Catholic Priest, Gay Sex, and Bagels
When I saw this one yesterday on social media I couldn’t believe it, and I went to 12 years of parochial school and I’d thought I’d heard it all. Never, in all the 12 years I spent in Catholic school, did I hear something this ridiculous.
Preacher John Riccardo was speaking at a conference in Michigan on Wednesday, called Welcoming and Accompanying Our Brothers and Sisters with Same-Sex Attraction. It was a Catholic conference in order to help gay and lesbian people stay celibate.
He was taking part in a lecture called ‘HIV and Other Health Risks Associated with Men Who Have Sex With Men’, led by HIV researcher Timothy Flanigan.
Yes. Bagels in your ear.
Trust me, there are 54 comments and you don’t want to miss any of them.
Anne Rice on Internet Lynch Mobs
If you follow Anne Rice you already know she’s no stranger when it comes to speaking up about online bullies. And now there’s a recent piece in The Guardian that gets into the topic of a new kind of censorship.
The bestselling novelist Anne Rice, author of Interview With the Vampire, has said that she believes “we are facing a new era of censorship, in the name of political correctness”, in the wake of the heavy online criticism that has been directed at Kate Breslin’s romance novel For Such a Time.
Rice hit out at what she called an “internet lynch mob” that has descended upon Breslin in the last week.
I can’t comment because I know nothing about Breslin and I haven’t read her book.
In any event, here’s a link to the Anne Rice piece.
Tab Hunter: His Gay Fears
These little stories about the one time film star, Tab Hunter, keep popping up and I find them fascinating, especially in relation to some film stars nowadays. And I think that’s because the same thing is still going on in Hollywood and many film stars who are gay are still terrified of coming out, or they’re buried so deeply in a world of denial and endless selfies they don’t see a need to come out. I usually see them comment, “I don’t like labels,” and it’s kind of sad. You can’t run from who you are.
But the truth is that many are coming out today and the most talented are doing well. Tab Hunter didn’t have that opportunity back in his day.
But it almost happened 50 years earlier when he was taking off as a movie star and was very deep in the closet.
‘It all came about because Henry Willson, who “discovered” me and many other “pretty boy” actors, was upset when I left him to be represented by another agent,’ Hunter writes in the current issue of The Hollywood Reporter.
Around the same time that Hunter left Willson, the agent learned that the scandal magazine Confidential was planning to out Rock Hudson who was still one of Willson’s clients.
‘He cut a deal with them to keep Rock out of their pages feeding them dirt on me instead,’ Hunter writes.
You can check out the rest here.
I’ve never been an advocate for pushing anyone out of the closet. It’s a personal decision and it’s different for everyone.
