GAY CITY NEWS, 10-26, 2011 by Schneps Media

YOUR FREE LGBTQ NEWSPAPER OCT. 26-NOV. 8 , 2011 VOLUME TEN, ISSUE 22

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In This Issue

Did Homophobia Trigger Cop’s Punch at Wall Street Demo?

YPD officer who clocked gay, HIV-positive Wall Street Occupier led public sex sting in Bronx Illustration by Vince Joy Page 6 and

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Page 22

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4/Community Frank Kameny, Gay Movement’s Father, Dies at 86 Activism began in ‘57 with firing by US government, lasted until death on National Coming Out Day BY ANDY HUMM

Gay historian David Carter, author of the seminal 2004 “Stonewall: The Riots that Sparked the Gay Revolution,” is at work on a biography of Frank Kameny. Contacted the evening of the veteran activist’s death, Carter wrote, via email, that Kameny was “the single most important person in the entire history of the movement, and I don’t just mean in America or just from the time he entered the movement. I think his impact for getting equal civil rights for LGBT people was greater than that of any other figure, including Harry Hay. It was Frank who said from the beginning that our movement should be modeled on the black civil rights movement and that, like that movement, we should settle for nothing less than full equality and should demand that unapologetically. “Frank directly helped lay the groundwork for the Stonewall Riots, which, by creating the gay liberation phase of the movement, changed the small gay civil rights movement into a mass movement, and that is

LEAH McELRATH RENNA

“G

ay is Good.” Gay activist Frank Kameny, riffing on “Black is Beautiful,” came up with that phrase in 1968. It made it onto buttons and posters and ultimately into the consciousness of homosexual people, who mostly believed we were sick and sinful. “Gay is Good” pushed us along to the point where we now take it for granted that not only is there nothing wrong with being gay, it is indeed good. Kameny often said it was the one thing in all of his activism that he wanted to be remembered for. He died of natural causes in his Washington, DC, home on October 11, National Coming Out Day, at the age of 86. While Harry Hay and his cohorts founded the first modern American gay group — the Mattachine Society — in 1950 in Los Angeles, they mostly operated as a secret organization. Kameny, who first stood up for himself as a gay man in 1957 after being fired by the Army Map Service for being homosexual in a civilian job, once said in all humility, “I created gay activism.” He was referring to the first public demonstrations by gays and lesbians that he initiated with activists including Barbara Gittings at the White House and at Philadelphia’s Independence Hall in the mid-1960s. Kameny fought the federal government’s 1957 discrimination against him by appealing to the White House, the Civil Service Commission, and the Civil Service Committees of the US House and Senate, losing at every turn. He went to court with the assistance of the American Civil Liberties Union. After losing two rounds, the ACLU gave up but Kameny did not, famously writing his own appeal to the US Supreme Court. When he had questions about preparing his brief, he recalled, “I called the Supreme Court and said, ‘What do I do now?’ They told me.” He filed in January 1961, and in March he was denied a hearing by the court. Earlier this year Kameny said, “There’s a huge exhibit at the Library of Congress on ‘The Creation of the United States.’ A small part is a copy of my brief and the nasty letter I got from the then-chair of the Civil Service Commission. Apparently, I have become a creator of the United States!”

Frank Kameny in the White House for President Barack Obama’s June 2009 LGBT Pride Reception.

Kameny continued to fight to the end the denial of security clearances to gay people (which gradually disappeared), exclusion from the Civil Service (which took until 1975), and the ban on open service by gays in the military, which was finally lifted in September. At a forum at New York’s LGBT Community Center in 2005, Kameny said about the military ban, “Any person in or out of office who supports the ban is constitutionally defined as a traitor and should be hanged!” He never minced words. “I adjust society to me,” Kameny said, “and society is much better off.” Franklin Edward Kameny was born on May 21, 1925 in New York City. He served in combat in the European Theater of Operations in World War II, acknowledging

what has made all the gains of recent decades possible.” Carter said that President Barack Obama should award Kameny the Medal of Freedom posthumously, and that his legacy should be as familiar to school children as are those of Martin Luther King, Jr., Susan B. Anthony, Benjamin Franklin, and Patrick Henry. “Like all the other greatest American patriots,” Carter wrote, “the benefits of his most selfless life have greatly benefited and will continue to benefit people all around the world for all time.” In a paper Carter recently presented to the American Historical Association (AHA), he wrote, “One of the most classic examples of Kameny seeking to influence the homophile movement to take a militant stance was his July 22, 1964 speech given in New York City, ‘Civil Liberties: A Progress Report.’ In that speech he critiqued the ‘information and education’ approach that most homophile organizations had

that “they asked and I lied and didn’t tell” in 1943 to get into the service, “though as a healthy teenager I can tell you that I had things to tell.” He got a BS in physics from Queens College in 1948 and an MA and PhD in astronomy from Harvard in 1949 and 1956. He was working as an astronomer for the Army Map Service when confronted by investigators. They told him, “We have information that you’re a homosexual.” Kameny asked, “What’s your information?” The investigators said, “We can’t tell you.” He was fired anyway, under President Dwight Eisenhower’s 1953 executive order denying security clearances to “people who engaged in sexual perversion.” Kameny was an indefatigable and tenacious gay rights pioneer with staying power. He derided the movement of the 1950s as “too apologetic and deferential to experts. I took the position that we gays and we gays alone are the sole authorities” on gay people, he said in 2005. With Jack Nichols, he co-organized the Mattachine Society of Washington in 1961, an independent chapter of the West Coast-launched group. They led the first gay protest at the White House in 1965, one in which the men wore jackets and ties and the women dresses. They brought the pickets to Philadelphia on the Fourth of July and kept them up annually until the month after Stonewall in 1969, by which time such protests had spread throughout the country. The group was the subject of a congressional investigation in 1963 for soliciting funds, but it survived. Some of their protest signs are now in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. The North American Conference of Homophile Organizations, founded in 1966, adopted his radical “Gay is Good” slogan in 1968. After losing a run for Congress in 1971 as the first out candidate for federal office, he co-founded the Gay Activists Alliance in DC, using the name of the New York group started shortly after Stonewall. For a decade beginning in 1963, Kameny was a key player in the campaign to get the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality from its Diagnos-

taken: ‘I feel that any movement which relies solely upon an intellectually-directed program of information and education… is doomed to disappointment. The Negro tried for 90 years to achieve his purposes by a program of information and education. His achievements in those 90 years, while by no means nil, were nothing compared to those of the past ten years, when he tried a vigorous civil liberties, social action approach.’” Carter noted that Kameny recommended that the Mattachine Society of New York (MSNY) focus on the issue of bar closings: “This seems to me an obvious infringement upon the right of the homosexual citizen to freely associate, to assemble, and to make use of public accommodations of his own choice on a basis of equality with other citizens,” Kameny said. “I am told that it is difficult to get a bar owner who will cooperate. This is not a matter for the bar owners. This is a matter for homosexuals. The lawsuits

KAMENY, continued on p.15

which brought an end to school segregation were not initiated by schools which wished to integrate; they were brought by Negro school children who wished to attend. The parallel is valid.” Kameny’s advice proved effective, Carter argued in his AHA presentation: “I have argued in my history of the Stonewall Riots that it was the actions by the militant slate of MSNY officers elected in 1965 in the wake of Kameny’s speech and with his prodding and support that were key in leading up to the Stonewall Riots… MSNY’s most notable achievements were the ending of entrapment by the NYC police department and MSNY’s success in beginning the process of legalization of gay bars as Frank Kameny had suggested in his 1964 speech. The most famous example of MSNY taking this approach was the so-called Sip-in at the bar Julius’ — an action that was brought about by the organized action of militant homosexuals and not by bar owners.” — Andy Humm

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6/ Civil Rights Did Homophobia Trigger Cop’s Punch at Wall Street Demo? NYPD officer who clocked gay, HIV-positive Occupier led public sex sting in Bronx BY DUNCAN OSBORNE

NEWS BRIEFS Homeless Youth Advocates Demand City, State Step Up With $3 Million At a Union Square rally on October 24, advocates for homeless youth in New York City called on the city and the state to jointly come up with in an additional $3 million annually to create 100

GAY CITY NEWS

he police department deputy inspector who punched a gay and HIVpositive Occupy Wall Street marcher oversaw a roughly six-month-long public sex sting operation that targeted gay and bisexual men in 2006, when he headed a Bronx transit command. “He probably clearly got that I was a gay guy,” said Felix Rivera-Pitre during an interview at the Brooklyn offices of VOCALNY, a group that does political organizing among HIV-positive people as well as among drugs users and those formerly incarcerated. At the time Rivera-Pitre spoke to Gay City News, he faced the chance of arrest himself, a possibility that has abated but apparently not been fully ruled out by authorities. On October 14, RiveraPitre, 37, was in a march that was wending its way through the Wall Street area when he encountered Deputy Inspector Johnny Cardona, who joined the New York City Police Department in 1990. Rivera-Pitre was handing out flowers to other marchers. “He saw me giving out the flowers,” Rivera-Pitre said. At one point, he passed Cardona on the street and the deputy inspector instructed him to get on the sidewalk. The street and the sidewalks were very crowded, and Rivera-Pitre said, “There’s no sidewalk to get on to.” It was then that Cardona punched him. Videos of the incident have circulated on the web

Felix Rivera-Pitre said NYPD Deputy Inspector Johnny Cardona’s recognition that he is gay may have triggered the cop’s punching him at an Occupy Wall Street demonstration.

(with links at the online version of this story at gaycitynews. com). In one video taken before the punch, Cardona grabs RiveraPitre by the right arm, and the man briefly turns to Cardona and then walks away. In a second video, Rivera-Pitre can be seen walking ahead of Cardona. The deputy inspector touches Rivera-Pitre, who turns around, at which point Cardona punches him in the face. Rivera-Pitre falls down, and the two are surrounded by a mob of marchers and photographers. A third video shows the same

scene from the other side of the street, though the seconds prior to the punch are obscured. That third video follows the incident to the moment when RiveraPitre has fallen on the street. It appears to show Cardona holding Rivera-Pitre’s head and drawing his arm back perhaps readying a second punch. In published reports, police have said that Rivera-Pitre tried to elbow Cardona and the deputy inspector responded to that. No video shows RiveraPitre striking Cardona. In the absence of any plausible explanation for the punch, some have

concluded that Cardona was reacting to Rivera-Pitre’s affect. “Some people who couldn’t see my face thought I was a woman,” he told Gay City News. “It has been brought to my attention that my appearance could have been a trigger.” Cardona’s past may suggest that he harbors some anti-gay animus. In 2006, Cardona headed Transit District 11 in the Bronx, when officers in that unit conducted public sex stings targeting gay and bisexual men at the Fordham Road subway stop on the D line. From May 18 until December 8, police arrested at least 35 men at that location, charging that the men were engaged in sexual activity. Arrests were made in every month except November. Using the state Freedom of Information Law, Gay City News, in 2007, obtained the criminal complaints related to these arrests. The Bronx district attorney’s office, which released the records, reported finding more than 100 cases in which public lewdness was charged in 2006, but some of those records were missing and others were sealed. It may be that there were additional arrests at the Fordham Road subway stop. Just five Transit District 11 officers made those 35 arrests, suggesting it was an organized sting with specific officers assigned to that duty. Of the five, two made 30 of the 35 arrests. The state Division of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS) reported that in 2006, there were 81 arrests for public lewdness in the Bronx. The DCJS reports only the top charge filed

against any defendant. Taken together, the DCJS and Bronx district attorney’s data suggest that the Transit District 11 sting accounted for as much as a third of all the public lewdness arrests in the Bronx in 2006. A story that year in the Daily News has Cardona keeping a close eye on the officers in his command. The May 8, 2006 story cited an April 18 memo that Cardona authored in which he admonished officers for not writing enough tickets each month, though the memo did not mention a quota. “We had a few personnel in certain squads that did not perform to standard,” Cardona wrote. “”So, effective immediately, those individuals will not be authorized programmatic overtime... I have been extremely patient about this and quite frankly, I am fed up.” Following the October 14 incident, Rivera-Pitre was told by his attorney, Ron Kuby, that the police department had issued an order, called a 61, that directed officers to arrest him if they encountered him. Rivera-Pitre was avoiding public appearances to avoid an arrest. On October 25, Gay City News was told that the police department had voided that 61 and Rivera-Pitre was scheduled to meet with an assistant district attorney in the Manhattan DA’s office on October 31 to discuss his case. “It appears the police have closed the open 61 and have decided they will not arrest him unless the DA decides to press charges,” said Sean Barry, a director at VOCAL-NY.

By PAUL SCHINDLER

new youth shelter bed a year until the demand for safe shelter is satisfied. Allied under the name Campaign for Youth Shelter, the advocates, including City Council Youth Services chair Lew Fidler and LGBT groups and those serving the community such as the Ali Forney Center, the Bronx Community Pride Center, Congregation

Beit Simchat Torah, Green Chimneys NYC, the Lambda Independent Democrats of Brooklyn, and Queer Rising, called for the state’s Runaway and Homeless Youth (RHY) budget to be supplemented by $1.5 million in the fiscal year beginning April 1, 2012 and the city’s funding for that category to go up by a similar amount beginning on July 1 next year.

According to Carl Siciliano, Ali Forney’s executive director, the Cuomo administration cut RHY funding to just $2.35 million, representing a 50 percent reduction in a budget where spending overall was reduced just three percent. His group, meanwhile, has seen a 40 percent surge in the number of homeless LGBT youth it has been forced to turn away

for lack of beds. “The Campaign for Youth Shelter allows the LGBT community to say loud and clear that it is wrong for parents to throw their queer children to the streets, and it is wrong for our elected officials to allow them to stay in the streets without safe shelter,” Siciliano said. A 2008 reported issued by the

Empire State Coalition and the City Council found that every night roughly 3,800 youth between 16 and 24 survived on the streets of New York without stable housing. Funding from the city and state currently provide only 200 beds for that population. The census estimated that 40 percent of the

BRIEFS, continued on p.7

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Community /7

Fears About AIDS Memorial Park Eased At Community Board 2 meeting, advocates, showing flexibility, welcomed BY NATHAN RILEY

QUEER HISTORY ALLIANCE

GBT community wor ries that opposition could block a Greenwich Village park commemorating the devastation of AIDS and the heroic struggle against it were eased at an October 20 Community Board 2 meeting. The Queer History Alliance, which is promoting the idea of the park, and its supporters were a strong presence at the CB2 meeting, but the feared donnybrook did not develop. Instead, a friendly amendment to a resolution supporting the This parcel of land across the street from St. Vincent’s Hospital would become an AIDS memorial effort paved the way for ami- park under a concept now embraced by Community Board 2. cable discussions in the near chance, giving the audience an ing the 1980s. future. In a packed hall at PS 130 in earful on the merits of the idea. The triangular park, bordered by 12th Street and Seventh and Little Italy, most of the audience Thirty-five supporters of the Greenwich Avenues, was part was there to comment pro or park — all ages, all colors, all of the adjacent campus of the con on the larger development sexualities, HIV-positive peobankrupt St. Vincent’s Hospi- plan, which has drawn consid- ple, and widowed lovers who tal and is slated to remain open erable fire because the loss of lost partners to the epidemic space in any redevelopment St. Vincent’s forces Villagers to — signed up to speak. Activists plan for the area. City land use go to the East Side, uptown, or and caregivers wore the green law, however, requires commu- all the way downtown in emer- triangle badges distributed by Christopher Tepper and Paul nity board input on the specifics gency medical situations. Not a single opponent of the Kelterborn, the Queer History of any plan initiated. The master plan under dis- Rudin plan mentioned the pro- Alliance’s founders. Tepper’s cussion calls for replacing the posed AIDS memorial as a con- daytime job is as director of development and planning at hospital with condo apartments, cern. Even though the community the Brooklyn Navy Yard Develan elementary school, and a much smaller medical facility. board’s resolution, when final- opment Corporation, while his At the meeting, CB 2 reviewed ized, will legally be only advi- associate is a public programs the entire project as yet anoth- sory, in political terms it will be project director at the Municipal er step in a lengthy community crucial and become part of the Art Society of New York. Since this spring, the two input process in advance of official record considered by sending a recommendation on the City Planning Commission have met with LGBT leadership, when it drafts changes in zoning the public health community, to city planners. The disposition of the park is laws. The language agreed on CB 2 members, and neighbors a very small part of the proposal in the wake of the board meet- of the triangle to develop a “perfrom developer Rudin Manage- ing recognizes the importance manent beautiful place” that ment. But it satisfies a require- of commemorating the fight Tepper said would “commemoment for preserving open space. against AIDS, and advocates of rate the community’s valiant In the resolution now under the park left pleased they had a response” to AIDS. Their proconsideration, the Community framework for reaching a posi- posal includes the removal of Board recognizes that St. Vin- tive outcome in the months to unsightly oxygen tanks making the park — at 15,102 square cent’s was the epicenter of the come. Still, they left nothing to feet — the neighborhood’s largAIDS epidemic in New York dur-

BRIEFS, from p.6

homeless youth identify as LGBTQ — many of them runaways from hostile or abusive home environments.

Paula Ettelbrick Memorial Set for November 14 A memorial service for Paula

Ettelbrick, a longtime and versatile leader in the LGBT community who died of cancer on October 7, will be held Monday, November 14 at 6:30 p.m. at the Fourth Unitarian Universalist Society at 160 Central Park West at 76th Street. In a 25-year career as a civil rights attorney policy advocate, Ettelbrick held leading positions at the International Gay and Les-

bian Human Rights Commission, the Empire State Pride Agenda, Lambda Legal, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. The Stonewall Community Foundation, a philanthropic grantmaking group that she served as executive director until this summer, has announced a memorial fund in Ettelbrick’s honor to sup-

est triangular open space. The plan would also convert the 10,000 square-foot basement of a former hospital utility building into a museum and learning center. Michael Seltzer, who lives across the street from the land and is on the proposed park’s advisory board, noted Lower Manhattan’s tradition as a neighborhood of conscience — including as it does the 9-11 Memorial, the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, the National Museum of the American Indian, the Irish Hunger Memorial, the Museum of Jewish Heritage, the Museum of Chinese in America, and the African Burial Ground National Monument. An AIDS memorial would be an apt fit, he said. The founders hope that a memorial park would commemorate the role the former hospital played in responding, especially in the earliest years, to the sudden health emer gency, but would also celebrate the activism of Villagers in decisively organizing in response — creating institutions from Gay Men’s Health Crisis to ACT UP. That latter group, in particular, spurred a dramatic change in the nation’s health care culture, by demanding that the approval process for new drugs be prioritized by the federal government. The government and pharmaceutical companies no longer carry out their work in a vacuum, immune from consumer oversight and advocacy. Mark Eagle was typical of younger speakers at the meeting in emphasizing his generation’s need to recognize “an entire generation contaminated and condemned. Countless people wasted away to nothing. I am so fortunate, but I can honor those

port LGBTQ family programming and lesbian feminist initiatives. For more information, visit stonewallfoundation.org.

David Norris Could Become Ireland’s First Gay President In a campaign that has had its fits and starts, David Norris, an

who are not as fortunate. We know, but other people may not know.” In the spirit of the mutual respect that came out of the meeting — which contrasted starkly with the concerns earlier expressed by CB 2 chair Brad Hoylman to the New York Times that the park had become a “hot potato” — the resolution recognizes that “a very strong case has been made for designing the new park around the commemoration of the AIDS epidemic,” but added, “The design process should engage and seek to incorporate this idea, but should not be led by it. The community has indicated it does not support a design that creates a solemn meditative park environment that discourages any other park use.” The Queer History Alliances fully accepts the notion that the park should be accessible to the community, and is in agreement with language that notes, “While memorials are usually monumental and less cheerful and intimate than the features of community parks, there is no reason why successful commemoration cannot be designed and placed in a way to coexist with and enhance a community park, especially where the history is so deeply connected to the community and the site.” Tepper declared the evening a success, saying he believes that potential opponents of the project now understand the depth of emotion embedded in his group’s proposal. Noting the need to accommodate a wide array of park uses, Seltzer noted that AIDS Memorial Park is, at this stage, only the Queer History Alliance’s working title for the proposed project.

Irish senator, could become that nation’s first out gay president in the October 27 election. Representing the University of Dublin constituency since 1987, Norris has a long record as one of Ireland’s leading LGBT activists. He is the founder of the Campaign for Homosexual Law Reform — which worked in both the Irish Republic and the British-

controlled north of Ireland. In 1980, that group brought legal action to get anti-sodomy laws declared unconstitutional, failing in the Irish courts but prevailing in the European Court of Human Rights in 1988. It took the Irish government until 1993, however, to reform the law.

BRIEFS, continued on p.10

26 OCT - 8 NOV 2011

8/ Politics Schumer Bucks Far Right Sneak Attack on Lesbian Judge Alison Nathan joins NY’s Southern District bench despite 11th-hour GOP desertion BY PAUL SCHINDLER

PETE SOUZA/ THE WHITE HOUSE

huck Schumer, New York’s senior senator, found himself scrambling on October 13 to ensure that what had been shaping up as a relatively noncontroversial confirmation of a federal judicial nominee he recommended in fact play out successfully. That day — which found Schumer positioned in the Senate well to guarantee his fellow Democrats stood with him — turned into a nail-biter, but in the end, Alison Nathan, an out lesbian appointed by President Barack Obama in March to a seat on the US Court for New York’s Southern District, was confirmed. The victory came on a strict party-line vote of 48-44, but was a rebuke to two right-wing organizations — Heritage Action and Concerned Women for America — that mounted a last-minute assault on Nathan just hours before the floor action. “It was a sneak attack,” Schumer told Gay City News of the effort launched the morning of the confirmation vote. Asked whether the groups or any other opponents of Nathan had been working the issue prior to that, the senator said, “Not that I knew of.” Nathan has most recently served as special counsel to the solicitor general of New York State, a part of the Attorney General’s Office, and prior to that was an associate White House counsel and special assistant to Obama. After earning her JD from Cornell University Law School in 2000, she clerked for Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Betty Fletcher and later Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. Though Nathan is only the second out lesbian confirmed for lifetime tenure on the federal judiciary, up until the morning of October 13, her nomination moved along without significant problems. On July 14, it was voted out of the Judiciary Committee with the support of four GOP senators — chair Chuck Grassley of Iowa, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, John Cornyn of Texas, and Michael Lee of Utah. Consideration of her appointment was scheduled among a group of two nominees taken up on October 13 for which the floor rules did not require a cloture vote, eliminating the Republicans’ ability to wage a filibuster to block it. That morning, however, Heritage Action, an advocacy arm of the longstanding rightwing Heritage Foundation think tank, announced it would be scoring the Nathan confirmation as a “key vote” in its legislative scorecard. Heritage Action, launched a year and a half ago, issued

Alison Nathan (l.), her partner Meg Satterthwaite, and their twin sons with President Barack Obama at the White House in 2010.

its first such scorecard in August, ranking senators according to their votes on 19 bills and their co-sponsorship position on four. The group is selective in identifying “key votes,” and Nathan’s nomination had suddenly become very important to it. A posting on the group’s website charged, “Nathan believes that foreign law can be used when determining the meaning of the US Constitution,” and said she lacked “courtroom experience.” At the same time senators were hearing news of Heritage Action’s “key vote” designation, they were also receiving a letter from Concerned Women for America (CWA), another right-wing group that amplified the charges Heritage lodged against the nominee. “Nathan is a transnationalist who believes international law should be binding on the United States,” the group’s chief executive officer, Penny Nance, wrote. Nance raised that issue in the specific context of the 2005 Supreme Court ruling that struck down capital punishment applied for crimes committed under the age of 18. She also faulted Nathan’s views on the rights of accused terrorists to be tried in US courts. To be sure, “national sovereignty” is one of the issues highlighted on the CWA website, but it is the last of six, following “sanctity of life,” “religious liberty,” “family” (the first line of which reads, “God made marriage between a man and a woman”), “pornography,” and “education” (a section that emphasizes the authority of parents in teaching children right from wrong). Whatever concerns CWA has about international law, they are subordinate to the group’s social

issues agenda. “Nathan has a long history as political activism [sic] with Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender (LGBT) [sic] which calls into question her impartiality and judicial temperament,” Nance wrote. “Her biases are so ingrained and so much the main thrust of her career that it [sic] not rational to believe that she will suddenly change once confirmed as a judge.” The unanimous Republican vote against Nathan showed that even among moderate Northeastern and Midwestern GOP senators, the hard right attack had made Nathan toxic. However, at least one of the four GOP committee members who flip-flopped between the Judiciary vote and floor consideration may not have had his heart in the last-ditch fight against Nathan, calling Schumer to warn him that all four Republican yes votes would now be nos. Schumer would not say which of the four tipped him off, nor would he speculate as to why. He did say it was “unusual” for four Judiciary Committee members to backtrack on their support for a nominee and that the strong bipartisan vote in Judiciary signaled that Republicans had not originally sought to derail Nathan. When Schumer got the call, he knew five Democrats were missing that day, but did not know how many Republicans were present. Faced with the possibility that as many as 47 GOP votes could line up against Nathan, it became critical to deliver all 48 Democrats in support. Asked if he worried about Democratic defections, he said, “You’re always concerned. There are some Democrats who may say, ‘Well, all the Republicans are voting against her, maybe I should too.’

Especially those in the reddest states who may not want to vote with a bloc that is all Democrats.” Assessing the unanimous Democratic vote, Schumer said, “People stepped up to the plate.” The absence of three Republicans gave Nathan some cushion, as well. Alabama Republican Jeff Sessions, speaking during the floor debate, dutifully repeated the lines of attack laid out hours earlier by Heritage Action and CWA. Schumer told Gay City News he viewed the right-wing attack on Nathan as “bigoted,” saying of the CWA letter, “That it was ungrammatical was not the worst of it. The implication was that no LGBT judge can be unbiased, and that is outrageous and is biased in itself.” Still, in pulling together his floor remarks about Nathan, Schumer decided that challenging the anti-gay animus in the attack on the nominee “might hurt the cause.” Instead, he vigorously disputed the charge that Nathan would apply foreign law to cases before her or would prove weak on national security. Schumer also addressed the criticism that the American Bar Association panel that reviewed the nominee did not give her any “well qualified” ratings, with the majority instead judging her “qualified,” with a minority saying she was “unqualified.” The New York Democrat noted that 33 nominees of former President George W. Bush’s were confirmed with identical ratings. “The ABA is a bit hidebound,” Schumer explained of Nathan’s ratings. “Their conclusion is about judicial experience — and because she is young.” The new judge will turn 40 next year. Nathan’s confirmation was a source of pride for Schumer that he was eager to talk about. In comments to this newspaper a few days after the vote, he reiterated a statement he made at the February Human Rights Campaign dinner in Manhattan that, in making judiciary recommendations to the president, he looks for excellence, moderation, and diversity. In fact, of 21 judicial recommendations Schumer has made — and were acted on by the president — since joining the Senate in 1999, just six have been straight white men. Eight nominees have been women; five, African-American, and one, Caribbean-born; two, Latino; and one, Asian-American. Schumer also holds the distinction of having nominated two of the three out gay or lesbian judges with lifetime appointments on the federal bench. Ear-

NATHAN, continued on p.9

26 OCT - 8 NOV 2011

Community /9

AVP’s Sharon Stapel Honored at White House Domestic violence was theme of week’s “Champions of Change” event BY PAUL SCHINDLER

NATHAN, from p.8

lier this year, J. Paul Oetken became the first out gay man to win Senate confirmation to a federal district court seat — also in the Southern District and at Schumer’s recommendation. The only other federal judge with a lifetime appointment — those authorized under the Constitution’s Article III — is Deborah Batts, appointed to the Southern District bench in 1994 by President Bill Clinton. Two other out gay Obama nominees for the federal judiciary — Edward DuMont, for a seat on the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, and Michael W. Fitzgerald, for a seat on the Central District of California Court — await Senate action. A recent book by University of Massachusetts at Amherst professor Sheldon Goldman, “Picking Federal Judges,” points out that Obama is achieving nationwide diversity on the judiciary comparable to Schumer’s record on

Sharon Stapel in 2008 at the time of her appointment as executive director of the New York City Anti-Violence Project.

AVP coordinates the New York State Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender & Queer Domestic Violence Network, a multidisciplinary group of direct service providers, community-based agencies, advocates, educators, policy makers, and funders. According to the group, domestic violence is just as likely to occur in LGBT households and relationships as any others. Roughly one-quarter of all relationships involve some degree of domestic violence. AVP’s website explains that the group works to counter fears prevalent among some LGBT victims of domestic violence

recommendations. More than 70 percent of the judges confirmed during his presidency have come from groups other than white males. Goldman cited administration figures showing that of 98 confirmed, 21 percent are African-American, 11 percent are Latino, and seven percent are Asian-American. Forty-seven percent of the Obama judges confirmed are women. Bush won confirmation for 322 judges, 18 percent of whom were non-white and 22 percent of whom were women. For Clinton’s 372 confirmations, 25 percent were non-white and 29 percent were women. Asked whether he has received prodding from the administration to offer diverse judicial recommendations, Schumer said no, and noted that his commitment on that score dates to his earliest days in the Senate. In fact, of the four judges Schumer recommended during the Clinton and Bush presidencies, just one was a white male. “I hope to set an example,” he said.

that they will be “outed” if they report their abuse or that the larger society will think they are deserving of their treatment. At the same time, the group challenges an array of assumptions in the

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haron Stapel, who has served as executive director of the New York City Anti-Violence Project (AVP) since the summer of 2008, was recognized for her work at the White House on October 20 as part of the ongoing “Champions of Change” program. The weekly event highlights the work of Americans engaged in efforts to improve their communities. The October 20 program, a roundtable discussion among 14 such leaders, focused on Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Valerie Jarrett, a senior advisor to President Barack Obama on Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs, hosted the event along with Lynn Rosenthal, the White House advisor on Domestic Violence. In an interview with Gay City News at the time of her appointment at AVP, Stapel’s office was decorated with pictures drawn by children who were clients during her two decades of work on domestic violence. That work took her from Massachusetts to South Africa, and in New York, she was on staff at the Legal Aid Society and later was the director of the domestic violence unit at South Brooklyn Legal Services. A 1998 graduate of the City University of New York Law School, Stapel, when she joined AVP, said, “I happen to think that the anti-violence work that we do here is about civil rights. It’s about being treated equally.”

wider community — from the perception that one member of a same-gender couple cannot be said to abuse the other because they both have equal social standing and power to the prejudice that violence and other types of abusive behavior are commonplace occurrences in LGBT relationships. Among the others whose work was recognized were William Kellibrew IV, the deputy director and national victims advocate at the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation in Washington; Lena Alhusseini, the executive director of the Arab-American Family Support Center in Brooklyn; Nicole DeSario, a 16-year-old high school junior from Skillman, New Jersey, who worked to pass a new state law there directing middle and high schools to incorporate “Safe Dating” into their health curriculum; Vincent Mazzara, a retired Detroit police officer who now works with the Florida Coalition Against Domestic Violence; and Misty Thomas, for the past five years the director of the Dakota Tiwahe Service Unit, the social services department for the Santee Sioux Nation in Nebraska.

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26 OCT - 8 NOV 2011

10/ Human Rights New Reports of Anti-Gay Crackdown in Kurdistan With U.S. about to withdraw, oppression aimed at LGBT Iraqis continues As America prepares to leave Iraq, after an occupation dating back to 2003, a new wave of gay suppression might be under way. According to Ali Hili, chair of Iraqi LGBT, a London-based human rights group aiding queer Iraqis, police recently raided a gay party in Kalar, a small town in Kurdistan, in the north of Iraq, arresting 25 men. According to a news release from the group, “The men were attending a party at a private house on 15th of September when the police raided the address. After fierce protests against the raid by human rights organisations, including Amnesty International, all but three men have since been released from the city’s Garmyan Prison. Several of those detained claim to have been subject to violent beatings while being held in solitary confinement. The authorities in Kalar refuse to disclose the whereabouts of those still in detention, the conditions in which they are held, or the charges they face.” Kurdistan, a semi-autonomous region of Iraq only loosely under central government control since 1991, has not seen the intense violence of Baghdad and the southern portion of the

BRIEFS, from p.7

“I am about inclusion and diversity,” Norris, a James Joyce scholar credited with bringing the ex-pat author back into favor in his native land, told a gathering of gay and Irish-American leaders Greenwich Village this past May. At that time, Norris seemed headed for victory in the fall election, but then in late summer, he quit the race when top lieutenants in his campaign resigned over revelations that he had written to Israeli authorities seeking clemency for an ex-lover convicted of having sex with a 15-yearold boy. Norris’ initial efforts at simply acknowledging an error in judgment apparently did not assuage those supporters. The UK’s Guardian, in an Octo-

GAY CITY NEWS

BY MICHAEL LUONGO

Michael Luongo reported on Iraq based on in-country visits in 2007 and 2009.

country, where an estimated 700 or more gay men have been killed by religious insurgents, militias, and other forces.

ber 23 story that termed him “the comeback kid,” reported that while on a long retreat in Cyprus after leaving the race, Norris was informed by his staff that 3,000 emails had deluged his inbox — only three of them hostile. Norris is now back on the campaign trail with a vigor that outpaces his opponents, the newspaper wrote. If elected, Norris would succeed Ireland’s first two women presidents — Mary McAleese and Mary Robinson — both of whom have distinguished themselves for their international outspokenness on the issue of LGBT human rights. The Irish Gay and Lesbian Awards Committee has just conferred its 2011 award for most-gay friendly politician on incumbent President McAleese.

“It is happening,” Hili said of the northern region. “It happened before. We don’t get that much information. The first

Philly’s Giovanni’s Room Honored as Historic Site The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission has designated Giovanni’s Room, an LGBT bookstore that has served P h i l a d e l p h i a ’s C e n t e r C i t y neighborhood at 12th Street and Pine for nearly 40 years, with an historic marker honoring it for serving as “a refuge and cultural center at the onset of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) civil rights movement.” Mayor Michael Nutter was on hand on October 9 for the dedication ceremony. In an email message, Ed Hermance from the store recalled that for the first three

time we got the information from a Kurdish website that published this information.” He continued, “In the south, there are still quite a few raids we were not able to document, and some we were not able to publicize because of protecting men from their families. We have seen a pattern of monitoring individuals. The government and the militias are now infor ming family members about behaviour. They are creating a system that has led to the deaths of so many individuals, because families are taking revenge. The militias are taking details like in text or video and sending it to families about their sons and daughters. And these people go crazy and kill their sons and daughters and brothers.” Honor killings of LGBT Iraqis by family members have been widely reported since the war began. Under Saddam Hussein, Iraq did not have a law against homosexuality, and that remains the case under occupation and the new government, according to Hili. Still, the war released a wave of violence against gays, women, intellectuals, and other symbols of a secular society. Beginning in 2006, Gay City News’ Doug Ireland began reporting on the killing of Iraqi

years of its existence, the founders of Giovanni’s Room traveled to New York every weekend where they picked up Craig Rodwell, the founder of Oscar Wilde Bookshop, who helped them make selections at an East Village book distributor. Founded in 1967, Oscar Wilde was the nation’s first LGBT bookstore. Its Christopher Street location, its second, closed in 2009. Hermance said he believes Giovanni’s Room is now the most convenient LGBT bookseller for New Yorkers. “Giovanni’s Room,” published in 1956, was James Baldwin’s second novel, which told the heartrending story of a bisexual American man living in Paris.

queers following a death-togays fatwa issued the year before by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the nation’s supreme Shia authority. This reporter traveled to Iraq in 2007 and 2009 and witnessed first-hand the life and death struggles of gays there, which formed the basis for two series of stories published in this newspaper. Hili is, at best, ambivalent about the impact the US pullout will have on members of the LGBT community. “It is going to get worse before it gets good at any point,” Hili said. “We’re watching carefully at how the situation is going to go. I think it is not going to be any worse than what we have seen in the past two to three years. The US invasion brought to the gay community nothing but catastrophe. It was a mistake, it brought fundamentalism and lack of civil society, and then there was the ruling by an Iraqi Shia religious government. They have been put in power because of that big mistake. “I don’t think the US withdrawal will be better for us in general. Iraq will be another Afghanistan. There is no stability for anyone, and most of all for us, the gay community. I don’t see any future for us.” For more information on Iraqi LGBT, visit iraqilgbt.org.uk.

ESPA Pushes Back on Resistance to Medicaid Trans Healthcare Funding The Empire State Pride Agenda (ESPA) has mounted a campaign to prevail on the state health commissioner to reevaluate her opposition to adding coverage for medically necessary transgender healthcare needs to New York’s Medicaid program. With an advisory panel known as the Medicaid Redesign Team evaluating, among many issues, the health needs of the transgender community, Dr. Nirav Shan, the commissioner, was quoted in the New York Post two weeks ago saying, “Gender reassignment surgery is a fundamentally

complex medical issue. However, no consideration is being given to any change in current state policy, and any proposal to have gender reassignment surgery funded by Medicaid would be rejected.” In an action alert to its members on October 12, Ross Levi, ESPA’s executive director, wrote of the Redesign Team’s work, “Various proposals have been on the table, including one that would have ensured that medically necessary transgender health needs would be covered by the program. Today this proposal was eliminated before it had even been considered.” Levi cited the American Medical Association’s conclusions about the medical necessity of

BRIEFS, continued on p.14

WWW.GAYCITYNEWS.COM

26 OCT – 8 NOV 2011

■ MILITARY

Gay Vet’s Separation Pay Claim Alive Claims Court allows discharged Air Force sergeant’s suit challenging 50 percent penalty BY ARTHUR S. LEONARD

he US Court of Federal Claims has refused a government motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by a gay man, discharged from the Air Force under the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy (DADT), who is challenging the Pentagon’s policy that gave him only half the separation pay normally given to individuals involuntarily dismissed from the armed forces. Judge Christine Odell Cook Miller’s October 18 decision allows Richard Collins to move forward with his claim that this unequal treatment violates his equal protection rights under the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment. Collins, a staff sergeant who served “ably for over nine years,” according to Miller, was honorably discharged from the Air Force in 2006 after his sexual orientation came to the attention of superior officers. Upon discharge, he received separation pay of $12,851.24, rather than the 25,702.48 his base pay and years of service would have entitled him to. Separation pay, mandated by statute, is designed to compensate those “fully qualified for retention” for the fact that the military budget sometimes requires trimming the ranks of those who had hoped to serve longer.

Miller also rejected the government’s argument that Collins lacked a claim against which an articuable standard could be applied. Ultimately, the judge concluded, the government was trying to argue the merits of the case — that is, whether giving only half separation pay to people who were honorably discharged under DADT is a violation of equal protection — rather than confining its dismissal motion to the question whether Collins has a claim for which the court is authorized to consider a remedy. Specifically, she was unwilling to accept the Defense Department’s conclusion that the separation pay statute defined “fully qualified for retention” with sufficient clarity to make clear that Collins was ineligible for full compensation. Miller concluded that it would be premature to terminate the litigation now. The next step will be for the court to decide whether to certify the case as a class action, so that Collins would be suing not only for his own separation pay but also in a representative capacity for all those similarly situated, a decision she will make after an October 31 deadline for proposed discovery schedules from the two sides. Beyond the potential that this case could affect all service members discharged under DADT, it also provides

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Under DADT, openly gay soldiers who were discharged were classed with those dismissed for drug and alcohol abuse. The statute gives the Defense Department discretion in deciding what portion of full separation pay an individual is entitled to, and under DADT, openly gay soldiers who were discharged were classed with those dismissed for drug and alcohol abuse or deemed security risks in receiving only half pay. Collins filed suit seeking to represent a class of all people who received honorable discharges under the DADT policy and were not give the full separation pay authorized under law. Decisions made by government officials acting under statutory discretion are generally immune from monetary damage claims — unless authorized under a “money-mandating” law that is, in effect, a command by Congress to make a payment to somebody. Miller found that the separation statute fits that exception.

one more vehicle for challenging disparate treatment of gay people by federal government agencies. It should also be noted that the Air Force separation pay regulations, unlike the general ones issued by the Pentagon, uses the phrase “homosexual conduct” rather than “homosexuality.” Since the repeal of DADT did not roll back the military’s ban on sodomy — and military courts have not definitively settled the question of what behavior falls outside the protections of the 2003 Supreme Court sodomy ruling in Lawrence v. Texas — it remains possible that an Air Force member discharged for “homosexual conduct” could fall victim to the halfpay penalty. Joshua A. Block of New York is Collins’ lead counsel, with the American Civil Liberties LGBT Rights Project assisting with the case.

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26 OCT - 8 NOV 2011

12/ Letter from the Editor PUBLISHER & CO-FOUNDER JOHN W. SUTTER

Zuccotti Park’s Takeaways for Queer Activists BY PAUL SCHINDLER

JWSutter@communitymediallc.com ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER & CO-FOUNDER TROY MASTERS

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

editor@gaycitynews.com ASSOCIATE EDITOR Duncan Osborne

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ccupy Wall Street is more than a month into its encampment at Zuccotti Park downtown, but it is still far too early to draw any reliable conclusions on what the movement — even with its spread across the nation and around the globe — will mean in the long run. On the opposite page, Kelly Jean Cogswell frames pertinent questions about the depth and nature of its political vision. And Gina Quattrochi offers a provocative — and potentially troubling — critique of the gender politics animating but also obscured by the street vibrancy. What we’ve seen to date, however, suggests a couple of issues to think about for the possibilities and risks they entail. First, large numbers of Americans visibly challenging the nation’s economic inequalities offer progressives an oppor tunity — for the first time in more than a generation, really — to engage a serious national debate about income disparities, which have widened starkly in recent decades. The “trickle-down” economic theory that Ronald Regan introduced into the American lexicon 30 years ago was widely ridiculed at the time, but to a striking degree that thinking triumphed. Many Americans, particularly those doing reasonably well in life — but also, and sometimes aggressively, others who hold out but fond hopes for advancement — now reflexively assume prosperity starts at the top. Democrats, meanwhile, unwilling to appear out of step, especially among entrepreneurs of the new information economy, have been reluctant to press their historic argument that fiscal and tax policy must serve the ends of social justice and basic fairness. Given their timidity, even when Domecrats were riding high during the Clinton years and the first half of the Obama administration, Republicans have jumped at every chance to label even the most modest proposal for redistributing the tax burden as “class warfare.” It may prove a passing curi-

osity, but the mainstream media in recent weeks has devoted more attention to wealth distribution in America than it has at any time in recent memory. This is a critical issue facing the nation — as important to LGBT folks as to anyone — and for those who care about an opportunity society, this new found public discourse offers a moment that must not be lost. The other clear signal out of Zuccotti Park is that disenfranchisement and a suffocating sense of powerlessness are not plagues peculiar to the Tea Party right. Americans are frustrated and anxious. The economy is not providing the opportunities people expect and need. Institutions — whether the government, employers, doctors, insurance companies, or consumer businesses we interact with every day — seem to grow ever bigger, more remote, and less tailored to serve basic human needs in humane ways. For this moment, at least, some portion of Americans — backed up by millions of others, so far, if polls are to be believed — are demanding a fundamental leveling of the playing field and a meaningful role in how the new rules are written and enforced. OWS may or may not have the capability and persistence to advance that agenda, but any large institution in America is foolish if it thinks the underlying aspirations fueling the recent protests — or the Tea Party movement, for that matter — will simply wither away unslaked. In the LGBT community, there is a whole lot of listening that institutions would do well to engage in. Longtime activist David Mixner last week suggested that the Washingtonbased Human Rights Campaign (HRC) hold a series of town hall meetings nationwide as it undergoes its search process to replace its president, Joe Solmonese, who leaves early next year. Top executives at multi-

million dollar non-profits are not chosen by plebiscite, nor is there likely time for the group to organize ground-level input that would meaningfully influence its choice. But tossing out logistical or process objections to Mixner’s idea should not mask its essential truth — that HRC and other leading LGBT and AIDS advocacy groups serving our community devote far too little attention to activating as well as listening to the grassroots. The occasional marquee activist like Dan Choi can sustain interest and media attention, but most demands for accountability go unheeded. Many institutions have become skilled at soliciting participation in events that match their agenda, but opening up the playbook for popular comment is not often in the cards. The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) recently lost its executive director in a scandal brought on by the group’s lack of transparency — many would even say basic honesty. Manhattan’s LGBT Community Center was roiled by controversy over its decision to ban a group critical of what it terms Israel’s “apartheid” treatment of Palestinians, held a town hall meeting with the stated goal of listening to the community, later issued “an indefinite moratorium” on renting space to organizing “around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” — an interim approach it has oddly elected not to enforce — but has announced no intelligible permanent policy toward such disputes over access. Apparently without embarrassment, the Center, on November 15, will host a lecture on the censorship of a gay art exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington late last year. In early 2010, as the community in New York was gearing up to reengage the gay marriage fight that stumbled badly the previous year, the Empire State Pride Agenda’s (ESPA) board — simultaneously working behind the scenes and on full display due to a New York Times leak

— carried out a comic opera of an executive search, one that happily turned out well in the end. Equality California, faced with its own marriage equality challenges, has been plagued for months by impermanence at the top. Even where things are working best, the grassroots is arguably being neglected. A series of public forums that have justly celebrated the victory of marriage equality in New York since its enactment in late June have made much of a successful inside strategy. A number of leading advocacy groups — and ESPA and HRC were certainly key players — deserve kudos for the work they did. But I, for one, have noticed a persistent silence on the contributions of grassroots activists to the cause. To be sure, the grassroots Marriage Equality New York has been part of the post-victory briefings, and its representatives have praised its more established institutional partners — and vice versa. But anyone who tracked the Albany narrative knows just how sharp MENY’s elbows had to become to stay in the game, and nobody other than that group has given any credence to the contributions from direct action efforts like those of Queer Rising. In Albany this week, Governor Andrew Cuomo, unhappy about increasing calls for him to support a millionaire’s income tax surcharge, has pushed hard on the mayor there to break up an OWS tent gathering highlighting his opposition. Cuomo is the quintessential inside player — and, so far, a damned good one, to our good fortune. But working successfully on the marriage team he led does not mean that is the only formula our community and our leaders should pursue. LGBT Americans need to be more willing to step up and play a part — and it’s not unfair to observe that too many have been complacent and disengaged for too long — but when grassroots activists emerge, they need to find that there is a place for them to serve.

26 OCT - 8 NOV 2011

Perspective /13 Occupy Wall Street’s Tragic Lack of Gender Analysis BY GINA QUATTROCHI

omen never fare well in occupations. Occupy Wall Street is no exception. I’ve been to OWS five times. What I have observed and heard about women’s roles and status in the encampment raises deep and disturbing questions about the state of OWS — dare I say the progressive movement? — particularly its lack of an analysis of racial, gender, socio-economic, and LQBT disparities. Many of those I met seemed to lack basic understanding of the social determinants that put young people at risk for poverty, poor health outcomes, sexual violence, economic disparity, and homelessness. While ther e needs to be a wholesale examination of internal OWS politics, I am specifically limiting my observations to the role and treatment of young women. There has been plenty of media discussion of the young people at Zuccotti Park, but visualize what I witnessed: Many older men — primarily white, many left over from ‘60s revolutionary groups like the Workers World Party — hogging the “front line” on Broadway, pontificating about their “revolutionary” ideas and a so-called

“new society” they envision. All this goes on within and surrounding an encampment where the media center responsible for live streaming of OWS events is “manned” by 12-15 men — each time I’ve been there I saw only one woman. A few days ago when I raised questions about OWS gender politics, one media “committee” guy told me, “We all have equal voice.” I was shocked. Do OWS participants in Zuccoti Park really think the social justice revolution is so far along that race, gender, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic factors don’t still silence many? That, in fact, seemed to be the case with many I spoke with in the park. The media center, however, is the least of it. Young OWS women staying at Zuccoti Park are interspersed — hanging out and sleeping — among young men, old men, middleaged men, revolutionary men, progressive men, mostly male cops (and some women too), vendors (mostly male), and reporters (both genders). Their input into the “general assembly,” where men regularly outnumber women five to one, is of little consequence. As of the past week, I hear that women have started to organize and

form their own committees, but there is little evidence they have successfully created gender parity in OWS activities. What most concerns me it that young women reduced by the environment and politics — and sleep-deprived — are subject to sexual harassment and even sexual assault. Medics and others have told me there has been at least one arrest for sexual misconduct. Like it or not, the Zuccotti Park encampment is the hub of OWS activity and its most

struggled for so long? As I went around distributing condoms to young women, who are at particular risk for HIV and hep C infection in such chaotic environments, I was overwhelmed with despair and anger. One young woman asked me if she could “catch HIV” by kissing. Others refused condoms because they were with their boyfriends. As I outreached and distributed condoms to young women in the so called “no-sex zone,” some reported that nights are

Do OWS participants really think that race, gender, sexual orientation, and socio-economic factors don’t still silence many?

potent symbol. Does no one care about the shoddy politics happening right under our noses? Has everyone drunk the OWS Kool-Aid without a thorough analysis of its politics? Are we so desperate for something to happen that we are willing to forget what we in the LGBTQ community have

“really scary” and they feel unsafe. Others said there was security at night, but when I asked why women didn’t organize on their own, they looked surprised. Clearly, none had ever attended the Michigan’s Womyn’s Music Festival. But where are those of us who did? O v e r a n d o v e r, I h e a r d

women referred to as “chicks,” and there are rumors that a Vi m e o c l i p “ H o t C h i c k s of OWS” is used to recruit straight men to Zuccotti. When I observe and hear things like that I feel transported back to the ‘60s, when the lack of an analysis about race, gender, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic status doomed many movements to failure. Haven’t we come farther than this? Some in Zuccoti Park seemed oblivious to the need for HIV prevention in an encampment populated by hundreds of young activists. Even the volunteers in the medical area — female and male doctors, nurses, and EMTs who are generously giving their time without much support or sleep — seem clueless about evidence-based HIV prevention. One discouraged the idea of Bailey House and Citiwide Harm Reduction teaming up to distribute condoms and syringes, saying the latter might encourage drug use. Another urged against proactive distribution of condoms among those sleeping there, saying there were boxes of them at the “Comfort” table, along with soap and deodor -

GENDER, continued on p. 33

■ A DYKE ABROAD

We Are the 100 Percent BY KELLY JEAN COGSWELL

’ve spent half my life as a lesbian activist. First taking to the streets with the Lesbian Avengers, then as a journalist trying to mobilize Americans for the sake of their own withering democracy. Like when the Supreme Court awarded Bush the presidency, making Florida votes toilet paper. Or when Attorney General Alberto Gonzales advised the nation that torture isn’t torture when Americans do it. So why, when the Occupy Wall Street movement finally emerges from grassroots America, do I find myself screaming, “Morons! Idiots!” What am I? A hypocrite? A newly minted neocon? An alien?

I’ve spent the last month tracking my flight pattern. If all my buttons got pushed, it’s not about the method. I still believe direct action is one of the only ways to deliver demands if you don’t have your own lobbyists. And that even without unifying goals, mass demonstrations can, in themselves, be useful in delivering messages of popular discontent. They give a voice and body to people who until that moment had probably been reduced to abstractions in the minds of the reps we sent to Washington. Or for that matter, City Hall. At the same time, street activism isn’t just for the audience. It can have a power -

ful effect on participants. For once, your voice is amplified. You exist. It can even empower us as citizens if we make that leap from airing grievances en masse to deciding to claim the whole country as a common project, acknowledging shared goals and shared faults. That’s the question, really. Will this moment of roused rabbles tur n more people into citizens, or will it just be catharsis, leaving them ideological consumers gobbling up the newest slogan, the quickest fix? I have my doubts. Partly because I always do. Humans, as we know, share far too much DNA with earthworms.

But also because in the last 20 years, only money worries have gotten Americans into the streets. This historical moment of civic involvement is all about the bottom line. Even if we cloak it in the language of democracy and the American way of life, calling it patriotism when the Tea Partiers declare they’ve had enough of paying taxes and want to end the Fed and shrink the government. Calling it a concern for democracy and inequality when the Occupiers, some of them, anyway, demand an end to taxation, also to the Fed, and to a government corrupted by corporations.

The biggest difference is that the Tea Partiers want to cling to their cash because it might otherwise go to health care for the poor — especially immigrants — even if they themselves benefit from government projects like roads, hospitals, and public schools. And the Occupiers don’t want their money to go to the rich, even if they aren’t quite willing to give up their iPhones made by a company that profits from child labor and subsidizes bonuses paid to fat-cat CEOs and stockholders. You could sum it up like this: All sides are freaked out by the tanking economy and don’t

COGSWELL, continued on p.33

26 OCT – 8 NOV 2011

Peace at Life’s End. Anywhere. No One Should Suffer ff When Legal Options Exist. Legal options for peaceful dying already exist in every state. Voluntarily Stopping Eating and Drinking (VSED) is not starvation and, with palliative support, is not painful. Compassion & Choices presents a free, informative look at the right to forego food and water to achieve a Armond & D Dorot Dorothy th t Rudolph R d l h peaceful death. Special guest, Coloradan Neil Rudolph, will talk about his parents’ eviction from an assisted-living facility for choosing VSED. Learn from their experience how to ensure your end-of-life wishes, or those of a loved one, will be honored. This program is designed to educate the general public but is appropriate for anyone facing a terminal decline in their own or a loved one’s health. It’s also an excellent resource for healthcare professionals, social workers and others involved with end-of-life care. For more information, please contact our

End-of-Life Consultation Program at 1-800-247-7421. Join Compassion & Choices supporters across the nation in protecting our right to a peaceful end of life anywhere.

Visit CompassionAndChoices.org/VSED today. Sign up. Take a stand. Stay informed.

Saturday, November 5, 2011, 12:00 noon (light refreshments served) All Souls Unitarian Church, 1157 Lexington Avenue Sunday, November 6, 2011, 12:00 noon (light refreshments served) New York University, Vanderbilt Hall, 40 Washington Square South

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BRIEFS, from p.10

the treatments in question and emphasized that they would reduce costs to the system overall. As he did in comments to the Post several weeks ago, Levi also noted that the coverage that had been contemplated are already provided in the California and Minnesota Medicaid programs. The Action Alert advised ESPA members to call Shan at 518-4742011.

Second Long Island GLBT Community Center Opens At an October 14 ribboncutting ceremony with Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice and the county police’s bias crime unit, the Long Island GLBT Services Network opened the second community center in the NassauSuffolk County area. According to a release from David Kilmnick, CEO of the Network, the new center — an 8,800 square-foot space located at 400 Garden City Plaza, a new glass building next to Roosevelt Field Mall in Garden City — will focus on fighting

WWW.GAYCITYNEWS.COM

bullying and violence against GLBT youth in the Nassau County public schools and the communities they serve. According to data from the Network, in the past year, there has been a 30 percent increase in anti-GLBT hate and bias crimes in Long Island schools. The Network is launching the n a t i o n ’s f i r s t G a y P a r e n t s Teachers Association to serve high school and college students in Nassau and Suffolk. The Network is an association of five non-profit organizations — Long Island Gay and Lesbian Youth (LIGALY), the Long Island GLBT Community Center (the Center), Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders — Long Island (SAGE-LI), the East End Gay Organization (EEGO), and Equality Long Island (EQLI). The Center in Suffolk County’s Bay Shore, at 34 Park Avenue, has operated for 16 years.

Kiss Caught on Camera 86s Gay Cheerleader A high school male at the Corpus Christi, Texas-area Alice High School charges he was

kicked off the varsity cheerleading squad and suspended from school after a surveillance camera caught him kissing another male, KRIS-TV reported on October 16. The student, who asked not to be identified as he spoke to the television station, said he believes he was targeted for his sexual orientation. “They never check cameras for anything unless something is stolen,” he told KRIS-TV. “We would be the ones getting caught because I’m sure we were the only ones, sexual orientation-wise, being caught like that.” Males kissing females in public is fairly common at the high school, he said. The school district superintendent would not comment to the news station, citing privacy issues — an interesting plea given the way the youth’s conduct was identified. After meeting with school officials, the young man’s parents said they were told any change to their son’s treatment would be decided soon. The parents said they would take further action if not satisfied by the school’s response.

WWW.GAYCITYNEWS.COM

KAMENY, from p.4

tic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. On the 30th anniversary of that crucial 1973 movement victory, Kameny told Gay City News, “When we initiated gay activism and militancy, here in Washington, DC, in 1961, we were faced with a massive assault of unrelieved negativism which obstructed the achievement of the equality and basic dignity to which we were entitled and which was and remains our goal. We were allegedly criminal, sinful, and mentally and emotionally sick and disordered. We commenced disposing of each separately, packaging up the process, in 1968, with the coining of ‘Gay is Good.’ “Once we had determined that there was no factual basis for the mental illness allegation, we commenced working on the psychiatrists. It took us ten years, but we succeeded on December 15, 1973 when, as the ‘keepers of mental illness,’ the American Psychiatric Association formally cured us all, en masse. “Now in 2003, we are no longer criminal, we are increasingly viewed as virtuous rather than as sinful, and we can joyfully celebrate the 30th anniversary of the cure which, in one fell swoop, removed previously insurmountable obstacles, made all the rest possible, and has made our situation in 2003 comfortable beyond our wildest dreams of 1961.” Kameny and Gittings went to the

26 OCT – 8 NOV 2011 1971 APA convention to protest its antigay stance, with Kameny seizing the microphone to denounce the assembled health professionals. In 1972, the activists hosted a convention booth called “Gay Proud and Healthy,” and Kameny danced at the group’s banquet with a local gay male activist. In 1994, the APA presented awards to the gay activists for their pioneering work. Kameny also led the 30-year campaign to repeal the DC sodomy law, writing the repeal bill and finally prevailing in 1993. He was a co-founder of the National Gay Task Force (now NGLTF) in 1973 and the National Gay Rights Lobby (later the Human Rights Campaign). He was the first out gay appointee to Washington’s city government, named human rights commissioner in 1975. In 1987 on the day after the October 11 March on Washington for LGBT rights, Kameny joined the civil disobedience demonstration at the US Supreme Court protesting the infamous 5-4 Bowers v. Hardwick decision the year before, which upheld Georgia’s anti-sodomy statute. Asked if in his early days in the movement he envisioned this level of activism — hundreds of thousands marching and hundreds risking arrest for gay rights — he flatly said, “No. Not until the end of the 1960s. We began activism in 1965 with ten people picketing at the White House!” Kameny never stopped speaking and

agitating, but he also lived to see the fruits of much of what he was working for and to be honored in his own time. The Library of Congress got his papers in 2006. His home on Cathedral Avenue was made a DC Historic Landmark in 2009, and a street near Dupont Circle was declared Frank Kameny Way in 2010. In 2009, he received a wildly belated apology for his 1957 firing on behalf of the US government from John Berry, the out gay director of the Office of Personnel Management. When President Barack Obama signed the bill authorizing the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell in December 2010, Kameny was present at the ceremony and told Metro Weekly, “I didn’t think I’d live to see it.” In fact, he lived to see the bill pass and the ban lifted on September 20. Tributes from all the major national LGBT organizations were issued on the evening of his death. Federal GLOBE: Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual Transgender Employees of the Federal Government called him “an American hero” and said, “Frank was our inspiration and was our father. He was our mother. He was our fairy/ angel/ mentor/ pathblazer/ blinding light… His meticulous research and articulation paved the way for LGBT civil rights advancement over the last 25 years.” Mike Thompson, the acting president of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against

15 Defamation, said, “He taught us the power that our visibility and stories have in changing hearts and minds.” George Weinberg, the author of 1972’s groundbreaking “Society and the Healthy Homosexual” who coined the term “homophobia,” was a close friend of Kameny’s. “Frank was the most important gay activist ever,” he wrote in an email to Gay City. “He had an encyclopedic mind, which he first used as an astronomer and then for half a century to attack discrimination against gays.” Weinberg added, “He worked hundredhour weeks, often going into mental hospitals and prisons to help gay people escape brutal punishment… He will be missed, but even more importantly he should be missed by gay people and humanists everywhere. Wherever gay history is taught, his name and accomplishments will be alive in the minds of new generations.” Sue Hyde, director of NGLTF’s Creating Change Conference, said in a statement, “Frank Kameny’s life spanned the baddest old days of the McCarthy-style witch hunts to the elations of winning marriage equality in the District of Columbia and beyond.” She added, “Frank Kameny wasn’t only a keeper of our history, Frank created our history. His life and legacy will carry us into the future.” Kameny was indeed the indispensable man — just as Barbara Gittings was the indispensable woman of our movement.

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■ POLITICS

Cuomo: Marriage Opponents Had No Argument

At Times panel, guv said he listened to all sides; GOP’s Jim Alesi said one no vote was his limit BY PAUL SCHINDLER

SARA KRULWICH/ NEW YORK TIMES

s the State Senate Republican minority prepared to enter the chamber for the December 2, 2009 vote on marriage equality, James Alesi, a GOP member from the Rochester area, told his colleagues, “I’m voting no. If anyone votes yes, I’m going to quit the Senate.” That was not because Alesi was a diehard gay marriage opponent. Far from it. Instead, he explained at an October 18 panel hosted by the New York Times, senators knew ahead of time that the votes for passage were not there. Eight Democrats, part of a 32-30 majority at that time, were prepared to vote no, while, Alesi said, “six Republicans wanted to vote yes.” “Out there in the world,” he told an audience of several hundred gathered at the Times’ Midtown headquarters, “unfortunately politics affects the way you act… We knew [voting yes] would be held against us. You don’t take a bad vote on a bill that won’t pass.” After the panel ended, Alesi told Gay City News that given the inevitability of the bill failing, he voted against his conscience in order to preserve the unanimity of his conference. Since he is the first Republican to cast a vote during the alphabetical roll call, he wanted his colleagues to understand he also had no interest in violating his conscience if a united GOP front was not going to be sustained. “I knew I’d never vote no again,” he said. In fact, Alesi was one of four Republican senators who provided the margin of victory, when they joined 29 of the 30 Democrats to pass marriage equality on June 24 in a 33-29 vote. In introducing the marriage equality panel, Times Metro editor Carolyn R yan described Alesi’s June 13 announcement that he would vote yes — he was the first to do so among the Republicans — as a key moment in the high stakes Albany drama. Right before Alesi met with the Capitol press corps to explain his vote, he conferred privately with Governor Andrew Cuomo, a meeting, R yan said, “we hope to hear more on.” At that, the governor, who was the panel’s star attraction, shot back, “You won’t.” Alesi leaned across City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who sat between him and the governor, to grab Cuomo’s pinky finger with his in a comic show of their shared interest in keeping the lid on what happened behind closed doors. Neither man, however, seemed par-

Governor Andrew Cuomo, flanked by City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, State Senator James Alesi, and polling expert Bruce Gyory at a New York Times panel discussion on October 18.

ticularly reluctant to delve into the backstory. The governor, for example, challenged what he said was the popular perception that the four Republicans who supported his drive to enact gay marriage before the Legislature adjour ned in late May acted as “a monolith.” In negotiating with other politicians, he said, there are two equally important factors to keep in mind: “What do you want to say? And, what do they need to hear?” In the final weeks before the successful Senate vote, Cuomo spent considerable personal time with each of the four GOP senators who came around on the issue. When Roy McDonald, who represents an Upper Hudson Valley district just outside Albany, arrived in his office, “There was no conversation,” the governor recalled. “He said, ‘I’ve heard you. I’m there.’” In the view of Bruce Gyory, the fourth panelist and a former political consultant and pollster who now teaches at the University at Albany, “it was in the Republicans’ interest to get [marriage equality] off the table.” With support for gay marriage growing at an accelerating pace — Gyory estimated that support is surging by three to four percent each year, while opposition is declining at roughly the same rate — by 2012, a no vote could prove very damaging for Republican senators with suburban constituencies. The governor, however, argued that the “accelerator” was not “automatic.” The campaign by advocates and the breadth of support they brought forward, he said, “changed the polls… The inside game only worked because the outside game worked. The politicians follow the people, which is not the way it’s supposed to be.”

Gyory acknowledged that the statewide push for gay marriage was well executed, citing in particular an ad in which a married couple in their 60s talked about wanting to see both their gay son and their straight son get married. The ad, he explained — targeted primarily at suburban women, who in turn were counted on to bring their husbands along — would remind viewers that they knew someone gay among one of four important groups in their life: their children, their “dearest friends,” their friends’ children, and their children’s friends. Saying he was willing to go out of a limb since he no longer practices political consulting, Gyory estimated that the ad had the political impact that $5 million in additional spending on the campaign would have yielded. The appeal that Gyory saw in that ad was one Quinn has often used in her public advocacy, noting that both she and her partner, Kim Catullo, have lost their mothers, and want to ensure that their 85-year-old fathers are able to dance with them at their wedding. Asked to explain what went wrong when advocates lost by a decisive 38-24 Senate margin in December 2009, Quinn said, “Bad counting.” She added, “And we lost perspective, which is not surprising on such a personal issue.” The fact that public opinion is shifting decisively toward marriage equality did not mean, Gyory said, that the yes votes by Alesi, McDonald, Mid-Hudson Valley Senator Stephen Saland, and Buffalo freshman Mark Grisanti were not acts of considerable political courage. In fact, he said, he could think of at least four Republicans for whom the vote would have been safer politically. The beneficiaries of their voting yes

were other suburban Republicans — Gyory mentioned Long Island’s Charles Fuschillo, John Flanagan, and Jack Martins and Greg Ball of Putnam County, among others — who won’t have to face the gay marriage issue again in 2012, after another year of increasing support for it. Asked by Times reporter Michael Barbaro, who led the Albany bureau’s coverage of the issue, what arguments from opponents he found persuasive, the governor, without hesitating, said “None.” Even as he commended New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan for the manner in which he made his case against gay marriage — and riffed about his worry that the Catholic Church had eliminated Purgatory as a way station between the best and worst case scenarios — Cuomo said, “There is no answer from the opposition. There really isn’t. Ultimately, it’s, ‘I want to discriminate.’ And that’s anti-New York. It’s anti-American.” While the entire panel pointed to the positive reaction most New Yorkers have to the enactment of gay marriage — Gyory noting that bigger margins oppose undoing the law than originally supported its passage — Alesi acknowledged the political risk he faces. “I fully expect the Conservatives will keep their promise to do everything they can to annihilate me,” he said of the third party that gave him his 2010 margin of victory. One man has spit in his face since he took the June 24 vote. Yet, Alesi added, nine out of ten Rochester area voters who have approached him to talk about the issue congratulated him on his stand. “This was the best vote I’ve ever taken in 20 years, and I’ll go to my grave with that,” he said.

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26 OCT - 8 NOV 2011

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■ LEGAL

What’s the Emergency?

Ninth Circuit blocks release of Prop 8 trial recordings BY ARTHUR S. LEONARD

three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit granted an “emergency motion” to stay the district court’s order releasing the video recordings of the 2010 trial in which California’s Proposition 8 was ruled unconstitutional. Prop 8, approved by voters in 2008, amended the California Constitution to provide that only a marriage between one man and one woman would be recognized or valid there, putting an end to marriages by same-sex couples that had begun earlier in the year on order of the State Supreme Court. Chief Judge Vaughan Walker of California’s Northern District, who originally presided over the case, had

planned to simulcast the proceedings to several courtrooms across the country, but that effort was blocked by the US Supreme Court on a motion from the Official Proponents of Proposition 8, who were allowed to participate as defendants because neither Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger nor Attorney General Jerry Brown (now the governor) was willing to defend the amendment from constitutional challenge. Walker had a video recording of the trial made for his own use, and provided copies to the parties as they prepared closing arguments. Otherwise, the recordings were kept under seal. Walker ruled that Prop 8 violated the 14th Amendment and issued an injunction against its enforcement, which was stayed by the Ninth Circuit

pending appeal. Once again, neither the governor nor the attorney general appealed, but the Proponents tried to do so. A serious question was raised whether they have standing to bring the appeal, and the Ninth Circuit asked the California Supreme Court to offer an advisory opinion on whether the Proponents have standing as a matter of state law to defend a ballot measure against constitutional attack. That advisory is expected soon. After retiring early this year, Walker came out as a gay man with a longtime partner and also used clips from the video recordings during some public lectures he gave. Both developments drove the Prop 8 Proponents crazy, leading them to make a series of intemperate charges against Walker.

The new chief judge of the Northern District, James Ware, having inherited the case, faced motions to set aside the trial verdict on the argument that Walker had an irremediable conflict of interest — he had a guy he might want to marry — and to require him to surrender the recordings to the court and refrain from playing them in public. Of course, the plaintiffs, two samesex couples represented by the American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER), defended their trial victory and counter-moved to have the recordings unsealed and made public. Ware rejected the motion to vacate Walker’s decision in a strongly worded opinion, and the Proponents appealed

PROP 8, continued on p.19

MEANWHILE, PROP 8 SUPPORTERS NOT IMMUNE FROM DISCLOSURE LAW Even as the battle over Proposition 8’s constitutionality and release of video recordings of the 2010 district court trial continues at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, a federal judge in Sacramento has ruled that two leading groups that pushed the 2008 ballot amendment are not exempt from California state campaign finance laws. The October 20 decision by District Judge Morrison England Jr., which affects contributions made to the National Organization for

Marriage (NOM) and ProtectMarriage.com, was a bench ruling, though San Francisco Deputy City Attorney Mollie Lee was quoted in the Los Angeles Times saying a written opinion would be forthcoming. “The winners here are really the voters of California,” Lee told the newspaper. “The 1st Amendment interest that the judge upheld in his ruling is the interest in having a robust democracy, an informed electorate, and vigorous debate.” England had earlier rejected the Prop 8 supporters’ motion to

temporarily order the removal of the data from the California secretary of state’s website while their case proceeded, saying the disclosure laws protect the public by allowing them to make decisions based on all relevant facts at election time. According to the LA Times, NOM and ProtectMarriage.com together raised “the lion’s share” of the $43.3 million spent to promote Prop 8.” — Paul Schindler

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PROP 8, from p.18

his ruling to the 9th Circuit. Regarding the recordings, Walker had voluntarily returned them to the court when controversy erupted, so that point was moot. But Ware decided there was no longer any reason to keep them under seal and granted the plaintiffs’ motion to have them released. Mania seized the Proponents a second time! What happened in Walker’s courtroom nearly two years ago now is hardly a big secret. Detailed news reports filled the press regularly as the trial was taking place, transcripts were posted to the Internet by AFER, dramatic readings of the transcript by actors were posted to YouTube, and a few weeks ago Academy Award-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black’s dramatization of the trial drawn from the transcripts was presented at a Broadway theater as a one-night benefit supporting the lawsuit. The content is out there. What is not is the actual live video of the testimony and arguments, and this is what Proponents are fighting like mad to block. Any fair -minded person would likely wonder what they have to hide. As soon as Ware announced his decision on unsealing the recordings, Proponents filed an emergency appeal

26 OCT - 8 NOV 2011 to the Ninth Circuit asking that release be stayed until the circuit could hear their appeal of the order. They maintain that in light of the Supreme Court’s order blocking the trial’s simulcast and Walker’s recording of the proceedings for his own use, they should never see the light of day. The Ninth Circuit panel that issued the order — Judges Stephen Reinhardt, Michael Hawkins, and N.R. Smith — offered no explanation for granting the “emergency motion,” although obviously if the motion were not granted the Proponent’s appeal would be moot. There’s no putting the cat back in the bag, as it were. But the court made clear it is not going to dally over deciding this appeal, announcing that both par ties are to submit their “simultaneous principal briefs” by November 14 and reply briefs by November 28, with oral argument to come during the week of December 5. Still, the holdup on release of the recordings will be prolonged several more months, and the saga continues. There are now three simultaneous appeals on different questions in the Prop 8 case pending before the Ninth Circuit — not to mentioned the unresolved advisory question before the State Supreme Court. Is that some kind of record, or what?

EVAN WOLFSON TIES THE KNOT Evan Wolfson, the thoughtful, articulate, and insistent civil rights attorney who as founder of Freedom to Marry is perhaps the nation’s leading advocate for marriage equality, has married his longtime partner, Dr. Cheng He, a molecular biologist. Judge Rosalyn Richter — who was among the first two out lesbian or gay appointees to the New York State Appellate Division when named by Governor David Paterson in 2009 — officiated at the October 15 ceremony at Guastavino’s on East 59th Street. As a staff attorney at Lambda Legal in the 1990s, Wolfson participated in the earliest promising same-sex marriage litigation in Hawaii. Progress there was halted when the state’s voters stepped in, but even the hint that gay and lesbian couples might begin to win the right to marry prompted the US Congress in 1996 to overwhelmingly approve the Defense of Marriage Act.

ANDY HUMM

WWW.GAYCITYNEWS.COM

Wolfson served for years as the director of Lambda’s marriage effort, and in 2003 founded Freedom to Marry, which in its early years coordinated national strategy among the wide array of advocacy and legal rights groups pushing the issue. In the past year or so, the group has become more of an on-the-ground player in the battle and was involved in

the day-to-day effort that led to the enactment of marriage equality in New York State on June 24. Less than four months after that law was approved, He, 36, and his now-husband exercised the hard-won freedom to marry that Wolfson, 54, has battled so hard to win for their community. — Paul Schindler

26 OCT - 8 NOV 2011

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■ LEGAL

Washington State Petition Disclosure Allowed Names, addresses of 2009 anti-gay referendum backers immediately posted BY ARTHUR S. LEONARD

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early two years after Washington State voters rejected an effort to block implementation of a comprehensive same-sex domestic partnership law, a federal judge has ruled that the state can make public the names and addresses of those who signed petitions to mount the ballot question. District Judge Benjamin H. Settle, on October 17, found that Washington can disclose the names as required by state law, even though he initially stated that doing so would violate the First Amendment rights of the petition signers. The judge concluded that plaintiffs had failed to show any infringement on their rights. Both the Ninth Circuit and the Supreme Court had earlier rejected Settle’s position that disclosing names of those signing initiative petitions is unconstitutional “as a general matter.” The high court said that the public interest in political transparency required the plaintiffs to show serious harm should disclosure be ordered. Most of the plaintiffs who made depositions in the case were known either for testifying before the Legislature or being members of it, and they largely recounted nothing worse than heated exchanges with their opponents or other members of the public. None stated that they lived in fear of retribution. In the end, Settle found it particularly noteworthy that the plaintiffs made no effort to offer testimony from the ballot measure’s financial backers, whose identities had already been disclosed. Evidence submitted about harassment of supporters of California’s Proposition 8 proved unimpressive.

Supreme Court precedent made the plaintiffs’ task difficult. Exceptions to state disclosure laws have typically been upheld only in cases involving “minor parties” that took very unpopular positions, such as the Socialist Workers Party, or in a famous incident involving the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) during the early years of the civil rights movement. Settle found the exceptions had been confined to “fringe” organizations with “unpopular or unorthodox beliefs” who were seeking to “further ideas that have been ‘historically and pervasively rejected and vilified by this country’s government and its citizens.’” The best the Washington plaintiffs could provide, the judge found, was “a mountain of anecdotal evidence from around the country that offers merely a speculative possibility of threats, harassment, or reprisals,” but that fails the requirement of showing the threat is “specifically and directly related to a group or organization.” If those seeking exemption from election law disclosure could succeed, Settle concluded, “by simply providing a few isolated incidents or profane or indecent statements, gestures, or other examples of uncomfortable conversations that are not necessarily even related or directly connected to the issue at hand, disclosure would become the exception instead of the rule.” Upon learning of the judge’s ruling, the state immediately made the list of petition signers publicly available. It was quickly picked up by the Associated Press, so the cat is now out of the bag. Nevertheless, the plaintiffs have vowed to appeal to the Ninth Circuit.

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26 OCT - 8 NOV 2011

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22/ Theater

Boys to Men A Terrence Rattigan revival and Bill Bowers’ solo show go to the heart of being a man

ould there be a better time to revive “Man and Boy,” Terence Rattigan’s obscure amorality tale from 1963 about an international businessman in the final spasms of brinksmanship as his empire collapses? Probably not. Could there be a better actor than Frank Langella to embody the ruthlessness, desperation, and strategizing all with an impeccable sang-froid? Decidedly not. Under the precise and thoughtful direction of Maria

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Aitken, Rattigan’s play — a combination of thriller, family drama, and social commentary — is vibrantly alive and wonderfully understated. It is a well-made play in a wellmounted production, but beyond that, it’s also enter taining and thought-provoking. The play is set in 1934, and Langella plays Gregor Antonescu, a wildly successful businessman credited with saving Europe after World War I. If his means are shady, the ends have justified them — at least until the opening of the play, when it seems the health of the global markets rides on his ability to forge an unlikely merger. Gregor seeks refuge from the media and arranges a meeting with the man he must come to terms with, Mark Herries, at the down-at-the-heels Greenwich Village basement apartment of one Basil Anthony. This seemingly incongruous meeting place makes sense when we lear n that Basil is actually Vasily Atonescu, Gregor’s estranged son. There is no happy reunion in this story, however. Basil abhors the actions that allowed his father to grow rich while others suffered, and yet he allows him to meet there. Gergor repays the filial favor by attempting — there’s no delicate way to put this — to pimp Basil out to Herries, a closeted homosexual, as the strategy for closing the deal. Conventional thinking would find this shocking, but Gregor is anything but conventional. In fact, he’s a sociopath, but one who has made people a great deal of money. No one wants to look too closely at his actions, and what might in other cir cumstances be seen as

YOSHIO ITAGAKI

n 1964, Topper Toys introduced the Johnny Seven O.M.A. (One Man Army). It was seven different guns in one — machine gun, grenade launcher, pistol, and more, and it was one of the most popular toys of the year. The O.M.A. defined boyhood as aggressive, competitive, and implicitly heterosexual. I coveted that toy even though it was based on a social role at odds with my growing selfawareness as a gay kid. Bill Bowers had his own experience with that toy, and it’s beautifully integrated into the opening of his oneman show, “Beyond Words,” which is billed as a “collection of mime, music, and monologues.” It is also a compelling and heartfelt mediation on what it means to be a man and gay as the larger culture is roiled by conflict and we each battle our own fears. Bowers’ story is one of discovery, liberation, and love, told in his unique style. Whether retelling part of “Winesburg, Ohio,” reflecting on Matthew Shepard’s mur der, or recounting his experiences as a visiting artist in a small Montana town, his journey is one of constant discovery and wonderful moments of joy — even in a world that can be cruel. “Beyond Words” is a wellcrafted, big-hearted, and surprisingly poignant piece. Bowers is an accomplished and appealing storyteller, and his are stories well worth hearing.

BILL BOWERS BEYOND WORDS

Bill Bowers’ journey in “Beyond Words” takes us back to the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard.

MAN AND BOY American Airlines Theatre 227 West 42nd Street Tue.-Sat. at 8 p.m.; Wed., Sat., Sun. at 2 p.m. $67-$117. 212-719-1300 www.roundabouttheatre.org

JOAN MARCUS

BY CHRISTOPHER BYRNE

Frank Langella (standing) and Adam Driver in a revival of Terence Rattigan’s “Man and Boy.

depravity is here considered a quirk. Gregor cares about nothing but winning, and the people in his life find him at once irresistible and repellant. They are unable to disentangle themselves from him, but he engages with them only when they are useful to him. Rattigan’s investigation of the bargains people make and the games they play is fascinating. Langella is at the height

of his game in this role. He is per fectly in control, and every moment is rich in detail — from the way he holds his hand in his jacket pocket to his gesture flicking a folder to the floor to the subtlety of Gregor’s unfolding plan. He’s so charming and persuasive it’s easy to see how an entire continent could fall under Gregor’s spell, blind to his pathological narcissism. The supporting cast is very good as well. Zach Grenier is

fascinating as Herries, a man who has the upper hand until Gergor finds his fatal flaw. Adam Driver is compelling as Basil, maintaining a strong sense of morality despite his seeming weakness. Michael Siberry, as usual, turns in an accomplished per formance as Sven, Gregor’s right hand man, and Brian Hutchinson is appealing as Herrie’s accountant, David Beeston, Ger gor’s first victim as the game unfolds. It’s tempting to see this play through the lens of our own time, and it certainly resonates. Still, it’s more chilling to realize that while the trappings may change, the desire to win — at the expense of others — is as old as civilization. It is in our DNA, this drive to survive. We may be shocked at Gregor’s actions, but we can’t really be surprised. And against all odds, part of us wants him to win.

26 OCT - 8 NOV 2011

Theater /23

The Mysteries of Nazareth, PA “Speech and Debate” playwright takes on grown-up themes

tephen Karam, now 31, burst on the New York theater scene in 2007 at the Roundabout’s Under ground with the canny, pitch-perfect teen drama “Speech and Debate,” exploring gay youth, among other themes. It spread to 100 theaters and made Karam’s name. His latest, “Sons of the Prophet” — commissioned by the Roundabout, playing in its mainstage off-Broadway Laura Pels Theatre, and directed by Peter DuBois — opens with a big bang (a car crash), includes lots of great characters and genuinely funny lines, but packs in so many themes and symbols it ends up looking like a Pennsylvania roadmap. We a r e i n d e e d i n “Northeastern and Central Pennsylvania,” where towns with biblical names such as Nazareth and Bethlehem abound. The patriarch of the Douaihys, a working class LebaneseAmerican family, has died of a heart attack shortly after swerving and crashing to avoid what turns out to be a fake deer wheeled onto the road in a prank by Vin (Jonathan Louis Dent), the local high school football star. The father’s grown gay sons (Chris Perfetti as younger and more flamboyant Charles and Santino Fontana as older and less stylish Joseph) take in their cantankerous old, ill Uncle Bill (Yusef Bulos). Joseph, a 29-year-old amateur track star in his working class region, is coping with mysterious degenerative ailments; a deeply neurotic boss, Gloria (hilarious Joanna Gleason in all her glory), with whom he puts up to keep health benefits; and an Anderson Cooper-

SONS OF THE PROPHET Laura Pels Theatre 111 W. 46th St. Tue.-Sat. at 7:30 p.m. Wed., Sat. & Sun. at 2 pm. Through Dec. 23 $71-$81; roundabouttheatre.org Or 212-719-1300

like closeted TV reporter, Timothy (a deft Charles Socarides), doing a story on the crash and the school’s determination to let Vin play out the season before facing the consequences of his misdeed. Hovering over the proceedings is poet and artist Kahlil Gibran, author of “The Prophet” — literally in terms of his words framing the scenes and literarily because agent Gloria wants Joseph to cash in and do a book about his family and their relationships to distant cousin Kahlil, with whom most Lebanese Americans apparently claim kinship. Also “looking” down from the wall of the men’s home is St. Rafqa, a Lebanese nun (18321914) and, like the boys, a Maronite Catholic, who had one eye pop out and the other sink into her head, with both sockets hemorrhaging three times a week for the rest of her saintly life. Yikes! Between the ecstasy of Gibran and the agony of Rafqa is the tragicomedy of this family, coping with pain and loss and neuroses. Karam seems to want this to be a quintessentially 21st century American story — ripped from the headlines (at least from the local papers) and freighted with Serious References — but he is best at telling really good jokes, the kind you hear on the better sitcoms, including some rippers about being gay in a small town. That’s not meant to be a putdown

JOAN MARCUS

BY ANDY HUMM

Santino Fontana and Charles Socarides in Stephen Karam’s “Sons of the Prophet,” directed by Peter DuBois.

— and Karam should go far with this talent — but it often distracts from the play’s weightier pretensions. (The producers are billing “Sons” as “the funniest play about human suffering you’re likely to see.” That award will go to Nicky Silver’s “The Lyons” this season.) Joseph (of Nazareth!) is the emotional center of “Sons of the Prophet” and young Broadway veteran Fontana (“A View from the Bridge,” “The Importance of Being Earnest”) gives a strong, nuanced performance in a play full of caricatures and types. His chaotic journey through various kinds of suffering is the story here, and for better or worse it is not neatly tied up at the end — sort of like life. But I was expecting more in a play, especially from this promising writer. Next time out he might think about heeding the words of another poet, Robert Browning. Less is more.

26 OCT – 8 NOV 2011

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■ THEATER

Relative Mess Three problematic plays in search of a super-director BY DAVID KENNERLEY

RELATIVELY SPEAKING Brooks Atkinson Theatre 256 W. 47th St. Tue. at 7 p.m.; Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m. Wed., Sat. at 2 p.m.; Sun at 3 p.m. $67-$127; ticketmaster.com

Marlo Thomas and Lisa Emery in Elaine May’s “George is Dead.”

or what inherited traits caused him to become such a wretch. Two weeks into previews Fred Melamed, who played the father, abruptly quit due to “creative differences.” Smart move. Infinitely more successful is Elaine May’s “George Is Dead,” a noir comedy with a coil of mystery that unwinds in delicious fits and starts. Marlo Thomas (yes, that girl), in the most sublime performance of the evening, plays Doreen, a rich, ditzy socialite who strenuously resists her advancing age — and the onset of grief due to the sudden death of her husband, about which she learned just minutes before she knocks on the door of long-lapsed childhood chum Carla (Lisa Emery). More demanding than distraught, she takes advantage of Carla’s hospitality, treating her like one of her staff — which is not such a stretch because, many years earlier, Carla’s

mother was her nanny. Carla’s shabby apartment is a far cry from Doreen’s 17-room Southampton estate. “I don’t have the depth to feel this bad,” says Thomas, sounding eerily like her Ann Marie character in “That Girl.” When Carla’s distraught husband (Grant Shaud, in a brief but affecting performance) shows up, all hell breaks loose. Doreen’s epiphany at the funeral might have been more potent if we hadn’t seen it coming a mile away. Carla’s epiphany, on the other hand, is astonishing. The final play, Woody Allen’s “Honeymoon Motel,” is the madcap one of the bunch. It’s a throwback to those old-school farces set in a single room — in this case, a tacky honeymoon suite — which starts out empty, then, after a series of frantic door-knocks, gradually fills with goofy characters and bizarre conflicts until the uproarious climax.

The plot is set in motion with Jerry, who appears to be a lovestruck groom (Steve Guttenberg, perfectly cast), with his young bride Nina (Ari Graynor), about to consummate their nuptials at the titular motel. When Jerry’s buddy Eddie (Shaud) barges in, we learn that the wedding did not exactly go according to plan. Before long, family members, friends, a drunken rabbi, and, finally, a pizza delivery guy, have packed into the room. Mind you, there are some brilliantly comic moments. Yet instead of a tight ensemble, it’s more like a free-for-all. The timing is off, lines get lost, and certain plot details contradict each

JOAN MARCUS

ohn Turturro has got considerable talent and grit, no doubt about it. But not even he has the power to reign in “Relatively Speaking,” a trio of chaotic, disparate oneact comedies premiering at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre. While loosely grouped under the heading of “fraught family bonds,” the sheer abundance of scenarios, ideas, and actors (an ensemble of 16, many of them heavyweights) is simply too staggering for Turturro to control — especially on a first outing as a Broadway director. Naturally, something’s got to give. The most glaring casualty is the opening play, “Talking Cure,” written by Ethan Coen, whose films Turturro has famously starred in. Coen breaks the rules by creating two discrete parts — they sure look like separate acts to me — whose connections to each other are murky at best. The first finds a mental patient (Danny Hoch, laboring too hard to animate his oafish character) verbally sparring with his doctor (Jason Kravits), who is trying, with little success, to root out the cause of his patient’s violent tendencies. The answer, supposedly, lies somewhere is the second part, set several decades earlier, where his angry parents wage domestic war across the dining room table. Trouble is, the characters are unlikable, and we don’t care what crime landed him in the psychiatric ward

other. As Nina’s mother, Julie Kavner, who has been in several of Allen’s films and is the voice of Marge Simpson, can’t hold her own against the likes of Caroline Aaron, who plays Jerry’s “other” wife. Astute theatergoers will detect a creepy parallel to a certain marriage scandal in Allen’s own personal life a few years back. The preachy, tidy message at the end — “Life is short and there are no rules” — comes across as a shoulder-shrugging excuse for his behavior, which, depending on your sympathies, is either admirable or abominable. “Somewhere Noel Coward is turning over in his grave,” says Eddie, observing the pandemonium. Given Turturro’s unsure direction of this amusing but bumpy enterprise, I tend to agree.

Ari Graynor and Steve Guttenberg in Woody Allen’s “Honeymoon Motel.”

■ OPERA

Passion, Hellfire Painted in Pastel, Beige Michael Grandage’s “Don Giovanni” is strike three for the Met BY ELI JACOBSON

“D

on Giovanni” is a third time unlucky at the Metropolitan Opera. Following a concept-free baroque pageant by Franco Zeffirelli and a dully-utilitarian redbrick run-through from Marthe Keller, Michael Grandage’s new production is visually and dramaturgically barren. First, James Levine withdrew due to another back injury, but luck-

ily the versatile new principal conductor Fabio Luisi was willing to step in. Then, at the final dress rehearsal, star baritone Mariusz Kwiecien suffered a herniated disc that required surgery. Fortunately, Peter Mattei, a successful Don Giovanni in two prior revivals, was at the Met concurrently singing Rossini’s Figaro and stepped in for the first three shows. Musically, there are no losses with either substitution. The new production’s towering unit

set by Christopher Oram consists of moveable building facades with multitiered rows of shuttered doors and balconies with peeling paint in dull pastels and taupe. When the downstage set is shuffled off into the wings, the audience is treated to yet another upstage set of identical buildings. Visually monotonous and lacking aristocratic elegance — despite the addition of a few velvet drapes and chandeliers in the ballroom scene — the

entire opera seems to take place on the premises of a dilapidated New Orleans hotel. The sets push the singers into a narrow playing area downstage where not much happens except entrances and exits, with occasional appearances on the upper balconies. Grandage misses basic points in scene after scene. In the first scene where the Don kills

DON GIOVANNI, continued on p.25

26 OCT - 8 NOV 2011

Film/25

A Strong Heart Is Broken Love is the best testimony offered in Patrick Wang’s custody drama BY GARY M. KRAMER

IN THE FAMILY Directed by Patrick Wang In the Family LLC Opens Nov. 4 Quad Cinema 34 W. 13th St. quadcinema.com

IN THE FAMILY LLC

“I

n the Family” is a sensitive, earnest drama about a gay AsianAmerican man in Tennessee embroiled in a child custody battle. Written, produced, directed by, and starring the openly gay Patrick Wang, this modest film sometimes wields a heavy hand in broaching legal challenges facing same-sex couples, but its sincerity ensures that its intentions resonate. The film opens with scenes of domestic tranquility featuring Joey (Wang), his partner Cody (Trevor St. John), and their son Chip (Sebastian Brodziak). Before the end of the first reel, however, Cody dies in an off-screen car accident. Bereft, Joey continues to care for Cody’s son until his late partner’s sister, Eileen (Kelly McAndrew), takes Chip away. Cody’s will, made before he met Joey, named her the child’s legal guardian. When Joey arrives at her home to pick Chip up, the police are called and he is slapped with a restraining order. We never learn precisely why Eileen is so inflexible regarding Joey’s role in Chip’s life. She may be homophobic or perhaps racist, but the film makes no firm case. Perhaps Wang is being deliberately cagey, asking viewers to fill in the blanks. Despite the lack of specifics, the characters are broadly sketched in either hero or villain archetypes.

Patrick Wang and Trevor St. John in Wang’s “In the Family.”

Curiously, the word “gay” is never used in the film. All of the characters, including Joey, tiptoe around the relationship between the two men shared. “In the Family” is also chaste when it comes to depicting their physical love, with only a few kisses testifying to their sexuality. Wang may have made the film with broadcast television in mind; in fact, many scenes use a fixed camera, with characters simply walking in and out of the frame. This static visual style is a bit distracting, but it can also be quite effective. When Joey sits silently at his kitchen table after Cody’s funeral,

his quiet despair is heartbreakingly palpable. At other points in the film, Wang proves he does know how to move a camera. One of the best scenes has one of Joey’s friends eavesdropping on Chip as the boy listens to Joey’s recorded voice. The way the camera closes in during this extended scene leaves a powerful impression. With a running time of nearly three hours, “In the Family” has many lengthy scenes that enrich viewers’ understanding of the characters. Among the strongest are flashbacks to Joey’s early days

DON GIOVANNI, from p.24

the Commendatore, Luca Pisaroni’s Leporello, instead of hiding, remained onstage and, after impassively witnessing the entire duel, inquired, “Who was killed — you or the old man?” His question to Don Giovanni had no point, humorous or otherwise. The audience laughed at the line from reading the Met titles, not in reaction to the stage action. The Don Giovanni here is merely a pleasant rake without the darker undercurrents of sociopathy, nihilistic egotism, or existential defiance revealed in more intellectually probing productions. The characterizations all around are standard issue, with the only individual touches coming from what the singers themselves bring to the table. The whole thing felt like a revival on its last legs. Musically, things are on a higher level. Luisi’s tempos were fleet; the orchestral texture, light and transparent. All hints of proto-Romantic grandiosity were expunged along with the

Peter Mattei and Luca Pisaroni in Michael Grandage’s disappointing new production of “Don Giovanni.”

contrast between the tragic and comic elements of Mozart’s score. Mattei’s Don was smoothly sung but lacked the dynamism of his earlier Met appearances. Pisaroni’s Leporello was more a wily Molière manservant than buffo sidekick. With his focused, lithe bass-baritone and alert acting, Pisaro-

ni made the best of what he was given. Veteran Ramon Vargas, always an elegant stylist, made a virile, forthright Don Ottavio. Despite occasional vocal fatigue, Vargas expertly phrased the coloratura runs of “Il Mio Tesoro” as part of a flowing musical line. Barbara Frittoli’s Donna Elvira, touchingly

with Cody. Many of these sequences are filmed with a handheld camera, providing a feeling of intimacy — as when Cody puts on some Chip Taylor music and first kisses Joey. The warmth of this scene makes viewers want to see more of the couple and less of the legal battle at the film’s center. By the final third of “In the Family,” the custody case has taken over. Joey’s deposition involves tough grilling from Eileen’s attorney and his long, moving monologue that could swing the verdict in his favor, but there is little dramatic suspense here. Still, when Joey describes love being “like a reflex,” it is hard not to feel a swell of emotion. That’s the strength of Wang’s imperfect film. It all comes from his heart. Wang’s performance in the film is at times stiff in his depiction of grief, but Joey does come off as likable. “In the Family” needs some serious editing, a better child actor — as Chip, the young Brodziak is often difficult to understand — and greater complexity, but it is absorbing and there is no lack of warmth and love. real in her loyalty and confusion, had a softly glowing timbre with fleeting moments of unsteadiness. Joshua Bloom’s resonantly sung Masetto was a characterful mix of lunk and hunk. Stefan Kocán’s lighttoned bass failed to sound the note of doom as the Commendatore. Met debutante Marina Rebeka’s Donna Anna was neatly, correctly sung with a brightly focused, rubytoned lyric soprano. The petite, attractive Rebeka had limited tonal variety and expansion for Anna’s more dramatic utterances. Mojca Erdmann also debuted as a vocally undernourished Zerlina — a smallhouse Papagena or Barbarina lost in the big leagues. Peter Gelb has once again lured a hot “name” director from theater or film into opera offering total artistic and financial freedom. Once again, Gelb has failed to guide the operatic neophyte in focusing the production concept. This “Giovanni” is another total miss and cannot be turned into a hit with recasting, restaging, or a fresh coat of paint.

26 OCT - 8 NOV 2011

26/ Books

The Pious Atheist Novelist Wayne Hoffman explores dogma’s dilemmas in “Sweet Like Sugar” BY JAY BLOTCHER

SWEET LIKE SUGAR By Wayne Hoffman Kensington Books $15; 352 pages

Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, he experienced a life transition: “When I went away to college, I decided I was done with religion. I’m an atheist, and it struck me that there was not much point in keeping up observances if I didn’t believe in God.” Hoffman had, in fact, reached this conclusion, he said, soon after his Bar Mitzvah ceremony. But, living under his parents’ roof, he opted for diplomacy for the intervening years before graduation: “I knew someday I would leave the house and I could do what I wanted — and that’s what I did. Left the house, stopped eating kosher, stopped going to synagogue.” At Tufts, Hoffman focused on two goals — his education and his emerging identity as a gay man. Eventually, he realized that his wholesale rejection of Judaism was only a reaction to the entrenched homophobia of Jewish liturgy, which had made it clear there was no place for homosexuality among the Chosen People. Hoffman decided to embrace those parts of his religion that nurture him. When he became a Manhattanite, Hoffman would once more celebrate certain holidays from his youth that resonated with both joy and nostalgia — Chanukah, Purim, Passover.

KENSINGTON BOOKS

n Wayne Hof fman’s new book “Sweet Like Sugar,” a 20-something graphic artist named Benji Steiner crosses paths with a 70-something Orthodox rabbi named Jacob Zuckerman. Their worlds could not be further apart, yet they are drawn together, first by a health emergency and, later, by intellectual curiosity. The story of their growing friendship in suburban Maryland — and the religious dogma that drives them apart — is the narrative arc of this book, which manages to evenhandedly speak volumes about the mixed blessings of modern Judaism. Hoffman, a 40-year-old New Yorker who has a second home in upstate Livingston Manor, echoes in his narrative several predecessors from modern Jewish American literature. Like the work of Philip Roth, his tale offers rueful humor about the excesses of family. Like the best of Cynthia Ozick and Chaim Potok, the book ponders a Talmudic-like array of arguments regarding a man standing in opposition to his faith. Like Jonathan Safran Foer and Jonathan Franzen, Hoffman brings a newer generation’s critical eye to analyzing the pros and cons of his millennia-long heritage. What may startle the reader most, however, upon finishing this satisfying tale, is the author’s pedigree. Hoffman, who has crafted a thorny but endearing story about modern Judaism, is a gay atheist. Of course, Hoffman did not begin his life as a gay atheist. Quite the contrary. “I grew up Conservative in the traditional household,” he said in a late summer telephone interview. “We kept k o s h e r, w e w e n t t o s y n a gogue every week, I was Bar Mitzvah’ed, I went to Hebrew School three times a week, Israel, Jewish summer camp, took JCC classes. It was a traditional household.” However, when Hoffman left his family and Silver Spring, Maryland suburban life for

Wayne Hoffman’s second novel speaks volumes about the mixed blessings of modern Judaism.

“I’m still Jewish,” he said, “and the things that have meaning for me have meaning for me for my own reasons, not because a rabbi told me that they’re supposed to mean something. They have meaning because of who I am. And it didn’t involve going back to synagogue, which I never did.” In “Sweet Like Sugar,” Benji is also a gay man, but hardly Hoffman’s doppelganger. The protagonist was born in 1980, a decade after Hoffman. The author placed the lead char acter in his mid-20s to allow him the flexibility in values that such an age offers. Benji, Hoffman pointed out, is “old enough to ask the questions, and young enough that he hadn’t yet answered them.” Benji nonetheless struggles with the role — at once inti-

mate and displaced — that Judaism plays in his life as a gay man, especially when Rabbi Zuckerman becomes his friend. (Benji’s mother has no problem with her son’s homosexuality; instead, she is fearful proselytizing Orthodox Jews might try to convert him.) As the interaction deepens between the men, Benji analyzes his own sense of Jewish identity. Why, for instance, does he have a predilection for dating blond, non-Jewish men? Like Hoffman, Benji eventually chooses to embrace those parts of his religious heritage that nurture or please him but not feel compelled to observe all its aspects. “Saying that you don’t believe in the letter of the law does not mean that none of it can have any meaning,” said Hoffman.

Eventually, Benji tests the fabric of the men’s intergenerational alliance and reveals his sexual orientation to his Orthodox friend. Neither easy answers nor quick reconciliations emerge, to Hoffman’s credit as a novelist, but the developments are emotionally captivating. Benji learns that the rabbi also harbors conflicts with the unyielding tenets of his religion where love is concerned — in his case, with a woman he met while car ing for his terminally ill wife. Both men need to heal from the wounds inflicted by Jewish dogma. And what of Hoffman’s own curr ent r elationship with Judaism? It is, as they say, complicated. For the past decade, the unwavering atheist has drawn a paycheck working for Jewish media — first, at the august Forward newspaper and, currently, as deputy editor of Nextbook Press, publisher of the Jewish Encounters book series. “It’s true; I don’t go to synagogue, but I spend 40 hours a week as a professional Jew,” he said. “I have a place in the Jewish community, and this is it.” Pressed to define himself, Hoffman offered the category “secular -cultural Jew.” Still, “Sweet Like Sugar” is richly threaded with Hebrew observations and prayers, such as Pirkei Avot, Chanukah prayers, and Song of Songs. Did research for the book require Hoffman to return to synagogue? No, the author said; he simply drew from deep reserves of memory as a Jewish boy. “There are things that have always stuck with me, since I was a child,” he said. Hoffman was not only a frequent synagogue attendee, but also a Bible scholar and Hebrew School teacher. “I knew my stuff,” he emphasized. That is not to say that “Sweet Like Sugar” was not a learning experience for him. This novel, Hoffman’s second, is certainly

ATHEIST, continued on p.30

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26 OCT – 8 NOV 2011

AMITAVA SARKAR

The Houston Ballet performs Jorma Elo’s “ONE/ end/ ONE.”

■ DANCE

Houston Ballet’s Got Chops! Joyce debut shows off spectacular dancing, solid repertory BY GUS SOLOMONS JR

n its debut performances this week at the Joyce Theater, the Houston Ballet — since 2003, under the artistic direction of Australian-born Stanton Welch — impressed even the notoriously reticent New York opening night audience with pristine technique, immaculate precision, and lightning speed that rival any other ballet company in America. The concise program, running just over 90 minutes, featured a ballet each by Netherlands Dance Theater’s legendary Joni Kalian, Finnish newcomer Jorma Elo, and Houston Ballet’s associate choreographer Christopher Bruce. In Kylián’s “Falling Angels” (1989), set to the persistent pulse of Steve Reich’s “Drumming,” eight women in black leotards and tan shoes (costumes by Joke Visser) emerge slowly from darkness, walking against the wind in small lunges. Joop Caboort’s minutely orchestrated lighting framed each of them in a square of light for a series of little canonic gestures that fall into and out of unisons. The long, bare limbs of the dancers etch crisp designs in the black space, framing their heads, pulling on their leotards. All the dancers duet or solo against the group and show their individual personalities within the taut structure of Kylián’s lucid syncopation and adroitly uncluttered counterpoint. Contrasting themes never clash or compete for our focus. “Angels” gets our attention, and then “ONE/ end/ ONE” rivets it with a barrage of Elo’s fastest, quirkiest, and most technically taxing contemporary ballet lexicon to date. The choreographer’s work in the past has seemed self-consciously inventive, trying too hard to be eccentric, and saddled with injudicious musical choices. But here, to Mozart’s “Violin Concerto No. 4 in D, K. 218,” performed with brio by the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra, Elo justifies his idiosyncratic style. These

sublime dancers attack every move with such reassuring power and conviction that you’re never in doubt they’ll triumph. The cast of eight at times seems like many more, flying on and offstage with soaring jetés and topsy-turvy lifts. Elo’s super-fast steps reference everything from Balinese to hip-hop, and at times the steel-cored dancing looks like speeded-up animation. Much of the complicated partnering is too swift to analyze, but one recurring lift has the woman jumping from arm’s length of her partner into midair, ending with him holding her waist, her legs split wide. The men flip and spin their partners with such force you’d fear for their survival were they not so strong and supple. Each section ends with a solo balance that’s all the more breathtaking for following such a kinetic deluge. The opening night cast sparkled — Melissa Hough, Lauren Strongin, Nozomi Iijima, Joseph Walsh, Peter Franc, and Garret Smith, with lead couple Karina Gonzalez and Connor Walsh featured in the central adagio section. At times, one wishes that Holly Hynes’ elegant black costumes, with gold appliqué, blended in less with the black background so we could better savor each leap, twist, and tumble. Christina R. Giannelli’s dynamic lighting did its best to throw the dancers into relief, but especially upstage, we lost some of the details. Following the splash in the face from Elo, Bruce’s 2006 quaint Commedia dell’Arte character study “Hush” was a soothing antidote. Against a starry sky, a circus family of six slog toward their next venue, giving us peeks into their souls along the way. Inspired by the Bobby McFerrin and Yo-Yo Ma music that backs it, the ballet relies on the fine dance-acting of its cast — Kelly Myernick, Rhodes Elliott, Ilya Kozadayev, Jessica Collado, James Gotesky, and Melody Mennite — whose solo and duet essays are by turns poignant and warmly humorous.

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■ IN THE NOH

Show Stoppers White hot, Jason’s gold, gay doc matters BY DAVID NOH

JOAN MARCUS

hen Terri White walked out onstage in “Follies” and sang “Mirror, Mirror,” followed by a vicious tap routine, the show hit a white hot high point for me, which nothing else topped. But then, White should be used to show-stealing — the opening night of the Encores!’ “Finian’s Rainbow,” after her sizzling rendition of “Necessity,” all you heard in the lobby was “Who is Terri White?” or “Where the hell has she been?” This unquenchable powerhouse, accompanied by her wife and business manager, Donna Barnett (in classic black leather jacket and tie), described for me that splendid “Follies” moment: “I was in my element. I’ve been tapping since I was two years old. What kills me is when people say, ‘I never knew you tapped!’ Well, I tapped the entire time I did ‘The Club’ for Tommy Tune in 1975, ‘Barnum,’ and ‘Bubbling Brown Sugar,’ so it’s not like it’s a first.” Her character, Stella, she said, is “me, in a sense. Especially when she says, ‘I’ve had hard times, taken my lumps. I see myself in the mirror, remembering those days I did hoof and struggle, hearing the crowd and being away for almost 30 years. And then, coming back. That feeling you can’t get any place else, when you get on that stage and give your all, looking out at the audience and thinking, “I remember this. Boy, I missed it!”’” White uses her memory of the 2009 opening night of “Finian’s Rainbow,” which brought her back to Broadway after decades in the casting wilderness: “It’s my visual, envisioning that first night back, with the response, which is why I look around at the audience remembering that wonderful moment.” During “Follies”’ run at the Kennedy Center in Washington, White said, she hadn’t heard a word from Stephen Sondheim, “and one night, he called almost all the leads in except me, and I thought, is this a good or bad thing? On opening night, he knocked on my door and said, ‘The reason why I didn’t give you any notes or call you in is because you’re perfect. I went, ‘Oh thank you, Steve Sondheim!’ “This is the first time Stella has danced the whole number. She always did the opening number, and when they got to ‘Mirror,’ the ghosts would do the dancing and everything else, until the last chorus when she sings again.” The show is chockfull of divas, and White said, “It scared me, the list there goes on and on, and I wondered, ‘Can I keep up with these people and will there

Out lesbian Broadway returning champ Terri White, photographed during the Kennedy Center run of “Follies.”

be a lot of diva stuff going on during rehearsals?’ Not at all — from day one, everyone was working hard, two and a half hours of tap rehearsals every day with women who range from 57 to 75 in age. We call it ‘The Show of the Walking Wounded,’ with people’s bodies going out all over the place. “Bernadette Peters is so much fun. We mess with each other constantly on stage, during the little party scenes, sometimes we’re in character, sometimes talk about what we just flubbed, ‘Okay, it’s a Wednesday matinee, keep moving.’ We don’t say, ‘Peas and carrots’ [for pretend dialogue] we go, ‘Rutabaga, rutabaga.’” Every night after the show, White meets people who remember her from her years of Village bartending: “I make a great martini and did piano bars for over 40 years — Rose’s Turn, 88s, Five Oaks, Don’t Tell Mama. I haven’t been down there since Rose’s Turn closed and was devastated because I worked in that building for almost three decades, when it was Bon Soir, Upstairs at the Downstairs, the old Duplex. So, to see it totally ripped out and made into a real estate office. Really? “I was at Don’t Tell Mama last night. I only have one and a half numbers in the show, so will get to feeling what I call a quart low. I need to sing. In the piano bars you did between 20 and 26 tunes, and that’s what built up these iron cords over the years to hit the back of the house.” White’s vocal preparation consists of a cigarette and an Altoid: “That’s it. Done!

In the 1970s, I went to a voice teacher, $75 an hour then, and he said, after I sang for him, ‘How do you do that?’ I said, ‘I have not a clue, and I came to learn from you so I guess the class is over,’ and left. Leontyne Price told me a teacher would only ruin me and that I have one thing that most opera singers work their entire lives for. I was a bassoonist and I use my back diaphragm for that support, especially when you’re tap dancing for eight minutes and have to come in at the end. “The only thing that really bothered me during those years of bartending was when people said, ‘You should be on Broadway.’ Been there! Want to, and it’s not like I stopped auditioning. It was a rough 20 years. I was blacklisted during ‘Barnum,’ and was basically run out of town and told you’ll never work here again.’ It was for being a lesbian, and a lot of them were gay themselves, but they were married to cover their asses, so I pretty much was the scapegoat. “I’m really proud that my wife convinced me coming back for ‘Finian’s,’ because I was scared and thought I can’t come back on Broadway and be out. I’ll get blacklisted again and go through the same thing. My wife convinced me that times had changed.” Things can still be difficult, though: “Yes, it still goes on, and the scariest thing is I know so many closeted lesbians. It’s a little easier for the guys. That has always been a lot more acceptable, because the casting couch would be very empty without the lesbians, if they all came out. Whatever comes out of this, I know that I’ve done what I can do to be a part of the community, representing the lesbians in the business. If you don’t like it, too bad. It has nothing to do with what I do on stage. Every day, someone asks for my autograph and thanks us for being public about it.” White did ‘Nunsense’ with Rue McLanahan: “We hit it off immediately. She did not know I was homeless at the time. I never said anything. But we had our Sunday Bitch Brunch, where spouses were not allowed, and ate bagels and cream cheese and everything else she wasn’t supposed to be eating, just get it all out of our systems. That was when she was writing ‘My First Five Husbands,’ almost first six during that time — she was just on the verge. “I sang at her wedding and called to tell her, ‘I’m with someone.’ She asked, ‘Who is it?,’ and because she could hear Donna’s voice in the background, which is so deep, ‘You’re with a man?!’ ‘No, no, calm down, dear. Don’t worry. Nothing’s changed.’ ‘Well, put her on the phone!’” Barnett broke in to say, “She said, ‘I

just have one question. Did you vote for Obama? I said I did, and she said, ‘You’re okay, and if you hurt her, I’ll kill you!’ I’ve lived in Key West for 26 years and met Terri at her piano bar. I had friends who wanted me to see her, and had to be dragged kicking and screaming because I had to be at work in the morning and had already been out at a different bar and needed to go home. That was it. We haven’t been apart since. It’s going to be three years next week.”

pity anyone who missed Jason Graae’s show, “Perfect Hermany,” which just wrapped at the Laurie Beechman Theater. Opening night saw most of New York’s cabaret cognoscenti, including the divine Marilyn Maye, exulting in his total mastery of the form. The show was a salute to composer Jerry Herman, who turns 80 this year and hasn’t enjoyed a fraction of the still extant idolatry dumped on Sondheim for reaching the same milestone. Graae performed with sparkling, adlib-filled wit, joy, and consummate professionalism that included high notes that can only be described as honeyed. He recently revived “The Grand Tour,” Herman’s musical adaptation of Franz Werfel’s “Jacobowsky and the Colonel,” and his irresistibly lovely rendition of “Mrs. S.L. Jacobowsky” turned the bare Beechman stage into a small portion of theatrical heaven. Graae’s show is thankfully preserved on his CD of the same name from Kritzerland (kritzerland.com/graae.htm), and he told me, “After doing ‘The Grand Tour,’ I thought, ‘Darn it! I have a lot of Jerry Herman stories and I wanna keep singing these songs and just love him so much.’ His spirit is so completely contagious when you’re working with him he just raises your game. He gave me this note about singing ‘It Only Takes a Moment,’ which is this life lesson song about falling in love and meeting somebody, but at the end with ‘It only took a moment,’ it changes for the singer and becomes something that really happened to me, so Jerry said, ‘Take a breath after “took,”’ and that changes the meaning as the song changes gear. “The first time I ever worked with him, I was so nervous because you’re in the presence of legendary greatness. I literally thought I was going to pee in the rehearsal room. But he was so generous and complimentary that you never feel intimated by him. Sondheim, I’ve only been in the same room with him once, and I did pee on the floor. He was quite amazed. [Laughs.] And, while Jerry’s

IN THE NOH, continued on p.34

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26 OCT â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 8 NOV 2011

HIP HOP PRODUCTIONS

Shy and unsure of herself at Harvard, Etay Tay flowers in post-grad b-ball play in Germany.

â&#x2013; FILM

Hoop Dreams, American Dreams California daughter of Burmese immigrants finds her authentic lesbian self in Germany BY DEAN WRZESZCZ

inner of this yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Outfest Special Programming Award for Freedom, director Melissa Johnsonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s â&#x20AC;&#x153;No Look Passâ&#x20AC;? is a comingof-age story that focuses on Emily â&#x20AC;&#x153;Etayâ&#x20AC;? Tay, a Burmese-American senior whom we meet as a star point guard on Harvardâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s basketball team, the Crimson. The story begins in LA as Tay sits between her traditional Burmese-born parents, whose plans for their daughter involve attending graduate school and marrying a rich husband. But the young woman has her American Dream. First, she wants to finish her last year at Harvard, where she feels â&#x20AC;&#x153;like a piece of shit compared to everyone else.â&#x20AC;? She then wants to play for a professional team in Europe. Tay becomes the 13th player in the Crimsonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s history to reach 1,000 points. Her fellow teammate and inseparable best friend Katie Rollins states that Tay ranks in the top 25 in the country for assists, and sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s known as the â&#x20AC;&#x153;Queen of the No Look Pass.â&#x20AC;? Her tough but inspiring coach, Kathy Delaney-Smith, considers Tay â&#x20AC;&#x153;my most talented player, who should have a very healthy, large level of confidence and in fact has none. She needs to be more of a verbal leader and she needs that presence; she doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have that presence yet.â&#x20AC;? Before the Crimsonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s matchup with Yaleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Bulldogs, the announcer singles out Tay as â&#x20AC;&#x153;a flat-out fun player to watch.â&#x20AC;? Thanks to the filmâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s top-drawer sports footage, we get to witness Tay employ the Allen Iverson crossover that sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d obsessively practiced, as well as her signature no look pass. Even if youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re

NO LOOK PASS DOC NYC Festival In English and Burmese and German with English subtitles Hip Hop Productions Nov. 5 at 2:15 p.m. Nov. 7 at 10:15 p.m. IFC Center 323 Sixth Ave. at W. Third St. ifcenter.org

not a hoops fan, youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll get hooked on the action. While a social misfit on campus, Tay becomes a beast on the court. Starkly contrasting Tayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s dazzling basketball displays are her understated moments of candor, heightening the impact of each. Tay speaks through smiles about being beaten by her mom growing up â&#x20AC;&#x153;because we were bad,â&#x20AC;? seeming to accept as fact that it was â&#x20AC;&#x153;well-deserved.â&#x20AC;? She also says she canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t remember her parents ever saying, â&#x20AC;&#x153;I love you.â&#x20AC;? Tay yearns to find her place in the world while struggling to remain loyal to her family. Nearly 20 minutes into the film, she tells us sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s gay. While sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s out to her teammates â&#x20AC;&#x201D; all of whom are â&#x20AC;&#x153;cool with itâ&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x201D; sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s â&#x20AC;&#x153;not even close to coming out [to her parents] because my momâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s gonna destroy me.â&#x20AC;? Her brother reminds her that their parents would be interviewed for the film, and that theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re sure to find out. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re fucked,â&#x20AC;? he tells her. After winning the game against Yale on senior night, Tayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s asked to sign autographs. Her father remarks, â&#x20AC;&#x153;She played good.â&#x20AC;? But her mother is not as gracious. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Not shoot enough,â&#x20AC;? she says, smiling.

NO LOOK PASS, continued on p.34

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30/ Film

Good Intentions, Great Visuals In first feature in five years, Aki Kaurismäki struggles with utopian vision of France BY STEVE ERICKSON

LE HAVRE Directed by Aki Kaurismäki Janus Films In French with English subtitles Lincoln Plaza 1886 Broadway at 62nd St. lincolnplazacinema.com IFC Center 323 Sixth Ave. at W. Third St. ifccenter.com

ATHEIST, from p.26

a departure in terms of subject matter from his 2006 debut, “Hard,” a brash, darkly funny tale about creeping conser vatism in New York City’s gay community during the 1990s, when sex clubs and bath houses were under fire, often from people within the community. Neither book is autobiographical, said Hoffman, who has also written for the Washington Post, the Village Voice, the Nation, Billboard, and gay community newspapers. “‘Hard’ was a more direct translation of real life into fiction and [‘Sweet Like Sugar’] is much more a mosaic inter-

JANUS FILMS

“L

e Havre” is a very unusual film. While it’s been criticized as more of the same from director Aki Kaurismäki, a Finn working in France, it indulges extreme stylization to a point rarely seen since Todd Haynes’ “Far From Heaven.” Kaurismäki’s use of color goes even further back, recalling Jacques Demy’s “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg” and “The Young Girls of Rochefort.” His sets are decorated in pastel blues and greens and blazing reds, and the costumes are carefully coordinated with them. At one point, protagonist Marcel Marx’s (André Wilms) brown jacket and blue shirt perfectly match the colors of the backdrop. Kaurismäki’s status as a rock’n’roll connoisseur is evident here, but the film’s soundtrack is dominated by an orchestral score that self-consciously screams “melodrama.” The film har kens back to Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Douglas Sirk-inspired dramas, but Kaurismäki puts Fassbinder’s gloom on Prozac. In the past, the director’s optimistic austerity suggested the motto of a character in Thomas Pynchon’s novel “V.” — “keep cool but care.” “Le Havre” throws away the “keep cool” part. Marcel Marx is a middle-aged married man who works a shoe shiner in Le Havre, although he boasts of a bohemian past. He lives with his wife, Arletty (Finnish actress and Kaurismäki regular Kati Outinen). When Arletty lands in the hospital with a tumor, Marcel’s world goes into free fall. He meets Idrissa (Blondin Miguel), a young African refugee who smuggled himself onboard a boat. Idrissa wanted to go to London, but mistak-

André Wilms and Jean-Pierre Darroussin in Aki Kaurismäki’s “Le Havre.”

enly wound up in Le Havre illegally. Marcel lets the boy stay with him and hides him from the police. Clad entirely in black, Inspector Monet (Jean-Pierre Darroussin) searches for Idrissa, and Marcel’s neighbors assist him in keeping the cops off his trail. “Le Havre” is not the kind of film one would think of as post-Tarantino “fanboy cinema.” Yet it’s not miles away from Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Drive.” Both films take place in a world made of secondhand cinematic and musical quotes. There are major differences between them. With its anemic love story and relish of grisly violence, “Drive” isn’t exactly dripping with humanism. By contrast, “Le Havre” wears its heart and its social conscience on its sleeve. There’s no bloodshed in it. All the same, Kaurismäki’s film is

pretation,” he explained. “The bulk of ‘Hard’ is inspired by true events, this is not. This is a novel, first and foremost.” There is abundant joy in “Sweet Like Sugar,” as Benji revisits his religion, egged on by Rabbi Zuckerman. He takes a stab at dating a Jewish man and stumbles into a one-night stand with a man who sexually fetishizes Jews. (That bitterly funny incident did draw from a real-life experience of Hoffman’s.) Benji eventually finds a place where his dual identities of Jewish man and gay man can co-exist. The fuzzy optimist might hope that Hoffman attained a similar consciousness dur-

made of movie references. Arletty is named after the French actress most famous for Marcel Carné’s “Port of Shadows.” Her husband’s first name may be an homage to Carné. French New Wave icon Jean-Pierre Léaud drops by for a cameo. The coziness of Le Havre, as depicted by Kaurismäki, evokes ‘30s French cinema, with almost all the menace and anxiety removed. Kaurismäki envisions a world where aging hipsters win and the French New Wave and ‘50s rock’n’roll defeat the forces of xenophobia. His ending isn’t just happy, it’s utopian. He accurately describes his film as “anyhow unrealistic.” One wonders if any French-born director — or, even more so, any Frenchbased director of Arab or African descent — could make a film imagining such a benevolent vision of the country. You’d

ing the two years it took to write “Sweet Like Sugar,” but the author, whose personal sensibility tends to steer clear of mushiness, dismissed the notion of a religious rebirth. Writing the novel “hasn’t altered my relation to Judaism qualitatively, but it has altered the depths to which I can engage or not engage,” he said. “I have access to Jewish books by the thousands [at work]. I’ve always been interested in Jewish literature and read much, much more than I ever did. I wasn’t interested in Jewish observances before, and I’m still not.” Another reason for keeping his distance, Hoffman said,

never guess from “Le Havre” how popular the extreme right-wing parties are in France. To be fair, Kaurismäki has every right to his optimism, but his film succeeds mostly as an exercise in style. A delight to look at, it doesn’t seem particularly felt. While its politics are undoubtedly sincere, they’re hampered by the sense that the rest of the film exists entirely in quotes. The style doesn’t necessarily suit its message. Kaurismäki was once extremely prolific. Debuting in 1981 with a film codirected with his brother Mika, he produced a large body of work in the two decades that followed. For some reason, his pace has slowed considerably since then. “Le Havre” is his first feature since 2006’s “Lights in the Dusk.” Despite its resemblance to his previous films, one can sense Kaurismäki cramming everything he wants to say in this latest. Perhaps Kaurismäki’s best film, 1990’s “The Match Factory Girl” is all buildup. “Le Havre” is far less measured, but it builds toward a lovely double ending. The final shot recalls the ironic happy endings of Sirk melodramas, but there’s no doubt that Kaurismäki means it. His hip posturing battles his political conscience, and the result is a draw.

is that much of Judaism still rejects gay people, even as progress has been made in the last decade. “But that doesn’t erase the past,” he said. “And it doesn’t erase the past in the memories of a lot of gay people, or people who care about gay people. You don’t wake up and say, ‘Oh, everything’s fine!’ You wake up and say, ‘Okay, I’ll keep that [new attitude] in mind.’” As for romance, Hoffman’s partner since college, journalist Mark Sullivan, is a blond Irish Catholic. To support his new novel, Wayne Hoffman plans a book tour, and hopes to appear not

only at bookstores, but at Jewish synagogues and religious conferences, as well. And what of Hoffman’s status as an atheist — albeit an atheist with a religious novel under his belt? “Unchanged,” he said. “Very much unchanged.” Hoffman leads an October 29 Saturday afternoon workshop called “Fact and Fiction: Storytelling for GLBT Jews” at Queer Shabbaton New York, a weekend event sponsored by Nehirim and held at the JCC in Manhattan, 334 Amsterdam Ave. at 76th St. The workshop runs from 1-2 p.m. Complete details at nehirim.org/qsny.

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14 DAYS 14 NIGHTS THU.OCT.27

In a special “town fair” organized by more than 20 sponsoring organizations — including the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, the Human Rights Campaign, Faith in America, the Jewish Daily Forward, and Lambda Legal — community leaders gather to “take religion back from the religious right.” The event celebrates the publication of “God vs. Gay? The Religious Case for Equality” (Beacon Press), by columnist and activist Jay Michaelson (jaymichaelson. net), which argues that shared religious values support, rather than oppose, full equality for LGBT people. Publisher’s Weekly called the book “a salvo in the case for equality.” Leaders from the sponsoring organizations will address the town fair. LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St. Oct. 27, 7-9 p.m. ✯

✯

HALLOWEEN Lewis Carroll Gets Steampunked Third Rail Projects’ “Steampunk Haunted House” returns for a third year, presenting “Through the Looking Glass,” an exploration of the darker, more terrifying aspects of Lewis Carroll’s classic stories. In this immersive experience, audience members are admitted in small groups, suddenly separated, and thrust into a beautiful and terrifying dreamscape of neo-Victorian elegance and phantasmagoric clockwork horrors. The experience sprawls throughout the three floors of the Abrons Arts Center’s majestic century-old playhouse, its innumerable twisting hallways, looming balconies, and labyrinthine cellars. 466 Grand St., btwn. Pitt St. & Bialystoker Pl. Groups are admitted every 15 minutes from 6-9:30 p.m., Oct. 27, 30-31; 8-11:30 p.m., Oct. 28-29. Admission is $20-$25 at steampunkhauntedhouse.com. ✯

✯

THEATER Glee on a Hot Tin Roof Jonathan Warman directs the New York premiere of Tennessee Williams “Now the Cats With Jewelled Claws,” a tale of society matrons and street hustlers intent on enjoying a cocktail-laden lunch who break into song-and-dance numbers as apocalypse approaches. This production provides two particular treats — Everett Quinton, a core member of Charles Ludlam’s Ridiculous Theatrical Company, as lecherous and prophetic restaurant manager Erin Markey and John Waters phenomenon Mink Stole as society lady Madge. La MaMa, 74A E. Fourth St., btwn. Second Ave. & Bowery. Thu.-Sat., 10 p.m.; Sun., 5:30 p.m., Oct. 27-Nov. 13. Tickets are $18; $13 for students & seniors at lamama.org or 212-475-7710. ✯

✯

Country Comfort CAP 21 Theatre Company presents “Southern Comfort,” a new musical by Dan Collins (book and lyrics) and Julianne Wick Davis (music), based on Kate Davis’ 2001 Sundance award-winning documentary about a group of transgender friends living openly, honestly, and courageously in rural Georgia. The show

✯

PERFORMANCE On Stage While Black & Latina/o The Bronx Academy of Art & Dance concludes its annual BlakTina Performance Series, a festival celebrating works by black, Latina/o, and Blatina/o artists. On Oct. 27, 8 p.m., Nigerian dyke poet Yvonne Fly Onakeme Etaghene performs “Volcano’s Birthright{s},” her one-woman, multi-media sensory overload that fuses poetry, choreography, film, and music ($15). On Oct. 28, 8 p.m., in “Danse Macabre and Monster Mash!,” BAAD! resurrects choreographers who have crossed over, with James Atkinson (as Alvin Ailey), Noele Phillips (as Katherine Dunham), Peter Cramer (as Bob Fosse), Jessica Danser (as Martha Graham), and Pedro Jimenez (as Michael Jackson). Jack Waters hosts ($15, includes post-show closing party). BAAD! is located at 841 Barretto St., btwn. Garrison & Lafayette Aves., Hunts Point (#6 train to Hunts Point Ave). For information and tickets, visit BronxAcademyofArtsandDance.org or call 718-842-5223. ✯

✯

FILM All Films Minnelli “The Complete Vincente Minnelli” is the first full New York retrospective of the Hollywood master in more than two decades. This 35-film series pays homage to one of the all-time great Hollywood directors, with a career that included successful forays into the musical (“Meet Me in St. Louis,” “An American in Paris,” and “Gigi”), subversive and deeply personal melodramas and sensitive biopics (The Bad and the Beautiful,” “The Cobweb,” “Home From the Hill”), and airy comedies (“Father of the Bride”). BAM Rose Cinemas, 30 Lafayette Ave. at Ashland Pl. Through Nov. 2. Admission is $12; $9 for students & seniors. Information at bam.org. ✯

✯

FRI.OCT.28

THEATER In Matthew’s Memory

In 2000, Moisés Kaufman and his Tectonic Theater Project premiered “The Laramie Project,” a docudrama stage performance exploring the attitudes of the residents of Laramie, Wyoming, toward the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard. The 4th Universalist Society of New York presents a production of “The Laramie Project” to benefit the Matthew Shepard Foundation and Interweave, a Unitarian organization that combats the homophobia and transphobia faced by its members. 160 Central Park W., btwn. 75th & 76th Sts. Oct. 28-30, 8 p.m. The show moves to Democracy Prep Charter School, 207 W. 133rd St., btwn. Seventh Ave. & Frederick Douglass Blvd. Nov. 4-5 & 12, 8 p.m.; Nov. 6 & 13, 2 p.m. Tickets are $15 at 4thu.org/laramie/. An extended run is planned for November. ✯

✯

SUN.OCT.30

POETRY Women’s Fireworks

Poets who appeared in the Bowery Books anthology “Bowery Women” will read their work in a fifth anniversary celebration. Bob Holman hosts Alana Free, Amy Ouzoonian, Cynthia Kraman, Diane O’Debra, Fay Chiang, Janet Hamill, Janice Erlbaum, Jennifer Blowdryer, Kathryn Fazio, Lee Ann Brown, Lynne Procope, Marjorie Tesser, Melissa Goodrum, Nancy Mercado, Patricia Spears Jones, Sarah Herrington, Seren Divine, Simone Gorrindo, Tanya O’ Debra, Tara Betts, Tsaurah Litzky, and Vicki Hudspith. Expect fireworks! Bowery Poetry Club, 308 Bowery, btwn. Bleecker & Houston Sts. Oct. 30, 4-6 p.m. Admission is $8. Details at bowerypoetry.com. ✯

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MON.OCT.31

HALLOWEEN More Vibrant than “Mulholland Drive”

Come dressed up as your favorite Hollywood icon for “Hollyween,” a party featuring a costume contest, a three-hour open bar, a raffle, a silent auction, and plenty of music from DJ Vito Fun. The evening benefits the Ali Forney Center, which provides housing and social services to LGBTQ homeless youth in New York. Eventi Hotel, 851 Sixth Ave. at 30th St. Oct. 31, 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $25 at passporthollyween.eventbrite.com. $75 admission gets you into the private VIP reception. ✯

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Trick or Treat for the New City Nonstop theater, a costume competition, and ballroom dancing will bewitch the East Village in Theater for the New City’s 35th annual Village Halloween Costume Ball, as a grand coming-together for everyday New Yorkers and artists alike. The one-night fiesta takes over all four of TNC’s theater spaces, plus its lobby and the block of E. Tenth St. btwn. First & Second Aves. The Community Theater becomes an atmospheric grande buffet for the event, with a variety of American and international delicacies available at peoples’ prices. Performance artists, songwriters, poets, and variety artists appearing include Penny

SAM DEVRIES

ACTIVISM God & Gays

has a folk/ bluegrass score. Thomas Caruso (“Zombie,” “Mimi Le Duck”) directs a cast including Annette O’Toole, Jeff McCarthy, Jeffrey Kuhn, and Todd Cerveris. CAP21 Black Box Theatre, 18 W. 18th St., fifth fl. Oct. 27-29, 7 p.m. Tickets are $18 at cap21.org.

Gregory Nalbone: November 1

Arcade Evan Laurence, Arthur Abrams, George Bellici, Norman Savitt, Richard West, Ellen Steier, Peter Dizozza, Star 69, Michael Lee (Man of Magic), The Wycherly Sisters, and Gary Height. Big-band orchestras taking over the Johnson Theater include Maquina Mono (The Monkey Machine) and the Hot Lavender Swing Band, an 18-piece gay and lesbian ensemble, — but they will surely compete with aerial acts Constellation Moving Company and Suspended Cirque. The House of Horrors, designed by David Zen Mansley, is a time machine in which travelers are put through a maze and duly horrified. At the Champagne Bar, libations will be served by vampire Richard Weber, who will awaken periodically for the task. A full calendar of free outdoor activities — including bluegrass and jazz bands and fire eaters, jugglers, storyweavers, and stilt dancers — begins at 3 p.m. TNC’s doors at 155 First Ave. at Tenth St., open at 7:30. Admission is $20 — costume or formal wear required. With 1,400-plus revelers expected, reservations at theaterforthenewcity. net or 212-254-1109. ✯

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TUE.NOV.1

CABARET No Lady Here. ¡Ninguna!

The raunchy, demented drag diva of Wigstock fame, Lady Bunny presents her first full-length one woman show in almost a decade. Fast-paced and actionpacked with glitzy costumes and Bunny’s trademark gravity-defying bouffant wig, “That Ain’t No Lady,” is a cabaret designed for a nightclub crowd — no lengthy monologues or sappy show tunes here. For mature audiences who enjoy irreverent humor! La Nueva Escuelita, 301 W. 39th St. Every Tue. through Nov., 8 p.m. Admission is — oddly — $14.98 at tinyurl.com/3jzfrk9. The show is followed by an hour of two-for-one drinks. ✯

Lady Bunny: November 1

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NOV 1, continued on p.35

GENDER, from p.13

ant. We ignored them. Despite the dubious gender and health politics at Zuccotti, Bailey House continues HIV and overdose prevention training, trying to support the medics who are key there. Like others in the HIV/ AIDS community, we are unwilling to stand by and see our young people subjected to unnecessary risk. For me a larger question looms. How can any of us, particularly lesbian activists who survived male-dominated social movements of the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;60s and â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;70s, ignore whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s going on there? How can we allow our young women to be so oppressed, so disempowered, to have their voices silenced and be subjected to neglect regarding their health and safety in an encampment that is a symbol for a movement heralded as a beacon of social change? How can we allow our concerns to be silenced by the same old divisive arguments from men â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and some other women â&#x20AC;&#x201D; who donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t want us â&#x20AC;&#x153;dividingâ&#x20AC;? or â&#x20AC;&#x153;criticizingâ&#x20AC;? OWS at such a critical time? How can we allow our concerns about the silencing of womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s voices in Zuccotti Park be answered with rationalizations such as â&#x20AC;&#x153;Well, Amy Goodman spoke at our rallyâ&#x20AC;?? How can we â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the feminists of the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;60s and â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;70s, many of us who found our power after we shed the fear of criticism and attempts to discredit us, we who excel, who run things, who raise daughters, sons, grandchildren, nieces, and nephews to respect themselves and each other, who fight for the homeless, for the disabled, for the incarcerated, for those living with HIV/ AIDS,

COGSWELL, from p. 13

want to be poor. To save themselves, theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve identified targets for their anger. Muslims or people of color or queers are convenient enemies on the one side, and the one percent â&#x20AC;&#x201D; or the ten percent â&#x20AC;&#x201D; on the other. Both hate big government. The two sides also both love to be victims. Of terrorists. Or immigrants. Or corporations. Which is why the Tea Party called itself the Tea Party, so they can pretend they are poor oppressed colonists launching a movement for independence against the duly elected Obama, though they still seem to adore the appointed President Bush. And why did the OWS folks tried to colonize the democracy movements of the â&#x20AC;&#x153;Arab Spring,â&#x20AC;? declaring, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re just like Egypt, just like Tunisiaâ&#x20AC;?? It was marketing. These are clear ways to establish tyrants and victims, gain instant legitimacy. And catchy names, as well. If Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve moved past anything, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sim-

26 OCT â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 8 NOV 2011 for syringe exchange, for global healthcare, for social justice and community empowerment â&#x20AC;&#x201D; allow this to happen? How can we afford not to challenge OWS â&#x20AC;&#x201D; now on the ascendancy as a blueprint for successful, progressive change â&#x20AC;&#x201D; on its internal gender oppression, on its failure to give women power in all aspects of its operations? On its failure to keep young people safe? Where are all of our youth advocates? Perhaps if we could confront the leaders, we could fight this and create change for everyone in Zuccotti Park, for the young women and men in every â&#x20AC;&#x153;Occupyâ&#x20AC;? that will happen anywhere in the US in the future. But, wait, there are no leaders of â&#x20AC;&#x153;leaderlessâ&#x20AC;? OWS. That seems to be a part of its power for some. I question that invisibility of leadership. Nonaccountability, which is often part of â&#x20AC;&#x153; leaderlessâ&#x20AC;? systems, often results in shoddy politics. We learned that in the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;60s and â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;70s. We shouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t forget it now. History has proven that women rarely fare well in occupations. Unfortunately, OWS is proving no exception. If the â&#x20AC;&#x153;non-leadersâ&#x20AC;? of OWS, especially the young among them, want the rest of us to have faith, to engage in their movement, they have to do a lot better. And they have to do it soon. If not, they are not the ones we have been waiting for. Gina Quattrochi is the chief executive officer of Bailey House, which since 1983 has been responding to homelessness among those living with AIDS. The views expressed here are Quattrochiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s and not a statement of the groupâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s policy.

plicity â&#x20AC;&#x201D; seeing politics as a high school basketball game with two sides struggling over the same ball. I wonder if thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a way out as long as we mask our real problems, our real natures with all these self-serving narratives. As long as we refuse to admit things are complicated and that all of our hands are dirty, even if some are dirtier than others. I include myself there, too. My TracFone is an embarrassment. If I suddenly came into some money, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d be awfully tempted to buy every Apple product on the market no matter how many employees commit suicide from the horrible conditions. But Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d have to shut up then. Couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t hector anybody. Not the racist right or the oblivious left. Maybe I shouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t anyway. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have the answers to anything. From the Iraq War to the War on Terror to the incredible inequality of the US economy. All I have is the intuition that the solution is complicated, painful, and involves all Americans. That unpopular percentage â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 100.

gaycity news.com 0<:2 .@ F<B .?2 <? .@ F<BÂ¸?2 ;<A :<; <0A</2? @A ?.3392 Â? /.? A./@ Â? 3?22 @5<A@ 0<@AB:2 =?6G2@ Â? A?2.A@ ;< A?608@

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ARTS CENTER

PERFORMING

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Family Series 2011/12

ArtsPower National Touring Company

Laura Ingalls Wilder: Growing Up on the Prairie

Saturday, November 5 t 1:30PM t $25

For over 50 years, Laura Ingalls Wilderâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s classic books have inspired young people to discover their own pioneering spirit and a love for Americaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s heartland. Little House on the Prairie was inspired by Laura Ingalls Wilderâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s classic books as well. Ages 7 and Up

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26 OCT – 8 NOV 2011

“Elaine sent over a note about the order of our numbers to all of us, which said Judy and I should do all our numbers before Elaine even walked out onstage. Margaret had the big 11 o’clock number, ‘Bewitched,’ which Elaine moved up four songs and it became all about Elaine. Judy and I said, ‘Ohmigod, all the theater queens will be so sick of us. They’ve all come to see Elaine and we will be on our seventh song. Don’t make us do it.’ We ended up having a very good order and it was a great show, but my God, you don’t want to follow her. Just be her warm-up act and then run!”

IN THE NOH, from p.28

music may not be sexy in a Kander and Ebb kind of way, I think it’s sexy in its accessibility, and he himself is very sexy, one of the most wickedly naughty, hilarious people with an incredible campy sense of humor, nothing of which I can repeat here.” We need to have Graae back on Broadway desperately. On that score, he explained, “I came out to Los Angeles to do ‘Forbidden Hollywood’ and just stayed. I didn’t mean to move, but I got evicted from my New York apartment, and it became harder to get back. It’s not easy. On Broadway, you’re a little out of sight, out of mind. If you’re not there to do an audition or workshop the next day, they’ll find someone who is. But I would love to come back. “I did ‘Ragtime,’ and kids that are in the business now say, ‘So you played the Houdini track?’ They call it that now, and it’s like a factory assembly line. ‘No, it’s not the track, it’s the role of Houdini!’ ‘Oh, we call them tracks now!,’ and this and that and ay yi yi!” Graae lives in what he refers to as the “labia of Hollywood — right across the street from Lake Hollywood, have a house, a partner, a dog, and an 88-year-old mother who is now in assisted living down the way. It’s very suburban. I lived in New York for 15 years on the Upper West Side and was the complete neurotic musical theater actor talking about nothing but the business and auditions. The fact that I’m out here for 13 years is just astonishing. “My partner is Glenn Fretwell, a landscape designer. We’ve been together two weeks, really great, he seems like a keeper and moved right in. We met at the gym where I saw him on the pec deck and thought this is it! No, really, we’ve been together for 12 years. All my New York relationships were so dramatic, and this has been so easy. I guess it comes with age or I’ve mellowed out here. I’m sure I was the more dramatic one in New York. “We are domestic partners, and I was so happy when you guys passed it in New York, although I wanted it to be in LA first. I saw all those pictures of people celebrating and thought, ‘Ohmigod, in the ‘80s there was such sadness and huge depression and to see everybody out there in the bars — I was actually sobbing. I was working this summer with these young chorus boys, and we were doing a toast of what we’re all grateful for at this dinner party. I said, ‘I’m grateful for all my friends who are living who were given a death sentence in ‘80s and are now surviving,’ and everybody stared at me. It was so foreign to them and they stared at me like I was nuts, and I thought, ‘Ohmigod, people really don’t have a concept of what went on.’ “I spent most of the ‘80s in the closet. It took me so long to come out, so I was a late bloomer when I moved to New York in the ’80s and was experimenting, but hadn’t really found my way in. I’ll never forget, I read in New York magazine about the first AIDS cases and

NO LOOK PASS, from p.29

Later, her dad gives a speech to the team about how he and his wife came to the US from Burma in 1980 with nothing, expressing pride that his daughter is graduating from Harvard as he wipes his eyes with his forearm. Not long after graduation, Rollins and Tay are picked up by a professional team in Germany. With Cambridge and California thousands of miles away, Tay begins a new journey of self-discovery, free from the role of the out-of-place

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Jason Graae’s Jerry Herman tribute at the Laurie Beechman Theater can thankfully be caught on CD; but when will he return to Broadway?

this man looking down on a red dot on his forearm, and that was the beginning. I saw a red dot on my forehead and thought, ‘Oh that’s it, I have it,’ and went on Ninth Avenue and collapsed on the street. So dramatic, but everybody was panicked back then.” A highlight of Graae’s New York years was the Rodgers and Hart show he did at Rainbow and Stars with Elaine Stritch: “She was a pisser to work with but a nightmare during rehearsals. Margaret Whiting was so easygoing and sweet, and Elaine was such a perfectionist and exacting. She fired the first director we had, and she was a bit of a bully during rehearsals and everybody held their own. I remember Judy Kuhn and I were singing ‘There’s a Small Hotel,’ and Elaine walked right in front of us in the rehearsal room wearing her bra and pantyhose and she was going to shoot up for her diabetes, an insane moment. “Once we opened and got these incredible reviews, she became one of the top three most generous performers I’ve ever worked with, so giving onstage about passing it over to you when it was your moment. Everybody from Sondheim to Hal Prince and Comden and Green came opening night.

Asian girl who kicks ass on the court. But Germany provides unexpected foreign drama of its own. Her teammates resent the paid imported Americans, a hostility that elicits a bit of sabotage. Tay doesn’t care for her new coach, either, who in a moment of frustration at losing their first game declares, “I don’t know what to do.” This becomes a turning point for Tay, who realizes, “I think I know more about the game than my coach.” She begins to become the verbal leader her Crimson coach knew she could be.

liked “Paul Goodman Changed My Life” a lot more than our film critic Gary Kramer, and think this incisive, passionate account of a kaleidoscopic genius should be screened for all those Wall Street Occupiers, who, as of this printing, seem to have less direction than admirable determination. A pity Goodman isn’t alive to tell them a thing or three about what to do — and think. I especially liked filmmaker Jonathan Lee’s balanced approach to Goodman, self-involved warts and all exposed as well as his visionary brilliance. This film was rejected by every festival, Lee told me at his opening night party at his mother’s Nancy Margolis Gallery in Chelsea on October 19, before being accepted by Film Forum and thereby happily bypassing any cinematic auditions. “Paul Goodman” stands in contrast to HBO’s “Vito,” directed by Jeffrey Schwarz, which practically sanctifies Vito Russo, activist and author of the seminal book “The Celluloid Closet.” Undoubtedly a brave voice in our community whose achievements are unquestioned, Russo could often be a handful. Full disclosure: when he was researching his book, I helped him find photos while working for Movie Star News’ Paula Klaw, whom some may remember as the woman who tied up Bettie Page for bondage sessions photographed by her brother Irving. I even prevailed on Klaw to give Russo a price break for his images and was rewarded with an acknowledgment in the book. Funny thing was that my name was missing from the second edition, but the same photos were all there. I remember when he was alive the very mention of Russo’s name would often cause rolled eyes and far worse, as he was known to be particularly abrasive if one’s views differed from his even fractionally. During the Film Festival showing of “Vito,” when someone onscreen extolled him as “everyone’s gay hero,” film scholar Elliott Stein loudly declared, “Not mine!” Stein said when he was working at MoMA, certain films Russo screened for his research would be returned missing whole gay-related segments. Just sayin’. Contact David Noh at Inthenoh@aol.com and check out his new blog at http://nohway.wordpress.com.

Even more empowering, Tay falls in love with Angela, a woman in the US military, one who had some misgivings about appearing in the film during a time when Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was still in place. “I finally found someone I can say ‘I love you’ to,” declares Tay. Unfortunately, Rollins doesn’t fare as well. During their second game, she again garners a fifth foul; this time, it’s a technical one, and she’s sent home packing. In the last third of the film, Tay cries at the thought of coming out to her parents.

While she learns to appreciate the sacrifices they made for her over the years, she speaks with an authority we haven’t seen before. “No one chooses to be gay,” she states. “I would love to be their perfect daughter, but I’m not going to ruin the rest of my life ... because when I’m 80 or 90, I would regret my entire life.” Through much of the film, Tay withholds anything specific about the significance of her Burmese tattoo. Only when she is able to say “You must be loyal to yourself first” do we learn that the design is a symbol of loyalty.

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26 OCT – 8 NOV 2011

14 DAYS 14 NIGHTS

holds it annual awards dinner, honoring State Senator Toby Ann Stavisky, one of the 33 votes that made same-sex marriage a reality on June 24; Gary Maffei, executive director of Quality Services for the Autism Community; Joseph T. Tanzi, the Marriage Equality New York representative in Senate District 10, where Democrat Shirley Huntley was converted from a no to a yes vote between 2009 and 2011; and Kevin Finnegan, political director at 1199 SEIU, one of the leading labor organizations in the successful Albany push for marriage. Joseph Abbracciamento Restaurant, 62-96 Woodhaven Boulevard, Rego Park. Nov. 3, 6:30-10:30 p.m. Tickets are $65, payable to LGDCQ, Box 857, Jackson Heights, 11372. For more information, email mallon.michael.j@gmail.com or call 347-223-0217.

NOV 1, from p.32

Nalbone at the Mic Vocalist Gregory Nalbone is back up on the cabaret stage with a glamorous evening of song, backed by musical director David Schaefer on piano, Saadi Zain on bass, and Russ DiBona on drums. Metropolitan Room, 34 West 22nd St. Nov. 1, 7 p.m. The cover charge is $25, with a two-drink minimum. Reservations at metropolitanroom.com or 212-206-0440. ✯

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COMMUNITY Camille Paglia Heads to Bollywood

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The Rubin Museum of Art and OUTmedia present “Out in the Himalayas,” a series exploring issues faced by LGBT people in the South Asian region and the diaspora. On Nov. 2, 7 p.m., author and cultural critic Camille Paglia discusses sexual identities in Bollywood film with Indian film specialist Priyadarshini Shanker. ($15) On Nov. 9, 7 p.m., “Unbounded Sensuality: The Letters of Amrita Sher-Gil” is a performance of the bisexual Indian artist’s letters by Rita Wolf (“My Beautiful Laundrette,” “Homebody Kabul”), with commentary by Dr. Judith Brown of Indiana University. ($15) On Nov. 19, 3 p.m., Professor Ruth Vanita, author of “Queering India: Same-Sex Love and Eroticism in India,” openly gay Indian-American comedian Vidur Kapur, and filmmaker Ishita Srivastava, director of “Desigirls!” hold a panel discussion on gender, sexuality, national identity, and their intersections. ($12) 150 W. 17th St. For more information, visit rmanyc.org or call 212-620-5000, ext. 344. ✯

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THEATER You Be the Laugh Track “The Men’s Room,” a live sitcom presented as a season-long series, tells the story of gay theater critic Martin and his burgeoning friendship with straight ad man Ted. With comedic insight from their married friends Valerie and Eddie and freelance men’s room attendant Benny, Martin and Ted navigate the waters of contemporary men. Catherine Zambri directs a cast that includes creator Jason Cicci, Seth Andrew Bridges, Darcie Siciliano, Tom Werther, and Ryan Duncan. The pilot episode, “Stalling”, “re-airs” on Nov. 3, 7 p.m. Episode 2, Take Me Out to the Sex Museum” follows on Nov. 16, 7 p.m., with Episode 3, “Merry Men,” on Dec. 7, 7 p.m. The Duplex, 61 Christopher St. at Seventh Ave. S. Admission is $5, plus a two-drink minimum. For reservations, visit theduplex. com.

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THU.NOV.3

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SAT.NOV.5

POLITICS Queens Dems Honor Victory’s Boosters

DANCE In Honor of Denise Jefferson

The Lesbian and Gay Democratic Club of Queens

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DAN ROMER

SUN.NOV.6

Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art: November 10

Solondz on Testing Limits.” As a writer and director, Solondz (“Welcome to the Dollhouse,” “Happiness,” “Storytelling,” “Palindromes,” “Life During Wartime,” and “Dark Horse”) is known for unflinching storytelling and graphic depictions of behaviors that somehow reveal the humanity beneath. Bradshaw “Mary,” “The Bereaved,” “Southern Promises,” “Job,” “Prophet,” and “Strom Thurmond Is Not A Racist”), whose plays are similarly daring explorations, discusses with Solondz his strategies for delving into the things no one wants to talk about. The New Group @ Theatre Row, 410 W. 42nd St. Nov. 6, 4 p.m. Reservations required at seats@thenewgroup.org. Suggested donation is $20. ✯

“The Annual Denise Jefferson Celebration” is a performance dedicated to the legacy of the Ailey School’s director for 26 years. Featured guest artists include LaChanze, Margo Jefferson, William Forsythe, Carmen De Lavallade, Ronald K. Brown, Karine Plaintadit, Nacho Duato, Aubrey Lynch, Francesca Harper, Dwight Rhoden, Daniel Gwirtzman, Elisa Monte Dance, and the Francesca Harper Project. The Ailey Citigroup Theater, 405 W. 55th St. Nov. 5-6, 8 p.m. Tickets are $50; $30 for students, dancers with valid ID, and children at smarttix.com or 212-868-4444. ✯

Isle of Klezbos: November 8

CULTURE Who Wants to Talk About That?

The Dark Nights at the New Group series hosts “Talking Taboos: Thomas Bradshaw Interviews Todd

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TUE.NOV.8

PERFORMANCE Klezmer — And a Soprano, Too

The Isle of Klezbos, a soulful, fun-loving powerhouse all-gal klezmer sextet, returns to the Sixth Street Community Synagogue — able, for the first time, to take advantage of the congregation’s new policy of allowing singing by female vocalist. Soprano Melissa Fogarty joins her bandmates for dynamic Yiddish and Yinglish lyrics, as well as her soaring scat improvisation solos. 325 E. Sixth St., btwn. First & Second Aves. Nov. 8, 8 p.m. Tickets are $15 — include one drink — at tinyurl.com/3wj3ql7. A full evening pass, which includes a Yiddish class, a klezmer workshop, and a post-show jam — running from 6-10 p.m. — costs $35. ✯

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WED.NOV.9

DANCE Lubovitch at the Baryshnikov

The Lar Lubovitch Dance Company returns to the Baryshnikov Arts Center with a two-week season, with two programs, that features a world premiere set to a commissioned score by composer Yevgeniy Sharlat and performed live by the ensemble Le Train Bleu, under the direction of conductor Ransom Wilson. The season also features three acclaimed company works — “The Legend of Ten,” “Men’s Stories,” and “Dvorák Serenade.” The Baryshnikov Howard Gilman Performance Space, 450 W. 37th St. Nov. 9-13, 15-20, 7:30 p.m.; Nov. 13 & 20, 3 p.m. Tickets are $15-$45 at smarttix.com or 212-868-4444. For information on Nov. 9 Opening Night Gala tickets, at $250, visit lubovitch. org or call 212-221-7909. Visit the company website, as well, for information on programs A and B. ✯

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THU.NOV.10

GALLERY In Celebration of Erotic Art

The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art hosts a benefit evening of art, entertainment, and celebration featuring an auction of drawings, paintings, and photographs by some of the finest and best known artists in the erotic genre. 26 Wooster St., btwn. Grand & Canal Sts. Nov. 10, 6-9 p.m. Donation is $25. Preview days are Nov. 8-10, noon to 6 p.m., and auction images can also be viewed at leslielohman.org. ✯

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26 OCT – 8 NOV 2011

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