ABOVE: I wish I'd never gotten so many gold stars in Aqua Tots.

BELOW: Keep reading for a model whose hotness can't be camouflaged, outrageous anti-Irish meme shared by the GOP, Beto > Bernie, high-profile queer nuptials, the death of one of Popeye's BFFs and more ...

Dmitry, a schoolteacher stripped of everything — played by John DiMino(All images by Ashley Garrett via LuredThePlay.com)

If you are a member of the LGBTQ community, chances are you've heard of the unimaginable persecution of gay men in Russia in recent years. Most shockingly, several years ago, neo-Nazi groups began attracting men with promises of sex via hookup apps, only to brutalize them on video to destroy their lives and teach them the lesson that homosexuality is a diabolical western plague.

In Frank J. Avella's revelatory play Lured, playing now through November 25 at Theater for the New City (155 First Ave., NYC), this grotesque violation of humanity is dramatized in an ingenius way that contextualizes the trend while never flinching from portraying the depravity.

Great Scott! (Images via Gay Times)

Adam Rippon did the honors as interview for fashion bigshot Jeremy Scott inside the November 2018 issue of Gay Times — the cover of which Scott nabs! (Garrett Clayton also has a cover.)

The harness seen 'round the world!

The kinds of guys who would love to model for Jeremy used to bully him in school. He tells Adam:

ABOVE: Save it for a rainy gay.

BELOW: Keep reading for how social media giants have radicalized the world, Trump's latest assault on the media, a major announcement from Germany's Angela Merkel, a list of very gay horror flicks, highlights from Taiwan Gay Pride and more ...

ABOVE: Are you all about that (Jake) Bass?

BELOW: Keep reading for red-hot cooks, Khashoggi's horrendous end, gay PDAs, meet Golfcart Gail, Rita Hayworth at 100 and more ...

Laverne urges LGBTQ youth to persevere. (Image via video still)

Laverne Cox is such a bright light, it's hard to imagine how low someone would have to be to want to extinguish it. And yet, she recounts violent bullying and assaults she survived in her youth, all to bring attention to GLAAD's Spirit Day, October 18 ...

ABOVE: Shoot bait! More here.

BELOW: Keep reading for hairy hotness, Trump's Saudi Arabian ties, Melania declares herself the world's #1 biggest bullying victim, nekkid bros on the beach and more ...

 

(Image via The Flag We Shouldn't Be Proud Of)

I have not known anyone closely who has committed suicide, but its spectre is all around — not only in the media, via high-profile suicides, but also in the LGBTQ community.

A young person I think the world of opened up to me about his past suicide attempts and it really jolted me. I think a lot of older gay people are stuck in the mindset that Will & Grace fixed things and that being gay is not as big a deal as it used to be. That show and many other things in the culture helped immeasurably, but the fact remains that there is still a deep-seeded stigma attached to being gay or bi or trans or non-binary, anything that is not straight 'n' narrow.