Gays Get Assaulted by Mob and Then Arrested in Moscow

A Russian Orthodox church activist attacks a gay rights protester during an unauthorised rally in central Moscow. Photograph: Anton Tushin/AFP/Getty Images

Dozens of people were detained in Moscow on Sunday after Russian Orthodox church activists broke up two gay rights protests, throwing water and shouting prayers at demonstrators.

Some Orthodox activists attacked the protesters, throwing punches, grabbing their rainbow flags and trampling on them in front of television cameras.

Skirmishes occurred at the protests outside the city hall and parliament. Neither rally was sanctioned by Moscow authorities.

Almost all of the 30 gay rights protesters were detained, and many fewer of 50 or so Orthodox activists involved.

Nikolai Alexeyev, the leader of the gay rights protests, said he was detained for talking to journalists. "I am arrested at Moscow Pride City Hall protest," he tweeted while in police custody. "I have no words."

Police told the state-run news agency Itar-Tass that about 40 people had been detained at the protests.

"All of our rights are being trampled on here in Russia," said Igor Yasin, another demonstrator. "Your rights aren't safe and you're not physically safe."

Earlier this year Russian MPs introduced a bill to that would impose fines for "spreading gay propaganda" among minors.

While the proposed law ostensibly targets actions such as the distribution of gay pornography to children, critics say it could be used to ban gay rights demonstrations.

Such a law is in force in President Vladimir Putin's home city St Petersburg where the US singer Madonna has said she will use her Russia tour this summer to speak out against the lawwhat she called a "ridiculous atrocity".

Homosexuality was decriminalised in Russia in 1993, but anti-gay prejudice runs deep and the gay community remains largely underground.

The Russian Orthodox church, whose influence has grown since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, speaks out against homosexuality. Gay rights rallies have often ended in clashes with militant anti-gay activists and arrests.

• Reuters in Moscow
• guardian.co.uk,

Chris Colfer of Glee Turned 22 Today

They grow up so fast!

Today is the 22nd birthday of the oh-so talented Chris Colfer, the Emmy-nominated and Golden Globe-winning star of Glee.

His character of Kurt Hummel just graduated from high school on the show but did not make it into his first choice school, NYU.
But Kurt is so talented and resilient. He will no doubt hatch an interesting Plan B.

Chris isn’t just focusing on Glee. He also wrote and stars in Struck by Lightning, a dark, irreverent coming-of-age comedy that premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival.

By Greg Hernandez 

The Letters Had an Impact on Sentencing of Ravi

To many fair minded people and people knowledgeable of how most judges will sentence (by average) a person vis a vis the crime were shocked by the sentence of Ravi.  In most cases a person convicted of manslaughter usually wont get the same low sentence as somebody who assaulted somebody else by a slapped in the in the face. 

In the case of Ravi you had a jury who convicted him of a laundry list of crimes, for him to do 30 days with small financial fine is like the judge annulled the conviction of the jury. 

One is curious to ask why? Is he anti gay? Was he a bully when he was in college? After listening to all the testimony and evidence we have to assumed he was very well verse on the crime. As we ponder this question we find all the letters that were sent to him(the judge).  Most people were expecting a serious sentence.  That is people on both sides of the issue. The only people that had something to gain to plead with the judge were the Ravi family and many supporters from his country and from here, even gay people themselves.  They were the ones that mostly wrote to the judge asking for mercy.  . 

Those letters came from a man who was once beaten with a baseball bat in a racially motivated attack, the widow of a Minnesota judge, a group representing lesbian, gay and transgender people from South Asia, a gay member of the Navy, and the father of a woman who committed suicide, among others.

There were more than 100 in all, and nearly all had the same theme: telling the judge it would be unjust to put former Rutgers student Dharun Ravi in prison for using a webcam to see roommate Tyler Clementi kissing another man in 2010, just days before Clementi killed himself.

"I learned a lot about bias crimes and bullying through this case," said a writer named Louise. "The bullying and bias acts occurred when the legal system and media got involved. Ravi is not to blame for the hardships endured by the gay community nor should he be tied to the whipping post because of it. If Tyler was not gay, this would have been just a prank gone wrong and no one would have rushed to incarcerate."

Ravi, now 20, was convicted in March of 15 criminal counts. Soon after, the letters began pouring into Superior Court Judge Glenn Berman's chambers making requests for how to handle sentencing.

Last week, Berman said Ravi would have to serve 30 days in jail. Because the sentence is less than a year, it decreases the chances that immigration authorities will seek to have Ravi deported to India, where he was born and remains a citizen. Prosecutors said they would appeal the sentence as too light.

Before delivering the sentence, Berman held up a folder, inches thick, of the letters he had received. Later, he quoted one of them, calling Clementi's suicide the "pink elephant" in the case.

Some of the letters came through an orchestrated effort. More than 30 of those in the file opened by the judge included a pre-printed plea with space for personal additions.

Sandeep Sharma, a friend of Ravi's family and an organizer of the letters, said he thinks the letters were one factor in the relatively light sentence. "It had probably some influence," Sharma said. "I think the judge himself did not believe that this case belonged to the criminal court system to begin with.” 

So we have a loss of a good young man that happened to be gay and in the closet. A non violent man.  Had he been straight he probably would have been jailed for what he would have done to Ravi and then raised his arms like a champion after he wins a boxing match.

Against Me! Transgender Singer Guitarist TomGabel

© RollingStone.com/ Laura Jane Grace

RollingStone.com

Against Me! singer-guitarist Tom Gabel made her live debut as Laura Jane Grace on Friday, performing with the band under her new name for the first time since coming out as transgender.

Bing: Watch Against Me! videos

Charging through a 40-minute set at Humphreys Concerts by the Bay in San Diego -- the first stop in a monthlong U.S. tour with British rockers the Cult -- the quartet played six new songs, including the rollicking anthem "Transgender Dysphoria Blues," the title track of an album they're working on. Decked out in a loose-fitting black tank top, tight black jeans and black eye shadow, Grace was in high spirits as she delivered her trademark, throat-shredding screams.

"I was worried that some people expected me to come out looking like Little Bo Peep or something," Grace said after the show while hanging out at the merch table with her wife, Heather. (They're doing the tour as a family; their toddler daughter, Evelyn, was sleeping with a nanny in the tour bus.)

Also on RollingStone.com: Inside Transgender Singer Tom Gabel's Rolling Stone Interview 

Though Grace says she's open to having a dialogue about her transition with fans, she kept stage banter to a minimum and never brought up her coming out or new name in between songs. Since many of the concertgoers were Cult fans who weren't familiar with Against Me!, the show wasn't exactly ideal for a punk-rock heart-to-heart.

For his part, longtime fan Jimmy Gomez, 23, doesn't think Grace needs to explain anything.

"She did it for herself, not for anybody else. This is about her," he said. "She's doing something she really loves now and she's really happy -- that's really awesome."

Thanks to the outdoor venue's seating arrangements, a mosh pit never did break out during the set, but a handful of fans got up to sing along. When Grace belted out the lines to "The Ocean," a revealing track from the band's 2007 album New Wave "If I could have chosen / I would have been born a woman" -- fans broke into cheers and applause.

"I really support her in being able to come out to everyone," said Maddie Leyland, 18. "I'm excited to see what happens to the band, too, what they all do with it."

Grace is two weeks into hormone replacement therapy. The process involves redistribution of her body's muscle mass, and she was worried about how it would affect her stamina. The band talked before the show about taking some time between songs, but they ended up just powering through the set. The only problem Grace encountered was her guitar cutting out during one song.

Though some fans at the concert wondered how the hormones would affect Grace's voice, Eryn Ramynke, 22, looks forward to any changes that may come. Really, the only issue that seemed to concern her was the venue's many plastic chairs.

"This is crazy," she said. "I didn't know Against Me! played places that had seats."

Lady GaGa Cancels Indonesia Because of Security Issues

Jakarta, Indonesia:

(CNN) -- Lady Gaga canceled her concert in Indonesia, her management said Sunday, citing security concerns after Islamic hardliners denounced her costumes and dance moves as too risqué.

If the concert is held, there are concerns the singer, her crew and attendees may be in harm's way, said Minola Sebayang, the lawyer for the promoters.

"This is an advice from her security team. So the cancellation is purely based on the decision made by her management," Sebayang said.

Earlier this month, Jakarta police recommended that Lady Gaga's sold-out June 3 show not be issued a permit because of security concerns.

The pop diva appeared to acknowledge the incident in a post on Twitter on Saturday: "There is nothing Holy about hatred."

Islamists and conservative Muslims have decried Lady Gaga's upcoming concert, saying her revealing costumes and sensual dance moves are forbidden by Islamic law.

The chairman of the Islamic Defenders Front, Habib Rizieq, said his group could not guarantee security if the concert were held.

Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world.

In March, the pop star got a thumbs-down by the country's highest Islamic authority, according to The Jakarta Globe.
Indonesian Council of Ulema chairman Cholil Ridwan was urging Muslims not to attend the controversial singer's upcoming concert in Jakarta, the newspaper reported.

"(The concert is) intended to destroy the nation's morality," Ridwan told the Globe.

Ridwan is concerned that the singer's revealing outfits and sexy dance moves will set a bad example for Muslim youths.

Newspaper reports said more than 25,000 tickets were sold in the first two hours after the concert went on sale in March. Police said the promoter should not have started selling tickets before getting a permit.

This is not the first controversy surrounding the singer's "Born This Way" tour. Gaga also ran afoul of Christian groups in South Korea, prompting the government to ban kids under the age of 18 from attending her show.

Last week, Christian groups in the Philippines protested Lady Gaga's performances there Monday and Tuesday.

The Mayor Has 11 Homes, Most of Us Can Barely Afford 1

 My 2/3 of my income goes for rent and then comes the utilities. One bedroom in one of the cheaper boroughs.  I’am for sure not talking Manhattan.  Not too long ago there was a bill in the city council that will restrict renters from giving more than 1/3  of their incomes to the landlords for rent. Every year the landlords cry and yell for a rent increase because they don’t make enough money. They always get what they want. Because they don’t make enough money.  I have yet to meet a worker getting any salary that feels that he gets enough or too much money.  If they didn’t make enough money they would be in another business. They would sell to another person and go and make enough money someplace else. Buildings don’t go out of business.  Building have been abandoned or seemed to have been abandoned because the landlord wants to have the building emptied of rent controlled tenants and either convert to co-ops or to high paying tenants.

  

 John Surico wrote the following post on the Village Voice  
that I think hits the big scary bull in the eye.

    A few months back, Runnin' Scared coveredwhat seems to be 

the biggest conundrum of the Big Apple: the fact that rents are higher than ever (averaging a solid $3,418 a month) yet no one is leaving the island. Actually, recent years have shown a huge increase in Manhattan newcomers, raising the question of whether the island will go the way of Venice.

These facts stand in huge contrast to the life of the Hozziner, the highest representative of all things related to New York City and shunner of Gracie Mansion. It seems like old news to say that Bloomberg is the King of New York: whether he's riding his helicopter over the East River late night or boosting the sales of Bloomberg Media, it's evident that Mayor has solidified his empire both in business and in city politics. 

But to compare and contrast the lives of normal New Yorkers and that of the Mayor is a job that must be done every so often just to remind us where we're at as a City. And, if his recent tax records and buys are any indications, the wealth is still pouring in while we're scrounging together pennies to satisfy our landlord come the first day of the month.

The Post reported yesterday that Michael Bloomberg now has eleven places to call home after recently picking up two more properties, each with MegaMillion price tags.

His first new buy is in North Salem, an exclusive village up in Westchester. Home to David Letterman and many other members of the super-rich (is the One Percent still being used?), Bloomberg already had a $3.65 million ranch up there. But, hey, the more, the merrier: his recently acquired property maxed out somewhere around $4.55 mill. And that stands in awe compared to his other home.

The second new buy came three months later and is located in Southampton. You know, that summer dreamland of every New Yorker that the Hampton Jitney will bring you to ifyou have the money. The estate cost the Mayor $20 million; according to Forbes, that's 1/1100-th of his total wealth, which is around $22 billion. With that being said,, doesn't your $3,418 a month small studio in Midtown seem irrelevant?

The plethora of households means that the Hozziner is paying taxes all over the damn place. But, at least he is paying the right amount: his tax records also tell us that he pays a 34.69% tax rate, which is equivalent to $7,631,800,000. Who said the rich don't pay taxes? That's enough money to bankroll 1/4 of every New Yorker's rent.

As his financial information company continues to expand, it's always appropriate to point out a few things about our Mayor, even if his time in office is coming to an end soon. Now, it's just a mystery we'll have to accept as reality and, soon enough, it'll be another chapter in Gotham's truly absurd history.

[jsurico15@gmail.com/@JSuricz]

In The Name of Truth and Who Ever is Been Cured from HIV

The story you are about to read was published by adamfoxie* and others a year ago. What we don’t hear anymore is stories like that. I don’t think is because there are none, but because no one want to say that they were HIV just like the majority of people with HIV don’t want to say that they are so. At the same time governments and health agencies also don’t want to emphasize and understandably so, that some people have come out of the disease and others are immune to it. The reason I’m posting again is because I don’t like people to forget certain truths about the disease. It’s good to advertise the dangers but the truth runs both ways.  
I know that people with HIV still face an awful discrimination by people that are afraid of the disease ( some HIV themselves) and therefore they are afraid of the people that are positive.
So in light of that truth I will like to republish this article and restate that this disease that killed so many is not invinsible no more. I remember when I was working out in the filed, I was sent to retirement homes to preach the dangers of HIv and how to avoid it. Why? There were numbers that indicated people in their 65-85 were showing up HIV. No one knew if they had been HIV all along but never tested or that they had acquired it from one of their buddies during straight or not so straight sex.  The belief then was that they were giving it to each other because they were together in those nursery homes-retirement homes.
As I think about that I tend to smile and think that If I were 80 yrs old and some young punk is coming to tell me to put on a condom I will probably hit him or her with the bed pan when is it hasn’t been emptied. Again another idea that should be buried with the one that french kissing will get you positive. ay vei and Im not even jewish.
In the spirit of the truth I give you the story about  Mr. Timothy Ray Brown:
 (by adamfoxie* the story below was written by Melissa Breyer)

Did you realize that 30 million people have died from HIV in the 30 years since the disease was discovered? Or that the disease spreads at the rate of 7,000 people per day globally? Pretty staggering statistics that seem to get fewer headlines than the latest celebrity scandal.

In the 90s anti-retroviral drugs were developed that transformed the disease from quickly lethal to more manageable, and the illness could be lived with for decades. But treatment is very expensive, and unrealistic for millions of people who have the disease.

But amidst all the discouraging news is a surprising and heartening story–that of the first man to be functionally cured of HIV. Timothy Ray Brown had both acute myeloid leukemia and HIV. As the leukemia spread through his bone marrow, he was forced to undergo chemotherapy and then a stem cell transplant. When the disease flared up again, he required another stem cell transplant.

What was unusual about the transplant donor is that he was immune to HIV. (Scientists say 1 percent of Caucasians are immune to HIV, some theorize that  the trait may be passed down from ancestors who became immune to the plague centuries ago; or that the trait was passed down from people who became immune to a smallpox-like disease.) Although the transplant was to treat the leukemia, an incredible thing happened. His HIV went away.

“He has no replicating virus and he isn’t taking any medication. And he will now probably never have any problems with HIV,” his doctor Gero Huetter told Reuters.

Although Brown’s story is amazing, scientists say that bone marrow transplants can be fatal, and it’s impossible for Brown’s treatment to be used for everyone in the world living with HIV. However, the discovery does encourage “cure research,” according to experts, something that many people never believed would be possible…

 

Enjoy Memorial Day

Memorial Day started as an event to honor Union soldiers, who had died during the American Civil War. It was inspired by the way people in the Southern states honored their dead. After World War I, it was extended to include all men and women, who died in any war or military action.

Memorial Day was originally known as Decoration Day. The current name for this day did not come into use until after World War II. Decoration Day and then Memorial Day used to be held on May 30, regardless of the day of the week, on which it fell. In 1968, the Uniform Holidays Bill was passed as part of a move to use federal holidays to create three-day weekends. This meant that that, from 1971, Memorial Day holiday has been officially observed on the last Monday in May. However, it took a longer period for all American states to recognize the new date. This is so typical for all the states not to recognize a day in which honor those that fallen fighting for their country and those that have been decorated in excel of their duties. 

Today this country battles equality for all. We have states that decided that all citizens should be given all civil and human rights equally. That includes same sex marriage. Just like before it included women to be able to vote and have equal pay, biracial couples to marry, slaves to be converted into citizens and be free. There are states that still find equality for marriage something that only selected people can have.  Eventually they will have to follow history because inequality and bigotry always take a back seat to fairness in an advance society that no longer uses a horse and a cart for transportation and means for the nation to move ahead.

Today we use a space ship to feed astronauts orbiting in space. Some like the past because they don’t like the present and recent the future. We know as a nation that is not the way we have moved ahead.  We recognize our mistakes, change and move on. Today 8 states recognize same sex unions. 

A big number compare to 0 a decade ago.

Anne Burrell “Food Network” Comes Out

 

By Greg Hernandez  

Anne Burrell, the spiky, platinum blond-haired host ofSecrets of a Restaurant Chefand Worst Cooks in America, confirmed earlier today that she is a lesbian.

This comes after a fellow Food Network personality,Ted Allen, mentioned Burrell having a girlfriend during a radio interview.

Allen had said on Romaine Patterson’s Sirius XM show: I am not going to put a label on Anne, but she is dating a woman right now.’

A spokesperson for Burrell tells Page Six: ‘Anne doesn’t feel she was outed. She has made no secret of her relationship. Her significant other is a very private woman. They have been together for a couple of years and spend a lot of time together. It is no secret in the culinary world.’

You Can Catch a Virus on a Church Website than on a Porn Site

As with herpes, one of the peripheral embarrassments of contracting a computer virus is that everyone has a pretty good idea of what you were up to when you got it. Oh sure, it’s possible you just chastely pecked a misleading email link. But odds are you picked it up because you were dallying on one of those shady, fly-by-night websites that people visit when they’re seeking fulfillment. You know—religious sites.

What’s that? Church blogs and Christian youth forums aren’t the first thing that comes to mind when you think of scareware, malware, worms, and Trojan horses? They should be. In its latest annual

Internet security threat report, Symantec, the maker of Norton AntiVirus software, found that “religious and ideological sites” have far surpassed pornographic websites as targets for criminal hackers. According to the company you’re now three times as likely to encounter malware—insidious software that can steal your data, pelt you with spam, or enslave your machine in a botnet—on your local church blog as you are on a porn site.

The explanation is straightforward: The entrepreneurs who run adult websites are old hands at Web security, and they’ve long since learned to use protection. Those who build and host church websites, by contrast, may have the best intentions, but they tend to be naive and inexperienced. For hackers, that makes them easy prey. 

Take Stephen Morrissey, a Pittsburgh-area e-commerce architect who moonlights as a Web developer for churches looking to establish an online presence. He admits he didn’t have the first clue about Web security when he volunteered to build a website for his mother’s small church in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. three years ago. He had designed simple, static Web pages before, but for the church he used a popular, freely available scripting language called PHP to add a few interactive elements.

Three months after the site went live, Morrissey took a glance at its Web traffic numbers and saw they had dropped off a ledge. Trying to visit the site himself, he found the path blocked by Google, which had posted an alert marking it as malicious. Scanning his code, he ran across a snippet he hadn’t put there and didn’t understand. “It was a bunch of gobbledygook,” he recalls. He immediately took the site offline and reported the intrusion to Symantec. He never did find out just what type of malware had been installed there. And luckily, the Google warning seems to have scared off most of the parishioners before their machines could be infected.

In retrospect, Morrissey says, he should have consulted security experts before building the site. The problem, in his view, is that churches are eager to get online, but many don’t understand what’s involved. And they’re so used to relying on volunteers to run their programs that they don’t realize that might be a bad idea when it comes to websites. “Oftentimes it’s an IT person who maybe has a clue about websites, but no real experience at the professional level,” he says. For his part, Morrissey moved that site, and the others he manages, from GoDaddy’s bare-bones hosting service to WordPress, a popular, standardized content management platform that regularly adapts its code to thwart hackers. To his knowledge, none of his sites have been compromised since.

By Will Oremus

But experts in the field point out that WordPress can be vulnerable too, especially for users who don’t recognize the importance of downloading its security updates as soon as they’re released. Those experts include Carmen Merighi, co-owner of a Florida-based Web development company called Online Technologies Group. The bland name belies the company’s racy clientele, which is dominated by adult websites. Merighi has been building and hosting sites for adult domains since 1996, before most churches had ever conceived of the idea of an online presence.

Merighi says the online porn industry in the 1990s resembled the online religious community today—technologically speaking, of course. Enterprising photographers, filmmakers, bloggers, and businesspeople with limited Web savvy were starting their own sites in droves, often using the cheapest and simplest platforms available. Hackers soon capitalized, giving porn sites a well-deserved reputation as cesspools of malware, spam, intrusive pop-up ads, and sneaky redirects. But as traffic soared and companies began to cash in, competition became stiff, and the industry consolidated. Homespun sites were squeezed out, and commercial sites that failed to clean up their pages developed toxic reputations. Merighi says a few of his own sites were hacked, mostly with relatively innocuous “scareware” and “redirect” programs that try to trick people into buying fake anti-virus products or visiting sites they didn’t intend to visit. 

Most of the porn sites that withstood the consolidation have beefed up their security considerably. At a porn expo this month in Miami, Merighi says that nearly all the webmasters he talked to subscribed to one of a few well-established hosting services. “Two to three years ago is really when it became much more of a part of your business plan to look at how you’re going to secure your site.” The credit card companies have pushed the process along, requiring privacy and disclosure standards for any site that processes customers’ financial information.

According to Symantec, pornographic sites now rank at the bottom of the top-10 list for malware threats. Blogs are first, followed by personal and self-hosted sites, business sites, and shopping sites. Religious sites aren’t a category unto themselves, but are split between blogs, self-hosted sites, and “education/reference” sites, which rank fifth on the “most-infected” list.

McAfee, another leading Web security firm, doesn’t break down its threat statistics by website category, but McAfee Labs security strategist Toralv Dirro tells me he isn’t surprised by Symantec’s findings. Malware is on the rise across the Web, he says, and small sites—including personal blogs, religious and nonprofit sites, and small business sites—are among the hardest hit.

The people who run these sites often assume that there’s safety in their obscurity. What hacker is going to bother installing a Trojan horse on a personal blog that gets only a few hundred hits per day? But these days, many hackers don’t even look at what sites they’re targeting, McAfee’s Dirro explains. The spike in malware is a result of a proliferation of downloadable attack kits, which automatically scan the Web looking for sites that appear likely to have vulnerabilities in their code, regardless of their actual content. The attack software probes for weaknesses, then automatically injects malware wherever it finds them. It just happens that church sites tend to be among the weakest.

Symantec’s numbers back that up. It found 403 million different variants of malware in 2011, a drastic increase from 286 million in 2010. And it found 55,000 malicious domains, a jump from 43,000. Three out of five attacks were the work of software kits.

How can devout churchgoers—or avid porn-surfers, for that matter—protect themselves when visiting their favorite sites? In many cases, you can’t—the malware installation begins as soon as you load the page. Norton, McAfee, and several competitors offer free and premium programs that assess sites’ risk levels before you visit them—a good precaution for the paranoid, though others might find the browser clutter almost as annoying as the malware they’re trying to avoid.

Once you’re infected, the symptoms can range from the irritating (programs that send your friends spam links from your email or social media accounts) to the insidious (those that log your keystrokes and steal your personal information). Among the most devious are rootkits, which can burrow beneath your computer’s operating system and take control of your machine, blocking your attempts to download the anti-virus programs that could knock them out. In these cases, professional help may be the only option.

The easier solution is for the websites themselves to clean up their act. Jose Gomez, who runs a business called NetMinistry, which does Web design for religious organizations, is among those trying to professionalize the religious content-management sector. He regularly evangelizes to his clients about the importance of Web security. Some churches are getting the message about the dangers of reaching their parishioners on the Web, he says. But others are more interested in growing their flocks, and take a devil-may-care attitude to safety. “Churches are racing to grow and to stay alive,” Gomez says. “In that race, they’re cutting a lot of corners and adapting technologies faster than they can handle.”