Chris Pine DUI

I’ve posted about actor, Chris Pine, several times on the blog because he’s usually in films I know I can trust to be good, and because he sometimes makes statements with which I agree. He said this about the Russian Olympics back when others like him were either remaining silent or supporting an event in Russia that supported inequality in ways we haven’t seen since the l940’s.

Chris Pine says the U.S. should have done more in the run-up to the Sochi Olympics to protest Russia’s anti-gay legislation, which he calls “clearly awful, archaic, hostile nonsense.”

“I think we should do more than just send gay Olympians there,” the 33-year-old actor said in an interview while promoting his film “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit.” ”What’s happening there in terms of gay rights or the lack of it is extraordinary and awful.”

Considering events that have transpired in Russia since the Sochi games, he’s been right on target.

Unfortunately, he was recently stopped for driving under the influence and it’s been making the rounds all over the world. This is a statement by the manager of the bar he was in before he was stopped:

Casey Crawford, manager of the Blue Pub, a Methven bar, told Christchurch newspaper The Press that Pine was attending a celebration at the bar on the night of Feb. 28 to mark the end of filming and was accompanied by his Icelandic girlfriend, Iris Bjork Johannesdottir.

Pine was drinking beer and did not appear intoxicated before leaving at about 2:30 a.m., Crawford said, adding that Pine had obliged locals who wanted their photo taken with him.

“He looked like he just wanted to spend time with his partner,” Crawford told the newspaper.
Crawford said the party was well-controlled. “Chris was really good. They were a good crowd, the whole lot of them,” he said.

I highly doubt this is a Justin Beiber/Paris Hilton type affair, where the careless spoiled privileged one takes advantage of celebrity and abuses his/her power. I think what happened to Pine is something that’s happened to a lot of people. He had a few drinks and made a very bad judgment call and got caught. He’s lucky nothing more serious happened. The odds are, after this, it will never happen again. If I’m wrong about that I’ll post all about it in the future. But I don’t think I’m wrong this time.

You can read more here.

Barney Frank: American Gay Haters In Uganda

In a radio interview this week openly gay former member of US House of Representatives, Barney Frank, blasted hate mongers in America who find places to promote their agenda of hate in other parts of the world. Most people don’t know how much influence American evangelicals have had in passing the gay hate bill in Uganda.

Uganda earlier this year passed a law against ‘aggravated homosexuality.’

The draconian legislation, originally known as the ‘Kill All The Gays’ bill before the death penalty was removed, punishes homosexuality with life imprisonment in some cases.

You can read more here. Frank was the first openly gay person in the US House of Representatives.

But the article is sketchy at best, and doesn’t give examples. A good deal of the gay hate bill in Uganda has been fueled by Americans who basically hate all gay people.

In late February, when Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni signed the nation’s harsh new anti-gay bill into law, he claimed the measure had been “provoked by arrogant and careless western groups that are fond of coming into our schools and recruiting young children into homosexuality.” What he failed to mention is that the legislation—which makes homosexuality a crime punishable by life in prison in some cases—was itself largely due to Western interlopers, chief among them a radical American pastor named Scott Lively.

This came from a piece in Mother Jones. You can read more here.

What this article basically states is that there are US evangelicals who are losing ground here in the US because there’s been a huge shift in opinion regarding equal rights and gay marriage and these bitter evangelicals are taking their cause overseas instead and promoting gay hate in other places.

This is something not many people even know.

But, according to Ugandan gay rights activists, Lively has played an unparalleled role in fostering the climate of hate that gave rise to Uganda’s anti-gay law. “The bill is essentially his creation,” says Frank Mugisha, director of Sexual Minorities Uganda, a coalition of gay rights organizations. Mugisha’s group has filed a first-of-its-kind lawsuit in US federal court, accusing Lively of international crimes against humanity on the grounds that he and his Ugandan allies allegedly conspired to deprive gay Ugandans of basic human rights.


Virgin Billionaire on Gays

Richard Branson is the founder and CEO of Virgin and the fourth richest man in the UK. I may or may not have posted about this in the past, but he was the main influence for the main character (Jase) in my ten book best selling series, The Virgin Billionaire. The reason I’m posting about him now is because he recently said that LGBTI diversity is good for business in a general sense.

‘Over more than 40 years of building our businesses at the Virgin Group, my colleagues and I have seen time and time again that employing people from different backgrounds and who have various skills, viewpoints and personalities will help you to spot opportunities, anticipate problems and come up with original solutions before your competitors do.

‘Regardless of the position you hold or the industry you work in, the key is to lead by example: Embrace diversity, starting with the choices you make for your first hires. An entrepreneur who hires a lot of people who are just like her and have had the same experiences will find that she’s leading a team that is less creative and helpful to customers, and ultimately produces lower profits.’

You can read more here. There are more comments that I wish some here in the US would pay attention to.