Tag Archives: Cleveland

Pioneering Gay Television News Anchor Randy Price Retires and Signs Off After 38 Years

Pioneering Gay Television News Anchor Randy Price Retires and Signs Off After 40+ Years

Randy Price, considered the nation’s first openly gay news anchor, signed off for the final time Wednesday after 42 years in the business.

For 38 years, New Englanders have trusted me and my colleagues to bring them the important news and information of the day. I thank you for that trust and inviting me into your home. But, beyond that, I want to thank so many people for letting me be a part of your life, in causes that are important to you. 

To the pioneers of the LGBT movement: thank you for wanting me to be part of something that would forever change the opportunities for millions of people across this country .”

 Price came out inadvertently in the early 1990s during an interview with a newspaper reporter. 

There probably were other people who were gay [in TV news at the time]. The difference is I was the first person where it was highly publicized. I remember getting letters like: ‘I don’t agree with you, but I’ve seen you for a long time, and I like you. 

Randy Price has worked as an anchor at all of the major network affiliates and the country and in Boston since moving to the city in 1983. He’s received the Edward R. Murrow Award for best newscast in a large television market — and been named “Boston’s Best News Anchor” by Boston Magazine.

Below watch Randy’s finals good-bye to his Boston co-anchors and friends and very rare and hysterical clip of Paul Lynde visiting WSPD, Ch. 13, In Toledo, OH in 1978 where he did a guest weather forecast with a very young Randy Price early in his career.

Stephen Colbert Hijacks Republican National Convention Stage, Opens “The National Hungry for Power Games” – Video

Stephen Colbert Crashes RNC

 

Stephen Colbert has repeatedly mocked the 2016 GOP Presidential race where he has  likened the election to the Hunger Games. In those segments, Colbert plays the role of Caesar Flickerman (Stanley Tucci), the outlandish announcer who covers the games.

Last night in Cleveland Colbert dressed as Flickerman stormed the RNC stage during set-up and declared,”[Donald Trump] has formed an alliance with Indiana Governor Mike Pence.” Colbert then appeared to doze off at the mention of Pence. “Sorry, I blacked out there for a moment,” he quipped. He then grabbed the gavel on stage and declared, “it is my honor to hereby launch and begin the 2016 Republican National Hungry for Power Games!”

As a security guard approached him to get him off the stage Colbert said, “Look, I know I’m not supposed to be here. But let’s be honest, neither is Donald Trump.”

 

Muslim Cab Drivers Walk Off Job In Cleveland. OH Rather Then Work With Gay Games

gay games

Muslim cab drivers have walked off the job in Cleveland, Ohio  rather than drive taxis with advertising for the Gay Games, which will take place there in August.

According to 19 Action News reporter Brian Duffy who spoke with about 20 cabbies at the airport who are still driving and all of them confirmed there are drivers who have walked off the job on protest.

Representatives of AmeriCab, one of the three cab companies on the job at the airport, also confirmed the protest but say only one of their drivers has been reassigned. We’re told at least 16-17 drivers who work for Ace Taxi, another company working out of the airport, are no longer driving. We went to Ace but were told they were too busy to talk to us. Yellow Cab, a third cab company at the airport, never returned our calls. Tom Nobbe, the executive director of the games, says he’s a bit disappointed. “When you look at what’s going on around the world it’s not a huge surprise. In some parts of the world LGBT folks are not very welcome,” said Tom Nobbe of the Gay Games.

I can’t wait to watch Matt Barber, Tony Perkins, Linda Harvey and the rest of The Bigot Bunch go out of their way to defend the rights of Muslims.

This should be entertaining.

Major Ohio Newspaper Refers To Transexual Hate Crime Victim As “IT”

From the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

OLMSTED TOWNSHIP, Ohio — A body  found in a retention pond  has been identified as a 20-year-old from Cleveland who was reported missing March 27.

Carl Acoff was identified this morning through DNA obtained from relatives, police said.

Acoff had been stabbed, tied with a piece of rope attached to a block of concrete and dumped into a pond on MacKenzie Road north of Cook Road.

The body was clad in a red Betty Boop tank top, three black bras on top of one another, and a light black hooded jacket. It was naked from the waist down, police said at the time. The rope was tied from the back and also attached to a steel pipe.

Acoff had identified himself as a woman to RTA officials, according to records.

This folks is Ohio.  Small minded, misinformed, and bigoted.

The AP Stylebook guidelines has guidelines in how to RESPECTFULLY report on a transgender person

Transgender: Use the pronoun preferred by the individuals who have acquired the physical characteristics of the opposite sex or present themselves in a way that does not correspond with their sex at birth.

These guidelines have been in effect since 2001.  Which means they’ll finally reach the midwest in about 10 years.

Now Cleveland, OH is not a podunk city by any means and the story did not only pass from the writers to the copywriter it also passed through many other hands at the Plain Dealer before it was ever released and not one of them caught the bigoted slam or the fact that they took away any dignity in death CEMINA Acoff could have.

GLAAD, Equality Ohio, TransOhio and Cleveland’s LGBT Community Center are all now involved with rectifying this story at the moment, but the trouble is not only the story its the state of Ohio and other parts of the midwest (except for Chicago) itself where people have never evolved because they have never had the chance or the education to.

I have yelled and screamed at conferences until I have been blue in the face that out national organizations ignore the midwest and to be more proactive and do outreach in the Midwest on LGBT equality and acceptance instead of leaving it to local organizations that are ill-equipped, staffed and severely under funded to no avail.

And this is the result.

I mourn the death of CEMINA Acoff and not only am I am not only pissed as hell with the Cleveland Plain Dealer but also with HRC, GLAAD, The Task Force and other national LGBT “professional advocacy groups who stay behind their ivory walls while those of us who do not have the luck or the money to live in Washington DC,  New York City, or San Francisco or L.A. have to fight for dignity and respect on a daily basis while they throw parties and beg for money.

May CEMINA Acoff rest in peace.

And may Gay Inc. get off their fat well tailored and overpaid asses and finally travel west of the beltway to actually help the members of the LGBT community that need it most.

Rant over.

 

Hate Preacher At Cleveland OH Pride: “80 Percent Of People Who Disappear Are Eaten By Gays”

Unfortunately with Pride often comes religious loons and there were none so loony as the street preacher at Cleveland, OH pride who amongst other things called LGBT’s “cannibals” and claimed that 80 percent of those missing in American are eaten by gays.

Cleveland Radio Shock Jock Dominic Dieter Tells Dad To Have His Lesbian Daughter “Raped Straight”

Dominic Dieter of Rover’s Morning Glory — talk show on Clear Channel’s WMMS 100.7, “The Buzzard” out of Cleveland, Ohio yesterday told a father that his possibly-gay daughter should be raped straight

Via GLAAD

According to the incident reports (and later confirmed to us by an executive for Clear Channel, the station’s parent company), the anti-gay remark was made by Dominic Dieter, one of the “Rover’s Morning Glory” cast members.  Responding to an e-mail from a father who (for reasons unknown) wrote to the station to say that he’d happened upon his teenage daughter kissing another girl. Deiter responded to the father, on-air, by saying:

“You should get one of your friends to screw your daughter straight.”

This is not okay.  Not on any level, and not in any context.  We trust that the majority of fair-minded Americans will agree. Make no mistake, if this young woman is, in fact, gay – or if she’s simply not interested in having sex with any of her father’s friends, then what Dieter is suggesting is rape.

GLAAD is calling for Douchebag Dieter’s suspension, and for an apology.

I say its not enough and I wish that GLAAD would stop being so weak

Dominic Dieter should be fired immediately.  Plain and simple. And thats too good for him.

Dieter’s statement was not just anti-gay, it’s anti-woman and anti-human.

PLEASE Call for Dieter’s immediate dismissal by using the feedback@wmms.com or calling the  general manager, Gary Mincer, may be reached at 216-520-2600.

Rape in any form is not funny.

Two Gay Men Sue Cleveland PD, Claiming They Were Beaten Because of Sexuality

Fox 8 News in Cleveland is reporting that two gay men, Steven Ondo and Jonathan Simcox, are suing the Cleveland Police Department because, according to their attorney, “[their] rights were violated in part of who they are, because they are homosexuals.”

According to the report, Simcox and Ondo were hauled off to jail in their underwear last April after an argument outdoors. Simcox’s brother asked police if he could get the couple pants and shoes, one of the officers responded by saying, “You can go get them shoes, but faggots don’t deserve to wear pants in jail.”

Head over to the Fox 8 website to see the full report.

Hunky Cleveland Browns Linebacker Scott Fujita Speaks Out For Same Sex Marriage

Cleveland Browns linebacker Scott Fujita is no stranger to standing up for LGBT rights.

Back in February of 2010, Fujita spoke out against the ‘Focus on the Family’ Tim Tebow Superbowl ad and also talked about having progressive gay rights views and speaking openly about them within the NFL:

It’s just me standing up for equal rights. It’s not that courageous to have an opinion if you think it’s the right thing and you believe it wholeheartedly.”

Now Fujita once again is standing up and speaking out this time on the isue of same sex marriage

Scott Fujita is a definate WOOF A+!

Boston and Washington D.C. Accuse Cleveland Ohio Of Cheating To Be The Selected Host City For Gay Games 2014

Boston Spirit Magazine is crying FOUL that Cleveland Ohio may have cheated to win the hosting rights to the 2014 Gay Games by flouting the bidding rules.

Someone PLEASE call  the Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaambulance!

One area of discrepancy according to Team Boston involved the amount of sports that the FGG wanted a host city to offer. The Red Book allowed for a limit of 28 sports. Why the cap? Team Boston was told that the FGG had previously had problems with overreach in the past, leading many past Gay Games to lose money. So, although Boston planners could have and would have happily prepped for more, they played by the rules and submitted plans for 28.  Cleveland? Their team proposed 40 sports, which automatically catapulted them into first place on the venue scorecard. The eventual host city snagged bonus points on martial arts, power lifting, racquet ball and rodeo, while Boston earned zeros in those events even though they could have easily found a hosting venue. The point spread? Boston earned 89, Washington D.C. 115 and Cleveland 123.

Other discrepancies according to Team Boston and Team D.C. include:

• The guidelines ask that each city’s proposed sporting venues be no more than 15 minutes apart by public transportation. Boston’s are. Cleveland’s golfing venue is over 45 miles away yet still snagged a score of “far beyond expectations.”

• The FGG says it wants long-term financial sponsors. Boston boasted nearly one million dollars more than Cleveland and DC, including money contributed by international and national companies interested in long-term partnerships. Cleveland only pledged $525,000 mostly from “local business owners.”

• Boston allegedly got unfairly low marks for their sports venues and for not having enough sports managers, while Cleveland went well over its allotted 45-minutes in their final presentation to FGG’s voting delegates.

Brent Minor, a longtime supporter of the FGG and a volunteer with Team D.C., says he wasn’t surprised that Cleveland won the bid, but he was concerned with the motivation behind the decision. “What did surprise me was the notion that bringing the Gay Games to Northeast Ohio to highlight gay-rights issues seemed to play such a significant factor to many voters,” Minor argues. “Not only does it seem to unnecessarily politicize the Gay Games movement, but I believe such thinking is too limiting. The fact is, there aren’t enough Gay Games in the world to go to every place that needs enlightenment on LGBT issues.”

“What the Federation presented to us is that they wanted to grow and build their future and host the Gay Games in a strong city,” says Linda DeMarco, president of Boston Pride and one of the many volunteers who spearheaded Team Boston’s bid for the Gay Games. “I don’t think any of us involved in the process thought that Cleveland was part of the scenario.”

When bid co-chair DeMarco and Team Boston learned that Cleveland was selected as the host city of the 2014 Gay Games—also outbidding Washington D.C.—they were shocked.

“At the end of the process, both D.C. and Boston said to each other that we thought we would lose to you,” remarks sports committee member Marc Davino, adding that it was Boston’s big-city attributes with its small-city charm that the group thought would win over the Federation.

“We took what a volunteer does and developed so much passion for it and to be shot down in this way is heartbreaking. We’re still emotionally distressed over this,” adds DeMarco. “We did this because it was important to our community and we know how to do it in Boston.”

Perhaps it’s all just sour grapes, a bad call, or indeed favortism.  But I’d like to remind both Boston and Washington, D.C. that we have much more dire and pressing issues to worry about like hmmmmmmm, Equal Rights perhaps? 
 
And when all is said and done, it’s all just some gay games.