As the company embarks on our most aggressive growth effort since our founding in 2007, Richard will be a beacon to position the Agenda as the LGBT content leader and newspaper of choice, staying ahead of the news and analyzing its potential impact on the LGBT community. There will be a complete redesign of the newspaper, which is published weekly on a Thursday.
Richard has written 17 books, three mini-series, and over two-dozen audio recordings including the New York Times bestselling “Hughes: The Private Diaries, Memos and Letters” which was used as the basis of the film “The Aviator.” His later book, “Puppetmaster: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover” was translated on the big screen as “J. Edgar” starring Leonardo DiCaprio in the title role. He has written about the rich and notorious in numerous other biographies including “Duchess of Death: The Unauthorized Biography of Agatha Christie” and the Michael Jackson story “Jackson Family Values.”
Richard served as the West Coast Programming Editor of TV Guide at a time when it was the largest magazine in the world (with 40 million readers and 50 separate local editions per week). Later, he served as the TV Editor for the Hollywood Reporter daily trade paper, producing 3,000 columns syndicated to over 600 newspapers across the country. He has appeared on over 200 television programs and series including “Oprah Winfrey,” “Larry King Live,” “60 Minutes,” “48 Hours,” “Good Morning America,” “Today Show,” “Tonight Show,” “Entertainment Tonight,” “Inside Edition” and “Charlie Rose” among others.
“I am delighted to help guide a team of incredibly dedicated and supportive writers, photographers, designers and sales people who all share our single vision,” Richard said. “Bobby Blair, Kevin Hopper, and their supporting staff have given me a gift. Beginning today, both the Agenda and Guy Magazine will be on the forefront of LGBT politics, entertainment, social media, and opinion–seamlessly merging Internet content (with its instant availability) with the sensibilities of print (with its permanency and archive potential). I look forward to meeting our readers personally at Wednesday evening’s Mix at Sidelines Sports Bar from 6:30-8:30.”
As part of our restructuring, we will be moving our corporate headquarters to new offices, providing the largest production, layout and sales space of any Florida LGBT media company. With the current buying power of adult LGBT individuals projected to reach $800 billion in 2014, Multimedia Platforms and its associated publications and social media sites are posed to take the leadership position in supporting our community with socially relevant entertainment choices, and political analysis and explanation, while our travel guides, film reviews, and fashion layouts will renew the creative posture of our readership.
My vision over the years has always been to create a media company that could offer our readers and advertisers every component available in the marketplace from newspapers, magazines, websites, social media outlets, etc. I am proud to say we are reaching our goals.
Rediscover the new Agenda, Guy Magazine, and their associated web platforms as we move into an exciting tomorrow.
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While the vast majority of the feedback has been positive, there have been those in the testosterone-world of über-masculinity known as the NFL who found it difficult to stomach. Miami Dolphins safety Don Jones tweeted “OMG” and “Horrible” seconds after the kisses were aired live on ESPN. Jones was called on the carpet by the Dolphins, removed from team activities, fined an unknown amount of cash, and sent to “educational training” for his actions, in addition to taking the tweets off-line.
Derrick Ward, who was part of the New York Giants squad when the team won the Super Bowl in 2008, wrote, “Man U got little kids lookin at the draft. I can’t believe ESPN even allowed that to happen.” Digging in his heels several hours later, he tweeted “I’ll continue to speak my mind because it’s my god given right and supposedly u can do it without being frowned upon here in America.”
In a similar ignorance-is-bliss-fashion, Marshall Henderson, a guard with the University of Mississippi basketball team,tweeted, “Boycotting Sportscenter til this Michael Sam nasty ass s**t is off …. My brothers are 7 and 11 and saw that!!! #Sickening.”
Yes, Derrick Ward, you may speak your mind in America; but you can’t speak your mind without consequences. Yes, Marshall Henderson, your little brothers saw those kisses, just as we’re certain the boys saw your homophobic reaction. And therein lies the problem.
Michael Sam and Vito Cammisano have every right to cry and hug and kiss their gay hearts out any place they want in America. This is, after all, the land of the free and home of the brave. There is nothing wrong with showing affection in public or in private. What is terribly wrong is suggesting that children of any age should not be allowed to see it. But why is that?
No child instinctively thinks hugging or kissing is horrible between two men. Someone has to teach them that. And you, Marshall Henderson, and you, Derrick Ward, by posting your outdated, bigoted comments on-line for the world to see have made yourselves out to be the homophobes you are. What is #Sickening is that many children are not being taught that equality and affection are universal gifts we can give one another without regard to gender or sexual orientation.
Sadly, as we continue to discuss “the kisses,” what isn’t getting any airplay is that Michael Sam has picked up this first endorsement deal. The smart folks at Visa negotiated the contract with Sam’s agent, in whose home the famous kisses were filmed. Watching that footage, it becomes painfully obvious that everyone in the surrounding crowd is white.
Sam’s family in Texas wasn’t present because they disowned him—not so much because he’s gay, but more because they are horrible parents. Vito’s family wasn’t there either. They are Mafia folk, don’t you know. Vito’s late grandfather was William “Willie the Rat” Cammisano, head of the Kansas City Civella family. Willie the Rat would have labeled the kiss “bulls**t.” We call it love.
]]>Sure, it would be equally gratifying to discover Wurst’s born gender after the decision was made, but seeing her come out in a full beard packed a punch that no one was prepared for (aside from those familiar with Hialeah’s Finest, AKA Juliesy Y Karla).
Of course, Wurst’s bold beard landed her in some hot water with Mother Russia. Following the announcement of her Eurovision win, Russian officials denounced Wurst, with one of the officials even asking the culture ministry (which basically keeps old traditions and cultural norms in place) to ban her from touring Russia, according to a report from Billboard.
Wurst, real name Thomas Neuwirth, took home Eurovision’s top honors on Saturday with her ballad “Rise Like a Phoenix,” showcasing a strong James Bond vibe while representing Austria in the competition.
Apparently her message of transformation and acceptance was not received well by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who tweeted: “Eurovision showed European integrators their Euro-prospect – a bearded girl.”
Vitaly Milonov, a conservative politician, was also critical of Wurst. But instead of responding or acknowledging the vicious comments in a recent interview with the Associated Press, Wurst said: “It’s strange that a little facial hair causes that much excitement. I have to add that 80 percent of autograph requests I get are from Russia and Eastern Europe – and that’s what is important to me.”
Susan Boyle also “surprised” everybody when she appeared on the stage for Britain’s Got Talent. After there wasn’t a dry eye in the house, Boyle effectively shook things up for vocalists of the future. Now, we have shows like The Voice, where the judges can’t even see the singer until after they vote.
Simply put, Wurst gets it. She deflects the hateful comments with charm and wit, which always wins in the end. With a beautiful voice and a charming personality, it doesn’t matter what you look like.
It’s safe to say the world hasn’t seen the last of Conchita Wurst, and we couldn’t be happier.
]]>The announcement brought a truckload of internet controversy (of course), and in a matter of hours, very polarized opinions. “How could he replace someone as legendary as Letterman?” I found myself thinking. “I mean don’t get me wrong he’s hilarious, but… the replacement for Letterman?”
While he may never be as awkwardly charming as Letterman, Colbert does have some redeeming qualities, and I’m fairly certain he will do just fine.
First of all, the man is hilarious. While his out-of-character, actual personality is very down-to-earth and likable, he has the ability to cut you down on command. This guy has received more blank stares than Louis C.K. and, I don’t know, Lindsay Lohan, combined. He shocks his interviewees more than James Lipton for God’s sake. Remember when he roasted George Bush at a White House function in 2006? Priceless. Just imagine what he could do out of character?
Colbert also actively defends the LGBT community. His tongue-in-cheek vibe coupled with sarcastic one-liners makes Colbert, Colbert. He constantly puts the world on the spot whenever a ridiculous story involving the LGBT community emerges and even appeared at the Vancouver Olympics Pride House where he spoke in-depth with its executive director Jennifer Breakspear.
He’s also totally humble. When speaking about the differences between himself and his character, he said: “I wouldn’t want to be that a**hole. He’s got a tremendous ego. I get to pretend I don’t.” He even teaches Sunday school! He’s also a bit of a nerd (he’s a huge fan of Lord of the Rings).
Colbert has humor, wit, compassion and of course, charm, so we doubt it’s going to be a rocky transition. Besides, just remember: If Jimmy Fallon can take over for Jay Leno, anything is possible.
]]>“I think my father felt very strongly that when there was bigotry anywhere, prejudice anywhere, all of us lose out,” said Luci Baines Johnson. “Because it’s just one more expression of hate.”
“It’s hard to project what daddy would have thought about that because that wasn’t an issue that had come upon the States at that time,” her sister Lynda Bird Johnson Robb added. “But I know he really wanted everybody to be able to live up to the best that God gave them.”
After John F. Kennedy was assassinated, Lyndon Johnson assumed the role of president (he was Vice President at the time). Johnson surprised a number of Americans with his support of civil rights for African-Americans. 2014 marks the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, which he signed into law in 1964.
“I certainly think that, if God made you a homosexual, that you should have love and affection with somebody,” Robb told Couric. “And I would not want to deny anybody that opportunity to be happy.”
Luci Baines Johnson added, “It’s a great civil rights concern of our day.”
Though many have argued that LGBT discrimination echoes the Civil Rights Movement, it’s somewhat reaffirming to hear it from the late president’s family. After all, the Civil Rights Movement appears to have paved the way for the gay rights movement we’re familiar with today.
“Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men’s skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact,” Johnson famously once said. “Until justice is blind to sexual preferences” could almost be tacked on the end of that quote.
Digging through old quotes that touch on the Civil Rights Movement, you’ll find virtually all of them still apply to us today.
“The question is not if we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be,” Martin Luther King Jr. once wrote in a prison cell.
Even the quotes from those who spoke out against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 sound hauntingly familiar to One Million Moms or the American Family Association.
When speaking of the passing of the Civil Rights Act, politician Strom Thurmond was particularly vocal.
“Mr. President, passage of this bill will visit the heel of oppression on all the people, vitiate their constitutional shield against tyranny, and materially hasten the destruction of the best design for self-government yet devised by the minds of men,” Thurmond said in 1964. “Its passage will mark one of the darkest days in history.”
Yes, the mindless dribble that lashes out against “that which we don’t know” shlepped its way all the way to present day.
“I think the thing that is getting a little tiresome, the gay community, they have so bullied the American people, and they’ve so intimidated politicians,” said Michele Bachmann in an interview last month. “The politicians fear them, so that they think they get to dictate the agenda elsewhere.”
Fear not, as conservative radio show host Glenn Beck recently regaled us with this knowledge: The civil rights movement never really ended at all. In fact, we’re still still fighting for our rights.
“How blind to believe the civil rights movement ever ended,” Glenn Beck said in a speech. “The civil rights movement never ends, and it never will. It has been marching since the beginning of time.” Too true, Glenn Beck.
Photo by Cecil Stoughton, White House Press Office:
Lyndon Johnson signing Civil Rights Act in 1964. Among those standing behind the president, are Martin Luther King, Jr., Sen. Barry Goldwater and future Mayor of New York, John Lindsay.
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Social media was ablaze with cynical comments from users, ranging from “Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead” to “I’m going to urinate on his grave!” While Phelps and his church posed a threat to the LGBT community by instilling fear, I was shocked to see so many hateful comments. Sure, Phelps was a hateful, angry person who lead a religious cult into dark territory, but why do people think they’re any better when threatening to urinate on his grave?
Rachel Maddow was of course vocal during her new episode of The Rachel Maddow Show (all Rachel, all the time), where she was quick to make the following statement regarding the estranged leader’s death: “Who cares, right? Who cares?”
The bold statement from Maddow also claimed that the organization was a cult, and the more they tried to pressure the right-wing into disliking LGBT people, the greater the backlash was. “Psuedo-religious hate-cult leader fails, dies,” read the headline for the clip from Maddow’s show.
Using Biblical justification, Phelps’s church was anything but forgiving. True, he did picket the deaths of gay individuals (as well as anyone else they saw fit to protest), but seeing the gay community react with such a hateful, narrow mindset is disturbing to say the least.
The head of the Satanic Temple, Lucien Greaves, made headlines last week when he told Vice that he would be performing a ritual on Phelps’s grave that would make sure the estranged leader was gay in the afterlife.
“The Satanic Temple exercised its own right to offensive Free Speech in our performance of the Pink Mass at Fred Phelps’s mother’s grave this past summer,” said Greaves in a statement. “After having two same-sex couples (one male, one female) engage in homoerotic activity at the grave site, we declared Fred Phelps’s mother a post-mortem homosexual conversion.”
Greaves went on to say that he made a statement at the time that he would be presiding over Fred’s “own Pink mass before too long.” He says since he made a promise to a dying man, he intends to do his “very best to see it through.”
By making threats and rejoicing in Phelps’s death, we lower ourselves to an unreasonable level, matching the hate of the Westboro Baptist Church. Remember, as Martin Luther King once said, “Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
]]>Cathy – who said his views on traditional marriage haven’t changed – told the AJC that the Atlanta-based company shouldn’t have made the comments in the first place, even regretting the fact that he did so.
“Every leader goes through different phases of maturity, growth and development and it helps by recognizing the mistakes that you make,” Cathy told the AJC. “And you learn from those mistakes. If not, you’re just a fool. I’m thankful that I lived through it and I learned a lot from it.”
When he says he learned a lot from it, I think he means he learned what not to say around the media.
“It’s probably very wise from our standpoint to make sure that we present our brand in a compelling way that the consumer can relate to,” he said in the interview. “Consumers want to do business with brands that they can interface with, that they can relate with.”
True, it’s much easier to relate to a non-political fast-food chain, but when is it okay to stop boycotting a brand? If the company’s chairman apologizes (like Guido Barilla did), at what point are we supposed to forgive and forget? When is it appropriate to start loving that delicious chicken again? Is there a time when it becomes appropriate at all?
“I think that’s a political debate that’s going to rage on,” Cathy said. “And the wiser thing for us to do is to stay focused on customer service.”
Though Barilla apologized, he still has not produced a gay-friendly advertisement in Europe, and Chick-fil-A’s CEO hasn’t changed his stance on gay marriage either, so either way one thing is for certain: Time is not of the essence.
]]>When Jonsson decided to join the women’s division of CrossFit, she was told she has to instead participate in the male side instead. Months after Jonsson sent the letter to the fitness giants, a response was issued by Dale Saran, CrossFit’s General Counsel.
In the letter, Saran made several strange claims, both legal and medical. He said that since Jonsson was born as a male, with both X and Y chromosomes, and therefore, she is male and must train with males. When mentioning Jonsson, he says that her lawyer’s claims that she is legally and physically a female, are wrong. If this is true, I’m sure Saran is testing each and every athlete involved in the massive fitness program, both transgender and nontrans (or cis).
“This is simply wrong as a matter of human biology and if you can’t see that, there really isn’t much to talk about,” Saran writes in the letter. “Chloe was born, genetically – as a matter of fact – with an X and a Y chromosome and all the anatomy of a male of the human race. Today, notwithstanding any hormone therapy or surgeries, Chloie still has an X and Y chromosome. Thus, you’re [sic] statement is categorically, empirically, false.”
According to a study (transathletes.org/skeletal), transgender women who have been on hormone replacement therapy for a number of years have no physical advantage against cisgender women. As time goes on, hormone therapy depletes muscle and actually makes bone density and soft tissue equivalent to that of a regular woman. If anything, transgender fighters are at a disadvantage against other women due to their lack of testosterone. After hormone therapy, trans individuals no longer produce testosterone, whereas cisgender women continue to produce the hormone via ovaries. It’s probably important to know that testosterone boosts bone density and aids in muscle development.
At 5’4”, Jonsson is now suing the company and I couldn’t be happier. Last year’s female winner of the CrossFit Games was Samantha Briggs, who by the way, is taller than Jonsson.
]]>“Since nurture is the main cause of homosexuality, then society can do something about it to discourage the trends,” he said in a vague statement. “That is why I have agreed to sign the bill.”
Last week, both President Obama and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry expressed deep concern over the signing of the bill. President Obama released a statement that he was “so deeply disappointed” in the country, and that the America’s future relationship with Uganda was now a bit muddled. He went on to say that signing the bill into law would be “a step backward for all Ugandans and reflect poorly on Uganda’s commitment to protecting the human rights of its people.”
Now that it has been signed into law, Kerry has released an additional statement in which he stated that it was a “tragic day for Uganda and for all who care about the cause of human rights.”
Just one day after the bill was passed, a tabloid named Red Pepper was released with “Uganda’s 200 Top Homos Named.” In the paper, transgender males are called “confessed gay” women and continuously calls gay men “bum-drillers.” While violating the law can earn you 5-7 years in prison, many anti-gay advocates have already taken to the streets quite violently. At least one Ugandan individual who was thought to be gay has been killed already, and anti-gay propaganda like Red Pepper aren’t exactly making matters better.
Though many Ugandans are being strung along by their nation’s discriminatory ways, there have been a number of people who have spoken out against the country’s old ways. In 2010, the now-defunct tabloid Rolling Stone published an article titled “Uganda’s Top Homos,” with the subheadline “Hang Them.” The following month, a Ugandan LGBT activist, David Kato, was clubbed to death outside of his home.
I don’t believe in divine intervention, but I’m not exactly loving the idea of America “restoring democracy” either. It’s a terrifying thought: What if your own country suddenly turned against you? What would you do if there were Kiev-level riots right here in America?
“That would never happen here,” a friend said when I asked him. When asked why, he could only answer with a nervous “Because, it just wouldn’t.”
While the White House announced that they are “beginning an internal review” of the relationship with Uganda, no official sanctions have been announced as of print.
]]>Sure, Zuckerberg issued a confusing statement on gender inclusion – in which he said that due to feedback from translators and users in other countries, essentially stating that translations could end up being “too confusing” – but why wouldn’t they issue a trans option?
Eventually, Facebook caught up with the 21st century and added gender neutral pronouns. They now offer dozens of gender options, including “Transsexual,” “Pangender,” “Bi-gender,” “Trans Woman,” “Trans Man,” “Intersex,” and more. Unfortunately for us, Fox News felt the need to cover the story.
“It includes ‘transgender,’ ‘intersex,’ and ‘neither.’ [Laughs] Okay…” one reporter is heard narrating in a Fox News brief. You can practically hear the disgust in Elisabeth Hasselbeck’s voice as she rattles off the same quote, ending with “Heading over to the male, Clayton.” Clayton Morris responds with a wry “No, I changed mine to intersex. Thanks, Elisabeth.”
Apparently these reporters missed the memo on sensitivity training, because Tucker Carlson circled back on “intersex,” following up with “whatever that means.” Yes, Carlson said on air “whatever that means.” Between Ellen Page coming out as a lesbian and discovering the term “intersex” for the first time, these journalists – using the term loosely of course – had a field day with the LGBT community this weekend.
Todd Starnes, host of Fox News & Commentary, was also seemingly shaken by this news flash. “In the beginning God made man and woman,” Starnes wrote on his Facebook, “but Facebook decided to improve on the original models.”
Starnes added, “What if you identify as a pine cone or a chicken or a weed whacker? Facebook doesn’t offer those options.”
In other news, inanimate objects are apparently interchangeable with gender identities. We reached out to Equality Florida to see if they would be offering pine cone inclusion workshops in the future, but as of print, we have not heard back.
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