Thanks—I'm sure—in no small part to Joe.My.God's spotlighting of the YouTubed evidence of a crime, "shotgun boy," a teenager who deliberately shot up a neighbor's anti-Amendment One sign in North Carolina, faces charges. Good. The Second Amendment says nothing about recklessly firing your gun near where people live and making threats.
Just over a week ago, I squeezed in a last-second event before hopping my flight to Vegas—and I'm so gIad I gambled with my time. Gary and Larry Lane, an adorable pair of twins I'd corresponded with forever and ever online, are traveling the international filmfest circuit with their feature Hollywood to Dollywood, and it was finally alighting in New York City at the Quad.
Oh, brothers! The Lanes are forging a path in film.
Hollywood to Dollywoodfollows the Lanes as they board an RV and trek from L.A. to Dolly Parton's theme park Dollywood in Tennessee, accompanied by one boyfriend (no, they do not share him), one camera and one gigantic script they'd co-written with a juicy part for Dolly. Their mission is to hand the script to their idol personally, so they make sure to get advice from mutual friends/their quirky network of supporters, including Leslie Jordan, Sordid Lives star Beth Grant, Chad Allen (who wound up co-producing) and Oscar-winning scribe Dustin Lance Black (who says of their screenplay that he's "seen worse, believe it or not").
Where is Globe when you NEED gossip to be started???
I arrived for the screening to find a mob of people associated with other films at the International Film Festival Manhattan jockeying to get pictures with the cherub-faced Lanes and with former closeted teen heartthrob Allen, who's now happily out (having been outed by the tabloids years ago).
Double your pleasure, double your fun
Chad's Downtown: A Street Tale (2004) was also playing
The boys (they're in their thirties but have a youthful energy that seems to be preserving them) were bouncing off the walls and gave me some great answers during our video chat (I asked why people are obsessed with twins and they immediately went there) and Allen had some interesting insights into the genesis of the film as well as into what it had been like to be a gay kid who was being painted as an ideal boyfriend in the teen 'zines.
After some introductory remarks, we watched a series of shorts including an atrocious vignette with a twist ending, an artsy dance tribute to a generation felled by AIDS and a documentary by Kenny Yanga called True Colors that was about how hard it is to be gay.
Via Joe.My.God.: State Senator James Forrester (R-North Carolina)—a doctor—has parroted crazy right-wing talking points, such as the fallacy that gay men die 20 years sooner than straight men and that AIDS is not an issue for straight people and other morsels of idiocy.
For some strange reason, he agreed to speak with Michelangelo Signorile about his positions, NONE of which he was able to back up with evidence. All he could do was say he'd gotten the info from a fellow crazy Christian.
This man is in elected office, is a doctor and yet is too fucking stupid to understand even the most basic aspects of AIDS. Listen to him crumble after the jump...
The North Carolina House has passed a Constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. The Senate is expected to sign off on it as well. The only positive news is that it will be voted on by North Carolinians in May of next year and not November, which they say was to "remove it from politics." It could potentially have been devastating to President Obama's re-election chances considering the North Carolina's emergence as a swing state.
The mother of all splits: But why hurt your own child?
By now, you may have read that the North Carolina State Supreme Court just voided the second-parent adoption of a child by its biological mom's lesbian partner. The reasoning is that in North Carolina, biological parents must waive all legal parental rights in order for another person to adopt, which was not done in this case. This move sets precedent—it very likely means same-sex parents won't be able to have the non-biological parent adopt the children they raise together, something parents have been doing for legal purposes.
But what needs to be stressed here is that the entire reason for this ruling is that the biological mother decided she no longer wanted her ex to have any legal ties to their child—the child they've raised together since birth. So a gay parent caused this ruling that will cause terrible harm to many other gay parents simply because she broke up with her lover and played the biological-mom card.
