Austin comedian Sam Killermann of It’s Pronounced Metrosexual has created this handy flowchart that shows when it’s appropriate to use the word “gay”.

Gay isn’t a bad word, folks. But it gets used that way so often people feel uncomfortable using it correctly. As much as it’d be wonderful to say that homophobia is an issue of the past, it’s not. Let’s continue reteaching our society what it means to be gay.

Sam has launched a Kickstarter project to help turn the flowchart into posters and t-shirts.

via I Love Charts

Some other famous kids of the ’80s and ’90s want you to know that gays rule and Kirk Cameron drools.

A faux organization has been created by former child stars to humorously challenge the recent homophobic statements made by another former child star, Kirk Cameron. This organization is called Child Celebrities Opposing Kirk Cameron (or “CCOKC”, which is pronounced “cock”) and they have released a PSA on Funny Or Die.

I’m a CCOKC and Kirk, you’re just a dick.

Starring Brice Beckham (Mr. Belvedere), Keith Coogan (Adventures In Babysitting), Josie Davis (Charles In Charge), Maureen Flannigan (Out Of This World), Christine Lakin (Step By Step), Jeremy Licht (The Hogan Family) and Kenn Michael (The Parent ‘Hood).

image via Kirk Cameron

As the “Shit Girls Say” meme continues to expand, YouTuber Rich Juzwiak brings us “Shit Gay Guys Say to Their Cats.”

Conan O’Brien, host of the late-night television show Conan, officiated the same-sex wedding of the show’s costume designer Scott Cronick and his partner, David Gorshein on air. The show spent an entire week filming at the Beacon Theater in New York City specifically to make this legally binding wedding happen. Conan normally films in California where it is currently not legal for same sex couples to wed.

The announcement from Conan includes a very funny segment on the media’s reaction to it, specifically for using very similar variations on the phrase “Conan O’ Brien may be about to push the envelope on late-night television…” Check out the mashup video that was created of various newscasters saying it in unison:

And just how do you pronounce ‘envelope’?

“The Homosexuals” is a 1967 CBS television documentary about homosexuality, narrated by Mike Wallace (who would later go on to host “60 Minutes”). At the time it was only the second American television documentary to address the subject of homosexuality–the first was “The Rejected,” which was produced in 1961 by the San Francisco public television station KQED.

via Brain Pickings

Is America Ready For Its First Gay Atheist Female Robot President?

According to The New New York Times, it might just happen in 2567.

original source unknown

via Guigo Reader, Chris Menning & meme-meme

“You Can’t Stop Love”, a new song by Jonathan Mann celebrating legalization of gay marriage in New York.

Loren Feldman made a great video of yesterday’s Gay Pride Parade Parade in NYC featured the celebration of the passing of the historic New York State Senate bill that makes it legel for members of the same sex to get married.

Tonight the New York State Senate passed the gay marriage bill in a vote of 33-to-29, making New York the largest state where gay and lesbian couples can get married. Once Governor Andrew M. Cuomo signs the bill it will go into effect 30 days later. A massive celebration is taking place at Stonewall Inn, where the gay rights movement started 42 years ago.

photo via Micah Jesse (this is a stock photo, not what the ESB actually looks like tonight)

Of course after the vote there was much celebration. Here are a few things that have been making the rounds:

NY Pride

Mayor Bloomberg Checks Into Marriage Equalitocalypse on Foursquare

NYC Mayor’s Office Changes Twitter Avatar In Honor of Gay Marriage Vote

Steve Martin & Alec Baldwin

Last night’s episode of Saturday Night Live featured a live-action version of the classic SNL animated segment The Ambiguously Gay Duo created by Robert Smigel and J. J. Sedelmaier, featuring Jon Hamm and Jimmy Fallon as Ace and Gary, along with Steven Colbert, Steve Carell and Ed Helms playing the evil villains.

“It Gets Better” & “Dear Sophie”, two new Google Chrome ads.

“Christina’s Farm” by Antony and the Johnsons, directed by Milica Zec and produced by Winslow Turner Porter III.

This video is dedicated to all of those who have encountered social injustice. It was inspired in part by the Serbian anti-gay riots on Oct 10th, 2010 and the numerous LGBTQ youth in the US, who took their own lives after experiencing harassment.

This week a group of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people who work for Apple appeared in a video relating how each of them weathered difficult times as teenagers to ultimately lead happy and successful lives. This is a message of hope intended for LGBT young people who may be experiencing bullying and harassment as they grow through what is an already tumultuous time for any teen. In making a video for the It Gets Better Project, Apple employees join people from Google, Facebook, The White House and many other workplaces, college communities, and individuals who have all come together to let LGBT teens know that they are not alone, that there is a long life ahead of them, and that these hard times will not last.

Back in December, I posted about It Gets Better and several other worthy (and funny) initiatives promoting gay rights. But It Gets Better is a particularly poignant effort, because it isn’t a political action group but a community outreach effort to support teens and prevent suicides.

In September 2010, syndicated columnist and author Dan Savage created a YouTube video with his partner Terry to inspire hope for young people facing harassment. In response to a number of students taking their own lives after being bullied in school, they wanted to create a personal way for supporters everywhere to tell LGBT youth that, yes, it does indeed get better.

One of the reasons that these testimonials and commentaries from gay and transgender adults are so moving, both for them and those watching, is that they are in a way talking to their younger selves. In these videos we briefly meet a diverse group of people who are variously nerdy, stylish, boisterous, shy, older, younger, but who all appear to be successful and sure of their identity. Yet their stories tell us that it wasn’t always as we see it today; they each felt awkward and horrible and that that would never change. But it has changed for them and it will again for so many others.

If you are considering suicide or need help, call the Trevor Project now: 866-4-U-TREVOR (866-488-7386).

Recently the It Gets Better book came out featuring David Sedaris, Tim Gunn, Suze Orman, and many others expanding on what they’ve said in their videos for the project. The book also lists resources for kids and parents to help through difficult times. Proceeds support LGBT youth. The book made the New York Times Best Seller List. Here’s more:

There are thousands of videos on the It Gets Better Project site from individuals and groups of people with stories to tell.

UPDATE 1: YouTube took down the original video posting this message saying it was due to “depiction of harmful activities”. It’s not clear what harmful activities they are referring to.

UPDATE 2: The original video is back up.

Mikala Bierma is a little disappointed with her gay best friend Tyler Coates.

via Brian Rountree

“It happened in 1969. And it happened in San Francisco.”

It’s kind of hard to imagine that prior to 1969 there were no professionally made films that showed people having sex. In fact it was a court case that year which established that it was legal to even have a porn film in your possession.

From Wikipedia:

Those that were produced were produced underground by amateurs starting in the 1940s. Processing the film by commercial means was risky as was their distribution. Distribution was strictly private. Denmark was the first country to legalize pornography in 1969, which led to an explosion of commercially produced pornography. It continued to be banned in other countries, and had to be smuggled in, where it was sold “under the counter” or (sometimes) shown in “members only” cinema clubs.

It was a 1970 “documentary” by San Francisco native Alex de Renzy with footage of the Red Light District in Denmark that finally got sex on the big screen legally. The fig leaf being that it had redeeming social value in educating about Danish culture. Almost overnight, De Renzy and other industrious San Franciscans became filmmakers and burgeoning smut moguls capitalizing on a open-minded population in the post-hippy and gay cultures to quickly get the cameras rolling.

A few years later and to this day, the city of Los Angeles would become the center of a true industry of adult film. The early Bay Area porn scene seems a lot more DIY, fitting of its place and time.

Now a pair of San Francisco filmmakers, both veterans of the current gay porn industry have a made a short documentary looking back at the city’s brief era as the center of smut.

In the late 1960′s the New York Times and many other media outlets named San Francisco “The Smut Capital of the United States.” This honorary title grew from both the reality and the myth of San Francisco, a city where the sexual revolution could be seen on the streets and soon in the movie theaters. This short uses first person interviews and historical research to tell the story of the development of hardcore pornography hitting the big screen.

They’ve already had a successful Kickstarter project to pay for the archival footage used in the film. The 15-minute documentary Smut Capital of America will play film festivals in the near future. More info and background recent interview with the filmmakers.

John Waters is one of the interviews in the film; here he talks about The Hungry Hole, a bar in San Francisco’s SOMA neighborhood that was “fairly radical”…

via Spots Unknown

The repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is official now, so it’s a good time to recall this recent The Daily Show video aimed at Senator John McCain. McCain has a track record of changing the basis for his opposition to repealing DADT. And as it became clear that repeal was imminent, Jon Stewart and team wanted him to know that It gets worse, referring to McCain’s legacy in the wake of defending a policy that has restricted the rights of gays in the U.S. military.

Comedy enlisted to makes a point about LGBT civil rights has given us a lot of great funny in recent years, like Prop 8 the Musical and Stephen Colbert’s parody of the pro-Prop 8 Gathering Storm ad. But as is often the case there are serious issues at the root of the laughter. The Daily Show sketch references two awareness campaigns and it’s worth taking a moment to mention them both.

The ad referred to in the Daily Show piece, in which the Senator’s wife Cindy McCain appears, is from The NOH8 Campaign, which begain in late 2008 in response to California’s Proposition 8 which banned gay marriage…

The NOH8 Campaign is a photographic silent protest created by celebrity photographer Adam Bouska and partner Jeff Parshley in direct response to the passage of Proposition 8. Photos feature subjects with duct tape over their mouths, symbolizing their voices being silenced by Prop 8 and similar legislation around the world, with “NOH8″ painted on one cheek in protest.

This particular ad was in response to suicides by several young gay men which gained national attention in the fall of this year. All those deaths were linked to bullying by peers, and the ad aims to raise awareness of the unfortunately rampant problem of LBGT kids being harassed in school. It features celebrities from Gene Simmons of KISS to that guy from Dancing with the Stars sending the message that bullying is wrong and that we can all do something to help.

The Daily Show’s “It Gets Worse” phrase is a play on the It Gets Better Project:

In September 2010, syndicated columnist and author Dan Savage created a YouTube video with his partner Terry to inspire hope for young people facing harassment. In response to a number of students taking their own lives after being bullied in school, they wanted to create a personal way for supporters everywhere to tell LGBT youth that, yes, it does indeed get better.

Now there are well over 1000 videos from all over the world online with personal stories about how “It Gets Better”. These include celebrity testimonials as well as those uploaded by everyday people.

Groups of LGBT employees at several tech companies have made videos for the project including folks from Google and Facebook…

Recently several White House staffers added their own “It Gets Better” video (below), following on the heels of videos by President Obama and Vice President Biden coming out of the closet. NOT REALLY! But they did talk directly to gay youth to encourage them to stay strong against the ridicule they may be experiencing.

White House Staff: It Gets Better from The White House on Vimeo.

You can watch more videos on the project’s website. Both of these campaigns support The Trevor Project which has advocacy/educational programs for LGBT youth and a a 24/7 Lifeline for kids who need help.

FCKH8

The FCKH8.com video and website were created by non-profit media campaigner Luke Montgomery, who hopes to one day get married. Back when he was a teen, Luke was the headline-making gay activist who had legally changed his name to “Luke Sissyfag.” Crazy, huh?

via Lori Dorn

photo of 5733 poster by Scott Beale

A federal judge in San Francisco struck down the Proposition 8 ban on gay marriage calling it unconstitutional.

In partnership with Freedom to Marry, Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream has renamed its “Chubby Hubby” flavor to “Hubby Hubby” in support of gay marriage in Vermont.

Ben & Jerry’s has a long history of commitment to social justice, including gay rights. Its partnership with Freedom to Marry, a national leader in the movement for marriage equality, aims to raise awareness of the importance of marriage equality and to encourage other states to follow the blazing trails of Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, and Maine. Freedom to Marry promotes the national conversation about why marriage equality matters and brings together partner organizations into a larger whole – a shared civil rights campaign.

via Serious Eats & Heather Gold

Time to rethink Bulgaria. Forget feta cheese, women’s choirs, and communist thuggery. Someone is rebooting  Bulgaria, and his name is Azis. At one level, you could simply describe him as a performer of chalga, a commercially streamlined fusion of traditional Romani (“gypsy,” ok?) folk-music and pop. But that would hardly do. In truth, Azis is Bulgaria’s answer to Madonna, Michael Jackson, Boy George, Liberace, and Marilyn Manson all rolled into one colossal glitter-dusted, KY-oozing jelly roll.

A Romani outsider by birth, this Balkan Bear’s star rose quickly with his first release in 2003, an unsuccessful bid for Parliament in 2005, an unofficial but highly publicized gay marriage in 2006, and the birth, in 2007, of a daughter via artificial insemination. But all this is nothing compared to the visual spectacle of his music videos. Whether playing Bollywood in an Erte-inspired Ice Queen get-up or playing nasty with Tom-of-Finland-inspired gangsters, the stylistic audacity of this hefty and uncompromising man-diva clearly demonstrates: it’s not your father’s Bulgaria anymore.

While there’s an ongoing debate over who actually created the character of Batman’s iconic nemesis The Joker (comic book artist Bob Kane, writer Bill Finger and artist Jerry Robinson have all variously claimed the idea) one aspect of his origin seems to be relatively free from dispute: that the creators drew their visual inspiration from German actor Conrad Veidt’s portrayal of the character Gwynplaine in the 1928 film The Man Who Laughs. An adaptation of a Victor Hugo novel, the film was directed by German expressionist filmmaker Paul Leni, with Veidt in the title role.

A well-known film actor with a long career, Veidt also appeared as Cesare the somnambulist in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Grand Vizier Jaffar in The Thief of Bagdad, and as Major Heinrich Strasser in Casablanca. The latter role being especially notable as Veidt himself was a fervent anti-Nazi, who emigrated from Germany to England in 1933, one week after marrying Illona Prager, a Jewish woman. Veidt also played what is likely the first homosexual character written for the screen, in Richard Oswald’s pioneering gay rights film, Anders als die Andern (“Different From The Others”).

Veidt died of a heart attack in 1943 while playing golf in Los Angeles.

The Joker is still at large.

UPDATE: Boing Boing just posted about the Inspiration for Super Friends’ Hall of Justice.

Shortly after Prop 8 passed in California, a conversation on the Heather Gold Show about its passing prompted Heather and guest Tara Hunt of Citizen Space to gather several others and start organizing EqualityCamp. A one-day event to discuss new ways of gaining support for same-sex marriage, EqualityCamp is using the BarCamp unconference format, with event planning and proposed panels being orchestrated on the BarCamp wiki.

It happens Saturday, January 3rd in San Francisco from 10am-6pm, at Citizen Space, located at 425 2nd Street @ Harrison, 3rd floor. Tickets are $21 ($20 + $.99 processing fee) and limited in number, and are available through Eventbrite. There’s a student/unemployed rate of $6 (including processing fee) as well. An explanation on where that money goes is on the site, which mentions that any funds left over will be donated to an organization decided upon by the attendees.

For more info, the organizers made the video FAQ above about the event.

“The Times of Harvey Milk”, the Oscar winning 1984 documentary by Rob Epstein that tells story of San Francisco’s first openly gay supervisor Harvey Milk who was tragically assassinated in 1978, is now available on Hulu. This is a really amazing documentary and provides a great look into an important period in San Francisco’s history. It also makes a great companion piece to the recently released film “Milk” by Gus Van Sant.

Look out San Francisco! South Carolina is making a play for our lucrative gay tourism revenues.

Sound absurd? Consider:  SF may have The Castro, Pride, and legalized marriage, but South Carolina has Hilton Head, antebellum mansions, and burly Civil War reenactors dashing though the woods in cute uniforms. And which of those do *you* think Judy Garland would prefer??

Frankly, this confirms a suspicion that has probably been lurking in the minds of many San Franciscans for quite some time. (“South Carolina = GAY!”) But back in the Palmetto State, some of the locals are reluctant to come out of the closet. MSNBC reports:

A state employee has resigned and officials have disavowed an international advertising campaign that led to calls for an investigation of tourism posters proclaiming “South Carolina is so gay.”

The campaign, which plastered the London subway with posters advertising the charms of South Carolina and five major U.S. cities to gay European tourists, landed with a resounding thud in South Carolina, where the issue of gay rights has long been a political flashpoint. [...]

The tourism department quickly said it was canceling payment of its $5,000 fee for the posters, which it said were approved by a low-level state worker who did not run the idea by senior officials. The employee, who was not identified, resigned last week, the agency said.

A spokesman for Gov. Mark Sanford, who has been mentioned as a possible running mate for the Republican presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, said the governor agreed that the posters were “inappropriate.”

image via Amro Worldwide