This Week In Gay History

In May the Tennessee Senate passed a bill that would make it illegal for teachers to even mention homosexuality in any context before 9 grade. That bill is expected to go to the Tennessee House in 2012.

Tuesday the California Assembly passed a bill that requires schools to include the accomplishments of LGBT people in their history lessons at all grade levels. The Democrat-controlled Assembly voted 49 to 25 for the FAIR Education Act. The Senate approved the measure in April. It now goes to Governor Jerry Brown for his signature. Brown is expected to sign it. Assembly Speaker John Perez, a Democrat from LA, the first openly gay Speaker of the California State Assembly, had urged lawmakers to approve a measure. The bill's sponsor, Sate Senator Mark Leno, Democrat from San Francisco:

"It’s no different than instructing students about the historical role of an African-American man by the name of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., fighting for civil rights & being assassinated for his efforts than teaching students about a gay American man by the name of Harvey Milk fighting for every man’s civil rights & being assassinated for his efforts. Why deny all students the benefit of that knowledge?"

Born On This Day- July 5th... Over Achiever- Jean Cocteau

My husband is a hyphenate (most people in Portland are), as an artist-designer-set designer, but he is a bit of an underachiever, compared with poet-artist-playwright-actor-designer-photographer-filmmaker-boxing manager- Jean Cocteau. Cocteau published his 1st volume of poems when he was 19. He was a well regarded artist & popular man-about-town in Paris, with the success of several ballets & plays that he wrote in his late 20s. In the early 1920s, Cocteau's lover, writer Raymond Radiguet, died of typhoid fever; the despondent Cocteau escaped the pain of his loss with the help of opium. In 1930, Cocteau tried film making as the medium best suited for his artistic expression. His stylized, homoerotic films are taken from Cocteau's drawings: bold, simple strokes, accentuated eyes, minimalist outlines & profiles, & erotic, surrealistic portraits that dominate the sets of his films. In his later films, Cocteau included bits of his poetry written in his distinctive handwriting, samples of his drawings & paintings, narration, & cast himself in certain roles.

Cocteau’s work is marked by whimsical special effects & exotic landscapes & themes of narcissism, the Orpheus myth, mirrors, passages to secret worlds, fairy tales, flowers, & beautiful people in iconographic settings. In 1937, Cocteau met Jean Marais, the most famous of his lovers, & helped make his talented, handsome, & athletic protégé into one of France's most beloved movie stars. Cocteau made with Marais, such classics films as La belle et la bête & Orphée.

Cocteau by Modigliani

Cocteau encouraged artists to speak out against unjust political domination, & yet he was burdened by the open secrets of his opium use & homosexuality, which made him particularly vulnerable to attack by the right-wing government. During the Nazi Occupation, Cocteau's plays were banned & Cocteau was a victim of physical violence & homophobic insults. But still, Cocteau wrote, made films, traveled, & attracted famous friends, patrons, & protégés throughout the rest of his life. Cocteau was elected to the prestigious Académie Français. The artist died of a heart attack in 1963, just an hour after learning of singer Édith Piaf's death. He wrote more than 30 volumes of poetry, 7 novels, 24 plays, 11 ballets, 6 operas, 6 full length films, & 100s of drawings & photographs. He contributed to the worlds of publishing, graphic design, clothing design, & interior design. Jean Cocteau continues to this day as one of France's most famous, & most adored, cultural icons. A fascinating gay man of the 20th century. How about Adrien Brody in the title role of the film of his life story?

On This Day In Gay History-July 4th... The Annual Reminders

I love this country. I really do. I am very much an American, a direct descendant of founding mothers & fathers on both sides of my family. On my mother's side I have a direct line back to Martha Washington & on my father's side I am a relation to Edward Rutledge (my father's name also), a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

I have major quibbles with a great many of my fellow countrymen. At the very least, I don't believe it is an American value to put the basic civil rights of a minority up for the popular vote, a very bad idea for advancing society. This is why our form of government is such a superior system: We elect fellow citizens to make the big decisions & figure out a way to implement the plan. I insist that this country is an on-going project & I reject the Republican/Conservative notion of returning to "Those Good Old Days When America Stood For Something".

Only a week ago I did a post on Stonewall & what that night & those days that followed mean to gay Americans. But Stonewall, watershed moment that it was, is not the only baby steps taken by brave gay people to claim our basic rights.

July 4th commemorates the "Annual Reminder," the first public demonstration for gay rights in the USA, which began on this day in 1965, 4 years before the rebellion at the Stonewall Inn in NYC. The name of the event was selected to remind the public that a substantial amount of American citizens were being denied the rights of "life, liberty, & the pursuit of happiness" as put forth in The Declaration Of Independence.

The peaceful, orderly protest of 39 brave souls, with lesbians wearing dresses & gay men in suits & ties, circled in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia, with signs bearing slogans such as "Homosexuals Should Be Judged as Individuals", & 15 Million Homosexual Americans Ask For Equality. Opportunity & Dignity." The "Annual Reminder" continued at the same spot on Philadelphia through 1969, but after the Stonewall riots the movement shifted to NYC.

There was very little press coverage, although Confidential magazine ran a feature- HOMOS ON THE MARCH!

The organizer was Craig Rodwell, an early gay activist, one time lover of Harvey Milk & Founder of The Oscar Wilde Bookstore in NYC. Behind the protest was Barbara Gittings, who had moved to Philadelphia in the 1950s & became one of the country's most important gay activists. She also helped organize picket lines at the White House and the U.S. State Department. Among her many accomplishments, she was instrumental in getting the American Psychiatric Association to drop homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses in 1972.

 

The Annual Reminders were commemorated in 2005 by the placement of a Pennsylvania State Historical Marker at 6th & Chestnut Streets in Phili.

Wouldn't it be a kick & plenty subversive if at the 2012 Pride Parades, all the marchers showed up in dresses, suites & ties?

 

On This Day In Gay History... Spain Recognizes Same-Sex Marriage

On July 3, 2005, when the Spanish parliament approved same-sex marriage, it handed a major victory to the Socialist Party &  produced the ire of the Roman Catholic Church, which denounced the measure as "unjust."

Spain followed  The Netherlands & Belgium, where same-sex marriage has been legal for some time.  Other European countries followed, with same- sex marriage now legal in Norway, Sweden, Iceland, & Portugal.

The vote was held after Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero unexpectedly took the floor of parliament to speak in its support.  Zapatero: "We are expanding the opportunities for happiness of our neighbors, our colleagues, our friends & our relatives. At the same time, we are building a more decent society."

Rafael Nadal remains single...

25 Years Ago In Gay History... Bowers V Hardwick

"Bowers was not correct when it was decided, & it is not correct today. It ought not to remain binding precedent. Bowers v. Hardwick should be & now is overruled."

Justice Kennedy in Lawrence v. Texas

One of the most significant of of all legal decisions having to do with gay rights is the infamous Bowers v. Hardwick:

Michael Hardwick was a bartender in a gay bar in Atlanta, Georgia who was targeted by a police officer for harassment. In 1982, an unknowing house guest let the officer let into Hardwick’s home. The officer went to the bedroom where Hardwick was engaged in oral sex with his partner. The men were arrested on the charge of sodomy. Charges were later dropped, but Hardwick brought the case forward with the purpose of having the sodomy law declared unconstitutional.

Bowers was a response to a particularly insulting police action & repeal advocates had hoped that the case would put an end to sodomy laws in the United States when it reached the Supreme Court. Unfortunately, the 5-4 decision found that nothing in the Constitution "would extend a fundamental right to homosexuals to engage in acts of consensual sodomy."

Justice Lewis Powell was the swing vote in the decision, switching from supporting invalidating all sodomy laws to denying homosexuals any right of privacy. In October of 1990, 3 years after his retirement, Powell told a group of New York University Law students, "I think I probably made a mistake in that one." He told the National Law Journal, "That case was not a major case, & one of the reasons I voted the way I did was the case was a frivolous case" brought "just to see what the court would do" on the subject. A more callous opinion is hard to imagine.

The case was overturned 17 years later by Lawrence & Garner v. State of Texas.

On This Day In Gay History... STONEWALL

I had to explain Stonewall to a group of 6 young people that I supervise. 2 of the group are gay. None of them had heard of Stonewall. I had to explain it to them, & they got quite an earful.

That the amazing news from New York State should have happened during NYC's Gay Pride & so close to this landmark anniversary was just icing on the wedding cake.

It was just 50 years ago, homosexuals were classified as subversives by the US Department of State; we were officially recognized as security risks to the country. The FBI kept lists of known homosexuals, as did the US Postal Service. The names of people arrested for public indecency & lewd behavior (men holding hands, women wearing suits) were published regularly in newspapers. Being queer was officially recognized as a psychopathic condition, & was a valid reason to be fired from your job. Gay men & women forced out of the government positions by the 1000s each year. If gay people regularly congregated together, the police department’s “Public Morals Squad” would be called in to intervene. Police brutality was commonplace. Hope for the future was pretty bleak; there were no substantial gay rights organizations. The only real community gay people had was in underground establishments, often maintained with help from the Mafia, or by bribing the police.

On June 27, 1969, the NYC tactical police force raided a popular Greenwich Village gay bar- the Stonewall Inn. Raids were not unusual in 1969; in fact, they were conducted regularly without much resistance. But, that night the street erupted into violent protest as the crowds in the bar fought back. The backlash & several nights of protest that followed have come to be known as the Stonewall Riots.

Prior to that summer there was little public expression of the lives & experiences of gays & lesbians. The Stonewall Riots marked the beginning of the gay liberation movement that has transformed the oppression of gay people into calls for pride & action. In the past 42 years, we have all been witness to an astonishing rise of gay culture that has changed this country & the world, forever.

Click on image in enlarge...NYTimes, July 29,

On This Day In Gay History- June 26th

In 1998, John Lawrence & Tyron Garner were arrested in Lawrence’s Houston home & jailed overnight after officers responding to a false report found the men having sex. The two men were convicted of violating Texas’s “Homosexual Conduct” law, which made it a crime for two people of the same sex to have oral or anal sex, even though those sex acts were legal in Texas for people to engage in with persons of a different sex. Lambda Legal quickly responded to represent Lawrence and Garner. Battling for years in the Texas courts, they sought to overturn the criminal convictions (which made the 2 men registrable “sex offenders” in several states) & to have Texas’s law declared unconstitutional. When the highest court in Texas eventually refused to even hear the arguments, the U.S. Supreme Court to take the case On this day in 2003, in a stunning victory, the highest court in the land found the “Homosexual Conduct” law unconstitutional & established, for the 1st time ever, that lesbians & gay men share the same fundamental liberty right to private sexual intimacy with another adult that heterosexuals have.


The mere existence of sodomy laws often had been used to justify wholesale discrimination against LGBT people. In striking down those laws, this historic ruling removed a major roadblock in the battle for LGBT rights. No longer can gay people be considered “criminals” because they love others of the same sex. Moreover, laws that deny gay people liberty or equal protection no longer can be justified on moral grounds alone.


The breadth of this landmark case is extraordinary. The Supreme Court declared all sodomy laws unconstitutional, putting an end to the sodomy laws that remained on the books in 13 states at the time of the ruling, including laws that criminalized only same-sexual conduct & laws that criminalized oral & anal sex irrespective of the sex of the participants. The Court also reversed Bowers v. Hardwick, its 1986 decision that upheld Georgia’s sodomy law that had been extraordinarily harmful to gay people’s struggles both for liberty & equality. The decision’s sweeping language about gay people’s equal rights to liberty marked a new era of legal respect for the LGBT community. Lawrence v. Texas is considered the most significant gay rights breakthrough of our time.


I think I may have to celebrate this historic anniversary with some hot & very legal man sex.

Happy Birthday, Larry Kramer

Last year on this day, I posted on Larry Kramer's birthday, the essence of that post is repeated below. I discovered that Mr. Kramer had commented on that post, providing me with one of the top thrilling turning points in my life. On my modest little spot on the Internet, I have been blessed with comments from writers & musicians that I have posted about, but Kramer is a pivotal, phenomenal, & have to say it-  most QUEER figures in my life.

His work & his life have informed, impressed & influenced my life like few others. From his novel- Faggots to his most recent rants, Kramer is a part of who I am today. I remember coming home from work & dancing, screaming to the Husband- "Larry Kramer left a comment on Post Apocalyptic Bohemian! Oh, my God, Oh, my God!"

In April of 2011, Kramer took on editor/writer Thomas Rogers of Salon, in a generation on generation debate about gay identity. I understood Kramer's position. Like Kramer, I am not Post-Gay. Before I am an American, before I am a white male, before I am a progressive... I am a Gay Man. The struggles, sensibilities &  spirit that give me breath are linked directly to being a gay man. As I have stated before, if I was not gay, I would be a white- straight- Protestant male, I would be- The Man. I have always considered being gay to be a gift from God. I would not wanted to live my life as an insider.

This month marked the 30th anniversary of the first diagnosed cases of AIDS.

Larry Kramer was there & he wrote a play- The Normal Heart, which I have a bit of history with.

The Normal Heart, which is currently on Broadway, on the high holy day of Tony Award night,  won for Best Revival of a Play, along with Best Supporting Actor & Actress for John Benjamin Hickey & Ellen Barkin. Kramer was on stage to accept the award with the producers: “To gay people everywhere, whom I love so dearly, The Normal Heart is our history. I could not have written it had not so many needlessly died. Learn from it & carry on the fight. Let them know that we are a very special people, an exceptional people, &  that, our day will come.”

Here is my story with my link to Larry Kramer & The Normal Heart:

Despite my reputation as a hedonist, a fellow known to swig & smoke & swallow substances to feel better, forget, or lose myself; I have never performed while anything less than stone cold sober. As an actor & a singer I was always clean as a whistle, had my homework done, was prompt for rehearsals & performances, & made it a point to get along with the cast & crew.


I had done a lot of work, a lot of good work, sometimes with some troublesome behavior swirling around me, at the now defunct- Pioneer Square Theatre in the 1980s. I was not completely surprised, but still thrilled, when the artistic director & the managing director told me that they had seen a production of Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart in London, & that they had secured the rights for the 1st Seattle production with me in mind for the role of Ned Weeks (the stand in for Kramer himself). I had already read the play & I was very intrigued with the idea of playing someone so close to my own personality. I usually was chosen for roles that were not anything like the real me. It was a breathtakingly good role in a powerful play. I never assumed for even a moment that the role was sewn up. I worked especially hard at the audition & call back, but I had a different kind of confidence, knowing that it was originally chosen with me in mind.

I didn’t get the part. I never portrayed Ned Weeks, a role on paper that haunted me with the likeness to my own psyche.
The role went to the artistic director himself, a straight man, who must have realized how juicy the character was. I was offered another role & was told- “you are much too good for the part, but we would still like you to be a part of this project.” I should have been a better man & a better actor; I turned down the smaller role.

I had an inner dialogue congratulating myself on dealing with my dreams being dashed in such a mature way. I never shed a tear or had a regret. I wished them all well & moved on. I had read a week’s worth of press before the opening & didn’t flinch with a sadness for opportunities lost. But, on the afternoon of the opening of The Normal Heart… I broke out in a serious case of the hives. Every inch of my body covered in welts & rashes. 6 weeks of bottling up my feelings & putting on my proud face took a toll on my body & I was a mess. I finally cried. I would never be Ned Weeks. The Husband: “The body is a powerful thing. Yours in giving you a really strong message.”

Larry Kramer was an accidental leader, thrown into action during the 1st days of the AIDS epidemic when his friends began getting infected. Kramer: "I was just a New York faggot like everyone else who was gay then. I didn't march in Pride. We used to be at Fire Island & make fun of all that." Kramer is an immensely accomplished playwright, screenwriter, novelist, & journalist. Kramer described himself as a shy person who "gets nervous when I'm away from my computer." He was nominated for a Tony for The Normal Heart, won an Obie Award for his 1993 play The Destiny of Me (also a runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize), & his screenplay for the film Women in Love was nominated for an Academy Award in 1969.

Larry Kramer's Faggots has been in print since its original publication in 1978. It has become one of the best-selling novels about gay life ever written. The book is a fierce satire of the gay ghetto & a touching story of a man's desperate search for love. I guess little has changed since 1978. Celebrated & reviled, this gay classic is not for the faint of heart. It is a harsh, fascinating look at the excesses of a generation that couldn't hear the bell tolling over the disco beat.


As AIDS threatened the lives of his friends, & fueled by fear & anger at the government for ignoring the epidemic, Kramer co-founded Gay Men's Health Crisis, the first & world's largest service provider to people with AIDS, in 1981. Frustrated by that organization's non-confrontational nature, he launched the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power-ACT UP in 1987, leading a grassroots effort for the approval process for drugs to treat AIDS. At its height from the late1980s to the mid 1990s, ACT UP boasted 140 chapters nationwide.


He is a powerful & profound writer & a real crank. Kramer: "You do not get more with honey than with vinegar. You get it by being harsh & demanding and in-your-face – constantly. We're all anxious to have everyone love us. It's difficult to maintain that if you have strong opinions."

Larry Kramer lives in NYC & in a country house in Connecticut, with David Webster, an architect, & the man for whom Mr. Kramer has waited 17 years. The pair met in the late 1960's & dated in the 1970s, but spent the 1980's apart.. Webster came back into Kramer's life in the 1990's, HIV negative & ready to live out his life with Kramer. The effect he has had on Kramer is said to be palpable, the calm that comes with finally being seen, finally being heard, & finally being loved.

Oh, Boy!

Norma Jean

"Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius & it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring."

It was announced at the Cannes Film Festival that Naomi Watts will play Monroe in a biopic based on author Joyce Carol Oates’s controversial, fictionalized memoir, 2000’s Blonde. The movie, also called Blonde, is to start filming in January 2011. Michelle Williams is to play Monroe in a film directed by Simon Curtis, which focuses on the screen legend’s time spent in England while filming 1957’s The Prince and the Showgirl with Laurence Olivier.

She is long gone but never forgotten.

Marilyn Monroe, star of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, The Seven Year Itch, Some Like It Hot, How to Marry a Millionaire & Bus Stop, was born Norma Jeane Mortenson on June 1, 1926 in Los Angeles.

She signed her first studio contract with Twentieth Century Fox in 1946 for $125 a week, Norma Jeane dyed her hair blonde & changed her name to Marilyn Monroe.

Monroe was pure & profane, & she soon became myth & metaphor as Hollywood’s most famous martyred saint. At the height of her fame, she had received 5,000 fan letters a week. Many were from men & women who talked about the sadness in her eyes, her vulnerability, &how they identified with her.

From Monroe’s first film, Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay!, in 1948, to her last, The Misfits, in 1962, she went from studio created blonde bimbo to a trained, heartbreaking actress of depth & soul. She is beyond camp. she was different than Jayne Mansfield & Mamie Van Doren, who Hollywood used to replace her. She was irreplaceable.



On an early morning in the summer of 1962, Monroe died in her sleep at her Brentwood, California home. Suicide, accident or murder? She was 36 years old. Monroe remains a gay icon. She would have been 85 years old today. If she had lived, Monroe could have tossed off her demons & would have probably become a nimble comic actor, making fun of herself & guest hosting on SNL to acclaim & high ratings.

June is Busting Out All Over

On this day in 1901, English playwright, director, & screenwriter John van Druten was born. In the early 1930s, he was one of the most successful playwrights in London with star studded West End productions: Diversion, After All, There's Always Juliet, Behold, We Live & Flowers of the Forest. Van Druten moved to the USA where one of his successful plays Bell, Book, & Candle was made into a rather good movie movie in 1950 starring Kim Novak & Jimmy Stewart. The original play was about the gay underground in NYC's Greenwich Village, with witches & their magic substituting for gay & special. Bell, Book & Candle is about witches living in the village. They have special 'witch bars,' & they are always worrying about being outed. He wrote the screenplays for Old Acquaintance,Voice Of The Turtle & Leave Her To Heaven.  His play- I Am A Camera was based on the Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood & was the basis for the musical Cabaret. He was gay & English, a winning combo.

On this day in 1970, Sexology magazine reported that a study shows that gay men have larger penises than heterosexual men.

On this day in1994 - the Pentagon considered a proposal from the Air Force requesting funds to build a "gay bomb" that would turn enemy troops gay. The proposal came to light in 2007 when the Sunshine Project discovered it through a Freedom of Information Act disclosure. As part of a military effort to develop non-lethal weapons, the proposal suggested: "One distasteful but completely non-lethal example would be strong aphrodisiacs, especially if the chemical also caused homosexual behavior." I like the idea of the Iraqis & the US soldiers in an orgy of lust... the war would have gone much differently.The documents show the Air Force lab asked for $7.5 million to develop such a chemical weapon. The called the new weapon- The Poppers.

In the words of Oscar Hammerstein II:

But it's comin' by dawn,
We can feel it come,
You can feel it in your heart
You can see it on the ground
Just because it's June, June, June!

On This Day In Gay History: Colorado's Romer V Evans

The Human Rights Campaign tells us that 3 out of 5 citizens live in jurisdictions that don't have antidiscrimination protections. Federal legislation to include those protections nationally, known as the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, remains stuck in Congress.

In Tennessee the legislature has given final approval to do away with antidiscrimination laws enacted by local governments. The push is specifically targeted at a Nashville ordinance which includes sexual orientation & gender identity to the list of groups who are protected from discrimination.

Republicans in the Tennessee House & Senate have succeeded in passing this anti-gay legislation. The final bill now goes to Governor Bill Haslam, a Republican.

It seems to me that Tennessee is wasting valuable time & money on this issue when the United States Supreme Court ruled on this issue  in the case of Romer v Evans, decided 15 years ago on this very day- May 20th.

Amendment 2 was an antigay initiative prohibiting all branches of state government in Colorado from passing legislation or adopting policies prohibiting discrimination against lesbians, gay men or bisexuals based on their sexual orientation. The measure was passed in 1992 by 53% of Colorado’s voters.

Working with the ACLU and the Colorado Legal Initiatives Project, Lambda Legal won preliminary court rulings that kept the measure from taking effect until this lawsuit was resolved. The case went before theSupreme Court, which struck down Amendment 2 in a landmark 6–3 ruling. In declaring Amendment 2 unconstitutional, the Court made clear that antigay sentiment does not justify governmental discrimination & shattered the “special rights” rhetoric of those who oppose equal treatment for lesbian, gay and bisexual people.

The Court’s ruling made clear that gay people have the same right to seek government protection against discrimination as any other group of people. The decision also marked a new level of legal respect for LGBT people & rejected the notion that it is legitimate for the government to discriminate against gay people based on moral objections to homosexuality.

Justice Kennedy wrote the decision: & stated: To the contrary, the amendment imposes a special disability upon those persons alone. Homosexuals are forbidden the safeguards that others enjoy or may seek without constraint. Its sheer breadth is so discontinuous with the reasons offered for it that the amendment seems inexplicable by anything but animus toward the class that it affects; it lacks a rational relationship to legitimate state interests.

Amendment 2 is at once too narrow & too broad. It identifies persons by a single trait and then denies them protection across the board. The resulting disqualification of a class of persons from the right to seek specific protection from the law is unprecedented in our jurisprudence.

"It is not within our constitutional tradition to enact laws of this sort. Finding that laws of the kind now before us raise the inevitable inference that the disadvantage imposed is born of animosity toward the class of persons affected, the Court implied that the passage of Amendment 2 was born of a bare desire to harm a politically unpopular group."

The always charming Justice Anoin Scalia wrote a dissent, which was joined by the lovely Justice Clareneve Thomas. Scalia wrote: Amendment 2 is a modest attempt by seemingly tolerant Coloradans to preserve traditional sexual mores against the efforts of a politically powerful minority to revise those mores through use of the laws.

In 2007, a law was passed that banned discrimination based on sexual orientation & gender identity in Colorado.

Born On This Day- April 6th... Rob Epstein

He is a Director, Editor, Executive Producer, Cinematographer, Producer, Sound/Sound Designer, & Screenwriter.From the beginning of his career, Oscar winner-Robert Epstein has sought to explore issues of homosexuality onscreen. At 19 years old, he responded to an ad looking for a director to contribute to the nonfiction film Word Is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives (1977). The finished film is a compilation of gay lives that shatter common stereotypes. The film was an impressive debut from such a very young man. Epsteins’ next work was the hugely successful The Times of Harvey Milk (1983), Epstein’s heroic homage to our hero, Harvey Milk, the gay city supervisor & assassination victim. It won an Academy Award for Best Documentary & a host of other honors. The film was screened at festivals & in mainstream theaters.

In 1987, Epstein teamed up with filmmaker Jeffrey Friedman to form Telling Pictures Production in San Francisco, California. Their first film together was Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt, inspired by the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt on the Mall in Washington DC. Narrated by Dustin Hoffman, Common Threads tells the dramatic story of the first decade of HIV/AIDS in America through stories of 5 individuals featured in the Quilt. Epstein won his second Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for Common Threads.

Next was The Celluloid Closet (1995), another collaboration by Epstein & Friedman. It took 9 years to finance, produce, & release; started in 1986, it finally had a theatrical release with the help of HBO Films. Narrated by Lily Tomlin, this star-studded film offered one of the first serious, in-depth explorations of Hollywood's onscreen treatment of homosexuality.

In 2000, Epstein & Friedman directed & produced Paragraph 175, a film about the experiences of homosexuals during the Nazi regime in Europe. Narrated by Rupert Everett, & filmed in Germany, France & Spain, Paragraph 175 was awarded the documentary Grand Jury Prize for Directing at Sundance in 2000, with European premiere at the Berlin Film Festival where it was won the International Film Critics Association Award.

Epstein moved to a fiction film scripting & producing 2010's Howl, a dramatization of the 1957 obscenity trial surrounding beat poet Allen Ginsberg, played in the film by my boyfriend- James Franco, & my occasional lover- Jon Hamm.

Rob Epstein lives & works in San Fransisco. He turns 56 years old today.

On This Day In Gay History

"U.S. Customs officials at Pearson International Airport in Canada were able to stop the latest pair of 'domestic terrorists.' Kevin Bourassa & Joe Varnell attempted to enter the United States Thursday as a married couple ..." Concerned Women of America, January 15th, 2001 


Kevin Bourassa & Joe Varnell are reluctant human rights heroes.

10 years ago today, they were the first same-sex couple to be legally married in North America. The couple married in Toronto at Riverdale’s Metropolitan Community Church on Jan. 14, 2001. The couples will renew their vows in a 10th anniversary celebration today.


While neither marriage was officially recognized by the Ontario government until the courts deemed them legal in 2003, the 2001 ceremony still represents a major milestone in gay civil rights.


The ceremony was a mix of terror and love. It took place under heavy police guard and Reverend Brent Hawkes performed the service wearing a bulletproof vest. The day before their marriage, fearing their lives could be in danger for the vows they were about to exchange, the couple said farewell to their families & to each other.


Bourassa: “Our constitution made the marriage possible, Pierre Trudeau is a hero still to us & we were married with red roses. We said goodbye to people, we told them we loved them. We were told we were under threat. The last words police officers said to us as we went down the aisle was, ‘If you hear a shot don’t move, somebody will move you, just stand still.’ We were told if a shot was going to come it would most likely be when we signed the papers because they’d try to stop us from signing.”


The couple were driven to the service by bodyguards who used a different route to get to the church. Dozens of police officers attended.


Bourassa: “Marriage is the ultimate right. With marriage comes everything else: the right to work, to adopt children, to visit people in hospital. This really has changed things & it has shifted the conversation away from just who you can have sex with to who you can love. The public responds to that.”


Bourassa gave up a successful banking career to work full time on Marriage Equality & has become an advocate & in demand public speaker on the issue: “If I knew then what I know now, I would have said, ‘No, are you crazy? No bloody way,’ Joe would have. He would have done this. He is my better half. But this changed me to become a better person… involuntarily. For this, I am glad, but it came at great personal cost.”


To this day, Varnell & Bourassa still can’t fly into the USA. Homeland Security won’t let them in because they declare themselves a family.


Immediately following the ceremony came the court challenges after Ontario refused to acknowledge the nuptials.


The first win came from the Ontario divisional court in 2002. The court said the law denying same-sex couples the right to marry was unconstitutional but the court did give the government 2 years to consider alternatives.


The government appealed the ruling but in June 2003, the Court of Appeal refused the delay & Prime Minister Jean Chrétien said he would not challenge it. Federal Attorney General Martin Cauchon went a step further & extend same-sex marriage across Canada.


More than 7,000 same-sex couples have married in Canada since, changing social norms along the way. Before Canadian law was changed, gay couples wanting to marry were often the target of vicious attacks.


Compared to the stress of the wedding, Bourassa & Varnell claim that renewing their vows is a lot less stressful.


My partner of 25 years became my Husband on our 25th anniversary of being a couple- October 9th, 2004, in Vancouver British Columbia, one of the most beautiful planet on the planet. Our marriage is not recognized in the USA.


We love Canada: Loonies, Catherine O’Hara, Kim Cattrall, Matthew Perry, Bruce Cockburn, Joni Mitchell, Scott Thompson, k.d.lang, Rick Moranis, Norma Shearer, Ryan Gossling, Victor Garber, Holly Cole, Leonard Cohen, Martin Short, Jim Carrey, Raymond Burr, Kurt Browning, David Cronenberg, John Candy, Crash Test Dummies, Yvonne DeCarlo, Colleen Dewhurst, Deanna Durbin, Vanouver, Brendan Frasier, Michael J. Fox, Glenn Ford, Glenn Gould, Robert Goulet, Phil Hartman, Norman Jewison, Peter Jennings, Montreal, Jack Kerouak, Margot Kidder, Gordon Lightfoot, Toronto, Quebec City, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Daniel Lanois, Anne Murray, Leslie Nielson, Michael Ontkean, Anna Paquin, Banff, Mary Pickford, Jason Priestly, Christopher Plummer, Keifer Sutherland, Paul Schaffer, Jennifer Tilly, Alex Trebek, my good close friend- Fay Wray… & Canada’s National Treasure- Celine Dion.

Do You Hear What I'm Saying?

I am watching the IFC channel, & although I have viewed it 5 or 6 times, there's this totally great scene in The Opposite of Sex (1998) where a gay kid is trying to blackmail a gay teacher for personal gain. The teacher grabs the kid's pierced nipple (through his shirt) & says:

"Listen to me, you little grunge faggot. I survived my family, my schoolyard, every Republican, every other Democrat, Anita Bryant, the Pope, the fucking Christian Coalition, not to mention a real son of a bitch of a virus, in case you haven't noticed. In all that time since Paul Lynde & Truman Capote were the only fairies in America, I've been busting my ass so that you'd be able to do what you wanted with yours! So I don't just want your obedience right now - which I do want & plenty of it - but I want your fucking gratitude, right fucking now, or you're going to be looking down a long road at your nipple in the dirt! Do you hear what I'm saying?"

On This Day In Gay History & A Birthday

This morning marks the signing of the repeal of the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy, the 17-year-old policy banning on homosexuals serving openly in the United States military, was signed into law by President Barack Obama. I never dreamed...

A gay, 20th Century artist is right up my alley. Gay history, art history, NYC in the 1970s, all my interests intersect with Jean-Michel Basquiat. Born on this day in middle class Brooklyn. His father, an accountant, was Haitian & his mother was Puerto Rican. As a teenager, he left home to live in lower Manhattan, selling hand painted tee shirts & postcards on the street. His work began to attract attention in the early 1980s after a group of underground artists held a public exhibition-The Times Square Show.

Basquiat's unique visual vocabulary of graffiti symbols & urban rage challenged accepted notions of art. His vivid paintings incorporated such diverse images as African masks, quotes from Leonardo di Vinci & Grey's Anatomy, Egyptian murals, pop culture, & jazz. Critics called his work childlike & menacing & neo-primitive.

 Basquiat associated with other artists whose work drew from popular culture: Andy Warhol, Julian Schnabel, & Keith Haring. Haring: "Basquiat’s stuff I saw on the walls was more poetry than graffiti. They were sort of philosophical poems . . . . On the surface they seemed really simple, but the minute I saw them I knew that they were more than that. From the beginning he was my favorite artist."


Embraced by the art world, Basquiat soared to international fame. In 1982 his work was exhibited in New York, Los Angeles, Rome, Rotterdam & Zurich. He was the youngest artist ever to be included in the prestigious German exhibition, Documenta 7. In 1985, he appeared on the cover of The NY Times Magazine. After Warhol died on February 22, 1987, Basquiat became increasingly isolated, and his heroin addiction and depression became more severe. After an attempt at sobriety during a trip to Maui, Hawaii, Basquiat died of a heroin overdose in his art studio on Great Jones Street in New York City's NoHo neighborhood on August 12, 1988, at the age of 27.

Several major museum retrospective exhibitions of Basquiat's works have been held since his death. The first was the "Jean-Michel Basquiat" exhibition at the Whitney Museum in 1993. It subsequently traveled to museums in Texas, Iowa, & Alabama. Another major & influential exhibition was the "Basquiat" exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum in 2005.

Until 2002, the highest price paid for an original work of Basquiat's was 3 million + at Christie's. in 2003, Basquiat's large piece- Profit I, owned by drummer Lars Ulrich of the heavy metal band Metallica, was set for auction again at Christie's. It sold $6 million.
In  2008, at another auction at Christie's, Ulrich sold a 1982 Basquiat piece, Untitled (Boxer), for $13,522,500 to an anonymous telephone bidder. The record price for a Basquiat painting was madein 2007, when an untitled Basquiat work from 1981 sold at Sotheby's in New York for $14.6 million.If you are interested in him. & you should be, try the 1996 film- Basquiat, directed by Julian Schnabel, with actor Jeffrey Wright playing Basquiat & David Bowie as Andy Warhol. Or try the2009 documentary Jean Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child.

Born On This Day... Paul Cadmus

My favorite book of 2010 is not a novel, a collection of essays, or a memoir, but rather the catalogue for unprecidented exhibit at The Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery, now showing through Februaury 2011. Hide/Seek: Difference & Desire in American Portraiture, surveys the presence of same-sex desire in American portraiture through a seductive selection of more than 140 full-color illustrations, drawings, & portraits from leading American artists. Starting at the end of the turn of 19th century, to Stonewall & the gay liberation movement in 1969, the tragedies of the AIDS epidemic, & on to to the new century, Hide/Seek openly considers what has long been suppressed & ignored, even by the most progressive members of our society: the influence of gay & lesbian artists in creating important American modern art.

Hide/Seek shows how questions of gender and sexual identity dramatically shaped the artistic practices of influential American artists  Thomas Eakins, Marsden Hartley, Georgia O'Keeffe,  Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Andrew Wyeth, Paul Cadmus, Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Robert Mapplethorpe, & many of my other favorites & introductions to artists unfamiliar to me. Gay artists were frequently not fully a part of the society they portrayed, often occupying a place on the outskirts, & from that vantage point they crafted innovative & revolutionary ways of doing portraits.

One of the artists featured is Paul Cadmus, a long time favorite artist of the Husband & mine. We have a “coffee table” book of his work that has had a great deal of attention & perusing. We have been thrilled at seeing many of his works in museums. I am hard pressed to choose a favorite.

Paul Cadmus' life spanned the 20th century, beginning with his birth on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in 1904, & ending, after taking his daily walk down his country road, & getting into bed with his partner of 35 years- singer Jon Anderson, where he died peacefully in his sleep, with no apparent illness, on December 12, 1999, 5 days before his 95th birthday & 11 days after 300 friends had gathered to celebrate. In between, his combination of meticulousness, classicism, & exuberance made him one of America's greatest artists--a "magic realist" in more ways than one. In the 1920s, he traveled through Europe with his lover- painter Jared Smith. When they returned to Manhattan, they formed an informal group of gay artists including photographer George Platt Lynnes, for whom Camus was a frequent model, & Lincoln Kirstein, who founded New York City Ballet.

He became an unlikely cause celebre in 1934, when the U.S. Navy went berserk over The Fleet's In! a truly glorious epic scene of uniformed sailors that included prostitutes & a homosexual pickup, & led Secretary of the Navy-Henry Latrobe Roosevelt to remove it from a WPA showing. Because of that controversy, his first show, at Corcoran Galleries in Manhattan, attracted more than 7,000 visitors. "I owe that admiral a very large sum," Cadmus remarked 6 decades later. 
 
 

The Fleet's In! (1934)

 
With a beautiful posture, a life long lovely full head of hair & piercing blue eyes, Camus was as luminous as his paintings. From everything I have read about Camus, he sincerely cared about other people, which may sound like a small thing, but is actually quite rare among artists of his caliber. "He had a remarkable memory," says openly gay Josef Asteinza, an architect who lived down the road from Cadmus in Connecticut. "We brought scores of people there & he always enjoyed meeting them & he never forgot a name. Edith Sitwell said, `A gentleman is never unintentionally rude,' but Paul said, `I don't think a gentleman should ever be rude under any circumstances.” I can’t help but wonder how amazing it would have been to have been a member of his circle.
 
 

Jon Anderson, his last partner

 

The handsome artist in the late 1990s

 
Some things never change. A full month into the exhibition of Hide/Seek, one video, by the late David Wojnarowicz, was removed from the exhibit. Crazy Conservative Christians called the video, with ants crawling over a crucified, bleeding man, sacrilegious. It’s meant to symbolize the suffering of AIDS, the disease that eventually claimed the artist.



The Portrait Gallery Spokesperson Bethany Bentley: "The video is being removed because the publicity is distracting from the themes of the exhibition. We wanted the larger themes to be able to stay in place. "Nothing else will be removed from the exhibition." Asked if that would still hold even if somebody has an objection over another piece of art, Bentley replied, "Nope, this is it."

On This Day In Gay History... You Could Drive A Person Crazy

37 years ago today, The American Psychiatric Association votes 13–0 to remove homosexuality from its official list of psychiatric disorders- the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders .

You could drive a person crazy,

You could drive a person mad.

First you make a person hazy

So a person could be had,

Then you leave a person dangling sadly

Outside your door,

Which could only make a person gladly

Want you even more.

I could understand a person

If it's not a person's bag.

I could understand a person

If a person was a fag.

But worse 'n that,

A person that

Titillates a person & then leaves her flat

Is crazy,

He's a troubled person,

He's a truly crazy person himself

When a person's personality is personable,

He should not sit like a lump.

It's harder than a matador coercin' a bull

To try to get you off of your rump.

So single & attentive & attractive a man

Is everything a person could wish,

But turning off a person is the act of a man

Who likes to pull the hooks out of fish.

Knock-knock! Is anybody there?

Knock-knock! It really isn't fair.

Knock-knock! I'm workin' all my charms.

Knock-knock! A zombie's in my arms.

All that sweet affection!

What is wrong?

Where's the loose connection?

How long, O Lord, how long?

Bobby-baby-Bobby-bubbi-Bobby...

You could drive a person buggy,

You could blow a person's cool.

Like you make a person feel all huggy

While you make her feel a fool.

When a person says that you upset her,

That's when you're good.

You impersonate a person better

Than a zombie should.

I could understand a person

If he wasn't good in bed.

I could understand a person

If he actually was dead.

Exclusive you!

Elusive you!

Will any person ever get the juice of you?

You're crazy,

You're a lovely person,

You're a moving,

Deeply maladjusted,

Never to be trusted,

Crazy person yourself.

Bobby is my hobby & I'm givin' it up!

Stephen Sondheim

1970

* Note... this song has one of the very best rhymes in songwriting, matching "personable" with "coercin' a bull". The brilliance of Sondheim!