This morning I lost my virginity… my TV interview virginity, that is.

Those who know me, know me as a fairly quiet person, so the last place they would expect to see me is on a live TV broadcast on ETV morning news, talking about international matters. Come to think of it, that’s the last place I would expect to see me. Never the less, I found myself there this morning, a bundle of nerves, like a lamb being led to the slaughter. (Read More)

Rachel Maddow is doing an amazing job covering this issue. Please check out video of her investigation. Time Magazine also has an extensive piece on the topic.

View Rachel Maddow’s entire series after the jump.
(Read More)

West Coast Ugandans and humanitarians who appeal to the consul in Los Angeles for respect and equality toward LGBT Ugandans are likely to receive a small taste of that nation’s U.S. evangelical-bred cultural warfare:

Veteran gay activist Michael Petrelis discovered that Uganda’s L.A. honorary consul is none other than Matthew Crouch, son of the infamous prosperity-preachers Paul and Jan Crouch of Trinity Broadcasting Network.

The younger Crouch is a Hollywood Christian entertainment producer.

An October 2005 news release on President Yoweri Museveni’s web site shines light on Crouch’s quid pro quo deal in which he would promote Uganda among U.S. Christians in exchange for government support of his activities.

However, some of Crouch’s shady business dealings were exposed by the Los Angeles Times in 2006.

In many ways, Crouch and his company, Gener8Xion Entertainment, are Hollywood anomalies. He hasn’t had to look further than his parents — with their tax-free donor base and worldwide television reach — to bankroll and market his movies. In other ways, the stereotype of a Hollywood producer fits snugly. Friends and foes describe him, by turns, as charismatic, arrogant, charming, ruthless, visionary and greedy. [...]

Associates also say that Crouch’s impulsiveness — and perhaps a desire to escape his father’s long shadow — has prompted him to take shortcuts that have led to risky decisions. During the production of “Omega Code,” his key personnel included a former adult-film actor and a novice screenwriter who was arrested and convicted of soliciting a child for sex.

Nevertheless, a year later, Crouch was appointed honorary consul for Uganda — a Hollywood entertainment-industry ambassadorship.

Petrelis uncovered Tweets from Crouch dated in the spring of 2009 regarding one of the evangelist’s recent trip to Uganda:

@MC8X at nashville airport flying to Dallas. Leaving for Uganda Africa on tues. Scheduled to meet with President Museveni while there! 1:49 PM May 30th from Tweetie

@MC8X wow! Couldn’t tweet from Uganda. Back from Africa a few hours ago. Was at a pastors conference with 10,000 people/leaders in Africa! 9:52 PM Jun 11th from Tweetie

Petrelis has written to Crouch asking for communication about his Ugandan political affiliations.

The Uganda-Los Angeles consul’s address:s Gener8xion Entertainment, 7095 Hollywood Blvd, Suite 1260, Los Angeles, CA 90068.

Truth Wins Out executive director Wayne Besen was supposed to appear on MSNBC today. Due to technical difficulties in the studio, it was postponed until Sunday.

The topic will be the high expectations that LGBT Americans have set for President Obama’s speech at the National Equality March this weekend, and whether Obama will recommit to equality NOW or disappoint Americans with delays and vague assurances.

We will keep you updated on the new interview time.

When actor/artist Thom Bierdz was asked to return to The Young and the Restless after a twenty year absence, he stated that he’d love to~~if he could play a gay man.

When Bierdz first played Philip Chancellor III on daytime TV’s top rated soap, he was a teen idol–and deeply closeted off screen.

As he recalls in his superb memoir, Forgiving Troy, he lived in fear, but yearned to come out. During the 1980s, sexual honesty in Hollywood meant career suicide.

Bierdz left the series in 1989. Soon after, he suffered through a series of real-life events that made his soap opera exploits seem tame in comparison. One shocking day, his mentally ill brother Troy picked up a baseball bat and murdered their Mom. In Forgiving Troy, Bierdz recounts the long, hard road to forgiveness, and his coming-out process. He also had to deal with the suicide of his other brother.

What Thom Bierdz lived through might have broken the spirit of a weaker person, but the now out, proud Bierdz bounced back, and forged a new, very successful career as an artist. He’s highly in demand for his detailed portrait work, often traveling for the many commissions he’s offered.

This past month, Bierdz returned to his second home. On July 7th, 2009, Y&R viewers were in for the shock of their lives: they had already learned that Philip Chancellor III had faked his death 20 years prior. On the 7th, they learned why: Philip didn’t want his conservative loved ones to know that he was gay. (Read More)

Most actors long to have one signature role that will define their careers. Sharon Gless has two: Christine Cagney on Cagney & Lacey and Debbie on Queer as Folk. Both series were groundbreakers: C & L for it’s strong portrayals of women in the police force, QAF for it’s day to day depiction of a fictional gay community.

After winning multiple Emmys and Golden Globes for her portrayal of Cagney, it was Gless, a staunch supporter of gay rights, who’s responsible for getting Queer as Folk off the ground.

“A friend gave me the script,” she told me in an interview. “I called Showtime and asked to be cast.” Because of her name, other actors were suddenly willing to appear on the show. Prior to her involvement, many performers were afraid to lend their name to Queer as Folk.

Gless calls the passage of Prop 8, and last week’s CA Supreme Court ruling: “Shattering. I’m a fifth-generation Californian. For the first time I’m ashamed of my home state.”

The star is immensely proud of her new film Hannah Free, which will premiere later this month as the closing night attraction at Frameline, San Francisco’s annual LGBT film festival. The film is based on a play by lesbian playwright Claudia Allen — Gless is repeating a role she played on the Chicago stage.

“It’s the story of two women in a 60-year relationship,” she says proudly. “I appear as Hannah at ages 50 and 80.” As elderly women, Hannah and her partner are in a nursing home — Hannah is stopped from visiting her partner by homophobic relatives. “It’s very timely,” says Gless. “It brings in Prop 8 themes.”

Gless will appear at Frameline with pal Rosie O’Donnell, who isn’t in the film. Gless says that O’Donnell often gets an underserved bad rap. “She donates millions of dollars to benefit children’s causes. She never talks about this, and never gets credit for it.”

Gless remains close friends with Cagney & Lacey co-star Tyne Daly — the two have since worked together on stage. Both actors are excited about the upcoming DVD box set:
Cagney & Lacey: The Menopause Years, which will feature the four made-for-TV reunion movies that were produced after the series was cancelled. It will be released in September of this year.

For more information on Hannah Free, please visit the film’s site.

To see the film at Frameline and meet the star, please visit www.Frameline.org.

David Alex Nahmod lives in San Francisco. Visit him at DavidsOpenForum.Blogspot.com.

In a new documentary set to air on HBO next month, a disgraced evangelical pastor comes clean.  “The Trials of Ted Haggard,” directed by US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s daughter Alexandra, was filmed with Haggard’s cooperation — and how. 

You may recall that two years ago, Haggard stepped down from his post as president of the National Association of Evangelicals and was sacked as senior pastor of New Life Church in Colorado Springs after a former male prostitute alleged that the cleric paid him for sex and used illicit substances.

I have yet to see the documentary, but published reports say that Haggard speaks onscreen, speaks about his new life. The father of five remains in his marriage for the same of his children and apparently has been living with shame. While he doesn’t speak of his sexual improprieties in detail, he does admit to “sexual immorality” and says, “I really did sin.” Haggard tells of his longtime struggle with his same-sex desires, insisting that he never claimed to be heterosexual.

“The reason I kept my personal struggle a secret is because I feared that my friends would reject me, abandon me and kick me out, and the church would exile and excommunicate me. And that happened and more,” he says in the film.

He also reveals that while he purchased methamphetamine, he never used it.

Haggard’s wife Gayle speaks in the documentary as well, and offers what perhaps is the reason behind the couple’s participation in the production: “I know to restore the honor to our children is to help restore honor to their father.”

That may be a long, hard road. Right-wing Christian leadership isn’t treating Haggard with honor, and most GLBT people probably will say that a man who worked so hard against honorable treatment for us is not worthy of anything resembling honor. Many believe he’s getting his just deserts.

After the scandal broke, the Haggard family fled Colorado for Arizona, where the former preacher confesses thta he is having a tough time making ends meet as an insurance salesperson. ”At this stage in my life, I am a loser,” Haggard says.

I suspect Haggard is a loser only if he does not come to grips with his reality and learn to embrace it. If he can emerge from this crisis a better human being, then he will deserve to be honored. He doesn’t have to abandon his family to do it: Many gay and bisexual people end up in marriages with heterosexual partners. (Exhibit A: Me.) Sometimes those marriages work; often they do not. But the real losers are the misguided ones who work to diminish others. The Religious Wrong is filled hypocrites who divide people and spead a message that does not include anything Jesus would champion — things like forgiveness, compassion, and acceptance without judgment.

Haggard could choose to re-up as a fundamentalist Christian soldier — or he could take another road, one that leads to justice for all of God’s children and could help him right the wrongs he committed. That second path leads to honor. At this point in his now-difficult life, the choice is his.

You know what? I hope he makes the honorable choice — and I wish him and his family well.

“The Trials of Ted Haggard” is scheduled to run Jan. 29 on HBO.

As noted by TWO, Richard Cizik, Washington lobbyist for the National Association of Evangelicals, resigned his post last week because of controversy over his nationally broadcast support of gay civil unions. The NAE and right-wing political organizations are applauding his departure with words both questionable and unkind.

During a Dec. 2 interview on National Public Radio’s “Fresh Air,” Cizik told host Terry Gross that he voted for Barack Obama in the Virginia primary and said Christians should not fear supporting pro-choice and pro-LGBT candidates. Cizik also said that his views on marriage were “shifting” and that he supports civil union.

The comments made by the lobbyist — formally known as NAE’s vice president for governmental affairs — caused a huge stir in evangelical Christian circles and the controversy led him to resign his job. In a statement to the organization’s board members, the association’s acting president Leith Anderson explained his departure, saying Cizik’s radio remarks caused “a loss of trust in his credibility as a spokesperson among leaders and constituencies.”

It turns out that Cizik’s views are evolving even more. For years, he has been one of the rare evangelicals banging the drum for addressing climate change. The DC-based Institute on Religion & Democracy’s Mark Tooley told OneNewsNow that “Cizik has been very outspoken and in some ways ‘off the reservation’ for the last five or six years in terms of his global warming activism, which the board of NAE had initially somewhat disavowed — but that had not discouraged him.”

Cizik’s civil-union support was an apparent step too far from the reservation. “The National Association of Evangelicals has official positions strongly supporting traditional marriage and opposing same-sex marriage, and certainly by implication same-sex civil unions,” Tooley said. “So it seemed to be a very clear case where Cizik was ignoring the very obvious and official positions of his own organization, for which he is supposed to be the chief spokesman and lobbyist in Washington.”

Evangelical support for Cizik’s resignation is voluminous, the criticisms harsh.

Ingrid Schlueter, co-host of evangelizing radio show Crosstalk America said, “Those who are at war with God, the author of life, should be publicly confronted by evangelical Christians. Instead, they are aided and abetted in their evil by craven leaders like Cizik.”

Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council is expectedly meanspirited: “This is the risk of walking through the green door of environmentalism and global warming – you risk being blinded by the green light and losing your sense of direction. How else can you explain enthusiastic support for what will probably be the nation’s most pro-abortion, anti-family president in our nation’s 232 year history?”

Janice Shaw Crouse, director and senior fellow of Concerned Women for America’s Beverly LaHaye Institute, takes a broad swipe: “I think, perhaps, my dear friend Rich has been inside the Beltway for too long and has swallowed too much of the NPR and Vogue magazine Kool-Aid.”

I suppose the nasty talk has to be over-the-top. After all, Cizik has the ear of millions of Americans. People listen to him. You can see it in the responses on the FRC blog, where faithful Christians responding to Perkins’ statement wonder why caring about the environment or supporting Barack Obama contradicts their beliefs. Time magazine even named Cizik one of the world’s 100 most influential people this year. That’s a lot of clout to for the evangelicals to overcome.

Consider the response of NAE supporters of Cizik — and there are many of them. According to US News and World Report, “a coalition of roughly 60 evangelical leaders (mostly of the non-Christian right variety) has written to … Leith Anderson pushing for a successor [who, like Cizik, is] not beholden to the Christian right… [one] who embraces more progressive causes like combating global warming.” Read the full letter here.

David Gushee, a college professor and progressive evangelical activist who helped write the letter to Anderson, said this in an interview with USNWR:

I think Leith and the executive committee are going to take their time and let the furor over this die down. I personally think they need to find somebody who can promote all seven of the policy commitments in the NAE’s Health of Our Nation statement. There’s one on sanctity of life and one on climate change and one on poverty. There are always pressures from the right that the two fundamental issues of our time should be abortion and homosexuality. I think there will be pressure to hire somebody to make those the top priority.

I can tell you from some feedback that if the NAE makes the mistake of rolling back to the classic Christian right agenda, they would lose support of a lot of people who are currently happy to be working with them.

Yes, this comes from within the NAE.

The good news for Cizik, if he is sincere in his evolution, is that his message is being heard across the nation. It’s evident in the growing support for legal recognition of same-gender couples and for humane and just treatment of LGBT citizens. It is reflected in the fact that an increasing number of people are realizing that “gay” isn’t something that needs to be prayed away. Even the vote that passed California’s obnoxious and un-American Proposition 8 was a close one. Cizik is but one of many Americans who are slowly but surely understanding that being a Christian does not require denying compassion and equality to LGBT people.

Let’s hope this good man is snapped up by a progressive evangelical organization so that his vast influence — and his personal evolution — can continue. And let’s hope those questioning evangelicals continue searching their hearts and minds.

In mid-November, the Colorado Springs-based media empire and political organization laid off 202 of its employees — about 20 percent of its workforce. The group’s explanation for the mass layoffs is the nation’s economic crisis. However, Focus’ money woes may stem, in part, from the more than half a million dollars it spent this fall to help defeat Proposition 8, the recently passed legislation that took civil-marriage rights away from GLBT Californians.

Today, we get new information: While Focus employees were getting the workplace equivalent to lumps of coal, Focus was busy spending more money: The Colorado Independent reports that the organization spent $35,310 to produce radio ads promoting Georgia Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss’ successful runoff re-election campaign this week. The commercials — which had to have been purchased after the Nov. 4 election that made the runoff vote necessary — reportedly were in production around the same time Focus workers were getting the bad news.

What does this move say about Focus on the Family’s priorities? In this season of love and goodwill, when much of the world’s focus will be on the Holy Family, the organization has opted to throw its money into a political move to destroy families. At the same time, Focus tells more than 200 of its workers and their families that for them, there is no more room at the inn.

Bah humbug, indeed. What would Jesus say?