Fabulous!

Well said.

Gay Couple Arrested For Having Sex Face Up To 100 Lashings

For the first time in Indonesia (according to the Shariah police’s chief investigator) a gay couple may receive 100 lashings by cane if they are found guilty of having, well, um, sex. The couple, a 23 and 20 year old, was arrested on March 29th in the provincial capital Banda Aceh after a neighbor reported them to the police. The men had ‘confessed’ to being a gay couple after a video of the pair together was posted online by a neighbor.

The footage allegedly shows one of the men naked and visibly distressed as he calls for help on his phone, while his partner is repeatedly pushed by another man who prevents the couple from leaving the room.
Aceh is the only province in Muslim-majority Indonesia to practice Shariah law, which was a concession made by the national government in 2006.
A Shariah code, implemented two years ago, allows up to 100 lashes for morality offences, including gay sex. - metro.co.uk

Caning of individuals occurs for many reasons. It is also a punishment for adultery, gambling, drinking alcohol, women who wear tight clothes and men who skip Friday prayers. The picture below is the result of a young woman and a man being sentenced to be publicly caned in Indonesia’s Aceh province for violating the Sharia law by allegedly being "too intimate" with each other. (December 2015)

We will have to wait and see if these two men are convicted. As well as being caned 100 times, people caught having sex with someone of the same sex will be fined up to a kilogram of gold (about £24,400) and can be sent to prison for 100 months.

This comic has a hilarious idea about why gay men get sent to hell

Study Suggests Genetic Link for Male Homosexuality

A large study of gay brothers adds to evidence that genes influence men's chances of being homosexual, but the results aren't strong enough to prove it.

Some scientists believe several genes might affect sexual orientation. Researchers who led the new study of nearly 800 gay brothers say their results bolster previous evidence pointing to genes on the X chromosome.

They also found evidence of influence from a gene or genes on a different chromosome. But the study doesn't identify which of hundreds of genes located in either place might be involved.

Smaller studies seeking genetic links to homosexuality have had mixed results.

The new evidence "is not proof but it's a pretty good indication" that genes on the two chromosomes have some influence over sexual orientation, said Dr. Alan Sanders, the lead author. He studies behavioral genetics at NorthShore University HealthSystem Research Institute in Evanston, Illinois.

Experts not involved in the study were more skeptical.

Neil Risch, a genetics expert at the University of California, San Francisco, said the data are statistically too weak to demonstrate any genetic link. Risch was involved in a smaller study that found no link between male homosexuality and chromosome X.

Dr. Robert Green, a medical geneticist at Harvard Medical School, called the new study "intriguing but not in any way conclusive."

The work was published Monday by the journal Psychological Medicine. The National Institutes of Health paid for the research.

The researchers say they found potential links to male homosexuality in a portion of chromosome X and on chromosome 8, based on an analysis of genetic material in blood or saliva samples from participants.

Chromosome X is one of two human sex chromosomes; the other is chromosome Y, present only in men.

The study authors note that animal research suggests a gene located in one region of chromosome X may contribute to some sexual behavior; it's one of the same regions cited in the new study.

Specific causes of homosexuality are unknown. Some scientists think social, cultural, family and biological factors are involved, while some religious groups consider it an immoral choice.

Study participant Dr. Chad Zawitz, a Chicago physician, called the research "a giant step forward" toward answering scientific questions about homosexuality and helping reduce the stigma gays often face.

Being gay "is sort of like having certain eye color or skin color - it's just who you are," Zawitz said. "Most heterosexuals I know didn't choose to be heterosexual. It's puzzling to me why people don't understand."

'Swipe Right' - A Short Gay Video On The Perils of Dating Apps

Sometimes you can be so caught up on your phone trying to find the perfect guy that you miss all the great options right in front of you.

Growing Up Gay: 21 Things To Do Before You Turn 21

Twenty-one is really the last milestone birthday you get before you start feeling the weight of time (turning 30, 40 and 50 likely won’t be nearly as exciting). And it’s a mark of transition from adolescence into young adulthood.

Still, your early 20s are really one mistake after another, so there’s no need to feel like you need to have it all “figured out.”

Scroll down for 21 things you might consider trying before you hit the big two-one.

1. Fuck up

Let’s face it, you’re going to fuck up. Maybe this should be get comfortable with fucking up. Breaking out of the teenage years and into your twenties is almost like learning how to walk all over again. And you will fall down. A lot. Getting used to that and realizing it’s not so hard to get back up will save you a lot of hurt later. Recognize when you screw up and learn from it.

2. Fall in love

Young love is a beautiful thing, full of hope and excitement. Who cares if it’s inevitably going to come back around and sting you? Your heart is a muscle and it needs to be exercised.

3. Do drag not just in your mom’s closet

One of the great things about growing up gay is the freedom to explore nonconforming lifestyles. Getting dolled up in drag is just plain fun, like playing dress-up when you were a kid except so much better. You may think it takes serious balls — and it does — but once you’re out in your fierce look, you may discover a confidence you never knew was there.

I’m a gay rights activist. I want to give $150,000 to someone who opposes gay marriage -- by Matt Stolhandske

As a gay man, I should hate Melissa and Aaron Klein.

They’re the Portland-based Christian bakery owners who, in 2013, refused to make a cake for a lesbian couple’s wedding. And despite their insistence that they’re only morally opposed to gay marriage, not gays, they make their disdain for equality quite clear: “I didn’t want to be a part of her marriage, which I think is wrong,” Aaron Klein recently said of one of the women he rebuked.

I’m also an evangelical Christian. I can’t understand why Klein or any other Christians twist the words of Jesus Christ to justify this behavior. To me, it’s a deeply harmful and embarrassing bastardization of our faith.

But I don’t hate the Kleins. In fact, I’m raising money to cover the $150,000 punitive fine they received from Oregon.

* * *

To be a gay Evangelical is to live what some may view as a paradox. I grew up in a loving, supportive Christian home and my faith eventually led me to a conservative Presbyterian seminary. I was yearning to study my faith more fully, but I was also deeply burdened by my same-sex attraction.

I believed it to be evil – the most revolting and damning of all sins. Looking back on those dark days, I now see the hate I had for myself. I was also secretly angry at everyone in the church who had tried to lead me to believe that something so fundamental to me was disgusting and wrong.

It wasn’t until I stepped away from the church, albeit briefly, that I was I able to find love and forgiveness for myself and the true heart of the Christian gospel; the love of a Father so stubbornly refusing to condemn that He would send His Son to die in my place. And that gospel has so deeply permeated my soul that I cannot find it in myself to hate the Kleins.

In the face of intolerance, I am yet called to love.

I know some Evangelicals are convinced that being gay is a grave moral sin. And I believe that they, and all people, should have the right to decide whether or not to condone religious marriage ceremonies for gay couples. But the Oregon case is not a question of religious marriage. This couple didn’t ask the Kleins for their blessing. They simply asked to pay for a cake.

Last I checked, a pastry is not moral approval of a religious ceremony.

As he was suffering an agonizing death on the cross, Jesus Christ forgave even those who slaughtered Him. He welcomed the poor, the indigent, the scourges of society, into his arms. It’s impossible to imagine the same Jesus who humbled Himself to the point of crawling on the floor to wash the feet of Judas, today standing in the Klein’s bakery and telling them not to bake cakes for gay weddings. Regardless of what you believe Jesus’s position would have been on gay marriage, the Bible makes it clear that the posture with which He would approach gay and lesbian couples is infused with love.

I know this is a lot to ask of Christians like Klein; to shower love on people like me who represent something she abhors. So I’m trying to live that challenge myself.

The Kleins say the $150,000 fee will bankrupt her family. I’m raising money to help offset that cost. I’ll send whatever we raise along to the Klein family with a message of love and peace. I don’t want them to suffer. But I am also pleading with them and other Christians to stop using the name of Jesus to explain to the LGBT community why we don’t deserve access to the civil rights afforded to heterosexuals through the legal institution of marriage.

I hope the Kleins will accept this sign of good will. After all, they must see that our goals here are the same – to live our lives as we see fit and be treated equally under the law.

Already I can hear the shouts from progressive and gay friends.

“You’re an apologist for homophobes,” they tell me. “How can you reward this anti-gay behavior? Who next will they choose not to serve? African Americans? Single mothers? Muslims? We cannot support this.” To them I say: this is what an olive branch looks like. I am not rewarding their behavior, but rather loving them in spite of it. It is time for these two communities, which both cite genuine love as our motivation, to put aside our prejudices and put down our pitchforks to clear the path for progress.

See The Super Gay Penis Doodle Uncovered In Leonardo Da Vinci’s Notebook

Besides the Mona Lisa, The Last Supper and the Vitruvian Man, it seems we also have Leonardo da Vinci to thank for this penis doodle.

Yes, the same genius who is credited as the archetype of the “Renaissance man” also seems to have had a thing for the men of the Renaissance.

Here’s the drawing that was uncovered in Leonardos’s notebook, which was actually drawn by his apprentice Salai (who was very likely also his lover):

The drawing shows two crudely drawn penises marching towards a mysterious hole. The hole, consequently, is labeled “Salai.” So either he picked an interesting place to sign his masterpiece, or there is much to be read from this historic piece of art.

If you have kids and ever find questionable doodles among their schoolwork, rest assured that some of history’s greatest minds operated the same way.

.

Leonardo’s drawing of Salai

Here’s some background on Leonardo’s sexuality from author and historian Ross King’s Leonardo and the Last Supper:

According to Lomazzo’s account, Leonardo’s passion for the beautiful Salai therefore reached its peak at about the time work began on The Last Supper in Santa Maria delle Grazie. 

In the fifteenth century, Florentines were so well-known for homosexuality that the German word for sodomite was Florenzer. By 1415 the sexual behavior of young Florentine men had caused the city fathers such concern that “desiring to eliminate a worse evil by means of a lesser one” they licensed two more public brothels to go with the one they had opened with similar aspirations a dozen years earlier. 

When these establishments failed to produce the desired results, and still “desiring to extirpate that vice of Sodom and Gomorrah, so contrary to nature,” the city fathers took further action. In 1432, a special authority, the Ufficiali di Notte e Conservatori dei Monasteri, or Officers of the Night and Preservers of Morality in the Monasteries, was formed to catch and prosecute sodomites. Over the next seven decades, more than ten thousand men were apprehended by this night watch. 

According to Vasari, Salai was “a very attractive youth of unusual grace and looks, with very beautiful hair which he wore curled in ringlets and which delighted his master.” Giacomo seems to have served as a model for Leonardo. No definitive image of him exists, but art historians refer to a distinctive face that appears repeatedly in his drawings—that of a beautiful youth with a Greek nose, a mass of curls and a dreamy pout—as a “Salai-type profile.” 

Leonardo was almost certainly homosexual by the standards of later centuries. Freud was no doubt correct when he stated that it was doubtful whether Leonardo ever embraced a woman in passion. Two years after the Saltarelli affair, Leonardo wrote a partially legible declaration in his notebook: “Fioravante di Domenico at Florence is my most beloved friend, as though he were my….” A nineteenth-century editor of Leonardo’s writings hopefully filled in “brother,” but the relationship may well have been more intimate.

Gay Flight Attendant Jailed For Blowing A Sleeping Straight Man At A House Party

A 23-year-old man was jailed for a year for performing a sex act on a sleeping man.

Iain Fisher, an air steward, had been at a bar with two female colleagues when they met the 22-year-old man and invited him to a house party.

According to the Daily Record, the four carried on drinking at the house before going to bed together fully clothed at 4.30am.

The women left the room and went to sleep on couches in the lounge and Fisher also left the bed.

He returned at about 6.30am and his victim – who is reportedly heterosexual – awoke to discover Fisher performing a sex act on him.

Ayr Sheriff Court heard Fisher left the room 'laughing' and his upset victim went home in tears and told his father about the incident.

Fisher's lawyer was quoted as saying, 'I asked him why he did it and he said he thought it might be consensual but he has to accept the victim was asleep.'

To The Gay Men Who Don’t Even Look My Way

I don’t workout, I don’t wear designer clothes and I don’t wax my body hair. After hearing that you may find it hard to believe me when I say I’m a gay man.

A pleasant surprise to find out that my email to the editor of gayguys.com was responded to with open arms. A lot of great topics on this site, and a few that are not so good. But the thing that bothers me the most is the lack of other types of gay men in photos attached to the articles.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like to look at hot half naked guys, but I would also like to see someone that looks like me (or just someone who isn’t an Abercrombie model).

Being gay is tough enough as it is, but having to deal with the pressures of not feeling worthy because I don’t have a 6-pack makes me not have that Gay Pride that everyone always boasts about. I wish that I could go to a bar and before someone looks at me and writes me off as the out of shape guy (or bear), that they could ask me about myself and try for a minute to get to know who’s inside before just writing me off.

Although it may not look like it, I love to play outdoors. Hiking, camping and baseball are some of my favorite activities. I’m the kind of guy that if you ever had to get something off of your chest, you could come to me and I wouldn’t judge you.

I always find the good in a situation. From an early age I just learned how to enjoy the good things in life and love being able to lift other people’s spirits up. If you were sick, I would whip up a batch of my signature chicken noodle soup, bring over my box collections of Sex in the City and Queer as Folk and become your own private nurse for 24 hours.

If you’re ever feeling in a crappy mood and need to take it out on someone, I’ll be your punching bag. I’ll take it without reacting back, and patiently wait for you to calm down and then give me a kiss.

Out of anyone you’ve ever dated I would be the one to treat you the way deserve to be treated. I wouldn’t look at other guys, I wouldn’t make you feel unwanted, and I would never go a day without telling you how much I love you.

The sad part is you may never know how happy you could be with me because you won’t even acknowledge my existence. Not because I hurt your feelings or did something wrong, but because I don’t have a flat stomach or hang out with the “popular” guys.

I’m not going to let it get me down, because everything happens for a reason. There is a guy out there for me somewhere. He’s the guy who is tired of having his heart broken, the guy who wants someone to wake up with laughing, and the guy who has learned to see people through his heart and not his eyes.

Thanks for listening to the ramblings of a non-Andrew Christian model.

Jeremy

PS – I’m not a writer so my apologizes if any of my sentence structures made you cringe ☺

Gay man subjected to ‘interrogation’ in front of his four-year-old son by UK passport official

An American-born, British citizen says that what should have been a routine passport interview with UK officials turned into a half hour interrogation about his sexuality and fatherhood.

The Home Office has suspended a UK passport official, pending disciplinary investigations, after the employee reportedly subjected a gay man to an intrusive line of questioning in front of the man’s four-year-old son.

The interrogation included information on the man’s sexual history and details about the adoption of his children.

American-born Randall Cole, aged 44, is married to a British man Stuart Wales, 42.

They moved to the UK from the US last year and Cole, a charity worker, became a British citizen in May. When he was invited to an interview with immigration officials, he believed that it would be a straightforward formality in order to process his application for a British passport.

He duly turned up to the interview centre in Chelmsford, Essex, with his four-year-old son, but has told The Guardian that he was left feeling ‘violated and dirty’ by the interviewer’s line of questioning, which he felt was ‘clearly homophobic’.

The interview took place in an open-plan office while Cole’s young son sat on his lap.

‘I told her I am here with my son Samuel and that he has an older brother [aged eight] but that my husband is looking after him,’ said Cole, ‘and when I used the term husband that's when you could see something immediately changed in her. She began to fixate on questions about my family.’

Get Ready For Ten Things HIV Negative Guys Really Need Positive Guys To Hear

Guys living with HIV aren’t the only gay men who are having trouble being heard. When Queerty posted “Ten Things HIV Positive Guys Want Negative Guys to Know” last month, negative men responded with comments ranging from sincere empathy to complete frustration. They also wrote with suggestions by the dozen for their own list. Negative men have just as much at stake in the HIV conversation, and their views matter (check out the short video NEGATIVE, a frank look at the sex lives and attitudes of four HIV negative gay men). So, with no further ado, here’s ten things HIV negative gay men want their positive buds to know as summarized and compiled by Queerty’s Mark. S. King. Just like the previous list, it can’t possibly speak for everyone. Few opinions in our complicated community are universal. Gentleman, start your engines. In no particular order, here they are:

1. We are all living in a world with HIV. Negative gay men face HIV every time they are tested. It is an unavoidable reality for any sexually active negative guy. We have friends with HIV we care about, have seen The Normal Heart, make AIDS Walk pledges, and are waiting for a day when HIV is no longer an issue to be debated and fought over. Most of us are as mystified with the apathy that exists around HIV as anybody else. And yes, we’re fully aware that we have also taken a lot of the risks our positive friends have, but escaped unscathed, somehow.

Most Straights Subconsciously Believe Gay Men are Dirty

New research shows that straight people still consider gay men to be ’dirty,’ even if it is subconsciously. 

Gay Star News reports that a study of more than 200 participants in the UK, Portugal and Poland showed that they felt the need to physically cleanse themselves after just imagining contact with a gay.

"Labeling people as impure is a culturally universal way of expressing prejudice," said lead researcher Agnieszka Golec de Zavala. "Physical cleansing is used as a way to euphemize through actions such as excluding from social life, depriving of human rights, imprisoning of, and finally exterminating."

Researchers, who described the results as "shocking" and "alarming," believe that it proves that some think that gay men will contaminate them in their mind.

In four experiments, the same outcome was reached: if the study participant self-identified as socially conservative, then they were far more likely to consider gay men to be dirty. 

In an experiment in Portugal, 55 participants were asked to do a word completion task with a mix of cleanness-related words, neutral words and words around cleansing. Those who imagined borrowing a phone from a gay man generated significantly more words around cleansing that those who imagined borrowing a straight man’s phone.

After the experiment, participants were offered either a yellow pencil or a yellow disinfecting wipe. Those who borrowed the phone from a gay man chose the wipe much more often. 

"It’s alarming that prejudice can still be found on a subconscious level. It may be difficult to reduce the prejudice people are unaware they hold," said Zavala. "Therefore there is still hope that more can be changed with education to limit and eradicate prejudice."

Young, HIV-Positive Gay Man Mulls Run For Congress

“Young people have very, very powerful voices,” Aaron Darr says. “We just need to speak up.”

The 23-year-old Democrat has worked on campaigns for Hillary Clinton and Anthony Wiener. He’s currently living in Largo, Florida, where he’s weighing a 2016 run for the Florida House of Representatives in District 66.

If elected, he will be the youngest person, the third openly gay person and the first openly HIV-positive person ever elected to a district office in the state of Florida.

Queerty chatted with Darr over Skype about his political ambitions, his chances of winning in a Republican dominated state and district, and how his HIV-status actually enhances his candidacy.

You’re considering a run for the Florida House of Reps.

I’ve been in the process of laying some groundwork for myself and to help other Democrats to win some local and state races down here. I’m a campaign coordinator for Shawna Bercher, which is right under campaign manager. [Laughs] Which is funny, at 23, that that’s what I’m doing.

How did you get involved in politics?

But I’ve doing things in politics since I was 16 years old. My first experience ever working on a political campaign was when this very, very remarkable, extraordinary human being named Hillary Clinton ran for president. I worked on her campaign and did a lot of stuff for her in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Indiana throughout the whole Democratic primary process. It changed my life.

So many young people seem to be about “me, me, me, me, me.” My generation, at least. You know, that’s not always a bad thing. But with everything that’s going on in the world, younger people, in general, need to step up and makes some kind of contribution.

Do you think you have a shot?

You have to play a little more moderate down here. I was born and raised Baptist for 19 years of my life, so I understand the views and opinions of those with whom I disagree. I understand them and I respect them. But I find that the more you educate people on these things called math, science, and facts, I think you can persuade them to come around and swing to your view.

If I do run, I’m going to win. I really do think it’s possible. And I’m going to try my darnedest. I think that it’s very important that LGBT people run for office. My idol is Harvey Milk. Right now we do not have a Harvey Milk, and we need a Harvey Milk. Someone in the gay community needs to step up and step forward and speak on all of our behalves.

If I’m elected, I will be the third LGBT person elected to a statewide office in the state of Florida, I will be the first openly HIV-positive person, and I would be the youngest person elected.

You’ve mentioned before that you are HIV-positive.

I like to look at myself as a people’s candidate. I understand these things. I’m not ashamed of this at all. I was diagnosed HIV-positive three days before Christmas in 2008, my sophomore year in high school. I had only ever had sex with three people and its forever changed my life.

I remember thinking of Samantha Jones when she had been tested for HIV on an episode of Sex and the City and I thought “Well, I’ve only been with two people. This isn’t going to happen to me.” And, sure enough, it had.

HIV/AIDS is very real to a lot of people. HIV/AIDS is not a gay disease. The highest infection rate of people living with HIV are heterosexual African American women. The two states that are having the highest infection rates are Mississippi and Louisiana, right here in the South.

I don’t know if this is necessarily going to help me. It’s a part of me. It’s not who I am. I hope, if anything, it encourage others to know their status. You have to know your status and you have to protect yourself.

Do you feel as though you lacked enough information to protect yourself as a young person?

I do feel I had lacked the information necessary to protect myself as a teenager. The reason I got tested in the first place was because of the information I learned about unprotected sex in a health class I had taken the semester before during my junior year.

In Ohio, there are those who believe that keeping men, women, and children in ignorance of reproductive healthcare, contraceptives, and information that children would and should learn at a young age about the ways in which they can protect themselves, isn’t something that should be included in education in public schools.

In reality, the infection rate of HIV/AIDS and the rate of teenage pregnancy actually increase dramatically, according to the work that The Campaign Against Teenage Pregnancy has conducted, when you deny others access to reproductive healthcare, contraceptives, sex education in schools, and proper family planning.

What was it like learning you had HIV at such a young age?

If anything, it forced me to grow up. I remember driving home and looking at the tree branches with snow on them. I had always noticed them before, but not how beautiful they really were. I learned to appreciate life, my surroundings and my family. I learned not to take for granted a single moment the struggles and hardships that I had faced in life. Yes, what happened to me was very unfortunate, but it is nothing in comparison to what is going on in the lives of others around the world and that this was a blessing from God for me to help others not have to learn some of life’s hardest lessons the way I had to.

And what about your family? How did they respond?

My mother could tell I visibly upset when I had got home. She asked me what was wrong and I wouldn’t answer. She then yelled at me to tell her what was wrong, so I told her. This for me became a defining moment in my life. I learned what it was like to break someone’s heart. In that moment that I had told my Baptist mother I was HIV-positive, at 17 years old, I broke her heart. I will never forget the complete and utter shock on her face and the hurt in her eyes. My stepfather then looked at me and said, “How could you do this to your mother?”

How did you deal with that?

I threw myself into theater and school to keep my mind off of my new diagnosis and try to adjust to it the best way that I could. I then had finished the rest of my junior year of high school and had the summer off to really learn about myself. I had become very sad, depressed and had so much resentment towards myself. I turned 18 and had gone out all summer, became friends with the wrong people and gotten into alcohol and became quite promiscuous. I was very sad, so sad that I actually moved in with my father whom I hadn’t had a relationship with due to the fact that he was an alcoholic and had beaten my mother, brothers and myself for the first eight years of my life. It was the worst decision I could have possibly made, but I learned from these mistakes.

What should the state and federal government be doing about the rising infection rates among young gay men?

I believe that both state and federal governments and elected officials must start a dialogue. Start a conversation, about the importance of reproductive healthcare, teenage pregnancy and sex education in public and private institutions of education. HIV/AIDS is still very taboo in America and around the world, which is truly a shame. We need to be investing money into programs like Planned Parenthood, local Health Departments, HRSA HIV/AIDS Programs like The Ryan White Program and ADAP. As a voter, we also must ask these questions of our elected officials, both Democrats and Republicans. We have a moral obligation to take care of one another and we need to elect public officials who understand the importance of investing in healthcare, because Democrat or Republican, we all get sick.

If you could give one piece of advice to sexually active gay teenagers today, what would it be?

I would tell young gay men that just because you are young that you are not invincible. Gay or straight, this can happen to you. I had only slept with three people before I had learned I was HIV-positive and to just remember that it only takes one time.

[HIV] isn’t as simple as just taking a pill every day, which sounds easy. You have to worry about what you eat, your personal and social habits, the protection of yourself and your sexual partners, and making healthier choices in life to ensure that your CD4 count is high and your viral load is always low. I think if anything, this is the hardest part about becoming HIV-positive, adapting to the diagnosis.

I know there is a lot said about the rate of teenage suicide among LGBT children and what they feel of their own self-worth. Younger LGBT people, in particular younger gay men, need to know they can grow up to be whatever they want to be and that they are valued members of society, and that they do have a voice, and that they need to stand up and use it, while being smart about the choices that they make in the process, which includes practicing safe sex, always.

Study: Gay & Straight Men Have Different Facial Shapes

A new study that analyzed the differences in facial structures between gay and straight men found "significant morphological differences," the British newspaper the Independent reports.

 

Researchers from the Center for Theoretical Study at Charles University in Prague and the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic conducted the study and looked at the differences in facial shape between gay and straight men, finding that gay men were rated more stereotypically "masculine" than straight men. Researchers said these results go against the stereotypical thought that gay men feminine.

After looking at the morphological (morphology is a branch of biology that studies the form and structure of organisms and their specific structural features) differences between gay and straight men, the research team, headed by Jarka Valentova, examined if a person’s sexual orientation can be correctly determined by looking at his face. Full story here!

AHT: A silly and useless study IMHO.

Elizabeth Warren and 86 Members of Congress Demand an End to the FDA’s Gay Blood Donor Ban

"Led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and a group of 87 members of Congress sent a letter has sent a letter to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)’ demanding that they lift the ban on blood donors who are “men who have had sex with other men , at any time since 1977,” a policy the FDA has had in place since the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis in 1992.

“Since the beginning of the HIV/AIDS epidemic more than 30 years ago, the scientific community’s understanding of the virus has changed dramatically. We have seen vast advances in blood screening technology, blood donation policy changes in other countries allowing MSM to donate, and opposition from our nation’s blood banks who have called the current ban ‘medically and scientifically unwarranted. Our current policies turn away healthy, willing donors even when we face serious blood shortages. Further, the existing lifetime ban continues to perpetuate inaccurate stereotypes about gay and bisexual men, and fosters an atmosphere that promotes discrimination and discourages individuals from from seeking HIV testing and treatment services.” Full story here!

American Medical Association Opposes FDA Ban on Gay Men Donating Blood

The American Medical Association voted on Tuesday to oppose the FDA ban on gay men donating blood, ABC News reports: 

"The lifetime ban on blood donation for men who have sex with men is discriminatory and not based on sound science," AMA board member Dr. William Kobler said in a statement. "This new policy urges a federal policy change to ensure blood donation bans or deferrals are applied to donors according to their individual level of risk and are not based on sexual orientation alone."

The AMA recommends that the FDA change its policy so that gay men are evaluated on an individual level rather than being lumped together in a high-risk category, in addition to crafting a policy that more accurately represents scientific research.

Said Robert Valadez, policy analyst for the HIV/AIDS advocacy group Gay Men's Health Crisis: "The policy was formed at a time in our history when we didn't have a name for AIDS or HIV. Our technology has advanced to the point where … it is antiquated to keep this policy in place and to keep those units of blood from entering the blood supply."