1 . “I’m a dude. I like dudes. And I appreciate a place where dudes can hang out together in dude-company.” An East Texas restaurant in hot water over telling a gay couple “we don’t serve fags here” is facing a unique form of protest, with online activists using Yelp and Google reviews to make Big Earl’s Bait House and Country Store seem like one of the highest rated gay bars in Texas. Do mess with Texas.
2. Trans actress and activist Laverne Cox has landed (beautifully we must say) on the cover of Time Magazine with the headline “The transgender tipping point.”
3. “HRC can’t have it both ways.” LGBT activist group Queer Nation is calling hypocrisy on the Human Rights Campaign, ripping the group for sending a letter to the Vatican on behalf of nine Catholic school teachers who lost their jobs over religious discrimination, while simultaneously pushing for the passage of a version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act which includes a major religious exemption.
4. Tween overlords One Direction managed to anger both their gay and black fans, as a video has surfaced showing band members Zayn Malik and Louis Tomlinson smoking a joint on the way to a show, with Tomlinson using a racial and homophobic slur. As Malik bashes the band’s official book, calling it “boring crap” and “weird,” Tomlinson agrees, saying it’s “gay.” The racial slur comes in the same conversation in the video.
5. VIDEO OF THE DAY: When do you think the first U.S. federal marriage equality lawsuit was filed? 2003? 1995? Try 1979. “Limited Partnership” is a new documentary exploring that struggle through the eyes of Richard Adams and Anthony Sullivan, a couple who wed in Colorado in 1975. The INS denied a green card to Sullivan, an Australian immigrant, because they “failed to establish that a bona fide marital relationship can exist between two faggots.” Here’s the trailer: