GAY CITY NEWS, JULY 4, 2012 by Schneps Media

FREE VOLUME ELEVEN, ISSUE FOURTEEN JULY 4 -17, 2012

AIDS Rent Cap’s Albany Death 8 Last Gay Holocaust Survivor Dies 11 Endearing Magic Mike 22 Sapphic Play as Bastille Rammed 25

From "Porgy and Bess" to Stevie, Choreographer is in a Wonderful Place

July 4, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com

You don’t have to go too far to relax. The acclaimed choreographer is in a wonderful place

Cover Illustration Michael Cove Co verr IlIllu ve lust lu stra st ratitio ra tiion on bbyy Mi M Mich ich chae a l SShirey ae

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Dr. Richard Isay, lover and fighter, dies at 77

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| July 4, 2012

POLITICS

Sean Patrick Maloney Winner in Hudson Valley House Race BY PAUL SCHINDLER

ean Patrick Maloney, an out gay attorney, has captured the Democratic nomination for the 18th District US House seat in New York’s Lower Hudson Valley. Maloney, who served for three years on the White House staff during the Clinton administration and was first deputy secretary for Governors Eliot Spitzer and David Paterson from 2007 to 2009, won just under half the votes in a five-candidate primary on June 26. Maloney, who turns 46 in July, will now face freshman incumbent Republican Nan Hayworth, who beat two-term Democratic Congressman John Hall in 2010. If elected, he would become the first out gay or lesbian member of Congress from New York and only the sixth in US history. “Sean has proven he knows how to get things done in Washington,” said Chuck Wolfe, president of the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, a nationwide group that works to elect out candidates to office. “He’s deeply experienced and absolutely committed to finding ways to put New Yorkers and all Americans back to work. As an openly gay dad, he’ll also be an authentic voice for LGBT families across the country. We’re extremely pleased about tonight’s big win.” The Victory Fund, several months ago, endorsed Maloney in a contest that included another out gay candidate, Matt Alexander, the mayor of Wappingers Falls, a Dutchess County municipality of 5,000. Alexander finished third, with about 12 percent of the vote. The runner-up was Dr. Richard Becker, a cardiologist from Cortlandt in Westchester County, who won about a third of the vote. The unusual June primary drew less than 15,000 Democratic voters. In 2010, Hayworth won in a race where nearly 210,000 ballots were cast. The district, which was reconfigured in the wake of the 2010 Census, includes portions of Dutchess and Westchester Counties along the Hudson River and all of Putnam and Orange Counties to the west. When the district lines were announced in the spring, only Alexander actually lived within its borders. Maloney, his partner, realtor, interior designer, and author Randy Florke, and their three adopted children had homes in Manhattan and Sullivan County, just to the west of Orange County. The family has since moved to Cold Spring, a Hudson River community in the district. Asked in a recent interview with Gay City News whether his status as a newcomer resident in the district was a concern for voters he had met, Maloney responded, “No, it’s not. People care about the issues facing middle-class families.” He noted that his home in Sullivan County was “just up the road” from Orange County. Maloney’s view of voter attitudes on the issue was apparently on target, given his near-majority finish in a five-man race. The primary winner said that, in making the race, his strengths were in “sharing the values of middle class families” in the district, his status as the only Democrat running with both federal and state government experience, and his ability to field the best

campaign team and the greatest resources. The most recent federal campaign finance filings in the race, completed on June 6, showed Maloney had outraised Becker $531,000 to $404,000, receipts that dwar fed the $148,000 posted by Alexander. Maloney noted that his campaign’s communications effort was helmed by Jennifer Cunningham from SKDKnickerbocker, a longtime political ally of Governor Andrew Cuomo. Maloney contested the 2006 state attorney general primary against Cuomo. In addition to his fundraising advantage, Maloney also enjoyed big name endorsements, including that of former President Bill Clinton, who has lived in Westchester County since leaving the White House, and powerful support from organized labor. He was endorsed by the New York State AFL-CIO, the New York State United Teachers, the Hudson Valley Area Labor Federation, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, the United Auto Workers, the Service Employees International Union Local 1199 United Healthcare Workers East, SEIU’s 32BJ building service workers union, and the United Food & Commercial Workers Local 1500. Maloney’s primary night victory party was held at the Teamsters’ Local 445 headquarters in Rock Tavern, an Orange County community. In November, Maloney will face a Republican candidate who won her first race two years ago with significant Tea Party support. In comments about the race made early this year at an appearance in Manhattan, out gay Massachusetts Representative Barney Frank, noting that the Democrats must show a net gain of 25 congressional seats if they are to regain the majority, said, “We won’t retake the House” if Hayworth, formerly an ophthalmologist from Westchester County’s Mount Kisco, is not defeated. Maloney voiced confidence about his chances in the fall and his party’s shot at winning control of Congress. “The House is very much in play,” he told Gay City News. “But, I don’t take lightly running against a well-funded Tea Party favorite.” He stated that Hayworth had twice voted for Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan’s budget that would “defund Medicare,” was “a field general in the war on women,” having voted to strip funding from the Women’s Health Care Act and Planned Parenthood, and had even voted against disaster relief for her district in the wake of Hurricane Irene last year. In an email message to his supporters announcing his run for Congress, Maloney said there was “an urgent need” to recapture the majority from “House Republicans who have turned government into a bitter game of ideological warfare; who can’t compromise or negotiate; who reject smart investments in education and infrastructure; who reject sensible tax policies that create jobs and balance budgets; who would end Medicare as we know it; and take us back decades to a world where women are denied access to contraception coverage, where the environment is under siege, and where LGBT people are second-class citizens.” At a Manhattan appearance early this year, Alexander, who has dealt with Hayworth as Wappingers Falls’ mayor, said that the Republican

HUDSON VALLEY AREA LABOR FEDERATION

Former out gay top aide to Paterson, Spitzer faces GOP incumbent Nan Hayworth in November

Sean Patrick Maloney at his June 26 victory party at the Teamsters' Local 445 headquarters in Orange County.

had told him, “We’re only here for interstate highways and national defense,” and complained that environmental regulations to protect the Hudson River watershed as well as Wappinger Lake, which borders his community, were stifling business in the area. Hayworth, who, according to the Wall Street Journal, has a gay son, has steered a more moderate course on LGBT rights. The Human Rights Campaign, which issues report cards on Congress every two years, has not yet compiled its tally on the 2011-2012 session, but in June of last year the group lauded Hayworth for being one of four House members — two Democrats and two Republicans — who introduced the Tax Parity for Health Plan Beneficiaries Act, which would end taxation of employer-provided domestic partner health insurance of the type exempt if provided to a differentsex spouse. On marriage equality, however, the incumbent has not been clear in her position, despite the fact that gay and lesbian couples have been able to marry legally in New York State for the past year. The Lower Hudson Valley Journal-News reported that in a Republican primary debate in 2010, she said only, “I will not seek to force a definition of marriage on the states.” However, Hayworth has not signed on to fellow New Yorker Jerrold Nadler’s bill to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, which bars federal recognition of legal same-sex marriages. Maloney was dismissive of his opponent’s bona fides on LGBT issues. “The number one issue for the community, she is on the wrong side of,” he said of her waffling on marriage equality. “There is no issue for our community that our community cares about that she is better than me on.”

July 4, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com

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July 4, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com

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July 4, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com

POLITICS

AIDS Rent Cap Protections Die in State Senate Tom Duane angry at what he sees as betrayal — by Republican colleagues and the Democratic governor BY PAUL SCHINDLER

DONNA ACETO

t his June 4 press conference announcing retirement from public ser vice after more than two decades, State Senator Tom Duane dedicated his final months in office to securing enactment of a rent cap for thousands of New York City tenants living with AIDS — a goal that he, West Village Assemblywoman Deborah Glick, and advocates have been pushing for since the Pataki administration. But just ten days later, in a 27-26 vote, the Senate may well have put Duane’s cherished aim out of reach for the remainder of his time in Albany. In a telephone interview with Gay City News several days after the failed vote, Duane was angry and bitter, not only that he was undone by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has long been on record in opposition to the rent cap, and set up by longtime colleagues on the Republican side, but also that in his view the key player in killing the bill was the Democratic governor, Andrew Cuomo. “This is what I believe happened. I believe Bloomberg’s lobbyists called Bloomberg, who called Cuomo,” Duane said. Then referring to the Republican Senator majority leader, Dean Skelos, Duane added, “Cuomo called Skelos and said, ‘I don’t want to veto this.’” Instead, Republicans who had supported the measure in past Senate sessions — and even in the Rules Committee moments before — walked away from the bill. “Governor Cuomo asked Dean Skelos to do his dirty work,” Duane charged. Neither the Republican majority leadership nor the Democratic minority offered support for Duane’s account of what was certainly a confused scene in the Senate, where bills almost never come to the floor unless they are assured of passage. Advocates who have worked on the measure for years were similarly unaware of any role played by the governor, and one cast doubt on whether the administration’s alleged action that day was consistent with its ongoing cooperative efforts with rent cap supporters. Neither the governor’s office nor the mayor’s office responded to requests for comment. The rent cap legislation would close an anomaly in housing aid to certain clients of the city’s HIV/ AIDS Housing Administration (HASA), by providing sufficient support so that their out-ofpocket rents are no more than 30 percent of their monthly income. Such a cap already exists for tenants in public and congregate care housing. A 2010

State Senator Tom Duane, appearing at Queens Pride the day before he announced his retirement.

estimate by VOCAL-NY, a group that does political organizing among HIVpositive people, found that as many as 11,000 people could be affected by the rent cap legislation. Advocates argue that without rent protection, many HASA clients pay as much as 70 percent of their income on rent and are left with just over $350 each month — or about $12 a day — to provide for their other needs. At his retirement press conference, Duane had pledged to “fix a policy that is incredibly cruel, that impoverishes the people who are sickest with AIDS.” The consistent sticking point on enacting a measure that on its face has such humanitarian appeal has been its cost. Advocates maintain the measure would be cost-neutral or actually save money, with reduced emergency shelter costs and less need for emergency room visits by those who lose their homes. The City Council, which several years ago passed a unanimous resolution in support of the cap, has been a bit less bullish, estimating first-year start-up costs of around $4 million, but with little or no additional net cost after that. Those analyses, however, have never been accepted by the Bloomberg administration, nor were they persuasive to the Paterson administration. Several years ago, City Hall produced an analysis showing annual costs of $31 million, divided evenly between the city and state. It also noted that up to $193 in a special

allowance for nutrition and transportation and $200 in food stamps are available monthly to HASA clients. Finally, the mayor’s analysis worried about establishing “an expensive precedent.” “No other population in receipt of public assistance in private housing has their rent contribution capped at 30 percent,” an administration memo read. The Duane-Glick bill would be the first to predicate housing assistance “solely on a medical diagnosis.” Advocates have responded that the mayor’s efforts to cast the legislation as a dangerous precedent overlook the limitations that apply to rents paid by HASA clients in public housing. In 2010, both the Assembly and the Senate approved the rent cap legislation, but Paterson, in a decision he clearly recognized was at odds with his traditional progressive base, vetoed it, saying that his administration could not get comfortable that it would cost any less than $20 million a year. Since last year, with a new governor and a record of passing the bill several times in each chamber of the Legislature, advocates have been upbeat about the prospects for finally achieving their goal. When Cuomo, early in his tenure, established a Medicaid Redesign Team (MTR) to improve the efficiencies of New York’s participation in the joint state-federal health care program for low-income Americans, the Affordable Housing work group, which included several leading

AIDS advocates, suggested that the rent cap provisions be folded into the governor’s overall restructuring. Bloomberg’s representatives opposed that in public hearings, and the recommendation did not make it into the governor’s fiscal year 2013 budget proposal (though $60 million was set aside for the MTR’s Affordable Housing Fund) and, so far, is not a part of his Medicaid 1115 “super waiver” application to the federal government. Carmelita Cruz, the director for New York State public policy and organizing at Housing Works, an AIDS services organization, said that incorporating the rent cap into the governor’s Medicaid overhaul will be a major focus of its advocacy going forward. With no concrete progress on that front, however, supporters of the cap continued to press for its passage as a stand-alone measure. According to Duane, the decision to bring the rent cap bill to the Senate floor on June 14 came as a surprise to him, and, in fact, the Senate website indicated that action on the measure was originally set for June 18. At some point on the 14th, Republican colleagues began congratulating him, saying they understood his bill would be approved by the Senate that day — behavior one advocate described as “Judas kisses.” When the Rules Committee, customarily the last stop on a bill’s journey to floor consideration, took up the measure, it breezed through on a 16-1 vote. “Of course I was happy that it flew through the Rules Committee,” Duane said. “But it’s a total aberration that a bill that flies through does not pass.” When asked if that had ever happened, Scott Reif, a spokesman for the Senate Republican majority, said he didn’t know. “There aren’t a lot of bills that are defeated on the floor,” he explained. Reif and Duane offered different accounts of how the defeat played out on the Senate floor. As Duane saw the vote going against him, he asked that he be allowed to withdraw the roll call and put consideration of the bill off for several days. That account is borne out by the official debate transcript, which has Duane, supported by Democrats Daniel Squadron and Neil Breslin, unsuccessfully arguing that a sponsor has the prerogative to pull a bill at any point in the process. After extended argument between the three Democrats and several Republicans, Duane said he no longer wanted to delay the vote. Reif said that Skelos’ counsel approached Duane on two separate occasions and offered him the chance to

䉴

DUANE, continued on p.13

| July 4, 2012

HEALTH

HIV Prevention Funds Restored, At Least for This Year In annual ritual, City Council added back cuts Bloomberg proposed in July 1 budget BY DUNCAN OSBORNE

hile the City Council restored funding for HIV prevention contracts that the Bloomberg administration wanted to eliminate entirely, that funding once again was not made a permanent part of the New York City budget, requiring AIDS advocates to continue waging an annual fight for those dollars. “A growing number of HIV/ AIDS programs that used to be ‘baselined’ in the mayor’s budget are now being restored with City Council discretionary funding that needs to be renewed every year, which is far from guaranteed given that every year there’s more and more programs that get cut from the mayor’s budget,” Sean Barry, a director at VOCAL-NY, a group that does political organizing among HIV-positive people, drugs users, and the formerly incarcerated, wrote in an email. The city’s $68.5 billion budget for the 2013 fiscal year, which began on July 1, included $1.3 million in restorations, ranging from $40,000 to $190,000 for contracts with 17 AIDS groups. In late 2011, the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) wrote to AIDS groups telling them that their HIV prevention contracts would be cut by 50 percent for the second half of the 2012 fiscal year. DOHMH relented after City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, an out lesbian who represents Chelsea, said it could not unilaterally make cuts to a budget that the Council passed and the mayor signed. The Council restored funds through the end of the 2012 calendar year when the contracts end.

“I am very pleased,” said Marjorie Hill, the chief executive officer of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC). The agency got $88,000 for HIV prevention work and $200,000 to continue a program that helps people with HIV who have dementia or other cognitive problems manage their finances. “I think that the real challenge is that there’s not enough money,” Hill said. “New York State and New York City are not receiving sufficient funds to support all of the HIV prevention and treatment work we need to do.” Mayor Michael Bloomberg has consistently sought to cut HIV funds of all types. Bloomberg and the City Council have eliminated $19 million in HIV prevention dollars over the past five years. Only some of those dollars have been replaced, with AIDS groups relying on the City Council to use its discretionary funds. In what has become an annual battle, those groups compete with other interests for that cash. “They are stop-gap measures, but it reflects the pretty limited power City Council has during the budget process,” Barry wrote. “The only long-term solution is getting the funding baselined again in either Bloomberg’s final budget or the next mayor’s budget, which should be one of the criteria by which any candidate’s HIV/ AIDS plan should be judged by the community.” In addition to the HIV prevention contracts, the Council restored funds for supportive housing and food and nutrition programs for people with HIV. One agency, Gay Men of African Descent (GMAD), did not see all of its funding restored for the remainder of 2012. GMAD has a $200,000 contract to run an anti-stigma campaign. That contract will now pay

$150,000. “It just says a lot about the value they attach to that. Stigma is not that important, which is very unfortunate,” said Tokes Osubu, GMAD’s executive director. The agency has an annual budget of roughly $1.3 million and has laid off one employee. Since 2007, DOHMH has been reporting increases in new HIV infections among young gay and bisexual men, with new infections among African-American and Latino men driving those increases. DOHMH is already rebidding the contracts that it earlier sought to cut. In June, Public Health Solutions, a non-profit that manages DOHMH’s portfolio of HIV prevention contracts, published a request for proposal (RFP) seeking bids. That RFP emphasizes that DOHMH wants to fund prevention programs that work with men who have sex with men (MSM) and transgender women. Those two groups “account for a relatively small percentage” of the city’s population, but “these are the populations most severely impacted by HIV,” the RFP read. While new HIV infections have decreased among most groups in the city, “new diagnoses among young MSM (ages 13-29) have been increasing in the last several years and comprised 49.3 percent of all new MSM diagnoses in NYC in 2010... Black and Latino MSM are at greatest risk, accounting for nearly seven out of 10 new HIV diagnoses among MSM in the city,” the RFP read. The RFP cited a 2009 study that found that nearly half of the transgender women were HIV-positive, with nearly all of that due to high prevalence among African-American and Latina women.

Third Plea Deal in Works in Bronx Torture, Sex Assaults Case BY DUNCAN OSBORNE

n apparent ringleader in a notorious anti-gay torture and sexual assault case in the Bronx is making a plea deal with the district attorney there. “We're asking for more time for the pre-plea investigation report,” an attorney for Indelfonso Mendez, 25, said in court on July 3. That attorney was appearing on behalf of Sanders L. Denis, the attorney of record for Mendez, and she would not discuss the case. Denis did not respond to a call seeking comment. Mendez is one of seven defendants who are each facing dozens of charges, including alleged sexual abuse, gang assault, and robbery, in the 2010 crimes. Some are charged as hate crimes, with the prosecutor asserting that defendants knew or believed that some of their victims were gay. Allegedly, the seven men

engaged in an hours-long session of beatings, sexual assaults, and other crimes involving six male victims in the Morris Heights section of the Bronx. Mendez and David Rivera, 23, are the only defendants who are named in every count of the 75-count indictment, which suggests that they were leaders in the crimes. On June 12, Theresa A. Gottlieb, a senior trial assistant district attorney who is prosecuting the case, discussed an expected “pre-pleading memorandum” from the attorney representing defendant Luis Garcia, 28, at a hearing before Judge Steven Barrett. “After we receive that, we’ll be prepared to offer pleas to this defendant,” Gottlieb said. At a June 15 hearing before Barrett, a defense attorney who was representing defendant José Dominguez, 24, gave what appeared to be a pre-plea report prepared by the Osborne Association, a non-profit that works with offenders, to

Barrett and Terry Gensler, an assistant district attorney who was subbing for Gottlieb. The judge then set a September date for a “disposition.” The defendants, who supposedly called themselves the Latin King Goonies, are alleged to have used ten different weapons including a bat, pliers, a cigarette, a lighter, and a chain. Allegedly, they sodomized some of their victims with some of these weapons, and some defendants are alleged to have menaced some of the victims by displaying a gun. Also charged in the case are Elmer Confresi, 25, Nelson Falu, 19, and Rudy Vargas, 24. Only Vargas is out on bail. The others are being held on Rikers Island, either because they could not make bail or they were remanded without bail. All the defendants have pleaded not guilty. In 2010, the crimes drew widespread revulsion for their brutality and condemnation for their motivation. David Paterson, then the governor, called the

KEVIN HECKMAN

Indelfonso Mendez joins two of seven fellow defendants in effort to avoid trial in six 2010 anti-gay attacks

Defendant Indelfonso Mendez, who is now 25, leaves the NYPD’s Bronx Special Victims Unit in October 2010.

attacks “vile, loathsome, and despicable conduct.” City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, an out lesbian who represents Chelsea, called it “the worst hate crime to hit our city in recent memory.” The Bronx district attorney’s office did not respond to an email seeking comment.

July 4, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com

REMEMBRANCE

Dr. Richard Isay, Lover and Fighter, Dies at 77 Dogged reformer cured psychoanalysis of anti-gay bias BY ANDY HUMM

COURTESY OF DAVE ISAY

r. Richard A. Isay, the out gay psychoanalyst who fought successfully to make his professional association drop its discrimination against gay members and its treatment of gay patients as cases of “arrested development,” died in New York on June 28. He was 77. The cause of death was complications of adenocarcinoma of the esophagus, stomach, and liver, his partner of 32 years and husband Gordon Harrell said. The cancer diagnosis was sudden, and Isay died a little more than a week after it in the arms of Harrell, whom he had legally married less than a year ago. The American Psychiatric Association (APA) dropped homosexuality from its index of mental disorders in 1973, but the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA) held homosexuality was pathological into the 1990s. Dr. Jack Drescher, an out gay analyst, said that until Isay took the group on, APsaA believed that “homosexuality was a ‘developmental arrest’ — a lower level of psychological development.” Gay psychoanalysts were discriminated against by the profession because the attitude of the establishment was, “How could you treat a heterosexual who had a higher level of development?” Isay, who himself had undergone psychoanalysis to stop being gay, figured out after ten years in the early 1970s that it didn’t work. But it took another 20 years to get APsaA to accept that view. William Rubenstein, now a law professor at Harvard, was director of the Gay and Lesbian Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union in 1992 when Isay asked them to use the New York City law banning sexual orientation discrimination to challenge the practices of his profession. Rubenstein wrote in an email, “Richard finally got them to remove their restrictions on admitting gay men and lesbians to their ranks, nearly a quarter century after homosexuality was removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.” Rubenstein wrote that Isay’s contributions went far beyond this case, citing his “pioneering books attempting to make sense of the particular psychological dilemma gay men confront” and his service “as an analyst, counselor, and mentor for countless gay people in his every-day practice. His many efforts helped lay the groundwork for the advances in social acceptance of LGBT people in the past decades. As importantly, Richard’s work gave dignity to our struggle and helped ameliorate the suffering so many gay people unnecessarily experience.” Isay, born on December 13, 1934, was a native of Pittsburgh and a graduate of Haverford College near Philadelphia. He went to medical school at the University of Rochester and did his psychoanalytic training at the Western New England Institute of Psychoanalysis. He was clinical professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College and lecturer in Psychiatry at the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. Among his many books were “Being Homosexual: Gay Men and Their Development,” (1989) and “Commitment and Healing: Gay

Richard Isay in 1996.

Men and the Need for Romantic Love” (2006). In addition to his active membership in APsaA, he served as vice president of the National Lesbian and Gay Health Association (NLGHA) and as a member of the board of the Hetrick-Martin Institute (HMI) for LGBT youth in Manhattan. Dr. Joyce Hunter, a founding member of HMI and a research scientist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute’s HIV Center, said, “He was one of my mentors along with Damien Martin and Emery Hetrick. He was extremely intelligent without being pretentious. He was really one of the reasons that NLGHA was taken seriously and able to make policy in the field of LGBT health care.” Isay was the recipient of numerous professional honors, most recently the 2011 Hans Loewald Award from the International Forum for Psychoanalytic Education. Dr. Bob Greer, an orthopedist who had been friends with Isay since they roomed at Haverford, said, “He was always very liberal,” noting that Isay became president of the United World Federalists in college, promoting international cooperation. “He was an extraordinarily loving guy.” Charles Kaiser, the out author of “The Gay Metropolis,” wrote in an email, “He was a man of special war mth and humanity. He had a kind of broad empathy, which may only be possible if you've attempted a heterosexual life and then accepted your true nature — and then learned how to celebrate it.” Isay was married to the former Jane Franzblau, who wrote in the New York Times last year about how they stayed together for ten years after he came out. They had two sons whom Isay adored — Dave, who founded Story-Corps, the oral history project on National Public Radio, and Josh, one of New York’s most prominent

political consultants, as well as four grandchildren. Gordon Harrell, an artist, was the love of Isay’s life. Harrell wrote, “We stayed together, despite the odds, the age difference, the background differ ence, and the criticism, and the longer we remained together, the deeper our love became. We spoke between almost every patient, for over 30 years. I acquired many of his characteristics, as he did mine. We've been told that our voices are the same (just ask his kids, who never knew who it was answering the phone), our mannerisms, facial expressions, body language. We eventually became so close that we became part of each other — very happily halves of a greater whole. There was a synergy between us that even we didn't understand. And that, I suppose, is what true love is… I cannot imagine any couple being closer.” Steven Sampson, an American writer living in Paris who was a patient of Isay’s and became his friend, wrote in an email, “I think Richard was sort of a ‘bridge’ person, providing a bridge between different worlds that don't always communicate. He was married with children, yet he was gay and had a long-term passionate committed relationship with another man, in an environment where long-term relationships were rare.” Dr. Simon LeVay, the neuroscientist who in 1991 discovered a difference in brain structure between gay and straight men, wrote in an email, “Dick Isay stood Sigmund Freud on his head. Freud said it was problematic parent-child relationships that made a child gay; Isay said that it was the gayness of the child that made the parent-child relationship problematic. After a long struggle psychoanalysts have warmed to his views and to gay people generally. For a glimpse of how they treated gays a generation or so ago, read Martin Duberman's book ‘Cures.’ Thank Dick Isay that those horrors are mostly history.” Dr. Richard Friedman, the author of two books on homosexuality and psychoanalysis, called Isay “an authentic moral leader and hero.” He wrote, “He was a true pioneer and spoke his mind to a psychoanalytic audience that was often hostile. Isay was unyielding in his certainty that his own life served as an example that the prevailing psychoanalytic ideas about homosexuality were incorrect… A generation of gay psychoanalysts and psychotherapists followed in his footsteps but only because he alone stood his ground in adverse and even threatening circumstances.” Tobias Picker, the composer and a patient of Isay’s, wrote in an email, “Richard said that fear of death came from feeling unloved. He knew he was completely loved by his husband, Gordon, and his family and it was easy to see that he felt that love utterly and completely. He knew he was much beloved by his patients too. Not long ago, he told me, with his trademark contented smile that he had no fear of death — that he never gave it a thought.” Picker added, “For those who didn't know him, his writings leave behind a lasting legacy of love.” Both his sons said that Isay’s favorite literary figure was Ferdinand the Bull from the Munro Leaf children’s book, the gentle beast who preferred flowers to bullfights. Richard Isay, famous for the fights he took on and won, was a lover at heart.

| July 4, 2012

OBITUARY

Gad Beck, the Last Gay Holocaust Survivor, is Dead Legendary resistance leader spent his final 33 years as activist in Berlin BY BENJAMIN WEINTHAL

COURTESY OF GAD-BECK.DE

ad Beck, widely believed to be the last known gay survivor of the Holocaust, passed away on June 24 in a hospital in Berlin, his city of birth. He died just six days before his 89th birthday. Beck is survived by his partner of 35 years, Julius Laufer. His death was first reported in the Jerusalem Post, by this cor respondent. Laufer, who spoke to Gay City News exclusively on July 3, said Beck died of kidney failure. His final words, Laufer said, were “Mom, help… mom, help.” Prior to his illness, Beck had been living in a senior citizens’ home. For years before his capture, Beck outwitted the Nazis with legendary resistance actions to save Jews. After the war, extroverted, witty, and filled with a kind of adolescent sense of possibility about the world, he displayed an electric personality that dazzled and deeply moved those who saw him on television or read his memoir. On a German talk show, he said, “The Americans in New York called me a great hero. I said no... I’m really a little hero.” In one of a remarkable string of heroic efforts, he sported an over s i z e d H i t l e r Yo u t h u n i f o r m a n d entered a deportation center in Ber lin to free his Jewish lover, Manfred Lewin. According to Beck, Manfred said, “Gad, I can’t go with you. My family needs me. If I abandon them now, I could never be free.” In his highly acclaimed autobiography “An Underground Life: The Memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Berlin,” Beck wrote, “In those seconds, watching him go, I grew up.” The Nazis deported the entire Lewin family to the Auschwitz exter mination camp, wher e they wer e murdered. As a gay Jew in Hitler’s Germany, Beck faced the ubiquitous lethal anti-Semitism of the Holocaust and the violent — and often deadly — persecution of gay men. Gerhard Beck was born on June 30, 1923, along with his twin sister, Miriam, to an Austrian Jewish f a t h e r a n d a P r o t e s t a n t m o t h e r. He would spend his early years in Scheunenviertel, a working-class Jewish district in Berlin. Germany’s Nazi racial laws classified Beck as a mischling, or half-

Gad Beck in a recent photo.

breed. He and his father were detained at a holding compound in the Rosenstrasse in central Berlin. After the non-Jewish wives of the prisoners launched a massive street protest that stunned the Nazis in 1943, the Beck family members were r eleased. Ther e wer e “thousands of women who stood for days... my aunts demanded, ‘Give us our children and men,’” he wrote. “The Rosenstrasse event made one thing absolutely clear to me: I won’t wait until we get deported.” Beck joined Chug Chaluzi, an underground Zionist resistance youth group, and played a significant role in ensuring the survival of many hidden Jews in Berlin. According to the entry about him at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, he said that “as a homosexual, I was able to tur n to my trusted non-Jewish, homosexual acquaintances to help supply food and hiding places.” In a 1999 New York Times review of Beck’s autobiography, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, wrote, “What he was often doing was trading sexual favors for aid to the people he was helping to protect: an apartment to hide in, some food to eat, even escape to Switzerland. But his transactions were rarely cynical. What

䉴

GAD BECK, continued on p.31

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR PUBLISHER & CO-FOUNDER JOHN W. SUTTER

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The Night Anderson Cooper Kissed Me

troy@gaycitynews.com EDITOR IN-CHIEF & CO-FOUNDER

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He has finally finished evolving. No, not President Barack Obama. That is so early May. No, no. I’m referring to A n d e r s o n Cooper’s Dear Fellow Celebrity Journalist letter to Andrew Sullivan, in which he wrote, “The fact is, I'm gay, always have been, always will be, and I couldn’t be any more happy, comfortable with myself, and proud.” The fact is, that’s no small thing. Cooper may be the best known news anchor in the country. He almost certainly is the one most appealing to young people — well, at least after we disqualify Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert, admittedly on technical grounds. He looks great in a field reporting T -shirt, does a pretty lively gig with Kathy Griffin every New Year’s Eve, and has treated us to some p r e t t y a w e s o m e Yo u T u b e giggling fits. He has also lived in what has been called a “glass closet.” There’s no hint that he has lied to people about his sexual orientation; his current relationship has been fodder for lots and lots of online mentions and photos; and he has not shrunk from bringing important LGBT stories to CNN’s large prime time audience. But he has also been resolute in declining to discuss being gay. Unfortunately, when a successful, high-profile person’s sexuality is such an open secret, the danger is that it sends a message to young people that even in a place of significant privilege, it’s just too risky to talk about being gay. And to many more Americans outside the LGBT community, it signals that gay

people still carry a burden of shame. In his note to Sullivan, Cooper explains his reticence about coming out publicly as a matter of jour nalistic principle. “I've always believed that w h o a r e p o r t e r v o t e s f o r, what religion they are, who they love, should not be something they have to discuss publicly,” he wrote. “As long as a jour nalist shows fairness and honesty in his or her work, their private life shouldn't matter.” Later in the letter, he elaborated on the theme of his professional ethics, writing, “It is not part of my job to push an agenda, but rather to be relentlessly honest in everything I see, say and do. I’ve never wanted to be any kind of reporter other than a good one, and I do not desire to promote any cause other than the truth.” These are all noble ideas, but I can’t help feeling they are also disingenuous pretext. Cooper is a journalist, but he is also a celebrity and has been marketed as such by CNN over the arc of his rise. A number of years back, he wrote a memoir about his time r eporting in war zones and from the sites of natural disasters. T o Sullivan, he said, “I did not address my sexual orientation in the memoir I wrote several years ago because it was a book focused on war, disasters, loss and survival. I didn't set out to write about other aspects of my life.” Some of those losses, h o w e v e r, w e r e v e r y p e r sonal — the early death of his father and the suicide of his only brother. He also wrote about his socialite mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, about whom he later contributed to a vanity picture book. The memoir was heavily promoted in a campaign that featured journalist Anderson Cooper. However, it is asking too

much of the public to insist they should have an interest in Cooper’s personal life, but then shoo away questions about his sexual orientation. Big name jour nalists have made much in recent years of their personal family stories; when the late T im Russert rather relentlessly promoted his memoir of growing up with an Irish Catholic working class father, nobody that I can recall questioned his bona fides in asking some of the toughest political questions each week on “Meet the Press.” To be fair to Cooper, some critics of his memoir commented that he seemed uncharacteristically stilted in those sections in which he talked about his family. Being circumspect about what goes on in private — whether in the kitchen or the bedroom — doesn't mean Cooper is a man filled with shame. Still, Cooper implicitly acknowledged in his letter to Sullivan that his obliqueness about his sexual orientation had gone on for too long. “It’s become clear to me that by remaining silent on certain aspects of my per sonal life for so long, I have given some the mistaken impression that I am trying to hide something — something that makes me uncomfortable, ashamed or even afraid,” he wrote. “This is distressing because it is simply not true… There continue to be far too many incidences of bullying of young people, as well as discrimination and violence against people of all ages, based on their sexual orientation, and I believe there is value in making clear where I stand.” Here, Cooper’s credibility is on much fir mer footing. If past is prologue, we might expect to see him fêted at LGBT non-profit fundraisers over the next year. Helping our community raise money is great, but I’d rather see

Cooper r oll up his sleeves and head out to some high schools to talk about his life as a successful gay man. In a celebrity-obsessed culture, Cooper’s recent action, done in writing to a trusted friend as he prepared to leave town for a holiday, provides something of a quintessential snark moment. “Duh!” “Finally!” And, “Didn’t he do that already?” have been typical reactions among folks who have long been in the know. Weeks before Cooper came clean, Michelangelo Signorile, as assiduous a student of famous people acknowledging their homosexuality as there is, tweaked the way famous folks are increasingly evading the uncomfortable acknowledgement they have lingered too long in the closet, in a Huffington Post column titled “The New Gay Celebrity Coming Out: ‘I’ve Never Been In.’” In his postCooper follow up, he noted that with copycat pieces in the New York T imes and Entertainment Weekly, his thesis has become rock solid conventional wisdom. (The world spins faster and faster and faster.) In fact, it was a question Sullivan posed to Cooper about the Entertainment Weekly piece that prompted the coming out letter. For all of Signorile’s disdain for the closet, however, he concluded the tr end is not a bad one. “The closet isn't going away any time soon,” he wrote at the end of his first installment. “But one step toward dismantling it among public figures it to make it a difficult and embarrassing place to be. Fr om the looks of the latest celebrity self-outings, that's perhaps starting to take hold. So now it’s time for me to come clean. Anderson Cooper never kissed me — at least that I can recall (leaving that door open ever, ever so slightly). But I will bestow my kiss on him tonight. What he did will likely help a young person. Probably a good many young people. The fact is, that’s a good and important thing.

| July 4, 2012

PERSPECTIVE

Dead Queers, Culture, and the Law BY KELLY JEAN COGSWELL ew York State’s anti-bullying law has finally gone into effect, and all the gay news sites are announcing, “Our kids are finally protected.” “It’s the end of bullying.” As if a couple of paragraphs inserted here and there magically keep kids from getting tormented, beaten up, or forced into suicide. Did laws against murder keep some guy from firing a couple of rounds into teenage lesbian couple Molly Olgin and Mary Kristene Chapa last week in Portland, Texas? Those don’t apply when you’re talking about dykes or women or somebody who doesn’t look quite white. Nope, the law didn’t put a force field around them or save Molly Olgin’s life. It rarely can. The law alone is like a message in a bottle. Maybe somebody’ll get it. Maybe not. The same holds true when the law is breached. Maybe you’ll get justice. Maybe not. The real trick is to get the law off that scrap of paper and into our heads, installing itself as a personal value, an organizing principle that creates its own refrains reminding us, “Those are other people, members of

䉴

DUANE, from p.8

pull the bill, only to be rebuffed. According to Duane, however, the conversations he had with top Republicans as this played out were marked by disingenuous behavior on the GOP’s part. He accused Deputy Majority Leader Tom Libous of “lying” to him and said Skelos would not come out of his office or take a phone call from him. “Senator Skelos never told me why he killed the bill,” Duane said. “He was ashamed to tell me what he was doing.” According to Mike Murphy, a spokesman for the Democratic minority, Duane finally gave up in his effort to forestall a vote when he realized that Republicans had set him up and would work to defeat the measure even if it were held over until the following week. Duane made much of the fact that 19 Republicans who

my human tribe. Put down the gun.” Unfortunately, changing culture, changing society isn’t something you can just lobby for or throw money at. Which is why LGBT people have mostly abandoned the project in favor of changing themselves. Becoming normal. In public, now, we mostly show up freshly scrubbed, paired off like sedated animals in the ark who can’t even be bothered to growl, squawk, or fuck. The artists we applaud for coming out are already adored by the mainstream. I love Ricky Martin, but what does him coming out prove besides the fact that at least a few of us are presentable? Not scary at all? He’s so good-looking and good humored. Ditto for Ellen. You could take her home to your Nana. Wanda Sykes has a lot more edge, but she’s not actually gonna cut anybody with it. In some ways, this decade and a half of efforts to join the military, get married, adopt, be accepted like anybody else only reinforces the idea that heterosexual, gender -conforming, mar riage-aspiring people are the standard of normal. And the rest of us that can’t — or won’t — pass are still screwed. And as likely to be targeted because our sexual orientation is like a persis-

had voted for the bill in 2009, when it was approved 52-1, voted no this year. However, when it was taken up again in 2010, the vote was much closer — 42-19. Only five of the Republicans who voted no last month had supported it in 2010. It’s worth noting, though, that four of the six Republicans present in the Rules Committee who voted to move the bill to the floor ended up voting no, including Skelos. Duane was less interested in talking about the eight Democrats who were either excused or absent from the vote. Had they been present and voted yes, the measure would have been approved. “Was there incompetence on the part of the Democrats? Yes,” he said. “Do I think they were in on the scheme? No.” The GOP’s Reif pointed to the eight missing Democrats as one reason why Duane cannot cry

tent, terrifying reminder of difference, that things don’t have to be the way they are. We say we want change, but we hardly ever do. There was, though, a brief moment in the late ‘80s and ‘90s when LGBT people still embraced change and experiment. It wasn’t just AIDS that provoked the queer art and activism of those years, shaping its bastard children, ACT UP, Queer Nation, the Lesbian Avengers. There was Holly Hughes with her epochal “The Well of Horniness,” and all the WOW iconoclasts, including the Five Lesbian Brothers. They created a lesbian theater that went beyond your mother’s lesbian separatism, which stood in opposition to a world dominated by men, rejecting their hostility and violence and wrapping us tight in cotton wool against the general ferocity of the world. What the WOW girls did was dismantle the world itself. If men existed at all, it was in faint echoes of old films and TV shows. And you could recast everybody’s roles. There was sex and humor and more words for vagina than you can shake a stick at. They were raunchy and irreverent and transformative. Pursuing their own peculiar world, they

foul. His Democratic counterpart, Murphy, however, said the defection of former Republican supporters of the bill proved that the vote was rigged. Had more Democratic supporters been on hand, he argued, fewer Republicans would have stuck with their earlier yes votes. Cruz didn’t see the matter that way. “Housing Works has always seen this as bipartisan,” she said, stating there has been a solid core of Republicans who were strong in their support. “This made the Democrats seem disorganized and messy. It is not the first time the Republicans have done this to the Democrats.” Not that the group has any respect for the way the Senate majority acted. “This vote represents the worst kind of nasty and inhumane politics that is currently in play in Albany,” said Terri

were incredibly free. After them, I discovered a book by David Wojnarowicz, a poet/ artist crying out to America as an unrepentant faggot, holding her accountable for all those AIDS deaths, all the suffering of queers sent into cultural exile. He demanded that the great narcissists of our country quit staring at their belly buttons and gaze into the distance. Into the future, which did not look at all like them. And dyke poet Eileen Myles actually ran for president, with her dog Rosie, stumping her way into American life, ready or not. While in “After Dolores,” novelist Sarah Schulman inserted dykes into a New York City that wasn’t asked to embrace anybody. She just planted her own dyke flag. At P.S. 122, performance artist Carmelita Tropicana turned Cuban — and American — culture upside down and inside and out, while her choreographer pal Jennifer Monson explored gracelessness and gravity, directing her dancers to collide mid-air. That was a different time, when queers had the ambition to broaden America, the whole world, really, not just squeeze themselves into a tiny corner of it. We were sick of being midgets and pygmies. And knew, what I still know now, that if there is going to be safety for any of us, we can’t just break down one wall. We have to destroy them all. Check out the Lesbian Avengers Project at lesbinavengers.com.

Smith-Caronia, vice president for advocacy and public policy at Housing Works. The flight of Republicans away from the bill, she said, “proves that they are willing to deploy the most egregious and Machiavellian power plays in their quest to further brutalize the poor and ill.” VOCAL-NY was similarly critical of the Republicans’ willingness to kill the bill. Alluding to the former governor’s veto, James Lister, a VOCAL member who has been particularly active in the advocacy effort, said via email, “Taking leadership lessons from former Governor David Paterson, these turncoats have shown their word is worth nothing and they happily renege on their commitment to affordable housing for homeless New Yorkers living with HIV/ AIDS.” Sean Barry, a director at VOCAL-NY, and Cruz agreed that Bloomberg’s lobbyists made

a final push to defeat the bill as the vote came up — like Duane, they said Republican senators were seen reading a pink opposition memo distributed by City Hall. Neither, however, had heard anything about Cuomo’s efforts, if any, that day. “That’s not what we’ve been hearing from the governor,” Cruz said. “They seem to be working on it, trying to settle on the numbers” to use for budgeting purposes. She sounded upbeat that a rent cap might yet make its way into Cuomo’s Medicaid reform effort. Barry offered one other ray of hope. Duane has refiled the bill with different effective date provisions, enough of a change to allow for Senate consideration again should a special session be called after the November election. Such a vote, if it happens, would come well past the eleventh hour in Tom Duane’s Senate career.

July 4, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com

HISTORY

Alan Turing’s Remarkable Life and Many Deaths Questions about suicide narrative of computer genius, wartime hero, defiant, persecuted gay man BY DOUG IRELAND

NPL ARCHIVE, SCIENCE MUSEUM / LONDON

une 23 marked the centenary of the birth of Alan Turing, the queer British mathematical genius and philosopher considered the father of the modern computer, the World War II hero who did as much as Winston Churchill to keep Britain alive and fighting in the war’s early years by cracking the secret of Nazi Germany’s communications codes, and an unapologetic gay man who was ahead of his time because he believed that homosexuality was a normal form of love. On that last score, he was persecuted and tortured by the British government for being queer. The story of Turing and his seminal role in defeating Hitler’s fascism was hushed up after his death from cyanide poisoning at the age of 42 in 1954 — in what a coroner’s inquest ruled a suicide — by a combination of British homophobia and the UK’s Official Secrets Act, a stringent form of censorship that prevented publication of anything the government deemed critical to national security. It was not until 1973 that a statement from a group of gay mathematicians associated with Britain’s Gay Liberation Front at long last lifted the veil of secrecy on Turing’s unrivaled wartime contribution and told the public how the government had arrested the queer genius under the insane 1885 Labouchere Amendment that had sent Oscar Wilde to hard labor in prison. The arrest forced Turing to choose between sharing Wilde’s fate or chemical castration designed to make him asexual. Opting for the second course as the lesser of two evils, Turning endured a series of estrogen injections that made him grow breasts and left him impotent. Turing’s story has since often been recounted, notably in a hit 1986 play, “Breaking the Code,” by British playwright Hugh Whitemore, which had a long run on both the London stage and on Broadway starring Sir Derek Jacobi in a magnificent performance that won him a Tony Award nomination. In 1997, the BBC turned this play into a memorable film, aired in the US on PBS’s “Masterpiece Theater,” with Jacobi recreating his role as Turing. The play and film were based on a superb biography of Turing, “Alan Turing: The Enigma,” by the British writer Andrew Hodges, and portrayed Turing, who continued to be hounded by the police until his death, as having taken his own life by eating an apple poisoned with cyanide. (The Apple Computer logo, showing an apple with a bite taken out of it, is said to be a thinly-veiled tribute to Turing.) This version of Turing’s supposed suicide has been widely unchallenged — until now. Just as commemorations of the war hero’s centenary were taking place all over the UK, a paper challenging the inquest verdict of suicide, terming it “not supportable,” has been published by one of the world’s leading experts on Turing, Professor Jack Copeland of the University of Canter bury at Christchurch, New Zealand. (A pdf version of Copeland’s paper automatically downloads at tinyurl.com/dxsh64q.) Copeland’s work could well lead to a wholesale revision of an important chapter in gay history. First, let us consider the many unique contri-

Alan Turing in 1951.

butions Turing made to computer science and the Allied victory in World War II. Turing was only 24 and still a student at Cambridge University when he wrote a paper proposing the possibility of “a machine that thinks” — in what was nothing less than a blueprint for the modern computer. Gay novelist David Leavitt, author of a serviceable 2006 Turing biography written from a gay liberationist perspective, “The Man Who Knew Too Much: Alan Turing and the Invention of the Computer,” wrote that his “universal machine” was capable of performing “the work of an infinity of single-use machines,” on June 22 in the Washington Post article. Leavitt’s Post article was one of few published in the US so far about the great man’s centenary. The computer he designed became known as “Turing’s machine.” On the very first day of World War II in September, 1939, having been recruited by Britain’s intelligence services, Turing took up residence at the nowfamous Bletchley Park, the sprawling Gothic Victorian mansion and estate that served as the wartime headquarters for Britain’s top codebreakers. The key assignment for Turing and his colleagues in Hut 8 at Bletchley Park was to crack Enigma, the Nazis’ cipher machine that Hitler’s forces used to encode all their communications. Fighting the Nazis’ machine with one of his own, Turing led in creating a codebreaking computer known as Victory, but more familiarly referred to as “the bombe” by Hut 8’s mathematical denizens. “Turing’s bombes turned Bletchley Park into a codebreaking factory,” Copeland wrote in one of seven articles commissioned by the BBC to commemorate the centenary. “As early as 1943 Turing’s

machine was cracking a staggering total of 84,000 Enigma messages each month — two messages every minute. Turing personally broke the form of Enigma that was used by the [Nazi] U-boats preying on the North Atlantic convoys” of arms, food, and raw war materials from the US to Britain, without which a starving Britain could not have survived. Turing next devised a way to crack a new and much more sophisticated Nazi cipher machine, which the British code-named Tunny, a teleprinter communications network that connected the German military’s high command in Berlin to the frontline troops in Europe and North Africa. The method of cracking the Tunny messages, known at Bletchley Park as “Turingery,” “gave detailed knowledge of German strategy — information that changed the course of the war,” according to Copeland’s BBC article, which cited military historians as saying that “Turingery” and his three “strokes of genius” — creating the bombe, cracking the U-boat Enigma, and breaking the Tunny code — “shortened the war by as many as two to four years.” A “conservative estimate,” noted Copeland, put at seven million the number of deaths for each year the war continued, and if Turing had not broken the codes and the war had continued for another two to three years, “a further 14 to 21 million people might have been killed.” With so many lives saved by Turing’s work, not to mention his role in preserving the island kingdom from a Nazi invasion, it is nothing less than hallucinatory to consider how Britain put this genius through the torture of chemical castration. But Turing, who had known he was gay from very early in his childhood and saw nothing wrong in it, had the misfortune to be arrested for homosexuality in 1953, at the height of the Cold War in the midst of what British queers called the Great Purge — a massive police crackdown on homosexuals in which nearly 5,000 were arrested in a matter of months on charges either of “gross indecency” (the same law under which Oscar Wilde was imprisoned), solicitation, or sodomy. This represented an increase of 850 per cent over the arrest rate for homosexuality in 1938, just before World War II. The Great Purge was provoked by the defection of diplomats Guy Burgess, a notorious homosexual, and Donald Maclean to Moscow, and in the climate of the day homosexuality was virtually equated with treason in the minds of the police. (See this reporter’s September 6, 2007 article, “Free the Buggers,” available in the gaycitynews.com archives.) By the time of his arrest, it had been a year since Turing’s government career cratered when he lost his security clearance because he was a homosexual — something he never took any pains to conceal throughout his life. Having secured a teaching post at the University of Manchester, he was having what Leavitt tactfully calls a “businesslike relationship” with a young Manchester man, who he discovered had stolen a significant amount of money from him. Under questioning from police when he reported the theft, Turing responded, with his typical frankness, that he’d been sleeping with

䉴

TURING, continued on p.31

| July 4, 2012

HEALTH

God Made Me Do It Defense in 2011 Midtown Murder Renato Seabrea says “manic episode” led to grisly slay of Portuguese TV star Carlos Castro BY DUNCAN OSBORNE

he accused killer of Carlos Castro will argue that he believed he was acting on instructions from God when he murdered and dismembered the 65-year-old Portuguese TV personality and gay activist in a Manhattan hotel last year.“ “Mr. Seabra developed a manic episode and became fulminantly psychotic,” David Touger, the attorney for Renato Seabra, wrote in a court filing last year. “He acted on his delusional ideas when he attacked and killed Mr. Castro. He did not appreciate the wrongfulness of his actions, as he was acting as a conduit for God.”

This mental disease or defect defense, or insanity defense as it is more commonly known, asserts that because the now 22-year-old Seabra could not tell right from wrong when he killed Castro, he cannot be held criminally liable. If a jury agrees, Seabra will be institutionalized until doctors decide he is no longer a threat. His trial may start as soon as September. At a June 18 hearing, Touger and Maxine Rosenthal, the assistant district attorney who is prosecuting the case, said they wanted to go to trial soon. While some earlier press reports have noted that Seabra would use an insanity defense, none has noted that he claimed to be acting on God’s behalf. Seabra faces one second-degree murder count

UNION SQUARE VIGIL COMMEMORATES FATAL ATTACK ON TEXAS LESBIANS

Renato Seabra claims he was “psychotic” when he castrated and killed Carlos Castro.

that alleges he intended to kill Castro. The maximum penalty for second-degree murder is 25-years-to-life. Following the hearing, Touger would not say his client had a history of mental illness, saying the judge in the case had barred him from publicly discussing the planned defense. The defense hired a psychiatrist, Dr. Robert Harris, and Mark H. Goldenthal, a psychologist, to evaluate Seabra. He was diagnosed as suffering from “Bipolar I Disorder, Single Manic Episode, Severe with Psychotic features,” accord-

ing to the court filing. Press reports had Seabra and Castro as partners of several months who traveled from Portugal to New York for vacation in January 2011. Seabra’s mother, Odilla Pereirinha, has denied that her son is gay in press reports. The two men argued, and Seabra attacked Castro. In a paraphrased version of the statement he gave to police, Seabra said he first strangled Castro then stabbed him in the face and groin with a corkscrew. After removing Castro’s testicles with the corkscrew, he hit Castro’s head with a computer monitor and “stomped on Carlos’ face while wearing shoes.” When the hour-long attack was finished, Seabra showered and dressed in a suit. He wandered around Midtown Manhattan for a while, then took a cab from Penn Station to St. Luke’s Roosevelt Hospital. The paraphrased statement was in the voluntary disclosure form that was filed with Seabra’s indictment. That form and the criminal complaint suggest that police recovered all of the weapons used in the attack and they have other physical evidence that corroborates Seabra’s statements.

INTERNATIONAL GAY AND LESBIAN HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION 2012 HUMAN RIGHTS AWARDS

A CELEBRATION OF As many as 100 demonstrators answered a call from the grassroots group Queer Rising for a vigil to commemorate a June 22 shooting attack on two Texas lesbian teenagers that left one of them dead and the other recovering from a head wound. Mollie Olgin, 19, and her girlfriend Mary Kristene Chapa, 18, were attacked by an unknown male assailant who looked to be in his 20s in Violet Andrews Park in Portland. Olgin was pronounced dead at the scene,

and Chapa only regained consciousness after several days of hospitalization. Portland police authorities are saying they have found no evidence the attack was motivated by anti-lesbian bias. Cleve Jones, a San Francisco gay activist, called on the LGBT community nationwide to respond to the Texas attack. The Queer Rising vigil was held late in the evening on July 1 in Union Square Park. —Photo by Donna Aceto

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July 4, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com

CELEBRATION

Pride 2012: New York’s Biggest LGBT Party Fifth Avenue a steady stream of luminaries and the luminous BY ANDY HUMM

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PRIDE 2012, continued on p.38

MICHAEL LUONGO

DONNA ACETO

MICHAEL LUONGO

Council Speaker Christine Quinn, with wife Kim Catullo and father Lawrence, to the left, and Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, City Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer, and his fiancé Dan Hendrick.

Members of ACT UP protested HIV criminalization.

Phyllis Siegel and her wife Connie Kopelov (seated).

DONNA ACETO

Grand marshal Cyndi Lauper.

DONNA ACETO

Governor Andrew and his longtime companion Sandra Lee.

DONNA ACETO

eep your A-list soirees and big-ticket benefits. The LGBT Pride Parade remains the biggest free party in New York, a truly democratic experience that attracts the most diverse participation of LGBT folk and our allies all year. It is a color ful mix of history, advocacy, sexuality, and commercialism — a chance for many to rededicate themselves to the roots of our movement, some to come out loudly for the first time, and others to cheer the spectacle from the sidelines. “We’r e showing what the LGBT community looks like and it looks beautiful,” said journalist Jane Velez-Mitchell riding in the “In the Life” contingent’s car. Grand marshal Cyndi Lauper was resplendent in a red top hat, promoting her True Colors Foundation’s push to help homeless LGBT youth by keeping families from throwing them out in the first place. “Today we’re here to celebrate,” she said, “but first I have to go paint rainbows on my fingernails.” Phyllis Siegel and Connie Kopelov, the first same-sex couple to marry in New York City, were also honored as grand marshals, along with Chris Salgardo, whom Out magazine calls the “power bear” president of gayfriendly Kiehl’s. The Pride march is always a good way to catch up on friends and, for a reporter, also on what activists and political leaders are doing on LGBT issues. Out actor and activist George T akei r ode with Jennifer Tyrr ell, the lesbian mom who was booted as a scout leader in Ohio. Both wore scout uniforms. Asked if the national campaign backing her push to lift the ban on gay scouts and gay and lesbian scoutmasters would finally bear fruit, Tyrrell said, “We’re going to do it!” Takei said the chair of the board of Ernst and Young is on the board of the scouts, “and he said it will change. It will change.” Susan Sommer, senior counsel at Lambda Legal, reviewed the group’s extensive marriage docket and hinted that a significant non-marriage case might be announced soon. State Senator Tom Duane, step-

Jennifer Tyrrell and George Takei.

| July 4, 2012

July 4, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com

POLITICS

OWS Occupies Pride, Pre-Occupies One Determined Spectator

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UNDERCOVER POLICE, continued on p.38

Activists from Occupy Wall Street took the Fifth for the Pride march.

GAY CITY NEWS

A man who appeared to be a plainclothes police officer tracking the OWS contingent on Fifth Avenue.

GAY CITY NEWS

h a n t i n g , “ We a r e unstoppable, another world is possible,” Occup y Wa l l S t r e e t ( O W S ) occupied Pride for several hours on June 24, as hundreds of thousands viewed or joined the 43rd annual march to commemorate the 1969 Stonewall riots. Roughly 75 people were in the OWS contingent as it entered the march at 37th Street and Fifth Avenue, but it grew to about 100 as others joined along Fifth Avenue as the march headed to the West Village. The annual event is produced by Heritage of Pride (HOP) and marks the riots that are seen as having launched the modern gay rights movement. While HOP has secured significant sponsors in the past, some of this year’s sponsors, including the Coca-Cola Company, Wells Fargo, and Citibank, have led to some complaining that the parade’s spirit has been diluted by the corporate floats and advertising. Wi t h d r u m s a n d a s a x o p h o n e , OWS set its own pace heading down Fifth Avenue, which led to some appar ent frustration on the part of HOP marshals, who kept urging the group to move along. OWS was determined to send its own message in its own time. The contingent’s members paused at Chase and Bank of America branches to denounce the banks for their involvement in the nation’s mortgage crisis and resulting foreclosures. Jennifer Maskell, an OWS member, said they had been warned by HOP that disparaging other parade participants or sponsors could get them tossed out. “We don’t want to be ejected,” she said before the group stepped of f. “Just saying Bank of America is bad for America is enough to be ejected according to Pride guidelines.” Of the nearly 325 groups that marched in or sponsored the parade this year, about 30 were major cor porations. As is true every year, the march was overwhelmingly made up of small community groups and local New York businesses and institutions. OWS’ view was that corporations sponsoring the annual event should not end any discussion of harm they may have caused. “There are real issues here,” Maskell said. “Just saying we support Pride doesn’t absolve them of that.” Offering a critique of some in

the gay community, OWS members distributed pink dollar bills that read, in part, “Pinkdollars set the agenda, buy politics, buy assimilation, buy silence. The people have created their own queer currency to buy it back.” While there are few of them, the large companies can create a dominating presence on Fifth Avenue. They buy huge floats and an early place in the march that guarantees they will be seen by the largest audience. Coca-Cola was this year’s presenting sponsor, and it had two floats at the front of the parade. T h i s y e a r, C h r i s S a l g a r d o , t h e president of Kiehl’s USA, a beauty products company, was a grand marshal, and the company had a large presence at the start of the parade. Salgardo has directed a significant amount of the Kiehl’s charitable giving to AIDS and gay causes. Like Kiehl’s, Delta Air Lines was a platinum sponsor and it had a sizable presence up front in the march. As with all the groups that march in the parade, OWS was greeted with yells and applause because the crowds tend to celebrate everyone that comes down Fifth Avenue. It was also clear that many viewers specifically recognized OWS, greeting it with raised fists and cheers. At the HOP reviewing stand at 23rd Street, the announcer declared, as the group passed by, that OWS demonstrated the “rebellious spirit of Stonewall.”

Masterdard had a large contingent in the march.

GAY CITY NEWS

BY DUNCAN OSBORNE

MICHAEL LUONGO

Undercover police officer tracks movement of anti-corporate contingent

Coca-Cola was the presenting sponsor of this year's LGBT Pride March.

| July 4, 2012

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incredible — a two-year h e s a m e d a y journey that began in Octo“The Gershwins’ ber 2010 with the first email Porgy and Bess” aimed at gauging his inter was opening on est and has soared based on Broadway, Evi- T ony Award wins for Best Musical Revival dence was leaving RONALD K. BROWN a n d f o r A u d r a on tour. Ronald K. McDonald as Best Brown, the choreAND EVIDENCE, ographer on the A DANCE COMPANY Actress. He’ll be celebrating with “Porgy and Bess” his own company creative team Joyce Theater in two programs and founder and 175 Eighth Ave. at 19th St. of dance at the artistic director of Jul. 9-11 at 7:30 p.m. Jul. 12-14 at 8 p.m. Joyce Theater. Evidence, found Jul. 14 at 2 p.m. Program A himself straddling Tickets begin at $10 includes the comboth worlds, an $10-$49; joyce.org pany premiere enviable if chalOr 212-242-0800 of “Gatekeeplenging position. This was his first Broadway ers” (1999), originally comcredit, yet he’s been making missioned by Philadanco and dances for his own company danced to music by Brown’s friend and longtime collaboraand others for over 25 years. Brown, age 46, was born tor Wunmi Olaiya, and the New and raised in Brooklyn and York premiere of “Everybody inspired to dance artistry, like At The Table,” a new section so many African Americans of the longer work, “On Earth growing up in New York, by a Together” (2011), danced to performance of the Alvin Ailey Stevie Wonder music. Program B features highAmerican Dance Theater. Few, however, have had his good lights from the Evidence repfortune, getting the opportuni- ertory, including an excerpt ty to choreograph for the same from “Walking out the Dark” company that first moved him. (2001),“Come Ye” (2003), a While he has choreographed call for peace inspir ed by for many others, that particu- the life, legacy, and music of lar dance for Ailey, “Grace,” Nina Simone, and the awefirst performed in 1999, was some “Upside Down” (1998), a career game-changer. Set to to music by Oumou Sangare Afro-pop, Ellington, and gos- and the late Fela Kuti — crepel music, it is a landmark ated long before the Broadway work that is now performed show celebrating Kuti’s life was even imagined. regularly by Evidence. “When I met with Diane Like all Brown’s dances, “Grace” is grounded in story- [Paulus] and Diedre [Murray],” telling — specifically, person- Brown told Gay City News al and folk histories related to about his signing on with the the African Diaspora — and “Porgy and Bess” team, “my his choreography fuses the first question was were they languages of modern dance, looking for a choreographer West African movement, Afro- for hire? Because I didn’t want Caribbean, and urban dance. to do that. But no, they were Rhythm, spirituality, and interested in answering where powerful, exuberant dancing dance should be. “When Diane and I would matched with music choices that are integral to the nar - talk, it was always about tryrative are all trademarks of ing to get a physical language this ever -rising star, whose for the cast in a way that repwork has also explored issues resents the characters. In a of concern to gay black men conference call with Audra, and to communities affected who had sung the music in concert, she wanted to know by AIDS. To Brown, the “Porgy and what were our intentions of Bess” experience has been making her a full character, a

full woman. Would she move?” You can hear elation in Brown’s retelling. “When they asked me, ‘So how many dancers would you like?,’ I said, ‘Everyone is going to dance.’” Brown defended the project against the purists — or in this case, really only Stephen Sondheim — who think the Gershwin opera shouldn’t have been “tampered with.” “We are trying to bring the work to new audiences, allow it to have some life on the musical theater stage,” he said. “The opera will exist forever long.” The theme of passing things on and inter -generational caretaking is central to “Gatekeepers,” which explores the relationship between ancestors and descendants at the time of crossing over. “I never thought about Evidence doing it,” said Brown, but dancer Arcell Cabuag, his associate artistic director, kept pushing. When the oppor tunity came to bring it back in Philadanco’s recent season, Brown said, “It made me remember why I made it and how the process came about.” He explained, “The first image ended up also being the last image, servants at a doorway waiting for the next generation of ancestors to come. In folklore from West Africa, there is a tradition of a baby being named after someone who has died as a way of teaching the child responsibility to that ancestor. We gather up our ancestors. We are our ancestors, and we are watching out for ourselves when we make the transition.” “On Earth Together,” a piece that is still growing, was not the original name the choreographer had in mind. Brown’s first title idea for his Stevie Wonder opus was “Wonder ful Place,” but EMI publishing suggested he find another one that didn’t have the word wonder in it. “I knew the title would come to me,” said Brown, who ultimately settled on opening lyr-

Ronald K. Brown dances “Grace.”

JULIETA CERVANTES

BY BRIAN MCCORMICK

Evidences dances “Upside Down” in 2010.

JULIETA CERVANTES

Ronald K. Brown is in a wonderful place

ics from the Wonder song “You And I.” “The last time it was at the Joyce,” Brown said, “we had 2 0 m i n u t e s . We ’ v e a d d e d another 25.” This time, the dance will be accompanied live by musical guest artists, including Peven Everett, Gordon Chambers, Caron Wheeler, formerly of Soul II Soul, and Andrea Jones-Sojola, NaTasha Yvette Williams, and Trevon Davis from the cast of “The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess.” “Bessie Schoenberg gave me some great advice,” Brown explained regarding his second program that draws from the Evidence repertory. “‘Don’t give in to the pressure to always do something new. Make sure people know where you have come from.’” Program B reflects Brown’s amazing journey.

BASIL CHILDERS

DANCE

Clement Mensah, Arcell Cabuag, and Otis Donovan Herring dance “Come Ye.”

| July 4, 2012

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FILM

Trying to have a baby?

star vehicle seduces and teases

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The Endearing, Imperfect Magic of Mike Channing Tatum’s

Channing Tatum, with back up by Matt Bomer and Adam Rodriguez, in "Magic Mike."

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can’t take the stage. He takes off his clothes, enough to make him a star a g i c M i k e ” i s a l l but not to hide the fact that he’s a lost g o o s e - b u m p a n d young man. Adam asks Mike to be his g r i n d . W h e n t h e best friend, and Mike agrees, assuring “cock-rocking kings” the younger man’s no-nonsense sister — Channing Tatum, Brooke (Cody Horn) that he’ll take care Alex Pettyfer, out actor Matt Bomer, of her kid brother. Mike’s story, of course, is the film’s and Joe Manganiello — take the stage to take off their clothes to “It’s Rain- central focus. He turns to stripping only after experiencing the frusing Men,” viewers excited MAGIC MIKE tration of being denied a by all the buffness on parade might just scream Directed by Steven Soderbergh business loan from a female Warner Brothers bank officer — a woman who like the female customers Open citywide would be throwing money at in the film. Steven Soderhim if she were in the audibergh’s enjoyable comedy-drama serves up sexy bare-ass ence at Xquisite. Mike also has relationactors along with a memorable shot ship troubles. Having no-strings-atof a penis pump that earns the film tached sex with Joanna (Olivia Munn), a bisexual student, he’s troubled he can’t its R rating. The thong-thin plot has Tatum — enjoy emotional intimacy with her. He whose real-life story inspired the film also pines for Brooke, who mostly disap— playing the title character, a Tampa proves of him. But it is Brooke’s banter with Mike roofer who strips for the cash he needs to open a handcrafted furniture busi- that forms the emotional backbone of ness. When Mike befriends the broke the film. Brooke’s wit also makes for 19-year-old Adam (Pettyfer) on a roof- a pricelessly funny line when Joanna ing job, he brings him along to Xqui- presses her for sex. The rest of the film, unfortunatesite, a male strip club. In a plot twist borrowed from the old showbiz war - ly, lacks the momentum promised by horse “42nd Street,” Adam gets a chance to strut his stuff when a dancer 䉴 MAGIC MIKE, continued on p.29

| July 4, 2012

FILM

All the World’s a Stage

KINO LORBER

Yorgos Lanthimos returns to his investigation of the roles we play and subvert

Aggeliki Papoulia in Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Alps,” which opens July 13.

BY GARY M. KRAMER

dent. The paramedic is a member of a secret organization named Alps, which few years ago, Greek writer consists of four unnamed people — the and director Yorgos Lanthi- paramedic, a coach (Johnny Vekris), mos brought us “Dogtooth,” a young gymnast (Ariane Labed), and a remarkable film — and a nurse (Aggeliki Papoulia, from “Dogsurprise Oscar-nominee — tooth”) — hired by the bereft to pose as their late loved ones. The about role-playing and the ALPS members of Alps recreate breakdown of social order within a family that closes Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos dialogue and activities of the Kino Lorber deceased to help the grievitself off from the world. In Greek, with English subtitles ing cope with their loss. His follow-up, the beguilOpens Jul. 13 When Mary dies, the ing “Alps,” expands on those Cinema Village 22 E. 12th St. nurse, unbeknownst to themes. Infused with dark cinemavillage.com the others, contracts her humor and employing an services to Mary’s parents oblique narrative structure that reveals itself slowly, “Alps” is pecu- to replace their late daughter for a few liar and unsettling — and, like “Dog- hours a week. She learns how Mary wore her hair, what she said, what perfume tooth,” completely riveting. An early scene has a paramedic (Aris she wore, and that she bit her nails. The substitution is meant to be comServetalis) caring for a teenage tennis player named Mary (Maria Kirozi), who has been critically injured in a car acci䉴 ALPS, continued on p.30

July 4, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com

FILM

Chat Roulette

TRIBECA FILMS

Martin Donovan’s directing debut is stagey but packs a punch

Martin Donovan and David Morse in Donovan’s “Collaborator.”

BY GARY M. KRAMER

him. After his meeting with a producer who wants him to collaborate on a fter years in front of the script rewrite, he reunites with Emma camera as an actor, Martin (Olivia Williams), an actress he knows, Donovan makes an assured and they share an intimate kiss. These early scenes set up “Collaborawriting and directing debut with the compelling drama tor” for its pivotal second act in which “Collaborator.” The filmmaker stars as Robert encounters Gus (David Morse), Robert Longfellow, a playwright once tout- his mother’s neighbor from across the ed as “a contender for the voice of his gen- street. Gus is an ex-con, who drinks dozeration.” His latest play, however, has just ens of beers and peppers his sentences opened to a review claiming “his reputa- with an equal number of F-bombs. Now 52 and living at his parents’ home, Gus tion as a writer is fading into irrelevancy.” Donovan creates an affecting, ele- has failed in his life, not unlike Robert. giac tone in the pre-credit scenes. A As Robert is about to head out one everadio voice-over recounting his negative ning to meet Emma, Gus arrives on his review is juxtaposed with scenes of Rob- doorstep with a six-pack and asks Robert — alone in the city and away from ert to have a drink with him. Though his sleeping family — that reinforce his he would prefer that Gus go home and leave him alone, Robert despair and isolation. politely invites him in. Soon, Robert leaves New York COLLABORATOR to take a meeting in Los Directed by Martin Donovan Gus gets drunk and takes Tribeca Films Robert hostage with a loadAngeles and also visit his Opens Jul. 6 ed gun. aging mother (Katherine IFC Center “Collaborator” is stagey Helmond), after assuring 323 Sixth Ave. at W. Third St. ifccenter.com in depicting the intensity of his long-suffering wife Alice this encounter, but Dono(Melissa Auf der Maur) that he’ll “put it all back together” when he van keeps the shifting balance of power returns. He hopes to sell their apart- between the two men interesting. Robert ment and promises to spend more time and Gus both seem backed into corners with his neglected family, yet it seems with nothing left to lose. Gus cannot entirely possible Robert has no plans to come out of this situation a winner, yet he manages to exhibit control. Robert go back home to his wife and kids. Robert is serious, terse, and some- strives to maintain a sense of his indewhat detached when interacting with pendence even in the face of hopelessothers — almost too closed off to engen- ness. In one scene, he wants to urinate, der any sympathy. But viewers’ feelings but can’t with Gus watching him. Over the course of their standoff, Gus about him will change over the course of the film — which is why he is an intrigu- and Robert come to represent, respecing protagonist despite his initial out- tively, reality and make-believe. Gus asks Robert to show how he writes his ward appearance. In LA, Robert tries to assist his elderly mother, who would prefer to care for 䉴 COLLABORATOR, continued on p.29

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FILM

Sapphic Indulgences as Ancien Régime Stormed

Dear Guys who like guys,

Bubbly and then cold, Benoit Jacquot’s Marie Antoinette enjoys her passionate friendships

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness began with me.

BY STEVE ERICKSON rench director Benoit Jacquot has made 20 films, in a variety of styles. However, the central vein of his work is epitomized by his 1995 breakthrough “A Single Girl.” There, a handheld camera followed a beautiful young woman through her duties as a hotel maid in real time. The director is attentive to the physical spaces through which his characters move. “Farewell, My Queen,” set in four days in 1789, takes place in the palace at Versailles, and the film carries an unusual sense of light and texture. Some of Jacquot’s films come across simply as opportunities to drag his camera alongside pretty women in equally pictur esque locales. But at his best, Jacquot’s libido is balanced by sympathy for Virginie Ledoyen as Gabrielle de Polignac and Diane the struggles his female characters Kruger as Marie Antoinette in Benoit Jacquot’s “Farewell, My Queen.” undergo. A film like “A Single Girl” could hardly feel more modern, but Jacquot seems attracted to period painfully hip “Marie Antoinette” took Marie’s side. Jacquot’s pieces, having directed is more ambivalent. a biopic of the Marquis FAREWELL, MY QUEEN film At first, the queen seems de Sade and a madeDirected by Benoit Jacquot like an appealing per for -TV film about SigCohen Media Group In French with English subtitles sonality — bubbly, girlmund Freud. Opens Jul. 13 ish, and friendly. When “Farewell, My Queen” The Angelika adds same-sex desire to 18 W. Houston St. at Mercer St. she’s faced with danger, h o w e v e r, s h e q u i c k l y the mix; it's probably the angelikafilmcenter.com Lincoln Plaza Cinema grows more arrogant first film to suggest Marie 1886 Broadway at 63rd St. and entitled. Her innoAntoinette was a lesbian. lincolnplazacinema.com cence is an act. In the “Farewell, My Queen,” end, she coldly proposes based on Chantal Thomas’ novel, begins on July 14, using Sidonie as bait. For the most part, Jacquot’s 1789, as Sidonie (Léa Seydoux) wakes up and prepares for her job treatment of lesbianism avoids the reading to Marie Antoinette (Diane usual heterosexual male voyeur Kruger). The two women seem to ism, although one gets the sense get along great; in fact, there’s a the subject excites him. In the 18th p a l p a b l e h o m o e r o t i c i s m t o t h e i r century, the vocabulary to describe chemistry. After the reading is over, two women’s desire for each other Sidonie goes back to sewing. The hadn’t yet been invented, and so it next day, she learns of revolution- wasn’t as taboo as it would become 200 years later. Marie and Sidonie ary tensions outside the Bastille. M a r i e i s a l s o a t t r a c t e d t o h e r freely talk suggestively and cuddle friend Gabrielle de Polignac (Virginie in bed together. Jacquot films them Ledoyen); in fact, she seems far more in gigantic two-shots in which the likely to jump into bed with her than actresses’ faces fill the screen. The with Sidonie. The castle is full of women seem unaware they’re crossing any kind of social boundary, tense servants and aristocrats. “Farewell, My Queen” tracks the and the possibility of their relationbr eakdown of a decadent, unfair ship becoming overtly sexual seems social order without demonizing the rich and privileged. Sofia Coppola’s 䉴 MARIE ANTIONETTE, continued on p.29

COHEN MEDIA GROUP

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July 4, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com

THEATER

Anything Can Happen — in a Bunker or the Woods “Love Goes to Press,” “As You Like It” deliver strong women, romance, and non-stop fun BY CHRISTOPHER BYRNE nce again, the Mint Theater Company has plucked a play from obscurity, given it a top-notch production, and come up with a completely entertaining evening that shouldn’t be missed. “Love Goes to Press,” by Martha Gellhorn and Virginia Cowles, real-life foreign correspondents, is a breezy comedy about Jane and Annabelle, two war reporters hunkering down with a group of less ambitious men in a press camp in Italy during World War II. True to the traditions of ‘40s comedy, the independent and inventive women are consistently outsmarting the men. At the same time, the romantic sparks fly, and it’s anyone’s guess if the gals will get the scoop or get scooped up into matrimony. Though many of the characters are recognizable types, Gellhorn and Cowles write snappy dialogue and have a light touch with a comedy of the sexes. They smartly — and given that it was written in 1946, presciently — satirize the media’s fascination with celebrities when a visiting actress is inadvertently hailed as a hero for hiding in a basement while Jane and Annabelle are breaking real news. It’s refreshing to see a play so unabashedly funny and well crafted. Renee Elise Goldsberry and Lily Rabe in the Shakespeare in the Park production of "As You Like It." Director Jerry Ruiz has done an outstanding job of bringing the story and its characters to life. Angela Pierce and Heidi Armbruster as Jane and Annabelle, she can hide among Duke Senior’s men in Arden. Orlando has likewise been banished, but not before respectively, are a terrific team. They have the fast-paced banter of the period down, but aren’t above sounding a meeting and becoming obsessed with Rosalind. When he arrives in the forest, Ganymede offers sharp report or falling into an uncharacteristic swoon. Margot White as actress LOVE GOES TO PRESS himself as a stand-in for Rosalind to teach The Mint Theatre Orlando how to woo. Daphne Rutherford, with her theatrics and 323 West 43rd St. There are other love stories played out fur, is a great foil for them. The men in the Through Jul. 29 as well, as the clown Touchstone, who has cast are all outstanding, especially BradTue.-Thu. at 7 p.m. ford Cover, as the PR officer who becomes Fri.-Sat. at 8 p.m.; Sat.-Sun. at 2 p.m. decamped with Celia and Rosalind, woos the shepherdess Audrey, and Silvius has smitten with Jane, and Rob Breckenridge, $55, minttheater.org Or 866-811-4111 his heart broken by Phoebe, who has fallas Anabelle’s ex, who, as luck would have en in love with Ganymede. As a piquant it, winds up in the same camp. Of course, since the play is a product of the immedi- commentator throughout, one of the Duke Senior’s men, ate postwar period, the girls ultimately face the question Jacques, muses on the human condition. And so it goes of whether they can keep on barnstorming into wars or to the inevitable happy ending, where man and nature must trade it all in for hearth and home. The play doesn’t restore their proper balance, all set to music with an come down definitively, but instead spins off into a final excellent bluegrass score by Steve Martin. I distinctly remember seeing six other productions of burst of hilarity that will send you out into the night very “As You Like It” over the years, yet I have never seen the entertained indeed. play so beautifully rendered or with such a deep underIn “As You Like It” — which just concluded an excel- standing of its themes. For that, all credit goes to direcHeidi Armbruster (top) and Angela Pierce in “Love Goes to Press.” lent Shakespeare in the Park run at the Delacorte — the tor Daniel Sullivan, who creates the two worlds and the Forest of Arden is more than just a place of exile from characters with such precision and honesty that even the corrupt court — the world of “painted pomp.” It is a a play as familiar and predictable as this seems fresh. detailed and precise underplaying of a Shakespearean metaphor for the ideal of humanity at its best, divorced His ability to draw fully realized performances from his clown. Similarly understated — and more powerful for from strictures and conventions and able to see the actors is consistently superb, but in this production, it — is Stephen Spinella as Jacques. Often played as a “good in everything.” Still, both the court and the forest he also achieves something that eludes many directors cynic and laughable, Spinella’s Jacques is a thoughtful are real, and the conflict between the two and the bal- of Shakespeare. It’s fully believable that all these char- man who is endearing in his own way. Jacques’ melanancing of political realities and humanist impulses pro- acters inhabit the same world, and the emotions that choly balances the more antic romance, and the play result from putting them all together make sense. It is feels whole encompassing both youthful romance and vide the dramatic center of the play. “As You Like It” is also as sparkling and romantic a all the funnier for feeling real. (Sullivan had the same mature realities. It is, as Rosalind herself says, “wondercomedy as Shakespeare wrote, deriving its humor from success with “Twelfth Night,” which ranks as one of my ful, most wonderful wonderful.” the same city-versus-country dynamic that provides its favorite productions of that play.) Shakespeare in the Park continues its 50th anniversaThe cast is outstanding. Lily Rabe as Rosalind/ philosophical center. At its essence, it is a love story. Rosalind, daughter of the banished Duke Senior, is herself cast Ganymeade is alive with romance and intelligence. ry season at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park with out by her father’s usurping brother, Frederick. Unable to Renee Elise Goldsberry is a perfect counterpoint as a July 23-August 25 production of Sondheim’s “Into the live without Rosalind, her cousin Celia runs away as well, the more sardonic Celia. Oliver Platt is outstanding as Woods.” Tickets are free; visit shakespeareinthepark.org while Rosalind disguises herself as a boy, Ganymede, so Touchstone, demonstrating the comedic power of a for information on how to secure them.

RICHARD TERMINE

JOAN MARCUS

| July 4, 2012

OPERA

Bay Watch San Francisco Opera offers Verdi, Mozart, and Adams who has taken “spinto” (“pushed”) too literally. This music needs elegance (sample Carlo Bergonzi’s studio recording or tapes of Veriano Luchetti or Ramon Vargas). But her e, tight, dry, legato-fr ee tone production yielded hard shell high notes and pitch uncertainty, unfor tunate evidence of a singer in clear trouble, with no compensatory interpretive insight.

CORY WEAVER

T h e n e x t n i g h t ’s n e w production premiere of “The

Albina Shagimuratova as Queen of the Night in Mozart’s “The Magic Flute.”

Magic Flute” owed its overall success to the fantastic, color ful but never overwhelming set and costume designs of Jun Kaneko, with a palette of children’s book shades,

id to late June is a great time to visit San Francisco, since the terrific Frameline LGBT Film Festival (at which I have volunteered sporadically since I was a student) draws cinematic entries and crowds from all over the world. There’s nothing like the sprawling and inclusive San Fran Gay Day parade, not to mention the carnivalesque Pink Saturday gathering in the Castro the evening before. And a visit is capped by another festival — San Francisco Opera’s June season — that offers three works in repertory every year. My visit began with the June 12 o p e n i n g o f Ve r d i ‘ s “ A t t i l a . ” T h i s opera is always an occasion for fun musically, though most of the best moments come early on — routine compositional solutions culled from Donizetti or Mercadante become more frequent as the Hun’s demise approaches. In San Francisco, we had a fine orchestral framework fr om Nicola Luisotti — if not the Verdian summit that New Yorkers briefly experienced from Riccardo Muti’s baton in 2010. Choral director Ian Robertson, celebrating 25 years’ tenure and receiving a medal and warm applause at the evening’s end, had also prepared his forces very well, even if director Gabriele Lavia’s blocking was mainly standand-sing at the footlights. The male principals got to place a foot on the prompter’s box. The show, borrowed from La Scala,

OPERA, continued on p.30

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proved even messier than Solera and Piave’s libretto — deliberate anachronism that leapt across centuries had fifth century fur costumes out of “Conan” paired with leather longcoats (a cliché within a cliché), a High Baroque crucifix, and a half-ruined Risorgmento opera house. Most unforgivably distracting and insulting to the singers, however, wer e scenes fr om Douglas Sirk’s high camp 1954 “Sign of the Pagan” projected onstage throughout the entire fourth act. Jack Palance, Jeff Chandler, and Rita Gam’s celluloid images upstaged everybody, even the superb Ferruccio Furlanetto, who at 63 brought big presence, idiomatic authenticity, and his imposing, only occasionally growly large-format bass to the conqueror’s role. The evening’s other gr eat deed was Quinn Kelsey’s Ezio, superb in clarity, line, and genuine Verdian sound. How long until the Met offers the Hawaiian baritone worthy assignments? The other leads, both local debutants, evoked more reservations. Lucrezia Garcia tackled Odabella bravely but it sounded risky. She is vocally gifted but not quite up to the rigors of this insane part — nor dramatically “demented” enough, in the manner of Marisa Galvany or the late Elizabeth Connell, to go beyond stolid placidity. The Venezuelan soprano should be handling Luisa Miller or Alice Ford. One feels badly that so many young singers go astray trying to establish themselves these days. A worse case was Mexico’s Diego Torre (Foresto), yet another tenor

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video-fueled elasticity, and fantastic formal imagination. The physical production will travel to Washington and elsewhere and is visually highly memorable. Harry Silverstein’s direction worked to remove some of the work’s misogynist stain, but too often descended into Vegas shtick or deployed awkward, ill-timed props. It was reasonable to stage the work in English. But the dialogue and lowdoggerel lyrics, cobbled together from hoary old translations — invoking the likes of “woe” and “mirth” — plus infusions of lamely unfunny wouldbe contemporary references, proved largely disastrous. Too bad the cast showed such fine diction!

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July 4, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com

IN THE NOH

Keepin’ On with Faison A new Harlem Renaissance, Patti at 54, a Judy gala, the best Antoinette here is a real jewel up in Harlem, the Faison Firehouse Theater, a 1906 firehouse that has been beautifully restored and retooled into a fabulous arts space. Its founder, legendary choreographer George Faison, who gave us “The Wiz,” the ballet “Suite Otis,” and so many other wonders, is leaping into drama, directing his theater’s first play, “Accept ‘Except’ LGBT NY” (through Jul. 8; 6 Hancock Pl., btwn. Morningside and St. Nicholas A ves., near 124th St.; smarttix.com).

FAISON FIREHOUSE

Tyree Young and Ceez Liive in “Accept ‘Except’ LGBT NY.”

Written by Karimah, and starring Tyree Young and teenage poet Ceez Liive, it’s the time-spanning story of a couple of young gay fugitives from the law — a slave from the plantation era who has a relationship with his owner, and a woman from what is called the Penitentiary Era of the 21st century. It’s inspired by the Constitution’s 13th Amendment, which states, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” I took the A train uptown to check it all out and was amazed by the wonderfully intimate 100-seat theater, state of the art rehearsal spaces and of fices, and a luxurious r eception era so glamorously outfitted it might be a set from a Noel Coward play. Faison, almost

exploding with excitement over his latest project, told me, “I haven’t felt like this in I can’t even tell you how long. How empowering this makes me feel because this playwright’s voice is being heard. I compare her to Albee and so forth because the ideas are about the freedom to be loved and to be able to talk to people about your choices. To find something original and be able to do it is just great for me, and I’m absolutely loving it. “People need awakening here because Harlem has been something of a dead zone and we have been ignored. Revolution was built on these streets — people came with nothing but dreams in their pockets. That has somehow been stripped away, but I hope it’s coming back. “This play is about reawakening that activism, if there’s going to be that change. It’s almost a welfare state here, but our mentality has changed and that’s why I am here nurturing the young, apprenticing and grooming them to make them ready to step in our shoes, not stand on our shoulders, but walk on. I have a couple of students from Howard University on my staff, and have reached out to Columbia and NYU for kids who are versed in technology. “We’re not getting grants because we don’t fit a cer tain criteria, so I’m producing this. You just get pushed back by your own people, the politicians, especially [City Councilwoman] Inez Dickens, [Congressman Charlie] Rangel, [State Assemblyman Keith] Wright. I and other groups here have approached them — nothing! There’s nobody to vote for. Put that in your interview!” Faison laughed when I asked him if he’d ever had to come out as a gay man: “I’ve always lived my life completely, so there was no need to, didn’t have to proclaim that to anybody. It has no reflection on my work, anyway, and this play is probably an exception to all of it.

“I kind of resent it when people run up and tell me about being gay. I’m not interested in that, but in what can we do together to push this envelope of understanding, opportunity, and education. It’s not about me. I’m strictly about the work. Everything I do is political, and I haven’t had to declare anything. My telling you doesn’t mean anything. Your perspective is the danger, what you’re going to do with that information, which goes back to James Baldwin and all those writers looking for political and social freedom. People only use private things they know about you to use them against you, and I’m not going to jump into either that box or the closet. “I taught my brothers how to throw a football, okay? And I chose dancing at a time when men didn’t dance and could express myself without words. I worked with everybody, Alan Jay Lerner, Leonard Bernstein, you name it. “Bernstein was a genius — temperamental, high-strung, all of those things, but that’s an artist. A lot of things were said about him, some true and some not, but that was a man who was a slave to his own art. Music was his mistress and, yes, he had a real sense of dance and an opinion on almost everything. Money and fame won’t change you, and he was allowed to live like that and ultimately be who he was.” For Faison, Bernstein was a contrast to Alvin Ailey who “didn’t enjoy that ultimate freedom, although other people certainly benefited from what he did. Today, Obama is part of the equation, and I was fortified by the fact that he did make a statement. But I was more fortified by what I heard in 1963 from a young John Lewis, who said that we will shatter the South and put it back together. Thank God he’s still there in Congress after all these years, fighting for the same civil rights, like when he did the Freedom Ride and got beat and bloodied.” Faison refers to his partner of decades, Tad Schnugg, as

“a definite blessing in my life. What I get involved with is so crazy and intense that it is definitely wonderful to have someone I can always lean on at the end of a hard day.”

June was a real cabaret feast. Below 54 opened in the notorious basement of Studio 54, which, in its heyday as the ultimate disco, was known for its darkness, stacked liquor boxes, secret drug caches, funky mattresses, and wildass action that went on there. Set designer John Lee Beatty has transfor med it into a comfortably glossy 1920s speakeasy facsimile. Though there doesn’t seem to be a bad seat in the house, owner Richard Frankel told me on June14, “You should talk to the six irate people I just spoke with” and agreed with me that every club needs a Siberia anyway. The headliner that night was Patti LuPone, who, for my money, taught such relative whippersnappers as Kristin Chenoweth and Jane Krakowski — who’d just done okay-butnot-earth-shattering concerts at City Center and Town Hall, respectively — how it should be done. Backed by the best band I’ve ever heard, LuPone’s miraculously undiminished powerhouse of a voice, with its oboe-like undulations, nearly blasted the new paint off the walls on a splendid variety of songs, many of them with a seafaring theme. “Sing ‘One Mor e Look!’” some patron, obviously clueless about LuPone’s famous contretemps with and lawsuit against Andrew Lloyd Webber over “Sunset Boulevard,” yelled. “You mean ‘With One Look’?” she snarled, as she mimed strangling Lloyd Webber. “Not in this lifetime!” She lets the audience tweet their encore requests and the selection that night was Sondheim’s “Being Alive.” “I hope I remember the lyrics,” she muttered. “If I forget them, I’ll sing ‘With One Look’ for you. KIDDING!” She was lyric-perfect and ferociously tore through this

RAHAV SEGEV

BY DAVID NOH

The incomparable Patti LuPone appeared at Richard Frankel’s new cabaret, Below 54.

ultimate show power anthem. I couldn’t resist it and screamed, “Again!,” at the end, which cracked her up. She actually started to sing it again, before stopping and saying, “What clown yelled that?”

P r i d e We e k a n d Judy Garland always go hand in hand, and there was no better way to celebrate both than at “Night of a Thousand Judys” on June 18 at Playwrights Horizons. A benefit for the Ali Forney C e n t e r, w h i c h p r o v i d e s housing and social services to homeless LGBT youth, it was brilliantly hosted by Justin Sayre, whose wonderful “The Meeting” regularly enlivens the Duplex with its quirky, camp sensibility, and proved to be the best Garland tribute I’ve veer attended. Sayre opened it with “Howdy Neighbor” from “Summer Stock,” with a posse of deliciously swishy dancers, helping him put the number over with the élan of Kay Thompson herself. He later delivered a marvelous, serious sermon, invoking Garland’s imperishable generosity of spirit, as well as, pointedly, the need for more of same in the gay community, so obsessed with gym narcissism,

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IN THE NOH, continued on p.30

| July 4, 2012

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MARIE ANTIONETTE, from p.25

remote. Despite two nude scenes, Jacquot never shows anything more explicit than kissing and one aborted heterosexual make-out session. “Farewell, My Queen” invites comparisons with epic portraits of social change like Luchino Visconti’s “The Leopard.” With its cinematography lit by candles, it looks a bit like Stanley Kubrick’s “Barry L yndon.” However, it’s a far more modest film than either, though it’s a deluxe production by Jacquot’s usual standards. Many period pieces wind up feeling like costume parties, but the past of “Farewell, My Queen” feels thor oughly lived-in. There’s a real attention to detail here, down to the dead rats floating in a river.

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COLLABORATOR, from p.24

plays. Inviting Gus to collaborate by doing improvisation exercises, Roberts instructs him, “Say what you think — be yourself.” Is Robert truly welcoming Gus’ assistance or just trying to gain his trust? Viewers must decide for themselves. The film’s curious denouement is also open to various interpretations, as is the title. Who here is the collaborator? Donovan his written a smart and provocative film that explores the motivations of complex characters. He also shows himself to be a shrewd and restrained director. The film sags a bit

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MAGIC MIKE, from p.22

Mike’s moments with Brooke. Employing a traditional three-act structure. “Magic Mike,” stripped down to its barest elements, consists of exposition (in this case, exhibition), rising action (sex, drugs, and financial strains that derail Mike’s career plans), and climax (when our hero develops a true sense of who he is). The story is hardly novel, but its unique setting and genuine good humor lend it considerable charm. “Magic Mike” offers several hilarious moments, as when Dallas (Matthew McConaughey), Xquisite’s owner, teaches Adam how to dance like a pro. “Fuck that mirror like you mean it!,” he instructs the novice hunk. Big Dick Richie (Manganiello) also provides hearty laughs as he gives a fireman’s carry to a plus-size patron — and nearly wrecks his back. For all its titillation, “Magic Mike” works best when it gets serious. When Adam tells Mike how grateful he is that he got into stripping — that he enjoys the money, drugs, and women that come with his new “career” — he is disarmingly sincere. We learn more about him here than in any scene of him naked. Doing ecstasy, Adam is encouraged

“Farewell, My Queen” blatantly interprets the past through the gaze of the present. Everyone knows what happened to Marie Antoinette — though her eventual fate takes place offscreen, several years after the film’s events. The sexual frankness is a product of 2012; one can only speculate about how lesbians behaved in 1789. Still, there’s no sense of superior ity over the past. Indeed, some might envy the ease with which Marie, Sidonie, and Gabrielle flirt with each other. The true subject of “Farewell, My Queen” isn’t Marie Antoinette, but the people she used, erotically and otherwise. The closing titles suggest that Sidonie, while she may have been a powerless servant, got the last laugh.

during an extended phone conversation Robert encourages Gus to have with Emma, but Donovan creates a spark with a revelation in the last act. The filmmaker also coaxes a terrific performance out of Morse, who wisely resists being showy, playing up Gus’ pathos rather than his menace. When Gus has his back to the camera, he is at his most powerful but also his most vulnerable. Donovan appropriately underplays as Robert, as well. These two strong performances elevate the modest “Collaborator,” a story that might otherwise be better suited to the stage than the screen.

to grope the breasts of fellow stripper Ken’s (Bomer) wife at a party, and the two men end up telling the other, “I love you.” Soderbergh teasingly cuts away before the scene plays out, but the bond between them is palpable and fascinating. Fans hoping to see much of Bomer and Manganiello will be disappointed to learn that Ken and Big Dick Richie stay mostly in the background. The film is truly a showcase for beefy Tatum, who dazzles viewers, whether on the dance floor, showing up naked somewhere else, or dressed up as Marilyn Monroe. Tatum exudes charisma — endearing as he tries to impress Brooke and sympathetic as his fortunes reverse. McConaughey is suitably slick and sleazy as Dallas, generating the most laughs with his over -the-top perfor mances on stage. Pettyfer, in the ingénue role, is appropriately stiff. The actor makes Adam likable but never truly desirable — which is exactly why his performance works. Soderbergh’s film seduces and then pulls back, but in the end gets its viewers’ money by taking off its clothes. Anyone in the mood to drink in the guilty pleasures of “Magic Mike” won’t mind that one bit.

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30 IN THE NOH, from p.28

judgmental exclusionism, and dehumanized Grindr hookups. This was followed by a heartfelt “A New World,” the melting Harold Arlen-Ira Gershwin ballad introduced in “A Star is Born,” which Lena Horne later took up as a Civil Rights anthem. The other talent on hand was impressive, indeed — Howard McGillin, Ashley Brown, Nellie McKay, Jessica Molaskey, John Pizzarelli, Molly Pope (who did a dead-on Judy that made me yearn to see her in a full gig), Tonya Pinkins, who killed on “By Myself,” and Darius De Haas, who is the only guy I ever want to hear singing “The Man That Got Away,” because godammit, he can! Sayre also wrote a reimagining of “The Wizard of Oz,” adorably told through the eyes of Toto, in which Frank DeCaro, as an on-themoney Lion, and Jenn Harris, having the cackling time of her life as the Witch, hilariously stood out.

I was seven years old, looking through an encyclopedia when my eyes fell on a picture of Marie

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OPERA, from p.27

Pride of place goes to Albina Shagimuratova, whose Queen of the Night was just sensational. By contrast, Heidi Stober, though phrasing competently, lacked either the purity of sound or the tonal expansiveness that can make a Pamina special. She sounded like a Papagena with dreams. The actual Papagena, Nadine Sierra, sounded fine but was pertly “School of Danielle de Niese” dramatically. Alek Shrader, announced with a cold, showed what an accomplished and fine-

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Antoinette, done up to death in big wig and panniered gown, an image which pr obably immediately tur ned me gay. “Who is that?” I asked my Aunt Mary, who said, “She was the queen of France who had her head cut off.” A lifelong fascination was thereby born, and, on July 13, the best film ever made about her is coming to the Angelika, “Farewell, My Queen.” Directed by Benoit Jacquot, it tells her story at the terrifying outbreak of the French Revolution over a few days, as seen through the eyes of her servant, a girl whose official function is to read to her. You are thrillingly swept right into the middle of the action in Versailles, and the film delivers a rich feast, visually, historically, and emotionally. I spoke to Jacquot, who professed his fondness for the lavish 1938 film, “Marie Antoinette,” with Norma Shearer as the Adrian-bedecked Queen: “I saw it more than 20 years ago, but it’s very amusing, very free, with the spirit of MGM and Hollywood. It’s almost a fantasy version of what could have happened, very imaginative, and it really has that MGM quality, which was perfect for portraying that time and court.”

grained tenor he is. His Tamino suggested a career path like Charles Castronovo — musicality, projection, linguistic ability, stagecraft, and handsomeness compensating for an essentially very light basic sound. Kristinn Sigmundsson (Sarastro) sounded more obviously becolded, with his lower voice scratchy and occluded. Nathan Gunn remains a winning, agile Papageno. Along with Shagimuratova, the most vocal impact came from David Pittsinger’s welldelivered Speaker. His initial scene with Tamino was the rare time when debuting Scottish conductor Rory

ALPS, from p.23

forting, but it is also sort of creepy. “Alps” investigates how individuals cope with personal loss. How to judge what is appropriate in responding to death is one of the more intricate questions this challenging film poses. Lanthimos deftly explores issues regarding pain and grief, but curiously is more interested in studying the effects the bizarre substitution arrangement has on members of Alps than on their clients. This approach undercuts the typical emotional investment viewers like to develop in a film’s characters. Here, the clients are mostly underdeveloped and the members of Alps have little or no

He’s less fond of the French 1955 “Marie Antoinette”: “very academic, too scholarly. Michele Morgan was a very popular actress, but she was too old and not really a great actress, which you need for Marie.” As for Sofia Coppola’s “Marie Antoinette”: I really do like the film, but it is one I would be totally incapable of making myself. I thought that it’s a film that comes across very snobbish and very insolent. Diane Kruger is simply magnificent in Jacquot’s film: “My first decision was that the actress had to be a foreign actress, foreign for France, because Marie Antoinette [an Austrian] was called the Foreigner. So the actress had to come from another place and had to be a native speaker of another language. I had three or four actresses — Diane was one of them — and when I met her, she had such a desire to play this part. She made it seem that it was very important for her, and there were certain signs. She was about the same age as Marie Antoinette, her mother had the same name as Marie Antoinette’s mother, Marie Therese. Diane was born on July 14, when the film takes place. She’s German and

Macdonald — technically accomplished and obviously fond of subtle orchestral and vocal embellishments — relaxed his rather “upbeat” pacing, allowing for some profundity and contrast. SFO’s first staging of John Adams’ 1987 “Nixon in China” was generally also a success. Michael Cavanagh’s staging and Erhard Rom’ set — both very good if somewhat overly busy — came from Vancouver Opera. Again, the final act, meant to be comparatively contemplative, suffered from far too many video effects. Brian Mulligan (Nixon) offered superb baritone singing and the most

identity outside of the substitute characters they play. Lanthimos’ detached perspective is deliberate. He wants viewers to piece things together and offers no answers himself — easy or otherwise. It is telling that when the members of Alps meet, they sometimes enact charades for each other. During their time off, they still can’t help but impersonate others. The nurse works not just for Mary’s parents, but for several other clients as well. At least they all seem to be clients. It’s never really clear what her real identity is. When she brings a young man over to play Mary’s boyfriend, she has Mary’s parents catch them together in Mary’s room. Things get more surreal when the nurse takes the same guy to

STEVE VACCARIELLO

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July 4, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com

Darius De Haas has the right — and the right stuff — to sing “The Man that Got Away.”

speaks German and she’s blonde, so it was obvious that she was the one to play the role. Contact David Noh at Inthenoh@aol. com and check out his blog at http:// nohway.wordpress.com/.

committed character portrayal I have seen from him. Four principals joined SFO for this run. Maria Kanyova (Pat Nixon) proved excellent vocally and very touching, with a far more distinctive and impressive soprano than the Anglophile Met offered in Janis Kelly. As Chou En-lai, Chen-Ye Yuan looks noble and gives the emotionally central role its philosophical dimension. Starting rather hoarse and strained, the Chinese baritone was singing mellowly by the end. Simon O’Neill fared splendidly as Mao, with a tireless dramatic tenor and absolute clarity of diction. The highly

her own home and replays the scene with her father. If this man really is her father, that is. “Alps” delights in setting up unanswerable puzzles. One thing that is clear about the nurse is her transgressive nature. She misses an Alps meeting, has a secret relationship with a client, blurs the lines of what is appropriate, and establishes her own rules that lead to her being punished. When she uncovers a shocking discovery, she makes a sacrifice that risks taking her too deeply into the role she has taken on. She seems to have trouble distinguishing make-believe from reality, but even here Lanthimos is cagey. The director’s deadpan style makes it challenging for viewers to separate real-

accomplished Hye Jung Lee also exceeded her Met rival as Chiang Ch’ing, whose lunatic coloratura intensity usually manages to steal the show. Patrick Car fizzi amused as Kissinger (the plot’s clown) but had little chance to show his fine voice. Conductor Lawrence Renes occasionally over whelmed the choral words, but the orchestral playing remained at a commendably high level. An initially wary audience seemed won over at final curtain. David Shengold (shengold@ yahoo.com) writes about opera for many venues.

ity from role-playing. One episode, both comic and gruesome, has the nurse playing tennis with the bedridden Mary. The nurse throws a ball at a racquet she has placed in Mary’s hand as the young girl lies dying in her hospital bed. The nurse seems sincere, but how could she be? Early in the film the characters’ behavior is often inscrutable, but there is a payoff. As the nurse’s actions catch up with her in the second half, “Alps” becomes more compelling. Papoulia gives a stellar performance in the film’s central role, with every one of the characters she plays credible and convincing. Lanthimos may be teasing viewers, but those engaged by all the game-playing will enjoy the come-on.

| July 4, 2012 TURING, from p.14

the young man, and found himself arrested. He was forced to undergo year -long treatments that killed his sex life and remained under tight police surveillance until his death. Turing had always been fascinated by the story of the poisoned apple in his favorite movie, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” a fact that buttressed the standard account of his suicide. But now, Copeland’s new paper suggests that homophobia may have influenced the verdict of the coroner, who ruled that Turing took his own life “while the balance of his mind was disturbed.” Relying on popular prejudices toward homosexuals, the coroner added, “In a man of his type one never knows what his mental processes are going to do next.” The police never tested the halfeaten apple found next to Turing for cyanide. Copeland has unearthed testimony from friends about Turing’s good humor in the days preceding his death. A neighbor described him as throwing

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GAD BECK, from p.11

always comes through in his account is a mischievous delight in his sexuality.” Lehmann-Haupt quoted Beck writing, “Of course the boss wanted something in return. He wanted me. I wasn’t totally uninterested. He was a construction-worker type with some signs of a paunch, but he was muscular.” Beck was the subject of a documentary film, “The Life of Gad Beck” and also appeared in the critically acclaimed “Paragraph 175,” which exposed the ways in which Hitler radically intensified the enforcement of the ban on homosexual conduct that already existed in the German penal code in castrating gay men or sending them to extermination camps. Speaking about his life as a gay Jew, Beck famously said, “God doesn’t punish for a life of love.” And in joking acknowledgement of the significance of his life’s trajectory, he once stated, “Only Steven Spielberg can film my life — forgive me, forgive me.” Shortly before the end of the war in 1945, a Jewish spy working for the Gestapo

“such a jolly tea party” for her and her son four days before he died. And his close friend Robin Gandy, who had stayed with him the weekend before, said that Turing “seemed, if anything, happier than usual.” Copeland gives credence to Tur ing’s mother’s theory that his death was accidental. Turing had cyanide in his house for chemical experiments he conducted in his tiny spare room — the “nightmare room” as he dubbed it. He had been electrolysing solutions of the poison and electroplating spoons with gold, a process that requires cyanide. He was also known for his habit of tasting chemicals to deter mine what they were. Copeland also notes that he could have inhaled the fumes fr om the bubbling cyanide, which act much slower in causing death than ingestion, giving him time to retire to bed before they killed him. But it’s not too paranoid to imagine yet another possibility mentioned by Copeland. With the discovery of the Cambridge Five Soviet spy ring headed by the well-known homosexual Sir Anthony Blunt

betrayed Beck and some of his fellow resistance fighters. When the Soviet ar my liberated Berlin, Beck was released from his captivity. He retur ned to his Zionist work, helping Jewish survivors emigrate to Palestine. He moved to Israel in 1947 and remained there until 1979. Miriam, his twin sister, died there. Two years before his departure from Israel, while on a visit to Vienna, Beck met Laufer in a bar there. Bor n in Prague in 1938 to a Jewish father and a halfJ e w i s h m o t h e r, L a u f e r survived the Holocaust by hiding in a Catholic Church until the war ended. He lived with Beck in Israel during Beck’s last year there. Beck returned to Germany in 1979 to become director of the Jewish Adult Education Center in Berlin. In a telephone interview with Gay City News, Judith K e s s l e r, e d i t o r o f t h e Berlin Jewish community’s monthly magazine, jüdisches berlin, r e c a l l e d t h a t B e c k would organize gay singles meetings at the Center. She described him as “open” and “sweet,” saying, “he would speak with everybody.” She said Beck regularly attended

and the defection of Burgess and Maclean, the “Queer = Red” equation was so prevalent in the British Cold War etablishment that MI5, the British secret intelligence ser vice, could well have decided simply to eliminate Turing before he could be tempted to pass on sensitive intelligence and computer progress to Moscow. Assassinations by MI5 were hardly unknown, as an extensive spy literature by former service members — historians and novelists such as John le Carré and Ian Fleming alike — suggests. In 2009, after an extensive Inter net campaign by admirers of Tur ing, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown made a for mal public apology for the way the British government treated the queer genius, paying tribute to him as “one of those individuals whose unique contribution helped to turn the tide of war.” He was sickened, the prime minister acknowledged, by “the appalling way he was treated.” That included killing Turing off in history by covering up his war time role for decades. If Copeland is right that we may

COURTESY OF GAD-BECK.DE

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Gad Beck, as a young man

Berlin’s annual Christopher Street Day Parade and waved an Israeli flag. Laufer recalled that his longtime partner was “always giving interviews” after his return to Berlin. In an email message, Ralf Dose, the director of the Magnus Hirschfeld Society (MHS) in Germany, wrote Beck “intensively promoted” the work of the institute aimed at preserving the tradition of Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, a pioneering

never know for sure just how Tur ing died, one thing is certain — not enough attention is being paid to his centenary in this country, despite the fact that his work saved countless American as well as British lives. Why, for example, has PBS not rescheduled a re-airing of “Breaking the Code”? For that matter, why haven't the vulgar ians who run Logo found airtime to show this film, preferring to offer us the umpteenth reruns of drag makeup tips from RuPaul? And why is Turing’s exemplary life, which he lived as an openly gay man without fear, not getting any attention in our gay press? Our youth could certainly benefit from such a heroic and brilliant role model. An extensive and excellent website on Alan Turing is maintained by his biographer Anthony Hodges at www.turing.org.uk/turing/. “Breaking the Code,” starring Sir Derek Jacobi, are readily available from Amazon.com, as are the Hodges and Leavitt biographies. See also a fine article by Pamela McCorduck, “Alan Turing Saved My Life” in the June issue of the Atlantic at tinyurl. com/co4w3b8.

sexologist — known as the “Einstein of Sex” — who was a champion of equality for sexual minorities. Explaining that Beck opened up the Jewish Adult Education Center to MHS lectures series, Dose stated that “without the startup help of Gad Beck it would have been much more difficult” to preserve and promote the historical record of Hirschfeld’s research and writings. The Nazi legacy lived on for homosexual Germans — some of whom remained imprisoned after the exter mination camps were liber ated — well past 1945. “For homosexuals, the Third Reich is still not over,” the German-Jewish theologian Hans-Joachim Schoeps said in 1963. That remarkable assessment highlights the significance of Beck’s role in breaking down homophobic barriers in the Federal Republic. Beck’s death was met with widespread praise for the contributions he made, and his funeral, according to Laufer, was attended by many Berliners. “We remember the Jewish resistance fighter and homosexual Gad Beck,” the Lesbian and Gay Associa-

tion of Berlin-Brandenburg wrote in an email message to Gay City News. “Through the National Socialists, Gad Beck lost his partner Manfred Lewin. After surviving the Holocaust, Gad Beck did not remain quiet. He engaged himself in the fight against discrimination and for justice and respect. “ David Mixner, the American gay rights activist, writing on his blog, recalled a 1996 meeting with Beck. “When I first met Gad Beck I was enveloped by this man who, with a huge smile, emanated pure joy as a way of life,” Mixner wrote. “Gad had flown into Washington, DC, in 1996 to be the keynote speaker at a formal ceremony at the National Memorial Holocaust Museum... The event was to commemorate the members of the LGBT community who had died in the Holocaust and for the museum to accept a $1.7 million gift raised in the last two years by LGBT Americans.” B e n j a m i n We i n t h a l i s a Berlin-based journalist who frequently writes for the Jerusalem Post and is a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

July 4, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com

9:30 PM “Prom Night, Holy Night,” Faux Pas’ KineticArchitecture offers a fun and heartwarming romp through the country of Texas, where cheerleaders are immaculate, football a religion, and God drives a Cadillac. ($12 in advance; $15 at the door, $10 for students & seniors.)

FRIDAY, JULY 13 7 PM Vincent Caruso performs his “Sister-Mary Sister-Mary Sofa,” about an over-the-top campy Brooklyn nun determined to set the world straight. ($5 at the door.)

In this 21st annual celebration of queer culture, Dixon Place plays host to a month of theater, dance, music, burlesque, performance art, and homoeroticism for the whole family. 161A Chrystie St, btwn. Rivington & Delancey Sts. Through Jul. 30. Ticket prices range from free to $18 at hotfestival.org or 212-219-0736.

SATURDAY, JULY 14 & WEDNESDAY, JULY 18 9:30 PM In “A Case of the Vapors,” Dandy Darkly, who previously performed solo “kneeling-room-only” shows beneath the infamous “Dick Dock” in Provincetown and on Stonewall’s cabaret stage alongside the Americana vaudeville troupe Fein and Dandee, makes his Dixon Place debut. Dandy Darkly is the creation of Brooklyn-based writer-performer Neil Arthur James, who will be joined by pianist, writer, and composer Adam Tendler, as Dandy Darkly’s loyal manservant and accompanist. ($5 at the door.)

FRIDAY - SATURDAY, JULY 6-7, 13-14, 20-21 & 27-28 7 PM Dan Fishback presents his new musical, “The Material World,” directed by Stephen Brackett with Yiddish translations by Eleanor Reissa. A HOT! Festival Mondo Cane Commission, this pop musical looks at a family of socialist Jews in the 1920s who live in a house with Madonna and Britney Spears. Will they spark a global anti-capitalist revolution? Will Madonna use secret Kabbalistic codes to harness the power of God and fix everything wrong with the universe? ($15 in advance; $18 at the door, $12 for students & seniors.)

MONDAY, JULY 16 7:30 PM

9:30 PM D’Lo presents his “D'FunQT: Stand Up or Die,” a one-person stand-up storytelling show filled with hilarious and poignant snapshots of growing up in a strict immigrant Hindu family, caught between overzealous parents who provided a wealth of material for self-reflective musings, rants, and side-splitting coming-out stories. ($15 in advance; $20 at the door, $15 for students & seniors.)

SATURDAY, JULY 7 7 PM Nicolle Maroulis presents her “For Those Who Cannot See,” an acoustic guitar project in which she hopes you’ll enjoy hearing what she finds important enough to sing about. (Free admission.)

MONDAY, JULY 9 7:30 PM Lauren Opper presents her “Ravishing Christina/ Ravishing Carlos,” in which Christina, slipping into the sparkly, disco noir night, dances the line between her two identities on a quest to break the destructive spell cast on her by a girl she once cruelly betrayed. Kate Gagnon directs. ($12 in advance; $15 at the door, $10 for students & seniors.)

7:30 PM In “Money Talks with Citizen Reno,” the brilliant satirist and social commentator returns with the next chapter in her episodic financial series she began in the wake of the Big Meltdown of 2008. Her rant on the financial world — i.e., the Great Vampire Squid wrapped around every living thing — attempts to explain to the average person just how we got into this mess and how we may never escape. ($12.)

TUESDAY, JULY 10 7:30 PM Elizabeth Whitney, as “Tricia Clayton Biltmore,” hosts “DykeOpalypse,” featuring Drae Campbell, T.L. Cowan, Kelli Dunham, Victoria Libertore, Afrotitty, Lea Robinson, and Laura Turley. ($12 in advance; $15 at the door, $10 for students & seniors.)

7:30 PM Marty Correia curates an evening of literature featuring Sassafras Lowrey, a storyteller and author who is the editor of the American Library Association-honored and Lambda Literary Finalist-nominated “Kicked Out” anthology, which brought together the voices of current and former homeless LGBTQ youth; Zyon Gray, aka “Gray the Poet,” a West African-American transgender spoken word artist, slam poet, and actor; and Marty Correia, a fiction and poetry-writing lesbian husband living in the East Village with arts activist Kate Conroy, whose work has appeared in FUSE, Punk Soul Poet, Assaracus: Lady Business, and Fiction Fix. ($6 at the door.)

WEDNESDAY, JULY 11 7:30 PM In “Slip Slide Transsexual,” Jack Shamblin, as Mia Kunter, and Shecky Beagleman debut an electro pop single amidst mayhem and comic catastrophe. ($12 in advance; $15 at the door, $10 for students & seniors.)

7:30 PM Bulletyme, a Shotokan Karate 1st degree black belt of Jamaican heritage, performs his “Battie Bwoy Fi Dead!!!,” a journey through sex, suicide, and the protection that hats provide. ($3 at the door.)

THURSDAY, JULY 12 7:30 PM Natti Vogel (below) and Najva Sol celebrate the release of their alternative wedding song, "Let Bloom," by immersing guests in a romantic, midsummer fantasy world where people become trees, vows become treason, and audience becomes priest. ($12 in advance; $15 at the door, $10 for students & seniors.)

Jim Bredeson presents “Even for One Night: The Life, Music & Lyrics of Michael Callen.” The show pays tribute to the singer, songwriter, author, gay and AIDS activist who helped create the concept of safe sex. The evening features Jonathan D. Lovitz, Rob Maitner, Will Reynolds, Steven Strafford, and Jonathan Whitton. ($12 in advance; $15 at the door, $10 for students & seniors.)

7:30 PM Kamelle Mills, directed by Molly B Murphy, performs “To Bloom,” an evening of diverse Southern characters surrounding an adolescent homosexual boy, Florence, on the verge of discovering who he is. ($5 at the door.)

TUESDAY, JULY 17 7:30 PM Constantine Lignos (top center) performs his “The Matryoshka Doll,” the story of a New Jersey housewife who recently had a hysterectomy and is having trouble identifying with her femininity. In an attempt to rediscover her sexuality, she dreams of becoming some of history's most iconic females — including Cleopatra, Lucille Ball, and Rainer Maria, a stripper in the vein of Gypsy Rose Lee. ($12 in advance; $15 at the door, $10 for students & seniors.)

7:30 PM “See Something, Gay Something,” showcases the comic braininess and bawdiness of Jessica Halem, who is what happens when you mix a hippie Midwest upbringing with a Sarah Lawrence education. ($5 at the door.)

WEDNESDAY, JULY 18 7:30 PM E. Patrick Johnson, a Northwestern University performance and African-American studies professor, performs his “Pouring Tea: Black Gay Men of the South Tell Their Tales,” oral histories of black gay men who were born, raised, and continue to live in the South and range in age from 19 to 93. ($12 in advance; $15 at the door, $10 for students & seniors.)

7:30 PM Raoul D. Luna performs his “My Last, Best Spouse,” in which he delves deep into his formative years, recalling the dysfunctional men of his biological family and the reasonable men of his new, improved “logical family,” including his first-love, the late Lance Loud. ($5 at the door.)

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HOT FESTIVAL, continued on p.33

| July 4, 2012

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HOT FESTIVAL, from p.32

THURSDAY, JULY 19 7:30 PM Nina Morrison presents her “Arrow In,” in which Lucia Cousins, Brenda Crawley, Jeannie Fry, Sandrine Hudl, Sharla Meese, Katherine O’Sullivan, Ellen Simpson, Jeanne Lauren Smith, Megan Tefft, Brooke Volkert, and Katherine Wessling perform a multimedia-devised work, where a woman wakes up and finds a strange object in her bed, believes it to be magical, and feels reassured it will end her ongoing anxiety. In Erin Buckley’s “CC Dances the Go-Go,” the title character appears every Saturday night at the local lesbian bar, but works the rest of the week as a nurse’s aide, while Nicky, an aspiring actor, believes she might have made CC up. ($12 in advance; $15 at the door, $10 for students & seniors.)

7:30 PM In “Jason & Jill: Craft for Your Life,” Jason Black and Jill Pangallo are celebrity morning talk show hosts whose reality show walks audiences through the very basic instructions of how to create one-of-a-kind crafts. The biggest and best winner will be chosen and rewarded at the end of the show. (Free admission.)

9:30 PM In “Gomez & Tropicana Do Jan Brewer,” satirists Marga Gomez and Carmelita Tropicana take on Latino sexual myth, drag, and anti-immigrant hypocrisy via the wasted mind and brittle loins of Arizona's governor. ($5 at the door.)

FRIDAY, JULY 20 7 PM Lucas Brooks performs his “Fame Whore,” the story of one struggling artist's attempt to rescue his community from being swallowed up by the temptation of expensive shiny things. (Free admission.)

SATURDAY, JULY 21 7 PM Colombian songbird Santiago Venegas sings uplifting songs to keep you away from the dark side. (Free Admission.)

9:30 PM Charlie Demos, following up on the release of his EP, "Seven Times Eternal," brings his band together to conjure all new original music infused with the magickal spirits of the old world. (Free admission.)

MONDAY, JULY 23 7:30 PM In “Electric Junk,” gamelan musician Terry Dame plays new music performed on original musical contraptions and assorted objects just as queer as the composer herself. (Free admission.)

TUESDAY, JULY 24 7:30 PM In “L Boogie’s Love Connection,” multi-talented butch Lea Robinson leads a dating game for the non-discriminating queer that features smoking hot butch burlesque and other cabaret acts. ($12 in advance; $15 at the door, $10 for students & seniors.)

WEDNESDAY, JULY 25 9:30 PM

7:30 PM “Live At The CoCo Room” presents Monstah Black and the Sonic Leroy in what “Soul Train” might look like if it fell into a rabbit hole and ended up in a futuristic wonderland. It's one part variety show, one part house party, and two parts electro punk/ funk performance art sleazy disco. ($12 in advance; 15 at the door, $10 for students & seniors.)

Theatre Askew presents Trav S.D.’s “The Fickle Mistress,” a Ridiculous Theater-style exploration of the life of Adah Isaacs Menken, actress, poet, equestrienne, and one of the most notorious celebrities of the 1860s. Elyse Singer directs a cast that includes Everett Quinton, Jan Leslie Harding, Tim Cusack, and Bruce Faulk. ($12 in advance; $15 at the door, $10 for students & seniors.)

THURSDAY, JULY 26 7:30 PM Interdisciplinary performing artist Professor Ariel "Speedwagon" Federow, with the assistance of Davina Cohen, presents “This is the Way the World Ends,” that explores the conundrum that it has been proven, over time, that 100 percent of us will die, but somehow, inexplicably, some of us are still here. Glenn Marla and Hana Malia present “My Wife's Ass,” a theater spectacle of sizeable proportions based in values of body liberation and the need to produce fat narrative and performance in a world intent on dehumanizing and shaming fat bodies, fat sexuality, and fat imagination into silence. ($12 in advance; $15 at the door, $10 for students & seniors.)

7:30 PM Lillie De presents “Black Hairy Tongue,” an exploration of her relationship to her body, drawing inspiration from gender identity, revulsion, systems within the human body, flora, fluidity, touch, butch aesthetic, energy efficiency, control, expression, utilitarian movement, body hair, and comfort. Mila Goluov presents her “Friends & Monsters,” featuring Tyler Noble and Austin Young in a story about two drag queens who, while awaiting the arrival of Lady Gaga in an alley, discuss their mutual love and find the line between friends and monsters blurring. (Free admission.)

9:30 PM Joe Kolbow and Johnnie Niel present “Super Spectacular! To Opera With Love,” which they wrote with Deanna Fleysher, about an actor hoping to make a comeback with a miniseries chronicling the life and times of Luciano Pavarotti. ($12 in advance; $15 at the door, $10 for students & seniors.)

FRIDAY, JULY 27 7 PM John M. Farrell presents his “Amorous Wet: Walt Whitman in Love,” which grapples with the synthesis of the individual and society, the erotic and the spiritual, and freedom and democracy in Whitman’s poetry. Antoin O’Gorman co-stars as Whitman’s Irish-American coachman lover, Peter Doyle. Deborah and Michelle Beshaw designed and choreographed the puppets. ($5 at the door.)

9:30 PM Brigid Pasco performs her “Lorelei: My Year as a Woman,” which explores what separates the female sex symbol from the sexual female and poses the question of why the middle class embraces a resurgence of pinup culture in the era of the war on women. Alicia Ohs and Oscar Trujillo present “you are who they say,” an exploration of fears, desires, and society’s pressure “to become” — whether in terms of sexuality, gender, or committed relationships. ($12 in advance; $15 at the door, $10 for students & seniors.)

SATURDAY, JULY 28 7 PM Christopher J. Staley performs “unsex me here,” which he co-wrote with Neal Utterback. It’s the story of a struggling actor and wannabe documentarian who enters an abandoned theater on a supposed story lead only to find something unlike anything he expected. “unsex me here” is an otherworldly camp musing on Shakespeare’s Scottish Play. ($5 at door.)

9:30 PM MargOH! Channing, MAN-ee Champagne, and Kevin Novinski host “Skanks in Pearls,” a burlesque that features Legs Malone, Della Dare, Rikki Crowley, Brandon Bartling, and Dolly Llamma. ($5 at the door.)

9:30 PM Alfredo Tauste presents his “Shaman: A Real Panic Therapy in 6 Parts,” a multi-directed drama that reveals a spiritual-analytical reality based on autobiographical memories, traumas, dreams, nightmares, photographs, drawings, and monsters of the creator. Michael Cross Burke presents “Unilepsy,” a sexy, subversive, and totally new performance work. ($12 in advance; $15 at the door, $10 for students & seniors.)

MONDAY, JULY 30 7:30 PM Katie Goldstein presents her “Auntie Flame,” an exploration of the queer generation gap, wealth and privilege in the LGBTQ community, gentrification, queer politicization, relationship drama, and what happens when a family just can’t get along. Andie Gersh, Rachel McCullough, Megan Hanley, and Zachary Wager Scholl star. ($5 at the door.”

7:30 PM Casey Llewellyn’s “Obsession Piece” is a story of a not-quite-reciprocated, potentially imaginary love that took place in text, in technology, in the space between New York and Providenceland, between a play and a web series, on and with devices — the phone, alcohol, a made-up body, and a breakaway cunt. Amanda Davidson’s “When It Comes,” starring Emily Abendroth and Aden Hakimi, is the story of a family that believes a special message is being transmitted to them. The play uses the simplest possible gestures and props to replicate texts, posts, and other auguries as the characters attempt to decipher this indecipherable — and possibly nonexistent — message. Playing dress-ups, cross-gender casting, and bedtime story rituals create a maze of dark make-believe as each family member tries to understand — or escape from — their part. ($12 in advance; $15 at the door, $10 for students & seniors.)

July 4, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com Boogie Nights Nightclub. For complete details, visit atlanticcitypride.org and risqueac.org.

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GALLERY George Towne’s Erotic Geography

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FRI.JUL.6

AT THE BEACH A Proud AC Fourth of July Weekend Atlantic City plays host to RisQue, an Independence Day Weekend celebrating LGBT Pride, Jul. 5-9. Highlights include “Caliente,” a Resorts Hotel & Casino Starlight Room celebrating of ethnic diversity and fever on Jul. 6. Over at Probar Nightclub, “Noah’s Arc” hottie star Darryl Stephens hosts “Devour.” On Jul. 7, Showtime’s “The Real L Word”

star Romi Kleinger hosts a daylight “Sun Kissed Pool Party” on the rooftop at Diving Horse. A crowd of more than 2,000 is expected at the Resorts Hotel & Casino Super Theater on the evening of Jul. 7 for “Jackpot,” which will feature performances by pop songstresses Nina Sky, Brooklyn hip-hop artist Bry’nt, pop opera starlit Charisse Mills, and Poca the Papergirl. On Jul.8, “Inaugural Mini-Ball Delux” features an appearance by MTVs Aneesa Ferrea at Resorts Casino & Hotel Main Ballroom. The weekend is capped on Jul. 8 by fireworks and “Boardwalk Empire,” a party hosted by New Jersey’s own Ms. Theresa at Resorts Hotel & Casino

“George Towne: Portraits & Landscapes” is an exhibition of the Pennsylvania-born East Village artist’s oil paintings, gouache watercolors, and drowning. Towne’s latest works explores landscapes that that embody a mystery of gay sex and fertility. The Meat Rack and the boardwalks of Fire Island, the abandoned Carrington Estate House — where Truman Capote is rumored to have written “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” in bed in 1958 — and the All-Male Video Arcade in New York City all resonate with a lingering essence of countless sexual encounters and gay history. In conjunction with the landscapes, Towne has also produced a new series of male portraits, in the vein of much of his better-known work, but now with a broader ethnic diversity. Michael Mut Gallery, 97 Ave. C at E. Sixth St. Sat., noon-6 p.m., Wed.Fri., 2-6 p.m., through Jul. 14. For complete gallery information, visit michaelmutgallery.com.

Early Haring in Brooklyn “Keith Haring: 1978-1982” is the first large-scale exhibition to explore the early career of the legendary pop artist, who died of AIDS in 1990. The exhibit traces the development of the artist's extraordinary visual vocabulary and includes 155 works on paper, seven experimental videos, and more than 150 archival objects, among them rarely seen sketchbooks, journals, exhibition flyers, posters, subway drawings, and documentary photographs. Brooklyn Museum of Art, 200 Eastern Pkwy (2, 3 to Eastern Parkway) near Grand Army Plaza. Jul. 6, 8, 11 a.m.-6 p.m.; Jul. 7., 11 a.m.-11 p.m.

SAT.JUL.7

ONLINE “Words Do Matter” on “In the Life”

In its July edition, “In the Life,” the public television/ online LGBT magazine, presents “Words Do Matter.” In the segment, “Changing the Game,” “In the Life” examines the pervasive homophobia in the world of sports and speaks with professional athletes who are standing up to put an end to it — including “Bam Bam” Meulens of the San Francisco Giants, former New York Giants running back Tiki Barber, rugby star Ben Cohen, and college wrestling champ Hudson Taylor. Then transgender advocate Janet Mock, a People.com staff editor, speaks with Isis King, the first transgender contestant on the CW’s “America’s Next Top Model.” And, Representative-Elect Brian Sims, who will become Pennsylvania’s first openly gay state legislator when he takes his seat at the end of the year, is profile. The episode can be viewed at itlmedia.org, which also includes a guide to broadcast dates.

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SAT.JUL.7, continued on p.36

SATURDAY

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JEFF SHENG

Former defensive back for the Washington Redskins

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Bridges, David Clark, Fenimore Fisher, Bill Hussey, Nick Patrick, Ryan Pedlow and Jonathan Ducrest, Jonathan Rebell, Steve Salee, Pete Webb THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS

Photography: Jeff Sheng, Fearless, a series of portraits of out LGBT college athletes.

’s Sports Project, CHANGING THE GAME, is an education and advocacy initiative focused on addressing LGBT issues in K-12 school-based athletic and physical education programs. For information and registration, go to https://donate.glsen.org/fireisland

| July 4, 2012

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July 4, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com

SAT.JUN.7, from p.34

GALLERY The Art of the Mask Canadian artist Patrick Lundeen has his first New York City solo exhibition, “Good For You Son,” bringing together seemingly disparate objects — from flags to rugs to posters to keyboards to grocery store dailies and magazine pages — into cohesive works resembling anthropomorphic masks. Neon-colored, kaleidoscopic patterns embellish six-foot tall cut out canvas masks, speaking to the artist’s fascination with the exaggerated theatricality of Coney Island type characters, the Contemporary Macabre, and Outsider Art motifs. Mike Weiss Gallery, 520 W. 24th St. Through Jul. 28, Tue.-Sat., 10 a.m.-6 p.m.

GALLERY Gender & Masculine/ Feminine Ideals “In-Between & Outside” is a series of portraits by Sara Swaty exploring gender identity and the human form across a broad spectrum of individuals. The works, curated by Cora Lambert, were created with an interest in how cultural preconceptions about gender have created unattainable ideals about masculinity and femininity. Subjects range from those born into a gender they do not identify with to individuals who have physically transitioned and changed their bodies. The LeslieLohman Museum Window Gallery, 26 Wooster St., btwn. Grand & Canal Sts. The exhibition is visible from the street and on view 24 hours a day. Through Oct. 8. Closing reception is Oct. 5, 6-8 p.m.

NYC’s Social Activist Tradition “Activist New York” is a Museum of the City of New York exhibition that examines how New Yorkers have advocated, agitated, and exercised their power to shape the city’s — and the nation’s — future. Among the installations examining 14 different movements over the past 350 years is “‘Gay Is Good’: Civil Rights for Gays and Lesbians, 19692012,” which draws on artifacts from groups ranging from ACT UP and Radicalesbians to the Human Rights Campaign and the Gay Men’s Health Crisis and borrows from collections at the New York Public Library and the Fales Library at NYU. 1220 Fifth Ave. at 103rd St. Daily, 10 a.m.-6 p.m. The exhibition has an open run. Admission is $10; $6 for students & seniors. For more information, visit mcny.org.

AT THE BEACH Justin Vivian Bond Sings Performer and raconteur Justin Vivian Bond has been called the generation’s “greater cabaret singer” by the New Yorker. As the kickoff to Daniel Nardicio's Fire Island Icon Series, Bond appears tonight, with musical direction by Lance Horne. The Ice Palace, Cherry Grove. Jul. 7, 10:30 p.m. Tickets are $25 at dworld.us; $30 at the door.

SUN.JUL.8

NIGHTLIFE Bad Boys Out to Sea

Will Clark, DJ Jonny Mack, and Imperial Court of NY Empress Witti Repartee host their annual Bad Boys Sea Tea, featuring a tasty spread of adult video stars, including Rafael Alencar, Michael Brandon, Lance Navarro, Spike, Scott Spears, and newcomer Collin Stone. The evening includes a two-and-a-half hour cruise, a complementary gourmet meal, and all the gorgeous sights a guy could hope for on a New York summer night.

Boardingg on the Queen of Hearts begins g Jul. J 8,, 6 p.m. at Pier ier 40, Houston & West Sts. Sts. Dinner begins att 6:30, with the boat setting ing off at 7:30 sharp andd returning at ckets are $22 at 10 p.m. Tickets ruise.com, gaypartycruise.com, the or $25 at the ortion gate. A portion of the proceeds ceeds rakbenefits BBrakcle, ing the Cycle, ber a September ew Boston-New York bike rride ide that raisess money forr the ice AIDS service using group Housing Works.

MUSIC SC SI Catnip Cabaret Meow Meow, a purr-fect post-post-modern diva, offers a unique brand of kamikaze cabaret kitsch and performance art in appearance from New York to Berlin to Sydney. Tonight Meow Meow appears with music director Lance Horne at Le Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker St., btwn. Sullivan & Thompson Sts. Doors open at 10 p.m.; show at 10:30. Tickets are $25-40 at lepoissonrouge.com, or $30-$45 at the door. Meow Meow also appears at the Ice Palace in Fire Island’s Cherry Grove Cherry Grove, Jul. 14, 10:30 p.m.

TUE.JUL.10

THEATER Boxes Everywhere

Trent Armand Kendall’s “Picture Incomplete,” created in collaboration with composer and lyricist Michael Polese, examines the neat little boxes into which we put each other and ourselves through daring and comedic characters including Clarence (a homeless man), Mavis (a know-it-all neighbor), and her two sons De Ron (a pretend thug) and Fred Jr. (an emerging gay fashion designer living life on his own terms). Dr. Feelgood, a pill-pushing psychiatrist, also turns up, as does a prophetic preacher named Righteous Reverend who urges his congregation to “be incomplete!” Kendall says that the musical draws from the storytelling styles of Whoopi Goldberg, Dennis Miller, Bill Cosby, Spalding Gray, and Bette Midler (what a group!). 45th Street Theatre, 354 W. 45th St. Jul. 10, 8 p.m.; Jul. 12, 4:30 p.m.; Jul. 18, 1 p.m., and Jul. 21, 9 p.m. Tickets are $25 at nymf.org or 212-352-3101. “Picture Incomplete” is presented as part of the 2012 New York Musical Theatre Festival, which runs Jul. 9-29 at venues throughout Midtown. For complete information on the festival line-up, visit nymf.org.

THU.JUL.12

THEATER Sparklers, All of Them

“A Moment of…LOUD: An Afternoon of Scenes with Lonette McKee’s Actors Workshop Stars” features the Tony-nominated actress and star of the original “Sparkle” movie (1976) presenting theatrical works from rising talent. Countee Cullen Library, 104 W. 136th St. near Lenox Ave. Jul. 12. 1 p.m.

SAT.JUL.14

MUSIC Catnip Cabaret

Meow Meow, a purr-fect post-post-modern diva, offers a unique brand of kamikaze cabaret kitsch and performance art in appearance from New York to Berlin to Sydney. Tonight Meow Meow appears with music director Lance Horne at the Ice Palace in Fire Island’s Cherry Grove Cherry Grove. Doors open at 10 p.m.; show at 10:30. Tickets are $20 at dworld.us, or $30 at the door. Meow Meow also appears at Le Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker St., btwn. Sullivan & Thompson Sts., Jul. 8, 10:30 p.m..

MON.JUL.16

BENEFIT IGLHRC’s Celebration of Courage

The annual Celebration of Courage held by the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission honors individuals who have made a lasting contribution to the lives of LGBT people worldwide. This year’s honorees are Wisconsin Democratic Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin and Karen Atala, a Chilean lawyer and former judge. In 2003, Atala lost custody of her three daughters, when, during a divorce hearing, the Supreme Court of Chile stripped her of her rights as a mother solely due to her being a lesbian. During an eight-year court battle that ensued, she co-founded Las Otras Familias, the first Chilean organization focused on families formed by lesbians. Last August, the Inter-American Court on Human Rights heard her case against Chile and issued an historic ruling in February that confirms it is a violation of international human rights law to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation and/ or gender identity. The ruling is the first by that court recognizing the rights of LGBT people. First elected to Congress from the Madison area in 1998, Baldwin voted against going to war in Iraq and has been a vocal critic calling for an end to the Afghanistan war. She also opposed the financial deregulation of the late 1990s that most observers agree led to the financial meltdown of 2007 and 2008. Baldwin is the Democratic candidate for the US Senate seat being vacated by her fellow Democrat Herb Kohl. The evening will be hosted by Maulik Pancholy, who currently plays Neal on NBC's “Whitney,” and previously appeared on NBC’s “30 Rock” and Showtime’s “Weeds” and “Web Therapy.” The Art Directors Club, 106 W. 29th St. Jul. 16, 6-9 p.m. The evening includes hors d’oeuvres and cocktails, followed by the awards presentation. Tickets begin at $200 at tinyurl.com/7bxofs9.

THU.JUL.19

PERFORMANCE It’s a Travesty! A Lot of Them, Actually

Trav S.D.'s American Vaudeville Theatre presents “Travesties of 2012,” a show that features the cream of New York’s Vaudeville aristocracy, including celebrity impressionist Bob Greenberg, ventriloquist Carla Rhodes, clowns Jennifer Harder and Glenn Heroy, operatic comedians Jenny Lee Mitchell and Dandy Darkly, rodeo rope artist A.J. Silver, “Mock Star” Killy Dwyer, the sketch team of Audrey Crabtree and Billy Dee Bedlam, contortionist Amazing Amy, and mentalist/ mind reader Rory Raven. John Hurly directs, and Sarah Malinda Engelke is musical director and accompanist. The 45th St Theatre Upstairs, 354 W. 45th St. Jul. 19 & 26, 9:30 p.m.; Jun. 20 & 27, 7 & 9:30 p.m.; Jul. 21 & 28, 6 p.m. Tickets are

$25 at nymf.org or 212-352-3101. “Travesties of 2012”is presented as part of the 2012 New York Musical Theatre Festival, which runs Jul. 9-29 at venues throughout Midtown. For complete information on the festival line-up, visit nymf.org. “Travesties” includes performers from other musicals in the festival.

BENEFIT Knock Back on the Terrace, and Then at the Pool

The Ali Forney Center, which provides housing and social services to homeless LGBTQ youth, presents its third annual Oasis. Indie queen Parker Posey hosts the event, which will include a performance by Chad Michaels from “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” The evening includes an open bar, a silent auction, and a fabulous view from the Terrace at the Bowery Hotel, 4 E. Third St. at the Bowery. Jul. 19, 6:30 p.m. Tickets begin at $75 at tinyurl.com/7ebz3jm. All tickets include admission to the Jul. 21 Oasis Overboard pool party in the Fire Island Pines.

MON.JUL.23

THEATER Corresponding With an Icon

In “A Letter to Harvey Milk” — a finalist for this year’s Richard Rodgers Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters — when Harry, a retired kosher butcher, wanders into the writing class taught by Barbara, a young Jewish lesbian, he doesn’t foresee the problems that will arise from sharing his impassioned letter to his late friend Harvey. Barbara’s demands and his nightmares are just the beginning. The musical asks the question whether love, humor, and delicatessen will enable Harry to finally confront his long-buried past? As he struggles to figure that out, he has plenty of advice from his dead-but-feisty wife and from Harvey Milk, as well. The musical’s creative team is of Jerry James (book), Laura I. Kramer (music), and Ellen M. Schwartz (lyrics), and it is based on a short story by Lesléa Newman, author of the children’s book “Heather Has Two Mommies.” Pershing Square Signature Center, 480 W. 42nd St. Jul. 23, 8 p.m.; Jul. 25, 26 & 28, 9 p.m.; Jul. 26 & 28, 5 p.m. Tickets are $25 at nymf.org or 212-352-3101. “A Letter to Harvey Milk” is presented as part of the 2012 New York Musical Theatre Festival, which runs Jul. 9-29 at venues throughout Midtown. For complete information on the festival line-up, visit nymf.org.

| July 4, 2012

DYKE MARCH CELEBRATES TWO DECADES OF LESBIAN VISIBILITY, DEFIANCE

The traditionally unpermitted Dyke March from Bryant Park in Midtown to Washington Square Park marked its 20th anniversary on Saturday afternoon, June 23. The event was big, exuberant, loud, and festive. —Photos by Donna Aceto

SUSAN SARANDON HONORED BY TREVOR PROJECT The Trevor Project, which provides life-saving and life-affirming support to LGBTQ youth in crisis — with a national hotline and other services and programs — hosted Trevor Live on June 25 at Chelsea Piers. The event honored actress Susan

Sarandon and MTV for their commitment to the issue of saving LGBTQ lives. The event also was a reunion for Will and Grace , Eric McCormack and Debra Messing. —Photos by Donna Aceto

DRAG BEGINS AT TOMPKINS SQUARE On Friday evening, June 22, marchers in all manner of transgressive dress turned out at the 19th annual Drag March from Tompkins Square Park in the East Village to the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street in the West Village. —Photos by Donna Aceto

38 UNDERCOVER POLICE, from p.18

In an entirely unscientific poll, Gay City News asked a selection of viewers for their opinions on the corporate sponsors. None objected. “It’s cool,” said Liana, 19, as she

population supports them, so why not give back to the community that supports them,” he said. Other viewers were supportive, as well. Dennis, 57, is from Arizona and said he would not expect to see companies being gay-friendly there. “I think it’s great,” he said. “It’s really taking a radical stance to say that you support gays.” Even out gay State Senator Thomas Duane, who described himself a s a “ s i n g l e - p a y e r, free education cradle to grave, fr ee mass transit” person, was pleased, though with a touch of reluctance. “We live in a capitalist society for now,” said Duane, who represents Chelsea. “We have to celebrate progress.” No OWS event would be com-

Jennifer Maskell said they had been warned by HOP that disparaging other parade participants or sponsors could get them tossed out. stood with her friend, Ashlei, 18, on Fifth Avenue. “They’re supporting us.” Joe, 43, was watching some of the first floats go by with a friend. He approved wholeheartedly. “It’s a good thing because the gay

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PRIDE 2012, from p.16

ping down at the end of the year after 14 years in Albany and seven before that in the City Council representing Chelsea, was working his way back through all the contingents of the parade in a kind of farewell tour. He said he was most proud of passing the Dignity for All Students Act (DASA) against school bullying, especially because it includes gender identity, as it finally goes into effect on July 1. All of New York’s leading elected officials were out again, from Gover nor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Michael Bloomberg to Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand. Gay activist Michael Colosi, who marched with the governor, said the reception Cuomo received as the leader who pulled together the final votes for marriage equality was “even louder than last year.” The 2011 parade took place less than 48 hours after the State Senate approved and Cuomo signed the state’s gay marriage law. Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney said that in the House, “with the Republicans in charge, it is not so much what you do but what you hold onto.” Schumer, in the Democratic-led Senate, said he hopes for a vote on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) this year. City Council Speaker Christine Quinn of Chelsea and Upper West Side Assemblyman Daniel O’Donnell, two key players in the marriage fight, enjoyed their first Pride march with their respective spouses, as did marriage activists and husbands Michael Sabatino and Robert Voorhies. Sabatino, who now serves as an elected City Council member in Yonkers, said a police captain there asked him, “How could we get more gay people to move to Yonkers? They beautify the neighborhood and crime goes down.” Quinn and O’Donnell were critical of how a Queens school censored a fifth grader who wanted to read his essay supporting same-gender marriage but was stopped by his principal, who was backed up by the schools chancellor. Quinn is having the student, Kameron Slade, appear before the Council in July to deliver his speech. O’Donnell said the

GAY CITY NEWS

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July 4, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com

Liana, with her friend Ashlei, said she thought corporate representation at the march was "cool."

plete without a police presence. As the group stepped of f, a man who appeared to be a plainclothes police officer engaged a uniformed officer in

DASA law “requires schools to teach tolerance and acceptance for LGB and transgender people.” Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly marched with the Gay Officers Action League and said he was “proud of the diversity of the department.” Responding to the massive Father’s Day march against stop and frisk, which included notable LGBT participation, Kelly recently announced that the use of the tactic would be modified, but at the Pride march continued to insist that it is “an important tool in our tool box. It’s something that can’t be abandoned. It’s something that keeps this city safe — the safest big city in America.” Brenda Berkman, one of the first woman firefighters in New York and now retired, marched with FIRE-Flag. Even as she celebrated the 30 years of women in the department, Berkman lamented “there’s still only 28 active women firefighters in the city.” On the other hand, she noted that when FIRE-Flag first marched in the parade, there was only one out gay male “and a bunch of lesbians like myself.” This year, a dozen men marched with the group. Cyrus Vance, Jr., the Manhattan district attor ney, marched in his fourth parade. He responded to a question about how well the rights of protesters are protected in New York by saying, “Occupy Wall Street has occurred on my watch. My mantra is pretty simple. Everybody has the right to speak freely and protest. I’m the district attorney, though. And when there are laws that are broken, there are times when our office is going to come in.” His goal, he said, is to resolve legal issues that arise from public protests “fairly.” Steve Ashkinazy, a gay activist since 1970 and the co-founder of the Harvey Milk High School, said, “Something that surprised me about the direction that the movement has taken is that people are becoming so assimilated. I think that they’re forgetting that being gay and lesbian is something special, and people want to be like everyone else instead of celebrating that we are different.” Rollerena, watching the parade from 24th Street

conversation. The plainclothes officer then followed OWS in the street itself, but eventually took to keeping pace with the group while remaining on the sidewalk. During the entire length of the parade, he closely watched the group. He paused occasionally and appeared to be sending text messages. He took at least one picture of the contingent. A s k e d f o r h i s b a d g e n u m b e r, name, and command at 8th Street and Sixth Avenue, he gave an answer that was nearly inaudible over the crowd noise, but he seemed to be saying he was just enjoying the parade. Seen again on Greenwich Street at the conclusion of the march, again in the vicinity of the OWS contingent, he declined to discuss his occupation, but did not deny he was a police officer. The NYPD did not respond to several emails raising questions about the man’s presence at the parade.

and Fifth, said she wanted to make clear that the parade was “fabulous,” but said that there are “too many barricades. They’ve got us all corralled in. We’re supposed to be marching for our freedoms and the causes we believe in!” (Rollerena insisted that I urge readers to check out one of her new causes, a new documentary she is in — “The Joy of Disco” from the BBC, “featuring Latinos, African Americans and gays” — and I do what my fairy godmother says.) Sharon Stapel, marching with the New York City Anti-Violence Project that she leads, said “one of the biggest advances of the year was the passage of the federal Violence Against Women Act, which was passed by the Senate as LGBT inclusive for the first time ever.” (The Republicanled House of Representatives has not yet agreed

Brenda Berkman noted that when FIRE-Flag first marched, there was only one out gay male “and a bunch of lesbians like myself.” to those provisions in the law’s required reauthorization this year.) The Trevor Project, which counsels LGBT youth on a nationwide phone hotline — working especially to prevent teen suicides — had a big contingent of volunteers. There was also a sizeable Obama contingent, as well as an ACT UP float focused on ending HIV criminalization. Many members of the group wore prison stripes to protest this emerging trend in laws across the nation and around the world. At the end of a long day, I was walking home from the West Village and on Ninth Avenue encountered Oswald Gomez, 68, a native of Brazil, in full, gender -fuck Carmen Miranda drag, accompanied by his rainbow-colored dog, Fifi, and his parrot, Rose My Ass, atop his head. He has been coming out for Pride dressed like this for 25 years, he had told me that morning on Fifth Avenue. And he was getting as many smiles from the non-gay people on the sidewalks of Chelsea as he did earlier in the parade.

DONNA ACETO

| July 4, 2012

The crowds were thick as the parade reached the West Village, passing the Stonewall Inn at Christopher Street and Gay Street, where it all began on a hot night in June of 1969.

MICHAEL LUONGO

Transgender activists marched to remind the crowds that New York State provides no comprehensive civil rights protections based on gender identity and expression.

MICHAEL LUONGO

Who couldn’t love an LGBT Mormon with the integrity to live openly in a cultural tradition resistant to same-sex expression?

MICHAEL LUONGO

Brilliant rainbow arches straddled Fifth Avenue as the parade kicked off.

DONNA ACETO

Many along the parade route, including his longtime partner Louis Webre, took a moment to thank State Senator Tom Duane, who is leaving office on January 1 after more than two decades of public service.

What parade would be complete without the Imperial Court of New York?

DONNA ACETO

Four of the day’s many golden boys.

MICHAEL LUONGO

The 2011 victory of marriage equality was even important to superheroes.

MICHAEL LUONGO

The visual riot was not, of course, confined to Fifth Avenue and Christopher Street.

Hundreds of thousands of LGBT New Yorkers spread their wings on Pride Sunday.

July 4, 2012 | www.gaycitynews.com

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