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February 1, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com

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February 1, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com

POLITICS

Advocates, Dems Reject Christie Referendum Call

BY PAUL SCHINDLER ccusing the Democratic leaders of the New Jersey Legislature of treating “hundreds of years of societal and religious tradition” like “a political football,” Republican Governor Chris Christie is calling for a ballot measure this November on whether the state will legalize marriage by same-sex couples.

Speaking on January 24, the same day the Senate Judiciary Committee approved a same-sex marriage bill on an 8-4 vote, Christie said he would veto the legislation.

“I made this opinion really clear when I was running for office in 2009,” he told reporters. “It’s clear to me that the Legislature knows this as well.”

Passing the marriage bill, he said, could only lead to “stalemate or deadlock.”

The November presidential election, Christie argued, would provide the largest turnout of voters to decide the matter, rather than just “121 people” — the full membership of the Senate and Assembly plus the governor himself.

Later in the day, Senate President Steve Sweeney, asked by a reporter why the Legislature would pursue a bill that the governor has said he would veto, responded, “The point of going through a fight for civil rights? Are you kidding me?

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For standing up for people to give them the same rights? I’m offended by that.”

The Star-Ledger reported that Cory Booker, Newark’s African-American Democratic mayor, responded to Christie’s statement by saying, “I shudder to think what would have happened if the civil rights gains, heroically established by courageous lawmakers in the 1960s, were instead conveniently left up to popular votes in our 50 states.”

Assemblyman Reed Gusciora, an out gay Princeton Democrat, upped the ante on Booker’s comment, releasing a statement on January 26 saying, “Governors Lester Maddox and George Wallace would have found allies in Chris Christie over efforts by the Justice Department to end segregation in the South.”

Many New Jersey voters may judge Booker’s framing of the civil rights argument more palatable than Gusciora’s.

Since the late 1990s, the gay and lesbian community has lost dozens of statewide ballot questions regarding marriage equality, and leading advocates often speak out forcefully against the idea that the community’s basic rights should be put up to a popular vote in a nation where the protection of minority rights is enshrined in the Constitution.

Steven Goldstein, the chair of Garden State Equality, New Jersey’s LGBT advocacy group, in a statement posted on the group’s website, said, “Our entire plan

NEW JERSEY OFFICE OF THE GOVERNOR

Jersey gay marriage side says no popular vote on civil rights

Governor Chris Christie’s January 24 call for a referendum to settle the question of marriage equality in New Jersey got a cool reception.

this go-round has included the assumption of a veto. We have a methodical plan: First pass the bill. Then endure the veto.

Then work on an override vote.”

Several weeks ago, however, Goldstein, asked about the prospects for overriding a Christie veto, said, “We are realistic.” He added, however, that he hoped the governor would not stand in the way of Republicans supporting the marriage bill.

Democrats hold 24 of 40 seats in the Senate and 46 of the 76 Assembly seats currently occupied. Both margins fall short of the percentage needed to override a veto.

The failure of Senator Christopher Bateman, a Somerset County Republican who is the deputy leader of his party’s conference, to vote for the bill in the Judiciary Committee is likely a sign of the difficulty advocates will face in bringing over a significant number of GOP legislators.

Goldstein noted that Lambda Legal, which won a 2006 State Supreme Court ruling that New Jersey must give samesex couples all the rights of marriage, even if under a different name, is back in court arguing that the civil union law enacted in response does not meet that mandate.

Christie Doesn’t Like Ike President Dwight Eisenhower resisted segregationist efforts to hold civil rights referendum

BY DUNCAN OSBORNE hen New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said he would veto any gay mar riage bill that arrived on his desk and suggested the state instead hold a referendum on whether same-sex couples can marry in the Garden State, he reached back into American history and asserted that civil rights proponents would have welcomed a ballot initiative.

“The fact of the matter is, I think people would have been happy to have a referendum on civil rights rather than fighting and dying in the streets in the South,” the Republican governor said on January 24.

History disagrees.

In 1957, Southern supporters

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Eisenhower had a very different view of civil rights referendums than does New Jersey’s Republican governor.

of segregation were pressing for a national referendum on civil rights laws. Richard B. Russell, a Georgia Democrat, wanted such a referendum regarding legislation proposed by the Eisenhower administration.

Describing that legislation in the New York Times, Russell called it “the most cunningly devised and contrived piece of legislation I have ever seen” and added, “If you propose to move into the South in this fashion, you may as well prepare your concentration camps, for there are not enough jails to hold the people of the South who will today oppose the use of raw Federal power to forcibly commingle white and Negro children in the same schools and in the same places of entertainment.”

Northern Republicans and Democrats rejected Russell’s

doomsday scenario.

“Seldom have I seen so many ghosts under a single bed,” said Everett M. Dirksen, an Illinois Republican who became the Senate minority leader in 1959.

“The heavens will not rent asunder. The earth will not rock and roll.”

At a press conference held the day after Russell made his comments, President Dwight Eisenhower, also a Republican, told reporters that the civil rights legislation would not make “a very good subject for a referendum, even if you could have one.”

Russell again sought a national referendum in an amendment to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 when that legislation was before Congress. Most Americans did not know what was in the bill,

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IKE, continued on p.9

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POLITICS

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Christie Appoints Gay Man to State Supreme Court Bruce A. Harris would become first out justice in New Jersey history

BY PAUL SCHINDLER ew Jersey’s Republ i c a n g o v e r n o r, Chris Christie, has appointed that state’s first out gay Supreme Court justice.

According to the Newark StarLedger, Christie named Bruce A. Harris, the African-American gay mayor of Chatham Bor ough, and Phil Kwon, a Bergen County Asian-American who worked under the governor when he was US attorney, to fill two vacancies on the high court.

Chatham Borough is a community of about 9,000 that is west of Newark in Morris County, and Harris, a Republican, was elected mayor there less than three months ago. He first became a member of the Chatham Borough Council in 2004 and served as its president, beginnning in 2007.

An attor ney, Harris is of counsel at Greenberg Traurig, an international law firm, representing, according to the firm’s website, “banks, specialty finance companies, and other lenders and borrowers in all aspects of commercial lending, asset-based lending, acquisition financing, and real estate financing.”

Harris earned his law degree at Yale and also has an MBA from Boston University.

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like marriage equality, he viewed the LGBT community as an important part of New Jersey, and that he wanted his administration to have a good working relationship with Garden State Equality,” Goldstein said in an email message.

“That has been the case every step of the way.”

With the strong support of the Legislature’s Democratic leadership, a marriage equality bill was reintroduced this month in Trenton, after failing to gain traction in the final days of the administration of Democratic Governor Jon Corzine in January 2010.

When the new bill was Out gay Republican attorney Bruce Harris, the mayor of Chatham Borough, has been appointed to the New announced, Goldstein Jersey Supreme Court. acknowledged that Christie, who favors the state’s In announcing the appoint- existing civil union law over gay ments, Christie said he aims marriage, would veto the bill to remake the court, which he and that achieving a veto-proof blamed for hamstringing New majority was a tall order.

“He said he is going to veto it Jersey government on issues such as school financing and and we take him as his word,” affordable housing, the Star- Goldstein said of Christie. “We are not naïve. That’s not going Ledger reported.

Steven Goldstein, the chair to change.”

On the prospects for overridof Garden State Equality (GSE), the state’s LGBT rights lobby, ing such a veto, he said, “We are reacted with strong praise for realistic.”

At the same time, Goldstein the governor.

“When I met with Governor — whom Christie phoned just Christie in 2010 at his request, prior to announcing the court he told me that though we nominations — credited the would differ on some issues governor with help on other

IKE, from p.8

the Times quoted Russell saying. They were confused by “emotionalism” and should have a chance to vote on the “new social order” that the bill contained, he argued.

Dirksen would have none of it.

“Do we have legislative responsibility or don’t we?” he said during the debate on the Senate floor. “I’m ready to accept my responsibility. I’m not going to pass the buck to the people back home and say, ‘I’m thinking about the next election.’ And they would say, ‘Haven’t you got any guts to stand up under the Constitution of the United States?’”

In a 67 to 22 vote, the Senate defeated Russell’s amendment. Only three Republicans voted for the Russell amendment.

The other 19 supporters were Southern Democrats as well as Robert C. Byrd from West Virginia and Frank J. Lausche

from Ohio.

Russell wanted the referendum in 1964 because he knew voters would likely oppose the Civil Rights Act. Various anti-discrimination provisions had been the subject of ballot initiatives across the country and Americans had consistently opposed them.

“I point out that every time any phase of this issue has been submitted to the people of the United States in a referendum, whether it was North, East, South, or West, with the single exception of Kansas City, where the margin was exceedingly slim, the people have voted against the type of government intrusion that is proposed in this bill,” Russell said during a Senate floor debate.

While Dr. Martin Luther King, a civil rights leader who was assassinated in 1968, was part of a 1967 effort to use state and local referendums to express disapproval for the Vietnam War, pub-

critical GSE goals, a theme he reiterated in the wake of Harris’ nomination to the high court.

“The governor and his staff were invaluable in helping us pass the Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights, the nation’s strongest anti-bullying law that the governor signed in January 2011,” Goldstein said in his statement on the high court nominations.

The national Log Cabin Republicans saluted Christie’s choice and held out hope the governor could be brought around on marriage equality.

“New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is the future of the Republican Party,” the group’s executive director, R. Clarke Cooper, said in a written statement. “This appointment is consistent with Governor Christie’s strong support for nondiscrimination, including signing the strongest anti-bullying legislation in the nation. As the New Jersey Legislature considers passing marriage equality this session, Log Cabin Republicans remain hopeful Governor Christie will continue his inclusive leadership by agreeing with Republican champions across the country that freedom means freedom for everybody.”

According to the Star-Ledger, Kwon, if confirmed, would become the State Supreme Court’s first Asian-American justice.

Harris and Kwan were nomi-

lished reports from the ‘50s and ‘60s show that civil rights groups consistently opposed putting civil rights laws on the ballot.

A 1964 Seattle Post-Intelligencer story on a vote in that city that defeated a housing anti-discrimination law quoted Jack Tanner, the northwest president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), saying “Actually, placing this ordinance on the ballot was unconstitutional... When you are dealing with rights granted by our Constitution there is no such thing as ‘majority rules.’ The Constitution grants rights to minorities, and the majority should not be able to vote down these rights.”

In 1952, Hobart LaGrone, the head of the NAACP’s Albuquerque branch, said of a referendum on a civil rights law in that city, “The law must be upheld if we are to demonstrate that democracy is more

nated to fill vacancies left by Justice Virginia Long, who reaches the mandatory retirement age in March, and former Justice John Wallace Jr., whom Christie declined to renominate last year.

In 2006, when the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the state must offer all the rights and benefits of marriage to samesex couples either through marriage equality or a parallel institution such as civil unions, Long sided with a minority dissent that argued that only marriage would meet the constitutional requirement. Wallace voted with the majority.

Last year, when Lambda Legal asked the State Supreme Court to weigh evidence that civil unions did not deliver what the 2006 ruling mandated, all six sitting justices agreed that the issue would need to be litigated at the trial level to create a factual record, but Long voted with two other justices in arguing that the high court should hear arguments “to guide us on the best procedural course for creating such a record.”

The Lambda motion was dismissed without prejudice, and the legal advocacy group is currently advancing its case at the trial level.

Wallace was no longer on the court when the Lambda motion was heard.

than a mere word to all of us.”

In 1963, members of the Cambridge Nonviolent Action Committee, a Cambridge, Maryland group, opposed a referendum on a civil rights law in that city.

“We are not going to submit the constitutional rights of Negroes in Cambridge to the vote of the white majority,” said Philip Savage in a Times article.

Press reports show civil rights leaders opposing such referendums in Virginia, Florida, Arkansas, New York, and other states. While not quoting anyone by name, the Times reported in 1964 that they saw them as a possible “seriously unsettling trend” and that expected votes in Maryland and California were “potentially horrible examples of the tyranny of the majority.”

Ultimately, voters in California put some limits on state anti-discrimination laws while voters in Maryland rejected any rollback on civil rights.

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February 1, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com

POLITICS

State Legislative Dems Left at Altar Money pours in to four GOP senators for gay marriage, not to party providing bulk of votes

BY ANDY HUMM he four Republican New York state senators who voted for same-sex marriage last June are reaping a windfall from gay, liberal, and some conservative donors who support marriage equality, but virtually none of that money is flowing to the Democrats who provided the overwhelming majority of the votes for the bill — including those who, like the GOP supporters, switched their votes to yes or who live in highly contested districts.

NEW YORK STATE SENATE

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“I’m disappointed, obviously,” said Democratic Senator Tony Avella, who raised $46,245 since his yes vote from conservative northern Queens. “I defeated someone who would have defeated marriage equality, and I made it a big issue in my campaign. I would appreciate the same amount of support.”

He beat anti-gay 40-year incumbent Frank Padavan in 2010.

“I got them to the spot where Republican votes made a difference,” Avella said.

Avella will also be up against the new district lines that Republican senators put forth January 26, a blatant gerry-

Queens Senators Tony Avella and Joe Addabbo are pro-marriage equality Democrats in tough districts who have not benefited from significant contributions since last June’s vote.

What’s more, $100,000 of the money given to these four Republicans has already been passed through by them to the New York Senate Republican Campaign Committee to support anti-gay senators and help preserve the one-vote Republican majority.

Among the GOP senators, Roy McDonald of Saratoga pulled in $447,000 since voting for marriage equality, “27 times more than he had raised in the same period in 2009,” according to the New York Times. Similar amounts were donated to Republicans Mark Grisanti of Buffalo ($325,000), James Alesi of East Rochester ($400,000), and Stephen Saland of Poughkeepsie ($425,000).

The Times did not note that Democrats are getting stiffed. Democrat Senator Joe Addabbo, who represents conservative Howard Beach and switched his vote from no to yes, raised just 36,000 in the same period. Shirley Huntley of Jamaica, Queens, who also made a crucial switch to yes despite her strong religious misgivings about same-sex marriage, raised $7,500

mander that Governor Andrew Cuomo’s spokesperson called “unacceptable” and former Mayor Ed Koch said was “dishonorable” because most of them had signed a pledge he wrote to do non-partisan redistricting. The plan creates new, more conservative districts and packs more voters into Democrat-leaning city districts and fewer into upstate GOP districts. The Wall Street Journal noted the plan would also force Democrats such as Avella to run against other Democratic incumbents.

Last July, Maggie Gallagher of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), which is fighting same-sex marriage and partnership recognition nationwide, said she was “confident” that a four-year, $2 million campaign in New York could turn around enough seats in both houses of the Legislature to undo same-sex marriage in the state.

The group did not respond to a request for comment on its strategy.

Assemblyman Daniel O’Donnell, an out gay Upper West Side Democrat who led the charge on marriage equality in

his chamber, saw the Times story about the gay money going to Republicans and said, “None of it has come to me. Part of this business involves raising money.

[Assembly Speaker] Shelly Silver has led the battle and I led the campaign. We put this out front and center when people in the governor’s office didn’t think we could do it.”

Gay donors, O’Donnell said, tell him, “‘We don’t want to take you for granted,’ but that is what has happened. When the larger gay community doesn’t recognize who fought the battle for so long, it makes the next battle harder.”

The Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA), which has passed the Assembly four times, has been blocked by the Republican-controlled Senate and did not pass when Democrats had narrow control two years ago.

“We can’t do that without a strong, Democratic majority,” O’Donnell said of GENDA. “At my first fundraiser after we won same-sex marriage, only my friends came,” he recalled. “I go to the dinners for the Victory Fund, which does great work and where people buy tables for $10,000. But I didn’t get a single check from any of those donors.”

The group endorsed him, O’Donnell said, but that’s about it.

Some of the big money that went to the Republican four is coming from conservatives unlikely to give to any Democrat. Paul Singer, CEO of Elliott Management, has given to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the American Foundation For Equal Rights, which is fighting Proposition 8 in court, but he is mostly dedicated to electing right-wing Republicans across the country who will stop LGBT rights and other progressive legislation as well as roll back the rights of labor. He and David Koch, who with his brother is funding a campaign to restrict ballot access across the country, maxed out to the four GOP senators who voted for marriage equality.

But big donations to the Republicans were also received from people such as Broadway producer Daryl Roth, who heroically brought Larry Kramer’s “The Normal Heart” back to Broadway last year. She and her husband Steven donated $16,800 to Saland, Grisanti, and McDonald. In 2008, they had made 92 percent of their political donations to Democrats and four percent to Republicans.

“My son [producer Jordan Roth] is happily planning to marry soon,” Roth told the Times regarding her motivation.

She told Gay City News, “We wanted to support people who had come to a courageous decision from a different place.

It wasn’t a decision not to support someone else.”

But none of the Roths’ donations were to the Democrats who switched votes or come from contested districts. The ask for the Republicans came from “people in the state administration,” she said, but would not mention whom.

Informed that a good chunk of the money was being passed on to the Republican’s general fund to elect GOP senators, Roth said, “I don’t want that to be the truth.”

She explained, “I’m really more political through my work.” Indeed, she has indeed produced groundbreaking shows, including six Pulitzer Prize winners — “August Osage County,” “Anna in the Tropics,” “Proof,” “Wit,” “How I Learned to Drive,” and “Three Tall Women.”

Some of the more familiar gay names who turn up on Republican disclosures include KPMG’s Michael Katovitz, attorney Marc Wolinsky, former Gay Men’s Health Crisis board president Louis Bradbury, and Patrick Guerriero, the former Log Cabin Club president, but in relatively smaller amounts. None made similar donations to Democratic senators or Assembly members during the last six months, according to State Board of Elections records, but most give to other Democrats including Cuomo.

The governor, in fact, has been the beneficiary of substantial donations from gay people — including at an LGBT fundraiser in California — for his leadership in the marriage equality fight.

A Democratic source said the party has been reaching out to the gay and progressive donors who gave to the Republicans, but nothing came through by the end of January’s reporting period.

The Senate Republican Campaign Committee (SRCC) has five times the cash the Democratic Senatorial Campaign (DSCC) has at this point.

Queens Senator Michael Gianaris, head of the DSCC, whose Democratic conference produced 29 of the 33 votes for same-sex marriage, said that while he is pleased that a few Republican senators voted for the marriage equality bill, “one good vote doesn’t justify a conference dominated by a conservative ideology that wouldn’t let bills like GENDA and housing assistance for people with HIV see the light of day.”

Gianaris spoke of the larger civil rights agenda that the Democratic majority supports, including what it did pass in the brief period they held power prior to 2011. New York Civil Liberties Union executive director Donna Lieberman called that session “probably the most

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SENATE, continued on p.14

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POLITICS

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Gay Man Seeks Hudson Valley House Seat Matt Alexander, Wappingers Falls mayor, challenges Nan Hayworth, first-term GOP rep

BY PAUL SCHINDLER crowd of many dozens were on hand in Tribeca on January 19 to meet and support Matt Alexander, the openly gay mayor of upstate Wappingers Falls, who is seeking the Democratic nomination to challenge incumbent Republican Congresswoman Nan Hayworth in the November election.

Alexander was hosted by Wickham Boyle and Zachary Minor in their North Moore Street apartment, and the congressional hopeful was joined at the fundraiser by two Democratic House veterans — East Side Representative Carolyn Maloney and Barney Frank, the out gay Massachusetts representative who recently announced his retirement after 16 terms.

Noting the swing nature of New York’s 19th congressional district that Hayworth represents, Frank said the November contest “will be one of the most watched races of the year. If Matt doesn’t win, we won’t retake the House.”

Democrats need a pickup of 25 seats to regain the majority they lost in the 2010 elections. John Hall, a two-term

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Wappingers Falls Mayor Matt Alexander with Representatives Carolyn Maloney and Barney Frank at a January 19 fundraiser.

incumbent Democrat, lost to Hayworth that year by a five-percentage point margin. Hall was first elected in 2006 by ousting six-term Republican Sue Kelly in a tighter race, but he won his first reelection race, in 2008, by a wide margin.

Alexander, an Alabama native who grew up in upstate Orange County, is a graduate of Notre Dame University and was a certified public accountant, with experience auditing the financial services industry, prior to entering politics.

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The 45-year-old is currently serving his third term as mayor of Wappingers Falls, a municipality of 5,000 in Dutchess County, just east of the Hudson River.

An avid conservationist, Alexander told the crowd at the fundraiser that, as mayor, he clashed with Hayworth over watershed regulation, among many issues.

He recalled that in his first meeting with Hayworth after her election, she said, regarding the scope of the federal government’s responsibilities, “We’re only here for interstate highways and national defense.” When Alexander raised his concerns about the Hudson watershed and pollution in Wappinger Lake, which borders his municipality, Hayworth, he said, responded by saying regulation was stifling business in the area.

“Sue Kelly was not the monster this woman is,” Alexander said.

Maloney agreed with Frank about the importance of Alexander’s challenge to Hayworth, saying the 19th congressional district race was one of the 25 Democrats needed to win.

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ALEXANDER, continued on p.32

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February 1, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com

POLITICS

Gingrich’s Erratic Swings on Gay Rights Georgia Republican’s positions followed arc of an opportunistic career

BY DUNCAN OSBORNE n his autobiography “House and Home,” Steve Gunderson, the gay Republican who represented a Wisconsin district in the House from 1980 to 1996, describes the chats he had with Newt Gingrich, a current contender for the Republican presidential nomination, during his last year in Congress. “Newt kept telling me that I could have a great future in Congress, if only I would pursue it,” Gunderson wrote. “When I would demur, suggesting that I was unlikely ever to move up in the leadership for various reasons (he knew very well that I meant my homosexuality), Newt would shake his head vigorously.”

Gingrich responded with “Steve, this town recognizes competence. You are a very competent person. Use it!”

Gunderson continued, “What was most important to me in this were the words that remained unsaid: ‘Steve, as far as I’m concerned, your being gay needn’t keep you from going as far as you can go in politics.’”

Gunderson seemed dismayed when Gingrich told him in July of that year — after the book was written but before its release two months later — that his political career was at an end. Then the speaker of the House, Gingrich told Gunderson that he would not be the chairman of the House Agriculture Committee.

Paraphrasing Gingrich, Gunderson, in a 1996 interview with ABC News, said Gingrich told him, “There are a number of people in our party’s leadership and in the party who don’t want an openly gay person to be chairman of a major committee because it somehow legitimizes homosexuality.” Gunderson had, by that time, been outed by a far-right Republican colleague during the debate over the Defense of Marriage Act. Gingrich warned Gunderson, “I just want you to know that if you run, the conservatives are going to run a major independent expenditure against you.”

Asked by ABC if his decision to step down was related to his sexual orientation, Gunderson said, “Unfortunately,

NEWS BRIEFS Live Free or Die? As Democratic Governor John Lynch used his January 31 State of the State speech to reiterate that he would veto any bill repealing New Hampshire’s 2009 marriage equality law, Republicans there, who dominate the current

GAGE SKIDMORE: FACEBOOK.COM/ NEWT GINGRICH

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Newt Gingrich’s flip flops on gay rights play into conservative fears about his erratic public posture.

yes.” This is classic Gingrich: expansive rhetoric on the one hand, and cold political calculation on the other. For the 68-year-old Gingrich, the calculation wins out much of the time.

Gingrich began his political career in Georgia and was teaching history at a small college there when he ran for a House seat in 1974 and 1976. He lost both races. Gingrich then changed his politics.

In a 1994 profile of Gingrich in the New York Times, people who knew him before he won his House seat in 1978 described him as “progressive” and “reasonable and rational.” His former minister, Brantley Harwell, told the Times, “He saw that swinging to the right as Reagan did was the way to get to the goal he wanted, which was speaker. He sees what will help him; whether he believes it or not, he uses it.”

Gingrich spent years in relative obscurity as one member of what appeared at the time to be a permanent Republican minority in the House, though he eventually gained a reputation as a bomb thrower. Gingrich, as he regularly reminds Republican primary voters, spent the 16 years between 1978 and 1994, when the GOP won control of the House, laying the groundwork for that 1994 takeover. Gingrich took control of

GOPAC, a political group, and trained Republican candidates in a more aggressive, some say destructive, form of politics. GOPAC’s work aided the Republicans in winning the House in 1994.

In 1988, Gingrich filed ethics charges against Jim Wright — a Texas Democrat who was then the speaker — that led to Wright’s resignation the following year.

Gingrich’s colleagues rewarded him by making him the Republican whip.

As whip, Gingrich let the Gang of Seven, a group of House freshmen that included Rick Santorum, also a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, use a scandal over members being allowed to overdraw their House bank accounts without penalty to promote internal reforms. That scandal also contributed to the 1994 Republican takeover. And with that takeover, Gingrich was elected speaker.

As speaker, Gingrich presided over four very contentious years. Republicans battled with President Bill Clinton over the federal budget, welfare reform, and a host of other issues. Those frequently bruising fights culminated in a failed effort by Republicans to remove Clinton from office after he lied in a deposition about having sex with a White House intern. Years later Americans would learn that Gingrich was cheating on his wife with one of his Congressional staffers, who is now his wife, during those impeachment proceedings.

In 1998, Gingrich faced ethics charges of his own. The Republican Party lost five House seats in midterm elections that year, as well, though the party maintained control of the House. That dismal showing led Gingrich to resign his seat in early 1999.

On gay issues, Gingrich has taken positions that resemble his career. While never a friend of the queer community, at times he has sounded sympathetic while at other moments he has attacked.

During his current run, Gingrich has wholeheartedly embraced the social conservative’s positions on marriage and other issues.

Gingrich has promised to reinstate the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, defend the federal Defense of Marriage

Act, a 1996 law that bars federal recognition of same-sex marriages and allows that states to do the same, and to support an amendment to the US Constitution that would effectively ban same-sex marriage anywhere.

In 1994, when he was the incoming speaker, Gingrich’s posture toward the queer community was decidedly different. “I think that on most things most days, the vast majority of practicing homosexuals are good citizens,” he told the Washington Blade, a gay newspaper, that year. “So why would you then say that, of all the different groups you can pick on, this is the one group you’re going to single out?”

The Republican Party’s position on homosexuality “should be toleration... It should not be promotion, and it should not be condemnation,” he told the Blade.

“I don’t want to see police in the men’s room, which we had when I was a child, and I don’t want to see trying to educate kindergartners in understanding gay couples,” he said. “I think both approaches are fundamentally and profoundly wrong. I think where we’re moving towards, as a society and in our position, is that consenting adults can have private relations without in any way the political system being involved.”

The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the nation’s largest gay lobby, welcomed Gingrich’s comments saying, “Antigay extremists are not the future of the Republican Party.” These shifting positions reflect another classic Gingrich quality that conservatives have been citing when attacking his candidacy — he is undisciplined and erratic.

Gingrich is now reviled on gay blogs.

After he signed a pledge to oppose same-sex marriage last year, HRC said, “Newt Gingrich’s signature to the [National Organization for Marriage] Marriage Pledge is just the latest indicator of how beholden the GOP presidential candidates are to anti-gay groups...

Gingrich and his fellow candidates are distancing themselves from mainstream opinion and taking an astonishingly extremist stance... His support for the NOM Marriage Pledge firmly puts Newt Gingrich on the wrong side of history.”

By PAUL SCHINDLER

session of the Legislature, are showing signs they don’t have the votes for an override.

According to the Concord Monitor, Representative Seth Cohn, who moved to the state as part of a libertarian movement effort to relocate to New Hamp-

shire, is opposed to repeal and said, “I know for a fact, based on people I’ve talked to, that if Governor Lynch vetoes it, that veto is not override-able.”

Another Republican, Representative Steve Winter of Newbury, was quoted saying, “I’m

for liberty and freedom, leaving people alone so long as they don’t harm or defraud other people.”

And a third GOP legislator, Senator Jim Forsythe of Strafford, who is also a libertarian, told the newspaper he is unsure if he could support repeal unless the

bill also got the state out of the marriage business altogether.

Senator Fenton Groen, a Rochester Republican and leader in the repeal effort, told the Monitor the hurdles to repeal are “disappointing” but that he recognizes the issue divides many libertarians,

particularly in the House.

Though Democrats had big majorities in the Legislature when the marriage law was enacted, the 2010 election gave the GOP a 19-5 majority in the Senate and

䉴 NEWS BRIEFS, continued on p.28

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| February 1, 2012

LEGAL

Appeals Court Revives Minnesota Marriage Suit Panel suggests state DOMA may be invalid under State Constitution

BY ARTHUR S. LEONARD he Court of Appeals of Minnesota, the state’s intermediate appellate bench, has ruled that a district judge erred in dismissing outright a lawsuit by three same-sex couples seeking marriage licenses.

Finding that Hennepin County District Judge Mary Dufresne inappropriately relied on a 1971 Minnesota Supreme Court decision, Baker v. Nelson, the Court of Appeals, on January 23, sent the case back to the trial court with instructions to determine if denying marriage licenses to the couples violates the Minnesota Constitution’s due process, equal protection, and freedom of association requirements.

Writing for the unanimous three-judge panel, Judge Renee L. Worke pointed out that the 1971 ruling — in a case brought by a gay male couple seeking a marriage license — was based entirely on the US Constitution and that the opinion issued by the State Supreme Court undertook

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Court of Appeals Judge Renee L. Worke.

no analysis under the Minnesota Constitution. The 1971 case was denied review by the US Supreme Court, which said it presented no “substantial” federal constitutional question.

Significantly, the Court of Appeals noted that Minnesota courts have construed their State Constitution to place a more significant burden of justification on the state when it adopts policies that raise due process and equal protection questions.

Worke also observed that federal constitutional law has moved on since 1971 and decisions including the US Supreme Court’s 1996 ruling in Romer v. Evans — which struck down a voter-approved Colorado state constitutional amendment prohibiting state and local gay nondiscrimination protections — might require a different analysis of a federal equal protection claim concerning samesex marriage.

The Court of Appeals did, however, grant a motion by the state to be dismissed as a defendant, finding that only the local official charged with issuing

marriage licenses, the Hennepin County registrar in Minneapolis, who had actually denied the marriage licenses, was an appropriate defendant.

The court also approved Judge Dufresne’s dismissal of a religious freedom claim asserted by the couples, one of which had enjoyed a church wedding not recognized by the state because of its Defense of Marriage Act. The court, seemingly having missed the point of this claim, concluded, “There is no evidence that the state’s failure to recognize same-sex marriages interferes with the appellants engaging in a religious marital ceremony.”

However, the court was clear in ruling that the plaintiffs are entitled to put the burden of justifying their exclusion from marriage on the state. The court was not ready to hold that same-sex couples are necessarily being denied a fundamental right on the basis of a suspect classification — a category such as race or gender where discrimination claims receive a

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MINNESOTA, continued on p.30

CRIME

Anti-Gay Taunts in Hell’s Kitchen Attacks As many as four men assaulted early on Martin Luther King holiday

BY DUNCAN OSBORNE still unidentified assailant, who may have been motivated by anti-gay bias, committed a series of assaults in Hell’s Kitchen early in the morning on January 16.

“I was walking home along Ninth Avenue,” Frederick Bodner, 28, told Gay City News, saying he saw a white male attacking a “blond guy.”

Bodner said, “I just heard fighting or something. I saw two guys brawling. As the blond guy started running across the street, the other guy started yelling ‘Faggot, pussy.’”

Bodner observed this at about 2 a.m. on West 52nd Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues. There are at least two gay bars on that block. The assailant was accompanied by three to five other men, but Bodner did not see the others participate in the attacks. The assailant hit several men.

“I guess there were four guys who were attacked,” Bodner said. “It was unprovoked.”

Bodner said the blond guy “had a really bloody nose, swollen upper brow, eventually a black eye.” Bodner was told that another victim had broken ribs. A group of witnesses and some victims, who gathered after the assailant and other men left in a car, discussed what they saw.

Responding to an email, the city’s Fire Department wrote, “We have record of an incident at 364 W 52 Street btw 8/9 Aves at 2:06 am on 1/16/12. Call was for an injured individual who had possibly been assaulted. A male, 28 y/o, with injuries to his face, was transported

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to Roosevelt Hspt.”

The police department did not respond to two emails seeking information on the assault.

Witnesses said that two uniformed police officers came in response to 911 calls, but they could not say what precinct the officers were from. Witnesses obtained a partial license plate number, EY8172, which they gave to police, though they could not say what state the plates were from. The car was a white or silver two- or four-door.

“Unfortunately, none of us had a lot of information that we could offer them,” said a second witness, who asked to remain anonymous. That witness said he saw two victims taken into the ambulance.

The assailant was white, about 6 feet, two inches tall, and was wearing a white hoodie, jeans, and sneakers, according to the second witness. In addition to the assailant, the second witness saw two other men get into the car.

“I think three got into it, including two who had been hovering,” he said.

The assailant looked “serious and threatening,” the second witness said. “He just kind of sucker punched people out of nowhere.”

It is not clear if the car’s driver ever got out of the car.

Bodner said the driver, who said, “Come on, let’s go,” may have been Latino. All the men climbed into the car and left.

Comments by the second witness suggested that the driver was waiting to take the men away.

“Just as quickly as it began, a car sped backwards

down the street,” the second witness said.

Bodner said he had reached out to the New York City Anti-Violence Project (AVP) and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn’s office.

“AVP is aware of the incident and is available to anyone who has witnessed or experienced violence and encourages community members to reach out to us through our hotline or at our office if they need support,” Sharon Stapel, AVP’s executive director, wrote in an email.

AVP’s 24-hour bilingual hotline number is 212-7141141.

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February 1, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com

RELIGION

Catholic Adoption Retreat Driven By Rome Warning of “violence” to children, Church bars gays, blames marriage equality

BY DUNCAN OSBORNE uring a January 7 debate among the candidates for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, and Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, complained that legalizing same-sex marriage had forced various Catholic Charities organizations to get out of the adoption business.

“Should the Catholic Church be forced to close its adoption services in Massachusetts because it won’t accept gay couples, which is exactly what the state has done?” Gingrich asked. “Should the Catholic Church be driven out of providing charitable services in the District of Columbia because it won’t give in to secular bigotry?”

Blaming gay marriage for ending the adoption services provided by religiously-affiliated non-profits has become part of the standard right-wing rhetoric. Romney made a similar argument.

“And I was in a state where the Supreme Court stepped in

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and said marriage is a relationship required under the Constitution for people of the same sex to be able to marry,” he said.

“What happened was Catholic Charities, that placed almost half of all the adoptive children in our state, was forced to step out of being able to provide adoptive services.”

What both men omitted is that it was a 2003 Vatican encyclical that described parenting by gay and lesbian couples as “gravely immoral” that required these agencies to end adoptions.

“That foundation provides the theological underpinning that we are seeing across the country of Catholic Charities abandoning adoption and foster care programs,” said Marianne Duddy-Burke, executive director of DignityUSA, a group of LGBT Roman Catholics.

The document was issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, then headed

by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger who is now the pope, and laid out the Church’s opposition to any legal recognition of samesex relationships.

The statement argued, “Allow-

SENATE, from p.10

productive for civil rights and liberties in decades” — with the end to the Rockefeller Drug Laws, a domestic workers’ bill of rights, safeguards for those stopped and frisked by police, and the counting of prisoners in their home districts rather than in upstate prisons for purposes of redistricting. Republicans are currently fighting the prisoner counting reform unsuccessfully in court.

“People are entitled to support who they want,” Gianaris said. “But it is important that they support those who share their values.”

The Empire State Pride Agenda gave more than $20,000 to the DSCC and none to the SRCC in the latest reporting period in recognition of the overwhelming Democratic vote for marriage equality.

“We should be thankful for that,” said Ross Levi, the group’s executive director.

“Our community has a history of standing by those who stood up for us.”

The Pride Agenda has not made its major donations for the 2012 elections yet.

“It’s about timing,” Levi said. “We’re

ing children to be adopted by persons living in such unions would actually mean doing violence to these children.”

In 2006, Cardinal William J. Levada, who replaced Ratzinger as the head of the congregation, ordered all Catholic Charities units to stop placing “children for adoption in homosexual households.”

Previously, at least three Catholic Charities agencies are known to have helped gay and lesbian couples adopt or they took a don’t ask, don’t tell posture toward the sexual orientation of prospective adoptive or foster parents.

In 2005, the Boston Globe reported that 13 of the 720 adoptions completed by the Catholic Charities agency in Boston over the prior 20 years were by gay and lesbian couples. The priest who headed the agency then, Father J. Bryan Hehir, was aware of those adoptions and told the Globe, “If we could design the system ourselves, we would not participate in adoptions to gay couples, but we can’t. We have to balance various goods.”

A former board member there

waiting to see which races will be competitive and where to best make our investment,” noting that the district lines are not even set yet. He also said that beyond donations, the Pride Agenda “can motivate thousands of people to go to the polls” for their endorsed candidates.

Brian Ellner, who led the Human Rights Campaign’s marriage equality effort in New York, was part of a group of 20 people who put together a fundraiser for the four pro-equality Republican senators. He did not respond to an email seeking comment on why no Democrats were included, but Fred Sainz, vice president for communications for the group, which is non-partisan like Pride Agenda, said, “It is especially important that Republicans are seen as being able to defend themselves” after supporting the LGBT community. “I don’t believe that there was any ill will intended against the Democrats who voted for it. It was more of a mistake of the mind than of the heart.”

HRC itself, he said, has donated to the DSCC and not to the SRCC. Senator Tom Duane, an out gay Chelsea Democrat who led the marriage

told Gay City News that Cardinal Bernard Law, who ran the Boston archdiocese from 1984 to 2002, and Cardinal Sean Patrick O’Malley, who replaced Law, were aware of the adoptions by gay and lesbian couples.

In 2006, published reports noted that the Catholic Charities agency in San Francisco had found homes for 136 hardto-place children over the prior five years, with five of them going to gay or lesbian households.

Levada ran the San Francisco archdiocese from 1995 until 2005. It is not known if he was aware of the gay adoptions.

In 2011, Illinois passed a law that granted all the rights and status given to married couples under state law to couples in civil unions. Four Catholic Charities agencies in that state objected.

Last year, writing in the News Gazette, a Champaign newspaper, Tricia C. Fox, the chief executive of Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Peoria, said that when a single person applied to be an adoptive or foster parent, her agency made no inquiry into their sexual orientation.

“There is absolutely no men-

effort in his chamber, said via email, “I cannot speak to the reasons of why or how members of the LGBT community, or any person, PAC, or bundler for that matter, chooses to contribute to any elected official or political party.”

Senator Andrea Stewart-Cousins, a Westchester Democrat who always gets a tough Republican challenge, wrote in an email, “I was proud to be one of the senators who formed the foundation for passage of the marriage equality act.

The foundation was built by Democrats, and I’m sure people recognize the important role we played in allowing marriage equality to pass in New York State. It was never about the money, it was always about doing what was right.”

Veteran gay activist Allen Roskoff, president of the LGBT Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club, said, “The Republican Party is going to use this gay money to run against our friends in the Senate. Where’s the logic in that? We are rewarding a party that gave us minimal support.”

Evan Wolfson, president of Freedom to Marry, another non-partisan group, wrote in an email, “There is no question that the bulk of the leadership and votes

tion or screening of sexual preference in our application policies,” Fox wrote.

Because they would not work with gay and lesbian couples in civil unions, the four Illinois agencies lost their state contracts. They sued, but lost. The agencies closed or ended their affiliation with the Roman Catholic Church.

“I think that the Catholic hierarchy is intentionally misleading people by claiming that it is marriage equality that is leading to the suspension of these foster care and adoption programs,” Duddy-Burke said.

Francis DeBernardo, executive director of the New Ways Ministry, a Maryland-based ministry that serves queer Roman Catholics, agreed.

“While the bishops may claim that they are the victims, they are ignoring the wide array of victims that their decisions have created, particularly the most defenseless: children,” he wrote in an email. “It is a sad and tragic spectacle for bishops to say that their supposedly threatened religious liberty is more important than the welfare of children.”

in support of equality for gay people, including in marriage, has come from Democrats. That should be acknowledged and furthered. It is also true that to win, we need, and increasingly — as our victory in New York showed — are getting Republican legislators as well as donors and advocates.”

Wolfson explained, “Personally, I know when I make a donation, I consider many things, including a candidate’s courage and commitment to the things I value most and believe best for our country. I also look at where donations are most needed to win a race that matters, and where I can make the most difference.”

According to Board of Elections records, Wolfson has not yet made any State Senate contributions.

“I’m getting married in a week,” O’Donnell said. “I feel I accomplished a good thing. For the gay community not to recognize what the Assembly did, how we managed to hold on to a vote count and keep the issue alive and propel the issue forward in the country — Assembly Democrats should be rewarded in the same way as those four Republicans. And they have not been.”

| February 1, 2012

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February 1, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com

Flowers, Chocolates & Champagne Keeping it simple on Valentine’s Day Day is to Ariston, a family member told the New York Times that on the morning of February 15, it’s all hands on deck to plan forward 364 days.

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family-owned business since 1977, Ariston Florist stocks an impressive array of fresh flowers — including some directly imported from France, Holland, Hawaii, and other far-flung hot houses.

Ariston’s work was featured in a recent photo spread in Bride Magazine, and the business has also been highlighted on “Live with Regis and Kelly� and in a Mother’s Day story on WCBS Channel 2 News.

As for how important Valentine’s

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at the original locale at 120 Christopher Street, near Bedford, to sample the special recipes created by founder George Demetrious, a native of Greece who learned the art of chocolate making in France.

Today, Demetrious’ recipes still come alive, nurtured by owners Anthony Cirone, formerly a marketing executive at Unilever and Bath & Body Works, and Anwar Khoder, a Lebanese immigrant who joined Li-Lac in 1990 as a student and is now chief chocolatier.

Li-Lac’s chocolates are made and hand-wrapped in its factory in Brooklyn’s Industry City section.

Late last year, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn honored LiLac for its historic role in the West Village with an official proclamation.

Langdon Florist 2 Reade St., btwn. Broadway & Church St. 212-962-4370 langdon_florist@yahoo.com langdonflorist.com

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ver since same-sex couples won the right to marry last summer in New York, Langdon Florist has been at the ready. A recent story in Business Week quoted Joe Rizzo, who has owned Langdon for 28 years, saying he expected his wedding business to grow by about 25 percent from the year before the law took effect.

Noting that rainbow arrangements can be created from red gingers, yellow mums, and purple gillyflower — or, instead, by looking to dyed flowers — Rizzo said his team creates arrangements that “hit it right on the nose ‌ as far as expressing gay pride.â€?

Come February 14, it doesn’t hurt that Langdon offers ten percent off to firsttime customers.

The Chocolates Li-Lac Chocolates 40 Eighth Ave. at Jane St. 212-924-2280 Grand Central Terminal’s Market Hall Enter at Lexington Ave. & E. 43rd St. Or through the Main Concourse 212-370-4866 Hand delivery in Manhattan: 718-567-9500 li-lacchocolates.com

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ince 1923, Li-Lac Chocolates has been a West Village institution. In fact, several generations of gay men cruising down Christopher Street will recall dropping in

Varsano’s Chocolates 172 W. Fourth St., btwn. Sixth & Seventh Aves.

212-352-1171 varsanos.com

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arsano’s Chocolates, which specializes in homemade, hand-dipped chocolates, including caramels, truffles, fruit centers, and nut patties, ships and delivers everywhere, and offers same-day service in Manhattan.

A recent visit by the Villager newspaper found the chocolates offered in a mind-boggling array of shapes and sizes — including Porsches, Jeeps, roller blades, and Champagne bottles.

The pretzel caramel rods are best-sellers, and the shop also offers fresh nuts and old-fashioned candies the likes of jelly beans, gummy bears, and Swedish fish.

䉴

VALENTINE’S DAY, continued on p.17

CHRIS BRODY DESIGN

The Flowers Ariston Flowers 110 West 17th Street 212-929-4226 florist@aristonflowers.com aristonflowers.com

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aybe you’ve been hunting for just the right watch. Or ring.

Or have become obsessed by sussing out the hottest new restaurant to score a deuce reservation for February 14.

Perhaps you’ve even decided that Eden is just a plane ride away for the long President’s Day weekend that follows Valentine’s Day. But all of that gets rather complicated — and, more importantly, poses the risk you will lose sight of what’s important: a quiet evening of intimacy and mutual appreciation with the person you love.

So this Valentine’s Day, we’re sticking to the basics — a tasteful offering of flowers, a unique box of chocolates, and a festive bottle of Champagne.

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| February 1, 2012

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For more than five years, XL was a standout in gay nightlife in New York –– and then, as so often happens in Club World, it vanished, the victim of a lost lease. But now, XL is back and –– at 14,000 square feet, a huge sunken dance floor, and a 100-seat cabaret –– bigger than ever.

On January 26-29, John Blair and Beto Sutter welcomed industry types and scene-hungry crowds of gay men to the opening of their new venue at 512 West 42nd Street. The club is an integral component of Ian Reisner and Mati Weiderpass’ new OUT NYC Urban Resort hotel, entertainment, and fitness complex, expected to open in full in March.

Attached to a new, gay-focused hotel, XL will likely draw a healthy mix of visitors and home-town boys seven nights a week, and be another milestone in this once-sleepy edge of Hell’s Kitchen finally coming to life after dark.

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VALENTINE’S DAY, from p.16

The Champagne Warehouse Wines and Spirits 735 Broadway, btwn. Eighth St. & Waverly Pl. 212-982-7770 warehousewinesandspirits.com verybody likely has their regular neighborhood liquor store, but for central location, price, and selection, Warehouse Wines and Spirit offers an awfully good bet.

As Valentine’s Day approaches, among its many French Champagnes and sparkling wines, Warehouse features Nicolas Feuillatte’s Palmes D’or Brut 1998. At a suggested retail price of $150, a very fine true Champagne can be yours for just $59.99

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February 1, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com

BOOKS

A Fraternity of Risk-Takers Christopher Bram tackles the rich, but largely untold history of gay novelists, playwrights, and poets and poems I discuss as they came out — or the earlier ones as I came out. I am old enough to remember the anti-gay press of the 1960s and 1970s, but young enough to come out of the experience unscathed.

hristopher Bram’s new non-fiction book, “Eminent Outlaws” is a compelling history of American gay male writers and their literature. And Bram is as GMK: What did you learn good a writer as the many folks writing the book? he includes here.

CB: Early on, I recognized His engaging storytelling cap- that the story wasn’t just about tures the essence of what make my generation — the postthese bold, pioneering writers Stonewall generation — but essential to our literary canon. also the generation before, the From poet Allen Ginsberg to generation of Capote, Baldwin, playwright Tennessee Williams and Isherwood. The presence of and novelists James Baldwin, those two generations — fathers Truman Capote, Gore Vidal, and and sons, or uncles and nephEdmund White, among many ews, if you will — really excited others, Bram prome. The story is vides a remarkEMENENT OUTLAWS so interesting — able chronicle of and necessary —

By Christopher Bram how gay writing that I’m surprised Twelve $27.99; 384 pages became a catalyst nobody has told it for social change. before. I assume In a recent email exchange, other gay writers hesitated for Bram — the author of nine the same reason I hesitated: novels, including “Hold Tight,” We want somebody else to write “Gossip,” “Exiles in America,” about us. But it’s hard to walk and “Father of Frankenstein,” away from a great story. the basis of the 1998 film “Gods and Monsters” starring Ian GMK: What were your criteMcKellen, Lynn Redgrave, and ria for identifying an author as Brendan Fraser — discussed an “Outlaw” or “Pioneer”? For his book and the risk-taking example, Samuel Steward gets writers that inspired him and only a note in your book.

“Eminent Outlaws.”

CB: It’s not an inclusive book and was never intended as GARY M. KRAMER: You such. I had no criteria for whom are primarily known as a nov- I included and whom I didn’t. I elist but have published non- just concentrated on a handful fiction essays in the past. What of writers that best enabled me prompted you to write this par- to tell the larger story — which ticular non-fiction book?

CHRISTOPHER BRAM: Well, to be frank, it’s harder to sell fiction in today’s book market than it used to be. I was already thinking about possible nonfiction projects when another writer, Sam Wasson, phoned me. He was writing a book about the movie “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and wanted to know the state of gay literature in the 1950s and 1960s. I filled him in for 20 minutes or so.

“This is great stuff,” he said. often meant writers who meant “Where can I read it?” the most to me. Afterwards, I And I realized no such book went back and wove in some of existed and it needed to exist. the writers who didn’t come up So I began writing “Eminent naturally, not just Steward, but Outlaws.” It seemed to be a John Rechy, Lanford Wilson, book I’d been preparing to write David Leavitt, and others. for my whole life without knowing it. I read many of the novels GMK: Risk seems to be a

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Christopher Bram, the author of nine novels, turns his attention to the fraternity of gay writers stretching back to the previous generation.

DRAPER SHREEVE

BY GARY M. KRAMER

unifying theme in “Eminent Outlaws,” as well as in your own fiction. Why is this element such a critical component to gay writing?

CB: I think risk is an important component to all good fiction writing, and not just gay writing. Good writers stick their necks out and take chances.

They write what they need to write — what they burn to write — without thinking too much of the consequences. Almost all of the writers I discuss began their careers by writing something gay, got kicked in the teeth, then tried to play it cool, but later came back to the subject.

Some were quite cagy about it, such as Gore Vidal, who avoided it after “City and the Pillar,” then returned with “Myra Breckinridge,” recognizing he had hit upon something so polymorphous perverse it left the idea of “gay” in the dust.

Others, like Christopher Isherwood, swore off the subject after being slammed by the

Good writers write what they need to write — what they burn to write — without thinking too much of the consequences.

critics, tried to write something straight, and then said, “Fuck it,” and wrote “A Single Man.” GMK: Do you feel that gay men of letters today continue to create work that is as challenging as it was when James Baldwin, Allen Ginsberg, Tennessee Williams first burst on the scene? How has gay writing changed — and is it for the better?

CB: They do, but readers are more experienced — more jaded, maybe — and more difficult to shock or challenge. Baldwin’s “Another Country” was a bestseller in the ‘60s because it included straight and gay and interracial sex scenes. Readers complained, but they still bought the book — they clearly enjoyed reading those scenes.

People don’t read books for sex scenes anymore — they get their porn elsewhere — but challenging, exciting work is done in other areas.

GMK: You deliberately decided not to include yourself in your book, but how has your own fiction transformed over

the years in terms of the stories you create and issues you explore in your work?

CB: I started with a very self-oriented novel, “Surprising Myself,” that wasn’t autobiographical, but was about all the issues that concerned me personally at the time: coming out, finding love, making peace with my family. But in everything I wrote since, I tried to get beyond that, to explore a wider world. It was always from a gay perspective, but I wanted to take in as much new life as I could.

Freeing me to do that, enabling me to explore other areas was the fact that there were all these other gay writers writing their own novels. None of us needed to worry about doing Gay Life 101 anymore — if there is such a thing.

Christopher Bram appears in conversation with playwright Mart Crowley (“The Boys in the Band”) and novelist Rakesh Satyal (“Blue Boy”) at Barnes and Noble/ Upper West Side, 2289 Broadway at 82nd Street, on Wednesday, February 8 at 7 p.m. For more information, phone 212-362-8835.

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| February 1, 2012

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February 1, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com

THEATER

Mocking Mortality A crusty college professor tries to outsmart cancer

BY DAVID KENNERLEY

effects are indeed excruciating.

Not content with simply dealing with life-threatening illness and the will to soldier on despite great obstacles, “Wit” also considers literary matters, such as the wonders of vocabulary and the written word and the subtle beauty of an expertly placed comma. The play also indulges a fascination with paradox.

Some 15 years later, “Wit” still packs a punch, though perhaps not with the brass-knuckles brutality of the original (the play is set in 1995, when it was written). Many of its themes that once felt fresh — treating patients more like guinea pigs than human beings, the inefficiencies of a broken-beyondrepair healthcare system, lab test-obsessed physicians, the cure being more painful than the disease — are now more or less accepted by the general public as business as usual.

Even the sight of a woman who’s lost her hair to chemo-

n 1998, the most lauded play of the season was “Wit,” which nabbed a slew of Best Play awards and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Running for more than 500 performances, the heartrending character study of one courageous woman’s bout with cancer cycled through two different theaters and two highly capable lead actors (Kathleen Chalfant and Judith Light) and, like its protagonist, proved quite durable.

Cynthia Nixon in the revival on Margaret Edson’s “Wit” at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre.

Many thought the intensely personal work by Margaret ately enough, the seminal poem thought. Somewhat predictably, Edson — largely an extended “Death Be Not Proud”), she’s it takes the nurse, Susie (Carra monologue intercut with brief earned the reputation of being Patterson), to break through the exchanges with other characters uncompromising and, at the stoic patient’s tough exterior.

In an effort to shrink the — owed much of its power to ripe old age of 47, something of tumor — and gather groundthe intimacy of the small-scale a battle-axe.

An only child whose parents breaking clinical data for a Off Broadway experience, not to mention the strength of its leads. are deceased, she has no visitors research paper to be published So when it was announced — except during the play’s final in a prestigious medical jourthe play was being reincarnated moments — dismissing them as nal — Kelekian prescribes eight courses of the most potent cheon Broadway starring Cynthia “not necessary.”

“I have cancer, insidious can- motherapy available. The side Nixon, tongues started wagging.

Would traditional Broadway cer, with pernicious side effects,” audiences flock to see a harrow- she says. Then, correcting hering drama about Stage 4 meta- self she adds, “No, the treatment has per nicious static ovarian canside effects.” cer? Could Miranda WIT Now comes the from “Sex and the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre asterisk: At first, City” carry such a Manhattan Theater Club 261 W. 47th St. despite being heavy show in the Tue.-Wed. at 7 p.m.

BY GUS SOLOMONS JR engaging, Nixon’s Manhattan Theater Thu.-Sat. at 8 p.m. portrayal of the Club’s cavernous Wed., Sat.-Sun. at 2 p.m. hard-nosed stickFriedman Theatre? ith a purposely diverse company $57-$116; telecharge.com Or 212-239-6200 ler tends toward Can she overcome — four men and four women, robotic. With her the kerfuffle sur half of them black, the other half rounding her coming out as a high-pitched voice, bulging eyes, white — baby boomer choreoglesbian, potentially limiting her hairless head not quite covered rapher David Dorfman brought by a blood-red baseball cap, and box-office appeal? memories of his ‘70s experience to the Joyce The answer appears to be yes, frail frame lost beneath a hospiTheater in an hour-long tribute to the music of albeit with an asterisk. After all, tal gown, she comes across as a Sly and the Family Stone. It’s called “Prophets of Nixon won the Tony in 2006 for kind of brainy alien. It’s not until Funk,” which Dorfman conceived and directed.

“Rabbit Hole,” also at MTC. And a bit later, as Vivian’s emotional Costume designer Amanda Bujak captures like the playwright and direc- and biological defenses break the wardrobe excesses of the era perfectly with tor Lynne Meadow, she’s able down, that Nixon truly shines, garish colors, fringe pants, stars-and-stripes to draw from a deep reservoir eliciting real compassion. jeans, distressed leather vests, beaded headWhether this lapse is a funcof experience — she is also a bands, and big Afro hair-don’ts. tion of the writing, the direction, breast cancer survivor.

The piece opens with a dapper Dorfman — The aptly named Vivian Bear- or the performance is open to whose figure has now yielded to middle age ing, Ph.D., is one of the more debate.

— in a golf cap and platform shoes, doing his Of course, Vivian is not comcomplicated, sharply drawn best disco funk across the stage in a diagonal characters you’re likely to pletely alone. Her medical team path of light (by David Weiner and Dans Sheeencounter on a Broadway stage includes Dr. Kelekian (Michael han). Then the company does a long passage of this season, and overall Nixon Countryman) and Dr. Posner club dances to a selection of Sly Stone’s iconic does her proud. After a life- (Greg Keller). With his unctufunk. The songs are all the same tempo and the time accruing a tough shell as ous, frat-boy demeanor, Keller movement is unrelentingly bouncy — too much a literature professor at a large nails the role of a perfunctory of a good thing. university teaching the perplex- research physician who once Though the piece alludes to peace and freeing metaphysical poet John took her class and learned more dom in a couple of places, Dorfman pretty much Donne (who wrote, appropri- about life than he originally avoids the drugs, crime, and random sex that JOAN MARCUS

I

therapy, now ubiquitous in the media, on television, and elsewhere, is not quite as shocking as it once was (if that translates into removing a stigma of cancer, that’s a good thing).

Santo Loquasto has devised an appropriately clinical, spare hospital room set that, at one key moment, gives way to an enlarged projection of text (in this case, a particularly intractable sonnet by John Donne).

As Vivian explains, in professorial mode, how the early 17th century poet “applied his capacious, agile wit to the larger aspects of the human experience: life, death, and God,” it occurs to us that she’s been applying a similar wit to fighting her disease.

As the final curtain approaches, all defenses have been thoroughly worn down and the play veers into treacle territory. Even Vivian agrees, observing, “That certainly was a maudlin display… But it can’t be helped. I don’t see any other way.”

David Dorfman Dance Reminisces Sly Stone’s funk revived in sound and sight

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also characterized the time. On the whole, the piece is intended as a feel-good affair, as if he’d watched the decade on TV from the suburbs with an occasional weekend trip to the familyfriendly parts of the beast’s belly.

In one scene, Kyle Abraham declares, “I lost my job, my family, my friends, but I still got my funk!” The closest Dorfman gets to “dark” matter is a potential confrontation among the men over the controversial “Don’t Call Me Nigger, Whitey” — but not to worry, no violence ensues. This section concludes with a series of couple swaps, where each pairing is a mixed-race one.

Abraham, a vivid stage persona, also asks each of his colleagues in turn, “Whatcha got?,” then imitates and appropriates their moves with a gleeful “That’s my step!,” saying he calls this one “The Purgatory Push,” that one “Stomping the Grapes,” and a third “Preacher Man.” Lanky Raja Kelly howls “If You Want Me to Stay” in a slightly off-key falsetto. Whitney Tucker rants about the insidiousness of prophets, then tears off her blonde Afro wig and has a frenetic, kinetic meltdown that actually draws applause.

Choreographically, there’s a little too much of full frontal unison movement, with the eight lined

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DANCE, continued on p.24

| February 1, 2012

THEATER

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Rough Magic Artistry and insight power two amazing evenings

BY CHRISTOPHER BYRNE

“I Got Plenty of Nothing,” we realize how much he’s found in h e n y o u s e e himself and Bess.

As Bess, Audra McDonald is a “The Gershw i n s ’ P o r g y fearless actress who throws herand Bess,” and self into the character’s broad you must if you range with complete commitlove musical theater, it is best ment. McDonald and Lewis are to leave your intellect and opin- two of the finest singers we have ions in the lobby and open your today, so their performance of heart to this powerful, visceral, “Bess, You Is My Woman Now,” and artistically magnificent pro- is as powerful and exquisite duction. If you are willing, this musically as it is emotionally. show will grab your heart the In the second act, “I Loves You, moment the curtain rises, and Porgy” expresses Bess’ desperait won’t release it ‘til well after tion and conflict and is a turning point in their relationship the curtain call — if then.

Ye s , t h e b o o k h a s b e e n — one that let’s Porgy hope for adapted, but in doing so, direc- future happiness… at least for a tor Diane Paulus and writers little while.

David Alan Suzan-Lori THE GERSHWINS’ Grier is wonderParks and Deif u l l y e v i l a n d Audra McDonald and Norm Lewis in the title roles of “Porgy and Bess.” dre L. Murray PORGY AND BESS Richard Rodgers Theatre manipulative as have given it an 226 W. 46th St. Sporting Life. He artfully abstract, a combinaimmediacy and very different but Tue. at 7 p.m.; Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m. tion of metal panels and wooden opens the second a level of emoequally mesmerizWed., Sat. at 2 p.m.; Sun. at 3 p.m. act with “It Ain’t sheets on a frame that evokes tional honesty ing evening is “Gob $15-$70; ticketmaster.com Necessarily So,” a rather than represents the world that stand in Squad’s The KitchOr 800-745-3000 brilliant number of Catfish Row. As lit by Chrisbeautiful conen,” part of the Under trast to the artistry of the stag- that, for all its apparent fun, topher Akerlind, it takes on a the Radar Festival at the Public. ing and design, all of which are cynically undercuts the religion painterly quality that is sublime. The piece is a reconstruction of Paulus and her collabora- Andy Warhol’s 1965 film “The most of Catfish Row’s residents superb. tors deserve high praise for this Kitchen,” along with parts of his The story is set in fictional depend on.

The rest of the ensemble production. They have kept film “Sleep” and various screen Catfish Row in Charleston, South Carolina, where the hard- — each member richly creat- the scale of opera, honored the tests. Warhol’s sets are replicated scrabble community of fisher- ing their character —is one of genius of the music, and given it backstage but are obscured from men and workers is shaken up the strongest and most accom- both humanity and theatricality, the audience by a movie screen. when hard-living Bess shows plished choruses you’ll hear in blessing this “Porgy and Bess” During the show, the audience up with her lover, Crown. When a Broadway house. Nikki Renee with new viability and power. doesn’t see the actors — their Crown kills a man in a fight, he Daniels, who opens the show images are projected onto the GOB SQUAD’S runs away from the law. Bess, singing “Summertime,” NaTasha screen in real time in black and meanwhile, runs into the arms Yvette Williams as Mariah, and white, giving viewers the sense THE KITCHEN of the cripple Porgy, who kills Bryonha Marie Parham as Serthey are watching a movie. When The Public Theater 425 Lafayette St., btwn. E. Fourth Crown when he returns to take ena are standouts, as is Philip actors emerge from behind the St. & Astor Pl. Bess away. Thinking Porgy Boykin as Crown, whose powerscreen, the performance examWed.-Sat. at 8 p.m. will be locked up forever, Bess ful bass and imposing presence ines the nature of art and time, Sun. at 7 p.m.; Sat.-Sun. at 2 p.m. returns to drugs and is lured are wonderfully terrifying. one that includes drafting audi$60-$70; publictheater.org Or 212-967-7555 Ricardo Hernandez’s set is away to the high life in Harlem ence members into the “film.”

by Sporting Life, a high living This remarkable piece at once dealer and con man. Porgy, transports us back to the rough however, is set free and, hobfilmmaking Warhol engaged in, bled though he is, sets out to provides historical and artistic find Bess, driven by his brokencommentary on that time, and hearted love. succeeds as both satire and Under Paulus’ direction, homage. This is about as smart the show is visceral in its emoas it gets, while being endless tional life, primarily driven by entertaining and oddly endearthe extraordinary cast. Norm ing.

Lewis plays Porgy as a walking cripple, rather than a man n the other hand, in a goat cart as in the original, “The Fall to Earth” but the tension between the has landed with a virile and the vulnerable motiresounding thud at vates his performance, giving 59E59. Joel Drake it a depth and complexity that Johnson’s amateurish mess make Bess’ growing love for him of a play relies on withholding more poignant. He’s the man information to achieve dramatic she’s dreamed of, not a proteceffect and manipulating charactor she’s run to. When he sings “Gob Squad’s The Kitchen” views Warhol’s films from a panoply of perspectives. ters so he can hector us about

A

O

MICHAEL J. LUTCH

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THE FALL TO EARTH 59E59 59 E. 59th St. Tue.-Thu. at 7:15 p.m.

Fri.-Sat. at 8:15 p.m.; Sun. at 3:15 p.m. $24.50-$35; 59e59.org Or 212-279-4200

loss and grief, with absolutely nothing original to say on these subjects. The story of a mother, Fay, and daughter, Rachel, who come to identify and claim the body of son and brother Kenny, who has been killed in a gaybashing incident, it is implausible from the first moment.

The daughter, who is clearly well to do, doesn’t want to share a hotel room with her mother, but the playwright forces that so that terrible things can be revealed about the family. Oh, and of course the brother has to be effeminate and slight, as we hear. Never mind the batty policewoman who shows up with dinner at Fay and Rachel’s hotel after they’ve viewed the body — and stays to play out her nuttiness and extend the play to make it seem like more than a sketch.

If you haven’t OD’d on stereotypes and claptrap, you will when that gratuitous and obvious nugget is revealed.

Deborah Hedwall as Fay, Jolie Curtsinger as Rachel, and Amelia Campbell as the cop are just going through the paces.

Hedwall is particularly annoying trotting out stock sitcom mannerisms and never coming close to a believable emotion.

Skip this, and you’ll be happy you did.

22

February 1, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com

IN THE NOH

Definitive Downtown Diva Three gifted ladies bring song and joy to a Manhattan winter

BY DAVID NOH rom the time we all first heard the irresistible “Downtown,” Petula Clark’s ineffably sweet, lilting soprano ruled pop music in the 1960s, and she’s bringing it to Feinstein’s at Loews Regency through February 4 (540 Park Ave. at 61st St.; feinsteinsattheregency.com).

“I haven’t performed in New York in years,’ she told me, “and I’m so nervous. Opening nights should be abolished! They asked me to do this a couple times and I said no, and then suddenly I said yes. I started making a list of songs people would want to hear — the obvious ones I still enjoy singing, like ‘Downtown,’ something from ‘Sunset Boulevard’ and ‘Finian’s Rainbow,’ some Gershwin and Porter, some new songs, and that’s pretty well an act. I don’t have what you might call a cabaret act so I’m just going to go out there and be me.”

Clark is unutterably delightful in her two big 1960s musicals, “Finian’s Rainbow” and the classic, woefully underrated “Goodbye Mr. Chips.” About the latter, she said, “You really like it? I would have to agree with you. There are some nice moments — a flawed movie, but with some beautiful things in it.

That’s interesting, because I’ve been listening to the soundtrack and thinking of maybe singing one of the songs from it. I did ‘Walk Through the World with Me,’ which I absolutely adore, in Australia. [Composer] Leslie Bricusse was a friend and a great, great writer. And, of course, ‘You and I,’ which I often do.”

I defy anyone to watch the scene in which she sings that song to Peter O’Toole (at his greatest) and not weep at the radiant womanliness and sheer love emanating from her. I wondered why she called the film “flawed.”

“I’m not quite sure what happened. They asked me to do it and I said yes, of course. I loved the music and it was a wonderful Terence Rattigan script and I loved him, but then they started changing it and I think they lost their confidence a bit. It got a lit-

STEPHEN SOROKOFF

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Petula Clark is the “Downtown” girl uptown at Feinstein’s.

tle soft, and it didn’t flow somehow. I had a great time doing it because O’Toole was gor geous, and we went to Italy and filmed there and at that beautiful school in England. I enjoyed doing it, but I had done ‘Finian’s Rainbow,’ and had such an amazing time with Francis Coppola and Fred Astaire, it wasn’t quite as much fun.

“Astaire was divine — funny and a total perfectionist, very unsure of himself. When people would come up and go, ‘Oh, my God, Fred Astaire, the legend!,’ he would be embarrassed and would often say to me, ‘I wish people wouldn’t do that.’ It was his last movie as a dancer, and he was very concerned about being up to scratch. We did a lot of filming outdoors on the back lot of Warner’s and it was a very hot summer, so on the weekends we would all go back to our homes with the swimming pools and recuperate. But he would stay in the studio and still keep working. I learned a lot from him.”

The film, though overlong and

suffering from a mugging surfeit of Tommy Steele, remains the freshest of the road show 1960s musicals because of the outdoorsy, countercultural-infected energy Coppola brought to it: “It was a new energy. He was new to directing, too, and not the Coppola that we know now. He was the new guy on the block, beard and long hair, the whole thing. He saw movies in a different way and actually shot ‘How Are Things in Glocca Morra’ himself with a handheld camera, which was very frowned on in LA. But he knew what he wanted. I knew he was special from the moment I met him, and adored him.”

Clark’s “Old Devil Moon” duet with Don Francks is probably the sexiest in movie history, and I mentioned that Cheyenne Jackson, who starred in the Broadway revival, told me he was dying to croon it that way instead of in the straighton romantic, juvenile style.

Clark laughed and sang it both ways for me: “That was quite sexy I suppose, why not? We

knew how it was going to be shot. I always thought it was a sexy song, and when we sang it together, it sounded even more so. So we said, ‘Okay, why not?

Let’s go for it!’”

From her pop songs to the way she gloriously belted out the school song in “Mr. Chips” and that final, funky melisma on “Glocca Morra” in “Finian’s,” I’ve always delighted in the considerable soulfulness Clark has evinced, especially for a white girl. But, like Ann-Margret, who always professes not to realize how sizzlingly sexy she is, Clark seemed genuinely unaware of this: “That’s very interesting.

I don’t look at myself as a soul singer at all, but there are all different kinds of soul for people, I guess. On ‘Finian’s,’ they wanted me to do it. They knew how I sang, and that’s the way they wanted it and that’s the way they got it. Soul is a very personal thing. It can come out sounding very different because people are just different inside.

Singing is not just about getting the notes out and sounding pretty. It’s about putting out something of yourself inside, and that’s what I do and that’s what you hear.”

Controversy came her way in 1968, during the taping of her debut American TV special: “NBC was treating me royally and they asked me who I would like to have on, and I said Harry Belafonte. We rehearsed for weeks and got along like a house on fire, and there was this song called ‘Paths of Glory’ I’d co-written, an antiwar song we both felt strongly about. We got to taping day and I touched his arm during it. Why not? I felt like touching his arm — big deal — and we finished the take.

“There was a pause, and the producer said, ‘We’re going to do it another way,’ and I said, ‘But this is the way we rehearsed.’

‘Yeah, but maybe Harry can go over there,’ and I said, ‘But I won’t be next to him!’ ‘It doesn’t matter.’ The producer had gotten word from the sponsor in the box: ‘We’re selling cars here!’

“We didn’t know — I think Harry suspected it — and we did a couple more takes and the lights went down and, ‘That’s it, we got it.’ And then my husband,

my executive producer, and my lawyer were there: ‘Come on, we’re going downstairs,’ into this cellar, really, of NBC. “This guy is sitting there, eating a sandwich, and he’s the one who has all the tapes of the takes. My lawyer said, ‘We want you to erase the other tapes and just keep this one.’ He said, ‘But we keep the others just in case something goes wrong,’ and my lawyer said, ‘This is an order.’

So he pushed the button and erased them, and that’s why the one where I touched Harry’s arm went out.

“That was that, and it caused, as you say a furor, which we thought was ridiculous. I had a black piano player for years and I just didn’t get the whole thing, but it was that time in American history and I found myself in the thick of it. Seems weird and ridiculous now.”

Pressed to name her favorite hit song: “I suppose there are two. One is ‘Don’t Sleep in the Subway,’ and the other is ‘Couldn’t Live without Your Love.’ As for “Downtown,” it was the 1960s, which I don’t remember much about. Not because of drugs and rock and roll but because I was so busy, flitting around Europe, trying to fit an American career into an already busy European one.

I was in Paris at the time, had become a big star over there.

Tony Hatch came to my apartment and asked if I’d like to make a recording in English again. I said, ‘If I find the right song,’ and he said, ‘I’ve been writing this song, haven’t finished it yet, but would you like to hear it?’

“I went to the kitchen to make a cup of tea as he started to play it. I came back and said, ‘That’s pretty good [laughs]. If you can write a lyric up to the standard of that tune, I’d like to do it. And two weeks later, we did it.

“It took off like a phoenix — became a number hit in England, knocking off The Righteous Brothers’ ‘You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feeling,’ and then Warner’s picked it up for America, where it hit instantly. That song just goes on with a life of its own.”

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IN THE NOH, continued on p.25

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| February 1, 2012

OPERA

Two Tenors Brownlee and Calleja light up the Met’s Gallic evenings

BY DAVID SHENGOLD

The vocally excellent, enthusiasticallyoffered Tonio of Lawrence Brownlee domrench opera often plays a dis- inated the evening. Brownlee is always tant third wheel to the Italian a welcome presence; he never shortand German repertory wings changes the audience in terms of winof major opera houses. These ning energy. His tenor is really capable of days, even Russian and Czech the demands of this bel canto role, which works — since they tend to be cast with requires not only a fearless string of high and conducted by native speakers — Cs but also a beautifully articulated and often get more idiomatic performances sustained line. These demands are typified by Tonio’s first and second act arias, than their Gallic competition.

Charles Gounod’s “Faust� actually both of which won Brownlee prolonged opened the Old Met back in 1883 — yet ovations.

I’m not the only commentator who it was sung in Italian, with a Swedish soprano and a French mezzo surround- finds Brownlee’s instrument more beautied by Italians. Francophone or French ful in timbre than that of his higher prostylists have never crowded the compa- file, more album cover-ready colleague/ ny’s ranks. Plus, after 1920, the whole rival Juan Diego FlĂłrez, who helped creFrench singing tradition declined, pro- ate this production. Brownlee also has more range as an actor, whereas FlĂłrez, ducing fewer international class singers. in my experience, always offers essentially the same characterization. I wish we had the Ohioan rather than the Peruvian tenor headlining next year’s new production of another Donizetti comedy, “L’elisir d’amoreâ€?.

Spunky Georgian soprano Nino Machaidze has tended, not without reason, to be a target of online complaints about looks casting and recording contracts being awarded too quickly. Her Met debut as Gilda was quite raw, and her recent debut CD lacks distinction.

Her voice is not fully worked through — it often projects a shrill edge, and her coloratura ability, save for some pretty exciting staccati, is iffy — plus her French was utterly incomprehensible in song and dialog. But she presented Marie’s two ballad-like slow arias with genuine feeling and managed some nice soft singing.

I don’t envy any artist being asked As Tonio, Lawrence Brownlee dominated in the Met’s production of Donizetti’s “La Fille de Regiment.â€? to reproduce as idiosyncratic a characterization as Dessay brought to this In the old house’s last decades, only production, but to her credit the likeable RĂŠgine Crespin, Gabriel Bacquier, and Machaidze pulled it off better than had Rita Gorr enjoyed star status, with JosĂŠ the vocally more accomplished Diana van Dam alone assuming their mantle Damrau in 2010. Machaidze may yet afterwards. Several French singers fig- develop into a genuine asset to the opera ure in the Met’s planning — mainly world — or, it may just be that having Natalie Dessay and Roberto Alagna, recently endured far more inadequate with Ludovic TĂŠzier — one hopes — an singing from “divasâ€? Mojca Erdmann, Marina Poplavskaya, and Danielle de increasingly familiar presence.

For the recent revival of Laurent Pel- Niese makes me appreciate a half-full ly’s cartoonish production of Donizetti’s glass.

The Met’s UK-oriented casting depart“comedy of sentiment,� “La Fille de Regiment� (heard December 29), the only ment habit of proceeding along archenative francophone on hand was not typal lines found the Marquise (Marie’s singing — French-Canadian conductor actual mother, we eventually learn) — a Yves Abel. Abel did a fine job with the role done terrifically the first time around forces he had before him, but couldn’t by veteran British mezzo Felicity Palmer produce linguistic finesse in a few rehearsals. 䉴 OPERA, continued on p.25 MARTY SOHL/ METROPOLITAN OPERA

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Rare photographs. Rare Vinyl.

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gaycity news.com

24

February 1, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com

sions and struggles of painter Mark Rothko. Anders Cato directs. George Street Playhouse, 9 Livingston Ave. at George St., New Brunswick, NJ. Tue.Sat., times vary, Feb. 2-26. Tickets are $59.50-$63.50 at GSPonline.org or 732-246-7717.

Homo Invasion B-Movie filmmaker Lola Rock-N-Rolla (“Dragzilla,” “Night of the Living Gay,” “Nefertitty”), seminal punk guitar player and songwriter Gina Volpe, and Broadway dancer and choreographer Aliane Baquerot (“Celebrity Circus,” “Movin’ Out”) have joined forces to create an experience of pure camp pop culture, chock full of ear splitting rock and high kick-ass dancing. “Homo the Musical!” tells the story of the infiltration of a religious, Middle American suburb by an alien from the Planet Homo posing as a suburban housewife. Michael Formika Jones, Brandon Olson, Erica Penn, and David Artarvia are among the stars. The Wild Project, 195 E. Third St., btwn. Aves. A & B. Feb. 2-4, 8 p.m. Tickets are $15 at thewildproject.com.

See “Fort Greene Renaissance”: February 7

Broadway & Roosevelt

The Transit Spotlight Series, a platform for innovative musicians to present solo performances of new and experimental music from the cutting edge, presents Phyllis Chen on toy piano, cellist Evelyn Farny, and multimedia artist Rob Dietz. Kent Fine Art Gallery, 210 Eleventh Ave. at 25th St., second fl. Feb. 2, 7 p.m. Free.

A closeted policeman from Long Island comes to Jackson Heights for a date. At Club Atlantis, a drag pageant contestant has a run-in with one of her fans, while farther down Roosevelt Avenue, a Russian immigrant discovers that redemption arrives in the strangest ways. Car dispatchers, sex workers, drag queens, ER doctors, gamblers, and insomniacs collide in the colorful world of Jackson Heights after hours. Seven playwrights explore the world’s most culturally diverse neighborhood from 10 p.m.-4 a.m. in “Jackson Heights 3AM.” Queens Theatre, 14 United Nations Ave. S., Flushing Meadows Corona Park. Feb. 3, 7:30

Push Comes to Shove In “BOB, Blessed Be The Dysfunction That Binds,” actress and writer Anne Pasquale invites you to meet her special needs brother Bob and her family, and share in their crises, craziness, laughter, tears, and triumph. This 90-minute solo show sheds light on the lives of folks with disabilities and those who love them. Mary Ann Hay directs. The 78th Street Theatre Lab, 236 W. 78th St. Feb. 2-4, 8 p.m. Tickets are $18 at smarttix.com or 212-864-4444.

Yosemite’s Secrets Playwrights Theater presents the world premiere of “Yosemite,” a new play written by Daniel Talbott (“Slipping,” a tale of gay seduction among two high schoolers) that is the story of three siblings sent out into the snow-silent woods in the Sierra Nevada foothills to dig a hole that will be deep enough to bury a family secret. The cast includes Kathryn Erbe (“Law & Order: Criminal Intent,” Tony nomination for “The Speed of Darkness”), Noah Galvin (“The Burnt Part Boys,” “Ace”), Seth Numrich (“War Horse,” “Blind”), and Libby Woodbridge (“Jerusalem,” “Gabriel”). Pedro Pascal directs. Rattlestick Theater, 224 Waverly Pl., off Seventh Ave. S., btwn. Perry & W. 11th Sts. Through Feb. 26, Wed.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sat., 2 p.m.; Sun., 3 p.m. Tickets are $55 at ticketcentral. com or 212- 279-4200. Student and theater artist discount information can be found on the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater Facebook page.

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FEB. 2, continued on p.34

DANCE, from p.20

up across the stage doing unadulterated disco dancing. Sly’s music is seductive but here Dorfman’s spatial patterning is reductive. Dorfman has found a dancemaking formula that seems to work for him, mining recent history — as he also did in “Underground” about the Vietnam war protests — and devising a series of vignettes inspired by it. But they lack the insight that could make the visual pastiches more resonant.

The cast includes dancers who are a treat to watch, like Abraham, Tucker, wiry dynamo Luke Gutgsell, and Karl Rogers as a rhythm-challenged, funk-deficient nerd. Jacob Pinholster’s effective video “set” projects psychedelic washes, digitized sound waves, archival film clips of Stone playing guitar, and real-time video of performers onstage lip-synching.

Kelly orders the audience to “put your fingers in the air” and to stand up and sing along with him on “I Want to Take You Higher.” And since the dancers entered down the aisles to reach the stage at the beginning, it’s not surprising that at the finale they invade the audience again and haul people onstage for a dance party. Audience participation is certainly not original or particularly ingratiating in general, unless you happen to be jonesing to fulfill your dancer fantasy.

ADAM CAMPOS

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Randy Harrison (Showtime’s “Queer as Folk”) and Bob Ari (Broadway’s “Frost/ Nixon”) star in John Logan’s “Red,” the award-winning Broadway play that examines the artistic pas-

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Renuka Hines, Kyle Abraham, and Karl Rogers, with Luke Gutgsell in the background.

25

| February 1, 2012 IN THE NOH, from p.22

wo very funny ladies, Marylouise Burke and Marin Hinkle, are appearing in a new farce, “RX,” by Kate Fodor, at 59E59 Theaters (59 E. 59th St., through Mar. 4; 59e59.org), and they chatted up a storm about it.

“My character is outside the narrative world of the play because they all work in this corporate pharmaceutical environment,” Burke said.

“I’m the lady Marin‘s character meets when she leaves the office to cry. In this play, the working place is so important and people’s feelings about that environment, who thrives in it, and who doesn’t.”

Hinkle added, “Marylouise was cast from the very beginning. When I heard about it from my agents and read the scenes of us together, I said, ‘To be able to watch her work and share a stage with her, it’s like a master class.’ You have people you dream of working with and this is one of them.”

Burke’s distinctive timing is

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undoubtedly what gets her so many jobs, and she confessed she lear ned it from “Jack Benny on the radio. I would cancel social engagements to listen to him.”

Hinkle was happy her schedule freed up enough for her to do this: “I don’t know if you read anything about ‘Two and a Half Men,’ but there was this moment with Charlie Sheen last year… So we were asked to take a pause while they figured out what to do with the show. About Charlie, everyone says he’s just playing himself, but no, he created the essence of this character with comic timing beyond belief. I watched when he would say something and the audience could not not laugh and not continue to. He was always incredibly professional, and I was always thrilled to be working with and learning from him.

“With the new guy Ashton, they’re creating this really interesting relationship, and something else is happening now. I haven’t been around so much, and I’m excited about it. There’s new hope, and sadness about Charlie not being

OPERA, from p.23

— filled by Dublin-born, London-based Ann Murray. Her spoken French was certainly acceptable, but while Palmer is a brilliant comedienne — what the art demands — with a lot of incisive tone left, Murray proved kind of wan and “adequate.” Yet another occasion to wonder, “Did they ask Ewa Podles?”

As the beefy Sergeant Sulpice, Maurizio Muraro did quite a good job replacing the initial cast’s wonderful stylist Alessandro Corbelli. Unlike many comic basses, Muraro actually addresses his music with accuracy. Kiri te Kanawa remains a handsome stage figure, but her timing isn’t good enough for the cameo comedy of Duchesse de Krakenthorp, and though she emitted some clear, star -quality notes in passing, the Alberto Ginastera song she chose to interpolate did nothing for her (or “La fille”). anuary 16’s “Faust” performance showcased a cast almost entirely different from the those who opened the show in November. Also, the premiere’s excellent conductor, the out gay Yannick Nézet-Séguin, was gone, replaced by the competent but more mundane Alain Altinoglu.

Altinoglu indulged lavishly the desire of the main remaining cast member, Marina Poplavskaya, toward lax, languid tempos.

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around.”

Hinkle also plays Sarah Silverman’s mother on that comedian’s TV show: “Twenty years ago, she and I were tested for the same role in a pilot.

I did not know who she was, but I did what you’re never supposed to do at auditions.

I put my ear to the door and listened to her being such a genius that I stepped away thinking, ‘The role is hers.’

No way to surpass that level of taking the text and flying off to a land of her own. Cut to 20 years later and I’m her mom.

“I watch her on the set taking the structure of what is there and start crackling with the brilliance of who she is, and it goes into another place.

The set was incredibly joyous.

There’s a darkness and edge, like Charlie has, but they’re both filled with love and childlike qualities. Sarah is like a little girl, and Charlie had that quality where you just wanted to hold him.”

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

Seen from a seat near the stage, Poplavskaya delivers an admirably detailed and moving dramatic performance. She had also improved her singing to some extent — she actually managed the high C ending the Garden Scene, and, as long as the music stayed soft and slow, she sang quite beautifully.

Unfortunately, high notes and fast passages remained problematic and often flat, and there’s a stamina issue — Marguerite’s hard sledding comes in the last hour and Poplavskaya sounded increasingly desperate. How she can sustain a professional career with such crippling technical problems is beyond me; clearly some think her acting talent trumps all.

Ferruccio Furlanetto sounds a touch rusty these days, but his voluminous bass still encompassed Mephistopheles’ part with ease, and he proved dapper and charming. George Petean (Valentin) mustered solid French and an apt baritone unfortunately somewhat occluded in the part’s top few notes.

What made the evening remarkable was the ravishing, stylish singing of the appealingly sincere Maltese tenor Joseph Calleja as Faust. His lightly vibratoed tenor and phenomenal diminuendi, including from high C, truly represent a throwback to a different — and, yes, better — age of vocalism.

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

JAMES LEYNSE

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Marylouise Burke and Marin Hinkle appear in Kate Fodor’s “RX,” at 59E59 through March 4.

26

February 1, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR PUBLISHER & CO-FOUNDER JOHN W. SUTTER

JWSutter@communitymediallc.com ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER & CO-FOUNDER TROY MASTERS

Christie’s Tax Levy on the Gays

troy@gaycitynews.com EDITOR IN-CHIEF & CO-FOUNDER PAUL SCHINDLER

BY PAUL SCHINDLER

editor@gaycitynews.com ASSOCIATE EDITOR Duncan Osborne

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Responding to a determined push by advocates and Democratic leaders in Trenton for a marriage equality law, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie emphatically stated he plans a veto.

Telling reporters, “I made this opinion really clear when I was running for office in 2009,” the Republican governor, on January 24, charged that Democrats are treating “hundreds of years of societal and religious tradition” like “a political football.”

Christie knows his resistance to gay marriage is increasingly unpopular in the Garden State, so he worked hard to position his call instead for a statewide ballot referendum as a sign of his openness on the issue. Undoubtedly, he felt his nomination the day before of an African-American Republican attorney, Bruce A. Harris, as the State Supreme Court’s first openly gay justice gave him some political berth.

“The fact of the matter is, I think people would have been happy to have a referendum on civil rights rather than fighting and dying in the streets in the South,” the governor argued.

Whatever Harris might think of that statement, the notion that minority rights should be

put up to a popular vote runs counter to the values held by leading civil rights leaders — back in the 1960s and today — by Republican leaders from days gone by, and even by the Founding Fathers.

Cory Booker, Newark’s African-American mayor, quickly responded to Christie, saying, “I shudder to think what would have happened if the civil rights gains, heroically established by courageous lawmakers in the 1960s, were instead conveniently left up to popular votes in our 50 states.”

Georgia Congressman John Lewis, a veteran of the ‘60s Civil Rights Movement, appeared in Trenton on January 30, doubling down on Booker’s point: “Apparently the governor of the state has not read his recent history books. We would never have won. The actions of Congress and executive orders brought down those signs that said ‘colored only’ and ‘whites only.’”

On page 8, Duncan Osborne reports that Lewis accurately reflected the views of his ‘60s allies, quoting a Seattle NAACP official who argued against a 1964 ballot initiative aimed at overturning a nondiscrimination law there: “When you are dealing with rights granted by our Constitution there is no such thing as ‘majority rules.’

The Constitution grants rights to minorities, and the majority should not be able to vote down

these rights.”

Osbor ne also noted that President Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican, and GOP Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen agreed civil rights do not make, in Ike’s words, “a very good subject for a referendum.” Dirksen stated, “I’m not going to pass the buck to the people back home and say, ‘I’m thinking about the next election.’ And they would say, ‘Haven’t you got any guts to stand up under the Constitution of the United States?’”

In fact, America’s tradition of protecting minority rights against the tyranny of the majority is deeply rooted in late 18th century constitutional thinking. James Madison, in “The Federalist Papers, No. 51,” wrote, “It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part…

In a society under the forms of which the stronger faction can readily unite and oppress the weaker, anarchy may as truly be said to reign as in a state of nature, where the weaker individual is not secured against the violence of the stronger.”

Preventing the “violence” of the majority has become a very costly proposition for the LGBT community. In 29 states, voters have gone to the ballot box to amend their constitutions to specifically bar same-sex couples from marrying. Accord-

prohibit such marriages.”

1998: Responding to an Illinois State Legislative National Political Awareness Test: “Q: Do you believe that the Illinois government should recognize samesex marriages? A: “Undecided.”

2004: In an interview with Windy City Times, Obama mentions the religious dimension of the gay marriage debate, says he supports civil unions, and indicates his stance is dictated in large part by political strategy.

2006: In his bestseller, “The Audacity of Hope,” Obama, now a US senator, explains his support for civil unions, again men-

tioning religion and noting the strategic problems that the push for gay marriage poses.

2008: At Rick Warren’s bigotfest, Obama said, “For me as a Christian, it is a sacred union.

God’s in the mix…” In an interview with MTV, Obama said he opposes Prop 8, but also gay marriage: “I have stated my opposition to [Prop 8]. I think it is unnecessary. I believe that marriage is between a man and woman.”

2008 to 2010: Defends DOMA in the courts using vile, bigoted language.

2011: Refuses to support

ing to Equality California, more than $43 million was spent in the unsuccessful effort to defeat Proposition 8 — and that’s before a very expensive legal battle to challenge its constitutionality in federal court began.

While the Census Bureau estimates California’s population at 37.7 million and New Jersey’s at only 8.8 million, buying ads in the New York and Philadelphia media markets means it is no bargain to reach Garden State voters. And, with anti-gay forces pushing marriage amendments in North Carolina and Minnesota this year, Fred Sainz, a spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign, said, “I wouldn’t place a bet that our side would be able to fund the referendum” in New Jersey at the level required to win.

The most salient question is: Why should we have to? Our community has been forced to defend our rights at the ballot box 31 times — and that’s just on the issue of marriage — a burden that represents a hidden tax on every LGBT American.

Republicans say they are the party of lower taxes, and yet, over and over again, key figures in the GOP have launched insidious efforts to deny us our rightful place in society by dragging us into costly election-year battles.

Christie is spinning fast to put a friendlier, let’s-see-whatthe-people-say face on his referendum proposal, but it amounts to the same thing. Anti-gay forces and their Republican friends have for too long had their hands in our pockets — and it’s time to demand they remove them.

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Web master Arturo Jimenez Arturo@gaycitynews.com Gay City News, The Newspaper Serving Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender NYC, is published by Community Media, LLC. Send all inquiries to: Gay City News, 515 Canal Street, Unit 1C, NYC 10013 Phone: 646.452.2500 Written permission of the publisher must be obtained before any of the contents of this paper, in part or whole, can be reproduced or redistributed. All contents (c) 2012 Gay City News.

Gay City News is a registered trademark of Community Media, LLC. John W. Sutter, President Fax: 646.452.2501; E-mail: JWSutter@communitymediallc.com

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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR MITT’S MYTHS, BARACK’S RECORD January 19, 2012 To the Editor: Romney’s not alone (“Mitt’s Myths,” by Paul Schindler, Jan. 17-31). Obama also has a record.

1996: In response to a questionnaire from Windy City Times, Obama, a candidate for the Illinois State Senate seat representing Chicago’s wealthy Hyde Park neighborhood, writes, “I favor legalizing same-sex marriages, and would fight efforts to

same-sex marriage in New York and continues to prefer that we be second-class citizens deserving only civil unions.

Republicans are right-wingers with a Christer bigot attached at the hip. Democrats are Republicans in drag.

Bill Perdue

BOB BERGERON’S PASSING January 18, 2012 To the Editor: I am deeply saddened by

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LETTERS, continued on p.29

27

| February 1, 2012

PERSPECTIVE

An AIDS Memorial Design To Embrace

BY NATHAN RILEY he shape of the AIDS Memorial Park advocates have been pr essing for on a triangular parcel adjacent to the former St. Vincent’s Hospital is no longer a matter of conjecture. A jury chaired by Michael Arad, the New York architect who created the National September 11 Memorial at Ground Zero, has announced a winning design that is at once pastoral and modern, an oasis that provides tranquility and an opportunity for reflection amidst the city’s noise.

The site of the proposed park — bounded by 12th Street, Greenwich Avenue, and Seventh Avenue South — is part of Rudin Management’s redevelopment of the shuttered hospital’s property into high-end residential uses. As the city moves toward final approval of the overall Rudin plan, decisionmakers must deal constructively with a major new fact — the unveiling of this dramatic proposal for a world-class park in the West Village.

Both Community Board 2 and the City Planning Commission have approved the

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plans laid out by Rudin for the 17,000-square-foot parcel — but on each occasion, that approval came with an endorsement for including a memorial to the AIDS crisis, for which St. Vincent’s was a Ground Zero in its own way.

Neither CB2 nor the Planning Commission offered a prescription for how to incorporate an AIDS commemoration into the park. They offered no view on whether it should be a plaque or a sculpture and whether the theme should define the park or be relegated to the least-used edge of it. However, Amanda Burden, the Planning Commission chair, urged Rudin to “continue to work with the community,” and she specifically included “those interested in creating an AIDS memorial” as members of that community.

Now that a fully realized AIDS memorial design has emerged, Rudin Management and the City Council should avoid enshrining the developer’s earlier plans in stone and instead work to make the new plan a reality.

The winning design, “Infinite Forest,” submitted by Studio a+i, a Brooklyn firm, is simple in concept. Groves of birch trees and adjacent seating areas may

attract tourists, but the overall effect is an environment closer to the quiet of a library than the noisy exuberance of a park full of young people such as Washington Square.

Studio a+i mixes modern and traditional. If the trees give the park a pastoral feel, mirrors on three sides add a distinctly modern touch and magnify the size of the site. Christopher Tepper, an urban planner who — with his friend and fellow design professional Paul Kelterborn — organized the design competition, predicted that the reflections created by the mirrored surfaces would attract and amuse children living in the neighborhood.

The ability of the park to simultaneously serve the recreational aspirations of the local community and honor the pivotal role St. Vincent’s and Greenwich Village played in responding to an unprecedented health emergency that staggered the gay community is a critical strength of the Studio a+i design. The sense of both the past and present in the firm’s proposal was undoubtedly a key factor that allowed it to beat out the 475 alternatives from 32 countries.

“Infinite Forest” offers crucial

Setting Priorities, Creating Change

BY KELLY JEAN COGSWELL didn’t go to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s Creating Change Confer ence this past weekend, but here’s my 25 cents on what I would do if somebody suddenly made me queen of the LGBT community.

First off, I’d ignore the “It Gets Better” project. Getting LGBTQ kids to believe time makes everything better is a big fat disempowering lie. Little bigots have a way of becoming big bigots and turning into our neighbors and bosses — and

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sometimes representatives in Congress.

Things only get better if we act to make them better, and in the case of queer kids and bullying, we all ought to be doing some ass-kicking now to improve things today. Hell, if I were queen, I’d go so far as to institute a national two-year service requirement for young queers, helping them to get their riot on. Especially targeting schools.

Let them call us pedophiles if they want, but we’ve got to get more laws passed against bullying and, more importantly, stick

around to get them enforced.

Even better, we ought to showcase kids that are already empowered and fighting back, making sure these projects get as much publicity as the latest kid suicide.

We should also act for our second most vulnerable group — older LGBT folks. Maybe later, as we begin to marry off like the mainstream population and spawn our own kids, aging queers won’t be more screwed than anybody else with crappy insurance and mediocre health care. But right now, older and disabled LGBT are often alone

flexibility on one other point.

Tepper, Kelterborn, and their allies hope to preserve a basement space below the triangular parcel for use as a museum and learning center about the epidemic. The Rudin plan, however, relies on gutting that space for use as a staging area in building the park. The Studio a+i design can proceed either way — by placing skylights on a roof enclosure for the basement or by developing the park without preserving the basement.

The design put forward, Tepper explained, is for now merely a proposal, and “there will be a process of design refinement” as additional stakeholders, including CB2, make suggestions.

In this way, the Studio a+i design offers ample room for a new consensus to emerge.

But that is possible only if there is leadership from Rudin and from Christine Quinn, the speaker of the City Council, which makes final decisions on land use matters. Those two players, in turn, will more likely do the right thing if CB2 continues to play a positive role in promoting AIDS commemoration as central to the park’s mission.

Rudin owns the site and is required to build a park as part of the overall approval of its ambitious redevelopment project. By law, only Rudin is positioned to request a change to its existing application before the

city. Whether any changes the developer agrees to are considered minor or major will be an important factor in determining how easily the Studio a+i design can be embraced. The question of preserving the basement may prove particularly tricky to navigate without going back to square one.

It is altogether fair of advocates, however, to expect that Burden was sincere in her admonition that Rudin continue to work cooperatively with the community.

Quinn plays the other major role here. The Council will vote within the next two months on whether to give Rudin authority to proceed with its project. As the Council member who represents the West Village, the AIDS Memorial Park proposal poses a critical test for her as she moves closer to a 2013 run for mayor.

Quinn has won significant financial support from the real estate industry, but a leader understands that such relationships are two-way streets. She ought to have the credibility to say to Rudin, “Embrace the new and go with the best idea.”

New and best are adjectives “Infinite Forest” represents dramatically. As visitors stand amidst trees surrounded by mirrors that reflect each other, they will witness images repeated multiple times, offering them a sense of the infinite that for each will have its own associations of wonder and awe.

in the world — no partner, no heirs. And if we do have relatives, they may either ignore us or see our disabilities as a chance to lock us away in the nursing home of their choice, far from other degenerates.

If you think being a queer kid sucked, don’t expect a joyous experience in nursing homes.

Besides the misery of physical decay, you may face a situation a lot like high school, with the popular girls grouped together and the gender police out in full force. Over Christmas, I saw one older woman use her walker to attack a butch, short haired woman: “You’re a man. Get out of here.”

We need queer-friendly nursing homes and assisted living places, so we don’t end our lives in facilities we don’t choose,

with incompatible roommates and lives governed by nurses and doctors and aides who may be smearing our fingernails with polish and slapping on lipstick if we don’t want them — and refusing them if we do. And now, we need to find ways to reach out to our elderly already in dire straights.

It’s best to avoid the whole declining health thing as far as possible by keeping queers in good shape to begin with — getting dykes and trans people to see doctors regularly, and fags too, with a renewed focus on HIV. It continues to spread even if we only talk about it on World AIDS Day and pretend it’s Africa’s problem now. The truth is queers are still getting infected,

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COGSWELL, continued on p.28

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February 1, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com

PERSPECTIVE

The Mad Activist Wears Her Hat

BY SUSIE DAY ey, lady. You got a problem with my hat? I mean, look.

I was just walking down Fort Washington Avenue, minding my own business on my way to the A train, and you — a middleaged white lady in a blue plaid housedress — stop to glare at my hat. How friendly is that?

This is a good hat, lady, a cool hat. My girlfriend got it for me. Yeah, my girlfriend, see?

She got me this tough, proletarian, newsboy’s cap. Says to the world, “I may be cute, but I am still a dyke.” You got a problem with that? You don’t like that I am wearing a lesbian hat?

Oh, I see I’m scaring your little pug dog. Yap, yap, yap — well, so what? Maybe little puggie, here, is afraid I’ll tear off your blue plaid frock, afraid I’ll sweep you into my arms and rain ardent kisses upon your writhing, horrified face. That would teach her to support gay

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rights, wouldn’t it, little puggie?

I’m sure you are aware that homosexuality is not a disease, lady. We queers may be going to hell, but we’re going with a certificate of mental hygiene from the American Psychological Association. There’s obviously nothing wrong with me, other than the fact that you don’t like my hat.

It’s too “mannish,” isn’t it, lady? Too “unfeminine”? My hat subtly tells you that, if my girlfriend and I were to get married, I would be the groom.

That the night before the wedding, there would be a torrid lesbo stag party with whips and spike heels and big, hairy, tattooed bulldykes throwing their babes over Harley-Davidsons and pleasuring them with the lubricated butts of AK-47’s — and everybody would be wearing these hats. Is that what you think, lady, is it? Oh, SHUT UP, little puggie.

All I’m doing is wearing a hat, lady. Big ordinary deal.

But I can see it bugs you.

COGSWELL, from p.27

especially queers of color, and even the lucky ones with an undetectable viral load aren’t exempt from problems.

HIV-positive people have more serious illnesses than the rest of us. They face the diseases of aging — like heart disease and osteoporosis — earlier, but also a range of non-AIDS related cancers like Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which is tough to treat when you have HIV. As chemo’s killing off the

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NEWS BRIEFS, from p.12

294-103 majority in the House — both of them veto-proof margins.

Action on repeal was put off last year at the suggestion of the House majority leader, who argued Republicans should use their mandate to work on economic issues.

The Monitor reported that the Senate majority leader, Jeb Bradley of Wolfeboro, though a marriage equality opponent, said recently he cannot support repeal unless language in the bill establishing civil unions is

You hate my hat. I mean, hat hatred is a terrible thing, lady.

So many hats suf fer needlessly. Compared to the war on Afghanistan or global warming, my hat, for you, is real pain.

I’m trying to empathize, here, lady. How’m I doing?

It’s hard being a middle-aged lady in a blue plaid housedress with no hat and a yappy dog, isn’t it? There are no blue plaid Pride Marches for your kind, no special bookstores, no blue plaid issues to defend on “The O’Reilly Factor.” You’re about to lose your social security and you carry, deep within your subconscious, the chronic awareness that the nuclear power plant supplying this city’s electricity could, any day, send out radioactive plumes that would kill us all within a week. Yet you, for some reason, decide to fixate your existential malaise on my hat.

Have you ever worn a hat, lady? I bet it was a nice hat — a frilly, girlish hat. When you were courting your hubby, you held hands, didn’t you? You

cancer, it’s killing off your immune system, too, and opening the door for your HIV to make a comeback. We should be doing a lot more than we are.

We should also be thinking more than we are. As queen, I say that ten or 20 years after queer boot camp and mandatory activism, we should all be inducted into queer think tanks, trying to balance out action with fresh ideas from fresh brains. We especially need to think about how our community fits into our

strengthened. In any event, he said, “Leadership in the Senate is not going to push people one way or the other.”

A University of New Hampshire poll in October found that only 27 percent of residents support repeal; 62 percent oppose it.

Maine Gay Marriage Advocates Head for Round 2 at the Polls After submitting 105,000 signatures in support of a ballot question aimed at restoring same-

sex marriage rights in Maine, the LGBT rights group there said the referendum drive is full speed ahead for November.

Maine enacted a marriage equality law in early 2009, but it was repealed in a voter referendum in November of that year by a 53-47 percent margin.

State law requires ballot initiative sponsors to deliver at least 57,000 valid signatures to the Secretary of State’s Office.

That office has until February 26 to verify the signatures, and if it does the matter is sent on to the Legislature, which is expected

kissed openly on the street. He removed your hat, caressing your heaving bosom, and you never once asked for “special rights.” Of course, you had no problem getting married. And now, at least in a few states, neither do we. This makes you fretful. You wonder if we receive toasters and bath towels as wedding presents, the way you did. You pale at the thought that you might have pur chased the same BedBath-and-Beyond duvet cover on which we disport in lesbo abandon.

I suppose, because you are relatively powerless, I enjoy venting on you. I should be grateful that you are not a gang of frat jocks who would do more than sneer at my hat.

And I admit that, while I have nothing against your housedress, I do see you as a stereotype. It’s hard for me not to think of you as “one of them.”

Because I am so sick of all the snide little glances “you people” give off when I pass.

But I have a large soul. I can forgive. I forgive you, lady. My hat gives me this power. It tells me that you and I are, in fact, one: We are part of that wondrous, protean 99 percent.

So, if you have a problem

larger societies, and ask if we will be able to protect and consolidate gains as our traditional activist tools like free speech shrink in America.

It worries me a lot that our civil liberties have been eroding continuously in the decade since September 11, 2001, while the power of the Executive Branch has been growing exponentially. Get declared an enemy, and you can get tossed in jail — no trial, no jury, no recourse. They don’t like what you’re up

to advance the question to the November ballot.

Equality Maine, in announcing the signatures it delivered, said it aims to engage 60,000 conversations about marriage with the state’s residents between now and Election Day. In the 2009 election, roughly 266,000 voters rejected marriage equality, while 239,000 supported it.

Equality Maine said its current polling shows 54 percent of residents now support marriage equality. All of Maine’s neighbors — Vermont, New Hampshire, Quebec, and New Brunswick —

with my hat, if my choice of chapeau oppresses you, please tell me. Go for it, lady. Share. It will bring peace.

Our time on this planet is limited and shortens, even as you glare. And yet, would your life improve if I actually took off my woman-identified headgear? I think not. That’s the whole point, isn’t it?

I can’t explain it, but your life, would, in fact, be somehow diminished if I removed this hat. And so I shall wear my hat — for you, lady. I shall wear my hat as I walk past you and your yappy dog.

For you, I shall wear this hat as I ride the A train downtown to a Wall Street demonstration against the greedy one percent.

Perhaps I will not be taken seriously because of my hat, and the one percent will continue its rule, succeeding in pitting us 99 percenters against each other in xenophobic or racist or heterosexist bitterness. Still, I shall wear this hat. I shall wear it in the wind and the rain and in paddy wagons and on sunny days at the beach. And maybe someday, lady, after the Revolution, maybe when we pass one another on the street, you will notice more about me than this hat.

to, they can now keep you under surveillance without warrants.

While these powers are mostly used in the war on terror, they could easily be used against any trouble-making activist who happens to offend the governing party. It was only 20 years ago that Pat Buchanan, then a candidate for president, used his speech at the Republican National Convention to declare homos public enemy number one in the Culture War for America’s soul. Remember?

allow same-sex couples to marry.

HUD Announces Rules Combating Anti-LGBT Housing Bias US Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan used the occasion of a January 28 speech to National Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s Creating Change Conference to announce new federal regulations, in the works for several years, that will fight discrimination against LGBT renters and homeowners who aim to live in HUD-financed

housing or take out a federallyfinanced mortgage.

Speaking in Baltimore, Donovan said the new rules would bar owners or operators of housing financed by HUD from making rental decisions based on the sexual orientation or gender identity — actual or perceived — of applicants, would include LGBT families within the definition of family for eligibility for HUD public housing or its Housing Choice Voucher program, and bar any mortgage lender offering prod-

䉴 NEWS BRIEFS, continued on p.29

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| February 1, 2012

䉴

LETTERS, from p.26

this. I was — and still am — very much looking forward to Bob Bergeron’s book (“Has Anyone Heard From Bob?,” by Christopher Murray, Jan. 18-31). I believe he had things to say no matter how conflicted he may have been about them. We often write about and help those with issues we are struggling with ourselves. As a gay author and psychotherapist, I feel a kinship with this man whom I have never met and never will. Great article. It is so true: “There for the grace of G-d go I.” Joe Kort Editor’s note: Subsequent to publication of Murray’s story, Magnus Books’ Don Weise told Gay City News that publication of Bob Bergeron’s book had been canceled.

䉴

NEWS BRIEFS, from p.28

ucts insured by the Federal Housing Authority from taking sexual orientation or gender identity into account.

Donovan said that the public housing and voucher program combined serve roughly 5.5 million people. The US Census Bureau in 2009 estimated that there are 130 million households in the US, and FHA is a common source of mortgage insurance.

“If you are denying HUD housing to people on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity — actual or perceived — you’re discriminating, you’re breaking the law — and you will be held accountable,” Donovan said. “That’s what equal access means.”

“This policy announced today

by Secretary Donovan will literally save lives,” said Rea Carey, NGLTF’s executive director.

January 18, 2012 To the Editor: Thank you Christopher for your powerful and beautiful tribute to Bob Bergeron. We are saddened to read about his death. We send our tender thoughts to his family and friends.

Krishna Stone Communications Dept Gay Men’s Health Crisis —————— January 21, 2012 To the Editor: Thank you Christopher for writing this piece. Bob was kind, good, friendly, and sweet, aside from his obvious good looks. As another fellow GMHC staffer from way back when, I was saddened to learn this news a couple of weeks ago and

“LGBT people and their families all across the country depend on HUD programs to have a roof over their head.” She added, “This announcement could not have been made to a more appropriate crowd — the thousands of LGBT activists working on the ground in all of the states across the country who see the impacts of housing discrimination every day.”

Harper Jean Tobin, the policy counsel at the National Center for Transgender Equality, said, “This is a major and urgently needed advancement in basic protections for transgender people. NCTE is calling on other federal departments to follow HUD’s common-sense approach and use existing legal authority to prohibit discrimination against LGBT people in the programs they fund and administer.”

The new HUD regulations will be filed in final form in the

saddened even more to learn this tragedy was by his own hand. Heartbreaking.

Jason Osher

nating. A light has gone out in Chelsea.

Chuck Gomez ——————

—————— January 24, 2012 To the Editor: Thank you Christopher for putting into words what so many of us who knew Bob felt about him. I was an acquaintance, and I was also a client.

I came for my appointment January 9 only to be told by the doorman to call a scrawled number on a note. When I learned of Bob’s passing I was stunned. Others have suggested to me that my therapy is invalidated by his suicide.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The advice he provided was outstanding and illumi-

Federal Register next week and become effective 30 days later.

Marriage Ban Fight Brightens as North Carolina Governor Bows Out Supporters of a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage in North Carolina were confident that the calendar was on their side. The vote on the issue would be taking place on Primary Election Day on May 8 when the GOP presidential contest might still be red-hot, and Democrats would have no similar contest on the ballot pulling them to the polls.

All that changed, Associated Press reported, when Democratic Governor Beverly Perdue announced last week she would not seek reelection in November.

Suddenly, her party faces a real contest on May 8 — the primary to succeed her.

January 25, 2012 To the Editor: I knew Bob, though not very well, when I was a consultant at GMHC in the late 1980s and early ‘90s. He always seemed a sweet and gentle man, and an earnest one, and I liked him. I am so sorry to hear this news.

Most of us have the bad habit of taking numbers seriously, and like 29, 39, 59, and 69, 49 can feel like the beginning of some end. The end actually comes when it comes. I send Bob good and kind wishes, as one never knows what is heard and what isn’t.

Walt Odets

“I’m sure that supporters of the amendment thought that, strategically, putting the question on the May ballot was their best chance,” said Michael Bitzer, a professor of politics and history at Catawba College, told AP. “That strategy just got blown out of the

January 24, 2012 To the Editor: Thank you for a stirring commentary. As a mental health and substance worker, I often wonder how much shame and stigma we face with our own personal issues inside our own community of professionals and how available we feel services are when we are the wounded healer.

Joseph Franklin

Write Us! Please address letters to the editor of 250 words or less to Editor@GayCityNews.com or mail them to 515 Canal Street, Suite 1C, New York, NY 10013.

We reserve the edit any letter for space or legal considerations.

water.”

Michael Cole-Schwartz, spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign, told AP, “Given the fact that this amendment won’t be decided by such a narrow slice of voters as it would have been previously, it increases the opti-

mism from our side.”

Public opinion polls in North Carolina have been all over the map on whether the amendment will succeed. In a November blog post, the North Carolina Justice

䉴 NEWS BRIEFS, continued on p.32

30

February 1, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com

POLITICS

Washington State on Cusp of Gay Marriage With guv’s

BY PAUL SCHINDLER he Washington State Senate now has the 25 votes necessary to pass a marriage equality bill that is also expected to clear the House of Representatives and has the support of the governor.

Democratic Senator Mary Margaret Haugen’s announcement she was prepared to cast the deciding vote came on January 23, as the Senate Government Operations Committee concluded a hearing on the bill. Later in the day, the House Judiciary Committee also held hearings. On January 26, the Senate committee advanced the measure to the floor on a 4-3 vote. Four days later, a House committee followed suit, by a 7-6 margin.

The measure has 50 sponsors in the 98-member House and now a majority in the 49-member Senate.

Marriage equality enjoys the strong support of Democratic Governor Chris Gregoire. In a hearty endorsement speech on January 4, the governor alluded to the struggles for civil rights and women’s equality and then said, “Now it’s our time... this generation’s call to end discrimination — discrimination against our gay and lesbian citizens. It is time for marriage equality.”

Associated Press quoted Senator Haugen saying she had now reconciled “my religious beliefs with my beliefs as an American, as a legislator, and as a wife and mother who cannot deny to others the joys and benefits I enjoy.”

Advocates are not taking their progress for granted, however. “The worst thing we can do at this point is to be complacent,” Josh Friedes, the director of marriage equality at Equal Rights

T

䉴

Washington, told Gay City News. Noting that the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) — the leading group fighting against equal marriage rights and other same-sex partner recognition laws — first testified publicly at this week’s hearings and has also begun opposition robocalls, Friedes said now is the time for gay marriage supporters to call legislators to thank them for their commitment to vote yes.

He also said advocates recognize that after winning approval for marriage equality, they will likely have to defend it in a referendum.

Friedes said that with a short legislative session, House and Senate approval of marriage must be wrapped up by midMarch.

“It’s likely we’ll see action significantly before that,” he said. In fact, the Senate vote is scheduled for February 1.

If enacted, Washington will join New York, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Iowa, and the District of Columbia in giving gay and lesbian couples equal marriage rights.

“I’m proud of the steps the Senate and House committees took today to advance marriage equality in Washington,” said Senator Ed Murray, a sponsor of the legislation. “Momentum continues to grow, and we’re seeing blossoming support from people of every walk of life.”

His House counterpart, Representative Jamie Pedersen, who chairs the Judiciary Committee, said, “I was moved by the families and veterans who came forward to share their stories about why our state should allow gay and lesbian couples to marry — and impressed by the broad coalition of faith leaders, businesses, and other allies who were willing to testify in support of equality for all Washington families.”

MINNESOTA, from p.13

higher degree of scrutiny.

It did, however, point out that Minnesota courts apply a more stringent version of the “rational basis” test than does the US Supreme Court under the Federal Constitution, where a law is presumed constitutional unless a claimant can show it has no rational basis.

Minnesota courts “have been unwilling to hypothesize a rational basis… as the more deferential federal standard requires,” Worke wrote. The burden is shifted from the plaintiff to the state, which must put forth a defensible justification for the law.

“Appellants claim that the government cannot deprive them of their fundamental right to marry without showing that this denial is narrowly tailored to serve a compelling state interest,” Worke wrote. “But even if the right to marry is not considered a fundamental right, appellants should have been granted an opportunity to show that

OFFICE OF THE GOVERNOR, WASHINGTON STATE

support, legislative majorities, advocates eye referendum risk

Governor Chris Gregoire’s strong endorsement of marriage equality on January 4 contributed to the surging momentum advocates have achieved.

Murray and Pedersen are two of the six openly LGBT members of the Washington Legislature.

Among the hundreds who descended on the State Capitol in Olympia for the hearings were Grethe Cammermeyer, a retired Washington National Guard colonel who successfully challenged her 1992 discharge under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and was able to serve until her 1997 retirement, and her partner Diane Divelbesse, who live on Whidbey Island in Puget Sound.

In a statement released by Washington United for Marriage, a broad coalition of equality supporters, the couple said, “We can’t believe this day has finally arrived.

We have always considered ourselves to be spouses and have strived to raise our family just as any other family would

MN DOMA is not a reasonable means to its stated objective — to promote opposite-sex marriages to encourage procreation. The district court failed to conduct an appropriate analysis under the Minnesota Constitution.”

The plaintiffs’ due process, equal protection, and freedom of association claims, the court concluded, were “improperly dismissed.”

Worke also noted that in the 1971 case, the Minnesota Supreme Court said that there was no guidance from the US Supreme Court “regarding whether the right to marry is a fundamental right of all persons and whether restricting marriage based solely on sex is ‘irrational and invidiously discriminatory.’” Since that time, the US Supreme Court “has issued decisions providing guidance on these issues.” Here, Worke singled out the Romer v. Evans ruling.

Clearly, in the opinion of the Court of Appeals, there is a serious question under state constitutional law whether Minnesota’s DOMA is constitutional. The court

do. Now the efforts we’ve made and the love we share can finally be recognized as equal under the eyes of the law and to our family, friends, and neighbors.”

The day’s hearings drew large crowds of marriage equality supporters as well as their opponents. According to AP, a gay marriage law can be challenged at the ballot if opponents are able to collect 120,577 signatures by July 6. The ballot question would ask Washington voters whether they approve or reject the new law. Such a referendum, however, cannot be filed with the state — a step that precedes circulating petitions — until after the law is enacted.

Enactment in this session would allow marriage by same-sex couples to begin in June if there were no referendum.

However, once opponents file a referendum — even before signatures are collected — the law is stayed until the matter is resolved definitively.

Equal Rights Washington’s Friedes did not offer an estimate of how much advocates would have to spend to defend the law, beyond terming the total “unprecedented.” Noting the strength of the coalition formalized with the launch of Washington United for Marriage last year, he said everybody has long known that the advocacy effort is two-pronged — enacting the law and defending it at the ballot box.

AP reports that NOM pledged this week to spend $250,000 in primary challenges against Republicans who vote for the gay marriage bill. Two Republican senators and two of their House GOP colleagues have stated their support for the legislation.

Since 2009, Washington State has had a broad domestic partnership law similar to the civil union statutes in New Jersey, Illinois, and Hawaii.

does not discuss or even cite recent federal rulings casting doubt on the federal DOMA’s denial of US recognition of legal same-sex marriages or the Prop 8 ruling in California, but these clearly hover in the background of the Minnesota decision.

The three couples were not represented by any of the national LGBT litigation groups, but rather by a local attorney, Peter J. Nickitas. It did attract amicus attention from the usual suspects, including the antigay Alliance Defense Fund and the Minnesota Catholic Conference, which filed a brief also representing the views of associations of Evangelicals and Hassidic Jews. Only Minnesota Atheists filed an amicus brief in support of the plaintiffs.

Since the state is no longer a defendant in the case, the decision whether to appeal this ruling to the Minnesota Supreme Court rather than go back to the district court for discovery and trial falls to the Hennepin County attorney, Michael O. Freeman.

31

| February 1, 2012

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February 1, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com

LEGAL

Counseling Student’s Religious Claim Revived on Appeal Sixth Circuit distinguishes case from recent ruling by 11th Circuit

BY ARTHUR S. LEONARD n contrast to a December ruling by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, the Cincinnati-based Sixth Circuit has refused to dismiss claims against a public university that expelled a graduate counseling student who declined to work with gay clients.

A unanimous Sixth Cir cuit panel, ruling on January 27, found that District Judge George C. Steeh should not have granted summary judgment to Eastern Michigan University on First and 14th Amendment free speech and free exercise of religion claims by Julea Ward, expelled after she asked that counseling practicum clients presenting gay relationship issues be referred to other counseling students because of her religious objections to such relationships.

Distinguishing this case from the 11th Circuit’s decision, the Sixth Circuit panel’s Judge Jeffrey Sutton wrote that a reasonable jury could conclude, based on the summary judgment

I

䉴

record, that Ward was discriminatorily expelled because of her religious beliefs.

In the December case, the plaintiff presented herself as an outspoken critic of homosexuality who would, if given the opportunity, refer gay clients for “conversion therapy” and try to persuade them to abandon the “gay lifestyle.” In this case, while Ward voiced her religiously-based objection to same-sex sexual relationships, she sought to avoid taking on such a case so she would not be in a position of having to affirm same-sex relationships.

The court pointed out that both the American Counseling Association (ACA) ethical code, cited as a required standard for an accredited program, and textbooks and expert testimony supported the proposition that professional counselors with strongly held beliefs that might clash with those of their clients can and should refer the clients to other counselors.

Faculty members and administrators dealing with Ward’s case had claimed the program

ALEXANDER, from p.11

If Hayworth has a conservative vision about the role government should play, she has steered a more moderate course on LGBT rights. The Human Rights Campaign, which issues report cards on Congress ever two years, has not yet compiled its report on the 2011-2012 session, but in June of last year the group lauded Hayworth for being one of four House members — two Democrats and two Republicans — who introduced the Tax Parity for Health Plan Beneficiaries Act, which would end taxation of employer-provided domestic partner

䉴

NEWS BRIEFS, from p.29

Center noted that the language used in the polling — particularly whether voters were asked about “same-sex marriage” or about “domestic legal union” — made a decisive difference in the results.

The group said if amendment opponents can emphasize that it aims to foreclose any option for same-sex couples to win partnership rights, they will have their

had a “no-referral policy” for the practicum. Students, they said, were obliged to deal with any client and be able to comply with professional standards of not imposing their own values. But the court found conflicting evidence as to whether the school was consistent in that policy, given that there was no evidence it was established in writing and that professional standards support making referrals to other counselors in such circumstances.

“Ward’s free speech claim deserves to go to a jury,” Sutton wrote. “Although the university submits it dismissed Ward from the program because her request for a referral violated the ACA code of ethics, a reasonable jury could find otherwise — that the code of ethics contains no such bar and that the university deployed it as a pretext for punishing Ward’s religious views and speech.”

The judge noted evidence in the record that several faculty members had made negative comments about Ward’s views.

Sutton also pointed to other

health insurance of the type exempt if provided to a different-sex spouse.

The Lower Hudson Valley JournalNews reported that in a Republican primary debate in 2010, Hayworth was vague about her position on marriage equality, saying simply, “I will not seek to force a definition of marriage on the states.” She has not, however, signed on to fellow New Yorker Jerrold Nadler’s bill to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, which bars federal recognition of legal same-sex marriages, such as those now available in the Empire State. Florida’s Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is the only Republican to have done so.

best shot at prevailing.

24-Hour LGBT Youth Drop-In Center Funded in NYC A half-million dollar grant from the Calamus Foundation will allow the Ali Forney Center to open the city’s first 24-hour drop-in services center for homeless LGBT youth.

Carl Siciliano, executive

director of Ali Forney, which has provided housing and social services to homeless queer youth in the city for a decade, said that in the past year the organization’s waiting list had reached 200.

“I became increasingly concerned about the limited number of shelter beds and drop-in services available,” he said in a written statement.

New York has 250 beds for a homeless youth population esti-

potential conflicts in values that might not lead a student to be expelled.

“Surely, for example, the ban on discrimination against clients based on their religion (1) does not require a Muslim counselor to tell a Jewish client that his religious beliefs are correct if the conversation takes a turn in that direction and (2) does not require an atheist counselor to tell a person of faith that there is a God if the client is wrestling with faith-based issues,” he wrote. “Tolerance is a twoway street. Otherwise, the rule mandates orthodoxy, not antidiscrimination.”

The court, however, was careful to note it was not ruling on the merits of the case, just on whether it was appropriate for the trial judge to grant summary judgment when the record consisted solely of affidavits and deposition testimony but no evidence presented at a hearing.

Addressing the conflict between the December and January appeals court rulings, Sutton wrote, “At one level, the two decisions look like polar

Pointing to her sponsorship of the tax parity legislation, the Log Cabin Republicans honored her at their September 2011 Spirit of Lincoln Awards Dinner in Washington. Hayworth also appeared that month at a celebration of the official end of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy hosted by Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, a leading repeal advocacy group. Though Hayworth took office after repeal legislation was enacted, she was one of nine House Republicans who voted against the effort to bar service chaplains from receiving training about the policy’s elimination. Conservatives objected to military guidelines that said

mated at 3,800 each night. Up to 40 percent of that population is estimated to be lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or questioning.

Ali Forney and other homeless youth advocates are pressing the city and state to provide $3 million in incremental funding each year until the demand for beds is satisfied. Figures from the city’s Department of Youth and Community Development

opposites, as a student loses one case and wins the other.

But there is less tension, or for that matter disagreement, between the two cases than initially meets the eye. The procedural settings of the two cases differ. In [the December 11th Circuit case], the district court made preliminary fact findings after holding a hearing in which both sides introduced evidence in support of their claims. Not only are there no trial-level fact findings here, but Ward also gets the benefit of all reasonable factual inferences in challenging the summary-judgment decision entered against her.”

Ward is represented by the Alliance Defense Fund, a litigation organization that frequently appears in cases involving religious freedom claims, especially against gay rights claims. The university is represented by the Michigan Attorney General’s Office. Numerous amicus briefs were filed on both sides of the case, including briefs supporting the university from Lambda Legal and the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan.

they could officiate at same-sex partnership ceremonies and weddings.

Alexander may face two Democratic opponents in the primary election — cardiologist Rich Becker, who has been on the Town Board in Cortlandt, a Westchester community of roughly 42,000, since 2007, and Tom Wilson, the mayor of Tuxedo Park, an Orange County community with just over 700 residents.

New York is losing two House seats in the wake of the 2010 census, but the new district lines have not yet been drawn, nor has the primary election been scheduled.

suggest that $3 million would increase the inventory of beds by as many as 87.

Advocates were disappointed on January 17 when Governor Andrew Cuomo failed to include any contribution toward the $3 million goal in his annual budget message.

Ali Forney is currently scouting locations and hopes to have the drop-in center up and running by late 2012.

Calamus is a grant-making foundation, established in 1994, that supports HIV/ AIDS and LGBT community organizations. The award to Ali Forney, announced on January 4, is a challenge grant. In 2012, the foundation will match new donations dollar for dollar up to $250,000. In 2013, Calamus will contribute a dollar for every two dollars donated, again up to a limit of $250,000.

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䉴

“Hide/ Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture,” a groundbreaking exhibit in presenting gay and lesbian portraiture in historical art and culture, the show includes works by Georgia O’Keeffe, Andrew Wyeth, Thomas Eakins, Romaine Brooks, Marsden Hartley, Charles Demuth, Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Catherine Opie, and Robert Mapplethorpe. The show, “A Fire in My Belly” restored, is at the Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway at Washington Ave., near Grand Army Plaza. Wed., Fri.-Sun., 11 a.m.-6 p.m.; Thu. 11 a.m.-10 p.m., through Feb. 12. Admission is $12; $8 for students & seniors. On Feb. 4, 2 p.m., Leslie-Lohman Museum guests receive an exclusive tour of the exhibit led by co-curator Jonathan David Katz. Space is limited so you must RSVP to jerry@leslielohman.org. The cost is $45; $35 for Leslie-Lohman members.

FEB. 2, from p. 24

PERFORMANCE From 1600 and Back Again Obie Award-winning and MacArthur Fellow writer, director, and multimedia innovator John Jesurun presents the world premiere of his “Stopped Bridge of Dreams,” which unfolds inside an anonymous globe-circulating jetliner, a modern-age pleasure palace operated by a mother and son. The piece is inspired by 17th century Japanese writer Saikaku Ihara’s “floating world” stories, and Jesurun’s mother and son hauntingly travel back and forth between the parallel worlds of the 1600s and now. Black-Eyed Susan and Preston Martin star. Among the other artists scheduled to appear during the “Stopped Bridge” run are actor, writer, and director Buck Henry, performance artist John Kelly, Butoh dancer and choreographer Dawn Saito, and Obie and Bessie Award-winner Mary Schultz. La MaMa’s Ellen Stewart Theatre, 66 E. Fourth St., btwn. Bowery & Second Ave. Jan. 20- Feb. 1-4, 7:30 p.m.; Feb. 5, 2:30 p.m. Tickets are $25; $20 for students & seniors at lamama.org or 212-475-7710.

FILM African Heritages

FRI.FEB.3

Men of All Colors Together welcome out gay African-American filmmaker Thomas Allen Harris — a Bronx native whose documentary “Marriage Equality: Byron Rushing and the Fight for Fairness” contributed to the public debate leading up to the successful vote on gay marriage in New York last June — who screens his new film, “That’s My Face,” a documentary on children of the African Diaspora that included his own journey of self-discovery in the black and African cultures of Brazil. LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St. Feb. 3, 8-10 p.m. The suggested contribution is $5. The film will also screen on Feb. 5 on TV systems that carry the PBS World Channel. A two-minute preview of “That’s My Face” can be screened at youtube.com/watch?v=JQICxG8cmSg

ADVOCACY HRC New York Gala

SAT.FEB.4

The Human Rights Campaign, the LGBT community’s Washington lobbying group that played a critical role in New York State’s marriage equality victory last June, hosts its annual Manhattan gala, with a cocktail hour, silent auction, dinner, and afterparty. The group will honor Vogue editor-inchief Anna Wintour and the Wall Street firm Goldman Sachs.

Ryan Murphy, the creator of “Glee,” will present Wintour with her award. Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, 301 Park Ave. at 49th St. Feb. 4, 5:30-10 p.m. Tickets begin at $450 at hrc.org. An afterparty at the Waldorf Startlight Roof follows at 10 p.m.

MON.FEB.6

CABARET No Lady Here. ¡Ninguna!

The raunchy, demented drag diva of Wigstock fame, Lady Bunny presents her first full-length one wo-man show in almost a decade. Gay City News’ David Noh writes, “There surely have been drag queens more beautiful and more vocally expressive, but none has ever made me laugh as hard and consistently over the years as Lady Bunny.” For mature audiences who enjoy irreverent humor! La Nueva Escuelita, 301 W. 39th St. Feb. 6, 14 & 28, 8 p.m. Admission is — oddly — $14.98 at tinyurl. com/3jzfrk9. The show is followed by an hour of two-for-one drinks.

TUE.FEB.7

FILM Fort Greene Renaissance

“Brooklyn Boheme,” the latest documentary from Nelson George and Diane Paragas, takes a look back at Fort Greene in the late 1980s and 1990s, prior to gentrification, when a closely-knit African American/ Latino community nurtured a new wave of original and uniquely talented artists — including Spike Lee, Chris Rock, Rosie Perez, Branford Marsalis, and many other creative innovators. LIU Kumble Theater for the Performing Arts presents a free advance screening. LIU Brooklyn Campus, Flatbush & Dekalb Aves. Feb. 7, 6:30 p.m. Register at cencom.org or info@kumblethater.org.

GALLERY Eroticism Unchained

WED.FEB.8

In “F*ck Art,” the Museum of Sex responds to the growing anti-institution sentiment pervasive in our culture by engaging a group of street artists to occupy the museum’s third floor gallery to create their most pro-

vocative work to date. The installation is a work in progress, with the artists painting, pasting, and manipulating the walls, ceiling, and floor in real time over the course of two weeks. Museum of Sex, 233 Fifth Ave. at 27th St. Feb. 8-26, Sun.-Thu., 10 a.m.-8 p.m.; Fri.-Sat., 10 a.m.-9 p.m.

Admission is $17.50.

NIGHTLIFE Sarah Palin Live!

It’s the ex-Alaska governor’s birthday, so P*rno Bingo welcomes Sarah impersonator Dorothy Bishop, who caused some whimsical trouble in 2008 with her musical spoofs of the GOP VP candidate. The evening benefits New Alternatives for LGBT Homeless Youth, a group of volunteers and professionals working with homeless LGBT youth in various shelter and transitional housing settings. Singer Melissa Wrolstad appears courtesy of Rock and Rawhide to encourage attendees to donate toys, rawhides, treats, blankets, and more for dogs and cats placed at Animal Control and other high kill shelters — contributions that can alleviate stress on the animals and make them more attractive to adoptive homes.

Pieces, 8 Christopher St. near Sixth Ave. Feb. 8, 8-10 p.m.

THU.FEB.9

THEATER Homophobia, Zenophobia

Lesbian playwright Barbara Kahn premieres her “Unreachable Eden,” a stand-alone sequel to “The Spring and Fall of Eve Adams,” the real life story of Polish Jewish lesbian Eve Adams (born Chava Zloczower), who ran a tearoom and avant garde salon on MacDougal Street in 1926, before being entrapped by an undercover policewoman and charged with making unwelcome advances and offering her a book of short stories she wrote about lesbians. After an 18-month imprisonment, she was deported and never able to return despite an effort lasting through the 1930s. She was murdered at Auschwitz. Kahn and Robert Gonzales, Jr., direct, with music

by Arthur Abrams. Theater for the New City, 155 First Ave. at Tenth St. Feb. 9-26, Thu.-Sat. at 8 p.m.; Sun. at 3 p.m. Tickets are $12 at 212254-1109 or theaterforthenewcity.net.

COMEDY Gaysian Daddy How do you go from stand-up gigs, red carpets, gay cruises, and circuit parties to being a responsible carpool-driving, PTA member? Find out in “Alec Mapa: Baby Daddy,” a fast-paced standup comedy ride with America’s Gaysian sweetheart who has appeared on Ugly Betty” and “Desperate Housewives.”

Beechman Theater, West Bank Café, 407 W. 42nd St. Feb. 9-11, 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $20, plus a $15 minimum at spincyclenyc.com or 212352-3101.

BOOKS The Latest Erotica Sinclair Sexsmith and Kathleen Warnock, editors of Cleis’ “Best Lesbian Erotica 2012” and “Best Gay Erotica 2012,” respectively,

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GALLERY “Hide/ Seek” in Brooklyn

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| February 1, 2012 p.m. Tickets are $35; $25 for museum members at boxoffice.mcny.org or 917-492-3395.

FEB. 9, from p.34

host a reading by contributors D.L. King, Ali Oh, Julia Noel Goldman, Deborah Castellano, Anne Grip, James Earl Hardy, and Greg Norris. Bluestockings Bookstore, Cafe, & Activist Center, 172 Allen St., btwn.

Stanton & Rivington Sts. Feb. 9, 7 p.m. Free.

MON.FEB.13

NIGHTLIFE Stupid But Loving Lions

BENEFIT Battling Cancer in the Community

The Queens Pride Lions Club celebrates Valentine’s Day with a Stupid Cupid Party, with food and beverag-

“Encore For Hope” is a night of cocktails and entertainment to benefit the American Cancer Society’s efforts within the LGBT community. Comedian Judy Gold hosts, welcoming performances by Joey Arias, the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus, Sherry Vine, 2 To Fly Aerial, Manila Luzon, and Sahara Davenport.

Providence NYC, 311 W. 57th St. Feb. 13, 6:30-10 p.m. Admission is $125-$500 at gala.acsevents.org/ encoreforhope or 212-237-3882.

WOLFE VIDEO

TUE.FEB.14

FRI.FEB.10

FILM The Kids Ain’t Alright

“Private Romeo” is a contemporary film rendering of the Shakespeare classic, in which the forbidden love takes place between two male cadets at a high school military academy and the original text is supplemented

by YouTube videos and lip-synched indie rock music.

Seth Numrich (Romeo) and Matt Doyle (Juliet) both appeared in 2011’s Tony-winning “Warhorse.”

Writer Alan Brown (“Book of Love”) directs. Opens at Cinema Village, 22 East 12th St., Feb. 10. Screening times at cinemavillage.com.

SAT.FEB.11

HISTORY Gay New York Artists

In conjunction with its exhibition “Cecil Beaton: The New York Years,” the Museum of the City of New York hosts a symposium exploring gay New Yorkers’ influence in the formation of the city’s artistic life from the 1920s through the ‘60s. Speakers include Donald Albrecht, the museum’s curator of Architecture and Design; George Chauncey, Yale University professor and author of “Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890– 1940”; Lynn Garafola, a Barnard College professor of Dance and author of “Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes and Legacies of Twentieth-Century Dance”; Nadine Hubbs, who teaches Women’s Studies and Music at the University of Michigan and wrote “The Queer Composition of America’s Sound: Gay Modernists, American Music, and National Identity”; Lawrence La FountainStokes, a University of Michigan professor of American Culture, Latino Studies, and Romance Languages who wrote “Queer Ricans: Cultures and Sexualities in the Diaspora”; Wendy Mofat, a Dickinson College professor of English who wrote “A Great Unrecorded History: A New Life of E.M. Forster”; Jeffrey O.G. Ogbar, a University of Connecticut history professor who edited “The Harlem Renaissance Revisited: Politics, Arts and Letters”; Hugo Vickers, an author of “Cecil Beaton: A Biography”; and Jane Tipett, a History of Art doctoral candidate in History of Art at the University of Delaware. 1220 Fifth Ave. at 103rd St. Feb. 11, 10 a.m.-4

es, dancing to music by DJ Cupid George, games and prizes, a photo booth, and a Valentine message board.

Queens Pride House 76-11 37th Ave., Suite 206, Jackson Heights. Feb. 11, 7-11 p.m. Admission is $10; $5 for members and their guests. For more information on the club, visit the Queens Pride Lion Club’s Facebook page.

Sharing the Love The Hudson Valley LGBTQ Community Center holds its annual Valentine’s Dance as a food drive to support local food banks including Angel Food East, Dutchess Outreach, Jewish Family Services of Orange County, and Queen’s Galley. Enjoy music by DJ John Martin’s Superior Sounds and DJ Retts Scauzillo, free snacks and a wine and beer bar. Admission is free with a donation of nonperishable food or dry goods.

Apuzzo Hall, 300 Wall St. at John St., Kingston.

Feb. 11, 7-11 p.m. More information at lgbtqcenter. org or 845-331-5300.

Hudson Love Ball Hudson, New York Mayor William Hallenbeck officiates at same-sex weddings as part of the Hudson Pride Foundation’s very first Love Ball. The evening begins with a cocktail reception with entertainment

by Cocoa Chanelle, Ophelia Nightly, and Lady Moon.

A silent auction and lively dance party follow, along with a wedding expo. Club Helsinki, 405 Columbia St. at S. Fourth St., Hudson, NY. Feb. 11, 6 p.m.-2 a.m. Tickets are $20 at hudsonpridefoundation.org/ donate; $25 at the door. Those couples interested in getting married at the ball should contact Foundation president Rich Volo at trixie@hudsonpridefoundation. org.

SUN.FEB.12

COMEDY Very Funny Valentines

Brad Loekle’s “Electroshock Therapy Comedy Hour” toasts loving couples and holds the hands of those singles looking to make it through Valentine’s Day without going nuts with an evening featuring Jessimae (VH1), Kate Wolff, and Hilary Schwartz (VH1’s “Why am I Still Single?”). Therapy Bar, 348 W. 52nd St. Feb. 12, 10 p.m. There is no cover charge, and cosmos are $7 all night long.

PERFORMANCE V-Day Dance Cabaret

In “Go F♥ck Yourself!,” “The Love Show” gets the sexy goin’ with their tightly choreographed and costumed numbers, theatrical appeal, and gorgeous girls and boys — a little cabaret, a little ballet, and a whole lotta rock and roll. Dance, burlesque, magic, music & comedy! Angela Harriell & the Love Show Dancers are joined by master magician the Great Dubini, and Matt “Matty B” Baram on the keys. David F. Slone, Esq., emcees. Drom, 85 Ave. A, btwn. Fifth & Sixth Sts. Feb. 14, 9 p.m. Admission is $10. For information, email info@theloveshownyc.com.

WED.FEB.15

ist discussion on Feb. 21, 6-8 p.m. For more information, visit leslielohman.org.

THU.FEB.16

BOOKS A Beautiful Boy, His Spirited Grandmother

Robert Leleux, author of the comedic and heartbreaking coming-of-age book “The Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy,” does a reading from his newest work, “The Living End: A Memoir of Forgetting and Forgiving,” a tribute to his spirited grandmother. Barnes & Noble/ Upper West Side, 2289 Broadway at 82nd St. Feb. 16, 7 p.m. Free. Call ahead to confirm at 212362-8835.

BOOKS Words & Whimsy This month’s edition of the “Drunken! Careening!

Writers!” reading is titled “Deep Whimsy,” an evening featuring Jacob M. Appel, whose short fiction has appeared in more than 200 leading literary journals and won the North American Review’s Kurt Vonnegut Prize; Lisa Ferber, a prolific multidisciplinary satirist, whose paintings and illustrations have been shown at National Arts Club and whose plays and songs have been performed at La Mama, the Duplex, and the Brick; and David Pratt, who won a 2011 Lambda Literary Award for his debut novel, “Bob the Book,” and whose story collection, “My Movie,” will be released

by Chelsea Station Editions in March 2012. KGB Bar, 85 E. Fourth St., btwn. Broadway & Second Ave. Feb. 16, 7 p.m. Free.

BOOKS Lean and Mean

Simon Doonan, fashionista and author of a new book of essays, “Gay Men Don’t Get Fat,” can tell a story like no one else, moving you from outright laughter to get a little tear in the corner of your eye. Doonan talks about himself and his designer hubby Jonathan Adler with honesty and hilarity, offering wisdom, advice, and inspiration beyond the same old diet and exercise tips. He reads from the book as part of the LGBT Community Center’s Second Tuesday series. 208 W. 13th St. Feb. 15, 7 p.m. A reception precedes the reading. The suggested donation is $10.

GALLERY Artist & Muse; Muse & Artist “Rolf Koppel: Willing” is a photography exhibition richly charged with fantasy, bearing witness to the interaction of Koppel, the photographer, with his muse and partner William Light Johnson. Johnson is no simple Narcissus figure in his ever-changing guises, no more than Koppel is merely the photographer, condemned to the role of voyeur — the two exchange roles again and again, reminding us that photographers themselves are objects that their pictures represent. Art historian Peter Weiermair curates. Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, 26 Wooster St., btwn. Canal & Grand Sts. Feb. 16-Mar. 17. Tue.-Sat., noon-6 p.m. Opening reception on Feb. 15, 6-8 p.m. Curator and art-

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