Los Angeles Blade, Volume 07, Issue 35, September 01, 2023

(Photo by Karen Ocamb)

SEPTEMBER 01, 2023 • VOLUME 07 • ISSUE 35 • AMERICA’S LGBTQ NEWS SOURCE • LOSANGELESBLADE.COM

FEATURES

Birthplace of LGBTQ movement in LA designated for preservation

The 4th Street Morris Kight Residence tells the story of a trailblazing LGBTQ+ civil rights activist who fought for LGBTQ+ civil rights

By SIMHA HADDAD Imagine Los Angeles in the late 1960s. A sharply dressed elderly gentleman with a white combover walks down the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and North McCadden Place. Spotting a homeless, possibly queer youth sitting on the sidewalk, the man hands the youth a card. On it is the man’s name, Morris Kight, his home address, and a phone number.

“Call me anytime,” Kight tells the youth, “day or night.”

BURBANK - The two women in Hawaiian print T-shirts greeted the Blade with warm smiles outside a mom-andpop coffee shop in Burbank this past month, joining the quickly forming queue inside the intimate shop where the patrons seemed just as eager to make small talk with the kind woman at the register as she was to get their artisanal coffee orders just right.

Obtaining the drinks- then claiming one of the two available four-tops situated on the sidewalk under red umbrellas just outside of the shop, Miki Jackson a long-time friend and partner in activism to Kight, and her wife Mary Ann settled in eager to share memories of their late friend.

“That was Morris,” said Jackson, Kight’s long-time close friend and activist partner relating the story about the youth. “He would be on his phone all day long taking these calls. Anytime you needed him, he was there…He knew that before we could be accepted by others, we had to accept ourselves. He knew we had to heal first.”

“He saw there was a need,” Jackson reflected. “He was always thinking ten steps ahead.”

Kight, born in 1919, grew up in Comanche County, Texas where he graduated from Christian Texas University with degrees in public administration and political science. His biographer Mary Ann Cherry noted that he began his long career as a civil rights activist in the 1940s when he became involved in organizing efforts with the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers International Union.

He moved to New Mexico where he married a woman and had two daughters, Carol Kight-Fyfe and Angela Chandler, and several grandchildren before leaving his old life behind to fight for gay rights in Los Angeles.

Throughout his time as a gay rights activist, Kight rarely discussed his marriage and family life because he believed that it could compromise his credibility within the LGBTQ movement.

In 1958, Kight moved to Los Angeles and chose a house on West 4th Street in Westlake near downtown LA in what was at the time known as the gay ghetto.

From 1967-1974 the modest house was the headquarters to several gay organizations, the most notable of those was the Committee for Homosexual Freedom, and the primary residence of Kight, who is often referred to as the grandfather of LGBTQ+ rights.

Now, Kight’s former residence and the birthing place of

the LGBTQ+ movement has been declared Los Angeles’ newest historic-cultural monument.

On August 8th, 2023, after a three-year fight fraught with delays, petitions, and controversy The Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously to protect 1822 West 4th Street. The declaration will prevent the home from being demolished by developers seeking to build multi unit properties in its place.

This modest Craftsman home in the Westlake neighborhood was a hub of social activity in the twentieth century and helped form L.A.’s LGBTQ+ civil rights legacy.

(Photo by Dr. Laura Dominguez, Los Angeles Conservancy, 2017)

Having grown up on a Texas farm, Kight had developed the habit of waking as early as 4:30 AM. His early waking hours gave him the opportunity to communicate with allies and activists in time zones across America to plan, organize, and execute projects to benefit the gay community, all from his home telephone.

He also used his time to take calls from the thousands of LGBTQ+ people he had handed his card to, all seeking guidance on issues from mental distress, child custody battles, and treating venereal diseases without being persecuted by the authorities.

Eventually, he began bringing in volunteers to handle the 200+ calls he was receiving per day. “Every call is priceless,” Kight was known to say, “every call is important…[it is] the most urgent call you’ve ever had in your life.”

Volunteers were drawn on from Kight’s Gay Liberation Front (GLF) which was also headquartered at the house.

The GLF started as a 20-member committee that met on Sundays. GLF quickly grew to an over 200-member organization of activists.

The GLF led over 175 protests. One notable protest took place over the course of months, as the GLF demonstrated and performed sit-ins to protest a sign that read “Faggots stay out” outside of popular Los Angeles bar, Barney’s Beanery. The GLF was successful in having the sign taken

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down.

Kight’s LGBTQ+ call center was the first of its kind and soon developed into the Gay Survival Committee, which was later known as the Gay Community Service Center (GCSC). Kight spearheaded the creation of the Gay Community Services Center, which operated from 1971 to 1975, which today is known as the Los Angeles LGBT Center.

On June 28, 1969, The Stonewall Riots in New York’s West Greenwich Village neighborhood, in a response to the NYPD raid of the Stonewall. NYPD officers brutalized patrons, arrested 13 people for illegal gay activity, and also performed humiliating sex checks on men dressed in drag.

It was a three day event that echoed and resonated with LGBTQ people all across the United States.

1969 was the same year as the murder of nurse Howard Efland by members of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Vice Squad at the Dover Hotel, a seedy downtown establishment run as a de-facto gay sex club. It was a frequently targeted location for LAPD vice & morals raids and ensuing police brutality against the LGBTQ+ community.

The police dragged a naked and bleeding Efland from his hotel room, claiming that he had groped an officer. LAPD Vice officers dragged him down a staircase to the sidewalk, then brutally beat him in plain view of nearly 25 witnesses.

Taken to Los Angeles General Hospital, Efland was chained to a bed, where he died of massive internal injuries less than an hour later.

Evelle J. Younger, the Los Angeles County District Attorney, refused to bring charges, and the City of Los Angeles along with LAPD Police Chief Edward M. Davis, rejected calls to discipline the officers. The injustice of Efland’s death sparked outrage in the gay community in Southern California.

In later years Kight himself recalled to his biographer, “We were horrified and we did the first real organized protest about that in that we asked that a coroner’s jury of civilians was put together and they had two days of testimony of police brutality (us mostly), with the police saying he was a dirty faggot and so on. The homicide was called justified.

We didn’t think it was justifiable.”

The following year, in honor of these events, the GLF and Kight’s friend, the Reverend Troy Perry from the Metropolitan Community Church collaborated to assemble the first gay pride parade down Hollywood Boulevard, known as The Christopher Street West march (CSW).

“He was revolutionary for the time,” said Jackson. “He was asking us to march proudly for being gay when we were being killed for it.”

“So marched we did,” said Kight told his biographer, “with butterflies in our stomachs, with legitimate doubts and

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FEATURES CONTINUED FROM PAGE 02 fears, but with enormous courage and devotion.”

Christopher Street West was one of the world’s first ever pride parades, but achieving CSW was a battle. At a Los Angeles Police Commission Meeting to obtain a permit for the march, Chief of Police Davis was famously quoted, “Well, I want to tell you something. As far as I’m concerned, granting a parade permit to a group of homosexuals to parade down Hollywood Boulevard would be the same as giving a permit to a group of thieves and robbers.”

While the Police Commission did grant Kight the permit necessary for CSW, they wanted him to secure a one million dollar bond to cover possible damages and the cost of police. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) was contacted and attorney Herbert Selwyn appealed the commission’s demand before the Superior Court of California for Los Angeles County.

MICHAEL WEINSTEIN, MIKI JACKSON, PATRICIA NELL WARREN, MORRIS KIGHT, RON ANDEREGG And unidentified woman (Photo by Karen Ocamb)

The court ordered the issuing of the permit and charged the LAPD with the responsibility to protect parade participants. CSW became the first organization to obtain a parade permit for a pride parade. The permit was granted only two days before the scheduled date for CSW, which also became the very first street-closing gay pride parade in the world.

In 1987, Kight helped organize the Second National March on Washington for Gay Rights that took place on October 11, 1987. Kight along with fellow organizers Steve Ault, Pat Norman and Kay Ostberg met with the steering committee in January 1987 at City Hall in the City of West Hollywood.

The delegates at the West Hollywood convention chose seven primary demands to serve as the platform for the 1987 March. Each of these demands was supplemented with a broader list of demands which extended beyond the scope of single-issue LGBT concerns. In doing so, the organizers wished to underscore their recognition that oppression of one group affects oppression of all groups. The seven primary demands were: • The legal recognition of lesbian and gay relation-

ships.

• The repeal of all laws that make sodomy between consenting adults a crime.

• A presidential order banning discrimination by the federal government.

• Passage of the Congressional lesbian and gay civil rights bill.

• An end to discrimination against people with AIDS, AIDS related complex (ARC), AIDS related conditions, HIV-positive status and those perceived to have AIDS. • Massive increases in funding for AIDS education, research, and patient care.

• Money for AIDS, not for war.

• Reproductive freedom, the right to control our own bodies, and an end to sexist oppression.

• An end to racism in this country and apartheid in South Africa.

On November 16, 1998, just before his 79th birthday, the City Council of West Hollywood presented Kight with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

In 2003, the year of Kight’s death, the City of Los Angeles dubbed the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and North McCadden place “Morris Square.” Morris Square was also the stepping off point for Christopher Street West, the world’s first ever street-closing pride parade.

There is a Chinese magnolia tree and a bronze plaque dedicated to him at the Matthew Shepard Triangle in West Hollywood. Kight used to visit this park weekly to tidy up the area, water and plant new flowers. He encouraged others to do the same.

The fight to establish 1822 West 4th Street as a historic-cultural monument There is a Chinese magnolia tree and a bronze plaque dedicated to him at the Matthew Shepard Triangle in West Hollywood. Kight used to visit this park weekly to tidy up the area, water and plant new flowers. He encouraged others to do the same.

When Kight’s home came under threat of being bought and possibly demolished by developers, Jackson with teamed up with writers/historians Kate Eggert and Krisy Gosney to nominate the West 4th street house a historic-cultural monument. Eggert and Gosney are also a married same gender couple.

In 2020, nominating Kight’s home quickly turned into a battle. While the Cultural Heritage Commission, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, and the LA LGBT Center all backed the nomination, it was ultimately held up indeterminately by discussions with the developer and the City Council member representing Westlake.

Eggert and Gosney took to social media and received an outpouring of support from those who had been affected by or who had heard of Kight’s contributions to the community. In response to Eggert and Gosney’s website, hundreds of supportive emails came in, acknowledging Kight’s importance and the significance of preserving his home.

“People were broken,” said Gosney. “The community was sick and broken. First Morris knew he had to make every-

04 • SEPTEMBER 01, 2023 • LOSANGELESBLADE.COM

body whole. He did that at 4th Street with all the services and all the outreach.”

However, in subsequent meetings in 2023, Councilmember Hernandez insisted that no one on her staff had ever heard of Kight, and discounted the importance of protecting the house.

Finally, on June 6th, 2023, after a three-year fight, the nomination went through to the Planning Commission.

On June 7th Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez called the nomination, a “land-use issue.” Councilmember Rodriguez and others went toe-to-toe with while Henrandez argued that the architectural changes made to the building and the dilapidated nature of the structure had rendered the home “very much different from what it was like when Morris Kight lived there many years ago.”

These architectural changes included the addition of a bathroom in the basement, replacement of a rear window, and the construction of a two-car garage in 1937; the repair of the front porch in 1994; the construction of temporary ancillary structures in 2019; and the replacement of the rear entrance door and some windows at unknown dates. In addition, based on interior photos submitted by the property owner at the Cultural Heritage Commission site inspection, other alterations consist of bathroom and kitchen remodels; replacement of some original doors; and the replacement of the original flooring in some locations.

At one point, committed to protecting Kight’s former residence, Eggert and Gosney even made a cash offer on the home in a further attempt to save it from developers.

Then the current owner requested a 60-day extension which was granted.

On August 8th, 1822 West 4th Street was unanimously nominated as an HCM. “We did it!” wrote Eggert and Gosney. “Morris Kight’s 4th Street is Los Angeles’ newest Historic-Cultural Monument!!

It was a nail-biter. We couldn’t have done it without AHF, the Los Angeles Conservancy, the LGBT Center, and the 100s of people who spoke up. We are forever grateful!”

“We’ll never know what tipped the scales,” said Eggert.

“But we are so happy with the outcome.”

A win for the LGBTQ+ community The Morris Kight Residence meets two of the Historic-Cultural Monument criteria.

The subject property “exemplifies significant contributions to the broad cultural, economic or social history of the nation, state, city or community.” The home is also “associated with the lives of historic personages important to national, state, city, or local history.”

Right now, less than 1% of all designated HCMs in Los Angeles represent LGBTQ+ heritage. Other LGBT HCMS include The Black Cat and the Margaret and Harry Hays Residence.

The 4th Street Morris Kight Residence tells the story of the trailblazing LGBTQ+ civil rights activist and the network of organizers who fought for LGBTQ+ civil rights, health, freedom, and joy. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Kight’s home was where activists gathered and LGBTQ community history was made.

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LOCAL

California Republicans to try anti-trans ballot initiatives WASHINGTON - Voters in California may remember Proposition 8, a ballot initiative that sought to ban gay marriage by defining marriage as between a man and a woman.

The initiative, which passed by popular vote in 2008, stood as one of the final victories for anti-gay campaigners until it was ultimately rolled back in 2010 as unconstitutionally discriminatory. Now, anti-trans campaigners such as Chloe Cole and Erin Friday are attempting to revive the spirit of the ill-fated law with a new target in mind: transgender kids.

The group “Protect Kids California” has revealed three new ballot initiatives targeting the rights of transgender youth, aiming for inclusion in the 2024 general election. To get there, they’ll need a considerable number of signatures: 546,651 for a straightforward statute and 874,641 for a constitutional amendment. Gathering such numbers is a challenging task. For context, a 2015 initiative aimed at banning transgender people from bathrooms couldn’t muster the necessary signatures.

However, today’s political climate surrounding transgender issues is notably more volatile. Conservative voices are dominating the airwaves with incendiary language, and over 20 states have already banned aspects of trans care for youth and even adults.

The three initiatives that will be proposed include: • Forced outing of transgender youth to their parents, ensuring that trans kids cannot have safety or privacy in schools if they are not ready to come out to family. Often these policies also include violations of privacy for the student when they discuss their gender identity with school counselors.

• Banning of transgender youth from sports that match their gender identity, stigmatizing them and often forcing them out of sports altogether. Notably, these provisions typically fail to differentiate

between high-stakes elite competitions and casual middle school teams. They also generally don’t provide for pathways to participation like hormone therapy, a method that has been researched and employed to address concerns of potential “unfair advantages” in competitions. California, which allows youth to access gender affirming care, will have youth who never underwent the puberty of their assigned sex at birth who would also be banned under this provision.

• Banning gender affirming care for trans youth shown to be lifesaving. Gender affirming care is associated with a 73% reduction in suicidality and over 50 studies assembled by Cornell University show its benefits. California is one of several states that has recently moved to protect transgender youth and their medical care, and such a restriction would impact a large number of transgender kids in the state.

Securing the necessary signatures will be difficult. Since 2010, only 12% of all ballot initiatives have been certified.

Once the initiatives are announced, they’ll be forwarded to the California Attorney General’s Office for review. Subsequently, they will draft descriptions of the ballot measures.

Collection of signatures is slated to begin on October 26th, as reported by the Sacramento Bee. The deadline to gather the required signatures is May 9th, 2024.

California has long been a significant battleground for LGBTQ+ rights using ballot initiatives. In the lead-up to 2008’s Proposition 8, 30 states had already inscribed bans on gay marriage in their constitutions.

Although California was perceived as largely supportive of LGBTQ+ rights, that image took a hit when Proposition 8, which defined marriage exclusively as a union between a man and a woman, passed with 52% of the vote in Novem-

House Speaker KEVIN MCCARTHY addresses California Republicans. (Screenshot/YouTube KTLA)

ber 2008. While this marked a major triumph for opponents of gay marriage, it proved to be one of their final successes.

By 2010, Proposition 8 was invalidated in federal court.

Subsequent years saw the dismantling of state-level gay marriage bans, culminating in the 2015 Obergefell decision, which secured the right to marry for all LGBTQ+ individuals.

Senator Scott Wiener, author of California’s safe-state law, similarly commented on the initiative by comparing it to an initiative filed 45 years ago. California proposition 6, which was voted on in 1978, would have banned gay teachers from teaching in the state. Famous gay rights campaigner Harvey Milk was instrumental in its defeat.

While most anti-LGBTQ+ laws have taken root in states dominated by Republican legislators, eyes will now turn to California to discern whether anti-trans campaigns can find footing there. Even though polls indicate that the majority of Americans don’t rank transgender issues as a top concern, this situation will serve as a crucial test to determine if Republicans can use prejudice against transgender individuals as a dividing issue during a significant election cycle.

ERIN REED

Temecula school district’s forced outing policy detrimental says AG OAKLAND — California Attorney General Rob Bonta issued a statement Wednesday following Temecula Valley Unified School District Board’s decision to implement a mandatory gender identity disclosure policy that is detrimental to the well-being of LGBTQ+ students on August 22, 2023.

The enacted policy requires schools to inform parents, with minimal exceptions, whenever a student requests to use a name or pronoun different from that on their birth certificate or official records, even without the student’s permission. The policy also requires notification if a student requests to use facilities or participates in programs that don’t align with their sex on official records.

The vote comes just weeks after Attorney General Bonta issued a statement denouncing Murrieta Valley Unified’s decision to implement a mandatory gender identity disclosure policy targeting transgender and gender nonconforming students.

In June, Bonta and Governor Gavin Newsom issued a joint statement urging the Board to provide information regarding its decision to reject the Social Studies Alive curriculum for grades 1 through 5, which highlights the contributions of various groups, including gay, bisexual, and

California’s Attorney General ROB BONTA listens intently to a teen member of the LGBTQ+ community during the launch of the first of a new series of youth community conversations with young leaders to foster civic engagement.

(Photo Credit: Office of the California Attorney General)

transgender Americans.

“The rise in school districts adopting policies that target California’s vulnerable LGBTQ+ student population is of grave concern,” said Bonta. “My office is closely monitoring the situation and will not tolerate districts compromising the safety and privacy of transgender and gender noncon-

06 • SEPTEMBER 01, 2023 • LOSANGELESBLADE.COM

forming students. We will remain committed to ensuring school policies do not violate students’ civil rights.”

Research shows that protecting a transgender student’s ability to make choices about how and when to inform others is critical to their well-being, as transgender students are exposed to high levels of harassment and mistreatment at school and in their communities.

Seventy-seven percent of students known or perceived as transgender reported negative experiences such as harassment and assault, and over half of transgender and nonbinary youth reported seriously considering suicide in the past year.

Earlier this month, Attorney General Bonta announced opening a civil rights investigation into potential legal violations by Chino Valley Unified School District’s adoption of its mandatory gender identity disclosure policy.

Prior to opening the investigation, Bonta in July sent a letter to Superintendent Norman Enfield and the Board of Education cautioning them of the dangers of adopting its forced outing policy, emphasizing the potential infringements on students’ privacy rights and educational opportunities.

LA BLADE STAFF

LOCAL

AG Bonta: Chino schools “forced Outing policy” is discriminatory SACRAMENTO - California Attorney General Rob Bonta held a press conference Monday to announce that his office has sued to immediately halt the enforcement of Chino Valley Unified School District Board of Education’s mandatory gender identity disclosure policy.

Bonta stressed that the Chino board’s action was a “forced Outing policy” and is discriminatory.

The Attorney General then went over a line item by line item listing of how the Chino board had violated state law regarding transgender and non-binary conforming students, Bonta noted that the policy infringes on several state protections safeguarding students’ civil and constitutional rights, including: • California’s Equal Protection Clause: The policy unlawfully discriminates and singles out students who request to identify with or use names or pronouns different from those on their birth certificates, or who access programs or facilities that, in the view of the Board, are not “aligned” with the student’s gender.

• California’s Education and Government Code: Education is a fundamental right in California, and California Education Code Sections 200 and 220 and Government Code section 11135 also ensure equal rights and opportunities for every student and prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender identity and gender expression. The policy violates these fundamental anti-discrimination protections.

• California’s constitutional right to privacy: California’s constitution expressly protects the right to “privacy,” including both “informational privacy,” and “autonomy privacy,” and the policy’s mandate to out transgender and gender non-conforming students against their wishes or without their consent violates that right.

“Every student has the right to learn and thrive in a school environment that promotes safety, privacy, and inclusivity – regardless of their gender identity,” said Bonta. “We’re in court

challenging Chino Valley’s forced outing policy for wrongfully and unconstitutionally discriminating against and violating the privacy rights of LGBTQ+ students. The forced outing policy wrongfully endangers the physical, mental, and emotional well-being of non-conforming students who lack an accepting environment in the classroom and at home. Our message to Chino Valley Unified and all school districts in California is loud and clear: We will never stop fighting for the civil rights of LGBTQ+ students.”

The lawsuit also alleges that the Board’s policy has already placed transgender and gender non-conforming students in danger of imminent, irreparable harm from the consequences of forced disclosures. These students are currently under threat of being outed to their parents against their will, and many fear that the District’s policy will force them to make a choice: either “walk back” their constitutionally and statutorily protected rights to gender identity and gender expression, or face the risk of emotional, physical, and psychological harm.

In a press release the Office of the Attorney General noted: The Board’s policy thus unlawfully discriminates against transgender and gender non-binary students, subjecting them to disparate treatment and harassment, including mental, emotional, and even physical abuse. The lawsuit also asserts this is by design: the Board’s plain motivations in adopting the policy were to create and harbor animosity, discrimination, and prejudice towards transgender and gender non-conforming students, without any compelling reason to do so, as evidenced by statements made during the Board’s hearing. In discussing the policy before its passage, board members made a number of statements describing students who are transgender or gender non-conforming as suffering from a “mental illness” or “perversion”, or as being a threat to the integrity of the nation and the family. The Board President went so far as to state that transgender and gender non-binary individuals needed “non-affirming” parental actions so that they could “get better.”

Equality California’s Executive Director Tony Hoang reacted to the Attorney General’s actions: “Equality California strongly supports Attorney General Rob Bonta’s decision to file a lawsuit against Chino Valley Unified School District challenging their recently approved forced outing policy for trangender students. This policy infringes on the rights and privacy of transgender students and sets a dangerous precedent that can lead to discrimination against others.

The LGBTQ+ community, and transgender people in particular, have long faced discrimination, harassment and violence.

Policies like those approved by the Chino Valley school board and school boards in Murrieta Valley and Temecula are intensifying the already alarming increase of anti-LGBTQ+ hate we are experiencing. California must stand up against these policies that fly in the face of the principles of equality and respect for all people.

Discrimination on the basis of gender identity is not only morally wrong but also unconstitutional. Furthermore, the policy violates the right to information privacy and autonomy privacy, which are protected by California’s constitution.

It is our duty to ensure that all students, regardless of their gender identity, feel safe, respected, and protected within our educational institutions. This lawsuit sends a clear message that discrimination and harassment have no place in our schools, and no place in California.

We are grateful for the leadership of Attorney General Bonta and his efforts to uphold the rights and dignity of all students.”

Bonta stressed that all LGBTQ+ students had an ally in his office, in him, and he will continue to fight for those students.

Bonta’s actions comes as conservative school boards around the state are considering similar policies, or in the case of Temecula Unified Schools and Murrieta Unified Schools in Riverside County which already have based on Chino’s actions, and stoking culture wars over gender issues in schools.

BRODY LEVESQUE

LGBTQ+ journalists association honors sports editor Christina Kahrl age of, issues of importance to the LGBTQ+ community, in any PHILADELPHIA — The NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ+ medium and on any platform.

Journalists announced Wednesday its recipient of the prized Kahrl is the first out trans editor at a major metropolitan Jeanne Córdova Award at its convention here next month will media outlet, and a sports journalism superstar. The Chronibe Christina Kahrl, the trailblazing sports editor of the San Francle hired her away from ESPN in 2021 cisco Chronicle. after a decade-long career as a sportsIt’s especially significant that this writer and editor, highlighted by being honor, which recognizes LGBTQ+ inducted into the National Gay & Leswomen in the media, will for the first bian Sports Hall of Fame in 2013 and time be awarded to an out transgenthe Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame in 2014. der woman journalist, who as of this In 2008, the Baseball Writers’ Associmonth has been Out 20 years. ation of America welcomed her as one “This is an extraordinary honor, of the first four internet-based writers knowing the impact Jeanne Córdova to join the organization, as well as its had in life and to this day,” Kahrl post(Photo Credit: NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists) first out trans member. The associaed on social media. “Accepting it is not tion votes each year on which players a case of looking back on my career should be named to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Coowith satisfaction, but a challenge to be worthy of it in everything perstown, N.Y. I have yet to do.

And Kahrl did all of this as the woman she is, the first out Córdova was a journalist and the editor and publisher of Lestransgender sports writer in the nation. bian Tide, which chronicled the 1970s lesbian feminist move“I started coming out to friends and family and began my ment. The award named for her celebrates the achievement transition in 2002,” Kahrl told the Los Angeles Blade. “I was out of an LGBTQ+ woman for a current body of work in journalism publicly by August 2003,” she said. and/or opinion, with an emphasis on, but not exclusively cover-

“At that point, nobody had tried to pursue a career as a sportswriter while also being trans,” Kahrl wrote for a magazine published by her alma mater, University of Chicago, in 2015.

“Unlike sexuality, this wasn’t something that could remain my own business: I had done a lot of TV work, particularly Cubs and White Sox postgame shows on CLTV, and a national book tour every spring for the new Baseball Prospectus annual.

Folks were going to notice.”

Readers of The Chronicle have certainly noticed her talent in her brief time as one of the few women named to run the sports section of a major daily newspaper. The paper has already received multiple nominations and awards for its sports columnists, investigative reporting, breaking sports news as well as for its digital coverage of the Giants, A’s, 49ers and more.

While Kahrl has written for some other illustrious news brands including the Washington Blade, Sports Illustrated, Slate, Cosmopolitan and Playboy, she launched her sportswriting career in 1996, when she co-founded the baseball analytics bible, Baseball Prospectus, devoted to the statistical analysis of baseball. The organization has pioneered several statistical tools that have become hallmarks of modern baseball analysis.

CONTINUES AT LOSANGELESBLADE.COM

LOSANGELESBLADE.COM • SEPTEMBER 01, 2023 • 07

NATIONAL

LGBTQ groups participate in March on Washington 60th anniversary commemoration of historic event draws thousands

By MICHAEL KEY Thousands of activists and spectators attended the 60th Anniversary March on Washington on Saturday, Aug. 26. Advocates and leaders from labor unions, faith communities, political groups, and community organizations traveled to the Lincoln Memorial at the historic site of Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech to call for a continuation in the fight for racial justice and equality.

Several speakers at the rally included a call for LGBTQ equality as an integral part of the broader fight for social justice. Leaders of LGBTQ organizations were among the speakers at the Lincoln Monument. Notable LGBTQ speakers included activists Ollie Henry and Hope Giselle representing the National Black Justice Coalition; Kierra Johnson, executive director of the National LGBTQ Task Force; Stacey Stevenson, president and CEO of Family Equality; and Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign.

Several speakers remarked upon the legacy of out gay activist and leader Bayard Rustin, the architect of the original 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

“I’m honored to be here among so many leaders, but especially the legacy of Bayard

Rustin,” HRC President Robinson said in her remarks. “Bayard Rustin was the lead organizer for the first March on Washington and he led proudly and loudly as an out gay Black man, y’all. And I say that because the truth is that lesbian, gay, bi, trans and queer people: We are here today and we have always been here.”

“I have a simple request,” Robinson continued. “If you have a queer or trans child: love them and love them completely. If you have a Pride flag: fly it, waive it, and waive it proudly.

And if you’ve got a vote: by God, use it.”

Task Force Executive Director Johnson spoke about the challenges facing members of the LGBTQ community, particularly those who live in the intersections of identities that face discrimination.

“Our lives are literally under attack,” Johnson said. “Our transgender, genderqueer and non-binary children are being targeted, religion has been weaponized to deny care and rights to our loved ones. The erosion of voting rights, the dehumanization of immigrants, the policing of Black and brown bodies and attempts to erase our contributions from the history books. And yet, here we are.”

Johnson continued, “We deserve congres-

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08 • SEPTEMBER 01, 2023 • LOSANGELESBLADE.COM

sional leaders that will pass essential, life-saving and affirming legislation like the EACH Act, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, the Renewing Immigration Provisions Act, and the expansion of civil rights in passing the Equality Act.” In the pre-program speeches, non-binary activist Ollie Henry remarked, “The March on Washington has always been a march towards. A march towards actualizing the dreams our ancestors laid into each marble slab placed on this stolen soil. They had a dream to be seen, accepted and celebrated just as they are. Decades ago, queer folks in the movement were kept to the outskirts of our community’s garden. But today, we stand in the sunlight.”

Hope Giselle of Get Phluid and the GSA Network addressed the crowd.

“As I stand here, where 60 years ago someone believed in a dream, as a Black trans woman, my dream is to be able to walk around amongst my people at the very cookout that so many are invited to who don’t belong and feel safe,” she said. “My dream is that when I walk into my home, when I see the faces of the people that look like me, they are not turned

Thousands of activists and spectators attended the 60th Anniversary March on Washington beginning at the Lincoln Memorial on Saturday, Aug. 26. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

up in disgust because of the way that I show up and that the contributions that I and the rest of my community make toward the betterment of Blackness is accepted as valuable.”

“To stand on the steps where this beautiful speech was given and be acknowledged in the fullness of who I am both being Black and being a trans woman at the same time feels amazing,” Giselle told the Blade. “But I also feel like it’s commemorative of the message that Dr. King gave, which is one, I believe, about solidarity of all people and about the coming together of everyone for the rights of folks.”

Following the speeches, activists held signs and chanted in a march beginning at Lincoln Circle proceeding south on 23rd Street, N.W. The march continued along Independence Avenue and concluded at West Potomac Park near the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial.

NATIONAL

Texas AG files appeal, trans youth healthcare ban will take effect AUSTIN, Texas - A Texas law banning transgender youth from accessing puberty blockers and hormone therapy will go into effect next week after the state attorney general’s office filed to block a judge’s temporary injunction against Senate Bill 14.

In her decision Friday, state district court Judge Maria Cantú Hexsel wrote that SB 14 “interferes with Texas families’ private decisions and strips Texas parents … of the right to seek, direct, and provide medical care for their children.”

In response, the attorney general’s office filed an appeal with the Texas Supreme Court, a move that automatically pauses Cantú Hexsel’s injunction and will allow the law to go into effect Sept. 1. The attorney general’s office said such medical treatments are “unproven” and “pushed by some activists in the medical and psychiatric professions” in a statement announcing the appeal Friday evening.

Texas lawmakers passed SB 14 during this year’s regular legislative session, in addition to several other pieces of legislation affecting the lives of LGBTQ+ people.

Texas families and doctors sued the state in July with the hope of blocking the law. They argued SB 14 violates the Texas Constitution because it strips parents’ rights to make decisions about their child’s health care and discriminates against transgender youth by prohibiting access to this population specifically.

Cantú Hexsel’s injunction would have blocked the state attorney general’s office, the Texas Medical Board and the Texas Health and Human Services Commission from en-

forcing the law. She wrote that transgender youth and their families would “suffer probable, imminent, and irreparable injury” if SB 14 went into effect while the legal battle ensues.

A trial is set to begin May 6.

The judge indicated the lawsuit would likely succeed.

Agreeing with the plaintiffs, she said that SB 14 was unconstitutional because it violated parents’ rights to make decisions about their children, infringed on doctor’s freedom to practice medicine and discriminated against transgender youth by withholding access to health care.

“This Act was passed because of, and not in spite of, its impact on transgender adolescents, depriving them of necessary, safe, and effective medical treatment,” the judge wrote.

In a hearing last week, medical experts testified to the efficacy of transition-related care in alleviating mental health issues associated with gender dysphoria — a medical term for the distress someone experiences when their gender identity doesn’t match their body.

Defense attorneys called doctors and other experts to discredit the existing evidence that supports the use of puberty blockers and hormone treatments on transgender youth diagnosed with gender dysphoria. They argued the risks of these drugs — and transition-related surgeries, which are rarely performed on children — outweigh the benefits.

In the larger medical community, there is less debate over the use of these treatments. Leading medical associations

like the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association support the use of transition-related care for people under 18.

Alex Sheldon, executive director of GLMA, an association of LGBTQ+ health professionals that is one of the plaintiffs, hailed Cantú Hexsel’s ruling before the attorney general’s office appealed it.

“This ruling stands as a testament to the unwavering dedication of Texas families and the medical expertise of GLMA’s health professional members, who with each testimony have clearly demonstrated that gender-affirming care is evidence-based, life-saving care,” Sheldon said in a statement Friday. “Although this was just one battle of many, we remain steadfast in our commitment to fight for the rights of trans youth and health care providers offering gender-affirming care in Texas and throughout the nation.”

Similar to Texas’ law, restrictions to transition-related care in other states have faced legal challenges in recent months.

In June, a federal judge ruled that Arkansas’ ban on gender-affirming care for minors is unconstitutional because it violates the due-process and equal-protection rights of transgender children and their families. Federal judges in Florida, Kentucky and Tennessee have also blocked those states’ laws from going into effect. An appeals court intervened to allow Tennessee to implement its ban, and the Kentucky federal judge lifted the injunction he issued, allowing the law to go into effect.

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NATIONAL

EXCLUSIVE: Meet director of Johns Hopkins Center for Transgender Health Dr. Fan Liang on politicizing healthcare, fear among patients

By CHRISTOPHER KANE practices standards of care, Liang said.

The topic of gender affirming health“I earnestly believe that people who care has never attracted more attention go into medicine try to do right by their or scrutiny, presenting challenges for patients and try to provide exceptionboth patients and providers, including al care whenever they can,” she said.

Dr. Fan Liang, medical director of the “When I speak to other providers who Johns Hopkins Center for Transgender are engaged in trans care, the reason and Gender Expansive Health and assisthey entered the field was because they tant professor of plastic and reconstrucsaw patients that were suffering and tive surgery. had no other providers to go to and Speaking with the Washington Blade they were filling a need that desperately by phone last week, Liang shared her needed to be filled.” perspective on a variety of topics, in“It is unfortunate that their motives cluding her concerns about the ways in are being misinterpreted, because it is which media organizations and others causing significant emotional harm to have shaped the discourse about gen‘I do think advocacy is important … but I these providers who are being targetder affirming care. have to balance that with all of my other clinical obligations,’ said Dr. FAN LIANG. ed,” Liang said, noting “there is so much Too often, she said, the public is pro(Photo courtesy of Liang) vitriol from the anti-trans side of things,” vided incomplete or inaccurate inforincluding “this narrative out there that mation, framed with politically charged physicians are providing trans care because of financial reaand polarizing language rather than balanced and nuanced sons or because of some sort of politically motivated, I don’t reporting for the benefit of audiences who might have little to know, conspiracy.” no familiarity with the topics at hand.

The political climate, along with the realities of practicing “This is an evolving field that requires input from many difin this speciality, may threaten to stem the pipeline of new ferent types of specialists,” Liang noted, so one issue comes providers whose practice would otherwise include gender when providers “start to comment outside of their scope of affirming care, said Liang, who serves on the interview board practice, or extrapolate into everybody’s experience.” for incoming residents who are looking to specialize in plastic A more intractable and difficult problem, Liang said, is presurgery. sented by the fact that, “issues with transgender health have Many, perhaps even most, she said, are eager to explore really taken center stage with regard to national politics, and transgender care, often because, particularly among young as a result of that, the narrative has really been reduced to an trainees, they are friends with trans and non-binary people. “I unsophisticated representation of what’s going on.” don’t know how much of that interest persists as they move “I think that is dangerous for patients and for the community through the training pipeline, because — especially if they are that these patients live in and have to work in and survive in at an institution that does provide trans care — they do see a because it paints a picture that is really inaccurate,” she said. lot of the struggles that physicians encounter in being able to Conservative state legislatures across the country have inoffer these services.” troduced a record number of anti-LGBTQ bills this year, passLiang noted the “significant hurdles from an insurance ing dozens, including a slew of anti-trans healthcare restricstandpoint” and the “significant prerequisites in order to actions. The Human Rights Campaign reports 35.1 percent of cess surgery,” which require “a tremendous amount of backtransgender youth now live in states that have passed bans on end coordination and optimization of the logistics for surgical gender affirming care, many of which carry criminal penalties readiness.” for providers.

“And then,” she said, “they see a lot of the backlash in the A big part of the Center’s work, Liang told the Blade, inmedia against trans providers, and I think that that does disvolves working closely with trans patients and organizations courage residents who otherwise would be interested in the like Trans Maryland and the Trans Rights Advocacy Coalition field because physicians, by and large, are a pretty conserva“to make sure that the community’s voices are being heard, so tive bunch. And having them start their practice where they’re that we’re able to represent those interests here.” sort of stepping into a political minefield is not ideal.”

She described “a generalized sense of anxiety and fear,” con“Some physicians feel like they can make the most amount cerns that she said are “pervasive throughout the community,” of impact by being advocates for the patient population on a over “access to surgery and to overall gender healthcare.” national stage or being more vocal about how anti-trans legis“I get a lot of questions about that,” she said. lation has been impacting their patients,” Liang said.

While Liang has not yet worked with any patients who trav“My goal, as the director for the Center for Transgender eled to the Center because gender affirming care was banned Health here at Hopkins is really to normalize this care to allow in the states where they reside, she said, “I do anticipate that for the open conversation and discussion amongst providers will happen in the relatively near future.” to create a safe space for people to feel comfortable providing Challenges for clinicians this care,” she said.

De-stigmatizing gender affirming care and connecting cliThe political climate “really interferes in physician autononicians who practice in this space will help these providers my and basically using our training and discretion to provide understand they are not “functioning in isolation” and instead the best therapies that we can,” based on research and eviare part of “a national effort and a nationally concerted effort dence-based guidelines from medical organizations on best 10 • SEPTEMBER 01, 2023 • LOSANGELESBLADE.COM

toward delivering state-of-the-art health care,” Liang said.

“It’s important,” she said, to “bring the generalized healthcare community to the table in offering these services and have a frank discussion when it comes to education, research and teaching.”

Other providers, however, “do not feel comfortable putting themselves into that place of vulnerability,” Liang said, “and I don’t fault them for it because I personally know people who’ve received death threats and who have been targeted because of what they say to the media,” in many cases because their comments were reported incorrectly or out of context.

In July, Liang participated in an emergency trans rights roundtable on Capitol Hill with representatives from advocacy groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Transgender Law Center, as well as members of Congress including U.S. Reps. Mark Takano (D-Calif.), Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), and Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.).

She told the Blade it was “a really wonderful experience” to “hear the heartfelt stories” of the panelists advocating on behalf of themselves, their friends, and their families, earning the attention of members of Congress.

“I do think advocacy is important,” Liang told the Blade. “I try to make time for it when I can,” she said, “but I have to balance that with all of my other clinical obligations.”

On Aug. 1, The Baltimore Banner reported that the director of the Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs in Baltimore filed a discrimination complaint with the city’s Office of Equity and Civil Rights against the Hopkins Center for Transgender and Gender Expansive Health. (The story was also published by the Washington Blade, which has a media partnership with the Banner.)

Asked for comment, Liang said “it was an upsetting article to read,” adding, “I was upset that there wasn’t more due diligence done to investigate a little bit further” because instead the article presents “just this one person’s account of things.”

She noted there is “not much I can say from a physician standpoint because everything is contained within HIPAA,” the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which prohibits providers from even acknowledging which patients they may or may not have worked with.

The Banner article underscores the importance of journalists’ obligations to “make sure there is due diligence to confirm sources and make sure things are accurate,” Liang said, including, of course, when covering complicated and politically fraught subjects like gender affirming care.

“On the one hand, it’s really wonderful that there’s a fair amount of press being dedicated to trans issues around the country,” Liang said, but what is “frustrating for me is these conversations always seem to be so loaded and politically charged, and there doesn’t seem to be much space for people to ask earnest and honest questions” without taking heat from either side.

There is “compassion to be offered for patients who are struggling to receive basic health care” as well as for “people who are struggling to understand how this issue is evolving,” those for whom the matter is “uncharted territory” and therefore likely to “cause consternation and fear,” she said.

“Most of the time, the way to overcome” this is to cultivate “relationships with people who do identify as transgender or non-binary” on the grassroots level, she said, while leaving room “for people to ask earnest and honest questions.”

NATIONAL

Orlando LGBTQ Center murals defaced, Nazi & anti-LGBTQ hate ORLANDO, Fl. - On Saturday, the LGBTQ Center of Orlando’s Zebra Youth murals were defaced with Nazi and white Christian nationalist symbols and anti-LGBTQ+ hate speech. A spokesperson for the Orlando Police Department confirmed that an investigation is underway.

The Center has been targeted before with incidents stretching back over a decade. In May of 2020, a Pulse memorial mural on the walls of the center was vandalized with white supremacist stickers and graffiti.

Democratic state Representative Anna V. Eskamani, who represents a District that includes Orlando and a longtime LGBTQ+ community ally noted on X/Twitter: “These [photos] were shared by the ED of our LGBTQ+ Center — absolutely disgusting. Will do what we can to identify who did this and hold them accountable.”

On Facebook the Center issued a statement: “The Center & Zebra Youth’s murals have been vandalized with hateful messages and nazi symbols. It’s not the first time it has happened and even though is frustrating, we are not going to stop being a beacon of light for our community.”

Anti-LGBTQ+ hate graffiti defacing murals at the Orlando, Florida, LGBTQ Center on August 26, 2023.

(Photo Credit: Orlando LGBTQ Center)

The LGBTQ+ youth organization Zebra Youth who created the murals also issued a statement: “Zebra Youth and

LGBT+ Center Orlando - The Center’s beautiful murals were vandalized with hateful homophobic and transphobic messages and n*zi symbols. We are working with the Orlando Police Department to identify and prosecute this horrible hate crime. We appreciate all of the community support and are doing everything to ensure the safety of our youth and staff. We will not allow hate to win.”

In a statement to the Blade, a spokesperson for Equality Florida said: “Governor DeSantis has unleashed and emboldened a scourge of hate in Florida. He has fanned the flames of anti-LGBTQ bigotry and his agenda sends a clear message that his administration not only tolerates hate, it welcomes it. These vile messages have no place in our state. We stand with The Center, Zebra Youth, and all those working to make Florida better.”

By mid morning volunteers were at the center to whitewash the hate speech and symbols and repair the damage.

The volunteers were joined by Orlando City Commissioner Patty Sheehan.

BRODY LEVESQUE

Texas high schoolers confronted: “You Deserve Hell” AUSTIN, Texas - After the final bell rang on Tuesday signaling the end of the school day and as students at McCallum High School headed out to the waiting busses, they were confronted by a small group of approximately eight street preachers holding anti-LGBTQ and anti-abortion signs shouting slogans and anti-LGBTQ+ hate speech.

An Austin Independent School District spokesperson confirmed that the protestors showed up around 4 p.m. as students were being dismissed from class.

“The protesters were on the sidewalk but were blocking the buses, so they were asked to move,” the spokesperson for the Austin ISD said. “Austin ISD Police officers were on-site to ensure everyone’s safety, and the protesters left after about an hour.”

McCallum Principal Andy Baxa in a letter to parents wrote: Dear McCallum High School community, I regret having to share with you that about eight demonstrators with anti-LGBTQ and antiabortion signs arrived at our school today during dismissal. The demonstrators were on the sidewalk and were blocking the buses.

We immediately contacted our campus police who required

the protestors to move out of the way of the buses and onto the public sidewalk.

Screenshot from mobile phone video posted to social media by a McCallum High School student showing anti-LGBTQ+ street preachers.

Austin ISD Police officers remained on-site to ensure everyone’s safety, and the demonstrators left after about an hour.

If your child was exposed to this hateful demonstration and needs support, please contact our counseling team at 512414-2519.

I want to emphasize that these hateful messages are in direct opposition to our values here at McCallum and to the values of our district. Austin ISD is committed to creating a safe, supportive, and inclusive environment for all students and staff.

Austin’s independent newspaper, The Austin Chronicle reported: Austin ISD police were also there to stand between the harassers and the students, but some parents still expressed alarm. “Very upsetting, with everyone wondering what to do,” one parent told the Chronicle. “Should we respond? Should we ignore? Just very unsettling that something like this could happen so close to a school.”

Parents were also concerned about what seemed to be vague threats. One of the men yelled that Jesus will “judge the living and the dead. That’s what he’s gonna do. I’ve already seen some transvestite out here boo-hooing and crying. … God’s people will never comply with the Devil’s lies.”

BRODY LEVESQUE

Federal court: Parents cannot opt kids out of LGBTQ lessons GREENBELT, Md. - A federal judge on Thursday ruled a group of Montgomery County parents cannot “opt out” their children from classes in which lessons or books on LGBTQ-related topics are taught.

The parents in May filed a federal lawsuit against Montgomery County Public Schools that alleges the policy violates their religious beliefs.

They asked for a temporary injunction to halt the policy

before Aug. 28, which is the first day of school in the county. U.S. District Judge Deborah L. Boardman of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland ruled against them.

“Members of the LGBTQ+ community are our neighbors, coworkers and friends,” tweeted Montgomery County Council President Evan Glass on Friday. “This ruling validates the right for everyone to be seen for who they authentically are, but it also shows that we have a lot of work

to do opening hearts and minds so everyone is welcomed and accepted.”

A federal appeals court on Aug. 14 dismissed a separate lawsuit against a policy that allows Montgomery County schools to create plans to support transgender and nonbinary students without their parents’ knowledge or consent.

LA BLADE STAFF

LOSANGELESBLADE.COM • SEPTEMBER 01, 2023 • 11

V O L U M E 07 I S S U E 35

Kierra Johnson speaks at 60th Anniversary March on Washington

Our trans, gender queer and non-binary children are being targeted

FROM STAFF REPORTS Editor’s Note: The following is a transcript of the remarks delivered from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial Saturday, marking the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington by Kierra Johnson, the Executive Director of the National LGBTQ Task Force: Family, I am so thrilled to be here today. My name is Kierra Johnson, I am a daughter of the South, a mother, and the first Black, Pansexual, woman to lead the National LGBTQ Task Force. It is an honor to celebrate the MOW’s 60th and the Task Force’s 50th anniversaries in the same spot Audre Lorde spoke from in 1983. The March Bayard Rustin helped organize in 1963.

This opportunity is more than a dream realized for me; I AM – WE ALL are the product of our ancestors’ wildest dreams.

Our lives are literally under attack. Our trans, gender queer and non-binary children are being targeted. Religion has been weaponized to deny care and rights to our loved ones. The erosion of voting rights, the dehumanization of immigrants, the policing of black and brown bodies, and attempts to erase the contributions of our people.

Yet here we are.

We are manifesting the solidarity that is the cornerstone of progress. Of Liberation. The causes we are marching for KIERRA JOHNSON, Executive Director of the National LGBTQ Task will impact generations. This is our country. This is our democForce, greeting MARTIN LUTHER KING III, American human rights racy. We have the power to demand what we want. activist, philanthropist & advocate at the observance of the 60th anniWe deserve a community that affirms, values and celebrates versary of the March on Washington which was led in 1963 by King’s father, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (Photo Credit: National LGBTQ Task Force) Black Trans women instead of one that seeks to eradicate them.

We deserve a government that values human rights while uplifting the marginalized and forgotten regardless of immigration status.

We deserve a community that invests in the health and wellbeing, of its people and welcomes a society of learning and love All people deserve bodily autonomy and liberation that extends across party lines, religions and the federal and state agencies that our tax dollars fund.

We deserve Congressional leaders that will pass essential lifesaving and affirming legislation like the Each Act, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, the Renewing Immigration Provisions Act, and the Equality Act. Let us move forward with determination and hope as we honor the legacy of those who paved the way for us. Let’s continue to build bridges of solidarity by reaching out to those who love us but may not understand the importance of our cause.

As I look out, I see an unstoppable force capable of dismantling the barriers that hinder our collective progress….a multiNational LGBTQ Task Force Policy Director, ALAN MORRIS, PEPgenerational, multi-racial and cultural movement cemented in PERMINT who spoke on behalf of GLAAD, and KIERRA JOHNSON, Executive Director of the National LGBTQ Task Force. the pursuit of equity, liberation and justice. For all. Together, (Photo Credit: National LGBTQ Task Force) there is nothing we can’t do!

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CAMERON DRIGGERS is progressive student activist attending the University of Florida. As a highschooler, Cameron led state-wide campaigns to resist anti-queer measures, such as the Don’t Say Gay School Walkouts of 2022.

School boards are the battlefield for LGBTQ+ Rights The battlefield for LGBTQ+ rights is closer to home than you may have thought says a progressive university student activist

GAINESVILLE, Fla. - Queer people are under attack across the United States, whether it be through legislation which strips the LGBTQ+ community of hard fought protections and rights, attempts to censor queer literature and media, or outright violence against the community.

Many have rightly laid the blame for this spike in anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment on demagoguery spewed from leading conservative figures such as Governor Ron DeSantis.

However, decidedly less attention has been paid to the role local school boards have played in facilitating grotesque bigotry within the public school system.

School boards and the school districts they oversee, like most municipal authorities, have generally been regarded as an afterthought by larger allied electoral organizations, which is reflected by the measly resources they have put into controlling them. This oversight has proven to be an immensely costly one, and to the detriment of queer and trans young people everywhere.

Although some state governments are headed by rabid homophobes such as Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott, South Dakota Republican Governor Kristi Noem, and Florida’s Republican governor, all indeed responsible for enacting pieces of highly-publicized anti-queer legislation- it lies largely in the purview of school boards to both interpret and implement them.

The former of which is a particularly important power, given that the most harmful of the laws in question, such as DeSantis’ signature “Don’t Say Gay” legislation, were intentionally written vaguely as to empower conservative school districts to impose the most extreme application of the law possible.

Over the past few years, far-right forces have successfully captured school districts across the country. Perhaps the most notorious of these forces is Moms For Liberty, which has distinguished itself not only as a dangerous hate group according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, but also as the foremost vehicle for the propulsion of bigots into positions of power within educational institutions.

M4L channels large sums of unaccountable dark money to blanket cities with mailers and other advertisements rife with frantic misinformation, which is able to drown out any rebuttal from under-resourced opponents. After employing this dubious strategy during the 2023 election cycle, candidates backed by MFL or other like minded groups won a score of school board seats. Not only in places where you’d expect, but also in deep-blue communities in states as New Jersey, Maryland and even California.

In Florida, the hysterical culture war spun up by Republicans manifested into Moms For Liberty’s most decisive victory in the nation. Ron DeSantis himself joined MFL in bankrolling dozens of their handpicked goons. Out of sixty-seven endorsed candidates, forty-one were elected. As a result, DeSantis’ administration has worked in-tandem with nominally independent school districts to impose fervent anti-LGBTQ+ bigotry within the state’s public schools.

COURTNEY VANDEBUNTE, ALYSA VIDAL, CAMERON DRIGGERS & JACK PETOCZ on election night, August 2022 after successfully unseating both anti-LGBTQ+ incumbents of the school board in deep red Flagler County.

(Photo Credit: ‘Recall Flagler County School Board’)

The battlefield for LGBTQ+ rights is closer to home than you may have thought These victories represented a terrifying new reality in which systemic homophobia could perniciously expand to new extents. Many of the increasingly outrageous headlines surrounding new anti-LGBTQ+ regulations in schools can be attributed to far-right school board members that were swept into office upon a platform of explicitly anti-queer sentiment.

These rogue school boards, despite an outcry from the students they are charged with serving, have pushed onward with a radical agenda. Teachers who support LGBTQ+ students have found themselves doomed to non-renewal of their teaching contracts. Superintendents face pressure to throw marginalized students under the bus lest they too find themselves abruptly fired.

Furthermore, school boards have embraced transphobia by taking aim at transgender student athletes and their ability to use facilities which correspond to their gender. Perhaps most abhorrently, many school boards have considered mandating the Outing of vulnerable LGBTQ+ students to unaccepting parents, opening the door for abuse and abandonment. Beyond just LGBTQ+ issues, far right board members have pushed for arming teachers, disbanding student identity clubs, and other regressive measures that also pose an existential threat to public education in the United States.

Defeating the far right campaign to hijack our education is imperative, and it is possible. I should know, because I have done it. Flagler County, Florida where I grew up, is one of the epicenters of the culture war in the state.

For instance, our small town made headlines after a sitting school board member, supported by another, (both of which being M4L cheerleaders, natch) filed a police report against district library staff for offering literature which served queer students and students of color. In the Summer of 2022, some friends and I organized a campaign to replace these two members of our school board with true champions for issues students care about.

We spent our hot Summer days knocking on thousands of doors, registering our peers to vote, and sign-waving along busy intersections. We were outspent massively, by both Moms For Liberty and Ron DeSantis’ personal super PAC. We faced long political headwinds in a county which voted for DeSantis by over thirty-five points in the last general election. Despite all of those challenges, we successfully unseated both incumbents on election night, representing one of only a handful of school boards that did not shift to the right.

The kind of grassroots movement I experienced in my hometown is exactly what is needed across not only Florida, but the entire country. The likes of Moms for Liberty are well-funded by far-right dark money donors. But while they might have the money, young people have something far more important: energetic passion. That is to say, the fuel which empowers a scrappy band of high schoolers to spend their Summer changing hearts and minds to defy the odds.

With that said, providing resources to young people eager to take on far-right school boards in their own communities must be an urgent priority, because the battlefield for LGBTQ+ rights is closer to home than you may have thought.

LOSANGELESBLADE.COM • SEPTEMBER 01, 2023 • 13

Charles Busch reflects on the paths he didn’t take in new book ‘Leading Lady’ a riveting memoir from legendary entertainer

“Charles, I’m telling you, I go to plays in rat-infested basements where I’m the only one who shows up,” the late queer icon Joan Rivers once told the queer, legendary playwright, actor, director, novelist, cabaret performer and drag icon, Charles Busch. “I can see the actors peeking through the curtain and groaning, ‘Oh God, that old bitch in the fur coat is here.

Does that mean we’ve gotta go on?’”

Busch reminded Rivers that she’d seen him perform in a rat-infested basement.

This is just one of the many stories that Busch, born in 1954, tells in his riveting memoir, “Leading Lady: A Memoir of a Most Unusual Boy,” which comes out on Sept. 12.

“Leading Lady” is a page-turner. Some of its tales of Busch’s life and career, such as his account of a Christmas party with Rivers as a guest, are dishy. Others, like his memories of trying to care for his beloved Aunt Lil, when he knew she was dying, would make even the Wicked Witch in Oz tear up.

The memoir, is, as Busch says on his website (charlesbusch. com), the story of “a talented artist’s Oz-like journey.”

“Leading Lady” isn’t linear. This isn’t a detriment. Busch deftly intertwines memories of his life and career from his mom dying when he was seven to being raised by his loving Aunt Lil to being the author and star of the cult classic “Vampire Lesbians of Sodom” to watching Kim Novak handle fans to being the Tony-nominated writer of “Tales of the Allergist’s Wife” to being creative during the pandemic.

“Storytelling is a huge part of my life,” Busch told the Blade in a lengthy phone interview, “I get into various adventures and, I think, this could be a good story to tell.”

Interviewing Busch is like chatting with a fab storyteller over coffee or a glass of wine. Except that you’re talking to a legend who’s entertained and inspired queers (and discerning hetero audiences) for decades. (I’m wearing my “Vampire” T-shirt as I write this.)

As a playwright, Busch writes “linear” plays, with a beginning, middle and an end, he said. As a cabaret singer, “the way I sing songs is telling a story,” Busch said.

Since childhood, he’s been creating vivid scenes in his imagination. From early on, Busch has felt as if he’s both a spectator and star in the movie of his life.

It seemed inevitable that he’d write a memoir. It’s the ultimate form of storytelling. “You reach a certain point in your

By KATHI WOLFE life,” Busch said, “where you’re more reflective and see your life as a whole.”

“You reflect on the paths you didn’t take,” he added.

Busch spent his childhood in Hartsdale, N.Y. He had two older sisters, Betsy and Margaret. His mother’s death was devastating for Busch. His Aunt Lil and Joan Rivers have been among the women who have been “mothers” to Busch since his mom died.

Once, Busch said he and Rivers dined with friends. “Joan Rivers said ‘I wish I had a gay son I could phone at midnight and discuss whatever movie was on TCM,’” he recalled.

Busch would have loved to have been Rivers’s “gay son.”

Life in Hartsdale was hard for Busch after his mother passed away. His father was often absent and showed little interest in his children.

Things were miserable for Busch when his grandmother, for a time, cared for the family. He knew, as a boy, that he was gay and hated going to school where a movie-and-theater-loving kid who liked to draw wasn’t one of the cool kids.

Yet Busch forgave his “father’s failings,” he writes in “Leading Lady, “because he gave me the theater.”

Busch became entranced with the theater when his father, an aspiring opera singer who performed in summer stock, took him to the old Metropolitan Opera House in New York City to hear Joan Sutherland sing the role of Amina in Bellini’s “La Sonnambula.”

Busch was saved from a life of boredom and bullying when Aunt Lil, his mother’s sister, took him to live with her in Manhattan. There, like Auntie Mame, she raised him. She prodded him into applying to the High School of Music and Art in New York City. He was accepted there.

After high school, Busch graduated with a bachelor’s degree in drama from Northwestern University in 1976.

“My Aunt Lil is the leading lady [of the title of his memoir],” Busch said, “she was the most influential person in my life.”

One of the reasons why Busch wrote “Leading Lady” was to paint a full portrait of her. “It was important that it not be this kind of gauzy, sentimental memory piece,” he said, “making her out to be a saint.”

Aunt Lil adopted Bush when he was 14. Her goal was that he would go to college, become independent, be a survivor – make a place for himself in the world.

“I don’t know what would have happened if she hadn’t stepped in,” Busch said.

“She was very intellectual,” he added, “I’ve never met anyone [else] with such a pure devotion to thinking. It was a little intimidating.”

Aunt Lil’s standards for caring – for giving of oneself – were so high that it was almost impossible to meet them. “She believed that you should anticipate what people would need,” Busch said, “before they told you.”

Looking back, Busch is most proud of himself when, “I’ve gone past my natural self-absorption,” he said, “when I’ve thought of someone else.”

Busch is being too hard on himself. In “Leading Lady,” and when interviewed, he’s caring and curious as well as witty, savvy, and as you’d expect, a bit campy.

14 • LOSANGELESBLADE.COM • SEPTEMBER 01, 2023

His sister Margaret died recently. “She declined gradually over nine months,” Busch, said, choking up, “I gave her my bedroom and I slept on my sofa.”

Like many of her generation, Aunt Lil didn’t understand queerness or drag. But she loved Busch. She didn’t go to see his productions, he said. “She could have gone like other parents,” he said, “and been tight-lipped. And said something nice that she didn’t believe.”

But “she didn’t want to lie or be hurtful,” Busch added, “so, for her, it was: can’t I just love and support you, and not go?”

Aunt Lil didn’t get Busch’s sexuality. But she knew about secrecy. Busch learned of a terrifying secret that his aunt had long kept hidden. In the 1930s, during the Depression, Aunt Lil worked as a nurse. One day, when she worked overtime, one of the patients suffered a burn. She had to leave nursing.

“Her sister in a nasty mood revealed this,” Busch said, “Aunt Lil never discussed it.”

In the 1970s, Busch had trouble getting into theater because there were only roles for actors playing straight male characters. “The only way I could get on stage was to write my own roles,” he said, “I have a rather androgynous nature.”

Busch found that the feminine within him was a place of authority and strength. “I’m fine when I play male characters,” he said, “but I’m better when I play female characters.”

Why this is so liberating for him is a bit of a mystery to Busch. “But I accept and love it,” he said.

Times have changed since Busch made his first big splash with “Vampire Lesbians of Sodom.” “In 1985, being a drag queen was considered a negative,” Busch said, “my generation of drag performers bristled at being referred to as drag queens.”

Busch no longer bristles. “I feel like the characters,” he said, “I enjoy costumes and getting the right wig.”

“But, I go from male to female not through trickery or anything visual, I transfer through my soul.”

In “Leading Lady,” Busch recalls AIDS and other dark moments from the past. Many of his friends and colleagues died from AIDS. “AIDS was the World War II of our generation,” he said.

But Busch, in his memoir and in his life, isn’t only looking back. He’s very much in the present. Busch is embarrassed to say he was lucky. During the pandemic, devastating to many, he made art. He did play readings on Zoom and finished writing “Leading Lady” which he’d worked on for 14 years.

During the pandemic, Busch with Carl Andress co-wrote and co-directed the movie “The Sixth Reel.” The film’s cast includes Busch, Julie Halston (Busch’s longtime muse), Margaret Cho and Tim Daly.

Busch describes the film, an homage to the Hollywood madcap movies of the 1930s, as “a comic, caper movie.”

“I play a disreputable dealer in movie memorabilia,” Busch said, “a legendary lost film is found, and I see it as my ticket out of debt.”

The “Sixth Reel” is playing from Sept. 21 to Sept. 27 at the LOOK Dine-In Cinema West 57th Street in New York City.

“I hope the run in New York will encourage people to distribute this little movie,” Busch said.

FILM

Sundance veteran takes a wild ride with ‘Rotting in the Sun’ Silva returns with outrageous film that satirizes modern culture

By JOHN PAUL KING Unless you’re a follower of independent cinema or the international film festival circuit, the name Sebastián Silva may not be familiar to you – yet.

The gay, Chilean-born filmmaker – also known as a musician and illustrator – has enjoyed substantial spotlight on his work over the last decade and a half, starting with a win for Best Film at the 2008 Chilean Pedro Sienna Awards for his debut feature – “La Vida Me Mata” (“Life Kills Me”) – and following up with 2009’s “The Maid.” The latter launched him into the American Indie scene, earning a Grand Jury Prize at Sundance; it went on to pick up several other honors, including a Golden Globe nomination, and firmly established him as an up-and-coming young director. Since then, his reputation has lured “Indie favorite” actors like Kristen Wiig, Juno Temple, Michael Cera, Gaby Hoffman, and Alia Shawkat to star in his films, and he’s garnered more accolades and awards along the way.

Still, the kind of films Silva makes are not exactly the kind that cross easily over into the mainstream, and wider recognition has thus far eluded him. Nevertheless, he remains a festival favorite, having twice returned in triumph to Sundance for premieres of his work, most recently with “Rotting in the Sun,” which debuted at the festival earlier this year. Now set for a limited theatrical release on Sept.

8 before expanding to digital a week later, it just might be the movie that finally gets the multi-hyphenate filmmaker the attention he deserves – though perhaps not for the reasons he might wish.

Directed by Silva from a screenplay co-written with frequent collaborator Pedro Peirano, his cryptically titled film scores points for audacity from its premise alone. Casting himself and real-life social media star Jordan Firstman as fictional versions of themselves, the filmmaker weaves an outrageous stream-of-events narrative that savagely satirizes both the self-obsession and perpetually distracted state of modern culture, simultaneously skewering the business of filmmaking and “content creation” while offering a sharp, darkly humorous commentary on the impact of economic and social class in human experience.

That sounds like a lot to juggle in a single movie, especially one with a less-than-two-hour runtime, but Silva and Peirano’s script manages it deftly with a intricately crafted structure that carries us along through a twisting plot that begins when the fictional Sebastián – nihilistic, misanthropic, and addicted to ketamine and poppers – takes an impromptu trip to a nude gay beach resort on the advice of his best friend (Mateo Riestra). There, he encounters the gregarious and flamboyant Firstman, a fan of his work who

JORDAN FIRSTMAN and SEBASTIÁN SILVA in ‘Rotting in the Sun.’

aggressively courts him for a closer relationship, both personally and professionally. With his career stalled and his finances drying up, the reluctant Silva agrees to collaborate on a show, and invites Firstman to come and stay with him in Mexico City while they write it.

From there, things don’t go quite the way we expect.

Though we’ve been primed for an “opposites-attract” romance, accompanied by a bemusing clash of Silva’s existential bleakness against the life-affirming positivity of his joyously hedonistic counterpart, an unexpected turn of events veers into a new course; rom-com tropes give way to a stark and harrowing mystery, with Silva’s longtime housekeeper Vero (Catalina Saavedra) at the center, and the film becomes a gripping thriller that blends suspense with social commentary and stark surrealism for a wild ride capable of making the heart pound and the head spin. We could say more – other reviewers have, making their jobs easier but spoiling some of the movie’s most electrifying surprises in the process – but to do so would be a disservice both to Silva’s painstaking efforts in crafting the narrative and the viewer’s enjoyment in experiencing it firsthand.

That does make it necessary to “talk around” some things; for instance, we can’t say all the things we’d like about Saavedra – returning to Silva’s fold after playing the title role in “The Maid” – and her performance without giving away key information; rigidly unsentimental, raw with emotions most of us find uncomfortable to watch, the movie hinges on her portrayal of this character, and she owns it completely.

We also can’t say much about the remarkable movement of the story, charted by the script and driven by the skillful, ever-flowing handheld camera approach of cinematographer Gabriel Díaz Alliende, which follows a singular thread of cause-and-effect through a course marked by random occurrence and inevitable consequence and plays out like an elaborate maze of falling dominoes; nor can we go into much detail about the observations the film makes about the divide between the privileged and the underclasses who serve them, who live in such different worlds that even the simplest interactions between them are often complicated by an inability to communicate or understand each

16 • LOSANGELESBLADE.COM • SEPTEMBER 01, 2023

other across the gap.

In a more general way, we can certainly talk about the movie’s appreciation for irony; indeed, its most sublime moments are dripping with it, and it provides the undercurrent for the tone of existential absurdism in which Silva steeps his film; for, make no mistake, in this “existential summer” marked by movies like “Asteroid City,” “Barbie,” and “Oppenheimer,” “Rotting in the Sun” fits right in – though, for what it’s worth, its inescapable dread is countered by a kind of humanistic compassion which, though it doesn’t exactly cast everything in a layer of sweetness and light, goes a long way toward leaving our hope for humanity at least somewhat intact.

Lastly, we can talk about the penises. Yes, there are a lot of them, and a few scenes of un-simulated gay sex, too; most of these take place in the early scenes at the resort, and while it would be wrong to say they are irrelevant to the larger purpose of Silva’s movie they certainly are not the point of it, prompting him to admit in a Variety interview that he was “a little bit scared that a lot of people will be centered on the cocks.” Predictably, most reviews (including this one, it appears) and much of the publicity for the film seem angled to let us know they are there.

Ultimately, “Rotting in the Sun” is about much more than cocks, of course; it’s also about much more than the various human pretensions, constructs, delusions, and dysfunctions it both sends up and seems to caution us about.

Like all great films, it contains all those things within a larger picture that points toward a more all-encompassing perspective on life – and, admirably, doesn’t try to tell us what to think of it, though it might guide us to a smaller conclusion or two about how we treat each other along the way.

Be warned: though ostensibly a comedy, “Rotting in the Sun” is not a film for the faint-hearted, and it should be noted that it explores themes of suicidal ideation that might be triggering for some viewers.

If you’re not deterred by that – and if your interest is piqued by all the things we couldn’t say – then you are heartily encouraged to watch it at your first opportunity.

We guarantee that afterward, you’ll remember the name Sebastián Silva.

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BOOKS

More than a coming-of-age, coming out story

‘Through the Groves’ a sharp, hilarious new book

By TERRI SCHLICHENMEYER You can’t see the forest for the trees.

Fluffy pines, and oaks that started growing before your parents were born.

Tall willows, towering cottonwoods that create a canopy far above you. The forest soothes your mind; if you have an out-of-control imagination, it offers a good scare. Nature’s there, and in the new book “Through the Groves” by Anne Hull, you’ll find memories, too.

She still recalls the smell and the heat and the pesticides.

Anne Hull was her daddy’s sidekick the summer she was six years old, riding along with him on his job as a fruit buyer in the middle of Florida where rows of orange trees stretched for miles. Together, they visited the dusty, scarred older Black men who worked the groves on her father’s route, and her father taught her all about “withholding confidential information” and not telling her mother about using a chalky field as a bathroom or about the gun in his car.

Hull’s mother already knew about the roadside stops he made, and the bars along his way home: the ride-alongs ‘Through the Groves: Hull so enjoyed were meant to deter A Memoir’ her father from “Friday afternoon fever” By Anne Hull and bright neon beer signs. c.2023, Henry Holt | $26.99 | 224 pages Back then, Hull was only starting to notice that her family moved often, from one ramshackle house to another, and she saw the weekly checks her great-grandmother gave her father. She already knew that adults kept secrets that weren’t so secret to a growing girl who was obsessed with being a spy someday. These were adventures just like the adventures she had with cousins and her little brother, who was an accident-prone “calamity.”

When Hull’s mother left Hull’s father and moved in with Hull’s grandmother, that was an adventure, too – until it wasn’t. Hull had become old enough to understand genteel poverty and that hand-me-downs weren’t cool. She bonded with her grandmother over music; sneered at her mother, as teenagers do; and she thought about her dad, but only in the abstract.

He never forgot about her, though.

He never stopped trying to be her father.

Do you really want some treacly life story now? Nah, you want something solid and sincere, right? Something different. Part coming-of-age, but more, maybe.

You want “Through the Groves.”

Rather than opening this tale where most childhood memoirs start, with eye-rolling, attitudinal teen years, author Anne Hull’s story begins the summer she was six years old and they move forward from there. This gives readers the gift of an observant kid’s-eye view of life – one that’s older than its years and doesn’t miss a thing, but that’s not insufferably precious or precocious. Viewed through the lens of a grown-up, then, those early memories give readers the “more” they crave, becoming a triple-whammy of coming-ofage, coming out, and coming to terms with the frailty of family. That’s sharp as flint but also hilarious.

Hull says her father was a storyteller and this orange apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Start “Through the Groves” and you’ll find that you just can’t leaf it.

FEATURE

Amazon Prime Video flirts with a regressive LGBTQ-erasure image

Amazon Prime Video’s cancellation of the popular ‘A League of Their Own’ shocks vast fanbase

By ROB WATSON CULVER CITY, Calif. - Renewal of the show should have been a no-brainer. Amazon Prime Video does not release numbers, but for anyone observing, A League of Their Own, the re-imagining of the 1992 Penny Marshall classic, was a monster hit with a broad audience.

It was in the Nielsen Top 10 for three weeks, was the top show on Amazon for a month and in the top five for six. It had a 94% critic rating and 87% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

It had the added distinction of getting top honors from key LGBTQ watchdog organizations GLAAD and HRC for its outstanding representation of lesbian, bisexual and other LGBTQ people. It won NAACP Image Awards, Independent Spirit Awards, and awards from the Critics Choice Association and the National Council of La Raza.

It created a vast hungry audience wanting more.

Who would be SO completely idiotic to not want to continue on with a much anticipated, much demanded Season 2?

Amazon Prime Video, that’s who.

After first agreeing to a shortened season 2 in April, the streamer cancelled the idea completely last week, blaming the “ongoing strikes.” It is a claim of which the series star and co-creator Abbi Jacobson said, “To blame this cancellation on the strike, (which is an essential fight for fair wages, protections and working conditions, etc…) is bullshit and cowardly.”

Will Graham, the other co-creator, held court on X (formerly Twitter), and shared his thoughts at length. First, he put the cancellation within the context of the current state of the nation and the challenges for LGBTQ people, “I see the pain and anger and worry out there, which for the LGBTQIA+ fans of the show is, of course, compounded by what’s happening across the country right now.”

He then wrote eloquently expressing the production team’s desire for the public to get “all the seasons of this show we want to give you.”

While fans were watching and loving A League of Their Own, Graham was apparently watching them. “I’ve never experienced a response to a show that’s as deep, personal, creative and meaningful as what the fans have done with League. When we were making the season 1, we all wondered and worried about whether people would accept it on its own terms next to the film,” he wrote. “They have, and you did that, and so much more. You lit up the internet on your first watch throughs of the show, when you realized where it was going (and made all of us laugh in the process). You wrote enough fan fiction for 100 novels and created an outpouring of art and creativity that could fill its own museum — I’ve truly never seen anything like it.

You lifted up a 95-year-old who had just come out of the closet and made her into a celebrity who gets recognized wherever she goes. Every time any member of the cast appears at anything, you turn it into a convention… You A League of Their Own (Amazon Prime Video)

dressed as the characters and made our characters into one of the biggest Halloween costumes of last year. You came out, you changed pronouns, you started living more openly, you gave sermons in church about the show, you opened bars, and you got a truly mind-boggling number of tattoos that say ‘to the five’ and ‘rob the bank.’ But most importantly, you made a community, you found each other and found joy, which of course is what the show is about. In many more ways than I would ever have let myself imagine while we were making it, you literally bring the show to life every day.”

Graham also expressed fear that the cancellation, which many might see as homophobia and cancellation of the LGBTQ audience itself, would dampen the pride of the community.

“As we gain strength, the predictable backlash forces are trying their hardest to get us to go back underground,” he points out. “In case anyone needs to hear it: You are not small, niche, modest, off-putting or marginal, and neither are your stories. You are multitudes, you are building, and your stories are universal. You are the most rapidly growing audience and consumer group in this country. You are powerful. You are the future, and the people who don’t recognize your importance now will feel be clamoring to catch up in a few years… you are the main characters. Be proud.”

While Graham promises commitment if the production team finds a way to do Season 2 somewhere, somehow: “If we have an avenue to do it well, we will continue the show, and I love seeing the noise you’re making in support of that. The noise matters!”

On the other hand, should this be the end of A League of Their Own, Graham draws a lesson with a parallel to a scene from the series itself, “What you are is bigger than this show. It’s the story of our community, that comes to us through the hidden history that League shows just one small part of: The bars got raided and shut down. But the people didn’t go anywhere, and they opened a new bar, and out of those spaces came music, cinema, dance, culture — What we now see as mainstream was birthed from the spaces our predecessors were forced to hide in. They made joy there. That’s what you are: In coming together, you are the start of something new, the seeds of a joy we desperately need, the beat of the music that people will dance to in a better future.”

So, as the audience that celebrated the LGBTQ perfection of A League of Their Own, grieves its untimely passing, we can take a lesson from the ghosts of its characters who haunt us with their truths. As the character Carson Shaw points out, “We’re not here to be perfect. We are here to be brave.”

The character Max Chapman is even more to the point: “Baseball is a metaphor for life. You’re gonna get hit, but you gotta keep getting back up.”

LOSANGELESBLADE.COM • SEPTEMBER 01, 2023 • 19