Living Out Loud with Darian

I've received my share of homophobic and racist hate mail over the years but it's always a treat when the mail is sent by someone of the professional wingnut sect. I had the pleasure of waking up to the following comment by "Dr." John Diggs on a post I wrote earlier this year about New Hampshire representative Nancy Elliot's distasteful and flat out wrong remarks regarding gay sex during a legislative session in an attempt to block marriage equality in her state.


"Gay men sexualize human waste, including the medically dangerous practice of coprophilia, which means sexual contact with highly infectious fecal wastes."


"Male homosexual behaviour is not simply either 'active' or 'passive,' since penile-anal, mouth-penile, and hand-anal sexual contact is usual for both partners. Mouth-anal contact is the reason for the relatively high incidence of diseases caused by bowel pathogens in male homosexuals."


JOHN R. DIGGS, JR., M.D.


everyone is learning what gay really is- and no amount of lying with change what everyone learns.."


Don't you just love it when they're not afraid to publicly attach their name and professional credentials to their brand of crazy? Now a little background on who this African-American(and I use that term loosely) spawn of Jerry Fallwell and Tony Perkins really is. Thank god (with a little g) for the "internets".


According to Diggs' profile on Ambassador's Speaker's Bureau website he is a board-certified Internist who has put his medical training and 15-plus years of clinical experience to work in developing a series of messages advocating the sanctity of human life and the proven benefits of sexual restraint. His central theme: Overwhelming scientific evidence supports the inherently reasonable and, at one time, universally held belief that sex belongs exclusively inside marriage.


A board certified doctor who has time to spew misinformation and homophobia on a little blog thingy? Really? Diggs' speaker's bureau has carefully sugar coated his vile and hateful message but the truth about who he is can be found after a simple google search. Thankfully South Carolina based black gay activist and Pam's House Blend diarist Alvin McEwen has already destroyed many of the "Dr's." talking points and outdated statistics written in his propaganda piece "The Health Risks of Gay Sex."


From Imp In Training: John R. Diggs' lies(PDF)


In another section, Diggs gives another distortion about gays and sexually transmitted diseases. In the summary section entitled Physical Health, he claims that :


“Common sexual practices among gay men lead to numerous STDs and physical injuries, some of which are virtually unknown in the heterosexual population.”


And what are these diseases? Diggs had this to say: There is an extremely high rate of parasitic and other intestinal infections documented among male homosexual practitioners because of oral-anal contact. In fact, there are so many infections that a syndrome called “the Gay Bowel” is described in medical literature. ‘Gay bowel syndrome constitutes a group of conditions that occur among person who practice unprotected anal intercourse, anilingus, or fellatio following anal intercourse.’ . . . the vast preponderance of patients with these conditions are men who have sex with men.”


Diggs is claiming that gay men are afflicted with “gay bowel syndrome.” But “gay bowel syndrome” is an obsolete medical term.“Gay bowel syndrome” is a term that religious conservative organizations often use in order to connotate the worst stereotypes about gay sex: gay men insert penises or whatever is handy when a penis is not available in the part of their bodies that are for waste disposal. Consequently, they are the victim to many diseases involving bacteria and feces due to this.


However, according to the "Free Online Dictionary and Thesaurus,” or
http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com: “Gay bowel syndrome was a term first used in 1976 prior to the discovery of AIDS, to describe a series of parasitic disorders caused by oral/anal contact and allegedly related to gay male sexual activity. The term was abandoned by the medical community in the 1980s dismissed because the problems that attributed to it were not specific to homosexuals, not confined to just the bowels, nor did it meet the medical definition of a syndrome.”


The site also says the term is still commonly used by anti-gay organizations, as a reason supposedly why homosexuality has a negative effect. This is true, because when one searches online via yahoo or google, he will find a litany of anti-gay websites, which go into detail as what gay men supposedly do sexually. Details, not to prove any facts but to spark a negative reaction by exploiting whatever stereotypes exist about gay men and anal sex. No credible researcher or physician uses the term and those who once did are quickly getting rid of it.


I've written it before and I'll copy and paste it again: Why are some straight folks so obsessed with gay sex? I bet Diggs and his ilk would be shocked to know that anal sex is not practiced nor enjoyed by all gay men and there's a large amount of straight men and women who enjoy this particular sexual act.


Diggs is married and the "beaming father of three children" and is obsessed with gay men and gay sex which can only mean one thing and we all know what it is...cue Eddie Long and Ted Haggard.


You just continue being the black face of the religious wingnuts who are using you for their personal and political gain while they privately hate you and those who look like you Diggs. I gladly give you the Negro Please Award.

You may have noticed the absence of television sitcoms featuring primarily African-American casts, only one exception comes to mind with the return of the CW cancelled fan favorite The Game returning in January with new episodes on BET.


Now African-American audiences can look forward to a second show when TV One premieres "Love That Girl", a new series starring Tatyana Ali premiering on January 10th. Ali plays Tyana Jones a recent young divorcee returning to Southern California in search of new independence, a new career and a brand new chapter in her life.


The sneak peek for the show includes two effeminate gay male characters who are tip-toeing the line of In Living Color's Blaine and Antoine's buffoonery from the early nineties. I'm reserving judgement until the show airs but it does give me pause.





Gay characters of color are already invisible on black networks and when we are present we're often on the down-low, outrageously over -the- top or caricatures of who we truly are only serving as the punch line.


Don't get me wrong I have the utmost respect for effeminate gay men(Stonewall uprising... anyone?) and believe their stories are important and should be shown, but I also believe there should be a balanced representation and far too often LGBT characters of color on television are one dimensional. We must demand to be portrayed as the multi-layered and diverse group we are just as we did prior to The Cosby Show era when black men were being reduced to gang-bangers and dead beat dads and not doctors, lawyers, or entrepreneurs.


I know some people will say it's just a TV show and it's not a big deal, but media has the ability to shape societal attitudes and for black people who may never come in contact with an LGBT person, Blaine, Antoine, and the gay characters from Love That Girl may be their only access to who we are. Let's hope the writers will get this one right. I'll be watching.


Get into the sneak peek below:

You may now have a reason to watch the Sundance Channel if you're not watching already when the new series "Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys" premieres on December 7th. Producers and BFF's Nathan Hale Williams and Crystal McCrary Anthony will be one of four platonic couples featured giving viewers a look into the unique dynamic of openly gay men and their close female friends.


Williams and Mcrary were the producing duo behind the hit black gay indie film Dirty Laundry and are considered to be among New York's African-American elite. Their story line seems to revolve around both their professional and personal lives. McCrary a single mother of two and Williams' desire to become a parent before turning 35 and his experience being a single man for the first time in over a decade.





Will you be watching? I know I'll be tuning in. Get into two previews featuring the beautiful and talented duo in the new series below:








h/t Bernie

Don't let the "down low" in the title deter you from checking out this great web news program developed to address issues important to the black LGBT community. Jonathan Plummer and Janora McDuffie hosts No More Down Low TV, a new YouTube show dedicated to dispelling myths and stereotypes about same-gender loving people in the African-American community.


The latest episode takes a look at how the internet is affecting the lives of the black LGBT community and is presented in two parts.


Get into episodes 1 & 2 below:

It looks as if the Bishop Eddie Long civil suit will never reach trial if both sides are able to settle out of court. Translation: It will continue to be business as usual at New Birth and the black church will continue to avoid dealing with it's dirty laundry.


Atlanta's Fox 5 News reports:


The first court hearing in the Bishop Eddie Long sexual misconduct case was held Friday, and the case is headed for settlement talks. Lawyers for the bishop and the four young men who have filed suits against him said they want to avoid a trial and resolve the dispute in mediation early next year.


During a status conference held Friday, lawyers for both sides gave a road map of what's going to happen throughout the case, when it's going to happen and why it's going to happen.


On the way into the courthouse, Bishop Eddie Long's attorney Craig Gillen, and the young accusers' attorney, B.J. Bernstein, had little to say. But after a short status conference, one thing was clear: Both sides were ready to resolve the case.


“The number one thing is we are ready to move forward in this case,” said Bernstein.


Watch a video report below:





h/t Maybe It's Just Me

I was rooting for Tyler Perry. I wanted him to win-to prove all of his critics wrong-to finally achieve the respect from Hollywood that has eluded him for his entire career, the respect that seems to only be an afterthought publicly for Perry in the midst of his multi-million dollar entertainment empire, legions of devoted fans, and media mogul status, but privately must be as important to him as it is to those who defend his desire to be considered a legitimate filmmaker.


I wanted to love For Colored Girls and I wanted a new generation of women and men who may not have experienced the power of Ntozake Shange’s original work to cry, feel, dance, sing, and marvel at the beauty of her words and the experiences of so many incredible black women as they leaped from the page to the screen in Perry’s adaptation. This did not happen. Instead what Perry gave us was a version of Shange’s For Colored Girls that is barely recognizable, if it were not for Shange’s poetry interwoven into typical Perry melodrama and randomly assigned to his gifted actors this film could have been any number of Perry’s previous efforts minus the mature and often intense subject matter.


There is a clear distinction between Perry and Shange’s contribution to the imposter that bears the name of the Tony nominated Broadway play that’s currently in theaters. Shange’s words and intentions soar while Perry is seemingly intent on bringing her down to earth and packaging the complexity of the women whom she writes about in an accessible soap opera format filled with religious overtones to be consumed by the faithful.


The resilience and strength of black women that has carried us through slavery, segregation, broken homes and in Shange’s original is nowhere to be found in the film; downtrodden, down low, down and out, and without hope. Once again black women are the victims and black men are the predators and cause of their pain.





This could not be more evident than in the Perry crafted story line between Janet Jackson’s character Jo and her down low husband played by Omari Hardwick, which served as the source of my ire and the catalyst for numerous anti-gay slurs that were hurled at the screen from the audience.


Jackson plays a successful and wealthy magazine editor who is oblivious to the plights of women she considers beneath her. On the surface she seems to be in denial about her troubled marriage and her husband’s homosexuality by looking the other way as she notices her spouse glancing too long at the backside of a strange attractive man he passes on the street or as he unsuccessfully tries to ease into their bed after a night of anonymous sex without disturbing her. It doesn’t take long before a recurring cough foreshadows sickness and forces Jo to visit her gynecologist setting the stage for the ultimate showdown between Jo and her down-low spouse.


Perry and his best friend Oprah Winfrey are clearly competing for who can create an even greater rift between black men and women by using the down-low monster to further strain relationships between heterosexual black couples while simultaneously blaming black gay men for the increase in new HIV/AIDS infections among black women, a myth that has been debunked by the Center for Disease Control, yet still persists in many circles and is perpetuated by Perry in this film.


Surely Perry is smart enough to know any adult who chooses to engage in sexual intercourse should be aware of the risks and responsible for his or her own sexual health, right? Surely Perry is using his art to empower black women to do so, right? As a resident of the city of Atlanta, home to one of the largest black LGBT populations in the country surely Perry knows openly gay black men who defy the dishonest, deceitful, and down-low low-down character made famous on his best friend’s couch in 2004 and who makes an unnecessary and stereotypical appearance in his film, right? Apparently, wrong.





Writer Wesley Morris said it best in his review of For Colored Girls on boston.com when referring to Perry’s depiction of black men in his films: “Perry has been playing a black woman for so long — he’s starred as the armed-and-dangerous Madea in at least five movies — that he practically is one. But black men in Perry’s movie are a source of visceral, physical ache. It’s as if a brother has broken his heart, too.”


And it’s Perry’s alleged homosexuality and conflict thereof along with his Christian faith that finds it’s way into all of his films that makes this aspect of For Colored Girls extremely hard to digest. One has to wonder if the words and scenarios Perry has written for this detestable down low character were born out of his own experience as an alleged closeted gay man held prisoner by religious fundamentalism and the traditions of the black church.


I’m convinced that Perry’s work will get better when he is able to write from a place of freedom and authenticity.


The powerful performances of his brilliant female cast with standout performances from Anika Noni Rose, Thandie Newton, Kimberly Elise and Phylicia Rashad isn’t enough to save Perry from himself and his tried and true formula of over-the-top melodrama. While we applaud Perry for his efforts and for employing black actresses who are often overlooked in Hollywood, they along with his audience deserve better material and Ntozake Shange deserves an apology.

I'm not sure where CNN found this "psychologist" or which school he attended but his alma mater should be embarrassed by his recent remarks broadcast on national television.


Jeff Gardere scolded Sarah, the Missouri Mom who approved her five year-old son's decision to attend school dressed as Daphne from Scooby-Doo for Halloween for "outing" her son. Gardere also stated that it's the "worst nightmare" of both heterosexual and gay couples "to have to fathom that their child might be gay." Sarah subsequently wrote a blog post that has received millions of hits after a handful of parents objected to her son's choice of costume.





I'm not sure but I bet millions of parents can think of a lot worse that can happen to a child other than them coming out as gay. Is Gardere a trained psychologist or a Focus on The Family implant? SMH.


Watch the video below:

Indie singer and straight ally Steph Jones has released the video for his infectious single 'Beautiful' and is staying true to form by challenging the Hollywood definition of beauty and gender.


A scantily clad and buff Jones surrounds himself with beautiful women of all sizes and colors in 'Beautiful', but his LGBT fans may appreciate the fact that he continues to be inclusive by his decision to include YouTube favorite DollFace Barbie, a beautiful androgynous man.





Steph Jones is an outspoken supporter of LGBT rights and according to some took a risk by publicly stating his support earlier this year in this YouTube video.



Beauty, talent, and brains. Get into 'Beautiful' in the video below:

Today there's 1.6 to 2.8 million young people in America who are homeless and forty percent of homeless young people identify as LGBT. Twenty six percent of young people who come out as gay,bisexual, lesbian, or transgender are kicked out of their homes.


Watch the cast of the webseries Drama Queenz, Broadway star Carol Channing, Melissa Etheridge, Bishop Gene Robinson and a host of others bring awareness to the epidemic of LGBT homelessness for Out Music Foundation and sponsor a child.

OUT MUSIC SPONSOR A YOUNG PERSON PSA from The Rainbow Collective on Vimeo.

A few days late on this one but it's still definitely worth mentioning. Actor and friend to the LGBT community Rockmond Dunbar appeared on ABC's Private Practice last week in a moving portrayal of a married closeted gay man infected with HIV.


This is the second time in recent months Private Practice creator Shonda Rhimes has tackled an LGBT theme. You may recall the transgender storyline played by Noah's Arc alum Darryl Stephens.


In this episode Dunbar's character is rushed to the hospital along with his boyfriend, a prostitute, following a car crash. After doctors learn of his HIV and marital status and his wife's plan to have a child they convince Dunbar to come clean to his wife about his secret double life.





The episode is well written and Dunbar wears his heart on his sleeve in this role. However, it's quite disheartening that the down low is a recurring theme on television involving black gay characters and the writer's missed the opportunity to show two black gay men in a relationship during prime time.





Watch a clip from this episode via Son of Baldwin here. You can also watch the full episode here.


h/t Son of Baldwin & Jeff Hobbs

A small group of protesters including clergy filed onto the grounds of the Atlanta capital building on Sunday to demand the resignation of Bishop Eddie Long. The rally was held in response to four lawsuits against Long, in which former male members of New Birth accuse Long of manipulating them into sexual relationships.





WSBTV reports:


“You think we are going to roll over? You think we're not going to fight back ... Hell no,” said Bishop H. "Prophet" Walker from the True Light Pentecost Church in Spartanburg, S.C.


The rally’s six speakers discussed their beliefs on the immorality of homosexuality.


"Homosexual practice is always wrong. It doesn't matter if you practice it in public in San Francisco or in secretly as a church leader, Mr. long," said Peter Laberbera, President of Americans for Truth about Homosexuality.





One of the speakers and organizers was Dallas radio talk show host Reuben Armstrong. He authored “Snakes In The Pulpit,” a book that accused Long of homosexuality three years ago.





“I would equate Bishop Long to Jim Jones, I would not be surprised if his followers didn't drink the Kool-Aid this morning,” Armstrong said. “I’m going to end today, Bishop Long, if it don’t fit, you must quit."


Armstrong has also called for Long to be administered an HIV test. It's apparent, at least to me, that this "protest" was merely an opportunity for these relatively unknown ministers (with Porno Pete Laberbera being the exception) to have their 15 minutes of fame by publicly condemning Long and railing against homosexuality. Part two of the Eddie Long scandal is coming but this sure isn't it.


Watch WSBTV's video report here.

Gay internet radio sensation DJ Baker and host of the long running Da Doo- Dirty Show is making the transition from radio to a new television format with his new project 'Late Night with DJ Baker'.


Over the past five years Baker has been one of the leading voices in LGBT radio opening doors for openly gay artists to present their work who are often overlooked by the mainstream media. 'Late Night' was originally to be presented as apart of EMBRACE TV's debut, but when the network imploded Baker decided to continue to work to bring his hit radio show to television audiences.


The first episode features Rupaul's Drag Race season 1 winner Bebe Zahara Benet, comedian Jae Benjamin, and rapper Medino Green.


"This is a start and the show will get better as the team expands," Baker tells loldarian.com. "I just finished my third and fourth episode and the next taping will be November 23rd. I'm building up my confidence and honing my skills just as I did with my radio show."


DJ Baker is an loldarian.com favorite and we're excited about watching him grow from a talented DJ into an even more engaging television host.


Get into the premiere episode of Late Night with DJ Baker below:

Late Night w/ DJ Baker Ep 101 from DJ Baker on Vimeo.