NOVEMBER 6 - 12, 2008 VOLUME SEVEN, ISSUE 45

■ STATE SENATE FLIPPED ■ CALIFORNIA HEARTBREAK

New York Democrats Pledged Voters Narrowly Overturn
to Deliver Marriage Equality P. 4 Marriage Equality Court Win P. 6
A M E R I C A’ S L A R G E S T C I R C U L AT I O N G AY A N D L E S B I A N W E E K LY N E W S P A P E R !

Gay City
TM

NEWS

S E R V I N G G A Y, L E S B I A N , B I A N D T R A N S G E N D E R E D N E W Y O R K • W W W . G A Y C I T Y N E W S . C O M

PAUL MORIGI/WIREIMAGE

THE AMERICAN
PRESIDENT TURN THE PAGE
© GAY CITY NEWS 2008 • COMMUNITY MEDIA, LLC, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
2/ Politics
Tensions Amidst Victory
New president-elect cites “steep climb” as local ugliness mars evening
BY DUNCAN OSBORNE
T
he race between John
McCain and Barack
Obama wasn’t the only
contest happening on Novem-
ber 4. In the rear of Gym
Sportsbar, the Stonewall Riots
faced the Gym Griffins in a
game of pool.
With televisions blasting the
election results and the crowd
cheering as CNN called one
state after another for Obama,
the match grew increasingly
impossible to play as patrons
pressed nearer to the pool
table and ignored pleas from
the Griffins and the Riots to
give them some room.
“I was pretty upset,” said
Rose Ng, captain of the Riots.
“I don’t think we should be
playing on election night... It’s
difficult to focus on two things
at once.”
Both teams belong to the
New York Gay Pool League,
which has raised and donated
$250,000 to local AIDS and
gay groups since it started
25 years ago. The current 11
teams in the league, which are
sponsored by local bars, meet
on weeknights to play matches
of best-of-15 games.
During a game, players get
one minute to make a shot
while another player acting
as the ref prowls around the
table, holding a cell phone to
keep track of the time, and
occasionally calls out the
seconds left. Usually they do
not also contend with CNN
and a mob.
“It is both a hindrance and
a great way to relax,” said
Chris Bess, co-captain of the
Griffins.
As the evening continued,
the crowd at the Eighth Ave-
nue bar, those who gathered
in other places, and even New
Yorkers who later were trav-
eling home by subway after
watching Obama crush McCa-
in, were cheering and chant-
ing “Obama.” The celebratory
mood was understandable.
President George W. Bush
has dragged the nation into
two endless wars, wrecked
the American economy,
trashed the liberties in the US
Constitution that protect tax-
payers, and run up stagger-
ing federal deficits. Bush has
been no friend to the queer
community.
While Obama supporters,
including many in the gay
community, partied, the eve-
ning also had its share of dis-
As the LGBT crowd cheered Barack Obama’s victory at Room Service, out lesbian City Council Speaker Christine Quinn appeared to celebrate,
but was interrupted by activist Ira Manhoff (seen here being hustled away by security), who objected to her efforts on extending the city’s
term limits law. Quinn urged security to allow Manhoff to stay.
sonant moments that should
have reminded celebrants that
the heady expectations of vic-
tory would have to give way to
politics and what is possible.
The president-elect nod-
ded to that in his post-vote
speech that was broadcast
from Chicago.
“The road ahead will be
long, our climb will be steep,”
Obama said. “We may not get
there in one year or even one
term, but America, I have
never been more hopeful than
I am tonight that we will get
there. I promise you, we as a
people will get there.”
Earlier in the speech, the
crowd of roughly 300 watch-
ing in the Lesbian, Gay, Bisex-
ual and Transgender Com-
munity Center on West 13th
Street stood and cheered when
Obama included “gay” in the
long list of Americans who had
supported his candidacy.
Another successful Demo-
cratic contender for presi-
dent, William Clinton, often
hit the right notes when talk-
ing to the gay community. At a
1992 Los Angeles fundraiser,
Clinton told 400 gay men and
lesbians “If I could wave my
arm for those of you who are
HIV-positive and make it go
away tomorrow, I would do it,
so help me God I would. If I
gave up my race for the White
6 - 12 NOV 2008
7 DAYS
7 NIGHTS
THU.NOV.6
GALLERY
Art We Can
Believe In
Politics and art? As impossible a
mix as oil and water? Hardly. Has there
ever been a more powerful anti-war
message than Picasso’s “Guernica”?
2008 has proven that Americans want
to engage in politics again. To cel-
ebrate the excitement now bubbling
as the coming election approaches, Art
Gotham chose the timely theme “Elec-
tion 2008” for its biannual “Square
Foot Show.” Artists were provided with
12” x 12” canvases and asked to think
politically as they created works for the
show. Nothing like a tough assignment
for producing amazing results. 192
Sixth Ave., btwn. Spring & Prince
Sts. 1-6 p.m. through Nov. 9. For more
information, visit artgotham.com.
✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯
THEATER
Passion Unspoken
The New Group presents the US
premier of Kevin Elyot’s “Mouth to
Mouth,” a play that opens with Frank,
a gay writer living with AIDS, attend-
ing a party thrown by his friend Laura
to celebrate the return of her teenage
son from abroad. The story is a haunt-
ing, twisting tale of undeclared passion
and the fine line between intimacy and
betrayal. Mark Brokaw directs. Acorn
Theatre, 410 W. 42nd St. Mon.,
Wed.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Tue., 7 p.m.; Sat.,
MICHAEL T. LUONGO
2 p.m. through Dec. 27. Tickets are
$56.25 at ticketcentral.com or 212-279-
4200.
✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯
COMEDY
Homo Comicus
Michael Brill hosts an evening of
queer and queer-friendly comics includ-
ing actress Jackie Hoffman, fresh from
her turn in Broadway’s “Xanadu,” the
big gay pimpin’ Jonny McGovern, Jim
David, Becky Donohue, Leah Dubie,
House and everything else, I and Dave Rubin. Gotham Comedy
would do that.” Club, 208 W. 23rd St., 7:30 p.m. The
It was a powerful moment cover charge is $15, with a two-drink
for an audience that lost many minimum. For reservations, call 212-
friends to AIDS during the ’80s 367-9000.
and had yet to see the anti-HIV ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯
drugs that have since saved
many gay men. POLITICS
We now know that new Now What?
HIV infections among gay The Queer Justice League, a group
and bisexual men increased of LGBT progressives dedicated to
throughout Clinton’s two change through coalition with other
terms and over the past eight social activist organizations, holds a
years with Bush in the White forum tonight looking at the election
House. results and contemplating next steps.
Clinton also approved the LGBT Community Center, 208 W.
military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t 13th St., 8 p.m.
Tell policy that has cost near- CAREERS
䉴 CHALLENGES, continued on p.15 䉴 NOV 6, continued on p.8
WWW.GAYCITYNEWS.COM 6 - 12 NOV 2008 3

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4/ Politics 6 - 12 NOV 2008

Democrats Grab State Senate

New majority offers first realistic shot at gay marriage, transgender rights laws
BY PAUL SCHINDLER trict that runs from Howard Queens’ District 11, where
Beach to Maspeth, Demo- incumbent Frank Padavan,

I
n a stunning realignment cratic City Councilman first elected in 1972, holds a
of the political status quo Joseph Addabbo swept to a lead of just over 700 votes over
in Albany, Democrats have surprisingly easy victory over James Gennaro, a member
gained control of the State 20-year GOP incumbent Ser- of the City Council. Padavan
Senate for the first time in 43 phin Maltese, a sponsor of a is also a DOMA sponsor and
years. state Defense of Marriage Act voted against the 2002 gay
With all but one of the 62 (DOMA), a proposal that has rights law in Albany. A recount
Senate races decided, Demo- gone nowhere in Albany. Add- is expected in the race.
crats now control at least abbo had a 15-percent edge Gennaro was not wide-
32 seats in the Legislature’s in that race. ly seen as posing a real
upper chamber, while Repub- A pro-LGBT vote in his challenge to Padavan and
licans will have at least 29. years on the Council, Addabbo received little support from
Democrats already control the said he supports the Gender the Democratic Senate Cam-

GAY CITY NEWS

State Assembly and the gover-
norship.
With a working Democratic
majority in the Senate, sev-
eral initiatives benefiting the
lesbian, gay, bisexual, and
transgender community — a
marriage equality bill, a trans-
gender rights measure, and
a public school anti-bullying
law that includes protections
based on sexual orientation
and gender identity — each
already passed by the Assem-
bly and supported by Gov-
ernor David Paterson, but
stalled in the Senate by GOP
resistance, will now likely be
considered.
“My reaction is that we
promised two things as we
headed into this election,”
said Alan Van Capelle, execu-
tive director of the Empire
State Pride Agenda (ESPA),
New York’s LGBT rights lobby.
“That every member of the
Assembly who supported
marriage equality, transgen-
ESPA’s Alan Van Capelle and Joe Tarver celebrate the Obama victory and State Senate gains
at a Democratic Party bash at the Sheraton on Election Night.
der rights, and school bullying
legislation would win reelec-
tion, and that happened, and
that we would help deliver two
State Senate district seats.”
“Look, we’re going to have
to have conversations with a lot
of people. No bill passes
without both parties.”
A year ago, ESPA, which
on occasion in the past has
drawn fire for its bipartisan
approach to lobbying and
endorsements from gay advo-
cates working within the Dem-
ocratic Party, concluded that
the GOP Senate leadership
Expression Non-Discrimina-
tion Act (GENDA), which would
provide transgender civil rights
protections, and the Dignity
for All Students Act (DASA),
the anti-bullying measure, but
was no longer willing to take has not taken a position on the
up significant pieces of LGBT marriage equality bill. Endors-
rights legislation. Between ing Addabbo, ESPA stated, “he
2000 and 2002, the Republi- is not opposed to marriage for
cans finally allowed passage same-sex couples and is com-
mitted to working with the
Pride Agenda and the LGBT
community to continue learn-
ing about this issue.”
In Suffolk County, Dem-
ocrat Brian X. Foley, the
Brookhaven town supervisor
and a former county legislator,
beat 36-year GOP incumbent
Caesar Trunzo, another DOMA
of hate crimes and sexual ori- sponsor. There, the spread was
entation non-discrimination more than 17 percent. ESPA
laws. endorsed Foley, who, like Add-
The Democratic pick-ups abbo, has a gay-friendly record,
came in Senate District 3 in but has committed to no more
Suffolk County and District 15 on marriage than keeping an
in Queens. open mind.
In a western Queens dis- The undecided race is in
paign Committee, in stark
contrast to Addabbo and
Foley, each of whom received
hundreds of thousands
of dollars. ESPA endorsed
Gennaro, but made no
financial contribution, while
donating $8,000 each to
Addabbo and Foley, close to
the maximum allowed under
campaign finance law.
Democratic non-incum-
bents in competitive races who
were also supported by ESPA
endorsements, and in some
cases financial contributions,
but fell short included Kristen
McElroy in Nassau County,
Joseph Mesi in Erie and Gene-
see Counties east of Buffalo,
and Richard Dollinger and
David Nachbar, both in the
Rochester area.
Two Democrats, neither
of whom supports marriage
equality, staved off tough chal-
lenges — William Stachowski
䉴 SENATE, continued on p.15

GAY CITY NEWS, DEM CANDIDATES SNARED IN ROBO-CALL HOAX

Voters in at least five State Senate districts,
each of which had competitive contests on Election
Day, received hoax robo-calls purporting to be from
Gay City News, stating the newspaper’s support for
the Democratic candidates in those contests.
Evidence of the calls first surfaced on November
2, when a voter in the Sixth Senate District, in west-
ern Nassau County on Long Island, sent the news-
paper an email reporting he had received a record-
ed message in which a woman, identifying herself
as a Gay City News staffer, said the newspaper
supported Democrat Kristen McElroy because “she
will vote for gay marriage, and advance the lesbian,
gay, bisexual, and transgender agenda in Albany.”
A spokesman for McElroy’s campaign confirmed
that they had received the same information from
district voters. The campaign of McElroy’s opponent,
Republican Kemp Hannon, the long-standing incum-
bent, told Gay City News they did not authorize the
calls and did not know where they were coming from.
Gay City News did not make an endorsement
in the Sixth District race, but McElroy is a marriage
equality supporter, according to her campaign and
to the voter guide published by the Empire State
Pride Agenda, the state’s gay rights lobby. The Pride
Agenda did endorse McElroy’s bid, and noted that
Hannon, who opposes gay marriage and even voted
against the 2002 gay rights bill that passed the Leg-
islature by a wide margin, did not return the group’s
candidate questionnaire.
Hannon held off a strong challenge from McEl-
roy by only two percent.
A Long Island reporter phoned Gay City News on
November 3 and played an identical message claim-
ing that the newspaper supported Democratic chal-
lenger Brian X. Foley in his race against Republican
incumbent Caesar Trunzo in Suffolk County’s District
3. Gay City News had endorsed Foley, but the Demo-
crat, who won the seat by 17 percent on Election
Day, has not yet taken a position on gay marriage,
contrary to the information in the robo-call.
The same calls were also made in the District 15
race in Queens that pitted Democrat Joseph Addabbo
against GOP incumbent Serphin Maltese; in the Dis-
trict 59 race east of Lake Erie where Democrat Kathy
Konst challenged incumbent Dale Volker, a Republi-
can; and in District 61, east of Buffalo, where Demo-
crat Joseph Mesi squared off against Republican
Michael Ranzenhofer in an open contest.
Gay City News endorsed Addabbo and Mesi,
but not Konst, and among the three only Mesi is
a public supporter of marriage equality. Addabbo
won his race by 15 points, but Mesi lost by seven
points and Konst, 11.
Mesi’s campaign confirmed it had heard reports
of the calls, but Ranzenhofer’s campaign did not
return a call seeking comment.
The Democratic Senate Campaign Commit-
tee was also aware of the network of hoaxes,
and believed they were designed to draw out vot-
ers opposed to marriage equality and LGBT rights
generally. The New York State Senate Republican
Campaign Committee did not return a call seek-
ing comment, and Nancy Drewsberry, a spokes-
woman for the New York State Conservative Party,
which supports some Republican candidates and is
strongly opposed to gay rights measures, said her
group knew nothing about the calls.
The robo-calls were placed from phone numbers
in the 201 and 571 area codes, both of them out-
of-state, according to voters who received them. A
message left at the 201 number was not returned
and the 571 number was consistently busy.
Gay City News informed the New York State
Attorney General’s Office of the hoax.
Gay City News also learned that photocopies of
some of its reporting and endorsements in State Sen-
ate races were used in campaign literature dropped
in some of the same districts. The literature bore the
imprint of Focus on the Family, a Colorado-based anti-
gay organization. The group promised to get back to
Gay City News to confirm that it was responsible for
the literature and whether it knew anything about the
robo-calls, but had not by press deadline.
Alan Van Capelle, executive director of the
Empire State Pride Agenda, New York’s LGBT lobby
which was involved in most of these races, said
that the hoaxes had “no effect whatsoever on the
outcome of the election.”
Characterizing the robo-calls as “the politics of
cynicism and desperation… out of the Bush-Rove
playbook,” Van Capelle said they were the work
of “a party with absolutely no ideas on how to
solve the problems” facing the New York economy
and the state’s families. “New Yorkers are smart
enough” to know better, he said. — Paul Schindler
WWW.GAYCITYNEWS.COM 6 - 12 NOV 2008 5

I’m anti violence

and pro respect.
Everyone deserves to be treated with respect. We’re no different. That's why I
stand behind the New York City Anti-Violence Project. AVP works to end violence
in our LGBTQ communities and keep our homes and our streets safe. If you need
help, call 212-714-1141 or visit avp.org

Live without fear

6/ Politics
Voters Turn Back California Marriage
Even as gay opponents of referendum refuse to concede, attention turns to courts
BY PAUL SCHINDLER
I
n a crushing blow to hope
unleashed by the California State
Supreme Court less than six
months ago, voters in that state have
apparently approved Proposition 8, a
ballot initiative to overturn the high
court’s marriage equality ruling with
a constitutional amendment limiting
marriage to unions of one man and
one woman.
With the California Secretary of
State’s office reporting returns from
99.7 percent of all precincts, Prop 8 has
a lead of 52.5-47.5 percent, or about
half a million votes. However, early on
Wednesday, leaders of the No on Prop 8
campaign issued a statement that they
were waiting until all absentee ballots,
which they said could number as many
as four million, were counted before
commenting on the results.
Even if four million ballots have
not yet been counted, supporters of
gay marriage would need a margin of
more than 56 percent among those
votes to overcome a half million-vote
deficit.
And there is strong evidence that
four million significantly overstates
the number of ballots still not tal-
lied. According to the official count of
all “vote-by-mail” ballots, kept by the
state’s Association of Clerks and Elec-
tion Officials, a total of 4.29 million
such absentee ballots were returned
to the state’s 58 counties. But,
according to officials in Los Ange-
les County, of the 643,000 absentee
ballots returned there, only 200,000
remain to be counted. Only 46,000 of
the 129,000 absentee ballots in San
Francisco have not yet been counted.
Of 232,000 such ballots in Alame-
da County, only 120,000 have not
yet been counted. And in San Diego
County, only 220,000 out of 403,000
absentee ballots remain uncounted.
The fewer the absentee ballots still
to be counted, the higher the percent-
age that must be no’s for marriage
equality advocates to be able to off-
set the margin they are behind at this
point in the count.
Most major news outlets are report-
ing that the anti-gay initiative has
passed.
The battle in California — which
cost the two sides combined an esti-
mated $73.7 million — was the most
expensive in the history of the LGBT
rights movement, and was among the
most exorbitant political contests in
2008. Though the pro-gay side raised
slightly more money than those seek-
ing to turn back marriage equality,
the community scrambled in recent
weeks to keep pace with a right-wing
money machine fueled in good mea-
sure by organized Mormon donors,
who are reported to have given more
than $20 million.
The pro-gay side struggled to get TV
Protesters gathered Wednesday evening in Sacramento and other leading California cities to protest the apparent
passage of Proposition 8.
and radio ads up to keep pace with an
aggressive campaign by opponents to
define marriage equality in the minds
of voters as a threat to religious free-
dom and as something about which
public schools would be required to
indoctrinate young children. There
were persistent online debates among
activists nationwide about the mes-
saging of the No on 8 campaign
— particularly regarding whether
straight allies or LGBT couples and
their children should be the primary
public face on TV ads.
As the campaign entered its final
month, Patrick Guerriero, the former
leader of the Log Cabin Republicans,
was abruptly brought in on loan from
his current post at the Gill Founda-
tion, to head up an effort widely seen
as in need of a steady hand. Even as
fundraising accelerated, a diversifying
array of ads won greater praise, and
high profile figures such as Senator
Diane Feinstein appeared in spots
opposing the proposition, critics
remained.
In an email circulated the day after
the vote, Ethan Geto, a longtime gay
activist in New York whose first expe-
rience in such campaigns came in
1977 when he worked to defeat the
Anita Bryant-inspired anti-gay initia-
tive in Dade County, Florida, wrote, “I
was appalled by the inferior quality of
the No on 8 TV ads.”
Pointing to a study of voter psychol-
ogy and electoral behavior commis-
sioned by Gill in 2004 and 2005, Geto
noted that campaigns are most suc-
cessful when they highlight the real-
life dilemmas faced by gay and lesbian
people rather than abstract discrimi-
nation arguments made by “political
stars”; when they focus on gay and
lesbian adults rather than introduc-
ing viewers more broadly to gay and
lesbian families and their children;
and when they feature lesbians, who
are perceived as less threatening than
gay men.
Evan Wolfson, who heads up the
nationwide advocacy group Freedom
to Marry, said it is premature to begin
an analysis of the strategies employed
in the No on 8 campaign, but noted
that different sorts of messages and
arguments are appropriate in mak-
ing the case for marriage equality,
depending on whether they are part of
a heated, short-horizon political cam-
paign or of a longer-term, affirmative
public education effort.
“What we want to do is stop having
to make that choice,” he said, empha-
sizing that the gay community needs
to develop its competencies in build-
ing public support both over time and
in a crunch.
Just as Wolfson cautioned against
jumping to quick conclusions about
what the No on 8 campaign may have
done right or wrong, he also urged
patience in analyzing the quality and
meaning of exit poll results out of Cal-
ifornia. One widely discussed result
on Wednesday was the finding that
while whites opposed the anti-gay ref-
erendum by a 53-47 margin and Lati-
nos narrowly supported it 51-49, Afri-
can-Americans voted yes by a 70-30
margin.
Wolfson noted that polling data from
other state marriage referendum ques-
tions do not point to the same sorts of
margins among black voters, a point
also made this week by the Califor-
nia State Chapter of the NAACP. Wolf-
son pointed out, for example, that the
exit data in California may never yield
details on what portion of the African-
American tally sampled represented
first-time voters, who may have been
buoyed by the prospect of Barack
Obama’s candidacy but otherwise less
engaged in political issues than their
more frequent-voting peers.
Ethnic voting patterns do not lend
themselves, he said, to analysis sepa-
rate from an appreciation for context.
According to exit polls, Latino voters
in Florida supported the gay marriage
ban there by about a 20-percent higher
level than in California. That disparity,
6 - 12 NOV 2008
Wolfson said, probably resulted from
the greater resources that the No on 8
campaign was able to devote to using
Latino faces in their ads and “connect-
ing their stories to marriage.”
Even as those fighting Prop 8 refuse
to concede and at least some other
advocates stand back from any post-
mortem, three lawsuits were filed
Wednesday challenging the validity
of the referendum. Lambda Legal, the
National Center for Lesbian Rights
(NCLR), and the American Civil Liber-
ties Union (ACLU) filed a petition with
the State Supreme Court, which had
held in May that same-sex couples
have a constitutional right to marry,
arguing that the type of change made
to “the underlying principles” of the
State Constitution was too great to be
enacted by a simple majority of vot-
ers. The groups are relying on a dis-
tinction between an ordinary “amend-
ment” and a “revision” to basic con-
stitutional underpinnings, and argue
that, at minimum, the sort of change
Prop 8 involves must first be consid-
ered by the State Legislature.
“If the voters approved an initiative
that took the right to free speech away
from women, but not from men, every-
one would agree that such a measure
conflicts with the basic ideals of equal-
ity enshrined in our Constitution,” said
Jenny Pizer, a Lambda Legal staff attor-
ney, in a written release. “Proposition 8
suffers from the same flaw: it removes
a protected constitutional right — here,
the right to marry – not from all Cali-
fornians, but just from one group of us.
That’s too big a change in the principles
of our Constitution to be made just by
a bare majority of voters.”
The legal groups noted that, in 1990,
the California Supreme Court struck
down a referendum passed by voters
that would have barred the State Con-
stitution from being construed to give
criminal defendants any more rights
than they have under the US Con-
stitution. That was overturned as an
improper attempt to strip the court of
its independent role as interpreter of
the State Constitution.
The advocacy groups brought a simi-
lar challenge to Prop 8 prior to the elec-
tion, but the court dismissed the case,
without prejudice, unwilling to consid-
er the question unless circumstances
made that necessary.
Similar suits were also filed Wednes-
day by Santa Clara County and the
cities of San Francisco and Los Ange-
les and by LA attorney Gloria Allred on
behalf of a married lesbian couple who
were part of the victorious lawsuit in
May.
Lambda, the NCLR, and the ACLU
also issued a statement Wednesday
that the estimated 18,000 same-sex
marriages performed in California
since May should continue to be hon-
ored. That view is shared by Califor-
nia’s attorney general, Jerry Brown.
WWW.GAYCITYNEWS.COM
NEWS BRIEFS
Marriage Bans
Win in Florida,
Arizona
Just as the voter referendum
effort to eliminate marriage
equality in California appears to
have won narrow passage, vot-
ers in Florida approved a draco-
nian constitutional amendment
defining marriage as the “legal
union of only one man and one
woman” and barring all “other
legal unions treated as marriage
or the substantial equivalent
thereof.” That language would
preclude civil unions and could
sharply limit the rights avail-
able even under a more modest
domestic partnership scheme.
Activists in Florida fighting
the battle against the amend-
ment had pinned their hopes on
the fact that such amendments
there require 60-percent voter
approval, as opposed to a sim-
ple majority. In the end, howev-
er, the measure won the support
of 62.1 percent of voters.
Florida has long had a statute
defining marriage as the union
of one man and one woman,
and in 1997, in response to the
federal Defense of Marriage
Act, passed a state DOMA. And
not content to simply layer a
constitutional bar on top of two
statutes, the geniuses behind
the effort this year added a
specific provision blocking the
state’s judiciary from overturn-
ing the amendment.
In Arizona, voters by a mar-
gin of 56-43 percent approved a
constitutional amendment bar-
ring same-sex marriage equal-
ity. The vote comes just two
years after the state became
the first in the nation to vote
down a referendum aiming to
limit the rights of gay and les-
bian couples.
The 2006 measure was
widely viewed as losing, though
only narrowly, because it was
too broad in scope, blocking
not only gay marriage but also
recognition of a wide array of
domestic partnership arrange-
ments between unmarried
couples, straight and gay.
Senior citizens who entered into
domestic partnerships in lieu of
marrying again after the death
of a spouse — out of estate
planning concerns — provided
a solid base of opposition to
the 2006 amendment. Senior
couples, in fact, were the key
face of the ads run to defeat
that referendum.
Legislative approval of
this year’s ballot question had
bogged down, first in the State
House of Representatives and
later in the Senate, and as the
lawmakers’ session wound
down, Democrats thought they
had defeated the effort to get a
vote this November. On the last
day that the Senate met, how-
ever, an underhanded parlia-
By ANDY HUMM
mentary maneuver, later judged
out of order, but left in effect,
revived the referendum, which
was approved for consideration
by voters.
JARED POLIS
LGBT
Candidates
Win Around
the Nation,
Including New
Member of
Congress
Jared Polis of Colorado will
join Barney Frank and Tammy
Baldwin in the out gay and les-
bian caucus of the US Congress.
The 33-year-old online entrepre-
neur millionaire won handily.
Kate Brown, an out bisexual
in Oregon, was elected as the
first LGBT secretary of state in
the country.
The Victory Fund, which works
to elect out LGBT candidates, said
in a release that 70 percent of its
111 endorsed candidates won.
Others highlighted were
Jason Bartlett, a Connecticut
state legislator, who came out in
his current term. He is the second
out gay African-American state
legislator in the nation.
Louisiana elected its first
two out LGBT officials, Thomas
Robichaux and Seth Bloom, both
gay men who won spots on the
Orleans Parish School Board in
October.
John Perez is the first out gay
person of color elected to the
California Assembly.
Dallas County, Texas’ out
lesbian sheriff, Lupe Valdez, was
re-elected.
Kevin Beckner, a gay man,
unseated an anti-gay incumbent
on the Hillsborough County Com-
mission in Florida.
And Oakland, California got
its first out lesbian City Council
member in Rebecca Kaplan.
Orphaned
Kids Lose In
Arkansas
Despite polls showing that
it would be roundly defeated,
voters in Arkansas approved
a radical new statute bar-
ring unmarried couples, gay or
straight, from adopting or serv-
ing as foster parents. The most
recent public opinion poll on the
question, from the University
of Arkansas at Little Rock, had
6 - 12 NOV 2008
found 38 percent of the elec-
torate in favor of Act 1 and 55
percent opposed, with seven
percent undecided.
At that time, Joe LaFountaine
of Arkansas Families First, which
fought the measure, wrote in an
email, “While still too close to call
(or for comfort), we are encour-
aged by these numbers.”
The genesis of this year’s
referendum was a 2006 State
Supreme Court ruling that threw
out a previous law banning gay
people from serving as foster
parents after a seven-year fight
waged by the American Civil
Liberties Union. The new stat-
ute was structured to dodge
any argument that the bar was
narrowly targeted at gay and
lesbian couples.
Transgender
Rights Vote in
Seattle
Voters in Seattle’s King Coun-
ty amended their charter to add
disability, sexual orientation, and
gender identity and expression to
their human rights law by a mar-
gin of 73 to 27 percent.
Transgender activist Marsha
Botzer wrote in a release, “In a
state that leads the nation on
transgender equality, King County
sets the bar!”
Bitter Log Cabin
The Log Cabin Republicans
endorsed John McCain for presi-
dent. The Cleveland chapter of
the gay GOP group issued a bit-
terly sarcastic statement, quoting
something that David Brinkley,
the late TV newsman, allegedly
said: “We all look forward with
great pleasure to four more years
of wonderful, inspiring speeches,
full of wit, poetry, music, love,
and affection — plus more god-
damned nonsense.”
The statement added that the
group “looks forward to working
against the upcoming socialist
agenda of the Democratic Party,
and working against the LGBT
Democrats’ efforts to re-elect
local ‘gay friendly’ Democrats.”
MICHAEL BLOOMBERG
Bloomberg’s
Efforts to Prop
Up Anti-Gay
Candidates Met
with Defeat
The Daily News called
Mayor Michael’s Bloomberg’s
election night “a bust” in terms
of the losses of candidates he
endorsed.
Bloomberg got away with
never endorsing a candidate
for president, despite the stark
differences between Obama
and McCain. He personally
campaigned for Chris Shays, a
moderate Republican from Con-
necticut, who lost and left New
England without a member of
the GOP in the House.
The mayor, who got the
Council to back his bill to let
him and themselves run for third
terms in contravention of two
referenda on the issue, gave
hundreds of thousands of dol-
lars to the Republicans in the
State Senate. Those Senate
Republicans blocked most LGBT
rights legislation for decades
and continue to refuse to vote
on transgender rights, an anti-
bullying bill, and marriage
equality (which was passed
by the Democratic-run State
Assembly).
Bloomberg did a robo-call
for the virulently anti-gay Ser-
phin Maltese, a Republican-
Conservative who lost his bid
for re-election in Queens over-
whelmingly to City Councilman
Joseph Addabbo.
He also backed Simcha
Felder, an anti-gay City Coun-
cil member from Brooklyn, in
his unsuccessful bid to unseat
incumbent State Senator Kevin
Parker.
Bloomberg had a long wait
at his Upper East Side polling
place, the Observer reported.
He said he couldn’t cut the line
of 270 people because the press
was watching. Besides, the
mayor said, he had a Spanish
lesson afterward. “So what’s
the big rush?” he deadpanned.
18,000 Gay
Couples
Married in
California
An estimated 18,000 same-
sex couples were married in
California by Election Day, the
Williams Institute of UCLA’s
School of Law said in a release.
Since there is no sex designation
on the marriage certificates, the
estimate represents the increase
in marriages over the same June
17-November 4 period last year.
Many lesbian and gay cou-
ples from California and around
the nation rushed to get married
in advance of the vote on Propo-
sition 8, which if passed would
eliminate their right to do so.
Surrender
Dorothy!
Friends of Dorothy were hor-
rified to see a skywriter over Los
Angeles urging people to “Vote
Yes on Prop 8” on the eve of the
election. The anti-gay campaign
was also diligent in taking out
election eve full-page ads in the
state’s major newspapers, mostly
with Mormon money.
EDGAR GARZON
Citizenship for
Slain Gay Man’s
Parents
Leonor and Armando Gar-
zon, who came to Queens from
Bogota in 2001 to be at the bed-
side of their son Edgar in the
days before he died from a gay-
bashing in Jackson Heights, have
passed their citizenship exam and
become naturalized citizens. They
worked for seven years to see
to it that the perpetrators of the
murder of their son were brought
to justice and, on October 17,
John McGhee was sentenced to
22 years for that crime.
The couple thanked Congress-
man Joseph Crowley and gay
activist Danny Dromm for their
help “in seeing us through this
most difficult time in our lives.”
They said in a statement, “There
is no doubt that the reward of cit-
izenship has helped somewhat to
alleviate our difficulties and we
are proud now to be Americans.”
Grisly Murder
in Florida
Carole Anne Burger, who
shared a house in Boynton Beach
with her ex-lover Jessica Kal-
ish, stabbed her 222 times with
a screwdriver, killing her, on
October 23, police said, and then
killed herself with a gunshot as
authorities closed in on her.
Burger, 57, who was covering
the election for the Huffington
Post, had broken up with Kalish,
a 56-year-old software execu-
tive, a year ago, but they had yet
to divide the house they bought
together in 2000.
Helen Gale, a close friend
of Burger’s, told the Palm Beach
Post, “My gut tells me it’s impos-
sible and that something else
is going on. This is just beyond
belief.”
Woodworth’s
Silver
Anniversary at
Center
Robert Woodworth will be
honored for his 25 years of ser-
vice to New York’s LGBT Commu-
nity Center with a reception on
Thursday, November 13 from 6-8
7
p.m. at the Center. Admission is
free, but they’d like you to RSVP
on their website at gaycenter.org.
Woodworth started with the
Center in 1983 as a consultant on
their negotiations with the City of
New York to buy the building at
208 West 13th Street and was
elected secretary of the corpora-
tion the following year and every
year since. His main occupations
have been managing the facil-
ity and making space happen for
those who need it — with grace,
calm, and good will, no less.
SACHA BARON COHEN
Bruno Strikes
Again
Sacha Baron Cohen’s “Bruno”
character, who is an Austrian
gay fashion designer, crashed a
rally for those supporting Propo-
sition 8 in Los Angeles, joining
their picket line. When the press
recognized him and tried to inter-
view him, his film crew inter-
vened and got him out of there.
We’ll see how this figures into
his next film.
St. Patsy
PATSY CLINE
We always loved Patsy
Cline, the great country star who
tragically died in a plane crash in
1963. It turns out she was a friend
of the gay community long before
Stonewall, at least according to
a viewer of my “Gay USA” show
and Cline fan who related an
encounter with Patsy’s second
husband, Charlie Dick.
“He told us that back in
the ’60s, a lot of record labels
wouldn’t send record singles
to gay bars,” she wrote, “so he
remembers Patsy would person-
ally drive to gay bars around Ten-
nessee and other Southern states
and go directly into gay bars and
䉴 BRIEFS, continued on p.8
8/ Police
Courts Training Prostitutes?
Gay man entrapped into trumped-up, false conviction stupefied by sentence
BY DUNCAN OSBORNE
B
eing arrested for pros-
titution on October 10
in a Lower East Side
porn shop made Robert Pinter
angry. The 52-year-old is not
a prostitute. He is a licensed
massage therapist with no
criminal record, an office in
the Flatiron District, and an
established client list.
His sentence was to attend
a series of five health classes,
the first on October 31. It was
titled “How To Be A Better Sex
Worker,” Pinter said.
Having punished him for a
crime he did not commit, the
state’s criminal justice system
now proposes to make him
better at the very profession
that he was arrested for and
one that he has no intention of
practicing.
“I could not believe it,” he
said. “Every step of the way,
this is bizarre.”
Pinter was busted after
an undercover police officer
approached him in Blue Door
Video on First Avenue. The offi-
cer was charming and aggres-
sive in proposing what Pinter
thought was a consensual sex
act between two adults.
As they left the store, Pinter
䉴 BRIEFS, from p.7
hand them her latest single.
“I just think that this is a
great story to know that one of
America’s favorite country/pop
artists would stick her neck out
for us back then, and that little
things such as those are not
mentioned but are a big step for
equality.”
JERRY LEWIS
Jerry Lewis
Strikes Again
Hey, Dean! Jerry’s at it
again.
Jerry Lewis, who disgraced
himself last year by calling a
cameraman on his Muscular
Dystrophy Telethon “an illiter-
ate fag” and later apologized,
6 - 12 NOV 2008
7 DAYS
said the officer said, “Oh, I Pinter took his first class on year. The title is “How to Be 䉴
7 NIGHTS
NOV 6, from p.2
want to pay you $50 to suck October 31. A Safer Sex Worker,” Orlando
Friends In High
your dick.” “It was all about safety, said.
Pinter said nothing and con- security,” he said. “When you “This whole set-up with the Places
tinued exiting the store with are giving a blow job, don’t court is for people who are Lisa Linksy, partner in the law
the man. He was arrested out- kneel down in the well of the engaging in sex work,” Orlan- firm of McDermott Will & Emery,
side and charged with prosti- car because somebody could do said. “That particular lec- and Jennifer Brown, founder of Jen-
tution. On the advice of a Legal hit you over the head or stran- ture was designed and created nifer Brown Consulting, a leader-
Aid Society attorney, he plead- gle you.” for people who think of them- ship, communications, and diversity
ed guilty to disorderly conduct Pinter also complained to selves as sex workers and the consulting firm for businesses and
on October 11. administrators at the Midtown feedback has been very, very non-profits in financial services,
“[The attorney] said, ‘Did Community Court, where the tremendous.” media, manufacturing, technol-
you leave the store with him?’ health class is conducted, Defense attorneys who prac- ogy, and retail, lead a Center Voices
and I said ‘Yes,’” Pinter told when he was identified in their tice in the court say most of the workshop designed to give lesbian,
Gay City News. “He said ‘They database as a gay male prosti- defendants who pass through bisexual, transgendered, and queer
could construe that to be pros- tute. He said a second man in there are prostitutes. Russell women the opportunity to improve
titution.’” his class made the same com- Novack, a senior staff attorney their skills and to make effective and
Court records in a closing plaint. with Legal Aid handles thou- strategic networking connections.
action brought against Blue “It’s about us being listed,” sands of prostitution cases LGBT Community Center, 208 W.
Door by the city in June sug- Pinter said. “He was also told each year. They are “usually 13th St., 6 p.m. reception; 7 p.m.
gest that this method has at his court appearance that repeat offenders,” he said. program. Tickets are $15 at gaycen-
been used in other arrests of there would no mention of “For the most part, it’s ter.org.
gay men. Police also made two prostitution in his record... It’s pretty much a fixed popula- ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯
prostitution arrests of gay men just troubling that that’s how tion,” Novack said. Orlando
in Chelsea’s Blue Store, one in we are entered.” said the classes are aimed at
2004 and one in 2005, prior to
temporarily closing that porn
shop.
Both stores were fined and
required to install video cam-
David Bookstaver, a spokes-
man for the state court system,
said it was unlikely that any-
one would see those records.
“I don’t how anybody can
them.
“I think that people who are
legitimate sex workers — the
point is to try and teach them
options so they don’t have
NIGHTLIFE
FRI.NOV.7
Don’t Bite Down
eras that monitor the inside get access to that,” Bookstaver to continue to engage in sex Men of All Colors Together/New
of the store. Blue Store has to said. work,” Orlando said. “I think York (MACT/NY) hosts its third Hard
save the images from the cam- Sam Orlando, health coor- that everyone involved in this Candy Lounge, a comfortable space
eras for two weeks and Blue dinator at the Lower East would rather see someone for gay men of all races and ethnicities
Door for six weeks. The imag- Side Harm Reduction Center, spend time in the alternative to meet, mingle, and converse freely.
es must be made available to has taught the health classes rather than seeing someone Expanding the choices gay men have
police on demand. at the court for roughly one spend time in jail.” for socializing, Hard Candy Lounge
provides an unpretentious atmosphere,
cool music, snacks, and beverages, cre-
has now riled up gay folks Johnston ating a welcoming environment. LGBT
Down Under too by calling Brings “Art’s Community Center, 208 W. 13th St.,
cricket “a fag game” during a Heart” Back 8 p.m. Admission is $5. You must be
press conference in Austra- Out gay Canadian actor 21. For more information on MACT/NY,
lia where he is doing a stage Anthony Johnston is bringing visit mactny.org.
show. In making the remark, he his hit one-man “Art’s Heart” ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯
mimed swinging a cricket bat back to New York for four per-
effeminately. formances at the Stage Left MUSIC
The Gay and Lesbian Alli- Studio, 438 West 37th Street, Queer Jazz
ance Against Defamation is 5A. Tickets are $18 and can be Rome Neal, artistic director of the
on Lewis’ case again, along ordered at smarttix.com or by Nuyorican Poet Café, presents “A Trib-
with the Australian Coali- calling 212-868-4444. Perfor- ute to LGBT Jazz Artists.” Billy Stray-
tion for Equality. Last year mances are at 8 p.m. on Novem- horn, Bessie Smith, “Ma” Rainey, Billy
he apologized for his “poor BETTE DAVIS ber 12, 14, 19, and 21. SIR IAN MCKELLEN Tipton, Billy Holiday, and Sun Ra are
choice of words” and claimed “Art’s Heart” is a “comedy among the greats honored by some of
to “hold no prejudices in this 230 West 49th Street. Tick- about loneliness” and touches Transsexual today’s hottest young singers — Kym
regard.” In this case, “his ets start at $100 and go up to on “skunks, sex, and suicide.” Gene IDed Hampton, Ricky DeMarco, Nhojj, and
spokeswoman in Australia, $1,500. Johnston starred in criti- Researchers in Austra- Mel Greenwich — and pianist Don-
Julie Cavanagh, said he did Annette Benning will brave cally acclaimed productions of lia found a “significant link ald Smith. Bronx Academy of Arts
not intend to comment,” the the Margo Channing role “Equus,” Edward Albee’s “The between a gene involved in & Dance, BAAD, 841 Barretto St.,
New York Times reported. with Brian Bedford as Addi- Goat,” and “Shopping and Fuck- testosterone action and male- btwn. Garrison & Lafayette Aves.,
son DeWitt, Cynthia Nixon as ing.” to-female transsexualism,” Hunts Point (#6 train to Hunts Point
Star-Studded Karen Richards, John Slattery the BBC reported. The team Ave.), 8 p.m. Tickets are $15 at Bronx-
“All About as Margo’s playwright Lloyd Waiting for from Prince Henry’s Institute AcademyofArtsandDance.org or $20 at
Eve” Reading Richards, Angela Lansbury Gay-Dot of Medical Research ana- the door.
Nothing could improve as Birdie, Peter Gallagher as We recently reported that lyzed DNA samples from 112 ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯
on “All About Eve,” the 1950 Margo’s lover Bill Samson, and out gay actor Nathan Lane male-to-female transsexual
classic starring Bette Davis, Joel Grey as Max Fabian. Zoe is bringing Samuel Beckett’s volunteers and found “they Opera
and while a remake should be Caldwell serves as the chief “Waiting for Godot” to Broad- were more likely to have a Triangulation
banned, there’s probably no prompter. Eve Harrington has way in the spring with Bill Irwin. longer version of the andro- Lee Hoiby’s dark verismo-like drama
harm in a one-off reading by yet to be announced. (Hiding in Now out gay Sir Ian McKellen is gen receptor gene,” a differ- “The Scarf,” about witchcraft and infi-
a wonderful cast all for a good the alleyway outside the the- taking the same role of Estragon ence that “may cause weaker delity, and William Walton’s comedic
cause — the Actor’s Fund — ater, perhaps.) to the Theatre Royal Haymarket testosterone signals.” They melodrama “The Bear” are both one-
on Monday, November 10 at For ticket information, call in London with Patrick Stewart also stressed that other genes
the Eugene O’Neill Theater, 212-221-7300, ext. 133. as Vladimir, starting April 30. likely play a role. 䉴 NOV 7, continued on p.13
6 - 12 NOV 2008 Legal/9
Jumping the Gun in Connecticut
Gay fathers with surrogacy contract get early recognition of Massachusetts marriage
BY ARTHUR S. LEONARD In September 2007, Ben- mother’s name is automati- a genetic tie. tus. Abery-Wetstone accept-
nett Cunningham and cally placed on the birth cer- After a child is born, the ed the plaintiffs’ declaration

J
ust four days after the Michael Spann, the Texas tificate, but in gestational sur- Health Department argues that their sperm created the
Connecticut Supreme couple, and Jamie and James rogacy cases a “replacement” that unrelated adults should embryos and, following the
Court’s October 10 Tardiff, a Connecticut het- certificate is soon issued list- have to go through an adop- Griffiths ruling, found that
announcement that the erosexual married couple, ing the legal parents, and tion process in order to no genetic testing was needed
state’s constitution required entered into a gestational this becomes the permanent become the legal parent of to match the biological father
allowing same-sex couples to agreement. The two gay men birth record. Anticipating the a child, so that their fitness and the child, since the two
marry, a Superior Court judge each donated sperm to cre- birth of their children, the to be a parent can be deter- men intended to raise the
ruled that a Texas gay male ate a fertilized embryo with men filed an action with the mined. children together as spouses.
couple who married in British an egg from an anonymous Superior Court on September After summarizing the Abery-Wetstone wrote that
Columbia and Massachusetts donor. 22, seeking an order to the recent conflicting decisions, the state’s laws concerning
should be recognized as mar- On May 14, the two embry- Connecticut Department of Judge Abery-Wetstone found artificial insemination “in
ried in Connecticut. os were implanted in Jamie Health that they both be list- Griffiths v. Taylor more conjunction with the plain-
The case involved the men’s Tardiff, who became pregnant ed as parents on the “replace- persuasive; there, a judge tiffs’ legally recognized mar-
effort to place their names on and carried them to term. ment” birth certificates. ordered that a gay male cou- riage... lend additional sup-
the birth certificates of chil- Two babies were delivered on The Connecticut Health ple be treated as legal parents port to placing the names of
dren they conceived through October 10, coincidentally the Department raised various for the replacement birth cer- the plaintiffs on each of the
gestational surrogacy in Con- date when the marriage ruling objections, pointing out that tificate. replacement certificates.”
necticut. was announced, but several in the absence of genetic test- But her ruling was bol- In this very unusual sit-
After conflicting rulings this weeks before it officially went ing there is no absolute proof stered by the recently- uation, the Connecticut
summer on the question in into effect on October 28. that either man is the biologi- announced Kerrigan marriage Supreme Court’s decision
similar cases by several Con- Each of the men is a bio- cal father of either of the chil- equality decision. actually served as a prec-
necticut trial judges, Judge logical father of one of the dren, and arguing that only a Connecticut law provides edent before its “official” date
Holly Abery-Wetstone deter- babies, but the couple plans biological or adoptive parent that the sperm donor in a of October 28, and before it
mined that the men should no genetic testing to figure should be listed on a birth gestational surrogacy case will actually go into effect on
be treated the same as any out which, since they plan to certificate. The Department will be named the legal father November 12.
married heterosexual couple raise both children together also has a standing objection on a replacement birth certifi-
who made a gestational sur-
rogacy agreement with a Con-
as “equal” parents.
Under Connecticut law,
to recognizing a legal parental
relationship in advance of a
cate without having the sur-
rogate’s husband first having
gaycity
necticut woman. when a child is born the birth child’s birth in the absence of to terminate his parental sta- news.com
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10/ Editorial 10 - 16 JAN 2008

■ LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

PUBLISHER & CO-FOUNDER

Two Contradictory Emotions
JOHN W. SUTTER BY PAUL SCHINDLER
646.452.2500

A
JWSutter@communitymediallc.com t the end, even after The Califor - ton years and now possible in Washing-
ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER & CO-FOUNDER watching him wage nia battle was assume we ton. “We can’t get the 1,049
TROY MASTERS his campaign day in hard fought, so jump right rights and benefits of mar -
646.452.2502 and day out for more than we know better back on where riage now?” he said. “Give
troy@gaycitynews.com 20 months, it was stun- than from some we got off me your top five. You can’t
EDITOR IN-CHIEF & CO-FOUNDER ning Tuesday evening to see other experi- invites bitter pay the taxes you owe on
PAUL SCHINDLER Barack Obama take to the ences just how memories of your domestic partnership
646.452.2503
editor@gaycitynews.com
podium in Chicago’s Grant indecent wer e our disappoint- benefits? I think we can do
Park to claim victory — not the lies our opponents told. ments under his adminis- that.”
ASSOCIATE EDITOR
Duncan Osborne only for himself, but for a That our marriages would tration — especially with the As for the amendment
nation not sure that it was deny them of religious free- Defense of Marriage Act and defeats this week, Evan Wolf-
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
Christopher Byrne (Theater), Susie Day, yet prepared or able to break dom. That our unions would the Don’t Ask, Don’t T ell son, who heads up Freedom
Doug Ireland (International), such a profound barrier. become mandatory curricu- military policy. to Marry, said, “The most
Brian McCormick (Dance) For weeks, there was the lum for the youngest of pub- In fact, our civil rights important message, as pain-
Dean P. Wrzeszcz steady accretion of Obama lic school children. Thirty movement is a “progressive ful as it is, is this is not the
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS pins on the lapels and knap- last word, even in Califor -
Betsy Andrews, Seth J. Bookey,
Anthony M.Brown, Kelly Jean Cogswell,
sacks of New Yorkers of all nia.” The issue of fairness
Dean Daderko, Tate Dougherty, Andres Duque, stripes. That wave mov- made solid progress in near-
Michael Ehrhardt, Steve Erickson, Nick Feitel,
Jim Fouratt, Joe Fyfe, Deborah Garwood,
ingly crested in the tears I “We can’t get the 1,049 rights ly every demographic relative
saw at the Democratic vic- to the first vote on this issue
Erasmo Guerra, Emily Harney, Andrey Henkin,
Frank Holiday, Andy Humm, James Jorden, tory party at Midtown’s
and benefits of marriage now? there in 2000, and, he said,
Brendan Keane, David Kennerley, Gary M. Kramer,
Arthur S. Leonard, Rachael Liberman,
Sheraton Hotel, the crowds Give me your top five.” “thousands and thousands”
Michael T. Luongo, Lawrence D. Mass, that jammed Times Square, of straight allies put their
Winnie McCroy, Eileen McDermott, and the shouts of joy bounc- hearts into our cause this
Gregory Montreuil, Ioannis Mookas, Carrie Moyer,
Stephen Mueller, Christopher Murray,
ing around Flatbush Avenue year.
David Noh, Wayne Northcross, Lori Ortiz, at 1 a.m. all the way from the years after Anita Bryant disease” to borrow (okay, With the State Senate flip
Pauline Park, Sheila Pepe, John Reed, Manhattan Bridge to Pros- launched her anti-gay jihad perversely) the phrase for in New York, marriage equal-
Nathan Riley, Andrew Robinson, Gerard Robinson,
Chris Schmidt, Sarah D. Schulman, pect Park. with the blood libel “Save describing alcoholism’s ity grows closer here, and
Jason Victor Serinus, Linda Shapiro, The change that beamed Our Children,” this hatred is advance even during the New Jersey is a good bet at a
David Shengold, Gus Solomons Jr., David Spiher, out from Chicago to the still flung at us with alarm- years when one has resisted legislative win as well. Given
Drew B. Straub, Stefen Styrsky, Jerry Tallmer,
Stefanos Tsigrimanis, Kathleen Warnock, world was, as ever, elegant ing impunity. picking up the bottle. We a once-in-20-years chance
Benjamin Weinthal, Lee Ann Westover, and inspirational, but, as So, just as Rachel Mad- are not getting back on the to call a constitutional con-
James Withers, Kai Wright, Susan Yung
we have grown increas- dow does every night on her escalator where we got off vention just weeks after the
GRAPHIC DESIGNERS
Mark Hasselberger, Jamie Paakkonen
ingly convinced, it was also MSNBC show, I am looking in January 2001 because marriage ruling in Connecti-
remarkably self-possessed, for others to talk me down. we are not the same, our cut, voters there passed it up
SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT OF ADVERTISING
FRANCESCO REGINI
intelligent, and substantive. In a press release Tuesday friends and allies are not the by a 60-40 vote.
646.452.2496 America has already changed night, the Human Rights same, and the world is not And the same year that
francesco@gaycitynews.com profoundly; it’s hard not to Campaign noted that the the same. Colorado’s Wayne Allard,
ADVERTISING MANAGERS believe that it will be for the pendulum has swung back, Rea Carey, the new execu- the Senate sponsor of the
MICHAEL RYAN greater good. and that “our years in the tive director of the National attempted federal mar -
646.452.2504 Still, a friend of mine wilderness are over,” even if Gay and Lesbian Task Force, riage amendment, retired,
micheal@gaycitynews.com called Wednesday and said, it is not yet clear precisely put it well when I spoke to his House sidekick, Marilyn
COLIN GREGORY “For queers, it was like at what locale we have exit- her one day before the elec- Musgrave, also of Colorado,
646.452.2468
colin@gaycitynews.com McCain won yesterday.” He ed the Bush. In a telephone t i o n . “ We w i l l b e m o v i n g was turned out by the voters.
was referring to our losses in interview on Wednesday, into a territory we’ve never What all this adds up to is
ALLISON GREAKER
646.452.2485 marriage amendment fights Joe Solmonese, HRC’s presi- been,” she said. There are, of our responsibility to simul-
allison@gaycitynews.com in Florida, Arizona, and most dent, said our community course, longstanding legisla- taneously hold within our -
JENNIFER HOLLAND devastatingly — because we will no longer be talking to tive goals we are still at — selves emotions that may be
646.452.2499 thought we had won there allies only on Capitol Hill, though “we are not starting at war with each other. To
Jennifer@gaycitynews.com
just six months ago — Cali- we will also have friends in at zero.” But there are “other dwell on yesterday’s rever -
LORET GAMBOA fornia. And to add insult to the administration and at conversations, big conver - sals as a way to avoid work-
646-452-2483
loret@gaycitynews.com those injuries, there was the White House. sations about all sorts of ing on the challenges and
the wholly gratuitous slap It’s true — to some degree, issues that affect our com- opportunities that tomorrow
ACCOUNTING
DAVID JAFFE
from Arkansas, where just to we’ve been there before. Bill munity” — taxes, the econo- presents could be to give
646-452-2477 ensure that gay people don’t Clinton placed impressive my, health care. up just before the miracles
david@gaycitynews.com get their hands on orphaned numbers of openly LGBT Progress is slow on the begin.
NATIONAL DISPLAY ADVERTISING children, all unmarried cou- officials in his administra- marriage equality front, but, “This is our era,” Wolfson
Rivendell Media ples were barred from adopt- tion, some at his side. But Solmonese argued, mean- told me, “and we should not
212.242.6863 ing or being foster parents. to look back to the Clin- ingful incr ementalism is sit this out.”
Web master
Arturo Jimenez
Arturo@gaycitynews.com
Gay City News, The Newspaper Serving Gay and Lesbian NYC, is pub- ■ LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
lishedby Community Media, LLC. Send all inquiries to: Gay City News,
145 Sixth Ave., First Fl., NYC 10013 Phone: 646.452.2500 Written
permission of the publisher must be obtained before any of the contents
of this paper, in part or whole, can be reproduced or redistributed. All THE ROTTEN of Rob Pinter a few years ago coercion is involved between any straight video stores also
contents (c) 2008 Gay City News.
BUSINESS OF and found him to be a fine, consenting adults and if no being targeted)? Or, is this
Subscriptions: 26 issues, $90.00 ENTRAPMENT upstanding person. The charge third party (such as a pimp perhaps simply an instance of
(c)2008 Gay City News. that he was offering someone or a sex trafficker) is coercing police reaction to “community
All rights reserved.
Gay City News is a registered trademark November 3, 2008 services as a prostitute is not the alleged prostitute, then pressure,” with the arrest of a
of Community Media, LLC.
John W. Sutter, President
believable to me. Rob is said where’s the civic harm? Is gay man “collateral damage.”
Fax: 646.452.2501; To the Editor: to be 52 and the policeman- the law against prostitution Entrapment of gay men
E-mail: JWSutter@communitymediallc.com
Regar ding “Entrapped: decoy, 29 — another reason being selectively enforced? Is by police was rampant when
NYPD Hunts Gay Men in for profound skepticism about the purpose here to counter- I moved to New York City in
City Porn Shops” (by Dun- the police story. act prostitution or, rather, to 1959, a period described by the
can Osborne, Oct. 30-Nov.5), But what’s so bad about harass the store in question?
I was briefly a massage client prostitution, anyway? If no Is homophobia involved (are 䉴 LETTERS, continued on p.14
6 - 12 NOV 2008
■ THE PRESIDENT-ELECT
Symbols of Hope and Auspicious Substance
B
arack Obama turns
symbols into sub-
stance.
The dreams of “our found-
ers” are “alive in our time,” he
declared in his first speech as
president-elect. “Founders” is
a political word; it replaces the
patriarchal image of founding
fathers with the notion that
human beings — men and
women create change.
“Alive in our time,” says a lot
in few words; Obama insists
the Constitution and the Unit-
ed States are a work in prog-
ress. The new administration
will not waste its time divin-
ing the original intentions of
the revolutionary generation.
While reiterating that he will
■ A DYKE ABROAD
I
would like to be on the
right side of history for
once. I would like to say I
saw Obama’s landslide victory
— and the cheering crowds,
and heard his speech, declar-
ing, “Change has come to
America” where anything is
possible — I would like to say
I saw all that, my heart melt-
ed, and I was swept away by a
sudden burst of optimism and
joy.
But in truth, my heart
didn’t melt. I didn’t rejoice.
I was relieved that the end of
the Bush administration was
official, but as a dyke, as a
woman, what I felt was some-
thing more like grief, wonder-
ing just whom the change was
for, and who was going to pay
for it.
I don’t mean to minimize
what Obama’s done, what
Americans have done, stand-
ing in line for hours to vote,
turning out in record num-
bers, many for the first time.
And by sweeping away every
Republican in sight from the
White House all the way down
to the House of Representa-
tives, voters literally changed
the face of power, above all by
electing the first black presi-
dent. God yes, that means
www. GAYCIT YNEWS .com
be a uniter not a divider, his
opening lines simultaneously
reject conservative ideology
without antagonizing conser-
vatives — a window into to the
new president’s superior politi-
cal skills.
These remarks were made
on the most important day in
the new president’s career —
the day he was elected. The
words will be repeated and
repeated on television, radio,
and the Internet all over the US
— indeed all over the world. As
he stated, the election shows
“the power of our democracy.”
And the nation’s new leader
thanked the people — young
and old, rich and poor, dis-
abled and not disabled, black,
Waiting for Change
something. Even if it’s just a
sign of change, a symbol, a
promise.
But how can we celebrate as
queers when Obama raises his
hands in victory and declares
the world changed, when he
has changed things so little
How can we hold Obama
accountable for promises he didn’t
make, in meetings he was too
cautious, too homophobic to hold?
for us? When he has made so
few gestures to include lesbi-
an, gay, and transgender con-
cerns, and actually moved his
Democratic Party backwards
in the last two years?
Where’s the change in his
promises to give enormous
amounts of our tax dollars,
like Bush, to the same faith-
based programs that fire queer
employees and run programs
that shun us, humiliate us, or
try to convert us?
Like Bush, Obama cam-
paigned extensively with anti-
gay preachers condemning
us as a sinners and degener-
ates. No doubt their hate con-
Perspective/11
BY NATHAN RILEY
white, Latino, Asian, and
Native American — gay and
straight.
Everybody understands
why African-Americans are
proud, but I have never in my
life heard a national politi-
cal leader say, so unequivo-
cally and at such a moment
of high visibility, that gays are
equal members of the Ameri-
can people. As a child, I heard
that gays— then labeled by
the name of a psychiatric
disorder, “homosexuals” —
were allied with Communists
trying to destroy the United
States. Today, many children
go to church and learn that
gays are sinners, but the new
president said simply “we are
BY KELLY JEAN COGSWELL
verted a few red states into
blue. Who gives a shit about
the increase in gay-bashings,
homeless kids, youth sui-
cides? Who cares if they raise
rates of HIV in communities,
especially black communities,
where churches fight AIDS by
“converting” queers? Should
we pop open the champagne
for that? Should we celebrate
votes bought with queer
blood?
As he lauded the dreams of
our founders and the power
of democracy, voters across
the nation were negating the
rights of gay Americans. In
California, they passed Propo-
sition 8, stripping away our
right to marriage. All Obama
has had to say on the matter
was that it wasn’t at all the
same as the miscegenation
laws prohibiting the marriage
of blacks and whites, and
his religion taught him mar-
and always will be the United
States.”
In the Obama administra-
tion gays are one of the build-
ing blocks who “put their
hands on the arc of history
and bend it once more toward
the hope of a better day.”
His inclusive sentiments
were unexpected and gratify-
ing. His words of hope reas-
sured that the defeats of mar-
riage equality in California,
Arizona, and Florida would not
be permanent setbacks. If mar-
riage equality is not accepted
by a majority of Americans,
it is very close to that accep-
tance. We have come a long
way.
And the LGBT community
riage was between a man and
woman, but hey, he could be
“misguided.”
What change is that for
queers?
Even straight Americans
in search of change will have
to take to the sidewalks and
streets where they waited in
line to vote because politicians
themselves are always the
same. For two years, Demo-
crats have had a majority in
the US Congress and they’ve
done nothing with it, claiming
it was impossible without a fil-
ibuster-proof majority. I think
they just didn’t want to take
responsibility for anything,
with their eyes on the 2008
election.
What excuse will they come
up with now? What risks will
they take unless we push
them? Who or what will they
hide behind? The economy?
The endless War on Terror
that can justify anything?
Queers ar e even worse
off. How can we hold Obama
accountable for promises he
didn’t make, in meetings he
was too cautious, too politi-
cal, too homophobic to hold?
All we can do is assert that
the “American dream,” that
the democracy his election
has every reason to think it
will be partners as the US
faces the enor mous tasks
ahead. The “challenges that
tomorrow will bring are the
greatest of our lifetime — two
wars, a planet in peril, the
worst financial crisis in a cen-
tury.”
Obama called the work of
uniting the nation a “cause.”
He promised relief to those
anxious over the cost of health
care and to restore prosper-
ity and promote the cause of
peace.
A president’s work is never
done. Obama’s first night as
president-elect gave the nation
reasons for optimism. It was
an auspicious start.
proved, also promises equal-
ity under the law to everyone,
even queers. Even on the sub-
ject of marriage.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe
when Barack Obama coasts
into the Oval Office on the
flood of an overwhelming vic-
tory, and sits down at that
storied desk, he will slowly
gain the solidity and weight of
305,600,000 American souls,
many of them queer, and he
will be transformed into more
than a symbol of change, but a
force for it. And he will remem-
ber and know that he is truly
a president of all Americans.
I’m not holding my breath. If
all our donated millions to the
Democrats couldn’t buy us a
chicken dinner with Barack
the candidate, we’re not going
to feast with Barack the presi-
dent. I suspect he and his
Democrats will continue to
keep us at arms’ length, and
that our only hope for progress
will be to extract ourselves
from the national Democratic
machinery that ground us up
for red state votes.
Frankly my hope is the fail-
ing economy. Maybe he’ll skip
the faith-based payoff if the
country’s broke. Maybe pigs
will fly.
12 6 - 12 NOV 2008 WWW.GAYCITYNEWS.COM

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6 - 12 NOV 2008
7 DAYS Eleven Years For Women
䉴
7 NIGHTS “L Word” stars help raise $130k for LGBT Community Center
NOV 7, from p.8
act operas based on Chekhov texts.
The two operas, fully staged and sung
in English, open Chelsea Opera’s fourth
season. St. Peter’s Church, 246 W.
20th St. Nov. 7-8, 7:30 p.m.; Nov. 9,
3:30 p.m. Tickets are $20-$35 at thea-
termania.com or 866-811-4111 or $25-
$45 at the door. For more information,
visit chelseaopera.org.
✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯
FILM
Every Minute, Four
Ideas
Through Nov. 13, the IFC Center
presents the most extensive US retro-
spective ever mounted of the films of
Arnaud Desplechin, one of the most
exciting of France s contemporary
filmmakers. “Kings and Queens”
(2004), about two former lovers, Nora
and Ismaël, whose lives are dis-
rupted by unexpected crises, starring
Mathieu Almaric, Emmanuelle Devos,
and Catherine Deneuve, screens
Nov. 7, 3, 6 & p.m.; Nov. 9, 5 & 8
p.m.; Nov. 13, 1 & 9:30 p.m. “My Sex
Life or How I Got into an Argument”
(1996), about a longtime graduate
student, starring Mathieu Almaric,
Emmanuelle Devos, Jeanne Balibar,
and Chiara Mastroianni, screens Nov.
8, 1:30, 5 & 8:30 p.m.; Nov. 9, 1:30
p.m. “La Sentinelle” (1992), about a
medical student traveling to Paris who
discovers a shrunken human head
stashed in his suitcase and begins
an investigation, starring Emmanuel
Salinger, Marianne Denicourt, Bruno
Todeschini, and Emmanuelle Devos,
screens Nov. 10, 1, 4 & 9:45 p.m.;
Nov. 13, 4 p.m. “Playing in the Com-
pany of Men” (2003), Desplechin s
meta-adaptation of Edward Bond s
play about boardroom arms dealing
that shifts back and forth between
the unfolding drama and rehearsals
for the production we are watching,
starring Sami Bouajila and Jean-Paul
Roussillon, screens Nov. 11, 1, 3, 7 &
10 p.m. “Esther Khan” (2000), about
a young Jewish woman in 19th-cen-
tury London dreams of becoming an
actress, starring Summer Phoenix and
Ian Holm, screens Nov. 12, 1, 4, 7 &
10 p.m. 323 Sixth Ave. at W. Third
St. Tickets are $12.
✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯
BOOKS
Youth Burdens
Mitchell Gold, cofounder of the
furniture brand Mitchell Gold + Bob
Williams, is the editor of “Crisis:
40 Stories Revealing the Personal,
Social, and Religious Pain and Trau-
ma of Growing up Gay in America.”
Gold discusses the pain, suffering,
and isolation millions of gay teens
still face today. Appearing with Gold
䉴 NOV 7, continued on p.14
BY WINNIE MCCROY
A
capacity crowd filled
the ballroom of Pier 60
on Saturday, Novem-
ber 1, for Women’s Event 11,
the annual fundraiser sup-
porting the LGBT Community
Center’s women’s programs.
This year’s honorees included
Stephanie Gibbons, execu-
✯ tive vice president of market-
ing and on-air promotions for
FX Networks; Lisa Sherman,
executive vice president and
general manager of Logo; and
Ilene Chaiken, creator and
executive producer of “The L
Word.” Special guests includ-
ed cast members Jennifer
Beals, Pam Grier, Daniela Sea,
and Rose Rollins.
The event raised $130,000
for the Center’s women’s pro-
grams.
All funds from the Women’s
Event went to support Center
programs, including the Les-
bian Cancer Initiative, Cen-
ter Kids, Causes in Common,
Lesbian Cinema Arts, the
Youth Enrichment Services,
and Center CARE.
“The Center does so many
great things, anything we can
do to shine a spotlight on it is
great,” said Sherman, whose
Logo headquarters are based
in New York. “Women are often
underrepresented and under-
served, so an event like this
when you can bring together
600 people to celebrate women
is fantastic!”
“I think that we’ve been
part of a cultural change,
and one of the reasons ‘The
L Word’ has been so success-
ful is because it was time for
that change, and we rode the
wave,” said Chaiken. “But
these are the organizations
that are doing the work that
keeps our community afloat.
It’s been a privilege to do a TV
show that can actually galva-
nize the community and help
to raise the money so that we
can pursue our progressive
✯ agenda, which has long been
underfunded.”
When Gay City News asked
what viewers could expect
in the final season of “The L
Word,” cast member Beals
replied, “They can expect a
lot of turmoil. By the end of
the season, there’s going to
be a lot of mail for Ilene Chai-
ken!”
Looking stunning in a
red evening gown, “Flash-
dance” star Beals later took
to the podium to present this
Community/13
“L Word” director Ilene Chaiken, Showtime’s Gwen Marcus, star Pam Grier, and the Center’s Richard Burns at Women’s Event 11 at Chelsea
Piers on November 1.
year’s Outspoken Commu-
nity Leader Award to Chaiken.
Overcome by emotion, Beals
teared up when speaking of
the upcoming election and the
gay community’s struggle for
marriage equality.
“In the course of the last
seven years we have seen
changes that when we first
“We’ve given away our gifts to
the dominant heterosexual
culture — and we will keep on
doing it for them.”
began making ‘The L Word’
seemed almost unimaginable,”
said Beals. “I envision a time
in the not-too-distant future
when my daughter asks, ‘You
mean there used to be a time
when gay people couldn’t
get married? God, that’s so
crazy!’”
Saying that she believed a
“seismic change” was on the
horizon, Beals urged the com-
munity to share their personal
narratives, to tell the stories of
LGBT lives in the way “The L
Word” had, saying, “If history
is written by the victors, then
we have made ourselves victo-
rious by writing our own his-
tory.”
Accepting her award, Chai-
ken noted, “LGBT people his-
torically have written, direct-
ed, and produced many of the
world’s greatest movies and
television shows while hid-
ing the portrayals of our true
selves. We’ve given away our
gifts to the dominant hetero-
sexual culture — and we will
keep on doing it for them. But
we won’t do it anymore with-
out seeing our own selves
wholly, gloriously, complexly,
glamorously, and provokingly
represented.”
Fellow honoree Gibbons
was instrumental in launching
both “The L Word” and “Queer
as Folk,” and now works with
the FX Network to positively
present rounded portrayals
of LGBT characters in shows
such as “nip/tuck” and “The
Riches.” Her work helped lead
to GLAAD’s naming FX one of
television’s most gay-friendly
networks.
“I’m proud to be a part of
the network,” said Gibbons,
one of two recipients that eve-
ning of the Corporate Leader-
ship Award. “Every show rep-
resents our story… I see that
they see [the GLBT communi-
ty] as part of the larger whole.
We’re unique as individuals,
but the commonality between
us as human beings is larger
than anything that separates
us, and the network puts us
in their stories the same way
JICKY
they put everyone else in.”
“It’s incredibly important
that the community does as
much as it can to help all of
our community-based orga-
nizations fundraise, because
these are going to be tough
times,” said City Council
Speaker Christine Quinn, a
guest speaker at the event.
“That said, women’s pro-
grams… don’t get nearly the
philanthropic grants or level
of giving that mainstream pro-
grams get. So to have a fund
of money for women’s issues
that’s not restricted is a bless-
ing to a place like the Center.
And it’s because of events like
this that there will be that
stream of money.”
The event featured both a
silent and a live auction. The
single item offered for live bid-
ding was a walk-on role in
a Showtime promo for “The
L Word.” Two bidders paid
$20,000 each to appear in ads
shot later that evening.
“The Center is celebrating
its 25th anniversary this year,
and since its very beginning
has sought to serve everyone
in the LGBT community,”
said Center executive director
Richard Burns. “Events like
[this] specifically enable us to
continue to provide things like
our lesbian cancer services
and our young lesbians pro-
gram, and help ensure that
programs like these continue
to exist.”
For more information or
to support The Center, visit
gaycenter.org.
14
䉴 LETTERS, from p.10
gay historians George Chaunc-
ey and Martin Duberman as
the most virulently anti-gay in
the city’s history. Entrapment
itself is perverted and should
have no place in a decent soci-
ety. Its purpose is to help indi-
vidual police officers make a
quota (and, sometimes, a few
extra bucks from bribe money);
politicians, to make the case to
the public that they are against
sin (usually with the next elec-
tion in mind); and police offi-
cials, to satisfy pressure from
politicians and some members
of the public. It serves no legiti-
mate social purpose.
If Mayor Michael Bloomberg
allows a policy of entrapment
to continue, he is not an ally of
the LGBT community. Period.
These instances of entrapment
again bring into question the
mayor’s commitment to the
US Constitution. One should
have the right to be in the Blue
Door Video store and not be
harassed by the government.
(During the 1960s, one could
be arrested simply for being
present in a gay bar.)
Why isn’t City Council
Speaker Christine Quinn pro-
testing loudly about this police
entrapment?
Why isn’t the Legal Aid Soci-
ety bringing a class action law-
suit against the city for this
entrapment policy instead of
advising individuals to plead
guilty when they are innocent?
Robert Lease
Manhattan
TERMS UNLIMITED
October 23, 2008
To the Editor:
I am a member of our LGBT
community who supports
City Council Speaker Chris-
tine Quinn on the term limits
change.
Throughout my professional
life I have worked in city gov-
ernment and in not-for profits.
I was permanently disabled
in the 9-11-01 attack on the
city, and now rely on disabil-
ity payments and government
programs for my housing and
other needs.
I know firsthand that effica-
cious government means the
difference between being able
to access housing, health care,
food, and other essentials, or
not.
A large percentage of New
York City’s funds originate
from federal grant money. Hav-
ing municipal elected leaders
known for their effective fiscal
management of the city’s bud-
gets will be essential to retain-
ing our fair share of federal dol-
lars, as competition for those
dollars become more acute.
When mayors change, city
government moves into a hold-
ing pattern for months until
the new administration takes
office and new commissioners
are appointed. This is not the
time for less responsiveness in
city government.
Speaker Quinn has led the
Council through the negotia-
tion of devastating cuts to the
city budget. The Council will
be facing many more terrible
choices. I would rather have a
speaker who understands and
cares about the agencies and
not-for-profits that are being
cut than someone who does
not. I am grateful that Speaker
Quinn is willing to step up to
the plate in these hard times,
when it would be so much eas-
ier and pleasant to walk away.
Sheri Clemons
Staten Island
October 27, 2008
To the Editor:
There are many valid argu-
ments to maintain the cur -
rent two-term limit on any one
office (“Council Term Limits
Grab Wrong on Every Count,”
by Michael Colosi, Oct. 23-29).
I also agree that the man-
ner in which term limits were
achieved — ballot initiative
bought by billionaire mayoral
wanna-be Ron Lauder and now
repealed by billionaire Michael
Bloomberg — is terribly cynical.
However, I am surprised
anyone who calls themselves a
“progressive” would favor term
limits to prevent city employees
from becoming vested into the
pension they already pay into.
Walmart uses a model of
high employee turnover to keep
retirement and other benefit
payouts low. I’m frankly sur-
prised a “Democrat” would
want to cut city costs by elimi-
nating pension payouts. In my
union, employees are vested
after five years, not ten. Also
during the first nine years of
employment, part of the money
the city pays each Council
member and staffer is going
into a pension fund. So should
only the few Council members
who get elected to mayor, pub-
lic advocate, comptroller, or
other higher office receive the
pension that all Council mem-
bers paid into?
I hope all progressives in
City Hall and in New York City
politics fight for health care and
pension benefits for all employ-
ees. I would certainly hope that
we first show our commitment
by being good employers our-
selves towards everyone who
works for New York City.
Why try and keep Walmart
out of New York City when we
argue to treat New York City
employees with the same low
standards as Walmart?
Jon Winkleman
Sunnyside
6 - 12 NOV 2008
OBAMA UNEASE
October 29, 2008
Dear Editor,
Thank you for the recent
articles by Doug Ireland about
the plight of Iraqi and Iranian
LGBTs (“Key Gay Leader Slain
in Iraq,” Oct. 2-8, and “Iranian
Queer RR Launched,” Oct.
16-22). I hope you will con-
tinue to run follow-up articles
so I, and hopefully other mem-
bers of our community, can
stay informed on this issue
and find ways to help save
LGBT lives.
Regarding “Being Obama’s
Main Gay” by Paul Schin-
dler (Oct. 23-29), Dave Noble
acknowledges the cynicism
that LGBT voters have about
the political process. The cyni-
cism is very well founded.
President Bill Clinton threw
the LGBT community under
the bus. And I, for one, believe
that Obama will do the same.
His past association with
homophobes is well docu-
mented. But the specter of an
Obama cabinet position for
Colin Powell does not bode well
for our “hope.”
However, there were two
candidates for the Democratic
presidential nomination, Den-
nis Kucinich and Mike Gravel,
that were in favor of marriage
equality. And the Green/Rain-
bow Party candidate, Cynthia
McKinney, was in favor of mar-
riage equality.
My question to the LGBT
community is: If you won’t
vote for the candidates that
are brave enough to stand in
favor of marriage equality,
how can you expect them to
continue to do so?
Mark Woodward
Lenox, Massachusetts
October 26, 2008
To the Editor:
Wasn’t it Joe Biden who
declared that yes, marriage
is only between one man and
one woman. There’s absolutely
nothing progressive in Obama’s
appeal to our community. He
is even supported by the main
players who forced Clinton to
adopt the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
policy instead of his proposed
plan to allow gays to serve
actively and openly join the mil-
itary. That would be Obama’s
military adviser and supporter,
Sam Nunn of Georgia, one of
the most homophobic Demo-
crats I’ve ever come across.
Add to the mix, Colin Powell
and we’ll be set back years.
It was Obama who began his
campaign with The Gospel Tour
with ex-gays, and followed with
his Faith Tour, featuring his
proposal to expand Bush’s faith-
based initiative. His church-
going supporters will help pass
the anti-gay amendments on
ballots in at least two states,
Florida and California, and have
historically resisted allowing HIV
education to be taught through
the churches. Why? Because
it’s a gay disease.
Now Obama’s spokesman,
Dave Noble, makes promises
about nothing.
Glenn McGahee
Hollywood, Florida
A COMFORT LEVEL
October 30, 2008
To the Editor:
Knowing Steven Goldstein
as I have for a few years, I have
seen him evolve and reach
a certain comfort level with
Barack on Israel and LGBT
issues (“A Gay Jew’s Journey
to Obama,” Oct. 30-Nov. 5).
I am confident that Barack is
the right choice — not only
on Israel, but LGBT issues as
well. Time will tell.
Leslie Farber
Montclair, New Jersey
MIDEAST
CONTRADICTIONS
October 23, 2008
To the Editor:
Fascinating article! (“Israel’s
History, at Home,” by Steve
Erickson, Oct. 23-29). Is there
a confrontation in the film
between Claire and the Dajan-
is? Maybe that would be too
Jerry Springer for what seems
like a highly restrained — or
possibly baroque — film?
Kevin Killian
San Francisco
WHY IS THIS AN
ISSUE?
October 30, 2008
To the Editor:
This to me is a non-issue
(“Equality on the Horizon,” by
Cathy Marino-Thomas and Jo-
Ann Shain, Progress Report,
Oct. 30-Nov. 5). If you don’t
agree with marriage equality,
don’t marry someone of the
same sex! As a school teacher,
I don’t ever recall reading/cit-
ing the words, “with liberty
and justice for ALL” and seeing
the word “except.” Separate
but equal does not, has not,
and should not work. We can
not “eeny, meeny, miny, moe”
through our neighborhoods
and point to who is allowed
marriage or not. As a Christian
and American, I am for equal-
ity, love, and acceptance to all
human life. God bless.
Stephanie Kansas
Detroit
䉴 LETTERS, continued on p.15
WWW.GAYCITYNEWS.COM
7 DAYS
䉴
7 NIGHTS
NOV 7, from p.13
are pop singer Ari Gold, Kevin Jen-
nings, founder of the Gay, Lesbian
and Straight Education Network,
and former New Jersey Governor
Jim McGreevey. Barnes & Noble
Bookstore, Broadway at 82nd St.,
7 p.m. Free. All events are subject
to change, so call 212-721-5282 to
confirm.
✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯
PERFORMANCE
No Olive, Please
Basil Twist’s innovative puppetry
unites with drag diva Joey Arias’ leg-
endary voice to transport audiences
to unpredictable worlds, channeling
ecstatic desires, lavish nightmares,
and bizarre premonitions. “Arias With
a Twist” is a feast for the senses, cen-
tering on rare songs and reinventions
of popular favorites. HERE Arts Cen-
ter, 145 Sixth Ave. at Dominick St.,
one block below Spring St. Wed.-
Sun., 9 .m. through Dec. 31. Tickets
are $35-$100 at here.org or 212-352-
3101. More information at http://
www.basiltwist.com.
✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯
HEALTH
SAT.NOV. 8
Not Quite Ready
The LGBT Community Center
SmokeFree Project hosts a three-hour
workshop, “Not Quite Ready to Quit.”
The event focuses on understanding
nicotine addiction, increasing moti-
vation, and eliminating roadblocks to
making the decision to quit. 208 W.
13th St., 1-4 p.m. Free, but screen-
ing required. For more information,
visit gaycenter.org/health or call 212-
620-7310 and ask for the SmokeFree
Project.
✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯
THEATER
Cultural
Competence
“Idiosyncrasy” is a one-man
play written and performed by Indio
Melendez that deftly mixes rhyme,
verse, song, and movement to look
at the struggles of a Latino man
coming to terms with core facets
of his cultural and sexual identity
and his relationships as a husband,
father, friend, and lover. Veronica
Caicedo directs. The performance
will be followed by a Yoruba/Afro-
Cuban drumming jam led by mas-
ter percussionist Angel Rodriguez.
Bronx Academy of Arts & Dance,
BAAD, 841 Barretto St., btwn.
Garrison & Lafayette Aves.,
Hunts Point (#6 train to Hunts
Point Ave.), 8 p.m. Tickets are $15
at BronxAcademyofArtsandDance.
org or $20 at the door.
✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯
䉴 NOV 8, continued on p.19
WWW.GAYCITYNEWS.COM
䉴 CHALLENGES, from p.2
ly 12,000 gay men and lesbians their
jobs. He signed the federal Defense of
Marriage Act (DOMA) that required the
federal government to ignore same sex
marriages and allowed states to do the
same.
Since Clinton signed DOMA in 1996,
roughly 45 states have passed laws
or amended their constitutions to bar
same sex marriage. On the night that
Obama was elected president, voters in
three states — California, Arizona and
Florida — added such bans to their
state constitutions.
䉴 SENATE, from p.4
in Buffalo and Darrel Aubertine in a
Lake Ontario district centered in Water-
town.
In Nassau County, marriage equality
supporter Craig Johnson, a Democrat
sent to Albany in a special election in
early 2007, won a comfortable victory,
and in Lower Manhattan/ Brownstone
Brooklyn’s District 25, Daniel Squad-
ron, a pro-marriage equality Democrat
who knocked off incumbent Democrat
Martin Connor in the September pri-
mary, racked up more than 85 percent
of the vote against John Chromczak,
an out gay Republican.
Malcolm Smith, the Queens Dem-
ocrat who will be the new majority
leader, appeared at ESPA’s annual
Manhattan Fall Dinner last October
and enthusiastically pledged to “for-
ward” the marriage equality bill on
䉴 LETTERS, from p.14
October 23, 2008
To the Editor:
Religious Californians, come out of
the dark and see the light (“Stars Come
Out vs. Prop 8,” News Briefs, by Andy
Humm, Oct. 23-29). How can you love
God and hate his creation? Would a
loving God hate his creation? I have
asked myself these questions every
since I attended bible college and every
time I ask the question, I get a resound-
ing “No!” Come out of the dark and see
the light. We are human too.
LindaJeanne Barr
South Dakota
ART AND POLITICS
October 31, 2008
To the Editor:
Stick to the arts, Brian (“Lead-
ing Men,” by Brian McCormick, Oct.
30-Nov. 5). “The Bush-Paulson reces-
sion?” Keep you economic ignorance
out of your otherwise well written piece
on good dance.
David Herro
Chicago
gaycitynews.com
6 - 12 NOV 2008
A flare up at Room Service, a club
on East 21st Street, that had more to
do with a local issue nevertheless illus-
trated how conflict is ever-present in
politics.
Moments after the cable networks
said Obama had won the race, City
Council Speaker Christine Quinn, an
out lesbian who represents Chelsea,
began to address the crowd. Ira Man-
hoff, a longtime gay and AIDS activist,
stormed the stage yelling, “whore of
Babylon” and “democracy.”
Manhoff is among those New York-
ers who objected to Quinn’s assisting
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg in chang-
“the first day of our session,” and to
put it at “the top of the list” when dis-
cussing agenda items with the gov-
ernor. In the current Senate, there
are 21 members who have signaled
support for marriage equality, all of
them Democrats, but there are also
six Democrats who have stated their
opposition, including Ruben Diaz, Sr.
of the Bronx, who is a harsh foe of the
LGBT community.
Unless Gennaro wins the 11th
District seat in a recount, no net gain
in public marriage equality support-
ers comes from this election, and one
current supporter — Efrain Gonza-
lez, Jr., of the Bronx — was defeated
in the September primary by Pedro
Espada, Jr., whose views on marriage
equality are not known. It is clear,
then, that Smith, in steering the bill
to passage in the Senate, would have
to rely on some GOP votes.
LAUGHS AND POLITICS
October 24, 2008
To the Editor
I used to like Whoopi Goldberg,
but I’m starting to feel she is one
of the most ignorant people on TV
(“Whoopi: Always a Step Ahead,” by
Paul Schindler, Oct. 23-29). Maybe
she should read her history, when
all Americans pulled together, and
stop bashing Republicans. Especial-
ly when Republicans are guests on
“The View.”
Grace Ousley
Paradise Valley, Arizona
WRITE US!
Address letters to the editor, of no more
than 250 words, to:
Editor@gaycitynews.com ;
Or fax them to 646-452-2501;
Or mail them to 145 Sixth Ave., 1st fl.,
New York 10013.
Please include your phone number, for
confirmation purposes only. The editors
reserve the right to edit all letters due to
space constraints.
ing the city term limits laws to allow
local elected officials to serve three
four-year terms instead of two terms.
Earlier, back at Gym, a conflict of
another sort marred an evening that
had some pundits marveling at Ameri-
ca’s first African-American president.
It was after 9:00 and the Riots had
won their first game to the Griffins six.
“None of my team is paying atten-
tion to the game,” said Ng as she ges-
tured towards the television screens
that hung near the pool table. CNN
called Ohio for Obama which led to
loud and sustained cheering in the
bar.
O n E l e c t i o n N i g h t , b o t h Va n
Capelle and Senator Thomas K.
Duane, an out gay Chelsea Demo-
crat who is the lead sponsor of the
marriage equality bill, noted that no
gay rights legislation has passed in
Albany without bipartisan support.
“Now that we are in the major -
ity, some Republicans will follow our
lead,” Duane said.
Asked whether the Pride Agenda
might find a chilly reception among
Senate Republicans after the group’s
push for a Democratic flip of the
chamber, Van Capelle said, “Look,
we’re going to have to have conver-
sations with a lot of people. No bill
passes without both parties.”
Van Capelle called the apparent
passage of an anti-gay marriage con-
stitutional amendment in California
“sad,” but predicted, “It will have vir-
tually no political impact on our abili-
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And the crowd was also pressing
further around the table making play
almost impossible. When Ng asked
one group to back off, one white gay
man suggested she go back to her own
country, Ng’s teammates reported.
That resulted in a loud argument and
Gym staff quickly tossed the man and
his two friends out of the bar.
The two teams agreed to suspend
play for the evening and resume on
another night when they would not
have to wrestle with a mob that is in
the mood to party.
Shaking his head, Bess said, “There’s
been more drama tonight.”
ty to win marriage in New York State.”
Both Van Capelle and Duane also
dismissed talk that a small number
of conservative Democrats, including
Diaz, might be looking at the possi-
bility of switching their party affilia-
tion to keep the Republicans in con-
trol of the Senate. Asked if he worried
about that possibility, Van Capelle
said, “Not at all.”
But, the day after the election, the
Buffalo News reported that a “Gang of
Four” Democrats — including Diaz,
Espada, Brooklyn’s Carl Kruger, and
Senator -elect Hiram Monserrate of
Queens — were skipping a meeting
of Senate Democrats Smith called
in Albany that day and instead cau-
cusing among themselves, making
no commitments on which party to
support for the majority leadership.
Of the four, only Monserrate is a mar-
riage equality supporter.
Morning, Afternoon
and Night Service
from Manhattan
NEW Service Added – Call for Details!
16 6 - 12 NOV 2008
INDICATIONS
ISENTRESS is an anti-HIV medicine that helps control
HIV infection. ISENTRESS is used along with other anti-
HIV medicines in patients who are already taking or have
taken anti-HIV medicines that are not controlling their HIV
infection, such as patients with HIV resistant to more than
one type of anti-HIV medication.
The safety and effectiveness of ISENTRESS have not
been established for the treatment of HIV infection in adult
patients who have never taken HIV medications before or
in patients under 16 years of age.
The use of other medications active against HIV in
combination with ISENTRESS may increase the likelihood
of your overall response to treatment. Your doctor will
work with you to find the right combination of
HIV medications.
The long-term benefits and side effects of treatment with
ISENTRESS are unknown at this time. It is important that
you remain under your doctor’s care. There are no study
WWW.GAYCITYNEWS.COM
results demonstrating the effect of ISENTRESS on clinical
progression of HIV-1.
ISENTRESS will NOT cure HIV infection or reduce your
chance of passing HIV to others through sexual contact,
sharing needles, or being exposed to your blood.
ISENTRESS must be used with other anti-HIV medicines.
IMPORTANT RISK INFORMATION
Immune reconstitution syndrome can happen in some
patients with advanced HIV infection (AIDS) when
anti-HIV treatment is started. Signs and symptoms of
inflammation from opportunistic infections may occur
as the medicines work to control the HIV infection and
strengthen the immune system. Call your doctor right away
if you notice any signs or symptoms of an infection after
starting ISENTRESS.
Contact your doctor promptly if you experience
unexplained muscle pain, tenderness, or weakness while
taking ISENTRESS.
 WWW.GAYCITYNEWS.COM 6 - 12 NOV 2008 17

Presenting ISENTRESS.
A different way to treat HIV when used
as part of HIV combination therapy.
The first drug in a class of HIV medications called integrase inhibitors.
Based upon studies of up to 24-weeks:
ISENTRESS when taken in combination with other anti-HIV medications may reduce
viral load to undetectable (less than 400 copies/mL, or less than 50 copies/mL)a and
may increase CD4 (T) cell counts. ISENTRESS may not have these effects in all patients.
( adepending upon the test used)

Talk to your doctor about ISENTRESS.

Visit isentress.com for more information.

Need help paying for ISENTRESS? Call the patient SUPPORT™ program at 1-800-850-3430.

When ISENTRESS has been given with other anti-HIV You are encouraged to report negative side effects of
drugs, the most common side effects included diarrhea, prescription drugs to the FDA. Visit www.fda.gov/medwatch,
nausea, and headache. or call 1-800-FDA-1088.

People taking ISENTRESS may still develop infections, For additional information about ISENTRESS, please read
including opportunistic infections or other conditions the information on the following page.
that occur with HIV infection.
Tell your doctor about all of your medical conditions,
including if you have any allergies, are pregnant or plan
to become pregnant, or are breast-feeding or plan to
breast-feed. ISENTRESS is not recommended for use
during pregnancy. Women with HIV should not
breast-feed because their babies could be infected
with HIV through their breast milk.
Tell your doctor about all the medicines you take,
including prescription medicines such as rifampin
(a medicine used to treat some infections such as
tuberculosis), non-prescription medicines, vitamins, ISENTRESS is a registered trademark of Merck & Co., Inc.
and herbal supplements. Copyright © 2008 Merck & Co., Inc. All rights reserved. 20850555(7)(101)-ISN-CON
18 6 - 12 NOV 2008 WWW.GAYCITYNEWS.COM

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WWW.GAYCITYNEWS.COM 6 - 12 NOV 2008 19

7 DAYS
䉴
7 NIGHTS
NOV 8, from p.14

FILM
Queer Screenings
in Jersey
Chillfest, the monthly queer film
series, returns to Jersey City for its
fourth season today with the pre-
mier of “Pageant,” a documentary
that takes you behind the scenes as
52 ordinary gentlemen go to extraor-
dinary lengths in hopes of being
crowned the 34th Miss Gay America.
The film, by Ron Davis (“The Busi-
ness Traveler”) and Stewart Halpern
(“When Boys Fly”), is a suspenseful
story of bare-knuckled — but not
bare-breasted — competition and
stunning musical numbers and tal-
ent routines. A Q&A with Davis fol-
lows. LITM, 140 Newark Ave., a
half block from the Grove Street

DONNA F. ACETO
PATH, Downtown Jersey City, 2:30
p.m. Tickets are $8 at the door. Drink
specials available. Chillfest contin-
ues on the second Saturday of the
moth through June 2009. For more
information, visit chillfest.org.
✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯

COMMUNITY
A Second Alumni
Reunion
GLYNY Again, the organization
drawn from alumni of the Gay and
Lesbian Youth of New York that met
from 1969 through the end of the
’80s, hosts its second annual reunion
and membership meeting, after its
smashing success of last fall. LGBT
DONNA F. ACETO
DONNA F. ACETO

MILO GEORGE
Community, 208 W. 13th St., 3-5
p.m. Free. For more information,
email approclay@att.net.
✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯

DATING
Now That Tina
Fey’s Over
Comedian/matchmaker Marilyn
Galfin hosts an evening of healthy fun
with a mixture of speed dating, group
discussions, and ice breaker games to
create a non-intimidating, trauma-free
environment with no bar-scene drama,
for lesbians in their 40s and 50s look-
ing to connect with other lesbians for
possible friendship, romance, or love.
LGBT Community Center, 208 W.
13th St., 8-10 p.m. Admission is $20.
For more information, visit nyclaven-
derlounge.com or call 212-989-8549.
✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯
MILO GEORGE

GALLERY
Bruce’s Beefcake
An icon of gay art and one of the
most famous names in physique pho-
tography, Bruce Bellas is remembered
today as a pioneer of beefcake. Begin-
ning in the 1940s and continuing until
his death in 1974, Bellas photographed
some of the most important figures in
the world of physical culture — body-
builders. His images are featured in
this exhibition, Bruce of Los Angeles
Inside/ Outside by Bruce Bellas,” and
JUBILANT CROWDS
CELEBRATE OBAMA’S WIN
As Election Day gave way to news that Illinois Democratic Sen-
ator Barack Obama had won the presidency, crowds gathered in
numerous outdoor spots across New York City — Harlem and
Rockefeller Center among them — to celebrate the end of eight
years of George W. Bush at the helm.
In Union Square, thousands came together to cheer, lend their
personal thumbs up, and for some number of minutes gather
MILO GEORGE

under a massive American flag. In Times Square, the flag shrunk

䉴 NOV 8, continued on p.22 to a snug fit for one.
20/ Dance
Whistling Winds, Winter Light
Inbal Pinto Dance Company envisions life inside a snow globe
BY BRIAN MCCORMICK
I
t’s been five years since
Inbal Pinto and Avshalom
Pollak’s striking “Oyster”
was performed at the Joyce
Theater, but audiences still
remember the haunting and
alluring vision they brought to
the stage from the short story
by Tim Burton. Now, choreog-
rapher Pinto and director Pol-
lak return with their new work
“Shaker,” an equally rich and
dark imagining.
A poetic and timely dream
of life inside a snow globe, the
immersive intimate world of
“Shaker” is fantastic and sur-
real, beautiful but also eerie —
equal parts terror and humor,
just like the humans who
inhabit it.
In gray winter light on
a landscape covered with
snow, three human-scale
gray doghouses stand in a
row in the distance. As a
The Art of Persistence
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker honors Steve Reich; Bangarra explores ancient modernity
BY GUS SOLOMONS JR
A
n elegantly structured
“Steve Reich Evening”
once again brought
Belgian dance-maker Anne
Teresa De Keersmaeker and
her 13-dancer company,
Rosas, back to the Next Wave
Festival at BAM’s Howard Gil-
man Opera House (October
22-25.) The program was a
tribute to Reich, whose music
has often inspired her. Along-
side two of the composer’s
musical works — “Pendulum
Music” and “Marimba Phase” –
were two US premiere dances,
two De Keersmaeker classics
from 1982 and 1997, and a
curious miniature by György
Ligeti.
The program began with
“Pendulum Music” — a medi-
tation in which a pair of hang-
ing microphones swung back
and forth over an amplifier
that produced feedback tones
with each pass. The hypnotic
swinging, slightly out of phase,
resulted in ever -changing
rhythms, and gravity deter-
mined the length of the piece
— about ten minutes — when
the two sounds turned into
a steady, bi-tonal hum as the
mikes came to rest. This medi-
tation set the tone for the eve-
INBAL PINTO DANCE COMPANY
“Shaker”
The Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Ave. at 19th St.
Nov. 11, 12 at 7:30 p.m.;
Nov. 13-15 at 8 p.m.;
Nov. 16 at 2 & 7:30 p.m.
$19; $35; $49; or www.Joyce.org
Or 212-242-0800
man in a striped suit cranks
a wind machine, a dancer
slowly turns beside him as if
she were a music box. Other
dancers emerge from a throb-
bing black mound and from
the little cabins, which seem
to move on their own.
As the inhabitants magi-
cally appear and disappear
— clad in either black or
vibrantly colored bodysuits
— their movement scatters
the Styrofoam pellet snow,
propelling it into enchanting
whirls of pure white around
their feet and over the sur -
rounding area.
The men of choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s company, Rosas, perform in the US premiere of her “Four Organs” at BAM.
ning.
Next, lit in silhouette,
“Marimba Phase” illustrated
Reich’s obsession with instru-
ments moving in and out of
unison. One musician slightly
sped his tempo, changing the
quantity of discrete notes we
could hear. The rhythm moved
from sixes to fours to twos over
the ten-minute duration of the
piece. And an almost imper-
ceptible nod cued the musi-
cians to end, miraculously,
together.
“Piano Phase” repeated this
Inbal Pinto Dance’s imaginary water-filled glass orb hides and reveals new wonders with
each shake, each new drift of falling and blowing snow.
An eclectic mix of music by
Chopin, Purcell, and Gavin
Bryars combined with Swed-
ish folk music, Japanese
songs from the ’50s, and
Arvo Pärt’s “Für Alina” is the
soundtrack for the ever-shift-
ing abstract scenery of this
imaginary water-filled glass
orb, which hides and reveals
new wonders with each shake,
same musical idea, with two
grand pianos straddling the
dance space and two women
dancing. They swung their
right arms, propelling them
into incessant half turns to
the left. The simple move-
ment gradually evolved, add-
ing arms wrapping around
the body, a sharp stop, an ara-
besque, audible breathing. The
partners remained equidistant
throughout, lighted from the
front in a way that threw three
shadows on the wall behind
them. Remon Fromont did the
6 - 12 NOV 2008
proper angle for pouring.
A young woman skips play-
fully, pulling herself up by her
own hair and then swinging
over to sweep the snow with it.
A giant man holds two women
up, also by the hair, driving
them as if they were horses
— until they turn the reins on
him.
At the end, one dancer
ELAZAR HAREL
dressed in black remains, in
stark solitary contrast to the
surrounding whiteness.
While there is no story,
and no overarching message
to this whimsical work of art,
each new drift of falling and there are certainly arresting
blowing snow. scenes and ideas that bear on
Gymnasts in bodysuits leap the global politics of the spe-
and dive through the space, ciously named “war on ter -
providing the illusion of move- ror.” That it’s not overt and
ment in a liquid environment. seems to organically stem
A statuesque woman cork- from the subconscious realm
screws a long stretch fabric of dreams — and all that they
in the wind. A couple bickers suggest about our waking life
over tea, having a terrible time — makes it that much more
physically agreeing on the powerful and disturbing.
to the fingertips, as the preci-
sion of occasional unisons
attested. Motifs kept repeating
in different orientations and
groupings; the density of danc-
ers in space and the kinetic
texture modulated constantly.
In “Four Organs” — the male
counterpart to “Eight Lines”
— five musicians on four elec-
tronic keyboards and sets of
maracas formed an upstage
centerpiece. Five men in black
JACK VARTOOGIAN/FRONTROWPHOTOS
and white street clothes began
in silence, moving in silhou-
ette, sparely but vigorously.
One man repeated a single
motif — knee lift, torso twist—
persistently, like a base line.
The men swapped fragments
— backward somersaults,
windmilling arms, running
dramatic lighting for the show. skips, spiraling torsos. Not
“Music for Pieces of Wood” until four minutes before the
accompanied the premiere of end of the 20-minute piece did
“Eight Lines” for women, six in the dancers touch. When they
white and two in black outfits. did, their motifs began to inter-
A more or less steady flow of lock and redirect each other’s
brisk, improvisational-looking trajectories. The five became a
motion carried the women into single interactive organism.
and around a glowing circle of As an interlude — covering
light. De Keersmaeker’s move- a costume and set change —
ment owes its breathy fluency 100 metronomes on the apron
to the style of postmodern of the stage were set ticking,
dance icon Trisha Brown. and we experienced the decay
The deceptively casual of sound as they gradually ran
phrases are in fact highly
designed and rehearsed down 䉴 PERSISTENCE, continued on p.29
WWW.GAYCITYNEWS.COM 6 - 12 NOV 2008 21

Experience the Power of Meditation...

without all that other stuff

If you’re ready to embrace the paradox, mystery and perfection of the present moment,
without dogma, doctrine and ritual, this is the meditation class for you.

Saturday November 15th, 5:30 p.m. – 6:30 p.m.

Chelsea Studios 151 W. 26th st. New York, NY 10001 (between 6th & 7th Ave)
$15 at the door

t

XXXNFEJUBUJPOXJUIPVUHVSVTDPN
22/ Film
Undead But Not Unoriginal
Bruce LaBruce comedy horror flick has tender gay love at core
OTTO; OR, UP WITH DEAD PEOPLE
Directed by Bruce LaBruce
Strand Releasing
Opens Nov. 7
IFC Center
BY GARY M. KRAMER
C
anadian bad boy
Bruce LaBruce’s lat-
est, “Otto; or, Up with
Dead People,” is a gory, post-
apocalyptic, gay zombie porn
comedy horror film. The plot,
which unfolds in flashbacks
and a film-within-a-film struc-
ture, has director Medea Yarn
(Katharina Klewinghaus)
shooting a movie about the
undead star, sexy Fritz (Mar-
cel Schlutt), and her new dis-
covery, Otto (Jey Crisfar), a
gay zombie with an identity
crisis.
On the phone from his
home in Canada, LaBruce dis-
cussed the origins of his film
and his title character.
“A lot of young people I talk
to on the Internet, or run into
while traveling, are dead inside
— really alienated from a lot
of the things going on now,”
he said. “From the corrupt
political situation, to the cor-
porate control of media, and
䉴 UNDEAD, continued on p.23
Stick-Figure Melodrama
Adaptation of apartheid-era South Africa lesbian romance falls flat
BY GARY M. KRAMER
“T
he World Unseen,”
directed by Shamim
Sarif — who adapt-
ed her own novel — is a well-
meaning but seriously flawed
lesbian drama. This period
piece about Amina (Sheetal
Sheth), an unconventional café
owner who develops a pas-
sionate bond with a married
woman, Miriam (Lisa Ray), in
1952 Cape Town, sounds good
on paper, but comes across
like a bad potboiler on screen.
A female-empower ment
drama, the film tackles signif-
icant issues of gender, racial,
and sexual discrimination
among immigrants. But Sarif
brought a heavy hand to both
the writing and the directing,
overemphasizing every point.
Indian-born Amina runs a
café she daringly co-owns with
Jacob (David Dennis), who’s
considered “colored” — he’s
Jey Crisfar, as Otto, the gay zombie, and director Bruce LaBruce.
THE WORLD UNSEEN
Directed by Shamim Sarif
Regent Releasing
Opens Nov. 7
Quad Cinema
half-black –– by the apartheid-
era society. She is beautiful
and a bit butch. In fact, two
characters point out that she
favors trousers, in case view-
ers were not paying attention.
Amina defies her heritage,
resisting marriage, and, when
pressed about having chil-
dren, goes against conven-
tion, saying she would prefer
girls over boys. Most impor-
tantly, she subverts the law,
hiding a woman sought by
the authorities for flaunting
the Prohibition of Mixed Mar-
riages Act.
Amina agrees to help plant
a garden so she can spend
䉴 MELODRAMA, continued on p.29
6 - 12 NOV 2008
7 DAYS
䉴
7 NIGHTS
NOV 8, from p.19
powerHouse book of the same name,
with text by Vince Aletti. The pow-
erhouse Arena, 37 Main St. near
Front St. in DUMBO, weekdays, 10
a.m.-7 p.m.; weekends, 11 a.m.-6
p.m. through Nov. 16. For more infor-
mation, visit powerhousebooks.com or
call 718-666-3049.
✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯
Lusty Power
Mark Beard presents an installation
of homoerotic power, “Gracious Dicta-
tor: The Seduction of Power.” Clam-
part, 521-531 W. 25th St., ground
fl. Tue.-Sat., 11 a.m.-6 p.m. through
Nov. 22. For more information, visit
clampart.com or call 230-0020.
✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯
From Troy to San
Juan
“Cultural Expressions in Art” by
Magdalena Castaneda and Ron Csuha’s
“Greek Images: Digital Images.” Cas-
taneda, a bi-cultural Puerto Rican-born
lesbian, paints portraits that explore,
reveal, and honor the human spirit, one
person at a time. The group of paint-
ings on exhibit evolved out of her past
expressionistic use of oil color to the
STRAND RELEASING
classical painting methods of “under
painting” and the realistic rendering of
the subject. The 24 images in Csuha’s
show are created from photographs of
statues, mostly of ancient Greek heroes
in museums in the US and Europe.
The tenet of the show is that a great
work of art has two important quali-
ties — one that makes it interesting or
beautiful from a distance, so that it will
grab your attention immediately as you
notice and approach it; and another that
makes it equally interesting or beautiful
when viewed close up. LGBT Com-
munity Center, 208 W. 13th St. The
Castaneda show runs through Nov.
28; the Csuha exhibition through
Nov. 14.
✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯
SUN.NOV.9
GALLERY
The Even Couple
Gilbert and George met in 1967
while students in London and began
to create art together, developing a
uniquely recognizable style both in
their pictures and in their presentations
of themselves as living sculptures. Over
40 years, they developed a new format
that created large-scale pictures, visu-
ally and emotionally powerful, through
REGENT RELEASING
a unique creative process. The Brook-
lyn Museum is the final venue in an
international tour that marks the first
retrospective of the artists’ work in
Sheetal Sheth (l.) and Lisa Ray are a would-be lesbian couple in 1950s, apartheid-era South
Africa. 䉴 NOV 9, continued on p.24
WWW.GAYCITYNEWS.COM
䉴 UNDEAD, from p.22
the return of nuclear threats, everyone
seems to agree that the world is pretty
unstable. I don’t think the film is very
farfetched on a fear level in terms of
its tone and critique of the world as it
exists at the moment.”
LaBruce explained that his gay zom-
bie character was informed by some of
what he’s observed of gay sexuality.
“If you have ever cruised a public
park or toilet, it can be very ‘Night of
the Living Dead’ — people in a trance
[having] anonymous, shadowy sex
and [many] interchangeable body
parts,” he said. “That’s not a bad
thing. It can be exciting, weird, and
fun.”
The storyline of “Otto” offers social-
political commentary. LaBruce
addresses AIDS while providing a
parable about xenophobia and social
conformity. Through flashbacks, we
learn that Otto is sick; his abandon-
ment by his boyfriend leaves him fear-
ful. From LaBruce’s perspective, that
emotion is analogous to the shame
and hostility gay people experience
when they are met with social disap-
proval.
The film’s visuals — alternately
dazzling and headache-inducing —
are well suited to the intricate sto-
rytelling. The overlapping images of
sex and blood, war and cinema, may
prompt viewers to see the film twice
just to absorb everything. The multi-
layered approach is the filmmaker’s
comment on the bombardment of
information and images we get on
TV, where CNN and the like foist four
different news items at viewers on a
single screen.
“I think audiences are conditioned
now to being overstimulated,” LaBruce
explained about his eye-popping style.
LaBruce pays tribute to avant-garde
filmmaker Maya Deren with the Medea
Yarn character; the two names are
anagrams. His treatment of Medea is
indicative of how he uses art to ana-
lyze the modern world and provide a
critique of society. Otto serves as an
identification point for gay viewers in
reminding them of the difficulties of
their teen years.
While the filmmaker subverts char-
acter expectations — a zombie who is
gay and a lesbian feminist intellectu-
al who has an aggressive edge — and
also plays with genres to stimulate his
audience.
“I think people are used to see-
ing things in categories,” LaBruce
explained. “They expect something
from a horror film. If they don’t get
it, they are disappointed. So I like to
disappoint people. I try to imagine
[my films] as something different and
make them political, funny, or highly
stylized. I am a contrarian. I like to
mix people up and play with expecta-
gaycity
news.com
6 - 12 NOV 2008 23
tions.” INNOVATIVE ARTISTS. ADVENTUROUS AUDIENCES.
His hope is that “Otto” is a zombie
film that will lure straight, homopho-
bic porn geeks into seeing it, only to
be scandalized by the tender gay love
story at its heart.
LaBruce continued on the subject
of the horror genre: “I love horror
films, but I find torture porn repel-
lant. It’s unappealing and misogy-
nist and homophobic. Most horror is
often based on homosexual panic or
sexual fear. I am trying to go against
that, making horror atmospheric,
melancholy, psychological, and
thoughtful.”
“Otto’s” blood and gore — which
“These are the memories we can’t escape.
consist of the gay zombie munch-
ing on dead people as well as dead beautiful, they are
They are
animals — ar e mor e disgusting
than scary, and greatly exaggerated. deranged, and Lock overheats
LaBruce believes the sex and vio-
them until they possess the
lence on TV are more shocking. He
dares anyone to turn on a “CSI” show ability to haunt.”
depicting gruesome autopsies and not —THE TIMES (UK)
be disturbed. He justifies the violence
in his films as deliberately over-the-
top — and artfully made. AMJAD
LA LA LA HUMAN STEPS
Similarly, the sex in LaBruce’s
CHOREOGRAPHY BY ÉDOUARD LOCK
films is more aesthetic than erotic. NOV 12* AT 7PM
Photo: Edouard Lock
He prides himself on making his sex NOV 13—15 AT 7:30
scenes awkward or funny. One par- *NEXT WAVE FESTIVAL GALA
ticularly uncomfortable encounter $20, 40, 55
features a character penetrating a
victim’s “intestines” with his erect SEE VIDEO PREVIEWS AT BAM.ORG
penis. This “gut-fucking” was delib-
erately constructed by LaBruce to be M 2008
BAM 2008 Next Wave
Wa Festival / Brooklyn, NY
“distanced” for the audience.
“It’s in black and white, and in a TICKETS: BAM.ORG / 718.636.4100
film-within-a-film, framed in an artful BAM 2008 Next Wave Leadership support for the Next Wave Festival
Festival sponsor: is provided by The Ford Foundation.
way, and meant to be a political state-
ment by the female filmmaker in the
film,” he explained. “It’s not presented
in an exploitative way.”
The same can be said about the
“orgy of the dead” that Medea directs.
As for getting his actors to par -
ticipate in such explicit sex scenes,
LaBruce has no expectations. Jey
Crisfar originally said he would do a
sex scene, but when shooting com-
menced, he changed his mind.
“It was fine with me,” the filmmaker
recalled. “I would never [ask] an actor
who hasn’t done porn before to do
that. If I know I’m doing a sex scene,
I use professionals who have done it
before, but I’m also open to amateurs
trying it if that’s what they want to
do.”
LaBruce wants viewers to decide if
they want to see his films or not.
“You can’t expect people to love
all your work, especially if you take
chances and do work that goes
against the grain,” he said without
irony.
It should not be surprising, then,
that “Otto” could prove an acquired
taste. Fans of LaBruce’s highly styl-
ized films will probably enjoy this
mélange of gore and porn. Others,
however, may judge it dead on arrival.
24/ Opera
Modern Visions
The Met’s new “Doctor Atomic”; beautiful singing in Philly’s “Fidelio”
BY DAVID SHENGOLD
J
ohn Adams and Peter
Sellars’ intriguing “Doc-
tor Atomic” premiered
in San Francisco in 2005, with
later performances in Chicago.
Dissatisfied with Sellars’ stag-
ing, Peter Gelb opted for a new
one by first-time opera direc-
tor Penny Woolcock. It scored
at least a succes d’estime at
the Met, thanks especially to
the remarkable generosity
of a donor underwriting $30
orchestra seats for thousands
of patrons, including many
students.
The evening’s dramatic
weaknesses (October 25) main-
ly resulted from the uneven
quality and nature of Sellars’
“assembled” libretto, in equal
parts moving and preten-
tious. It is distancing, despite
Adams’ beautiful scoring of
their nocturnal scene, to have
the Oppenheimers converse
mainly in quoted poetry; fur-
thermore, both Kitty Oppen-
heimer and the other female
character, the Native American
Pasqualita, sing a great deal
of vocalise, as if Womankind
in the piece’s world were some
kind of inchoate, inarticulate
Sensitivity.
The reductive treatment
of the Native American char-
acters is as shamelessly rac-
ist as chez Belasco and Puc-
cini’s Wowkle and Joe, despite
the creative intentions being
steeped — drowned? — in
political correctness. Pasqual-
ita’s repetitive phrases about
nature, motherhood, and ritual
denied any kind of real subjec-
tivity; worse, as the bomb blast
approaches she is surrounded
by mute, feathered-attired
warriors deployed entirely as
symbols.
Both in the libretto and the
production, some elements just
seem like padding; but, in the
second act, Adams sustains
the tension by means of rhythm
and canny orchestration.
Julian Crouch’s set proved a
mixed success. A heavy scrim
depicting the Table of Elements
as of 1945 obscured the initial
images of a white multi-topped
tent figuring as the Sangre de
Cristo Mountains — and, final-
ly, as the mushroom cloud —
and a kind of a Calder mobile
of exploded material that hung
above the proceedings, as, later,
did the bomb itself.
The scrim lifted to disclose
a three-tiered structure across
the stage for the chorus —
Gerald Finley’s Robert Oppenheimer, magnificently sung and acted, proved inspiring.
exactly as in the recent “Orfeo”
and “Peter Grimes”; one fears
that this device, which limits
the playing space and slants
stage action towards the orato-
rio-like, has become the visual
signature of the Gelb regime.
The scientists — the ”ele-
ments” of the Manhattan Proj-
ect — each had a cubicle.
The set later opened and
rotated to produce different
spaces, but confinement in the
boxes exacerbated some of the
distortion inherent in Adams’
having written this massive,
generally impressive score
with the presumption of micro-
phone-enhanced singing.
Gerald Finley’s Oppenheim-
er, magnificently sung and
acted, proved inspiring. Very
strong holdovers from 2005
include Eric Owens’ bluster-
ing general, the excellent light
tenor Thomas Glenn as an
idealistic young scientist, and
Richard Paul Fink bringing
his Alberich-like cynicism and
capacious voice to the complex
figure of Edward Teller.
Sasha Cooke, a fine young
recitalist, disappointed as Kitty
— too many problems with
intonation and hard-edged
ascending intervals. Meredith
Arwady’s earthy contralto
sounded splendid in Pasquali-
ta’s largely melismatic writing.
The instrumental playing
was not spotless in this fourth
performance, but debutant
Alan Gilbert— newly appointed
chef of the New York Philhar-
monic — makes a welcome,
capable addition to the con-
ducting roster.
O
pera Company of
Philadelphia began
its season October 10
with “Fidelio,” the most visu-
ally striking production in its
recent history. Japanese art-
ist Jun Kaneko’s unforgetta-
ble designs for both sets and
costumes were spectacular,
with brilliant color — not a
commonly deployed element
in this prison-set work — and
fascinating, largely abstract
and geometrical shapes used
as superbly projected and
constructed set elements.
The finale’s “ Mamma Mia”
style women’s chorus cos-
tumes could be rethought;
ditto the upside-down, even-
tually bleeding head project-
ed during Pizarro’s aria (the
only other figurative elements
in the set were two eyes, apt
in a work so concerned with
specularity). The brightly lit
dungeon scene obviated cred-
ible mistaken identities; that,
and a slackening in Rob-
ert Driver’s generally sound
direction, reduced the needed
tension.
Driver left in yards of dia-
logue, with generally positive
results; rarely, for instance,
has one seen Leonore’s mis-
givings over flirting with Mar-
zelline so fully explored. Cor-
rado Rovaris led with aplomb
and dispatch. In her initial
Leonore, Christine Goerke’s
ever-larger, ringing dramatic
soprano could still honor soft
dynamics and execute pre-
cise vocal filigree. Her wonted
honest dramatic commit-
ment, insightful phrasing, and
often thrilling vocalism earned
deserved cheers.
Most cast members made
pleasing company debuts.
Anthony Dean Griffey’s strong
lyric tenor and formidable art-
istry brought musical and spir-
itual conviction to Florestan.
Greer Grimsley (Pizarro) fur-
nished suitable machismo and
exciting tonal snarl, and Ailyn
6 - 12 NOV 2008
7 DAYS
䉴
7 NIGHTS
NOV 9, from p.22
more than 20 years. The exhibition was
organized by the Tate Modern, London,
with the collaboration of the artists,
who consider this to be the definitive
presentation of their art. 200 Eastern
Parkway at Washington Ave. near
Grand Army Plaza. Wed.-Fri., 11
a.m.-5 p.m.; Sat. 11 a.m.-6 p.m. (until
11 p.m. first Sat.); Sun. 11 a.m.-6
p.m. Exhibition runs through Jan.
KEN HOWARD/ METROPOLITAN OPERA
11. Admission is $8; $4 for students &
seniors.
✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯
COMEDY
Three Men & a
Dirty Little Lady
The ever-inappropriate Brad Loekle,
in his weekly “Electro Shock Therapy
Pérez lent enchanting presence Comedy Hour,” presents homo-hilarity
and gorgeously focused sound with Keith Price (Sirius OUT Q in the
— if fuzzy German — to Mar- Morning), Scott Ryan (Broadway
zelline. Stephen Morscheck, a Comedy Club); Dave Rubin (Here! TV);
light-timbre but musical bass- and Allison Castillo (Sweet Paprika).
baritone, valiantly jumped in Therapy, 348 W. 52nd St., 10 p.m. No
as perhaps history’s only boy- cover; $6 cosmos all night.
ish Rocco. ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯
P
hiladelphia heard some
more beautiful singing
October 17 when the
Orchestra gave Berlioz’ idio-
syncratic dramatic symphony
“Romeo et Juliette” under
TUE.NOV.11
HEALTH
Don’t Focus the
Charles Dutoit’s baton — not Mind on Stress
an immaculate or particularly Center CARE hosts its weekly drop-
incisive reading when it came in yoga workshop for people of all gen-
to orchestral ensemble or pac- ders, Tue., 6-7:30 p.m. through Dec.
ing. Two participants proved 16, at LGBT Community Center, 208
outstanding — David Hayes’ W. 13th St. Weekly attendance and
eloquent Philadelphia Singers registration not required. $5 suggested
Chorale, who had the lion’s donation. For more information, visit
share of vocalism, and the gaycenter.org/health.
elegant, plaintive-toned mezzo ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯
Ruxandra Donose, whose
supple “Couplets” reflected Building
perfect French style. Why New Community Health
York presenters favor the ano- Center Care’s Gender Identity Proj-
dyne Angelika Kirschschlager ect (GIP) hosts its monthly drop-in advo-
and the merely correct Anke cacy group working to create a commu-
Vondung over the more inter- nity-based trans-access to healthcare
pretively interesting and vocal- movement. The Transgender Health
ly superior Donose is anyone’s Initiative of New York (THINY) is for
guess. transgendered, gender non-conforming
As for Elina Garanca: sorry, people and allies. Along with GIP, the
but massive promotion alone event is hosted by the Transgender
does not make stars. Genuine Legal Defense and Education Fund, and
audience excitement makes the New York Association for Gender
stars. (Donose stars as Rossi- Rights Advocacy. LGBT Community
ni’s Isabella at OCP opposite Center, 208 W. 13th St.. Nov. 11,
Kevin Glavin and Lawrence Dec. 2, 6-7:30 p.m.
Brownlee — persuasive cast- ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯
ing — November 14-23.) The
other Berlioz soloists, Gregory HUMAN RIGHTS
Kunde and David Wilson- Struggle for the
Johnson, showed experienced Sacred & the
artistry and voices healthiest Sovereign
at their top ends. This year marks the 30th anniversa-
ry of American recognition of the rights
David Shengold (shengold@ of Native peoples to practice traditional
yahoo.com) writes about opera
for many venues. 䉴 NOV 11, continued on p.26
6 - 12 NOV 2008
Been There, Done That
“Boys’ Life” grown old; “Capture Now” is fresh, poignant
BY CHRISTOPHER BYRNE
T
he medieval mystery
plays were designed
to educate an almost
totally illiterate populace
about the key stories of the
Bible from the 10th to the
15th centuries, more or less.
It’s not a good sign that I was
thinking about them through-
out the bland and largely
pointless revival of Howard
Korder’s “Boys’ Life.”
The mystery plays were
performed on pageant wag-
ons, mobile stages that were
dragged through the towns on
festival days. Michael Greif’s
production of Howard Korder’s
1988 play is performed on
a series of wagons dragged
around the stage to create
the various settings. So I kept
wondering whether Greif want-
ed us to think that the play is
about entering into the mys-
tery of the young, single man
who refuses to grow up — to
help us understand his inner
workings and spirit, or, more
BOYS’ LIFE
Second Stage
307 W. 43rd St.
Tue. at 7 p.m.; Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m.;
Wed., Sat. at 2 p.m.; Sun. at 3 p.m.
$70; 212-246-4422
CAPTURE NOW
The Theatres at 45 Bleecker Street
45 Bleecker St.
Tue.-Fri. at 8 p.m.;
Sat. at 3 & 8 p.m.;
Sun. 3 & 7 p.m.
$56.50; 212-239-6200
aptly, the lack thereof.
In 1988, the play seemed
fresh and engaging, and there
was something appealing
about the “Puer Aeternus,”
the “boy eternal” as an emerg-
ing type in our culture. Yet in
the succeeding years, plays,
movies, pop psychology, and
Dr. Phil have all kind of ruined
the party and showed us that
beneath the veneer is a shat-
tered soul. Boo hoo.
Moreover, playwrights like
Neil LaBute have delved much
more deeply into the psychol-
Rhys Corio, Jason Biggs, and Peter Scanavino party hearty in “Boys’ Life,” but we’ve seen it
before and seen it better.
ogy and inherent darkness in
these characters. Seen today,
“Boys’ Life” seems by compar-
ison to gloss over the internal
lives of these boy-men, mak-
ing this more an anthropolog-
ical examination rather than
a complete play. (Hmmm…
maybe those wagons are zoo
cages? Who knows?)
Structured as a series of
Theater/25
tion is that the boys have to
return from Neverland some-
time, or face the consequenc-
es. The characters he pres-
ents, unfortunately, are never
developed fully enough for us
to believe him. They are types
doing typical things.
As a director, Grief knows
how to get solid performanc-
es from his actors, and Clint
Ramos’ costumes are an eerie
flashback to the period, but
JEAN-MARIE GUYAUX
that’s not enough to sustain
an entire evening.
During the Reformation,
the pageant wagons and mys-
tery plays were banned. With
an economy shattered, the
kind of reckless masculine
short scenes, we watch the behavior “Boys’ Life” repre-
boys Phil (Jason Biggs), Don sents may become increasing-
(Peter Scanavino), and Jack ly irrelevant as a new sobriety
(Rhys Corio) tangle with vari- and maturity are demanded.
ous women in various situ- Or not. Economic reforma-
ations. The women are ulti- tion may be difficult for many
mately stereotypes and foils to embrace — the boys may
for the men drawn to and just keep partying ’til they all
repelled by them. It all ends fall off the cliff.
at the sidelines of Don’s mar-
riage, and Korder’s implica- 䉴 BEEN THERE, continued on p.29
26/ Books
Rimbaud: Teen Top
Edmund White tackles the queer heart of legendary French poet
BY MICHAEL EHRHARDT
T
he title of Edmund
White’s erudite new
biography, “Rimbaud:
The Double Life of a Rebel,”
about the legendary 19th cen-
tury French poet who trans-
formed modern literature, is a
sly reference to the visionary
bad boy’s sexuality during his
scandalous relationship with
the established (and married)
poet Paul Verlaine, ten years
his senior, and his adventur-
ous and tragic career in the
arid wiles of North Africa, after
finally turning his back on lit-
erature at age 21.
In only 185 pages, White
does a brilliant job of synthe-
sizing all the vital information
found in previous, heavier
tomes — including his own
translations of excerpts of
many poems — and even finds
space to contribute his queer
viewpoints on his famously
elusive subject; which makes
him unique among Rimbaud
scholars
With White, the poetical is
personal. In his first autobio-
graphical novel, “A Boy’s Own
Story” (1982), he detailed his
confusion over his “forbid-
den” post-pubescent queer-
ness, and how he aspired to a
life of spiritual and romantic
freedom: “ I believed without a
doubt in a better world, which
was adulthood, or New York or
Paris or love.”
Like many adolescent read-
ers of Rimbaud before him,
White found his story intoxi-
cating stuff; in his brief intro-
duction, he recalls discovering
the poetry at 16 at a board-
ing school for boys, where he
would sneak from his dor -
mitory bed to the toilets and
secretly read “The Drunken
Boat,” a long poem of adoles-
cent yearning and wanderlust,
and “float off into daydreams
of exotic climes.”
“As an unhappy gay adoles-
cent, stifled by boredom and
sexual frustration and para-
lyzed by self-hatred, I longed
to run away to New York and
make my mark as a writer;
I identified completely with
Rimbaud’s desires to be free,
to be published, to be sexual,
to go to Paris,” White writes.
“All I lacked was his courage.
And genius. I crammed all my
homework into the afternoon,
when most of the other boys
were playing sports. That way
I was free during the two-
hour compulsory study hall
In just 185 pages, Edmund White synthesizes what’s vital in past tomes about Rimbaud.
in the evening to work on my
novel. I wrote one novel, then
a second.”
But White never sent off his
manuscripts: “Maybe I was
afraid that my book would
be accepted, that it would be
published, that I would have
to live out my fantasies —
and the notion of answered
prayers I found even more
alarming than a continuation
of my dependence and frus-
tration. After all, in Rimbaud’s
nineteenth century Catholic
village, a homosexual might
have been a sinner or a crimi-
nal, but in the Freudian 1950s
in America, he was sick and in
urgent need of treatment. A
sinner might insist he wanted
to be a Prodigal Son, a crimi-
nal or might want to be irre-
deemable, but no one could
fight for the right to be sick.”
Of course, the story of the
17-year -old prodigy-poet
from the boondocks of the
Ardennes, who, with the avid
assistance of Verlaine, his
plug-ugly lover, became the
enfant terrible of Parisian
bohemia in 1871, and, even-
tually, the darling of the Sur-
realists, has been rehashed in
studies all through the last to
the present century. Christo-
pher Hampton’s play, “Total
Eclipse,” was made into a 1995
film, with the pre-“Titanic”
Leonardo DiCaprio starring as
Rimbaud. (River Phoenix was
originally attached to the proj-
ect, but the part of Rimbaud
went to DiCaprio after Phoe-
nix’s death.)
It is well-documented how
the sexually repressed, self-
loathing, unprepossessing
Verlaine became infatuated
with the fresh-faced maverick,
whose high-flown aesthetic
objective was to “re-invent
and married, was the passive
“Foolish Virgin’. For while I
referred to this book as ‘Rim-
baud: Teen Top.’ To be sure,
Rimbaud enjoyed shocking
his older straight male friends
by claiming otherwise.”
White notes that the pair of
poets made no secret of their
“vice,” and even collaborated
on an erotic sonnet celebrat-
ing the delights of the asshole,
SOPHIE BASSOULS/ EDMUNDWHITE.COM
which he translates:
“Dark and puckered like a
violet carnation
It breathes, humbly lurking
under the moss,
Still moist from an amorous
inclination which
follows the gentle dip
love,” articulate the ineffable, Of the white buttocks down
and seek a new golden age of to the edge of its scarlet
reason through poetry — “the hem…”
alchemy of the word” — by
I
systematically transforming n time, the intentionally
himself into a seer through boorish and arrogant Rim-
the rational “disordering of all baud, incapable as he was
the senses.” of being politically correct, was
Same sex artistic relation- ostracized by the reigning artis-
ships are hardly news today — tic community, the Parnas-
Jean Cocteau, with Raymond sians, and soon forced Verlaine
Radiguet and Jean Marais; to leave the sterile security of
Gertrude Stein and Alice B. his bourgeois married home
Toklas; Benjamin Britten and life to pursue the open road as
Peter Pears; Sam Wagstaff absinthe-guzzling fellow vaga-
and Robert Mapplethorpe; bonds. Verlaine was the classic
Merce Cunningham and John mean drunk, who could write
Cage — gays of White’s gen- elegant impressionistic verse
eration were hard-pressed to when dry and turn homicidal
find accepted models of them. under the influence. He was
He cites the famous example soon convinced that his young
of Diaghilev and Nijinsky: “To paramour held the key to the
read (as a teenager) that the ineffable. As things turned
two men ‘were one in private out, the co-dependant lovers
life,’ thrilled me, just as I was — Rimbaud, the Dionysian
half-convinced by Diaghilev’s pagan-provocateur, and Ver-
argument that heterosexu- laine, the passive-aggressive,
ality was an animal neces- guilt-ridden lapsed-Catholic
sity for breeding, ‘but that love — became the notorious Joe
between the same sex, even if Orton and Kenneth Halliway of
the persons involved are quite their day.
ordinary, because of the very The climax to their toxic
similarity of their natures relationship occurred in Brus-
and the absence of a presup- sels, when Verlaine, in a jeal-
posed difference, is creative ous rage, shot and wounded
and artistic.’ Oddly enough, Rimbaud after he threatened
this strange and questionable to leave; when he was arrested
homage to homosexuality had for attempted murder, inves-
been written by Nijinsky’s wife, tigators uncovered a piece of
Romola (not so odd, perhaps, “incriminating” doggerel by
since Romola, as I only recent- Verlaine addressed to Rim-
ly learned, was a lesbian). baud, which, in White’s trans-
“The only problem with lation, reads:
the case of Rimbaud,” White
continues, “was that the boy, What hard angel stuffs me
Rimbaud, dominated the older full
poet, Verlaine.” Between the shoulders,
Referring to Rimbaud’s while
iconic autobiographical poem, I fly off to Paradise...
“A Season in Hell,” White O you, the Jealous one, who
adds: “Rimbaud was the top, waves to me,
the ‘Infernal Bridegroom’,
and Verlaine, ten years older 䉴 RIMBAUD, continued on p.27
6 - 12 NOV 2008
7 DAYS
䉴
7 NIGHTS
NOV 11, from p.24
spirituality, forced underground after
centuries of persecution. At the same
time, Native American governments
began to exercise a formal role in the
decision-making processes governing
Indian families and children after the
devastation of stolen children, board-
ing schools, and adoption. A panel of
Native American leaders — including
Sharon Day, executive director of Indig-
enous Peoples Task Force, an urban
services organization; Tonya Gonnella
Frichner, president of the American
Indian Law Alliance; and Debra White
Plume, executive director of Owe Aku,
Bring Back the Way, a cultural and
educational organization of traditional
Lakota people fighting for sovereignty
— examine the struggle and impact of
these two government acts in affecting
the human rights of the Native peoples.
Harlan Pruden, of NE2SS, an organiza-
tion of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgen-
dered, and two-spirit American Indians
in the New York metro area, moderates.
LGBT Community Center, 208 W.
13th St., rm. 301, 6-8 p.m. Admission
is free, but donations are welcomed.
For more information, visit ne2ss.org.
✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯
Gallery
Fleshing Out
Street Life
Catherine Opie’s body of photo-
graphic work, created since the early
1990s, spans such diverse genres as
studio portraiture, landscape photog-
raphy, and urban street photography to
explore notions of communal, sexual,
and cultural identity. From her early
portraits of queer subcultures to her
expansive urban landscapes, Opie has
offered profound insights into the con-
ditions in which communities form and
the terms by which they are defined.
Guggenheim Museum, 1071 Fifth
Ave. at E. 89th St., Sat.-Wed., 10
a.m.-5:45 p.m.; Fri., 10 a.m.-7:45
p.m. Through Jan. 7. Admission is
$18; $15 for students & seniors; pay
what you wish Fri. after 5:45 p.m. The
LGBT Community Center presents a
survey of Opie’s exhibit and career in
its Second Tuesday series, Nov. 11, 6
p.m. 208 W. 13th St. Tickets are $10 at
gaycenter.org.
✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯
DANCE
From Outer Space
& Heard on the
Street
After its premiere at the Wexner
Center for Performing Arts in Colum-
bus, Ohio, Bebe Miller Company brings
“Necessary Beauty” — a performance
that converges dance, theater, and the
latest in digital technology in a series
of short dances contained by space
䉴 NOV 11, continued on p.29
WWW.GAYCITYNEWS.COM 6 - 12 NOV 2008 27

䉴 RIMBAUD, from p.26
Here I am, here is all of me!
Still unworthy I crawl toward you —
Mount my loins and trample me!
Next, Verlaine was subjected to a
dehumanizing medical examination,
the doctors reported on his “small
penis and its particularly small, taper-
ing head,” and after a bogus rectal
exam, concluded that “P. Verlaine
bears on his person traces of habitual
pederasty, both active and passive”; he
was summarily imprisoned, accused of
sodomy, and served a two-year prison
sentence — shades of the future Oscar
Wilde trial to come!
White astutely parses the “official”
medical reports: “Ironically, Verlaine
had requested just such an examina-
tion in the past to prove he was not
homosexual. Perhaps he thought the
whole examination was bogus and
could not be made to prove anything.
Or maybe his ‘practices’ with Rimbaud
did not involve anal intercourse. Here
the Belgian doctors seemed to find
what they were looking for. They knew
that Verlaine was recently divorced
and that Mathilde had accused her
husband and Rimbaud of immoral
relations.
“The small penis perhaps suggested
a low level of virility, its tapering form
supposedly spoke of constant insertion
in a tight young anus—and the slight
dilation of his own anus was thought
to prove his submission to Rimbaud’s
attentions, though all of recent date.”
Despite the pseudoscience and
“disgusting prurience” involved in
the affair, White adds, “As a result of
it, curiously enough, we know more
about the intimate condition of [Ver-
laine’s] penis and anus than we do
about the intimate anatomy of any
other major poet of the past.”
The next startling metamorphosis of
Rimbaud, then 24, involved his total
renunciation of art (which he would
ever-after refer to as “hogwash”) and
his wild pursuit, beginning in 1878,
of commerce and filthy lucre in truly
infernal regions of North Africa; he
began as a foreman of a stone quarry
and gradually became a coffee trader
and gun-runner.
There’s an almost Oedipal quality
to Rimbaud’s ambivalent relationship
with the older Verlaine. Indeed, he
admires Verlaine the Poet; yet, hav-
ing grown up constantly abandoned
by his own scoundrel father, Rimbaud
must have subconsciously resented
Verlaine for callously abandoning his
infant son, George. White observes
that “Arthur seems to have harbored
erotic memories (or fantasies) of his
father. When he was seventeen and
living in Paris, he wrote a series of
parodies of other poets, including the
popular bourgeois rhymester, Francois
Coupee, whom he despised:
I daydreamed about my father some-
times;
In the evening, a card game and off-
color jokes,
The man from next door, and I seat-
ed off to one side,
things seen… For a father can be
disturbing! — and the things
dreamed up!
His knee, nudging me sometimes;
his trousers
Whose fly my finger wanted to
explore — oh no!
In order to touch one of my dad’s bits
— big, black
And hard —
He whose hairy hand rocked me in
the cradle…”
After the squalid scandal and trial
— and fucking his paternal stand-in —
could Rimbaud’s total renunciation of
poetry be seen as a metaphor for the
seer putting out his
own eyes to wander in the wilder-
ness? The visionary poet of “A Sea-
son in Hell” would spend the rest of
his life in godforsaken regions, until
1891, when a long-ignored cancerous
tumor on his leg forced him to return
to France for an amputation, where he
was tended by his devoted sister, Isa-
belle, until, in a morphine haze, the
Flying Frenchman finally gave up the
ghost.
In his cogent conclusion, White
examines Rimbaud’s long-lasting
influence — “far more rigorous than
the posthumous reputation of Ver -
laine, for instance” — and the para-
dox of the fame he himself renounced:
“Perhaps obscure poets (and Rimbaud
invented obscurity) become more
renowned than transparent ones since
only the obscure need interpretation
— that is their lasting appeal both to
scholarly exegetes and adolescent
mystics.”
The claims for a piece of Rimbaud
seem endless; as White explains:
“Everyone has weighed in on Rim-
baud. Marcel Proust wrote that he was
‘almost superhuman’. Bob Dylan in a
song lyric said, ‘Relationships have all
been bad, mine have been like Ver-
laine’s and Rimbaud’s … Patti Smith
wrote a song called ‘Easter’ about Rim-
baud’s first communion. Jim Morrison
claimed Rimbaud as his ‘master’….”
䉴 RIMBAUD, continued on p.30

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15th Annual Race to Deliver

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November 16, 2008
4 MILE RUN/WALK @ 10:00 am s KIDS FUN RUN @ 8:30 am

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WWW.GAYCITYNEWS.COM
7 DAYS
䉴
7 NIGHTS
NOV 11, from p.26
and time that find expression in the
mysteries of physics and the passing
epiphanies of overheard conversations,
to New York. Albert Mathias provides
live music, and Miller collaborated with
video artist Maya Ciarrocchi, animator
Vita Berezina-Blackburn, dramaturg
Talvin Wilks, composer Albert Mathias,
writer Ain Gordon, and lighting design-
er Michael Mazzola. Dance Theater
Workshop, Bessie Schönberg
Theater, 219 W. 19th St. Nov. 11-15,
7:30 p.m. On Nov. 12, there will be a
post-performance talk with David
Thomson. On Nov. 13, 6:30 p.m.,
there will be a pre-show coffee
and conversation with Ain Gordon
and Talvin Wilks. On Nov. 14, there
will be a Friday Night Toast after
the performance. Tickets are $26;
$15 for members, students & seniors
at dancetheaterworkshop.org or 212-
924-0077.
✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ more time with Miriam, whom
THU.NOV.13
MUSIC
Forward Thinking
Grammy-winning sextet eighth
blackbird will be joined by students
from the Oberlin Contemporary Music
Ensemble to form a conductor-less
supergroup for the world premieres of
commissioned compositions by two
legendary American mavericks (par-
don the word), Frederic Rzewski and
Steve Reich. The program, inspired by
Albrecht Dürer’s haunting 16th-century
engraving “Knight, Death and the
Devil”, is headlined by Rzewski’s bizarre
fantasia on songs associated with war.
And Steve Reich’s funky, rhythmic tour-
de-force, “Double Sextet,” will receive
its first all-live performance. The
Kitchen, 512 W. 19th St. Nov. 13-14,
8 p.m. Tickets are $15; $12 for students
at thekitchen.org or 212-255-5793, ext.
11.
✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ actresses simmers on screen.
DANCE
Dreams Dammed
Butoh-influenced choreographer
Erin Dudley presents an evening of sur-
real dance with artist Mark McNamara
and musician Mark Deutsch. Dancers
dangle from the ceiling and steady New
York City’s hectic pace to a slow latex
crawl. The evening explores beauty,
love, and restraint within our limiting
definitions of eroticism and the pre-
sumed banality of domesticity. Danc-
ers Masanori Asahara, Kelly Buwalda,
John Mario-Sevilla, and Omagbitse
Omagbemi perform to mesmerizing
live music by Mark Deutsch on his self
made bazantar. Gene Frankel The-
ater, 24 Bond St., btwn. Lafayette
St. & Bowery. Nov. 13-14, 8 p.m.;
Nov. 16, 4 p.m. Tickets are $18-20 at
smarttix.
䉴 7 DAYS, continued on p.30
䉴 PERSISTENCE, from p.20
down. This little conceptual
sketch is Ligeti’s “Poéme sym-
phonique pour cent métro-
nomes.”
Part 1 of “Drumming”
(1997) brought the program
to an exhilarating close. Its
aerobic pace was impelled by
the accumulating percussion
sound, as drummers entered
singly and joined in playing at
the back of the stage. A solo
woman, dancing in a strip of
light on a partially unfurled
roll of light gray dance floor-
ing, was joined by a man, mir-
roring her, out of the light in
front of her.
Gradually, the other 11
emerged from the shadows at
the sides and filled the stage
with flocking patterns of run-
ning, skipping, and twisting
motion. Phrases combined
and recombined like pieces
䉴 MELODRAMA, from p.22
she flirted with at her café.
The two women are instantly
smitten with each other, but
Miriam, who just gave birth
to her third child, is still com-
ing to terms with her same-
sex desires.
“The World Unseen” is best
when the two women are
together. Amina tries to coax
Miriam into a romance, offer-
ing her driving lessons and
pressing the point that there
is more to life than being a
housewife and a mother. But
her efforts to take care of her
new friend meet with resis-
tance.
Still, as the women spend
more time alone, their
romance blossoms. When-
ever the two women start to
kiss, they are interrupted
— a portent that their love is
forbidden. The film remains
extremely chaste, but the
relationship between the two
䉴 BEEN THERE, from p.25
O
nce my initial resis-
tance was overcome
by the highly tal-
ented actor/playwright Josh
Jonas, I have to admit that I
was affected by his new play,
“Capture Now.” It is the story
of Elijah, a young man on
Long Island who is coping
with both a tortured adoles-
cence, including his sexual
awakening, and the death
of his younger brother, Ace,
from cancer.
The story and the play has
bathos aplenty on an Oprah-
esque scale, and the conceit
that the dying brother has
Yoda-like wisdom to impart is
hackneyed, but ultimately the
6 - 12 NOV 2008
of a jigsaw puzzle. The gid-
diness of the dancers’ ath-
letic abandon made an apt
counterpoint to the Zen-like
astringency of Reich’s musi-
cal minimalism.
Except for “Music for Pieces
of Wood,” all the music was
expertly performed live by the
six men of the Belgian percus-
sion ensemble Ictus.
M
eanwhile, around
the corner from
the Opera House
at the BAM Harvey, Austra-
lia’s Bangarra Dance The-
atre was performing Stephen
Page’s “Awakenings” (Octo-
ber 21-25.) The dances of
this aboriginal company are
based on ancient rituals and
legends. But the dancing,
created by Page, is thorough-
ly modern. His collaborator
is guest artist and cultural
advisor Djakapurra Mun-
However, the rest of “The
Wo r l d U n s e e n ” i s p o o r l y
realized. Sarif certainly has
important messages to share
about the role of women in
society in general and during
the ’50s in apartheid South
Africa in particular. But the
film often presents its drama
in an unintentionally funny
manner. A flashback involv-
ing a child being “stolen” is
so badly handled — the child
is obviously a prop and not
real — it is hard not to guf-
faw.
When husband Omar —
who is adamant about keep-
ing Miriam in her “place” at
home, tending to their chil-
dren and their retail business
— slaps her and upsets tables
because she suggests cooking
part-time at Amina’s café, the
scene provokes laughter rath-
er than shock.
Omar has an affair with
Miriam’s sister-in-law, Farah
(Natalie Becker), but their
tryst is shot and edited so
clumsily that audiences may
characters Jonas creates are
appealing, so one is willing
to go along for the 90-minute
ride.
As a performer, Jonas is
bursting with energy, and he
has a strong ability to make
the characters distinct. His
inherent charm and essential
innocence under a manufac-
tured cool is compelling. So,
too, is the use of music as the
initial bond between Elijah
and Ace and the believable
tension of a young man trying
to separate from his family
while at the same time devel-
oping his own individuality.
It’s not easy for a solo per-
former to convey a child with-
out being cloying, and Jonas
succeeds, even if the voice
yarryun, an amply propor -
tioned, imposing man whose
onstage presence acts as a
kind of cultural anchor.
Luscious 3-D woven back-
drops by Peter England and
costumes by Gabriela Tyleso-
va and Jennifer Irwin in tex-
tural, natural-hued fabrics
enhanced the impression
that the dances sprung from
the earth. And Nick Schliep-
er and Joseph Mercurio’s
beautifully sculptural light-
ing added to the mystery.
Music by David Page and
Steve Francis featured vocal
chants and assorted native
and western instruments.
“Act I – Boomerang” is a
rather prosaic depiction of
traditional rituals of hunting,
fishing, and initiation into
manhood. Despite the remark-
ably fluid dancing of Sidney
Saltner, as a spirit in search of
rebirth, and Patrick Thaiday
think whole sections of film
are missing.
The issue of racism is por-
trayed without subtlety. A
subplot involving Jacob’s
attraction to Madeleine
(Grethe Fox), the local post-
mistress, is meant to show
how discrimination is mani-
fested in society. Yet an epi-
sode in which Madeleine
stands up to a cop who bullies
Jacob is didactic, but lacks
feeling. The point is made,
but the impact is blunted.
The same can be said for
much of the film. Viewers will
have a hard time caring about
characters who are all sym-
bols — of liberation (Amina),
repression (Miriam), patriar-
chy (Omar), and on and on
— because nothing and no
one in “The World Unseen” is
three-dimensional.
This low-budget drama
is lacking in visual style as
well. The sets look cheap and
unconvincing, and the actors’
shadows are often promi-
nent on the walls. Every so
he has chosen for Ace seems
a bit forced at times. Direc-
tor Larry Moss has helped
to keep the story rolling and
the transitions sharp and, at
times, moving.
It’s wasn’t the death of Ace,
finally, that got me. Instead, it
was the growth of Elijah and
the understated understand-
ing that his Hispanic girl-
friend provided that engaged
me. The knowledge that Eli-
jah is not going to end up like
one of the soulless wastrels
of “Boys’ Life” was incredibly
moving, believable, and heart-
felt. Jonas really came into
his own in those moments.
Fortunately, there is a stra-
tegically placed box of tissues
as one leaves the theater.
29
as “Manta Ray,” an insect-like
creature crossed with a vogue
dancer, Page’s ancient inspi-
rations are blunted by some
less-than-inspired modern
dance movement.
“Act 2 – Brolga” traces
the journey of a young girl
(lovely, willowy Deborah
Brown) who ventures into
the territory of brolga birds
in the Brolga Plains of Dhal-
inbuy. She meets a flock of
birds — the males with red
combs keep her aloft as she
crawls and walks upon their
nearly naked bodies, and
the females scurry around
in sheer dresses. The girl
does a sensuous duet with
the alpha brolga before being
transformed into a bird her-
self. But with its movement
rooted in pre-postmodern-
ism, “Awakenings” seems
less culturally ancient than
just old-fashioned.
often Sarif cuts to a beautiful
vista, but that hardly com-
pensates.
The performances are also
subpar. Sheetal Sheth glides
through the film — her long
dark hair flowing — with an
air of self-righteousness. Lisa
Ray is all tentative and flut-
tery as the prim and proper
Miriam. These actresses may
be lovely, but they cannot
overcome the deficiencies in
the script that reduce their
characters to archetypes.
The supporting cast fares
even worse, with Parvin
Dabas trying too hard in his
one-note role and Natalie
Becker purring her every line
in case viewers didn’t think
she was sexy enough. David
Dennis and Grethe Fox nobly
inhabit their rudimentary
characters, but they are not
given much to do.
Perhaps Sarif was too close
to her material to breathe life
into it on film. As it stands,
“The World Unseen” is best
left that way.
CAROL ROSEGG
Actor/playwright Josh Jonas avoids one-
man show pitfalls in his moving “Capture
Now.”
30
䉴 RIMBAUD, from p.27
White’s “Rimbaud: The Dou-
ble Life of a Rebel,” alongside
his previous work about Jean
Genet and Marcel Proust, adds
another biography to a trilogy
of queer geniuses, written by a
true master of his craft.
E
dmund White recently
shared his thoughts,
speculations and con-
victions about Rimbaud — the
enigma, genius, lover, and leg-
end — with Gay City News.
MICHAEL EHRHARDT:
Rimbaud believed he could
become a seer, through the
re-invention of language, or
the “alchemy of the word” and
the systematic “re-ordering
of the senses.” In his famous
poem “Vowels,” he claimed he
could detect colors in words;
he claims to have invented
the colors of vowels. The
condition of synesthesia is
reportedly more common
among artists, novelists, and
poets. Was there any truth to
his claims?
EDMUND WHITE: A person
who is capable of synesthesia
might sees colors in the sounds
of vowels or in listening to
music. While that’s a fascinat-
ing part of his work, I think he
was influenced in this respect
by Baudelaire, who was the
great apostle of the idea of
synesthesia. Baudelaire’s
other famous dictum was to
“be drunk, always.” And Rim-
baud and Verlaine were always
imbibing absinthe, which was
believed to produce a state of
hyper-creativity. They smoked
hashish as well.
ME: Do you believe Rim-
baud was really convinced he
could transform life through
poetry?
EW: He did believe in the
disordering of the senses,
of creating a kind of liberat-
ing chaos. It might come as
a terrible cost to you, not to
mention for your friends, but
that’s all right, because out
of this great disorder comes
this great poetry. After all,
whereas prose is realistic
and chatty — poetry has an
exalted side to it, where you
transform the everyday into
the fantastic. For instance,
Rimbaud writes about seeing
a mosque instead of a factory.
Rimbaud took the idea of
being a mage or seer quite
seriously. He even read books
on alchemy and magic. There’s
a famous letter that he wrote
called the “Lettre du Voyant,”
which he wrote to two differ-
ent people and stated that the
poet must be a kind of seer. I
mean, Rimbaud’s literary era
was really at the height of the
Romantic period with a capital
R, and the notion of the artist
was to achieve the sublime.
He seriously believed that
poetry had these remarkable
powers. And when it failed
him, or didn’t work out that
way, he abandoned the whole
project with a lot of anger, and
declared it “hogwash.” His
career as a poet was a very
brief, flaming career.
ME: It’s fascinating to think
that in America Walt Whitman
was singing “the body electric”
and celebrating the “beauti-
ful and sane affection of man
for man,” and died a year after
Rimbaud in 1892. Rimbaud
was a voracious reader, with a
mind for processing like a Cui-
sinart. Do you know if he ever
read Emerson or Whitman?
EW: There’s no evidence of
that. But probably not since,
while Rimbaud was very pro-
ficient in languages, his grasp
of English wasn’t all that good.
And Whitman hadn’t been
widely translated during his
lifetime, so he couldn’t have
been an influence.
ME: There are also some
striking resemblances between
the ideas of Nietzsche and
Rimbaud. Do you think he ever
read the German philosopher?
EW: Later he did try to
learn German. But, in a pro-
vincial village like Charleville,
books were scarce and too
expensive for a student. When
I was doing my research on
Genet, who was brought up in
a similar village, I discovered
that there were only about
40 books available there.
Remember, this was the era
before public libraries. Rim-
baud knew the ancient Greek
poets, and was proficient in
Latin. He borrowed all the lat-
est poetry books and journals
from his professor, Georges
Izambard.
ME: Balzac, who was a fol-
lower of the mystic Sweden-
borg, and already published his
“Seraphita” in Rimbaud’s era,
wrote about an androgynous,
angelic creature of a higher
intelligence, which seems
reminiscent of his poems, like
“Genie” or “Antique.” Could
that have been one source for
his poems?
EW: Possibly. In Charleville,
he borrowed books from an
obese, older gay man, Charles
Bretagne, whom he’d met at a
local café and befriended him,
and whose opinion he respect-
ed. These were books about
alchemy, mysticism, and the
occult, which were very popu-
lar at the time.
Swedenborg’s philoso-
phy was widespread and had
already influenced writers
such as Blake and Baudelaire.
Baudelaire’s famous poem
“Correspondences” and longer
prose poems must have had
6 - 12 NOV 2008
an influence on him. These
studies had a big influence on
Rimbaud’s poetic language.
He also consumed books on
science and the latest technol-
ogy, which encouraged him in
his visions of a utopian future.
In London, he was constantly
going to the library to keep up
with the latest developments.
ME: Verlaine had never met
Rimbaud before he came to
Paris, right?
EW: Right. Verlaine didn’t
even know Rimbaud was
young and cute. It’s one thing
to invite someone if you know
they’re a hot 16-year-old on
the make as a writer — but
he was actually impressed
by the poetry. But Rimbaud
arrived with a secret weapon
in his baggage — which was
“Le Bateau Ivre,” “The Drunk-
en Boat” — and he read it to a
group of poets, and they were
just bowled over, because no
one had ever written anything
like it.
Mind you, they were com-
petitive artists, not ready to
concede their preeminence to
a 16-year -old raw peasant.
But they could all see what
a genius he was. Remember,
that Verlaine’s own poetry had
taken off after he met Rim-
baud. I mean, I love Verlaine’s
poetry as much as I do Rim-
baud’s, and I think he was a
great genius. But it is true that
he responded to the challenge
that the younger poet repre-
sented.
Yet, Rimbaud’s behavior was
so reprehensible at times that
he couldn’t help put the others
off. For instance, people would
give him their maid’s room to
live in, and then he’d piss on
everything. Or he’d stand in
the window nude and jerk-off,
or break their heirlooms. He
wasn’t a very nice guest.
ME: Did you find any evi-
dence of Rimbaud’s homosex-
uality before he met Verlaine?
EW: Well, he did write a lot
of poems in which he day-
dreamed about girls. But in the
19th century, of course, society
didn’t have the group elements
together, the way we do today.
Verlaine, like Oscar Wilde, was
married and a father, and even
wrote a lovely poem about how
much he loved and physi-
cally desired his wife. That he,
like Wilde, was attracted to a
beautiful boy was embraced
as part of the Greek ideal; in
which the older man loves
the young ephebe and guides
and nurtures his intellect. For
instance, all of Wilde’s affairs
— apart from Lord Alfred
Douglas — were with younger,
pretty men.
ME: So, Verlaine and Rim-
baud were both switch-hit-
ters?
EW: Yes. And with Rim-
baud, his sexuality seems to
be part of his philosophy of
experimenting with all kinds
of experiences and sensations.
In his “La Lettre du Voyant,” he
states that the first objective
of a seer is to know every part
of himself. And you can only
know this through the sens-
es. And, after all, he did have
respect for Verlaine as a poet.
ME: Do you think Rim-
baud’s renunciation of poetry
at so young an age is part and
parcel of his legend.
EW: Yes. In the aftermath of
all these romantic notions of
the artist, he turned his back
on literature, and money took
the place of Art. He wanted
money, to be rich, but he
wasn’t a very good business-
man. It’s like what Jean Genet
said; that the only thing he
could do was be a genius, and
when he wasn’t being that, he
was just a bad thief. It’s like
people who have no talent —
they only have genius.
In Rimbaud’s case, I think
he really reverted to his moth-
er’s values. She was some-
thing of a hard-bitten peas-
ant woman, who believed in
distrusting everyone, and was
paranoid about everything and
tried to accumulate a small
fortune and bury it under the
bed. And later, Rimbaud kind
of subscribed to that notion.
He wrote an enormous num-
ber of letters to his mother and
sister from Africa, always com-
plaining about his luck and
about how awful it was to live
there. But he was convinced
it was worth it, and he would
eventually amass a fortune.
ME: After his rupture with
Verlaine, Rimbaud lived in
London with Germaine Nove-
au. Were they lovers as well as
colleagues?
EW: Germaine Noveau was
a would-be writer; was small,
dark and good-looking —
according to photos of him. He
and Rimbaud were probably
lovers for a short time. But
Nouveau became an eccentric
and ended up begging outside
of churches.
ME: Did you ever find any
hard evidence that Rimbaud
and his servant boy, Djami,
were lovers?
EW: No. But he did leave
him something in his will.
Rimbaud also had a native
mistress in Abyssinia. She was
black with European features.
ME: What can your readers
look forward to in the future?
EW: I’m working on a new
novel, and a history of New
York City in the 1970s.
Michael Ehrhardt can be con-
tacted at Menyc3@aol.com.
WWW.GAYCITYNEWS.COM
7 DAYS
䉴
7 NIGHTS
7 DAYS, from p.29
FRI. NOV.14
DANCE
Queer on the
Streets
“Hip-Hop: Out, Loud & Proud II” is an
evening that brings together hip-hop and
spoken word artists of various sexual
orientations, ethnicities, and races from
New Jersey and around the country to
explore human sexuality in hip, poignant,
and often humorous ways. Pandora
Scooter, a New Jersey-based self-identi-
fied “queermamasapien,” hosts a line-up
that includes God-des & She, from Madi-
son, Wisconsin; Shorty Roc, from Brook-
lyn; the series first transgendered artist,
kay ulanday barrett, from Chicago; Poetic
Assasin from New Brunswick; and Bry’Nt
from Brooklyn. New Jersey Performing
Arts Center, Chase Room, 1 Center St.
at Park Pl., Newark, 8 p.m. Tickets are
$16 at njpac.org or 888-466-5722.
✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯
Coming Together
Fast
“The 60x60 Project” is a multimedia
extravaganza pairing 60 composers with
60 choreographers for a one-hour surf-
ing of today’s music and dance scenes,
each piece lasts 60 seconds. “The 60x60
Project” embraces today’s new aesthetic
of “channel surfing” while asking: How
short can a composition be to get its mes-
sage across? Eclectic by nature, “60x60”
offers a diversity of dance and music
styles, ranging from ballet and tango to
postmodern movements and from neo-
romantic chamber music to jazz, hip hop,
and techno. Choreographers include Mary
Cochran, Guta Hedwig, Pascal Rekoert/
Flexicurve, and Dixie FunLee Shulman.
Composers include Laurie Spiegel and
Maggi Payne. World Financial Center
Winter Garden, 12:30 & 7 p.m. Free.
✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯
SAT.NOV.15
DANCE
Live From Buenos
Aires
Argentine company Tango Fire returns
to New York with a program showcasing
ten torrid dancers accompanied by the
fiery musicians of Quatrotango. The com-
pany offers a journey through the history
of tango, from its origins in the red light
district of Buenos Aires to the glamour
of the Roaring 20s and its evolution to
the world of contemporary ballroom.
The performance also features singer
Javier “Cardenal” Dominguez, a regular
performer in many of the most impor-
tant tango houses in Buenos Aires, and
showcases the music of Astor Piazzolla
and others. Brooklyn Center for the
Performing Arts, Brooklyn College,
2900 Campus Road (#2 or #5 train to
Flatbush Ave., Brooklyn College), 8
p.m. Tickets are $30-$75 at BrooklynCen-
terOnline.org䉴or 718-951-4500.
JUMP, continued on p.30
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