QSaltLake Magazine - Issue 312 - June, 2020

UTAH PRIDE • OGDEN PRIDE • PROVO PRIDE • LOGAN PRIDE • SO UTAH PRIDE • MOAB PRIDE

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QSaltLake replaces the trees we use.

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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.

So, for every tree we use, TWO trees are planted.

Fires, insects and disease outbreaks are jeopardizing the majestic trees that grow in our forests from Maine to California. That’s why we have joined the National Forest Foundation’s ambitious effort to plant 50 million trees across our National Forests by 2023.

The National Forest Foundation is investing in healthy forests for today and for future generations. With QSaltLake’s help, they will restore tens of thousands of acres of wildlife habitat, from the longleaf pine forests of Florida to the cedar groves of Alaska.

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

BY CRAIG OGAN

Conversion therapy, “Nein!”

Germany has banned gay conversion therapy for anyone under 18 years old and for adults who have been forced, threatened, or deceived to undergo treatment. A growing number of countries are starting to enact legislation regarding the controversial practice. The Germans put teeth in the law with fines of €30,000 (US$32,500) or up to one-year jail for lawbreakers.

Germany is the fifth country to ban conversion therapy. In the United States, 19 states, including Utah, have banned the practice but there is no nationwide ban.

HRC a big fat yes to Biden It was no surprise that HRC would endorse the Democrat presidential nominee, so to make it interesting, the LGBT fundraising organization chose May 6 as the day to endorse it. Why then? It’s the anniversary of the day in 2012 when then Vice President Joe Biden declared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he supported the legalization of same-sex marriage. He, “got over his skis a little bit,” according to his boss, President Barack Obama, who endorsed marriage equality later in 2012 after a career of voting against it in the Illinois Legislature and non-support in his first election bid in 2008.

Qsaltlake.com | ISSUE 312 | JUNE, 2020

Seigfried Loses Roy

Strange bedfellows

Cold case heats up

One of the first committed same-sex relationships many people saw and appreciated was the couple who did magic tricks with lions and tigers in Las Vegas. That was, of course, Seigfried and Roy. Sadly, Roy Horn, half of the illusionist duo Siegfried & Roy, died in Las Vegas from COVID-19 complications. He leaves behind his partner in life and work, Siegfried Fischbacher.

The two German entertainers were brought to prominence

by Princess Grace (you know, Grace Kelly) of Monaco in 1966. They performed to packed houses in Las Vegas for 35 years until Roy was attacked during a performance by one of the performing tigers. He never fully recovered from the attack.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has not been a particular friend of the gay and lesbian community.

He urged states to ignore the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling on marriage equality and supported the Kentucky County Clerk who refused to issue licenses to same-sex couples. So, it is surprising that Cruz has taken up the cause of anti-gay censorship — and not on the side of the censors. He criticized the U.S. entertainment industry for allowing China to censor its films for LGBTQ content. He cited Bohemian Rhapsody, the Oscar-winning biopic of Freddie Mercury, which was edited to obscure Mercury’s bisexuality to suit Chinese government censors.

In a blatant act of bi-erasure, Cruz said, “Hollywood was more than happy to edit the scene out because the Chinese government didn’t want to acknowledge that Freddie Mercury was homosexual.

Look, that’s a huge part of the story!” Cruz said.

More than 30 years after American mathematician Scott Johnson died after falling off a cliff in Sydney, a man has been charged with his death after police changed the case from suicide to a hate crime.

The status change came in a revaluation of nearly 88 murders of gay men during the time this murder took place. At the time, police were more interested in closing the cases of murders of gay men and ruled them suicides, after cursory investigations. The suspect met Johnson at a hotel and they went together to the site of the murder, a “gay meeting place” near the beach. The suspect says he panicked when the victim removed his clothes and the suspect “punched him,” causing Johnson to fall off the cliff. New South Wales state police said Tuesday that a 49-year-old man who was 18 years old at the time was charged with the 1988 murder.

The Seoul Closet relaunches COVID-19 If we needed more proof that the closet kills and stigma is a dangerous thing, a recent coronavirus outbreak in Seoul, South Korea provides it. A local man with no symptoms of COVID-19 went out to several gay bars and unknowingly spread the virus.

He visited two convenience stores and five bars and nightclubs in Itaewon, a “party” district in Seoul. He may have exposed as many as 1,500 people. During the first outbreak health officials widely disclosed details on diagnosed patients via cell phone alerts, including patients’ gender, age, location, and workplace.

This was the first infection in South Korea in several days after the lockdown had been suspended. While homosexuality is not illegal, it is still stigmatized. Since the contacts feared societal and legal repercussions many contacts’ names and telephone numbers turned out to be false.

Gay weathermen What is it about the weather in Minnesota that requires a gay man to explain it on TV? KARE 11 in the Twin Cities market (St Paul and Minneapolis) had two gay men talking about the weather. Until recently. The network abruptly fired gay meteorologist Sven Sundgaard, who had been with the network for 14 years, for reposting a Minneapolis Rabbi’s social media post that compared those protesting coronavirus-spurred public health restrictions around the U.S to “white nationalist Nazi sympathizer, gun fetishist miscreants.” The station didn’t like that. Then the station’s other weatherman who is also gay, Jason Disharoon, announced he was leaving for a new job.

Tent hospital closed; mouth opened up Samaritan’s Purse organization has dismantled its field hospital for COVID-19 patients in New York City. Instead of graciously folding its tent and leaving the city after doing a good deed, Franklin Graham, the chair of Billy Graham Ministry and sponsor of Samaritan’s Purse, defended his anti-marriage equality views in the New York Times. He claimed that most New Yorkers share his disdain for marriage equality. Some may, but polls show 69 percent of New Yorkers support marriage equality. SP’s partner, Mount Sinai Health System, closed the facility due to decreased demand, stating no one was denied treatment at the facility or volunteers were turned away because of Franklin’s religious views. Q

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ISSUE 312 | JUNE, 2020

Utah Pride Center lays off much of its staff as donations slow because of Covid-19 and postponed Pride Festival safe space for the LGBTQ+ communities since 1992,” the statement continued.

“Before Covid-19 forced the temporary closure of the physical space, there were over 1,800 people visiting the Center per month for a variety of support groups, identity-based programming, community meetings, and mental health therapy. Just as the pandemic struck, the staff adapted the majority of programming into virtual online spaces quickly and effectively.

There are currently over 40 youth, adult, and senior meetings, events, and resource groups online and run by the staff of the Center.”

The Center let 10 people go May 8, and has 15 people remaining on staff.

“These are people with passion and commitment,” Moolman said. “It was a very difficult process.”

Moolman said that they had to determine who could help the Center keep going through this difficult time, and could help “get them through on the other side.” He also said the largest focus was on programming.

“We have to stay focused on the community,” Moolman said. “Our distinct focus while making these decisions was to keep our mental health programs and as much of our youth, family, and senior programs as we possibly could.”

The Center is, however, moving forward on expanding the LGBTQ+ suicide prevention and resource programming.

“Our focus at this time has to be our communities and providing support, services, and resources with a long-term, sustainable vision,” said board chair Mona Stevens. “I am confident that Know who WANTS your business with the thoughtand will treat you with the ful, proactive, and DIGNITY and RESPECT creative planning, our Center will you deserve

As the Utah Pride Center’s largest fundraiser is postponed and possibly won’t happen this year at all, leaders have done what they call a “restructuring,” resulting in many layoffs of staff and a reduction of services.

The Utah Pride Festival has been postponed until September.

Executive director Rob Moolman and the Center’s board of directors made this decision “out of an abundance of caution for the finances and long-term future of the Center,” Moolman said.

“This downsizing is happening as a result of Covid-19’s impact on our funding streams,” explained Moolman. “We are seeing slow and lower donor engagement, depressed economic outlook, large donors funds tied to the stock market, and the slow rollout of the PPP/SBA grants to non-profits.”

“This has become our reality,” he said.

“This decision was made in order to better address the core needs of our communities at this time and to ensure that the Center is able to provide services, resources and programming that will meet their needs now and into the future,” the Center wrote in a statement. “The message from the Utah Pride Center is, and always will be, that we care about our LGBTQ+ family and allies and that there is a space that is here for everyone.”

“The Pride Center has been a brave and

continue to be in a good financial position to manage through this crisis.”

Leaders say it is important to emphasize that they remain optimistic about hosting the annual Utah Pride Festival, scheduled for September 26 and 27.

“The event is vital to the Center’s future and the long-term ability to bounce back out of this crisis,” the statement said. “The Utah Pride Center is calling on sponsors, vendors, donors and community partners to continue their support this event, and more importantly, the Center and its work.”

“The Utah Pride Center is a community space, run by community and for community,” Moolman said. “We have never needed our communities more than right now. Please consider volunteering or donating to the Center if you are able.”

Several city and county leaders put together videos in support of the Center.

“We didn’t even know these videos were being made,” Moolman said. “I have never in all my days seen community leaders come out to support a center like this. It was truly touching.”

To help maintain the existence and vitality of the Utah Pride Center, you can become a sustaining member with monthly or yearly donations or a onetime donation at utahpridecenter.org. Q

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Utah Pride Center is expanding suicide prevention resources as risk increases As new research is published showing Utah in the top three states with the highest incidence of mental health conditions and number one in incidence of suicidal thoughts, the Utah Pride Center has announced an expansion of its suicide prevention services.

May is Mental Health Awareness Month and the Utah Pride Center announced a new program, Suicide Prevention and Services, which will greatly expand its reach to rural parts of the state and make mental health professionals more accessible.

This program is designed to expand access to education, tools, and resources to outlying parts of the state with an initial focus on St. George and

Logan.

“Our goal is to decrease suicide ideation and suicide attempts and increase grief support to survivors and access to LGBT-affirming services in more remote areas of Utah,” said Rob Moolman, executive director of the Utah Pride Center. “This couldn’t come at a more crucial time as LGBT youth especially are among the most at risk of suicide in our state.”

The Center is also creating an Emergency Therapist Roster to focus on postvention services or support following a suicide loss. To access the therapist roster people can call 1-833-LOSS-UPC. Logan and St. George will also be able to expand existing

Young nonbinary person missing for weeks Friends and family of a young, non-binary Rose Park person are concerned for their safety and asking for the public’s help. Eztli Atl Cortez Trujillo, 22, has been missing since April 23. Their roommates filed a missing person report with the Salt Lake City Police after Trujillo’s vehicle was found crashed and abandoned.

According to a poster being spread through social media, Trujillo goes by “Ez,” is gender fluid and uses the pronouns they and she. They are about 5’11” tall and 150 to 170 pounds with a medium build, brown eyes and hair that was recently buzz cut. They are Latinx/Mexican and tan/ brown completed. They were wearing a white Henley shirt and black pajama pants when they were last seen.

Police say an attempt to

ping Trujillo’s phone was unsuccessful.

Trujillo’s roommate, Jem Locquiao, said that while it is not unusual for Ez to take drives to clear their mind a reflect, it is very unusual for them not to return.

“They left early in the morning, likely to clear their head and reflect,” Locquiao said. “I wasn’t aware that they had left.”

Trujillo’s car was found by an officer of the Weber County Sheriff’s Office after receiving a call about a wrecked vehicle on Ogden Canyon Road, a mile west of the North Ogden Divide trailhead.

If you have any information about Trujillo, you are asked to contact Salt Lake City Police at 801-799-3000 and reference case number SL2071931. Q A Facebook page has been set up to coordinate search efforts at fb.me/findeztli/

programs of crisis intervention through Question Persuade Refer (QRP) training, peer support groups, family and caregiver support groups, SAGE for elders, support groups for survivors of suicide attempts, and survivors of suicide loss.

“Through this very critical work, we look to change the narrative and conversations around suicide to increase prevention and early intervention,” the Center said in a statement. “We are creating a team of community partners all across the state of Utah be-

H

cause we understand that we are stronger together. Here’s to increasing love, support, and community.”

A group called Psy.D. Programs analyzed 2020 data from Mental Health America, a non-profit association that measures mental health indicators via surveys and online screening tools. They found that the top three states with the highest incidence of mental health conditions are Idaho, Oregon, and Utah, all with close to 25 percent of adults showing these conditions. Q

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ISSUE 312 | JUNE, 2020

UofU awards Dr. Kristen Ries honorary degree The University of Utah Board of Trustees awarded the university’s highest honor to Dr. Kristen Ries who, along with Maggie Snyder, became the first to address Utah’s HIV/AIDS pandemic. She received the degree at the 2020 campuswide convocation on Thursday.

“Our honorary degree recipient exemplified courage, compassion, and service during her professional career,” said Joe Sargetakis, chair of the Board of Trustees’ honors committee. “Through her affiliation with the University of Utah, Dr. Ries helped the university succeed in its duty to serve the state.”

Honorary degrees are awarded to individuals who have achieved distinction in academic pursuits, the arts, professions, business, government, civic affairs, or in service to the university. The Honorary Degree Committee, which includes representatives from the faculty, student body, and Board of Trustees, reviews nominations and then consults with an advisory group of faculty, staff, and administrators for additional input. Finalists are presented to the university president, who selects recipients.

Ries is a professor emeritum of internal medicine and retired infectious diseases physician who was at the forefront of treating patients in Utah at the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

“Ries fearlessly provided loving, compassionate care at a time when the disease was highly stigmatized,” the board said in a statement.

Ries received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Pennsylvania State University and a Doctor of Medicine with honors from Drexel University, where she also completed her residency, fellowship, and spent two years as a faculty member in infectious diseases. She left Drexel University to join the Indian Health Services at Rosebud, South Dakota, where she cared for Lakota Sioux. She then went to Vermillion, South Dakota, to serve in the National Health Service Corps.

Ries moved to Utah in 1981 with

the goal of treating more patients with infectious diseases — arriving the same day the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report about a new infectious disease affecting gay men. Ries initially worked for FHP as the head of adult medicine, and then as a physician at Holy Cross Hospital, where she created Utah’s first comprehensive HIV/AIDS program.

For many years, Ries and Maggie Snyder, her physician assistant, were the only medical professionals willing to treat AIDS patients in Utah.

They found creative ways to serve patients and provide them with the expensive drugs then used to treat HIV/AIDS. Working with the nuns at Holy Cross, Ries and Snyder set up an end-of-life care network because nursing homes refused to take dying patients. In the early 1980s, patients diagnosed with AIDS had a life expectancy of about six months.

The refusal of health care professionals to work with AIDS patients was a national problem at the time, an issue that led the U.S. Surgeon General to publicly chastise doctors who wouldn’t take patients with the disease.

In a lecture at the University of Utah in 2017, Ries paraphrased a comment by Mother Teresa that the greatest pain in life is caused by isolation, abandonment, and feeling unloved.

“I think that so describes how the patients felt with this disease back then and how they were treated by our own people,” Ries said.

When Holy Cross Hospital was sold in

1994 and became Salt Lake Regional Medical Center, Ries joined the University of Utah’s Division of Infectious Diseases and brought 500 patients with her; the HIV clinic she set up within Clinic 1A, the Infectious Diseases Clinic, is still operating. In 2000, Ries and Snyder led efforts to establish a treatment clinic in St. George, which also continues to serve patients today.

Ries was president of the medical staff for the University of Utah Hospital & Clinics and served as the clinical director of infectious diseases/HIV at U of U Health.

In 1988, Ries was named as one of Newsweek magazine’s “Unsung Heroes”; she has been recognized by the University of Utah School of Medicine, the Utah Department of Health & Human Services, People with AIDS Coalition of Utah, Salt Lake County Health Department and the Utah Medical Association. In honor of her work, the Marriott Library has established an archive that collects oral histories and archives documents and other memorabilia related to the history of treatment and prevention of HIV/AIDS in Utah.

Ries and Snyder were the subjects of the documentary Quiet Heroes, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2018.

Ries and Snyder married in October 2013 in San Francisco during a lunch break at a medical conference.

The commencement can be seen at bit.ly/KristenRies with Dr. Ries’ award being shown at the time marker 34:16. Q

JUNE, 2020 |

ISSUE 312 | Qsaltlake.com

NEWS | QSALTLAKE MAGAZINE | 13

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14 | QSALTLAKE MAGAZINE | PRIDE MONTH

Qsaltlake.com | ISSUE 312 | JUNE, 2020

What to expect at local and global Prides in these days of COVID-19

Obviously,

Prides across Utah and the globe will look and feel different than previous years. Here is what we know today on what to expect.

Utah Pride The largest of our annual events, the Utah Pride Festival has been moved to September. Organizers are in touch with the county and state health departments as they make plans for what the Festival will entail.

The Festival will be participating in the Global Pride virtual event that will happen on June 27 with Prides from around the world.

One event, however, will take place the originally planned weekend of June 5: THE PRIDE SPECTACULAR. The annual swank dinner, which was the brainchild of then-board president Michael Aguilar, will be hosted online.

Once called the Grand Marshal Reception, the event went from an appy and cocktail soire to a full-on sit-down dinner with emcees, video presentations, dance acts, and much more.

This year, the event will be streamed live on Facebook and YouTube.

“We are also still working on ways to interact with attendees,” said Michael Bryant, event chair and Utah Pride Center Community Development Manager.

“We are also looking at ways people can support the event and the Center by buying party packages. You’ll get something physical as if you were attending live.”

Savannah Von Cartier, Empress XLIV of the Royal Court of the Golden Spike Empire and drag pageant winner, will be the emcee for the evening.

Also promised are a number of people who will be in drag for their first time at the event. Think Ru Paul’s Drag Race Secret Celebrity Edition.

Several performers are planned including singer/songwriter Talia Keys.

The annual Kristen Ries Community Service Award and two Lifetime Achieve-

ment Awards will be presented as well.

(See page 14 for information.)

While the event has changed and faceto-face interaction isn’t possible this year, Bryant is upbeat about the event.

“Part of the reason we are excited is that in the past, few people could actually attend the Pride Spectacular. This way we can greatly expand the audience and far more people will be able to participate and celebrate,” Bryant said. “We are the Utah Pride Center. We serve the community from Logan to St. George. It is nice to provide an event for anyone who wants to attend from across the state.”

Information and tickets for the Pride Spectacular can be found at bit.ly/PrideSpec5

Ogden Pride Ogden Pride, scheduled for August 6, will also be a virtual event. Organizers are now reaching out to local people and organizations to present relevant, important topics.

“We hope to have a keynote speaker, small breakout sessions that attendees can sign up for, entertainment, wellness sessions like yoga and meditation, and such,” said board member Sean ChildersGray. “We want to be able to support the messages our community partners would normally try to get out there during an in-person festival. That means a great deal to us. We will also be hosting on our website a vendors area to help them get their offerings to our community.”

Vendor and sponsor packages will be online soon on their website.

“We feel it is important to continue our Pride tradition in the best and safest

way,” Childers-Gray said.

Ogden is close to opening its own Pride Center. After many months of fundraising, plus a grant from the LoveLoud Music Festival, they have a good nest egg in the bank.

“We were actively looking for a space in January. With the pause of physical life, we are blessed to have not gotten into a contract just yet,” said ChildersGray. “The Ogden Pride Center is our priority once we feel it is reasonable, responsible, and capable.”

More information at OgdenPride.org

Pride of Southern Utah The Pride organization of the St. George area announced that their event has been postponed to Nov. 7. Organizers are hopeful for a full outdoor Pride Festival.

“We are planning to follow state and CDC guidelines. If they are still asking the public to wear masks, we will as well.

If we are still six-foot distancing, we will be arranging our festival to support that,” organizers wrote to QSaltLake. “As of right now at this moment everything is being played by ear with hopes for the absolute best. We are currently booked for the same park as last year and if anything changes we will update everyone via Facebook and Instagram.”

More info at prideofosouthernutah.org

Moab Pride Moab’s Pride organizers are still hopeful that the event, scheduled for Sept. 25 and 26, can go on as normal. As the event gets closer, more details will be fleshed out.

More information at moabpride.org

JUNE, 2020 | ISSUE 312 | Qsaltlake.com

Provo Pride Provo Pride did not respond to our attempts to reach them, nor has their information been updated on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or their website.

Logan Pride Logan Pride has been very active with their virtual presence , offering yoga classes, virtual paint nights, and a virtual comedy event.

No information is yet available about what their plans are for their festival.

More information at loganpride.org

Global Pride The worldwide event that will take place June 27, Global Pride, will use online platforms to deliver a Pride in which everyone can participate, wherever they are in the world. It will include musical performances, speeches, and

key messages from human rights activists. The event will be live-streamed, and people will be invited to join in the event from home.

The organization is still taking applications for performers, so a line-up is not yet available.

“We need community and connection more than ever,” said J. Andrew Baker, co-president of Interpride, which is hosting the event. “This gives us an opportunity to both connect and celebrate the LGBTQIA+ community’s resilience in the face of this pandemic and the true spirit of Pride.”

“Pride 2020 represents a milestone for Pride events, with many honoring the 50th anniversary of their first gatherings and marches, such as New York to the first Gandhinagar Pride this year.” Q More information at interpride.org

PRIDE MONTH | QSALTLAKE MAGAZINE | 15

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Utah Pride Center announces Awards Three members of Utah’s LGBTQ and ally community will receive awards at the annual Pride Spectacular, which will take place as a virtual experience on June 7, the day the Utah Pride Festival was scheduled to begin.

KRISTEN RIES COMMUNITY SVC AWARD

Karrie Galloway

Past Kristen Ries Community Service Award winners chose Karrie Galloway as this year’s recipient.

Galloway is the CEO and president of Planned Parenthood of Utah, which provides over 32,000 STD tests and serves over 11,500 teens and families with medically accurate responsible sex education to ensure our community stays safe.

“In 1981, I joined Planned Parenthood as a full-time staff member and never left,” Galloway said. “I worked first as a community educator and then as president and CEO — a role I have filled for more than 30 years. But even before I made Planned Parenthood my life’s work, I was a patient.”

“That was in the 1970s, when I was a University of Wisconsin student. I received services thanks to a new federal program [Title X] created under the direction of President Richard Nixon and George H.W. Bush, that provided low-cost reproductive health care to people without insurance or who couldn’t otherwise afford health care services on their own,” Galloway continued. “It meant I could get the affordable birth control I needed so I could finish my education.”

The basic preventive health-care services provided by Title X include wellness exams, life-saving cervical and breast cancer screenings, birth control, contraception education, testing and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases, and HIV testing. PPAU was the sole grant recipient of Title X funds for 35 years before the Trump administration gutted the program and created a gag rule that prevents doctors receiving such funds from talking about abortion.

PPAU also has a variety of educational programs including educator training called Safe at School, which last year trained over 1,100 current and future

educators about how to make classrooms safe for LGBTQ+ students. PPAU spends around double the amount of other Planned Parenthood affiliates on education since the state does not provide such services in the schools.

Of the nearly 47,000 patients PPAU sees annually, 20 percent are males seeking services because of the lack of state-provided STD testing and treatment services and the lack of other safe spaces for the LGBTQ+ community to receive care.

“I am heartbroken that this administration is ruining the most successful public health program of the last century,” Galloway said. “In the meantime, Planned Parenthood will still be here. We will do all we can to keep providing affordable health care for the people who need us. We have saved our pennies from the many generous donors who have stepped up since Trump was elected — we will do all we can to not make patients suffer.”

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

John Bennett

John Bennett, who passed away in January of this year, held leadership roles in the ’80s and ’90s at the University of Utah Lesbian and Gay Student Union, AIDS Project Utah, Utah Pride Festival, and the Gay and Lesbian Community Council of Utah.

He was an accomplished classical pianist and was accompanist at the Salt Lake Men’s Choir for three years and, in 1993, helped found the Lesbian and Gay Chorus of Salt Lake City.

He was also former Sen. Bob Bennett’s nephew.

Bennett served as executive director of the Utah Stonewall Center, now the Utah Pride Center, from 1994 to 1995.

He was part of many other groups, including the Utah AIDS Memorial Quilt Project, and marched with the Utah contingent at the Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights in 1987.

Bennett managed a senior center of Salt Lake County Aging and Adult Services from 2004 to 2013 before taking on the full-time role of caregiver for his aging par-

ISSUE 312 | JUNE, 2020

ents until his mother’s death in 2018.

He started Bennett’s Art Glass in 2015.

The name paid homage to the Art Glass Department of a former family business, Bennett’s Paint and Glass. He did custom pieces for many homes and businesses.

He became president of LifeRing Secular Recovery, a secular alternative to 12-Step recovery for drug and alcohol dependency, in 2017.

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

Kim Pederson

Kim Pederson began her service to others joining the U.S. Army at the age of 18. She was jailed two years later for being a lesbian.

After refusing to betray others by telling military police of other lesbians, she was tracked, harassed, put in solitary confinement on numerous occasions, and then discharged and declared an “Undesirable.” She went on to promote LGBTQ veterans’ rights.

In college, she fought for the Equal Rights Amendment and against the Vietnam war.

She also worked as an advocate for those on a limited income, battered women and children, and unemployed miners.

Pederson was the first director of the Utah chapter of the National Alliance of Mental Illness. She also worked with the University of Utah Women’s Resource Center and the Battered Women’s Project at the Utah YWCA. She worked as a licensed social worker for four decades, focusing in part on alcoholism and addiction in the LGBT community. She is also personally celebrating 48 years of sobriety. As a longtime member of the LGBTQ Affirmative Psychotherapy Guild of Utah, she worked alongside others to address the treatment disparities based on racial and sexual biases. She also worked to ban reparative therapy in the state.

She is currently a member of the Utah Pride Center’s Sage leadership team, where runs the Supper Club committee. She is also an active resident of the Friendship Manor, encouraging proper treatment of LGBTQ residents and helping management deal with residents in crisis. Q Awards will be presented at the Fifth Annual Pride Spectacular, June 5, from 5.30 to 7 p.m.

More information at utahpridecenter.org

JUNE, 2020 | ISSUE 312 | Qsaltlake.com

PRIDE MONTH | QSALTLAKE MAGAZINE | 17

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from the editor

The future of Pride is up to us

BY MICHAEL AARON

For a while

there, it seemed Utah’s LGBTQ community was doing pretty well. Even in the age of an antagonistic presidency and Congress, we were moving forward. We have a beautiful building to house

our community’s services. We were able to get our state to deem supposed conversion therapy as unlawful. Our arts organizations are producing compelling, meaningful plays. Our social organizations are thriving. And while we once had nearly a dozen

bars, we still have three that open their doors to us.

And then some virus starts to take over the world, shutting it all down. Our Utopia was brought to a standstill.

Now our Center, our arts organizations, and our political advocacy groups are struggling to survive. Our social organizations have had to cancel all events. Our bars had to shutter for weeks, opening only under severe restrictions to those not in fear of stepping back out into public.

As we know in our personal lives, bills pile up even when we are forced to stay home.

Building leases still have to be paid. Employees need to make a living. Utilities, even though largely unused, still send bills.

Through all of this, our Pride Center’s staff worked diligently to find ways to maintain their services online.

Some bars were able to pay staff, at least for a short time, to help spruce up their buildings.

And then the headline on QSaltLake.com: “Utah Pride Center lays off much of its staff as donations slow because of Covid-19 and postponed Pride Festival.”

In talking with other nonprofits, the situation is the same. All are wondering how they will weather this pandemic. Donations have trickled because people fear their own financial future needs and situations.

But it is up to us to determine what the future of our community will be.

Will we attend and support the Pride Spectacular fundraiser, even though it is online? Will we participate in its silent auction and pay for tickets at some level?

This was a fundraiser that

helped pay salaries and bills in the past. Will our Center be able to rely on us to maintain our level of support?

Will we attend Pride this Fall, or if a change like forcing it to be virtual as well, will we pay what we would have had it been any other year?

We need to maintain our membership dues to our social organizations even though they struggle to find ways to engage us.

We need to participate in fundraising for our bars and their employees.

We need to donate to ensure our political advocates can represent us on Utah’s Capitol Hill.

The future of our community depends on us digging deep in these uncertain times.

This is not our community’s first pandemic. How we responded to HIV/AIDS with love, compassion, properly directed anger, and our pocketbooks made it possible for many of us to survive and our community to thrive.

Those of us who have the means, we implore you to spend what you would have at Pride, even though it may be next year before we can see each other on floats again.

Add up what tickets you would have bought and beers or wine you would have paid for. Donate that amount.

Encourage your employers and companies you do business with to continue or begin to support our community through Pride donations.

We can skip a few lattes.

We can invest in our community’s future.

How our community will thrive through this rests on our willingness to be about and for our community more than about ourselves. Q

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ask mr. manners

The new Pride

BY ROCK MAGEN

Last June,

rainbows and cheering filled the streets of downtown Salt Lake City. They were there to celebrate the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, the rebellion against anti-queer policing that Pride is meant to commemorate. Those in attendance will recall the feelings of elation as we celebrated our history and progress of LGBT rights. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Utah Pride Center announced that the annual Utah Pride Festival, normally held the first week of June, has been postponed to September.

While we are hopeful that the in-person festival will still take place, the looming question which haunts our community is, “What will Pride mean this year?”

While Utah has been lucky enough to postpone our parade, there is a larger pattern of other cities around the world having to forego in-person events this year. According to the European Pride Organizers Association, there are currently 280 Prides globally which have been postponed or canceled in light of the pandemic. While public health and safety are a top priority, we have fought what feels

like an uphill battle for our rights. Even in countries considered “progressive” or safe, LGBTQ rights has a way to go.

As we look forward, it is time to focus on the ideals of Pride beyond the parade.

While live programming and events are postponed, our focus needs to shift to the initiatives which give back to our community. Each year the pride festivities generate funding to develop much-needed programming for some of the most marginalized factions of our community.

The largest concern this year is that these groups may not raise the capital needed to sustain operations, and now we are scrambling to reimagine some of the largest in-person gatherings in the world.

While in-person pride events have played an important role in raising awareness for LGBTQ rights, like samesex marriage, the spirit of gay pride can’t just be confined to big parades.

Our biggest challenge at this time is the potential drop in visibility that canceling these in-person events could have on the LGBTQ movement overall. So what is the solution? We look to the internet. This year large Pride events, including World

Millcr

Pride, are seeking solutions that allow for “virtual” gatherings. We are seeing this shift locally as well. The Utah Pride Center has adapted much of the programming it offers to be implemented in virtual spaces. While a new format brings some change, the focus of the services remains the same.

So, what do we do for Pride this year?

This year we have the unique opportunity to change our views on Pride. While we may have been looking forward to the parties, this year we are in a unique situation where we get to give back.

While we need to have some sort of celebration, it needs to be a celebration about getting to work and protecting people’s lives and the advances we have made as a community. Take this time to learn more about the resources which have shifted to online delivery and continue to financially support the organizations that fight for us.

While we may not have a party this year, our actions during this time will be the deciding factors on if we have something to celebrate in the future. Q

dens

CELEBRATING 65 YEARS AS YOUR FAVORITE GARDEN CENTER

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views

Qsaltlake.com | ISSUE 312 | JUNE, 2020

quotes “There will not be a magic day when we wake up and it’s now okay to express ourselves publicly. We make that day by doing things publicly until it’s simply the way things are.”

—Tammy Baldwin’s “Never Doubt” speech at the Millennium March for Equality, 2000

“We will not go away with our issues of sexuality. We are coming home. It is not enough to tell us that one was a brilliant poet, scientist, educator, or rebel. Whom did he love? It makes a difference.

I can’t become a whole man simply on what is fed to me: watered-down versions of Black life in America. I need the ass-splitting truth to be told, so I will have something pure to emulate, a reason to remain loyal.”

— Essex Hemphill from Ceremonies: Prose and Poetry, 1992

“Like racism and all forms of prejudice, bigotry against transgender people is a deadly carcinogen. We are pitted against each other in order to keep us from seeing each other as allies.

Genuine bonds of solidarity can be forged between people who respect each other’s differences and are willing to fight their enemy together.

We are the class that does the work of the world, and can revolutionize it. We can win true liberation.”

—Leslie Feinberg in Transgender Liberation: A Movement Whose Time Has Come, 1992

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who’s your daddy

Welcome Pride

BY CHRISTOPHER KATIS

For me,

it isn’t Christmas until I’ve seen the Grinch. I don’t mean that trippy Jim Carrey version where he has to work through childhood trauma before the presents are returned. No, I mean the original where a Boris Karloff-voiced Grinch learns that Christmas came without ribbons, it came without tags, it came without packages, boxes or bags.

I think the lessons Grinch learned will serve us well as we all face the reality that Pride is — at best — postponed. But it’ll come. It will come without twinks, it will come without dykes, it will come without bear cubs, daddies or drinks. Pride, my friends, lives in our hearts.

Pride will always be so long as we have we.

A few weeks ago, I watched as the usually professional and demure Anderson Cooper failed to hold in his emotions as he announced to the world that he had become a dad. He said that growing up, he believed being a gay man meant he would never be a father.

He expressed his gratitude for changing attitudes and to those who led the way.

As his baby blues looked directly at me, I felt proud that Kelly, the boys and I played an indirect role in making that happen for Cooper. Our family — every happy, average family with an LGBTQ+ parent or parents — helped make that proud moment.

And we should be proud that our community’s decades-long demands for equal-

ity and acceptance have led to celebrities, like Cooper, being out and proud. Those efforts have resulted in a lesbian and a bisexual woman serving in the U.S. Senate and seven gay or lesbian members of the U.S. House. Colorado’s governor is gay, and Oregon’s is a bisexual woman, and then there was this mayor from South Bend, Indiana who won the Iowa Democratic Caucuses.

But pride isn’t just found in the historic. Every irritating argument about homework, every exasperating reminder to pick the damn towel up off the bathroom floor, every sleepless night worrying about the boys’ futures makes me proud. Every time another gay dad or lesbian mom posts some achievement of their kid on social media, I feel proud — pride in our community. It doesn’t matter whether it’s June or January, Pride isn’t seasonal.

So, in this Summer without Pride, I challenge all of us to find the Pride in ourselves, in our community, and in those who have our collective backs.

Be proud of the fourth-grader in Utah County who faced bullying from a substitute teacher because he dared to be grateful for his upcoming adoption by two dads. And be equally proud of the three girls in his class who stood up to the teacher and brought a stop to the abuse.

Be proud — and supportive — of the lesbian next door celebrating another year of sobriety. Be just as proud of the 60-year-old guy finally coming out, as you are of the high

schooler who never had to be in the closet anyway. Be proud of this community’s strength, diversity, and progress. Be proud that you are a part of it, and together we are always better. We share our setbacks, but we also share our victories.

Pride, my friends, isn’t the warmth of June. It isn’t a fun-filled parade. It isn’t the

shirtless hunks or the Mormon moms. Pride comes from within our hearts; Pride is us.

As the great Dr. Seuss may have said: Welcome Pride, bring your cheer. Cheer to all queers far and near. Pride is within our grasp, so long as we have hands to clasp. Pride will always be, just as long as we have we. Q

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ISSUE 312 | JUNE, 2020

creep of the month

Robert Jeffress

In the

BY DANNE WITKOWSKI

past month you’ve no doubt seen headlines like, “Can your marriage survive the coronavirus?” or “15 Tips On How To Stay Married During Quarantine” or “Yep, we’re all fighting with our partners right now.”

The fact is, being with anyone 24/7 can be challenging, even if he/she/they are supposed to be the love of your life.

Marriage is hard. And according to the National Center for Health Statistics, marriage rates dropped dramatically in 2018. So we can’t blame COVID-19. So what could possibly be causing this?

The American Family Association’s One News Now has an idea: the gays.

They trace, without evidence mind you, the declining marriage rates back to the Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell ruling.

You know, the one that made marriage equality legal in all 50 states. And that apparently turned marriage to shit for heterosexuals.

“Whenever you counterfeit something, you cheapen the value of the real thing,” Texas pastor Robert Jeffress told AFA’s One News Now. “And if you expand marriage to, basically, any definition you want — two men, two women, three men and a woman — I mean, if marriage is what you want it to be, why bother to get married at all?”

Interesting logic there. If the gays can have it, then it’s not worth having.

Also worth noting that Obergefell did not legalize marriage between three men and a woman, so I’m not sure where he’s getting that from. Maybe he’s misremembering the 1987 comedy “Three Men and a Baby” in a way that makes me fear for him.

The lead author of the NCHS study, Sally Curtin, told the Wall Street Journal, “Millennials are in peak marriage years, their 20s and 30s, and it’s still dropping.

This is historic.”

Those darn Millennials! Maybe they’d be getting married if they weren’t so busy eating avocado toast.

Surely the reason Millennials aren’t getting married is because they look at gay and lesbian couples getting hitched and are like, “Ugh. What a pointless institution.”

But that makes no sense since younger people are in favor of marriage equality at higher rates than older people.

So if it’s not the gays, then what is it? I have some theories.

MONEY: People in their 20s and 30s are living through their second “once-in-alifetime” economic decline. They’ve been told that going to college is definitely worth it and then graduating without those fabled cash-money-post-college jobs. On top of that, they’re being told that not getting a six-figure salary is because they’re lazy AND they’re drowning in student loan debt they can’t pay off.

Marriages aren’t cheap, and weddings are expensive! I know a couple who aren’t married because he has student loan debt that would wreck her credit if they were.

They even have a kid together. And not once have they blamed me and my lawfully wedded wife for this.

SEXISM AND MISOGYNY: It’s cute that right-wing Christian conservatives want to blame same-sex couples for making marriage look cheap while at the same time treating Donald Trump as a messiah.

The man has been married multiple times, cheated on all of his wives and he and has been accused of rape and sexual assault by one of his ex-wives and over 20 other women. He paid a porn actress money to have sex with him, he openly bragged

about sexual assault into an open mic (“grab them by the pussy”), and he continuously treats the women he interacts with, whether they’re reporters, federal lawmakers, governors, or world leaders disrespectfully. With so many men (read: white men) supporting this creep, I would not be surprised if women in their 20s and 30s were saying, “Aw, hell no.” For Christian conservatives to blame gays on marriage’s failings on the one hand and then on the other hand hold Trump up as a human being beyond reproach? Well, congratulations. You played yourself.

LIES: People are tired of being lied to and shamed: Our culture is constantly in flux, despite the fact that groups like the American Family Association and folks like Jeffress think everything is rigid and defined. You can’t have sex before marriage? Lie. Having sex before marriage sullies you? Lie. The only reason sex exists is to have all the babies? Lie. There are only two genders and two possible expressions of gender? Lie. Women can have it all? A lie in this country still steeped in patriarchy and sexism and lacking institutional support for families.

Ever peeped day care prices? The “stay-athome mom” idea is nice in theory, but we don’t make it easy for women to transition in and out of the workforce, nor do we make it financially feasible to do so.

So, yeah. Blaming the gays for making marriage less desirable? Another lie, dearly beloved. Q D’Anne Witkowski is a poet, writer and comedian living with her wife and son. She has been writing about LGBT politics for over a decade. Follow her on Twitter @ MamaDWitkowski.

JUNE, 2020 |

ISSUE 312 | Qsaltlake.com

guest editorial

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I have never felt so Asian in my life

BY KELSEY LOUIE

I was born

in New York City and have never lived anywhere else. Here, I have always thought I could manage to fit in and be like everybody else. I don’t speak Chinese, and I couldn’t use chopsticks properly until I was in college. For most of my childhood and into adolescence, I eschewed feeling Asian — like most Asian-American kids, I just wanted to belong. And since I was born in the U.S., had a name like “Kelsey,” and didn’t have an accent, to me, I was passable. In the past few weeks, I have questioned just how passable I really am.

I am a 45-year-old gay Asian man. I am the son of Chinese immigrants. I am a social worker. I am the CEO of the first HIV/AIDS service organization — GMHC (formerly known as Gay Men’s Health Crisis). I have a partner who is an attorney. I am a competitive runner. That is all part of who I am. Yet in the past few weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic, I have felt more Asian than I ever have before. I have read the articles about the increase of verbal abuse and physical violence toward Asian people, blaming them for COVID-19. I have watched news stories with footage of Asian people being spit on, screamed at, and physically attacked.

People were afraid to go to Chinese restaurants for fear of “catching” the virus from the employees. A U.S. government leader has repeatedly called COVID-19 the “Chinese virus,” a racist term that creates division.

This isn’t the first time a group of people that I identify with has been blamed for a virus or disease. In the early 1980s, AIDS was considered to be a “gay disease” and HIV was considered to be a “gay virus.” While much has changed over the last three decades, HIV and AIDS continue to stigmatize men who have sex with men.

Coming to terms with my identity as a

gay man happened gradually. Like many, I first came out to my adolescent crush, then to a few friends, then more, then my family, then everyone else. The shame of being gay kept me in the closet, and I dealt with it by denying it, until I was brave enough not to. Because of the HIV/ AIDS crisis, I didn’t have many gay role models, not even in media. In my 20s and 30s, I finally learned to be proud of being gay — I joined LGBT social clubs and an LGBT running club, and began working with the LGBT population as a social worker. I went out to gay bars. I marched and danced every last Sunday in June in my adult life. And in 2014, I took on the role of CEO of GMHC — Gay Men’s Health Crisis with much pride. Today, I start every speech I make with “My name is Kelsey Louie, and I am the proud CEO of GMHC.” When I was younger, I dealt with the shame of being Asian by hoping that my immigrant parents who spoke broken English didn’t try to talk to my friends or by calling myself Asian-American — somehow, that made it more tolerable.

But there was no closet to hide in until I was ready to face my Asian identity. It probably wasn’t until my 30s that I started to be proud of being Asian — I rarely felt oppressed as an Asian, so I had a late start in feeling the need to have Asian pride. I now insist on using chopsticks whenever I have the chance. I have graduated to playing mah-jongg with my aunts for hours during holidays. I even taught mah-jongg to my non-Asian friends and my partner’s family in small-town Ohio.

Those very “Asian mother” things my mom did that used to embarrass me are now the centerpieces of proud stories I have told my friends over and over.

At GMHC, I am reminded daily of the harmful effects of stigma, discrimination, homophobia, xenophobia, and racism on our clients living with and affected

by HIV and AIDS. Many lack economic opportunities or experience housing and food insecurity. Others suffer from addiction. Their HIV-positive status amplifies the economic and social disparities that they experience on a daily basis.

Fighting stigma and discrimination is in our DNA at GMHC. We are outspoken against hate speech and prejudice. We form coalitions with other organizations fighting for the rights of people living with HIV or AIDS as well as all LGBTQ people. We tirelessly advocate for changes to public policies that marginalize people because they have a disease or because of who they are.

In this new era of COVID-19, we all have a responsibility to speak out against discrimination against Asian people.

We need to shift the discourse that COVID-19 is a “Chinese virus” and call out our leaders when they try to advance a false narrative and whip up animosity toward Asian people. COVID-19 doesn’t discriminate against the people who it infects and neither should we.

The coronavirus pandemic will pass, but stigma can be lasting. Let’s all commit today that we have learned from our past experience with HIV and AIDS and will not allow any group to be blamed for a new disease.

This June, as I always do, I will celebrate being gay, because I love being gay.

No amount of discrimination will take that away. But before June, May is Asian Heritage Month, and I will celebrate being Asian because I love being Asian. No amount of discrimination will take that away. I probably won’t march or dance in May, but I will start by speaking out against what I’m seeing happening today with COVID-19.

I have never felt so Asian in my life.

And I am so proud of it. Q Kelsey Louie is CEO of GMHC.

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lambda lore

Qsaltlake.com | ISSUE 312 | JUNE, 2020

My first Pride Day

I think

BY BEN WILLIAMS

everyone remembers their first Pride Day whether you are 15 or 65. There’s something powerful and magical about gathering with people of your own kind in large numbers. As a minority, it is important to find a place that is welcoming and safe. That is what Pride Days in Utah has always been, a day when one can throw off the shame that a disapproving society would have us feel and replace it with feeling proud of who and what we are.

Various celebratory events have been held in Utah since 1974, whether these occasions were called “Gay Freedom Day,” “A Day in the Park,” “Gay Pride Day,” or simply Pride Day as the festival has become to be known.

There are still seniors in our community who remember attending the Gay Freedom Day beer busts held on the shores of the Great Salt Lake or up in Rotary Park. My memories do not go back that far. The first Gay Pride Day I attended was in 1986 when it was held in Pioneer Park. That was a different time when, outside of the bars and support groups, one did not see homosexuals in large numbers. I am talking maybe 100 on a good night at the Sun Club.

I first heard that Gay Pride Day 1986 was being organized by Beau Chaine.

He had taken over the Gay Pride Day event after members of the Royal Court, which had organized it for a few years, had stepped away.

I attended my first Gay Pride Day planning meeting on 26 April 1986. I was bored and needed to get out of the house, so I attended the meeting which was held at the old Salt Lake Public Library. I wrote in my journal that in attendance were only Beau Chaine, Donny Eastepp, Marc Lamar, and myself.

Donny Eastepp’s lover Bobby Dupray was the owner of the In-Between Bar and was well connected with members

of the Royal Court and the Gay Rodeo Association. He would later become Emperor of the Royal Court. He died from AIDS. Marc Lamar was a former U.S. Marine Gay activist who wanted to become a drag queen performer. He had a good singing voice, did not lip-sync, and did fun campy drag. He would later be nearly stabbed to death and so he fled from Utah.

Gay Pride Day 1986 was held on Sunday, July 13 at Pioneer Park. The event was sponsored by Chaine’s Cabaret Corp as he was chair of Pride Day ’86. Approximately 200 people attended. Performers were Marc Lamar, Julliard-trained pianist Steve Oldroyd, Walt Larabee’s “New Orleans’ Waylon and Madame” act, singers Darrel Rojoit, and Ron Richardson, the Salt Lake Men’s Choir, and the Saliva Sisters.

The Saliva Sisters are a campy novelty act parodying Utah culture. Joe Redburn, the owner of the Sun Tavern, gave them their first break booking them in his club and they, in turn, have been loyal ever since to their appreciative Gay audience. Pride 1986 was the first of many of their appearances at Pride Days in Utah. They were then the headline act having their fee donated by Redburn.

Redburn was the keynote speaker. He spoke out about the unfair legal harassment of Gay people by the police.

Community organizations that sponsored booths were the Libertarian Party staffed by Bob Waldrop, Restoration Church of Jesus Christ staffed by Bob McIntier, the AIDS Project Utah staffed mainly by Duane Dawson, Wasatch Affirmation staffed by myself, the Restoration Metropolitan Community Church staffed by Rev. Bruce Barton, and Triangle Magazine, staffed by John Sassaman and Michael Aaron. Additionally, Richard “Ragnar” McCall, a local artist, sold his pagan artwork. He died on October 3, 1994, at the age of 35 of AIDS.

Besides the normal concession fare sold by Chaine, I was the only one selling food. I had made cookies for a bake sale to raise funds for the Wasatch Affirmation. I called them “Whole Wheat Mormon Faggot Cookies.”

I wrote in my journal, “I brought with me about 30 giant cookies I called “Whole Wheat Mormon Faggot Cookies,” which I was selling at fifty cents apiece. I made $12 for affirmation after two cookies were stolen by transients and I had given away four more. It turned out that I was the only one to have brought anything for the Affirmation Booth’s bake sale.

“Russ Lane, the founder and director of Wasatch Affirmation, was already at the park by the time I arrived and he was in a tizzy because Affirmation’s booth was in the direct sun without any cover.

So I said “let’s just move it to where you want it” so we did, beneath a shade tree.

“There were supposed to be police at the park during the fair but I didn’t see any. I did see two transients steal cookies from me, and an Indian chasing some other Indian with a knife, which Beauchaine intervened by taking the knife away. So no one was seriously bothered or hurt. All in all the transients kept to their side of the park and the faggots kept to our side of the park.

“Marc Lamar came dressed as Alice Foxx. When he saw me, this six-foot three-inch, former Marine-slash-dragqueen comes running at me and just scooped me up into his arms. That was the most excitement I had all day!

“Later I asked Jon Butler if he would run me home because no one thought to provide folding chairs for the booth and I didn’t want to stand all afternoon. He complied and I brought back chairs and paperweights to hold down our pamphlets that were blowing in the wind.

“As we were leaving I spotted a car driving around the park with a photog-

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rapher leaning out of the window taking pictures. We drove up next to them and yelled “what the hell are you doing?”

And they sped off but not without us getting their car plate numbers. We are going to give them to Willy Marshall, who works as a police dispatcher, to trace. [The plates turned out to be unregistered so we were under surveillance. Willy Marshall later became the first openly Gay Mayor in Utah.]

“I sat at the Affirmation booth for most of the afternoon while Russ Lane proselytized. However, when the Saliva Sisters performed, I went to the makeshift stage to see them better. They were great! I laid out on a blanket with Eddie Muldong and Mike Howard listening to the campy girl group. [Mike Howard later died of AIDS] “It was hot in the park and at one point I left with Lon Wright and Jon Butler to go get some drinks. I bought Russ a soda and some California wine coolers for me which I poured into my Bota bag. I guess after a bit I was getting pretty smashed, having not eaten any-

thing but a Faggot Cookie since morning. [Lon Wright later died of AIDS] “I asked Russ if he wanted a drink from my Bota bag after he had finished his soda and he assumed that it was water in my bag. I, on my part, assumed that he knew that I had been pouring coolers into my Bota bag but evidently he didn’t and after the first mouthful he spit the wine out, and made such a fuss, being a Word-of-Wisdom-Mormon still.

I almost wanted to burst out laughing.

What a wimp. Anyway, I said I was sorry and said I thought he knew what I was drinking since I had told everyone else what was in the bag. Maybe if he would have paid me more attention he would have known also.

“By late afternoon I was pretty smashed and when the shindig was all over Jon Butler took my drunk butt home. Lon Wright had left the party early in a huff, mad at Jon for not giving him enough attention. How we fags love our drama.

“My first Pride day.” Q

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26 | QSALTLAKE MAGAZINE | Q&A

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Filmmaker Rachel Mason on the history of gay porn landmark Circus of Books

BY CHRIS AZZOPARDI

Gay porn

is not what straight, religious-conservative married couple Barry and Karen Mason thought they’d become known for. But for over 35 years, they owned a bookstore that sold videos like Confessions of a Two Dick Slut and Meat Me at the Fair in West Hollywood. And now thanks to their daughter, filmmaker, and artist Rachel Mason, her parents’ story is a Netflix documentary.

For the couple, however, selling and producing gay porn was just business as usual. Hard times forced Karen, a former journalist, and Barry, a former special visual effects engineer who worked on Stanley Kubrick’s 2001, to think fast, so they took over Circus of Books, which became a queer cultural institution. Karen and Barry, who still own the building even though Circus of Books closed in 2019, would go on to become wealthy LGBTQ activists and PFLAG parents.

But in the 1980s, the business was kept a secret from their three children, including Rachel and her gay brother Josh, who appear in Circus of Books along with former porn star Jeff Stryker and RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars winner Alaska Thunderfuck. TV titan Ryan Murphy executive produced the film.

Here, Mason discusses the power of straight parents as activists, what it says about porn that celebs who shopped at the store won’t openly admit it, and the awkward dinner table talks her parents have with her partner, transsexual porn star and activist Buck Angel.

It’s funny to hear your mom say in the doc, “I don’t know what you’re gonna make out of all this filming. No one is going to be interested in this.” And now, of course, it’s on Netflix for the world to see. That’s her whole constant mantra: No one’s gonna care, this is not interesting to anybody.

I think that was her way of having a smokescreen. Of course it’s actually fucking amazing that I’m like, “Deep penetration on these videos you made sent me to college.” How could that not be interesting? You know, I think it’s her PHOTOS: COURTESY OF NETFLIX

way of misdirecting, but also at the same time it could also be true for her: It was not interesting. This was a boring job for many years. (Laughs.)

It’s like when she walks by the dildo wall but won’t look at it. (Laughs.) I do have to say there’s a part of her, sadly, that is really kind of prudish and disgusted by her whole thing. I find that offensive and sad because I love and appreciate everything that she was involved in, and I actually think that the work she did was critical.

Do your parents bond with Buck over porn? It was really funny the first time we had a family dinner. My mom said, “Do not bring this up to my grandma,” my mother’s mother who is still alive. “Do not bring up the business at the dinner table tonight.” And of course, we’re sitting there and there’s dead silence; then my mom was like, “Buck, I have a question.

I got an email today from one of these distributors — do you ever work with this guy?” I’m like, “Mom! You totally outed him as being in the business!” She’s just so business-focused that it’s kind of hilarious.

But my parents and Buck can just talk shop together, and I can listen and be kind of coming up with the sequel in my head, or like an episode for the TV series.

How do they feel about being Netflix-famous? In a weird way it’s a good time to be an anonymous celebrity because everyone’s wearing masks. (Laughs.) You know, my mom’s a totally reluctant celebrity, if you want to call her that. She really is a subject right now. And I think on the one hand it’s uncomfortable for her when people walk up and know her for something she kept a secret for several years.

Your mom seems like the kind of person who really knows how to command a room. She got up on the stage at Outfest and just said, “Had I known you guys were all going to be here, I never would’ve agreed to doing this.” The audience is laughing and it’s like, “Mom, you just got an audience of 2,000 people to laugh.” But she’s like, “Now can I go? I don’t like this.” (Laughs.)

That’s part of her sheer brilliant comedic instincts. She kind of knows, like Woody

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Allen, that she has this kind of nebbishy, over-the-top insulting quality that is just so funny.

And her dynamic with your father — the way she interjects when he doesn’t tell the full story — is really hysterical. I think that’s part of their comedic duo vibe that is so amazing. I have to say, I milked it for all that it’s worth in the documentary.

(Laughs.)

How did the idea for the documentary come to you? It really began in 2004. I had taken a lesbian and gay studies class, as it was called at the time, and it was about just sort of the history of LGBTQ experience. So the teacher, Jonathan D. Katz, a very prominent media studies scholar, his focus was on Robert Mapplethorpe, specifically gay imagery and photography, and the art that wasn’t above ground. It was sort of this subculture, and I remember my parents had Robert Mapplethorpe books in their store and I mentioned it to him. I said, “You know my parents carried his stuff?” And he was like, “What was their store?” And I said Circus of Books and he said, “Wow, Rachel, that is the most important store on the West Coast and that store really helped me to come out.” I think he was himself from LA; I was at Yale at the time. I was like, “What do you know about Circus of Books?”

I didn’t know my parents’ little LA weirdo store would’ve been something anyone would’ve known this far east, let alone at a fancy school like Yale. So it just gave me an impression that I needed to do something about it. And he said, “This is part of gay history. It’s not just a little store. It’s actually the historical record because gay history didn’t have a chance to be documented because it was underground.” So when the store started to close in 2015, that’s when I started really documenting it in earnest.

And your mom had low expectations. She didn’t think this film would amount to anything. Oh yeah — no.

What does she think of the finished film? She just feels like I did a good job, basically. And that it just would be better if it were about anyone except her.

(Laughs.) One thing she says that I have some sympathy for: “I don’t picture myself looking this age.” I’m following her around at age 75. A lot of it is unflattering because she let me follow her around,

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and she’s, like, squatting down to pick up DVDs (laughs). It’s kind of funny. I kept being like, “Mom, turn this way. I don’t like this angle. It’s not good.” But at the same time, I’m chasing her — she moves like a motherfucker!

Did your mom ever try to control the narrative? Kind of. But I know how to work around that.

What was it like to learn about Josh’s struggle to come out during the making of the film? That was one of the interviews that actually I reshot because I had shot the film in a different way going into it. I was working hand in hand with Cynthia Childs, my producer, and I was going to be more of a distant subject. When I started to cut the film together, the most poignant moments were in all of the different interviews when people would look at the camera or look at me and say, “Your dad was going to go to jail.” I was like, “Shit, they’re talking to me; I need to actually be seen and heard on the other side of this.” I didn’t get that with my interview with Josh.

The second time around, I did the questions, and I didn’t expect my own reaction to be so shocked by what he said.

I was really so blown away, and it was so horrible to hear these things and to look back at myself with a sense of shame that I so was a self-absorbed teenager who loved everything gay and was wanting it,

and here’s my poor little brother who’s trying to be so perfect and trying to hold it all together. And here he has this freaky, insane sister being an artist, and maybe that’s what gay looks like to him. And the store is also this crazy place where a lot of people died of AIDS, and he sees that world. So he’s caught in between these images that are not realistic of what he could have for himself as a gay man.

I’ll tell you: My partner and lover is Buck Angel and his parents are Trump supporters. What I think is really fascinating is he talks to them and he actually fully gets into it. I think it’s important to address it full-on and be like, “OK, you can support the guy who is gonna actually take your son’s right to exist.” If you have the stomach to engage, it’s actually a good idea to engage.

What was it like to hear the stories of your parents’ relationship with those who were dying of AIDS, and how they kind of became surrogate parents to them because their families disowned them? I feel like that is part of the real untold story and untold chapter in gay history — it’s not exclusive to my parents. When you think back to the AIDS crisis, these men were dying in these horrible situations alone in the hospital because people were afraid to touch them. The bravery of not just my parents but all the different people who would show up for these men was so profound. I really have to say I look at my parents in a really heroic light myself at that moment, but I also think back on the fact that there were other people like them.

Before our call, I was talking to my dad.

There’s been some tension among family members on Facebook, and we’re still having a hard time wrapping our heads around the fact that some of them still support Donald Trump.

Your parents remind me of my dad. Is your family Christian or religious?

Yeah. They’re Christian and Catholic. My dad identifies as a Baptist, but he supports me and he lets people know he supports me. That is really powerful, if he does let people know that he supports you.

Well, our conversation stemmed from a Facebook war with family members who are anti-LGBTQ. My dad commented and said to them that he supports me and who I am, and that what they’re saying could potentially harm LGBTQ people. That’s very powerful when people like your dad and my mom similarly do that because those are the most important activists. You and me being queer and waving our rainbow flag is actually sort of not really tipping the scale for those people; it’s people like your dad and my mom who are actually saying, “Look, I am still gonna go to church and I’m gonna find it in the Bible where Jesus says we can love everybody.

And in the Old Testament, where you can

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reinterpret the word, the actual definition of what it means to lie down with another man, in fact, and totally recognize that there’s the possibility that we have a wrong interpretation here.”

The film comes at a time when queer spaces are vulnerable to the pandemic and are at

Qsaltlake.com |

risk of closing. Having gone through that experience with your parents, what are you feeling? First off, my heart’s breaking for all the businesses. I look back at the strange timing: I could’ve never predicted that I’d be making a story about a story that’s unfolding currently, and that we’re in the time of a pandemic and the documentary is entirely basically based in the time of a pandemic for the gay community. It’s almost like we’re living in that active moment where everyone is deciding the thing that you see my mom trying to decide when she’s talking about whether or not she can close the business. People are wrestling with that. All businesses.

Did you ever wonder why the store catered

“The best advertising I do”

—JAY HALLSTROM

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to gay men and not queer women? I guess that’s sort of interesting. Certainly there were lesbian clerks and women customers, and there were trans people. They had trans clerks and trans customers, and in fact they had Buck Angel work there — the very first trans guy to basically do porn at all. So there was a variety. But probably the vast majority were gay men.

I think it’s because that exact neighborhood was called Boystown (laughs) and it was located in a gay boys’ neighborhood.

I’m not an expert so you can’t quote me on this, but it’s pretty well known that men are the predominant consumers of pornography, especially in a store where you have to walk in and physically appear. Also, it was a meeting ground. I think it just naturally became a hotspot for gay culture.

What did you find out from Ryan Murphy about shopping at the store? Ryan basically said that store was so important to all gay men in LA. I think he was just no different. In fact, Ryan happens to be a very famous, powerful gay man — and I won’t name names — but think of any gay man who was alive at that time in Hollywood and they no doubt went into that store.

Did you try to interview any of these other men? Yeah, I’ve reached out to a few — again, I won’t say the names — and I’ve noticed things have leaked out here and there and I’m like, “Wow, I don’t know who said that. The gossip mill. I will just say think of a (famous) gay man over 50 and they were in Circus of Books.”

pages Get in the 2020 directory of Utah’s LGBTQ-friendly businesses today by calling 801-997-9763 or emailing sales@qsaltlake.com

So the gossip is true? Absolutely. And celebrities who aren’t even straight or gay or male. Rose McGowan posted that she loved the store’s selection of Italian Vogue, and Kathy Griffin posted about how she did her Christmas shopping at the store. So the celebrities who’ve come out, that’s awesome and fun and cool. It does speak volumes that people can’t just jump out and wave the flag of, “Yeah, I went to that store; it’s a porn store.” Because porn still has a stigma. I think that’s what we’re looking at right here, and I really hope to be part of the change that destigmatizes it. Q As editor of Q Syndicate, Chris Azzopardi has interviewed a multitude of superstars, including Cher, Meryl Streep, Mariah Carey, and Beyoncé. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, GQ, and Billboard. Reach him via Twitter @chrisazzopardi.

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30 | QSALTLAKE MAGAZINE | Q&A

Janelle Monáe doesn’t know time either

The queer icon talks ‘too on the nose’ pandemic, LGBTQ representation and Pride plans

BY CHRIS AZZOPARDI

I really

hadn’t planned on telling queer powerhouse singer-actress-activist Janelle Monáe that I made food for my boyfriend the night before I got on Zoom with her.

That afternoon, Monáe was feeling it all. This global pandemic, the quarantining. She told me she can’t even create right now because she doesn’t have the mental bandwidth. When we linked up, her mind was understandably heavy and momentarily adrift. While talking about Amazon’s second season of its thriller Homecoming, Monáe accidentally called PHOTOS: COURTESY OF NETFLIX

Qsaltlake.com |

her character — a war vet who we first meet on a boat, alone and drifting, unsure of how she got there — an “ex-veterinarian.” “I said veterinarian,” she started, realizing her slip-up. “It’s that quarantine mind!”

Then I diverted her attention to her neo-soul album Dirty Computer, a life-affirming celebration of queerness released in 2018.

I began by telling her about my night before we Zoomed, when my spiraling mind happened to find a rare moment of pure, unencumbered joy within that album as I prepared for our virtual chat.

Songs from Dirty Computer had my boyfriend and I bopping in the kitchen.

Emerging from her face was a smile so wide I could almost see my reflection in it. It was like I’d cracked a code. A pandemic-era topic universal enough that it got even Janelle Monáe curious that she, during a promo tour for a TV show, couldn’t help but ask me a question everybody is asking everybody because all we do is cook now: “What were y’all eatin’?”

Monáe’s in isolation too of course, trying to navigate not merely how to be an artist but if that’s even possible for her right now. From lockdown, she at least looks put together. Greeting me like the bots she sings about, she says, “Hi, I’m Janelle and I don’t know who I am today.”

She appears to be reclining on a couch, a white top hat perched on her head; her virtual backdrop is appropriately one for Homecoming. In August, Monáe leads the cast of the slavery-themed horror film Antebellum, which was initially scheduled to be released in April.

And though it was just in February, it seems like another life when Monáe opened the Oscars and celebrated diversity and being, as she proclaimed on national TV during her performance, a “black queer artist.” Previously, in 2018, she came out as pansexual, after years of telling the press she was dating androids.

So no wonder she was looking forward to headlining NYC Pride Island on June 27. In a statement, she called it a “dream.”

But summer gatherings, including NYC Pride Island, have been canceled.

Monáe is still doing what she can; recently, she took part in a special performance for Verizon’s Pay It Forward Live, when she and Verizon made donations to small businesses owned by those in the

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LGBTQ community and other minorities affected by COVID-19.

“Stay up, Chris,” she gently consoles as we wrap, offering the same kind of bright-eyed hopefulness contained in “Americans,” one of the songs that, for a few dazzling minutes, took me out of life as we now currently know it. She continues: “And send my love to your boyfriend.” Even in a pandemic, even when she’s not creating, Monáe has so much to give.

How are you coping with everything that’s happening right now? I don’t know. I probably won’t know until, like, next month. Time is not real to me. I feel like I’m in a warped, alternate universe, especially watching everybody walking around with masks and avoiding each other, and dealing with an administration who hides information and is putting capitalism above the health and well-being of our people. I have no grasp of reality right now.

It’s like living in the twilight zone. Yeah.

I write too much science-fiction to be dealing with this shit right now. It’s too on the nose. (Laughs.)

How does Homecoming fit into the kind of stories you want to be telling? We’re on a journey with her as she discovers her identity, and I think when you go back into her past there are some decisions that she makes that I just would not make as a human. But when I was creating her backstory and understanding her motivation I realized that this person could have been dealing with a lot of childhood trauma, and it gave reason to why she is the way she is.

I think that this show has a lot to say about capitalism over citizenship and community, and the well-being of our citizens. I think it has a lot to say about how we treat ex-vets and mental health.

And it’s a character study on minorities and those who are marginalized and how they go on their rise to being powerful and also having their freedom through living in their truth, so that was super important to me.

And the show’s queer representation — how is the fact that your character just happens to be in a relationship with a woman meaningful to you? Like you said: representation. It always matters. You think about the number of shows that are greenlit and

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films that are greenlit, and we’re still in that minority. It’s still not equal in terms of storytelling. There are so many cis, het-normative stories, and that’s not a reflection of the real world. I don’t want to give away too much, but there is a strong presence of [queerness] in Homecoming. I hope the folks feel seen.

How would this kind of representation have changed your life as a young woman growing up in Kansas City? I would probably feel less alone. I’d be more intrigued.

When you grow up in small towns and you have large families, and when being Baptist and going to church is the center of your family and your household — in addition to going through that and trying to love yourself and finding out who you are and what you want to be and deciding how you want to live your life — I think that having that representation would have made things easier for a lot of us.

When was the first time you identified with someone from the LGBTQ community and what did that mean to you? That’s a really good question. There were, of course, a lot of artists who have come before me that have walked in their truth, like [openly queer singer-songwriter and activist] Meshell Ndegeocello. Even if they didn’t say, “Hey, I’m gay,” there was just a certain freeness that I got when I looked at David Bowie, a freeness I got that blurred the lines of gender. And I’ve always felt a part of everything, and as I find out more about myself and who I am, I look at myself and all of us as experiences. I just don’t believe in those binaries. But I love identifying as a woman, and I’m not mad when I’m not called a woman. I feel so a part of everything, and I am a part of everything.

Earlier this year, you tweeted #IAmNonBinary. Does that mean you’re using they and them pronouns now? I use free-ass-motherfucker pronouns. That’s the pronoun that I use. Absolutely.

Over the years you’ve gradually taken on more of an activist role, both as a vocal advocate but also in the way you’ve chosen projects. Your art is clearly a conduit for your messaging of unity and empowerment. How do you see yourself evolving as an activist and artist? I never considered myself an activist. I think there are really people out on the front lines who are doing that groundwork in our communities.

I have a mic; I have a studio; I’m doing film. I’m doing all those things. And I’ve never considered myself that.

People have kind of placed that label on me, but I don’t feel pressure. I think I feel more pressure just as a citizen to lend my support and my voice. I think even if I never wrote another song in my life, if I saw something happening to someone who couldn’t protect themselves or take care of themselves and they were in a marginalized group, then I’m gonna say something about it. That’s just been me since I’ve been little. I’ve never allowed people to bully my little sister or people who were helpless and couldn’t defend themselves. I’m just not gonna stand for that. I guess I look at myself as anti-bully, and I will whoop your ass in different ways if you try to oppress or harm other people that I love and I care about. And I care about my community.

How do you feel about where we’re at now with LGBTQ representation? And what do you hope is next in that regard? I think it’s getting better. I think we have a long way to go. I think it’s a more nuanced conversation because we’re dealing with sexuality and we’re dealing with gender. A lot of it is a journey, it’s not just a destination.

And there’s new terminology that’s coming, and we have to be open and nonjudgmental within our community.

I’ve definitely received a lot of judgment, and I can’t say that I haven’t judged myself, but at this point I think that life is a mystery. We are uncovering truths about us, just like this show does, and the more information we have, we should never feel ashamed to lean into that gray area. Don’t become a prisoner or a slave of your past. Move forward accordingly once you discover who you are and what it is that you want to be.

But I want to say that I think that we still have a lot more work to do in terms of allies. Folks who are more privileged, who are the majority and the minority, I think that they can share the mic.

Are you currently creating? And while I have Dirty Computer on my mind — will you make music with the queer community in mind for your next work? I don’t know what kind of music I’m gonna make. I’m not in a musical space. I’m not inspired.

I’m just not inspired right now. I mean, I want to be; I want to be using this time

and come out with five albums. But my heart is just so broken right now with everything that’s going on. So I’ve been DJing; that’s been inspiring. Deconstructing songs, my favorite songs. And I’ve been listening to Childish Gambino, and I love Megan Thee Stallion’s Savage remix with Beyoncé. Been listening to that. But I’ve just been trying to figure out how to put my boots on the ground and how to thrive in a pandemic.

It’s affected me. I’m not a black, single mom with five kids or a single parent trying to make ends meet because she got laid off. I’m not in that position. We’re in this, but we’re not all in the same boat.

And for me, I feel a sense of urgency to figure out how we can come together as citizens. Once I get that down pat and understand what this all means and I can get some foundation then maybe I can go to a creative space, but right now my mental real estate is dealing with this pandemic.

You were supposed to perform at NYC Pride Island this summer. What message would you like to send out to all the dirty computers of the world who will be celebrating Pride in a very different way this year? I love you. I was looking forward to being there, but all of our health is important. I would hate to be irresponsible and hold a concert and bring people together and then people pass away as a result of us trying to have a concert right now. But I have a feeling that in the future I will come back. The organizers of Pride New York are trying to put together something special that I may be a part of, so just keep your ears glued. [On May 15, it was announced that Monáe would be among the performers taking part in NYC’s virtual pride celebration on June 28.]

And to answer your last question: I did say I wasn’t really inspired to make music, but because I am a dirty computer at heart, whatever I do is always going to be through the lens of being a part of the LGBTQIA+ communities. That is who I am, so I can’t help but to have that perspective. So I’m sure whenever I start making music (laughs) I will still be a free-ass-motherfucker making music. Q As editor of Q Syndicate, Chris Azzopardi has interviewed a multitude of superstars, including Cher, Meryl Streep, Mariah Carey and Beyoncé. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, GQ and Billboard. Reach him via Twitter @chrisazzopardi.

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Patti LuPone A Comeback in Quarantine Stage icon talks Hollywood, her basement videos and why ‘Ladies Who Lunch’ will never be the same

BY CHRIS AZZOPARDI

In Ryan

Murphy’s Hollywood, the wife becomes the boss, the “black screenwriter” is simply a screenwriter, and the gay leading man is just himself. Naturally, it stars Broadway icon Patti LuPone, who, in conversations like the one we had recently, thrives on brazen authenticity.

In the seven-episode Netflix series, LuPone portrays Avis Amberg, the wife of a studio head whose work is relegated to the kitchen. But not for long, thanks to Murphy’s 1940s corrective where power dynamics shift in favor of the underdogs and outsiders in this alternate reality, a fantasy depiction of Tinseltown’s Golden Age reimagined as diverse, inclusive and unabashedly queer.

That LuPone, 71, portrays a grand Hollywood dame and housewife-turned-studio head — in, of course, only the most glam fur-fringed couture — should be no surprise given how she’s been commanding the stage through a variety of extravagant personas for a half century. In 1979, PHOTOS: COURTESY OF NETFLIX

as Eva Perón, she won her first Tony for Evita; her second win came in 2008, for her portrayal of Rose in Gypsy. She’s also been nominated for roles in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, War Paint, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and Anything Goes.

On Broadway is where she was throwing back martinis in Stephen Sondheim’s 1970 musical Company, as Joanne, until the pandemic lockdown forced theaters to shut down.

Now quarantined in rural Connecticut with her husband, Matthew Johnston, and son Josh, LuPone has been doling out delicious bits on social media. In one video she posted to Twitter, she channeled Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, making a dramatic entrance from her basement steps [when Glenn Close got the role for the Broadway run of the show in 1994, LuPone said she reacted by trashing a dressing room]. Other at-home videos of LuPone involve her giving aptly chaotic, hungover tours of her treasure-filled basement.

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When we connect via phone, I tell LuPone that she might actually be happy that, for once, this conversation is occurring between phone lines, not on Zoom.

“You’re right,” she says, roaring with laughter. “It really is the Brady Bunch.”

Do you have any more basement videos in the works? My problem right now is focus and structure. If I don’t do something in the morning, I’m in bed till 4:30 in the afternoon. So my kid — we’ve come up with a couple more. We just have to get down to it. We have to get up in the morning and go, “OK, now we’re gonna do the video.” We have two plans. So we’ll see.

The problem, Chris, is it has to be spontaneous. It’s the only way it’s funny.

The day after my birthday when I was so hungover I went, half-asleep, (slurring, drowsy) “Let’s … go … make … a … video, I’m ... re–a–dy.” (Laughs.)

If it weren’t for COVID, you’d be throwing back martinis on Broadway in Company.

So I’m happy to hear you’re still throwing back martinis — or something! Well, last night we had frozen strawberry daiquiris, but that was really the first time, because I was texting with a friend of mine and she said, “Go have a daiquiri,” and I went, “You know what? That sounds like a good idea.” And we seem to have all the fixings for it! So my kid made daiquiris for my husband, himself and me. Then I had red

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Q&A | QSALTLAKE MAGAZINE | 33

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wine, which wasn’t too smart. What I’m drinking a lot of right now is red wine.

And I’m just trying … you know it’s really easy to let yourself go!

Have you completely let yourself go? No! No! I’m holding it together. I have to!

(Laughs.) Years ago a friend of mine, when he was on unemployment, I said, “What are you doing, Tony?” He said I’m preparing for my comeback! So, Chris, I’m prepping my comeback!

You made me teary when you recently sang “Anyone Can Whistle” for Stephen Sondheim’s virtual 90th birthday party. Do you like performing virtually? What was difficult about it was the technical aspect.

My kid was filming it and I had one AirPod in and I’m going, “I can’t really hear,” and then my kid said, “You’re pitchy,” and I was like, “WHAT DO YOU MEAN I’M PITCHY. I’m NEVER pitchy!”

There’s always the fear that, you know, you’re gonna sound like shit. And Stephen’s thanking everybody who partook, and I wrote him back and I said, “The rub is that we all wish we could’ve done better.” It’s true. I’m sure everybody thought, “Damn, if only I was in costume and makeup and on the stage at the Philharmonic with a full orchestra behind me.”

You were singing “The Ladies Who Lunch” in Company, which Meryl Streep, Christine Baranski and Audra McDonald performed during that same birthday celebration. What did you think of their version? (Explodes into a thunderous, dragged out cackle.) When it was over, I went, “I’ll never be able to sing ‘Ladies Who Lunch’ again!”

Yeah? Because they set the bar? No. I don’t think they set the bar — I think they trashed the number!

They set the bar for trashing the number?

Yeah, exactly! That’s what I think! I mean, I say that with great humor, but I’m not going to be able to sing it without thinking of them doing it. (Laughs.) This is all joke, by the way! This is all humor!

Let’s talk about Hollywood. Does it feel good to be part of a project that’s beaming with hopefulness in a time when hope seems harder and harder to find? Yes, yes, yes.

And I hope that is translated across the board. It’s hard. It’s really, really hard. I mean, I’m having a hard time. We all are.

I’m not unique. And my problem is, I

don’t know who to believe anymore. I’m so confused by what everybody’s saying.

It’s just … I just … ahh. And you can’t stick your head in the sand because any minute now we’ll be “hi Hitler”-ing [President Trump]. So I’m just really confused. I’m confused, I’m lost.

So how do you keep your mind straight? By drinking strawberry daiquiris? (Laughs.)

How do I keep my mind straight? That’s the question! Because my problem has been structure, and I’m the kind of person that goes, “OK, you have to be on the set or you have to be at the theater — OK, great. I know what my schedule is.” But without a schedule, I’m lost. I’m going, “I don’t know what to do.” I guess I am my work.

For structure, what’s the first thing you do in the morning? I started working out remotely with my trainer. Just to do something, just to feel like something is done. And then as soon as the weather gets really nice I’m gonna walk up our road, which is part of a mountain, and walk back down. And I have shows coming up, unless they’re going to be canceled, in January. I haven’t done them in a while, so what I started to do, because the weather still isn’t that great where I am right now, I’m listening to the shows that I have to sing in January, just to remember them. I haven’t sung them in a while. Then I’ll feel like I’ve accomplished something in the day and it hasn’t been — this is our lives! And our lives are being wasted! Not that work is the only thing, but if we can’t figure out what to do in the time that we have been given, that’s pathetic! It’s a blessing, really!

If you were running Hollywood right now, what changes would you make? I would listen to the artists, I would listen to the writers. And I would not greenlight pictures because of statistics. I would ignore the statistics, and I would greenlight films and television shows that I thought were going to be beneficial for education and for parents as opposed to, “Well, that was a big hit; let’s make 9,000 more of those Marvel comics.”

Would you let them make another Mamma Mia! movie? (Deliberates, speaks flatly, deadpans.) No. We don’t need a third? I hate ABBA. I have always hated ABBA. I will not go

see Mamma Mia! because I hate ABBA. And I’ve hated ABBA since I was a kid, because I’m a closet rocker; when ABBA came out, I went, “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding.” My favorite band is The Band, and so if you’re a rocker, and if you’re a rocker and The Band is your favorite band and ABBA comes along, there’s no way. And so I don’t support ABBA at all.

So you haven’t even seen the Mamma Mia! movies? No. Can’t support ABBA! Is Hollywood the gayest thing you’ve ever been a part of? Is it? Let me think.

Consider that pool party scene — all those naked men, penises hanging out. Yeah!

And the thing that was kind of distressing to me when I was shooting it was: Why am I going home?! Why is Avis going home?!

Yeah. Why doesn’t Avis get to go to the party? (Feigns weeping.) Why couldn’t she just sit there and ogle the penises? No. I go home early.

Didn’t you talk to Ryan about that? Trust me, I thought about that. But no, I didn’t.

That was in the script and I went, “OK, I gotta leave the party.” But I’m trying to think — is that the gayest thing? Maybe it is. I’m trying to think of anything I’ve done. I can’t remember anything that I do and that I’ve done. Maybe. I don’t know.

That party that Avis doesn’t get to go to — have you ever gone to an industry party like that in your life? No. I mean, I’ve gone to pool parties with tons of Broadway dancers who were gay, but they kept their clothes on.

That seems less fun. Well, their bodies were incredible to look at, but they were all clothed. Well, barely clothed! Everybody had a speedo on!

If someone decides to reimagine your life in 70 years, what parts of it would you ask that they keep factually intact and which parts would you allow them to reimagine?

All of it! I think they should keep it all factually intact! It’s been a rebellious life. And it’s been interesting. I hope it’s not over — the rebellion part, and the interesting part. No — they don’t have to reimagine anything. It’s been a lot of fun.

You’ve turned down diva roles in the past, like one that Ryan offered you on Glee.

Avis does have some diva qualities, though.

What about her divaness made you say yes

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ISSUE 312 | JUNE, 2020

DNA. That’s just how I thought. And it has nothing to do with being a woman or a man — it has to do with me being Patti.

It was different to watch you have that rough sex scene with actor David Corenswet because I was like, “Oh, wait — we don’t typically see this.” We don’t get to see a woman over 50 go at it in full view like you two do. Yeah!

Did you relish that moment because for whatever stupid reason it’s still so rare to see that onscreen? Yep, are you kidding?

Gimme more Gina, as they say! I had a sex scene with Dylan McDermott that was rougher but that was cut! Yeah. That was sad. (Laughs.)

to playing her? I hadn’t read any scripts when Ryan pitched it to me. All Ryan said was that I was going to be the wife of a studio head and I would inherit the studio and make movies for gays, minorities and women. That’s all he told me.

But Ryan is such a champion, and I’m not offered a lot of roles, and I’m not going to turn down Ryan or a role that he offers me. He expanded the role for me in the process, and of course it’s the most stunning era for women. Every time I would go to a costume fitting I was reeling with delight because the stuff was stunning.

You feel so glamorous in that time period.

I felt really, really glamorous, and I’m just thrilled.

I’ll tell you, even though I knew from a very early age that I was born for the Broadway musical stage, I was one of those kids who wanted to go to Hollywood and be a movie star. Who doesn’t?

If you’re in the business, who doesn’t want to be a movie star, especially when you go to a movie theater and see your idols up on the silver screen? When I was 12, I saw Disney’s Swiss Family Robinson with Tommy Kirk and marched out of that movie theater determined to go to Hollywood and be his leading lady. At 12!

To be challenging the patriarchy like Avis does — was that cathartic for you? Yeah, I think so. Any time a woman gets to push back on any kind of male authority, it’s cathartic. Push back and succeed.

But I seem to have done that all my life, just in life, and then in my career. But I’ve always kind of pushed back because authority needs to be explained to me. I need to understand, “Why do you have authority?” If it’s something you want me to do as a human being, I’ll do it; but if you are authoritarian about it, I need to understand why.

When in your career have you felt slighted or like you didn’t get what you deserved because you’re a woman? Hmm. A lot of times. I would say the majority of my career — not necessarily on the musical stage. You know, I think I got what I deserve as far as roles are concerned. I think I’ve had a varied career. But in the development of them, I think that I’ve been stifled because I was a woman. The opinion that you have is not valued because you’re a woman. That kind of stuff.

I’ve always questioned authority and I’ve always spoken up for what I perceived as injustice. Always. I think it’s just in my

What advice did the intimacy coach give you? How does that even work? He was a great guy. And he was always there to make us comfortable. I don’t know what other intimacy coaches do, but I don’t think I need an intimacy coach. I think I know what I’m doing. I’m certainly not uncomfortable, and if I was uncomfortable, I would talk to the director or the actor I was working with. As long as the coaches don’t interfere with acting, I’m fine with them. But if they start to interpret for us, then I’m not happy.

As we near the upcoming presidential election, I was curious: What advice do you have for LGBTQ people who struggle with the fact that some of their family members are still supporting and voting for Trump?

Oh, I’m having a real hard time with that, Chris. I don’t have family members necessarily that I discuss it with, so I don’t know if they do. But I have close friends and I actually had to cut one loose. It’s heartbreaking. But I’m thinking of my own mental health and I’m not going to get into an argument with anybody about that Piece. Of. Shit. I’m just not. I can’t.

I have very dear friends; they’re Republicans; it’s really hard. It’s really hard to talk to people. I don’t even want to talk to these people. Q As editor of Q Syndicate, Chris Azzopardi has interviewed a multitude of superstars, including Cher, Meryl Streep, Mariah Carey and Beyoncé. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, GQ and Billboard. Reach him via Twitter @chrisazzopardi.

JUNE, 2020 |

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PUZZLES | QSALTLAKE MAGAZINE | 37

JUNE, 2020 | ISSUE 312 | Qsaltlake.com

Kissing Taylor Swift’s Brother

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

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PUZZLE SOLUTIONS ON PAGE 30

14 Gore, who wrote 63-Across 20 P on Socrates’ paper 22 Frida played by Salma 23 Seizure for Caesar 24 Figwear for Adam and Steve 26 IRS info 28 Op. ___ 31 Doc for lions and tigers and bears 32 It arouses you in bed 35 Phantom’s Opera instrument 36 Red Book author 37 Kept from being a breeder 38 ”Xanadu” band, for short 39 L of GLAAD 40 Scare the pants off of 43 Characteristic of Diana 44 Dancer Duncan 45 Your, among Friends 47 Emulates Dick Button 49 Day one 50 Log Cabin org.

52 Like some Greek columns 53 Linda Ellerbee’s __ It Goes 55 Presidential title role for Kevin Kline 57 The Laramie Project st.

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LGBTQ-Affirmative Psycho-therapists Guild of Utah  lgbtqtherapists.com * jim@lgbtqtherapists.com Utah Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce  utahgaychamber.com * info@utahgaychamber.com LGBT & Allied Lawyers of Utah  lgbtutahlawyers.com * lgbtutahlawyers@gmail.com Utah Independent Business Coalition  utahindependentbusiness.org 801-879-4928 DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

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BOOK REVIEW | QSALTLAKE MAGAZINE | 41

JUNE, 2020 | ISSUE 312 | Qsaltlake.com

the bookworm sez REVIEW BY TERRI SCHLICHENMEYER

The Heart: Frida Kahlo in Paris

BY MARC PETITJEAN, TRANSLATED

BY ADRIANA HUNTER, C.2020, OTHER PRESS $25, 208 PAGES

Every brush stroke must have had meaning.

Every color, every shading, every wipe and fingerprint and trowelmark left by the artist became a portrait of metaphor and mystery: what was the artist trying to say? Was it just a painting or, as in The Heart by Marc Petitjean, was there a story behind it for observers to unravel?

Because his father had led a colorful life, Marc Petitjean was surrounded by artwork

q scopes JUNE

BY SAM KELLEY-MILLS

ARIES March 20–April 19

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Strip away the unnecessary layers and embrace what lies beneath.

TAURUS Apr 20–May 20

A new era is upon you, yet limbo is the current state. It’s not about getting life back on track but finding a new path in which to follow.

Sometimes doing nothing is actually doing something, especially when it means building a reserve of energies. When the time comes, just let it blow.

GEMINI May 21–June 20

Whatever has happened lately doesn’t matter. A family member or annoying roommate could be a source of aggravation. It is better to let it go, but don’t be afraid to make

and objets d’art for most of his childhood. One of those works was a painting that Petitjean understood was important to his father. Later, long after the elder man died, Petitjean learned how important the painting was when a stranger inquired about his father, and the affair he had with Frida Kahlo.

Michel Petitjean was just twenty-nine when he met Kahlo; she was thirty-three, and was staying in France at the time, having gone there because André Breton, who’d founded the surrealist movement, had decided on his own that Kahlo was a surrealist painter. Breton told her that he wanted to do an exhibit of her work but when Kahlo arrived in France, she was angered that Breton was unprepared for both her arrival and her show.

She’d met Breton when he and his wife, Jacqueline, came to Mexico to talk with Leon

Trotsky, who was living temporarily with Kahlo and her husband, Diego Rivera. The Bretons stayed the Rivera’s for several months — long enough for Kahlo to have a brief but playful sexual affair with Jacqueline before the Bretons returned to France.

Petitjean says that there is no way to know exactly how his father met Kahlo, but the first time they slept together “was the day Barcelona fell.”

They didn’t speak the same language but he comforted her as best he could, and she grew to mean a lot to him.

Later, he helped her pack up her paintings to return them to Mexico, and she gave him option of choosing any painting he wanted.

He chose The Heart.

In a surprisingly charming mixture of fact and fiction, author Marc Petitjean spins a dreamy tale of an artist and a painting that is in itself a mystery. That, the multiple

a drastic change. It may be too late or undesirable to alter the relationship, but always a good time to walk away.

far even if they can’t touch you.

CANCER June 21–July 22

The duality of truth is something you don’t explore often. While facts are definitive, how you feel about them is up to you. Take time to explore what the heart is saying but never doubt that the head guides.

Whether it be a desire for the obscene or a need to go clean, truth is important.

LEO July 23–August 22

There always seems to be a problem to solve. Now is a time when you don’t want to play detective and that is okay. Instead of delving deep into something, explore what is going on around you. There are no emergencies right now, so sit back and enjoy being a spectator for a bit.

VIRGO August 23–Sep. 2

Where have all your friends gone? It seems like a lonely time but it’s really about them more than you. Reach out to friends and loved ones who are missing you too. If they don’t care, then take that as a sign to move on. Everyone that matters is never

LIBRA Sept 23–October 22

The task at hand is something to be taken seriously. There is a time for fun and a time to work and plenty of room to do both. Figure out the boundaries and plan accordingly.

Work is always a challenge. Remember that no one cares as long as they see good results from you.

SCORPIO Oct. 23–Nov. 21

Take a seat and enjoy a glass of wine as much as possible. The season for fun may not be quite as exciting as it should be, but there are simple pleasures to be found. Get a grip and settle in for some good rides. In the long term, you might actually start to get used to this. Relax and enjoy.

SAGITTARIUS

Nov. 22–December 20.

Try to see a bigger picture but don’t forget what is going on around you. The cycle of redundancy has you questioning the wrong things while being certain about doubtful elements.

Ask for advice from those you trust.

Even if you don’t agree with everyone, broaden your perspective.

hypotheses, and a lingering unknown make “The Heart a captivating tale.

Petitjean depicts Paris in the pre-War years in a way that lets readers feel the devil-may-care extravagance of the city’s residents living in the shadow of Nazism and looming trouble, giving this book a dark sense of forboding. He then imagines Kahlo’s political leanings and adds to her mystique, giving her a certain cheeky flamboyance and, with passages that seem as if they’re viewed through sheer white curtains, he shows us a Kahlo that falls easily in lust and love, but with a blithe sense of detatchment.

Petitjean hints that his father was more upset about that than was Kahlo, but again — we’ll never know for sure. Still, readers that love art, biographies, historical mysteries, and Kahlo in particular will find The Heart to be a stroke of enjoyment. Q

CAPRICORN Dec 21–Jan 19

A frustrating element has a deceptively simple solution. Take time to figure it out but don’t overthink the problem. Simple explanations tend to be right. Take a key person in your life off a pedestal and start to see them for who they are. Flaws aren’t always attractive but they do provide intrigue.

AQUARIUS Jan. 20–Feb. 18

The flight or fight responses are going to be normal for a while.

With life bringing ups and downs, there is a tendency to get discouraged. Keep caring but stop engaging so much. Give in to a tendency to rebel but make sure you don’t damage key relationships.

Independence is an illusion.

PISCES Feb 19–Mar 19

Forget all your troubles for a while and realize there are people worse off than you. Even the more dire situations teach and individual moments are often neutral. Find the pleasure in little things and don’t worry about the big picture. Figure out how to make each moment a mental vacation.. Q

42 | QSALTLAKE MAGAZINE | SEX

Qsaltlake.com | ISSUE 312 | JUNE, 2020

sex and salt lake city Pandemic or not — June is still Pride Month

At the

DR. LAURIE BENNETT-COOK

time of writing this article, it marks what would have been opening night of Pride for Long Beach, Calif. I haven’t missed a Pride weekend in Long Beach in years!

In fact, the last five years that I lived in Long Beach we had a home with a large front porch that sat right along the parade route. I’m not gonna lie, the fact that this home sat on the parade route was the single biggest selling point!

Each year, on parade day, we’d get up at 6 a.m., hoist our flags — there were many.

One for bi, one for trans, one for BDSM, and of course, the original rainbow. The original rainbow flag was HUGE. It was gifted to us by the previous owners and it had been gifted to them by the owners before that. And yes, we left it for the family who occupied the house after us.

Once our flags were hung we’d walk a few blocks and go pick up several dozen donuts from the corner bakery and bring them home where we’d place them on the tables on our front porch. Along with the donuts, we’d put out bottles of orange juice and champagne. A large speaker was

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plugged in and by 8 a.m. we had music thumping and parade party goers would begin passing by — excitedly calling out: “HAPPY PRIDE!” As planned and expected, several would come up to the porch and get drinks and donuts. Some would stay briefly and others for the entire day. Whomever they were and however long they stayed, for this day, everyone was validating, loving, and each other’s best friends.

Also at the time of this writing, it’s been 60 days since this global pandemic has reached our community and called on us all to move about the world as minimally as we can. While it’s been public information for a while that Pride events across the globe are either being canceled or postponed, for some reason it just occurred to me today that I won’t be going to Long Beach to kick off the season. I won’t be seeing friends or making new ones in the most glorious of celebrative atmospheres.

I’ve been very pro “keep yourself safe,” “wear a mask,” etc. and I still feel strongly that it’s necessary to keep up with all the precautions, but I’m definitely feeling a bit of loss. As much as misery loves company, misery also loves a cheer up.

So, doing my part to lift my spirits and keep festive, I went on Etsy and ordered a Pride-themed face mask. As quickly as I felt loss at the cancelation of various celebrations, I also reminded myself that parade or no parade, Pride is ongoing and we are so very fortunate to have ways to connect and fly our colors. Pandemic or not — June is still Pride Month!

Like so many, I have had my full share of working on my home computer.

Everything from Zoom coffee dates and cocktail hours with friends to FaceTiming directions and recipes with family.

The virtual tool is both something to be grateful for and a pain in the ass. However, where Pride is concerned, the virtual world is about to become a lot more fabulous!

Kicking off Pride Month — on Sunday, May 31, at noon Pacific Time, the Lavender Effect will host a live virtual Pride Parade via Zoom and Facebook live.

Legendary transgender activist Alexandra Billings will be the Grand Marshal and host. And looking further into the month of June, on Saturday, June 27th, The first-ever Global Pride will take place. A virtual event that will be historical and exciting. For the first time, at a time that is the 50th celebration for many Prides, Pride will take place at the exact time in nearly every country in the world. To have the whole world sharing such and experience — viewing live streams that host speeches, musical performances, activists, and virtual dance parties. Personally, I am totally down for this.

I wonder if this odd time we’re in is paving the way for more events like this.

I can just imagine how many people who have been unable to attend a Pride event for any number of reasons will now have this global supportive network literally in the palm of their hand. Historic to say the least, but this time of isolation just may also prove to be the biggest global outreach and connection event our Prideful souls have experienced.

Happy Pride! Q Dr. Laurie Bennett-Cook is a Clinical Sexologist with a private practice in Salt Lake City. During this pandemic she is seeing clients virtually on a “pay what you can” basis. She can be reached at: DrLaurieBennettCook@gmail.com

JUNE, 2020 | ISSUE 312 | Qsaltlake.com

HOLLYWOOD | QSALTLAKE MAGAZINE | 43

deep inside hollywood Janelle Monae’s Homecoming Based on the podcast of the same name, the Amazon sci-fi series Homecoming takes place in a secret government facility that runs tests on American soldiers with an experimental PTSD therapy. Season one of the hit show starred Julia Roberts, but season two will be all about Janelle Monae. Although the details are more or less under wraps, it’s known that Monae’s character will have nearly complete memory loss, a person who doesn’t know her own identity. This, in turn, leads her to the Homecoming Initiative, and the discovery of nefarious goings on within the program. The only first season returnees known at the moment are Hong Chau (Downsizing) and Stephan James (If Beale Street Could Talk), but that’s not to say that other regulars like Sissy Spacek, Bobby Cannavale, and perhaps even Roberts, won’t be involved. If you’d like that mystery solved, you can tune into Amazon Prime on May 22.

One Day at a Time turns ’toon Pop TV’s series One Day at a Time, like so many other projects, came to an abrupt production standstill in midMarch, with about half of the season’s episodes wrapped.

What to do? Scrap the season?

Wait it out until production picks up again? Or… turn it into a cartoon! Well, that’s what’s going to happen for at least one upcoming special episode — due to air later this spring — where the beloved and queer inclusive sitcom becomes entirely ’tooned. The cast — Justina Machado, Rita Moreno, Stephen Tobolowsky, Todd Grinnell, Isabella Gomez and Marcel Ruiz, alongside

some as-yet-unnamed special guest stars — will record their vocal performances, the action will be created by animators, and we will be the grateful recipients. The episode is apparently election-themed (Remember that? There is one happening this year allegedly.) because in early March that thing you were already exhausted by now feels, in early May, like a welcome reprieve from constantly wondering if that guy who jogged by you too closely without a mask is an asymptomatic carrier. Stay inside and watch this show, folks!

P-Valley’s hustlers are coming to Starz Heard of Katori Hall yet?

Well, here’s where you get familiar. She’s an Olivier Award-winning playwright, whose most famous work, The Mountaintop, a fictionalized account of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s last night alive, opened on Broadway in 2011. She’s the bookwriter and co-producer of Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, and now she’s the showrunner of the new Starz drama, P-Valley, a series based on her play Pussy Valley. (TV is somewhat more skittish than the theater about that word, it would appear.) It concerns strippers in the Deep South, their complex lives and dreams, and according to advance press it’s a moody and atmospheric piece of work. Furthermore, putting its money where its mouth is, so far every episode in the can has been directed by a woman, including Kimberly Peirce, Tamra Davis, and Empire star Tasha Smith. It drops this summer, a time when clothes come off, which is only appropriate. Q Romeo San Vicente longs to touch you.

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44 | QSALTLAKE MAGAZINE | HEALTH

Qsaltlake.com | ISSUE 312 | JUNE, 2020

Utah AIDS Foundation endorses 2-1-1 PrEP non-daily dosing regimen The San Francisco AIDS Foundation launched a study of a non-daily dosing regimen for HIV prevention early last year that showed such efficacy in blocking the transmission of HIV that the World Health Organization endorsed it a year ago this month. The Unitred States Food and Drug Administration has not yet put its stamp of approval, however.

The Utah AIDS Foundation became the first Utah health organization to officially endorse the dosing regimen as well.

“The science supporting the efficacy of event-based PrEP has been around since 2008 and is commonly used in many European countries,” wrote Ahmer Afroz, UAF’s executive director. “With the World Health Organization endorsing the protocol this past June, several agencies around the U.S. have begun to endorse the protocol as well.”

“Through consultation with some of Utah’s foremost infectious disease clinicians working in HIV prevention, treatment, and care, the Utah AIDS Foundation is proud to be the first agency in Utah to openly endorse the efficacy of the ED-PrEP regimen,” Afroz continued.

“The science is there, and we will always strive to provide and advocate for high impact evidence-based tools that the communities we serve deserve. It is important to note that the on ED-PrEP protocol is currently not FDA approved and should be considered through consultation with your medical provider.”

To learn more about the protocol, we encourage you to visit our website, utahaids.org, and reference the WHO technical brief accessed at https://www. who.int/hiv/pub/prep/211/en/.”

What is Event-Driven PrEP? Event-based PrEP (ED-PrEP), commonly referred to as on-demand PrEP or PrEP 2-1-1, is taking Truvada only around the time of sex or potential HIV transmission.

This is instead of taking Truvada daily.

The dosing regimen is geared toward

people who are sexually active only on occasion and therefore might not need the daily dose of Truvada as pre-exposure prophylaxis that is currently recommended by the FDA. Specifically, the 2-1-1 dosing requires you to do the following: take two tablets of Truvada (a double dose) at least two hours before you anticipate having sex, but preferably 24 hours beforehand. If sex

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does happen, take another pill 24 hours and then 48 hours after the double dose.

If you have sex again (meaning the day after your first encounter), then take one tablet every day you have sex, plus a pill 24 hours after the last dose (the last day you have sex) and then again 24 hours after that.

In other words, you take PrEP during a short period when you’re having sex, and you don’t take PrEP when you’re not having sex.

Who should consider ED-PrEP? ED-PrEP is only for cisgender men who have sex with cisgender men. It has not been studied for cis-gender or transgender women, and in fact researchers believe it will not work for vaginal/ frontal sex.

According to WHO, ED-PrEP is not appropriate for cisgender women, transgender women, transgender men having vaginal/frontal sex, men having vaginal or anal sex with women, or people with chronic Hepatitis B infection.

Where can I get PrEP? blackBOOTS Salt Lake City hosts a page of PrEP resources at blackbootsslc.org/ prep-resources for insured and uninsured people.

On it you can find a long list of Utah doctors across the state that are prescribing PrEP to their clients.

For those who are uninsured, the University of Utah Health Department has a Free PrEP Clinic. Information is available at slcPrEPisfree.org

Things to consider

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While PrEP failures are rare, they can occur. This is also true of the ED-PrEP protocol and we encourage all those interested to research their options and consult a medical provider before beginning the protocol.It is important to note that since this protocol is currently not FDA approved, some providers may refuse to endorse the 2-1-1 protocol. Q For more information, go to UtahAids.org or blackbootsslc. org/prep-resources.

SEPTEMBER 19, 2019 |

ISSUE 304 | Qsaltlake.com

DINING GUIDE | QSALTLAKE MAGAZINE | 45

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46 | QSALTLAKE MAGAZINE | FINAL WORD

Qsaltlake.com | ISSUE 312 | JUNE, 2020

the perils of petunia pap smear

A tale of the straight and narrow

BY PETUNIA PAP SMEAR

The road

to walking the straight and narrow is fraught with danger and excitement.

Two months ago I told you of my attack of the dizzies. Let me continue that story. After the hunky emergency room doctor told me I had a case of vertigo, he prescribed that I take Dramamine and, to my immense disappointment, before I could get him to give me a pelvic exam, told me to go home and make an appointment with the dizzy clinic. Who knew there was such a thing as a dizzy clinic?

When imagining a place called the dizzy clinic, all I could visualize was a building full of blond people unable to form coherent common-sense trains of thought and incapable of finding the exits. Reluctantly, I called the dizzy office and the soonest they could get me in was a week later. I was still very wobbly and unable to walk unassisted so in the meantime, while awaiting my appointment, I decided to do some online research about vertigo to see if I could find a way to lessen my distress.

My first Google search turned up a review of Vertigo, the Alfred Hitchcock movie, so I watched it while lying in bed to see if I might be able to pick up a few tips. I must have fallen asleep during the movie because I woke up screaming just as Jimmy Stewart pushed me off of the bell tower at First Baptist Church and the immensity of my bodicus profundus abun-

7pm, most third Fridays First Baptist Church, 777 S 1300 E fb.me/matronsofmayhem

dus was plunging downward on a collision course with a line of people waiting to enter for Third Friday Bingo. More quickly than if I had announced that I needed help moving to a new house, the people fled in all directions, lest they be skewered by a plummeting breasticle.

On the day of my dizzy clinic appointment, I was very apprehensive as Nurse Ratchet, who could best be described as a female Gollum, led me to the examination room. Just who and what were they going to do to me? My pulse quickened when the doctor entered the room. OMG, what a superb specimen of humanity.

To my astonishment and delight, he was wearing a snugly fitting t-shirt, that showed off a classic V-shaped torso, rippling abs, and bulging biceps. As if that were not tempting enough, he was also wearing tightly packed mid-thigh length shorts, barely able to contain significant bulges in all the strategic places with tanned muscular powerful legs protruding below. He looked more like a personal trainer at a gym than a medical clinician.

Six-packs and biceps and thighs, oh my!

Doctor Swoonworthy sat on one of those rolling stools and wheeled himself directly in front of me, placing my legs between his muscular thighs with my knees almost touching his crotch area.

My pulse quickened. He gently cupped my chin with his left hand and held open my eyes with his right hand while he shined a blindingly bright light while gazing into my eyes. I felt as if he were looking directly into my soul. His lips were tantalizingly close to mine. I could feel his minty fresh breath wafting ever so gently over my face. My God, I was getting dizzier with each passing second.

Before I could collect my senses, Doc Swoonworthy placed my arm on his and his hand on the small of my back lest I fall over to help guide me to an exercise room. I nearly fainted. If it weren’t for me being so unsteady on my feet, we could have danced a waltz. For my first task, he asked me to walk heel-to-toe in a

straight line without falling. He followed me, holding his hands just inches away, to catch me if I lost balance. It was an exceptionally good thing that he was a powerfully built man because I was only able to take about three steps before tottering over. He deftly caught me in his powerful arms and stood me back up. Repeatedly, over, and over. I must have toppled over at least six times.

Next Doc Swoony required me to stand on one foot, with eyes closed to see if I could remain upright. I could not. Again, Doctor Flawless had to catch me several times. Each time he would catch me, I would open my eyes to see his crystal blue eyes gazing into mine. One time, I could have sworn that his eyes sparkled like diamonds.

Subsequently, Doctor Pornworthy required me to perform several more equally humiliating exercises. Each and every one designed to cause me to lose my balance, with him catching me each time.

And to add temptation to embarrassment, in all this manhandling he would crack a wide smile with perfect teeth and giggle.

After an hour of this, I was very exhausted and ready to go home, but I was ever so eager to make a return appointment.

This story leaves us with several important questions: 1. Should I form a petition to request that a pelvic exam be standard with every emergency room visit? If only to check for clean underwear?

2. If I had indeed fallen from the bell tower, would the resulting crash have set off the Wasatch Fault?

3. Would taking a field sobriety test have prepared me for these exercises?

4. When Doc Swoonworthy was looking into my eyes, was he doing a medical check or inspecting my make-up?

5. Just how many times did I fall into Doctor Swoonworthy’s arms on purpose?

6. Should I install convenient grab bars on my breasticles to enable Doctor Swoonworthy more easily to steady me?

7. Was I tipping over because I was dizzy or because my breasticles made me topheavy?

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

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