GAY CITY NEWS | DEC. 19, 2012

FREE VOLUME ELEVEN, ISSUE TWENTY SIX DECEMBER 19, 2012 - JANUARY 1, 2013

It's Official: Corey vs. Yetta 09 On the Road on Film 17 Glengarry Glen Ross 19 Chuck Hagel at Defense? 10

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December 19, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com

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| December 19, 2012

DOMA, Prop 8 on tap, with untold potential outcomes 12

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| December 19, 2012

POLITICS

9

It’s Official: Corey versus Yetta in Race to Succeed Quinn Kurland joins Johnson in race for City Council District 3 Democratic nomination

BY PAUL SCHINDLER

DONNA ACETO

S

even months after Corey Johnson, the chair of Community Board 4 in Chelsea, officially announced his aim to succeed Speaker Christine Quinn in the City Council’s District 3 seat, Yetta Kurland stepped up to say she too would contest the seat in 2013.

The December 10 City Hall press conference at which the out lesbian civil rights attorney and community activist threw her hat into the ring was hardly surprising; in fact, it was long expected. In 2009, Kurland took on Quinn, who had then been speaker for four years, and earned a third of the vote in a three-woman race, holding the incumbent to just over 50 percent.

Since then, Kurland’s visibility has remained undiminished — tackling issues like the closure of St. Vincent’s Hospital and the rights of Occupy Wall Street participants to hold their ground in Zuccotti Park, and also hosting a weekly radio show on WWRL AM 1600. In announcing her candidacy, Kurland evoked her now familiar combatively progressive tone.

Saying New York, her home for the past two decades, is “the greatest city in the world,” she warned, “We’re heading toward becoming a place where only the richest can afford to live and where our public resources are being converted into private profit.”

The closing of St. Vincent’s and the damage Lower Manhattan and other parts of the city suffered from Hurricane Sandy, she said, represented “critical points in our sustainability.”

Kurland’s press conference included full-throated endorsements from Cathy Marino-Thomas, the co-president of the board of Marriage Equality USA (MEUSA), David Braun, the co-founder of United for Action, an anti-fracking group, and Penny Landau, a West Village resident and theater world publicist.

Voicing the Kurland campaign’s outsider message, Braun said. “We don’t need leaders who come here with a certain set of goals and them watch themselves get corrupted.”

During the press conference itself, which drew roughly 50 Kurland supporters who stood behind her, the candidate took no questions. Asked afterward how she expected the debate in the primary campaign to take shape, she responded, “I honestly don’t know who’s running,” and then lauded “active democracy where the more candidates the better.”

On Johnson’s role as her only declared opponent to date, Kurland said, “I haven’t seen Corey’s full set of issues yet.”

The candidate released a list of 65 supporters — each of whom were quoted —

Yetta Kurland (r.) greets a supporter during her December 10 City Hall campaign kick-off.

that included a number of other prominent LGBT New Yorkers, such as civil rights attorney Tom Shanahan, author and gender theorist Kate Bornstein, Queer Rising grassroots activist Jake Goodman, playwright Barbara Kahn, AIDS activist Andrew Velez, and MEUSA’s former executive director Ron Zacchi.

Attorney Christopher L ynn, who served as transportation commissioner in the Giuliani administration and ran against Quinn in her first election to the Council in 1999, was on hand for the press conference.

Producing blizzards of endorsements has become something of the standard in the nascent District 3 race. Earlier this year, Johnson, who is gay, issued a list that numbered nearly 600 names. Among many leaders in the LGBT community, Johnson announced support from Henrietta Hudson owner Lisa Cannistraci and former Human Rights Campaign leader Elizabeth Birch, as well as many gay men with high visibility, including Evan Wolfson, the founder of Freedom to Marry, Herndon Graddick, the executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), where Johnson formerly worked, Sean Strub, the creator of POZ magazine, Mitchell Gold, a worldwide premier furniture retailer who founded Faith in America to challenge religious anti-gay bigotry, and four former executive directors or board chairs of the Empire State Pride Agenda.

Both candidates boast endorsements from outside District 3, but Johnson’s list, at this point, is heavier on that score.

In an email message to Gay City News, he highlighted his support from out gay US House Representatives Barney Frank of Massachusetts, Jared Polis of Colorado, and David Cicilline of Rhode Island and Academy Award-winning screenwriter

Dustin Lance Black — even as he pointed, as well, to endorsements from “PTA presidents, block association leaders, tenant association presidents” and the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union and the United Food and Commercial Workers Union.

Kurland has been endorsed by the Transport Workers Union and the Communication Workers of America.

Johnson’s response to Kurland’s entry into the race mirrored the one she offered about him.

“I’m looking forward to a spirited race focused on the issues that affect our neighborhoods and residents of West Soho, the Village, Chelsea, and Hell’s Kitchen,” he wrote.

Like Kurland, Johnson said he was

Community Board 4 chair Corey Johnson announced his candidacy early this year.

uncertain whether anyone else might jump into the race, adding, “I’ll be running on a long record of service and accomplishments both as an activist and in leading a community board.”

Johnson has scrambled to an early lead in campaign fundraising, reporting just under the legal limit of $168,000 in donations, which will allow him to gain the maximum public match of $92,400.

According to the city’s Campaign Finance Board, Kurland has raised more than $75,000, or about 45 percent of Johnson’s private donations. She, too, will be eligible for the city’s generous public matching funds program.

Next year’s primary date has not yet been scheduled and could happen in either June or September.

AIDS ACTIVIST SPENCER COX IS DEAD AT 44 As Gay City News was going to press on December 18, news surfaced that Spencer Cox, 44, a veteran of ACT UP and a founder of the Treatment Action Group, had died earlier in the day.

According to Peter Staley, a colleague of Cox’s in ACT UP and at TAG, Cox died at New York Presbyterian/ Allen Hospital in Upper Manhattan, where he was being treated for AIDS-related pneumonia and other opportunistic infections. A Staley post on Facebook stated Cox had stopped medication for his HIV infection at some time in the past.

Cox was among the activists featured in David France’s recent AIDS documentary “How to Survive a Plague,” in which he recalled the introduction of protease inhibitors in the mid-1990s, saying, “I remember sitting there and just crying. It was like 'We did it! We did something!'”

France, on his Facebook page, posted an outtake from the film in which Cox said, "What I learned from that is that miracles are possible. Miracles happen, and I wouldn't trade that for anything. I

wouldn't trade that information for anything… You live your life as meaningful as you can make it. You live it and don't be afraid of who is going to like you or are you being appropriate. You worry about being kind. You worry about being generous. And if it's not about that, what the hell's it about?"

In 2005, Cox launched an effort he called the Medius Institute for Gay Men’s Health, which he said would take a holistic approach to the needs of men in the community. Depression, he told Gay City News at the time, would be an early priority of Medius.

“Despite the key role that depression and other mental health issues play in influencing risks of HIV and other preventable diseases, gay men’s mental health needs have gone tragically unaddressed,” Cox said. “We have this enormous, terrible thing that happened to us that we have not confronted at all.”

In his Facebook post, journalist France said, “Over the years, he was a frequent and always brilliant source of mine, and a good friend.” Staley wrote, “I will dearly miss this beautiful and devilish man.”

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December 19, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com

POLITICS

Concerns Raised about Chuck Hagel at Defense Department NGLTF highlights poor LGBT, women’s, people of color record, OutServe-SLDN says DADT issues remain

BY ANDY HUMM

P

resident Barack Obama is widely reported to be leaning toward former Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel, a two-term Republican, to be his next secretary of defense, succeeding Leon Panetta, despite Hagel’s record of voting against LGBT rights, women’s reproductive rights, and issues of concern to people of color.

During his Senate career, Hagel received ratings as low as zero from both the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and NARAL-Pro-Choice America and an 11 percent rating from the NAACP. LGBT groups, many of which have a close working relationship with the Obama White House, are starting to express concern about Hagel, though some are avoiding the issue. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force has come out with the strongest statement to date.

Stacey Long, NGLTF’s director of public policy and government affairs, wrote in an email, “Despite former Senator Chuck Hagel’s early criticism of the war in Iraq after voting to authorize it, we are gravely concerned about his track record on civil rights and opposition to LGBT equality while a member of the Senate. Cabinet choices help set the tone for an administration, and we believe it is critical that those members support the values of respect, inclusiveness, and the belief in a level playing field for all — and that includes for LGBT people and women in general. We are very concerned that someone with such a poor record on these issues is under consideration to become secretary of defense. We are making our concerns known to the administration.”

Allyson Robinson, the new executive director of OutServe-Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, the nation’s largest association of LGBT military personnel, fired a more cautious shot, saying in a statement, “We expect that anyone being considered by the president for the secretary of defense post would embrace one of the signature accomplishments of this administration — the repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ — and would be prepared to demonstrate his or her firm commitment to fairness and equality for our nation’s men and women in uniform. Finishing the work of repeal — and the important next steps toward achieving equality in the military — need

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Former Nebraska Republican Senator Chuck Hagel.

to happen during the tenure of the next secretary of defense. Should he become the secretary, we would look forward to working with Senator Hagel to achieve the president’s priorities for our nation’s armed forces.”

The Washington Blade, on December 14, reported that Republicans in the House of Representatives are pushing for what they call a “conscience protection” clause that would allow members of the armed services to express their “sincerely held moral principles and religious beliefs” regarding “the appropriate and inappropriate expression of human sexuality” without fear of adverse personnel action. The newspaper wrote that critics of such language — championed by lame duck Missouri Republican Todd Akin, who lost his Senate bid after inflammatory comments about “legitimate rape” — warn such a clause could protect service members who harass gay and lesbian soldiers in their ranks.

Asked how well suited Hagel was to handle the ongoing LGBT rights issues facing the Defense Department, R. Clarke Cooper, executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans, focused instead on the former senator’s military credentials and on his fidelity to Republican positions.

Speaking for himself and not for LCR, Cooper wrote in an email, “I recall working with Senator Chuck Hagel and his staff during the Bush administration and he was certainly not shy about expressing his criticisms. But despite his criticisms, Hagel voted with us most of the time and there was no question he was committed to advancing America’s inter ests abroad. As for his nomination to be secretary of defense, it is well worth noting that Senator Hagel is a combat veteran who has hands-on experience in the field. The battlefield is not just theory for him.”

HRC and NARAL have yet to say whether they have concerns about Hagel succeeding Panetta, despite both groups having given him ratings of zero.

While Senator John Kerry was seen as a likely successor to Panetta, the withdrawal of United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice from consideration to replace Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has made the Massachusetts Democrat the likely pick for State

— the job he really wants — increasing the prospects for a Hagel nomination to Defense.

Hagel, now 66, was in the Senate from 19972009, and so missed the 2010 vote on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repeal.

Asked in 2003 about an amendment to the US Constitution barring same-sex marriage, Hagel told the Omaha World Herald, “I don’t think the Constitution was ever written or set up for those kinds of amendments. I think those kinds of issues are better off left to the states.” But he voted for it anyway the following year. He switched his vote when the issue resurfaced in 2006, but maintained his opposition to same-sex marriage.

Hagel repeatedly voted against adding sexual orientation to the federal hate crimes law and opposed setasides for minority and women-owned businesses.

While Hagel has a reputation as a maverick among Republicans and has sometimes complained about his party’s move to the extreme right — going so far as to remain neutral in the 2008 presidential campaign and to endorse Democrat Bob Kerrey in his unsuccessful Senate bid from Nebraska this year — he has an 85 percent rating from the American Conservative Union.

Hagel’s name was floated as a possible running mate for Obama in 2008 and he was later appointed co-chair of Obama’s Intelligence Advisory Board.

In response to questions to the White House press office on whether it mattered to the president that Hagel had a long record of opposition to civil rights, Shin Inouye, a spokesman, wrote in an email, “I have no personnel announcements to make.”

Similarly, Hagel’s office at Georgetown University, where he is distinguished professor in the Practice of National Governance, also refused comment on his possible nomination or on whether he has changed the views that earned him low ratings from LGBT and other civil rights groups.

Obama considered Hagel for Defense in 2008 before persuading Republican Robert Gates to stay on from the Bush administration. At the time, Ilan Goldenberg of the National Security Network wrote in the New Republic, “Appointing a Republican as secretary of defense could send a message that Democrats are still too uncomfortable with the military to take on the responsibility of defending our country by themselves.

Moreover, there’s no reason not to appoint a Democrat. The party has a deep defense bench that includes military and defense advisors for the Obama and Clinton campaigns — many of whom have served in the Pentagon in previous administrations.”

Cenk Uygur of the progressive talk radio show, The Young Turks, wrote on the Huffington Post, “If I was voting for the Chuck Hagel I hear, I would vote for him for president. If I was voting for the Chuck Hagel I see on the record, he’d be the very last person in Congress I would ever vote for.”

Uygur wrote that in 2006 that Hagel’s voting record was “abysmal” and that “there was not one senator who voted with the Bush administration more than Chuck Hagel” — 95 percent of the time.

Hagel is drawing fire, as well, from conservative quarters, not only for his criticism of the Iraq War and his recent flirtations with Democrats, but also for what some see as his insufficient support for Israel, particularly on the threat that nation sees from Iran.

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| December 19, 2012

POLITICS

Lessons from the Fight Against Interracial Marriage Bans Tool from 1964 Civil Rights Act lay dormant in long court slog

BY DUNCAN OSBORNE

W

hen Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it gave the federal gover nment tools that were used to force schools, businesses, and state and local governments to stop discriminating on the basis of race.

“The CRA of 1964 created or identified substantive rights in some sections, and created a vehicle to enforce those rights or rights created by the Constitution (right to sue for damages or other relief for injuries) in others,” Marcia L. McCormick, a law professor at St. Louis University, wrote in an email. “It also gave federal agencies power to enforce the rights identified either through lawsuits or by withholding federal funds.”

One provision, T itle III, was a powerful tool. It authorized the US attor ney general to sue any state or local government that denied an individual the “equal protection of the laws” by denying that person the “equal utilization of any public facility.”

T itle III was a power ful tool that was rarely, perhaps never, used.

When the act was debated in Congress in 1963, the Kennedy administration opposed Title III. At a 1963 hearing of the House Judiciary Committee, Charles Mathias, a liberal Republican from Maryland, said he had a constituent whose son was denied a marriage license due to a state ban on interracial marriage and asked if the Justice Department might take up such a case.

“That is the question of the attitude of the Justice Department if it received a request for assistance or a complaint which arose under any one of the existing miscegenation laws which are now on the books in several states,” Mathias said. “Would T itle III create in its present for m any right of action in this regard?”

Robert Kennedy, the US attor ney general then, responded, “I think that the Supreme Court has not passed as yet on the constitutionality of those laws so I think we would not be able to tell at the present time.”

“In other words, your present view is that the Justice Department would not act upon any such

complaints?” Mathias asked.

“My present view is that I hope that you do not pass Title III so that that question won’t come before us,” Kennedy said.

Of note to the gay and lesbian community, the provision played no role in overturning the state laws that criminalized interracial marriage.

In 1967, 12 years after it refused t o h e a r a c h a l l e n g e t o Vi r g i n i a ’ s interracial marriage ban, the US Supreme Court voided those laws in the 16 states that still had them.

The couple who brought that suit, Mildred and Richard Loving, married legally in the nation’s capital in 1958 and were charged in Virginia when they returned to their home there.

The Lovings were represented by the American Civil Liberties Union. The Johnson administration did not join the Loving case.

In 1964, Democrat Daniel Inouye, the US senator fr om Hawaii who died on December 17, spent 10 days in Maryland posing as a Japanese reporter asking taxpayers about their views on race, the Washington Post reported.

Inouye told the Post that he “sensed a deep resentment” among people over the civil rights movement and that “the question of interracial marriage kept cropping up,” the Post reported. Inouye assured people that the Civil Right Act “as he read it, made no provisions for interracial marriage.”

Until Loving v. Virginia, there was resistance in every branch of the federal gover nment to confronting the bans on interracial marriage, though there was little demand to overturn those laws.

“It is certainly true that the Supreme Court got interracial marriage wrong until it got it right,” said Evan Wolfson, the founder and president of Freedom to Marry, a pro-gay marriage group. “Many of the most prominent voices in the country refused to step in.”

Currently, 38 states bar same sex marriage by state constitutional amendment, a statute, or both, but 2012 is not 1963. National polls show increased support for same-sex marriage, and after losing better than eight out of 10 ballot initiatives going back to 1978, gay groups reversed

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LEGAL

Taking Marriage Cases, High Court Leaves Itself Outs DOMA, Prop 8 on Supreme Court schedule, but questions of standing, scope of review remain

BY ARTHUR S. LEONARD

NYCLU.ORG

T

he Supreme Court a n n o u n c e d o n December 7 that it would review the Ninth C ir c u i t ' s Pr o po s i t i o n 8 ruling and the New York-based Second Circuit's ruling on the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), but in both cases it indicated it would hear argument about whether the petitioners had standing to seek review of the decisions.

The arguments in both cases will probably take place late in March, with opinions expected by the end of the high court's term in June.

The court made no announcement about the other pending cer tiorari petitions from DOMA rulings by the Boston-based First Circuit or by district courts in California and Connecticut. Nor did the Supreme Court say anything about a case involving Arizona’s efforts to rescind its public employees domestic partner benefits.

Edie Windsor (r.) and her late wife Thea Spyer.

In the Prop 8 case, the Ninth Circuit ruled the 2008 voter refer endum, which placed a dif ferent-

sex-only definition of marriage into the Califor nia Constitution, violates the constitutional equal pro-

tection rights of same-sex couples because there was no rational basis to rescind the right to marry granted earlier that year by the Califor nia Supreme Court. Same-sex couples were marrying in Califor nia from mid-June 2008 thr ough Election Day, when Prop 8 was enacted.

The initial challenge to Pr op 8 went before the California Supreme Court, which held that its enactment was valid, though it also ruled that the marriages that took place prior to November were valid and would continue to be recognized. Its earlier state equal protection ruling required that same-sex domestic partnerships in California be treated by the state as equal to marriage for all legal purposes, that court found.

The American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER) retained noted Supreme Court advocates Ted Olson, a former US solicitor general, and David Boies to challenge Prop 8

䉴

SUPREME COURT, continued on p.13

SCHOLARS, ADVOCATES RESPOND TO SUPREME COURT ACTION K e n j i Yo s h i n o , constitutional law professor at NYU. Writing on Scotusblog. com, Kenji Yoshino outlined potential outcomes in both the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) case and the Proposition 8 challenge: What is the implication of the high court taking up both matters?

“Everyone assumed the Court would grant one of the Professor Kenji Yoshino. eight petitions to review the constitutionality of DOMA… The betting was much closer on whether the Court would grant review in Perry [the Prop 8 case]. Now that the Court has taken both, some have speculated that the Court will split the difference — striking down DOMA but upholding Prop. 8. I think this forecast is incorrect.”

What is the likely outcome on DOMA and how will it be decided?

“DOMA represents an intrusion of federal law into the traditional state domain of family law. As the lower courts have pointed out through various formulations, invalidating DOMA would represent a triumph for state sovereignty as well as for gay rights. Justices on the right tend to favor state power (relative to federal power); Justices on the left tend to favor gay rights. The Justice in the middle — Justice [Anthony] Kennedy — has historically favored both.”

What are the possible outcomes in the Prop 8 case?

“The second premise is that the Court will wish to proceed incrementally — that it will not, in one Term, strike down DOMA

and flip the 41 states that do not currently recognize same-sex marriage. Here, too, I agree… It might seem to follow from these two premises that the Court will split the baby between the cases. But the error lies in thinking that the Perry Court must require marriage in all 50 states or none. In fact, the Court can more narrowly invalidate Prop 8 in at least three ways.”

Yoshino described the first way as the “procedural onestate solution,” in which the high court simply finds that the Proponents of Prop 8, who brought the 2008 referendum and are the only ones defending it, do not have standing to do so.

Would that restore marriage equality in California?

“As the Ninth Circuit indicated during oral argument, the impact of a ruling based on standing would be limited to requiring the clerks of Alameda County and Los Angeles County — the only county clerks named in the complaint — to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Plaintiffs’ attorney David Boies predicted that the Governor would then require other counties in California to operate in a manner that would ensure statewide consistency. He further averred that if the Governor refused to do so, the plaintiffs would sue to secure such uniformity.”

Yoshino wrote that the court could also reach a “substantive one-state solution”: “The Court could also adopt a substantive one-state solution, which was the rule adopted by the Ninth Circuit panel. The Ninth Circuit held that under the Equal Protection Clause, a state could not grant an entitlement and then take it away without a legitimate reason.”

He noted that the Ninth Circuit’s ruling relied on the 1996 Supreme Court decision that struck down Colorado’s Amendment 2, a voter initiative that barred gay rights protections in the state, finding it was based only in “animus” against gay and lesbian people. Yoshino also acknowledged that an important part of that ruling was based on gays and

lesbians being denied “protections across the board,” so he addressed the distinction between Colorado’s sweeping measure and a ban solely on marriage rights: “The [Ninth Circuit] panel acknowledged this distinction, saying that animus could be present even (or perhaps especially) when a state enacted legislation with “surgical precision.”… Romer [the Colorado case] is but one member of a family of cases in which the Court has invalidated laws that lacked a rational basis… The best reading of these precedents is that the problem with legislation based solely on animus is the animus, not the breadth of the legislation.”

Finally, Yoshino indentified a third potential narrow finding, which he calls the “substantive eight-state solution”: “[This] would focus on the lack of justification for giving samesex couples all the rights and responsibilities of marriage but withholding the word ‘marriage’ from them. This resolution differs from the Ninth Circuit panel’s ruling because it removes any issue of retrogression from the analysis. What is important is not that California went all the way to same-sex marriage and then retreated, but rather that California went all the way to ‘everything but marriage.’ Once it did so, it reached the point of no return. Currently, seven states besides California would be affected by such a ruling: Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, and Rhode Island.”

Yoshino’s analysis, then, suggests that the Supreme Court will strike down DOMA, but has five potential outcomes on Proposition 8, from upholding it to striking it down in a fashion that would give all gay and lesbian people in the US a right to marry: “There are plenty of options within Perry itself that would allow the Court to move at what one might call a stately pace.”

䉴

RESPONSE TO ACTION, continued on p.13

13

| December 19, 2012 SUPREME COURT, from p.12

on behalf of two same-sex couples denied marriage licenses. After a trial held in the district court in San Francisco, Judge Vaughan Walker declared Prop 8 unconstitutional in a sweeping ruling that found that same-sex couples have a right to marry under the equal protection and due process clauses of the 14th Amendment. Because neither Gover nor Ar nold Schwarzenegger nor Attorney General Jerry Brown, who is now governor, would defend Prop 8 against the lawsuit, Walker allowed the referendum’s Of ficial Proponents to intervene as defendants.

The Proponents appealed Walker's ruling to the Ninth Circuit, which stayed his order pending the outcome of the case. The Ninth Circuit first held that the Proponents had standing to appeal Walker's ruling, after obtaining an advisory opinion from the California Supreme Court that initiative sponsors enjoy that right under state law. The appeals court then affirmed Walker, but on the narrower theory that no rational basis had been shown for the state to withdraw the right to marry after it had been granted.

In their petition to the Supreme

䉴

if so inclined, accept the narrower reframing on which the Ninth Cir cuit decided the case and find that Prop 8 violated the 14th Amendment because no rational grounds exist to rescind an existing right to marry, especially in a state whose Supreme Court had ruled that same-sex domestic partners were entitled to all the rights of marriage.

In other words, the December 7 action by the Supreme Court offers no guide as to how broad or narrow its final decision might be.

Court, the Pr oponents posed the broader question — on which the Supr eme Court has now granted review — of whether same-sex couples ar e entitled by virtue of the 14th Amendment to the same right to marry enjoyed by dif ferent-sex couples.

But the high court will revisit the question whether the Pr oponents have standing to represent the State of California in defending Prop 8. If the Court rules that they did not have standing to appeal Walker's ruling as a matter of federal law, that would mean that neither the Supreme Court nor the Ninth Circuit would have jurisdiction to decide their appeal. In that event, Walker's ruling, which was not appealed by any of the named defendants in the case — such as the governor or attorney general — would be the final ruling, binding in the state of California. Same-sex couples would once again have a right to marry there.

If the Supreme Court finds that the Proponents did have standing, it would pr oceed to consider the merits of the case. It could decide to answer the question on which it granted review — whether California can reserve the status of marriage to different-sex couples — or it could,

RESPONSE TO ACTION, from p.12

Kate Shaw, visiting professor at Cardozo Law School at Yeshiva University who formerly worked in the White House Counsel’s Office.

On Prop 8, Kate Shaw, in comments emailed to Gay City News, did not state a view on whether the referendum’s Proponents would be given standing to appeal the Ninth Circuit decision striking it down, but offered a view assuming the case does go forward: “If the Court does reach the merits, a narrow opinion that closely tracks the Ninth Circuit's reasoning and saves for another day the question of whether the Constitution permits states to limit marriage to opposite-sex couples seems quite likely.”

Although the high court has also raised standing questions about the parties to the DOMA case, Shaw believes it will conclude the case should go forward.

She offered her view on how the case will turn out and addressed the question of whether the stringent review the Second Circuit Court of Appeals applied to DOMA will be necessary to decide the question: I think the Court will conclude that it does have the authority to rule on the case, and I think it will find Section 3 of DOMA [the portion involving federal recognition] unconstitutional. I'm less sure how it will get there — my guess is that the Court will conclude that the law has no conceivable rational justification and so it fails even rational basis review, so there's no need to decide whether heightened scrutiny is appropriate.

Edward Stein , professor and director of the Program in Family Law, Policy, and Bioethics at Cardozo Law School at Yeshiva University.

Edward Stein, in comments to Gay City News, first speculated

In United States v. Windsor, t h e S e c o n d C i r c u i t r u l e d that Section 3 of the 1996 federal Defense of Marriage Act — which bars federal recognition of otherwise legal same-sex marriages — violates constitutional equal protection rights of such couples because the court found no important government interest was significantly advanced by treating them unequally to different-sex married couples.

Edith (Edie) Windsor, the plaintif f r epr esented by the American Civil Liberties Union, is suing for a refund of taxes paid — amounting to mor e than $360,000 — on her inheritance of property from her wife, Thea Spyer, who passed away in 2009, several years after they

on the implications of the high court taking up both the DOMA and the Prop 8 cases, noting a widespread v i e w t h a t Yo s h i n o a l s o acknowledged: “Some people say they decided to take Prop 8 once they had decided to take the DOMA case. From that view, it would be the work of the conservative wing with the goal to, in essence, split the baby.”

Voicing the view that Professor Edward Stein.

DOMA will be struck down, Stein elaborated about whether the court would apply the heightened scrutiny the Second Circuit Court of Appeals used in rendering its decision — which would have profound implications for gay rights generally and the broader question of marriage equality — or use a more lenient standard of review: “I think they’re going to strike down DOMA, but their decision may have a different frame of reference. Perhaps states’ rights or federalism. I would surprised if there are five votes on the court for a heightened scrutiny ruling. It would be a home run if heightened scrutiny leads to DOMA being struck down. A rational basis standard worked in the First Circuit [which also struck down DOMA.] Or it could be rational basis with “bite” or informed by fundamental rights or federalism.”

Noting that Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the Supreme Court’s 1996 decision striking down Colorado’s discriminatory Amendment 2 and the 2003 Lawrence v.

Texas sodomy decision, and is considered the swing vote on the marriage cases, Stein pointed out that Kennedy did not embrace an equal protection argument, which was the basis of the Second Circuit’s DOMA ruling: CARDOZO.EDU

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had married in Canada. Surviving spouses don't have to pay taxes in that situation, but the Internal Revenue Service relied on Section 3 of DOMA as authority to demand the taxes and deny any refund. It was in the context of this case that the Justice Department and the Obama administration, in early 2011, determined that Section 3 was unconstitutional and declined to defend it on the merits.

Paul Clement, another former solicitor general, was hired by the Republican leadership of the House of Representatives — acting as the so-called Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group (BLAG) — to intervene and defend Section 3. After losing the case in the Second Circuit earlier this year, Clement filed a petition on BLAG’s behalf before the Supreme Court.

Donald B. Verrilli, Jr. , the cur rent solicitor general — the third holder of that of fice to tur n up in this story, for those keeping score — also filed a petition, stating its agreement with the Second Circuit's decision but asking the high court to take the case so there would be a clear ruling on Section 3's constitutionality with nationwide applica-

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SUPREME COURT, continued on p.31

“He did not engage equal protection in Lawrence, even though he said [Justice Sandra Day] O’Connor’s equal protection argument was tenable, but not his route. Instead, he focused on the plaintiffs’ liberty interest and zone of privacy.”

Though he believes DOMA will be heard on the merits, he speculated on the possibility the court might decide that its standing questions have not been addressed and that the Second Circuit ruling in Edie Windsor’s lawsuit will be left to stand: “If Windsor is not argued, the Obama administration might take the position it will not enforce DOMA in any case. They will need a standard, even if provisional, until the Supreme Court resolves the issue.”

On Prop 8, Stein might best be described as “optimistic,” but not fully “confident”: “If the court gets to the merits, I think they will take a narrow frame on the case and affirm… I’m still not as confident as [litigators David] Boies and [Ted] Olson. If their perspective is a narrow one, they are likely to affirm [the Ninth Circuit ruling striking down Prop 8].”

If the referendum’s Proponents fail to show they have standing and the case is not considered on the merits, Stein said the issue is not as clear-cut as marriage equality simply resuming in California: “If they say the Proponents had no standing at the district court, that could lead to a default, but would it apply beyond the defendants or beyond the counties where they sued? Would additional action be needed to broaden the right to marry in California? And with a default, would [District Judge] Vaughn Walker’s ruling be vacated?”

Walker’s 2010 decision, Stein noted, is the most compelling ruling to date about the right of same-sex couples to marry, and its loss to gay rights jurisprudence would be “very unfortunate.”

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RESPONSE TO ACTION, continued on p.25

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December 19, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com

HUMAN RIGHTS

United Nations Out for LGBT Rights Secretary-general speaks up forcefully at sixth annual forum

BY ANDY HUMM

MICHAEL LUONGO

A

t the sixth annual United Nations conference on “Leadership in the Fight Against Homophobia” that marked Human Rights Day on December 11, SecretaryGeneral Ban Ki-moon was flanked by singers Ricky Martin and Yvonne Chaka Chaka of South Africa. But his voice was the most rousing in unequivocally condemning homophobia wherever it lurks in the world.

“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights,” he said. “All human beings — not some, not most, but all. No one gets to decide who gets human rights and who does not.”

Ban paused before declaring, “Let me say this loud and clear — lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people are entitled to the same rights as everyone else… I stand shoulder to shoulder with them in their struggle for human rights.”

He was “proud,” he added, “I have a global platform to highlight the need to end violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.”

More than 400 LGBT activists and their allies from around the world crammed into one of the temporary meeting halls at the UN, which is undergoing renovation, for the panel that also featured lesbian activist Olena Shevchenko, fresh from her arrest in Ukraine for protesting the country’s new anti-gay “propaganda” law and headed back to face trial the following day, gay leader Gift Trapence, director of the Centre for the Development of People in Malawi, and Blas Radi, a trans activist from Argentina, which was cited as having the most progressive protections for LGBT people while still having to work on homophobia and transphobia in society. Transgender people, Radi said, have a life expectancy of just 35 in his nation.

South African singer Yvonne Chaka Chaka, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and Ricky Martin at the December 11 LGBT rights conference.

With the “kill the gays” bill once again not passing the Uganda Parliament this week, some of the credit has to go to the leadership of Ban, who has made justice for LGBT people a hallmark of his tenure as secretary-general, which began in 2007. This year, the UN’s Human Rights Committee affirmed the responsibility of member nations to protect LGBT rights and — according to a release from the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) — “the Third Committee of the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution on extrajudicial executions with reference to sexual orientation and, for the first time, gender identity.”

Chaka Chaka, a star in South Africa and internationally who survived apartheid, has thrown herself into the fight against homophobia. “I am the mother

"Wishing everyone a happy holiday season for all traditions and a happy and healthy New Year."

Assemblymember

of four boys,” she said. “Why should they be discriminated against if they bring Peter home?”

Martin, appearing prior to going on stage in “Evita” that evening, spoke of his public coming out two years ago.

“For years I did nothing,” he said. “I lived in fear. I was hating myself. I grew up listening to a crooked concept — ‘You’re gay; you’re going to hell.’ Come out! You’re loved! We are here fighting for love and social justice.”

Martin said the spark for his coming out came from his children.

“I didn’t want to live a lie,” he said, adding that fans and journalists sometimes tell him, “OK. Stop talking about LGBT issues. We’ve had enough of it.”

But, he insisted, “I’ll keep using my music to talk about it.”

Shevchenko said that every single

member of Ukraine’s Parliament voted for the anti-gay bill there. Now, she said, “every public action” by gay people “can be a crime” carrying a three to five year penalty.

Trapence had this message for Western activists who want to help the African LGBT movement: “Engage them at the grassroots. Ask them how they can engage their governments. Activists want that protective cover when there are threats of violence.”

South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu delivered a stirring five-minute video message, saying, “No one is born hating another person. If you can learn to hate, you can learn to love.”

Tutu, a longtime supporter of LGBT rights said, “I cannot be free unless you are also free.”

Jessica Stern, executive director of IGLHRC, which co-sponsored the panel, said at its conclusion, “The UN is in the process of institutionalizing LGBT rights across its work.”

If you are wondering if an afternoon panel can have far-reaching effects for LGBT rights, Eric Sawyer, Civil Society Partnership advisor for UNAIDS and a longtime gay and AIDS activist, said that the stirring images from this forum “can be circulated around the world to show the leadership of the UN and the leadership of the secretary-general standing up for dignity, equality, and the protection of human rights for everyone.”

“Homophobia expressed locally in any town, city, or region is a global issue that we all have to address,” said Roberta Sklar, a spokesperson for IGLHRC. It was last December’s Human Rights Day when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a sweeping speech to a UN group in Geneva about the universality of LGBT rights and President Barack Obama issued a directive about the integration of the issue into US diplomatic practices.

Happy Holidays & Happy New Year from

Assembly Member

Dick Gottfried

Deborah J. Glick

242 West 27th Street New York, NY 10001 (212) 807-7900

853 Broadway, Suite 1518, New York, NY 10003

email:GottfrR@assembly.state.ny.us

Tel: 212-674-5153 / Fax: 212-674-5530 glickd@assembly.state.ny.us

| December 19, 2012

BOOKS

15

The American Taliban’s Boston Roots How 19th century moral crusaders established the tradition of censoring books

BY DOUG IRELAND here are many forms of censorship, and gay-themed books are constantly under attack.

One pernicious form is economic.

Nothing is “free” in the mythical “free marketplace of ideas” about which we’re taught in our high school civics classes. Competition from Amazon.com and e-books has driven many independent booksellers out of business. Here in New York, we are still mourning the loss of our last two remaining gay bookstores — the legendary Oscar Wilde Bookshop, which under the leadership of its late founder, the out-before-Stonewall queer activist Craig Rodwell, played such a key role in the birth of the modern gay liberation movement, and A Different Light, another fine purveyor of gay literature. Both were driven out of business over the past decade by the failure of cost-conscious LGBT book buyers to support them.

T

BANNED IN BOSTON:

By Neil Miller Beacon Press $26.95, 209 pages

Now, two young gay entrepreneurs are attempting to fill the void. Since November, a new bookstore and queer community space with the somewhat cumbersome name of Bureau of General Services — Queer Division has been operating out of a temporary headquarters at the Strange Loop Gallery at 27 Orchard Street, while trying to raise the modest sum of $15,000 to rent a permanent home. But this valiant effort to create a sexpositive, activist-oriented bookstore on the Oscar Wilde model will lose its temporary location at the end of January.

So, if you care about books and want to take a concrete step to fight the censorship of the marketplace, I urge you to visit their web site at bgsqd.com and make a donation while there is still time.

The other for m of censorship that threatens LGBT books is the political homophobia of the fundamentalist Christian right, which is the American Taliban. Their censorship campaigns target, in particular, school libraries. When I recently ordered some quality gay novels from my favorite independent bookseller, New York’s legendary Strand Books, which stocks 15 miles worth of “used” volumes, I was sickened to find several of these superior literary ef forts had come from school libraries, but were stamped with an ominous black “Withdrawn” label indicating they’d been removed from those libraries’ shelves, undoubtedly under Christian right pressure.

The anti-gay censorship in libraries embraces

BEACON PRESS

The Watch and Ward Society’s Crusade Against Books, Burlesque, and the Social Evil more than just books. The American Civil Liber ties Union this year initiated a highly successful “Don’t Filter Me” campaign asking students to report censorship of LGBT -related material on the web when school libraries employ software programming to screen out the offending queer material. This campaign, too, deserves your support; you can visit the ACLU web site at aclu.org/ dont-filter -me-web-content-filtering-schools to

Boston practitioners of Comstockery targeted “Leaves of Grass,” and the Boston district attorney sent the publisher a letter telling him it had been classified as “obscene.”

find out more about this important effort.

Sadly, the roots of the American Taliban’s censorship crusades are deep ones. The first organization in the country to conduct such a campaign was the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, headed by the notorious 19th century antiobscenity crusader Anthony Comstock. A salesman of ladies’ dry goods, Comstock discovered that two of his fellow employees were reading

Thomas Eakin's 1887 portrait of Walt Whitman.

erotic books. He bought one and had the dealer arrested, and went on to found his Society as an outgrowth of a YMCA committee of which he was a member.

So influential did Comstock become — his Society seized some 100,000 pounds of bound books in its first year — that he was hired as a special obscenity czar by the postmaster general and wrote the infamous federal Comstock Law, enacted in 1871, which gave the Post Office the power to ban and seize “indecent material.”

His name entered the language when the playwright George Bernard Shaw, faced with Comstock’s charge that he was an “Irish smut dealer” during a campaign against his play about prostitution, ‘Mrs. Warren’s Profession,” dismissed the broadside as “Comstockery.” In an absorbing book from Beacon Press, “Banned in Boston,” Tufts University journalism professor Neil Miller relates how that retort “became a term of ridicule, a synonym for Puritanism, censorship, and general moral squeamishness.”

In 1878, in a meeting at Boston’s Park Street Church — where William Lloyd Garrison had launched his anti-slavery campaign in 1829 — leaders of Boston’s upper -crust Protestant Brahmins established what became known as the Watch and Ward Society. Comstock was the featured speaker at that meeting, and the Boston group was modeled on Comstock’s New York Society.

One of the Watch and Ward Society’s first tar gets was America’s greatest poet, Walt Whitman,

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BANNED IN BOSTON, continued on p.31

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December 19, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com

THEATER

Brief Boxer Decades-old drama about an angry young fighter still packs a punch

BY DAVID KENNERLEY he ter m “angry young man” is generally attributed to working class British playwrights in the 1950s and ‘60s, but perhaps no other drama embodies the concept more fervently than “Golden Boy,” written by Clifford Odets in New York in 1937. Proof positive that the influential Odets was well before his time. He is timeless, as well.

T

GOLDEN BOY

Anthony Crivello and Seth Numrich in Lincoln Center Theater’s production of Clifford Odets’ “Golden Boy,” running at the Belasco Theatre through January 20.

This “Golden Boy” has received a richly textured, gut-wrenching production from Lincoln Center Theater, tapping the clear-eyed Bartlett Sher, who directed another Odets gem, “Awake and Sing!,” winner of the 2006 Tony Award for Best Play Revival. Aided by Michael Yeargan’s moody urban exteriors and gritty gym interiors and Catherine Zuber’s period-perfect costumes (she did painstaking research to get

the boxing garb just right), the 19-actor ensemble exquisitely evokes Depression-era New York.

As the betrayed boxer, chiseled pretty boy Numrich is astonishing, mor phing convincingly from awkwardly defiant son to bloodthirsty monster.

The 25-year-old, Julliard-trained actor most recently starred in “War Horse,” but just three years ago he was playing a tortured gay teen in a tiny play titled

NEWLYWED GLAMOUR, LGBT YOUTH NEEDS SHARE STAGE AT “BARE” OPENING A new production of “Bare,” a rock musical that attracted a cult following in earlier incarnations, opened at the New World Stages on December 9, with a splashy afterparty at the Out Hotel on West 42nd Street.

The show tells the story of a group of Catholic high school students confronting a variety of adolescent issues — from pre-marital sex to first gay love, drug use, and the suicide of one among them.

Newlywed gay glamour was an evening highlight. Brad Altman Takei and George Takei, who played Sulu on “Star Trek,” MSNBC anchor Thomas Roberts and husband Patrick Abner, and playwright Terrence McNally and husband Tom Kirdahy were all at New World Stages for the opening.

Adding gravitas to the opening night festivities was the family of gay Rutgers student Tyler Clementi, who committed suicide in 2010 following harassment from his freshman roommate.

Jane Clementi, Tyler’s mother, said she had seen the play four times.

“Each time I see it, I see a different perspective,” she told Gay City News. “And it has many different themes young people can relate to — the gay kids, the girls, even the sister with her drug issues.”

Steven Guy, executive director of the Tyler Clementi Foundation, which promotes safe environments for LGBT youth in schools, homes, churches, and online, called the play, “a conversation starter,” adding, “It’s something Jane and I think is good for parents, kids, churches, many different kinds of groups can benefit by seeing it.”

MICHAEL LUONGO

Joe Bonaparte (Seth Numrich), the titular boy, gets mighty angry. As the youngest son of an Italian immigrant, he was a geeky, cock-eyed kid — a “shrimp with glasses” and a weird name that made him a social outcast who got bullied. He found solace studying the violin and support from his sensitive, music-loving father (Tony Shalhoub), yet on the eve of his 21st birthday he discovers he has another talent — boxing. The nimble lightweight has an edge over other prizefighters — instead of relying solely on brawn, he uses his brains.

As for his fists, well, he initially uses them sparingly in order to protect them from serious damage so he might one day go back to his first love.

Torn between a career in music and boxing, Joe chooses the more manly, lucrative path, egged on by his opportunistic manager Tom Moody (Danny Mastrogiorgio), his devoted trainer Tokio (Danny Burstein, from “Follies” and “South Pacific”), and, later, a ruthless mentor, Eddie (Anthony Crivello), who is seen as a threat by the syndicate that handles Joe despite his veiled homosexuality. Along the way, Joe falls hard for Moody’s girl, Lorna (portrayed with complex intensity by Yvonne Strahovski), a bleach-blonde “tramp from Newark” who’s got an axe of her own to grind.

Once the prizefighter tastes blood, he becomes a veritable vampire, wrecking relationships as he goes out for more.

But can he ever satisfy his thirst?

“Do not violate the laws of nature if you do not want to be miserable,” says the elder Bonaparte. Joe admits fighting is not in his nature and that he is indeed miserable. But he bounds ahead and pays the price.

PAUL KOLNIK

Belasco Theatre Produced by Lincoln Center 111 W. 44th St. Tue. at 7 p.m.; Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m.

Wed., Sat. at 2 p.m.; Sun. at 3 p.m.

Through Jan. 20 $37-$127; lct.org

“Slipping” at the Rattlestick, opposite Adam Driver.

My only quibble is that the play sometimes feels like a pulpy film noir of that era, and a few characters, with their dated New York vernacular, verge on cardboard cutouts. “His mitts are on his mind,” says Moody. “You can’t do a thing with a nut like that.” But overall the performances are so strong it doesn’t matter.

For his part, Sher keeps the action churning in this three-act play, which clocks in at just under three hours with two intermissions. He seems especially keen showing as many fleshy boxing champs as possible, at both their fiercest and most vulnerable. The sight of the sobbing, shuddering golden boy on the rubdown table, being soothed by his trainer, is one of the most tenderly harrowing moments you’ll see on the boards this season.

This blistering, first-rate production of “Golden Boy” is a testament to the durable power of Odets, who may have modeled the material on his own conflicts as an angry young man. Surely the themes of choosing fame and fortune over art, staying true to your nature, and avenging bullies resonate just as clearly today.

How fitting that the drama is being staged at the Belasco Theatre, where it premiered with Frances Farmer and Elia Kazan 75 years ago.

Brian, Joseph, Jane, and James Clementi at the opening night afterparty for “Bare.”

Clementi further reflected, “I think one of the important messages of the play is that things shouldn’t be kept secret. You see it in the characters, what it does to them. Secrets, they eat you up inside. This is an issue that is relevant for me that we need to get behind.” — Michael Luongo For more information on the Tyler Clementi Foundation, visit tylerclementi.org. In the December 5-18 issue of Gay City News, David Kennerley spoke to “Bare” choreographer Travis Wall.

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| December 19, 2012

FILM

What A Long, Strange Trip It’s Been “On the Road” finally comes to the screen, with respectable results

presents

BRINGING COMMUNITY BUSINESS DOWNTOWN January 23, 2013, 6 - 8 pm EXCITING PRESENTATION ON

IFC FILMS

"HOW TO MAXIMIZE YOUR ONLINE PRESENCE" Sam Riley and Garrett Hedlund in Walter Salles’ “On the Road,” based on the iconic novel by Jack Kerouac.

BY GARY M. KRAMER t took more than 50 years for Jack Kerouac’s bestseller “On the Road” to be turned into a film. Curiously, it was a Brazilian director, Walter Salles, who finally took on this American classic about freedom — sexual, spiritual, musical, and drink- and druginduced. Working from an adaptation by José Rivera, with whom Salles partnered on “The Motorcycle Diaries,” the director is faithful to key chunks of Kerouac’s vivid prose. No screen version can do complete justice to the novel, but this cinematic “On the Road” mostly succeeds.

I

ON THE ROAD Directed by Walter Salles IFC Films Opens December 21 IFC Center 323 Sixth Ave. at W. Third St. ifccenter.com

Salles’ film gets the beat era’s language as well as its jazz and the camaraderie of its young men — and women — right. These are lives fueled by cigarettes, Benzedrine, joints, alcohol, sex, poetry and the open road, poetry of the open road, and the freedom that comes from being one’s own person.

The film, shot by Eric Gautier, looks utterly gorgeous. Many of the urban scenes have the burnished lighting and composition of a poignant Edward Hopper painting. Scenes on the wideopen road are luminous. The atmosphere found in seedy apartments, diners, and bars is consistently richly textured.

The story opens with Sal Paradise (Sam Riley of “Control” playing the Kerouac character) recounting his first meeting with Dean Moriarty (Garrett Hedlund, in the Neal Cassady role) when the latter arrives in New York. The two men become fast friends — like long lost brothers, they say — and Dean prompts Sal to begin his life “on the road.”

These early scenes have an urgency and energy that mirror Kerouac’s jaunty text. The way the characters relate to one another also captures the spirit of the times. When Carlo (Tom Sturridge, who represents Allen Ginsberg) kisses Dean and has a threesome with Dean and a girl, he effuses, “This is how you love.” Very much of its particular moment, the comment is also typical of the way these characters intellectualized their late 1949s experiments in personal freedom.

“On the Road” meanders a bit after its initial kinetic burst. A sequence of Sal picking cotton in Selma, Cali-

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ON THE ROAD, continued on p.23

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December 19, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com

IN THE NOH

LuPone-itis Pasolini celebrated, glorious Cumming, weirdest cartoon ever

BY DAVID NOH here can be little doubt that Patti LuPone is the curr ent r eigning Eminence of Broadway — and cabaret. With her sensational pipes, which can belt as well as lyrically melt, her dramatic sense, and her keen musicality, she’s Ethel Merman and Mary Martin combined, and a far greater actress than either of them ever dreamed of being. Her worshippers are legion but there can be no greater one than Ben Rimalower, whose show, “Patti Issues,” now at the Duplex (Dec. 21-22, 28-29, 9:30 p.m.; Dec. 30, 7 p.m., 61 Christopher St. at Seventh Ave. S, Sheridan Square; theduplex.com), embraces his obsession.

“My father was the biggest bottom in Los Angeles!” he brays at one point in his breathlessly paced, often hilarious show, and this is just the tip of the iceberg of dysfunctional family revelations. That statement might lead you to infer that he sprang from a splintered clan, and you’d be dead right. And, as a rebuke to all that “It gets better” politically correct palaver, it really never did, especially in terms of his relationship with his unavailable, selfish, and often very immature Dad. Even in later years, the shared fact of their being gay offered no real bond between them.

What kept Rimalower going, in the same way as Judy and Barbra for previous generations of alienated, misunderstood little gay boys, was Patti, especially her recording of “Evita.” His show is a total immersion in LuPone-itis, with him waxing rhapsodic over her distinct genius at phrasing while delivering a few choice digs at her Broadway Queen rival, Bernadette Peters. (True to form, as with so many obsessed fans, there can be no greater love for a star than the kind that involves total hatred of her rivals, dating back to Bette vs. Joan or Callas vs. Tebaldi — or Sutherland — and, in fact, well before that.)

Rimalower came to New York as soon as he possibly could, with theater director ambitions and, through family connections (proving that even the most dysfunctional blood relations can have their advantages), landed a job as assistant to director Lonny Price, who was mounting the New York Philharmonic revival of “Sweeney Todd,” starring no less than LuPone herself. At this point in Rimalower’s story, the show becomes even more breathless as he describes his often excruciatingly clueless and slavish behavior around the star.

Given the cherished task of organizing her collection of performance vid-

CHRIS SULLIVAN

CHRISTIAN COULSON

JENNY ANDERSON FOR BROADWAY.COM

T

Ben Rimalower in his Duplex show, “Patti Issues,” and with his muse.

A still from Chris Sullivan’s “Consuming Spirits,” now playing at Film Forum.

eos, he happened upon her legendary cabaret appearance at Les Mouches, which she would do every Saturday night following the evening perfor mance of “Evita.” He then came up with the idea of having actress Leslie Kritzer recreate the entire show, which had a popular run at Joe’s Pub, with LuPone’s approval. But, when he came up with the idea of transferring the star’s performance to CD, Rimalower felt the inevitable scorching heat that happens when one flies too close to the flame of a diva’s ego.

(I must confess that, having heard the recording of LuPone at Les Mouches, I was underwhelmed, not finding it the so-called Holy Grail akin to Bette Midler’s mythic Continental Baths performances. The show is all over the place, as is the star, who seems a bit — ahem — pharmaceutically rejuvenated; well it was 1980! It naturally includes her singing her trademark “Meadowlark” from her show “The Baker’s Wife,” an emptily histrionic song whose appeal has also always eluded me.)

Things eventually got patched up between Rimalower and LuPone sufficiently for him to be invited to the dress rehearsal of her triumphant “Gypsy.” He saw the show many times, including a performance that found him sitting directly in front of his longestranged father, which event brings his life full circle and his manic show to an end.

Sodom” in 1975, and even more so by his death that year. He was brutally murdered and then run over several times by his own car on a beach near Rome. The murder remains a mystery, with Pasolini’s killer being variously identified as a 17-year-old hustler, a trio of anti-Communists, and an extortionist.

The decadence I referred to was wholly in the spirit of Pasolini’s unquenchable love of life, delivered by the wine provided at the press breakfast, which, due to the continuous pouring of my Russian and Australian tablemates, had me drunk by 10 a.m. The PS1 exhibit consists of continuous, environmentally appropriate showings of Pasolini’s “Medea,” starring Maria Callas, “Teorema,” starring Terence Stamp as a beautiful stranger who seduces an entire family of hautebourgeoises, including the glamor ously etiolated Silvana Mangano, and “Salo.” I staggered into the “Salo” salon and finally watched the entirety of this oh-so brutal, but oh-so sexy depiction of Italian fascisti in 1944 — though my cell phone came in handy in blocking the view when things got too savage.

We were all delighted to see Pasolini’s muse, the actor Ninetto Davoli, who starred in all the “Tales” and was quite the sexual fantasy of my youth. Silverhaired now, but still devastatingly handsome and brimming over with joie de vivre, he spoke effusively through a translator about his late mentor, what a great poet he was, and how, when the two of them were once in Canada for a film event, Davoli persuaded

I wonder what Rimalower’s reaction would be to LuPone’s show “The Atheist,” the David Mamet play that just closed ignominiously.

Mamet’s “Race” was infuriating in its well-heeled white man’s vision of interracial relations, the kind of thing wealthy theater patrons love going to, to feel bad about being Caucasian for a couple of hours before returning home to Westchester or the Upper East Side with perhaps the virtuous intention of being extra-generous to the help over the holidays. But at least it wasn’t boring. With the paltry “The Atheist,” one gets the feeling that this over-produced writer is indeed written out.

The show started with LuPone and Debra Winger talking in patented Mamet machine gun-fire style while saying nothing. The woman next to me turned to her companion and asked, “Can you hear them?” “No,” came the reply, whereupon the woman promptly fell asleep for the show’s duration, as did the man on the other side of me.

I spent the most decadent morning I can remember on December 12 when I went out to MoMA PS1 for the press preview of its major Pier Paolo Pasolini retrospective (22-25 Jackson Ave. at 46th Ave., Long Island City, through Jan. 7; momaps1.org). Growing up in Hawaii, the Communist poet and filmmaker Pasolini was, of all people, a seminal figure in my discovery of my sexuality. His famous “Tales” trilogy of “The Decameron,” “Canterbury Tales,” and “Arabian Nights” somehow got shown theatrically there, and their lustiness and homoeroticism were eyeopening, to say the least.

Like everyone, I was shocked by his final film, “Salo, or the 120 Days of

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| December 19, 2012

THEATER

19

Personality Driven In a real estate office and a provincial theater, ego clashes enliven two revivals

BY CHRISTOPHER BYRNE

“The Mystery of Edwin Drood” is a sprawling mess of a

n his Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Glengarry Glen Ross,” David Mamet uses language and situation to mine the more elemental characteristics of males — survival, sexual prowess, and dominance — all in the metaphor of competition to sell questionable tracts of land in early ‘80s Florida. It is a battle royale in a kill-or-be-killed culture where leads for potential buyers are the prize, closing a sale leads to animalistic chest-beating, and ethics have no place.

musical. With book, music, and lyrics by Rupert Holmes, it purports to dramatize Charles Dickens’ last, unfinished novel as portrayed by a provincial Victorian theater troupe. Dickens’ plot very nearly takes a backseat to the dramatic egos and antics of the troupe and is structured largely to give each of the actors a chance to do his or her specialty. Anyone familiar with Dickens will recognize the character types and form of the show, reflecting his humorous affection for the provincial theater, which shows up several times in his works.

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GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD Roundabout Theatre Company at Studio 54 254 W. 54th St. Tue.-Sat. at 8 p.m.; Wed., Sat.-Sun. at 2 p.m. $42-$147; roundabouttheatre.org Or 212-719-1300

Al Pacino and Bobby Cannavale in the revival of “Glengarry Glen Ross” at the Schoenfeld Theatre.

JOAN MARCUS

Under Daniel Sullivan’s direction, the new production at the Schoenfeld is solidly entertaining and replete with the eerie echoes of everything from Ponzi schemes to the subprime mortgage crisis. If the Florida land scheme now seems quaint and the shoddy and the slick salesmen Mamet has created come off like lambs compared with Bernie Madoff, the greed and fear that drive them are nearly as old as humanity.

At the center of the production — and the marketing — is Al Pacino who plays Shelley “The Machine” Levene, a veteran salesman desperate to hold onto his job and his manhood.

He is desperate for the “good leads,” but John Williamson, the office manager, doles them out to younger, more aggressive and successful men. Now routinely passed over, Levene makes the predictable arguments about his long experience, but this is a meritbased system and he is the infirm animal being culled from the herd. In the second act, having made an impossible sale, Levene is apparently back on top, strutting and preening, the ruler recovered to glory — at least for a time.

Pacino is strong in the role, downplaying Levene’s desperation and focusing instead on the character’s wiliness, desperate not so much to maintain his income but to prove in the company of men that he still “has it.” That is the currency that matters to him, and it’s a different take on the role than has been seen in the past. Pacino is the consummate actor, but at times his theatricality overwhelms the scene

SCOTT LANDIS

Schoenfeld Theatre 236 W. 45th St. Tue. at 7 p.m.; Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m.

Sat at 2 p.m.; Sun. at 3 p.m. $72-$152; telecharge.com Or 212-239-6200

Chita Rivera, Stephanie J. Block, and Will Chase in the Roundabout production of “The Mystery of Edwin Drood.”

and he would be more convincing if his performance were simpler.

Bobby Cannavale as Richard Roma is the younger man who has supplanted Levene in the operation and sets the quasi-Oedipal themes in motion. Cannavale is magnificent, using all the tricks in the book to express his dominance while clearly using the all-too-compliant Levene for his own ends. The interplay between the two men consumes the second act, and it’s fascinating.

The rest of the company is strong,

particularly David Harbour as the conflicted Williamson who has had unearned power conferred on him, and Jeremy Shamos as James Lingk, one of Roma’s marks, is quite compelling as a man not equal to competing in this bloodsport.

This is a more subtle production than others I’ve seen, but with fewer pyrotechnics — some of Pacino’s choices aside — it becomes both more interesting and more harrowing, and that is a powerful combination.

The music, for the most part is undistinguished, so to succeed a production has to rely on its charm and good humor. Happily, the current Roundabout revival has plenty of that going on and the show is best enjoyed as a rollicking good time. Director Scott Ellis has mounted the show with an emphasis on the fun, and he’s assembled a cast that does him proud.

Stephanie J. Block in the title role is outstanding, as are Jim Norton as the Chairman who manages the company and Will Chase as John Jasper. They all have the mix of seriousness and irony this show demands.

In supporting roles, it’s a delight to see Chita Rivera as Princess Puffer, and Andy Karl is a caricature of villainy as Neville Landless. Peter Benson as Bazzard, a lesser character with one of the three good songs — “Never the Luck” — is hilarious. The other two memorable songs are the oft-reprised “Moonfall,” performed beautifully by Betsy Wolfe as the standard-issue Dickens ingénue Rosa Bud, and “Perfect Strangers,” a duet between Block and Wolfe.

The gimmick of the show is that since Dickens’ novel was unfinished, the audience gets to vote on the outcome, and that pr ocess pr ovides great fun in the latter half of the second act.

The sensational costumes and sets are by William Ivey Long and Anna Louizos, respectively, and they perfectly capture the period and the sense of fun that characterize this nearly perfect production of an imperfect show.

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December 19, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com

FILM

A Tortured Rationale

BY STEVE ERICKSON ately, Kathryn Bigelow has seemed drawn to political subjects, but not to partisan politics. This served her on “The Hurt Locker,” an Iraq War film calculated not to take a stand on the conflict’s merits. Despite Bigelow’s strenuous efforts at keeping the film apolitical, some veterans complained of its inaccuracy, and it found greater appeal among liberals than conservatives. Still, it became the first film directed by a woman to ever win a Best Picture Oscar. In truth, the Iraq War isn’t the real subject of “The Hurt Locker”; its critique of a brand of adrenalin-junkie machismo could just as easily apply to the bullring or the arena of extreme sports.

Bigelow’s distance from overt politics

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ZERO DARK THIRTY Directed by Kathryn Bigelow Columbia Pictures Opens Dec. 19 citywide

suits her far less well on her latest film, “Zero Dark Thirty.” Making his 2012 top 10 list, New York magazine critic David Edelstein placed it at number one, though he added the caveat that it may be morally and politically reprehensible.

The film is not going to make my own top 10 list, but I share his ambivalence.

How else should one react to a film that amounts to a brilliantly directed and acted defense of torture? But though it

may be ethically dubious, I can’t deny that its depiction of the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound contains some of the year’s most gripping filmmaking. The fact that it’s so far been greeted ecstatically and totally uncritically by American critics apart from Edelstein.

Fortunately, a r eal debate has emerged in the media and online about the film’s depiction of torture. The Guardian editorialist Glenn Greenwald may have been foolish in attacking “Zero Dark Thirty” before he’s seen it, but at least his op-ed piece got the film’s fans to actively argue it doesn’t condone torture, instead of simply praising its artistry and ducking the issue.

“Zero Dark Thirty” begins with audio from 9/11 over a black screen. From there, it heads to a torture cell, where Dan (Jason Clarke) is roughing up a suspect.

The film hops forward in time and space, as CIA agent Maya (Jessica Chastain) searches obsessively for Osama bin Laden.

For years, she follows trails that lead nowhere. She butts heads with her boss (Kyle Chandler) and gets into screaming matches with him. Then, she discovers a mysterious compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan and becomes convinced that bin Laden lives there. She then has to convince her colleagues to take her seriously.

Chastain delivers an extremely impressive performance. If there’s anything progressive in “Zero Dark Thirty,” it lies with her character. At first, Maya seems like a blank slate, perhaps intended as an audience stand-in. She hovers in the corner during interrogations, witnessing torture silently. As she ages, she

JONATHAN OLLEY/COLUMBIA PICTURES

Kathryn Bigelow’s film about bin Laden’s killing is gripping, troubling

Jessica Chastain in Kathryn Bigelow’s “Zero Dark Thirty.”

becomes an angry, driven woman. She’s willing to swear and shout to get the men around her to take her seriously. There’s something of Joan of Arc in her absolute conviction in her own certitude. Recent American cinema has given us few female characters like her.

Bigelow’s treatment of violence is generally sober. She has a flair for action, but doesn’t use it for cheap thrills. Several times in “Zero Dark Thirty,” suicide bombs go off, placing people we care about at risk. These scenes are staged for maximum jarring effect. During the final raid, the action pauses to point out that numerous scared children are now going to be left fatherless. The raid itself is stripped-down; while it’s depicted

through night-vision cinematography and quick editing, there’s no attempt at disorienting the spectator. Bigelow’s direction is far from Michael Bay’s world of chaos.

This makes the film’s attitude toward torture all the more frustrating. Its first third contains many scenes of both physical and psychological torture. These are often extremely unpleasant, but the characters act blasé, when not actively gung ho. At this point, “Zero Dark Thirty” neither condones nor condemns torture, presenting it simply as a fact of life in the period immediately after 9/11.

Maya and other CIA agents watch a TV clip of Obama stating that the US will cease torture, and they do indeed give the practice up, although they seem disappointed. “Zero Dark Thirty” implies that more traditional forms of interrogation — as well as bribing informants with expensive cars — work better. Or do they? Maya ultimately reveals that the information leading her to bin Laden’s compound came from a tortured detainee. Torture can produce good results after all, “Zero Dark Thirty” suggests.

Republican fears that “Zero Dark Thirty” would be pro-Obama propaganda led to a delay in its release, but they might actually approve of the finished product.

(The president is only mentioned once, apart from the TV appearance.) “Zero Dark Thirty” is too nuanced to be propaganda of any stripe. If it suggests that torture has a positive side, one is still left with the ugliness of seeing a man forced to swallow vomit. That said, the inescapable conclusion is that Bigelow has placed her enormous talent on the wrong side of history.

Intimate Surveillance Christian Petzold creates a very personal story about East Germany’s spy culture BARBARA

BY STEVE ERICKSON erman director Christian Petzold’s work has always engaged his country’s history and politics. Yet in doing so, it’s drawn on American genre films and literature. His film “Yella” suggested the sort of film that might result from M. Night Shyamalan being set loose in the banking world, back when Shyamalan seemed like a real talent. Its follow-up, “Jerichow,” drew on James M. Cain’s novel “The Postman Always Rings Twice” but used the narrative to describe the alienation of a Turkish immigrant in Germany.

His latest film, “Barbara,” still alludes vaguely to American cinema — with her blonde hair pinned up, its heroine exudes the glamour of Hitchcock’s actress-

Directed by Christian Petzold Adopt Films In German with English subtitles Opens Dec. 21 The Angelika 18 W. Houston St. at Mercer St. angelikafilmcenter.com Lincoln Plaza Cinema 1886 Broadway at W. 63rd St. lincolnplazacinema.com

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Nina Hoss and Ronald Zehrfeld in Christian Petzold’s “Barbara.”

es, even in an East German hospital — but unlike his previous films, its plot opts for intimate character study over drama. You’d think the story of a woman trying to escape East Germany in 1980 would have plenty of thrills, but “Barbara” is disappointingly bland.

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| December 19, 2012

Trying to have a baby?

When Portugal Was the World Miguel Gomes’ impressive film hints at its colonialist shackles

WE CAN HELP!

BY STEVE ERICKSON hen it makes the news, Portugal is mentioned mostly these days for its faltering economy.

Yet it has one of the most thriving national cinemas in Europe, with extremely talented filmmakers like Pedro Costa, João Pedro Rodrigues, and the world’s oldest working director, Manoel de Oliveira.

W

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Directed by Miguel Gomes Adopt Films In Portuguese with English subtitles Opens Dec. 26 Film Forum, 209 W. Houston St. filmforum.org

You can add Miguel Gomes to that list. His previous film, the documentary-fiction hybrid “Our Beloved Month of August,” played briefly at Anthology Film Archives. “Tabu” has received far more attention, winning two awards at last winter’s Berlin Film Festival.

While I’m slightly less enthusiastic about it than many of my fellow critics, it’s a hell of a calling card.

In present-day Portugal, Pilar (Teresa Madruga) enjoys her first years of retirement, remaining politically active and working with Catholic charities. She’s troubled, however, by her neighbor Aurora’s apparent loneliness. In her 80s, Aurora (Laura Soveral) heads to the casino, losing all her money whenever she has any cash to spare. She also constantly complains about her daughter and thinks her maid Santa (Isabel Car doso) is casting voodoo spells to spite her. For her part, Santa minds her own business, reading “Robinson Crusoe” in her apartment at night.

On her deathbed, Aurora asks Pilar and Santa to track down a man named Gian Luca Ventura (Henrique Espírito Santo), who they discover is still alive but suffers from dementia. Ventura made a secret pact with Aurora in Africa 50 years earlier, just before Portugal lost its African colonies. The second half of the film switches to Africa and takes place in flashback, with narration by Ventura.

“Tabu” suggests that Gomes is familiar with a wide range of classic and current cinema. His appropriation from silent cinema is closer to Filipino direc-

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TABU Isabel Cardoso as Santa in Miguel Gomes’ “Tabu.”

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tor Raya Martin’s than “The Artist.”

The separation of sound and image and the invocation of the last days of colonialism recall Marguerite Duras’ “India Song.” While he doesn’t use live dialogue in the film’s second half — we see the characters’ lips move but don’t hear what they’re saying — sound effects are employed. The film’s very title comes from German Expressionist master F.W. Murnau’s final film, set on a Polynesian island. Gomes fills “Tabu” with beautiful vistas of African landscapes, shot in black and white.

The image is shrunk to an aspect ratio of 1.33, the same as old-fashioned TV sets and movie screens before the advent of Cinemascope.

There’s one scene in particular that sums up Gomes’ brand of weirdness. Ventura’s friend Mario’s band is performing a cover of Phil Spector’s “Baby, I Love You.” Close attention reveals that they’re actually lipsynching to the Ramones’ version of the song. The string section accompanying the Ramones is nowhere in sight. The singer sometimes holds his microphone away from his mouth while Joey Ramone is singing. The soundtrack is filled with Portugueselanguage Spector covers. Gomes works with familiar material but treats in ways that make it new.

Alas, “Tabu” falls into a long line of films that use Africa as a backdrop for the problems of white people. This impression isn’t helped by the use of intertitles declaring Portugal a “lost paradise” and Africa a “paradise, ” although Gomes is obviously being

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TABU, continued on p.22

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22

December 19, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com

OPERA

The Divas and Divos of December Opera in concert across New York’s stages oncert opera leavens New York’s repertory in salutary ways. The Collegiate Chorale’s December 5 mounting of Vincenzo Bellini’s penultimate work, “Beatrice di Tenda,” was a worthwhile and interesting endeavor, if uneven in its execution.

“Beatrice,” not top-flight Bellini either musically or dramatically, deserves trotting out from time to time for some of its well-crafted ensembles.

The evening’s most impressive work came from mezzo Jamie Barton, with a rich, imposing tone. She sounded a bit hard-pressed on a few high notes — Agnese is really a soprano role — but otherwise drew her lines in long, meaningful ways and with much expressive feeling.

Such feeling went notably lacking in the first act contributions of nominal star Angela Meade, a gifted but often interpretively blank, unspecific singer.

Meade encompassed the music with considerable accomplishment, but the tone sometimes lacked focus and there was little sense of emotional involvement or expressive shaping of phrases.

Matters improved somewhat in the second part, where Meade uttered the text more incisively and deployed a wider dynamic palette. Despite the now de rigueur diva-worthy cheers that greeted her testing final scene, she has substantial work to do to become a real artist — as opposed to a well-stocked vocalist.

Michael Spyres is certainly already an estimable bel canto stylist with wellpronounced Italian, but Orombello’s part gave him little to do in the register extremes that are his particular specialties. Baritone Nicholas Pallesen showed excellent line and mellow if somewhat light timbre in the cantilena passages of Filippo, the only character with any trace of development. On book, seemingly sight-reading recit passages, however, he might as well not have been onstage at all; concert opera calls for strong presence maybe even more than staged work.

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TABU, from p.21

ironic. To be fair, social realism is the last thing on Gomes’ mind. He’s obviously not trying to give a conventional account of the last days of Portuguese colonialism. In fact, the gr owing probability of African rebellion and the fact that his characters’ “para-

The chorus itself was in healthy voice.

I’ve heard James Bagwell do well conducting smaller forces but this was not a very distinguished showing, with little inflection of tempo or phrasing. Frequently, his American Symphony players were just plain too loud for the singers, and the score was significantly cut.

Manhattan School of Music scored substantially with its “Thaïs” (December 9), utilizing the preexisting colorful, well-imagined settings and costumes by André Barbe.

As in previous outings (St. Louis, Montreal, Boston), Renaud Doucet directed.

Working with him and the deft conductor George Manahan seems to have buoyed the student forces, as this was a very fine performance, both fun and moving — two adjectives not evoked by the Met’s leaden 2008 effort.

It really helped to have young protagonists. Leela Subramaniam and Yunpeng Wang, looking plausibly combustible, both used suitably fresh and elastic voices in stylish, musically informed ways.

At the end, Thaïs died in a white dress, imagining herself borne upward — a far better solution than the Met’s having Renee Fleming transmogrified into a likeness of the Empress Theodora.

Aaron Short fur nished an alert, pleasing-voiced Nicias, and smaller roles were especially well-taken by Elena Perroni (Crobyle), Elsa Quéron (Myrtale), and Clarissa Parrish (Albine).

The level of comprehensible French diction reflected credit on Cristina Stanescu’s coaching. Bravi tuttti!

CAROL ROSEGG

BY DAVID SHENGOLD

Yunpeng Wang and Leela Subramaniam in the Manhattan School of Music Opera Theater’s production of “Thaïs.”

The really impressive singing came from Karen Cargill (Anna), Eric Cutler (Iopas), and Paul Appleby (Hylas), though Francesca Zambello has altered the once-breathtaking staging of Hylas’ scene to resemble a Broadway second lead’s big moment, having him come forward singing full out to the audience.

Zambello has made several changes, presumably for the January 5 HD broadcast. Some are clever. Another — having the silent Andromache scream not once but twice — is disastrous, violating some of Berlioz’s most expressive music. Odds are this show will improve.

If you’ve never seen the colossal “Troyens,” the HD broadcast offers an inexpensive opportunity to hear an elusive masterpiece of jaw-dropping power and beauty.

The Met’s “Aida” December 12 was most notable for Liudmyla Monastyrska’s luminous vocalism in the title role. The Ukrainian soprano doesn’t offer much in the way of verbal bite or facial mobility, but she has the goods — a dynamically flexible, beautifully soaring sound — in this tough role, ill-served hereabouts since the 1980s showcased Leontyne Price, Anna Tomowa-Sintow, and Aprile Millo.

Roberto Alagna — no kind of Radames in terms of vocal weight, but not without some latinate virtues —

offered strolling waiter manners and too much evidence of crooning and straining. Olga Borodina managed to pull off Amneris, but the top is becoming alarmingly ragged — she eventually had to leave out some of “Voi la terra.”

George Gagnidze made a very solid, conventional Amonasro, while the two basses (Stefan Kocan and Miklos Sebestyen) were embarrassingly provincial.

The gifted Alexei Ratmansky provided trivial dances. Fabio Luisi conducted with high competence in a manner best described as objective.

The next night, Luisi held everything together for “Les Troyens,” but the phrases had little distinctive shape and there was no special sense of overall architecture. Berlioz’s music is terrific, and the chorus did it justice. Sadly, the vocal performances of Deborah Voigt and Marcello Giordani were largely inadequate; he rallied a bit in the magical fourth act, finding a bit of liquidity in what has become a fixed, choked tone.

Susan Graham, always sympathetic, lacks the grandiose vocal and dramatic scope for Didon. When she “went for it,” she pushed off the note or did some screamy declamation. Yet much of her soft singing was enjoyable, and she understands French style. Dwayne Croft — a fully qualified Chorebe — had an announced cold.

On December 14, seasoned choral conductor Harold Rosenbaum led his Canticum Novum Singers — the women fresher and more precise than the men, the opposite of the Met chorus — in Bach’s splendid “Christmas Oratorio” at the Church of St. Jean Baptiste.

The church’s acoustics didn’t flatter the Artemis Chamber Ensemble’s collective string tone, but gave the trumpets, timpani, and oboes a field day.

S o p r a n o K a t h e r i n e We s s i n g e r, merely correct at first, bloomed in Part Two. The standout was the Met’s Anthony Roth Costanzo, bringing to his first Bach assignment luminous sound and expert ornaments, plus showing — in both recitative and cantilena — a wonderful play of dynamics within sculpted phrases. Jesse Blumberg sang with skill and attractive baritone timbre and, as always, great communicativeness.

Despite some rough edges, this was a very enjoyable concert. On May 18, Rosenbaum’s forces tackle an intriguing Mozart/ Salieri program involving rising mezzo Jennifer Johnson Cano and a fine tenor we hear far too little of locally — Frank Lopardo.

dise” comes with a sell-by date are only acknowledged in the film’s final ten minutes. But if he’s critiquing his characters’ obliviousness to the unhappiness of their African neighbors, it’s a mighty subtle enterprise.

“Tabu” is a fever dream of Africa, not a tract. Nevertheless, Gomes’ choice of subject matter can’t help

being politically suggestive. It fits snugly with recent European films like Chantal Akerman’s “Almayer’s Folly” and Claire Denis’ “White Material,” which have explored the ongoing legacy of colonialism. “White Material” is unabashedly told from a white woman’s perspective, but it does more than give lip service to its

black characters, suggesting that colonialism is a for m of madness.

By contrast, the only fully developed black character in “Tabu,” Santa, lives in present-day Portugal. Gomes’ film-buf f playfulness and eye for beauty are welcome, but he’s not as distant from old colonial ghosts as he thinks he is.

David Shengold (shengold@yahoo. com) writes about opera for many venues.

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| December 19, 2012

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IN THE NOH, from p.18

him to come to New York for the first time: “Pasolini loved the energy and excitement of your city! He said this is nothing like Rome!”

MoMA will be showing all of Pasolini’s films in gorgeous, newly struck prints by Luce Cinecitta, coinciding with a new book, “Pier Paolo Pasolini: My Cinema” (Cineteca di Bologna/ Luce Cinecitta). If you have never seen it, I urge you to catch my favorite, and perhaps the most accessible of this difficult genius’ works, “Mama Roma,” starring Anna Magnani in one of her greatest performances, entailing, as always, oceans of humor and heartbreak.

More cinematic riches are currently to be found on Manhattan screens. I can only add my praise to “Any Day Now,” one of the better gay

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BARBARA, from p.20

Upon applying for an exit visa from East Germany, Barbara (Nina Hoss) is punished with a transfer from Berlin to a small pediatric hospital in the country. She benefits from the attentions of a lover who brings her West German money and cigarettes.

(It’s unclear whether the man is actually West German himself.) With him, she plans to escape to the West.

In the meantime, she becomes friends with André (Ronald Zehrfeld), a fellow doctor whose attentions toward her evoke her suspicions. A teenager, Stella (Jasna Fritzi Bauer), checks into the hospital with a case of meningitis, but Barbara discovers the girl is also pregnant. A refugee from a work camp, Stella also wants to leave East Germany. All the while,

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ON THE ROAD, from p.17

fornia, is important — it shows him working and away from Dean’s influence — but it slows things down before they pick back up with the two friends reuniting.

Sal’s meetings with Dean often involve the latter’s romantic entanglements. Dean loves two women — Marylou (Kristen Stewart) and Camille (Kirsten Dunst as the Carolyn Cassady figure) — and he spends time with one or the other and traveling back and forth between them. In contrast, Sal is a more passive character.

Even when Dean and Marylou invite him into their bed, Sal’s discomfort prompts him to ask Dean to leave the room. But Sal is not always so prudish, as a scene of the three of them, naked in the front seat of a car with

full as it is of healthy attacks upon the Catholic Church, as well as, well, being Irish. Floods of drink go down at the local pub, the Juice of the Barley, while Gentian gets called on the carpet for creating too-weird newspaper headlines like “Gentian Violet Admits Concealing Nun Under Solitary Faggot” and they all try to infiltrate the secrets of the neighborhood combined convent/ insane asylum, the Sisters of the Holy Order of the Evacuated Sepulcher. This institution is run by the Reverend Mother Mary Elastica, who puts up signs that read “Prayers are not gratis” and advertises for nuns with “Unknown women preferred.”

It’s all quite twisted and often oddly beautiful, and a perfect, bitterly funny antidote to the holiday season.

films, for its true depiction of life in the 1970s, which, while full of joyous postStonewall/ pre-AIDS hedonism, was a pretty dark place where legal matters were concerned. The film is one of the most devastating — and honest — tearjerkers I’ve ever seen, about a gay couple’s custody battle for a kid with Down Syndrome nobody wants anyway. Isaac Leyva will shatter your heart as the boy, while Garrett Dillahunt, as one half of the couple, is your very dream of the perfect, solid, and sexy boyfriend.

As the other half, Alan Cumming gives his best onscreen performance yet. Singing a great cover of France Joli’s disco standard “Come to Me,” pulling off a raggedy drag act, cracking wise in the dark, and fighting fiercely for certain rights that have yet to be bestowed, he is magnificent, somehow reminding me of no one so much as the aforementioned Magnani, and there can be no praise higher than that.

I hope continues at Film Forum (and if it doesn’t, hunt it down) is, hands down, the year’s most creative film. Chris Sullivan made it over a 15-year period, and you can appreciate his effort and care in every densely rich frame of this animated film like no other. Sullivan and an army of helpers painstakingly created it, frame by frame, utilizing elaborately layered multi-plane cutout animation and drawings on paper, as well as model miniatures and photographs.

It takes place in the Appalachian burg of Magguson, centering on three spectacularly dolorous main characters — radio announcer Earl Gray, newspaper pasteup artist Gentian Violet, and her sometimes love interest, Victor Blue, an alcoholic co-worker whose life is described as “a terminal social-service project.”

That last should give you some idea of the film’s wondrously dark humor,

Barbara grows closer to André.

The cinematography of “Barbara” is tinted a golden yellow, and the corridors of the hospital where Barbara works are painted the same shade.

There may be some irony implicit in Petzold’s visual decisions here — or at least a desire to avoid clichéd depictions of communist dystopias.

The backwaters of East Ger many look a lot warmer and homier than one would expect. Rather than showing us block after block of brutalist architecture, “Barbara” is filled with pleasant bike rides through the woods.

In the very first scene, the audience learns André is spying on Bar bara, who, despite her foreign lover, is very lonely. By default, Andr é becomes a friend of sorts, even a rival for her lover’s affection. All this

happens despite the fact that André and Barbara don’t trust each other.

She makes her paranoia clear to him. Even when he relates a story about a case of medical incompetence that almost ruined his career and left him in debt to East Germany’s spy service, she expresses skepticism about its truth.

They wind up kissing anyway.

After all, they’re both very attractive people — Zehrfeld could almost pass for a Russell Crowe lookalike — but they also have no one else to turn to most of the time. Even being an informant is lonely, though given André’s charm and looks, it seems improbable he’s still single and has no friends.

“Barbara” is very good at creating a paranoid atmosphere but not so good at developing a nar -

rative. One of its subplots doesn’t tur n out to mean much, while the other provides a surprise ending.

For long stretches, the film seems interested in simply observing life in East Ger many in 1980. Up to a point, this has its merits, but one gets tired of the doctors’ rounds and ambiguous conversations between André and Barbara, punctuated by trysts with her lover.

The finale suddenly shifts to a monochrome image that looks like Andrei Tarkovsky, and it seems to celebrate an ideal of Christian sacrifice. “Barbara” is more satisfying than the much more popular “The Lives of Others,” made in 2006, but the definitive film about the way East Ger many’s spy service insidiously got its citizens to turn on each other remains to be made.

Marylou servicing both men, proves.

The film version of “On the Road” makes Dean a mythical figure — much as Kerouac did in the book. Hedlund’s Dean is a magnetic conman. The sexy actor, swaggering shirtless or altogether naked, does well in the difficult role; his infectious enthusiasm makes viewers appreciate Dean’s hedonism.

Dean is charming even as he’s stealing gas or food or trying to sweet-talk his way out of a speeding ticket.

Sal is far less interesting a character for much of the film. He is often the quiet observer, taking careful, copious notes, which he will use to turn his and Dean’s story into the celebrated novel.

Sal’s few active moments come when he steps in for Dean — as a dance partner for Camille in one scene and a companion for Marylou in another. Riley does his best with the limited role, but

his final moments provide some payoff for his slow-burn performance.

“On the Road” is largely about the two men embracing their adventures.

It is not about the destination, but the journey, and the film makes that clear.

An experience they have in Mexico may be the most memorable — in part because of the stylish way Salles films it — but there are interesting facets to all their encounters. A meeting with Old Bull Lee (Viggo Mortensen in the William S. Burroughs role) in Louisiana is strange, as are the experiences that result from accepting a ride from a mild-mannered gay man (Steve Buscemi) who gets Dean to fuck him.

Dean and Sal have an undeniable chemistry that bonds them, but the film is curiously cool about explor ing its emotional core or their feelings about the other characters.

Dean’s struggle to satisfy both Marylou and Camille is not particularly compelling, nor are episodes featur ing Galatea (Elisabeth Moss), who is angry that her husband Ed (Danny Morgan) leaves her while he takes out on the road with the guys. The lack of emotional engagement among the characters is the film’s biggest drawback, perhaps demonstrating how the necessity of compressing the novel made it so tough to film.

Salles’ film may not be a master piece — honestly, how could it be when stacked up against the book’s legacy? — but it is an earnest effort.

This screen version of “On the Road” may disappoint fans of the novel — not to mention enraging purists — but it offers some very fine moments reconjuring the restless spirit of Kerouac’s classic.

“Consuming Spirits,” which

Contact David Noh at Inthenoh@aol. com and check out his blog at http:// nohway.wordpress.com/.

24

December 19, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

A False Equivalency

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BY PAUL SCHINDLER Few people would dispute that Washington and American politics in general are broken. Most, in fact, would agree that polarization r eached new levels during President Barack Obama’s first term, though any accurate accounting would take note of the deep divisions that plagued George W. B u s h ’ s e i g h t y e a r s i n office, and — even more pronouncedly — Bill Clinton’s two terms before that.

Still, after a harshly negative fall campaign, the two parties seem unable to find even the slenderest common ground to avert a fiscal trigger of their own making — a dilemma that raises the question of whether elected officials pay any attention at all to election results.

Among those who say they would like to see compromise solutions forged, there is a strong temptation to ascribe our problems to the outsized influence of activists, interest groups, bloggers, and cable television personalities from both the right and the left. To be sure, Americans are far more organized than they have ever previously been along interest and terest a nd iideologideol de olog ogii cal lines, and nd the two parties have not,, go going back at least

a century or more, been so cleanly divided along a leftright spectrum.

That said, the proposition that thunder on the right and agitation on the left both contribute, to the same degree, to our political stalemate is simply a false equivalency. As the president and a Republican House struggle to come to agreement before the January 1 deadline — either on a broad deal or a narr ower one that kicks some big questions down the road — Democrats will surely demand that the distribution of tax burdens be shifted and that basic health and social supports be protected. No matter how dogged their advocacy, however, when the story is written their stance will pale in comparison to the uncompromising posture too many Republicans will cling to on taxes. There is no figure on the left who exerts the sort of domination over the Democrats that Grover Norquist — in extracting lifetime pledges of never raising taxes — does on the GOP. The tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut last week tests whether we as a society are willing to stand up to another organization exerting outsized influence on our politics — the National Rifle

Association. To be fair and clear, the NRA has not only hypnotized a good share of the Republican Party but many Democrats as well. If it hadn’t, it wouldn’t take a tragedy of the magnitude we’ve just witnessed to galvanize public debate. Gun regulation has not been as hot button an issue as many in r ecent years simply because even people supporting sensible action thought there was little chance of progress.

But Mayor Michael Bloomberg is one leader who challenges the conventional wisdom that the gun group is invincible. “There is this myth that the NRA is so power ful,” he said on “Meet the Press” on Sunday, explaining that a political action committee he funds put “a small amount of money” into seven races where the NRA was spending big dollars — and won four of the seven.

Some say the mayor of the nation’s largest city is illsuited to take on an organization whose membership skews small town and rural — and, indeed, voices like We s t Vi r g i n i a S e n a t o r J o e Manchin, a strongly pro-NRA Democrat who this week said, said sa id, “Everything E ve very ryth thin ing g has ha s to be be on the table,” are needed to move the public dialogue.

But the idea that city people don’t understand the role of guns in the lives of those living elsewhere is overblown — at the behest, I would guess, of NRA messaging aimed at forestalling a united push for sensible policy. Some of us may roll our eyes when we see a political ad in which a candidate is showing off their prowess with a rifle, but I have never heard a serious proposal put forward to curtail the fundamental Second Amendment rights guaranteed by the Constitution — much as part of me wishes our society had no guns in civilian hands at all. The debate is all about assault rifles and unregulated gun shows, not about confiscating guns owned legally for a family’s protection and for sport.

Opponents of sensible regulation argue that criminals will always find a way to secure guns. Certainly some will. But as Bloomberg argued this weekend, the inability to promise that every tragedy will be averted is no excuse to do nothing.

If we are unwilling to put reasonable additional hurdles — especially ones that hinder nobody’s reasonably legitimate right to own a gun — on those who would commit the sort of mayhem visited on Connecticut last week, our society clearly has an unhealthy attachment to Second Amendment absolutism.

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f Santa actually comes this year, and not the Mayan Apocalypse, all I want is a little peace.

No angels harking and heralding. No kids getting shot. Not in Connecticut. Not anywhere. Isn't that why so many films are rated R — we don't want our babes exposed to the violence? Or is it just sex we're opposed to? Heterosex when they take too many clothes off? Homosex in all its

forms?

I went to a gun show once. It was just like a carnival. There were families with kids, stalls with French fries and corndogs. I like me a good corndog with that glowing yellow mustard that they probably use as radioactive contrast for MRIs. After a deep-fried Snickers, you can buy pellet guns for the babies. Or a .38 for her in lavender or pink, that isn't too big for a purse. I was surprised that my girlfriend knew what the serious stuff was. "Is that

a Soviet blahbetty blab?" But then half the Cuban kids of her age were trained for an American invasion. Which actually came, by the way.

Americans prepare for something largely imaginary. Like maybe a photo shoot. When I was a kid, me and my sisters would pose as Charlie's Angels with their guns in the air. I've been known to use my own fingers to form a revolver. "Make my day." It's not just ego. We are so often afraid, even if our enemies aren't a solid 90 miles

away. There are those damn undercover Canadians that talk just like us. Those Mexicans who have the nerve to speak differently, but still steal our jobs. Or maybe it'll be an invasion by aliens we're sure are just a cattle prod away.

Then there are real muggers and rapists. It seems every high school and college football team has one or two. Just look at Notre Dame, and Steubenville High. But instead of pro-

䉴

COGSWELL, continued on p.25

25

| December 19, 2012

William Eskridge, Yale law professor specializing in statutory interpretation, and Hans Johnson , president of Progressive Victory, a nonprofit group that advises organizations and political campaigns: On Scotusblog.com, William Eskridge and Hans Johnson assessed the legal issues, but informed their analysis with the politics of marriage equality. They come from a pro-marriage equality perspective and they believe this is the issue’s “Cinderella moment,” but they urged the court to move deliberatively. In particular, they voiced concern that New York widow Edie Windsor’s victory at the Second Circuit — the DOMA challenge taken up by the high court — found that laws making distinctions based on sexual orientation are subject to heightened scrutiny, a more searching form of judicial review than is customary: “If the Supreme Court adopted that reasoning to strike down DOMA (in Windsor) and Proposition 8 (in Perry), every state marriage law excluding lesbian and gay couples would be in immediate jeopardy, because no state could muster a compelling or substantial public interest that would satisfy the Second Circuit’s approach… Just as a Supreme Court decision upholding DOMA and Proposition 8 would be an affront to the (largely blue) half of our country opposed to anti-gay discrimination, so a decision effectively sweeping away the marriage restrictions followed in threequarters of the states would be an affront to the other (mostly red) half of the country.

“So what should the Supreme Court do in Windsor and Perry?

Surely, the Court ought not uphold DOMA… Nor should the Court uphold Proposition 8.”

In resolving the conflict between those observations, Eskridge and Johnson noted that another appeals court ruling, in a lawsuit brought in the First Circuit in Boston, struck down DOMA even though it subjected the law to a more lenient standard of review: “The Court would be wise to rule narrowly. In another DOMA challenge that is pending before the Court, but on which the Court did not act yesterday, the First Circuit ruled that DOMA is subject to “closer than usual review” because the federal government was legislating in an area traditionally reserved for the states… The Justices are free to follow its reasoning, which would invalidate DOMA without terminating the ongoing constitutional marriage equality debate in the states. Likewise, the Justices could follow the Ninth Circuit’s narrow reasoning in Perry, which invalidated Proposition 8 because the popular revocation of equal rights did not reveal a rational basis for state discrimination.”

In the end, Eskridge and Johnson urge a more gradual

䉴

COGSWELL, from p.24

tection, people with guns usually have them taken away and find themselves not just violated, but dead. Or on the flip side, fearful people end up shooting innocent kids like Trayvon Martin.

Real perps hardly ever get killed.

Still, after the latest shooting, somebody actually said the kindergarten teachers should have been packing.

When Gabrielle Giffords was laid up in the hospital after getting plugged, more than one asshole declared, "If it had been me, I'd've known right away with my extrasensory American sense that Jared Lee Loughner was a danger and taken him out with a shot right between the eyes. Ditto for that joker James Eagan Holmes, who went nuts in the Colorado movie theater."

Only guns can solve the gun problem. We'll fight fire with fire. Burn the

advance for marriage equality than advocates on the issue are demanding: “The country as a whole is en route to resolution of the marriage equality issue. That result is approaching more swiftly than the pundits thought possible. Cinderella waits impatiently at the altar for her Princess Charming. Full marriage equality is no fairy tale, though it is a story whose happy ending has not quite arrived.

NCLRIGHTS.ORG

RESPONSE TO ACTION, from p.13

HRC.ORG

䉴

Chad Griffin, president of the Kate Kendell, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights.

Human Rights Campaign.

The American Foundation for Equal Rights, which brought the Prop 8 litigation.

In announcing the Prop 8 lawsuit in 2009, AFER asserted that the case would result in a nationwide victory for marriage equality at the Supreme Court.

Chad Griffin, AFER’s co-founder who now leads the Human Rights Campaign, reaffirmed that confidence in a press statement: “I believe our cherished constitutional principles will win the day and that the Court will uphold the fundamental right that all Americans can marry the one they love.”

AFER’s executive director Adam Umhoefer was similarly upbeat: “It is past time that the nation redeem our Constitution’s promise of liberty and equality for all by ensuring that every American has the right to marry the person they love. Make no mistake, with two lower court victories and the Constitution on our side, we will prevail.”

The two lead attorneys, however, were less direct in their reactions. Theodore Olson said: “The Supreme Court’s decision to grant review… brings us closer to the day when every American will be able to equally enjoy the fundamental freedom to marry.”

David Boies said: “Fourteen times the Supreme Court has stated that the freedom to marry is one of the most fundamental rights — if not the most fundamental right — of all Americans… We will urge the

whole place down. Why wait for the Mayan gods to extinguish the sun? Or send meteor showers, or whatever it is that will bring the 5,125-year cycle of life on earth to an end?

Other advocacy groups were more guarded in their predictions about how the Prop 8 litigation, in particular, will play out. Jon Davidson, legal director at Lambda Legal, in a press statement, said: “It is clear that DOMA's days are numbered… As for [Prop 8], while the Supreme Court's decision to review the Ninth Circuit's correct and carefully-worded ruling delays the restoration of equal access to marriage for same-sex couples in California, we believe the lower court rulings in California will stand… If the Supreme Court finds that the proponents of Prop 8 did not have right to appeal, same-sex couples in California will again have the right to marry."

The National Center for Lesbian Rights’ executive director, Kate Kendell, was also careful not to predict a broad, nationwide victory from the Prop 8 case: “We are confident the Supreme Court will strike down DOMA once and for all next year, and, after four long years, will finally erase the stain of Proposition 8 and restore marriage equality to California couples.”

The American Civil Liberties Union — which, along with attorney Roberta Kaplan of Paul, Weiss, prevailed at the Second Circuit in Edie Windsor’s case — predicted victory at the Supreme Court, but hedged on whether the case would be decided in a sweeping heightened scrutiny ruling or instead in a narrow ruling based on a rational basis standard for reviewing DOMA: “The court held that laws like DOMA that subject lesbians and gay men to unequal treatment are presumed to be unconstitutional and are legal only if the government can point to an ‘important interest’ that justifies the discrimination. A federal district court had previously held in Windsor's case that DOMA was unconstitutional even under a less rigorous constitutional standard.” — Paul Schindler

it. When shootings happen in high schools, I can sometimes understand.

A troubled kid accustomed to guns goes back for revenge against bullies.

It's an old, old story. But attacking seven-year-olds? No. NRA types will defend the guns and say Adam Lanza was sick, and probably he was. They'll point the finger at the failures of the mental health establishment. Which should have done more. And that will be right, too. Or maybe they'll blame the mother he killed. (Who taught him to shoot.)

But it's more fundamental, a flaw in our culture, our species maybe. We are so good at imagining the end of things.

We embrace films where monsters attack our cities, or meteors are aimed

It's more fundamental, a flaw in our culture, our species maybe. We are so good at imagining the end of things.

Sometimes I wish the Apocalypse would come before the next atrocity.

Human acts of generosity are often so comparatively small. We save dogs and sheep when they fall in rivers. Hand out a pair of shoes. While our acts of hatred are on the Olympian scale.

Twenty dead kids. I can't even imagine

Justices to reaffirm our Constitution’s central promises of liberty, equality, and human dignity.”

Olson voiced the hope that the Obama administration will file a brief in support of AFER’s position: “Given the position that the government has taken in the DOMA case, the reasoning that they have used in filing their brief would apply with great effect in our case, the Perry case, as well."

The Courage Campaign, a statewide progressive group in California, put a finer point on that hope, in a statement from its leader, Rick Jacobs: “The White House and the Department of Justice refused to comment on the Administration's views concerning Proposition 8. Not good enough. We need our ‘fierce advocate’ in the White House to do right by the LGBT community, and take this simple, but hugely important, action.”

at earth like an alien invasion.

We rarely imagine some dramatic way Will Smith could transform our existing lives into something better. The closest he came was playing Mohammed Ali, sports star and activist. If you don't aim for Buddha or Jesus, maybe that's all there is. One person taking a stand.

Bloomberg was right to call on Obama to do it, push back against our culture of guns. I'd like to see him go further and dump our new toys, the drones. And maybe the Israelis could sit on their hands for a while. And the Palestinians, too, even if theirs are more often filled with rocks. Congo is a disaster. Let's wish impotence for each rapist's dick. And that their knives and guns bend like rubber. That they go to bed early, dream of peace.

Which is all I want. That, and a pony.

26

December 19, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com

LEGAL

Court Finds Realtors Discriminated Against Man With AIDS Housing Works believes federal court verdict first test of 2008 law protecting tenants on government assistance

BY ARTHUR S. LEONARD

U

S District Judge Samuel Conti ruled on December 3 that two New York realtors violated city law in their responses to a prospective tenant living with AIDS who sought an apartment with financial support from the HIV/ AIDS Services Administration (HASA).

Conti awarded the plaintiff, Keith Short, $20,000 in damages, and also awarded $5,000 in expense reimbursement to the Fair Housing Justice Center (FHJC), the agency to which Short complained about discrimination from Manhattan Apartments, Inc., and Abba Realty Associates. The court also issued expansive injunctive r elief against the defendants.

Attorneys Armen Merjian, a senior staf f attor ney at Housing Works, and Diane Houk of Emery, Celli, Brinckerhoff & Abady represented the plaintiffs.

Short and FHJC contended the

defendants violated anti-discrimination provisions of the federal Fair Housing Act regarding disability and city protections based on a prospective tenant’s disability or source of income. Conti found that the defendants did not discriminate against Short based on his having AIDS as such. Instead, the evidence showed the discrimination was against people seeking apartments financed through housing grants from HASA. Short, diagnosed with HIV in 1989, approached Abba Realty in late 2010 looking for an apartment that he would pay for with HASA financial assistance. He soon learned that not all the apartments listed by the realtor within his price range were available to him — as a “program person” — since the company accepts listings from landlords who will not take tenants relying on HASA funding. The court received testimony that HASA funding is reliable and that delays while the agency inspects and approves apartments are minimal. Still, one apartment that Short was provisionally

set to move into became unavailable when the landlord rented to somebody who could pay immediately.

After facing hostility from a building superintendent when he complained about the filthy conditions of a second apartment he was due to move into, Short gave up on Abba and tur ned to Manhattan Apartments. There, he encountered a real stonewall. That company told him it had no listings from landlords who would rent to HASA clients.

When Short complained to FHJC, the group employed "testers," actors posing as pr ospective tenants to confir m Short's story and gather evidence. Neither company attempted to mask its discriminatory policy, unaware, its brokers said, of the City Council law prohibiting its conduct as well as housing discrimination law generally.

In court, FHJC argued the realtors were guilty of disability discrimination under federal law because their refusal to show certain apartments due to source of income had a "disparate impact" on prospec-

tive tenants with disabilities. Conti rejected that argument, pointing out that housing support programs assist clients without disabilities as well, so Short’s AIDS status was not the issue.

T h e j u d g e , h o w e v e r, r e t a i n e d jurisdiction and ruled on the source-of-income claim under New York City law. That claim was crystal clear, since the testimony by Short and the FHJC testers, as well as that fr om the r eal estate br okers themselves, pr ovided dir ect evidence of the discrimination. The defendants argued they were merely following the orders of the landlords and had no intention themselves of discriminating, an argument the court rejected, pointing out that the realtors facilitated the landlords' discrimination by actively screening candidates. There was also no direct evidence the landlords actually discriminated, merely statements from the brokers they had recieved such instructions.

䉴

DISCRIMINATION, continued on p.27

US Courts Clash Over Reparative Therapy Law Two Sacramento judges take different First Amendment approaches

BY ARTHUR S. LEONARD

R

uling on consecutive days, federal judges sitting in the same US courthouse in Sacramento reached directly opposite views about how to analyze challenges to a new California law prohibiting licensed health care professionals — though not religious counselors — from providing “sexual orientation change ef fort” (SOCE) therapy to patients under 18.

O n D e c e m b e r 3 , i n We l c h v .

Brown, Senior District Judge William B. Shubb, appointed to the court by President George H.W. Bush, found the statute was subject to strict judicial scrutiny and issued a preliminary injunction barring its enforcement against two licensed professionals who provide such treatment and one individual who has under gone therapy of this kind and hopes to make it his professional career.

The next day, in Pickup v. Brown, District Judge Kimberly J. Mueller, appointed to the court by President

Barack Obama, found the statute was subject to the more customary judicial standard of whether it was rational, denying a preliminary injunction sought by an organization of professionals who provide such treatment as well as parents seeking the therapy for their children.

At the heart of the case is the question of whether the law is a content or viewpoint-based regulation of speech, which is subject to the most searching level of judicial scrutiny, or simply part of the state’s regulation of medical practices, which would be upheld as long as the Legislature had a rational basis for enacting it.

To Shubb, it was clear that critical parts of SOCE therapy involve speech by the licensed professional, even though he and Mueller agreed that the law does not apply to what a licensed professional, short of practicing the treatment, might say to a patient about it.

Mueller said the statute applies to “practices,” not to speech as such, and the fact that speech enters into the practice does not change the

underlying analysis required. Courts “have found that the provision of healthcare and other forms of treatment is not expressive conduct,” wrote Mueller, so “plaintif f therapists have not shown they are likely to succeed” in their First Amendment arguments, nor would a claim based on the constitutional rights of minors to receive such treatment likely prevail.

Addressing the autonomy traditionally granted parents in deciding how to raise their children, Mueller noted that the state has a compelling interest in the welfare of minors, finding the SOCE law restrictions comparable to other gover nment medical regulations that have been upheld, such as childhood vaccinations required over the objections of parents.

The Legislature specifically cited reports of ten mental health professional organizations that oppose SOCE, discourage its use, and suggest it could be harmful to minors.

Under rational basis review, it is not necessary that the Legislature’s action been judged “correct,” but

merely that its members could have rationally believed the statute is justified as a means of preventing harm.

Shubb disagreed with Mueller on just about every point, beginning with his proposition that Supreme Court precedent recognizes First Amendment protection for physician-patient treatment speech and that the Ninth Circuit, whose decisions are binding on Califor nia’s federal courts, has “recognized that communication that occurs during psychoanalysis is entitled to First Amendment pr otection.” Regulations that are content-based and not viewpoint-neutral are subjected to strict judicial scrutiny, which puts the burden on the state to show that any restriction imposed is necessary to achieve a compelling state interest and narrowly focused to limit speech no more than absolutely necessary.

Shubb focused on a case that struck down a federal policy prohibiting physicians from recommending marijuana to patients, and rejected the argument that the SOCE statute regulates only

䉴

ANTI-GAY THERAPY, continued on p.27

27

| December 19, 2012

䉴

DISCRIMINATION, from p.26

Short ultimately found a satisfactory apartment using another real estate broker, so his actual damages in the case were nominal, but he sought $25,00 from each defendant for "lost housing opportunities and for emotional distress.” Conti settled on $10,000 per defendant.

Mor e important than the monetary damages is the injunctive relief against the two realty companies. They were ordered to stop discriminating against people funding their rentals through HASA grants or other gover nment housing programs, to adopt written non-discrimination policies, and to undertake training for their owners, employees, and any "independent contractor" agents with whom they do business. Since Manhattan Apartments, in particular, is a very large rental broker with thousands of listings, this injunctive relief may help break a logjam for HASA clients searching for apartments.

The New York Law Journal reported the plaintiffs' attorneys will apply for legal fees authorized for the "pre-

䉴

ANTI-GAY THERAPY, from p.26

conduct and so does not raise First Amendment concerns. Even though he noted a statement by the Ninth Circuit that “the key component of psychoanalysis is the treatment of emotional suffering and depression, not speech,” he insisted that the “talk therapy” elements of SOCE constitute the “communication that occurs during psychoanalysis” that the Ninth Circuit states in a different opinion is “entitled to First Amendment protection.”

Applying strict scrutiny to the state’s assertion it had narrowly tailored a response to a compelling interest, Shubb said that the studies regarding harm to minors subjected to SOCE quoted in the legislative record

vailing parties" under city Human Rights Law. Since this case involved significant investigation and a four day trial, such an award is likely to dwarf the damages awarded to Short and FHJC. Merjian told the Law Journal the sum could be "in the hundreds of thousands of dollars,” a large por tion of which, in Housing Works’ case, would go toward its mission of helping people living with HIV secure appropriate housing. He said he believed this was the first case that had gone to trial since the city ban on source-of-income discrimination was enacted in 2008, all previous cases having been resolved through settlements or pretrial dismissals.

In a Housing Works press release, Merjian said, “This decision reveals that notwithstanding the law, companies continue blatantly to discriminate against indigent, disabled individuals who rely on government subsidies to pay their r ents. It’s hard enough for such individuals to find affordable housing in New York City without facing this crushing and widespread discrimination.”

refer to “probable” or “possible” harm, but not proven harm. In a strict scrutiny analysis, such evidence is not sufficient to sustain a law against a constitutional challenge.

Shubb's injunction prohibits enforcement of the statute, scheduled to go into effect on January 1, only against the thr ee plaintif fs.

Mueller's denial of injunctive relief means the law can go into effect with respect to all other licensed health car e pr ofessionals in Califor nia.

Appeals from the judges' rulings are expected in both cases, so the Ninth Circuit will be addressing the issue soon, most likely during 2013. In the meanwhile, other SOCE practitioners may seek injunctive relief regarding their treatments.

To advertise call 646-452-2496

28

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December 20: Streisand Under Mistletoe.

READING Lesbian Erotica In the December installment of “Drunken! Careening!

Writers!,” host Kathleen Warnock, co-editor with Jewelle Gomez of “Best Lesbian Erotica 2013,” welcomes contributors Rebecca Lynne Fullan, a New York writer who wrote her story for her girlfriend Charlotte, and Sid March, who describes herself as a disastrously queer daughter of Neptune, a gifted escape artist, and an excellent party planner. KGB Bar, 85 E. Fourth St., btwn. Bowery & Second Ave. Dec. 20, 7 p.m. Admission is free.

CABARET Streisand Under Mistletoe

THU.DEC.20

THEATER Let Go and Enjoy Joe Marshall wrote and directs “Girl. A Lopsided Tree Won’t Ruin Christmas,” a story in which Santa croaks, leaving Herby and Vinnie, his two trusted elves, unemployed and in debt, while on the other side of town, the ghetto-fabulous Tym Moss is starring in an Off Broadway show as Flamin’ Cowboy, Prepubescent Girl, High Society Lady, Little Boy, and Drug Addict. When their worlds collide, it’s a lopsided Christmas. Girl. Moss welcomes special guests Pepper Mint (Dec. 20-21), Reverend Yolanda (Dec. 27), and Ernest Kohl (Dec. 28-29). The Players’ Theatre Loft, 115 MacDougal St., btwn. W. Third & Bleecker Sts. Through Dec. 29. Thu., 7:30 p.m.; Fri., 7 p.m.; Sat., 2 & 7 p.m.; Sun., 5 p.m. Tickets are $45 at lopsidedchristmas.com, but you can use Promo Code TYM for discounts.

PERFORMANCE Anti-Slam After a five-month hiatus, the Anti-Slam, where pros and amateurs alike share the stage, with both given equal respect and a place to try out new things, is back. As always, “It Elf” Reverend Jen hosts and performers — of comedy, poetry, music, interpretive dance, primal scream therapy, prose, genius, or stupidity — are given six minutes of stage time and a perfect score of 10. AntiSlam’s new home is Pyramid Club, 101 Ave. A, btwn.

Sixth & Seventh Sts. Every Thu., beginning Dec. 20, 7-9:30 p.m.

REVJEN.COM

Hedwig Would Die for an Invitation Dancing pink flamingos, cans of Spam, and ugly Christmas sweaters — but no sugar plum fairies or snowflakes — come to life on Christmas Eve in “Project Runway” and “Mad Fashion” star Chris March’s “Nutcracker” trailer park mash-up, “The Butt-Cracker Suite.” HERE Arts Center, 145 Sixth Ave. at Dominick St., just below Spring St. Through Dec. 29, Tue.-Sun., 8:30 p.m.; Sat., 10:30 p.m. also; Sun., 4 p.m. also. Additional shows on Dec. 26, 4 p.m.; Dec. 28, 10:30 p.m.

No show on Dec. 25. Tickets are $50 at here.org or 212-352-3101.

PERFORMANCE A New York Christmas Panto

Panto, an historic staple of British popular theater that has never successfully crossed the Pond, is family-orientated satire using certain stock characters and traditions — including cross-dressing, interactivity, and music — to retell a fable in a more recognizable setting. The OPTimistiks present a contemporary rendition of “Dick Whittington,” written by Jenny Green and Mary McLaughlin and directed

by Jenny Lee Mitchell and Wes Seales. Here, a poor upstate boy follows his star to New York City, where he crosses paths with the scheming Sara Pain and bungling Mayor Gloomberg in a quest for success on Simon Trouser's “P-Factor Talent Contest.” Dixon Place, 161A Chrystie St., btwn. Delancey & Rivington Sts. Dec. 21, 22 & 28, 7 p.m.; Dec. 29, 3 p.m. Tickets are $16; $12 for students & seniors at dixonplace.org; $18 & $15 at the door.

PERFORMANCE La Navidad Cubana

Barbra Streisand tribute artist Carla DelVillaggio, whom the New York Post says looks and sounds “uncannily like the real deal,” presents a holiday special, featuring songs including “Memories,” “Jingle Bells,” “What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?,” “It Must Have Been the Mistletoe,” “Grown-Up Christmas List,” “Winter Wonderland,” a couple of Hanukkah songs she remembers from her days at Erasmus Hall High School, and even a couple of Barbra classics. Laurie Beechman Theater, 407 W. 42nd St. Dec. 20 & 22, 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $22 at SpinCycleNYC.com or 212-352-3101, and there is a $15 food & drink minimum.

Gershwins, Feinstein & A Young Protégé Celebrating the release of his new book “The Gershwins and Me” and a CD of 12 Gershwin songs, Michael Feinstein performs “A Gershwin Holiday,” an evening of classic Jazz Age songs from “Strike Up the Band” to “Love Is Here to Stay.” Pianist and arranger Alan Broadbent leads a quintet in accompaniment, and Nick Ziobro, the 16-year-old upstate New York winner of a Feinstein high school competition, joins the engagement as special guest vocalist. Feinstein’s at Loews Regency Hotel, 540 Park Ave. at 61st St. Dec. 20, 8 p.m.; Dec.21-22., 8 & 10:30 p.m. Cover charge is $60, with a $40 food & drink minimum. Reservations at FeinsteinsatLoewsRegency.com or 212-339-4095.

NIGHTLIFE Bingo Times 400 Will Clark celebrates the 400th edition of his “P*rno Bingo,” tonight featuring singer Kylie Edmond, comedian/ drag singer Candy Samples, and Lucas video star Vito Gallo, in an evening benefiting the New York City Anti-Violence Project. Over its run of nearly eight years, the show has raised more than $200,000 for LGBT community groups.

Bubbly Cuban chanteuse and campy cult favorite Margarita Pracatan — armed with a Yamaha keyboard, her thick accent, and a slippery grasp of the English language — wants to spend the holidays with you. She loves you, baby! With a program of holiday classics — plus a tune written for her by the B-52's Fred Schneider!

— she’s on a mission to change your life one song at a time, even if she seldom finds the right key, lands on the right note, or sings the proper lyrics! Laurie Beechman Theater, 407 W. 42nd St. Dec. 21, 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $18 at SpinCycleNYC.com; $20 at the door, with a $15 food/ drink minimum.

Happy Mollydays Poet/ elementary school security guard Molly "Equality" Dykeman presents her second annual Christmas variety show. With the Percocet-fogged haze that is her mind, will she be able to muck her way through holiday numbers, festive choreography, and a glittering array of guest stars, including Michael Musto, Bambi Galore, Will Clark, Jubilee Diamond, and Adam Sank?

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FRI.DEC.21, continued on p.29

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| December 19, 2012

Come find out. Laurie Beechman Theater, 407 West 42nd St. Dec. 21, 9:30 p.m. Admission is $18 at SpinCycleNYC.com or 212-352-3101; $20 at the door. There is a $15 food & drink minimum.

Christmas Stripped & Sullied EndTimes Productions presents the sixth annual edition of “Naked Holidays,” a flesh-filled evening of nontraditional holiday mischief, naughty short plays, music, and merriment. Highlights include "Weredeer," about a man doomed to become a monster on Christmas Eve; "How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Holidays," set in the Fox newsroom during the War on Christmas; "The Worst Jews In the World," in which a Christmasloving Jewish couple feels conflicted; "Dad Came Out This Christmas," about a father who makes the Yuletides gay; and "The Naked People Play," the traditional full-monty “Naked Holidays” closer. Times Square Arts Center, 300 W. 43rd St. Through Dec. 30, Wed.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 7 p.m. No performances Dec. 23-26. Tickets are $57.50 at Telecharge.com or 212-239-6200.

NIGHTLIFE Ritual – In Life & Erotics From casual kisses at the door to formal slave poses, ritual objects such as collars to slave contracts, the BDSM world is rife with concepts of ritual — but what is a ritual?

The Lesbian Sex Mafia hosts Lee Harrington, a spiritual and erotic educator, gender explorer, and eclectic artist, who leads an inquiry into rituals from day-to-day life to intense connections, erotic play, and sacred time. LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St. Dec. 21, 8-10 p.m. Admission is $10; $5 for LSM members. Workshop open to all genders.

SAT.DEC.22

PERFORMANCE Twinkies Never Die at 92Y

Proving that downtown is not the only place for fun and frolic, the 92nd Street Y hosts a series of burlesque shows.

In the Dec. 22 kick-off (at 8 p.m.), the 92Y Harkness Dance Center, the Bishop of Burlesque, and the New York School of Burlesque present “Twinkies Forever!,” a celebration of the lean and lithe man. Featured performers include Rique Shaw, Lucky Charming, Sticky Ricky, and Johnny Panic in a fun, giddy evening out before we all hunker down with family for the holidays. 1395 Lexington Ave. at 92nd St. Tickets are $25 at 92Y.org. Future shows include “Hot Geeks: A Nerd-lesque Review,” for those who prefer brainy men on Jan. 12, 8 p.m., and “Burlesque is LOVE!,” a celebration of romance, where sweethearts are welcome, on Feb. 9, 8 p.m.

From Berlin to the Lower East Side “No One to Be” is an evening in which Jeffrey Marsh offers a queer blend of new urban folk songs and Weimarinspired cabaret. Dixon Place, 161A Chrystie St., btwn. Delancey & Rivington Sts. Admission is free.

Nightmare Before Xmas Frustrated by Hurricane Sandy’s assault on their oncea-year celebration, Halloween Town’s skeletal reindeer and zombie elves invade Christmas Town to stage a depraved twist on Yuletide. Cabaret legend Joey Arias, Obie Awardwinning singer and performance artist John Kelly, and notorious burlesque queen Lee Chapell are joined by a host of half-naked boy-toy imps led by the Ladies of Ill Repute, who dance for your licentious entertainment, ending in a pitch-black Xmas Mass hypnotized by the sounds of DJ

Honey Dijon. Kayvon Zand acts as the Mayor of Mayhem, and Benjamin Ickies leads a demonic symphony that provides a minor chord for the ghoulish carolers who sing hellion selections from “Nightmare Before Christmas” and other dark holiday songs. Costumes are encouraged (and a mask if you wish to save face). Le Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker St., btwn. Sullivan & Thompson Sts. Dec. 22, 11 p.m. Tickets are $25 at lepoissonrouge.com; $35 at the door. Donations of coats for the NY Cares winter coat drive will be accepted.

Because of the Wonderful Things He Does “The Wonderful Wizard Of Song” is a musical revue celebrating the compositions of Harold Arlen and featuring “Stormy Weather,” “Come Rain or Come Shine,” “Paper Moon,” “Accentuate-The-Positive,” “Lets Fall in Love,” and the tunes from “The Wizard of Oz.” The show stars the Three Crooners — George Bugatti, Marcus Goldhaber, and Joe Shepherd — who are joined by Antoinette Henry. After a national tour of 18 cities and a month-long run in Las Vegas, the show, directed by Gene Castle, is in previews, in advance of a January 10 opening, at St. Luke’s Theatre, 308 W. 46th St. Mon., 7 p.m.; Wed., 2 p.m.; Thu., 8 p.m., except 7 p.m. on Dec. 20 & no show on Dec. 24. Tickets are $39.50-$69.50 at telecharge.com or 212-239-6200. For more information, visit thewonderfulwizardofsong.com.

THU.DEC.27

MON.DEC.31

MUSIC A New Bach Entry

NEW YEAR’S EVE La LuPone

New York Bach Artists, Manhattan's newest professional ensemble dedicated solely to the performance of Johann Sebastian Bach’s work, presents its debut concert at St. Ignatius of Antioch Episcopal Church, 552 West End Ave., entrance on W. 87th St. Dec. 27, 8 p.m. The ensemble is comprised of Jorge Avila on violin, Susan Rothholtz on flute, Eliot Bailen on cello, and Douglas Keilitz on keyboard.

Admission is $30; $20 for students & seniors at the door.

Two-time Tony Award-winner Patti LuPone presents two special encore performances of her show “Far Away Places,” which took the cabaret world by storm this year. Backed by a five-piece orchestra, LuPone performs a mixture of contemporary pop and Broadway songs, as well as a selection of Paris and Berlin cabaret songs from the ‘30s and ‘40s. 54 Below, 254 W. 54th St. Doors open at 5:30 p.m. for the 7 p.m. show. The $300 price includes the cover charge, a three-course dinner, a champagne toast, tax, and tip. For the 11 p.m. show, the doors open at 9:30, and the cost is $400.

For reservations, visit 54Below.com or call 866-468-7619.

NIGHTLIFE Bingo With Antonio & Gusty

Judy & Liza The Manhattan Association of Cabarets and Clubs (MAC) named Tommy Femia and Rick Skye, the stars of "Judy and Liza Together Again” (directed by Ricky Ritzel as Mort Lindsey/ Pappy), this year’s best duo. Their dizzying hollers and whoops are not being wasted on the Loop — they’re right here in New York, at Don’t Tell Mama, 343 W. 46th St. A special New Year’s Eve performance includes a sumptuous banquet. Dec. 31, 9 p.m.-1 a.m.

Tickets are $175 at limor.shekhter@donttellmamanyc. com or 212-213-4485, ext. 13. On Dec. 22, Jan. 12 & 26, Feb. 9 & 23, 8:30 p.m., Femia and Skye also perform their show, with a $25 cover and a two-drink minimum. Reservations for those shows at 212-757-0788.

GALLERY The Eros of Italy European-based curator Peter Weiermair, a specialist in the field of the male nude who is particularly knowledgeable about gay photographers working in Italy, has selected work by 11 such artists from different generations whose work ranges from documentary to conceptual. The exhibition he brings to the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, consisting of 60-70 photographs and one video, is titled “Diaries: An Anthology of Photography from Italy,” and he writes, “The unifying theme of the work is the male nude, its beauty, Eros, and sexuality.” 26 Wooster St., btwn. Grand & Canal Sts. Through Feb. 3. Tue.-Sun., noon-6 p.m. More details at leslielohman.org.

SUN.DEC.23

PERFORMANCE Lettuce Entertain You

Hedda Lettuce’s crisp comedy and delicious song parodies have made her festive holiday celebrations a hit for more than a decade. With “Lettuce Rejoice 2012!,” she returns with classics such as “Here Comes Tranny Clause,” “Sleigh Ride,” her tribute to Grindr, and “Do You Think that He’s Queer?,” a fag hag’s plaintive ballad.

Hedda also offers a demented homage to the late Amy Winehouse. Paul Leschen accompanies Hedda on piano.

Metropolitan Room, 34 W. 22nd St. Dec. 23, 4 & 9:30 p.m. Admission is $22-$25; reservations at 212-206-0440.

Gilbert & Sullivan The New York Gilbert & Sullivan Players continues a New Year’s Eve tradition when artistic director Albert Bergeret and his merry company perform select G & S scenes, songs, and parodies, and step up to the popular tourde-force challenge — when they and their 25-piece orchestra respond, in impromptu fashion, to audience requests.

Peter Norton Symphony Space, 2535 Broadway at 95th St. Dec. 31, 8 p.m. Ticket prices, which include complementary champagne, are $77-$97 at 212-864-5400.

Drag performer Gusty Winds celebrates her birthday in style, with an appearance by Cockyboys model Antonio Manero at Will Clark’s “P*rno Bingo.”

Tonight’s game, which offers erotic prizes, benefits the Ali Forney Center, which provides housing and social services for New York’s homeless LGBT youth.

The Ritz, 369 W. 46th St. Dec. 27, 7-9 p.m. There is no cover charge.

StormQueer Singer/ songwriter, playwright, and performance artist Dan Fishback and comedian Jessica Halem host “Stormqueer: A New Year’s Extravaganza for the New World Disorder.” They are joined on stage by Erin Markey, Glenn Marla, Shane Shane, Max Steele, and Kit Yan, with a special midnight performance by singer Molly Pope.

Dixon Place, 161A Chrystie St., btwn. Delancey & Rivington Sts. Dec. 31, 10 p.m.; doors open at 9. Tickets are $20 at dixonplace.org; $25 at the door, and include a bubbly toast at midnight.

TUE.DEC.25

PERFORMANCE Santa Klez

Metropolitan Klezmer, which brings eclectic exuberance — drawing on wedding dance, trance, folk, swing, and tango styles — to Yiddish musical genres, plays Christmas Day at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, 36 Battery Pl., btwn. First Pl. & West Side. Dec. 25, 1-2:30 p.m. Admission is $15; $12 for students & seniors at mjhnyc.org.

JACQUES JEAN TITZIOUV

FRI.DEC.21, from p.28

WILL CLARK

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December 19, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com

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SUPREME COURT, from p.13

tion. The Second Circuit's ruling is only binding in the handful of states making up that federal judicial cir cuit.

In granting the solicitor general's petition (not Clement's petition), the Court added two questions: First, in light of the solicitor general's agreement with the Second Circuit's ruling, did Verrilli have standing to appeal the case to the Supreme Court, and, second, does BLAG have such standing.

In both the DOMA and Prop cases, then, the Supreme Court added questions to those posed by the petitioners, signaling the possibility it could find it does not have jurisdiction to rule on the merits in either. Under the Constitution, the Court is limited to deciding actual "cases and controversies," which it has construed to mean that only a party with a distinct personal stake

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MARRIAGE BANS, from p.11

that trend by winning four out of four marriage ballot initiatives on November 6. Many leading political figures, including President Barack Obama, have endorsed gay marriage.

But when the US Supreme Court announced on December 14 that

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BANNED IN BOSTON, from p.15

and his famous volume “Leaves of Grass,” which included the Calamus poems, Whitman’s homoerotic paean to “comradeship” among men who loved men.

First published in 1855, “Leaves of Grass” had gone through a number of editions, and its erotic content had forced Whitman to publish the book himself. But in 1881, a distinguished Boston publisher, James Osgood — who’d published Emer son, Twain, Hawthorne, and Dickens — approached Whitman about releasing a definitive, one-volume edition of the work.

Whitman readily accepted, but wrote Osgood, “Fair warning on one point: the sexuality odes about which the original row was started and kept up so long are all retained and must go in the same as ever.”

Osgood agreed.

By this time, Whitman’s liter ary r eputation was alr eady wellestablished, not just in America but inter nationally. Indeed, in Great Britain, the first public associations o f g a y m e n w e r e a s k e i n o f Wa l t Whitman Clubs, organized by the poet’s queer devotees.

in the outcome of a case has "standing" to bring their case to federal court. Plaintiffs must have standing to initiate a lawsuit, and appellants must have standing to appeal a trial court's ruling. If the petitioners in one or both of these cases don't have standing, then that case is not a real "case or controversy" for constitutional purposes and so is outside the court's jurisdiction.

As a result, the court’s December 7 actions raise all sorts of interesting questions that will probably keep scholars and commentators busy speculating fr om now until whenever the cases are disposed of.

If the court finds that none of the petitioners have standing, it will dismiss these appeals — and a ruling on standing also affects the jurisdiction of the courts of appeals. Presumably, a party that does not have standing to appeal to the Supreme Court also lacks standing to appeal a trial court's ruling to a cir cuit

court of appeals.

That technicality would not affect the outcome in Windsor's case, since she won at the district and appeals court levels. She would be entitled to her tax refund in such an event. But her victory at the district court level would establish no pr ecedent. And if the petitioners in the Windsor case lack standing, then the very same parties lacked standing in the First Circuit DOMA case, where the 1996 law was also ruled unconstitutional at both the district and appellate levels. The district court ruling in that case, then, might also only be binding on the particular parties and their individual claims for federal benefits.

At the end of the day, I don’t believe the Supreme Court will find that the US solicitor general lacks standing to bring these cases before it. The number of federal district courts that have ruled against

the constitutionality of Section 3 is steadily mounting, more lawsuits are in the pipeline, and a nationwide resolution of its constitutionality is needed.

As a result, my conclusion is that the court will likely proceed t o t h e m e r i t s o n Wi n d s o r, a n d I think there is a good chance it will decide, by at least a vote of 5-4, that the lower courts are correct in holding it unconstitutional. The progress of the marriage equality movement may help to influence the court in reaching that conclusion. As of January 1, same-sex marriage will be legal in nine states and the District of Columbia, and if Judge Walker's ruling eventually goes into effect, in California as well. As the portion of the country living in marriage equality states increases, the "anti-democratic" effect of a Supreme Court ruling on this issue decreases.

it would hear two marriage-related cases, lesbian and gay groups were celebrating, but also muted in their expectations of what could come from the decisions.

“I think rather than spending our time on predicting something we can’t control, we should focus on something we can control,”

Wolfson said.

What the community can control is “winning more states and winning over more hearts and minds,” he said. “That’s what we can control and that’s what will give us our best shot.”

So while the circumstances leading to interracial marriage bans being

overturned illustrates the political inertia that can slow the pace of change, that history also shows that they ultimately were overturned.

“Judges, like elected officials, can do the right thing, and it helps the country and puts their legacy on the right side of history,” Wolfson said.

But Comstock denounced the Osgood edition as “Another ‘classic’ for which exemption is named, an attempt by an author of our own time to clothe the most sensual thoughts with the flowers and fancies of poetry, making the lascivious conception only more insidious and demoralizing.”

The Boston practitioners of Comstockery targeted the Osgood edition of “Leaves of Grass,” and as the result of their pressure, the Boston district attor ney sent the publisher a letter telling him the book of poems had been classified as “obscene” and demanding elimination of the contentious passages.

When Osgood buckled and sought to make the changes demanded by the censors, Whitman rebelled, broke his contract with him, and took the book to a Philadelphia publisher who brought out an unexpurgated version — the first printing of which sold out in a single day!

The Watch and Ward Society was supported financially by the cream of the Boston aristocracy — its treasurer for 40 years was the immensely wealthy Godfrey Lowell Cabot, and its

contributors included such famous family names as Coolidge, Lodge, Saltonstall, Weld, and Forbes. The Reverend Endicott Peabody, headmaster of the prestigious Groton School (and grandfather of a later Massachusetts governor of the same name) was a vice president of the Society, and Julia Ward Howell, author of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” was another major supporter.

With roots like these, the Society’s censorship crusades went on for many decades, targeting and successfully instigating prosecutions of some of American literature’s greatest works — from Theodore Dreiser’s “An American T ragedy” to Eugene O’Neill’s Pulitzer winning play ”Strange Interlude” and Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid o f V i r g i n i a Wo o l f ? ” T h e S o c i e t y even succeeded in having the great H.L. Mencken arrested for selling a copy of his magazine American Mercury.

Meanwhile, the phrase “banned in Boston” made bestsellers out of many books and plays eagerly snapped up by the literate in the rest of the country in search of some titillation.

With the federal Comstock Law

undermined by a 1959 Supreme Court decision against the banning of “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” the Watch and Ward Society expired in 1967, the victim, as Miller writes, of “the secularization of society, the increased frankness about sex and sexuality in literatur e, [and] the diversity of a city where the old families no longer controlled many key levers of power…”

Miller’s book makes a fascinating read, and a vital one — for, as he writes in closing, “Many of the attempts at book and theatrical censorship in our own time stem from the same root causes as those that led to the founding of the Watch and Ward Society — fear of social and cultural change and an attempt to shore up traditional values. Today, one can simply substitute gay par enting for heter osexual sex, and J.K. Rowling’s sorcery for Sinclair Lewis’ affronts to religion.”

Miller’s “Banned in Boston illuminates a particuolarly sinister chapter in America’s literary history. And, as my friend Jules Feiffer has often remarked, “Sex is still America’s dirty little secret.” This superbly researched book helps us to understand why.

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