Stonewall Gazette

Written by Shane Smith, Editor, Stonewall Gazette


In a recent interview with the Desert Sun actors, Kit Williamson (pictured right) and John Halbach (pictured left) discuss their hit show "EastSiders" and what it's like being openly gay men in Hollywood today.

Written by Shane Smith, Editor, Stonewall Gazette


It can be a challenge to find a career that you love, to wake up every day with the excitement of knowing that you are living your dream life.

For automotive designer Bryan Thompson, finding that rare sweet spot in life was not an easy journey.

Written by Shane Smith, Editor of Stonewall Gazette

Drake Jensen (L) and Patrick Masse (R)

This past June, during Pride Month, openly gay country music singers Drake Jensen and Patrick Masse released their song "Go Your Own Way" and I was so excited by their collaboration I contacted Towleroad's Michael Goff, HuffPost's Noah Michelson, Axxidental's Mike Enders, Queerty, Bear World Magazine and many other folks in queer media. The importance of two openly gay singers doing a duet was unprecedented in country music and I wanted to help in any way that I could.

Written by Just Jared


Singer Shawn Mendes opened up about some very private and intimate details of his life in a revealing new interview.
 

Written by OutVisions


Starting at an early age, both Justin Mallard and Brett Rancourt knew they wanted to have kids. As they came to terms with their sexualities, accepting the fact they were gay, one of the biggest struggles they faced was the idea that being gay and having a family did not seem like a realistic reality.

In 2012, Omar Sharif Jr., the actor, media personality and campaigner used his public profile to come out as both gay and half Jewish, through a poignant letter in Advocate magazine. On its own, coming out in his native Egypt takes an immense amount of courage. Homosexuality isn’t specifically outlawed, but there are morality laws in place, carrying a sentence of up to 17 years in prison and, in recent years, the LGBT+ community has been the target of a fierce state-sponsored crackdown. Fearing persecution if he stayed, “Egypt’s favourite son” (as he was often called) was forced to leave Cairo and seek sanctuary in America. It would have been easy to retreat into the safe, relative obscurity his new home offered, but instead he recognized his platform and used it. Last year, he made more history by becoming the first openly gay man to discuss his sexuality on an Arabic news program. Not only was it his first appearance on Arabic TV, it was probably the first time many of those watching would have heard directly from a gay man. READ MORE

Written by Jeffrey Masters

Zeke Thomas

Amid the growing onslaught of allegations against Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, and other prominent figures, one thing is certain: there isn't a right or wrong way to respond after experiencing sexual assault. We also know that it's something that affects people across all demographics. Zeke Thomas, musician, DJ, and son of NBA great, Isaiah Thomas, knows this firsthand. In our conversation, he discussed how prevalent sexual assault is in the gay community, why he waited so long to tell anyone after his own experience, and why we need to stop shaming people who use Grindr.

Written by Matthew Rettenmund


After three seasons with the Royal Shakespeare Company, Julian Morris built a following with magnetic turns in horror fare like Cry Wolf (2005), Donkey Punch (2008) and cult-fave Sorority Row (2009). Though originally from England, he honed a foolproof American accent studying his Valkyrie (2007) co-star Tom Cruise.

Hot off a role on New Girl (2014-2015) and a return to the ABC Family teen drama Pretty Little Liars as Dr. Wren Kingston this year, just in time for that series’ sign-off, Morris appears to be making a clean break with less challenging roles, stunning in this summer’s British miniseries Man in an Orange Shirt as a gay man navigating empty hookup culture who discovers his grandfather was himself closeted — and had far more serious roadblocks to maneuver in the ‘40s.

Morris is currently playing Watergate lid-blower Bob Woodward in Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House, and will next be seen in a new film adaptation of Little Women.

In this NEW interview Julian Morris speaks comfortably about politics, the abuse scandals sweeping Hollywood, and his sex-symbol status.

Written by Seth Abramovitch


Like much else about his charmed life, Armie Hammer's handwriting is perfect — all swooping loops and exacting peaks, like something from a bygone era. I'm paging through one of his obsessively maintained notebooks while we idle at a red light in his black pickup truck, American-built and high off the ground, much like the 6-foot-5 actor himself.

Written by Derek Kwait


When H. Alan Scott looked up through the mikvah waters, he says he saw the shadows of his past and present lives undulating above him: Poor Mormon kid. Gay man. Comedian. Cancer survivor.

Written by Edward Siddons


Khalid Abdel-Hadi [pictured above], founder of the Middle East's leading LGBT magazine My.Kali, has carved a new space for queer culture in the Arabic world. Founded in 2008, the magazine was published exclusively in English. "We didn't want to speak the language of the public," he explains, in part for fear of reprisal, the likes of which recently saw Xulhaz Mannan, a prominent Bangladeshi LGBT blogger, beheaded by radical Islamist militants. Last year heralded a brave new move in My.Kali'sud history with the publication of its first edition in Arabic. "We thought it was time. Regardless of whether it's smart or completely safe, it is needed."

Forging an identity free of Western dominance that avoids casting queer Arabs as a monolithic bloc poses a struggle. Khalid expresses particular frustration at the Western media's obsession with casting Arab queers as victims. For all the stories of rejection, alienation and oppression are others of acceptance and triumph, but the complexity of queer Arab life is lost in Western representation. As but one example, while nearby Iran imposes the death penalty for sodomy, it is home to the second highest number of gender reassignent surgeries in the world. The unevenness of LGBT rights throughout the region gains minimal attention. READ MORE

Written by Donalevan Maines


Openly gay 25-year-old Harper Watters first began dancing around age five “purely because I had so much energy.” He now dances with the Houston Ballet’s main company.

Dancing is a silent art form, says Harper Watters, but his success at Houston Ballet has taught him that he has a voice. “There is a lot of power in words,” explains the out 24-year-old dancer in the company’s corps de ballet. “I have been solely focused on being a dancer, but I realize there is so much more I want to do, and feel like I have to offer.”

Please share this post on your social media (Facebook, Twitter etc). Thank-you!

Written by Justin Moran


Félix D'Eon has long been fascinated with art history, reveling in everything from Edwardian fashion and the golden-era of American comics, to Japanese printmaking and children's book illustrations. Though visually enrapturing, the subject matter of these works never connected with D'Eon, who's a queer Chicano man, born in Mexico and raised in Southern California. Here, the artist saw an important opportunity.


By appropriating the aesthetic of classic illustrations and trading out straight subjects for his own LGBTQ characters, D'Eon found he could use an already established visual language to showcase queer communities in a celebratory light. His work features a multicultural spectrum of queer love, seduction and sex, all presented in an antiquitous format that aims to normalize and empower historically marginalized people. READ FULL INTERVIEW HERE

Please share this post on your social media (Facebook, Twitter etc). Thank-you!


Magician James More is on tour with The Illusionists and is doing some interviews to promote the show. The handsome hunk was a semi-finalist on "Britain's Got Talent" and is quite personable as you will see in the video below. Watch James More do some fun magic tricks and talk about his new tattoo!

James More shows off his new tattoo. Image courtesy of James More's Instagram

WATCH VIDEO: Magician James More and His Magic Tricks!

Please share this post on your social media (Facebook, Twitter etc). Thank-you!

Written by Kristin Hall

Two years after coming out publicly as a gay man, country singer Ty Herndon is revealing much more about his lifelong struggle for acceptance in a new album that he hopes everyone can relate to. "House on Fire," features love songs that are gender neutral, a moving title track about feeling shamed inside the church and hopeful anthems for love. "I wanted music that would go out into the world and that anyone from any walk of life could hear their story in my music," Herndon said in a recent interview. "Because I have a lot of die-hard country fans who have been with me a long time and are still right there. And I have a legion of brand new fans, within the young country listeners, within the LGBT community."

Please share this post on your social media (Facebook, Twitter etc). Thank-you!

Tarell Alvin McCraney

Recently, Greg Hernandez had a chance to interview Oscar nominee Tarell Alvin McCraney (Moonlight). Enjoy the excerpt below.

Tarell Alvin McCraney is the man who essentially lived Moonlight. The film, nominated for eight Academy Awards including best picture, is largely based on the play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue which McCraney wrote in 2003. ‘A great deal of the story is based on my life and (writer-director) Barry Jenkins’ life in Miami for sure,’ McCraney told me recently. ‘A lot of those events happened to me.’ 

Jenkins and McCraney grew up just blocks away from each other in the same housing project in Miami’s Liberty City neighborhood. They even went to the same elementary school at the same time but did not know each other.  

There were other similarities as well. Both men grew up in poverty with mothers who were addicted to drugs. It was as adults that they met when Jenkins contacted McCraney about adapting his play to the screen. Now they share an Oscar nomination in the adapted screenplay category. ‘There is an element of excitement and fun to (the recognition) but even more than that there’s something that feels like we made good on a promise to our younger selves,’ says McCraney, 36. 

Although McCraney is gay and Jenkins is straight, both see themselves in the movie’s main character of Chiron who lives in a Miami housing project with his mother who is addicted to crack. READ MORE

Please share this post on your social media (Facebook, Twitter etc). Thank-you!

Written by Hank Trout


“The Movement saved my life.”

With that simple declarative statement, the first sentence in the preface to his long-awaited and just-published memoir When We Rise: My Life in the Movement, Cleve Jones begins to open up his life to us. And what an extraordinary life it has been. We sat down to chat, one long-term survivor of HIV/AIDS to another, about the movement then and now, what we’ve learned and, importantly, what remains to be done.

Cleve was born in 1954, “into the last generation of homosexual people who grew up not knowing if there was anyone else on the entire planet who felt the way that we felt.” Continue reading Hank Trout's great interview with Cleve Jones here.


RELATED Harvey Milk Protégé, AIDS Quilt Creator Cleve Jones on Queer Activism in the Age of Trump

SHARE THIS POST on your social media (Facebook, Twitter etc). Thank-you!

Written by Karen Iris Tucker


Bullies roamed his high school gym class, so Cleve Jones feigned a chronic lung ailment and retreated to the library. It was on one such occasion that he flipped through the magazine that likely saved his life. A headline piqued Jones’ interest: “Homosexuals in Revolt!” It topped a Life report on the nascent gay liberation movement that was taking root in New York and California. The year was 1971.

“I’m pretty sure that was the exact moment I stopped planning to kill myself,” Jones, 62, says in his new memoir, When We Rise: My Life in the Movement. “I took the pills I had been hoarding from their hiding place and flushed them down the toilet.” Until then, Jones says, he had thought there was no one else like him on the planet.

From there, Jones takes readers on his thrilling, if perilous, voyage from fey, long-haired teen hitching his way from his home in Arizona to San Francisco, to becoming the mentee of Harvey Milk, one of the first openly gay elected officials in America. Jones survives San Francisco’s viciously homophobic police in the ’70s and, later, the AIDS epidemic that took his dearest friends. In the process, he helps mobilize the anguished, fiery momentum of LGBTQ rights in the United States and also conceives the Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt. His life story continues to impress; When We Rise is credited as an inspiration for the ABC miniseries of the same name that is expected to premiere in February 2017. Jones was a historical consultant for the TV project but says he hasn’t yet seen it.

It seems only fitting to talk to Jones, a grass-roots political firebrand, at a time when the election of Donald Trump feels like a massive setback for progressive, pro-LGBTQ policies. Describing himself variously as “terrified” and “heartbroken” by the results, Jones is nevertheless unbowed: “The next person to tell me we survived Reagan and Bush is going to get slapped.” READ MORE

RELATED Gay Rights Pioneer, Cleve Jones, Covers A & U

Skippy Baxter is a Melbourne-based porn star who has starred in over 30 films for well-known Australian and American porn companies like Bentley Race, Raging Stallion, Falcon, Hot House and RoganRichards.com.

Baxter spoke to the Star Observer about his battle with crystal meth addiction. Read an excerpt below.

Tell us a little about yourself?

Skippy Baxter: I used to be pediatric nurse and did that for about two and a half years. Before that I was just a regular nurse. Recently I quit that and I’ve been working in bars and cafes for the past ten months, but currently out of work. This year I did a couple of porn movies overseas, but I’ve put that on hold while I get my shit together.

You recently revealed your meth struggle on Facebook. How did that start?

Skippy Baxter: It started probably about two and a half years ago when I was at a sex party and some guys were doing it. They asked if I wanted to slam some meth, and I said ‘what is that?’

They said, ‘well you inject it.’ I said, ‘sorry no, it’s not for me’ but they talked me into it – they said ‘if you don’t like it, you don’t ever have to do it again, it’s just a once off thing. Just see if you like it.’

I tried it and it was probably the best experience I’ve ever had, it was incredible the feeling but the comedown was just horrific and they didn’t explain to me what that would mean and I swore I’d never touch it again. But everywhere that I went to have sex it was just prominent, everybody was doing it so I kind of got swept up into the shitstorm of using it. That’s kind of how it blew out of control. I kept it hidden for about a year, from everybody – my partner, my family. Then it got to the point where I couldn’t have sex without it. I never smoked, I only injected – smoking never really did anything to me, it just made me awake but injecting got me really high and horny.

How long were you doing it before you realized you had a problem?

Skippy Baxter: I realized I had a problem about three or four months ago I was using it every day. I wasn’t using it for the normal sexual encounters, it was more of an escaping every day life and I needed it to function really so that’s when I knew I had a big problem.

I kind of fell into a blackhole and didn’t really know how to get out of it, (I) lost a lot of weight, started to get paranoid, pushed everyone aside, my family, my friends, – my partner. And I realized ‘holy shit, I’ve got a problem here and I’ve gotta fix it’.

My parents actually got in contact with a rehab place called Bradshaw House in Victoria, and she rang me one day. It was probably the best phone call I ever got because at that point I was about to commit suicide because I couldn’t handle feeling like shit and depressed all the time. I didn’t know how to get out of it so she pulled me out of the hole.

You said you put your porn career on hold – it hasn’t contributed to it at all?

Skippy Baxter: No, no, interestingly enough it never came into play. I was always quite professional, I never used drugs before a shoot or weeks and weeks before a shoot because part of my contract was I had to have a body that was not smaller than when they signed me up. I had to maintain it so it never came into play. But when I came back (to Australia), it did. I got straight back into getting high and sex parties and all that stuff. And now I’m noticing it’s everywhere, six months ago it wasn’t. But now everybody is doing pnp and getting high and having sex.

You think it’s getting worse?

Skippy Baxter: Definitely, it’s definitely getting worse. And not just in Australia, it’s even overseas. My partner was saying everywhere he was there was all PnP stuff, all these parties going on. He said it would be hard for me if I went overseas because it’s everywhere.

What is it about ice that makes it so hard to quit?

Skippy Baxter: I think because it’s more available than any other drug, it’s cheapish, the high you get from it – slamming especially – is very out of this world. It’s more than I’ve ever experienced with any other drug but at the same time it can have its ugly side.

READ FULL INTERVIEW

NOTE:
Please feel free to share any post(s) that you like on your social media (Facebook, Twitter etc). Thank-you!

Written by Shane Smith, Editor, Stonewall Gazette


2016 was a banner year for actor Garrett Clayton with two high profile projects. October saw the release of the film King Cobra in which Garrett portrayed gay porn star Brent Corrigan opposite James Franco and Christian Slater. Although the movie received mixed reviews most critics agreed that Garrett was on point (see some of the sexy stills from the film below).