LONDON’S GAY CATHOLICS WON’T LET THE POPE FUCK WITH THEIR RELIGION

ARE ASEXUALS “QUEER”?

Minerva isn’t gay. A fluid conversationalist, the Massachusetts native has been artfully rehashing this point for the last three hours.

“I have been told I could easily be mistaken as a lesbian” she says, gesturing to her cropped, copper hair as evidence. “Which is not a bad thing.”

Minerva isn’t a lesbian, she says, but she certainly isn’t straight. At 29 years old, Minerva, who asked that she be identified by the name of her Tumblr, has never had a romantic relationship. She calls herself “asexual” meaning she doesn’t experience sexual attraction. To anyone.

To the deep chagrin of some members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, Minerva also uses the word “queer” to define her sexuality. A re-appropriated term of endearment for sexual minorities, “queer” is as emotionally charged as it is oddly exclusive, and there is an ongoing, online debate about whether she should feel comfortable using it to self-identify. In some corners of the internet, that debate has turned to all out war.

In October 2011, an outreach organisation called Asexual Awareness Week released a “Community Census” that polled data from over 3,000 asexual-identifying people. In the survey, more than 40 percent of respondents said they consider themselves members of the LGBT community, and another 38 percent said they consider themselves “allies” or supporters of the community.

The community isn’t so quick to oblige.

“Practicing sex/sexuality slightly differently, or not at all, does not make you queer” “Aria” wrote in a Tumblr post earlier this year. “People don’t shout ‘queer’ at an asexual person on the basis that they are not (sexually) attracted to anyone.”

Continue

The Vice guide to being Trans

Which Spandex-Wearing Super People Are Gay?

Northstar, who is apparently one of the X-Men, although you’ve never, ever heard of him, recently asked his boyfriend to marry him. This savvy PR move from Marvel marks the first time a mainstream comic book character has gotten gay-married, although Apollo and Midnighter (who are part of one of DC’s many, many alternate universes and are even more obscure than Northstar) got married back in 2002. While this marriage probably won’t affect our reality too much – other than briefly boosting Astonishing X-Men sales – it might inspire some closeted comics characters to finally reveal what they were hiding (barely) underneath their brightly-colored spandex bodysuits. (The list of currently out superheroes include Batwoman – duh – and some D-listers like Hulkling and Wiccan. Who? Exactly.)

Check out our list of the heroes and villains it’s easiest to picture in rainbow-flag duds here.

Dogmageddon - Throw The Gays In A Corral

Love thy neighbour. Unless they are gay, in which case put him behind an electrified fence. It’s what Jesus would do.

Read the article here.

My VICE Internship Taught Me Everything I Needed To Know About Having A Penis

I once convinced an ex-boyfriend to let me fuck him up the ass with a strap-on. We’d been dating for three years, the sex was getting boring – you know how it goes. Anyway, I did my due diligence, researching and picking out a supercute purple one that I thought would look great with my eyes. But he – being a huge pussy – backed out at the last minute, claiming it would be “emasculating”. I was crestfallen.

Ever since that big let down, I’ve been left with a severe case of penis envy. Not the self-loathing Freudian version, where girls want to steal their fathers’ dongs so they can screw their mothers, but a genuine curiosity concerning what it would be like to have a flappy member down there.

Read the rest of the article here.

QUESTION OF THE DAY - ARE YOU MAXIMISING YOUR HETEROSEXUAL POTENTIAL?

Remember when the internet was briefly outraged by this at the tail end of last week? It didn’t take the mayor of London long to realise it wouldn’t be great to have moving, bus-size adverts for homophobia parading through the city’s transport arteries, and stepped in to block them.

“Reparative therapy works to help men, who want to change their sexual orientation, naturally dissipate their homoerotic feelings and maximise their heterosexual potential,” said Reverend Lynda Rose, a spokesperson for Anglican Mainstream in the UK. Aside from making me wonder what gay men have done to Ms Rose to make her think that they’re all ill, it also made me wonder: Am I maximising my own heterosexual potential? Were the heteros of the UK maximising theirs? How do I know when I am “maximum straight”?

Read the full article here here

AN ETIQUETTE GUIDE FOR STRAIGHT PEOPLE IN GAY BARS

One of the great things about the hottest club in any town these days is that gay people are welcome. But with acceptance comes responsibility, and over the years homosexual partiers, like a bunch of hard-drinking Emily Posts, have had to learn the ins-and-outs of how to behave in a mostly-straight environment without pissing anyone off. It’s a straight man’s world, we’re just livin’ in it.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for straight people when attending a gay watering hole with their same-sex-loving friends. We love having straight people hang out with us, we really do, but I’m going to break down the rules for the breeders who forget how to behave when there is a rainbow flag on the wall. For our purposes we’ll be talking about gay male bars, since lesbian bars, like pandas in the wild and good female acoustic folk acts, are harder and harder to find these days.

Read the full article here

BISEXUAL MUSICIANS: LET’S BANG THEM

I have a memory of being in middle school and bitchily declaring, “I don’t believe in bisexuality, those people just seem confused and slutty.” Then a higher power played an awesome joke on me, and as my pubic hair came in I noticed rather than being jealous of the pretty girls, I wanted to do things to them (all the while still loving the peen).

Here is a list of my favourite artists that also play for both teams.

THIS ARTICLE JUST BECAME ILLEGAL IN ST PETERSBURG

This week, the homophobic and medieval “anti-gay propaganda” law passed its third and final reading in St Petersburg. Yesterday, it was signed by Georgiy Poltavchenko, Governor of St Petersburg (despite international protests from assorted LGBT groups and Western governments), which now makes it an actual law in St Petersburg. Officially, the law states that “public actions directed at the propaganda of sodomy, lesbianism, bisexuality and transgenderism among minors” will be punishable with fines of up to £17,000.

AllOut.org is a global organisation that campaigns for gay rights across the world. Having been toiling since December to try to bring worldwide attention to the law, one of the videos they put on the internet condemning it and asking people not to travel to the city went viral. Andre Banks, co-founder of AllOut, said: “By validating a new regime of censorship and intolerance, Governor Poltavchenko has diminished the reputation of his city with the stroke of a pen. One hundred thousand people have promised not to visit the “new” St. Petersburg after this law goes into effect.”

Read the full article here

IS THE IRAQI GOVERNMENT KILLING LGBT PEOPLE?

A couple of days ago, The International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission put out a report claiming that LGBT Iraqis are being targeted by death squads.

According to the report, early last month notices were posted on the houses of suspected LGBT citizens in Baghdad and Basra, warning that they had four days to reformat their sexuality, or face the wrath of God. According to sources inside Iraq, these 40 people were then abducted, tortured and eventually murdered. I spoke to Ali Hili, a gay Iraqi living in London who started the charity Iraqi LGBT. Below is a document he sent me that he says proves the Iraqi Ministry of Interior (the wing of Iraqi government that deals with policing) is targeting and killing gay people.

Read the full article here