httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjziyYEZPPE&feature=player_embedded

Johnson, 27, gave what was described as “singlehandedly, the best first audition I have heard” on the talent show according to show judge, Simon Cowell. However the compliment went to his head as he was frequently described as cocky on the show and was subject to a lot of bad press during the show with someone even declaring him “more hated than Hitler”. Clearly the guy that said that needs to pick up a history book and get out of the house on a Saturday night more – Hitler murder millions of people…Johnson only murdered a few songs!

Johnson is bisexual and stated in an interview with the Mirror: ‘I don’t like to conform or be put into one box or another… If I like someone’s personality it doesn’t really matter what they look like or what sex they are.’”

Can’t see myself dragging myself to the sausage-fest that will be this gig…particularly after listening to a track on his website…but it could be a good night -if you’re into that kind of thing!

CaKe is one of the few club nights in Dublin for gay girls and their mates. It’ll be on every second Saturday in the Academy on Middle Abbey Street. Doors open at 10.30pm and it’s €10. As usual you’ll get a free shot and a cake (a bun to you and me) if you’re in before 12pm.

They outlined their strategy in an email to supporters earlier in the week:

*****DATE OF DEMO WILL BE DECIDED AT SHORT NOTICE********

The Civil Partnership Bill is due for discussion very soon in the Dáil. The schedule of the Dáil is released every Monday – as soon as we know the day of discussion of CP we will spread the word to you. This is a chance to stand-up and to tell our elected representatives that the Civil Partnership Bill is an inherently discriminatory piece of legislation and that the choice of civil marriage for all citizens represents full equality for Irelands LGBT community.

Demonstrating against this bill is about showing our elected representatives that Ireland’s LGBT community should not be forced to participate in it’s own discrimination by accepting, out of necessity, the measures contained within it. Joining NOISE in protest against the Civil Partnership Bill does not undermine any progress that this bill might represent for some members of our community who will avail of the limited rights within the bill to regularise their legal affairs. We need to continuously remind the Government that they have not done enough until they have actually granted us full equality. As equal citizens, we should have equal access to the various institutions of the state including the civil institution of marriage.

Noise will be organising a ‘flash Demo’ at short notice. This demo will not be like other NOISE rallies. It is an opportunity for the lgbt community to come together quickly to make our feelings known directly- by chanting and through our visibility – to our elected representatives. NOISE will be inviting the TDs and Senators of the Dáil to mix with the demo to better undertand why Civil Partnership is not good enough for our community or for our children.

DEMAND EQUAL RIGHTS
DEMAND CIVIL MARRIAGE

In the coming days, keep tuned in to lgbtNOISE.ie, NOISE Facebook, Bebo, Youtube, Twitter and JOIN US TO MAKE SOME NOISE!

Love & Noise,
The Noise Team

Last year in the UK, video games topped the list of entertainment purchases with sales reaching £4bn. This was more than the total sales for DVD’s and CD’s combined and wiped the floor with Hollywood competition with more than four times cinema box office takings. Illustrating the demand for video games, Grand Theft Auto VI grossed $310m within 24 hours of its release last year whilst Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows earned only $220m in the same timeframe.

A  lesbian couple in Australia took their love of gaming from the living room to the altar with a gamers wedding. The couple played the game Rock Band rather than having a hen party, the wedding was themed around the video game Portal and they posed for their wedding pics with Nintendo DS consoles.

You can check out more photos here. I hope they left the consoles out of the bedroom on the wedding night!?!

There used to be a perception that video gamers were nerdy spotty young guys in darkened room playing Super Mario Bros. until their fingers locked in position. The gaming industry has spent big bucks to change this perception. Advancements in computer graphics now means we see eye-popping TV adverts with heart pumping music and action which we’ve previously only seen for movie trailers. New consoles such as the Nintendo DS have provoked a change in thinking as to what computer gaming is. Gone are the days of people playing Pac Man. Your games console can now help improve your memory, your IQ and even help you make dinner. Celebrities of all ages have been recruited to showcase new consoles and games again trying to entice people to put down the TV remote and pick up a console. Gaming is now becoming cool….well cooler at least.Of course as the gaming industry becomes more powerful people and more people settle down to ‘’get their game on”, various group have questioned the cultural impact of gaming. Hilary Clinton, for example, is quoted as asking:

“What kind of values are we promoting when a child can walk into a store and find video games where you win based on how many people you can kill or how many places you can blow up?”

However a recent report from the Entertainment Software Association shows that in the USA shows that the average gamer is aged 35…not the vulnerable child likely to grab a grenade and a sawn off shotgun in order to imitate the action from Halo 3. The report also shows that 40% of gamers are female, with gaming companies moving away from the ‘shoot em up’ style helping to attract more female gamers.

Video game consoles have developed to become home entertainment devices playing music and dvds and connecting to the internet. This has served to take the game out of one individuals bedroom, allowing the console to have pride of place underneath the TV, with families and friends (under the same roof or thanks to the internet, anywhere) competing against each other for the coveted accolade of ‘top scorer’. Video gaming is now a more interactive, social activity with people playing at local and national competitions, groups and chatting about their favourite games on online forums. There is even a site dedicated to lesbian gamers with the tagline “because sometimes we use our hands for other things”!

Never fear. The good old chaps at the BBC have stepped into the breach and have already begun filming a new lesbian drama series to air on BBC3 in Spring 2010. The six-part series with the provocative title ‘Lip Service’ will circle around the lives of three lesbians in Glasgow. The cast was announced this week and the girls will be played by Laura Fraser (Casanova and Nina’s Heavenly Delights), Ruta Gedmintas (The Tudors) and Fiona Button (The Palace).

Discussing the show, it’s writer and creator, Harriet Braun (who also wrote Mistresses),  said:

“Based on my own experiences and those of my friends, I wanted to write a sexy, funny and irreverent drama that reflects what it is to be a young gay woman living in Britain today.”

“I loved The L Word but it’s high time we saw some contemporary British lesbians, with all the bad weather, trips to the pub and repressed emotions that go with that. It will be as funny as it is pathos-filled, because in my experience that’s how life is.”

So will simply be the L Word with some rain and Glaswegian accents thrown in?  All signs point toward yes as we’ll be watching the life and times of:

• Frankie – “an irreverent and provocative photographer who avoids commitment at all turns”  (ok so replace a camera with scissors and it looks a bit more like Shane right?!?)

Ruta Gedmintas as Frankie

• Cat – Frankie’s ex-lover who would still like to be Frankie’s muse

Laura Fraser as Cat

• Tess – Cat’s “best friend and flatmate who has an uncanny knack of attracting all the wrong sorts of women”

Fiona Button as Tess

Other familiar faces to appear in the show include Hollyoaks star and regular in FHM’s Sexiest Female list, Roxanne McKee.

Roxanne McKee

God bless the BBC!

It launches tonight in the Dragon on Georges St., Dublin with music from DJ Ruth. Free before 10am, €7 from then on unless you’re lucky enough to still be a student in which case you can wriggle your way in for only a fiver.

If you didn’t get a chance to see Donal Og Cusack on the Late Late Show this week then here’s a clip of  what you missed:

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ps2a67EOBY4&feature=player_embedded#at=123

Cusack has been supported in his decision to come out by his Cork team mates and since the news broke, the reaction of the general public has also been very positive – so much so that some are proclaiming this a landmark time in gay equality in Ireland. Editorial in the Irish Times today described the last two weeks as “quietly momentus” for “gay men and lesbians in Ireland”. They said:

We may indeed be passing a watershed in the acceptance of homosexual people as full and equal members of society. The first open conference of gay, lesbian and bisexual primary school teachers was held in Dublin. The funeral of Stephen Gately was notable for an affection and admiration that went beyond his status as a pop star and embraced his life as a pioneer for gay men in the music industry. Donal Óg Cusack’s decision, elaborated so eloquently in today’s Weekend Review , to be open about his sexual orientation broke through another barrier of silence. It should not require courage to be honest about one’s own identity, but Cusack’s declaration is as gutsy as anything he has done on the field of play.

Mmm…ok so Donal Og wasn’t burned at a stake in the middle of Croke Park for being gay and people were genuinely saddened at the untimely passing of Stephen Gately but does that mean the tide has turned against homophobia in Ireland? The fact that the writer of the Irish Times piece acknowledges that gay teachers in Ireland are still afraid to be open about their sexual orientation in their communities for fear of being fired from their jobs highlights that there still is a long way to go in terms of gay rights in Ireland.

The Irish Times have clearly forgotten that only three months ago homophobia was the subject of much discussion in Ireland following the publication of an article by Sunday Times columnist and now ‘red flag to a gay’, Brenda Power. In a staggering display of homophobic and uninformed writing, Brenda first shared her views on gay marriage:

“Change the ingredients, and you change the institution. A legal, civil and religious union between a same-sex couple may well be new and wonderful, or sacrilegious and distasteful, depending on your point of view, but it’s not a marriage.”

“…homosexuals are entirely free to marry. They just can’t marry someone of the same sex. None of us can, because, whatever the resulting union might be, marriage it ain’t.”

She then went on to why gay couples shouldn’t be allowed to adopt (for the good of the children of course…not because she’s homophobic) and ended with a deftly delivered insult to Miss Panti, a gay icon in Ireland, to whom she referred to as “a bloke in a dress”.

Reviewing the article and the subsequent coverage now, months later, it still beggars belief!

A study by the Gay and Lesbian Equality Network (GLEN) also recently revealed that, in a study of 1,110 LGBT respondents in Ireland, “80% were verbally insulted on the basis of identity – 36.5% of these 6 or more times. 20% were threatened with physical violence on the basis of identity. 25% were punched kicked or beaten because of identity and 8% were attacked with a weapon or implement (such as knife, gun bottle or stick) on at least one occasion. 9% were attacked sexually as a consequence of identity.”

Don’t get me wrong, it is of course great that Donal Og Cusacks coming out hasn’t created much hullaballoo. There were no crazed religious folks marching in rural Ireland. No detractors on national radio criticising him. However the fact that the GAA (the sporting organisation for which Donal Og is an award-winning All-Star) and the Gaelic Players Association both declined to comment on Cusack’s coming out, suggests that while Cusack isn’t being condemned, he is not fully supported by those who could open the closet doors in Ireland’s largest and oldest sporting organisation and support others who wish to follow in Donal Og’s footsteps.

So whilst the wheels are moving towards equality they’ve a long distance yet to travel.

When her female classmates turned up to have their yearbook picture taken they wore ‘drapes’ (as is tradition in the States) but Ceara Sturgis wore a tuxedo.

Sturgis is out and proud and has the support of her mother who said :

“The tux is who she is. She wears boys’ clothes. She’s athletic. She’s gay. She’s not feminine.”

Her mother received a letter following the photoshoot for the yearbook pics saying that only boys could wear tuxedo’s! (Someone should tell Tilda Swinton that as she clearly didn’t get the memo) When her mother met with the principal he admitted there was no rule stating Sturgis couldn’t appear in a tuxedo but that it was “his conviction” that she shouldn’t.

Sturgis has rightly said that she should have the right to dress as she wants to and appear in the year book with all her friends:

“I feel like I’m not important, that the school is dismissing who I am as a gay student and that they don’t even care about me. All I want is to be able to be me, and to be included in the yearbook”

The American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi has now waded in, issuing an ultimatum to the school principal – publish the tuxedo picture or be taken to court. The Copiah County School board has rejected the ACLU’s request.

There is now a Facebook page with over 2000 fans (and rising) supporting the teenager.

Clearly this is all the result of a few school leaders who are letting their personal views get in the way of serving their school in an ethical fashion. As long as a student is sensibly dressed and doesn’t turn up to have their photo taken wearing ripped jeans and with their pierced nipple hanging out, they should be treated with respect. After all Sturgis did wear the traditional yearbook picture attire – it’s just that it was traditional for the guys to wear it!

You can watch Sturgis and her mom in a WLBT news report here. Sturgis mom summed it up well I think – “to hide how you express yourself is not being true to yourself”.

The article attracted a record number of complaints to the Press Complaints Commission as the public took offense at her insinuation that there was more to the Boyzone singers death than had been reported. Her article was labelled as homophobic as she stated the circumstances of Gately’s death dispelled the “happy ever after myth” of gay marriages.

Moir wrote today that she was horrified at the accusations of homophobia and was “sorry” if she “caused distress by the insensitive timing of the column, published so close to the funeral.” What begins as an apology quickly turns into a defense of her article and her right to question the circumstances around Gately’s death inferring that his “celebrity and sexuality” don’t make him “untouchable“.

Attempting to counteract accusations of bigotry, Moir again pointed to being ‘on the record’ as supporting gay marriage. She went on to defend the content and tone of her article:

“We were told that Stephen died of ‘natural causes’ even before toxicology results had been released. This struck me as bizarre, given the circumstances.

Absolutely none of this had anything to do with his sexuality. If he had been a heterosexual member of a boy band, I would have written exactly the same article.”

In crouching tiger, wounded journalist mode, Moir tried to turn the focus of the debate on to those who were annoyed by her article. She asks:

“is there a compulsion today to see bigotry and social intolerance where none exists by people who are determined to be outraged?”

“Can it really be that we are becoming a society where no one can dare to question the circumstances or behaviour of a person who happens to be gay without being labelled a homophobe?”

Of course the actions of a gay person can be questioned with as much tenacity as you would question a straight person – but the same level of tact,common sense and respect for the facts is required. When Moir found no facts to back up her theory (that there was more to Stephen Gately’s death than meets the eye) she attempted to delve to the sewers of tabloid journalism and use Gately’s sexuality as as evidence that there was something questionable and ‘troubling’ about his death. Moir stated that the circumstances surrounding his death were “more than a little sleazy” and with the subtly of a sledgehammer she wrote of how Gately and his husband, after a night out partying, brought a Bulgarian man back to their apartment which she referred to as a “glamourous routine”. Is it any wonder people were annoyed?

As a journalist bound by professional ethics, Moir knows that her views, as she conveys them through her columns, must be representative of the facts. Of course journalists should and must look for the ‘real story’ at all times. High quality investigative journalism is what drives us to go out and buy a paper – It has unveiled so much of late, from politicians living high on the public’s money to celebrities covering up dastardly deeds. That said, discretion is requiredas to what’s worth digging in to and what’s not. Moir’s sensationalist attempts to have readers picture Gately’s death as something smutty and sinister leaves the truth nowhere to be seen, given that Stephen’s family, the police and more importantly, the coroner, found nothing ‘unnatural’ in his death. Essentially she brought this upon herself.

OK so posting Moir’s home address online and sending abusive and threatening letters to her family home is taking things too far. Perhaps she is an advocate for gay marriage but given the content of her article it is obvious why gay and straight people alike were offended by her piece. The gay community has for decades been fighting for equality and for acknowledgement of the fact that the love a same sex couple have for each other is no different to the love a heterosexual couple feel. It isn’t something unnatural. It isn’t something sordid. Moir attempted to use the circumstances of Gately’s death to position being gay as a “dangerous lifestyle” and openly questioned whether gay relationships are just the same as straight ones.

She said: “Gay activists are always calling for tolerance and understanding about same-sex relationships, arguing that they are just the same as heterosexual marriages. Not everyone, they say, is like George Michael.”

Personnally I hope George Michael kicks her ass.