Category: bill clinton

"Nobody Born Gay" Billboard; Lance Bass’ Gay Bachelor Party; Still Bitter At Bill Clinton

“Nobody Born Gay” Billboard

This makes me wonder a lot lately, partly because I’m listening to a closeted friend talk about whether or not he should come out and partly because just once I would like to see a straight person be forced to be gay and know what it’s like to not live your life the way it was meant to be. The closeted person I’m talking about is married, middle aged, and has teenage kids. His entire life has been about living a life of repression and frustration. And there’s nothing anyone can do. He has to draw his own conclusions.

It’s just important to know and understand that some things are ridiculous…like this:

An ex-gay group…meaning they are still most likely attracted to men but don’t act on their natural instincts any longer…put up a billboard that says “Nobody Is Born Gay.” It appeared on I -95 near Richmond, VA, an area I know is well frequented by people traveling from Maine to Florida on the east cost. The group responsible for this is PFOX which stands for Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays. Ironic how they worked “Fox” into that.

Those of us who aren’t laughing at these blithering pathetic idiots, don’t seem too thrilled about the billboard by any means, and rightly so.

Some who have seen the billboard on I-95 expressed their disgust to WWBT. 

“We do not know why people are heterosexual,” Bill Harrison with the Richmond Gay Community told the network. “Maybe when we figure that out, we can determine why some people are not. What we do know is that this type of therapy has caused many people to commit suicide.”

The rest of the article explains more about these “ex-gays” and how they claim they can “cure” people from being gay. They never once mention whether or not the “cure” prevents men from being attracted to other men, or how they can get a gay man attracted to a vagina (which is the most basic principle, though admittedly crude). They only mention how they can make people NOT gay…as if gay is a concept and not an intrinsic way of life you’re born with. But frankly, I can’t even begin to imagine how it must suck to live with that kind of self-loathing. And I’ve read my own horror stories about how dangerous conversion therapy can be.


You can read the rest here. I knew I was gay at 3 years old. I was born gay. I didn’t know or understand the word gay. But I knew I liked watching those male lifeguards on the beach. I also know and understand a little about behavioral and cognitive therapy, and both can be used in negative or positive ways.

Aside from the fact that I feel sorry for the guys who buy into this ridiculous concept of conversion therapy because it can be so psychologically dangerous from a behavioral and cognitive POV, the billboard doesn’t bother me in the least. I know who I am, thank you. Feel free to waste your free speech anywhere you want.

Lance Bass’ Gay Bachelor Party

God knows I’ve been to more than my fair share of the fresh hells of heterosexual male bachelor parties. I’ve been to hotels, to restaurants, and even once to a strip bar called Delila’s Den in Philadelphia where some topless, large-breasted woman tried to aggressively rub her pointed little ninny pies in my face. In fact, I can’t imagine much worse for any gay man to go through than a straight male bachelor party. So this article about Lance Bass’ gay bachelor party is something I’ve been waiting for all my life. 

The 35-year-old *NSYNC star told TMZ that the festivities, which were held at The Abbey in West Hollywood, were a complete surprise. Joey Fatone, Alan Thicke and comedian Fortune Feimster were among those in attendance at the party, which reportedly featured penis-shaped favors and a beefcake photo of Bass. 

“It makes me feel like a human being,” Bass told TMZ. “It was a complete surprise.”

This week, Bass confirmed to E! News that all of his *NSYNC bandmates will be in attendance at his nuptials, with the exception of Justin Timberlake, who is wrapping up his “20/20 Experience” concert tour.

You can read the rest here. I understand the part about how he feels like a human being. You have to be gay to get that. You can research, ask friends, do a poll, but this is one thing you’ll never know or understand unless you are gay.

Still Bitter At Bill Clinton

Here’s a commentary piece written by about how she still feels bitter with regard to Bill Clinton and DOMA. One reason is the way he’s still putting a spin on it to get LGBT support now, and another is that he’s never formally apologized for signing DOMA. Speaking personally, I can remember when DOMA happened and I remember the feeling of absolute hopelessness back then, thanks to Clinton.

In any event, here’s a quote:

I’m still bitter, Bill. While other gay and lesbian people applauded and cheered, I sat in disbelief. I still remember the day you signed DOMA. The anger. The disappointment. The despair. I still remember watching states pass gay-marriage prohibitions quite easily. I cannot forget, and I cannot forgive until there is a proper apology. Even then, I am never going to be prepared to give you credit for the advancements of marriage equality. I want to be better than all of this bitterness, Bill, but I want you to be better too. Man up. Apologize with some sincerity. The stress and pain you caused millions of gay and lesbian people cannot easily be forgiven. 

You can read it all here. It’s not a long post, but it hits hard. I know a lot of you have been willing to forgive Clinton and make all kinds of excuses for him, the same way so many have made excuses for President Obama without even realizing how he’s used LGBT people to divert and get attention at the right times…not to mention money, but I agree more with this commentary. And I’m not willing to apologize and settle for less anymore. The stress and pain DOMA caused us all is not something I’m willing to forget either. 

Sidenote: nothing is mentioned about the six figure fee Bill probably got paid to speak the the HRC, and no one has commented on the post so far.

Chase of a Christmas Dream

 
 

Bill Clinton Gay Rights; James Franco’s Ass; Chase of a Dream by Ryan Field

Bill Clinton Gay Rights

President Clinton recently made a few comments about gay rights that support Hillary Clinton’s most recent stand. For one thing he’s now actively supporting overturning DOMA, The Defense of Marriage Act, that he signed during his administration in 1996. I remember how devastating that was back then. Tony and I had only been together four years and it didn’t give us much hope…in the sense that we would see any drastic changes in the way gay people were treated.

Mr. Clinton’s remarks will be included in a special program to honor gay rights activists that will be shown on Thursday on Logo TV, a cable channel aimed at gay and lesbian viewers. The special, called “Trailblazers,” will mark the first anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the marriage act, and will pay tribute to two figures in the case: Roberta A. Kaplan, a lawyer, and Edith Windsor, the plaintiff.
 
“As marriage equality spreads across the states, the number of people impacted by these two amazing women will only continue to grow,” Mr. Clinton said, according to a transcript of his comments.
 
 
I know President Clinton has taken a lot of criticism over the years for DOMA, but I also remember what the times were like in 1996. He didn’t have much of a choice, and it was clear at the time he didn’t believe in the law and didn’t want to sign it. He basically did what he had to do, at that time.
 
You can read more here.
 
James Franco’s Naked Ass
 
There’s an event for HIV research called Broadway Bares where Broadway dancers do strip acts, and the event raises a lot of money for this hugely important cause. This week James Franco showed up at the event, pulled down his pants, and bared his ass for the crowd.
 

James Franco made an appearance at the annual “Broadway Bares: Rock Hard!” event on Sunday, and the star continued to play into the mainstream queer fascination surrounding his body of work — and his body.

Franco proved to be the highlight of the evening, with season six “RuPaul’s Drag Race” winner Bianca Del Rio ripping the actor’s pants down to reveal his bare ass set in a black jockstrap.

You can read more here, and there’s a photo of Franco’s ass. Not bad for a guy his age…considering his competition that night. I’m not sure I’d drop my pants in a roomful of Broadway dancers with rock solid butts and I run five miles every morning!!

 
Chase of a Dream by Ryan Field
 
 
 
 



In this 59,000 word unabridged version of the sequel to “Chase of a Lifetime” that contains all of the original erotic scenes, Jim Darling finally finds the happiness he’s been chasing for so long. He and Len Mayfield have settled into a quiet routine in their small newly renovated home in the Hollywood Hills, and they enjoy every minute they spend together raising Len’s toddler grandson, Culum Mayfied.

And then one evening Len’s grown son, Cain Mayfield, from his former marriage shows up in Los Angeles and asks if he can live with them while he’s trying to figure out his life. Though Len isn’t too thrilled about his grown son moving in, Jim can’t refuse him. Cain was Jim’s best friend in Texas at one time, and he’s also Culum’s irresponsible dad.
Amazon Customer Review:

i really enjoyed this book. i would recommend this book and the 1st book in this series and i would suggest reading the 1st book for the backstory. the main characters are very likeable and so are the side characters. the ending made me cry

There is also an abridged version of this book. I removed the sex scenes, as an experiment, and you can read that version here. It’s the same story, but without the sex scenes. From what I’ve gathered through e-mails from readers, they prefer the unabridged version. I only wanted to show that an erotic romance could be self-censored without ruining the story.
 

Monica Lewinsky, Bill Clinton, and the Creepiest Literary Agent of all Time

Monica Lewinsky, Bill Clinton, and the Creepiest Literary Agent of all Time

Maybe it’s just me, but I thought we’d already heard all there was to the Monica Lewinsky/Bill Clinton deal several times over. Maybe it’s just me but I honestly don’t care to hear about Lewinsky giving head to the President of the United States in the Oval Office anymore. And maybe it’s just me, but I’m also a little sick and tired of Vanity Fair publishing this content time and time again. This one is for the history books now, not for pop culture. It’s been done. 

The reason I stopped reading Vanity Fair was because they printed a piece about Bill Clinton having affairs right about the same time Hillary Clinton was up against Barack Obama in the Democratic primary a few years back. The two candidates were back to back at that point, and then right after that ridiculous article in Vanity Fair Clinton fell behind. It may or may not have had anything to do with the primary, but I never forgot it. There was absolutely no viable reason for them to print that piece. At least not on the surface. And yet the timing was just too perfect.

In any event, good old Monica Lewinsky has surfaced yet once again and she’s now breaking her silence…once again. And she’s doing it in another gonzo piece for Vanity Fair. But that’s not all. Wait until you see who she compares herself to this time. If I hadn’t read it myself I wouldn’t have believed it.

Monica Lewinsky is opening up about her affair with former President Bill Clinton for the first time in years, sharing how the Internet has driven her and others to “global humiliation.”

Lewinsky, who penned an essay for Vanity Fair that will be available digitally on May 8 and on newsstands May 13, said she finally came forward about her experience because of Tyler Clementi, an 18-year-old who committed suicide after video of him kissing another man was broadcast online.

“[T]hanks to the Drudge Report, I was also possibly the first person whose global humiliation was driven by the Internet,” Lewinsky said.

Lewinsky said she and her mother were both disturbed by the circumstances surrounding Clementi’s death.

I’m not even going to comment on the way she compared herself to an innocent victim like Tyler Clementi. How she could have the audacity to capitalize on that passes me by. You can read the comment thread that goes with this article and many have already commented on this much better than I could. In fact, this is one comment thread that makes the whole thing worth while.

You can read the rest here.

Side note: For those who don’t know, or weren’t around when all this went down, pardon the expression, with Monica Lewinsky, you should read this about Linda Tripp.

Tripp’s action in secretly recording Lewinsky’s confidential phone calls about her relationship with the President caused a sensation with their links to the earlier Jones v. Clinton lawsuit and with the disclosing of notably intimate details. However, Tripp claimed that her motives were purely patriotic, and she was able to avoid a wiretap charge in exchange for handing in the tapes. She then claimed that her firing from the Pentagon at the end of the Clinton administration was vindictive, but it was shown to be a standard routine. Still, she was able to claim generous compensation for unauthorized revelations about her security clearance.

And I don’t think anyone should ever forget about creepy literary agent, Lucianne Goldberg, and the part she played in this entire mess.

Lucianne S. Goldberg (born Lucianne Steinberger; April 29, 1935), also known as Lucianne Cummings, is an American literary agent, author and the publisher of the website Lucianne.com. An avowed critic of U.S. President Bill Clinton, she helped bring the Lewinsky scandal to light, which triggered impeachment proceedings that nearly removed Clinton from office.

She’s one agent I never queried back then, and for valid reasons. She repped Kitty Kelly, the one who wrote the unauthorized biocrapography about Elizabeth Taylor. Kelly also wound up suing Goldberg and she won a nice sum thanks to what was referred to in court as Goldberg’s sloppy book-keeping. When you have an agent, authors, the agent gets your check and takes his or her 15% off before sending you your check…you don’t get paid first by the publisher and then you pay the agent. It’s the other way around. The agent gets paid first and you get a check from him/her. It’s always been done this way. It usually works out fine, unless of course you have a sloppy agent.

Goldberg has been running this odd right wing web site on the fringes for a long time now. I’m not too political, but this one web site screams creepy. The photo of her alone on her own site look as if it dates back to the early part of the last century.

 Goldberg was a prominent presence on the conservative website, Free Republic in the late 1990s, posting under the name “Trixie”. She and other conservatives, including Matt Drudge, left the site when the webmaster, in Goldberg’s words, “let all the Y2K, gun-nut, Jew-baiting crazies take over [the forum] and flame the plain-old conservatives. She then founded her own website, Lucianne.com, and for a time, was a nationally syndicated talk radio host whose show featured a Washington correspondent.

But that’s not all there is to good old Lucianne/Trixie, agent and author and spy with multiple fake names. In a question and answer piece she did about two years ago this is what she said about gay marriage:

Cotto: One of the gravest concerns frequently cited with modern conservatism is the rise of hot-button social issues. What is your opinion about this?

Goldberg: If you mean same sex marriage, abortion, stem cell research on the unborn and gun control I don’t see them “rising.” We’ve never liked these ideas and never will. That’s consistent and unmoving.

Since that interview, there have been polls that suggest public opinion in general is moving toward acceptance of gay marriage and a good deal of that is because so many conservatives are gay, have gay family members, and want to go down on the right side of history now. 

The photo on this web site with the interview is what good old Lucianne/Trixie looks like now.


Matt Damon’s Gay Sex Scenes in "Liberace"; Bill Clinton Calls DOMA Discriminatory

There’s a film coming out about the life and times of “Liberace,” Matt Damon and Michael Douglas are going to star in it, and there are a few gay sex scenes.

I’ve posted about how one of the biggest taboos in Hollywood has always been related to anything gay, and recently interviewed a young gay actor, Jeffery Self, about his new novel that talks about closeted gay actors. But they never seem to shy away from putting straight actors like Matt Damon in lead gay roles with gay sex scenes. And we never stop listening to the pithy little interviews these straight actors give afterward about doing the gay sex scenes.

It’s interesting. So they couldn’t find one single gay actor to play the part of Liberace’s lover? I know. I’m supposed to be open about that and all actors should play be able to play any role regardless of their sexual orientation. It’s just that I don’t see anyone breaking any doors down to offer Jeffery Self…or other openly gay actors…any lead roles in feature films. That idiot Brett Easton Ellis didn’t think Matt Bomer could play Christian in 50 Shades.

That’s all I’m going to comment on this one. I’m sure Matt Damon did a good job and I’m sure the film’s going to be more than interesting. I’ve always been a fan of both Damon and Douglas. And, at best, I like when “they” throw us a bone and do a film like this. We don’t get much and Liberace was one of the most notorious closeted gays in the entertainment business. But this is also one of the reasons why I’d like to see an actor like Matt Bomer play Christian Grey in the upcoming 50 Shades film.

In any event, this is what Damon had to say about playing gay:

Damon explained that the numerous gay sex scenes were not exactly comforting for him. “The scene where I’m behind him and going at him, we did that in one take. We do it. Cut. There’s a long pause. And then you just hear Steven [director Steven Soderbergh] go, ‘Well… I have no notes.’”

I hope he’s not scarred for life. But I think he’ll survive the trauma. It didn’t hurt Rock Hudson or any of the other gay actors who *couldn’t* come out back in the day.

He also said this:

The “Promised Land” actor is proud of the role and the boundary-pushing film. “It’s the kind of movie that if it were a man and a woman, it would feel a little too intimate and you’d feel like, ‘Maybe I shouldn’t be watching this,'” Damon told PopSugar. “But it’s a man and a man. And I’ve never seen that movie before. So hopefully people will dig it.”

He has a point there. However, if it were a man and a woman, Matt, you wouldn’t have commented on it one way or the other. It wouldn’t be significant enough to comment about. Just saying. Sometimes the most liberal thing an actor can do is keep his or her mouth shut.

This article went on to mention a few more interesting things.

Here are two generations of Hollywood heartthrobs as you’ve never seen them before.

Sounds like the circus is coming to town.

Michael Douglas and Matt Damon pose for the current cover of Entertainment Weekly camped out as the late, flamboyant pianist Liberace and his much younger live-in lover, Scott Thorson. Douglas is nearly unrecognizeable as Liberace while Damon’s usual aw, shucks grin remains.

Maybe I’m being too sensitive here, but am I the only one who thinks this looks like they’re doing black face? (Here’s a post I wrote about Jim Sturgess doing yellowface.) Or is the mainstream media just making it look that way? We won’t know until the film is released. I’m keeping an open mind about this one. But I’m also prepared for all the fresh hells we’ll be seeing in future articles about what it’s like to be gay and what it’s like for these “hearthrobs” to do gay sex scenes.

As a side note, I would like to add that Liberace wasn’t the only one who looked that way in the 1970’s. I was a kid and I still remember how ridiculous some of the styles were. Liberace just exaggerated a look that many straight men adopted during that time period. So the look isn’t all that “gay.”

Bill Clinton Calls DOMA Discriminatory:

The Defense of Marriage Act and Proposition 8 are headed to the Supreme Court soon and it seems as if a lot of people are now coming out in support of same sex marriage, including well-known Republicans like Clint Eastwood, which I posted about last week.

Although the fact that Republicans in support of same sex marriage often shocks people, it’s not something new and it’s not something we hear about all too often. I even posted about Patricia Heaton, a Republican in Hollywood heaven forbid, who has always maintained support of same sex marriage. I’ve posted so many times about openly gay Fred Karger who ran on the Republican ticket last year for President supporting same sex marriage so many times I’ll just link to this and you can shuffle through it if you’re so inclined.

And now former president Bill Clinton has decided to speak openly about his support of same sex marriage, even though he signed the DOMA bill while he was President. However, I remember this, too. Clinton was a victim of his times, and at the time I do remember this wasn’t a bill he was thrilled about and he didn’t believe in it. He only did it to keep things from getting worse. 1996 doesn’t seem like that long ago, but trust me, it was.

This is what Clinton has to say now:

When I signed the bill, I included a statement with the admonition that “enactment of this legislation should not, despite the fierce and at times divisive rhetoric surrounding it, be understood to provide an excuse for discrimination.” Reading those words today, I know now that, even worse than providing an excuse for discrimination, the law is itself discriminatory. It should be overturned.

Although things haven’t changed all that much on the Hollywood end, at least we’re still moving forward in Washington. And great deal has changed since 1996.

Photo above found here.