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Thursday, March 28, 2024

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One of the mainstays of the Olympics is the myriad examples of branded merchandise that are sold to support the Games, not to mention burnish the images of official sponsors. The supporters of an effort to help lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender citizens of Russia, where the Winter Games are to be held in February, are adapting that marketing tactic with a line of protest merchandise to be sold by American Apparel and promoted by athletes.
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Principle 6, a campaign inspired by the values of the Olympic charter, is a way for athletes, spectators, and global supporters to celebrate the Olympic principle of non-discrimination and call for an end to Russia's anti-gay laws before the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.

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For the first time in West Point's history, two men (both West Point graduates) married in the chapel of the military academy on Saturday, November 2, 2013.  Larry Choate III, class of 2009, married Daniel Lennox, class of 2007, at the U.S. Military Academy's Cadet Chapel. West Point hosted two same-sex weddings of women in late 2012, more than a year after New York legalized gay marriage. But this is the first time two men have been wed at West Point.  WestChoate, 27, said the landmark Gothic chapel at the Hudson Valley academy is a special place and it's an honor to be wed there. He taught Sunday school at the chapel as a cadet and always thought of it as the place he would get married, if he could.

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Both men are out of the military. Lennox, a 28-year-old from Washington, D.C, is getting his master's degree in business administration at Harvard University in Massachusetts. Choate, from Seattle, works at the business school there and is applying to Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government.   Last year, Brenda Sue Fulton and Penelope Dara Gnesin became the first gay couple to marry at West Point.

 

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Louganis, 53, married paralegal Johnny Chaillot, 52, Saturday evening at Geoffrey's in Malibu.  "It was amazing because I have so many people from all facets of my life here tonight and they are all here and celebrating it is all wonderful," Louganis expressed immediately following the sunset ceremony. "I already feel different. The ceremony was so reflective and representative of who we are."  The recent Splash coach and Chaillot began dating in 2012 after finding each other on the online dating site Match.com and became engaged almost exactly a year later on April 8.

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"It has been an incredible journey," Louganis said in an interview Thursday of his relationship with Chaillot. "I feel like we've been through a lifetime in a very short time."

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On November 7, 1991, superstar Magic Johnson aanounced to the world he had acquired the HIV/AIDS virus.   In 2011, ESPN produced an extraordinary docuemntary in his honor marking the 20th anniversary of this historic press announcement.  In 2013, Magic Johnson will be honored by the World AIDS Museum in Wilton Manors, Florida.   Watch this rivetting documentary here in CommunityofLights.

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Earvin "Magic" Johnson, Jr. (born August 14, 1959) is an all star American professional basketball player who played point guard for the Los Angeles Lakers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). After winning championships in high school and college, Johnson was selected first overall in the 1979 NBA Draft by the Lakers. He won a championship and an NBA Finals Most Valuable Player Award in his rookie season, and won four more championships with the Lakers during the 1980s. Johnson retired abruptly in 1991 after announcing that he had contracted HIV, but returned to play in the 1992 All-Star Game, winning the All-Star MVP Award.

 

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A kiss is always a story. But the kiss at the heart of David Levithan's ambitious, humane, extraordinarily moving new novel is thirty-two hours long, and the story it tells is different from most. Two ex-boyfriends, Harry and Craig, aim to set a new record for longest kiss in front of their high school. They do it to show their support for a friend who was a victim of anti-gay violence; they do it hoping that "it'll make people a little less scared of two boys kissing."

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It's a young person's dream, that a kiss can change the world, and like most of Levithan's other books Two Boys Kissing has been marketed for young adults.