More than 80 gay or bisexual men from around New Zealand have put themselves forward for the Gay Men’s Health Safe Sex Poster Boy competition.

Entries were accepted online throughout the month of September, under one of six categories: Party Boy, Bear/Cub/Leather, Boy Next Door/Regular Guy, Sportsman, Businessman/Professional, and Alternative.

“We’re very pleased with the response,” says Douglas Jenkin, National Campaigns Co-ordinator for the New Zealand AIDS Foundation. “We’ve had men enter from rural areas as well as cities, across all the categories, and a wide age range. Our youngest entrant is 18 and our oldest is 69.”

A requirement of entry was consistent use of condoms for anal sex, the best method for preventing transmission of HIV between men. Entrants were asked to supply their own reasons why using condoms is important for them.

“Many entrants spoke of the need to protect their health as one of the reasons why they use condoms, but some also had personal experience of the epidemic, such as knowing someone who is HIV positive,” Jenkin says. “This highlights the importance of making sure the safe sex message is personally relevant for all gay and bisexual men, which is one of the aims of this contest.”

Safe Sex Poster Boy will now proceed into the next phase, which involves entrants being interviewed on-camera before a panel of their peers during the month of October. Selections from the interviews will appear on www.safesexposterboy.co.nz.

“This will act as a dry run for the semi-finals, which will be held in venues in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch,” Jenkin explains. “Then it’s up to our communities to decide who will be the safe sex poster boys for 2008!”

Article courtesy of: NY Times

LOS ANGELES- The popular online dating service eHarmony was sued on Thursday for refusing to offer its services to gays, lesbians and bisexuals.

A lawsuit alleging discrimination based on sexual orientation was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on behalf of Linda Carlson, who was denied access to eHarmony because she is gay.

Lawyers bringing the action said they believed it was the first lawsuit of its kind against eHarmony, which has long rankled the gay community with its failure to offer a “men seeking men” or “women seeking women” option.

They were seeking to make it a class action lawsuit on behalf of gays and lesbians excluded from the dating service.

eHarmony was founded in 2000 by evangelical Christian Dr. Neil Clark Warren and had strong early ties with the influential religious conservative group Focus on the Family.

It has more than 12 million registered users, and heavy television advertising has made it one of the nation’s biggest Internet dating sites.

The company said the allegations of discrimination against gays were false and reckless.

“The research that eHarmony has developed, through years of research, to match couples has been based on traits and personality patterns of successful heterosexual marriages,” it said in a statement.

“Nothing precludes us from providing same-sex matching in the future. It’s just not a service we offer now based upon the research we have conducted,” eHarmony added.

According to the lawsuit, Carlson, who lives in the San Francisco Bay area, tried to use the site’s dating services in February 2007. When she was denied access, she wrote to eHarmony saying that its anti-gay policy was discriminatory under California law but the company refused to change it.

“Such outright discrimination is hurtful and disappointing for a business open to the public in this day and age,” she said.

Carlson’s lawyer Todd Schneider said the lawsuit was “about changing the landscape and making a statement out there that gay people, just like heterosexuals, have the right and desire to meet other people with whom they can fall in love.”

Carlson’s lawyers expect a significant number of gays and lesbians to join the class action, which seeks to force eHarmony to end its policy as well as unspecified damages for those denied eHarmony services based on their sexual orientation.

Article courtesy of: The UK Sun

A male escort told of his terror last night after claiming he was kidnapped by Boy George.

Auden Carlsen, 28, said: “It’s ironic that his biggest hit was Do You Really Want To Hurt Me? — because I’m sure he did want to hurt me.

“I was convinced I was going to die.”

The Norwegian spoke out as George, 45, was bailed by detectives probing assault and false imprisonment allegations.

Carlsen said he was grabbed by the singer and another man and chained to a wall after the star invited him to his pad in Shoreditch, East London, to pose for photos.

The escort fled in his pants after wrenching the hook from the wall.

Carlsen revealed he met George on the Gaydar website, but only agreed to go to his flat at midnight as a £400 photographic model and not as an escort.

The ex-Culture Club star took pictures of him in kinky gear.

Carlsen said: “George said he was popping out for milk at 5am. I heard him come back and I walked into his bedroom wearing just my white underpants and a T-shirt. I was jumped on by George and another man.

“George handcuffed me to a hook by the bed as they held me down.”

He said George got rid of the blond man then produced a box of whips and sex toys — telling him: “Now you’ll get what you deserve.”

Carlsen pulled the hook from the wall and fled — then alerted the police from a nearby newsagent’s at 6.30am on Saturday.

George — real name George O’Dowd — was taken to a police station.

Last year he got community service in New York after he said a rent boy tried to rob him — and cops found cocaine in his apartment. He was unavailable for comment.

Illustration courtesy of: Pretty on the Outside

Article courtesy of: NY Daily News

A hunky physical therapist at a Queens elementary school holds a steamy second job nude modeling.

Julian Fantechi, a full-time occupational therapist at Public School 99 in Kew Gardens, graced the August 2006 cover of the racy magazine and has appeared nude more than a dozen times inside including Playgirl and Men magazine.

“I can have this career, and I can also have a heart and work with children,” Fantechi told the Daily News yesterday.

Though the nude modeling raised eyebrows and prompted a probe by city investigators, Fantechi’s moonlighting doesn’t violate school policies, officials said yesterday.

A state-licensed occupational therapist with a master’s from New York University, the 5-foot-10 Fantechi began working with special-needs students in city schools about six years ago.

Outside the classroom, the 37-year-old continued his modeling career, working for Saks Fifth Avenue and appearing in Men’s Health magazine and other publications. This fall, he also had a small part in the ABC sitcom “Ugly Betty.”

When he was approached to appear in Playgirl, Fantechi said he contacted his union representative to make sure he wasn’t violating any city rules. He was given the go-ahead as long as he didn’t advertise that he worked as a city educator.

He described his August centerfold and four previous appearances in Playgirl as “artistic and tasteful,” saying he felt confident his underage students would not have access to the material.

“It’s totally separate,” he said of his teaching job. “I haven’t done anything that I’m ashamed of.”

But a complaint about the raunchy images was made to special school investigator Richard Condon’s office in November and was forwarded to the city Office of Special Investigations, officials said yesterday.

In mid-January, investigators found that Fantechi’s modeling broke no rules and posed no danger to kids, schools spokeswoman Dina Paul Parks said.

Still, some parents said they felt uneasy about a school staffer posing in the buff.

“We don’t like that. That’s definitely not good. Absolutely not,” said Mohammad Alam, 41, who has daughters in third and fifth grade.

Aureia Lamberty, 65, said she planned to talk about the matter with her granddaughter, who attends the school.

“I think it’s not good for the children,” she said.

But Fantechi said he wants to reassure parents that he would “never, ever do anything to jeopardize a child” and that he is devoted to helping special-needs students.

“I’d want them to know that just because I was a Playgirl centerfold has nothing to do with my capabilities as a physical therapist,” he said.

Article courtesy of: Times Online

London- ALAS, poor Juliet. Matthew Bourne, Britain’s most successful choreographer, is to give Romeo a male lover in a gay version of the romantic tragedy.

Bourne, whose all-male Swan Lake has enthralled audiences for more than a decade, is again using an all-male cast for Romeo, Romeo — his version of Prokofiev’s ballet Romeo and Juliet, based on the Shakespeare play.

For Bourne, 47, the challenge is to portray a convincing gay relationship in dance. He said last week: “It’s more to do with dancing than with sexuality. A male dancer, whether he’s gay or straight, fits into a relationship with a female partner very happily.

“Getting away from that, making a convincing love duet, a romantic, sexual duet, for two men that is comfortable to do and comfortable to watch — I don’t know if you can. I’ve never seen it done.”

Bourne’s Swan Lake, in which all the swans and cygnets are male, was first staged at Sadler’s Wells theatre in London in 1995, and became the longest-running ballet in London’s West End and on Broadway. But although it was critically celebrated, Bourne has long had concerns that it was short of being a true homosexual work of art, since many of the performers were not playing people.

He said: “I have a way of approaching it so as to make it — I hate to say ‘acceptable’, it’s a terrible thing to say — but so that people don’t run screaming from the theatre. I let them find their own way with it, take it as far as they want in their own heads.” While a gay interpretation of Romeo and Juliet has the potential to be more provocative, critics have often pointed to homosexual undertones in Shakespeare’s work. Many of his sonnets were addressed to a young man, and there has also been speculation about the sexuality of the lead male characters in Romeo and Juliet, particularly Mercutio, Romeo’s best friend, and Benvolio, his cousin.

Bourne plans to improvise movements and scenes for Romeo, Romeo with small groups of dancers later this summer. If successful, rehearsals with the whole company could begin next year.

Since West Side Story translated Romeo and Juliet to the gang warfare of 1950s New York City, the play has often been reinterpreted. In 1996, Baz Luhrmann, the director, cast Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes in the title roles, retaining the poetry, but updating the story to replace rapiers with pistols.

Article courtesy of: New York Times

Eric Koningsberg NEW YORK- At five minutes before 10 on Saturday night, the Roxy’s manager, Jason McCarthy, lined up the folks who staff the discothèque’s massive front bar. “O.K., everybody, remember what I told you,” he said. “Smile a lot. Hug people a lot. Tell them how important the gay community has been to this place. O.K.?”

The Roxy, on 18th Street near the West Side Highway, was about to open for its last night. Since 1991, this warhorse of a club, which operates during the week as a roller-skating rink, has made its name as a gay dance hall on Saturday nights. But last month, the word went out that the Roxy would be shutting its doors for good after a final bash on March 10. The building’s owner has plans to sell it to developers.

“The end of an era,” read the copy on a stack of promotional cards that sat on a column near the Roxy’s 6,000-square-foot dance floor. The card listed a few employment statistics — “53 disc jockeys”; “781 go-go boys” — in addition to the four “live music icons” (Madonna, Cher, Bette Midler and Beyoncé) who were known to turn up nominally unannounced every now and then and perform a short set.

But the Roxy’s significance, said people from both sides of the velvet rope, has less to do with such performances than with the droves of gay men who cycled through its gates weekend after weekend.

“I’ve seen so many people come here, it’s like I watched a lot of them grow up,” said John Blair, a club promoter who has been putting on Saturday nights at the Roxy from the start.

He said on Saturday that he was expecting a full house — it holds about 2,300 people at a time — for the final night. “We’ll be letting them in in shifts, from 10 at night until 9 in the morning,” he said. “I used to always go home at 2 a.m., but tonight I’ve got to stay until 4.”

In fact, the club stayed open until noon yesterday, and all told, took in close to 4,000 people. The final D.J., Peter Rauhofer, played a remix of Donna Summer’s “Last Dance” twice.

The doors opened at 10 p.m. sharp, and a thick column of men and the odd female friend here and there advanced up the sloping entry hall, checked their coats and dispersed on the dance floor. The price of admission ranged from $10 to $40, depending on the hour and whether a patron had been issued a gold or white Roxy loyalty card.

Lines formed at the club’s three bars, and drinks — vodka cocktails and Jägermeister shots were staples, said the head bartender, Kathy Condon — were served in plastic cups. The lights dimmed, and strobes flashed along the walls. Progressive house music tracks ran together, peaking on the matched beats.

The clubgoers were in their 20s and 30s. Most had short hair or shaved heads. They wore low-slung jeans, sneakers or work boots, and faux-vintage T-shirts that bore the insignias of athletic departments that don’t exist.

“Oh, my God, I had my coming-out party here 11 years ago,” said Terrence Cairy, a reed-thin, 35-year-old jewelry designer from Melville, on Long Island. “I brought my friends and broke the news. Some friends I lost, some friends I kept.”

But, he said, “This place stayed. Oh, my God, I used to come here every weekend. One friend, I brought him here three years ago to come out. It’s a safe place to come out, and oh, my God, it has the best D.J.’s in the city.”

A good number of men on the dance floor went with a bare-chested look. This typically included barbed-wire tattoos encircling their biceps, dog tags around their necks and baseball caps with curved bills, such that a visitor unaware of the event taking place might have thought he had walked onto a set where somebody was reshooting the volleyball scene from “Top Gun.”

“The Roxy is a rite of passage for gay New Yorkers, an essential stop on any gay tourist’s agenda,” Matt Kalkhoff, a contributor to The New York Blade, wrote in 2005.

In a telephone interview, he added: “Musically, it’s been very influential. When one of the D.J.’s, Larry Tee, was working there, it was a time when you would hear records on the dance floor and then hear them on the radio six months later.”

Joe Panetta, 36, who had driven to the city from Newburgh, where he is studying for a master’s degree in education, said: “This place has molded me. The people here are doctors, lawyers, professionals. The people I met aren’t the stereotypical gay men that I used to see on TV.”

Mr. Blair said that when he started Saturday nights at the Roxy, “we were just coming out of the dark ages of AIDS, and there was a real move away from the sort of pageantry of clubs and drag queens and that whole thing where the clubs threw glitter on the people.”

He went on: “This was the emergence of the Chelsea era, and the Chelsea Boy look. Everyone worked out really hard. And they all worked on the same body parts.”

Mr. Blair, who had owned gay health clubs, explained the coding system that he and his business partners devised for the Roxy’s loyalty cards and mailing lists. “We rated everybody on a scale from 1 to 4 based on how they looked,” he said. They kept the rankings in a database, so that for certain events they could direct their invitations to a specific mix of loyal customers and trophy guests.

“We gave out very few 1s — that’s the worst-looking, or for straight people,” he said. “Then, most people got 2s; if they’re pretty, they got a 3. Four is for people we have to let in free — either they’re really hot or they’re a friend of mine or somehow important in the club community.”

He explained that 3s were actually more desirable guests than 4s. “A 3 is a cutie that pays,” he said.

According to the guys at dezeen a condom applicator designed to help AIDS prevention has been named the Most Beautiful Object in South Africa by Dutch designer Jurgen Bey.

Bey, who was in Cape Town to speak at the Design Indaba conference last week, selected the product from a shortlist of 15 products at the Design Indaba Expo.

The applicator, invented by Willem van Rensburg and designed by industrial designer Roelf Mulder of South Africa’s XYZ Design, allows a condom to be put on easily and rapidly.

The user holds the device with the thumb and forefinger of both hands, pulling the condom down over the penis in a single rapid movement. See video demonstrations of the product here and here.

It is hoped the design will encourage the use of condoms, thereby helping reduce the spread of AIDS.

The applicator, which was selected for the SAFE exhibition at MoMA in New York two years ago and is in the museum’s permanent collection is now being marketed and sold under the Pronto brand.

New York, February 12, 2007 - Dark Alley Media, Falcon Studios,
Hot House Entertainment, Jet Set Productions, Pitbull Productions, Raging Stallion Studios and Titan Media announced today that an early morning raid ordered by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and conducted by two teams of U.S. Marshals yielded more than 4,000 counterfeit DVDs. Further announced was that they have served lawsuits against several retailers for engaging in the duplication, importation, distribution, and/or sale of unauthorized merchandise infringing upon copyrighted and trademarked properties. Defendants in the lawsuits and raid include:

Peep Show XXX 610 8th Ave., New York, NY and
The Blue DVD, Inc., 236 W.40th ST., New York, NY (not to be confused with The Blue Store)

The complaint was filed in Federal Court for the Southern District of New York as a result of a broadening investigation that uncovered a large scale counterfeiter, plaintiffs’ spokesperson Michael Violet announced Monday. The initial discovery was made by Dark Alley Media who notified the other studios and it was decided that Pitbull Productions would spearhead this action.  
Among claims asserted are those under the Latham act “…for causing confusion, mistake and deception …“and that the defendants had unlawfully used Plaintiffs’ “trademarks and copyrights in interstate commerce”.  It is the infringement of trademark which constitutes false designation and false advertising. 

In effect, a legal dragnet thrown over the city of New York by Plaintiffs, seeks to determine all parties, persons and entities involved in the counterfeiting, illegal distribution and sale of their DVDs.  “These egregious acts of corporate terrorism will not be tolerated and the Plaintiffs have implored every legal means at their disposal to apprehend and prosecute all those involved,” plaintiffs’ spokesman added. 

Plaintiffs were granted a sweeping order from the Federal Court in New York restraining the defendants from the sale of the counterfeit DVDs and the Court also ordered the U.S. Marshalls to seize and raid the establishments for purposes of confiscating the counterfeit DVDs. The Court also asked that Pitbull Productions and Dark Alley Media representatives accompany the U.S. Marshals to help identify all goods to be seized.  

“According to industry figures, piracy is 600% higher for adult content than for theatrical films. If we are to survive the natural course of business evolution, we must be even more aggressive than Hollywood”, said Mark Hovanec, Executive in Charge of Production for Jet Set Men.

“The increased proliferation of counterfeit merchandise and DVD piracy of adult male entertainment properties has gone on for too long”, states Pat Reshen, Executive Vice President of Pitbull Productions, Inc, “The time has come to take a stand against the flood of cheap knockoffs and blatant bootlegs. The vendors who sell pirated DVDs are causing huge economic losses for legitimate businesses and must be stopped.”

“When we first uncovered this plot, we had no idea the depth to which it would extend.  Soon, we discovered nearly every studio in this industry was being affected,” says Dark Alley Media President Matthias von Fistenberg.  “No one should think that because we produce adult material, or gay material, that we do not deserve equal protection under the laws of this country, or that we will show any hesitation in exercising our right.” 
Hot House Entertainment President, Steven Scarborough was quoted as saying…”I am glad to see these studios come together and enforce legal action against these criminals. Each judgment against these thieves sends a clear signal to others that they will be found and prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Hot House is only too happy to cooperate in these pursuits.”

Raging Stallion president Chris Ward noted the high quality of the bogus copies, “These were really good, very professional, and clearly mass produced. We strongly defend our intellectual property rights and we are grateful that our partners in this legal action have joined together for the common cause.”

“Piracy of Titan Media content will not be tolerated,” said Keith Webb, Vice President of Titan Media. “Unless aggressive steps are taken to stem the tide of piracy, the entire industry stands to lose billions of dollars. This suit shows our resolve and commitment to protecting our property.”
With the full cooperation of all those who participated in the creation and distribution of these products,  Dark Alley Media, Hot House, Jet Set Productions, Pitbull Productions, Raging Stallion Studios, Titan Media and Falcon Studios aim to aggressively protect their intellectual property rights and licenses through these actions and hopes that these lawsuits will send a clear message to other retailers and distributors that distributing counterfeit or bootleg DVDs and merchandise will not be tolerated.

Consumers and retailers are urged to contact Pitbull Productions, Inc. at support@pitbullproductions.com to report other retailers or distributors suspected of selling counterfeit DVDs.

Article courtesy of: Pink News

Tony Grew

A former producer at MTV has sold his memoirs to a publisher, and claims they will blow the lid off the secret gay world of hip hop.

Terrance Dean’s book, Hiding in Hip-Hop: Confessions of a Down Low Brother in the Entertainment Industry sold to Atria last week, according to eurweb.com

The book is due for publication next year.

The memoir will expose:

“The author’s life as a closeted homosexual working in the film and music industry and his relationships with other closeted homosexuals—film stars, rap artists, and music producers.”

Dean’s book about life as a black gay man in the entertainment industry will not directly name any stars, but a spokeswoman for the publisher said anyone who knows the hip-hop world will be able to identify them.

“It’s a no-holds-barred look at Hollywood and hip-hop and who’s living on the down-low,” she said.

Gay hip hopper QBoy was not impressed with the salacious revelations promised in Dean’s book.

“There are of course gay people in the industry but I think what is more to the point is that they shouldn’t be exposed and outed by someone else.

“I think its their choice to come out.”

Gay culture and hip-hop have always had what can best be described as an icy relationship, but US stars Mary J. Blige, Kanye West and L’il Kim have all campaigned on gay issues and tried to in part heal rifts between hip hop culture and gay lifestyle.

Around my household butt dragging is just another fun way to pass the time but if you’re a 17 year old high school student it’s a punishable offense that could get you some major slammer time.

According to Keloland.com, Seventeen year old Jerome Hunt faces 21 counts of rape and attempted rape. Each count carries up to 25 years in prison. All this over a wrestling move called a “butt drag” or “skinning,” which involves the wrestler placing pressure on the area of the rectum.

Hunt’s former assistant coach told investigators, “It’s not something illegal or not taught. It’s being taught all over.” 

One accuser even testified to the grand jury, “I didn’t take it as a sexual move. I took it as him just messing around.” (Boy if I had a dollar for everytime I heard that line).

But the criminal complaint states that Hunt “accomplished an act of sexual penetration.” That implies penetration, even if it happened with Hunt’s fingers through the other boys’ wrestling uniforms, could be considered rape.
 
Hunt denies penetration. His lawyer writes that the claims against Hunt are “grossly distorted and exaggerated.” And he thinks the matter should be handled in juvenile court.

The two instances that didn’t happen in the wrestling room allegedly happened on the bus ride home from a match.

Hunt will be in Turner County court December 22nd, where a judge will decide whether the case stays in adult court.

Hang in there bud, in another year you will be legal and you’ll have a line of guys who will be more than willing to butt drag with you.