BY ROB SALERNO - A Florida lawmaker is trying to update the state's 19th-century legal code to remove misdemeanour offences for unmarried couples who live together and for married individuals who commit adultery.

While the law is rarely enforced, it carries maximum penalties of $500 or 60 days in prison. And quite right. Just look at these two vicious fugitives from Florida justice:

Sickening. 

It's almost quaint that such laws could remain on the books anywhere in the States, but it does have actual consequences. As recently as 2006, the adultery law was used to file a nuisance prosecution against a cheating husband.

Interestingly, the law can't be used against gay cohabitors or adulterers, in part because Florida's 2008 constitutional amendment bans recognition of any kind of same-sex union.

 

 

For the state that hosts some of the biggest gay events and resorts in North America, America's wang has a shockingly anti-gay voting and legislative record. This is the state where Anita Bryant started her Save Our Children campaign to ban gay adoption, after all. That campaign got Florida, in 1977, to ban all gay people from adopting children. It was overturned by the state courts, although the law still remains officially on the books. As does Florida's sodomy prohibition, enacted in 1868, updated in 1917 and scrapped by the US Supreme Court in 2003. Legislators haven't bothered to repeal the anti-gay law. 

And just for fun, here's an inexhaustive list of famous couples who'd be breaking the law if they moved to Florida.

BY ROB SALERNO - Police in Murmansk, Russia, have arrested a 21-year-old man who has confessed to luring a gay man to his apartment, killing him and eating part of his body.

Investigators say that the accused found his victim on a gay cruising website and that he targeted gay men because he assumed they wouldn't tell anyone where they were going, making it more likely that he would get away with his crimes.  

Fortunately in this case, the victim's mother did contact the police. Reports from RIA and The Daily Mail conflict on whether or not she told the police that the victim cruised on gay websites, or if the police found that out on their own. Either way, this case should be a reminder to always practise safe online cruising.

The accused reportedly wanted to eat a dozen or so more men. Only one victim is known so far.

According to reports, the accused turned some of his victim's flesh into sausages and meatballs.

If this story sounds familiar, it could be because Russia's been the source of a few high-profile cannibalism cases in the past few years.

Or it could be that the killer's "lure gay men because they're easy targets" MO is reminiscent of the string of gay men who disappeared from Toronto in the 1960s.

Or perhaps you're thinking, "Gee, there've been a lot of gay cannibal stories, haven't there?" Perhaps you're remembering the horrific 1980-'90s Dahmer murders, the bizarre case of the German cannibal who "auditioned" his victims in 2001, the 2004 Mexican gay lovers' spat that became several days worth of spicy stews, or the former Mr Gay UK, who in 2008 was found guilty of murdering, butchering and partially eating his lover.

BY ROB SALERNO - It's time for another Gay Republican Sex Scandal - US Commonwealths Edition!

Actually, as far as scandals go, this one is not all that exciting. Last week, Puerto Rican TV show Dando Candela aired pictures they'd taken from a Grindr account of a nude man who seems to resemble anti-gay senator Roberto Arango. While he refuses to admit the pics are of him, today Arango offered his resignation from the Senate.

Grindr, of course, is a gay cruising app for smartphones.

 

 

The senator issued non-denials to the media, saying that he can't say for certain that the pictures were of him. He also offered that he regularly takes pictures of himself naked to document a weight-loss regimen he's on and suggests they could have come from that. Because naturally, if you're a straight man looking for dieting tips, you post pictures of your anus to Grindr.

(The NSFW version of the above photo appears not to have been released yet.)

While Puerto Rican politicians don't break neatly into Republicans and Democrats -- Arango represents the ironically named New Progressive Party -- he is active in the state's federal Republican Party and vice-chaired the 2004 Bush/Cheney campaign on the island. 

His political career also includes a host of anti-gay actions, including banning gays from adopting children, a proposal to bar the state from recognizing any relationship other than male-female, and calling a political rival a fag at a public rally. 

His now-obvious hypocrisy aside, I'm not sure I understand what the scandal is. No one is claiming he harassed anyone on the site, or even that he met anyone from the site. There's no allegation of illegal behaviour or wrongdoing. He does have a wife and daughter, but no one's coming forward with allegations of adultery, and who knows, maybe his wife knows about it.

It's a little curious that the pics have surfaced through Grindr, too. The app is notoriously stringent about preventing people from posting nude, explicit or even suggestive profile photos, so the photo where the man we assume is Arango is, shall we say, winking at the camera, must have come through a private chat. It does have the faint smell of a witchhunt here, and it's yet another case where a politician seemingly resigns simply because he's been found out as gay.

In other Gay Republican Sex Scandal news, Indiana Republican legislator Phil Hinkle, whom we first told you about two weeks ago, says he won't resign even as he admits he paid a young male prostitute to meet him at a hotel. With an incredible amount of chutzpah, he admits the encounter happened but insists that he's not gay, wasn't meeting the young man for sex, and says that he can't explain why he offered to pay a male prostitute to meet him in a hotel. Maybe he was just planning to say "No homo" afterward?

First in line for that honour is Michele Bachmann. Bachmann is, of course, a Republican, a supporter of the Tea Party movement and founder of the House Tea Party Caucus.

She is also married to a homophobic bigot, Marcus Bachmann, who runs “reparative therapy” clinics that attempt to turn gay people straight.

The Huffington Post highlights the presidential hopeful’s continuing tactics to dodge questions about her past comments on gay and lesbian issues. When pressed to answer, Bachmann simply insists that she is running for president to fix the economy, not to get involved with “frivolous matters.”

So that’s what our issues are? Frivolous?

Well, at least she has changed her tune. Before she decided to leap onto the national stage she said being gay is a “sexual dysfunction.” She also said that if same-sex marriages were allowed, parents would not be able to protect their children: “It is our children who are the prize for this community; they are specifically targeting our children.”

The woman is psycho. Apparently, after being asked about same-sex marriage in a town hall debate, Bachmann excused herself and fled to the bathroom, where two women —one a former nun — asked her some follow-up questions.

Did she answer them? No. Instead she screamed, “Help, I am being held against my will!” before fleeing to her vehicle. She later told the police that she was terrified because she did not know what the women were going to do to her.

While some people have gone undercover to learn more about Bachmann’s husband's treatments (check out this first-person account of what happened when John Becker checked in for some “therapy”), others have taken the guerilla approach — doing the "Thriller" dance to Lady Gaga in front of one of his clinics. The act was inspired by Bachmann himself when he referred to homosexuals as barbarians who need to be disciplined.

 

    

BY ROB SALERNO - Queers concerned with the rights of our brothers and sisters overseas may have hit on a useful new strategy: tourism. 

It seems every week there's a new story about the hot new gay destination or the new country that's chasing after the pink dollar.

But this week brought news that Greece, long a gay tourism mecca for its iconic resort islands of Mykonos and Lesbos, is falling out of favour with gay tourists. Bloomberg reports that the drop-off has to do with tourists' discomfort with homophobia in Greece, and a renewed curiosity about destinations in Latin America, where gays and lesbians are starting to enjoy unprecedented advances in rights. 

It appears that the Greek government is catching on, as the same report indicates that the country is considering passing same-sex civil union laws in order to bring some good news back to the country, which has spent the last year under scrutiny for its mounting debt woes. It's also a conscious attempt to differentiate the country from neighbouring Turkey, with whom Greece has a longstanding rivalry. Turkey is even further away from recognizing or protecting queer people than Greece is. 

While it would be great to have countries coming to the international queer community for advice on how to make us love them more, it's unclear if this case can be positively associated with other countries. Boycott campaigns may not work where the countries don't actually want queers to visit  and may just serve to further impoverish the poorest of people (see Jamaica).

Greece had already become used to an international queer presence, and our absence is what's making them call us back. As they say, you don't know what you've got till it's gone.

It may be that tourism can be a vital weapon for the advancement of gay rights only in places where a solid foundation of rights already exists.