Pro Wrestler Matt Cage Comes Out

Professional wrestler ‘Money’ Matt Cage has come out publicly as gay.

The athlete and entertainer – real name Matt Hullum – shared the news in a Facebook post last week (June 18), saying that trying to keep his sexuality a secret had left him stressed and depressed.

Cage – who performs on the indie wrestling circuit in the US – revealed that he had previously told close friends that he was bisexual, but had “no real intentions” of pursuing women romantically.

And explaining that rejection had always been one of his “biggest fear”, he added that he hoped the announcement wouldn’t change how people viewed him in the wrestling industry.

Below is the full post, which he titled ‘Here Goes Nothing’, and which has already received over a hundred shares on Facebook.

Justin M. Quinn: I Want My Dad To Finally Come Out

Originally published on advocate.com

My father’s gay. As our nation stumbles steadily towards long-overdue legal equity for same-sex couples and their families, I’m grateful to know that doesn’t necessarily make me a rarity these days. My father’s gay. I’ve known since I was 16, when a confluence of events (his repeated “solo” trips to Key West, his membership at an all-male gym, the discovery of his Playgirl stash) forced my siblings and me to reevaluate our entire family dynamic. My father’s gay. In the 20 years since, I’ve shared those exact same words with my best friends, a few girlfriends, and a therapist who is, I’m quite certain, the closest thing I’ll ever have to an attentive paternal figure. It’s too bad I have to pay him.

I don’t normally lead with this information, but I’m not dishonest about it either. If you’re curious enough to wonder out loud how my parents have stayed married for 40 years, I’d tell you the truth: No, it’s not one of those marriage-takes-many-shapes “understandings” that’s keeping them together. That would at least be a step toward openness and acceptance. My father and mother are still married because he lies about his sexuality and she chooses to believe him. It wasn’t always this clear to me.

‘I Cum Really Fast…I Don’t Really Have Friends.’ – Adult Film Star Sebastian Kross Says

Rising Falcon star Sebastian Kross recently made a club appearance in Akron, Ohio, for the big 28th anniversary BASH at Interbelt Nite Club. The club flew him out there and Sebastian danced on stage, posed for photos, and gave an interview with this guy named Adam Marc, who spends the full six minutes of the interview obviously wanting to reach out and grab Sebastian’s cock (lol).

Sebastian is as cute as ever during the interview, answering questions from a guy who’s treating him like he’s already a huge star even though he’s barely got five months of shoots under his belt.

But there are a couple of revealing moments. He says his family ‘might’ know about his porn career, but they don’t talk about it. Sebastian hails from Sacramento, and he was discovered while dancing in a club up there. But when asked if any of his close friends know about him becoming an adult performer, he says, “I don’t really have that many friends. Most of my friends are just people on Instagram who I don’t know in real life.”

‘I Thought Sex Was Bad.’ – Binyavanga Wainaina

In a Facebook post, Kenyan writer, Binyavanga Wainaina, reveals his earliest turmoil as a gay man.

‘In my 20s, I wanted to be asexual. I let my body grow very fat (safe from desire). I become the group rustic – big dreads to hide under, oversize clothes, never shave, a story of huggable bear who never lets anybody close. I decided to love groups, buddies, cliques. Like many queers, become the class clown. Nobody asks you who u are with. U make sure they have no reason to ask you. You put out the vibe that u are beyond sex and loving. U are available to advise everybody. U are a public person, in your room you wank a lot. Alone. I did the work diligently of guiding everybody to not see me as a sexual person a person needing love. I was the highest defender of all closets. I made all those who love me expect little of me. I expected very little of me. It nearly destroyed me. I buried a friend who died of shame ..I would have expired the same way, slowly degraded again and again. Until I was thirty I really thought kisses were dirty. Every women I kissed sexually left me feeling wrong and dirty. So, I told myself sex itself is bad. It was a male escort who kissed me and made me feel I deserved to tingle from a kiss. Imagine that. A French Canadian man in Montreal. Imagine that. Fucker saved my life.’

Transgender Model Gisele Alicea Shares Her Journey to Finding Happiness

Originally published on glamour.com

FOREWORD: This has been a big week for the transgendered community. First, there was Caitlyn Jenner’s Vanity Fair cover, and then, Make Up For Ever unveiled its campaign with model Andreja Pejic, making her the first transgender model to land a major cosmetics contract. And now, another trans woman, Latina model Gisele Alicea, talks about her journey of claiming her true identity despite all the challenges that lay ahead. Much like actress Laverne Cox, who recently said that diverse representation is needed is the media, Alicea agreed. “I want to be treated like everyone else, with respect.” This is her story.

*

Years before I heard the term transgender, I was a seven-year-old boy who loved dressing up in girls’ clothing. Named William Alicea and raised with three sisters by a single Dominican mom in the predominantly Hispanic Hamilton Heights section of New York City, I knew even then how the Latino community expected boys to behave. I’d overhear my family say men shouldn’t cook or clean, because that was women’s work—and other such machista comments. And they definitely didn’t think boys should dress like girls. But I did it anyway. My mother didn’t love me prancing around in my older sisters’ clothes, but I know that she was just trying to spare me from being hurt.

Throughout childhood I had crushes on boys and knew that I was gay, but I didn’t tell a single soul. No one ever talked about homosexuality—ever! I was 15 when I came out to my school guidance counselor, who referred me to a support group at the Hetrick-Martin Institute at the Harvey Milk High School. When I finally told my mom that I was gay, we cried together. She tried hiding her sadness, but I could see right through it.

Kenny Badmus and South Africa’s Zanele Muholi Bring The Spotlight on Queer Africa

Established to combat the growing cloud of American isolationism after 9/11, the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature aims to further the organization’s dedication to the freedom of expression through literature and art. This year, the festival has been organized under the chairmanship of Colm Tóibín, and it is the first time in its 11-year history that the content will be focused on a single region of the world. Co-curated by Festival Director László Jakab Orsós and Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the program will explore African literature and art — or at least, a fraction of what the vast and diverse continent has to offer.

This year also sees the inclusion of a workshop titled “Queer Futures,” the first time that queer writing will be explored on its own. The event reveals cutting-edge discussion of the continent’s LGBT movements, and participants include Zanele Muholi, a South African visual artist, with a new exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum; Binyavanga Wainaina, a Kenyan author and journalist; Shireen Hassim, a professor of political studies in Johannesburg, South Africa; and Kehinde Bademosi aka Kenny Badmus, Nigerian entrepreneur and writer.

Meet The First Man Cured Of HIV

Timothy Ray Brown is the first and only person in the world to be cured of HIV. There are some fascinating parts to his story you may not know, but first, here’s a little background.

In 2007, Timothy was a gravely ill leukemia patient living in Berlin (after his cure he was famously known as “the Berlin patient” before he came forward in 2011 and identified himself). Timothy was also HIV-positive, but at the time, his HIV was the least of his worries.

When Timothy needed a stem cell transplant to treat his leukemia, doctors located a donor who had a rare gene mutation known as CCR5, which makes human cells immune to HIV. The result of the stem cell transplant? Timothy’s immune system was replaced with a brand new immune system minus the HIV, and to this day he remains the only person to be cured.

“The HIV is gone and it is gone for good,” says Timothy, who today lives in Palm Springs. “And I am also cancer free. Two cures. I am really fortunate and blessed.”

His cure is now part of the scientific record, but there are more interesting tidbits to learn about this courageous gay man who risked it all and found himself making history in the process.

Here are five things about Timothy Ray Brown that you may not know:

‘The Sex Is Continually Off The Chain.’ – Lee Daniels Dishes On His Relationship With Younger Boo

Lee Daniels has never shied away from his sexuality since stepping into the mainstream, following the success of such films as Precious, The Butler, and now his Fox show, Empire. But for the first time ever, the 55-year-old critically-acclaimed director is putting it all out there when it comes to his five-year relationship with 33-year-old boyfriend Jahil Fisher and the joys of their union (the sex) as well as the insecurities (the age difference) and what makes their partnership more special than ones he had in the past. Both men were profiled in Out Magazine earlier this month and this is what Daniels had to say about the man by his side and how they make their relationship work.

On what attracted him to Fisher:

“I heard his voice before I saw him, and that’s what attracted me first — the laughter. Then I was blown away by his sense of humor. He’s pure and in the moment, and he doesn’t have a poker face. When he’s happy, it’s like happiness on steroids, and his physical features change if he’s upset. I hide my stuff well — I’ve learned to. But he doesn’t. And he makes me laugh. It’s a completely different mind-set: He introduced me to The Real Housewives of Atlanta and he’s best friends with the Kardashians’ hairstylist. He’s very hip, and he brings all of that into my antiquated way of thinking.”

‘I’d rather live so I can keep fighting.’ – Bisi Alimi

In an interview with Blanck Digital magazine, Nigerian gay activist, Bisi Alimi says he can’t come to Nigeria because he’s scared for his life. Bisi who came out as gay on National TV many years back has been living in the UK since 2007. Bisi says Homosexuality can be accepted in Africa as Africans are neither idiots nor senseless.

“Since I left Nigeria in 2007 I have never been back, it’s not a safe place for me. It would be sheer foolishness on my part to go back to Nigeria after the failed attempt on my life or the never ending run-ins I had with the police. It is one thing to be a martyr and another to live to fight another day, and I think I would rather want to live so I can keep fighting.

More excerpts of the interview after the cut.

Kenny Badmus Comes Out

This is a mistake a lot of us make. We all want to change people to conform to our preferences. We find it easier to play god in the lives of people we did not make. – Kenny Badmus.

Such is the damage the expectations of society wreaks in the lives of men like brand expert, Kenny Badmus, pushing them to live lives that they did not bargain for.

You must all have already read or heard about Kenny Badmus’ coming out in a post on Facebook.

Read his post below:

When I first told my ex-wife that I was gay, we were far from being married. I wanted her to find other men honorably, who had a thing for women. I never did. I ‘swear down.’ I was only obeying the popular demand of traditions. Now, this was my terrible mistake. No one should live their life based on dogmas and other people’s expectations. As far as I could remember, even though I was always dating girls, I had always preferred being with a man. I had fought it with every fiber of spirituality in me as a Pentecostal preacher boy (find details and journeys in my book ‘THE EXODUS.’) The more I fought my sexual preference for men, the more I became more miserable. Unfortunately, as erroneously believed, sex wasn’t the problem. I had been having sex with women as far back as a twelve-year-old. Sexuality is whom we are emotionally present with, not whom we are sleeping with. And oh boy, she really tried to make me a heterosexual. But I’m still not, sadly.