Manti Te’o and Ronaiah Tuiasosopo: The movie

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 18:24:00 +0000

No doubt the strange affair of Notre Dame star linebacker Manti Te’o and his imaginary dead girlfriend will provide fodder for a movie somewhere down the line, whether cheesy and lesson-oriented, sleazy and exploitative or arty and sensitive (or perhaps all three at once). But with the recent confirmation that Te’o’s acquaintance Ronaiah Tuiasosopo created and maintained the female persona of Lennay Kekua because he was "deeply, romantically in love" with the studly football hero, it came to me that this story already is a movie.

Various commentators have already pointed out the similarities between the Te’o affair and other information-age scams, from the film-turned-TV show-turned-verb “Catfish” to the story of JT LeRoy, a purported transgender teen genius from Appalachia who turned out to be an adult female New York writer named Laura Albert. And it’s not as if Tuiasosopo was the first man in history to pose as a woman in order to seduce another man – or, on a more theoretical level, to blur the boundaries of sexual orientation. Just looking at recent culture, you have “M. Butterfly” and “The Crying Game,” not to mention the profusion of transgender or “shemale” pornography, which deliberately confuses heterosexual and homosexual desire and is primarily consumed by nominally straight men.

Russia’s proposed ban on gay propaganda is awful

Fri, 25 Jan 2013 23:41:00 +0000

Have you heard about this Russian bill aiming to ban "propaganda of homosexualism"? It was just approved by an overwhelming majority in Russia's lower house of Parliament, and it is expected to be signed into law by president Vladimir Putin.

And it's awful. Seriously.

Not only would the law criminalize gay pride demonstrations and very basic forms of free expression, it would also penalize anything seen as promoting a gay lifestyle or gay culture to minors, punishing offenses like wearing rainbow suspenders with jail time or fines of up to $16,000. (I am not kidding about the rainbow suspenders.)

So what else is the propaganda of homosexualism? Glad you asked! Because, according to the insanely vague language of the bill, it is everything on Earth.

So here we go. Say goodbye to the following, Russia.

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Salon.com > gay culture

Manti Te’o and Ronaiah Tuiasosopo: The movie

Russia’s proposed ban on gay propaganda is awful