Legendary filmmaker Tinto Brass is set to preside over the Queer Lion award jury panel at the Venice International Film Festival. Four gay films are in the running for the 2nd annual prize.

Brass, 75, best know in America for his erotic film Caligula and subsequent demand to have his name stricken from it, will have the difficult task of selecting which of the following four films is most deserving of the praise.

Director Yen Tan's Ciao is a powerful film that speaks about the strength of love. When a man dies, two men find each other as they correspond over the Internet to discuss their loss. Lives are altered forever when the pair continue their friendship.

AfterElton.com said Ciao was “the best gay movie I've seen all year.”

Two men remember a past romance in opposing views – joy and shame – in writer/director Gabriel Flemming's The Lost Coast. Mark and Jasper are in San Francisco's Castro district with their friend Lily. Mark's recollection of a high school romance with Jasper is one of joy, while Jasper can barely acknowledge it.

Israeli writer/directorYair Hochner's Antarctica seeks to thaw out the hearts of two lost souls. On his 30th birthday, Omer is drowning himself in work at the library. Shirley, Omer's little sister, is having an affair with her boss. Both seem to be locked in a perpetual cycle of unhappiness when Ronen, the handsome journalist, enters their lives. Will their frozen hearts thaw?

Esprit Es-Tu La, French director Philippe Vallois' latest film, will be a world premiere when screened in Venice on September 3rd. Here is the director's synopsis: “In the mid-nineties, a young writer, victim of AIDS, wants to ensure from the beyond that his friend receives a camera, with supernatural powers. He hopes that this will revive his friend's will to live, connect with him and look after the company he keeps.”

“What should filmmakers show and what should they not show? Each one has their own theory, modesty, ethics, bans. In my opinion a film, like any work of art, can help the artist to bring out the hidden part of his inner world, to affirm his real nature and not what society expects of him. And therefore, why oppose such a process? It cannot help but be a service to the public,” Vallois said.
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As a wedding gift to friend and celebrity publicist Howard Bragman and his longtime partner, Chuck O'Donnell, Bratton made it official: He and his wife, former Court TV diva Rikki Kleiman, strongly believe that gays have a right to marry. And in honor of Bragman and O'Donnell, who wed this past week in Norwalk, the chief and Kleiman have made a donation to Equality California, a group seeking to stop a state ballot measure this November that would ban same-sex marriages.

"The Constitution guarantees life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," Bratton said this week. "I see no reason why gays can't pursue happiness through marriage."

After learning of the Bragman-O'Donnell union a few days ago, Bratton and Kleiman asked the couple what they would like as a wedding present. Bragman was direct: No gifts -- instead, make a donation to Equality California to help stop Prop. 8. And please make it public.

Other friends of Bragman and O'Donnell -- who was USC's Tommy Trojan for 10 years -- have done the same. They include tennis star Martina Navratilova and former "Grey's Anatomy" actor Isaiah Washington. (He's been trying to make amends with the gay community since he was caught uttering an antigay slur backstage at the Golden Globes in January 2007; Bragman is his PR rep.)
The veteran celebrity spin master is hopeful that others will make donations to Equality California's efforts to stop Prop. 8 this fall.
"So many of these ballot initiatives seem esoteric and hypothetical," Bragman said. "Our marriage changed that for people who know us. Our love, respect and commitment has the power to change hearts and minds and make an ethereal concept real."
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Lord of the Rings star Sir Ian McKellen says he has received death threats in the past because of his sexuality.

Speaking on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show, the actor, who came out in 1988, said the number of threats had "declined considerably" in recent years.

"I think I've become rather boring to the public at large on this particular issue," he said.

Sir Ian is supporting gay US bishop Gene Robinson, who has been excluded from an Anglican Church convention.

The American preacher has not been invited to the Lambeth Conference, held every 10 years, but has said he will be in Canterbury, where it is taking place, at the same time.

Sir Ian told the BBC that, like Bishop Robinson, he had received death threats - and argued that Britain was still intolerant of homosexuality.

"There are deaths in public places on the grounds that the victim is gay," he said.

"There is violence of language which can be related to violence in action."

On Sunday Bishop Robinson will attend the screening of a film about how the Bible can be used to combat homophobia, and will hold a question and answer session with Sir Ian.

The Lambeth Conference begins on Wednesday.
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The man perhaps best-known around the globe as Wizard Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings trilogy certainly fulfilled his duties to the gay community at Pride London on Saturday.

Recently awarded the Companion of Honour for services to drama and equality by the Queen, Sir Ian McKellen showed his support with various contingents and personalities at the event.

He started the day with a visit to Downing Street.

Before the Pride march he accompanied members of Stonewall, which he co-founded, to discuss a range of gay issues with Gordon Brown.

He then headed to a Pride London reception and spoke to journalists, before taking his place on the parade.

Dressed in a dapper linen suit and a Stonewall 'Some People Are Gay, Get Over It' t-shirt (available from their website), he seemed less than keen to be photographed near the Mayor of London, who was surrounded by Conservative party balloons and indeed supporters.

Sir Ian marched alongside human rights and gay equality campaigner Peter Tatchell and Davis Mac-Ivalla, a leader of the Nigerian gay rights movement.

Next he was on a bus, supporting the Older Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transexual (OLGBT) Community as a recognition of older people’s contribution in the fight for LGBT rights. Sir Ian is 69.
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The life of Hugh Hefner, the founder of Playboy magazine who presently stars on the reality series The Girls Next Door, has always been an open book. His self-promoted public persona became that of womanizer and party animal, and earned him the title of sex icon. While we already have a clue of the kind of sexual appetite he has, seeing that he has three girlfriends on The Girls Next Door, his “authorized” biography reveals more shocking information about the 82-year-old playboy.

Steven Watts' Mr. Playboy: Hugh Hefner and the American Dream reveals that Hefner once had a gay sex encounter, which occurred in an unspecified time and an unnamed bar in Chicago.

Hugh Hefner, who maintains that Watts' book "is all essentially true," said “he was propositioned [by a man] and, thought, 'What the hell...'" He found it “an interesting experience," though one, presumably, he didn't choose to repeat.

On top of that, the book also details many more of Hugh Hefner's sexual exploits, including a foursome involving his brother and sister-in-law and a porn film starring Hefner himself.

“A foursome did happen with his brother, Keith, and his wife, Rae, one evening. But while Millie, Hugh's first wife, ultimately backed out of having sex with Keith, Hugh slept with his sister-in-law,” Watts wrote in the book.

In between tales of Hefner's sex life, the book also tells the story of how The Girls Next Door star created the Playboy empire.

"It's the most authoritative book ever written about me," Hugh Hefner told the New York Post.

Mr. Playboy: Hugh Hefner and the American Dream is set for release in the United States in October.

Meanwhile, fans can relive the adventures of Hugh Hefner and his girls, Holly Madison, Kendra Wilkinson and Bridget Marquardt, by catching reruns of The Girls Next Door on E!
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I want to get married. I want to marry my partner of 27 years. And I want to do it here in New York, where I was born, work and have lived nearly my entire life. Last year I was the prime sponsor of the Marriage Equality Act in the New York State Assembly, which would allow the state to grant civil marriage licenses to same-sex couples and which passed with an historic 85 votes. Marriage equality is important not just to the women and men who wish to marry their life partner, to share the 1,324 legal rights, obligations, benefits and responsibilities that civil marriage confers, but also to all New Yorkers, who would benefit from the stability that marriage would offer these couples, their children and their communities.

There are certain spheres where government belongs and others where government’s involvement constitutes an inappropriate invasion of people’s intimate lives and their personal health choices. Former bans on interracial marriage, a woman’s right to choose and current laws on same-sex marriage fall into the category of invasive legislation. Incredible as it now seems, it was only 41 years ago that the Supreme Court came to a conclusion that seems obvious now: prohibiting a marriage based on race violates the Constitution. But that was far from obvious in 1967, when the United States Supreme Court found Virginia’s statutory ban on interracial marriages to be unconstitutional in Loving v. Virginia. Today we are at a similar crossroads for marriage equality; in 40 years, people will look back and wonder why it was not obvious in 2008 that same-sex couples and their families are entitled to equality under the law.
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Nightlife? Yes! Culture? Of course! But what sets Vienna apart from any other city in the world is its rich gay and lesbian history. Gay historians have researched the gay past of the city (and its men) and their findings are quite queer to say the least! The undisputed metropolis of gay and lesbian life in Austria boasts an unparalleled melding of gay—present and past.

Probably the most prominent homosexual in Austrian history was the man responsible for stopping the Turkish advance into Europe once and for all in the 17th century. Prince Eugene of Savoy (1663-1736) was the successful warrior who freed Vienna from Turkish siege and pushed the Ottomans back to the Balkans over the course of several wars. But it wasn’t just on the battlefield that Eugene was surrounded exclusively by men; in private, he preferred to have intimate relations with members of his own sex—a fact well known even during his lifetime. Even so, he managed to build his career and expand his power base during the reigns of three emperors, and his strong influence on Vienna remains visible to this day. His summer palace, Schloss Belvedere, is an impressive baroque edifice which today also houses the Austrian Gallery with paintings by numerous Austrian artists of the modern period (Klimt, Schiele, Kokoschka).

Charles VI, the last emperor under which Prince Eugene served the court, is said to have had an intimate relationship with Count Michael Johann Althan III, one of the few members of the introverted and eccentric monarch’s inner circle. When Althan died in 1722, the grieving emperor recalled that they had “loved each other intimately 19 years long, in true friendship.” Under Charles’ reign, Vienna flourished, the Karlskirche was built, Schönbrunn Palace (the summer residence) and the Hofburg (the imperial palace) were enlarged, and numerous grandiose baroque structures were put up by the most prominent architects of the day, Fischer von Erlach (the elder and the younger) and Lukas von Hildebrandt, which travelers can still enjoy today.
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At 7 a.m. today, former Marine Bob Lehman and Tom Felkner will be among the first gay couples to exchange vows at the downtown county building, cementing their 15-year relationship with the bonds of marriage.

Tonight, they'll dance and eat wedding cake at a club in Hillcrest with hundreds of friends and family members. Among the guests will be an active-duty Navy corpsman and Iraq war veteran whom Lehman and Felkner consider a close friend.

There's little chance the corpsman will marry his partner, who also is in the military, any time soon because of the government's policy barring gay and lesbian service members from serving openly.

For now, “don't ask, don't tell” trumps “I do.”

“It's inevitably going to change, but is it going to take years or decades?” said the corpsman, who asked not to be named because the Navy would be obligated to dismiss him. He hopes to retire in five years, when he reaches his two-decade career milestone with the service.

California and Massachusetts are the only states to have legalized same-sex marriage.

Unlike Massachusetts, California is home to a major concentration of military bases. San Diego County is home to the nation's largest active-duty force – at least 70,000 sailors and 46,000 Marines, plus thousands of soldiers from the National Guard and reserves.

The California Supreme Court's decision last month to allow same-sex marriage collides with the 1993 federal statute governing homosexuality and military service. Congress crafted that law in the early days of President Clinton's administration as a compromise between the Pentagon, which had criminalized homosexuality, and Clinton, who had vowed to do away with the ban.
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The openly gay US Episcopal bishop at the centre of the Anglican church's global battle over homosexuality, has entered into a civil union with his longtime partner at a private ceremony.

About 120 guests gathered at St Paul's Church in New Hampshire for Saturday's ceremony for Bishop Gene Robinson and his partner of more than 19 years, Mark Andrews. The event was kept private out of respect for next month's worldwide Anglican conference, Robinson's spokesman, Mike Barwell, said on Sunday.

"It was absolutely joyful," Barwell said by telephone. "A lot of his supporters and friends were there, including many members of the gay and lesbian community."

The 77 million-member Anglican Communion, a global federation of national churches, has been in upheaval since 2003 when the Episcopal Church consecrated Robinson as the first bishop known to be in an openly homosexual relationship in more than four centuries of church history.

The Episcopal Church is the US branch of the worldwide Anglican Communion.

Disputes over scriptural authority, the blessing of gay unions and other matters have become a worldwide issue and threaten turmoil this summer when Anglicans gather for their once-a-decade Lambeth Conference in Britain.

Robinson has in the past received death threats and wore a bulletproof vest under his vestments at his consecration in 2003. Two uniformed police officers stood guard at Saturday's ceremony in the state capital Concord, said Barwell.

Robinson and Andrews held two ceremonies - a non-religious one in which they became legal partners followed by a formal church service to give blessings to God for their relationship.

Robinson, 61, a divorced father of two, praised New Hampshire's lawmakers when they passed legislation last year to make the state the fourth in the country where same-sex civil unions are legal. The law took effect on January 1.

Robinson has suggested states go further and follow Massachusetts, which in 2003 became the first US state to legalise gay marriage.

Robinson has said he wanted to enter into the civil union before leaving for England to ensure Andrew and his two daughters had legal protections given the threats to his life.

Civil unions grant largely the same state rights as married couples - from insurance coverage to tax benefits and hospital visiting rights - but lack the full, federal legal protections of marriage.

Robinson has been excluded from the Anglican Communion's Lambeth Conference but plans to attend as an outside observer.