Late Thursday, Clear Channel released a statement regarding the Dawson McAllister Live radio show, which Clear Channel syndicates, and which airs live Sunday evenings, offering advice and counsel to young men and women, ages 13-29, and which was found to be referring callers who were expressing a conflict over sexual identity to Exodus International, an anti-gay group, whose quasi-Christian philosophy includes a belief in sexual reparative therapy – that an individual can change from homosexual to heterosexual. Clear Channel, in part, wrote that it has “a history of making significant commitments to diversity within our own company, and has been honoured by the Human Rights Campaign for its policies regarding GLBT employees and business partners. After looking into this matter, we expressed to the producers of Dawson McAllister Live that Clear Channel listeners who call the Hopeline be treated in a manner consistent with our corporate commitments to diversity. As a result of those discussions, the Dawson McAllister Association has reviewed its training for Hopeline volunteers and will remove the Exodus organization from its referral system and remove links to Exodus from its website.
American President Barack Obama signed a memorandum Thursday, ordering the Department of Health and Human Services to enact policy that prohibit hospitals from discriminating against gay and lesbian individuals, denying them to right to visit their partners. Obama’s decision was in large part influenced by the tragic tale of Janice Langbehm, who sat in a waiting room for hours at Miami’s Jackson Memorial Hospital while her partner of 17 years died from a brain aneurysm she suffered while the two, along with the couple’s three children, vacationed. According to David Smith, an executive with the Human Rights Campaign, the Obama administration and the HRC have been working for months on the policy initiative, Smith saying “in the absence of gay people being able to legally marry in most jurisdictions, this is step to rectify a gross inequity. Because without gay marriage, much more inequities exist. It should be applauded.” Earlier this week, Jackson Memorial updated its visitation rights policy slightly, however the apology Langbehm sought from hospital administrators was not forthcoming.
The Hearty Boys – Steve McDonagh and Dan Smith – who appear on The Food Network, have invited failed Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee to their Chicago home for dinner, a polite response to Huckabee’s hateful homophobic diatribe to a New Jersey college newspaper that included an insistence gay men and women should not be permitted to adopt because children are not “puppies.” McDonagh and Smith, who adopted a boy almost five years ago, wrote “Sir, your comments likening my parenting my son to adopting a pet are beyond hurtful and dangerous,” adding that “even though I find your comments reprehensible and irresponsible, I will open my home to you and pray that we might help you better understand the damage you could inflict.” Huckabee has yet to respond.
Brett Corrigan, so cute, and actually articulate and engaging given his past as a underage, bareback gay adult film star, was scheduled to speak in May at Yale University as a part of the campus’s Pride Month, but was disinvited, and according to Corrigan, whose real name is Sean Lockhart, the reason was that “various esteemed professors ... and a few students were vocal enough in their opposition to my presence on campus. They didn’t find me appropriate for the scholarly adults that attend Yale University.” Alejandro Bustillos, the Yale Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Cooperative Coordinator, told the Yale Daily News that the decision to disinvite Lockhart was “made for a variety of reasons,” which is a non-denial/denial way of saying that the administration and faculty opposed having a gay porn star associated with the Ivy league institution.
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