Andy Cohen briefly moved Watch What Happens Live away from celebrity gossip and reality television to deliver an unusually serious defence of Dr. Anthony Fauci.

The openly gay host selected Fauci for his “Mazel of the Day” following a contentious appearance before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Fauci had been subpoenaed by Republican committee chair Rand Paul to answer questions about his management of the COVID-19 pandemic and previous testimony concerning federally funded coronavirus research.

The former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases invoked his Fifth Amendment rights more than 100 times during the approximately three-hour hearing.

Fauci said he followed his attorney’s advice because he believed Paul was attempting to create a path toward prosecuting him.

Paul and other Republican senators accuse Fauci of misleading Congress and the public about the origins of COVID-19 and research involving bat coronaviruses in China.

Fauci has consistently denied lying about those subjects.

Democratic senators described the proceeding as a politically motivated attempt to entrap a retired public servant.

More than 150 infectious-disease specialists and other scientists also signed a public letter rejecting the accusations against Fauci as unsupported.

Paul announced that the committee would vote the following week on whether to hold Fauci in contempt for refusing to answer its questions.

A committee referral would not itself amount to a criminal charge or conviction.

It would have to clear additional political and legal stages before the Justice Department could seek a prosecution.

Legal experts have also said that any case would raise unresolved questions about Fauci’s Fifth Amendment rights and the scope of the pardon President Joe Biden issued before leaving office in 2025.

Cohen did not attempt to resolve those complicated legal arguments during his late-night monologue.

Instead, he condemned what he saw as Republican senators using the hearing to humiliate and threaten an 85-year-old scientist.

Cohen said Fauci had spent the day being “grilled, berated and sworn at” over crimes that Republicans wanted the public to believe he had committed.

He then shifted attention away from the partisan conflict surrounding COVID-19 and toward the public-health career that preceded it.

Fauci joined the National Institutes of Health in 1968 and became director of NIAID in 1984.

He remained in that position for 38 years and advised seven American presidents on infectious diseases and public-health emergencies.

His work during the HIV/AIDS epidemic is particularly significant for LGBTQ+ audiences.

Fauci began studying the emerging illness shortly after the first cases among gay men were reported in 1981.

He conducted research that helped expand scientific understanding of HIV and later played a major role in changing how experimental treatments were developed and made available.

That history was not free from conflict or legitimate criticism.

During the epidemic’s devastating early years, activists accused federal health agencies of moving too slowly while gay men and others with AIDS were dying in enormous numbers.

ACT UP protested at the National Institutes of Health, while writer and activist Larry Kramer publicly attacked Fauci in exceptionally harsh terms.

Fauci eventually invited activists into discussions about clinical research and listened as they demanded a greater role for patients in decisions affecting their lives.

That evolving relationship helped change federal treatment research and the broader relationship between medical institutions and patient advocates.

Kramer and Fauci eventually became friends despite their years of confrontation.

Kramer later described Fauci as the only true and great hero among government officials responding to AIDS.

Cohen referenced that remarkable reversal while explaining why he believed Fauci deserved gratitude rather than abuse.

He also highlighted Fauci’s contribution to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.

Fauci was one of the principal architects of PEPFAR, which President George W. Bush launched in 2003 to expand HIV prevention and treatment internationally.

The United States government credits the program with saving approximately 26 million lives and enabling millions of babies to be born without HIV.

That record does not require viewers to believe that Fauci made no mistakes during COVID-19 or that questions about pandemic decisions should never be asked.

It does provide necessary context when politicians describe his entire career as one long exercise in dishonesty and abuse.

Cohen’s intervention was notable because direct political commentary remains relatively unusual on Watch What Happens Live.

The program is built around celebrity interviews, cocktails, games and the elaborate universe of Bravo reality television.

Cohen generally reserves more serious monologues for subjects that intersect strongly with his experiences as a gay man, a father or a New Yorker.

Fauci’s AIDS legacy placed this story directly within that territory.

Cohen argued that the United States faces urgent problems requiring serious leadership and that attacking science has become both dangerous and deeply unserious.

He ended by suggesting that politicians may resent doctors and scientists because those professions sometimes achieve something elected leaders repeatedly fail to accomplish.

They fix things.

For LGBTQ+ viewers who remember AIDS or live with the consequences of that history, Cohen’s message was simpler still: do not erase the people who eventually listened, changed and helped save lives.

📷 @bravowwhl

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Gay adult performer Drake Von has reportedly been arrested for the third time since the beginning of June.

The latest incident occurred in Los Angeles on Tuesday night.

Von, whose legal name is Dawson Bacon, was booked into the Los Angeles Police Department’s Van Nuys jail.

TMZ reports that he was arrested on suspicion of misdemeanor possession of a substance similar to toluene.

Toluene is a colourless solvent that can be highly toxic when inhaled and may cause dizziness and other serious effects.

Police told TMZ that officers responded to a call concerning two men allegedly using narcotics on the street.

Von was taken into custody when officers arrived.

The second man was not arrested.

Jail records reportedly show that Von was released on Wednesday on his own recognizance.

That means he was released without posting bail after agreeing to return for future court proceedings.

No conviction has resulted from the new arrest.

Von had not publicly commented on the latest allegations when TMZ published its report.

The arrest adds to a series of serious legal incidents involving the performer during the previous two months.

Von was arrested in Las Vegas in early June following an alleged domestic-violence incident involving his female partner.

Police alleged that an argument escalated into physical violence.

According to reports describing the police account, Von allegedly grabbed the woman by the throat, forced her to the ground and restricted her breathing.

The woman reportedly told officers that she could not breathe and believed she briefly lost consciousness.

Police also documented injuries they said were consistent with her account.

Von was charged with domestic battery by strangulation and coercion constituting domestic violence with threat or use of physical force, both felonies.

He was additionally charged with misdemeanor domestic battery.

Von was later released after posting a bond of more than $25,000.

He has denied the domestic-violence allegations.

Von told TMZ that the claims were false and said the case would eventually be dismissed.

He also described the incident as a misunderstanding and a publicity stunt.

Those statements represent Von’s position rather than the findings of a court.

The criminal charges remain allegations unless and until prosecutors establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

Later in June, Von was arrested again following a vehicle collision in Las Vegas.

He was booked on suspicion of misdemeanor driving under the influence.

Police said his Tesla collided with another vehicle after pulling out of a parking area.

Those involved in the crash were reportedly taken to hospital.

A witness allegedly told officers that Von appeared slumped over the steering wheel before the collision.

When police later spoke with him at the hospital, officers said his eyes appeared glossy.

Von denied drinking alcohol or using marijuana or illegal drugs before driving.

A police report obtained by TMZ said officers found 13 nitrous-oxide tanks inside the Tesla.

The reported items included several large tanks, smaller containers, balloons and rubber bands.

Von allegedly told officers that he had previously used nitrous oxide but not during the month of the crash.

Police obtained a warrant for a blood sample after he declined to provide one voluntarily.

Authorities also requested testing for inhalants.

No publicly reported conviction has resulted from that DUI arrest.

The Los Angeles case is separate from both the domestic-violence prosecution and the DUI matter in Nevada.

Each incident will be handled according to its own evidence, charges and court process.

It would therefore be inaccurate to combine the three arrests into a single finding of guilt.

What can be said is that three arrests within such a brief period form a deeply concerning pattern around a 23-year-old performer with a large online audience.

Von has worked in gay adult entertainment since he was 18 and has received multiple GayVN Award nominations.

He won two fan-voted categories at the 2024 awards and has built a following through adult films and social media.

His latest arrest is likely to intensify attention on both the unresolved criminal allegations and his public response to them.

For now, Von has been arrested and released, not convicted in the new Los Angeles case.

The legal proceedings surrounding all three incidents remain more important than the jokes generated by his increasingly familiar booking history.

📷 @drakevonx

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Alan Turing has often been remembered through two powerful but limiting images: the brilliant mathematician who helped Britain break Nazi codes and the persecuted gay man destroyed by the country he served.

A newly completed transcription of an unfinished story written in Turing’s own hand now reveals a personality that does not fit neatly inside either portrait.

Pryce’s Buoy presents Turing as playful, funny, literary, sexually curious and far less ashamed of his homosexuality than popular retellings have sometimes suggested (Pink News).

The approximately 1,000-word manuscript survives as six handwritten pages in the archives of King’s College, Cambridge.

It has previously been quoted and discussed in part, but Cambridge literature professor Sarah Dillon has now produced the first complete transcription and extended literary study.

The story does not carry a title in Turing’s manuscript and became commonly known as Pryce’s Buoy because of the fictional invention associated with its central character.

Turing transforms himself into Alec Pryce, a successful homosexual scientist whose celebrated invention made his name while he was still a young man.

After completing another piece of scientific work he considers particularly important, Alec decides that he has earned some pleasure and goes looking for a male companion.

He encounters Ron Miller, a younger working-class man hoping to make money, and the narration moves between the thoughts of the two men as they cautiously assess one another.

The scene captures the uncertainty surrounding gay encounters at a time when consensual sex between men remained a criminal offence in Britain.

It also presents desire without apology, allowing Alec to experience attraction, self-consciousness, humour and growing comfort in another man’s company.

Dillon argues that the manuscript disrupts the two-dimensional version of Turing as a socially unaware scientist concerned only with logic and numbers.

She instead describes the writer who emerges from the pages as playful, cheeky and someone who enjoyed sex.

The story appears to be a fictionalized account of Turing’s first encounter with Arnold Murray in Manchester near the end of 1951.

Turing met Murray shortly after submitting his landmark scientific paper on morphogenesis, matching the sequence of events described through Alec Pryce.

Their relationship later became known to police after Turing reported a burglary at his home.

During the investigation, Turing openly acknowledged having a sexual relationship with Murray.

Both men were prosecuted for “gross indecency,” the same legal category used against generations of gay and bisexual men.

Turing pleaded guilty in 1952 and accepted probation that required hormonal treatment rather than imprisonment.

The estrogen treatment has frequently been described as chemical castration because of its intention and physical effects.

Turing died from cyanide poisoning in June 1954 at the age of 41, and the official inquest concluded that he had taken his own life.

The short story was probably written while he was attempting to understand what the arrest, prosecution and punishment had done to him.

In a letter written shortly before pleading guilty, Turing told his friend Norman Routledge that the strange story of how his sexuality had been discovered deserved to become a short story one day.

He also wondered what kind of person would emerge from the experience.

Dillon reads Pryce’s Buoy as part of that process of self-exploration.

Turing had always been an enthusiastic reader, including of literature dealing openly or indirectly with gay men and their social worlds.

The new study identifies a particular influence from Angus Wilson’s 1952 novel Hemlock and After, which portrayed homosexual desire, class and the largely hidden communities through which men found one another.

By turning his own experience into fiction, Turing could step outside himself and explore the encounter from both men’s perspectives.

The result is not simply confession but a glimpse of gay life in post-war England written for readers capable of recognizing that world.

It also matters because the manuscript refuses to let Turing’s sexuality appear only as the source of his suffering.

His desire is dangerous because society and the law made it dangerous, but it is not portrayed as inherently tragic.

Alec is interested in men, knows what he wants and enjoys discussing or displaying his homosexuality in company he considers appropriate.

The document therefore returns humour, eroticism and agency to a historical figure whose sexuality is too often mentioned only when describing his punishment and death.

The surviving manuscript ends abruptly at the bottom of its sixth page and in the middle of a sentence.

Its physical condition suggests that Turing probably continued writing but that the remaining pages were lost, removed or never preserved.

Dillon has questioned whether the missing section became more sexually explicit and whether someone within Turing’s family might later have censored it, although no evidence currently proves what happened.

The British government formally apologized for Turing’s treatment in 2009, and Queen Elizabeth II granted him a posthumous pardon in 2013.

Legislation commonly known as Turing’s Law later extended pardons to thousands of other men convicted under abolished laws criminalizing consensual same-sex activity.

Those acts recognized an injustice, but they could not return the years, careers and lives damaged by the law.

The new reading of Pryce’s Buoy offers a different kind of restoration.

It reminds us that Alan Turing was not only a genius, a victim or a symbol, but a complicated gay man who read, joked, desired and tried to write himself through an experience designed to shame him.

📷 AI

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