The headlines are in and the buzz is beginning to build. Occupy London (formerly known as Occupy London Stock Exchange, or Occupy LSX) have set up a new protest camp in London’s Hampstead Heath, one of the city’s busiest public parks.

Hampstead Heath is popular with families, tourists, sun seekers and dog-walkers, but the park also happens to be a renowned cruising spot popular with the local gay community, a fact which has not gone unnoticed by the new Occupy camp.

It appears that tensions between the two communities are on the rise - or are they?

A recent news item posted by the gay-interest site Pink News suggests that they may be, quoting from a protester at the Hampsted Heath camp:

Timothy Sullivan, a 46-year-old protester, responded to potential objections to the group’s presence by saying they would improve safety by deterring gay cruising on the Heath.

He told the paper: “We could vaporise that problem just being here and let people enjoy their open space again.”

As would be imagined, these comments have not gone down well with many in the gay community. Or with other communities, for that matter, as a lot of commentators see this story as proof of the Occupy movement’s ill-founded logic, and the stereotype of protesters as “unwashed” (seeing as they will be camping out in a public park for months on end.)

But is there more to this than the initial reports suggest?

As with anything this neatly packaged, the motives of the site doing the reporting should be examined. While gay people should be very vigilant against perceived homophobia, the cynic in me wonders if this is yet another non-story that has been blown out of all proportion and designed to inspire “victim-rage” in a minority, thus drawing more advertising hits?

Because it seems awfully silly of a movement who claim to represent 99% of the world’s population to make comments that single out, and make targets of, a specific minority (a minority who, lest we forget, are already facing their own tribulations.) The Occupy movement itself has been somewhat of a whipping boy in certain corners of the internet and the oldstream media, who seem intent on discrediting the movement, something that has been made much easier by Occupy’s nebulous nature.

However, Ronan McNern, a gay member of the Occupy London press team, has said today:

“{These comments] are not representative of Occupy London, and against our own Safer Spaces Policy, which is very clear:

“Racism, as well as ageism, homophobia, sexism, transphobia, ableism or prejudice based on ethnicity, nationality, class, gender, gender presentation, language ability, asylum status or religious affiliation is unacceptable and will be challenged.” [http://occupylondon.org.uk/about/safer-space-policy)

Occupy is made up of individuals and these are the comments of an individual - comments that run contrary to positions decided by Occupy in its very earliest days and remain at the core of how we relate to and show respect for one another. I will be speaking with him personally (have left a voicemail with him), as I know will others. Having met and chatted with him briefly I thought he was a good guy and I was very surprised to hear these comments. There is the potential that the words reported weren’t exactly what he meant to say, but whatever the case he will be spoken with so that he gains a clearer understanding of the history of Hampstead Heath, the fight for gay/queer rights and the stigma that has had to be overcome, and that still continues.

I’ve heard that other members of the Occupy Nomad camp have already expressed serious concerns regarding these comments. As a movement, it is essential that we challenge the language and assumptions that appear to have been made in the comments that appeared in the article - while Occupy is open to all, it is not open to all behaviours."

Sure, there may be many reasons to disagree with the methods of the Occupy movement (if not the motives, per se) and the confusion surrounding the reporting of this issue ties in strongly with that, but with summer rolling back 'round and people getting ready to get protesting again, it will serve us well to keep our media-cynicism levels at an all-time high. Because I think we are going to see a lot more of this kind of thing.

Occupy London have an official statement addressing the comments made by Timothy Sullivan on their website..

With thanks to Paul Shetler.

 
When she found him in the early hours of the morning, it seemed as if he was sleeping. Lying on the bed, with an ink-marked script beside him. Still dressed, his shoes carelessly kicked off, a television flickering in the corner. The room smelled of smoke and sweat. She noticed the table lamp was still on, his pack of cigarettes, an overfilled ashtray. It seemed as if he’d fallen asleep as he worked on his latest screenplay Rosa L., a film about the revolutionary socialist Rosa Luxemburg. He looked pale. An unlit cigarette drooped from his lips, a small trickle of blood glistened from one nostril. For four years, Juliane Lorenz had been his partner, she had seen him tired out like this before, falling asleep while working late at night, geed-up by cocaine and alcohol, but this time there was something different. Juliane listened. He was too quiet. When he slept he snored. But now, all she heard - the ticking clock, the television, the hush of traffic outside - was his silence. Rainer Werner Fassbinder was dead.

It’s still hard to believe Fassbinder managed to do so much in his short thirty-seven years of life. That fact he was working on a script at the moment he died, says everything about his dedication to his art. In less than fifteen years, Fassbinder made forty feature films, three short films; four TV series, twenty-four stage plays and four radio plays. He also acted in thirty-six productions and worked scriptwriter, cameraman, composer, designer, editor, producer and theater manager.

Born into a middle class family, his father was a doctor who worked near Munich’s red light district. His mother helped with her husband, and neither had much time for their son. After their divorce, Fassbinder lived with his mother, who worked as a translator but was often absent, hospitalized with tuberculosis. Then, Fassbinder spent his time with neighbors, listening to their life stories or, going on his own to the cinema - he later claimed he saw a film a day during his childhood.

“The cinema was the family life I never had at home.”

His favorite films were melodramas, his favorite director Douglas Sirk, of whom Fassbinder said:

“The important thing to learn from Douglas Sirk’s movies is that on the screen you are allowed to, or better still, supposed to, enlarge people’s ordinary feelings—as small as they may be—as much as possible.”

Fassbinder started writing plays, and read about the Spanish playwright Lope de Vega, who had over 1,800 plays attributed to him. This became the gold standard to which Fassbinder aimed his ambitions. At eighteen, he joined a theater group, and the first hint of his incredible talents and ambitions became apparent.

Within two months of joining the Action Theater group, he became its leader. This proved too much for other, older members, who led to the group’s disbandment. Fassbinder then created a new company and drew together a team, or family of actors - Peer Raben, Harry Baer, Kurt Raab, Hanna Schygulla and Irm Hermann - who were to work with him until his death.

His first movie was a “deconstruction of the gangster films”, called Love is Colder than Death, it caused considerable controversy at its premiere at the Berlin Film Festival in 1969, where Fassbinder was jeered and denounced as a “dilletante” by members of the audience. Even so, it established his reputation as a talent to watch, and led on to his next film,  Katzelmacher, which was adapted from his stage play. It was the start of his movie career that saw such an unparalleled output. Everything in Fassbinder’s life went towards his film-making. He was often ruthless and allegedly pimped some of the theater group actresses to raise money for his films.

“I would like to build a house with my films. Some are the cellars, others the walls, still others the windows. But I hope in the end it will be a house.”

The turning point came in 1971 with the release of The Merchant of the Four Seasons, the tale of a merchant who is slowly destroyed by circumstances beyond his control. the story epitomized Fassbinder’s world view as tragedy. Life was battled out against insurmountable odds, at great cost to its players. Though his films were often described as “bleak”, I never found them less than engrossing, for the theme to all his films is love - the cost love has on us all.

During the 1970s and 1980s, Fassbinder made such unforgettable films as The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972) (adapted form his play); World on a Wire (1973); his first major international success Fear Eats the Soul (1974), the story of love between an older woman and Moroccan immigrant, played by Fassbinder’s then lover El Hadi ben Salem; Effi Briest (1974); Fox and His Friends (1975); Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven (1975); Despair, his first English film, with a script adapted by Tom Stoppard form the novel by Vladimir Nabokov; In a Year of Thirteen Moons (1978), Fassbinder’s bleakest and personal movie, made in response to the suicide of his lover, Armin Meier; The Marriage of Maria Braun (1978), which became a breakthrough movie in America; Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980), a 13-hour TV series adapted form Alfred Döblin’s novel; Lili Marleen (1981), another big budget English movie; Veronika Voss (1982) which was inspired by Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard; and his last major feature, which progressed cinematic narrative in a new and original way, Querelle (1982), adapted form the novel by Jean Genet. Fassbinder had just finished editing Querelle when he died.

The official cause of his death was “an overdose of cocaine and sleeping pills”. The cost of his lifestyle and his ambition took too great a toll. Before he died, his body had bloated from an excess of drink, food and drugs, and he once said, he became fat to make it harder to be loved. Fassbinder used his body, as he used chain-smoking, or his excessive drinking, as means to protect and distance himself from others. His sense of being unloved or, of being unworthy of love, stemmed from the parental indifference of his childhood. When he was older, he often treated his lovers and those closest to him badly, testing their loyalty and love for him. Emotionally, Fassbinder was childlike, as he always searched for that imagined lack, which would make him feel loved. It was this, Fassbinder’s own emotional biography that underscored his films.

Thirty years after his death, we can more fully appreciate the scale and quality of Fassbinder’s genius; and see the real beauty of the man who was Rainer Werner Fassbinder.
 

 
Talk gay? Dress gay?

Can this be real???

Joe.My.God reader Clay quipped:

“it’s all fun and games until someone gets a prick in their eye”

 
Wow. Just wow. This is one of those astonishing things where you watch it and your brain just freezes for a few moments while you try to make sense of what you just saw.

I know the Bible’s right, somebody’s wrong
I know the Bible’s right, somebody’s wrong

Aint no homos going to make it to heaven

These kids get a standing ovation, too, from a roomful of ADULTS. If this doesn’t send chills down your spine, nothing ever will.
 

 
This will take your breath way!

Last night CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° show saw the debut on the world television stage of Stacey Pritchard, one of the pinhead Christianists who attends the Providence Road Baptist Church in North Carolina. Providence Road has been getting a lot of unwanted (?) attention lately due to Pastor Charles “Kill the Queers” Worley’s recent sermon there about putting gays and lesbians inside of an electric fence until they died. Last night Pritchard went on CNN to defend Worley and the result was TV magic!

It is AMAZING just how stubbornly impervious this woman is to basic facts. It’s like she has an impenetrable bubble all around her where no intelligence can get in or out (Only Cheetos, Mountain Dew and Domino’s pizza can pierce her force field of ignorance. I don’t know what happens on the other end and I don’t want to know).

Mark my words, this is a bravura, star-making appearance by one of American’s most dreadfully dumb people. Of course, I jest, there might be people stupider than Stacey in some dark, backwoods"holler” of America, but do they have her sneering, know-nothing Tea party charisma? Her fashion sense? Her gift of gab?

I don’t think so. A STAR IS BORN.

This woman is already an ICON OF STUPIDITY, even if she doesn’t know what that means…

Why, Stacey Pritchard, you just might be the female equivalent to Joe the Plumber! (Secretly I think you’re better than he is!). Please run for US Congress in your state (you’d win!) and caucus with Michele Bachmann, Allen West, Steve King and your North Carolina home girl/soul sister in MENSA, Virginia Foxx! A Sarah Palin endorsement must be imminent. The abjectly stupid gotta stick together!

“Hey Stacey, phone for you. A guy callin’ ‘eemself Roger Ailes wants to offer yew a contract on the Fox News…”
 

 
Anyone care to hazard a guess at why he’s crying?

Via RightWing Watch:

The Family Research Council is currently hosting its annual Watchmen on the Wall Pastors Briefing in Washington DC, featuring a variety of Religious Right leaders and members of Congress working to mobilize pastors from across the nation.

Today, in between speakers, FRC handed the floor over to Jesse Connors so that he could promote his web-based evangelism tool called TrueLife.org which claims to offer “reliable answers from a biblical worldview via the Web that are non-threatening and easy to understand and directs people to church.”

Connors’ service seems to revolve around producing, for a fee, personalized business cards that pastors can hand out, encouraging people to visit the True Life website where they can learn more about Jesus and the Bible and find local churches.  At least, that was the best we could discern, as it was hard to know just what Connors was talking about as he grew increasingly emotional while discussing the success of the effort and demonstrating a video about struggling with homosexuality.

Get some help, Mary!

I feel really sorry for this fuckin’ guy.
 

 
Pastor Charles Worley is the dumbshit dipsy doodle-bug old Christian guy who called for “lesbians and queers”—millions and millions of them, apparently—to be penned up inside electric fences until they all die. A videotape of Worley’s words have become a viral sensation on YouTube, making the pastor a laughingstock the world over. Now some of the members of Worley’s Providence Road Baptist Church in North Carolina are speaking out in the old coot’s defense. Via Raw Story:

Geneva Sims told WCNC that she had been listening to Pastor Charles Worley’s sermon’s since the 1970s and agrees with the message.

“He had every right to say what he said about putting them in a pen and giving them food,” Sims explained. “The Bible says they are worthy of death. He is preaching God’s word.”

Church member Stacey Pritchard agreed that Worley was just speaking the truth.

“Sometimes you’ve got to be scared straight,” she said. “He is trying to save those people from Hell.”

So says a woman who listens to hate speech every Sunday and mistakes it for religion!

In a sense, though, as appalling and moronic and as totally idiotic as Worley and his minions are, they are, IN FACT, “doing the Lord’s work” as Faith in America Executive Director Brent Childers told WCNC:

“When [LGBT youth] see this type of rhetoric coming from a so-called Christian pastor, they aren’t going to want anything to do with the church—now or in the future. If you defend this pastor’s comments, you are mocking God’s love, God’s understanding and God’s knowledge.”

Whether they realize it or not—and clearly they are not bright enough to have noticed—these bigoted, buffoonish Christianist pukes, like the Westboro Baptist Church before them, are only furthering their enemies’ cause.

Here’s to stupid people! Viva l’Idiocracy!

Catawba Valley Citizens Against Hate have organized a protest at Worley’s Providence Road Baptist Church this coming Sunday at 10 am.
 

 
What fresh madness is this? Well, apparently it’s the Japanese version of Rickrolling, “switch and bait” trolling using footage from American gay wrestling porn instead of Rick Astley, and it has been a relatively popular meme over there for the last few years.

As you can imagine from that description, it’s pretty fucking nuts. And very NSFW.

Much of this “wrestling series” stars a guy called Billy Herrington, who has become such a cult figure in Japan that a doll has been made in his honour (above, part of the “panty edition”.) You may have seen some of these kinds of clips before, in particular a 3D computer graphic version of Herrinton riding a clone of himself like a Segway, chasing after a guy on a steamroller, and thought “what the fuck am I watching?” Well, friends, wonder no more, thanks to the folks at Know Your Meme (Herrington also has his own Wiki page with more info.)

Here’s a great example of the wrestling series, an edit of a film called Bayollante, supposedly a parody of Bayonette. Even though this is completely made up, I love this quasi-review-cum-description by YouTube commenter skidreckums:

With a palette of visual effects that would make James Cameron blush and some of the most bone-crunching sound effects to be found outside of a Jell-O factory, Bayollante 4 leaves little to be imagined or desired by anyone lucky enough to stumble across this gem in their local video store’s import bargain bin. Fans of Bart Howard’s 1954 vocal jazz standard, Fly Me to the Moon, will also appreciate the subtle yet fully modern remix heading the otherwise brutal soundtrack. I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you that SEGAY really has outdone themselves this time. Just writing this review has gotten me wondering if I will ever be able to water my motorcycle with peace of mind again. The great thing about watching Bayollante 4 - Trillion Real Handguns isn’t seeing the beefcakes smack each other down with colorful energy attacks and hard gay magical summons, it’s showing everyone online that I did. It’s official, I’ll never be able to watch anything else again.

Bayollante - Stylish Gay Wrestling (in Japanese) - NSFW:
 

 
Yet another example of why no self-respecting young person with a lick of sense wants anything to do with American-style Christianity as North Carolina “Christian” minister Charles L. Worley, of the Providence Road Baptist Church provides the latest reason to flee the faith:

“I figured a way to get rid of all the lesbians and queers,” he says in his sermon, delivered on May 13. “Build a great, big, large fence — 150 or 100 mile long — put all the lesbians in there, [drop some food down] … Do the same thing for the queers and the homosexuals and have that fence electrified so they can’t get out… And you know what, in a few years, they’ll die out.”

Pastor Worley apparently isn’t bright enough to know where gay people come from, and yet this fucking fool seems to think his opinion is important enough to share with the rest of us…

There will be a peaceful protest against Worley’s hate-mongering by the Catawba Valley Citizens Against Hate on Sunday, May 27.

Regardless if you are gay or straight, Christian or not… this rhetoric is dangerous and harmful. Taking a peaceful stand for our right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is paramount.

More details about the protest will be posted to this page soon. Please, only RSVP if you plan to come. If you are out of town, and support our cause but will not be coming to the event, please do not RSVP. In lieu of participating in this event, you can email Pastor Worley at pastor@prbcnc.com, to let him know what you think of his rhetoric. Remember, making threats against Pastor Worley will not help our cause and may result in criminal charges against you. Keep your message clean, clear and peaceful.

Here’s how crazy old fuck Worley responded to the new of the protest:

We offer NO apologies in believing the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible is the inerrant Word of God. If you live in this area or are ever passing through, I invite you to come visit with us at Providence Road Baptist Church.

Don’ ever change, Rev, you’re doing your cause so much more harm than good…

If you’d like to have a chat with Pastor Worley you can call him on 828-428-2518.
 

Via Towleroad

 
On a blog post that’s been shared tens of thousands of times in the past few days, Rachel Held Evans, author of A Year of Biblical Womanhood writes of how Christianist haters like Tony Perkins, Maggie Gallagher and Bryan Fischer are forcing younger Christians to chose between their gay friends and their religion.

From “How to win a culture war and lose a generation”:

When asked by The Barna Group what words or phrases best describe Christianity, the top response among Americans ages 16-29 was “antihomosexual.” For a staggering 91 percent of non-Christians, this was the first word that came to their mind when asked about the Christian faith. The same was true for 80 percent of young churchgoers. (The next most common negative images? : “judgmental,” “hypocritical,” and “too involved in politics.”)

In the book that documents these findings, titled unChristian, David Kinnaman writes: “The gay issue has become the ‘big one,’ the negative image most likely to be intertwined with Christianity’s reputation. It is also the dimensions that most clearly demonstrates the unchristian faith to young people today, surfacing in a spate of negative perceptions: judgmental, bigoted, sheltered, right-wingers, hypocritical, insincere, and uncaring. Outsiders say [Christian] hostility toward gays… has become virtually synonymous with the Christian faith.”

Later research, documented in Kinnaman’s You Lost Me, reveals that one of the top reasons 59 percent of young adults with a Christian background have left the church is because they perceive the church to be too exclusive, particularly regarding their LGBT friends. Eight million twenty-somethings have left the church, and this is one reason why.

Rachel Held Evans has closed comments on her essay, writing “I want to keep this a safe place for conversation.”

You won’t wonder why after you’ve read the responses from some of her supposedly Christian readers…
 

 
Via Dan Savage/Joe.My.God