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Wayne Besen

  • Brokeback Locker Room
    20 January 2006 par (Open-Publishing)

    by Wayne Besen
    A few years ago, I had the privilege of meeting a gay professional basketball player for the Utah Jazz. He desperately wanted to come out of the closet, but feared reprisals and career suicide. The man relayed to me the great difficulty of having an active social life in conservative Utah. As a gigantic, well-known black man in lilywhite Mormon Country, it wasn’t as if could slip into a gay bar unnoticed.
    There were teammates who were aware of his sexual orientation and (…)

  • Intelligence indications and warnings abound as Bush finalizes military attack on Iran
    4 January 2006 par (Open-Publishing)
    22 comments

    By wayne madsen
    January 2, 2006 — Intelligence and military sources in the United States and abroad are reporting on various factors that indicate a U.S. military hit on Iranian nuclear and military installations, that may involve tactical nuclear weapons, is in the final stages of preparation.
    Likely targets for saturation bombing are the Bushehr nuclear power plant (where Russian and other foreign national technicians are present), a uranium mining site in Saghand near the city of (…)

  • Programmed To Be Shallow?
    4 January 2006 par (Open-Publishing)
    1 comment

    by Wayne Besen Giving new meaning to a pyramid scheme, a recent New York Times article discussed how the pharmaceutical industry hires college cheerleaders as its drug representatives. "They don’t ask what the major is," T. Lynn Williamson, a cheering advisor for University of Kentucky, said of the drug companies who turn to the school to find pompom pill pushers. Of course, the pharmaceutical giants would have us believe it’s coincidental that their reps look like runway models. (…)

  • The Best of 2005
    28 December 2005 par (Open-Publishing)

    by Wayne Besen
    This past year, my weekly column has opined on key issues affecting the American people. Heroes have been lauded, hypocrites exposed and crucial gay issues brought to the fore. Here is a snapshot of the tantalizing topics discussed in 2005:
    Adultery in the Military: It is time the military bring back adults who care more about winning wars than declaring a self-righteous war on adultery. We might be doing better in Iraq if the Pentagon started paying more attention to the (…)

  • Leave The Whining To Us
    13 November 2005 par (Open-Publishing)

    by Wayne Besen
    Remember the good old days when liberals were the victims? Today, one has to wear a raincoat not to get splashed by the cascade of crocodile tears cried by whiney conservatives plaintively screaming how they have been wronged. Has there ever been a wimpier group in the history of politics?
    This week, a dozen AIDS activists reportedly wearing body condoms were arrested after storming the Family Research Council’s Washington headquarters to protest the group’s deadly (…)

  • Borking Alito Requires Democratic Agenda
    9 November 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
    1 comment

    by Wayne Besen
    By nominating a man known as "Scalia-lite" for the Supreme Court, President George W. Bush may have picked a fight he is going to lose, unless the Democrats prove to be losers. The choice of Samuel A. Alito, a right wing stalwart, to replace the moderate Sandra Day O’Connor is at once, audaciously brazen, spit-in-the eye insulting, nakedly partisan and just plain dumb.
    Bad News Bush has watched his poll numbers sink faster than New Orleans. Yet, he makes a choice of (…)

  • The Priest Made Me Gay
    30 October 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
    3 comments

    by Wayne Besen
    A New York socialite who claims a priest turned him into a sodomite is suing the Catholic Church for $5 million. J. David Enright IV, 51, says Rev. Joseph Romano molested him as a 7-year-old boy at summer camp, and as a result he was unable to live as a suburban heterosexual.
    "Romano bent my life," Enright told the New York Post. "I believe my life would be very different now. I’d probably be married, living in Greenwich, with four children in boarding school. I had a (…)

  • Who Will End Up In The Pit Bull’s Doghouse?
    29 October 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
    1 comment

    by Wayne Besen
    President Bush once called his mystery Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers "a pit bull in size six shoes." This courtroom Cujo is going to bite someone in the rear, and the roiling debate is whether she takes a chunk out of the right or left cheek.
    No one really knows, and if the John Roberts confirmation hearings are any indication, a tight leash and a muzzle will keep us from finding out the answer before she is confirmed. "We just don’t know anything about her," said (…)

  • Gay Ghettos Are In Transition
    29 September 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
    3 comments

    by Wayne Besen
    If only the coffee shop Big Cup had changed its name to the Luxurious Latte it might have survived. Instead, the cornerstone of New York’s gay Chelsea neighborhood closed shop earlier this month after the landlord raised the rent from $16,500 to $21,500. The downfall of the Big Cup is indicative of dramatic changes taking place in gayborhoods across America, where artists are pushed out, as art dealers move in.
    From San Francisco’s Castro District to Provincetown, the hard (…)

  • The Big Empty &The Big Easy
    24 September 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
    1 comment

    by Wayne Besen
    I look out of my window in Brooklyn and see a beam of light soaring skyward from the World Trade Center site. Following the tragedy of 9-11, I found this luminous image greatly inspiring, as it represented America’s steely determination to rebuild the Twin Towers and defeat Al Qaeda.
    Four years later, this grand incandescent spectacle is just as symbolic. This time, however, it highlights George W. Bush’s utter failure to capitalize on the catastrophe to unify America and (…)