After all the rantings and ravings of the religious right and their fear of “homosexual special rights,” us queer folks finally have them:
For a limited time, Travelocity is offering LGBT travelers an additional $150 off its already discounted 5-night or longer flight and hotel vacation packages to major cities in Europe as well as many other destinations around the world including Costa Rica, Australia and Venezuela.
Remember Monday morning’s post on Prince Harry’s royal racist and homoerotic tendencies?
Well, discounting the racism, of course, legendary Brit gay activist Peter Tatchell is saying King-never-shall-be Henry is “enlightened” and is praising the lad for his apparent comfort with male-male intimacy:
The video, obtained by the News of the World tabloid, also includes images of Harry on a night out with friends in which he mouths to one soldier: “I love you” before kissing him on the cheek and licking his face.
Another extract shows Harry asking a colleague how he felt after an army exercise, adding: “Gay, queer on the side?”
But Peter Tatchell, an Australian-born human rights activist who made his name focusing on gay rights, said he had no problem with Harry’s use of the word “queer” and praised his show of affection.
“For him to happily give his soldier friend a public kiss and lick his face strikes me as rather liberated and enlightened, for a straight man,” he said.
“If only more heterosexual men were relaxed about same-sex affection like Harry, the world would be a better place.”
Tatchell added: “The context and intention of words is crucial in deciding whether they are offensive or not. I don’t find anything objectionable about the context in which Harry used the word queer.”
Heterosexual men rarely kiss their male friends or family members in stiff upper lip Britain, preferring to greet each other by shaking hands.
Maybe Harry’s really gay and all this macho-jock-boy-cool-and-down-with-the-gays thing is a cover-up?
I think this story is almost as good as, and maybe even better than, Prince William’s penis pictures (NSFW).
Prince Harry just doesn’t ever seem to get it. Nazi uniforms. Smoking weed around the palace. Sucking a friend’s nipple. Licking and kissing a friend on the face. Calling military colleagues “Paki” and “raghead.”
Sounds like average-joe, racist, redneck, military jock talk and behavior to me. It certainly isn’t behavior you’d expect from a member of the most powerful royal house in Europe.
This is what happens when you give a hot boy complete access to the world’s privilege and power expecting no responsibility in return. You don’t see big brother William acting like this. Maybe Harry should be told he’ll be his brother’s future co-regent. Maybe then he’ll shape up. Some responsibility might do him some good. I doubt William would appreciate sharing the throne, though.
But on the other hand… I kind of feel bad for the guy. He’s 24 years old, he’s never had a normal life and he’s part of a family he certainly had no choice to belong to. I kid about him having no responsibility; that certianly isn’t true. I can’t imagine what it’s like to have to grow up with the whole world watching, nit-picking over every little part of my life.
More: News of the World
Arab Times is reporting that Kuwaiti police raided several restaurants, cafes and other establishments on New Year’s Eve and arrested several youth, both male and female and at least 22 gays.
Under instructions from the Undersecretary of the Ministry of Interior Lieutenant-General Ahmed Al-Rujaib and Assistant Undersecretary for Criminal Security Affairs Lieutenant Ghazi Al-Omar, the Criminal Investigation Department raided a number of restaurants on New Year’s eve and arrested several youngsters — male and female — for drinking alcohol and taking part in ‘wild’ parties. During the raid police also arrested 22 gays, reports Al-Anba daily.
The places targeted included cafés and restaurants inside commercial complexes in Salmiya.
Both homosexuality and cross-dressing are illegal in Kuwait, a Muslim nation; however, many anti-gay laws are rarely or severely enforced. No civil rights legislation exists to protect LGBT Kuwaitis. If convicted of homosexuality, LGBT people can face up to seven years imprisonment. If the acts involve anyone under 21, the maximum penalty is 10 years imprisonment.
What happens when you take one of the most powerful, most influential world-wide “governments” with unfettered access to all the accumulated knowledge of Western Civilization and allow them to speak on the environment, nature’s “law,” sexual orientation and gender?
They ignore it, trash it, squander it — and sound like they’ve never taken a serious look at human biology in their entire 2,000 year existence.
Recently, Pope Benedict XVI said, “[The church] must defend not only the earth, water and air as gifts of creation that belong to all. It must also defend the human person against its own destruction. What’s needed is something like a ‘human ecology,’ understood in the right sense. It’s not simply an outdated metaphysics if the church speaks of the nature of the human person as man and woman, and asks that this order of creation be respected.”
Yesterday, a statement on the decriminalization of homosexuality and protection of LGBT human rights was presented to the United Nations. The statement called on countries to protect LGBT from discrimination in hiring and housing, as well as a most important call to repeal laws the criminalized homosexuality or put a death penalty on it.
Among the Western nations that didn’t sign it, one name sticks out: The United States of America.
A report from The AP by writer David Crary tells us why:
According to some of the declaration’s backers, U.S. officials expressed concern in private talks that some parts of the declaration might be problematic in committing the federal government on matters that fall under state jurisdiction. In numerous states, landlords and private employers are allowed to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation; on the federal level, gays are not allowed to serve openly in the military.
Oh, so it was a technicality. That makes me feel much better. On a day chock full of political B.S. — from Obama’s pick of Rick Warren to deliver the inaugural invocation to the news there’d be no openly gay cabinet posts — this story only adds to the frustration.
SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Pop star Madonna’s antics are lustful, a stain on humanity and offensive to God, a retired Roman Catholic cardinal said Wednesday during a mass for the late Chilean military dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet.
Madonna performed in Santiago on the Latin American leg of her Sticky and Sweet Tour to promote her album “Hard Candy.”
“The atmosphere in our city is pretty agitated because this woman is visiting and with incredibly shameful behavior provokes a wild and lustful enthusiasm,” Cardinal Jorge Medina told the congregation.
“Thoughts of lust, impure thoughts, impure acts, are an offense to God and a dirty stain on our heart,” Medina said in his homily marking the second anniversary of Pinochet’s death.
The conservative prelate is reviled by some Chileans for his close ties to Pinochet, who died in 2006 without facing trial for the fate of 3,000 people who died or disappeared during his 1973-1990 rule.
(Writing by Simon Gardner, Editing by Anthony Boadle)
Oookay.
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Publish2: Link Journalism, Pam's House Blend, PageOneQ, Washington Blade, Southern Voice, Queerty, Towleroad, Charlotte Observer, News & Observer
