Chris Brown denies anti-gay slur and pleads not guilty to assault charges

R&B star Chris Brown is denying claims of making a homophobic slur during an alleged attack on a man outside a Washington DC hotel.
 
The incident occurred at around 4.30am on Sunday morning.
TMZ.com reports a law enforcement source claimed that the R&B star said, “I’m not into this gay shit, I’m into boxing,” before punching the alleged victim.

But a friend close to the controversial rapper insisted: “Chris is many things, but NOT homophobic.
“He is upset that he’s been quoted as making any kind of homophobic comment and is desperate to set the record straight.”

Brown, 24, has been released following his arrest; the charges have been reduced from a felony to a less serious misdemeanour.
The singer’s lawyer, Danny Onorato, said: “Christopher Brown committed no crime.
“We understand that his security staff acted to protect Mr Brown and Mr Brown’s property as he was authorised to do under District of Columbia law.

“We are confident that Mr Brown will be exonerated of any wrongdoing.”
According to court documents, the man told police he’d tried to push his way into a photograph Brown was taking with a woman and her friend.

Parker Adams, 20, from Maryland, claimed he was punched by both Brown and his bodyguard Chris Hollosy before Brown boarded his tour bus.
The star is due back in court on 25 November.

Brown recently spoke out in support of gay rights – but he also has a history of making anti-gay remarks when he loses his temper.
The singer became embroiled in a long-running feud with Frank Ocean earlier this year following an altercation where homophobic language was allegedly used by one of Brown’s entourage.

In August, the ‘Don’t Wake Me Up’ star was ordered to do 1,000 hours of community service after his probation stemming from a 2009 assault on his ex-girlfriend Rihanna was restored.

Chris Brown Arrested for Antigay Assault

The R&B singer will go on trial today for allegedly assaulting a 20-year-old man last weekend in Washington, D.C.

Chris Brown will stand trial today for a charge of felony assault against a man who Brown perceived to be gay.
The Grammy Award-winning singer allegedly punched the man in the face early Sunday morning outside of the W Hotel in Washington, D.C., after the victim, Issac Adams Parker, tried to jump into a photograph being taken of Brown and a witness, reports to the Associated Press.

The report notes that Brown, who was in D.C. to perform at a club, said, "I'm not into that gay shit,” and "I feel like boxing," before punching the 20-year-old man in the face. Brown’s companion and supposed bodyguard, Christopher Hollosy, 35, also stepped into the fray and punched Parker in the face. Officials say the incident occurred at around 4:30 a.m
.
Parker was treated for his injuries, including a broken nose, at a local hospital and released Sunday. Police say the felony charge is related to the extent of the damage Parker sustained.

The R&B singer is currently on probation, which he initially received for assaulting Rihanna, his girlfriend at the time, in 2009. The probation was reinstated in August, after his involvement with an alleged hit-and-run occurrence.

He also made headlines in January for an altercation with gay singer Frank Ocean, who claims he suffered an injury to his hand during the incident, which occurred January 2013 in the parking lot of a Hollywood recording studio. No formal charges were filed by Ocean.

Texas Judge Nixes Republican Antigay Dogma, Crosses to Democrats

I cannot tolerate a political party that demeans Texans based on their sexual orientation, the color of their skin, or their economic status,' says Carlo Key.

Judge Carlo Key

A Texas judge says he’s leaving the Republican Party and becoming a Democrat, in part because of the Republicans’ antigay stances.

“I cannot tolerate a political party that demeans Texans based on their sexual orientation, the color of their skin, or their economic status,” said Carlo Key, a judge in Bexar County, which includes San Antonio, in a campaign ad released Monday.

 “For too long,” he added, “the Republican Party has been at war with itself. Rational Republican beliefs have given way to ideological character assassination. Pragmatism and principle have been overtaken by pettiness and bigotry.”

He also objected to the recent federal government shutdown and the Republican fight against health care reform. “I cannot place my name on the ballot of the political party that is proud to destroy the lives of hundreds of thousands of federal workers over the vain attempt to repeal a law that would provide health care for millions of people throughout our country,” he said.

Key also held a press conference Monday to announce his change of party. “Make no mistake, I did not leave the Republican Party, it left me,” Key said, according to the San Antonio Express-News. “My principles have led me to the Democratic Party, and my only hope is that more people of principle will follow me.” He was joined at the press conference by several prominent Texas Democrats, including Congressman Joaquin Castro.

Key has been a Bexar County Court-at-Law judge since 2010 and was an attorney before that. He will run for reelection as a Democrat next year. There had been speculation about him switching parties after he attended a recent fund-raiser for Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Wendy Davis, currently a state senator who gained a higher profile this year with her filibuster for abortion rights.

Documentary About LGBT In Uganda Doing Wonders Across Africa And U.S.

A new documentary explores the American connection to the virulently homophobic climate in Uganda.

When people with opposing viewpoints engage in dialogue, change is possible. It doesn’t happen all the time, or always easily, but it happens.
That’s what filmmaker Roger Ross Williams is seeing with the dialogue around God Loves Uganda, his powerful new documentary about American fundamentalist Christians’ export of homophobia to Africa.
“The most amazing thing happened at this recent screening in Malawi,” says Williams, whose film has been shown around the world and is now having a theatrical release in the U.S.
After a group of clergy and laypeople, the latter largely LGBT but closeted, viewed the movie, they engaged in a nationally broadcast debate about homosexuality, with most of the religious leaders condemning it. But then a few of the LGBT people in the audience made coming-out statements, and one of the ministers recanted the antigay comments he had made earlier. “I’m withdrawing my statement,” he said. “Gays and lesbians are good.”
“That’s why I made the film — moments like that,” says Williams. The minister who recanted said he’d never met a gay person, at least one he knew was gay and the film and the dialogue made him realize they were humans like him. “They had built up this monster in their minds,” Williams says of the religious leaders.
In making God Loves Uganda, Williams found that many of the fundamentalist Christians spreading their antigay dogma abroad are not monsters either, although their message is a harmful one.
“What really surprised me was how nice and well-mannered the fundamentalist evangelicals were,” he says. “I had in my mind, as a gay man, demonized them, the same way they had demonized us. … They’re really nice and you like them, and they’re preaching something really dangerous and don’t even realize it’s dangerous.”

Antigay Pundit Compares LGBTs to Terrorists, Anorexics, and Voldemort.

The managing editor of World Net Daily made bold and incendiary comparisons in a recent op-ed.
David Kupelian, the managing editor of World Net Daily, published a vehemently anti-LGBT column Sunday on the conservative news site.
The op-ed, titled “Amputating Healthy Organs ‘The New Normal,’” bemoaned the influence of the “powerful LGBT lobby” and compared transgender people to terrorists and anorexics.

“If I suggested genetics or biochemical imbalances were responsible, you would laugh,” Kupelian stated, comparing transgender identity to the indoctrination of children to terrorism. “Little jihadists are created when, from an early age, they are continually indoctrinated, intimidated, degraded, rewarded, tempted, lied to, punished, threatened and praised (for reinforcement) — until their little developing minds and emotions are not their own anymore. They have a new implanted identity, very different from the one they were born with.”

He also likened the LGBT rights movement to a “burgeoning form of totalitarianism,” a “madness,” that “like Voldemort,” the evil antagonist of the Harry Potter series, the public is afraid to name or address.
“This revolutionary sexual anarchy movement, which more than any other ideology, including Marxism, Islam or atheism, has the potential of permanently corrupting our nation’s core ‘operating system’ called the family — is the one issue that almost everybody is afraid to confront,” Kupelian continued.
“There is no end to the madness, because madness has no end — it’s a black hole with no bottom,” he wrote.

Meet the First Openly Gay NCAA Division II Basketball Star

Derek Schell talks about bravery, honesty, and taking it to the court in his op-ed for OutSports.

LGBT athletic news outlet OutSports kicked off National Coming Out Week with an impressive and eloquent article written by the 22-year-old Hillsdale College senior who just became the first out male basketball player in Division II of the NCAA.

Derek Schell is a guard for the Hillsdale College Chargers and an international business major. And as of last month, he's out to his coaches, teammates, and classmates at his liberal arts college in Hillsdale, Mich. 

In his articulate op-ed, Schell recounts his high school experience as a "star athlete and a successful student" at a prestigious Catholic school, acknowledging that for most 17-year-olds, that situation would be a "dream come true."

"For me, it was a nightmare," Schell writes. "I became part of a group of people from whom certain things were expected, including being honor roll students and varsity athletes. … I hid who I was so that I wouldn't let other people down. It was much later that I realized that the problem was not that I didn't fit into my world the way that I wanted to. The problem was that my world didn't fit who I was. It fit the guy I was trying to be, but it didn't fit Derek."

Schell reveals his lengthy and emotional coming-out process, valiantly struggling to overcome stereotypes that made him believe he couldn't be an athlete and be gay; or be gay and Christian. Alongside his attraction to other men, Schell also developed what he calls an "emotional connection" to creative outlets like music, art, and photography.

"Those feelings conflicted with my understanding of being an athlete and I couldn’t figure out how to make those two concepts coexist," he writes. "Who I was becoming contradicted who I thought I was supposed to become."

Schell points out that three years ago, he promised himself he would never reveal his secret to anyone. But since then, with the support of his family, his boyfriend, and even classmates at his self-described "conservative college," Schell has come to realize that he "could be an athlete, be a friend, be a son, be a brother, be an artist, and be gay as well."

"I could even be a huge Glee fan too," he writes. "There never needed to be differentiation between the various aspects of my life and personality. One is not mutually exclusive of the other, and being all of these things, all at once, makes me who I am."

U.S. Olympic Committee Adds Sexual Orientation to Nondiscrimination Code

The United States Olympic Committee announced that it has expanded its existing nondiscrimination policy to include protections for sexual orientation.

 Scott Blackmun, CEO of the U.S. Olympic Committee.

Partially in response to Russia's increasingly violent anti-LGBT climate in the run-up to the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, the U.S. Olympic Committee today announced that it's amended its code of conduct to expressly prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, reports BuzzFeed. 

Scott Blackmun, the USOC's chief executive officer, announced the news at an assembly Friday, citing Russia's recently enacted nationwide ban on "propaganda of nontraditional sexual relationships" in front of minors, which has seen LGBT Russians and tourists arrested, beaten, and harassed for waving rainbow flags or speaking out in support of the LGBT community.  

"I want to address the legislation in Russia prohibiting advocacy of nontraditional relationships among minors," said Blackmun. "Even though we have been assured by the IOC that the new law will not directly impact anybody in Russia for the Games, it is important for us to emphasize that we believe the law is inconsistent with the fundamental principles of the Olympic and Paralympic movements. To bring that point home, yesterday, our board voted to amend the USOC’s code of conduct to include specific mention of sexual orientation in our own nondiscrimination policy."

Blackmun clarified that the USOC does not support the so-called gay propaganda law, and pointed to American Olympians who've recently spoken out against Russia's antigay climate, including Nick Symmonds and Bode Miller. 

Blackmun also said the USOC is seeking "more clarity" from the International Olympic Committee on what will and will not be considered violations of an Olympic charter provision that bans "demonstration or political, religious, or racial propaganda," from "any Olympic sites, venues, or other areas." 

After asking for repeated "assurances" that Russia's anti-LGBT laws won't impact Olympic athletes and spectators, the IOC said in September that it is "completely satisfied" with vague promises from Russian diplomats that LGBT athletes and spectators will be safe during the Winter Games. Notably, the IOC's charter does not enumerate sexual orientation among its protected traits in its nondiscrimination policy.

Uganda: Petition and court case urge arrest of three for persecution of gay peopleM

Mr. Magembe Norman, says he received death threats after filing the petition.

A petition and court case have been filed to urge for the arrest of three men  ”for the persecution of gays” in the country.

Magembe Norman, who is straight, filed a complaint to the International Criminal Court against three Ugandans, David Bahati, a Ugandan MP, Giles Muhame, editor of Rolling Stone, which publishes identities of people suspected of being gay, and Martin Ssempa, and anti-gay pastor.

Mr Norman heard confirmation from the ICC on 9 September, that it is looking into the complaint, and that it was undecided whether to proceed with an investigation.

He has since started a change.org petition urging the court to undertake an investigation of the three named in the complaint.
The petition calls on the ICC to ”Investigate and Prosecute The Top 3 Homophobic Ugandans for Crimes against humanity”.
Mr Norman said he was kicked out of his home by his father, and that he had received death threats for being seen “as someone who betrayed Uganda.”
The controversial “kill the gays” bill was first introduced in 2009 by MP David Bahati, but has yet to gain parliamentary approval.
It specifies long jail sentences for those convicted of same-sex sexual acts and in certain cases has suggested the death penalty.