Category: media

“I killed someone once,” BBC TV host Ray Gosling said in a program about end-of-life decisions that aired last night

Ray Gosling, an award-winning documentary filmmaker, broadcaster, and veteran gay rights activist, revealed last night on a regional BBC program that he performed a mercy killing of his lover many years ago. He explained that the young man was in great pain with a terminal diagnosis from AIDS-related illnesses.

“I killed someone once,” Gosling,  said in a filmed installment of the program Inside Out, which Gosling hosts and which airs on BBC East Midlands channel. [see video clip at the end of this post]

“He was a young chap, he’d been my lover and he got AIDS.”

For a segment of the show about end-of-life decisions, Gosling was filmed strolling through a graveyard as he made his confession.

He he broke down as he recalled, “In a hospital one hot afternoon, the doctor said, ‘There's nothing we can do’, and he was in terrible, terrible pain.

“I said to the doctor, ‘Leave me just for a bit’, and he went away.

“I picked up the pillow and smothered him until he was dead.

“The doctor came back and I said, ‘He’s gone’. Nothing more was ever said.”

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San Francisco’s Balboa High School Flickr photo by BernalKC via SFSchools photoblogging

The San Francisco School Board voted Tuesday to fund the district’s support programs for LGBT students in city schools even though it will add to the district’s debt.

Before their vote, the board was told that a survey conducted by the district shows that nearly 13 percent of San Francisco's middle school students (about 1,000 students) and 11 percent of high school students (about 1,700 students)identify themselves as gay, lesbian, or transgender, San Francisco Chronicle reports.

43 percent of those middle schools students—430 children—said they didn't go to school because they didn’t feel safe compared with 11 percent of heterosexual students, district officials told the board.

“It’s the data that's driving my decision,” said board member Norman Yee, his voice filling with emotion as he wiped away tears, according to the Chronicle.

The resolution, sponsored by Commissioner Sandra Lee Fewer, calls for at least a half-time staff position to help with the schools' Support Services for LGBTQ Youth work, Bay Area Reporter reports.

The compromise measure adopted by the board will cost about $62,000 to implement, according to BAR. If the staff position eventually becomes full-time, the cost would be about $119,000.

Both the Chronicle and AP cite the higher price tag in their stories about the resolution.

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A rumor website heavily promoted what turned out to be a hoax video from a woman who claimed to have exposed over 500 men in the Detroit area with HIV

A Detroit woman who posted an online video claiming that she has AIDS and had intentionally exposed hundreds in Detroit, told police Saturday morning that the video was a hoax and that it was meant as a “public service”, Detroit Free Press reports.

The video, in which the woman’s face is obscured by a bandana with prints of $100 bills, was first posted Thursday at a rumor website, MediaTakeOut.com. It soon went viral, according to Detroit media, quickly making its way to YouTube.

“I’ve set out to destroy the world because they haven’t come up with a cure for this sh***,” says the woman in the video. She says that she also has syphilis and says, “Three minutes of pleasure turns into a lifetime of death.”

[see video clip at the end of this post]

The video had generated dozens of video responses on YouTube and had been viewed there over 660,000 by Saturday afternoon.

It also generated several calls to Detroit police who tracked down Jackie Braxton, 23, by Saturday morning. Braxton admitted that she had made the video, but told police that she is not HIV-positive, and that she made the video as a “public service” hoax .

“We are 100-percent positive it was a hoax,” Detroit Deputy Chief James Tolbert said, according to Detroit News.

After police picked her up for questioning, Braxton agreed to take an HIV test at a Detroit clinic. Although results of such a test are technically confidential, a police spokesman confirmed today that test results showed Braxton is negative for HIV.

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Rachel Maddow’s superb coverage of Uganda’s kill-gays bill has introduced the country to that draconian law that would, if passed, make homosexuality—broadly defined—punishable by life imprisonment or, in some cases, by hanging. She has also expertly delved into the connections between the bill’s sponsors in Uganda and  “Christian” anti-gay activists in the US.

But the best place to find in-depth coverage of the proposed law is a US blog.

Uganda’s “Anti-Homosexuality Bill” has been covered in great depth and stunning insight since before it was introduced by one of this country’s best blogs, Box Turtle Bulletin and its editor, Jim Burroway and three writers, including Thomas Kincaid. Their posts have traced the genesis of the bill from that first conference held in Kampala last March that attracted Ugandan politicians who interacted with three anti-gay US activists, up through the latest apologetics about the bill issued this week by a member of a Christian activist group on the Rachel Maddow Show.

They have shown in both detail and broad strokes how US anti-gay activists helped to shape the bill—some of the same so-called “Christian” activists who now say they do not support the bill.

After the break: See Box Turtle Bulletin video from the March anti-gay conference in Kampala

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