Toronto Muslim Conference To Feature Violently Anti-Gay, Anti-Semantic Speakers, Gay British Couple Home Shot At By Homophobic Youths, 17 Year Old New Zealand Male Convicted Of Manslaughter After Stabbing Gay Police Officer, Bronze Plaque Commemorating Harvey Milk Stolen In San Francisco, Colton Haynes And Tyler Posey Twosome, River Phoenix Final Film To Be Released 18 Years After His Death

Four of the six speakers scheduled to appear at an upcoming Muslim conference at a downtown Toronto hotel have made anti-gay or anti-Semitic remarks. The Toronto Star reports that the Calling the World Back to Allah conference is part of the “Canada Launch Tour” of the Islamic Education and Research Academy (IERA), a British organization seeking to establish a presence in Toronto and Montreal. The conference is scheduled for October 23 at the Sheraton Centre. Gay activists in Britain denounced a hotel chain in January for hosting a London IERA event involving several of the same speakers. One of the speakers expected in Toronto, Malaysian convert Hussain Yee, has said “the Jews” are “the most extremist nation in this world.” He also suggested that Jews perpetrated and celebrated the 9/11 attacks. Hamza Andreas Tzortzis, a British convert, has argued that open displays of homosexuality should be made a crime. British convert Abdur Raheem Green, who also appeared at a July conference in Toronto, has written that gays, like adulterers, should be stoned to death. At the July conference, Green criticized the media for labeling him hateful and challenged critics to “find a pattern” of homophobia in his hundreds of public statements. “All you can find is one comment I made on my blog where I talked about Islamic law and punishment for homosexuals,” he said. Toronto’s Abdullah Hakim Quick, an African-American convert, has been lauded for his work to promote women’s rights, improve interfaith relations and eradicate female genital mutilation; he wrote a column for the Star in the 1990s. Later, however, he said AIDS was caused by “sick” homosexuals who want “to take us all down with them” and referred to the “filth” of Christians and Jews. He has rejected accusations of bigotry. His “filth” comment, he wrote, was merely a plea for “God to heal the spiritual corruption that afflicts some members of religious groups, which in turn leads to injustice against innocent people.”The public relations officer for the conference referred questions to an IERA official who did not respond to a request for comment. A Sheraton convention services employee said hotel staff began researching the event after he was informed of the speakers’ backgrounds Wednesday by a reporter, adding “We book things and sometimes we don’t know exactly what they are.”

An airgun was fired through the glass patio door of a gay couple's home in Oxfordshire, England in what police have described as a homophobic attack. BBC Oxford reports that the two victims were at their home in Chestnut Close, Witney, when they heard a loud bang at the rear of their property. The couple then heard homophobic abuse from a group of five youths outside, aged between 16 and 18, police said. One youth was wearing large headphones while another wore a dark Bench hoodie. The two victims, a 45-year-old man and a 39-year-old man, were left "distressed", Thames Valley Police said. The incident took place October 12, but details were only released by police on Wednesday.

A teenager in New Zealand who stabbed a gay police officer to death has been found guilty of manslaughter, but, reports The Herald, the jury of eleven found 17-year-old Willie John Ahsee not guilty of murdering Denis Norman Phillips, at the High Court at Auckland Wednesday. Ahsee wiped tears from his eyes after the verdict was handed down. Phillips, a 59-year-old temporarily sworn police officer who worked as a jailer, was found dead in his Papakura flat on July 31, 2010, stabbed four times with a serrated knife. The Crown said Ahsee, who was 16 at the time, was drunk and was seen running down the road yelling, “I killed someone" on the night of the killing. In her opening address last Monday, Crown prosecutor June Jelas said Ahsee lived within walking distance of Phillips' home and would visit him regularly to work out his gym in a converted garage. On the night of the killing, Ahsee had gone to Phillips' house for a workout before neighbours heard "banging, thumping noises", Jelas said. One neighbour called police shortly after 10pm and said she hearing "yelling and screaming" on his way home, including yells of "I killed someone". The teenager returned to his family home "emotional and intoxicated" and smashed two windows, so his mother asked police to keep him overnight to detox, Jelas said. She said that the next day Ahsee confessed to his mother that he had stabbed the policeman, and he went to a police station. "He admits to stabbing the deceased but he said he can't remember anything about it. He can't say what was in his mind," Jelas said. Ahsee will be sentenced in December.

Police are investigating the whereabouts of a missing bronze plaque honouring slain gay San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk. The Associated Press reports that Supervisor Scott Weiner has filed a police report after he was notified on Saturday that the plaque created in the mid-1980s was removed from its spot in the city's Castro district. Sgt. Mike Andraychak believes that thieves may have chopped up the plaque to recycle the brass pieces for profit. Police estimate the plaque to be worth about $10,000. Wiener said he is not sure the theft was a hate crime, and is hoping for its safe return.


Colton Haynes and Tyler Posey have something sweet, sticky, and edible between them.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, eighteen years after the sudden death of actor River Phoenix, Dutch director George Sluizer says he will finish Dark Blood, the 1993 drama that Phoenix was shooting when he died of a heart attack on Halloween night outside the Viper Room in Los Angeles. After Phoenix’s death, apparently of a drug overdose, Sluizer took the original Dark Blood footage and kept it hidden fearing, he says, it would be destroyed. The director has now re-edited the material and believes with a few adjustments – using voice over for instance – he can now deliver a final cut of the film for release next year. Sluizer, mainly known for his acclaimed film Spoorloos, remade as The Vanishing starring Jeff Bridges and Kiefer Sutherland, said he plans to ask Phoenix’s brother Joaquin Phoenix to do the film’s voiceover as River’s character Boy. “The voices of both brothers are very much alike,” the director, who has stayed in touch with the Phoenix-family, told THR. In Dark Blood, Phoenix plays a hermit living in the desert on a nuclear testing site as he waits for the end of the world. When a Hollywood jet-set couple (played by Judy Davis and Jonathan Pryce) arrives to find shelter, he begins a troubled relationship with the wife.