Tag: #Censorship

Longtime country radio host Blair Garner recently taped an interview with 2020 hopeful Pete Buttigieg, but listeners of the nationally syndicated program, which reaches nearly 200 cities, will never get to hear it. Garner says he was approached about doing an interview by the Buttigieg campaign. “Since Country music tends to lean in a conservative direction, I was surprised,” Garner wrote on social media afterward. “But more than surprised, I was EXTREMELY flattered.” “One of the few truly viable candidates in the...

Salty — a dating and relationships newsletter for women, trans & non binary people — has alleged that Facebook and Instagram rejected at least four of its ads for promoting “escort services.” None of the ads feature any suggestive nudity, sex workers or undertones of sex work. Both social media platforms later reversed their decisions, but the initial rejection still sheds light on the barriers that social media sometimes places on LGBTQ content creators. In a series of tweets published on...

Joshua Simon, a gay radio DJ in Singapore, has refused to participate in a local TED Talk after its organizers asked him not to make “sensitive” comments about his sexuality, especially since male same-sex encounters are punishable by two years in prison in the predominantly Buddhist country. Simon had wanted to discuss coming out to his father and changing social attitudes towards LGBTQ people, but a spokeswoman for Singapore Polytechnic, the school where the TED Talk was hosted, told Reuters: “Joshua...

Zane from Sean Cody (his tattoo is hiding underneath that armpit and flexed bicep) A recently released scene from mainstream gay adult studio Sean Cody featured Zane — a muscular, furry, bisexual guy who has a tattoo on his right shoulder of the confederate flag within the state of Texas. Embarrassed by the prospect of promoting a guy with a racist tattoo, the studio Photoshopped it out of Zane’s photos and blurred it out of his two video scenes. Gay adult industry...

Where some schools are banning gay speakers, Stanford invited Apple’s openly gay CEO, Tim Cook to address its graduates today. While much of the speech was about Silicon Valley needing to accept responsibility, the Tim Cook Stanford speech used the 50th anniversary of Stonewall to make a point about the importance of leaving a legacy for the future. Choking up during the speech, Cook told the gathered Stanford graduates: “In a few days, we will mark the 50th anniversary of the...

YouTube has continued to muck up its own attempts to regulate hate speech on its platform with two recent developments. First, it said today that users can make hateful, even homophobic statements targeting a single individual as long as the statements are part of a larger argument. Second, the company’s recent efforts to ban extremists has included demonetizing videos of journalists who make their money covering racism and white supremacists. These developments come after yesterday’s decision by YouTube to allow right-wing...

EW on YouTubeI guess now I can really cross Russia off my list of dream travel destinations. Oh, well… As reported by The Moscow Times via The Advocate, Elton John biopic Rocketman‘s sex scenes, notably the ones featuring gay stuff, have been chopped in Russia.   LGBTQ “propaganda” is prohibited by Russian law. A film critic present for the premiere of Rocketman at last month’s Cannes Film Festival confirmed that scenes were missing from the cut that’s playing in Russia....

The rainbow heart mural at the Bergen Arts and Science Charter School, before and after the Catholic Church complained about it. (image via Garden State EqualityThe Bergen Arts and Science Charter School is a taxpayer-funded public charter school in New Jersey run by a private non-profit organization. But their landlord is the Catholic Church, and because of this, the school was forced to paint over a 16-year-old student’s LGBTQ-supportive mural after parishioners complained about it being “offensive” and “obscene,”...