Last weekend’s  Pride fundraisers,  a presidential proclamation, Old Navy Pride t-shirts, and Moscow repression; solidarity against hate in Portland; marriage equality updates from California and Minnesota; a memorial to gay Holocaust victims in Munich; and more in this edition of  Bent News.

Pride

Anchorage. Alaska Pride reports Sarha Shaubach’s Lemonade 4 Love Stands this past Saturday raised over $200 for Alaska Pride (and Sarha herself reports additional fundraising for Pride, NE2.0, and the Imperial Court at yesterday’s Memorial Day picnic). CrazyHorse Alaska’s “Roast Diedra Windsor Walker” fundraiser also raised quite a bit for Identity and this year’s Pride Fest. Thanks to everyone who helped raise $$$ for Pride last weekend! And stay tuned for another great fundraiser next weekend, as Mad Myrna’s goes USO.

Nation. Presidential Proclamation: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, And Transgender Pride Month, 2011 (Pam’s House Blend, 6/1/11). (But it’s still 5/31 here in AK!). But Pres. Obama is leaving marriage equality, repeal of DOMA, or even same-sex civil unions out of the mix this year.

Why Did Old Navy Only Sell Their Pride T-Shirts In 26 Of 1,035 Stores? (Queerty, 5/31/11). Queerty caught up to what Mel Green wrote about on Bent last Friday: that Old Navy is only very minimally gay pridish. We thought it was cool that Queerty used our post as a source, even mentioning Mel by name, and noting with approval her support of Alaska Pride. But we wish they’d get her personal pronoun right. In related Old Navy news: see Hallie Gammon’s petition at Change.org asking Old Navy to extend its version of Gay Pride nationwide.

Russian Federation. Russian Police Stamp Out Moscow’s Sixth Gay Pride Parade. (ThinkProgress LGBT, 5/31/11). A summary of the weekend’s events in Moscow, where Moscow police arrested and beat more than 30 people, including U.S. activist Dan Choi. ThinkProgress’ Igor Volsky also gives good background on Russian context, including the Russian Orthodox Church’s propagation of antigay stereotypes and sentiment, and official condemnation by the U.S., France, and the Secretary General of the U.N. and other international response. The U.S. Department of State’s statement can be found here, courtesy Pam’s House Blend.

Antigay violence

VIDEO: 4,000 People Hold Hands Across Portland Bridge in Epic Show of Solidarity Against Anti-Gay Hate (Towleroad, 5/31/11).  A gay-bashing on the Hawthorne Bridge in Portland, Oregon last week has led to establishment of a new volunteer safety patrol and a show of community solidarity against antigay violence. Watch the video, “Hands Across Hawthorne Bridge” (27 minutes):

LGBT youth

Trans Woman, Gay Man Crowned Prom Queen and King in Florida (Towleroad, 5/31/11). “Seniors at McFatter Technical High School in Davie, Florida have chosen a bullied transgender teen, Andrew Viveros, and a gay teen, Juan Macias, as their prom queen and king.”

Marriage equality

California. Debate over judge’s sexual orientation not likely to affect Prop. 8 case (Los Angeles Times, 5/29/11). There’s general agreement among legal ethics experts that gay judge Vaughn Walker doesn’t need to recuse himself. Walker ruled Prop 8 unconstitutional last August; his decision is now before an appeals court.

With the recent passage in Minnesota of a constitutional amendment to ban same sex marriages, which will go before Minnesota voters in 2012, the Minnesota Family Council — a close cousin of the Alaska Family Council — has entered the limelight. We posted about MFC in our 5/24 news summary last week:

NOM’s Minnesota partner: Gays engage in bestiality, pedophilia, and other nasty stuff (Pam’s House Blend, 5/23/11). “[W]hen looking at the Minnesota Family Council’s webpage, one gets the impression that that organization’s stance against gay marriage is less to do with ‘preserving marriage,’ but rather adhering to the monstrous stereotypes which lgbts have had to endure for years.” Sez Bent News team member Chris, “I think Pam does a good job of mitigating the harm from drinking from the toilet of the religulous right.” Yes: & we need that mitigation!

Chris had supplied the Bent News team with an additional link, too — “if you prefer your teufelsdreck unfiltered from the Minnesota Family Council” — but by the time we were preparing our news summary, that link was giving us a 404 “not found” error.

We shortly learned why. The following day, the marriage equality blog Good As You posted about “the documents the Minnesota Family Council doesn’t want you to see.”  It seems that MFC decided to scrub its site of its most incendiary documents. But thanks to Good As You’s policy of saving backup copies, you can still read MFC’s unfiltered teufelsdreck. And more here. And more here. And so on. Good As You continues to follow the situation in Minnesota.

History

[caption id="attachment_3344" align="alignleft" width="240" caption="Over 50,000 homosexuals were imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps during the Third Reich."][/caption]

New memorial to gay holocaust victims to be built in Munich (PinkNews, 5/31/11). The German city of Munich, where the Nazis raided gay bars in the early days of the Third Reich, is to have a new memorial dedicated to the gay and lesbian victims of the holocaust. Over 50,000 homosexuals were imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps during the Third Reich, the majority men — who were forced to wear pink triangles — but women were also imprisoned, and forced to wear black triangles.  Many of those who survived the camps were reimprisoned after the end of World War II, as Paragraph 175, the German law which had criminalized homosexuality since 1871, remained in effect in its harshened Nazi form (enacted in 1935) until 1950 in East Germany and 1969 in West Germany. Paragraph 175 was finally revoked in its entirety in 1994 after German reunification.

[caption id="attachment_3342" align="alignright" width="240" caption="Poster for a Royal National Theatre production of "Bent." The play was first staged in 1979 at the Royal Court and Criterion in London's West End and starred Ian McKellen as Max."][/caption]

Bent News team member Mel remarks, “In fact, the first time I ever heard the word bent applied to gay people was in the 1979 play Bent about homosexual concentration camp inmates.” Bent friend A.T. tells us, “The true story, Aimee and Jaguar, is about lesbians in Berlin…Lilly Wust and Felice Schragenheim…Lilly survived until 2006. Charles Brady’s book was made into the Zeitgeist film…until I saw it, I had no idea. At least she lived long enough to see being gay decriminalized in Germany in 1999.”

Arts

Movies, Maxim and a Whole Lot of Mojo (Republic of Brown, 4/7/11). An interview with actor Sheetal Sheth, whose film Three Veils (mentioned in this interview) will be screened at Out North on June 11. Some of you were lucky enough to meet her when she came to Anchorage last October for a screening of two other films she’s appeared in, I Can’t Think Straight and The World Unseen.

India celebrates second gay film festival (PinkNews, 5/27/11). Last weekend in Mumbai: the Kashish-Mumbai International Queer Film Festival — a great sign in a nation that only decriminalized gay sex in 2009. 124 LGBT films from 23 countries, approved by India’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting — with no anti-gay backlash. Among the films which screened there: Three Veils.

On the lighter side…

[caption id="attachment_3346" align="alignleft" width="87" caption="Kevin Keller, the first openly gay character in the Archie Comics universe"][/caption]

Gay ‘Archie’ Character Kevin Keller to Become Openly Gay Soldier, Journalist (Politically Illustrated, 5/31/11).  This comic miniseries debute June 8 for a four-issue run. But wait, Kevin!  Kevin?…. June 8? Kevin, DADT repeal hasn’t been implemented yet!

Watch: Rachel Maddow On Rick Santorum And His Own Man And Dog Encounter (Towleroad, 5/29/11). Towleroad quotes Bent’s favorite pundit about Rick Santorum’s latest man & dog encounter: “Mr. Santorum is trying to undo what started as his man-on-dog problem with a new stump speech about a man and a dog. And a warm sensation.” Follow the link to see the videos.

Ku Klux Klan Protests the Westboro Baptist Church (Bilerico Project, 5/31/11). There’s no virtue in hating the Phelpists. After all, even the KKK hates ’em.

Tags: Alaska Pride, Barack Obama, benefits & fundraisers, California, Holocaust, LGBT youth, marriage equality, Minnesota, Old Navy, Oregon, Proposition 8, Rick Santorum, Russia, Sheetal Sheth