Hollywood Casting Call } For Boys to do Porno

By Rob Quinn                              Murphy registered as a sex offender in California in 2005.   (Washington Corrections Department)

(NEWSER) – A conviction for kidnapping and molesting an 8-year-old boy in 1996 didn't prevent Jason James Murphy from forging a successful career in Hollywood casting—recruiting child actors for movies includingSuper 8 and Bad News Bears. Murphy, 35, moved to California after completing a 5-year prison sentence in Washington state. He was required to register as a sex offender, but he worked under the name Jason James and did not register the alias, the Los Angeles Timesreports.

There have been no known complaints about Murphy behaving inappropriately with minors, but police are investigating whether he was in compliance with state rules for sex offenders. Super 8 director JJ Abrams says that he only learned about Murphy's background this week, and after doing so he notified Paramount, which notified authorities. "It's shocking and it's devastating, not just as a filmmaker but as a father and someone who is entrusted to make sure that everyone I work with, especially children, are safe," Abrams says. "To think that someone like this was among us is unthinkable."

New Newt } Same Newt

 http://opinion.latimes.com

 In his Nov. 17 Op-Ed column, Doyle McManus draws attention to Newt Gingrich's comeback and compares it with Richard Nixon's makeover in 1968.  To that end, McManus offers a side-by-side comparison of the two Newts:

Old Newt -- Angry Newt, the one who entered the presidential campaign last spring -- talked in apocalyptic terms about threats to American culture. Old Newt wrote about "a secular-socialist machine" led by the Democratic Party that "represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once did."

"If we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America," he warned, the U.S. could soon become "a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists."

And the revised version:

New Newt -- Presidential Newt -- talks about fiscal challenges more than cultural threats and says they don't look that scary. "There are ways to solve this," he told voters in Iowa this week. The economy can be fixed, he said, simply by allowing more oil and gas drilling, reducing fraud in federal programs and "putting people back to work."

The change is not complete.  Gingrich still slips back into his past ways, as people do.  Regardless, is this change sustainable?  McManus wonders:

Can New Newt keep Old Newt at bay for long? It's one thing to focus on fiscal issues instead of cultural warfare; that's just a matter of emphasis. The greater challenge for Gingrich is maintaining his changed temperament after years of delighting in unconventional ideas and unrestrained polemic.

Readers took the issue in various directions.  Here is a sample of comments from the discussion board:

Put your faith in whomever the left hates this week

As Rush Limbaugh always says, you can tell who liberals fear the most by who the Democrats and the media try to destroy the most.  Just look at the onslaught of attacks in the last two days.  Newt is being attacked worse than Sarah Palin has.  You can bet that a left-wing organization is responsible for the fliers being passed around the state of Iowa detailing Newts marriages etc.   The state-run liberal media and the "establishment right-wing media"  will do their best to see to it that he is not the nominee.  This tells me that Newt is the right candidate.  Obama will be effectively "Newtered" after Newt is done with him in the debates.

-- Tralfazzz

Pleasantly surprised by New Newt

I have a confession to make: I have been very surprised by Newt's rise in the polls. Like other Americans, I had swallowed the MSM's distortions about the man.  Just today, the polls in Iowa show him at 32%, way ahead of Romney and the others.  Early on in his campaign, I thought Newt was finished.  I thought he was a "has been," with too much baggage to get elected POTUS.  Then I started to listen to him during the debates and was I ever impressed! He is clearly the most experienced, the most intelligent and knowledgeable of all the GOP candidates.  He would wipe the floor with Obama in any debate. Next to Newt, Obama looks like a kid in diapers.  I don't know if the Republican establishment will take the risk of nominating Newt, but I think that if the voters get to see him as a presidential candidate, listen carefully to his arguments and positions, watch him mop the floor with Obama in the debates, and ignore the liberal MSM attacks on him, he could actually win the White House.

-- dagstd

Female voters, anyone?

Exactly what group would enthusiastically support this morally corrupt bombastic egotist?  Certainly not most women, who would find his marital history and his Tiffany's bedecked third trophy wife appalling.  Certainly not most of us with a memory of his "contract on America" and his corrupt history as speaker.  Now with the revelation of his huge "consulting fees" from Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, we see just what sort of self-enriching scumbag old Newtster is.  Like the rest of the sorry field of GOP candidates, his only chance is for a gig on Rupert Murdoch's Lying Circus.  Newt is a prime example of what's wrong with Washington, yet he claims he can transform it.  What a laughingstock.

-- theantipalin

Forget Gingrich.  Romney's the GOP nominee, and one destined to fail

Gingrich has no chance ... nor does Cain or Perry. When Romney gets the GOP nod, the GOP base will nod off. How dense are you folks really? You do realize that McCain destroyed Romney in '08 and was then hammered by Obama, right? The GOP base hates Romney even more than they hated McCain ... given those facts ... how does Romney win? I'm all ears.

-- BartA58

Imagining an Obama-Gingrich match-up

Gingrich is a much more capable candidate than he is given credit for.  He isn't perfect -- no man is, but he'd make a much better president than Barack Obama.

Obama is a fine human being, a devoted husband and father -- and for that he has my respect.  His demeanor is without equal.  He rarely loses his temper, and carries himself with a cool confidence that nobody can come close to.  As Oliver Wendell Holmes once said of FDR, Obama has "a first-class temperament".

Beyond Obama's style, though, one must look for substance.  When you peel away the layers of the onion skin and see what lies beneath, one thing becomes clear: there are very few core convictions, and his flailing (and failing) presidency is a direct reflection of his lack of experience.

Obama could have and should have put healthcare reform on the back burner and instead concentrate on energizing the economy and staving off unemployment.  He did neither.  Now, $4 trillion later, (the national debt just crossed the $15 trillion threshold this week) we teeter on the precipice of economic ruin, and the present administration's fallback position continues to be that everything's the fault of the previous administration.  Don't look at us, we're just janitors cleaning up somebody else's mess.

America will not reelect a president who slouches his way through a crisis.

-- GregMaragos

Why such short memories?  It's the same guy!

There's nothing new about Newt Gingrich.  He's an original signer of the No New Taxes pledges, and a big supporter of Grover Norquist and that NeoCon Starve The Beast movement to paralyze government. This is the guy who engineered the tax cuts which set the stage for the national fiscal crises.  He may hope that people forget, but there are plenty of reminders, such as the new article by Tim Dickenson in Rolling Stone, reviewed by Terry Gross on Fresh Air, for anyone who needs a detailed history up to present-day problems.  New Newt?  Only in his imagination.  He is the personification of the mean-spirited Republican. 

-- Observer26

Gay Malaysian Pastor } Asks For Tolerance for Gays Drawing Fire in His Country

By J. DAVID GOODMAN and LIZ GOOCH     New York Times.com 

The Rev. Boon Lin Ngeo, a Malaysian Protestant pastor whose message of tolerance for homosexuals has drawn fire in his country, sat with his male partner on a lime-green sofa inside the Office of the City Clerk in New York on a late summer day, where they waited their turn to be married.

 The banality of the scene — the plastic-sealed bouquets, the bureaucratic march of couples through the office — masked the roiling effect that Mr. Ngeo’s nuptials have had in Malaysia, where Muslims are a majority and sodomy, even among consenting adults, remains a crime punishable by as many as 20 years in prison.

“I’m nobody here,” he said in New York, where same-sex marriage became legal in June, “but this marriage could have a global impact.”

While prosecutions in Malaysia under the sodomy law are rare, they are not unheard of. The leader of the country’s political opposition, Anwar Ibrahim, is facing sodomy charges for the second time in what he has called a politically motivated trial.

Advocates for gay rights say that even if such legal threats are remote, many Malaysians remain afraid to come out publicly for fear of religious condemnation, choosing instead to survive in a conservative society by remaining in the shadows.

But in recent years, Mr. Ngeo, 41, and others have encouraged gay Malaysians to let a little more light seep in, tentatively pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable.

One group, Sexuality Merdeka, created an annual festival in 2008 celebrating sexuality in all its forms. Last year, it encouraged Malaysians to post videos online proclaiming their sexuality, in a campaign modeled on the American “It Gets Better” video project combating the bullying of gays. The organization received 15 submissions, but posted only 5 before stopping because of a backlash that included death threats.

For his part, Mr. Ngeo has used his platform — he is a well-known Chinese-language writer and newspaper columnist in Malaysia — to push for greater rights by shining a spotlight on his own relationship. He came out publicly in a memoir in 2006, and has traveled to Kuala Lumpur several times with his partner of two years, Phineas Newborn III.

Even the date of their marriage at the City Clerk’s office was chosen to draw attention. They were married by a justice of the peace on Aug. 31, the Malaysian independence day.

Government officials and conservative newspapers in Malaysia appeared happy to respond, lashing out at Mr. Ngeo when the wedding plans were announced. “Day by day, we see various attempts to destroy our value system and Pastor Ou is doing it in the open,” a columnist wrote in the conservative daily, Utusan Malaysia, referring to Mr. Ngeo by his Chinese name, Ou Yang Weng Feng.

The couple plan to celebrate their marriage in the winter with a large banquet at a restaurant in Kuala Lumpur, a move likely to further inflame conservative sentiment in the country.

Of course, some gay people live openly in Malaysia, especially in Kuala Lumpur and other cities. In an interview in New York, where he now lives, Mr. Ngeo said he had noticed changes in the country and counted it as a success that newspapers in Malaysia were reporting on homosexuality when they reported about him. “At least now they articulate the word ‘homosexual’ in the newspaper,” he said. “Before they just ignored it.”

He has been working with the Metropolitan Community Church, a global organization with congregations in 23 countries that welcome lesbian, gay and transgender worshipers. Along with a former Baptist minister, the Rev. Joe Pang, he has been developing a safe gathering place in Kuala Lumpur. Christians make up about 9 percent of the Malaysian population, where the right to freedom of religion is enshrined in the country’s Constitution, though religious tensions have occasionally flared.

Mr. Pang, who leads the community church’s Malaysian congregation, was forced to resign from the Baptist Church after he declared his sexuality. In August, he led the small Malaysian congregation, with a few dozen people, in the mezzanine of a suburban Kuala Lumpur cafe. He was joined on this occasion by Mr. Ngeo, who was in town and preached about his own coming out, scarcely drawing breath as he jumped seamlessly between English and Chinese. “I was so afraid of myself,” he said.

  Raised a fundamentalist Christian in Kuala Lumpur, Mr. Ngeo married a woman in Malaysia and moved with her to the United States in the late 1990s before telling her about his sexuality in 2002. “I said to her, ‘I think I’m gay,’ ” he said. “And she said, ‘Yes, I think you are.’ ” But while Mr. Newborn, a Broadway producer, found support from his family, Mr. Ngeo struggled to come out at home. It was only with the publication of his memoir that he revealed his sexuality to his family, calling his mother a week before it appeared in stores to tell her. (His father died when he was 13.) Such public declarations of homosexuality are rare in Malaysia — Mr. Ngeo is believed to be the most prominent person to do so — and can elicit bitterness. Some in the Malaysian gay community who live under the radar have criticized Mr. Ngeo for disturbing their fragile peace.He rejects the criticism, saying that the only way to gain rights is to fight for them in public. “If we want changes in Malaysia, we have to pay the price,” he said.

Azwan Ismail has. A 33-year-old Malay engineer who was raised Muslim, Mr. Ismail posted a video online in December as part of the coming-out campaign by Sexuality Merdeka, but received so many death threats that he was forced to take it down. Mr. Ismail said that he expected a negative reaction to the video, titled “I’m Gay, I’m Okay,” but that he was taken aback by the violent threats.

“To that extent it was a surprise, and shocking and quite frightening,” Mr. Ismail said.

As the service in Kuala Lumpur ended, Mr. Pang introduced a newcomer to the gathering of mostly men, both gay and straight, who ranged in age from 20 to 55. None were willing to share their names. Some members are married with children and have not yet come out.

They said they told their wives that they were meeting friends when they went to the Sunday meetings, Mr. Pang said, adding, “Their whole lives, they only can be themselves for two hours.”

J. David Goodman reported from New York, and Liz Gooch from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

M Bachmann Tries to Collect for $175.00 for Trying to Make someone Straight } Now He Might be SOoory..Lawyers are calling

TWO Responds to Bachmann & Associates with Letter From Attorney

Posted November 17th, 2011

November 17, 2011
Bachmann & Associates, Inc.
Lake Elmo Office
8669 Eagle Point Blvd.
Lake Elmo, MN  55042
Dear Dr. Bachmann:
The undersigned is personal counsel for John Becker of Burlington, Vermont.
It has come to my attention that Bachmann & Associates has wrongfully billed my client Mr. Becker, representing the organization Truth Wins Out, for therapy sessions that he never attended.
More so, you have personally called my client demanding he remit immediate payment to Bachmann & Associates in the amount of $150.00 for cancelled appointments. In truth and in fact, these so called appointments were timely canceled pursuant to and in compliance with your clinic’s stated procedures.
According to Bachmann & Associates’ no-show policy, patients are assessed a $75 fee for each appointment that they miss without giving prior notification. Becker’s telephone records indicate that he called the clinic in early July to cancel his remaining sessions, giving Bachmann & Associates ample time to schedule appointments with other clients.
Accordingly, assuming you were even entitled to collect money for cancellations, that would not apply in this instance. My client met your office’s policies. This should end the discussion alone.
However, if you are persistent in this claim, and attempt to employ the collection agency you have threatened to, you should know that my firm and our associates in your jurisdiction would take legal action against you.
Specifically, and you should make no mistake about the same, we consider your therapy and practices fraudulent. We have concluded your services are dubious and questionable, not worthy of any billing at all. We consider your fees and charges part of a larger civil conspiracy to defraud vulnerable individuals.
As you know, the American Psychiatric Association says that attempts to alter one’s sexual orientation can lead to “anxiety, depression, and self-destructive behavior.” Truth Wins Out has conclusively documented your office engaging in this discredited “therapy” while masquerading it as treatment.
If you go forward with your claim, we are prepared to show that your clinic’s presentations and practices are specious and surreptitious, unworthy of financial compensation. In furtherance of our assertion, we are going to ask the Office of the Minnesota Attorney General to investigate your policies, practices, and procedures. Specifically, we are going to ask them to evaluate the purported ‘scientific’ basis for your patently false representations that your clinic offers ‘therapeutic’ services.
Nevertheless, having timely canceled his appointments, it is apparent that Mr. Becker has received this billing as retaliation. Unlike your billing department, my client, in fact, did his due diligence and followed up with your office.
On November 2, your billing department informed Mr, Becker that the decision about whether to waive the no-show fees would be made by his therapist. My client was further informed that if he didn’t hear back from the therapist, Timothy Wiertzema, within the week, he should consider the fees waived, and the matter settled. No one from your ‘clinic’ contacted him.
Thus, one can reasonably conclude that Bachmann & Associates was derelict in its duty, as it failed to contact Becker in a reasonable and timely matter, giving him the false impression that the dispute had been resolved. Instead, you personally- and inexplicably- called on November 14^th, leaving a voicemail demanding payment from my client.
To be quite frank, in reputable and ethical mental health practices, the billing department usually handles collections. We are gravely concerned that you contacted my client out of spite, because he disclosed the truth about the discredited and outmoded techniques practiced in your office, instead exposing the way you misled the public- by denying that this “therapy” was even taking place.
Accordingly, should you take any action against Mr. Becker, we will also allege that your actions constitute a purposeful and malicious prosecution, albeit for a ridiculously small stipend. We will be interested in the civil discovery process to find out from you in a deposition how often you personally call up clients to collect on an alleged $150 debt. Your answer under oath will be most probative.-
It appears that the goal of your unwarranted attacks is to publicly defame and discredit Mr. Becker and impugn his reputation by portraying him as a deadbeat unwilling to pay his bills.
Therefore, we hereby demand that you immediately cease and desist from your harassment and intimidation of my client and his employer. Please do not embarrass yourself or your firm further by attempting to collect a debt that you are not owed for a point you cannot make.
Please advise me that Bachmann & Associates will summarily dismiss this claim within 72 hours, or we will necessarily engage counsel and institute appropriate legal actions of our own against your firm, premised on the three legal arguments I have outlined above:
First, that my client was compliant with your business practices, albeit questionable though they are;
Second, that because your services involve a conspiracy to defraud otherwise innocent parties they constitute fraud in the inducement; and
Third, that your attempt to facilitate the collection of an unjustified debt constitutes a retaliatory and malicious prosecution, warranting attorney’s fees and court costs.
You decide the better way to proceed.
Sincerely,
Norm Kent, Esq.
Kent & Cormican, P.A.
Attorney sat Law
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301

http://www.truthwinsout.org

Liver Transplant Refused by Hospital because of Medical Marijuana

By Eric W. Dolan     Rawstory.com/rs

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles has denied a liver transplant to a patient with inoperable liver cancer because he uses medical marijuana. But the marijuana was prescribed by the very same hospital, according to the advocacy group Americans for Safe Access (ASA).

Sixty-three year-old Norman B. Smith was diagnosed with inoperable liver cancer in 2009. His oncologist at Cedars-Sinai, Dr. Steven Miles, approved of his medical marijuana use as a means to deal with the effects of chemotherapy and pain from an unrelated back surgery.

In September 2010, Smith became eligible for a liver transplant, but after testing positive for marijuana in February he was removed from the transplant list due to non-compliance with the hospital’s substance abuse contract. Smith was within two months of receiving a transplant before he was de-listed

He is scheduled to undergo radiation treatments in the next few days.

ASA Chief Counsel Joe Elford in a letter urged the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center to change its transplant eligibility policy, which ran counter to the hospital’s stated mission of “providing the highest quality patient care that modern medicine has to offer.”

“While your liver transplant policies are likely motivated by the best intentions, the decision to deny Mr. Smith eligibility for a liver transplant based solely on his compliance with California law and the advice of his physician is extremely misguided and may prove fatal,” he wrote.

In a letter sent to Smith in May, the director of Cedars-Sinai’s Liver Transplant Program said that the liver transplant center “must consider issues of substance abuse seriously since it does often play a role in the evolution of diseases that may require transplantation, and may adversely impact a new organ after a transplant.”

But the group noted that studies have found marijuana use did not adversely affect liver transplantation.

In order to be put back on the liver transplant list, Smith is required to abstain from marijuana use for at least six months and participate in weekly substance abuse counseling over the same period. Even if he is re-listed, he will be re-added to the bottom of the list.

“ASA seeks to change this harmful and uncompassionate policy not only for Smith’s benefit, but also for the benefit of numerous other medical marijuana patients who are being made to suffer unnecessarily as a result of political ideology,” said Elford.

In 2008, a medical marijuana patient from Seattle died after being denied a liver transplant by the University of Washington Medical Center. Less than a year later, another medical marijuana patient from Big Island died at Hilo Hospital after being denied a liver transplant.

Warren Beattty's Transgender Son Reacts Badly to Chaz Bono } Calls Him a misogynist

By DAILY MAIL REPORTER

Chaz Bono received dig after dig during his performance on Dancing With The Stars.

Now Cher's superstar son has been criticised from some unlikely quarters after Warren Beatty and Annette Bening's transgender son blasted Chaz as a misogynist.

Stephen, 19, born Kathlyn, has hit out at the 42-year-old, who underwent female-to-male gender transition between 2008 and 2010.

Hitting out: Warren Beatty's transgender son Stephen, right, has criticised Chaz Bono over his misogynistic views 

Writing on his blog Super Mattachine, Stephen took issue with Chaz's view that transgender people have effectively been born with a 'birth defect' - something Bono said in an interview with the New York Times.

Chaz described being transgender as effectively having a 'mismatched' brain and body, akin to a 'birth defect like a cleft palate'.

Supportive: Chaz with his famous singer mother Cher last year

But Stephen fiercely disagrees: 'I do not have a birth defect. If you feel like you have a birth defect, fine. That’s how you feel. Go feel that,' he wrote on his blog.

He went on: 'Do not put it onto me. Do not define me that way, and do not define other trans people that way unless they claim that label.'

Stephen continued, by branding Chaz a misogynist and saying that he does no represent the views of the transgender community.

'[Chaz] has appointed himself as the representative of a group of people who are not all like him. 

'He has said misogynistic... things about gender. I take particular issue with his comments on trans embodiment and on women.'

Stephen concluded: 'Chaz is a misogynist. He is a trans man who seems to believe that his female-assignedness and his female socialisation makes him immune from being a misogynist, and he is manifestly wrong.

'This man doesn’t represent our community... The next time you hear Chaz’s name brought up in a conversation about trans issues, point out the things he’s said about surgery, ‘birth defects,’ and women.

Family photo: Warren with wife Anette and their children pictured in 2004,  from left Isabel, Ella, Benjamin and Stephen (then Kathlyn)

'Because I don’t want a single person thinking this guy is the best of us.'

Stephen describes himself as 'a gay trans man for whom both identities are equally important, a white anti-racist, a feminist, and a poet.'

His father, the famous actor Warren, also dated Chaz's mother Cher back in 1962. Beatty and wife Bening, who married in 1992, have four children together.

 

'Viva Glam’ New Campaign with Ricky and Nicky took over GaGa

Author: Donovan  In: Donovan, Fashion     

Over the summer, MAC Cosmetics revealed that Nicki Minaj and Ricky Martin would be the new faces for their VIVA GLAM ad campaign. The duo took over the reins from the Fame Monster herself, Lady Gaga. Martin becomes the third male to represent the brand following Elton John (2001) and Boy George (2004). Minaj on her part was brought on board after her limited release Pink Friday lipstickbecame an instant bestseller. The lipstick was sold for $14 during its initial sale, but can now be found on eBay for as much as $79.

With Martin’s recent coming out and impending wedding, and Minaj’s proven track record with the company, the decision to bring them on board to raise money for the company’s MAC AIDS Fund was a no-brainer. The foundation uses the monies raised to help with prevention, treatment and education of HIV and AIDS. Since the charity’s launch in 1994, an astonishing $224 million has been raised. No doubt, with Nicki and Ricky on board, that total will only rise.

MAC unveiled their first promo picture featuring their two new celebrity endorsers today. Shot by famed photographer David LaChapelle, the visual shows Minaj looking like an urban Harajuku Barbie on all fours riding a motorcycle, while Ricky Martin holds up a giant lipstick. Can’t get any butchier than that. LOL. The $14 lipsticks dubbed Viva Glam Ricky and Viva Glam Nicki will go on sale in February with 100% of the proceeds going to fight HIV and AIDS.

 

Entertainment mogul Michael Lucas warns about Homophobia in The Arab Spring

by Michael Lucas 

http://www.pinknews.co.uk

After decades in power, a brutal dictator in a Muslim country is dramatically deposed by a massive popular uprising. Sound familiar? Of course: that’s what happened in Egypt and Libya this year, as part of what’s known as the Arab Spring. But it’s also what happened in Iran in 1979 — and that should make us pause for a moment.

It’s easy to cheer for democratic change and celebrate the downfall of tyrants like Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi. But what if the end of one kind of oppression brings about the rise of another? As history has shown us time and again, revolutions are often turns for the worse.

Gay people should be especially wary when the forces of religious fundamentalism are involved. And nowhere are those forces stronger today than in the Muslim world. The power behind the Arab Spring came in large part from the coiled energy of Islamic groups that had been suppressed by secular dictatorships; as the old regimes crumble, hard-core Islamists are eager to take their place.

If the past is any guide, that’s bad news for gays in the Muslim world. Consider Iran. Under the Shah, Tehran had room for gay nightclubs and artists. That tolerance ended when the ayatollahs took over in the Islamic revolution of 1979 and instituted a fundamentalist form of Quranic law, or Shariah, under which gay sex is punishable by death. (Three Iranian men were hanged for sodomy in September, and hundreds of others have reportedly been executed for gay-related offenses.)

Or consider the explosion of anti-gay violence that followed the end of Saddam Hussein’s secular regime in Iraq. The powerful cleric Ali al-Sistani, who had been kept in check by Saddam, issued a 2005 fatwa calling for gay men and lesbians to be killed “in the worst, most severe way of killing.” In recent years, according to human-rights groups, scores of Iraqi gays have been abducted and murdered — often through gruesome torture and mutilation — by sectarian death squads and even by members of their own families (in so-called “honor killings”).

Iraqi authorities have mostly turned a blind eye to this “sexual cleansing.” Should we be surprised? After all, Shariah is now officially the law of the land. The 2005 Iraqi constitution includes talk about equal rights for all citizens, but its Article 2 calls Islam “the official religion of the State” and says that “no law that contradicts the established provisions of Islam may be established.”

Whether by law (in Iran) or by acceptance of lawlessness (in Iraq), the increased power of Islam in daily life has been a disaster for Muslim gays. Will things be different in the Arab Spring countries?

We have reason to worry. Egypt’s constitution also has an Article 2, which says the same thing as Iraq’s, that “Islam is the religion of the state,” and that “the principal source of legislation is Shariah.” Egyptian voters had the chance to change that language in a March referendum, but they chose to keep it.

Mubarak was no friend to gay Egyptians, and in the past decade his government stepped up its persecution. But as the Egyptian-born LGBT scholar Hassan El Menyawi has pointed out, this policy was largely motivated by Mubarek’s desire to “shore up [his] Islamic credentials” with a radicalized Egyptian population that was happy to see gays targeted.

A Pew Research Center poll last year found that 82 percent of Egyptian Muslims support stoning people who commit adultery, and 84 percent support the death penalty for Muslims who leave the religion. It’s not hard to imagine the same group’s attitudes toward homosexuality. Any government that results from Egypt’s planned 2012 elections is sure to reflect the country’s widespread religious conservatism.

In Libya, as well, the future will almost certainly be less rosy than we’d like. Last month, the world’s jubilation at the death of Gaddafi turned sour when graphic evidence emerged of the mob’s savagery toward the captured leader. (One video shows Gaddafi being sodomized with a stick.) Libyan liberals, and Western ones, were further disturbed a week later when the head of the transitional government suggested that polygamy should be legalized, in line with Shariah.

Optimists say that the practical concerns of democracy — getting elected, building coalitions — will keep radical Islam in check. I think they’re being deeply naïve. The expectations raised by the Arab Spring will be hard to live up to; soon, the new governments will start looking for scapegoats and distractions. Gays have always played those roles too well.

By supporting the revolutions in Egypt and Libya, the West has meddled where it didn’t belong and unleashed the beast of fundamentalism in those countries, just as it did in Iraq. It’s only a matter of time until that beast starts to bite. And when the tyranny of the religious majority starts trampling on sexual minorities — not to mention women and non-Muslims — the world’s pride in the Arab Spring will turn out to have gone before a very long, very hard fall

Rob Kardashian } Not True Rumors of Kristin Cavallari/Scott Disick Hookup

Giulio Marcocchi/Sipa Press  

Eonline.com   

by MARC MALKIN AND BRETT MALEC

We'll get to the Dancing With the Stars finale in just a minute. First, let's get to that Kristin Cavallari, Scott Disick hookup rumor.


Yesterday, a source close to Cavallari told E! News that the Hills star thought the report that she got it on with Kourtney Kardashian's other half was downright "gross."
And now, Rob Kardashian, is helping us keep up with Mr. Disick's side of the story...
READ: Kendall Jenner Gets New Range Rover, but Can She Drive?
"100 percent untrue," Kardashian told us at last night's OP Winter Wonderland party at Siren Studios in Hollywood. "I mean, people make stories up all the time. It's part of the world we live in."Phew.




He also told E! News, "I'm friends with Kristin and I'm pretty sure that's very false."

Now let's get to next week's Dancing With the Stars finale where Kardashian will go head-to-head with J.R. Martinez and Ricki Lake for the coveted mirror-ball trophy.

"I made it this far so I might as well try and win the whole thing," he said. "I mean last week I had my best scores yet and I just got a lot of raves from the judges and a lot of confidence so I feel like it's a perfect transition going into the finals."
READ: Foxy Kim Kardashian Too Furry for PETA

Where would the 24-year-old put his ballroom prize if he wins the whole thing? "I'd probably put it in my mom's house so everybody sees it, like my whole family," he smiled.

He also echoed what little sis Kylie Jenner told us of 16-year-old Kendall's good driving skills.
He laughed, "She knows how to drive stick and I don't."


 

Alex Meraz } Twilighter and CSI

 By Greg Hernandez  http://greginhollywood.com/

 

He may not be as famous as Robert Pattinson or Taylor Lautner, but Twilightfans are well aware of Alex Meraz who plays the werewolf named Paul in the series of films – the latest of which opens on Friday.

The 26-year-old is from Mesa, Arizona and is much more than an actor: Alex also is a dancer, painter and illustrator and has won tournaments in mixed martial arts.

His first film role was in 2005′s The New World starring Colin Farrell and Christian Bale.

Aside from the Twilight movies, Alex appeared in the current season of CBS’sCSI: New York and has filmed Never Back Down 2: The Beatdown.