Picture of the Day - 219

"We Make This World Our Hell" by Bronson Twine

If you wish to see more of Bronson's photography, please visit his Flickr photostream here.

The New & Improved Zeus Gay Club Opens

Just be there!

The Duo Birthday Bash, November 15, 1-3 PM SLT

Why: Celebrating Tomais Ashdene's 6th and Dejerrity Mycron's 8th rezdays
When: November 15, 2014, 1-3 pm SLT
Where: Southern Charm sim (landmark will follow at a later date)
What (to wear): The theme of the party is Sci-Fi and Alien Invasion (but you will be welcome in whatever you choose).
What (to bring): No gifts necessary, but if you feel inclined please use the gift jar that will be rezzed. All donations eill be forwarded to The Ali Forney Center for homeless LGBT youth.
Who: All of our family and friends and their families and friends and their families and friends ad infinitum...

Featuring The Big Boom Bounce Sound of DJ Ryder Yowman and the something-something sound of DJ Rylan Sirnah..

The Ali Forney Center

#ProudofEdgars

I proudly announce I'am gay... Good luck all of you...
— Edgars Rinkēvičs (@edgarsrinkevics) November 6, 2014

(via J.M.G.)

"Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkēvičs announced Thursday that he was gay, breaking a barrier in Eastern Europe’s socially conservative political arena. The declaration, made via a cheerful Twitter posting, immediately gave gay rights advocates a prominent voice in post-Soviet Eastern Europe. The region — where openly gay public figures are a rarity — has significantly lagged behind the United States and Western Europe in its acceptance of same-sex relationships. The announcement came less than two months before Latvia assumes the European Union’s rotating presidency on Jan. 1, giving Rinkevics an even higher-profile platform from which to push for more tolerance for same-sex relationships."

The Advocate's Person of the Year: Little Father

Driving the governmental, religious, and popular disdain for gays and lesbians, the Russian president became the single greatest threat to LGBTs in the world in 2014.

“Imagine a boy who dreams of being a KGB officer, when everyone else wants to be a cosmonaut.”

This quote appears early in The Man Without a Face, Masha Gessen’s 2012 biography of Vladimir Putin. It’s as succinct and illuminating a characterization of the Russian president as you’re likely to find. The KGB, after all, perfected the thuggery, espionage, and aimless bureaucracy that are hallmarks of Putin’s regime. The agency’s crackdown on dissidents offered a blueprint for Putin’s own strongman excesses. That he aspired to such a career as a child tells us something useful about his psychopathology: This is a man hardwired to intimidate.

Nowhere is this tendency more apparent than in his crusade against LGBT Russians. Since winning a third term in 2012, Putin has become ever more autocratic, and his antigay ideology ever more extreme. In June 2013, he signed the infamous antigay propaganda bill that criminalizes the “distribution of information…aimed at the formation among minors of nontraditional sexual attitudes,” with nontraditional meaning anything other than heterosexual. Individual violators are fined anywhere between $120 and $150, while NGOs and corporations can incur fines as high as $30,000. International outrage flared in the months before the Sochi Olympics, in response to which Putin reassured the gay and lesbian community they had nothing to fear as long as they left Russia’s children in peace.

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Read the full article here:  The Advocate's Person of the Year: Vladimir Putin

Picture of the Day - 218

"Tequila Sunrise" by Tomais Ashdene

If you wish to see more of Tomais' photography, please visit his Flickr photostream here.