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This week, writer-director Nick Cassavetes released his new movie, "Yellow," about a woman having an affair with her brother. "I have no experience with incest," says Cassavetes. "We started thinking about that. We had heard a few stories where brothers and sisters were completely, absolutely in love with one another. You know what? This whole movie is about judgment, and lack of it, and doing what you want." But Cassavetes wasn't done: "Who gives a s--- if people judge you? I'm not saying this is an absolute, but in a way, if you're not having kids, who gives a damn?...

Writer-director Nick Cassavetes unveiled his new movie “Yellow” at the Toronto Film Festival this weekend and found himself defending the main character’s incestuous love affair with her own brother. [....] Cassavetes – a maverick filmmaker whose parents are the legendary actress Gena Rowlands and actor-director John Cassavetes -- confessed he could not condemn it. “I have no experience with incest,” he told TheWrap in an interview on Sunday. “We started thinking about that. We had heard a few stories where brothers and sisters were completely, absolutely in love with one another. You know what? This whole movie is about judgment,...

Writer-director Nick Cassavetes unveiled his new movie “Yellow” at the Toronto Film Festival this weekend and found himself defending the main character’s incestuous love affair with her own brother.... “I have no experience with incest,” he told TheWrap in an interview on Sunday. “We started thinking about that. We had heard a few stories where brothers and sisters were completely, absolutely in love with one another. You know what? This whole movie is about judgment, and lack of it, and doing what you want. Love who you want. Isn’t that what we say? Gay marriage – love who you want?...

Hollywood director finds it acceptable for people to commit incest. In an interview with The Wrap, director Nick Cassavetes believes no one should judge a brother and sister being with each other if they are in love. “I’m not saying this is an absolute but in a way, if you’re not having kids – who gives a damn? Love who you want. Isn’t that what we say? Gay marriage – love who you want?” Cassavetes told The Wrap. “If it’s your brother or sister it’s super-weird, but if you look at it, you’re not hurting anybody except every single person...

Republican Todd Akin is standing firm. He has refused to bow to pressure to withdraw his candidacy for the U.S. Senate after he made a comment that Gary Bauer of The Campaign for Working Families called, "a gift to our political enemies." When the Missouri Congressman was asked by a St. Louis TV station to state his views regarding possible exceptions for abortion, he responded, "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down." He added: "But let's assume that maybe that didn't work or something. You know I think there...

Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin thinks that, as a scientific matter, Jenni Maas shouldn't exist. Mitt Romney thinks that, as a legal matter, Jenni didn't have the same right to exist as the rest of us do. Many others seem to think her mother should be ashamed that Jenni exists at all. Jenni was conceived when her mother was raped by a boyfriend as a teenager. She is a human reminder of an uncomfortable truth denied and minimized by people on all sides of the abortion issue: Rape can result in pregnancy, which means it can create innocent babies. "A...

Commentators at the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times may decry the Episcopal Church as a place offering pet funerals but nothing for the faithful or failing to provide anything one cannot get from purely secular liberalism. These traditionalists appear to bemoan the loss of a 1950s-era church that promoted an Eisenhower-era civil religion replete with the cross draped in the American flag. While they wax nostalgia over a past that largely existed only in TV Land,.the Episcopal Church made history at its 77th triennial General Convention by passing two gender nondiscrimination resolutions. Led by a grassroots coalition...

A CATHOLIC bishop has sparked controversy by suggesting that, if the Scottish Government truly believed in equality, it could extend legislation on same-sex marriage to encompass bigamy and even incest. Bishop Hugh Gilbert of Aberdeen asked why equality did not extend to "nieces who genuinely, truly love their uncles" and why men could not have two wives, adding such scenarios were not freaks of nature but might in fact occur in Scottish parishes. ... In an interview with the Scottish Catholic Observer (SCO), Bishop Gilbert, the first to be appointed in Scotland by Pope Benedict, said: "You can't have a...

Repeating what has been a rallying cry of gay activism for years, the cover of the December 16, 2008, issue of The Advocate announced, "Gay is the New Black: The Last Great Civil Rights Struggle." Last week, on May 19, headlines across the nation announced, "NAACP endorses gay marriage as 'civil right.'" So, is gay the new black? There are prominent black leaders who say yes, including Congressman John Lewis, who was active in the early civil rights movement. There are other prominent black leaders who say no, like Timothy F. Johnson, founder and president of The Frederick Douglass Foundation....

Jamie Lynn Grumet, the 26-year-old mother featured on the cover of Time magazine breastfeeding her 3-year-old son, has done more this week than become the poster woman for “attachment parenting,” the sometimes laudable movement that advises parents to be physically and emotionally available and responsive to their children. She has shown the limits of such a concept, and the ways in which it can be twisted into a bizarre, contemptible caricature of itself. Grumet is a model, and models have to have at least healthy dose of narcissism (television journalists like me, too, by the way). But I fear Grumet...

The European Court of Human Rights has upheld Germany’s anti-incest laws and has affirmed the sentence of a man sent to prison for fathering children with his sister. The Court concluded that the human rights of Patrick Stuebing were not violated when he was sent to jail for three years in 2005 for his sexual affair with his allegedly psychologically troubled sister Susan Karolewski, whom he had met as an adult after being adopted in early childhood. The Court cited several justifications for the law’s existence, including “protection of the family” and “self-determination and public health,” which are “set against...

<p>EGYPT: A young Egyptian girl sought the help of police to save her from her parents.</p> <p>She alleged that her father had been raping her since she was 13 years of age and that her mother forces her to please her dad.</p>

A 48-year-old Florida businessman has legally adopted his 42-year-old girlfriend as his daughter in what one attorney is calling an attempt to shield assets in a wrongful death civil suit that has entered a "legal twilight zone," according to a judge. John Goodman, who founded the International Polo Club Beach in Wellington, legally adopted Heather Hutchins on Oct. 13 in Miami-Dade County, according to a court order by Circuit Court Judge Glenn Kelley. "The events which serve as the grounds for the relief sought by the Plaintiffs border on the surreal and take the Court into a legal twilight zone,"...

As celebrity scandals go, it’s probably second only to the O.J. trial: Woody Allen leaving Mia Farrow, his girlfriend and muse of 14 years, for her adopted teenage daughter Soon-Yi. That was way back in 1992, and what was unthinkable then has long since come to pass: Woody Allen has been forgiven by the public at large. His most recent film, “Midnight in Paris,” has made over $56 million at the US box office to date — his highest-grossing film ever. Along with Elaine May and Ethan Coen, he contributed a one-act play to Broadway’s “Relatively Speaking,” which opened this...

In Lawrence v. Texas (2003) the Supreme Court invalidated Texas’s sodomy law as violating the United States Constitution. The case involved “two adults who, with full and mutual consent from each other, engaged in sexual practices common to a homosexual lifestyle.” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for a majority of the Court that “there are other spheres of our lives and existence, outside the home, where the State should not be a dominant presence. Freedom extends beyond spatial bounds. Liberty presumes an autonomy of self that includes freedom of thought, belief, expression, and certain intimate conduct. The instant case involves liberty...

Rick Perry Now Opposes Abortions in Cases of Rape, Incest Washington, DC -- At a pro-life presidential forum last night, Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry announced that he had a change of heart on abortion in cases of rape or incest -- now opposing abortion in such rare cases. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/12/28/rick-perry-now-opposes-abortions-in-cases-of-rape-incest/

They were told to expect a kiss from a 'special someone'. But the joke was on teenagers at Rosemount High School when the mystery lip locks they suspected came from their classmates... were actually from their parents. Now that footage of the cringe-worthy pep rally prank has gone viral, John Wollersheim says as the school principal he owes an apology to everyone who was offended by the incestual display.

Last night, Presidential candidate and former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson announced during an on-line Town Hall Thursday night that he supports civil marriage for gay Americans. Having long supported civil unions for gay couples, Johnson's decision to endorse gay marriage is based on "a great deal of deliberation, discussion with the gay community, and a conclusion that government has no business choosing who should be allowed the benefits of marriage and who should not." Announcing his support for gay marriage, Johnson said, "As a believer in individual freedom and keeping government out of personal lives, I simply cannot find...

If the Republican presidential contenders wish to remain truthful to their rhetoric of decentralization of power in Washington, they should take a break from wooing social conservatives and stand for states' rights in regard to gay marriage. Because many likely Iowa caucus-goers describe themselves as very conservative on social issues such as gay marriage and abortion, many candidates feel they need to reach out to the far-right if they plan to get the presidential nod. However, a staunch, conservative position on social issues will likely hurt them in the long run, because it undermines their more-appealing small-government policies.... The three...

After introducing its first openly gay character in September 2010, Archie Comics continues to lead the pack with the mainstream comic book world’s first same-sex marriage. Kevin Keller will marry his military sweetheart, Clay, in an upcoming issue of Life with Archie. The character is also set to star in a pioneering solo title starting this February. An interracial same-sex marriage between two soldiers in an Archie comic? The times are no longer a-changin’, they are a-changed.