AFRICA: South Africa – Transgender woman, Lindiwe Rigane, gets turned away from a Miss South Africa beauty pageant because she is not legally or naturally a woman. [SOURCE] ASIA: Mumbai, India – During a 600+ gay pride parade in Mumbai, India, marchers protested a 1947 British Imperial anti-sodomy law that Indian police still use to persecute homosexuals. [SOURCE] India – The BBC World Service Trust India–with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation–has released a cell phone ring tone that features a professional singer chanting the word “condom” 50 times, a capella. [SOURCE] Beijing, China – Openly gay ex-NBA star/blogger John Amaechi covers LGBT politics during the 2008 Olympic Summer Games. [SOURCE] Beijing, China – US Amnesty International urges public to take action to release HIV/AIDS advocate Hu Jia from prison. [SOURCE] AUSTRALIA: Hobart, Tasmania – The Australian Red Cross has ignored the opinion of its chief medical advisor that there’s no justification for excluding donors who’ve had oral or protected anal sex. [SOURCE] Olympic News – Openly gay Olympic diver Matthew Mitcham gets 18th in men’s 3m diving competition. [SOURCE] EUROPE: London, UK – After shunning them for decades over worries of blackmail, MI5, the UK security service, has consulted Stonewall, the gay lobby group, on ways to recruit more gay staff. [SOURCE] Berlin, Germany – Police search for vandals who damaged a monument to gay victims of the Nazi Holocaust. [SOURCE] NORTH AMERICA: Denver, Colorado – More than 350 National Stonewall Democrats from across the country have arrived in Denver for four days of meetings, parties, and lobbying ahead of the Democratic National Convention. They had a key role in helping shape the Democratic Party LGBT platform. [SOURCE] United States – On top of their “coming out” line, Hallmark rolls out gay greeting cards for gay commitment ceremonies. [SOURCE] SOUTH AMERICA: Buenos Aires, Argentina – Argentina announced it’s first nationwide gay rights measure granting same-sex couples the right to claim their deceased partner’s pensions. [SOURCE] Sao Paulo, Brazil – Brazil’s lower house of Congress has rejected part of a pending adoption law that would have allowed gay couples to adopt children because there’s federal law doesn’t recognize same-sex unions. [SOURCE]
Color us (not) shocked — yet another porn amateur has turned reality television “star.”
We came across After Elton’s blog post about The Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency. This season premieres on August 26th and features a deaf model named Martin. We couldn’t shake the feeling we’d seen Martin before. After diving into the QC archives, we realized he’s also known as Pauly, who has appeared on Cruiser Boys.
This isn’t the first time a former porn model has appeared on The Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency. Last season featured model Rodrigo de Carli, who was discovered to have a porn past.
Our hats off to Janice for bringing these guys into the mainstream spotlight. Previously on QC: Pauly at Cruiserboys.com Javan and Pauly at Cruiserboys.com
See Martin’s gallery on Oxygen.com. UPDATE: We’ve been asked by Oxygen to remove the photos of Martin from the Dickinson site. You can still see all the photos here.
When Manhunt.com’s co-owner, Jonathan Crutchley, donated $2,300 to Republican presidential candidate, John McCain, some gays felt betrayed. QueerClick recaps the controversy and examines if the two are as unlikely a pair as they seem. A lot’s been going on over the past couple of weeks atManhunt.com. If you’re a member of the massively popular hook-up site, you might know that it just launched a ManCam video chat feature that “enables members around the world to easily connect with each other ‘live’ before meeting in person; and offers a fun alternative when meeting in person is not possible.” Almost concurrently with ManCam’s release, writer Michael Joseph Gross released an article, entitled, “Is Manhunt Destroying Gay Culture?” on Out.com. In his article, Gross wonders why so many national political victories and reforms— such as a repeal of the military ban and securing of gay marriage— have remained beyond gay grasp. When someone replies, “It’s because so many of us spend so many hours of so many days online, doing things that make us feel ashamed of ourselves,” Mr. Gross latches onto the explanation, and decries online cruising in general (and Manhunt in specific) for intensifying our isolation, exaggerating our propensity to objectify each other, and diminishing our sense of life’s nonsexual possibilities. Any LTR-minded Manhunt user who has found themselves disappointed by the site’s numerous “Sup?” e-mails and “unlocked” butthole pics, will identify with Mr. Gross’ sad psychosocial portrait. Yet, in targeting Manhunt specifically, he’s excluded other gay hookup sites like Gay.com (owned by the same company as Out) and other sexualized marketing that his argument could have included. He also ignores the internet’s role in the long, painful history of anonymous gay sex and the myriad ways in which the internet promotes non-sexual gay culture offline. In short, his impassioned article poses an important question but provides too easy an answer. Around the same time Gross’ article came out, it came to light that Manhunt.com’s “liberal Republican” co-owner, Jonathan Crutchley, had donated $2,300 (the maximum allowed) to Republican presidential nominee John McCain. Below an interview with Crutchley on Online Personals Watch, he responded to another user’s announcement of the donation thus: “I believe McCain will be a better commander-in-chief than Obama, who also opposes gay marriage. If we have an experienced, seasoned person defending the country in this dangerous age, we will be able to argue about the gay agenda later.”
NOTE: Please scroll to the bottom of this post for updated information.
Rascal Video exclusive, Cole Ryder was found dead today according to as-yet-unconfirmed reports. Though initial claims said that the porn star died in his sleep of a staph infection, that claim has since been retracted. At this time, his cause of death remains unknown, pending autopsy results.
A hot and hairy five-feet, 10 inches tall and 195 pounds, Ryder was one of the emerging crop of versatile, ultra-masculine performers under contract with Rascal since 2006. More as this story develops…
UPDATE: August 15th
Although final results of his autopsy are still pending, the coroner’s first impression is that the immediate cause of Cole’s death was congestive heart failure. Preliminary tissue studies showed Cole suffered from severe, hereditary, arteriosclerosis, a hardening of the blood vessels, which can lead to heart attack, stroke or aneurysm. Final autopsy results are pending.
Friends of the late porn star issued a press release in which they solicit commemorative donations to The Life Group LA, an Los Angeles-based organization for HIV education and support. Funds donated in his name will launch a support program for emergency veterinary care for the pets of HIV+ men and woman.
Director Chi Chi LaRue sent over the following statement: “Cole Ryder was a beautiful person on the inside and the outside! He had such a great manly appeal and the heart of a gentle giant. Cole was always such a pleasure to work with and I’m deeply saddened by his passing. I can only wish now that he is in peace and he will always have a special place in my heart and the C1R Family.”
His friends have also launched Cole Ryder Tribute MySpace Page. The page is sweet in that it makes the deceased porn star look simultaneously hot and dorky with just a twinge of sadness — the page has only 19 friends. It alternates pictures of him shirtless in gay bars and clothed traveling the world, and lists “the joy of his life” as a 12-year-old dachshund, “Peanut.”
You may have already heard that James Franco is playing alongside Sean Penn in gay director Gus Van Sant’s Milk, a film about pioneering gay San Francisco politician Harvey Milk. Penn and Franco play Milk and his lover Scott Smith, respectively. And to prepare for their scene, Van Sant instructed the two men to kiss for twelve hours. But for a more recent role as a New Orleans prostitute in a Nicholas Cage-directed feature, Franco participated on the sidelines of a gay threesome. Regarding the kiss with Penn, Franco said, “It wasn’t twelve hours, but it certainly felt like it. The first kiss of the movie was out on Haight Street, with, like, 200 people watching, outside. It was a crane shot&mdash I’m sure in the end it will be a really cool shot, but it starts close and then it takes maybe a minute. That’s a long time on film with everybody watching and, like, a fake mustache getting in your mouth. It was long enough that you couldn’t help thinking, ‘Oh, my God, I’m kissing Spicoli.’ ” Regarding his watching a gay orgy, Franco told GQ, “There was a strip club on Bourbon Street. I had only ever been to one strip club before I went to New Orleans to do that movie. But I started going to every strip club. There was one they advertise as ‘Live Sex Shows’ and I went in there and met a male stripper who said he was straight and that he serviced men and women. I later found out he didn’t really tell the truth all the time. But I thought he was a good model for my part. And he was the guy I hung out with the most. He would do lap dances for people, and then in between we hung out in the back. So I was with him one night and this other guy came in. And this guy came in and said to my friend, ‘Hey, man, I need you for a job right now–this guy wants two.’ And he said, ‘I’m hanging out with James doing research for this movie.’ And the guy says, ‘You’re doing research? Okay. You want to do real research. You’re going to come down, come to the hotel. This guy’s so out of his mind on coke, he won’t even know what’s going on. You just sit in the corner in the chair, take your shirt off, sit there, you can watch the whole thing.’ I said, ‘Okay.’ ”
GQ asks the actor if he wasn’t a bit worried about what he was getting himself into?
“Yeah. Heck, yes. But then I thought, ‘Well, this is real research. I’ve got to do this for the role, man, I’ve got to do this.’ But yeah, it was terrifying. Especially when I get there–this guy was a doctor, apparently. He was an older man. And they whip out the cocaine and they start doing cocaine on the desk and I’m like–am I incriminating myself? I mean, I didn’t do any of the cocaine. Okay? I just went there to observe. So that was scary. It was in a nice hotel. The guy who took us over had a key to the room. So he just opened up and the doctor is just lying in the bed. And he wasn’t completely naked when we got in there, but he certainly got naked.” Read more about Franco’s orgy and link to the full GQ interview after the jump!
Gay, B-movie horror director David DeCoteau founded Rapid Heart Pictures in 1999 to make homoerotic horror movies shot on 35mm. Though his previous features include The Wolves of Wall Street, Test Tube Teens from the Year 2000, and Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama, he recently signed a two-year, multi-picture deal with here! Networks for 10 films and 2 television series, including adaptations of tales by Edgar Allan Poe, H.G. Wells, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
DeCoteaus’s recent collaborations with here! include a sexed-up adaptation of Poe’s Fall of the House of Usher. Poe’s original tale involved three characters: a visitor who helps his mentally deranged friend bury his twin sister. DeCoteau’s updated version incorporates four shirtless, underwear-clad frat boys (wonder how he worked that in). You can watch a clip of Usher below and read two interviews with the director after.
A new generation of homosexual teens will no longer have to stash the cum-encrusted pages of Playgirl Magazine under their mattresses&mdash they’ll have to hide their laptops instead.
On Monday, August 4th, Playgirl‘s editor-in-chief, Nicole Caldwell wrote in an e-mail that “Playgirl is going all-Web. The last print issue will be the Jan/Feb 2009 magazine, which comes out Nov. 18.”
The online version continues to boast “HOT, throbbing cock, the tightest buns (buns… really? Is this the 80’s?), and hardest pecks.” No word yet on whether the web-version will continue to pretend that most of its readers are straight women.
While the rest of the world is speculating on David Hernandez’s sexuality and scouring for pictures of him stripping (which probably do not exist), we (who have waaaay too much time to snoop around) at the QC quarters have fished out something rather obscure BUT related to Hernandez! Let’s call it the Two Degrees of Separation from Porn Scoop!
Stay tuned for the juice. 😉
Sorry this took a while (we were trying to figure out if it was Justin Timberlake featuring Madonna on “4 Minutes to Save the World” instead of the other way round) but here’s the meat! Grand reveal after the jump!
