A male reporter embarrassed himself and George Clooney at the Venice Film Festival when he removed his shirt and proclaimed he wanted George to “take him now”.

Matt Damon and Steven Soderbergh talk more about “The Informant”, the film where Damon had to gain 30 lbs to play a man who blows the whistle on his company’s price-fixing scheme.

A gay man in Thunder Bay, Canada was brutally beaten by six to eight men with bricks, and will now require reconstructive surgery to deal with the damage done to his face.

Openly gay Representative Barney Frank is eyeing a position in the Obama cabinet.  I doubt it will happen, but if it did he’d be the first gay person ever in the Presidential cabinet.

Ntozake Shange was slated to write and direct the film adaptation of her play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf, but now Tyler Perry has stolen the entire film from her.

Female UK prison officer wins case against correctional facility she claims treated her unfairly for being young, female, and pretty.

More tour dates have been canceled for homophobic Jamaican singer Buju Banton.  One of his most popular songs talks about shooting gays and burning their bodies.

Proud, admitted homophobe Tim Hardaway is now working hard to save gay lives.  He says “we don’t have to accept the act, but we have to accept them as people.” How generous of you.

A gay man in Ontario is now needing reconstructive surgery after being attacked by at least 6 men with bricks.

John “Jake” Raynard suffered 15 fractures to his cheekbone, a broken eye socket, a broken jaw and a broken upper palate when six to eight men surrounded him near a North Cumberland Street business. Raynard, 30, and two friends were smoking outside of a bar after last call when a man approached them for a cigarette. The three friends walked away from the man after he became aggressive. Raynard said as they walked toward the Water Street Bus Terminal a group of males followed them shouting derogatory comments about their sexual orientation.

“It was like they were waiting in the woodwork,” said Raynard, who is gay, from his hospital bed. “The crowd just seemed to get bigger.” One of the men grabbed Raynard’s friend and started choking him. Raynard said he struck the man that was assaulting his friend and then began yelling at the group to try and scare them away. “I managed to fend off six to eight people by yelling long enough to get them (Raynard’s two friends) into a cab,” said Raynard. Once his friends were in the cab, Raynard said the group surrounded the taxi, preventing him from getting in.

He decided to run through a nearby alley towards a local restaurant instead, grabbing a brick for self-defense as the men chased him. “I was screaming loud enough to wake up six blocks,” said Raynard. “How did nobody hear me?”

No arrests have been made.  When will this ever stop?

Gay screenwriter/director Mike White is at the helm of a new HBO comedy pilot starring the fabulous Laura Dern, who caught HBO’s attention with her priceless portrayal of Katherine Harris in the movie Recount.

The Hollywood Reporter scoops:

Mike White and Laura Dern’s comedy project at HBO is moving forward with a pilot order from the network.

The single-camera comedy, tentatively titled “Enlightened,” stars Dern as a self-destructive woman who has a spiritual awakening and becomes determined to live an enlightened life, creating havoc at home and work.

“The only thing I can think of cooler than making a show at HBO is doing it with Laura Dern,” White said. “I am totally stoked.”

I’m a huge fan of Mike’s because of his films The Good Girl (one of my favorites of all time) and Chuck and Buck.  Not so into School of Rock, Nacho Libre, and Year of the Dog, but hey, at least we have a gay screenwriter out there that’s making movies that appeal to mainstream audiences.

I have no idea why, but for some reason CNN has decided to hail Perez Hilton as a pioneer for gay Latinos in America, and makes him the main topic of their piece on gays and lesbians coming out of the closet in the Latino community.

Perez Hilton is a celebrity blogger who dishes out the latest Hollywood gossip, but there’s something about his personal life you may not know.

Hilton is a Latino pioneer. He is one of the first Latino public figures in the U.S. to be openly gay. While Latinos have broken ground on the U.S. Supreme Court, in Hollywood and in professional sports, gay Latinos in the nation’s public arena remain largely invisible.

Hilton says deep-seated homophobia within the Latino community has forced many gay Latinos to go underground, but attitudes are shifting.

I suppose it says something about Hollywood and the media if Perez Hilton’s the best “pioneer” they can find, but at any rate they go to discuss the deep-rooted issues with homophobia among Latinos.

Like other gay people of color, Latino gays face a double bind: discrimination from mainstream culture and from their own community, Torres says.

This double bind presents an obstacle to Latinos who consider coming out. Their challenge: risking rejection from their family when they need their family as a refuge from racism.

They mention a poet who struggled with violent homophobia and his own self-loathing but later came to find acceptance.

Emanuel Xavier, a gay poet and spoken word artist, says he almost destroyed himself because he couldn’t find acceptance within the Latino community.

The New York-based poet says he grew up knowing that his sexual identity infuriated other Latinos. He once saw kids pelt a gay Latino hairdresser with stones. He routinely heard Roman Catholic priests condemn homosexuals.

His own mother called him names when she discovered he was gay, says Xavier, editor of “Mariposas: A Modern Anthology of Queer Latino Poetry.”

Xavier says he was so filled with self-loathing that he once sold drugs and engaged in risky sexual behavior.

“I became all those things society expected me to become,” he says. “I thought that was the only thing I could be.”

Xavier says he decided to ditch his reckless lifestyle and become a poet. He reconciled with his mother and took on a new mission. He wanted to show others that one could be Latino, gay and proud.

It’s an interesting piece on both the Latin community in the U.S. as well as the changing world in Latin America.  I just really wish they’d excluded Perez Hilton and not given him more reason to think he’s a legitimate celebrity.

Speaking of gay Latinos, this article reminds me of another article I read a while back about a Latin gay couple in the Bronx that had adopted children, and their day-to-day struggle in their community.  It also mentions how gay couples in the Bronx are more likely to adopt children than in any other New York City borough. It’s an interesting read.