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Issue 289 | DECEMBER 6, 2018

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from the publisher

40 Years after the assassination of Harvey Milk

BY MICHAEL AARON

Harvey

Milk was among the first elected openly-gay people, elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors after numerous previous attempts. Forty years ago last week he was assassinated by fellow supervisor Dan White.

Over 500 LGBT politicians now hold public office in the United States — city council members, mayors, members of Congress, state legislators, even governors. Hundreds more have been elected in countries around the world, including four heads of state. A far cry from the 70s when you could count them on one hand.

“Harvey was charismatic, funny and something of a father figure to me. He was one of the first people to tell me that I had value as a human being and that I didn’t need to change,” wrote Cleve Jones in his book, When We Rise: My Life in the Movement.

Jones interned for Milk, and when Milk was killed, he was among the first to see his dead body in San Francisco City Hall.

As news raced through the city, Jones rushed back to City Hall and let himself into a private hallway, heading towards Milk’s office.

“I looked down the hallway and saw Harvey’s feet sticking out from Dan White’s office. I recognized his secondhand wingtip shoes immediately,” he wrote. Seeing him close-up confirmed his fears. “I struggle to comprehend as my mind begins to understand what my eyes are seeing. The only thing that I can think is that it is over. It is all over. He was my mentor and friend and he is gone. He was our leader and he is gone. It is over.”

Jones remembered a tape that Milk had recorded, “Just in case.”

“I’d known of the tape and teased him a bit, ‘Who do you think you are, Mr. Milk?

Dr. King? Malcolm X? I don’t think you’re important enough to be assassinated.’” He pressed the play button.

Issue 289 | DECEMBER 6, 2018

staffbox

publisher/editor Michael Aaron

ASSISTANT editor Tony Hobday NATIONAL NEWS editor Craig Ogan designer Christian Allred sales Ken Stowe, 801-997-9763 x1

“This is Harvey Milk ... This is to be played only in the event of my death by assassination. I fully realize that a person who stands for what I stand for, an activist, a gay activist, becomes a target or the potential target for somebody who is insecure, terrified, afraid, or very disturbed themselves. Knowing that I could be assassinated at any moment, any time, I feel it’s important that some people know my thoughts,” the recording started. “I cannot prevent some people from feeling angry and frustrated and mad, but I hope they will take that frustration and that madness and instead of demonstrating or anything of that type, I would hope they would take the power and I would hope that five, ten, one hundred, a thousand would rise. I would like to see every gay doctor come out, every gay lawyer, every gay architect come out, stand up and let that world know. That would do more to end prejudice overnight than anybody would imagine. I urge them to do that, urge them to come out. Only that way will we start to achieve our rights.”

“If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door in the country,” Milk said in the tape.

That sparked a lifetime of activism and Jones became known as the “Boy with the Bullhorn.”

To say that Milk became a martyr may not be far from the truth. While some thought people might fear to hold public office after Milk’s murder, what actually happened was that many took to knocking on doors for the first time.

And here we are, 40 years later, with hundreds of openly LGBT politicians holding office. In Salt Lake County alone we have and have had dozens of openly gay representatives from school board members to state senators.

As Jones put it, “I was wrong. It wasn’t over. It was just beginning.” Q

sales@qsaltlake.com contributors Joshua Adamson Pickett, Diane Anderson-Minshall, Chris Azzopardi, Paul Berge, Jeff Berry, Paul Campbell, Laurie Bennett-Cook, Mikki Enoch, Jack Fertig, Greg Fox, Charles Lynn Frost, Oriol Gutierrez Jr., Ryan Haymore, Tony Hobday, Joshua Jones, Christopher Katis, Rock Magen, Sam Mills, Craig Ogan, Mikey Rox, Terri Schlichenmeyer, Gregg Shapiro, Petunia Pap Smear, Steven Petrow, Ed Sikov, JoSelle Vanderhooft, Ben ­Williams, D’Anne ­Witkowski distribution Bradley Jay Crookston,

RJ Graham publisher

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QSaltLake Magazine is a trademark of Salt Lick Publishing, LLC., Q Media Group Copyright © 2018, Salt Lick Publishing, LLC. All rights reserved. No material may be reprinted or reproduced without written permission from the publisher. 8–12,000 copies are distributed free of charge at over 300 locations across the state. Free copies are limited to one per person.

For additional copies, call 801-997-9763. It is a crime to dispose of current issues or otherwise interfere with the distribution of this magazine. Printed in the USA on recycled paper. Please recycle this copy when done.

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news The top national and world news since last issue you should know

BY CRAIG OGAN

Let’s be careful of our wishes The “Blue Wave” knocked Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk who made headlines after refusing to issue a marriage license to a gay couple in 2015, out of office.

However, according to one of the couples she discriminated against, it swept a homophobic hypocrite into office.

Democrat Elwood Caudill Jr. will be the new clerk. David Ermold, one of the gay men Davis initially denied a marriage license, lost the primary to Caudill. Ermold endorsed Davis saying she is out front about her bigotry but Caudill, who beat him, was a bigot as well as a liar.

Gay men’s club at Florida City Commission For the first time, a Florida city elected an all-gay City Commission which includes the mayor and two commissioners. Wilton Manors is a gay mecca in South Florida and joins Palm Springs, Calif., as the only other U.S. city with an all-gay and or -lesbian elected city government.

Ohio university professor cites ‘preferred pronouns’ a violation of freedom of speech A professor of religion and philosophy at Shawnee State University’s was disciplined by the school for “misgendering” a student. The professor

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is taking legal action against the Ohio-based university in the U.S. District Court citing violations of freedom of speech, religion, and due process. The transgender student requested the professor use the students preferred pronouns and was refused.

Newspaper reports say the professor claimed the student shouted an unspecified “C word” at him (ed: cisman, creep, Christian?). The professor’s supervisor instructed him to use the preferred pronoun and made a disciplinary note in the personnel record when the professor added to the class syllabus that preferred pronouns will be used, “under compulsion.”

Take that back, “faggot” Between Imagine Dragons singer Dan Reynolds’ virtue signaling Twitter beef with Eminem and English pro soccer player Tassal “Tass” Rushan’s suspension from soccer for using “faggot” in a YouTube video, the word may never regain respectability.

The out-straight Reynolds took issue with out-self loathing Eminem’s use of the word in a new song, saying, “There is never an OK time to say the word fa**ot. I don’t care who you are.”

Eminem often uses ”anti-gay” slurs in his songs, sometimes “apologizing” and other times saying the use furthers his “art.” The soccer star, Rushan, said he didn’t know it was a bad word. He says in his hometown of London, England, “faggot” is another word for unpleasant person analogous to “prick”. Turning to the Oxford English Dictionary, critics say they can’t find any reference to “faggot” meaning “prick” or “idiot” in the definitive dictionary for both the Queen’s English and British slang.

Issue 289 | DECEMBER 6, 2018

Newly named Lantion Log Cabin Republicans Executive Director Jerri Ann Henry

Rare bird flies into NLCR net After what may have been an inter-galactic search, the National Log Cabin Republicans have found one of the four lesbians who identify as Republican to become the new executive director of the NLCR. Jerri Ann Henry, a communications strategist and GOP consultant, replaces Gregory Angelo. She is the first woman to lead the organization, though women were involved in the founding of NLCR and have served on the board.

Sexual confusion in London A London man who posed as a woman online to lure straight men into having sex has been sentenced to 15 years in prison. Using a hook up app not owned by the ChiComs, he had oral and anal sex with the men on the condition they wear blindfolds. One of the “victims” pulled off the mask and slapped the bearded perp’s face while receiving oral sex. Another had 20 minutes of anal and 20 minutes of oral which he described in the complaint as, “Quite pleasant.” The charge of “causing a person to engage in sexual activity without consent,” sounds a little

sketchy as the victims were using hook up apps and drove to various parks in London for liaison.

Equality scores in Wyoming Wyoming Equality Executive Director Sara Burlingame was elected to the Wyoming legislature. The Democrat won with 70 more votes than the Republican opponent. Burlingame, from Cheyenne, has been an activist and lobbyist involved in the legislature for Wyoming Equality’s issues.

Yes, maybe no in Taiwan; Yes in Bermuda Taiwan voters backed a referendum that contradicts a Supreme Court ruling favoring marriage equality. The court’s ruling came in 2017 and creates tension between the courts and the Taiwanese Legislature. Marriage equality activists worry the law will be written to give marriage-lite, domestic-partnership rights to gay and lesbian couples but confine the legal definition of marriage to opposite-sex couples. President Tsai Ing-wen, in a profile of courage, has backed away from a promise of marriage equality she made in the run-up to her election in 2016.

In Bermuda, the Supreme

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Court ruled that marriage inequality is unconstitutional in that British Colony.

Grindr nudes oust council member from office As further evidence that many good candidates will be unable to run for office because of men’s need to “show our junk,” a city council member in Groves, Texas is suing after he was defeated in a recall election resulting when nude photos of him from Grindr were anonymously sent to city hall. Before the election, Cross Coburn welcomed his recall election because it would clear the air. His suit is based on what he calls “deficiencies, fraud and forgery” in the recall petition. He claims signatures on the petition were forged, duplicated or were spouses signing for married partners.

Archbishop of Canterbury confirms God as nonbinary Not sure why he felt he had to, but the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby confirmed centuries old C of England and Roman Catholic doctrine that God is neither male nor female. He said the gendered language Christians have used for centuries to speak about God is “inadequate and to some degree metaphorical.” In a blow to non-Christian cults everywhere, he said, “God is not a father in exactly the same way as a human is a father.”

College says no to students hunger for waffle fries Even though Chick-fil-A topped the list of chain restaurants in a Rider University (Lawrenceville, N.J.) student survey, the university

won’t consider the restaurant for its union building. “It was removed as one of the options based on the company’s record widely perceived to be in opposition to the LGBTQ+ community,” President Gregory G. Dell’ Omo and Vice President of Student Affairs Leanna Fenneberg wrote in a letter to students.

Giving logical cover to bigots everywhere, they wrote, “We understand that some may view the decision as being just another form of exclusion, but that’s not the spirit in which the decision was made.” Chick-fil-A ruffled feathers some years ago when the company’s founder contributed to anti-LGBTQ organizations, something he vowed to never do again, but has contributed to athletic organizations which exclude transgender athletes.

NEWS | QSALTLAKE MAGAZINE | 11

Call Wharton O’Brien Law

#metoo J’accuse: California Demo.Chair Daraka Larimore-Hall, vice chair of the California State Democratic Party is calling on Party Chair, Eric Bauman, to be removed because of allegations of sexual misconduct lodged by two other men.

Larimore-Hall filed paperwork requesting removal after speaking with two victims, both of whom were party staff members, that Bauman allegedly abused. A witness claims the chair intimidated him to keep quiet. Larimore-Hall writes: “I believe the victims.”

Bauman, the first openly gay person to serve as chair, has called for, “A prompt, thorough and independent investigation of the allegations.

I take seriously any allegation brought forward by anyone who believes they have been caused pain.” Q

Wharton O’Brien, PLLC 165 S Main Street, Suite 200 Salt Lake City, Utah 84111 chriswhartonlaw.com

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Kalen Allen speaks in Lehi, Utah at the Ignite LGBTQ+ Youth Summit, hosted by Encircle LGBT+ Family & Youth Resource Center

Issue 289 | DECEMBER 6, 2018

PHOTO: DYLAN WILKINSON

‘TheEllenShow’s Kalen Allen comes out as gay on the way to Utah for Ignite LGBTQ+ Youth Conference

BY JOHN HALES

YouTube and Ellen Show sensation (and now movie star) Kalen Allen signed an Instagram post on Saturday, “Sincerely yours, A proud gay black man from Kansas.”

It was the first time Allen — named in the current issue of Hollywood Reporter as the industry’s “next big thing” — had publicly admitted he is gay.

It was Utah’s LGBT youth who gave him the gumption him to do it.

Allen, along with a handful of other LGBT or LGBT-allied celebrities, was a guest the Ignite LGBTQ+ Youth Summit, held Saturday at Adobe in Lehi. He was going to deliver a message of strength and

support, telling young people to be themselves, be in charge of their own story, be “authentic.”

But, he told the audience at the event’s evening concert, “I cannot come on this stage and tell you to be authentic … if I cannot implement that into my own life.”

That realization — the need to be both authentic and non-hypocritical — led the rising star to come out to the world just as he was en route to Utah.

“I’ve contemplated, erased, and modified countless times what I am about to say. A truth that to most was never really a secret but I kept to myself due to fear,” Allen’s Instagram post, which he later posted also on Facebook, began.

“I can no longer live hypocritically,” he wrote. “I cannot preach of living life authentically and with no regrets when I do not adhere to my own advice.”

Allen recently finished shooting for his role in an upcoming Seth Rogen film, In a Pickle. He’s had a pretty quick rise in popularity since being discovered only within the last year by Ellen DeGeneres for his “Kalen Reacts” YouTube videos.

At such a tenuous point in a career, coming out —as anyone who has come out knows, regardless of celebrity — is scary stuff. “My heart beats fifty miles an hour at this very moment,” Allen wrote, after admitting that it had been fear that kept him from coming out before now:

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“Fear of losing my mother, fear of losing friends, fear of not being loved unconditionally…”

He told the Ignite audience earlier in the day that he made his coming-out posts without even telling his mother beforehand. He spent the day nervous about the implications and possible fallout once the news spread. “Nobody has seen me since I posted on Instagram,” he said.

“He’s had a rough day,” said Jacob Dunford, production manager of the Ignite event and also the LoveLoud concert, explaining that Allen wasn’t ready to give an interview to reporters about his decision.

Allen said nearly the same thing in another post early Sunday morning: “It’s been a rough 24 hours for me.”

Backstage, Allen looked thoughtful and, away from any audience, didn’t (or couldn’t) completely disguise the worry he was wrangling with internally.

The Ignite event was produced by Encircle, an organization with the mission “to embrace and sustain every LGBTQ+ youth, every family and every community,” as its website, encircletogether. org, states. In its second year, the summit drew 800 participants including preteens, adolescents, young (and even older) adults, families, and allies.

Other concert performers included such LGBT luminaries as Carmen Carrera, the once gay-male drag-queen now turned transgender model; Jeffrey Marsh, a gender-nonbinary person who was once dubbed as “the internet’s most beloved anti-bully” and is the first nonbinary author to have a book with a major publishing house, Penguin; gay singer-songwriters Wrabel and Vincent (both of whom were to thank for the two of the evening’s highest emotional high-points); actresses Alexis G. Zall and Mindy Gledhill; and Utah-based music band Foreign Figures, with lead-singer Eric Michels who only recently came out as gay.

They all expressed earnest and palpable concern, support and outreach to the Ignite audience. They all understood; they all empathized. They all had messages that resonated powerfully with people who feel shunned to some degree by their own society; being famous doesn’t necessarily change that.

Carrera said it had been difficult being in the modeling industry while being trans

and “trying to figure out who you are.”

“I was on RuPaul’s Drag Race,” she said, “and I figured everybody loved me, right?

No.” But despite how unwell it might be received, she said, “Always hold on to your story … No matter what situation you are in, there is someone like you. You are not alone.”

“Most times and in most situations, people find me disgusting,” said Marsh, whose own story included reconciling with his mother, who, as a Christian pastor, had an incredibly difficult time understanding her child.

While LGBT people want so badly to be understood and to be heard, Marsh remind-

duction booth, which went out mid-song.

As stage techs scrambled to restore power, the time was filled by co-emcee Jasmine Fullmer, the program director and “house mom” at Encircle’s Provo center.

Fullmer informed the audience of a young person who frequents Encircle who had attempted suicide earlier that day. That person is safe, but it was the impetus behind Fullmer’s impassioned and impactful plea for people to realize they are meant to be here, to find reasons to live and survive.

Power was restored; Wrabel again began “The Village” and completed it with a

800 Ignite conference attendees fill the Adobe lobby in Lehi, Utah.

ed the audience that the coin has two sides.

“Mom had a million things to say, too.”

Vincent touched hearts to the core with his rendition of Coldplay’s “Magic,” which he made personal to the audience: “If you have to ask me, after all, you’ve been through if I believe in magic, yes I do, and it’s because of you.”

Wrabel’s performance also led to an outpouring of emotion, though somewhat impromptu. He performed his song, “The Village,” with its message that if the world has a problem with you, the problem is with the world, not with you.

That’s when there was a problem with the electrical power to the stage and pro-

PHOTO: DYLAN WILKINSON

poignancy somehow enhanced — rather than spoiled — by the interruption.

If the performers gave love, they received it as well.

“I just gotta level with you,” Marsh said, “This is the most loved I have felt in a very long time.”

Michels said almost exactly the same thing, and Vincent told the audience, “I’m just blown away by how kind you are.”

And Allen, who only hours before had come out to the world, and who had been introduced by Miller as himself “the king of kindness,” said, “I don’t’ think I would have made it through this day if I hadn’t been here.” Q

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Issue 289 | DECEMBER 6, 2018

Researcher: theory of religious influences in Utah LGBT suicides may be overblown

BY JOHN HALES

A Utah suicide researcher says the friction between LGBT sexuality and religion in Utah may not be quite the driving factor behind youth suicide as many people believe.

Despite a general perception that many of Utah’s youth suicides arise from intolerance toward LGBT people promulgated (though not necessarily intentionally) by teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the state’s suicide prevention research coordinator says that may not be the case.

“There’s no data to show that, period,” says Michael Staley, who works in the Utah Office of the Medical Examiner and is the first person who would know, since he leads an effort to collect, compile and analyze suicide information from around the state. He conducts that research at the behest of the Utah Legislature. “We are working to get that data,” he says.

While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in 2016 that LGBT youth die by suicide at double the rate of their non-LGBT peers, Staley says data specific to Utah so far doesn’t validate the sexuality-religion narrative. “The people who are driving that narrative are going to be disappointed,” Staley says, while at the same time recognizing that “theoretically, it makes sense.”

Given the state’s predominant Mormon faith and the church’s rigid, often equivocal stance on LGBT-related issues, it seems only intuitive that the stress thus induced for LGBT people would influence some toward suicide. Especially when an LGBT person’s family members, under certain interpretations or apprehensions of Mormon beliefs, exhibit “highly rejective” behavior, as a study from the Family Acceptance Project calls it.

So it’s little wonder that “Day one in this job, I started getting questions from the media and members of the general public about sexuality,” Staley says.

But his mandate from the legislature is broader than that. He is examining all suicides.

“We’re building the most comprehensive database of information about suicide decedents around. That’s huge,” Staley says in an interview with QSaltLake Magazine.

In fact, it’s the first undertaking of its kind in the country and, because of the organization of the state’s medical examiner’s office, it’s possible in Utah and only a handful of other states. Staley calls the effort “progressive” and “pioneering.”

Staley’s research involves gathering two kinds of information. The first is the findings in official documents: OME investigation records, medical and mental health records, criminal or court records, and the like.

The second kind makes up a “psychological autopsy,” and involves, among other things, talking to the people suicide victims leave behind: family and friends. “We’re getting real-time data about suicide that we’ve never gotten before,” Staley says.

But that real-time data, as well as other available information, doesn’t validate the narrative of the sexuality-religion-suicide nexus. “I will not ignore that narrative, of course … but I also think it’s a more complex story than just religion and sexuality,” he says.

If there is a misperception about that, it begins with another. During a presentation to the LGBTQ Affirmative Therapists Guild of Utah on Nov. 15, Staley asked guild members what proportion of Utah

suicides they thought were made up of youth (LGBT or not) age 10–17. “Most people would say 40–60 percent, and people assume that all these people are LGBT,” he said. But the real numbers may be far lower. Data from the OME shows that suicides of youth age 10–17 make up about 6 percent of suicides per year in Utah.

Staley presented information from the CDC that illustrated one of his obstacles: “If you told me to do a [suicide] study of LGBT people, I have no idea who those people are.”

The CDC in Atlanta reviewed investigations for 150 youth suicides in Utah.

Last year, it reported its findings. Sexual orientation could be determined by actual or even circumstantial evidence for 40 of those individuals. Of those, only six — or 4 percent of the total 150 — could be identified as non-heterosexual; seventy-three percent could not be confidently identified one way or the other.

Another obstacle is knowing the exact factor or combination of factors that led to a suicide, and to what degree each factor contributed. Even deeply personal, probing interviews with people closest to a deceased person can only go so far to shed light on that. “We have to abide by what families will allow us to see,” Staley says.

Staley, an openly gay man, adds that in a nutshell, LGBT suicide with the LDS church as a factor “is not this overwhelming tidal wave.”

He knows he’s going to get pushback.

“I hope I didn’t paint a huge target on

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my chest with this group,” he said to the Guild. Nevertheless, “I want to prepare groups like this group to hear that.”

But that hardly means that the “intersection between sexuality and religion,” as Staley calls it, is not a factor in suicides, or that religion-based or -justified messages and actions don’t contribute to it.

When the final report comes out, he told therapists, “I don’t think anybody’s going to be really satisfied.”

To QSaltLake, he added, “This is what I’ve been trying to say all along: Suicide is just not reducible to this one thing, or even one or two things, or three things. It’s many things that add up, and we’re trying to figure out how they add up. “… I’m sure that there will be people who think that our study and our research are flawed, and I probably will agree with them to some extent. But we do our best to get at the truth, and that’s what we have to do.”

Kara Posner, a Salt Lake City therapist in private practice who specializes in treating LGBT individuals, agrees that suicide is not a simple issue. “We’re all such complicated creatures,” she says.

Posner sits on the leadership committee of the Guild and invited Staley to address the group. “What Michael is doing is invaluable, and I applaud Utah for doing something groundbreaking,” she explains.

Posner did not seem disturbed by the disconnect Staley anticipates between the LGBT-suicide narrative — driven as it is by anecdotal evidence — and the direction his research data appears to be headed. Macro data is important for broad-based strategies and approaches; but for the therapist, Posner says, “I’m just working with the person in front of me.”

Regardless of either the

statistical data or the broader social narrative, she adds, “What I’m going off of are my clients narrative and their issues, and their pain — and my opinions don’t matter. If they’re an outlier from the data, I just need to deal with their narrative. It doesn’t change their story because the data says something else.”

Posner and Staley both said that attributing blame, for instance to a religion or church, is counterproductive. While ascertaining the preventable causes of suicide is important, they agree it’s also important to find and emphasize reasons to live.

Posner advocated for “trying to find more love so that people stay alive, rather than contributing to hate by pointing fingers.”

“There’s a pretty heavy focus out there in suicide prevention at looking at risk factors and warning signs, and that’s important,” Staley tells QSaltLake. “But there’s this other side of that that is protective factors.”

In addition to finding out why suicide is rampant in Utah, he says, people should be discerning: “What about this place keeps people alive, so we can re-invest and tell people and family and peers and friends what it is that keeps people alive, and how to do those more and better. Q Local and national support lifelines that can help support and protect LGBT youth.

ENCIRCLE HOUSE – Family and youth support center. Location is in Provo and a new center opening in Salt Lake in 2019.

UTAH PRIDE CENTER – A safe space for education, support and events for LGBT youth.

Suicide prevention resources: 1-800-273-8255 – NATIONAL SUICIDE PREVENTION LIFELINE available 24 hours 7 days a week.

TREVORLIFELINE FOR LGBT YOUTH at 1-866-488-7386.

Safe UT App – Smartphone app providing confidential crisis intervention, 24 hours 7 days a week.

Ogden Pride seeks substantial funding for a N. Utah LGBT community center Ogden Pride recently launched it’s “largest fundraiser” to date. During the group’s latest future planning summit, the board of directors identified many needs of the community of Ogden and surrounding areas. Those needs include opening a pride center to support the LGBT community in Northern Utah.

The group’s two-year, $500,000 fundraising campaign is to purchase and renovate a home or office to create the center.

The potential Ogden Pride Center will strive to provide a safe space to support and strengthen the LGBT community and foster an environment to gather in celebration and unity. As well as to educate for a greater understanding of the issues and needs the LGBT community faces, and offer support programs and forage resources that benefit the community.

Harrison Spendlove, board president of Ogden Pride, admits it’s a heavily challenging endeavor. “We just don’t have the resources the community needs up north,” he told the

Standard-Examiner.

Spendlove also said high on the group’s wish list is finding an actual house to renovate — that way, it has more of a “home feel.” And preferably a house in downtown Ogden that will be “visible to the

community as a whole.”

Additionally, the vision of the new center will include a “youth zone,” a resource library, a kitchenette and conference space. He said he envisions the spaces will be interchangeable, and the new center can act as a community gathering place.

“I know it’s a tall order, but Ogden has achieved great things in the past,” Spendlove said. Q To donate visit ogdenpridecenter. Or donors may call 801-917-4588 or mail a check to Ogden Pride, Inc., P.O. Box 13353, Ogden, UT 84412.

16 | QSALTLAKE MAGAZINE | SPORTS

Qsaltlake.com |

National LGBT sports league to start Salt Lake City chapter

BY JACOB BUCK

Stonewall Sports, a national LGBT nonprofit sports organization, founded in 2010, and based in Washington, D.C., is expanding after approving an application for a Salt Lake City chapter. Salt Lake City is the 16th city to be added to this national organization that has over 12,000 athletes throughout the US. It’s also the first West Coast city!

The effort to bring Stonewall Sports to Salt Lake City was spearheaded by a new local, the new commissioner Jacob Buck (that’s me). Having a masters in community development and playing sports my whole life I wanted to have this in my new community in Salt Lake City to grow and become more connected. The first thing I did was look for sports to be active and meet new people. I found a couple sports but they weren’t the kind I wanted to play and couldn’t find a centralized league that had more than one sport.

While living in Baltimore, I played in a kickball league, and knew people in D.C., and participated with Stonewall Sports in Chicago during my time living there.

I met my best friends and built such a strong camaraderie. And I was inspired to bring Stonewall Sports to Salt Lake after knowing the community that can occur, the spirit of giving and the fun going to their events. I’ve heard so many people say I’m so glad I joined this league.

“You guys are my best friends” and I was

missing out on a sense of community.

Stonewall builds community! From my experience living in Salt Lake for such a short time, we have a large gay population but its so disconnected. People know each other but not really. I want to change this through Stonewall.

I have always used sports to build friendships, and to be active with Stonewall Sports you get to give back to the community. We would have mixers with other teams, special team events — Spirit Day is one of my favorites.

However, fun is secondary to the mission of Stonewall Sports. Every chapter is focused on giving back to the community as it bills itself as an inclusive sports organization with philanthropy at its core.

The Salt Lake City chapter has chosen the Utah Pride Center and Encircle as the league’s charitable partners. We not only want Stonewall Salt Lake to raise funds for both of these local charities but hope to raise visibility in the community.

Stonewall Sports also encourages inclusivity and diversity, and this is an important part of the application to bring a chapter to Salt Lake City. I tried to build a diverse team of leaders from throughout the community. I’ve been working with people in the latino, jewish, and other communities to do outreach for our inception. The Stonewall Sports Salt Lake City leadership team is as follows: • Jacob Buck, Commissioner

Issue 289 | DECEMBER 6, 2018

• Kayla Adams, Division Lead • Bryce Jackson, Events Director • James Pumphrey, Treasurer • Matthew Boudrero, Technical Director Stonewall Sports SLC will formally kickoff activities during the January and February months with some dodgeball tournaments. Anyone interested in learning more about Stonewall Sports is invited to come to an information meeting with the leadership team and get more information about the league (date to be announced). Formal play begins in March for our inaugural season with a kickball league. Chapters in other cities play more than kickball — other potential activities include billiards, bocce, bowling, climbing, dodgeball, flag football, softball, tennis, ultimate frisbee, volleyball, and even yoga. We hope to expand and add some of these sports to this league within the next few years.

Persons of all skill levels are welcome to participate, there are no try-outs and the league teams will not be separated by skill level. You may join as a team or be a ‘free agent’ and meet other free agents and teams at a ‘Free Agent Social’ that is currently being planned, or join as a full team.

In the next few weeks, Stonewall Sports SLC will be rolling out a website and a social media presence to register teams and recruit players and teams. We currently have a Facebook group where people can go and join.

The cost to join is not yet set, but is typically $35–45. We also need local sponors to help raise funds. Q Check out “Stonewall: 2018 Highlights” from Joo Kno on Vimeo.

DECEMBER 6, 2018 |

Issue 289 | Qsaltlake.com

NEWS | QSALTLAKE MAGAZINE | 17

Utah Pride Center, UofU autism clinic partner to discuss the links between LGBTs and ASD Mounting evidence over the last few decades points to an increased correlation between autism spectrum disorder and children and adults experiencing dissonance with and the gender assigned at birth.

ASD characterizes as difficulty with social interaction and communication as well as restricted, repetitive patterns

of behavior. Approximately 1–2 percent of the population is estimated to meet criteria for ASD, about twice higher in men than women. The potential link between ASD and gender issues was noted by researchers as early as 1981 when 10 percent of 30 children with a clinical diagnosis of autism had trouble answering a gender identity question (“Are you a little boy or a little girl?”). Nine additional studies, beginning in 2010, have reinforced the recognized links.

Nationwide, one in 68 children is diagnosed with autism, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In Utah, it’s greater, with one in 54 children being diagnosed, reported the Daily Herald this month. And while 4.5 percent of Americans identified as part of the LGBT community in 2017, according to a Gallup Daily tracking survey, research and those in

the autism community report much higher rates of people who have autism who also are LGBT. Then in retrospect, yet little training has been available to providers and staff working with either population, particularly in Utah.

Hence, the University of Utah Autism Spectrum Disorder Clinic is partnering with the Utah Pride Center to host a day of training that focuses on bridging the gap between two communities: LGBT and autism spectrum disorder.

On Friday, Dec. 14, 2018, members of the communities mentioned above are encouraged to attend the LGBTQ-autism Training Exchange at UPC, 1380 S. Main St., 8:30 a.m.–1 p.m.

The program includes two training sessions. First is “Involving Autists” which will discuss the intersection between the autism and LGBT communities, as well as ways to understand and improve the lives of autists through their families, friends, and others. The second session, “LGBTQ+ Sensitivity” will discuss current ideas about terminology, needs, challenges, and barriers to access, and best practices.

Because seating is limited, please reserve your attendance by emailing Jimmy Lee at jimmylee@utahpridecenter. org. Q

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18 | QSALTLAKE MAGAZINE | NEWS

Qsaltlake.com | Issue 289 | DECEMBER 6, 2018

USU students’ first drag show bursts at the seams Students at Utah State University, a largely conservative school in Logan, held their first drag show on campus last week to great success. The event featured 10 drag performers, mostly USU students, and according to organizers, nearly 1,200 people filled the ballroom of the campus student center to watch, bringing in hundreds of more chairs and cramming into the standing room at the back.

"Words cannot describe the gratitude that myself and the Residence Life staff have for the support that was given to this event," wrote organizer Nathon Taylor on the Facebook event page. "Tonight we planned for an audience of 500 and ended with a room full of nearly 1,200 individuals full of passion, excitement, and love for the drag community. Thank you to each and every one of you for coming to this event and making it such a success. It is because of you all that this event was so successful. Here's to the beginning of

another amazing USU tradition!"

The show was developed to provide an open dialogue about drag culture and the LGBTQ community. Performers not only danced and sang but also answered questions about what taking part in the show meant to them.

One performer, Tyler Jones as Anya Bacon, held up a sign during the performance declaring, “We won’t be erased.”

It included a drawing of Trump with a red X through his face. The act is as much about politics as it is about gender.

Tyler Jones as Anya Bacon “With how much is happening in the

White House and how much he’s doing against our community,” he told The Salt Lake Tribune, “in my own sort of way, this is me fighting back a little bit.”

Following Jones' performance to Lily Allen's "F You", tears of joy erupted — “It was such a moving experience for me,” Jones said. “It’s such a big step for our little rural community.”

Jones attributes RuPaul's Drag Race to the start of the drag scene in the Logan area. He said it’s been slow to catch on in a community that doesn’t quite understand what the form of self-expression is about.

"It was amazing to perform in front of so many people," said Neil Betty, who performed as Betty O'. "The energy was electric."

One mother took to the event's Facebook page hoping that the show will continue.

"As we were leaving the show tonight, my straight teenage boy said 'When’s the next one?!

That was awesome!' Thank you for bringing education and acceptance to the valley! #loveislove," wrote Jennifer Lemon Reeves. Q

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New Utah Student Advisory Council forms

Park City High School student Daniel Bernhardt was recently selected to the Utah State Board of Education Student Advisory Council, a newly placed committee of which junior and senior high school students periodically discuss with members of the Board “how decisions made at the state level are affecting students throughout Utah and provide feedback — from a student perspective — on critical issues impacting Utah students and schools.”

Bernhardt, who is visually impaired, completes the 15-member council — each of who joined because of their interests

in such things as mental health, access to technology, homelessness, and school funding. And the members represent the LGBTQ community, ethnic minorities, rural Utah and even refugees.

At the council’s first student-led meeting last month, Bernhardt told The Park Record that it formed sub-committees around topics, such as school safety, representation of race and sexual orientation and updating standardized testing.

“It was inspirational to be surrounded by students who were willing to put in the work to change schools,” he said.

And while not all Board members

attended, Bernhardt also said to see Board members take a hands-off approach during the meeting was promising.

“It is often Daniel Bernhardt that it is a bunch of older people who choose what happens, but they don’t really have the full story. They don’t really know what’s actually going on inside the schools,” he said. Q

Happy Holidays!Join Us! UGLCC Holiday Social December 6th 6-8pm Wasatch Brewery

Register at utahgaychamber.com

20 | QSALTLAKE MAGAZINE | VIEWS

views

Qsaltlake.com |

Issue 289 | DECEMBER 6, 2018

quotes “Come, woo me, woo me, for now I am in a holiday humor, and like enough to consent.”

— William Shakespeare

“I don’t need a holiday or a feast to feel grateful for my children, the sun, the moon, the roof over my head, music, and laughter, but I like to take this time to take the path of thanks less traveled.”

— Paula Poundstone

“Nothing says holidays, like a cheese log.”

— Ellen Degeneres

“My brother, little sister and I decorate the tree together, and every year we fight over who gets to hang our handmade childhood decorations.”

— Carly Rae Jepsen

“The two most joyous times of the year are Christmas morning and the end of school.”

— Alice Cooper

“I love my family but my family — they’re the type of people that never let you forget anything you ever did... I was in the first grade Christmas play — I’m playing Mary.

Now, during the course of the play, I dropped the baby Jesus... They still talk about this. I go to my family reunion, and one of my cousins just had a baby. So I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s a cute little baby. Let me hold the baby...’ And my aunt runs over, ‘Don’t you give her that baby! You know she dropped the baby Jesus!’”

— Wanda Sykes

DECEMBER 6, 2018 |

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Issue 289 | Qsaltlake.com

who’s your daddy

A truly heroic gift

BY CHRISTOPHER KATIS

We are

all in the midst of trying to find great holiday gift ideas. But Kelly has already given me a gift to last a lifetime. In fact he’s given it to my entire family. Kelly donated a kidney to my big brother, John.

Like most siblings growing up, John and I had a love/ hate relationship. Being five years older than I, he tortured me pretty regularly. But he was also a constant source of knowledge for me.

It was John, after all, who taught me to sneak out our bedroom window when I was banished there for misbehaving. I tried it exactly once. As I was dangling half way out the window, our dad’s hand planted on my butt and shoved me back in. (John was busted as the obvious mastermind behind my escape plan, by the way.) He also taught me how to dance – or to shift my weight from one foot to the other doing the straight boy shuffle. And he taught me to drive a stick, throwing me out of his car after I popped the clutch for the third time on a slight hill on 9600 South.

Just over 20 years ago, John was diagnosed with diabetes. It runs in our family.

In spite of all the medical advancements and the happy commercials heralding medications to easily manage it, diabetes kicks the crap out of your body. A couple of years ago, John’s kidneys started shutting down, and this past

January he began dialysis. Our entire family was overjoyed when we learned he was placed on the kidney transplant list earlier this summer.

Forgetting it would take me a good 10 years to relearn how to dance with rhythm, I immediately volunteered one of my kidneys. I mean, it’s just a kidney; it’s not like my liver, which I’m still pickling! But my propensity for developing diabetes down the road was too great, and I was eliminated.

With no other family members eligible or able, Kelly stepped up. He did it for John, and he did it out of love for me. Honesty, I don’t think anyone thought he’d be a match. But he was. He was a really good match.

On November 3, they had the surgery. It was a tremendous success. They’re now referring to one another as “Kidney Brothers.” The difference for John has been night and day. There’s still a long road of healing ahead – for both of them – but the doctors are amazed at just how well the kidney is working.

The number of people, who have mentioned what a tremendously generous act Kelly has committed, is endless. But it didn’t surprise me in the least. He’s probably the most compassionate, loving and generous person I’ve ever known. I’ve seen it in the way he treats me, and I’ve seen it in the way he treats our sons.

The boys don’t quite realize it, but Kelly is a hero. He saved my brother’s life. Every single member of my family will be forever grateful for his altruistic act. I will forever marvel at his love for me that sparked his decision.

Of course, for the rest of my life, I’m also going to hear how he can’t fold laundry, eat at my favorite restaurant, or let me have the TV remote because he only has one kidney,

after all.

This holiday season, be a hero like Kelly. Give the gift of life by becoming an organ donor. Believe me, it’s the best gift you will ever give.

You can find more information and sign up to be a donor at organdonor.gov. Q

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Issue 289 | DECEMBER 6, 2018

lambda lore

Utah’s gay life was a drag

BY BEN WILLIAMS

It’s a little

known fact that Utah used to love its drag queens. It’s true. The Ogden Standard-Examiner reported in 1924 that female impersonator Jeff Jones was one of the featured acts at Weber County’s Old Folks Day Outing in Lorin Farr Park. This event was for Weber County pioneers over the age of 70.

And if that is not proof enough for you, in 1946 female impersonator “Madam LaPura Devonovitch” (Herbert Osmond Traynor) performed at the Deseret News Old Timer Club in the Lion’s House. Two Mormon Apostles, Elder A.E. Bower and Elder Mark E. Peterson were in the audience. Can someone tell me when Mormons became such sticks- inthe-mud?

Peruse the entertainment section of Utah’s local newspaper for Vaudeville shows from the 1890s to the 1920s and you will find female impersonators as part of almost every one. In 1902 the Deseret News reviewer of the play The Country Fair simply gushed over Neil Burgess’ farewell tour as “Abigail Prue,” the play’s elderly “spinster.” He wrote that Burgess “has become to be almost so much a household word where ever theaters are known, that his reappearance hardly needs describing. As a female impersonator, he occupies a place all by himself, and he has for so many years that it is impossible to think of him in any other habiliments [clothes].”

Another female impersonator the critics raved over was Ray Lawrence who, in 1915, played at Salt Lake City’s Pantages Vaudeville. A Deseret News critic wrote, “Ray Lawrence promises wonderful impersonations and delineations of feminine roles. He has an unusual falsetto voice with his natural feminine cast of countenances and ability to wear stunning gowns with the grace of a showgirl enables him to carry the deceptive role to perfection.” He added in another review,

“Ray Lawrence, a female impersonator, looks stunning as he parades in attractive gowns. Also, he sings a fair soprano. ” As long as these cross-dressers kept to the limelight they were praised and adored, but they ran smack into the arms of “Lilly Law” whenever they ventured on stage as recorded in 1906. “Roy Bland, one of the members of the Mahara minstrels, was arrested last night by [Provo] City Marshal Henry for masquerading as a woman. Bland left a $10 forfeit which he probably will not call for. He is a female impersonator and has been in the habit in other towns of carrying the impersonation farther than his contract requires. He attempted the same thing here and was arrested by Mr. Henry at the back door of a saloon and all his protestations that he was a lady did not avail him.

He gave a sprinting stunt which would have been more effective in enabling him to escape from the guardian of the peace, had he not run into the arms of Officer Olsen, who was at the end of an alley through which Bland was making his exit.”

The tradition of men performing on the American stage as female impersonators can be traced back to Francis Leon or as he preferred to call himself, “The Only Leon.” Leon was born in 1844 and rose to fame in the 19th century by performing in minstrel shows. By the time Leon was 29, his influence was such that every major minstrel troop had its own “Leon” imitator and eventually even Vaudeville shows. Leon was said to have owned more than 300 dresses, which he refused to call “costumes.” Some of his gowns cost as much as $400. But he could afford it because, by 1882, Leon was earning more than any other minstrel performer in America. The press loved him and raved, “Leon is the best male-female actor known to the stage. He does it with such dignity, modesty, and refinement that it is truly art.”

In 1864, Francis Leon formed his own minstrel troop with Edwin Kelly, who was probably his lover. The pair began to feature theatrical elements using elaborate scenery and refined songs from operas. In three years Kelly and Leon were even able to open their own theater company at Hope Chapel in New York City.

But not all was well. Leon, who was considered girlish and even effeminate

off stage, was being defamed by Tom Sharpe, the brother of Sam Sharply [aka Sharpe], another well-known performer who owned a rival minstrel troop. On December 11, 1867, Sam Sharply stopped the pair as they were leaving Hope Chapel and quarreled with Kelly and Leon in front of the theater. At one point Sam attempted to strike the diminutive Leon, who the New York Times had reported weighed 100 pounds or less. Sam chased Leon while Tom Sharpe and Edwin Kelly began to struggle. As soon as Kelly was pulled from Tom, he fired a pistol at Sharpe who fell to the ground. In a fit of rage Kelly then shot twice at the man as he lay in the gutter. Sam, seeing

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Issue 289 | Qsaltlake.com

his brother lying dead, fired off a round at Kelly, grazing his head. Before Sam could get off another shot a police officer seized him. The body of Tom Sharpe was then taken into the vestibule of the Hope Chapel Theater to await an ambulance to take it to the city morgue. Edwin Kelly was arrested and after a sensational trial, he was found not guilty due to self-defense.

Kelly and Leon performed in Vaudeville houses across America for the next 10 years until 1878, when their company sailed for Australia and opened at the Queen’s Theatre in Melbourne. During their first four weeks there they made $11,000. One member of their troop was Thomas Dilverd, a three-foot, one-inch tall African-America female impersonator, who billed himself as “Japanese Tommy.” He popularized the expression ‘hunky dory’ in American culture.

Kelley and Leon ended their long relationship in Australia where Kelly remained and became lovers with a fellow American actor named W.H. Leake.

When Kelly died in Adelaide in 1899, he was buried in the same grave as Leake.

Francis Leon’s career began to fade as he reached middle age. In America, he joined the famous Jack Haverley’s Mastodon Minstrels which had performed in London.

Whether Francis Leon ever played in Salt Lake is unknown to me, but the Salt Lake Herald reported that on June 30, 1882 and August 12, 1882, Francis Leon and the Haverley’s Mastodon Minstrels of San Francisco were staying at the White House Hotel in Salt Lake City. But they may just have been traveling cross country on a train and laid over in Salt Lake since the paper didn’t mention them performing in a local show.

The once world-famous Leon died in obscurity. He is mentioned in reviews in 1900, so he survived Edwin Kelly but who knows for how long. There are no notices in America’s media to mark the passing of the “Only Leon,” but his legacy, that performing in drag is indeed an American art form, lives on. Q

QSaltLake replaces the trees we use.

Twice.

The paper mill we buy our paper from plants a new tree for every tree they use. But that wasn’t enough for us.

We have partnered with the National Forest Foundation to plant an additional tree for every tree used to produce QSaltLake Magazine.

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creep of the month

Qsaltlake.com |

Issue 289 | DECEMBER 6, 2018

Bob Vander Plaats

BY D’ANNE WITKOWSKI

When I

was in high school it was common to hear kids say “that’s so gay,” usually to deride something that was thought to be extremely corny or nerdy. Or, well, lame.

And I have to admit, I suspect that 4-H got more than its fair share of that’s-so-gays.

Honestly, I only had a passing understanding of what 4-H was while growing up. I knew that some kids went to the state fair to eat and then throw up cotton candy on carnival rides, while other kids went to the state fair because they had, like, a pig in the pig contest or something. I didn’t fit into either of those categories, which helps to explain why my 4-H knowledge base is shaky at best.

Oh, and the name 4-H “represents four personal development areas of focus for the organization: head, heart, hands, and health” (thanks, Wikipedia! Send them $3).

The 4-H website has no farm animals on its front page and kind of looks like Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, and Big Brothers Big Sisters all rolled into one.

Millions of kids are involved in one way or another. Even some LGBTQ kids.

And here’s the great thing: 4-H wants to include and protect its LGBTQ youth.

The not-so great thing, however, is that the Trump Administration does not want them to do that and, according to a detailed investigation in the Des Moines Register, the

administration “pushed the national 4-H youth organization to withdraw” the LGBTQ-inclusive policy.

The biggest sticking point appears to have been letting transgender youth use the bathrooms that matched their gender identity.

It is a familiar story, one that Trump’s administration really enjoys telling, and believing, even though there is no evidence to justify the right wing’s anti-trans focus.

So when 4-H in Iowa published the inclusive guidelines to their website, some people freaked the eff out.

One of those freakers was Bob Vander Plaats, president of the conservative Christian organization the Family Leader in Des Moines. According to the Register, he wanted his supporters to reject the policy’s “radical” approach. He claimed that under this policy allows “a man who claims the female gender (without any medical procedure or legal verification) to sleep in the girls’ hotel rooms.”

Vander Plaats, whose photo in the Register looks like a headshot for an actor playing a B-movie role as the head of a conversion therapy summer camp for gay teens, is but a bit player in the Register’s investigation. But I’ve chosen to focus on him because comments like his get people killed. This idea that there are men out there who want to slip their hairy calves into a pair of L’eggs so that they

can stride confidently into a ladies’ locker room to ogle and sexually assault women and girls is absurd. It’s also dangerous, painting an already vulnerable population as predators, which pretty much gives a blank check to those who wish to do violence against transgender people.

The vast majority of transgender people are not predators. But they are all people.

Vander Plaats would like you to forget that part, and his comment about “girls’ hotel rooms” is clearly an effort to dehumanize a group of people who, like all of us, just want to live their lives in a way that makes the most sense to them.

I should note that Vander Plaats’s comments are not a surprise. The Family Leader is staunchly anti-LGBT. The very first thing on their “Issues we are focused on” page is marriage, as in, “We believe marriage is a permanent, lifelong commitment between a man and a woman.”

This is followed closely by sexuality, as in, “The Family Leader affirms sexual relations within the bond of marriage,

and opposes distortions of sexuality or special rights to those practicing distorted sexual behavior.”

Thankfully, the LGBTQ kids of 4-H had someone in their corner: 4-H Youth Development Program leader John-Paul Chaisson-Cardenas.

According to the Register, Chaisson-Cárdenas wrote in an email referring to WorldNetDaily, a right-wing website that has an extreme anti-LGBTQ bias and had been covering the 4-H controversy: “I guess I am not sure why we are valuing the propaganda machine of a recognized hate group over the existing rights of LGBTQ youth?”

An excellent question, and one that we’ll probably never have an answer for because Chaisson-Cárdenas was canned. He’s not the first and won’t be the last person pushed out by Trump for supporting transgender people. The question is only how many more will there be? Q D’Anne Witkowski is a poet, writer and comedian living in Michigan with her wife and son. She has been writing about LGBT politics for over a decade. Follow her on Twitter @MamaDWitkowski.

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Issue 289 | DECEMBER 6, 2018

University of Utah Health PrEP Clinic staff on opening PHOTO COURTESY JORGEN MADSEN day in May.

UofU Health’s free PrEP Clinic is a game-changer in HIV prevention

BY STEPHEN DARK

When Jorgen Madsen came out to his family in late 2015, his father told the 23-year-old medical student a cautionary tale about the only gay man he knew. His father’s friend had been ostracized by the small, rural Utah town where Madsen grew up in the wake of his HIV diagnosis.

Only seven people went to his funeral.

“The story of my dad’s friend made HIV very scary for me personally,” Madsen says. “The way that town reacted: people don’t talk about him; he’s one of those secrets. I didn’t want that to be me.”

Madsen approached gay life with trepidation. After learning about the dating app Grindr, he downloaded it, only to be traumatized by the dozen men immediately asking him for sex.

Madsen took the world of dating very slowly. His first kiss with a boyfriend at the end of their third date was an emotional revelation. “I’d never felt anything more pure, more honest,” he says.

Shortly after that date, Madsen went to the hospital for treatment on an old bone break that had painfully flared up. This was the first time he identified himself as gay. “The experience was less than ideal,” he says.

Through the walls, he heard the nursing student who had taken down his details tell the doctor, “I’m afraid he’s at high risk, being homosexual.”

Medical staff grilled the terrified student about his sexual activity, even though it only amounted to a lip-locking farewell at the front door. “They didn’t

believe me,” he says. “They still screened me for everything. I felt so vulnerable.”

An attending opened the door and shouted, “We need an HIV test in here.”

Madsen sank further down into his chair.

They told him he should start taking PrEP, which stands for Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis. Essentially a one-pill-a-day intervention, it has proven up to 95 percent effective against HIV infection. A Lancet study on “rapid, targeted, high-coverage roll-out” of PrEP in New South Wales published in fall 2018 made international headlines, revealing that PrEP usage led to “a rapid decline in HIV diagnoses.”

When Madsen asked why the staff thought he should go on PrEP, they replied, “Well, you engage in risky behavior.”

It was just a kiss, he thought.

While highly effective in combatting HIV, PrEP is also very expensive. Madsen would have to pay $1,500 a month, half of which his insurance would then reimburse. As much as he wanted to take PrEP, he couldn’t afford it. “I felt like a hypocrite being a medical student and not doing everything I could to be safe,” he says.

Afterwards, he sat in his car in the hospital parking lot, humiliation washing over him. As he stared numbly out of the window, he cried.

Over the next two years, Madsen got a crash course in the paucity of LGBTQ health resources in Utah. He joined forces with two doctors at University of Utah Health, Susan Keeshin, MD and Adam Spivak, MD, along with a fellow medical

student, Julie Weis, and the local nonprofit Utah AIDS Foundation, to improve health care for the LGBTQ community.

Their main efforts laid the groundwork for what at that time was only the second free PrEP clinic in the United States.

Madsen and his allies found that while it took a collective effort of passionate, activist-minded medical staff to stake out a new frontier in LGBTQ health culture, inside the clinic it came down to communication between providers and patients to realize their dreams of change.

Madsen and the rest of the clinic’s leadership had four goals for the HIV prevention clinic: to serve the LGBTQ community, to educate the community about safe sex, to build trust between patients and LGBTQ-allied and gay medical professionals, and to educate the medical community about LGBTQ health issues. Part of that last goal was learning how to take a patient’s sexual history in a non-judgmental manner. That involves recognizing the role humility plays in HIV care, Keeshin says, especially given the fact that patients are typically underserved. Doctors who work with them, “have to check race, sexuality, and privilege at the door,” she says, “whereas a lot of other specialties you don’t.”

In March 2018, the clinic began opening its doors every other Saturday morning from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Spivak and Madsen (the dreamers, the big-vision guys) and Keeshin and Weis (the practical engine of the clinic that keeps it motoring) volunteer their time, along with a rotating handful of medical students, several case managers, and a physician’s assistant.

In just six months, the skeletal crew squirreled away in the back of the Redwood Health Center on Salt Lake City’s west side has been all but overwhelmed by its own success. Ninety-eight percent of their patients are young gay men, and close to 40 percent identify as Latino, so the clinic has reached the most at-risk populations with little more than word of mouth.

This, however, is just the beginning.

One Voice Recovery director Patrick Rezac told Keeshin he’s tried unsuccess-

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fully to get the more than 1,000 patients at his needle exchange and addiction recovery program to go to the clinic. A mobile clinic, they agreed, might well cover that gap.

The need for the PrEP clinic was apparent in a 2016 survey conducted by Monica Schwarz Josten, MD, and Keeshin. It showed, Keeshin says, that “primary care providers are very uncomfortable talking about sex,” and did not screen young patients for HIV infections. The majority of survey respondents took the view that their youthful patients weren’t sexually active. Yet results revealed that, in Utah in 2016, youth from ages 15 to 24 accounted for more than half of sexually transmitted infections and 21 percent of new HIV infections.

One reason doctors won’t prescribe PrEP, Madsen argues, is that they feel “morally opposed” to it. “They feel it increases promiscuity, increases risky behavior, and doesn’t protect against other STIs [sexually transmitted infections],” he says, “since patients taking PrEP are less likely to use condoms.”

While some health officials who battle sexually transmitted infections [STIs] in the gay community link spiking STI rates to PrEP use, Madsen says such concerns are a fallacy. He points to studies showing that STI incidence decrease because patients, in order to keep receiving PrEP, have to get tested for HIV and STIs every three months.

From the beginning, Madsen and his cohorts were determined to make the clinic an oasis of tolerance and empathy.

Along with PrEP and STI education, they provide peer counseling for patients struggling with stigma, isolation, and depression. “This is a population that’s already marginalized,” Madsen says. “The clinic is a space where we can talk about the excitement of a date they had, or how the family is reacting to coming out.”

The Utah Aids Foundation has served as the clinic’s strongest ally, Madsen says, referring uninsured patients to them and helping to organize fundraising events.

UAF HIV prevention coordinator Daryl Herrschaft credits Madsen’s persistence for providing UAF and the gay communi-

ty access to decision-makers at University of Utah Health who were able to put this clinic into place. “Madsen was the driving force turning the clinic from a concept into a reality,” Herrschaft says.

Even when Madsen’s sitting still, his long legs scissor in one direction, then swing back; his energetic enthusiasm is contagious. “When you work with him, you feel compelled to try to follow through what he’s planning,” Herrschaft says.

That same zeal for PrEP access is apparent in the clinic’s other co-founders: Spivak advocates intensely for the underserved, while Keeshin’s steely focus helps to marshal the flow of the clinic’s patients. Part of the clinic’s culture is to be realistic about people’s sexual behavior.

“People still do practice high-risk sexual behavior,” Spivak says. “That’s the nature of life. If someone wants to use PrEP instead of a condom, we can talk about that decision. We know PrEP works. That’s what I care about: preventing HIV.”

An emotional connection In 2015, Julie Weis was living in Seattle, pursuing a Master’s in public health, when she learned that her dad had been diagnosed with brain cancer. Then 29 years old, she decided to return to Utah to care for her dying father and signed up for medical school at the U. In her first year, she met and befriended Madsen, who also identified as LGBTQ. (“It’s the least interesting thing about me,” she says with a laugh.)

When Madsen shared his frustrations about the lack of dedicated resources and treatment for LGBTQ members with Weis, he also talked about his idea for a free PrEP clinic. Weis was thrilled. While insurance coverage had improved, she

UofU Health HIV PREP CLINIC Open two Saturday mornings each month.

REDWOOD HEALTH CENTER 1525 West 2100 South Call 801-585-2512 Monday–Friday to make an appointment.

believed more work was needed: “There’s a lot of people who are most at need of it who don’t have insurance at all,” she says.

In summer 2017, Madsen’s frustration with the lack of resources addressing LGBTQ health issues hit a boiling point.

He emailed Spivak, who teaches a fourhour HIV class to medical students at the University of Utah, for help addressing “what barriers our community is facing with the LGBT community and medicine,” Madsen wrote, “and what we could do as students to be involved.” Spivak was excited by the idea, one that had gripped his imagination when it was first suggested to him by a former Utah Aids Foundation employee.

A Maryland native, the 43-year-old Spivak was painfully aware of the socioeconomic differences dictated by a change in zip code from the comfortable middle-class neighborhood where he grew up and Baltimore’s downtown, where he first worked as a doctor. “All of my patients were black, largely impoverished, with diseases of abuse and neglect,” he remembers. “I felt passionately that to those who much is given, much is expected.”

That’s a perspective shared by Keeshin, whom Spivak brought into the conversation with Madsen. Keeshin was adopted as an orphan in Bolivia and raised by a family in Utah. “I felt like I was given so many opportunities in my life,” she says, “adopted to a family that had the means to get me educated.”

Growing up in Utah, HIV first made its mark on Keeshin’s life as a teenager at Skyline High School, when gay friends shared their fears about the future. “One said, ‘I’m going to get HIV and die, and probably half of us will,” she recalls.

Keeshin applied to Meharry Medical College, a historically black institution in Nashville, Tenn., to study medicine, drawn in part by the school’s philosophy of serving the under-served. “It’s more of an emotional relationship than I think traditional medicine is,” she says.

“Just seeing the interaction of patients and HIV doctors, it’s so close. You share their highs and lows, go to their birthday parties. You’re part of each other’s lives.

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They’re not just a diagnosis.”

The level of demand for PrEP had opened Spivak’s eyes. At University of Utah Hospital’s Infectious Disease Clinic, where both he and Keeshin work, about 100 people — all insured white men — are on PrEP, Spivak says. Many uninsured people had gone to UAF for PrEP and been told there wasn’t a way for them to access the drug yet. “These are people who sought out UAF [and] think they’re at risk of HIV,” Spivak says. “Everyone I talk to who thinks that, they’re right. Patients know they want this and they can’t get it. What is the barrier? Gilead [the manufacturer] gives patients the drug for free. The barrier is the system.”

In fact, UAF believes that far more people want PrEP than their numbers indicate: “Uninsured people might not seek services believing they are out of financial reach,” Herrschaft writes in an email.

Coming down from the hill In October 2017, Spivak and Keeshin met with Kathleen A. Cooney, then the chair of internal medicine, and showed her data from UAF that demonstrated the unmet need for PrEP in Salt Lake Valley.

They told her that only people who had insurance could get PrEP, but they knew people in the city who wanted it and couldn’t get it. Spivak offered a tantalizing proposition: Would you like to stamp out HIV in your own backyard?

Cooney gave them a seed grant from her discretionary chair funds to start the clinic. “Then we just relied on our friends,” Keeshin says. The nurse manager at the infectious disease clinic volunteered her time. ARUP provided a manageable price on laboratory tests. A volunteer case manager helped clients access PrEP free via Gilead’s patient assistance program. Communications and IT helped build a website to get the word out. “We asked a lot of people, ‘Hey, can you help us with this?’” Keeshin notes.

“And it all came together.”

Madsen and Weis worked hard to spread the word about the clinic and attract volunteers among U of U Health’s student body. Madsen organized a training day in late 2017 where 120 first- and second-year students took mock sexual histories from LGBTQ patients. “It can be uncomfortable to sit down with a doctor

Qsaltlake.com |

and use big terms,” he says. Rather than desexualize activity by making it scientific, he and other clinic staffers use gay vernacular found on dating apps.

The clinic leadership secured free space at Redwood Health Center on 2100 South, east of Redwood Road. The location was crucial: They wanted somewhere neutral, out of the way, and discreet.

“We’ve engineered this clinic to try to align it to the patient population we want to treat, as opposed to the standard model of health care,” Spivak says. Its location near West Valley City places the clinic close to many uninsured patients; for those without access to transportation, a TRAX station is nearby. “We wanted to make it a point that we were in the community,” Spivak says. “We wanted to be an equal.”

So much more than an HIV status The clinic leadership announced their plans to the gay community at a World AIDS Day event on Dec. 1, 2017 at Ember, a downtown Salt Lake City venue. With help from U of U Health, UAF and other community supporters organized food and decorations, as well as a candlelit vigil at the Salt Lake City and County Building, which was bathed in red light to mark this seminal day of awareness and remembrance. A crowd of nearly 40 people held a moment of silence to remember those lost to HIV and AIDS, candlelight flickering over their faces.

Spivak remembered a young woman and talented artist who had acquired HIV from her ex-husband, who was both abusive and, unbeknownst to her, an IV drug user. She’d gone to the hospital delirious and burning up; two hours later, she was diagnosed with HIV/AIDS and lymphoma. She died two years later.

Keeshin recalled a transwoman patient who had been murdered.

Madsen thought about how lucky he was to have been born after the AIDS crisis, even as its ripples continue to wash up on his life every day. He thought about an old college friend, a drug-using gay man who struggled so much with his HIV status, his sexuality, and his addiction that he took his own life. “For me, he is a testament that no patient is ever just a disease but a complex human being,” Madsen writes in an email. “His life was

Jorgen Madsen

Issue 289 | DECEMBER 6, 2018

PHOTO COURTESY JORGEN MADSEN

so much more than his HIV status — but that status also impacted every single aspect of his life.”

Weis was out of the country at that time, working at a hospital in Rwanda with local doctors treating patients with HIV infections. She saw in horrific, painful detail the price patients paid for the failure to prevent and diagnose HIV infections. “These are people who should have had a fair shake in life, but they were dying,” she says. When she returned to Utah in February 2018, she knew unequivocally that “preventive health care is the way we are going to stop the epidemic in the U.S.” She told Madsen, “I want to be right there with you. I’m in.”

OPENING DAY After building a career in academic medical centers and the massive, bureaucratic machinery of medical research, Spivak found himself in the midst of creating something new. Then, one Saturday morning in March 2018, the first patient entered a room. He had to remind himself to not overwhelm the man with his excitement and enthusiasm. “Don’t get too effusive,” Spivak told himself. “It’s not about you.” Nevertheless, after the first patient came out, the staff cheered.

As exciting as opening day was, it also presented a steep learning curve. “A patient comes, then what?” Keeshin says.

“That was a little awkward.” She became a traffic controller of sorts, working with Weis to streamline the patient’s intake, first talking to an assistant, then a doctor, and then a case manager to get their paper-

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work in to Gilead to apply for financial assistance, a three- to four-week process.

One patient who attended the clinic when it first opened was “Carlos,” referred by UAF after he went to the nonprofit for an HIV screening. The 39-yearold had thought he couldn’t afford PrEP. Now that he’s on the drug, he says, “I feel more safe when I meet somebody.”

Weis expected the clinic to “limp along” in its first year, with patient counts barely breaking into double figures. As the months went by, the five to 10 new patients arriving in the first weeks quickly increased until they had more than 100 patients on their books.

“Clearly, their client load is suggesting there’s even more need than they anticipated,” UAF’s Executive Director Stan Penfold says.

Patients routinely expressed their gratitude to Spivak for the non-judgmental environment of the clinic, something that he was puzzled about when Madsen had first brought it up. Madsen insisted that the clinic should be LGBTQ-friendly, with staff expected to understand the gay vernacular, but Spivak was surprised at what he felt was obvious: “Of course we’re going to be LGBTQ-friendly,” he thought. Now he understood Madsen’s concerns. “Patients would share really awful experiences in 2018 in Utah,” Spivak says, “of going to physicians’ offices, being singled out, being told to leave, being told ‘we don’t provide that service here,’ ‘we’re not seeing you,’ just really awful stuff where folks are seeking out help and it’s not there for them. I wasn’t aware that this stigma was that extensive, and I’m an HIV doc. I should know that.”

Every other Saturday, Weis sees couples dealing with what she calls “leaps of faith,” where one partner takes PrEP so they can stay with someone who is HIV positive. “We decided to get tested together; he came up positive, I came up negative,” is the story she often hears.

One Saturday morning saw several return patients, including a couple: one on PrEP, the other positive. “They were very loving,” Weis says. “It was really beautiful to watch them with each other.” They had just learned that the positive man’s viral load had been suppressed through medication. He was undetectable, meaning that the virus was essentially

untransmissable. That’s the ultimate goal, she says: to get an HIV positive person’s viral load so low it’s undetectable, with the negative person they are having sex with on PrEP.

Ambassadors for prep On a mid-October Saturday morning, Spivak stands in the PrEP clinic’s hallway and glances at the consulting rooms. All the doors are closed. At the Infectious Disease Clinic, which Spivak calls “a welloiled machine,” 20 to 30 percent of their appointments are no-shows. At the PrEP clinic, it’s about 10 percent.

At a clinic that didn’t advertise until a few weeks before via a free ad on Grindr, every room is full. That’s the first time that’s happened, he says. “Word is out I guess.”

Among those who transmitted that word are passionate patient-advocates for PrEP. “Patients were taking pictures of our business cards and putting them on dating apps,” Madsen says. One such advocate is court interpreter Juan Marquez, who Keeshin calls “my PrEP champion.” She adds, “He’s taken it upon himself to put the word out in the Latino community.”

Marquez’s introduction to PrEP came while filling out paperwork in a doctor’s office, where a nurse told him about the medication. “It seemed too good to be true,” he says. When he went to see Keeshin for the first time — he has insurance through his job — she told him that taking PrEP was an act of responsibility.

After Keeshin told him about the PrEP clinic, Marquez offered information about free PrEP on his Grindr profile for anyone that wanted it. He also posted similar offers on Facebook. “I make sure to say it’s not a gay pill,” he says. “It’s for you if you’re not infected.” He’s had more than 100 people ask for information.

On one visit to the clinic, Keeshin asked him, “Did you ever post on this on Grindr? I think some of my patients are your referrals.” Several patients had talked about Marquez’s advocacy efforts through social media, and she’d recognized him from their description of his profile picture on Grindr.

That was Marquez’s ah-ha moment.

“Wow, people care,” he thought.

Proud to be Utahn, proud to be gay On Nov. 29, 2018, the clinic and the Utah Aids Foundation hosted its second World AIDS Day fundraiser, Red Party, hosted

by Tan France, the star of Netflix’s Queer Eye reboot. “We’re looking to expand,” Madsen says. “We have an overwhelming need in the community for PrEP.” Beyond the fundraiser, Spivak and Keeshin hope to raise $500,000. That would allow them to open every Saturday morning instead of every other one, and also purchase a van to use as a mobile clinic so they can do outreach to addicts, the homeless, street sex workers and other high-risk populations.

In October and November, Madsen and Weis interviewed for residency positions at high-profile out-of-state hospitals.

Before Madsen co-founded the clinic, he wanted to leave Utah as fast as he could.

Now, it’s hard to depart. “This is like my baby,” he says. “I don’t want to hand it off. [The clinic has] given me confidence.

It’s given me a sense of purpose. It’s made me very proud to be a gay man.”

Marquez has also found his self-assigned work as a clinic advocate rewarding. A young man he’d told about the clinic reached out for information months later. He works part-time work and goes to college thanks to DACA while supporting his single mother. PrEP was a luxury he couldn’t afford, he told Marquez, who responded that the clinic was free.

A few weeks later, he got a text with a photograph of a prescription labeled bottle of PrEP. “Look what I just got!!!!” his friend texted, with a smiling emoji.

“I’m so excited.”

“Omg!!!!!!!!!!!” Marquez texted back.

“I’m so excited for you.”

“Yass. I’m starting tomorrow.”

Spivak spells out just how high the stakes are for Utah and for those at risk of infection. “The only state ever in the country to drive down HIV rates? It’s never happened,” he says. “We. Can. Do. That. We are doing that. We have the opportunity in this small, tight community to stamp all this out. We can end the spread of HIV in Utah.” Q This story was first published in the Newsroom of the University of Utah Health Department website. It is reprinted with permission. Photo: Volunteer staff at the end of the PrEP Clinic’s inaugural day. Credit: Jorgen Madsen

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Qsaltlake.com |

ANNUAL EVENTS

SPECIAL ENGAGEMENTS

Welcome to the 5th Annual MASQUEERADE WINTER BALL for LGBT+ youth, ages 14–20. Enjoy an evening of glamour, dancing, fun, and community! The theme this year is Creatures of the Night. There will be incredible drag performers and free giveaways. The Utah Museum of Contemporary Art will also provide an interactive activity. Jennafer Martin and her team will be providing free readings all night. And Gallivan Photography will take fabulous free photos at the photobooth all night.

Plus desserts, snacks, and delicious non-alcoholic mocktails will be available.

SATURDAY — MASQUEERADE WINTER BALL

Kurt Bestor says about the 2018 A KURT BESTOR CHRISTMAS, “As a musician, I resonate with everything happening around me and I can’t help but feel intense sadness about the anger, war, and poverty I see in the world. But if ever there was a year that needed more ‘Peace on Earth, Good Will to Mankind’ it would be this year. I hope to give my audiences a few hours of that peace and the love of the season.” Makes my nipples hard, just sayin’!

Join SAGE Utah for a holiday sing-along and white elephant gift exchange. Bring a “re-gift” item from your home to share with someone else. We will have hot chocolate, coffee and play the gift exchange game. This event is sponsored by SAGE and is open to all ages. Music will be led by the duo Sweet Tea (Cathy Cash and Sara Kincannon).

Well just more queenie stuff to do before the new year. A night with Queen Nation is a crazy little thing called love.

The SALT LAKE MEN’S CHOIR presents their 37th annual Christmas concert: Remembering Decembers. Awww, it’s all about me! Thank you, Dennis. The choir sings Christmas music from many genres: classical, swing, contemporary, sacred, humorous, and always with a smile on their faces. This year the choir is joined by an orchestra, full brass section, and the First Baptist Church’s incredible pipe organ.

Out singer-songwriter, JOHN GRANT had a checkered past but since his debut solo album, Queen of Denmark, he’s grown as an outspoken man with HIV. He’s also fast becoming a bear icon. But most appealing, some might say, is his incredible songwriting. Songs like “Queen of Denmark” and “Guess How I Know” are putting Grant on a fast track to stardom.

Well just more queenie stuff to do before the new year. A night with QUEEN NATION is a crazy little thing called love.

Tony’s 8 Gay CONCERTS Agenda

Salt Lake City Public Library, 210 E. 400 South, 8 p.m. Tickets $5, utahpridecenter.secure.force.com

BY TONY HOBDAY

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SLMC: REMEMBERING DECEMBERS

Friday–Sunday at First Baptist Church, 777 S. 1300 East, times vary, Monday at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Park City. Tickets $15, brownpapertickets.com

WEDNESDAY — JOHN GRANT

The State Room, 638 S. State St., 8 p.m. Tickets $27, thestateroom.com

DRAG SHOWS A DRAG QUEEN CHRISTMAS — THE NAUGHTY TOUR flaunts a hilarious evening of holiday performances featuring undisclosed contestants from RuPaul’s Drag Race. Christmas this year will the cattiest yet! A VIP ticket includes premium reserved seat in the first few rows on the main floor, plus meet all the queens and take pics (before the show), score autographs, and receive an official tour poster and customized laminate with lanyard. You must check-in at the box office upon arrival at the venue to receive your tour swag. Meet & Greet starts at 6 p.m. sharp and concludes when the line ends.

On NEW YEAR’S EVE ring in the new year with LATRICE ROYALE, Gia Bianca Stephens, Molly Mormon, Kay Bye, London Skies, Willard, Marrlo Suzzane, Mariška Katastrofa, DJ Shutter, DJ Justin Hollister. Bitches, please! This party will most definitely leave you hurting well into May 2019.

Fabulous!

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SATURDAY — A DRAG QUEEN CHRISTMAS — THE NAUGHTY TOUR

The Depot, 13 N. 400 West, 7 p.m. Tickets $35–50/VIP $150, smithstix.com

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MONDAY — NYE WITH LATRICE ROYALE

Metro Music Hall, 615 W. 100 South, 9 p.m.

Tickets $20, 24tix.com

13 15 26

THURSDAY — A KURT BESTOR CHRISTMAS

Delta Performance Hall, Eccles Theater, 131 S. Main St., times vary through Saturday. Tickets $25–50, artsaltlake.org

SATURDAY — SAGE SING-ALONG AND WHITE ELEPHANT GIFT EXCHANGE

Utah Pride Center, 1380 S. Main St., 6:30–9 pm. Free

WEDNESDAY — QUEEN NATION

Egyptian Theatre, 328 Main St., Park City, 8 p.m., through Friday. Tickets $35–50, egyptiantheatrecompany.com

THEATRE

CAROLINE, OR CHANGE is an Olivier Award-winning musical written by Tony Kushner (Angels in America). It’s late 1960, and warm for November in Louisiana. The southern air is thick with the tensions of a changing nation. Caroline continues her work as a maid in the muggy basement of the Gellmans, a Jewish family still rocked by the sudden death of a wife, and mother. Embittered by the limitations of her blackness and tired from a life of servitude, she finds little joy in her life. When she asks for a raise her bosses are unable to give, Caroline finds every relationship in her life strained to the point of breaking.

In Topher Payne’s biting comedy, PERFECT ARRANGEMENT, it’s 1950 and new colors are being added to the Red Scare. Two U.S. State Department employees, Bob and Norma, have been tasked with identifying sexual deviants within their ranks. The twist: Both Bob and Norma are gay, and have married each other’s partners as a carefully constructed cover.

Inspired by the true story of the earliest stirrings of the American gay rights movement, madcap I Love Lucy sitcom-style laughs give way to provocative drama as two “all-American” couples are forced to stare down the closet door, confronting the same struggles facing society today.

6 7

THURSDAY — CAROLINE, OR CHANGE

Good Company Theatre, 2404 Wall Ave., Ogden, times vary through Dec. 9. Tickets $20, goodcotheatre.com

FRIDAY — PERFECT ARRANGEMENT

An Other Theater Company, 1200 Towne Centre Blvd., Provo, times vary through Dec. 22. Tickets $12–14, anothertheatercompany.com

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UMOCA’s 2019 exhibition season expands to Trolley Square, offers LGBTQ teen program Exhibitions focusing on the long-term effects of American suburban development, a tongue-in-cheek look at self-medication, enhanced residency opportunities for Utah artists and a creative program for LGTBQ teens will highlight the 2019 season for the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art. “We focus on the dynamics of how current issues dominate wider discussions,” Kristian Anderson, UMOCA’s executive director, explains. “We hear about how policy drives dialogue and vice versa. Our objective is to stay connected between these two threads of public discourse and debate.”

Anderson says that this includes bringing in partners and collaborators with whom a contemporary art museum might not typically engage. In recent shows, there have been contemporary dance artists, independent filmmakers, architects, and associates from local and national nonprofits — including Urban Land Institute, Spy Hop Productions, and the Sundance Institute.

A new Main Gallery exhibition in early 2019 will be Shady Acres (Jan. 26–May 26), which will present works by up to 15 artists who observe and interpret the longterm effects of American suburbanization within the broader contexts of urban density, homelessness, and infrastructure in disrepair. Shady Acres will be the culminating show in a triptych of exhibitions that comprise the relevant community and environmental spaces in their totality.

The first two, respectively, focused on landscapes and urban centers.

For the upcoming exhibition, Jared Steffensen, UMOCA curator, says the aim is to challenge how suburban lifestyles have been sold, based on favorable attributes of safety, space, and affordability. He adds, “the emphasis turns to the real and cultural costs of suburbia,” which includes transportation and the headaches of commuting to work, the prescription opioid abuse prevalent in suburban communities and the implications for locally owned businesses as strip malls and big-box store construction overwhelmed the traditional ideals of main street commerce.

Other scheduled exhibitions play directly on thematic tangents from the Shady Acres show, which will broaden audience perspectives. UMOCA’s Codec Gallery features video, audio, or technology-based works and installations that expand on

nuanced themes from the Main Gallery exhibitions.

Contemporary Suburbium, by Ed and Deanna Templeton, will be presented as a photographic meditation on living in the suburbs of Orange County, Calif. — specifically, Huntington Beach. Once dotted with orange trees, oil drilling, and summer cottages for the rich, Huntington Beach is now a popular beach destination for vacationers, and tall modern three-story houses are replacing the old cottages. The photographs portray the people of this traditionally conservative stronghold, the disaffected youth, and the fortunate (as well as the less fortunate), as they venture out from behind fences, walls and endless blocks of tract housing.

“We create and curate shows that can engage audiences without them fearing about being intimidated about contemporary art,” Anderson says. “We go by the simple axiom that there are no dumb questions and we make it a point to answer everyone’s question when they are curious about something new they see in a show.”

Another Street Gallery exhibition will be Gettin’ By, a tongue-in-cheek exploration by artist Mike Simi of the various ways in which people indulge in self-medication, as marked by class and economy. In addition to the show’s winks and self-effacing humor, Steffensen says Simi’s artistic approach blurs the boundaries between self-representation and objecthood in ways that deny their existence in either realm.

This approach is manifested, for example, in the wall sculpture of a pair of Tylenol PM pills fashioned to scale. Other representations show cast pitchers of Miller High Life beer and Bloody Mary cocktails.

The only long-term artist residency program available in Utah, UMOCA’s Artist-in-Residence Program, which started in 2013 and is supported by the George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Foundation, is expanding its exhibition space. UMOCA will occupy additional space at Trolley Square.

While the AIR program is not a new concept relative to other organizations, UMOCA’s program has given a growing number of Utah artists the opportunity to stay in the state and develop their careers without having to relocate to major cities.

“For us, it has been a great hedge against the worries of cultural brain drain in the

area and it has become a key part of our programming,” Anderson explains.

In 2019, seven Utah artists will have solo exhibitions planned in the museum’s AIR Space, a gallery of approximately 1,000 square feet. Steffensen adds that the new Trolley Square location will give AIR participants the opportunity of a second exhibition to either repeat or expand on their first show or to create new works entirely. The new Trolley Square location will give significant support to a program that emphasizes career building experiences and networking for the local artists. The solo exhibitions come at the end of the residency, which includes learning through interactions with each other along with visiting artists, curators and art world professionals during workshops and critiques.

Many of the approximately 30 alumni from the AIR program have cultivated portfolios with solo and group shows, fellowships, and residencies in numerous venues across the globe. UMOCA also presents shows by Utah artists, both emerging and established, in its Projects Gallery.

UMOCA also offers its fifth version of Out Loud for LGTBQ youth in grades 9-12 who are looking for safe, independent spaces in art and creativity. The program consists of 10 workshops, beginning in February, and a two-month exhibition with an opening reception event. Elly Baldwin, UMOCA’s curator of Public Engagement, says some students are surprised when they begin the program, believing that it will operate as a high school art club — instead, they are guided toward creating work for the annual gallery show.

Beyond offering free tuition for accepted students, Baldwin says the museum arranges for public transportation passes and parking costs for students who otherwise might not be able to afford coming downtown even if not accepted. Funding for Out Loud comes from the LGBTQ Community Endowment Fund at the Community Foundation of Utah and the B.W. Bastian Foundation.

Founded in 1931, UMOCA remains the state’s only museum dedicated exclusively to contemporary art. Programming includes family art activities, the Art Truck housing mobile shows and a year-round schedule of youth events and tours for students of all ages. Q UMOCA is located at 20 S. West Temple. Admission is a suggested $5 donation. Hours are Tues.-Thurs. and Sat.: 11 a.m.–6 p.m. and Friday: 11 a.m.–9 p.m. http://www. utahmoca.org/.

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Issue 289 | DECEMBER 6, 2018

bublé michael

gets into the heavy stuff

Crooner talks plans for LGBTQ youth outreach, teaching his kids to be themselves and his ‘sexist’ Christmas cover

BY CHRIS AZZOPARDI

‘You’re

my first. Be gentle with me. Can we start with, like, a foreplay thing where

you can just take it easy on me? Some gentle licking perhaps, and then we’ll get into the heavy stuff.”

And so my interview with Michael Bublé, who has almost made me forget he has a wife, Argentine actress Luisana Lopilato, begins.

Returning to music with a new heart-emoji-titled album called love that he will support on a world tour in 2019, Bublé — who introduces himself by that mononym when he rings me directly — spoke openly on a variety of topics, including the difficulties of being a public figure amid familial distress, atoning for his “sexist” Christmas song and doing his part to support the LGBTQ community.

It’s sweet that this album uses the heart

emoji for its title, though the gay community certainly wouldn’t have argued with you naming your album using the eggplant emoji. Oh god, I wanted to use the eggplant. You have no idea.

You fought for that. I did. I had long conversations about it. And you think I’m joking. I’ve already said this a million times when talking to my friends: They were like, (in a deeply bro voice) “Why didn’t you use the eggplant?” and I’m like, “Oh, I would have.”

Did you intend for the album to be a BandAid for our divisive times? Yeah, it’s funny that you just said that: I’ve actually said

that in private. You know what, man, obviously everything I’ve gone through has everything to do with this record and what I want to put out to the world.

I had different names that I’d come up with, but there was nothing that really explained the record and the concept as well as just one word could.

The record is about love, but it’s not simply about romantic love. It was really a record that was kind of my theory on this word, this emotion that has so much range. When you hear it you think, “Oh god, romantic and lovey-smovey,” but there’s so many different things that happen with that word.

“When I Fall in Love” is such a beautiful track and people say, “Oh, it’s so romantic.” It is romantic. But for me, it’s really sad. As I put myself into the character of that song, I thought about a guy sitting at the bar at 4 o’clock in the morning,

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drunk, looking over at another couple, wishing that he had that because it hasn’t happened for him. It’s very unique in that way. It’s a very sad song about longing. I could go on through the whole tracklist.

They all have a story for me.

Did you personalize any of the songs? I wanted to do the best I could to be as personal and honest in the storytelling, in becoming the characters for the song, but at the same time give the audience a way to be able to hear and have their own opinions.

If I want to use this album to get a guy to fall in love with me, which song do you suggest I play to make him swoon? Honestly, I think “La Vie En Rose” (a duet with jazz vocalist Cecile McLorin Salvant) is incredible because when I did this song my concept was to build a mirror of the relationship I had with my wife. It was me going to this foreign land with someone who didn’t speak my language and having this kind of dance of love with them.

I felt like there were these two characters and one is singing to the other, where I was singing to her in my language and my culture and she was answering in hers.

Though we were on this path together, we were still apart; and by the middle of the song we have this beautiful dance together, this incredible night, and by the morning we were walking through the streets of Paris. I have sort of assimilated to her culture and I am singing in her language, and I loved that because that’s exactly what happened in my life.

I don’t think you thought you’d be recording music again after your 5-year-old son, Noah, was diagnosed with liver cancer in 2016, days after our last conversation. But I’ve heard you say he’s holding up and is in remission. Was creating this album more cathartic than past albums? I don’t think I ever fell out of love with making music or being a creative person; I just think I knew it had to be put aside. The part of being a public person, that part I didn’t know if I was ready for. There are always reminders every time you go out and people speak and you’re trying to move on with your life or yourself and your family. At first, there were always these reminders of it and so it was hard to just move on.

I made a promise to myself that it would be organic and that it would be joy

and it would be blissful — and if it ever becomes what I consider work, or egotistically driven, then I would step away.

But I never fell out of love with making music. You know, I’m having to leave the family and stuff for little bits, and if I do then it has to be for the right reasons.

Harder than usual to leave the family right now? No, it’s not. When I do something, I know that there’s a great reason for it.

We can make more money and we can make more music and we can make more this and more that, but it’s time — you can’t make time. I wanna make sure I’m spending time doing what I love and that it’s all worthwhile.

Being a public person is having a responsibility sometimes to show that kind of love and that kind of support and to step out there and to do that.

It’s not an edgy fucking thing to do. It’s not.

You talked about being an LGBTQ ally in our last interview. Why did you decide to express your compassion and advocacy for the LGBTQ community at that moment in your career? I don’t know if it was about that moment. I think I had an opportunity to speak with you, and I felt like it was a really good chance to say how I felt.

Now more than ever I think it’s important for me to just be honest, and it’s what I believe. It’s part of who I fundamentally am, how I was raised. And it’s about equality. It’s simple. That’s it.

I wish it were so simple. When we last spoke, Trump hadn’t been elected, and a lot has changed in the last couple of years politically. How are you feeling about the way this administration has treated the LGBTQ community and other marginalized groups? I don’t… (pause)... it sounds crazy, but after what I’ve been through, I really promised myself that I would try not to get into — and when I say “get into,” I just didn’t want to be a part of

negative things. So I stopped reading things. I stopped reading things about myself. I stopped reading things that made me feel badly.

I really, truly feel like more than ever in my life actions speak much louder than words do and how you treat people is — it’s funny, a friend heard me talking to my son. My son was going to his first day of kindergarten and he saw me kneel down to my boy and I said to him, “Noah, I just want you to know that” — and it sounds like a cliché, but I said, “You treat people the way you want to be treated, kid.” I said, “If you’re kind to people and you’re good to people, life will always be OK for you.” And I got up and I walked away and my friend said to me, “They may not remember what you did or what you said but they’ll remember how you made them feel.”

I can’t stop the politicians or stupid, uneducated people from thinking and saying and doing stupid things, but I can make a stand, I can talk to you, and when I’m with groups of friends or I’m in public places or when I’m with people who I think can use that sense of love and education, I can open my mouth and tell them how I feel. And one at a time, you can change the world like that.

Listen, I’ve gone through too much not to feel this way. I just feel this way really strongly. I also think it’s important — it’s really easy for someone selling something, an artist, to say that they support or love the gay community; I just think it’s a different thing to say it than to do it.

When we spoke in 2016, you told me you had plans to get involved with the Harvey Milk High School in New York City, but then, of course, you had to tend to your family. Do you plan on picking up where you left off? As a matter of fact, [my publicist] Liz [Rosenberg] and I have spoken many times and talked about the plan that we have. We have a plan [that involves] The Hetrick-Martin Institute (a NYC-based professional provider of social support and programming for LGBTQ youth and host agency for the Harvey Milk High School).

To start, I just wanted to go. I wanted to go and just let people know they had my support. Young kids who have been bullied and haven’t felt comfortable have a place to go, which is just disturbing in the first place, that in 2018 they didn’t.

34 | QSALTLAKE MAGAZINE | A&E

There wasn’t an environment where they felt they could be who they are. Listen, I can’t get into the details. I can’t.

You can’t get into details about the project? Not those details, but within my family there are things that I can’t really speak to that have made this even more pressing for me. It’s because it’s not my story to tell. But I’ll just say that within my family these are the same issues that every family has. I wouldn’t and I couldn’t talk about something so personal. Definitely, I just know there needs to be advocates. Being a public person is having a responsibility sometimes to show that kind of love and that kind of support and to step out there and to do that. It’s not an edgy fucking thing to do. It’s not.

For some public figures it seems so. Why? Because what — half of the audience doesn’t buy your records anymore? Well, that’s fucking stupid, isn’t it? Then you

Qsaltlake.com |

gotta ask yourself if you want half of those people buying your records in the first place, and what’s really important to you.

Because if you’re gonna tell people that you know what’s important or that you’ve had an epiphany in your life that you

I just tell both of my boys now that they’re old enough to understand: “You know, boys, the things that make you different are what make you special.” know what matters then, again, actions speak louder than words, don’t they?

Knowing what Noah has gone through, has the feeling of loving your kids no matter who they are, which we discussed in 2016,

Issue 289 | DECEMBER 6, 2018

intensified in the last couple of years? No, it was always the same. I could tell you the truth: I never had to find that perspective, I always felt that way. And I think I’m very lucky because I really do think that came from the way I was parented. I really do think I was very lucky to be raised in a family that was so open and liberal and loving. I just think they were always so unconditionally loving — not just toward us children, but toward our family.

Again, clichés, but I just tell both of my boys now that they’re old enough to understand: “You know, boys, the things that make you different are what make you special.” What’s amazing to me about that school and wanting so badly to go to that school is, I just feel so strongly that the difference between a child and an adult is only life experience. An adult’s life experience is, “It’s gonna get better.

This isn’t how it has to be, and this isn’t how it’s going to be.” So for me, it’s really

DECEMBER 6, 2018 |

massive to be able to meet kids and to say publicly — really: “It’s not always going to be like this.”

and if I do concerts and I wanna add a Christmas song, then you know what? I can amend it and I can sing “Santa Baby.”

In light of the holidays, you do realize your gay fans would’ve gone wild for a version of “Santa Baby” by you that was actually called “Santa Baby,” right? (Laughs) Yeah, exactly.

Instead of “Santa Buddy.” I think I used “Santa Baby” in one of the lines.

A straight guy singing “Santa Baby” is the progress we need. Fuck yeah. You’re right, you’re absolutely right. It was sexist of me not to.

You did. I should’ve gone full.

I mean, a straight man can shop at Tiffany’s. (Laughs) Yeah, no, you’re right. It’s funny: When I did that song, I tried to put it into my perspective and modernize it.

I changed words; I asked for a Rolex or Mercedes or things I would want. The best part about it is: I get to sing those kinds of songs now in my life,

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A&E | QSALTLAKE MAGAZINE | 35

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Madison Square Garden, fucking done. Q As editor of Q Syndicate, Chris Azzopardi has interviewed a multitude of superstars, including Meryl Streep, Mariah Carey and Beyoncé. Reach him via his website at chris-azzopardi.com and Twitter @ chrisazzopardi.

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Each Sudoku puzzle has a unique solution which can be reached logically without guessing. Enter digits 1 through 9 into the blank spaces. Every row must contain one of each digit, as must each column and each 3x3 square. Qdoku

Q doku Easy

6

3 5 8 8 6 4 3 9 5 7

1

3

2 7

3

2

2 7 4 8 1 3 1 1 6 4 9 6 8 8 4 2 6 1 4 3 4 2 5 1 3 3 5 2 2 5 6 7 7 4 6 2 5 6 4 1 5 8 6 7 4 8 4 1 7 5 8 3

5

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8

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7 4 8 9 6 3 5 7

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3

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6 8

9

6 9

3

2 9 3 1 5 8 6 1 9 3 3 5

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A E T

Many Happy (Election) Returns

44 Home of the Bruins 48 Claire of the Moon actor Todd 51 Greet with loud ACROSS laughter 1 They get checked at 53 Kim Davis, who lost bathhouses the race for this 4 Abbreviated Broadoffice way musical?

56 Blue bottoms 8 First out governor 59 “Houston, we have Kate, who was a problem” reelected 60 Reagan’s Star Wars 13 Prefix with classical letters 14 Antigay prejudice, 61 Like an eagle in e.g. flight 15 Milk, in Madrid 62 Pride of lions?

16 Mineo, who played 63 Half a score Plato 64 First gay man elect17 All’s Well That ___ ed governor Jared Well 65 Title for Uncle 18 Emma Stone plays a Remus’ bear beard in this movie 66 AARP members 19 Rights law upheld DOWN

by Massachusetts 1 It’s found under the voters tongue 22 Whoopi, et al., at 2 Diary entry start by the Oscars Anais Nin? 23 Underdog victories 3 Comfort in sorrow 27 Fruit cover 28 “___ Ordinary Man” 4 Hardly like a muscle Mary (My Fair Lady) 5 Even bigger than a 31 Squealer bed for a queen 32 Lay in the hammock 6 Fill with freight 34 Role for Madonna 7 The A in GLARP or LuPone (abbr.)

36 Sharice Davids, first LGBTQ ___ elected 8 Censor’s sound 9 Tails of the city, to congress 40 Hollywood Squares when cruising? choice 10 Place for future Lts. 41 Church sections 11 Porter’s “___ 42 Saint, in Rio Shouldn’t I?” 43 Daly of Judging Amy 12 PBS helper

20 South Pacific heroine 21 Plague for payment 24 Mabius of Ugly Betty 25 “Toodles” 26 Gay-dog owner on TV 29 Former labor leader George 30 Darrin Stevens, for one 33 St. crosser 34 Preposition that goes either way 35 Type of aids 36 First of the Democratic ass drawers 37 Tutti-frutti ingredient 38 Star Trek counselor Deanna 39 Who should be against homophobia 43 T, to a “Homer-phile” 45 Wave tops 46 “Harder days, empty ___ days” (Oliver!)

47 Big name in dieting 49 Field of Ursula Le Guin 50 Ellen DeGeneres and others 52 Earth tone 54 Ready to get drilled by the dentist 55 Direction for seamen 56 Race unit in The Front Runner 57 ”Xanadu” band, for short 58 Tennessee foot player

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Qmmunity Groups ALCOHOL & DRUG

Alcoholics Anonymous 801-484-7871  utahaa.org LGBT meetings: Sun. 3p Acceptance Group, UPC, 255 E 400 S Mon. 7p Gay Men’s Stag (Big Book Study), UPC, 255 E 400 S 8p G/Q Women’s Mtg, Disability Law Center (rear), 205 N 400 W Tues. 8:15p Live & Let Live, UPC, 255 E 400 S Wed. 7p Sober Today, 375 Harrison Blvd, Ogden Fri. 8p Stonewall Group, UPC, 255 E 400 S Crystal Meth Anon  crystalmeth.org Sun. 1:30pm Clean, Sober & Proud LGBTQIA+Straight USARA, 180 E 2100 S Thurs. 1p Unity In Sobriety, 175 S 700 E LifeRing Secular Recovery 801-608-8146  liferingutah.org Sun. 10am Univ. Neuropsychiatric Institute, 501 Chipeta Way #1566 Wed. noon, 2319 Foothill Dr, #120 Weds. 6:30 pm, Univ Neuropsych Institute, 501 Chipeta Way #1566 Thurs. 7pm, USARA, 180 E 2100 S, #100

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SPORTS

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USGA at BYU  fb.me/UsgaAtByu Utah State Univ. Access & Diversity Ctr  usu.edu/ accesscenter/lgbtqa Utah Valley Univ Spectrum  facebook.com/ groups/uvuspectrum Weber State University LGBT Resource Center  weber.edu/ lgbtresourcecenter 801-626-7271

Embracing the health & resilience of our community Utah’s Inclusive Aquatic Club since 1995 BEGINNERS WELCOME EVERYONE’S INVITED

umen.org

42 | QSALTLAKE MAGAZINE | PETS

Qsaltlake.com |

Issue 289 | DECEMBER 6, 2018

Pet Month of the

Felicia

7 years old, female, domestic long hair, brown tabby

Felicia is a gorgeous girl with a big personality! When she’s not napping in her favorite spot, she’s bright and alert and paying attention to everything 6 5 8 7 2 4 1 3 9

would do best in a home with adults that will play with her with interactive toys and let her watch the world outside from a window perch.

4 6 2 1 3 5 9 7 8

1 4 9 3 6 8 5 2 7 9 7 3 8 2 4 5 1 6

3 7 2 9 5 1 8 4 6 1 8 5 6 9 7 4 2 3

9 3 4 8 7 5 6 1 2 6 5 8 4 1 2 7 3 9

2 6 1 4 3 9 7 5 8 7 1 9 5 6 3 2 8 4

7 8 5 6 1 2 4 9 3 2 3 4 9 7 8 1 6 5

5 9 7 3 8 1 6 4 2 7 8 9 5 1 3 2 8 6 9 7 4

3 4 1 2 5 6 8 9 7 5 1 3 4 2 6 5 9 7 3 8 1

8 2 6 7 4 9 3 5 1 6 2 4 8 9 7 1 4 3 2 6 5

9 6 8 2 4 7 3 5 1

1 3 4 9 5 6 2 7 8

7 2 5 1 3 8 9 6 4

3 9 2 8 5 1 4 7 6 3 9 5 1 8 2 5 9 7 6 4 3

6 8 4 9 7 2 5 1 3 8 6 2 7 4 9 1 6 3 5 8 2

5 1 7 3 6 4 2 8 9 4 7 1 6 3 5 8 4 2 7 9 1

8 1 3 6 2 9 4 7 5 4 3 8 6 9 7 1 5 2

5 2 6 4 7 1 8 3 9 1 5 9 2 4 3 8 6 7

9 7 4 3 8 5 1 2 6 2 7 6 5 1 8 9 3 4

4 5 1 2 3 8 9 6 7 9 4 3 7 8 5 6 2 1

q scopes DECEMBER

BY SAM KELLEY-MILLS

ARIES March 20–April 19

Despite what others might say, good things are coming your way! An amazing career move will lead to exploration and much-needed relief.

How you proceed with a loved one relies greatly on an ability to remain calm.

That may be difficult, but possible.

Avoiding confrontations, and lay low when things heat up.

TAURUS Apr 20–May 20

Dismiss bad ideas and trust your instincts. Pressure builds as the weather gets cool and activities heat up. Plan for mild celebrations and more fun will come as a result. Though family is important, don’t let drama become a setback. Many people in your life have entitlement issues. Now is the time to set the record straight.

GEMINI May 21–June 20

going on around her. She

An odd problem requires a creative solution, and results could be unpredictable. It doesn’t hurt to hold off when dealing with unreasonable people. A breaking point could

For more information, go to Best Friends Animal Society–Utah, 2005 S 1100 East, or call 801-574-2454 or go to bestfriendsutah. org or utahadoptions@bestfriends.org

lead to erratic behavior, but this is the key to obtaining a long desired goal.

Apologizing won’t be necessary. Get mad, if you must, but use tact.

CANCER June 21–July 22

Drowning in a sea of tears will do no good, so learn to swim by gaining perspective. Now is the time to get away from work. Put aside unnecessary obligations. Emotionally detaching is difficult, but could be necessary. It’s a matter of survival, especially in regards to a partner. Care less, do less, and feel more.

LEO July 23–August 22

How a bad influence is handled could have a great impact on goals this month. Don’t be lured into a trap and stay grounded by spending time alone. A social or family gathering could be intensely rewarding, but the potential for outbursts exist. Sometimes it pays to submit to the will of others and enjoy the ride for a while.

VIRGO August 23–Sep. 22

The weather is cool and dry, but things are warm and cozy inside.

Create a nook of happiness in your home and invite friends looking for the same. Approach a good job offer with skepticism. While the best things tend to seem the most obtainable, nothing

comes without cost. Weigh all the options and take few risks.

LIBRA Sept 23–October 22

Don’t depend heavily other people. They aren’t as strong as you think. A threshold of frustration that is about to be breached, so avoid the frustrations by eliminating obligations. An abundance of good news will be delivered at work, leading to a fruitful period. Enjoy the acquisitions but don’t go overboard. Save!

SCORPIO Oct. 23–Nov. 21

No one has a clue of what is really going on with you. It would be wise to provide a close associate, lover, or family member a glimpse into what matters. People are a conduit for desire, and giving a little can bring a huge return. It’s time to face a nagging feeling which resulted from a feud. It’s not too late to fix mistakes.

SAGITTARIUS

Nov. 22–December 20.

Delicious things are coming this month, and not in the form of food. Get ready for a happy time and enjoy emotional satisfaction. Financial matters will not be bothersome, but keep an eye on your accounts. Dire things tend to happen when least expected. A child or pet is in need of

attention, so please provide it.

CAPRICORN Dec 21–Jan 19

Help is on the way, not a moment too soon. There is confusion during this time, and questions that need answers. A fountain of knowledge will present itself in the form of romance or sexy friendship. While the world currently seems to be squeezing tight, it’s an illusion. Trust in those who really care and have fun.

AQUARIUS Jan. 20–Feb. 18

The desire for a good time will consume you. It’s a great period for cutting out troublemakers, but you must identify them first. Test the sincerity of friends who don’t know you well. An elderly family member provides great insight, but don’t accept it casually. Give real thought into the implications here.

PISCES Feb 19–Mar 19

A parental figure will materialize from out of nowhere.

A kind heart is needed right now, but a tough love comes with the territory.

Make intentions known, and don’t fear to ask for favors. The spirits will be moving, and the heart takes the lead.

Don’t fear to find the confidence to simply feel good. This is your time! Q

2 9 8 7 5 6 3 1 4 7 6 5 1 2 9 3 4 8

3 6 7 9 1 4 2 5 8 8 2 1 4 3 6 7 9 5

DECEMBER 6, 2018 |

Issue 289 | Qsaltlake.com

PETS | QSALTLAKE MAGAZINE | 43

HOLIDAY MINI SUPER ADOPTION ’Tis the season to snuggle December 8, 10 am – 4 pm The Gateway 400 West 100 South · Salt Lake City, Utah

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44 | QSALTLAKE MAGAZINE | HEALTH

Qsaltlake.com |

positive thoughts

Issue 289 | DECEMBER 6, 2018

The Hidden Survivors

Why people living and aging with HIV will lead the way

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Long-term

BY JEFF BERRY

survivors of HIV face unique challenges — they are the “hidden” survivors of the epidemic. When I was diagnosed with HIV in 1989, I wasn’t sure I’d be here in 2018 to talk about it.

At the time there was no effective treatment for people living with HIV; it was basically a death sentence. For those of us who did have access to health care and treatment, we were given what we now know is suboptimal therapy that not only rendered us resistant to more effective medications that were being developed, but also had life-altering side effects that remain with some of us to this day. These side effects from those earlier, more toxic treatments have added to the stigma of aging with HIV and have disfigured us, made us frailer, and caused our hearts to literally skip a beat.

Don’t get me wrong, I am grateful to be here. As a white, gay, cis man living with HIV who turns 60 this year, I also recognize and acknowledge my privilege.

I have access today to a one pill, oncea-day therapy that keeps my virus fully suppressed, so that I’m unable to pass on HIV to others, and I experience virtually no side effects to my current regimen. But I also know that when I walk into a room, I have “the look”—the sunken cheeks, the veiny arms and legs, the extended belly.

“You should be grateful to be here,” we’ve been told, “thankful to be alive!” But to what end? Grateful to be here to suddenly be rolled off of disability after being out of work for 20-30 years, expected to join the ranks of the work force without any specialized training or support? Grateful to be here only to fall into addiction or isolation because our support networks, friends and former lovers no longer exist? Grateful to be here while there is scant culturally competent care for aging LGBTQ+ seniors who are living with HIV? We as a society in general do not value our elders — how does the LGBTQ+ community regard those of us aging, let

alone aging with HIV? There is much work to be done, but if anyone can lead the way, it’s people living with HIV and our allies. We were the ones who took care of each other back at the start of the epidemic, and we will come to the forefront of the battle once again. The lesbian community was there for many gay men back in the 1980s when we were dropping like flies and when no one else would touch us; thank heavens for these unsung heroes. Community-based organizations like TPAN were founded by people living with HIV so that we could survive and thrive. Informational resources like Positively Aware delivered the information we needed to live healthy, happy lives.

Earlier this year The Reunion Project convened a community-led, diverse coalition of survivor advocates to discuss the needs and priorities of survivors, and issued a report in June. Go to tpan.com/ reunion-project for more info. As someone living with HIV for 29 years, I am excited to be part of a national network of survivors that is giving voice to those who don’t have one and who have in many respects been left behind.

Currently 50 percent of people living with HIV are over the age of 50, and by 2020 it will be 70 percent. But we knew this was coming. Where is the sense of urgency? Where is the crisis task force taking up our agenda? Do we matter?

I believe we do. As the saying goes, with age comes wisdom. Long-term survivors have an opportunity to come together and join forces, mentor those coming up behind us on how to age and live with HIV gracefully, and to advocate for those who have no voice. An entire generation was lost, so who now is going to step up and advocate for us?

Those of us who have survived. Q Jeff Berry is the editor in chief of Positively Aware magazine, and director of publications at Test Positive Aware Network in Chicago. Find him on Twitter @PAEditor. This column is a project of Plus, Positively Aware, POZ, The Body, Q Syndicate, and QSaltLake Magazine

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46 | QSALTLAKE MAGAZINE | A&E

Qsaltlake.com |

Issue 289 | DECEMBER 6, 2018

hear me out

7 not-to-be-missed LGBTQ artists

BY CHRIS AZZOPARDI

MNEK You’ve heard English singer, songwriter and producer MNEK behind the scenes, writing for artists like Madonna and Beyoncé (yes, he co-wrote a Lemonade jam, Bey’s “Hold Up”). But with his Capital Records debut, the 23-year-old UK rapper-singer steps into the spotlight, seeing his own artistic vision through with a 16-track album meant to be heard as a full album, a defiant move in a singles-driven music industry. Black and gay, MNEK knows the struggle to thrive in a majority-rules world, which he writes about on the album’s standout, “Correct,” a call-toarms for queer people, served through the musical guise of a big party bop. Words to live by: “Yas bitch, stay fabulous, honey.”

Donna Missal As is the case for many aspiring musicians who climb YouTube’s ladder, New Jersey’s Donna Missal stormed the internet first, racking up 11 million combined streams. The demand opened the doors to her first album, the soulful This Time, released in September on Harvest Records. Produced by Tim Anderson, known for helming projects by Solange

and Halsey, the sexually fluid LA-based singer-songwriter’s rock-meets-soul sound is as intoxicating as her lyrical content, which she says reflects “taking chances for yourself, figuring out who you are and really standing behind that.”

Shea Diamond Activism is art in Shea Diamond’s case.

Performing songs to fellow prisoners while serving time in various Michigan prisons, the trans singer-songwriter and her inspiring narrative soon fell into the nurturing hands of star producer Justin Tranter, who Diamond has called her “fairy godmother.” Tranter produced songs from Diamond’s first EP, released this year. For the album, the artist channels her personal struggles as a trans woman of color living in a time when the trans community is under attack. Now, particularly, her soulful croon is a voice that needs — and demands — to be heard.

Christine and the Queens Pansexual French pop singer, songwriter, producer and choreographer Hélöise Letissier yearned to break down gender constructs, so she fashioned an androgynous look, started going by “Chris,” and used her new persona (previously, her professional alias was Christine and the Queens) as the title of her sophomore album, released in September. One of the most exciting pop albums of the year, Chris holds a mirror to the artist’s personal journey, boldly framing her newfound identity in assertive retro beats that throb and empower.

Michael Blume Michael Blume, an alumni of Yale University whose future was once academia-bound, almost didn’t pursue music as a career. But after joining an on-campus a capella group that toured the world, performing in 35 countries, the New Jersey-bred, NYC-based has forged a flourishing musical career for himself.

Queer and other human rights issues still rest heavy on his mind as illustrated by

his latest release. A follow-up to his 2016 debut When I Get It Right called Cynicism & Sincerity, the six-song EP’s musically diverse palette — from trap hip-hop to gospel and electronica – is the conduit for his pointed and passionate activist convictions.

John Duff Sassy, frequently shirtless IG sensation John Duff took his social clout to the next level with the release of his song “Girly,” a frothy pop romp celebrating femme power (“let’s get girly, flip our hair, we don’t care”). Its accompanying video is a tribute to a pantheon of gay icons. In the clip, he delightfully mirrors the precious mannerisms of Mariah in her 1999 “Heartbreaker” video along with her signature look — a midriff halter top, cut-off jeans — while also recreating other iconic music-video scenes from Madonna, Britney, Beyoncé and Christina Aguilera.

Faultlines Folk-pop trio Faultlines pulled no punches with their Trump-targeted words on “Rain,” released early this year. The firedup anthem is in the stomping soul style of 1960s protest songs and blends the earthy voices of band members Todd McCool, Ashley Morgan and John Flanagan, who draw upon urban pop and roots country for the gritty call-to-action. Their lyrics rouse: “There’s a man in a big white house trying to take your voice away,” they sing.

“Do nothing and stay silent if you think that it’s OK.” Q Chris Azzopardi is the editor of Q Syndicate. Reach him via his website at www.chris-azzopardi.com and on Twitter (@ chrisazzopardi).

DECEMBER 6, 2018 |

BOOKS | QSALTLAKE MAGAZINE | 47

Issue 289 | Qsaltlake.com

the bookworm sez

Book Gifts for the Holidays

BY TERRI SCHLICHENMEYER

Who doesn’t like a mystery?

Your giftee sure does, and if there are chills inside it, all’s the better so wrap up SODOM ROAD EXIT by Amber Dawn. It’s the story of a small but dying village that’s lost its last reason for tourists. Even so, one young woman lives there with her mother because she has nowhere else to go. She wishes she did, though, because her small hometown holds terror… Wrap it up with RUIN OF STARS by Linsey Miller, the second book in a fantasy series in which the main character is gender-fluid.

For the reader who loves books that may make him think, look for SO FAMOUS AND SO GAY

by Jeff Solomon.

It’s a book about Truman Capote and Gertrude Stein and how their fame still lingers while so many other almost-celebrities barely get a nod today, no matter what they did for LGBTQ rights….

The person on your list who is thinking about transitioning (or who recently has) will love unwrapping TRANS LIKE ME

by CN Lester, a series of essays on gender diversity, being

trans, and how to tackle tacky people whose questions are too nosy. Pair it with BEING EMILY by Rachel Gold, a book about a trans woman, now updated to include new material.

For the traveler on your list, the person who also loves history, you can’t go wrong with RIVIERA DREAMING by Maureen Emerson.

It’s the true story of an architect and an ex-officer in the British Army, how they teamed up to create a mansion that took society by storm, and who vied to hire these two men to decorate their Riviera mansions. Wrap it up with GLOBAL GAY: HOW GAY CULTURE IS CHANGING THE WORLD by Frédéric Martel, for a very well-traveled gift.

More fiction for the gay reader: YOU CAN’T TELL

BY LOOKING by Russell J. Sanders, a romance about love between two high school boys, one of whom is also dealing with his anti-gay Islamic family; and AESOP LAKE

by Sarah Ward, a unique book based on three of Aesop’s Fables to tell a tale of a hate crime and its aftermath. Q

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48 | QSALTLAKE MAGAZINE | FINAL WORD

Qsaltlake.com |

Issue 289 | DECEMBER 6, 2018

the perils of petunia pap smear

The tale of the Issue of Size

BY PETUNIA PAP SMEAR

Editor’s note: This is a column from 2016.

The road

to Logan is fraught with danger and excitement and memories.

Last month I was privileged to attend the Logan Gay Pride Festival. Wow, was I impressed. It was much larger than I ever anticipated (I almost got the vapors), and I thought it was very well organized, with something to appeal to almost everybody.

I know I should have been a jealous bitch because there were some pretty fierce drag queens present, but I was just overcome with joy at their success.

When I first learned about the event, I saw that it was being billed as “the first ever” Logan Gay Pride Day. I felt the need to gently remind the organizers that the Gay and Lesbian Alliance of Cache Valley organized Gay Pride Days in 1995 and ’96, held on the Taggart Student Center patio on the Utah State University campus. My excuse for forgetting things is that I’m a senile old queen. Of course, in a university town like Logan, institutional memory only lasts four years. Therefore, in the intervening 20 years, there have been five new generations of community leaders over which the memories of past accomplishments by the queens of yesteryear have been lost to that great trash bin of makeup remover.

In conjunction with the Gay Pride Day in 1995, Tim Keller also organized a fantastic Gay and Lesbian Film Festival at the Taggart Student Center Auditorium that

7pm, Oct. 19, Nov. 16, Jan. 21 First Baptist Church, 777 S 1300 E fb.me/matronsofmayhem

lasted an entire week, which we named Pride Fest that included about 15 movies that otherwise would never have come anywhere close to Logan. A most memorable movie was called Issues 101, the tale of a shy boy moving to a big city for the first time, joining a fraternity and eventually coming out of the closet.

In preparation for the festival, Tim and I previewed each movie to ensure we would not be showing something too racy for the Logan audience to handle. We both recalled that Issues 101 was a cute, feelgood story that would be a nice fit for the university community.

The show time for Issues 101 arrived. The audience was made up of a varied sprinkling of the LGBTQ community of Cache Valley, and then there was this mother and father, unknown to all of us, escorting their teenage son. After the family had entered the auditorium, Tim and I looked at each other trying to remember if there was any nudity in this movie. It had been about a year since we had previewed it and we couldn’t remember. The family chose seats that were halfway down and on the left of the audience. Tim and I sat in the back row.

Our eyes locked on the family.

The movie began, innocent enough, but about 15 minutes in there was a fraternity initiation scene where they blindfolded the lead actor, wearing only a jockstrap, and had him give a blow job to the frat president. I guess that when we previewed the movie on a 27-inch television, the scene wasn’t all that memorable. But on the large screen, his balls were two feet across, his dick was nine feet long, and the ass sticking out of that jockstrap was as large as Mount Everest, filling up the entire screen. An innocent family was viewing all our deepest darkest secrets in public. Oh god!

Tim whispered to me, “Should I run upstairs and have the projectionist turn it off?” I replied that the damage has already been done. The entire audience was stone silent. All that could be heard was the greatly amplified slurping sound of the blow job echoing around the room as the scene went on, and on, and on. I gripped

the armrests so tightly that my Lee Presson Nails popped off with such energy that they became flying missiles throughout the theater. Where was the premature ejaculator when you really needed him?

Each and every separate thrust of the blow job was equivalent to a full-scale eruption of Mount Vesuvius destroying Pompeii, or Krakatoa destroying Java, or that one time when I fell on top of a poor unfortunate twink while trying to ice skate in Logan’s Central Park. Still, no one moved. The family just sat there, stone still.

Finally, that scene ended and the rest of the movie was much less eventful. I began to relax a little bit, thinking we may have just dodged a bullet.

As the movie let out, Tim and I went to the lobby to greet the audience. And there, standing in all his sexy uniformed glory was a Utah State University police officer, “keeping the peace.” As the family emerged from the auditorium, I was greatly relieved that they didn’t run right up to the police officer and make a complaint. They came up to Tim and I and the mother said, “Well, if you were going to show porn, the least you could do was show good porn.” To which we all giggled ... and I shit my pants!

This story leaves us with several important questions: 1. Do you think that my Dame Edna fashion eyeglasses clouded my judgment of the preview?

2. Does time actually warp between the small screen and the big screen?

3. If I had not called the paramedics, do you think the ice skating twink could have survived the intimate encounter with my Rotundas Bodundus?

4. Should I re-name my right breasticle Krakatoa, and the left one Vesuvius?

5. Should I make volcano tits my new image?

6. Whatever should I use for the lava?

7. Similar to the secrecy of magic statute in the Harry Potter books, should we initiate a secrecy of porn statute, keeping gay porn away from the Muggles?

These and other eternal questions shall be answered in future chapters of the Perils of Petunia Pap Smear. Q

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