colombian meals, which is met with some ribbing from Jay — but see who gets the last laugh. Meanwhile Claire finds herself becoming the overbearing mom when she finds out Alex likes a boy, and Haley’s idea of sisterly advice is not helping matters; and Mitchell and Cameron have a tiff over Mitchell’s freakish aversion to PDA, on “Modern Family,” WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 29 (9:00-9:31 p.m., ET), on the ABC Television Network.

After a massive Facebook campaign requesting that Cam and Mitch lock lips, it looks like the “Modern Family” writers are finally going to make it happen. The power of social networking sites like Facebook have led to a grassroots power that can do such things as make gay men kiss on camera and land Betty White a gig hosting “SNL.” It is truly amazing.

Israel's Tel Aviv Gay Parade 2010! Enjoy

Greg Giraldo Dead After Drug Overdose

by Celebuzz on Sep. 29, 2010 02:20 PM 

Getty Images

Comedian Greg Giraldo has died days after being rushed to the hospital following a drug overdose. Fellow comic Jim Norton confirmed his friend's passing via Twitter, and TMZ is now reporting the same. Giraldo was 44 years old.

Norton wrote on Wednesday: "Greg Giraldo passed away today. This is the last photo of us together, taken June 28 at Noam's wedding. RIP buddy."

Giraldo was a judge on Last Comic Standing, and also made regular appearances on Comedy Central's Friars' roasts and on The Howard Stern Show. Watch a video of Greg talking about Last Comic 

 The comic was hospitalized over the weekend following an overdose on prescription drugs in his New Jersey hotel room, the NY Post first reported. A source at Giraldo's management agency called it "an accidental overdose."

Benicio Del Toro: Campari Calendar Model!

Oscar-winning actor Benicio Del Toro will be the star of the 2011 Campari Calendar, “The Red Affair.”

The 43-year-old Puerto Rican star will become the first-ever male to take the lead role!

“It is an honor to be the first ever Campari Man,” said Benicio. “I am in good company with my three amigas of previous calendars: Jessica Alba, Salma Hayek, and Eva Mendes. The 2011 Campari Calendar images tell a very cinematic story, which made it fun for me as an actor. I’m really looking forward to seeing the reaction of Campari fans to the style and drama of the 2011 edition.”

The 2011 Campari Calendar should be available late October!

Read more: http://justjared.buzznet.com

Global Outcry Frees Russian Gay Leader

Russian gay activist Nikolai Alexeyev spoke to Gay City News about his harrowing 72-hour detention by Putin regime thugs.

Putin regime's illegal effort to force end to Nikolai Alexeyev's European court lawsuits fails

Published: Wednesday, September 29, 2010 2:46 PM CDT

BY DOUG IRELAND 

Just three days after a frightening 72-hour ordeal in which he was kidnapped, drugged, and intimidated by Russian strongman Vladimir Putin’s security forces — provoking world-wide protests — Russia’s best known gay activist, the intrepid Nikolai Alexeyev, was arrested on September 21 along with ten other gay activists, part of a group of 30 who were holding a demonstration outside ultra-homophobic Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov’s office.

An Agence France Presse reporter was also briefly detained.

In full view of a large media contingent, Alexeyev, a young lawyer and the lead organizer of repeated annual attempts to hold Gay Pride marches in that city, was roughly dragged away by police after he had chained himself to the fence surrounding Luzhkov’s City Hall office.

Luzhkov, who has called Gay Pride marches “satanic,” has banned them since 2006.

Alexeyev told Gay City News by telephone from Moscow that his wrist was badly injured when police used brute physical force to separate him from the fence, instead of following standard practice of using a chain-cutter. “It will take awhile to heal, but I am okay,” he said. (A video of the arrests, with Russian subtitles, is at youtube.com/watch?v=f1yocqekWS0.)

Those arrested were released the same day, and Alexeyev said they are due back in court on October 6 to face charges of “holding an illegal demonstration.”

 

The City Hall protest was planned in advance of Alexeyev’s kidnapping, after a Moscow court dismissed a lawsuit the activist had brought against the mayor under Russia’s law forbidding hate speech. The suit cited Luzhkov’s use of the word “gomiki,” the Russian equivalent of “faggot,” to describe homosexuals.

Freedom of speech and assembly are, in theory, guaranteed by the Russian Constitution and by international treaties to which that nation is a signatory, but those rights have been ignored and trampled under Putin’s authoritarian reign.

Over the last five years, Alexeyev has used his skills as a lawyer to bring 168 court cases challenging the Russian government’s squelching of gay demonstrations and its official expressions of homophobia. After exhausting legal remedies within the nation’s judicial system, he has taken a number of the cases to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). (For a comprehensive portrait of Alexeyev’s gay activism, see this reporter’s Jun. 24, 2010 article, “Moscow’s Man of Action.” )

“It was like a VIP service at the police station,” Alexeyev said of his treatment after the City Hall arrest, an official response no doubt the result of the outcry from Western governments and advocates over his earlier detention. “The police did everything to write the protocols and get rid of us as fast as possible. I have never seen any such service from this police station in the last five years that I have been regularly taken there when conducting our actions.”

Alexeyev’s nightmare three-day kidnapping began on the evening of September 15 at Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport, when he was about to board a Swiss Air Lines flight for a three-day trip to Geneva. After passing through passport control, he was arrested by Russian border police, who ordered the airlines to off-load his luggage.

Because he had already cleared passport control, Alexeyev was legally no longer under Russian authority but in an international zone, making his arrest illegal.

Taken to a small room in the airport, he was able to use his mobile phone to alert his colleagues atgayrussia.ru, the human rights website he co-founded that has been a major catalyst for the Russian LGBT rights movement. Alexeyev also telephoned Interfax, considered the most reliable and independent Russian news agency, and Ekho Moskv (“Echo of Moscow”), a popular, independent news radio station heard in dozens of cities and on the Internet. His arrest was widely reported throughout the country over the next 24 hours.

“Even though they seized my laptop, which had all sorts of crucial organizational information in it, in the beginning, I wasn’t all that worried after I was arrested by the police, because I thought my arrest would be handled according to law,” Alexeyev told Gay City News. “But then four hulking plainclothes men who would not identify themselves and whose faces were not disfigured by intellect showed up and took me away by a back exit, and this was very scary.”

In a written statement he distributed to media after his eventual release, Alexeyev said, “I was prepared to shout out that I was being kidnapped, but they took me to where there were no people at all.”

The four plainclothes men, he said, “stuck me in some kind of foreign car and drove me for two hours to where, it quickly became clear, was not Moscow. They brought me to what I understood was some police building, brought me into a room, and began to search me.

I had no idea where I was. And then when I was left alone for a period of time, I reached for my iPad, and with two taps learned my location. If it was not for this device, I still wouldn’t know where they took me on the first day. My location showed up as the town of Kashira,” 70 miles from Moscow.

Meanwhile, alerted by Alexeyev’s mobile phone call, Nikolai Baev, a co-organizer of Moscow Pride, and two other colleagues from gayrussia.ru, went to the airport to try to find him. “The airport police told them that Nikolai was not detained by the airport police and one police officer suggested that he was being interrogated by the FSB (ex-KGB) at its headquarter in Lubyanka,” the infamous former KGB headquarters and prison, a statement published on gayrussia.ru that evening reported. “A recent law passed by the Russian Parliament, and signed-off by President Medvedev in July of this year, allows the FSB to echo Soviet practices.”

“The FSB denied to answer questions tonight,” the statement continued. “No more information is expected before tomorrow morning. Under Russian law, enforcement authorities have no right to detain people for long periods without charges and without giving reasons for the detention, but this time has already expired at 10 p.m. Moscow time.”

Shortly after the statement on Alexeyev’s arrest was posted, the gayrussia.ru website was disabled, in an attack obviously coordinated by hackers, presumably from the FSB, which has an extensive electronic surveillance and monitoring department. Andy Harley, editor of UK Gay News, who had several times traveled to Moscow for the banned Pride demonstrations, played a crucial role in pumping out information to Western gay media and activists about Alexeyev’s arrest, staying in telephone contact with Moscow activists and posting updates every few hours.

As a result, a number of Western governments were prodded by activists into making formal communiqués to the Russian foreign ministry about Alexeyev’s arrest and his safety.

In Germany, protests on Alexeyev’s behalf were led by Volker Beck, an openly gay member of theBundestag, who was badly beaten and arrested at the 2007 Moscow Pride demonstration, which was crushed by police in collusion with anti-gay neo-fascists. (For details, see this reporter’s May 31, 2007 article, “The Agony of Moscow Pride.”) Beck organized a demonstration by 50 people — cosponsored by the national LGBT rights group LSVD (Lesben- und Schwulenverband in Deutschland) — protesting Alexeyev’s arrest at Russia’s embassy in Berlin. Beck delivered a letter signed by the human rights representatives of all five parties in the Bundestag denouncing his disappearance. The German foreign ministry, headed by openly gay Guido Westerwell, also conveyed its concern for Alexeyev to its Russian counterpart.

In France, 36 hours after Alexeyev’s arrest, the French foreign ministry also delivered a formal public protest. “France expresses its extreme preoccupation over the reported disappearance in Moscow of Nikolai Alexeyev as he was preparing to travel to Geneva,” spokesman Bernard Valero said at a press conference. “We demand that the Russian authorities respect the right of freedom of expression and guarantee the freedom of movement of Alexeyev, and [French Foreign Minister] Bernard Kouchner will convey these sentiments today to his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov.”

Jean-Luc Romero, an openly gay local elected official who was the first politician in France to disclose his HIV-positive status, played a key role in getting the country’s foreign ministry to speak out.

In the UK, agitation about Alexeyev was spearheaded by Sarah Ludford, a member of the European Parliament from Britain’s Liberal Democratic Party who also sits in the House of Lords.

“Nikolai Alexeyev’s arrest is of deep concern — he was not given any explanation for his detention and it has been suggested that the secret services are involved,” Ludford said. “State-sponsored homophobia, as shown by bans on Gay Prides, is common in Russia and other parts of Eastern Europe, and I fear that this arrest of a prominent gay rights campaigner may be part of this.”

In the US, several members of Congress, including New Jersey Democrat Rush Holt, asked the State Department to express its concerns on Alexeyev’s behalf to the Russian government, but no public statement was forthcoming from Secretary Hillary Clinton’s office.

Alexeyev said that he suffered “psychological torture” and “mocking with homosexual insults,” including “faggot” and “pederast,” during his interrogation, and was subjected to “intense pressure” to withdraw the case he brought to the European Court of Human Rights challenging Mayor Luzhkov’s ban on the Gay Pride marches in 2006, 2007, and 2008.

The ECHR is expected to issue its decision by the end of the year, and is almost certain to uphold the right of Russian gays to demonstrate given its 2007 ruling against a Polish ban on Warsaw’s Gay Pride march. Alexeyev said he refused to sign a written statement withdrawing his case forced on him by his thuggish interrogators.

Alexeyev is also convinced he was drugged while in custody. “They gave me water in an already-filled glass to drink,” he said, “and I began to have doubts relative to the composition of the water. For the period of two days I lost concentration and felt some kind of emotional unresponsiveness. Only several hours after my return to Moscow today did I understand that there was a purpose to all this.”

It was then — after three days in captivity —that he learned about a series of phony text messages sent from his confiscated mobile phone claiming he had been deported to Minsk, the capital of the neighboring former Soviet republic of Belarus. Interfax’s Belarus branch had published a dispatch falsely reporting that Alexeyev had told them he was withdrawing his ECHR suit and seeking political asylum in that nation.

The Interfax dispatch from Minsk heightened the fears about Alexeyev’s safety among those who know him. Belarus is a dictatorship ruled by a former high ranking Soviet military official, Alexander Lukashenko, since 1994; his regime has persecuted the country’s gay activists. The idea that Alexeyev would request political asylum there was absurd.

In fact, the Interfax dispatch and the phony text messages were part of an elaborate disinformation plot orchestrated, there is little doubt, by Putin’s FSB. Murders of human rights activists and journalists critical of the Putin regime have become so frequent in recent years that the fear that Alexeyev’s life would be snuffed out before he could return to public view and deny the fabrications was quite real.

“I would never even think about asking for asylum in Belarus, and even if I did I highly doubt that the authorities there would accommodate me,” Alexeyev said when informed about the hoax. “To have withdrawn my complaint from Strasbourg [headquarters of the ECHR] would have been a betrayal of all those who’ve been with me for these last five years.”

Fortunately, with the whole world watching, Alexeyev was finally released. “On Friday evening [September 17], they put me in a car and drove me to the outskirts of [Kashira], where they stopped and said, ‘Get out,’” he explained. “I made my way downtown, understanding that I couldn’t take a train because I’d need to show my [confiscated] passport. As a result, I grabbed the first bus to Moscow, arriving by morning.”

Alexeyev now intends to file a number of lawsuits.

“I intend to take Domodedovo Airport and its aviation safety department, which violated international law and forcibly returned me to Russian jurisdiction, to court,” he said.

He also plans to sue Swiss Air Lines in the Swiss courts. “My ticket was purchased in Switzerland, therefore the contract between Swiss Air Lines and the passenger is concluded on the basis of Swiss law,” he said. “I will also demand a complete investigation into the basis of crimes against me in the form of illegal deprivation of freedom and kidnapping.”

Alexeyev told Gay City News that his priority is to get gayrussia.ru back to full working order.

“After I got back to Moscow, we had posted a large number of the foreign press articles on the site,” he said, “but then it was hacked again, and when we managed to get it back up all those articles and all references to my arrest and kidnapping had been deleted. I’m now in intense negotiations with our ISP to have the site restored to full functioning and its archives restored as well.”

Alexeyev has had the last laugh at one of his persecutors. As Gay City News was going to press, news broke that Russian President Dmitri Medvedev has fired Mayor Luzhkov after a long public feud between the two men, a move which Alexeyev had predicted to this reporter several days earlier.

“First of all it is a very courageous decision of the president, and it shows that he is the president,” a jubilant Alexeyev crowed on the phone to the Moscow News. “All Moscow and all the people in the city should be thankful to him because he has freed the city from all the mafia that were here before and that worked under criminal understandings of the law.”

Hopefully, the indomitable courage and perseverance shown by Nikolai Alexeyev and his Russian activist colleagues and the example of his liberation after global protests will remind us of how our duties toward international queer solidarity can have a real, and even life-saving, impact.

Doug Ireland may be reached through his blog, DIRELAND, at http://direland.typepad.com/.

'90210' Trevor Donovan-Kyle Riabko Gay Storyline Begins

PUBLISHED: SEPTEMBER 29, 2010

The highly anticipated gay storyline on the CW's teenage drama
 90210 has begun.

Which show regular would play gay in season 3 was suppose to
remain a secret until the drama unfolded in the fall, but inquisitive
bloggers quickly solved the mystery, prompting Trevor Donovan,
who plays all-American jock Teddy Montgomery, to openly discuss
the upcoming storyline.

“It was cool when they came to me with it, I was honored, flattered
 that hey thought I could take on something like this and handle it 
in the way it's being written and what we shot so far is done very, 
very smart, very intelligent,” he told celebrity website Just Jared.

On Monday's episode, Teddy spends much of the day avoiding Ian,
played by Canadian pop star Kyle Riabko.

When Ian does catch up with Teddy, the jock has a warning for him:
 “Stay away from me. Alright, I mean it.”

“Look, I just want to tell you it's cool,” Ian responds. “You don't have
 to worry, okay. I'm not going to tell anybody that we hooked up.”

Producers of the show have described the storyline as a “dramatic, at
 times painful, but hopefully ultimately cathartic journey for” Teddy.

BY ON TOP MAGAZINE STAFF 

'True Blood' Leads Hike In Gay Characters On TV, GLAAD Says

 
PUBLISHED: SEPTEMBER 29, 2010

True Blood is the most gay-friendly scripted program on television,
a new Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) report
 says.

The 15^th annual “Where We Are On TV” reported released Tuesday
 found that the HBO vampire drama included the most gay characters
 on television.

“Thanks to its large cast, HBO's True Blood is the most inclusive
 program currently on television, featuring six regular and recurring
 LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) characters,” the survey
 says.

Overall, the 2010-2011 network season has 23 LGBT primetime
characters, five more than last year. Cablers have added gay characters
at a faster pace this year. After declining to a low of 25 characters last
year, cable networks rebounded to 35 in the upcoming season. But that's
 a lower number than in 2007, when cablers regularly featured 40 gay
characters during primetime.

Among the networks, ABC again topped the list with 11 gay characters
out of 152 (7.2%), followed by Fox with 5 (5%), CW with 3 (4.5%), and
 NBC with 3 (2.1%). CBS, which has previously promised to increase its
 diversity, came in last with 1 (0.8%).

“The increase in lesbian, gay and bisexual characters on primetime
 television not only reflects the shift in American culture towards
greater awareness and understanding of our community, but also
 a new industry standard that a growing number of creators and
 networks are adopting,” Jarrett Barrios, president of GLAAD, said.
 “The recent critical and commercial success of shows like Modern 
Family and Glee clearly indicate that mainstream audiences embrace
 gay characters and want to see well-crafted stories about our lives.”

BY ON TOP MAGAZINE STAFF

MI Official Andrew Shirvell Defends Right To Harass Gay Student Chris Armstrong

PUBLISHED: SEPTEMBER 29, 2010

Andrew Shirvell, assistant to Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox, is 

defending his right to harass openly gay student Chris Armstrong.

Armstrong was elected president of the University of Michigan at Ann

 Arbor Student Assembly in April. Among his campaign pledges was a

 promise to push for a gender-neutral option in university housing.

Since then, Shirvell, a U of M alum, has led a one-man protest against

 Armstrong. Shirvell repeatedly attacks Armstrong in lengthy blog posts

 at Chris Armstrong Watch, a website he runs.

He begins a recent post titled OUTRAGE ALERT: Armstrong Invites U of M Freshman to Join the Homosexual Lifestyle with: “Parents of University of 

Michigan freshmen beware: the University's first openly 'gay' student body president, Chris Armstrong, is actively recruiting your sons and daughters

 to join the homosexual 'lifestyle.'”

The blog is peppered with accusations that Armstrong is preying on impressionable freshmen.

“It seems that the aim of this 'party' is to liquor-up underage freshmen and promote homosexual activity,” he writes in a post.

Shirvell has also heckled Armstrong at political rallies and protested outside

 of his home.

In an interview Tuesday with CNN's Anderson Cooper, Shirvell defended his 

right to harass Armstrong.

“Andrew I want to go over some of the stuff that you have on your blog,” 

Cooper says. “There's a picture of Chris Armstrong with a Nazi swastika 

under his face, there's another with the words 'racist elitist liar' scrawled 

on his face. You accuse him at one point of being Satan's representative

 on the student assembly.”

“You're a state official. This is a college student. What are you doing?”

“This is a political campaign. This is nothing personal against Christ,”

 Shirvell responded.

“I'm a Christian citizen exercising my First Amendment rights. I have

 no problem with the fact that Chris is a homosexual. I have a problem 

with the fact that he's advancing a radical homosexual agenda,” he added.

Shirvell's boss, Attorney General Mike Cox, a Republican, issued a stern 

warning against Shirvell: “All state employees have a right to free speech

 outside working hours. But Mr. Shirvell's immaturity and lack of judgment outside the office is clear.”

BY ON TOP MAGAZINE STAFF 

Another Sensless Suicide Death of a Gay Youth

Wednesday, September 29, 2010, 2:07 PM     Updated: Wednesday, September 29, 2010, 5:42 PM 

FacebookFacebook photo of Tyler Clementi, a Rutgers freshman who is presumed dead after jumping off the George Washington Bridge last week.

PISCATAWAY — A Rutgers University freshman appears to have killed himself by jumping off the George Washington Bridge after his roommate broadcast live images of the 18-year-old having a sexual encounter with another man on the internet, according to campus and law enforcement sources.

Tyler Clementi, 18, of Ridgewood, is presumed dead after his car, cell phone and computer were found near the George Washington Bridge last week, law enforcement sources said. His wallet was found on the walkway adjacent to the New York-bound lanes. In a statement released this afternoon, Clementi’s family confirmed the suicide and said his body has not been found.

Dharun Ravi, 18, of Plainsboro, and Molly Wei, 18, of Princeton, were charged with two counts each of invasion of privacy for setting up a camera in a dorm room on Sept. 19 and using it to view and transmit a live sex scene, said Middlesex County Prosecutor Bruce Kaplan.

Paul Mainardi of Woodbury, the Clementi family's attorney, said Ravi and Clementi were roommates at Rutgers.

 

Ravi's Twitter feed on that date referred to seeing his roommate have sex with another man in their room on the Piscataway campus, classmates said.

"Roommate asked for the room till midnight. I went into molly's room and turned on my webcam. I saw him making out with a dude. Yay," Ravi said on his Twitter page in a Sept. 19 entry posted at 6:17 p.m.

Two days later, Ravi posted another entry directing his nearly 150 Twitter followers to iChat, an internet messaging service with a live video feed.

"Anyone with iChat, I dare you to video chat me between the hours of 9:30 and 12. Yes it's happening again," Ravi wrote in the Sept. 21 post.

Ravi's Twitter feed has since been taken down. But the entries survived in a cached version of the page still available through Google's search engine this afternoon.

Yearbook photosDharun Ravi and Molly Wei, both Rutgers students, are charged in connection with broadcasting a sexual encounter involving Ravi's roommate Tyler Clementi.

Prosecutors said Ravi and Wei set up a camera on Sept. 19 and broadcast live images of Clementi having a "sexual encounter." Ravi is also accused of trying unsuccessfully to broadcast a second sex scene Sept. 21.

The Clementi family released a statement this afternoon. "Tyler was a fine young man, and a distinguished musician. The family is heartbroken beyond words. They respectfully request that they be given time to grieve their great loss and that their privacy at this painful time be respected by all," it said.

"The family and their representatives are cooperating fully with the ongoing criminal investigations of two Rutgers University students," the statement said.

Clementi was an accomplished violinist who had received a college scholarship from the Ridgewood Symphony Orchestra for his musicianship and leadership.

The violinist left a lasting impression with some in the Bergen County town, said Hiro Kagei, 17, who played in the orchestra with the teenager. A solo Clementi played in a concert last year "blew the audience away," he said.

"Now that he’ dead, it’s sad to think we won’t hear something like that anymore," Kagei said.

On the Rutgers campus, classmates described Clementi as quiet. At a mandatory dorm meeting called the day he was reported missing, only three students said they had spoken to Clementi since they moved into the dorm last month, according to students who were at the meeting.

View full sizeTwitterA screen shot of Dharun Ravi's Twitter feed.

Ravi and Wei — who were classmates at West Windsor-Plainsboro High School North before enrolling at Rutgers this fall — did not respond to e-mail requests to comment Tuesday. Steve Altman, Ravi’s attorney, also declined to comment.

Ravi surrendered to Rutgers police Tuesday and was released on $25,000 bail, the prosecutor’s office said. Wei surrendered to the campus police Monday and was released on her own recognizance.

Under New Jersey’s invasion-of-privacy laws, it is a fourth degree crime to collect or view images depicting nudity or sexual contact involving another individual without that person’s consent, the prosecutor said. It is a third degree crime to transmit or distribute the images.

If the students are convicted on a third degree offense they could face up to five years in prison each under state law. Conviction on a fourth-degree crime could lead to probation or up to 18 months in prison.

Kelly Heyboer/ The Star-Ledger