As an antidote to today’s onslaught of double-dumbass news, here’s a great photo of Manhattan (and Queens) today, freshly snagged from Gothamist. I live about ten blocks to the right of the Queensborough Bridge (at the center-right of the photo). See me waving? That long green strip is Central Park. (Photo credit: Joe Schumacher)

Citing laws against hateful acts, Canadian border officials turned back members of the Westboro Baptist Church yesterday, saying that they may not enter the country to make their planned protest at the funeral of the man murdered on a Greyhound bus last week. Members of an anti-gay group which describes itself as a church have been barred from entering Canada, …

The first gay couple to marry in Fresno, California has already filed for divorce. Same-sex couples are once again making history in Fresno. They got married in June but now at least one couple is seeking a divorce. Two women are believed to be the first-same sex couple in Fresno to file for divorce. They married days after the state …

Under the headline “California Legislature Approves Gay Day in Public Schools” the Campaign for Children and Families is objecting to Harvey Milk Day, which the California legislature has approved as a state holiday, pending Gov. Schwarzenegger’s approval. “If signed into law, AB 2567 will mean an official day commemorating homosexuality, bisexuality, and transsexuality in California government schools,” said CCF President …

A New York man has kidnapped the boy he and his husband adopted together and fled to Israel. Authorities are calling it the first such case ever involving a married gay couple. A baby boy adopted by two gay men whose marriage soured was abducted and spirited away from New York to Israel by one of the parents, who’s now …

The 14 year-old killer of gay teen Lawrence King pleaded not guilty to premeditated murder and a hate crime yesterday in a ploy to have the charges reduced to manslaughter. Brandon McInerney entered the plea in Ventura County Superior Court on Thursday. McInerney is charged as an adult with first degree murder and a hate crime for the Feb. 12 …

Christianist group Focus On The Family is asking its members to pray for rain during Barack Obama’s outdoor speech at Denver’s Invesco Field at the end of the Democratic convention.

This curious notice was in yesterday’s New York Times: LOG CABIN REPUBLICANS STREET FAIR, Saturday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Greenwich Avenue, from Avenue of the Americans to Seventh Avenue. Is this for real? Anybody know anything about it? There doesn’t seem to be any mention on the LCR’s main site.

Shit! Georgia’s president said Friday that his country is under attack from Russian tanks and warplanes, and he accused Russia of targeting civilian populations as tensions over the breakway Georgian region of South Ossetia appeared to boil over into full-blown conflict. Russia’s Channel 1 shows heavy tanks purported to be on their way to South Ossetia. “All day today they’ve …

Fancy food store Balducci’s lives in the former New York Savings Bank, built at the corner of 14th and 8th in 1897. That giant brick monster looming over Balducci’s is a former Port Authority building that is now home to Google’s NYC offices.

I just have the sickest feeling that we’re going to be hearing about more of these. A man is being held in Florida on charges he threatened to assassinate Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, according to court documents. An affidavit filed by a Secret Service agent in U.S. District Court claims that Raymond Hunter Geisel, of Marathon, Florida, threatened to …

Perhaps spurred by gay male couples, a new report on adoption in America from the CDC reveals that men have adopted children at more than twice the rate of women. Men are twice as likely as women to adopt a child, the CDC’s latest adoption figures show. There are a number of surprises in the CDC data, which come from …

File under: Hard to believe. Three years after civil unions became legal for UK gays, new figures indicate that the ‘divorce’ rate is only 1%. Between December 2005, when gay and lesbian couples gained the legal right to formalise their relationships, and December 2007, there were 24,629 civil partnerships in England and Wales. Couples have to wait at least a …

Eight is considered a lucky and “auspicious” number in China and that’s why the Olympics will begin on 08/08/08 at 8:08:08PM local time. Just so you know. “When you believe in things you don’t understand, then you suffer…”

Craig Brownstein, a gay McCain supporter in Washington DC, tried to order a banner for his home from McCain’s campaign site, where $250 will get you a personalized sign. However, the campaign refused to allow his message: “A Proud Gay Democrat For McCain.” Oh, pity. A rep from the campaign said they’d allow “Craig And Doug For McCain”, but that’s …

“Open your fucking minds. Open your minds. Be accepting of different people and let people be who they are. You know how many people came to me calling me gay cause I wear my jeans the fresh way? Or because I said hey, dude, how you gonna say ‘fag’ right in front of a gay dude’s face and act like …

“As a normative way of socializing for gay men, online cruising is a disaster. We need to recognize its effects — including its tendency to isolate us, encourage objectification, and diminish our sense of life’s nonsexual possibilities — as disasters. We need to recognize that too many of us, too much of the time, are cruising online because it is …

New on Coney Island’s boardwalk, the Waterboard Thrill Ride, where beach lovers can add torture to their mix of sun, surf, and sand. If you climb up a few cinderblock steps to the small window, you can look through the bars at a scene meant to invoke a Guantánamo Bay interrogation. A lifesize figure in a dark sweatshirt, the hood …

The UK Times Online tested some of the new electronic passports and discovered that they can be hacked and cloned in under ten minutes. In the tests, a computer researcher cloned the chips on two British passports and implanted digital images of Osama bin Laden and a suicide bomber. The altered chips were then passed as genuine by passport reader …