The puppeteer who performs as the Sesame Street character Elmo has been granted a leave of absence from his job amid allegations he had an improper relationship with a 16-year-old boy.
Kevin Clash denies the allegations first reported by TMZ but says that he had a consensual relationship with a man, who is now 23, that occurred when the accuser was of legal age.
“I am a gay man. I have never been ashamed of this or tried to hide it, but felt it was a personal and private matter,” Clash, 52, tells PEOPLE in a statement via his personal rep.
“I had a relationship with the accuser,” his statement continues. “It was between two consenting adults and I am deeply saddened that he is trying to characterize it as something other than what it was. I am taking a break from Sesame Workshop to deal with this false and defamatory allegation.”
Sesame Workshop officials said in a statement released to PEOPLE that they have investigated the claims and found that the underage sex allegations could not be substantiated.
“Although this was a personal relationship unrelated to the workplace, our investigation did reveal that Kevin exercised poor judgment and violated company policy regarding internet usage and he was disciplined,” the company said in a statement.
Sesame Workshop officials told PEOPLE that the character Elmo would survive despite the scandal, saying, “Elmo is bigger than any one person and will continue to be an integral part of Sesame Street to engage, educate and inspire children around the world.”
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California Gov. Jerry Brown speaks to congregants celebrating Yom Kippur at Temple Emanuel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2012. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon)
Smoking Gun Website Reveals Elmo Voice Actor Kevin Clash’s Accuser Is A Male Model & A Criminal!!!
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NOVEMBER 14–The mystery man who accused Elmo puppeteer Kevin Clash of engaging in an underage sexual relationship–only to recant the allegation a day later–is a struggling 24-year-old model/actor who was once arrested for the knifepoint robbery of $250,000 in jewelry from a music manager for whom he interned, The Smoking Gun has learned.
The accuser, Pennsylvania resident Sheldon Stephens, had his unsubstantiated claims against Clash published Monday on the gossip web site TMZ. The smear triggered a torrent of social media activity and press reports that portrayed Clash, 52, as a predator (the New York Post’s front page headline read “Nookie Monster”).
While Stephens (seen at right) has not been publicly identified, TSG yesterday learned of his identity and confirmed his role in the Clash matter with two sources, a family member and a friend.
It is unclear how Stephens, who once lived in New York City, met Clash, who resides on Manhattan’s West Side. A friend of Stephens said that he “attracts these high-powered men,” but that the model wannabe was a “God-fearing guy” and “not just a pretty boy.”
In a statement released yesterday, a Harrisburg, Pennsylvania law firm–which no longer represents Stephens–reported that Clash’s accuser “wants it to be known that his sexual relationship with Mr. Clash was an adult consensual relationship.” TMZ initially reported that the man claimed to have been 16 when his sexual relationship with Clash began.
Shortly after the statement’s release, TMZ scrambled to publish a story (citing “sources close to the situation”) claiming that attorneys for Clash and the accuser were, right then, purportedly “discussing a financial settlement and 6-figures were on the table.” At that point, however, Stephens was no longer being represented by Andreozzi & Associates, the Harrisburg law firm, and had no other legal representation. The issuance of the statement was done as a courtesy by Stephens’s former counsel, who noted that, “He will have no further comment on the matter.”
The acknowledgement that the damaging claim against Clash was not true came as a relief to the producers of “Sesame Street,” who, as The New York Times notes, “had been alarmed by seeing the words ‘under-age sex’ in the same sentence as ‘Elmo.’”
The recanting, however, came after TMZ had effectively outed Clash as a gay man. In a statement, the puppeteer noted, “I have never been ashamed of this or tried to hide it, but felt it was a personal and private matter.” It is unknown if TMZ, one of the country’s leading practitioners of checkbook journalism, paid Stephens for his story.
Stephens, who did not respond to e-mail and Facebook messages, describes himself as an “Entrepreneur, Student, Model, Actor” on his Twitter account, which is protected. His Facebook page’s “About” blurb notes, “I like to consider myself a rare breed. I’m very spontaneous and random…I’m determined and goal oriented. My destiny is laid on a solid gold brick pathway……. MY FUTURE IS BRIGHT and never will it dim.”
Online searches turned up dozens of modeling-type photos of Stephens, who often uses the name “Sheldon Xzavier.” However, there is no evidence that the 5’ 10” Harrisburg resident has met with any success as a model or actor. In a submission this year for a cover shoot with an online fashion magazine, Stephens wrote that, “I’ve always wanted to land a major project such as this one. It will help restore my confidence and to give me a better outlook on the future of my career.”
Photos show Stephens in a variety of U.S. cities, including Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Miami, and New York City, where he is seen posing in a hotel room overlooking the World Trade Center memorial. As seen below, Stephens appears in a 30-second online commercial for a York, Pennsylvania clothing store. He also has a page on the Xtube porn site, but it appears inactive.
According to an October 2011 resume, Stephens has taken classes at Harrisburg University of Science and Technology, and expects to receive a bachelor’s degree from the 322-student school in May 2013. Along with several internships, he reported working as a valet at a Hilton hotel in Harrisburg, and as an office assistant at an American Automobile Association branch.
Stephens’s resume also lists stints at a pair of clothing stores in Manhattan’s Soho neighborhood. During this period, he resided in Brooklyn, but eventually returned to Harrisburg, where he now lives in a school dormitory about a mile from his mother’s apartment.
Felicia Stephens, 48, was charged last March with attempted murder after she allegedly repeatedly stabbed her husband with a pair of scissors. Free on bail, Stephens, who is also facing a felony aggravated assault rap, is next due in court December 19. Following his 
mother’s collar, Sheldon Stephens described her to a newspaper reporter as “the nicest person in the world.” Mother and son are pictured at right.
Court records show that Stephens himself has been arrested several times since 2009. Last year, Stephens was busted for passing a bad check, though that charge was eventually dismissed after he settled the debt with a Harrisburg business. He was also collared last May for reckless driving, and subsequently pleaded guilty to a traffic offense.
The most serious criminal charges filed against Stephens came in September 2009, when he was arrested at the Harrisburg airport after stepping off a flight from L.A..
According to a criminal complaint, music manager Darian Pollard contacted the Beverly Hills Police Department to report that Stephens–an intern that he had just fired–had robbed him at knifepoint of a $250,000 “white gold necklace with diamonds” and a “white gold ring with diamond baguets.”
Pollard, who heads DP Music Entertainment Group, told cops that Stephens had boarded a flight bound for Harrisburg. Beverly Hills police contacted their counterparts in Pennsylvania, and two officers detained Stephens, who “was wearing the necklace and also the ring” as he exited the plane, reported an investigator, who added, “He made no attempt to hide either article.”
Cops, who did not find a knife in Stephens’s luggage, arrested him on two felony receiving stolen property counts. Stephens, according to 
the complaint, denied that the jewelry was stolen. “He insists they were gifts,” a cop noted.
Criminal charges were initially filed against Stephens in a Pennsylvania court, where a judge ordered him held in lieu of $15,000 bail (his prison mug shots are here). The criminal complaint notes that a Beverly Hills Police Department detective told Pennsylvania investigators that he “would be filing charges in Beverly Hills for theft and other charges.”
However, a TSG search of L.A. county court records did not locate any evidence indicating that charges were subsequently filed against Stephens in Beverly Hills. The charges lodged against Stephens in Pennsylvania were dismissed two weeks after he was arrested at the Harrisburg International Airport.
In brief phone interviews, Pollard described himself as a “very wealthy” man who has been held up “like five times.” He claimed not to recall being robbed at knifepoint by Stephens or calling Beverly Hills cops. A friend of Stephens’s dismissed the Beverly Hills incident as a simple “misunderstanding,” likening it to a “domestic dispute.”
In addition to Stephens’s modeling and acting pursuits, he has founded a management company whose web site describes itself as “a boutique style full service agency representing the industries elite.” The firm’s “target markets” include Harrisburg, New York City, Miami, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Las Vegas. Stephens describes himself as having traveled the U.S. as a “High Profile Model, Hollywood stylist, Public Relation rep, and an Intern for multiple entertainment and production Agencies.”
Among the companies listed as partners of Stephens’s fledgling concern is “DP Music Management,” Pollard’s firm (the name of which does not appear, however, on Stephens’s resume).
Stephens’s web site also notes that one of his goals has been “spearheading Local Celebrities to National Stars.” Mission accomplished (17 pages)
Breaking News: Elmo Voice Actor Kevin Clash Career Tarnished Accuser Changes Story Now Claims They Had A Consensual Adult Homosexual Relationship.
Elmo and Kevin Clash pose for photographers on the red carpet at the Kennedy Center in Washington. Photo: REUTERS
11:20PM GMT 13 Nov 2012
The 23-year-old man, who had claimed that when he was 16 he and Kevin Clash, 52, had begun a relationship, recanted his statement through his lawyer last night.
The man, who has not been identified, “wants it to be known that his sexual relationship with Mr Clash was an adult consentual relationship,” the statement from the lawyers’ said.
Mr Clash, who had previously denied the accusastions, said: “I am relieved that this painful allegation has been put to rest. I will not discuss it further.”
Sesame Workshop had said its own investigation, during which its lawyers met with the accuser twice, had found the allegation of under age sex to be unsubstantiated.
But it said Mr Clash had exercised “poor judgment” and was disciplined for violating company policy on internet usage.
The puppeteer, who has voiced the red furry monster Elmo since 1984, told TMZ he did have a relationship with his accuser but “it was between two consenting adults and I am deeply saddened that he is trying to make it into something it was not.”
Mr Clash was granted a leave of absence at his own request in order to “protect his reputation” and to fight the allegations, Sesame Workshop said.
Last year Mr Clash starred in the successful documentary film “Being Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey,” which told the story of how he had dreamed as a child of working on The Muppets.
In 2006 he wrote a book called “My Life as a Furry Red Monster: What Being Elmo Has Taught Me About Life, Love and Laughing Out Loud.”
Shocking Allegations:Elmo Puppeteer Kevin Clash Takes Leave from Sesame Street Accused Of Having Sex With Male When He Was Only Sixteen.
By Andrea Billups
Kevin Clash
Kevin Wolf/AP
Guardian Interview: Openly Gay Boxer Orlando Cruz Talks About His Career, Family, & Coming Out Of Closet.
Orlando Cruz: ‘I wanted to take out the thorn inside me and have peace’
The Puerto Rican, who became the first boxer to declare publicly that he was gay, explains his long and traumatic struggle against fear and prejudice and his fight to be true to himself
- The Guardian, Thursday 18 October 2012 12.18 BST
‘There is suicidal death – when a gay man cannot stand being unaccepted and takes his own life,’ says Orlando Cruz. ‘And there is homophobic murder. In both I want to be a force for change.’ Photographs: Herminio Rodriguez for the Guardian
“I decided to be free,” Orlando Cruz says with piercing clarity as he looks out across his home city of San Juan. The Puerto Rican fighter, who this month became the first boxer to declare publicly that he was gay, remains on the balcony of his condominium as a blue and humid sky darkens. Cruz ignores the drops of rain that glisten on his bare torso as he whistles to Bam-Bam, a cheerful sausage dog who jumps on to his lap. The 31-year-old then talks with increasing passion about his new-found liberty.
“They can call me maricón, or faggot,” he says with a wry smile as he tickles Bam-Bam behind the ears, “and I don’t care. Let them say it because they can’t hurt me now. I am relaxed. I feel so happy. But to make this announcement to the whole world I had to be very strong.”
Cruz flexes his tattooed arms while deflecting Bam-Bam’s urge to lick his face. He might usually be besotted with his little dachshund but, now, Cruz is fiercely concentrated. On Friday night, in Kissimmee, Florida, he faces the most testing bout of his career, a WBO world featherweight title eliminator, but he needs first to explain the far harder struggle he has finally won over fear and prejudice.
“I have done well as a boxer,” he continues before switching to Spanish so he might speak more evocatively. “I’ve only lost two of my 21 fights. I won those other fights but, all this time, I have been living with this thorn inside me. I wanted to take it out of me so I could have peace within myself.”
Cruz glances down and it’s easy to imagine him searching for an invisible wound. “You can’t see it,” he says of his hurt, “but it was here.”
He taps his heart and recalls his bleakest moment. “People have died because of this,” he says as he details the murderous aspects of homophobia on the lush and sweltering island he loves. “I am proud to be Puerto Rican, just like I am proud to be a gay man. But I was sad and angry a long time because there are two doors to death over this one issue. There is suicidal death – when a gay man cannot stand being unaccepted and takes his own life. And there is homophobic murder. In both these situations I want to be a force for change.”
Cruz is such a warm and friendly man, and an unassuming fighter, that these words carry a jolting impact. He makes it sound as if he has personal experience of tragedy. “Si, si,” he murmurs. “I lost one friend who was murdered by people who hated gay men. I was very angry then because homophobia ended his life in the most violent way. But I was also angry because, at the time, I was hiding this secret of mine.”
The rain falls harder and Cruz stands up, almost reluctantly, as if not wishing to break the spell of his confession. “Let’s go inside or we will look crazy – sitting in the rain.” He gathers his boxing paraphernalia – scooping up the gloves and headguards, his trunks and socks – and ushers us inside the condo.
Cruz sits on his kitchen worktop. He cannot quite believe how his life has changed in the last few blurring days. “It’s emotional for me, but I am also excited. I think I can be an example for people who are in the same position. I have received letters from people saying they have been afraid to come out of the closet because of what their families might think of them. Now, they say, I have given them courage.”
He looks still more moved when asked who helped him find the bravery he needed to tell the world the truth about himself. “One person is very important to me. I’ve known him four-and-a-half years and he taught me to value myself. I won’t say his name but he is like my angel. We discussed this whole situation and he told me about the positive impact it would have for me. In boxing it has been great and, in Puerto Rico, the reaction has been 90% good. So I owe him a lot.”
Cruz might say that one word, “angel”, in English, but he shakes his head when asked if he’s thinking of his partner? “No. We separated but we still have this closeness. I am on my own now and he always tells me to focus on boxing. He’s a good guy and he’ll be at the fight in Kissimmee on Friday.”
Kissimmee might sound a sweetly coy name for a gay fighter called Cruz to make his first appearance in the ring as a self-confessed homosexual. But boxing’s brutal undertow cannot be forgotten. While Bam-Bam crunches his dog biscuits and laps noisily from his water bowl, Cruz licks his own dry lips. Boiling down to the 126lb featherweight limit, and only days from fighting Jorge Pazos, a durable and still ambitious Mexican, Cruz has to ration every morsel of food. And, despite his raging thirst, he’ll soon step into the rustling sweatsuit that will help him shed more ounces during afternoon training.
Cruz poses with his dog Bam-Bam for a portrait in his apartment at Carolina Puerto Rico. Photograph: Herminio Rodriguez for the GuardianCruz’s life has been turned inside out by his revelation and it seems strange that he should have invited such scrutiny so close to a fight of this magnitude for him. If he wins on Friday his hopes of fighting the world’s best featherweight, the WBO world champion, Orlando Salido, will feel deliciously close to fruition. But a loss to Pazos would be disastrous. Was it difficult to come out so close to an important fight?
“No,” Cruz says. “I wanted the whole world to know the truth about me. I have been a professional fighter for 12 years [having made his paid debut with a first round knockout win in December 2000] and I have been hiding this secret all that time. Now there is no secret. There is only the truth. Believe me: that means there is so much less pressure on me. It is so much better. I have been thinking about this moment for 11 years. All the time I was fighting and thinking when would be the best time to show my real self. It started in 2001 when I told my parents.”
Cruz laughs as a way of easing his emotions. “You should have seen me,” he says, remembering the moment he told his mother he was gay. “I was crying! She was crying! I am emotional and I am so close to my mother. She said: ‘It doesn’t matter. You are my son. I love you.’ That made me cry some more.”
Cruz pauses before addressing his father’s reaction. He sighs, his breath leaving him in a muted hiss of resignation. “My dad is more difficult because of the macho thing. Now, it’s better. He supports me but… there is always a ‘but’…”
The fighter raises his eyes and there is no need for him to explain more. “My parents are separated. My dad lives in Miami but I’m glad he will be at the fight to support me. And my mother and I will fly together to Orlando. She was always more sympathetic – she’s a special friend. And my sister and brother are the same. They have been great. They have all known for a long time.”
His phone rings repeatedly but Cruz has been so engrossed that he waves dismissively at it. Eventually he picks it up on the caller’s fourth try. “Oh,” Cruz says in English, looking at his phone in surprise. “It’s my trainer. The two o’clock call…”
On a public holiday in Puerto Rico, Cruz’s usual gym has been shut for the day. Yet he had still set his alarm for 4.30 that morning. Thirty minutes later he had slipped out into San Juan’s sultry blackness. What did he think about on his long and lonely 5am run? “I thought about the fight against Pazos. October 19 holds my future because if I win then the next fight is for the world title. So I go through the fight in my head, round by round, and I see myself knocking him out.
“Sometimes my team runs with me. But this morning it was just me. I had the space to think about everything. I moved to New Jersey two years ago because my manager wanted me to get disciplined. There are too many distractions in Puerto Rico. And when I was in New Jersey I started the psychological process of being able to come out.”
Cruz seems briefly pensive as he charts the arduous journey he has taken to reach this point of release. “After a while the psychiatrists say: ‘Are you ready?’ I say: No, not yet.’ A few months later they ask the same question. I shake my head. I was nervous a long time because it’s a big step to be the first in history. Even six months ago I was worried how people would take it. I had to wait until I was physically and emotionally prepared.
“It was still a big surprise to a lot of people in boxing. But the response was good. Miguel Cotto [the great Puerto Rican light-middleweight who is the same age as Cruz and his former team-mate on the national amateur team] said some beautiful things in support of me. Miguel suspected I was gay but I could never discuss it with him. But I always knew Miguel would support me. I never doubted that.”
Does Cruz believe that his coming out will help other gay boxers follow the same path? “I don’t know. Probably in other sports it will happen. But boxing will still be difficult because it is so macho.”
Cruz’s face grows sombre and he nods when asked if he knows the tragic story of Emile Griffith and Benny Paret. “Of course,” he says. Fifty years ago, in April 1962, at the weigh-in before their third bout in a bitterly ferocious series, Paret taunted Griffith as a maricón. Griffith beat up Paret so badly that the Cuban welterweight was reduced to a punching bag in the 12th round – absorbing 29 unanswered blows. Paret fell into a coma and died 10 days later. Griffith was haunted for decades afterwards.
“Griffith was gay,” Cruz says, “but he could not do what I did. It was only years later he could admit to being bisexual. I understand.”
Cruz listens intently while I read a quote from Griffith – who said these words before he succumbed to dementia: “I kill a man and most people forgive me. However, I love a man and many say this makes me an evil person.”
He sinks back into his chair, a strange expression flitting across his face. “It shows the hypocrisy of the world,” he murmurs in Spanish. “He probably wanted to say those words 50 years ago but he was not living in the moment we are now. He was not as lucky as me.”
Cruz carries a sense of boxing history inside him and cites Muhammad Ali as his favourite fighter. He covers his face in embarrassment when I suggest that, in his own humble way, he has made the kind of history that usually belongs to fighters as monumental as Ali. Cruz has not risked jail, like Ali did in refusing to serve in the US Army in Vietnam, but he has broken the last great taboo in boxing.
“Thank you,” he says before lightening the moment with a quip. “Even women here in Puerto Rico were surprised. They used to say to me: ‘Oh, you are beautiful!’ Now they say: ‘Oh my God! You are gay! I’m sorry!’ But they accept it. They are still nice and warm.”
When did Cruz realise he was gay? “Before the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney I tried to deny it to myself. I dated girls as a straight man. I had sex with girls. It was only after I came back from the Olympics that something changed inside me and I took another path. But, still, I didn’t want to accept the truth about myself. It’s been a long, painful journey.”
At the sound of his doorbell Cruz jumps up. “You’re going to meet my father-in-law,” he says. Jim Pagán is a veteran of the ring, having trained Puerto Rican fighters like Eric Morel and Cruz for years, and he arrives at the condo with a weathered face and a quiet gravitas. Cruz tells me how Pagán, who speaks little English, has trained him since he was seven years old. “Twenty-four years,” Cruz exclaims, as he reflects on their bond.
Cruz jumps rope during his training prior to his fight with Orlando Salido. Photograph: Herminio Rodriguez for the GuardianAnother more emotive bond ties the two men together. “I went out with Jim’s daughter for five years,” Cruz says. “Her name is Daisy-Karen and she has supported me. Just like Jim.”
With Cruz acting as translator I ask the trainer how he feels now that his daughter’s former boyfriend has come out as a gay man. “We have great respect for each other,” Pagán says in soft but gravelly Spanish. “I have always known Orlando is a very good person.”
Cruz laughs. “Not always,” he says, switching back into English. “He once told me to fuck off and leave his gym. I had no discipline as a kid. But I always came back to him. He’s my second father.”
Walking in tow with Pagán’s two young sons – one who hopes to become a professional fighter while the other dreams of playing baseball for a living – Cruz leads us to a gym at the far end of the complex. It is neat and clean and without any of the grit and stink of Pagán’s boxing gym in downtown San Juan.
Inside, Cruz skips with a rope and then smacks his fists into Pagán’s raised pads. They make eerie shadows when silhouetted against the fading afternoon light; but the old tattooed beat of their pad-work calls up a shared and enduring love of boxing. Cruz is now just a fighter preparing for a dangerous battle.
During a brief break, I ask if he feels nervous. “Not yet,” he says. “The worst is two hours before the fight. Oh my God! Then there are big nerves. I go very quiet. But as soon as the knock comes on the locker-room door I am fine. And on Friday I will be ready.”
Once the fight is over, and he has hopefully secured his crack at Salido’s world title, Cruz will party a little in Kissimmee. “And then,” he grins, “I go to Disneyland in Orlando with my mom. She loves it.”
Cruz might get hurt or pushed to the edge of his ability against Pazos. Yet he insists that, after the greater struggle he has just won in real life, he will prevail in the ring. “Pazos is a tough, typical Mexican fighter. We respect each other. When they asked him about me he says he doesn’t care about my sexual preference. He knows I am a good fighter and that’s his main concern. I am the same towards him. I keep my private and professional life separate but for one thing…”
Cruz looks up, his eyes shining in his sweat-streaked face. “If I am inside or outside the ring I just want to be me. And, now, I’m happy I can do it. I can be true to myself.”
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard Blasts Opposition Leader Tony Abbott For His Hypocrisy & Misogyny!!
Julia Gillard Australia’s first female Prime Minister has experienced a lot of misogyny from the opposition parties and the Australian media. In this fifteen minute speech, Prime Minister Gillard blasts the opposition leader Tony Abbott for his hypocrisy and sexism. This is a wonderful take down by Ms. Gillard! However, I find it interesting that Prime Minister Gillard isn’t so vocal about marriage equality or gay rights in Australia? Can’t Ms. Gillard see the similarities between the right to equality for women and for gay people in Australia? Gays and lesbians in Australia deserve to have the same human rights as heterosexuals.
UK Telegraph Article: Orlando Cruz Breaks Barrier Is The World’s First Openly Gay Male Professional Boxer!!!
The world of sport has become a little more colourful now that the 31-year-old Puerto Rican boxer Orlando Cruz, currently ranked fourth-best featherweight in the world, has given a statement to the Boxing Scene website openly declaring that he is gay.
“As I continue my ascendant career, I want to be true to myself,” he wrote. “I want to try to be the best role model I can be for kids who might look into boxing as a sport and a professional career. I have and will always be a proud Puerto Rican. I have always been and always will be proud gay men.”
Cruz himself, however, has precious few role models. Traditionally, there has been a tendency for gay sportspeople to hide their sexual orientation until they retire. Justin Fashanu, the only English footballer to openly declare his homosexuality, was disowned by his brother John Fashanu and subjected to a great deal of homophobic abuse; he took his own life in 1998.
Emilie Griffith, a welterweight in the 1960s who was the first boxer from the US Virgin Islands ever to become a world champion, is another tragic figure. He managed to keep his bisexuality largely hidden from the public despite being seen by Alan Hubbard, a sports writer, “passionately kissing one of his cornermen”.
In 1962, Benny Paret, a Cuban boxer, threw homophobic insults at Griffiths during the weigh-in. Griffiths was restrained, but in the subsequent fight he responded with such a devastating chain of blows that Paret was knocked unconscious. Griffiths continued to attack while the Cuban was propped against the ropes, and Paret died of his injuries 10 days later. Griffiths suffered from guilt throughout his life, but was also haunted by the bitter irony that underpinned the episode. “I kill a man and most people forgive me,” he said. “However, I love a man and many say this… makes me an evil person. So, even though I never went to jail, I have been in prison most of my life.”
In 1992, Griffith was beaten almost to death in New York after leaving a gay bar near the Port Authority Bus Terminal in an attack that was thought to be motivated by homophobia. He currently received full-time care and has been diagnosed with pugilistic dementia.
But for all the dark tales from the past, times have changed. Cruz’s announcement has not provoked the same degree of shock that it might have done in previous decades, and his career is not in any danger. Nevertheless, he will doubtless be the victim of a degree of abuse, and is clearly brave to have put his head above the parapet. Orlando Cruz is poised to become a symbolic figure among gay sportspeople, whether they are out of the closet or not.
Associated Press Article: California Bans Gay Conversion Therapy For Teens More States Might Follow.
More states could join California’s ban on gay teen ‘conversion’ therapy
California Gov. Jerry Brown speaks to congregants celebrating Yom Kippur at Temple Emanuel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2012. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon)
Published Monday, Oct. 1, 2012 7:11PM EDT
SAN FRANCISCO — Gay rights advocates are making plans to get other states to join California in banning psychotherapy aimed at making gay teenagers straight, even as opponents prepared Monday to sue to overturn the first law in the nation to take aim at the practice.
After months of intense lobbying, California Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill late Saturday that prohibits licensed mental health professionals from using so-called reparative or conversion therapies with clients under age 18. Brown called the therapies “quackery” that “have no basis in science or medicine.”
Two New Jersey lawmakers already are drafting similar legislation, while groups that helped get the California law passed are sharing research, witnesses and talking points with counterparts in other gay-friendly states, said Geoff Kors, senior legislative and policy strategist for the San Francisco-based National Center for Lesbian Rights.
“There are lots of folks today who are looking at this, now that the governor has signed it,” Kors said. “We’ll be reaching out to all the state (gay rights) groups, especially in states that have had success passing LGBT rights legislation.”
The law only applies to licensed therapists, not ministers or lay people who counsel teens to resist same-sex attractions.
Two Christian legal groups, meanwhile, said they would sue in federal court in Sacramento to prevent the law from taking effect on Jan. 1.
The lawsuits will be filed on behalf of therapists whose practices include efforts to help clients change their sexual orientations or reduce their attractions to people of the same-sex; parents who have sought such therapy for their children; and teenagers who currently are undergoing it, lawyers for the California-based Pacific Justice Institute and Florida-based Liberty Counsel said.
Liberty Counsel Chairman Mat Staver said his organization plans to argue in court that the law infringes on the First Amendment and equal protection rights of individuals to give and receive information that matches their personal and professional beliefs.
“What this law does is tell minors that they can no longer receive information about same-sex attractions that they have been receiving and that they find beneficial to them,” Staver said. “It also puts counsellors in a situation where they must present only one viewpoint of this subject.”
The law Brown signed states that mental health providers who use sexual orientation change efforts on clients under 18 would be engaging in unprofessional conduct and subject to discipline by their respective state licensing boards.
Mainstream associations representing psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers have dismissed reparative therapy in recent decades as being ineffective and potentially dangerous to the mental health of teenagers and young adults who are led to believe their interest in same-sex partners is wrong.
As originally written, the bill introduced by state Sen. Ted Lieu, also would have required therapists to warn adult patients of the practice’s risks and limitations and to obtain their written consent before engaging in it.
Lieu dropped the informed consent provision, however, after a number of mental health associations in California — including the California Psychological Association and the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists — complained that it interfered with the therapist-client relationship.
Both groups, as well as the other leading professional groups, ultimately endorsed the ban for juveniles.
It remained unclear how many practitioners and patients the law would affect.
David Pruden, vice-president of the California-based National Association for Research and Therapy on Homosexuality, a professional association that supports treatment for homosexuality, estimated there are two dozen therapists statewide who engage in efforts to change sexual orientation, and not all of them treat adolescents.
The association plans to be a plaintiff in the Liberty Counsel lawsuit, with its support based mostly on the law’s symbolic effect than its consequences for large numbers of California teens and their counsellors, Pruden said.
“If you said, realistically, how many hamburgers did you think you weren’t going to sell at McDonald’s because of the new pickle law, the answer is not very many,” he said. “Then the question becomes should we be legislating pickles.”
Staver thinks the law could impact hundreds of licensed Christian psychotherapists and their teen clients from religious families nationwide. Depending on how it’s enforced, California therapists who treat clients in other states via Skype, and therapists in other states who conduct telephone sessions with California residents could be investigated for misconduct, he said.
Advocate Magazine: Was Deceased TV Legend Former Jeffersons Star Sherman Hemsley A Closeted Homosexual?
Sherman Hemsley Remains Unburied Due to Will Dispute
The embalmed body of actor Sherman Hemsley, best known for portraying TV’s George Jefferson, is being kept refrigerated in a funeral home in El Paso, Texas, until a local court decides on the validity of his will.
BY JEREMY KINSER
The embalmed body of actor Sherman Hemsley, best known for portraying TV’s George Jefferson, is being kept refrigerated in a funeral home in El Paso, Texas, until a local court decides on the validity of his will, reports Associated Press.
Richard Thornton, who claims to be Hemsley’s brother, is disputing a will the actor signed six weeks prior to his death from lung cancer at age 74 on July 24. In it Hemsley named Flora Enchinton as sole beneficiary of his estate, valued at more than $50,000. Hemsley also refers to Enchinton as a “beloved partner.”
Enchinton says she had been friends with Hemsley and had even been his manager for more than two decades. During this time she lived with Hemsley and Hemsley’s friend Kenny Johnston, 76. Enchinton tells AP Hemsley never mentioned any relatives.
“Some people come out of the woodwork — they think Sherman, they think money,” Enchinton tells AP. “But the fact is that I did not know Sherman when he was in the limelight. I met them when they [Hemsley and Johnston] came running from Los Angeles with not one penny, when there was nothing but struggle.”
While there was no official confirmation during his lifetime, there was frequent speculation that Hemsley, famed for his portrayal of the bigoted dry cleaning mogul on the hit sitcom The Jeffersons, was a gay man. A 2007 VH1 story that listed three favorite allegedly gay black actors from the past put Hemsley in the top spot.
Associated Press Article: Eighteen Year Old Gay Football Player Says He Got Kicked Off Team For Kissing His Sixty Five Year Old Boyfriend.
By James MacPherson, APJamie Kuntz, posing for a photograph Tuesday at a football field in Dickinson, N.D., says he was kicked off the North Dakota State College of Science football team because he was gay. School officials say he was dismissed from the team for lying to a coach.
By James MacPherson, AP
Jamie Kuntz, posing for a photograph Tuesday at a football field in Dickinson, N.D., says he was kicked off the North Dakota State College of Science football team because he was gay. School officials say he was dismissed from the team for lying to a coach.
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DICKINSON, N.D. (AP) — A concussion kept Jamie Kuntz from suiting up for his first college football game. A kiss from his much-older boyfriend at that game led the freshman linebacker to be kicked off the team, he said.
North Dakota State College of Sciences in Wahpeton acknowledges Kuntz was disciplined by the team, but says it wasn’t because he is gay. Football coach Chuck Parsons told Kuntz in a letter that he was removed from the team for lying about the kiss.
Kuntz, 18, and on a partial football scholarship, left the college in southeast North Dakota this month after his dismissal from the team.
“Football didn’t work out, so there was no reason to stay,” said Kuntz, who lives with his mother across the state in Dickinson.
Kuntz said he and his 65-year-old boyfriend were in the press box at the game against Snow College in Pueblo, Colo., over Labor Day weekend. Kuntz was videotaping the game for the team. His Wildcats were down by more than 40 points when “the kiss just happened,” he said. The team would eventually lose 63-17.
“People around here aren’t exposed to it,” Kuntz said of homosexuality. “People expect gays to be flamboyant, not football players.”
A teammate apparently saw the kiss and told coaches, Kuntz said. When Parsons confronted Kuntz on the bus ride back to North Dakota, Kuntz told him the man he kissed was his grandfather.
“I lied,” Kuntz said.
Later, he felt guilty about lying and came clean to his coach.
In a Sept. 3 dismissal letter obtained by the Associated Press, Parsons told Kuntz he was being ousted from the team under the “conduct deemed detrimental to the team” category outlined in guidelines in the team’s player’s manual. Parsons specifically noted the manual’s section on “lying to coaches, teachers or other school staff.”
“This decision was arrived at solely on the basis of your conduct during the football game; and because you chose not to be truthful with me when I confronted you about whom else was in the box with you,” Parsons wrote. “Any conduct by any member of the program that would cause such a distraction during a game would warrant the same consequences.”
Kuntz doesn’t believe he was dismissed simply for lying.
“I know if it was a girl in the press box, or even an older woman, nothing would have happened,” he said. “If it was an older woman, I would have probably been congratulated for it from my teammates.”
School officials told the AP that they were investigating whether this was the first such instance of someone being kicked off the football team for lying.
John Richman, North Dakota State College of Science president, said other players have been kicked off the team for various reasons, though he couldn’t say whether any before had been booted specifically for lying.
“I don’t know of every single case where coach Parsons has had to discipline a young man,” Richman said.
Other behavior that the player’s manual says could lead to dismissal includes criminal violations, fighting and repeated absences or tardiness to class. Richman said he believes Kuntz’s case was handled “fairly and consistently” by the athletic department.
“I’m very confident that with the information that’s been provided to me by our football coach, Chuck Parsons, by our athletic director, Stu Engen, that the thought process, the facts that were reviewed, have led them to an appropriate and the right decision in this case,” Richman said Tuesday in an interview at the college.
Parsons recently joined the school’s diversity council as a faculty representative, according to Sybil Priebe, an English and humanities professor who heads the council. Its programs include events for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students. Priebe said Tuesday she had not heard much about the incident with Kuntz.
Kuntz said he told his mother that he was gay at the same time he told her he was kicked off the team.
“I’m struggling with it,” said Rita Kuntz, choking back tears. “I love Jamie and I’m proud of him, but I know what the school did was wrong.”
Rita Kuntz said she has accepted that her son is gay, but she believes he was taken advantage of by his boyfriend, who is more than three times her son’s age.
Jamie Kuntz said he met the man online more than a year ago. Kuntz said the man, whom he would not identify, lives in Colorado and the two have met there a few times in recent months.
As far as his football career, Kuntz says he’s not giving up. He may pursue it as a walk-on at another university outside North Dakota.
“I miss it already,” he said.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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