Tag Archives: Germany

My election analysis article for Germany’s MÄNNER Magazine, which is sort of a more beefcake-y version of the Advocate, has been posted. The online version lacks paragraph breaks and is therefore somewhat reader-unfriendly. (I took several years of German in high school and college, but submitted the piece in English and it was translated on their end.) Here’s the first …

Germany’s Catholic bishops have declared that they will no longer perform sacraments or burial services for those that opt-out of paying church taxes. Germans who officially declare themselves members of major denominations pay an additional 8% of their annual tax bill which is then granted to their church.  The Vatican has approved the new decree. Alarmed by a wave of …

Germany-based Boehringer Ingelheim, which sells Aptivus and Viramune, two of the world’s most widely-prescribed HIV medications, has announced that they are closing their virology research division. “To ensure our sustained growth, competitiveness and independence, Boehringer Ingelheim has been focusing on areas of high medical need in which we have convincing research targets as well as outstanding capabilities,” said Dr. Michel …

As rioting continues to spread across the Middle East and northern Africa, protesters today overran the U.S and German embassies in Sudan. Sudanese demonstrators broke into the U.S. and German embassy compounds in Khartoum and raised Islamic flags on Friday in state-backed protests against a film that insults the Prophet Mohammad, witnesses said. Police armed with tear gas and batons …

German Chancellor Angela Merkel yesterday declared that professional soccer players should not fear coming out. Merkel’s statement comes as the nation buzzes about the identity of a player who was quoted anonymously this week as saying that he would come out, but he fears for his safety. Gay Star News has Merkel’s quote: “I am of the opinion that anyone …

An interesting piece from Al-Jazeera examines how Turkish Ausländer are treated in Germany’s media. Turks are the largest ethnic minority in Germany, comprising about 5% of the population.

Copyranter reports on the latest safer sex ad out of Germany: Translation: “Don’t risk your neck. Your decision for safer sex at love-rocks.de.” Got that, dickheads? Something like “Don’t think with your dick” would have been a better headline. One of these images is bad enough, but the ad agency, JWT in Frankfurt, felt that five were needed to convey …

After a German court ruled that the circumcision of minor boys constituted “grievous bodily harm,” a coalition of Jewish and Muslim groups are calling on the national legislature to pass a bill that allows the practice. “We call on the German Bundestag (lower house) and the government to act as quickly as possible to put an end to this legal …

A German court has outlawed circumcision for non-medical reasons. Circumcisions of young boys on religious grounds should be considered as grievous bodily harm, a German court has said, in a landmark ruling that clears up a grey area for doctors. The regional court in Cologne, western Germany, ruled that the “fundamental right of the child to bodily integrity outweighed the …

Via Jerusalem Post: Gad Beck, an anti-Nazi Zionist resistance fighter and the last known gay Jewish survivor of the Holocaust, died on Sunday in Berlin. He passed away in a senior citizens’ home six days before his 89th birthday, which would have been on June 30. Beck was a pioneering gay activist and educator in a severely anti-homosexual, repressive post-World …

Shades of BearForceOne.(Via – Towleroad)

Via Outsports.

Via Andrew Sullivan.

Kraftwerk’s only American pop chart hit was 1975’s dreamy and iconic Autobahn, which got to #25. They had more success on the dance chart, such as with Telephone Call, which rode the top for two weeks in 1987.

Seminal electronic quartet Kraftwerk is down to the final show of their sold out eight night stand at the MOMA’a Marron Atrium, where each night they’ve played one of their groundbreaking albums in its entirety. I would have attended at least one of the shows (Trans-Europe Express!), but the madness of ticket acquisition was so terrifically redonk, it spawned new …

She even does the parallel bars.

Allegedly this is “the” summer anthem of 2012. Less painful the most of the stuff I’ve come to refer to as “Jersey Shore disco.” Embarrassingly, I still get Cascada mixed up with the far superior Kaskade.

Somehow we missed this story when it happened, but last year Germany banned Muslim cleric Bilal Phillips following this speech calling for the executions of homosexuals. German police officials announced on Wednesday that Abu Ameena Bilal Philips, a hardline Islamic preacher from Jamaica who defends use of the death penalty for homosexuality, had been ordered to leave the country and …

Cute boy, but lacking our beloved Eurovision cheese.