metroweekly.com - 3 207 Showbiz News and Updates

My Little Pony franchise, deeming it a hotbed of “LGBT propaganda.”The impetus for the raid appears to be objections to furries — a minority sub-culture of primarily adults, some of whom may identify as LGBTQ, with an interest in roleplaying and dressing up as anthropomorphic non-human animal characters — who may have been present at the conference, known as “Mi Amore Fest.”Furries have commonly been associated with “deviant” expressions of sexuality. They are often accused of trying to entice or indoctrinate children into embracing “non-traditional lifestyles,” as Russian politicians often refer to LGBTQ identity.Other objections seem to be related to the character Rainbow Dash, a pony with a rainbow-colored mane who is one of the chief protagonists of the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic series, as well as the presence of characters — both male and female — with gender-nonconforming character traits in various iterations of the My Little Pony cartoon series, which first aired in 1986.Organizers of “Mi Amore Fest” had changed depictions of Rainbow Dash to include the colors of the Russian national flag.Still, Russian authorities appear to believe that the series is sending subtle messages to viewers about support for LGBTQ causes.“Eric Myval,” who appears to be a furry, anime, and cartoon enthusiast based on their social media channels, wrote a series of posts on Telegram informing followers about the raid in real-time.“Apparently, you won’t be able to get to the fest anymore,” Myval wrote.

The Associated Press. Desperate to keep the affair secret, Ritter lured Doe to a remote area outside of Allendale on August 4, 2019, shooting her three times in the head with a .22 caliber handgun.

TheWrap, the 57-year-old Lemon has agreed to a separation deal for approximately $24.5 million, the equivalent he would have earned for serving out the remainder of his final contract, which was set to expire three-and-a-half years after he was pulled from the airwaves.In April 2023, Lemon, who was featured on Metro Weekly’s coverin 2016, announced on X that he had learned from his agent — and not from the network, for which he had worked for 17 years — that he had been terminated. He said he was never given any indication that the network was considering letting him go.

guilty of threatening to kill former U.S. Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.), according to the U.S.

declared an “extremist organization” by the Russian Supreme Court.As reported by The Telegraph, security officers entered the party, held at Typography, a club in Tula, 100 miles south of Moscow. They then dragged “feminine-looking” men out into the snow before beating them, based on information from the Russian human rights organization OVD-Info.

Hail, Caesar!, the Coens’ last proper comedy. After that, they made the Western anthology film The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, then went their separate ways.Joel went full Shakespeare in 2021 with The Tragedy of Macbeth, an expressionistic exercise that was never quite more than the sum of its parts, while his brother took a hiatus from narrative filmmaking.

Private Jones poses a thrilling musical adventure in story and in form.The company’s first world-premiere musical since the pandemic, produced in association with Goodspeed Musicals, shrewdly deploys sign language, practical sound effects, and silence, along with Pailet’s compelling score, to shape the world of Private Gomer Jones, a deaf Welsh sniper in World War I.Inspired by a real-life WWI marksman who was deaf since infancy, Private Jones comes firing to life in Johnny Link’s feisty take on the role.Gomer, who loses his hearing as a child, is gutsy enough at 16 to fake his way past British Army recruitment officers so he can join up and fight alongside his fellow Borderers from Breconshire.Backed by the production’s robust ensemble, he sings, bursting with hope, in “The South Wales Borderers” of answering the nation’s call. Moments later, innocence still guides him, as Gomer and company march through “Part of the Sound,” his vow to not simply soldier in step, but truly prove his value in combat.Link ably captures Gomer’s boyish voice and outlook, and evolves the character in his dark, humbling descent into the trenches of war, though it’s not the performer’s singing that carries the characterization.Distinctly pleasing voices do surround him — notably, David Aron Damane, lending his deep baritone to Gomer’s father and other roles, and Leanne Antonio as Army nurse Gwenolyn, leading the transporting ballad “Every Soul’s a Soul.”Later reprised as “Every Soldier,” the intoxicating melody ripples like water, floating Gwenolyn’s simple wisdom, that every soul is a soul.

David Carlin King and the Gold Diamond Band perform a Tribute to Neil Diamond on Sunday, Feb. 18, at 7:30 p.m. at The Birchmere, 3701 Mount Vernon Ave. in Alexandria, Va. Tickets are $45. Visit www.birchmere.com.For more information about Kingsbay Mansion, visit www.kingsbaymansion.com.

The Ohio Department of Health rolled back several rules and regulations that would have restricted access to gender-affirming medical care for transgender adults.In January, Republican Gov. Mike DeWine directed the department and the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services to file rules for public comment to ensure that individuals do not pursue a gender transition hastily.

Love means different things to different people — there is no one simple definition. But we all generally agree that along with love comes romance, and along with romance come specific tropes: wine, roses, chocolates, and sex.Those tropes are out in full force every February 14, on Valentine’s Day, a holiday that some view as a celebration and affirmation of romance.

Renaissance, but the pop singer isn’t giving her fans a chance to breathe. Instead, she’s announced a new album, it’s coming very soon, and fans can already hear the surprising new sonic direction she’s chosen for her latest era.On Sunday, February 11, Beyoncé dropped two new songs. The tracks, “Texas Hold ‘Em” and “16 Carriages,” are assumed to be the first official singles from her forthcoming album, which was announced at the same time that the cuts arrived.Beyoncé took to social media on Sunday night to reveal the second installment of Renaissance is coming next month.

Military.com mid-January headline was blunt: “Army Sees Sharp Decline in White Recruits.” An appropriate, similarly blunt reaction might be, “Who cares?” Not surprisingly, the right wing cares. Histrionically. They’re all in a bunch about it.Of these bunched-up deplorables, Rep.

Fellow Travelers, in which Bomer and Jonathan Bailey star as secret lovers who meet in McCarthy-era Washington.While a rapt audience inside the screening room enjoyed the series’ racy, ’70s-era Fire Island episode, Bomer, prompted by our discussion of whether actors are destined for certain roles, mused on his uncertain path to his SAG Award-nominated role as closeted WWII vet turned State Department official Hawkins Fuller.“It’s so interesting, because this came to me early on and I was so pessimistic about it,” he says. “I started out in this industry — I’ve been doing this almost 30 years — at a time when something like this just wouldn’t get made, period.”Still, throughout his career, the erstwhile White Collar lead has represented the LGBTQ community admirably offscreen, and in stage and screen revivals of The Boys in the Band, and his Golden Globe-winning portrayal of a writer with AIDS in HBO’s The Normal Heart.“We have seen this slow ebb of progress happening in Hollywood in our storytelling,” he says, citing Fellow Travelers creator Ron Nyswaner’s “beautiful scripts,” and the support of Showtime and Paramount for the show as prime examples of that progress.

Couple to Throuple all bed down for their first night, the show could be any other in the proliferating genre of hookup TV, populated by bed-hopping singles shacked up in sex mansions.But look closely, once the screen shifts to spy-cam night vision of bodies writhing beneath the sheets, and you’ll not mistake a third eager, willing participant bumping and grinding with the main pair. Set to boldly explore the bounds of polyamory, the show’s couples and singles — thirds, if you will — might represent a lighthearted, next logical step in society’s surging discourse on ethical non-monogamy.Then again, to more traditionally-minded viewers, or those simply with different tastes in popular entertainment, these semi-exhibitionist throuples might just speak to the unrelenting decline of American culture.

Lil Nas X: Long Live Montero, the artist known as Lil Nas X lays down his ambitions to achieve something “great, super grand, BIG.”He might be referring to his trailblazing career as a Grammy-winning rapper-singer-songwriter, whose unabashedly queer persona and presentation garner admiration and controversy in equal measure.He could mean his first concert tour as a headliner, the Long Live Montero Tour, the American leg of which is chronicled in this film by directors Carlos López Estrada and Zac Manuel.There’s little doubt he envisions greatness for himself, Montero Hill, the self-described brat from Lithia Springs, Georgia, who uploaded his modest country-rap banger “Old Town Road” to his socials and became a global sensation.The film, a verité-style tour diary in three acts, doesn’t achieve greatness of its own, but offers glimpses at those aforementioned aspects of Montero’s super grand life.Whether rehearsing for opening night at Detroit’s legendary Fox Theatre, getting a surprise pre-show visit from Madonna, or donning his drag persona to meet his uncannily accurate Madame Tussaud’s wax figure, he rides the dizzying whirlwind of music stardom with aplomb, clearly living out a dream.Among the most compelling footage presented here is the video he shot himself in 2018, as a striving but confident 19-year-old, a month after releasing “Old Town Road” to the internet. Looking into the camera, he tallies his current follower count, promising that in a year the count will look different.

Gen X has gotten. No world wars, thankfully, though we did grow up imagining thermonuclear Armageddon as a genuine possibility, if merely accidental.But the Cold War ended. We were evolving!Some credit Ronald Reagan for ending that chapter.

Metro Weekly, describing the embrace he has felt from the leather community. “There’s nothing left in the closet, and that has rounded me out as a person. The leather community made me who I am.”DanBear was on hand to enjoy the weekend festivities, represent his title, and serve as a judge at the 2024 Mr.

The Telegraph, Thomas — the former University of Pennsylvania swimmer who won the 500-yard freestyle race in the 2022 NCAA Division I Swimming and Diving Championships — has petitioned the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in Switzerland to overturn rules prohibiting transgender athletes from competing in world championship events, and at the Olympics, based on their gender identity.Thomas’s victory in the 500-yard freestyle sparked a backlash against transgender athletes in the United States, prompting FINA, the predecessor to World Aquatics, to adopt rules prohibiting transgender females from competing in women’s events if they have undergone “male puberty.”Only those athletes who have never developed secondary sex characteristics, or those who started puberty blockers prior to age 12, are exempt from the ban.World Aquatics has justified the restrictions on transgender participation, saying it based its recommendations on a scientific policy document that concluded that transgender women swimmers retain significant physical advantages over cisgender women, including increased muscle mass and lung size, even when they suppress their testosterone levels. Along with its adoption of the transgender athlete ban, World Aquatics sought to create an “open” category that would be open to individuals, regardless of gender, in which transgender athletes could compete.The category’s first races were scheduled to be held at the World Cup in Berlin last October.

diversion or treatment programs designed to decrease the risk of recidivism.According to the Italian newspaper La Stampa, the now-17-year-old’s father read his son’s diary in 2020, when the youth was 14, and discovered the boy was attracted to other males. The father then imposed various punishments on his son, forcing him to do military-style training runs at night, refrain from shaving, expose his genitals, and read pages from his diary out loud.He also accessed his son’s online social media accounts, monitoring sites he visited and restricting who he could communicate with.When those punishments didn’t work, the father sought help from a psychologist in the hope that the psychologist would affirm the parents’ conservative worldview.

commercial that also featured people doing various leisure-time activities such as hiking, chess, and yoga, as well as a heterosexual couple kissing.The newest ad from TurboTax features Doug and André, a mixed-race couple who say they “navigated a turbulent housing market” by buying a houseboat, which they call a “boater home.”André has his arm around Doug’s shoulder throughout the commercial, including a scene where the couple sits on a couch inside their houseboat. “We didn’t know the first thing about filing taxes as first-time homebuyers,” says André.Monica, a tax expert, appears on the couple’s tablet screen and informs them of the benefits of TurboTax, adding that new homeowners can file taxes with complete accuracy “on land and sea.”Merely showing Andre and Doug is an unforgivable offense to One Million Moms, which has chastised TurboTax for approving a commercial with a same-sex couple.“TurboTax should be ashamed of attempting to normalize sin in their 2024 commercial ‘Boater Home,’ which features a gay couple buying a houseboat.

Philadelphia and Memphis top the list of metropolitan areas with the highest incidence of STDs in the United States, according to an annual analysis of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).The seventh annual study, by Innerbody Research, the largest online medical and wellness testing guide, drew its data from the CDC’s latest STD Surveillance data, ranking the top 100 metropolitan areas based on the number of cases, per 100,000 population, of HIV, gonorrhea, chlamydia, and syphilis. The latter three diseases are among the most commonly reported new sexually transmitted infections.According to the analysis, the top 10 cities with the highest STD rates were:The data — marking the first from the post-COVID-lockdown period — shows that Philadelphia jumped from having the fifth-highest STD infection rate in last year’s study to the highest rate in this year’s study.

the letter alleges that the laws significantly infringe on LGBTQ individuals’ rights.“Taken individually, the seven pieces of legislation (the ‘Bills’) discussed in this submission will disrupt the lives of LGBTQIA+ people of various ages and backgrounds,” the letter reads. “Put together, the Bills are a systemic attack on the fundamental rights, dignities, and identities of LGBTQIA+ persons that opens the gates for discrimination by both public and private actors.“Considering the danger this represents, we humbly ask for you to make inquiries into this backsliding of human rights of LGBTQIA+ persons in the state of Texas, United States of America.”The advocates also assert that the U.S.

Wichita Eagle. “[O]ur deeply held religious belief keeps us from celebrating anything but marriage between a man and woman.”“I just started crying hysterically,” Waggy told the Eagle.

Lawrence v. Texas invalidated state-level sodomy laws as unconstitutional.However, unless a state proactively removes prohibitions on same-sex intimacy, local law enforcement authorities could choose to selectively enforce the law with the intent of targeting LGBTQ people — forcing them to expend money and energy defending themselves in court, even if the charges would ultimately be dismissed.Additionally, if the Supreme Court were to reverse its finding in the Lawrence case, those 12 states where anti-sodomy statutes have not been repealed would immediately be revived and could be used to prosecute LGBTQ people.Under Massachusetts’ anti-sodomy statute, which equates same-sex activity with bestiality, a person could be imprisoned for 20 years in prison for violating the law.A similar law punishes those convicted of an “unnatural and lascivious act” with a five-year prison sentence and a fine of up to $1,000.The anti-sodomy and “unnatural acts” laws are being targeted for repeal by some more liberal members of the state legislature, who are seeking to repeal or erase other outdated laws governing personal conduct, typically known as “morality” laws.One such law is a prohibition on “night walking,” which critics say can be used to harass individuals, especially transgender and gender-nonconforming individuals, for simply being out in public, allowing law enforcement to claim that such people intend to engage in prostitution.However, despite arguments from opponents, repealing the “night walking” law would not change other commonwealth laws declaring prostitution illegal.The Senate also added an amendment repealing a ban on “blasphemy,” a rarely-enforced statute in which Massachusetts residents are supposed to be punished

January 18, 2024All federal workers, including employees of Congress, are eligible for up to 12 weeks of paid parental leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act. That’s the benefit Buttigieg took advantage of when his children developed medical complications.But the decision to do so, in 2021, just months after being confirmed as Secretary of Transportation, has drawn jeers and derision from conservatives, many of whom believe that fathers shouldn’t qualify for parental leave since they do not directly give birth — or, apparently, have any significant role in child-rearing, except when it’s politically convenient to champion “parental rights.”Luna, 34, who gave birth to a son in August, had initially planned to return to Congress soon after giving birth.

The Associated Press, the Mercer County Board of Elections chose not to disqualify Arienne Childrey, a Democrat from St. Mary’s, Ohio, whose candidacy for the 84th District seat in the Ohio House of Representatives was challenged after Mercer County Republican Party Chairman Robert Hibner filed a protest with the elections board.Hibner argued that Childrey had violated a little-publicized state law requiring public office candidates to list any name changes they have had over the previous five years on their election paperwork.The law contains some exceptions, including for those who change names after marrying or those running for re-election, having previously been elected by voters under their new name.While the law was not intended to address transgender existence, it has since been weaponized against transgender candidates.

Fireworks. The boys spark a bond from the moment their mopeds collide on a forked road winding through the rocky countryside.Mop-haired 16-year-old Nino (Gabriele Pizzurro) is out joyriding on the scooter his parents just bought him, while slightly older Gianni (Samuele Segreto) is racing to escape two of the tormentors who refuse to let him be.Set during the summer of 1982, with the entire country entranced by the Italian national football team’s progress through the World Cup, the film marvelously conveys a sense of time and place.Picture it: small-town Sicily before Italy’s gay rights movement had truly crystallized.

Origin, starring as a celebrated writer diligently solving the puzzle that is her latest book, while also facing unfathomable personal adversity.The book she’s writing happens to be the nonfiction best-seller that inspired this film: Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent, by Isabel Wilkerson. In Caste, published in 2020, Wilkerson examines the racial hierarchy in America as a caste system, not unlike systems of oppression in India and in Nazi Germany that have enforced dynamics of superiority and inferiority based on characteristics other than race.“We call everything racism.

tracker developed by the American Civil Liberties Union.According to the ACLU, Oklahoma currently has the most proposed anti-LGBTQ bills with 36 — though many of them are redundant, with lawmakers introducing their own versions of nearly identical bills.The state with the next highest number of bills is Missouri, which has introduced 28, and South Carolina, which has introduced 26.Most of the bills target the transgender community, taking the form of efforts to either redefine transgender existence out of law or place restrictions on transgender people’s ability to self-identify, access spaces, or receive services that affirm their gender identity.More than 200 bills focus on educational matters, including proposed athlete bans, curriculum censorship bills, and at least 38 requiring LGBTQ-identifying students to be outed to their parents in the name of “parental rights.”Another 120 seek to restrict access to gender-affirming health care for trans-identifying minors, with some even seeking to require transgender adults to overcome a number of bureaucratic or regulatory obstacles to receive transition-related treatments, which critics say is an attempt to frighten medical providers into refusing to see transgender patients altogether.Already, 24 states have passed some form of restrictions on gender-affirming care for minors, resulting in a flood of legal challenges from families with transgender children and from doctors who are penalized for prescribing gender-affirming care under the laws.While most lower-level federal courts temporarily blocked such bans last year, only one statewide ban, in Arkansas, has been declared unconstitutional.Other bans in Indiana, Montana, and Florida remain blocked, although bans in states

A proposed bill in Iowa seeks to prosecute people accused of providing “obscene material” to minors could potentially be weaponized against book lenders throughout the state.Depending on one’s own biases, and how broadly the law is interpreted by prosecutors, the proposed law might be used to force librarians and bookstore owners to serve prison time and register as sex offenders if they allow minors to access LGBTQ-themed books that have been deemed “obscene.”The bill amends an existing obscenity law with harsher penalties.Under the proposed revision, “any person, other than the parent or guardian of the minor, who knowingly disseminates or exhibits obscene material to minor, including the exhibition of scene material so that it can be observed by a minor on or off the premises where it is displayed” will be considered guilty of an “aggravated misdemeanor.”Previously, the dissemination of so-called “obscene material” was considered a “serious misdemeanor,” punishable by up to a year in prison and a fine of at least $430 but not more than $2,560. But an aggravated misdemeanor is punishable by up to two years in prison, and much larger fine, ranging from $855 to $8,540.