Jerry Curl

Queerty answers: He's said he's too busy with the economy to get around to marriage equality. He's let his secretary of defense tell the world that Don't Ask Don't Tell might get repealed, which is the same as saying it might not. For all his talk about health care, he's done nothing to let gay people share benefits with their same-sex partners. There are no protections in place to keep us from getting fired from our jobs for being gay, even though we're losing paychecks like every other American. Immigrants are being deported because they cannot legally marry their same-sex partners. So while you argue "Obama is busy, he'll get around to us," you might be right. But apparently NOT HAVING EQUAL RIGHTS and being considered SECOND-CLASS CITIZENS is not a big enough priority for Barack Obama to act. The economy is unquestionably a priority. But so should making sure every American is given the rights they're due.

By John Darkow

Michele Graglia as featured on DNA .

British troops ended six years of combat operations in Iraq today, beginning to withdraw from the southern city of Basra after a bloody and costly mission that was deeply unpopular at home. Prime Minister Gordon Brown praised his military's accomplishments and sacrifices, speaking after meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki at Brown's Downing Street office in London. ''Today marks the closing chapter of the combat mission in Iraq,'' Brown said, adding that Britain's remaining 3,700 troops had begun to leave their base on the outskirts of Basra. Since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, 179 British service personnel have been killed in Iraq. In Basra, the British military held a ceremony to honor those who died -- reading aloud the names of all of those killed. ''They will always be remembered for the service they have given. Our country owes them a huge debt of gratitude,'' Brown said. (Via NYT )

The fight for political reform in Kenya has moved into an unlikely venue -- the nation's bedrooms. Activists in the East African nation are urging women to withhold sex for a week to protest the growing divide in Kenya's coalition government. "We are asking even sex workers to join the cause, even if we have to pay them ourselves," said Patricia Nyaundi, executive director of the Federation of Women Lawyers in Kenya. The campaign was organized by G-10, an umbrella group for women's organizations. It called on the wives of President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga to join the cause. Odinga's wife, Ida, told CNN on Thursday that she supports the campaign "100 percent." "I will not get into what my husband thinks," she said, chuckling, "but I will say leaders need to focus on the things that affect our people, and I hope the publicity from this campaign will raise awareness on those issues. " (Via CNN )

Last night's results show was a train wreck of epic proportions. Everything from Taylor Hicks (who?), to Jamie Foxx (why?), to this week's bottom three was unconscionable. Hicks and Foxx were there to promote their new projects, which is fine. After all, that's why God invented the mute button. But what I still can't fathom is how Kris and Adam Lambert ended up in the bottom three. For one thing, Kris and Adam have been judge and fan favorites for weeks now. Neither of them have been in the bottom 2. Moreover, nine of Kris and Adam's songs are among the top 10 Idol downloads on iTunes. If their music is already flying off the virtual shelves, where are the votes? As far as Adam Lambert's bottom position (Yes, I went there), theories and speculation are running rampant in my family. Some good, some not so good. A few of us believe that voters are under the impression that Adam doesn't need the votes because he's such a solid performer and are in turn, no...

From HX : For nearly three decades, the distinct and rousing staccato that punctuates the intro to Dolly Parton’s Grammy-winning anthem “9 to 5” has sparked hysteria in queens across the country and beyond. The 1980 blockbuster movie for which the song was written has likewise remained a staple on our list of all-time camp classics. Now the film has come to life on stage, as 9 to 5: The Musical gets to work eight times a week at Broadway’s Marquis Theatre. Featuring an acclaimed new score by Parton and an all-star cast led by Stephanie J. Block, Megan Hilty and Allison Janney, it’s the most exciting thing to hit the workplace since Casual Fridays.

(Via Towleroad )

By Cam Cardow

More than half of the nation's population, 186.1 million people to be exact, live and breathe in communities with dangerously high levels of air pollution, new research shows. "Six out of ten Americans live in areas dirty enough to send people to the emergency room, to shape how kids' lungs develop and even dirty enough to kill," Charles D. Connor, president and CEO of the American Lung Association said during a teleconference Tuesday to present the findings of the association's State of the Air 2009 report. "Forty million Americans live in counties where the air quality has failed every single test," he continued. "Even as our nation explores the complex challenges of global warming and energy independence, we still must recognize the problems we have with old-fashioned air pollution." Although there have been some improvements in the nation's overall air health over the past decade, those gains are leveling out, said Janice E. Nolen, assi...

Jonathan Nice as featured on JBM .

Veteran Republican Sen. Arlen Specter disclosed plans Tuesday to switch parties, bringing Democrats closer to the 60-vote supermajority they need to push Barack Obama's agenda through the Senate. This is a painful decision," said Specter at a Tuesday afternoon news conference. "I know that I'm disappointing a lot of my friends and colleagues...the disappointment runs in both directions." Specter would give Democrats and their allies at least 59 Senate seats. One vacancy remains from the state of Minnesota, where Democrat Al Franken holds a narrow lead in a race being disputed in courts. With 60 votes in the 100-seat chamber, Obama's fellow Democrats would have the three-fifths majority necessary to stop Republican filibusters, a stalling tactic used to delay or defeat legislation. (Via MSNBC )

Rubina Ali's house is flooded with sewer water, and her feet itch. She's discovered a world of creepy-crawlies in the opaque gray water: scorpions, rats and slithery creatures with lots of legs. Two months ago, the child star of the hit movie "Slumdog Millionaire" was worrying about what to wear to the Oscars. Now she has come home to a very different problem: How to get the fetid water out of her family's one-room shack. The 9-year-old picked up a plastic bucket Monday and began to scoop, but it was hopeless. "There are a lot of rats," she told The Associated Press with a shudder, standing in water above her ankles. "In the night also." Eight Oscars and $326 million in box office receipts have so far done little to improve the lives of the film's two impoverished child stars. Rubina and co-star Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail have been showered with gifts and brief bursts of fame, but their day-to-day lives are little changed. In some ways, thi...

The New York Times has an interview with the President and a nice slide show commemorating today's milestone.

(Via Dlisted )

Via Made in Brazil

A six-pound Chihuahua has been reunited with her owners after a 70-mph gust of wind picked the puppy up and tossed her out of sight. Dorothy and Lavern Utley credit a pet psychic for guiding them on Monday to a wooded area nearly a mile from where 8-month-old Tinker Bell had been last seen. The brown long-haired dog was dirty and hungry but otherwise OK. The Utleys, of Rochester, had set up an outdoor display Saturday at a flea market in Waterford Township, 25 miles northwest of Detroit. Tinker Bell was standing on their platform trailer when she was swept away.Dorothy Utley tells The Detroit News that her cherished pet "just went wild" upon seeing her. (Via MSNBC )

By Mike Luckovich

Brandon Perry as featured on Queerty .

State university students will face tuition hikes of up to 15 percent annually under legislation that passed the Florida Senate on a 30-7 vote yesterday. It's the first big test for the measure, which will allow all 11 state universities to charge a tuition differential, or supplement. Currently, only the University of Florida, Florida State, South Florida, Central Florida and Florida International have that authority. Combined with base tuition, the increases cannot equal more than 15 percent a year and must be approved by the Board of Governors, the goal being to get Florida to the national average of more than $6,500 for tuition and fees. In-state tuition and fees for a full-time student in Florida are now less than $3,900 a year. ''We've got education so cheap now that it's a miracle that we've been able to do as much as we have over these years,'' Sen. Steve Oelrich, R-Gainesville, said during debate. The bill now moves to the House, where approval ...

An excerpt from a great Queerty article: In fact, if you are a social conservative frustrated by the advance of gay rights in the past few months, you're probably thanking Perez right now. In singling out Prejean, Perez chose a beautiful, all-American (by definition!) girl who has the whole "I care about gay people, but I am entitled to my opinions" shtick down. Perez may have wanted to make her into a poster child for homophobia, but instead, he's transformed her into a doe-eyed Anita Bryant, in the worst sense of the term. Furthermore, does anyone think that Perez's name-calling is actually in the service of gay rights? In 2006, I wrote a story for Salon about Perez's tactics of forcibly outing people (mainly by drawing cum stains on their photos) and argued that "Spreading gossip is just your average pedestrian variety of immorality. Claiming that you're doing it to further civil rights is an outright sham." And here's where the quandary ...

I.B.M. plans to announce today that it is in the final stages of completing a computer program to compete against human “Jeopardy!” contestants. If the program beats the humans, the field of artificial intelligence will have made a leap forward. I.B.M. scientists previously devised a chess-playing program to run on a supercomputer called Deep Blue. That program beat the world champion Garry Kasparov in a controversial 1997 match (Mr. Kasparov called the match unfair and secured a draw in a later one against another version of the program). But chess is a game of limits, with pieces that have clearly defined powers. “Jeopardy!” requires a program with the suppleness to weigh an almost infinite range of relationships and to make subtle comparisons and interpretations. The software must interact with humans on their own terms, and fast. Indeed, the creators of the system — which the company refers to as Watson, after the I.B.M. founder, Thomas J. Watson Sr. — said they were not yet confid...

Ellis McCreadie as featured on JBM .

General Motors announced plans to cut 23,000 U.S. jobs by 2011, drop its storied Pontiac brand and slash 40% of its dealer network in its latest bid to stay out of bankruptcy. GM also announced an offer to its bondholders to swap $27 billion of the company's unsecured debt for stock. GM is offering bondholders 225 shares of its stock for every $1,000 it owes the bondholders in principal. The move will greatly dilute the value of GM shares held by current stockholders. Still, shares of GM, a component of the Dow Jones industrial average, gained nearly 10% in pre-market trading following the announcement due to hopes that the company will now be able to avoid bankruptcy. (Via CNN )

Weekend Top Five #1 Obsessed ($28.5M) #2 17 Again ($11.7M) #3 Fighting ($11.4M) #4 The Soloist ($9.71M) #5 Earth ($8.55M)

Mark Rosenberg, a beloved 33-year Florida International University professor and administrator on Saturday became the school's fifth president. Rosenberg, 59, sailed into the post after fellow finalist Carlos Santiago, chancellor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, unexpectedly withdrew from the race two hours before a final vote on both men was to be taken. In a room full of supporters, FIU's board of trustees voted to have Rosenberg take over the school's reins from long-time president Modesto ''Mitch'' Maidique. The move by Santiago cleared the path for Rosenberg, FIU's former provost and most recently chancellor of Florida's state education system, to assume the post. (Via Miami Herald )

Bea Arthur, best known for her roles as television's Maude and the sardonic Dorothy on The Golden Girls , has died of cancer, a family spokesman said today. She was 86. Spokesman Dan Watt said that Arthur died Saturday morning at her home in Los Angeles, her family by her side. We'll remember you always. Thank you for being a friend, Bea.

Alessandro Calza as featured on Queerty .

Indian police said yesterday that they would not charge the father of a child star in the hit movie “Slumdog Millionaire,” and ended their investigation into claims he tried to sell his 9-year-old girl to a reporter posing as a wealthy sheik. Rubina Ali’s estranged mother, Khurshid Monish Dewade, filed a complaint against the girl’s father on Sunday, after the British tabloid News of the World reported that he offered to give Ali up for adoption in exchange for $400,000, police said. The newspaper — owned by News International Ltd., the main British subsidiary of News Corp., which also owns “Slumdog” distributor Fox Searchlight Pictures — said the deal was allegedly offered to one of its reporters. The newspaper issued a statement yesterday saying it stands by its story. The father, Rafiq Qureshi, has denied any wrongdoing. (Via MSNBC )

So here they are, kids. The Top 5 on Idol: Gokey , Adam Lambert, Allison, Kris, and Matt. I don't think anyone is surprised to find the first three there. Despite my reservations about Gokey , he's got a loyal and powerful fan base out there. He'll make it further. Not far enough to beat Adam Lambert though. He's been this season's winner since performance 3. Even when I don't watch, I vote Lambert! For her part, Allison has been this season's biggest delight. I liked her since the auditions and hoped she'd make it far enough to be noticed. Allison, we noticed and love it. Kris and Matt are unexpected surprises. Kris' performances have gotten progressively stronger throughout. He's shown a real command for his music and let's face it, he's the cutest thing to watch on a Tuesday night. I'm still waiting for shirtless Facebook pictures to surface. Matt, on the other hand, started strong but has lost some of his mojo . I'm not sure ...

A sad story to share this Friday morning. Another kid, bullied by classmates, has killed himself. This from CNN : Eleven-year-old Jaheem Herrera woke up on April 16 acting strangely. He wasn't hungry and he didn't want to go to school. But the outgoing fifth grader packed his bag and went to school at Dunaire Elementary School in DeKalb County, Georgia. He came home much happier than when he left in the morning, smiling as he handed his mother, Masika Bermudez, a glowing report card full of A's and B's. She gave him a high-five and he went upstairs to his room as she prepared dinner. A little later, when his younger sister called him to come down to eat, Jaheem didn't answer. So mother and daughter climbed the stairs to Jaheem's room and opened the door. Jaheem was hanging by his belt in the closet. Bermudez says bullies at school pushed Jaheem over the edge. He complained about being called gay, ugly and "the virgin" because he was from the Virgin Isl...

Brock Harris as featured on We Love Guys .

A decade-long battle for marriage equality in Connecticut ended when the General Assembly voted to update the state's marriage laws to conform with a landmark court ruling allowing gay and lesbian couples to tie the knot. "It feels so good. It really does feel like the book is closing," said Anne Stanback, president of Love Makes a Family, a gay-rights group that has led the fight for same-sex marriage in the state. A spokesman for Gov. M. Jodi Rell said she will sign the bill, which passed 28-7 in the Senate and 100-44 in the House of Representatives late Wednesday, into law. While Rell, a Republican, signed the state's 2005 civil unions law, she has said she believes that marriage should be between a man and a woman. The bill comes six months after the State Supreme Court ruled 4-3 that same-sex couples have the right to wed in Connecticut, rather than accept the civil union law designed to give them the same rights as married couples. It redefines marriage in Conne...

Here's an interesting article from the AP via MSNBC : Raul Castro seems ready to discuss improving relations with Washington. Brother Fidel is clearly uncomfortable with the idea. Do the mixed messages from Cuba's current and former presidents reflect the communist leadership's resistance to moving too quickly? Or are they a ploy for leverage ahead of any talks? As the White House ponders its next move, the question of who calls the shots in Cuba is less clear than ever. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described the delicate situation in comments to Congress on Wednesday, saying the Obama administration needs to be ready to engage with Cuba, even though its government "is one that is very difficult to move." Noting Fidel "contradicted" his brother in an essay published earlier Wednesday, she said, "I think you can see there is beginning to be a debate." Some Cuban dissidents put a more negative spin on the brothers' messages. "...

The Walt Disney Studios will celebrate Earth Day 2009 with the debut of Earth , the first feature-length nature documentary from its new production banner, DisneyNature. This amazing new film is from award-winning British producer/director Alastair Fothergill, whose credits include the Emmy and Peabody award-winning Planet Earth series (BBC and The Discovery Channel) and The Blue Planet . Earth takes moviegoers on an extraordinary tour of our home planet as its never been seen before. Check out the trailer below and make it a point to see the film. I hear it's breath-taking.

By Tab Boldt

Ryan Cross as featured on DNA .

I have to admit that I've lost my zest for Idol. It seems as though the top three have already been decided and everyone else is just filler. That's not how I like my Idol. I want competition. I want suspense. I want less of Kara DioGuardi! Watching the show with so much commentary from the judges is very draining. Lock-jaw especially. In any event, the internets tell me that last night was disco night-- a genre that j'adore! I hear both Kris and Adam Lambert forewent the disco and did other stuff. Interesting to see their spin on music that is essentially perfect already. I haven't seen it, but I already know that I have to add Adam's performance last night to my iPhone. Cheers all.

President Obama signed into law yesterday a measure designed to strengthen national community service efforts by boosting federal funding for thousands of volunteers in fields ranging from clean energy to health care and education. The Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, recently renamed to honor the Massachusetts senator's sponsorship of the measure, will more than triple the number of positions in the AmeriCorps program, from 75,000 to 250,000, by 2017. "Our government can help to rebuild our economy ... [but] we need Americans willing to mentor our eager young children, or care for the sick, or ease the strains of deployment on our military families," Obama said. "All that's required on your part is a willingness to make a difference. And that is, after all, the beauty of service. Anybody can do it." The law creates four national service corps and launches several other initiatives, including, among other things, a "Summer of Service" program t...

Sadly, I wasn't able to make it out to the festival. But both the Miami Herald & Towleroad have some great coverage on the weekends events.

Matthew Paetz as featured on Major Models .

India's child-rights watchdog has sought a report from police investigating allegations by a tabloid that the father of a "Slumdog Millionaire" child star tried to sell her to an undercover reporter, the watchdog's leader told CNN. "We have sought a report from them and will take a decision after seeing it," said Shantha Sinha, who heads the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights. Meanwhile, authorities in Mumbai have recorded the statements of Rafiq Qureshi; his "Slumdog" daughter, Rubina Ali; and his former wife, Khurshida Begum, senior police inspector Prakash Salunke told CNN. Qureshi has denied allegations made in Britain's News of the World that he tried to sell 9-year-old Rubina for £200,000 ($290,000), Salunke said. In her statement, the child-actor favored her father, according to the police. (Via CNN )

By Mike Keefe

Weekend Top Five: #1 17 Again ($24.1M) #2 State of Play ($14.1M) #3 Monsters vs Aliens ($12.9M) #4 Hannah Montana: The Movie ($12.7M) #5 Fast & Furious ($12.3M)

Bruno Rodriguez as featured on DNA .

(Via Oh La La )

Disney World has not been the happiest place on Earth for employees this year. Disney has eliminated 1,900 U.S.-based positions since mid-February. Some 900 salaried employees working at Disney's theme parks in Florida were laid off, and 700 open positions were eliminated, said communications Vice President Mike Griffin. In California, 200 workers were laid off and 100 open positions were cut. Disneyland in California and Disney World are having their behind-the-scenes operations combined in a restructuring, said Griffin. Disney officials say theme parks, the Disney Cruise Line, Disney Vacation Club and off-property resorts have seen some people with decades of experience laid off during the restructuring. Employees let go will receive pay for 60 days; extended medical coverage; and severance packages that vary according to their years of service, said a Disney source. Disney's Griffin said: "These decisions were not made lightly, but are essential to maintaining our leade...

Joshua Sarrazola as featured on DNA .