This 11-year-old, who IDs as gay, had to leave his Tennessee school system due to extreme bullying. Now, he is calling on Michelle Rhee and Students First to rescind their 2012 award to John Ragan, who was honored as a reformer, but who also authored the "even more homophobic" version of his state's infamous, failed "Don't Say Gay" bill.
Park Overall from Empty Nest is running for a seat in the Senate in Tennessee. Do you even care what party she'll represent? I don't—she's got my vote! (I cheated...I knew she was a big ol' Democrat.)
Brandon K. Thorp over at Towleroad is covering the unbelievable blindness of Sen. Stacey Campfield (R-Tennessee), who in an interview with Michelangelo Signorile said he believes AIDS originated with homosexuals, specifically with a gay man (so-called Patient Zero Gaetan Dugas) having sex with a monkey. And other stupid shit, like believing that And the Band Played On's Randy Shilts was "appalled" by unsanitary gay-sex practices and thinking it's "virtually impossible" (!) to get HIV from heterosexual sex. Um, tell Africa that. Um, tell the huge number of heterosexuals who got it that way that. (Also, does a guy putting his dick in a woman's butt not count as heterosexual? Just curious.)
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.
