WATCH: “The Golden Girls” On Marriage Equality

Sophia Petrillo puts the need and desire for marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples in a very astute yet simple way.

Gay in City: Entrepreneur Finds Success in Lube

After hitting the market in 2003 Boy Butter lubricants have been top rated as some of the best for men, especially play. If you haven’t tried it, here are plenty of reasons. 
Boy Butter is still a young company. Its founder, New York-based Eyal Feldman, studied history and had hopes of becoming a history teacher. Feldman was previously working for gay clothing company Nasty Pig Inc. in order to save money for his product. At age 24, Feldman wanted to provide the world with a lubricant that would last even longer than silicone-based formulas and clean up easier than water-based. That is exactly what he did. The most impressive part: Feldman does everything from design to business matters himself (he's the CEO). He is even the official spokesperson (yes, that's him in the picture).  Click here to read the rest of the article on Gay in City.

Obama to break bread with 1st Black Miss Israel

       

       First the Miss Israel tiara, then a meal with the leader of the free world. After receiving an exclusive invite to next week’s gala dinner celebrating President Obama’s trip to Israel, newly-crowned Ethiopian-born beauty queen Yityish Aynaw is well on her way to becoming an Israeli diplomat. As of now, the guest list for the event includes Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Army Chief of Staff Benny Gantz, and Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin, and Aynaw has reportedly sparked no small bit of envy among other high-powered politicos. 

Despite the fact that Obama’s Israel policy has been staunchly debated, almost everyone seems to be bidding to see the president during his three-day trip to the Holy Land. At one point, the U.S. Embassy in Israel even thought that a Facebook contest would be the fairest way to give away tickets to his keynote speech in Jerusalem.

Aynaw scored an invite to the dinner when White House officials heard that she was the first black immigrant to be crowned Miss Israel. She has also said that she looks to Obama as an influential role model. 

Read the original Tablet Magazine article 

PLUS: Check out this Hebrew language interview, if you can understand, she is super spunky and cool.

Watch: Hedda Lettuce dishes out Boy Butter Gold Label

The hilariously green tinged drag queen, Hedda Lettuce gave out some Boy Butter Gold Label, the 10th Anniversary Edition to a very lucky winner last night at the screening of The Women (1939), at Thursday night Chelsea Classics at Chelsea's Clearview Cinemas. It is a great film and someone was made happy with some great lube. I LOVE HEDDA LETTUCE!

Undressing Israel: Gay Men In The Promised Land,

       I wanted to share a great new gay documentary film that my friend, Michael Lucas, has produced, Undressing Israel: Gay Men In The Promised Land. When many people think of Israel, it is often in terms of modern war or ancient religion. But there is much more to the Jewish state than missiles and prayers. In his debut as a documentary filmmaker, adult-film entrepreneur and political columnist Michael Lucas examines a side of Israel that is too often overlooked: its thriving gay community. Undressing Israel features interviews with a diverse range of local men, including a gay member of Israel’s parliament, a trainer who served openly in the army, a young Arab-Israeli journalist, and a pair of dads raising their kids. Lucas also visits Tel Aviv’s vibrant nightlife scene—and even attends a same-sex wedding—in this guided tour of a country that has emerged as a pioneer for gay integration and equality.                

Now available for purchase on Amazon.com. 

The Official Trailer for Undressing Israel: Gay Men In The Promised Land

from Michael Lucas on Vimeo.

All proceeds from the sale of this movie will go towards the production of my next documentary, which will focus on the terrible mistreatment of gay people in today's Russia. Filming is set to start in mid-April.

Pro-Jihad and Anti-Jihad Ads compete in US metros

Pam Geller and her Freedom Defense Initiative have won their battle to run these anti-Jihad ads in the Washington, D.C., metro subway system. One ad features Fort Hood killer Nidal Hasan, and the words, "Reloading, firing again, reloading, firing again, while screaming Allahu Akbar — that's his Jihad. What's yours?"

They are a response to a campaign by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which ran a series of ads that said things like, "#MyJihad is to build bridges through friendships." currently running in the Chicago metro.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/this-anti-jihad-ad-just-went-up-in-the-dc-subway-system-2013-3#ixzz2My0hurS8

Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez Dies at 58

Original post by Adam Chandler on Tablet Magazine:

Venezuela’s mercurial, prickish, defiant, and brutal leader Hugo Chávez shuffled off the mortal coil this afternoon at age 58, following a long struggle with cancer. The 9/11 truther, strongman, and moon landing denier led Venezuela since 1999, suppressing free speech and remaining surprisingly successful at minimizing his country’s extreme poverty.

He was not popular with Jewish communities at home or abroad. Writing in Tablet last year, Matthew Fishbane covered Chávez’s reign, during which roughly half of the Jewish population of Venezuela fled the country.

In 2004, Chávez made his first official visit to Tehran and struck up a personal friendship and diplomatic alliance with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, whom he welcomed to Venezuela this month. This came after decades of political tutelage from another Holocaust denier, the Argentine ultra-nationalist Norberto Ceresole, who died in 2003 but who managed to instill a conspiratorial, amalgamated view of Jews in his pupil. Chávez has seemed to find in anti-Zionism, and later anti-Semitism, a valuable political tool, one that enhances, or makes more precise, his love of straw-man rhetoric and open hostility toward the United States, first against the bellicosity of George W. Bush and then against President Barack Obama, who remains an avatar of “imperialismo yanqui,” which has abetted “las oligarquias” in Latin America.

Taking over for Chávez will be Venezuelan Vice President Nicolás Maduro, who doesn’t sound like a very nice guy either.

In his December profile of Maduro for FP, Peter Wilson quotes a professor of Latin American history arguing that it’s “impossible to expect Maduro to be another Chávez.” Instead, the professor explained, “he represents continuity with the policies and programs that the president has promoted.” …Maduro is planning to cloak himself in the more conspiratorial dimensions of Chavismo as well. What’ll be interesting to watch is whether he succeeds — or comes across as an inferior imitation of the Bolivarian Revolution’s original steward.

Yikes.