GXR GAY NEW

MANILA, Philippines — Like many of the other Adam Sandler comedies, “I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry

Move over Wikipedia. The bible of the online world has launched Geekipedia.

The problem with the former, proclaims the intro to the latter, is its failure to “distinguish between `need to know’ and `didja know?’ – and it’s lousy for browsing.”

To rectify that situation, the magazine has compiled 149 entries for “people, places, things and trends to help you navigate the wired world.” Among them:

Abrams, J.J.: the horn-rimmed creator of TV’s Lost and “the biggest geek in network television;”

Lolcats: a basic rule of Web comedy: “funny pictures of cats are even funnier with all-uppercase pidgin English captions;”

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The YES Institute was born of a desire to prevent teen suicides. On the YES Institute’s website, founders Martha Fugate and Connie Barden remember when the organization was founded more than a decade ago:

We began meeting with local community leaders and educators to find out what could be done to keep youth from wanting to kill or harm themselves. In these meetings we discovered two missing pieces to the puzzle of why well-intentioned professionals were not taking effective actions: they lacked education and they were not comfortable talking about gay youth.

This led to the clear focus that was to become YES Institute – providing education and powerful communication that enables adults to serve all youth even when they are uncomfortable or hold conflicted opinions on the subject.

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NEW YORK (AP) — T.R. Knight says he’s evolved as a person since announcing last October that he’s gay.

“I feel I’ve learned so much this past year, so I’m grateful for that — so, yeah, that changes you,” the 34-year-old actor said Thursday on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show.”

Knight, who plays Dr. George O’Malley on ABC’s hit medical drama, “Grey’s Anatomy,” announced that he’s gay after it surfaced that Isaiah Washington had used an anti-gay slur against him during an on-set clash with a co-star.

Washington, 44, was booted from his role as a surgeon on the show after he used an anti-gay epithet backstage at the Golden Globe Awards in January while denying he’d used it previously on the set against Knight.

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MEXICO CITY (AP) — Adam Sandler says he would like to work alongside gay-rights groups after starring in “I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry.”

Sandler, who was in Mexico with co-star Kevin James to promote the film’s opening in theaters here, told a news conference: “If I can help anybody in any way, I certainly would.”

But the 41-year-old actor-comedian stopped short of calling himself a potential gay icon.

“I don’t think that’s gonna happen, dude, certainly not,” Sandler said. “If I was a gay man, I wouldn’t want me to represent” the gay community.

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The head of Kenya’s Anglican Church has rejected a compromise over gay bishops by US Episcopal Church leaders.

They have said they will halt the ordination of gay bishops and public blessings of same-sex relationships to prevent a split in the Anglican Church.

“That word ‘halt’ is not enough,” said Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi.

Many African Anglicans threatened to leave the worldwide Anglican Communion after the ordination of the first openly gay bishop four years ago.

The American Church was told to meet the conditions by 30 September or lose membership of the communion.

US bishops made the decision after a six-day meeting in New Orleans.

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NEW YORK For gay newspaper publishers, the good old days are now. “Compared to 23 years ago?” Publisher Tracy Baim says with a laugh, referring to the year the weekly Windy City Times was founded in Chicago. “I think it’s a great time to be in gay publishing. It’s so much easier than it was even 10 years ago to pitch to mainstream businesses”

Indeed, according to the Gay Press Report, advertising spending in publications, about half of them weekly newspapers targeting the so-called GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered) audience, increased 205% between 1996 and 2006. Last year’s ad revenues of $223.3 million represented an increase of 5.2% over the year before — a period during which print and online ad spending on daily newspapers was essentially flat.

In 1994, just 19 Fortune 500 brands advertised in the gay press. Last year, 183 did.

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The local writer-activist who created the stage satire “Candy Corn, Christ and the Convoluted Creation of Golf” now is swinging from a cinematic tee.

Swartz Creek resident Antonio David Garcia has made a movie, “Fences,” in which he uses an unconventional cross-country trip to take a few swipes at the religious right.

Garcia plans to give the 75-minute “Fences” its first public screenings at 7:30 and 9 p.m. Friday at Good Beans Cafe, 328 N. Grand Traverse. Donations will be taken at the door for the Flint AIDS Walk (set for the following day) and the Matthew Shepard Foundation.

“Fences” chronicles a three-week journey by gay-rights advocate Garcia in 2005 to find Oregon-based filmmaker Gus Van Sant (”Good Will Hunting”). Along the way, Garcia attempts to visit conservative Christian groups such as Dr. James Dobson’s Colorado-based Focus on the Family and the Kansas church pastored by the Rev. Fred Phelps, who is known for protesting at funerals.

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Last week the San Diego city council prepared a resolution to present a friend of the court brief for the California Supreme Court who is about to hear yet another case about the constitutionality of gay marriage in the State of California. It has been two years since San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom stood against the state laws regarding gay marriage and allowed gays to have marriage ceremonies performed by judges in San Francisco.

San Diego mayor Jerry Sanders had long been a staunch opponent to gay marriage, and vowed to veto the resolution he was about to be presented with by the city council to submit the brief. However, Sanders in a tear-filled speech on the matter did a dramatic about face and agreed with the city council that gay marriage should be allowed. His reason is because his daughter is a lesbian, and many of his associates and friends are gay or lesbian. He said “In the end, I couldn’t look any of them in the face and tell them that their relationships, their very lives, were any less meaningful than the marriage I share with my wife, Rana.

In an impassioned Sunday morning sermon to more than 2,000 worshipers at a Wheaton church, a leading critic of the Episcopal Church’s liberal stance on homosexuality spoke against sexual sin, saying unity must come from transformation and obedience to God.

Anglican Archbishop Peter Akinola, a Nigeria-based cleric who leads the largest church in the 77 million-member worldwide Anglican Communion, is perhaps the fiercest critic of the U.S. Episcopal Church’s stand on gays.

His controversial visit to Edman Memorial Chapel coincides with a meeting in New Orleans of Episcopal bishops who must respond to a demand from Anglican leaders that they stop consecrating gay bishops and ban the blessing of same-sex unions.

Last week, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, spiritual leader of the Anglican Communion, attended two days of closed-door meetings with bishops in New Orleans, in hopes of avoiding a painful schism of the church.

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