@RyanNewYork
He's also a director/producer, who lives in Brooklyn, NY and created the musical White Noise. Ryan writes about politics for The Huffington Post & The Hill. He has been a guest editor for Queerty and is the host of the podcast Gay History: Uncut.
Here Ryan blogs about politics, film, TV, history, religion, science, books, theater, digital media, LGBT issues, Bushwick & Williamsburg, New York City, and anything else he's interested in at the moment. Oh, and he'll probably talk a lot about himself.
This is a personal blog. Any opinions expressed here and on my Twitter represent my own and not those of my employer or clients.
Great video out by the Obama campaign showing how much the President has done for the LGBT Community.
“You’re gonna need a strong advocate in The White House. I am that strong advocate.” - President Barack Obama
This is what it looks like to be on the wrong side of history.
Bigots were thinner then!
You’ve got to listen to this terrific Radiolab podcast on Alan Turing, one of the most brilliant minds of the twentieth century, who was prosecuted for being gay and eventually took his own life in 1954. He’d turn 100 in June.
Turing is the father of artificial intelligence and the modern computer. He also was responsible for cracking the Nazi Engima code, helping to end World War II.
Turing’s story reaffirms how far we’ve come on gay rights since the movement began. Just over fifty years ago, a war hero’s life was destroyed just for being gay in England. Now gays serve openly in militaries around the world and countries that criminalize homosexuality are theocratic outliers. That’s progress.
Andrew Hodges’s Alan Turing: The Enigma is on my bookshelf to read this summer.
Listen below or click here to listen at Radiolab.
More information on the slate statue of Alan Turing pictured above.
A remarkably beautiful story of a lesbian couple, one who serves in the military, told via a familiar social network. Kudos to Freedom To Marry and all involved in producing this, it’s powerful and deserves an audience.
To learn what you can do to help repeal DOMA, click here.
I’ve always thought it was something that was still holding the country back. What people do in their own homes is their business and you can choose to love whoever you love. That’s their business. It’s no different than discriminating against blacks. It’s discrimination plain and simple… I think it’s the right thing to do, so whether it costs him votes or not – again, it’s not about votes. It’s about people.
It’s the right thing to do as a human being.
Jay Z, endorsing marriage equality.
Watch the video here.
Mitt Romney returned from a three-week spring break in 1965 to resume his studies as a high school senior at the prestigious Cranbrook School. Back on the handsome campus, studded with Tudor brick buildings and manicured fields, he spotted something he thought did not belong at a school where the boys wore ties and carried briefcases. John Lauber, a soft-spoken new student one year behind Romney, was perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality. Now he was walking around the all-boys school with bleached-blond hair that draped over one eye, and Romney wasn’t having it.
“He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!” an incensed Romney told Matthew Friedemann, his close friend in the Stevens Hall dorm, according to Friedemann’s recollection. Mitt, the teenaged son of Michigan Gov. George Romney, kept complaining about Lauber’s look, Friedemann recalled.
A few days later, Friedemann entered Stevens Hall off the school’s collegiate quad to find Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut Lauber’s hair. Friedemann followed them to a nearby room where they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors.
The incident was recalled similarly by five students, who gave their accounts independently of one another. Four of them — Friedemann, now a dentist; Phillip Maxwell, a lawyer; Thomas Buford, a retired prosecutor; and David Seed, a retired principal — spoke on the record. Another former student who witnessed the incident asked not to be named. The men have differing political affiliations, although they mostly lean Democratic. Buford volunteered for Barack Obama’s campaign in 2008. Seed, a registered independent, has served as a Republican county chairman in Michigan. All of them said that politics in no way colored their recollections.
“It happened very quickly, and to this day it troubles me,” said Buford, the school’s wrestling champion, who said he joined Romney in restraining Lauber. Buford subsequently apologized to Lauber, who was “terrified,” he said. “What a senseless, stupid, idiotic thing to do.”
“It was a hack job,” recalled Maxwell, a childhood friend of Romney who was in the dorm room when the incident occurred. “It was vicious.”
5 Mitt Romney Quotes On Marriage Equality
- “I stood up to fight same sex marriage. I was one of the nation’s leading advocates of traditional marriage.”
- “I opposed then, and I do now, gay marriage and civil union.”
- “I am proud of the fact that I and my team did everything within our power and within the law to stand up for traditional marriage.”
- “From day one, I’ve opposed the move for same-sex marriage and its equivalent, civil unions.”
- “When I am President, I will preserve the defense of marriage act and I will fight for a federal amendment defining marriage as a relationship between one man and one woman.”
For the first time in my life, I have a President who believes that I should have equal rights. Yeah, that feels good.
The last time North Carolina amended its constitution on marriage was to outlaw interracial marriage. History will judge yesterday’s vote just as harshly.
Terrific video showing the diverse coalition voting against discrimination in North Carolina tomorrow. Please vote AGAINST Amendment One.
A great timeline of progress made for the gay community under Barack Obama. Click for a closer look.
