We go behind-the-scenes of our April/May cover shoot, with photos and videos featuring music artists Tegan & Sara. The duo was photographed by David Needleman (Who also shot our April 2012 cover with Ricky Martin) at The OUT NYC in Midtown Manhattan. Read the cover story here, then check out the rest of the photos and videos after the jump.
(BTS Stills & Video by Vladimir Weinstein & Matt Monath)
The World Is Not Over
Lawmakers in Arizona are still pressing for a law that protects any business requiring trans customers to use a bathroom corresponding with the sex they were assigned at birth. And that gave Allyson Robinson an idea. She is the trans woman who taking on the military as executive director for OutServe-SLDN. While passing through Phoenix, she used a women’s restroom and left behind a message to Arizonans. See a photo she shared of the image above. It’s attached to a bathroom stall.
TIME magazine released the April 8, 2013 issue today in two editions. One cover featuring a gay couple, and the other a lesbian couple, locking lips. The portraits are by photographer Peter Hapak, and outtakes of the couples, including additional duos that didn’t make the cover, can be seen here. The kissing men are real-life couple, film and television set designer Eric LaBonté & his domestic partner Russell Hart, a hair salon owner. Living in Los Angeles, the two have been together for 7 years and engaged since 2010. Says LaBonté (right):
“My parents have been married for 45 years and I always knew that was something that I wanted. I want our children to say, ‘My daddies are married.’ We wanted to feel like a complete package.”
See the second cover, which features Sarah and Kristen Ellis-Henderson of Sea Cliff, N.Y., after the jump.
From Left: HIVPlusMag.com Editor Michelle Garcia, Associate Art Director Boo Jarchow, Managing Editor Neal Broverman, Creative Director Scott McPherson, Olympian and HIV Plus Cover Boy Ji Wallace, HIV Plus Editor-in-Chief Diane Anderson-Minshall, Ji’s partner Shaun Baldwin, Copy Editor Trudy Ring, and Editorial Director Matthew Breen.
Olympian silver-medalist Ji Wallace and his partner Shaun stopped by The Advocate & HIV Plus offices on Friday in Los Angeles. They were in town from Sydney competing in the L.A. Marathon, after raising $4,000 for APLA. Ji made headlines last year when he disclosed publicly that he was HIV-positive after seeing a Piers Morgan interview with Olympian Greg Louganis, whom he had the chance to meet with while in Los Angeles. Ji signed copies of the issue, which HIV Plus plans to auction off for charity in the coming weeks.
The Advocate is with Edie. The Art Department made this supportive graphic today, in hopes to bring attention to the DOMA case U.S. v. Windsor, where oral arguments begin on Wednesday. Show your support for marriage equality and share this with your network of friends. Check back to Advocate.com for in-depth coverage, as Advocate contributor Kerry Eleveld sits in on two very important cases at the U.S. Supreme Court this week.
Not ‘Too Gay’ For The Cover
Michael Douglas as Liberace and Matt Damon as his younger lover appear on the cover of the new Entertainment Weekly. This is the HBO movie that Director Steven Soderbergh said major movie distributors passed over because it was considered “too gay” for the big screen. “Nobody would make it. We went to everybody in town. They said it was too gay,” Soderbergh told The New York Post in January while promoting Behind the Candelabra.
Poet Shane Koyczan, along with a team of motion graphic artists, created the above video as part of the To This Day Project. a project based on a spoken word poem of the same name written by Koyczan to further explore the profound and lasting impact that bullying can have on an individual.
The Stigma Project completed it’s Winter 2013 campaign, titled Know HIV this week. The colorful array of educational graphics were shared daily for the last month on the organization’s Facebook page, as well as a number of other social media outlets. The intent is to provide easy to digest memes that would hopefully teach the public something they may not have known about HIV/AIDS, then share with their friends to educate them. Each graphic proclaims the clever slogan “KNOW HIV = NO HIV” in the caption field.
In a day when HIV is a manageable disease, the stigma associated with the virus has become a catalyst for new infections. Fear, apathy, ignorance, and lack of education cause people to not get tested, and in turn pass the virus onto others much more easily due to a high viral load (see the letter V) while putting their own health at risk.
After the jump, we present a preview of the campaign with the letters A-F. You can see the entire alphabet (and yes there’s even an X,Y, and Z) at www.thestigmaproject.org or on their Facebook page at www.facebook.com/thestigmaproject.
Baltimore Ravens linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo celebrates after winning Super Bowl XLVII, 34-31, against the San Francisco 49ers. We didn’t pick sides, especially not when San Francisco is arguably a gay mecca, but we’re sure happy for Ayanbadejo. The outspoken supporter for LGBT equality gave a lot of LGBT fans yet another reason to root for the Ravens if they weren’t already. And we are sure happy for Maryland, where coincidentally marriage equality is newly law. Before this Super Bowl, he was trying to think up ways to use the spotlight to promote equality. A suggestion: check out our interview with Ayanbadejo from last year.
These three license plates above won’t be placed on any cars in Georgia anytime soon. James Cyrus Gilbert, a resident of Atlanta, is suing the commissioner of the Georgia Department of Driver Services for rejecting three different requests for gay-themed vanity license plates. Gilbert believes the decision is political, telling the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “If I want I could get a tag that said straight man, but because it had gay on it, it’s not available.”
The LGBT News Blog for the Visually Stimulated.
