July 10. 2009

Queens attack; Flirting illegal in MO town; Gless gay icon award

   ::: Leslie Mora was attacked and beaten by two men in Queens, NY on June 19 while walking home from a gay club. Her attackers Trinidad Tapia and Gilberto Ortiz, tugged at her dress and pulled her before they began to throw a barrage of punches that left her motionless on the street, Queens Tribune reports. When she attempted call for help on her cell phone, the two returned and continued the attack while calling her “faggot” in Spanish. Tapia later removed his belt to beat her on the head with the buckle. The assault ended only after a driver stopped and threatened to call police. Despite the viciousness of the attack which causes the transgender woman to suffer anxiety attacks when she goes out in public, the attackers were not initially charged with a hate crime – at least not until a complaint from a transgender advocacy group prompted the DA to “reopen” the file. Queens Tribune reports that are too many stories in the borough that are similar to Mora’s.

image    ::: Actress Sharon Gless will be presented with the Gay Icon Award on July 19 at the 15th annual Philadelphia QFest for being “a compassionate champion for the gay & lesbian community.” The film festival which continues through July 20 features a screening of Gless’s new film, Hannah Free, in which she plays a wheel-chair-bound free-spirited lesbian. Gless, who now steals the show during her brief appearances on the cable show Burn Notice as the chain-smoking, fast-talking, and overprotective mother of a spy, cemented her gay-iconic status when she played the fast-talking, oddly-dressed, overprotective mother of a gay son on Queer as Folk.

   ::: Springfield, MO has an ordinance on the books declaring “solicitation by homosexuals” to be illegal. The unused “anti-gay flirting law” states, “It shall be unlawful for any person in a public place to invite, entice, persuade or to address a person of the same sex for the purpose of inviting, enticing or persuading such person to commit" a sexual act. The city attorney says the law, which was enacted in 1976, is unconstitutional and should have been stricken long ago during a review of antiquated ordinances. A member of the city council now says it should be wiped off the books immediately.

headlinks: 

[India] Director says Bollywood needs to be more sensitive towards depiction of homosexuality [The Hindu] 
[business] CEO of Rockstar Energy Drink’s says company will 'expand' LGBT policies, donations; Disavow’s father’s anti-gay tirades [SistersTalk]
[religion] Pope lets married right-wing ex-Anglican become Catholic [McClean’s]
[dadt] Palm Center legal memo outlines Pentagon options on gay ban [press release]
[media] Village Voice Media writers try to guess “best parks for sex” [Kansas City Pitch]
[India] Homosexuality not a taboo in Jharkhand tribe  [Hindustan Times]

Posted by NewsEditor -- 10 Jul 2009 11:23 AM (PT)

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After ‘gay panic’ defense, man convicted of manslaughter for NZ bashing death

image Philip Ambach
A 32 year-old Hungarian tourist was convicted this week of manslaughter, but found not guilty of murder, for the 2008 beating death of a 69 year-old gay man at his Aukland, New Zealand home.

During trial the jury was told that Philip Ambach beat Ronald Brown with a banjo before ramming the instrument down his throat, New Zealand Herald reports.

Ambach’s defense put up a “gay panic” defense during trial. They claimed that the older man, who was gay, made unwanted sexual advances toward Ambach, who worked as a diving master.

Police found Brown badly beaten on the ground floor of his home in the early hours of December 7, 2008. Ambach was found upstairs. Brown died three days later in Auckland City Hospital, hours after his life support was turned off.

The attack happened after Brown met Ambach in a bar and took him back to his home in Aukland’s Onehunga area.

At the time of Ambach’s arrest last year, residents of the cul-de-sac told New Zealand Herald of hearing piercing screams and the sound of shattering glass coming from Brown's two-storey unit on the night of the attack.

Brown’s family condemned a law that allowed Ambach to avoid a murder conviction. His niece Tracy Evans said the family is “deeply disgusted with the verdict”.

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Posted by NewsEditor -- 10 Jul 2009 11:01 AM (PT)

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GM says ad for gay buyers was ‘inappropriate’

image      ::: To promote a screening of Transformers last month in Los Angeles during an event called Gay Day at the Movies, GM supplied the car for online ads that featured “Bumble Bee Boys in Briefs” – two muscleboys washing a Camaro in yellow underwear with the car’s model name across the butt.

“The models lean seductively over the hood of the 2010 Chevrolet Camaro….  Grasping a wash cloth, they rub down the car until it sparkles as an unseen cameraman asks about the car,” according to MSN Money.

(Although it’s no longer on YouTube, USA Today found a bit of the vid still available on Bing.com (but only if you turn off “safe search”) )

GM didn’t pay for the videos which were created by a Camaro enthusiast, but did supply the car used in the ads, according to most reports.

MSN Money pitched a story about the online ad as an “implicit” attempt by the car company (which is emerging from bankruptcy today) to appeal to a niche market of possible gay buyers. (The story doesn’t ask the obvious question about whether any ad could make the car appealing to gay buyers.)

But After some anti-gay bloggers complained about the videos, GM somehow forced YouTube to remove clips from their service. (That they were able to force the removal of the video suggests that GM was able to put forth some sort of copyright claim about the video.)

If the video was, in fact, an implicit attempt by the car company to appeal to possible gay buyers, the company has now explicitly decided it does not want gay buyers. “The video was not appropriate and not in good taste," said GM spokesman Dave Barthmuss. He said executives decided the batch of vignettes “was not the way we wanted to represent” the Camaro brand to the general public.

[Think of that if you’re ever tempted to approach one a dealership that sells one of the company’s brands.]

Posted by NewsEditor -- 10 Jul 2009 10:58 AM (PT)

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