Stock your cupboards and prepare for Y2GAY.

A hilarious new short film from Australia documents the manic efforts of a hobbit-like homophobe as he prepares for the coming of "Y2GAY" in a bunker stocked with "straight nonperishables" and Ricky Martin DVDs. His wife is less than enthusiastic about her husband's obsession.

The film was a finalist in Australia's Tropfest, the largest short film festival in the world.

Watch other finalists, including the winner, here.

Film producer and author Perry Moore died on Feb 17. He was only 39. Moore was an executive producer on the Chronicles of Narnia films and the author of the gay novel Hero. Fab associate editor Matt Thomas interviewed Moore a couple of years ago.

 

Perry Moore

In happier news....

Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports that an NGO called LGBT Forum Progres has been launched in the Balkan nation of Montenegro.

Pink News reports that a court in Budapest, Hungary, has overturned a police decision to limit or ban that city’s Pride parade, scheduled for June 18.

Time.com reports that a brewery in Mexico has introduced the “world’s first gay beer.” Of course, the beer itself doesn’t have a sexual orientation, it’s just that the brewers want gay people to drink it. It sounds tasty to me. The headline writer on the Time story deserves a little knuckle rap, though, for playing fast and loose with the superlative “first.” In fact, plenty of beer brands marketed to gay people have come before. In 2005, for example, the Church-Wellesley Village Business Improvement Area launched Alexander Wood Lager in Toronto’s Church St gay bars.  

I love it when professional athletes come out. The Australian has a cool piece about openly gay former professional rugby player Ian Roberts. Check him out.
 

UPDATE: Thanks to "Sochi" for pointing out that the pic below is Leonard Cohen and his partner, Anjani, not his daughter Lorca. Lorca photographed the pic. 

Canadian singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright announced the birth of his daughter on his website today. 

Darling daughter Viva Katherine Wainwright Cohen was born on Feb 2, 2011, in Los Angeles, California to proud parents Lorca Cohen, Rufus Wainwright and Deputy-Dad Jorn Weisbrodt. The little angel is evidently healthy, presumably happy and certainly very, very beautiful.

Daddy #1 would like to offer everyone a digital cigar and welcome the little lady in with a French phrase from his favorite folk song, "A La Claire Fontaine": "Il y a longtemps que je t'aime, jamais je ne t'oublierai."

^{Rufus Wainwright (right) with Deputy Dad Jorn Weisbrodt.}

Lorca Cohen is the daughter of Canadian poet and musician Leonard Cohen.

_{Leonard Cohen and Anjani} 

The post below is an earlier collaboration between the new father and grandfather. Wainwright performs Cohen's "Hallejulah":

Join us here for live video and chat live from the 519 Community Centre. Use the CoverItLive window below for chat (the window also captures all tweets using the #PrideTO hashtag). Feel free to post comments in the chat window.

See the recommendations for yourself.
All Xtra's Pride coverage here; our Community Advisory Panel coverage here.

Community Advisory Panel Presentation:

Pride Toronto Board response:

The changes were made in consultation with Facebook's Network of Support, a group that includes LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender] organizations such as the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network, and the Human Rights Campaign.

The report quotes spokespeople for the Human Rights Campaign and Equality Matters, who herald the change as a "milestone" for the LGBT community. 

Well, maybe for the LGB communities.

What the report and the spokespeople fail to mention is that Facebook continues to offer only two gender options: "male" or "female." 

Before we start congratulating Facebook for this relatively insignificant change, let's compare the social networking site's gender options with those of a few other popular social media sites:

FLICKR:

TWITTER:

N/A

(Twitter doesn't ask gender)

YOUTUBE:

"No gender" is an option on YouTube.

Facebook, with its locked-in gender binary, is far behind many other social media sites.

In fact, just a few months ago Diaspora, a new open-source social networking site touted as a "Facebook killer," made the decision to code its gender option as a text field. Diaspora users can insert anything they choose as a gender.

Sarah Mei, a developer in California who made the decision, explains:

I made this change to Diaspora so that I won’t alienate anyone I love before they finish signing up.

I made this change because gender is a beautiful and multifaceted thing that can’t be contained by a list.

I know a lot of people aren’t there with me yet. So I also made this change to give them one momentary chance to consider other possibilities.

I made it to start a conversation.

I made it because I can.

Here are some examples of how people are using Diaspora's gender text field: 

So there is little excuse for Facebook's limited options... aside from preventing confusing demographic reports for the advertisers who pay the company for access to our "male" or "female" eyeballs.

Much worse than Facebook, though, are the spokespeople who applaud a change to the "relationship status" without a mention of how the limited gender options continue to alienate the trans members of our community.