Eve Arnold, Maryland Labour Leaders Promote Same Sex Marriage Legislation, Two Oshkosh Wisconsin Men Accused Of Anti-Gay Hate Crime Wave Hearing, Portland Oregon Man Mobilizes Protest Against Boy Scout Christmas Tree Recycling Program Over Organization’s Anti-Gay Position, Director David O. Russell Accused Of Groping Transgender Teen Relative

Eve Arnold, one of the first woman photojournalists to join the prestigious Magnum Photography Agency in the 1950s and traveled the world for her work but was best known for her candid shots of Hollywood celebrities, has died. She was 99. Arnold died Wednesday at a London nursing home, Magnum announced. The cause was not specified. The Los Angeles Times reports that starting in 1951, when career women were a rarity, Arnold navigated distant countries and cultures, photographing horse trainers in Mongolia, factory workers in China and harem women in Dubai. Her photo essays appeared in feature news magazines and in the many books she compiled. "Eve was a very good photographer," said Stephen White, who owned the Stephen White photography gallery in Los Angeles from 1975 to 1990. "She was socially significant, as one of a group of women photographers who emerged after World War II." Arnold began working for Magnum on a freelance basis in 1951 and became a full member of the group in 1957. The agency's founders included Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Capa, considered the greatest reportage photographers of the time. Most members of the cooperative were men. Arnold's only female colleague at the agency was Inge Morath, who joined Magnum as a full member in 1955. "I began to haunt the files at Magnum," Arnold recalled in her memoir, Eve Arnold: In Retrospect (1995). Studying contact sheets she found there, she learned how each of Magnum's photographers approached an assignment. Cartier-Bresson's photographs, in particular, taught her to tell an entire story in a single image, she wrote. Arnold made Hollywood a specialty starting in the mid-1950s. Her attraction to the backstage of life gave her a particular angle on the movie business. "Eve used a photojournalistic approach," White said of Arnold's photos of actors and actresses. "Hers was the naturalistic form as opposed to the posed studio photography more often associated with Hollywood at that time." In several books, including, Eve Arnold: Film Journal (2001), she wrote about her experiences in Hollywood. Some of her best known images are candid shots of Marilyn Monroe. On the movie set of The Misfits, Arnold captured the tension between Monroe and playwright Arthur Miller, her husband at the time and the screenwriter on the 1960 film. One photograph shows them together on a veranda, looking as if they have just cut short an argument. Others show glimpses of Monroe's legendary insecurity. In one photograph she sits at a table with a script in front of her, hands covering her eyes. "She liked my photographs and was canny enough to realize that they were a fresh approach for presenting her — a looser, more intimate look than the posed studio portraits she was used to in Hollywood," Arnold wrote of Monroe in Film Journal. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement. Arnold published several more books, Marilyn Monroe: An Appreciation and Marilyn for Ever, both in 1987. She exhibited and sold the images repeatedly, for decades. Her photographs of Joan Crawford show the actress in her 50s, near the end of her reign as Hollywood royalty. None is flattering. There are close-ups of Crawford applying makeup to her wrinkled eyelids and evaluating her aged face in a hand mirror. "The first time I met Joan Crawford she took off all her clothes, stood in front of me nude and insisted I photograph her," Arnold wrote in Film Journal. They met in a dressing room when Arnold was on assignment for Women's Home Companion magazine. "Sadly," she wrote of Crawford, "something happens to flesh after 50." After the photo session Crawford demanded that Arnold give her the film of the nudes and Arnold agreed.

In heavily Democratic Maryland, where organized labour can still pack a punch, unions have lobbied in recent years to protect public employees, expand collective-bargaining rights and improve worker safety. According to The Washington Post, a less-traditional issue will top their agenda when the General Assembly reconvenes next week: legalizing same sex marriage. In advance of the 90-day session, labour leaders are promoting the new priority in coming days with a news conference and participation in an Internet video campaign organized by a group pushing to make Maryland the seventh state (in addition to the District) to allow gay nuptials. “At 1199 SEIU, we support working families, not just certain families,” Ezekiel Jackson, an organizer for health-care workers in Maryland and the District, says in the video, in which he dons a Baltimore Orioles baseball cap. “That’s why bringing marriage equality to Maryland is important. It’s about making all families, including committed gay and lesbian couples, and their kids, stronger.” A bill to legalize same sex marriage fell short last year, and both sides are mobilizing for a rematch that will probably be decided by a handful of wavering members of the House of Delegates. Late last year, a diverse coalition of religious leaders launched a renewed campaign against “redefining” marriage with a pair of news conferences at churches in Prince George’s County and Baltimore, jurisdictions that several of the targeted lawmakers represent. Bill supporters, among them Governor Martin O’Malley (D), are hopeful that some additional muscle will be added to their side by organized labour, which despite declining membership has a still-strong tradition in Maryland of helping its friends at election time. SEIU affiliates alone steered more than $575,000 to Maryland legislative candidates during the 2010 election cycle, according to campaign finance records. Fred D. Mason Jr., president of the Maryland State and District of Columbia AFL-CIO, said labour’s stance on marriage rights builds on its long-standing support of measures to protect gay people in the workplace. And it is an acknowledgment that some of its members are gay, he said. “When push comes to shove, union members, regardless of their personal views, stand on the side of social justice,” said Mason, who has a son who is gay. “This is certainly a major issue for Maryland, and organized labour will not stand on the sidelines.” The AFL-CIO serves as an umbrella organization for several dozen international unions with chapters in Maryland — some of them newer than others to the fight over same sex marriage. Nationally, SEIU has been on record supporting marriage rights for gay couples since 2004. The service-workers union was heavily involved in last year’s successful effort for same-sex marriage legislation in New York. In Maryland, labour leaders are hoping to build upon that momentum with a broader coalition. At a convention in November, the AFL-CIO affiliates unanimously passed a resolution supporting passage of legislation that O’Malley has pledged to sponsor this year. In coming weeks, labour leaders say they plan to mobilize many of the 300,000 workers they represent to lobby lawmakers in Annapo­lis and in their districts back home. Same-sex marriage will be a major theme of a January 16 rally outside the State House, Mason said. And the AFL-CIO will weigh the votes of lawmakers alongside other labour priorities as it decides which candidates to endorse in the future, he said. “We’re prepared to put the resources of our organization behind this effort,” Mason said. “All the affiliates are expected to use their political leverage to get it done.” Whether that is enough to alter the outcome remains to be seen.

Two Oshkosh, Wisconsin men accused of beating up a man outside a bar on Christmas Eve waived preliminary court hearings Thursday, reports The Northwestern. Lyall B. Ziebell, 20, and Jake R. Immel-Rhode, 20, are each charged with battery causing great bodily harm and burglary, both as a party to the crime. The battery charge also carries a hate crime modifier, which increases the penalties. If convicted, each man faces 23 years, six months imprisonment and $40,000 in fines. According to the criminal complaint, Ziebell and Immel-Rhode were walking past PJ's Bar, 1601 Oregon Street, at 2:15 am on December 25, when a man asked them for a cigarette in exchange for buying them a shot of liquor. The men went into the tavern, drank a shot and then went back outside to smoke a cigarette. Ziebell told police he punched the man in the face after the man started "hitting on me," causing the victim to fall down onto a car. Immel-Rhode then began to kick the man's head, while shouting slurs about the man's sexuality. The man had a broken jaw and a brain injury that required emergency surgery. He told police he was attacked, "because I'm gay," the complaint states. Ziebell told police he is "very homophobic," according to the complaint. Ziebell also told police the men stopped at Nayarit Mexican Market, 258 W. Eighth Street, on the way back to Ziebell's home, and stole cash and pre-paid cell phones. Both men remain in custody at the Winnebago County Jail on $3,000 cash bonds. Ziebell is due back in court Jan. 12 for an arraignment and Immel-Rhode is due back in court for a pre-trial conference on February 1.

A Portland, Oregon man is urging people to boycott the Boy Scout Christmas tree recycling program to challenge the organization's position on gay rights. Richard Kuhns posted flyers throughout the Laurelhurst neighbourhood where he lives, complaining of the Boy Scouts’ national stance against gays, reports NWCN. Local Boy Scout leaders said the tree recycling program has traditionally been one of their biggest yearly fund-raisers. Boy Scouts of America issued a statement Thursday that said in part, "The BSA recognizes that some do not agree with its position on this single issue, but values the freedom of everyone to express their opinion and teaches its members to use courtesy and respect at all times. To disagree does not mean to disrespect... The BSA believes that its youth program is not the appropriate forum in which to discuss issues of sexuality." Kuhns disagreed and in addition to circulating 200 flyers, he also started on online petition against the Presbyterian Church of Laurelhurst, which sponsored the local Boy Scouts. “Too many organizations like the church in Laurelhurst continue to enable the discrimination of the Scouts,” Kuhns said. “I think it's a basic civil rights issue.” Pastor Greg Ikehara-Martin responded, saying, “We understand the protest. We are opposed to homophobia. We don't believe local Scout 22 is a homophobic group and we don't believe boycotting the Christmas tree recycling fund-raiser of this group is the best way to change the national policy on homosexuality." Meantime, the Boy Scouts plan to start collecting trees for recycling in the Laurelhurst neighbourhood starting at 9:00 am on Saturday.

According to a police report obtained by The Smoking Gun, director David O Russell's transsexual, 19-year-old nephew, Nicholas Peloquin -- the son of Russell's adoptive sister, Barbara Jane Peloquin -- alleges that "The Fighter" director inappropriately groped Peloquin during a super-awkward exchange at a Florida gym on Friday. Peloquin, who also goes by the name Nicole, told a Broward County Sheriff's Office deputy that the bizarre incident took place in the gym at the Embassy Suites in Deerfield Beach, Florida (Russell is currently editing the Weinstein Co.'s Silver Linings Playbook, starring Bradley Cooper.) According to Peloquin's testimony, 53-year-old Russell offered to help Peloquin with abdominal exercises, during which Russell's hand hovered above Peloquin's "private parts." Peloquin, who has not yet undergone male-to-female gender-reassignment surgery, described "the hormones to increase his breasts" to Russell, at which point the director slipped his hands under Peloquin's shirt "and felt both breasts," the police report (available at the source) reads. Peloquin told the deputy that he felt uncomfortable during the groping, but did not tell Russell to stop. He did, however, subsequently tell his mother that Russell put the moves on him in the gym. Russell confirmed the exchange during his own interview with the detective, claiming that Peloquin was "acting very provocative toward him" during their workout, and that Peloquin invited him to feel his breasts. Russell told police that he was "curious about the breast enhancement." Russell's spokesperson, Cynthia Swartz, told The Wrap in a statement, "David O. Russell emphatically denies any wrongdoing and has cooperated fully with the authorities." Per the police report, Russell told the deputy that Peloquin told him that one of his breasts is larger than the other. Oh, and that Peloquin made him "pinky swear" about the breast-touching.