OCT. 30, 2014 GAY CITY NEWS by Schneps Media

Ebola, AIDS & the Flu 10

Puerto Rico Setback 14 & 19

“Klinghoffer” Rises Above Protests 30

FREE | VOLUME THIRTEEN, ISSUE TWENTY-TWO | OCTOBER 30 - NOVEMBER 12, 2014

October 30 - November 12, 2014 | www.gaycitynews.nyc

POLITICS

Andrew Cuomo’s second term

Sean Patrick Maloney’s centrist bet

16-18

THEATER

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26-29 FILM

PERSPECTIVE

14 DAYS

HEALTH

Cuomo AIDS task force & gay black men

It’s only a Nathan Lane & a Stockard Channing

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The look & feel of love

Fifteen years of queer laughs

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HEALTH

GMAD, Upstate Mocha Center Don’t Make Cuomo AIDS Task Force Among 63 members, organizational history specifically serving black gay men missing BY DUNCAN OSBORNE

GAY CITY NEWS

hile concerns over continuing n e w H I V infections a m o n g black gay men have been widely discussed since 2007, the task force that will write the plan t o e n d A I D S i n N e w Yo r k i s proceeding with no input from any organization with a history of specifically serving black gay men. “I think the needs of our community require more than one voice,” said Vaughn Taylor-Akutagawa, executive director of Gay Men of African Descent (GMAD), a Brooklyn AIDS group that was founded to serve gay black men. GMAD is not on the task force. Taylor -Akutagawa said that when he asked the AIDS Institute, the state health department unit that assembled the task force, about the lack of representation of black gay men, he was told it was an “oversight.” The task for ce, which was announced on October 14, has an unwieldy 63 members with an emphasis on large institutions, such as non-profits, hospitals, and clinics. It has many members from New York City, which is not surprising given that the majority of

New York’s 3,400 annual HIV diagnoses are in the city. There are individuals with no organizational affiliation on the task force, including Peter Staley, a long time AIDS activist, and Marjorie Hill, the former head of Gay Men’s Health Crisis. Nathan Schaefer, executive director of the Empire State Pride Agenda (ESPA), a gay political group, is a task force member. Zachary Jones, a senior bishop in the Unity Fellowship Church and a former GMAD board member, is on the task force. Jones is a member of the Black LGBT Alliance of New York, a new group that has a board of directors, but no staff and no annual budget. The alliance met with the AIDS Institute in August and lobbied to join the task force. “We are encouraged by the governor’s task force, however, until we see proof that black LGBT men and women become full partners in this venture and not simply treated as clients and consumers of services provided by others, we’re not convinced that the committee is serious or capable of achieving the stated goal of reducing new HIV infections in the state,” said Gary English, an alliance member, in a statement. The task force will develop a

Vaughn Taylor-Akutagawa , executive director of Gay Men of African Descent, a Brooklynbased AIDS group.

plan to reduce new HIV infections in the state to 730 annually by 2020 using a mix of drug regimens, including pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and treating HIV-positive people so they are not infectious, and improving housing, nutrition, and other services for people affected by AIDS. It will complete its work by the end of January so its recommendations can be incorporated in the next state budget. New York’s fiscal year begins on April 1. The Mocha Center, a health group that was founded to serve communities of color, has offices in Buffalo and Rochester and is funded by the state health department. The Mocha Center is not a task

force member. “I think it would be apparent that in New York there are only two organizations that were founded to serve black gay men,” said Bruce E. Smail, executive director of the Mocha Center. “It’s not as if the AIDS Institute is unaware of the Mocha Center. We’re funded by them.” The state health department did not respond to an email seeking comment. Noting that he had no role in selecting the members, Charles King, chief executive officer at Housing Works, an AIDS group, who co-chairs the task force, said it would hold a series of town hall meetings around the state to get input from many New Yorkers about the plan. He has been holding unofficial sessions. “I wouldn’t advise that the task force be about identity politics,” King told Gay City News. “We have the right set of minds to construct the right solutions.” In a recent complaint filed with the AIDS Institute by a former GMAD employee, Taylor -Akutagawa was accused of sexual harassment. The group also has continuing financial problems. Taylor-Akutagawa said he had no reason to believe that these played a part in GMAD being excluded from the task force.

FAMILIES

When Gay Men Want to Be Biological Dads

November 2 conference, expo offer guidance, resources in tackling surrogacy BY PAUL SCHINDLER

ew York finished a more than respectable sixth place in ter ms of states giving gay and lesbian couples the right to marry, but for gay men who wish to be the biological father to their child, the primary route to doing so — relying on a surrogate mother to carry their child to birth — remains closed to them here at home. In fact, across the 50 states, New

York and New Jersey are among the five most legally restrictive for gay men — or anyone else — taking advantage of the advances in reproductive technology that surrogacy offers. For the past 15 years, though, Men Having Babies, a New Yorkbased nonprofit group, has worked with gay men here and elsewhere to assist them as they navigate the journey to fatherhood through surrogacy, largely out of state. During that time, demand for surrogacy services has grown dramatically

among gay men, but the number of providers of such services that work with the LGBT community has exploded. The result is that costs have come down significantly and access to information and resources has improved. Men Having Babies is a big part of that changed landscape. On November 2, the group holds its 10th annual conference and expo, bringing together experts on surrogacy and LGBT families as well as roughly three-dozen service providers, including surrogacy and

fertility clinics and attorneys who specialize in family law. According to Anthony Brown, Men Having Babies’ board chair, the November 2 conference, which will be held at JCC Manhattan, is the largest event in an ongoing schedule of monthly meetings and workshops the group offers in New York for prospective “intended parents” — a legal term of art for the two parents who, in the best case, will be listed on a child’s birth certificate under the terms of a surrogacy contract and the applicable state law. Under existing New York law, surrogacy contracts are legally unenforceable and, except for

FATHERS, continued on p.8

October 30 - November 12, 2014 | www.gaycitynews.nyc

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POLITICS

For Sean Maloney, Centrist Posture, Distance from Obama, May Pay Off

As anger over 2013 shutdown votes cools, gay Dem focuses rematch on beating back “radical Tea Party” ideas

NANHAYWORTH.COM

SEANMALONEY.COM

On their campaign website splash pages, both Democratic Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney and Nan Hayworth, a former Republican representative, cast themselves against the background of the Hudson River and the Tappan Zee Bridge.

BY PAUL SCHINDLER

emocrat Sean Patrick Maloney was elected New York State’s first openly gay member of Congress two years ago after challenging a Republican incumbent in one of the few competitive US House districts in the nation. With President Barack Obama expected to handily carry New York State in 2012, Maloney nevertheless ran as a “Clinton Democrat.” With Obama not on the ballot this year — and suffering some of the lowest poll numbers of his six years as president — Maloney, not surprisingly, is once again running as a “Clinton Democrat.” Maloney, who is 48, in fact spent three years working as a White House staffer during the Clinton administration and, of course, for a Democrat running in New York there’s not much better a name to invoke. In his tenure in the House, where he represents Orange and Rockland Counties northwest of the city as well as portions of Westchester and Dutchess Counties due north, he has not shrunk from highlighting the differences he’s had with the current Democratic president. At times, especially on some votes against the Affordable Health Care Act, or Obamacare, during last fall’s budget showdown and government shutdown, Maloney’s opposition to the president has sparked anger among groups that backed his 2012 victory, especially labor unions. But in a rerun against his opponent from that year, Republican Nan Hayworth, who has tried to walk away from her 2010 embrace of Tea Party groups but has otherwise not much varied her campaign playbook, Maloney’s cen-

trist course — in which he emphasizes working across the aisle as an antidote to gridlock — may be serving him well politically. He faces a candidate who, in debates, inveighs again and again against the Democrats’ “agenda of burdens” — a shorthand formulation for her broad-based philosophical objection to government being an active player in the economy. And Hayworth has largely ceded issues of critical interest to women voters to him. Maloney may be positioned to withstand what could be a bad day for his party on November 4. That’s not a certainty, though. A September poll out of Siena College gave the Democrat an eight-point lead. Successive polls released by the Hayworth campaign and conducted on its behalf by Public Opinion Strategies put the race at four points in mid-October and tied roughly a week later. Crediting a candidate’s internals is risky, but the Cook Political Report, in assessing what it terms 64 “competitive” House races — out of 435 in total — changed its rating this week in the Maloney-Hayworth rematch from “lean Democratic” to “toss up.” To be sure, New York’s 18th Congressional District is one of an increasingly rare breed in the US — a true swing district. Maloney won two years ago with 51.7 percent of the vote, just ahead of Obama’s 51.4 percent showing there. Hayworth served only one term before her defeat by Maloney. In the 2010 Tea Party sweep election — in a district later redrawn based on that year’s Census — she ousted a two-term Democrat who had ridden the 2006 Democratic wave to end decades of GOP dominance there. Maloney and Hayworth have met in a series of debates this year, including several newspaper editorial board face-offs streamed online, and the

encounters are difficult to distinguish from those in 2012. The Democrat talks about working across the aisle, serving a district where voters are “sick and tired of partisan fighting and gridlock in Washington.” Maloney touts endorsements from two local GOP state senators — Greg Ball, who is retiring, and Bill Larkin, to whom he returned the favor — and frequently mentions how he’s worked on bipartisan initiatives with Republican Congressman Chris Gibson, who represents the neighboring 19th District. (Gibson is running well ahead in the polls against the other gay Democratic Sean running for the House from New York — investor and activist Sean Eldridge, whose husband is Facebook co-founder and New Republic owner Chris Hughes.) Maloney also makes frequent mention of Hayworth’s “radical Tea Party” ideas. For her part, Hayworth has apparently decided former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is more toxic in the district than Obama; she repeatedly reminds voters that Maloney’s first vote in Congress was to return the California Democrat to the speakership and typically castigates the opposition party for its “Pelosi-Obama agenda of burdens.” The Hudson Valley, she charges, is buried in “an avalanche of mandates” coming down from the federal government. Maloney’s proposal to close the controversial Indian Point nuclear power plant will not only drive up electricity costs, Hayworth says, it will also “create more pollution.” The Republican voices a not uncommon mistrust of government solutions and burdens and taps into the current sour mood about Obama, but at many turns Maloney outflanks her with his own dissatisfactions with the administration, managing to snatch back a good deal of the turf she is trying to stake out. While she warns that Indian Point is essential to keeping down energy costs, Maloney charged, in a WAMC radio interview, that she was “asleep at the switch” as the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved a public utilities rate structure in the Hudson Valley with “reckless” rates. He took on the administration, he explains, and got the commission’s attention with the assistance of Republican Gibson. Both Hayworth and Maloney are bluntly critical of what they say is the administration’s failure to articulate a clear policy toward the rise of ISIS, terrorists laying claim to speak for an Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, but Maloney rules out any deployment of US ground forces, something the more hawkish Hayworth says might be necessary — assuming, of course, the president satisfies her on his overall policy

MALONEY, continued on p.7

October 30 - November 12, 2014 | www.gaycitynews.nyc

MALONEY, from p.6

aims. And both candidates, faulting the administration’s response to Ebola, call for an end of flights from the West African nations hardest hit, though Maloney has not joined in Hayworth’s call for the resignation of Dr. Thomas Frieden, who heads the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nothing, however, animates Hayworth — who is an ophthalmologist whose husband is CEO of a Westchester County medical group — more than Obamacare. “This law is a disaster and the individual mandate is a disaster,” she said in an October 21 debate before the Orange County Times Herald-Record editorial board. At the same time, she is careful to endorse many of the benefits most attractive about the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Women

care on a similar scale. While arguing that Hayworth offers no alternative to the ACA, he also distances himself from Obamacare’s most controver sial aspects. He doesn’t support the Medicare cut, Maloney says, and voted against the individual mandate and a medical device tax. In fact, the Democrat argues, he “voted against the president 44 percent of the time” on Obamacar e. If Hayworth fails to offer any kind of plan to achieve the outcomes she claims she favors, Maloney does not explain how to maintain the ACA without those elements he says he opposes. Maloney’s willingness to break ranks on Obamacare created a storm among progressive allies last fall when House Republicans forced a government shutdown over its demand that the budget incorporate a delay in the ACA’s implementation. In a decisive

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Come Make a Difference shouldn’t pay more for insurance then men, she says, and those 26 or younger should be able to stay on their parents’ health insur ance plan. Coverage should not be denied due to a pre-existing condition. “She would love it if all those things were out there, but she just doesn’t want do anything about it,” Maloney fired back. Hayworth has no recommendations for changing the law, he charges, she simply wants to scrap it — and that would lead to “gridlock.” When she argues that the ACA cut $716 billion from Medicare, Maloney responds that the Paul R yan budget she supported while in the House would have hit Medi-

September 30 vote, after twice siding with his fellow Democrats, he joined eight others who defected to support the GOP in a vote that essentially left the government without the money to keep it open. He then joined Republicans in a string of votes that would have incrementally and selectively reopened government agencies — proposals opposed by the Democratic leadership, which eventually succeeded in forcing Speaker John Boehner to blink. Maloney now campaigns on being one of the top three percent in terms of bipartisanship in Congress, but he took heat at the time of the budget debacle.

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MALONEY, continued on p.21

FATHERS, from p.4

specific minor expenses, a woman who carries her own biological child to term or serves as gestational carrier for another woman’s fertilized egg cannot be compensated for giving up parental rights to the child at birth. Brown, who is a family law attorney, said there are such instances of “altruistic” surrogacy, but it is a risky path for intended parents since their legal rights are not secured until after birth. Out gay Manhattan Senator Brad Hoylman and Westchester County Assemblymember Amy Paulin, both Democrats, have proposed legislation to open up surrogacy rights to New Yorkers but the measure has not yet advanced in Albany. New Jersey does not have the outright ban New York is burdened by, but its case law poses similar barriers to intended parents. Hoylman and his husband, David Sigal, have a daughter born through surrogacy, and Brown and his husband, Gary Spino, are fathers to Nicholas, born in 2009

with the help of a gestational surrogate. Brown and Spino, whose sperm was used, worked with an egg donor from Florida and a gestational surrogate who lived in North Carolina — a process that had to be structured to comply with the laws of several states. Brown explained that such gestational surrogacy has become more common than “traditional” surrogacy — in which a woman carries her own biological offspring to term — because most instances of a surrogate rethinking and regretting her decision to surrender parental rights involve those who are the biological mother. He emphasized, however, that he and Spino have worked to keep both women involved in Nicholas’ birth a part of the youngster’s life. According to Brown, the world has changed considerably even since he and Spino became fathers in 2009 — a story that was captured in a Soledad O’Brien special on CNN and in Gay City News’ LGBT Pride issue cover story. He estimated that the total costs incurred — for surrogacy services, hospital expenses, legal fees, and

compensation to the surrogate and the donor, not to mention travel — came to $160,000, though without one extraordinary expense typically not incurred the cost would have been $140,000. With the proliferation of providers serving the market of gay intended parents, he said, that has come down to an average of about $110,000, and Brown has seen some full-service providers offering costs as low as $85,000. That’s still a big hurdle for many prospective parents, and Men Having Babies works to ease the burden on at least some of them. Brown said the group last year distributed about $600,000 in cash and donated services to nine qualified couples or single par ents and made provider discounts worth about $1 million available to another 30. Paying for surrogacy is just one of the topics to be tackled at the November 2 event. Nathan Schaefer, executive director of the Empire State Pride Agenda, and Gabriel Blau, who heads up the Family Equality Council, will address efforts to reform surroga-

cy law in New York and elsewhere. In an ethics panel, Professor Susan Golombok from the Centre for Family Research at Britain’s University of Cambridge will discuss her research findings on the impact of surrogacy on both children and the surrogates themselves. One of the chief concerns lawmakers often raise when considering reform of family law in this area is guaranteeing that the rights and informed consent of surrogates and egg donors are adequately addressed. The JCC event will also include a Surrogacy 101 introductory panel, private consultations, and workshops exploring health, legal, and emotional aspects of surrogacy with the participation of fertility service providers, attorneys, and parents and children who have built their families through surrogacy. The Men Having Babies conference takes place on Sunday, November 2, from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., at JCC Manhattan, 334 Amsterdam Avenue at 76th Street. Admission is $10 at menhavingbabies. org/surrogacy-seminars/ny-2014, or $15 at the door.

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HEALTH

AIDS Activists Criticize Ebola Quarantine Orders

Outside Bellevue, protesters say Cuomo, Christie regs have no public health basis BY DUNCAN OSBORNE

GAY CITY NEWS

eading AIDS activists are protesting Governor Andrew Cuomo for ordering quarantine for people returning to the US from West Africa after having close contact with someone who has Ebola there. “There is no science to support the idea that a person should be quarantined before they are symptomatic,” said Charles King, the chief executive officer at Housing Works, an AIDS group, at an October 27 press conference outside Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan. Dr. Craig Spencer, the city’s one Ebola case, is in isolation at Bellevue. On October 24, Cuomo joined New Jersey Governor Chris Christie to announce that anyone who was entering the US through a New York or New Jersey air port coming from any of the West African nations currently enduring an Ebola outbreak and who had had close contact with Ebola patients would be subject to a 21-day quarantine. The order was quickly imple-

Housing Works’ Charles King and longtime AIDS activist Peter Staley outside Bellevue Hospital on October 27.

mented with the detention of Kaci Hickox, a nurse who treated Ebola patients in Sierra Leone and was returning to the US through New Jersey. Hickox was detained at a Newark hospital on October 24. The order was just as quickly undone as the outcry against the quarantine grew over the weekend. After testing, it was determined that Hickox was not infected with the virus and she was released from quarantine on October 27. Cuomo announced that any quarantined person could spend the 21 days in their home.

People with Ebola are only infectious when they have symptoms, such as fever, and close contact is required to transmit the virus. Ebola is most commonly transmitted in hospitals and clinics among people who have frequent contact with the bodily fluids of Ebola patients. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) does not recommend quarantine for people who have worked with Ebola patients. The AIDS activists, including Peter Staley, Jennifer Flynn, executive director of VOCAL-NY, Guillermo Chacon, president of the Latino

Commission on AIDS, and Kelsey Louie, chief executive officer at Gay Men’s Health Crisis, took advantage of the large media presence outside Bellevue and held an hour-long press conference there denouncing the quarantine. Staley noted that Ebola was first identified in 1976 and that there have been 24 outbreaks of the virus since then. “Nothing about this outbreak has disproven the knowledge that we have from those outbreaks,” Staley said. The activists also circulated a letter that garnered more than 100 signatories in less than 72 hours and included some leading AIDS activists and experts on public health from around the nation. They had a meeting with senior Cuomo administration staff just prior to the press conference. Notably, a number of the signatories are also members of a Cuomo-appointed task force that will develop a plan to end AIDS in New York by 2020. King, who co-chairs the task force, did not think that the disagreement over quarantine would affect the work of the task force. “We anticipate that we will continue to work closely on the task force,” he said. “We don’t mean to make this adversarial, but we want the very best public health practices.”

PERSPECTIVE: Epidemic Proportion

Ebola and AIDS BY ED SIKOV

ourtesy of Peter Staley, writing in The Huffington Post, chronicling the mirthfilled reaction of the Reagan administration to AIDS:

Q: Larry, does the President have any reaction to the announcement — the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, that AIDS is now an epidemic and have over 600 cases? MR. SPEAKES: What’s AIDS? Q: Over a third of them have died. It’s known as “gay plague.” [Laughter.] No, it is. I mean it’s a pretty serious thing that one in every three people that get this have died. And I wondered if the president is aware of it? MR. SPEAKES: I don’t have it. Do you? [Laughter.]

Q: No, I don’t. MR. SPEAKES: You didn’t answer my question. Q: Well, I just wondered, does the president — MR. SPEAKES: How do you know? [Laughter.] Q: In other words, the White House looks on this as a great joke? MR. SPEAKES: No, I don’t know anything about it, Lester. Q: Does the president, does anybody in the White House know about this epidemic, Larry? MR. SPEAKES: I don’t think so. As Staley points out, the first question about AIDS to be posed to President Ronald Reagan’s press secretary, Larry Speakes, came in the middle of October 1982 — 17 months after the first reported cases. And as we can see from

the transcript, it was all a big joke, not only to Reagan’s staff but to the assembled journalists as well. May they all rot in hell. Cut to the fall of 2014. Ebola is ravaging West Africa, killing thousands of people and poised to kill 10,000 a month by December. The American media responds in full panic mode. It’s widely characterized as a “crisis” even here, though the death of one person in the US as of October 29 scarcely constitutes a crisis. As the weeks progress, the press pays scanter and scanter attention to the horrific conditions and metastasizing mortality rate in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea, preferring to set up encampments 24/ 7 outside those few hospitals in the US that are treating the handful of Ebola patients, clearly in the hope that someone else will die a horrible death so they can ratchet up the panic level another few notches and improve their ratings and boost their advertising revenue. To their credit, most media outlets have made a point to note at least somewhere in their coverage that Ebola is very hard to trans-

EPIDEMIC PROPORTION, continued on p.11

October 30 - November 12, 2014 | www.gaycitynews.nyc

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EPIDEMIC PROPORTION, from p.10

mit and that people with the Ebola virus are not infectious until they are symptomatic. But the mule-like public persists in braying about how confusing it all is, in no small measure because of the breathless tone of television, radio, and print news outlets. A second-grade girl on Long Island has a cousin who flew in from West Africa, and half the school is kept home by idiot parents — this despite the fact that the girl herself is kept home as well. The willfully ignorant can be partly forgiven though, since the facts of Ebola transmission in news accounts always appear well after the hysterical opening paragraphs. Still, the wretched fact is that at least people give a governor’s ass about Ebola. The same could not be said of AIDS. For the first two years of the epidemic, when hundreds of gay men were dying and the rest of us were turning

inside-out with terror, the so-called “gay plague” made no impression whatsoever on then-Mayor Ed Koch, then-Governors Hugh Carey and Mario Cuomo, and the clown king himself, Ronald Reagan. The New York Times spent next to no time on the subject at all; on those rare occasions when something appeared in its pages, it invariably appeared on a Tuesday — in Science Times alongside articles about the mating habits of moles and whatever Jane Brody was suffering from that week. The only source of information about AIDS on the East Coast was the New York Native, the gay paper that printed the first article ever about the disease. Its author was Dr. Lawrence Mass, who continues to be a sentinel on the issue of gay men’s health. My Media Circus column will continue to follow the Ebola story in the months ahead. Having lived through the AIDS epidemic, we have a moral obligation to do so.

| October 30 - November 12, 2014

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MARRIAGE

Marriage Equality Setback in Puerto Rico Federal judge says 42-year-old Supreme Court precedent prevents ruling on merits BY ARTHUR S. LEONARD

DONNA ACETO

federal district judge has rejected a marriage equality lawsuit Lambda Legal brought on behalf of same-sex couples in Puerto Rico. In an October 21 ruling, Judge Juan M. Pérez-Giménez ruled he was bound by a 2012 precedent from the First Circuit Court of Appeals — under whose jurisdiction federal courts in Puerto Rico fall — which found that a 1972 Supreme Court decision, rejecting a marriage equality suit in Minnesota because of the lack of a “substantial federal question,” was still binding law. Ironically, the First Circuit came to that conclusion in a ruling that struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act. Since the Supreme Court decided that issue in June of last year, nearly all the federal judges who have taken up the question concluded that high court ruling supersedes the 1972 precedent. Pérez-Giménez, in contrast, found that last year’s ruling in Edie Windsor’s challenge to DOMA had no effect on the binding precedent from 1972. Given the grounds for his ruling, it was not necessary for Pérez-Giménez to decide the plaintiffs’ constitutional claims, but his opinion makes clear he believes Puerto Rico appropriately has authority over its marriage laws. Lambda Legal promptly announced it would appeal this “aberrant” ruling to the First Circuit. Throughout the recent blizzard of marriage equality litigation, states defending gay marriage bans usually cited the 1972 Supreme Court precedent as grounds for dismissing those cases. In state after state, however, federal courts have cited Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissents on DOMA and in the 2003 Texas sodomy case, where he asserted the reasoning of the majority would support claims for a right to same-sex marriage under the 14th Amendment. In his DOMA dissent, in fact, Scalia paraphrased a portion of the majority opinion to show how a lower court could write such a decision by channeling its reasoning. All four circuit courts of appeals that recently delivered marriage equality victories — in Virginia, Indiana, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Utah, Idaho, and Nevada — ruled that the 1972 Minnesota case was no longer a controlling precedent. The Supreme Court has denied review in those cases, and while those are not findings on the merits, the high court declining to step in has widely been interpreted as tacit agreement with the lower courts’ dismissal of the 1972 precedent. If a majority of the justices believed otherwise, they could instead have summarily

City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito quickly denounced the ruling against marriage equality in Puerto Rico.

Marriage law, Pérez-Giménez asserted, is the responsibility of the legislature and the voters, not the courts.

reversed all of those marriage victories. Having established the 42-year-old precedent as the basis for his ruling, Pérez-Giménez proceeded to offer his thoughts on the underlying merits he already announced he would not be deciding. “Recent affirmances of same-gender mar riage seem to suffer from a peculiar inability to recall the principles embodied in existing marriage law,” he wrote. Quoting from Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s dissent in the DOMA case, Pérez-Giménez asserted that traditional marriage is “exclusively an opposite-sex institution… inextricably linked to procreation and biological kinship.” He went on to write, “Traditional marriage is the fundamental unit

of the political order. And ultimately the very survival of the political order depends upon the procreative potential embodied in traditional marriage.” The judge’s ruling took no account of the children being raised by same-sex couples, whose rights to equal treatment proved central to the Seventh and Ninth Circuit’s recent pro-marriage equality decisions. Pérez-Giménez’s commentary on recent pro-marriage equality decisions took on a caustic tone when he wrote, “In their ingenuity and imagination they have constructed a seemingly comprehensive legal structure for this new form of marriage. And yet what is lacking and unaccounted for remains: are laws barring polygamy, or, say the marriage of fathers and daughters, now of doubtful validity?… It would seem so, if we follow the plaintiffs’ logic, that the fundamental right to marriage is based on ‘the constitutional liberty to select the partner of one’s choice.’” Marriage law, Pérez-Giménez asserted, is the responsibility of the legislature and the voters, not the courts. Lambda Legal’s appeal will present the First Circuit with an unanticipated opportunity to weigh in on the same-sex marriage debate, since all of the states under its jurisdiction — Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island — already allow same-sex couples to marry. Should the First Circuit reaffirm its view from two years ago that the 1972 Minnesota precedent is still binding and uphold PérezGiménez’s ruling (an ironic result, indeed, coming from a court based in Boston), that would create the split among the circuit courts of appeals that would likely prompt the Supreme Court to take on the underlying merits of the marriage equality question — unless, of course, appellate rulings on cases already in the works in the Fifth, Sixth, and 11th Circuits provide an adverse decision first. Perez-Jimenez was appointed to the district court by President Jimmy Carter in 1979. A ruling on marriage in Puerto Rico is of particular interest in New York City, home to so many people born in the island commonwealth. In a statement released shortly after the ruling was announced, Melissa Mark-Viverito, the City Council’s first Puerto Rican speaker, said, “Today’s court decision upholding the ban on marriage equality in Puerto Rico is tremendously disappointing, mean spirited, and an injustice for everyone who believes all people must be treated equally. As a Puerto Rican, I know we are sensible, humane, inclusive, and respectful people. We love our LGBT brothers and sisters and we stand with them in the struggle for equality and justice.”

October 30 - November 12, 2014 | www.gaycitynews.nyc

MARRIAGE

ACLU Unflusterred by Marriage Religious Objections Senior legal staffers point to defeat of legislative efforts in many states BY DUNCAN OSBORNE

enior members of the American Civil Liberties Union say that while efforts in a few states to enact laws exempting businesses and government employees from participating in the marriages of gay and lesbian couples have received media attention, they have largely been unsuccessful. “I think the way this is going to continue is a few small conflicts here and there,” said James Esseks, director of the ACLU Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender & AIDS Project, during an October 23 briefing with reporters. Currently, 32 states let lesbian and gay couples marry and that number is expected to grow quickly. The conservative response to this success has been to press for state laws that would let private businesses and government employees refuse to serve these couples or perform such nuptials if they have religious objections to same-sex marriage. In recent legislative sessions, state legislators introduced bills in 10 states that were touted as ways of generally protecting religious freedom. The bills were defeated in nine of those 10 states, Esseks said. Three other states had laws that specifically targeted gay and lesbian people. None passed. “The intent behind some of those laws was very clearly to discriminate against lesbians and gay men,” Esseks said. This year, owners of wedding chapels, which are private businesses, in Nevada and Idaho announced that they would refuse to marry gay and lesbian couples after federal courts in those states struck down marriage bans there. They cited their religious views as justification. Nevada law bars discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity by businesses. “In Nevada, open for business means open to all,” said Tod Story, executive director of the ACLU of Nevada. “A few wedding chapels have said they will refuse to perform

weddings for same-sex couples.” In Idaho, the owners of Hitching Post in Coeur d’Alene first announced that they would not marry gay and lesbian couples. Originally established as a for-profit business, Hitching Post has apparently changed its legal status to a religious corporation, which would exempt it from the city’s anti-discrimination law. Leo Morales, the interim executive director at the ACLU of Idaho, said Hitching Post had “restructured themselves to become a religious organization” and that the law provided a “reasonable exception” for such corporations. The ACLU has a long history of defending religious freedom. On October 21, Phil Berger, the Republican leader of the State Senate in North Carolina, issued a press release saying he would try to enact legislation that would let government employees in that state deny marriage services to gay and lesbian couples. The Associated Press reported that on October 26, Berger and 27 other senators asked state court administrators to not punish state employees who refuse to marry gay and lesbian couples. “Regardless of their political ideology, all North Carolinians should be deeply concerned by this proposal,” said Christopher Brook, the legal director at the ACLU of North Carolina. “State officials don’t get to pick and choose which laws they will follow… Government officials serve all the public.” North Carolina may present the most serious challenge to gay and lesbian couples seeking to wed, but so far Berger and his colleagues have done little more than issue press statements. Twenty-one states bar discrimination based on sexual orientation and 18 of those also bar discrimination based on gender identity. Businesses in those states are likely barred from refusing to serve gay and lesbian couples. If the court rulings continue on their current trend, it appears that government employees in all 50 states will soon be barred from refusing to marry gay and lesbian couples.

| October 30 - November 12, 2014

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In Campaign’s Final Stretch,

Cuomo Touches Some LGBT Bases BY PAUL SCHINDLER

WILLIAM CHARLES ALATRISTE

espite the near certainty of his reelection on November 4 — likely with a comfortable enough margin to keep him near the top of the heap nationwide among Democrats not named Clinton — Governor Andrew Cuomo has not had an easy time this year with progressives, who are among the party’s most energized activists. Outmaneuvering Mayor Bill de Blasio on funding for pre-K education, he rejected calls on the left for redistributing the state’s tax burden. Though fracking has been held at bay the past four years, environmentalists are suspicious of the governor’s failure to commit to the outright ban they’d like to see. And Cuomo’s heavy-handed disbanding of his Moreland Commission on public corruption has disappointed advocates for transparency and election reform. And so, in the September 9 primary, a governor nobody seriously thought wouldn’t get a fouryear contract renewal in office was kept to just 62 percent of the vote against a poorly funded and previously little-known law professor, Zephyr Teachout. In one key progressive precinct, however — the LGBT community — Cuomo has a powerful trump card: his leadership role in enacting marriage equality in New York in his first six months in office — when same-sex couples could legally wed in only five other states. Asked at the campaign’s only debate on October 22 to explain his attacks on what he’s called Republican opponent Rob Astorino’s “ultra-conservative philosophy,” the governor mentioned groups of New Yorkers that Westchester’s elected county executive “disrespects,” including women, minorities, immigrants, and gays. “He disrespects gays by being against marriage equality, which is a question of equal rights,” Cuomo said of his GOP rival. “And why

Governor Andrew Cuomo got a hero’s welcome in the 2011 LGBT Pride Parade, two days after signing New York’s marriage equality law.

would we discriminate against gays? And that’s not who New Yorkers are, and I don’t believe there’s political support for a politician who has that position.” Little elaboration is needed to remind voters — and the LGBT community, in particular — how crucial the governor was to the successful 2011 gay marriage drive. The issue took a drubbing in December 2009, losing in the State Senate in a 38-24 vote. Eighteen months later, the Senate approved it with one vote to spare, 33-29. Cuomo seemed to be everywhere in the final push: disciplining key advocates to forge a unified effort, helping bring on board key conservative Republican, but pro-gay, donors in funding a campaign that ran to several million dollars, enforcing party unity — except for the Bronx’s Ruben Diaz, Sr. — among Democratic senators, wooing four Republicans to the pro-equality fold, and executing an end game that forced the GOP majority to allow a floor vote. Indeed, a new book out in November from Marc Solomon, a longtime veteran of the marriage equality movement who is national campaign manager at Freedom to Marry, paints the governor as nothing less than the indispensible man in the June 2011 victory.

The Agenda Beyond Marriage Equality Cuomo’s bona fides on mar riage, however, have not shielded him completely from criticism among LGBT advocates. Reduced state funding for homeless youth sparked anger during his first few budgets, and transgender activists are frustrated that the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA) remains stalled after nearly a dozen years of effort. When the Legislature adjourned in June, Democrats aimed their fire primarily at the coalition of Republicans and five rump members of their party organized as the Independent Democratic Conference (IDC) who run the Senate and did not allow a GENDA vote. Still, Cuomo’s silence on on the issue was also noted. “We would like to see more from the governor on GENDA,” Nathan Schaefer, executive director of the Empire State Pride Agenda (ESPA), told Gay City News during the Senate’s final weeks. “He said it was a priority in 2011, but we haven’t heard from him since. And the Senate leadership will need to hear from the governor on this if it is to move.” Too late for this year’s legislative session but not for the September primary, Cuomo, on August 19, sent ESPA’s board a letter stating,

“Per earlier conversations with my office, I write to reiterate my deep commitment to protect the rights of all New Yorkers, including those in the transgender community.” The letter arrived two days before the group’s endorsement of his reelection. At the Pride Agenda’s Manhattan fall dinner on October 16, the governor repeated that pledge in a video message, where he said, “Now is not the time to be complacent. Now is the time to redouble our efforts.” Noting that the state, earlier this year, updated its policies “to make it easier for transgender New Yorkers to change their birth certificates” (ahead of New York City), Cuomo added, “But we need to do more. We need to pass GENDA.” He also committed to press for a measure prohibiting so-called conversion therapy by state-certified mental health professionals aimed at LGBT minors. That bill, too, won Assembly passage but received no vote in the Senate.

The Battle for an LGBTSupportive State Senate The failure of the five-member IDC Conference — all of whom had voiced support for both GENDA and the conversion therapy ban — to force their GOP coalition

CUOMO, continued on p.17

October 30 - November 12, 2014 | www.gaycitynews.nyc

CUOMO, from p.16

| October 30 - November 12, 2014

MICHAEL SHIREY

partners to allow votes on the two bills strengthened the argument among many advocates that Democratic control of the Senate was needed before either could become law. Through much of his four years as governor, Cuomo seemed comfortable with Republicans running the Senate, but they did pose a major block to one of his key goals — the 10-point Women’s Equality Act. There, the strengthening of abortion access rights later in pregnancy where a woman’s health is at risk sparked intractable GOP opposition. If that were not enough for the governor to conclude he needed to press for Democratic Senate control in the November elections, the Working Families Party threat in the spring to endorse Teachout instead of Cuomo led to a brokered deal in which he committed to work for such a flip. Shortly thereafter, the IDC announced it had reached agreement with the Democratic Conference to return to the party fold come January. Since then, there has been grumbling that Cuomo was not living up to his end of the bar gain. Though he has slowly gotten around to endorsing Democrats in the handful of districts that are truly contested, he has largely left the task of personal appearances with those candidates to his lieutenant governor candidate, Kathy Hochul. As the New York Times noted, at a recent Long Island rally where he endorsed Adrienne Esposito, the Democratic candidate for an open seat, she was not given a speaking role. The weakness of the Democratic slate, however, may be as much a factor as the governor’s lukewarm efforts. Three upstate Democratic incumbents — Terry Gipson, Cecilia Tkaczyk, and Ted O’Brien — are currently trailing their Republican challengers by double-digit margins, according to recent Siena College polls, which also put Esposito behind by 27 points on Long Island. Democrats appear to be pinning hopes on Democrat Justin Wagner’s ability to pick up the seat being vacated by retiring Republican Greg Ball, but, in the third open contest for a seat currently held by a Repub-

lican — George Maziarz, also retiring — Capital New York pointed to a poll by labor groups that has the Democrat, Johnny Destino, down by 17 points. Democratic hopes in the Senate are also complicated by Simcha Felder, a socially conservative Brooklyn Orthodox Jew hostile to LGBT rights who was elected as a Democrat but caucuses with the Republicans separate from the IDC. What he would do if his seat were the deciding vote on who holds the majority next year is unknown. Finally, there is Mark Grisanti, the two-term Buffalo-area Republican who lost his party’s primary in September but is running on the Independence Party line and is very much still in the mix for November 4. Grisanti was one of the four Republicans Cuomo brought on board for the mar riage equality vote in 2011 and the governor clearly feels bound by his commitment then not to support challenges to reelection bids among that quartet. In fact, he said he has not ruled out the possibility of actually endorsing Grisanti. Cuomo is not the only one who retains loyalty to Grisanti for his stepping up on marriage. The Pride Agenda also endorsed him, and in comments to Gay City News said he has committed to support both GENDA and the conversion therapy ban. Though advocates have long been confident that a few Republican votes could be found for GENDA if it made its way to the floor, Grisanti’s position makes him the first GOP senator to go public. Even the Stonewall Democratic Club of Western New York has held back from endorsing its party’s candidate in the race, Marc Panepinto — a progressive activist with strong LGBT ties — given the abiding good will toward Grisanti. According to the club’s president, Bryan Ball, the group has considered the question at several meetings but each time tabled it, in part, he said, based on arguments made by local LGBT activists with looser party affiliations than the core of the group’s membership. At the same time, Stonewall is mindful that Gristanti’s support for GENDA and banning conversion therapy aimed at youth

might not translate into success for the two measures should he be reelected and Republicans maintain control of the Senate. And, Ball said, despite Grisanti’s rejection in the GOP primary, he’s heard no talk that the incumbent would do anything but stay in the Republican Conference if he returns to the Senate next year. Ironically, one of the issues on which Grisanti is least palatable to progressives is his opposition to the abortion protections offered in Cuomo’s Women’s Equality Act, a point driven home by critics including choice advocates and the Working Families Party. The incumbent also opposes a state DREAM Act — which the governor took after Astorino for not supporting in this week’s debate — that would provide tuition assistance to undocumented immigrants.

Reshaping the State High Court, Moving on AIDS As the election approaches, Cuomo has taken several other high profile steps focused on concerns in the LGBT community. On October 17, he announced he would not reappoint Judge Victoria Graffeo to another term on the Court of Appeals, the state’s highest bench, where she would have served another eight years until reaching 70, the mandatory age of retirement. In recent months, the Pride Agenda, the Human Rights Campaign, and the LGBT Bar Association of Greater New York, or LeGaL, all pressed him to look elsewhere to fill that seat on the seven-member court. They fault-

ed Graffeo not only for her vote against marriage equality in 2006 — where her dissent argued that, like gays, heterosexuals are also barred from marrying people of the same sex — but also for her support of a 1991 Court of Appeals precedent that refuses to recognize parental rights for anyone who does not have a biological, adoptive, or marriage tie to a child. Especially in the years before same-sex couples had any legal recognition under New York law, that precedent repeatedly hindered claims made by de facto parents, no matter how long and deep the familial tie they had to both their child and to the child’s biological parent. In a written release, the Pride Agenda’s Schaefer praised Cuomo’s choice, Leslie Stein, an intermediate appellate judge from Albany, for her “favorable record on furthering civil rights, including gender equality.” Earlier the same week, Cuomo also moved on a key AIDS initiative, naming more than 50 New Yorkers to a task force to implement a plan aimed at effectively ending the AIDS epidemic in New York by 2020 through the reduction of annual HIV infections to roughly 750 a year. The governor embraced the goal — which has been a major priority of local advocates for some time — during Gay Pride Month and has now also agreed to their request that community members join with the state and city in helping put the plan into action. The task force includes dozens of well-known civil rights and AIDS activists from the LGBT community, including Schaefer from the Pride Agenda, Housing Works CEO Charles King, Gay Men’s Health Crisis’ current and immediate past leaders, Kelsey Louie and Marjorie Hill, Bailey House’s Regina Quattrochi, Jay Laudato, executive director of the Callen-Lorde Community Health Center, Mark Harrington from the T reatment Action Group, longtime ACT UP members Peter Staley and Jim Eigo, VOCAL-NY’s Jennifer Flynn, Dr. Perry Halkitis, who teaches and heads up prevention studies research at NYU, and Dan Tietz, who works for the city Human Resources Administration.

ENDORSEMENT PUBLISHER JENNIFER GOODSTEIN

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

Andrew Cuomo’s Second Term BY PAUL SCHINDLER

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

editor@gaycitynews.com ASSOCIATE EDITOR Duncan Osborne

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

Christopher Byrne (Theater), Susie Day (Perspective), Brian McCormick (Dance)

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Even LGBT New Yorkers who vociferously resist identity politics and being labeled one-issue voters must contend with the compelling case for Governor Andrew Cuomo’s reelection made by his extraordinary leadership on marriage equality. It might be easy to shrug off that challenge given there is no doubt he will win a second term on November 4. But at election time, it’s appropriate to evaluate Cuomo’s track record to date and to articulate the goals we should hold him to over the next four years. First, on marriage equality. In 2014, with gay marriage in place in 32 states, it might be tempting to downplay Cuomo’s 2011 accomplishment. That is a mistake. Gay marriage took a thrashing in the New York State Senate in December 2009, in a 38-24 adverse vote, with eight Democrats among those saying “no.” To be sure, the community mobilized quickly to respond in the strongest way possible — by defeating three opponents (two in Queens, one in Buffalo; two Democrats and one Republican) by the time the 2010 elections were over. Those results dramatically demonstrated LGBT political clout and sophistication, but threading the needle to get to 32 votes took additional muscle and no small amount of political finesse. Any careful reading of the successful June 24, 2011 Senate vote on marriage casts significant doubt on whether the result would have been possible without Cuomo’s hands-on marshaling of the political assets at hand. Prior to New York, only five states had marriage equality. Though several states got there through legislative enactments, Cuomo was the first governor to lead a fight to win marriage from a Republican-controlled legislative chamber. He personally organized and disciplined the advocates, enforced party unity among Democrats, and alternately courted and put pressure on the Senate’s majority Republicans. He deserves enormous credit for the victory. The governor has other laudable achievements to his credit — the strengthening of gun control laws, taking the initial steps in bringing the state’s minimum wage up toward an

adequate living standard, and rationalizing the chaotic budget approval process that for decades had run well past the April 1 deadline. Cuomo’s administration moved out ahead of New York City in making it less onerous for transgender folks to take care of a vital need — changing the gender designation on their birth certificates. The state also moved more aggressively than Mayor Bill de Blasio’s team in embracing AIDS advocates’ call to establish a plan for making 2020 the target date for ending HIV transmission as an epidemic in New York. In a recent appointment to the state’s highest court, the governor replaced a sitting judge whose votes had been hostile to LGBT rights with a lower court veteran with a promising and progressive record. As the September 9 primary results made clear, however, a good many Democrats are frustrated, even disillusioned with Cuomo — on issues from tax policy to fracking. Nothing has been more damaging to the governor’s credibility than his handling of his Moreland Commission on public corruption. Cuomo arrived in the governor’s office promising to clean up Albany’s lamentable ethics. Pulling the plug on Moreland and saying he was satisfied with what was a very modest set of reforms out of the Legislature, he let political expediency trump governmental transparency. Cuomo may well have the right legal arguments about his disbanding of Moreland, but the ethics and optics had nothing to do with bringing sunshine onto the workings of state government. The Moreland episode points up a potential Achilles heel in the Cuomo style of governance. He keeps tight control of those issues he cares about. And there’s no doubt that controlling the process is important in achieving the right results. That was abundantly clear in the marriage fight. At the end of the day, voters care about results. But they have a right to demand that government also be open and that elected officials — a shocking parade of whom have been indicted and convicted over the years in Albany — are honest. The policy outcomes here in New York are nowhere near good enough to mount a persuasive “ends justify the means” argument, if that were ever acceptable.

Defeating public corruption very much remains on the to-do list. For the LGBT community, the most glaring piece of unfinished business is the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act, stalled now for nearly 12 years. After the Senate’s Republican-Independent Democratic Conference coalition this June once again failed to allow a vote, conventional wisdom among advocates was that a Democratic Senate needed to be elected in November. That now looks like a high hurdle in next Tuesday’s vote. Should Democrats fall short, some will complain Cuomo did not sufficiently lean into that cause, but, with three incumbent Democrats in serious trouble and a Long Island candidate for an open seat bailing out in the face of ethics charges, there’s plenty of blame to go around among party leaders and activists. Whatever the outcome next week, Cuomo needs to demonstrate greater leadership on GENDA. When it’s been important to him, he’s found ways to work with the Senate Republicans — and GENDA should be important to him. His recent reaffirmations of support for the measure and for a bill barring sexual orientation conversion therapy for minors are encouraging on that score, but, as he knows, results matter. The community will also look to the governor as it aims for additional goals — like reform of surrogacy and other gay family laws and greater funding for LGBT homeless youth. Emphasizing that he and Democratic Senate candidates support his commendable push for the Women’s Equality Act, Cuomo has created a new Women’s Equality Party ballot line — though a number of the down-ballot candidates, which it was presumably created to help out, have not delivered sufficient petitions to qualify. The entire effort has been misguided — and just might have been intended to diminish the influence of the Working Families Party, which made the governor sweat for its nomination this year. For more than a decade, however, the Working Families Party has played a positive role in pressing the Democratic Party to embrace progressive issues, including on women’s and LGBT rights. We urge a vote next Tuesday on the Working Families ballot line for Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York’s other two statewide elected officials, both with long and strong LGBT rights records — Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.

October 30 - November 12, 2014 | www.gaycitynews.nyc

PERSPECTIVE: American Justice

A Marriage Loss & the Ongoing Debate Over Puerto Rico’s Political Status BY ÁNGEL LUIS CASIANO

da Conde and Ivonne Álvarez are household names within Puerto Rico’s LGBT community. As a civil rights attorney for many years, it was no surprise when Conde married her partner in Massachusetts, in the wake of same-sex marriage legalization there 10 years ago. The couple, however, live in Puerto Rico, which does not recognize their union as valid. Determined to change that, in March of this year the couple launched a legal challenge against the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico’s samesex marriage ban. Three months later, Lambda Legal came on board and several plaintiffs were added. Their case was a robust challenge to the Commonwealth’s ban and the government’s response was highly anticipated. A few hours before the deadline, the commonwealth moved to dis-

miss the case. The filing was essentially a rehash of the arguments set forth by conservative-leaning state governments throughout the nation. “Marriage is the province of the states”; “judges should not make law”; the usual. One baffling aspect of the commonwealth’s response was its assertion that the plaintiffs, who by now included five same-sex couples, lacked standing to sue because they were not harmed by the ban. Perhaps such assertion was the reason why the commonwealth’s response was deemed to be little more than a token defense. Then came October 6, when the United States Supreme Court announced its refusal to review decisions favoring marriage equality hailing from the Fourth, Seventh, and Tenth Circuits. Things looked even brighter on October 16, when Juan Pérez-Giménez, a federal judge appointed by President Jimmy Carter, rejected the petition to intervene sought by an association of Christian chap-

lains, concluding that the applicants lacked standing, since the commonwealth does not require them to perform any specific marriages. Three days later, the commonwealth’s secretary of justice stated it was “very likely” the plaintiffs would prevail, in light of the “national trend.” Despite said national trend, the judge dismissed the entire case with prejudice. In his October 21 ruling, Pérez-Giménez did not waste the opportunity to equate same-sex relationships to incest and accused dozens of prior federal court decisions — at both the district and appellate levels — of being naive and “imaginative.” The opinion has been condemned across the nation as being insulting and improper (it even goes on to cite Justice Samuel’s Alito’s dissent in last year’s Supreme Court DOMA case as if it were binding precedent). But the involvement of the federal judiciary has also reignited the debate regarding Puerto Rico’s

San Juan attorney Ángel Luis Casiano.

political relationship with the United States. Puerto Rico’s political landscape is not defined by the Republican/ Democrat dichotomy of the 50 states. Af filiations are determined by the type of political relationship with the United States government each party represents. The governing Partido Popular Democrático defends the current status, which dates back to 1952. Although voters ousted the pro-statehood Partido Nuevo Progresista in the November 2012

AMERICAN JUSTICE, continued on p.21

PERSPECTIVE: A Dyke Abroad

Band of Sisters

BY KELLY COGSWELL

ou see them when you live in Paris, these small groups of black teenage girls who hang out near Châtelet or Les Halles, an area of the city with an enormous decrepit shopping center that smells of piss and bleach. They move in packs, jostling and laughing. Picking victims of all races to heckle or scare, turn the tables for once. Everybody is a little afraid of them. God knows I am. They’re the same girls who harassed me in high school. My sister was their white equivalent — getting in girl fights and threatening to beat me up. At the same time, they draw the eye. They’re larger than life, practically glowing with beauty and rage and suppressed violence. I was happy when I found that Céline Sciamma (“Tomboy,” “Waterlilies”) actually made a film about them. I | October 30 - November 12, 2014

saw “Bande de filles” (literally translated as “Girl Gang” and released in English as “Girlhood”) this summer at a festival in Paris and was engaged from the first mysterious scene where we watch two teams playing American-style football with all its brutality and grace. You only realize they’re women when they pull off their helmets. Afterwards, we see the girls walk back home through a gauntlet of darkness and trash and groups of loitering men. They shrink with each step. By the time they peel off one by one to enter their apartment blocks and face their own domestic horrors, they are timid and small. The last is Marieme, a 16-year-old who hooks up with three other girls when it’s clear she’s not going to be able to escape the projects. We’re not sure how much is an act, or playacting. They are teenagers after all, and their moods are mercurial. They take as much childlike pleasure in their friendship as they do in invoking violence, and we also get a few wistful

moments when they retreat to a cheap hotel room with their shoplifting booty to hang out and dance to Rihanna. I saw it in previews with an audience that was maybe 75-percent white. The white people were a little tense. Especially when a white salesgirl got intimidated and harassed by the gang. But every now and then you’d hear these little snickers from the people of color, or sighs of recognition, particularly from black women. Last week I read an article in Slate (French) by Charlotte Pudlowski called, “Being Invisible as a Black Woman in France.” She described how few images of black women there were in politics and culture, and hailed “Girl Gang” as the first major film in France with a serious budget and professional cinematographers to feature a story with all black female leads. “This absence of models is an absence of possible dreams, is an absence of choices and an absence of tools,” Pudlowski wrote. Especially when you’re seen as foreign, as stupid, as eating weird food. Almost every black woman she inter-

DYKE ABROAD, continued on p.21

PERSPECTIVE: Media Circus

Waiting for Guff — In Vain BY ED SIKOV

s the dust settles on the Supreme Court’s unexpected decision not to take up the appeals of lower court rulings on marriage equality — and gay and lesbian couples are suddenly marrying in droves in once unexpected locales across the land — I thought I’d hunt for editorials blasting the decision and other LGBT judicial wins. As ever, I was searching for a concrete basis for my congenital paranoia, a justification to keep on playing the role of the downtrodden and the oppressed. Boy, was I in for a rude surprise! Wading through dozens of disturbingly supportive editorials in heartland newspapers, I found:

Wyoming’s Casper StarTribune: Wyoming “should get out in front of this social change and allow the weddings to happen now.”

New Orleans’ TimesPicayune: “Same-sex couples in Louisiana are not allowed to adopt a child together. And it has been difficult for same-sex couples from other states who adopt children born in Louisiana to get a birth certificate listing them as parents. Couples married in other states are forced in Louisiana to file ‘single’ income tax returns. All of this is patently unfair.”

The Dallas Morning News: “This same Supreme Court recognized equality under the law in striking down the Defense of Marriage Act last year, which makes its passivity all the more perplexing. We can only hope the court seizes its next opportunity to lift same-sex marriage laws out of the gray twilight and presents an undeniable victory for a fundamental ideal.”

North Carolina’s Gaston Gazette: “The court could and should have ended any uncertainty by taking the cases it turned away on Monday and affirming the rulings of the lower courts in favor of gay marriage, which we believe to be a matter of equality in a free

nation and not an issue for such government oversight.”

Colorado’s Loveland Reporter-Herald: “Someday American society may look back on gay marriage bans as well and wonder about the society that denied people’s rights to be married to those they loved. When people who love each other can work together in partnerships to build full lives, surely all of society will benefit.”

Finally, after I’d thoroughly nauseated myself with all this happy talk, I found just what I’d been searching for: an editorial that took an aggressive stance against not only the courts but in opposition to marriage equality itself. I found it in a marginal Baptist publication called the Pathway. Phew! I was beginning to fear that I’d have to turn optimistic. “Outrageous, Arrogant Ruling by Judge,” by Don Hinkle, is a model of impotent wrath. ‘This is judicial malfeasance and a slap in the face to Missouri voters,” Hinkle rails. “To say there is no rational basis for the ban is judicially irresponsible if not irrational. Moreover the Bible — that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman — is not irrational. Nor are we who believe the Bible to be the words of God. If we are irrational, then it will be easier for judges like [State Circuit Court Judge J. Dale] Youngs to label us bigots and deny us our religious liberty whenever we express opposition to same-sex marriage.” I’ll refrain from addressing Hinkle’s concern over society viewing him and his kind as “irrational,” other than to note the old adage that if it looks like duck shit and smells like duck shit it’s very likely to be duck shit. But I must call attention to Hinkle’s dismay over being labeled a bigot. First of all, he was not so labeled. Nor has his religious liberty been denied. At all. He and his kindred coreligionists are still free to believe in a God who must have just slipped up when he created gay men and lesbians in His own image (Bad God! Bad God!). No, Hinkle’s brand of scorched-

earth Baptists are just no longer allowed to make their embittered private belief system the law of the land. It must be heartbreaking to have the power and authority you assumed was your — you should pardon the expression — God-given right ripped from your hands and distributed more or less equally throughout the population. But let me be clear: the LGBT community doesn’t hate you, Mr. Hinkle. We only hate your foul, foul sins.

Seven Brothers for the Seven Sisters? We can now add the New York Times Magazine to the list of major publications that have featured intelligent, supportive articles about trans folks as cover stories. (I’ve written previously about the ways that Time and New York handled the subject.) The Times story — “Men of Wellesley,” by Ruth Padawer — is a sensitive, in-depth look at the complex issues raised by transgender students who transition during their undergraduate years at women’s colleges, Wellesley in particular. How do women’s colleges like Bryn Mawr, Smith, and Wellesley deal with the fact that after hundreds of young women matriculate every year, some of them begin living as men before graduation? Do trans men offer a moral and ethical challenge to these colleges, or do they simply not belong there after transitioning? The students Padawer inter viewed all come off as thoughtful, analytical scholars who have used the superb education they received — or continue to receive — at Wellesley to inform their experience of transitioning. It’s the administrators who seem skittish and uncomfortable. But that’s to be expected. Leaders of women’s colleges must tread a fine line between accepting young women whose identities may change during their four years at college and placating and reassuring alumnae, many of whom remained horrified even by the lesbian populations of their alma maters. Alumnae support is vital to the survival of these women’s colleges; offending major donors is a big no-no. One aspect of Padawer’s coverage of college sex and gender politics struck me as both finely spun and slightly ludicrous. It was also recog-

nizable to me from my own experience, though from some time ago. It’s been years since I taught the — oh, I must say it — wildly popular Sex and Gender on Film course at Haverford, my own alma mater, and I’d forgotten just how fraught the emotional lives of college students can be. Everything is a crisis! One false move by a professor can result in a near riot in the classroom. A single letter to the editor in a college newspaper can send emotionally overwrought students into hysteria. Padawer takes particularly delicate care when discussing whether trans men at Wellesley feel “welcomed” by the school; she also questions whether Wellesley’s women feel “welcomed” as well at a college that promised them a community of women but actually delivers a couple of guys as part of the deal. A student election assumes earth-shattering consequence when the only candidate left standing is a white trans man. Emotions run high. But the tale and the overwrought emotions it generates only prove once again that in college one learns as much outside the classroom as in it — maybe more. I’ll end with a true story that bears only partially on the subject at hand but the payoff is so good I can’t help but tell it. A fellow Haverfordian named Brian was rooming at Bryn Mawr circa 1979 at the peak of the bi-college cooperation. (Haverford had just begun admitting women, while Bryn Mawr was — and remains — all female.) One day Brian donned his bathrobe, entered the nearest bathroom, and began to brush his teeth. A flushing sound was heard, a stall door opened, and out came Katharine Hepburn. Bryn Mawr’s most famous alumna was appalled at the sight of Brian in what she’d assumed was a women-only bathroom in a women-only dorm on a women-only campus and said, “Younnnggg maaannn! Whaat dooo you think you are doo-iiing?” “Brushing my teeth?” Brian answered, at which point the Oscar-winning actress gasped, said “Well I’ve never!” and exited the room in a rage. Something tells me that Ms. Hepburn, be-trousered though she usually was, would not be terribly happy to discover that Bryn Mawr’s student population now includes a number of trans men.

October 30 - November 12, 2014 | www.gaycitynews.nyc

MALONEY, from p.7

“Being a Democrat means something,” Khan Shoieb, a spokesman for the local Working Families Party chapter, told Gay City News, “and it’s the wrong moment to abandon progressives. Voting with the Tea Party to shut down the government has consequences.” Scott Sommer, the New York area regional director of the United Auto Workers, told Gay City News, “We’re disappointed on some of his votes on the government shutdown. Once this crisis is over, we’ll have a chance to sit down with the congressman and voice our concerns, and hopefully he’ll do things differently next time.” A year later, Maloney is once a g a i n r u n n i n g o n t h e Wo r k -

ing Families Party ballot line and enjoys the endorsement of the UAW, among many major unions. Maloney may have wavered in his fidelity to the ACA, but his attacks on Hayworth’s posture pays progressive dividends when he argues she has also advocated turning Medicare into a voucher program and privatizing Social Security. Maloney also enjoys strong support from women’s groups. In contrast, Hayworth scores well with anti-abortion groups, and the Democrat ties her to efforts by “the House Tea Party leadership” to defund Planned Parenthood. Asked repeatedly by the T imes Herald-Record whether she supports the Paycheck Fairness Act, which aims to strengthen existing law barring wage

AMERICAN JUSTICE, from p.19

election, they also voted against maintaining the current political status. On the same ballot, given the choice among statehood, independence, or associated sovereign state, more than 61 percent of voters chose statehood. Although the independence option received just over five percent of the vote in 2012, last week’s decision has given its supporters fresh ammunition to make their case. There is little doubt that Pérez-Gimenez’s decision will be reversed by the Boston-based

DYKE ABROAD, from p.19

First Circuit Court of Appeals, under whose jurisdiction his court falls. There is also little doubt that, were it not for the presence of the federal court in Puerto Rico, the privacy and reproductive rights we take for granted today would not exist. And we should not forget that the federal court has also been instrumental in addressing chronic local maladies such as police brutality, political discrimination, and even price discrimination on staple food items such as milk. The LGBT community’s struggles to achieve equality should not be exploited for political gain, especially by those who can’t

blah boiled down to, “Who does she think she is, a white Parisian lesbian making a film about young black women from the ghetto?” Or “Creating the wrong impression is worse than none.” It is alternately too stereotypical and too sociological. Because of course black filmmakers like Spike Lee never set their work in poor neighborhoods and never try to explain anything. Nope, pure art for them. I don’t understand the Left. Not in France, or here either. We hate the stereotypes of the “good” blacks as much as the “bad” ones, and when we get complicated images, we hate them, too. We especially censor any suggestion that these girls emerge from households where black men may wield an arsenal of weapons from humiliation to their fists to keep their female relatives in line. Erase that, you miss how remarkable it is any time these

| October 30 - November 12, 2014

tion about whether she understood last year’s DOMA ruling — by saying that a state should recognize any other state’s marriages, “just like a driver’s license.” Maloney was ready to pounce. “The congresswoman’s position is both wrong and incoherent,” he said, noting that Hayworth had answered “no” on whether there was a federal constitutional right to marry. Then, cutting Hayworth off as she tried to interject, Maloney said, “On a subject as personal as my marriage, how dare you say that you respect our marriage and wish us well but if we go down to Alabama you’re okay that they discriminate against us? If you are going to represent the State of New York, you have to come to terms with the fact that you are treating my family as less than your own.”

break the single-digits come election time. The arrival of marriage equality in Puerto Rico will constitute the most dramatic change in individual rights since Roe v. Wade. Once the issue is settled on constitutional grounds, there will be no turning back. The district court’s decision is destined to become an inconsequential oddity. It is just a matter of time. Puerto Rico has waited since 1952 to solve our political status; we can certainly wait a few more months for the right to marry. Ángel Luis Casiano is a San Juan attorney.

ESTELLE HANANIA/ PYRAMIDE DISTRIBUTION

viewed for the article looked to the US for images of black intelligence, beauty, possibility. They embraced Toni Morrison, “The Cosby Show,” even Whoopi Goldberg in “Jumping Jack Flash” because this little black computer geek was the hero! And most of their responses to “Girl Gang” were positive, though a few wished it hadn’t been set in the slums. Still, as one person posted, “Even if it’s not really your world, your city, your job, you still recognize yourself as a black woman, and you turn to your friend and you understand that it’s you up there on the screen.” I was disappointed this morning on Facebook to read comments from the usual French leftists casually trashing the film in yet another febrile display of white anxiety and political correctness: “I haven’t seen it but...” The blah blah

differentials between men and women doing the same job, the Republican dodged numerous times — saying, “I support equal pay for equal work” — before acknowledging she opposes the proposed legislation. Nowhere, though, did Hayworth seem more off her game than when marriage equality — an issue she insisted is “personal,” given that she has a gay son — came up during a debate before the Poughkeepsie Journal editorial board. Voicing satisfaction that New York allows same-sex couples to marry and the Supreme Court ruled against the Defense of Marriage Act last year, Hayworth argued, “The federal government should not impose a definition of marriage on the states.” Then, she contradicted herself — and raised a ques-

Céline Sciamma’s “Girlhood” will be distributed in the US by Strand Releasing, likely in early 2015.

young black women try to explore their own power, even if it means standing outside the schools and shaking down other students, entertaining themselves with shoplifting, staking out territory, and getting in fights with other girl gangs to protect their honor, which may not shine too brightly,

but still endures. Strand Releasing has US distribution rights to “Girlhood” and hopes for an early 2015 theatrical release. Kelly Cogswell is the author of “Eating Fire: My Life as a Lesbian Avenger,” published earlier this year by the University of Minnesota Press.

What is STRIBILD? STRIBILD is a prescription medicine used to treat HIV-1 in adults who have never taken HIV-1 medicines before. It combines 4 medicines into 1 pill to be taken once a day with food. STRIBILD is a complete single-tablet regimen and should not be used with other HIV-1 medicines. STRIBILD does not cure HIV-1 infection or AIDS. To control HIV-1 infection and decrease HIV-related illnesses you must keep taking STRIBILD. Ask your healthcare provider if you have questions about how to reduce the risk of passing HIV-1 to others. Always practice safer sex and use condoms to lower the chance of sexual contact with body fluids. Never reuse or share needles or other items that have body fluids on them.

IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION What is the most important information I should know about STRIBILD?

Who should not take STRIBILD? Do not take STRIBILD if you: • Take a medicine that contains: alfuzosin, dihydroergotamine, ergotamine, methylergonovine, cisapride, lovastatin, simvastatin, pimozide, sildenafil when used for lung problems (Revatio®), triazolam, oral midazolam, rifampin or the herb St. John’s wort. • For a list of brand names for these medicines, please see the Brief Summary on the following pages. • Take any other medicines to treat HIV-1 infection, or the medicine adefovir (Hepsera®).

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Serious side effects of STRIBILD may also include:

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• Bone problems, including bone pain or bones getting soft or thin, which may lead to fractures. Your healthcare provider may do tests to check your bones. • Changes in body fat can happen in people taking HIV-1 medicines. • Changes in your immune system. Your immune system may get stronger and begin to fight infections. Tell your healthcare provider if you have any new symptoms after you start taking STRIBILD.

What should I tell my healthcare provider before taking STRIBILD? • All your health problems. Be sure to tell your healthcare provider if you have or had any kidney, bone, or liver problems, including hepatitis virus infection. • All the medicines you take, including prescription and nonprescription medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements. STRIBILD may affect the way other medicines work, and other medicines may affect how STRIBILD works. Keep a list of all your medicines and show it to your healthcare provider and pharmacist. Do not start any new medicines while taking STRIBILD without first talking with your healthcare provider. • If you take hormone-based birth control (pills, patches, rings, shots, etc). • If you take antacids. Take antacids at least 2 hours before or after you take STRIBILD. • If you are pregnant or plan to become pregnant. It is not known if STRIBILD can harm your unborn baby. Tell your healthcare provider if you become pregnant while taking STRIBILD. • If you are breastfeeding (nursing) or plan to breastfeed. Do not breastfeed. HIV-1 can be passed to the baby in breast milk. Also, some medicines in STRIBILD can pass into breast milk, and it is not known if this can harm the baby.

You are encouraged to report negative side effects of prescription drugs to the FDA. Visit www.fda.gov/medwatch, or call 1-800-FDA-1088. Please see Brief Summary of full Prescribing Information with important warnings on the following pages.

The most common side effects of STRIBILD include nausea and diarrhea. Tell your healthcare provider if you have any side effects that bother you or don’t go away.

October 30 - November 12, 2014 | www.gaycitynews.nyc

STRIBILD is a prescription medicine used as a complete single-tablet regimen to treat HIV-1 in adults who have never taken HIV-1 medicines before. STRIBILD does not cure HIV-1 or AIDS.

I started my personal revolution Talk to your healthcare provider about starting treatment. STRIBILD is a complete HIV-1 treatment in 1 pill, once a day. Ask if itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s right for you.

| October 30 - November 12, 2014

Patient Information STRIBILD® (STRY-bild) (elvitegravir 150 mg/cobicistat 150 mg/emtricitabine 200 mg/ tenofovir disoproxil fumarate 300 mg) tablets Brief summary of full Prescribing Information. For more information, please see the full Prescribing Information, including Patient Information. What is STRIBILD?

Who should not take STRIBILD?

• STRIBILD is a prescription medicine used to treat HIV-1 in adults who have never taken HIV-1 medicines before. STRIBILD is a complete regimen and should not be used with other HIV-1 medicines. • STRIBILD does not cure HIV-1 or AIDS. You must stay on continuous HIV-1 therapy to control HIV-1 infection and decrease HIV-related illnesses. • Ask your healthcare provider about how to prevent passing HIV-1 to others. Do not share or reuse needles, injection equipment, or personal items that can have blood or body fluids on them. Do not have sex without protection. Always practice safer sex by using a latex or polyurethane condom to lower the chance of sexual contact with semen, vaginal secretions, or blood.

Do not take STRIBILD if you also take a medicine that contains: • adefovir (Hepsera®) • alfuzosin hydrochloride (Uroxatral®) • cisapride (Propulsid®, Propulsid Quicksolv®) • ergot-containing medicines, including: dihydroergotamine mesylate (D.H.E. 45®, Migranal®), ergotamine tartrate (Cafergot®, Migergot®, Ergostat®, Medihaler Ergotamine®, Wigraine®, Wigrettes®), and methylergonovine maleate (Ergotrate®, Methergine®) • lovastatin (Advicor®, Altoprev®, Mevacor®) • oral midazolam • pimozide (Orap®) • rifampin (Rifadin®, Rifamate®, Rifater®, Rimactane®) • sildenafil (Revatio®), when used for treating lung problems • simvastatin (Simcor®, Vytorin®, Zocor®) • triazolam (Halcion®) • the herb St. John’s wort Do not take STRIBILD if you also take any other HIV-1 medicines, including: • Other medicines that contain tenofovir (Atripla®, Complera®, Viread®, Truvada®) • Other medicines that contain emtricitabine, lamivudine, or ritonavir (Atripla®, Combivir®, Complera®, Emtriva®, Epivir® or Epivir-HBV®, Epzicom®, Kaletra®, Norvir®, Trizivir®, Truvada®) STRIBILD is not for use in people who are less than 18 years old.

What is the most important information I should know about STRIBILD? STRIBILD can cause serious side effects, including: 1. Build-up of lactic acid in your blood (lactic acidosis). Lactic acidosis can happen in some people who take STRIBILD or similar (nucleoside analogs) medicines. Lactic acidosis is a serious medical emergency that can lead to death. Lactic acidosis can be hard to identify early, because the symptoms could seem like symptoms of other health problems. Call your healthcare provider right away if you get any of the following symptoms which could be signs of lactic acidosis: • feel very weak or tired • have unusual (not normal) muscle pain • have trouble breathing • have stomach pain with nausea or vomiting • feel cold, especially in your arms and legs • feel dizzy or lightheaded • have a fast or irregular heartbeat 2. Severe liver problems. Severe liver problems can happen in people who take STRIBILD. In some cases, these liver problems can lead to death. Your liver may become large (hepatomegaly) and you may develop fat in your liver (steatosis). Call your healthcare provider right away if you get any of the following symptoms of liver problems: • your skin or the white part of your eyes turns yellow (jaundice) • dark “tea-colored” urine • light-colored bowel movements (stools) • loss of appetite for several days or longer • nausea • stomach pain You may be more likely to get lactic acidosis or severe liver problems if you are female, very overweight (obese), or have been taking STRIBILD for a long time. 3. Worsening of Hepatitis B infection. If you have hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection and take STRIBILD, your HBV may get worse (flare-up) if you stop taking STRIBILD. A “flare-up” is when your HBV infection suddenly returns in a worse way than before. • Do not run out of STRIBILD. Refill your prescription or talk to your healthcare provider before your STRIBILD is all gone

• Do not stop taking STRIBILD without first talking to your healthcare provider • If you stop taking STRIBILD, your healthcare provider will need to check your health often and do blood tests regularly for several months to check your HBV infection. Tell your healthcare provider about any new or unusual symptoms you may have after you stop taking STRIBILD

What are the possible side effects of STRIBILD? STRIBILD may cause the following serious side effects: • See “What is the most important information I should know about STRIBILD?” • New or worse kidney problems, including kidney failure. Your healthcare provider should do blood and urine tests to check your kidneys before you start and while you are taking STRIBILD. Your healthcare provider may tell you to stop taking STRIBILD if you develop new or worse kidney problems. • Bone problems can happen in some people who take STRIBILD. Bone problems include bone pain, softening or thinning (which may lead to fractures). Your healthcare provider may need to do tests to check your bones. • Changes in body fat can happen in people who take HIV-1 medicine. These changes may include increased amount of fat in the upper back and neck (“buffalo hump”), breast, and around the middle of your body (trunk). Loss of fat from the legs, arms and face may also happen. The exact cause and long-term health effects of these conditions are not known. • Changes in your immune system (Immune Reconstitution Syndrome) can happen when you start taking HIV-1 medicines. Your immune system may get stronger and begin to fight infections that have been hidden in your body for a long time. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you start having any new symptoms after starting your HIV-1 medicine.

October 30 - November 12, 2014 | www.gaycitynews.nyc

The most common side effects of STRIBILD include: • Nausea • Diarrhea Tell your healthcare provider if you have any side effect that bothers you or that does not go away. • These are not all the possible side effects of STRIBILD. For more information, ask your healthcare provider. • Call your healthcare provider for medical advice about side effects. You may report side effects to FDA at 1-800-FDA-1088. What should I tell my healthcare provider before taking STRIBILD? Tell your healthcare provider about all your medical conditions, including: • If you have or had any kidney, bone, or liver problems, including hepatitis B infection • If you are pregnant or plan to become pregnant. It is not known if STRIBILD can harm your unborn baby. Tell your healthcare provider if you become pregnant while taking STRIBILD. - There is a pregnancy registry for women who take antiviral medicines during pregnancy. The purpose of this registry is to collect information about the health of you and your baby. Talk with your healthcare provider about how you can take part in this registry. • If you are breastfeeding (nursing) or plan to breastfeed. Do not breastfeed if you take STRIBILD. - You should not breastfeed if you have HIV-1 because of the risk of passing HIV-1 to your baby. - Two of the medicines in STRIBILD can pass to your baby in your breast milk. It is not known if the other medicines in STRIBILD can pass into your breast milk. - Talk with your healthcare provider about the best way to feed your baby. Tell your healthcare provider about all the medicines you take, including prescription and nonprescription medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements: • STRIBILD may affect the way other medicines work, and other medicines may affect how STRIBILD works. • Be sure to tell your healthcare provider if you take any of the following medicines: - Hormone-based birth control (pills, patches, rings, shots, etc) - Antacid medicines that contain aluminum, magnesium hydroxide, or calcium carbonate. Take antacids at least 2 hours before or after you take STRIBILD - Medicines to treat depression, organ transplant rejection, or high blood pressure - amiodarone (Cordarone®, Pacerone®) - atorvastatin (Lipitor®, Caduet®) - bepridil hydrochloride (Vascor®, Bepadin®) - bosentan (Tracleer®) - buspirone - carbamazepine (Carbatrol®, Epitol®, Equetro®, Tegretol®) - clarithromycin (Biaxin®, Prevpac®) - clonazepam (Klonopin®) - clorazepate (Gen-xene®, Tranxene®) - colchicine (Colcrys®) - medicines that contain dexamethasone - diazepam (Valium®)

| October 30 - November 12, 2014

- digoxin (Lanoxin®) - disopyramide (Norpace®) - estazolam - ethosuximide (Zarontin®) - flecainide (Tambocor®) - flurazepam - fluticasone (Flovent®, Flonase®, Flovent® Diskus®, Flovent® HFA, Veramyst®) - itraconazole (Sporanox®) - ketoconazole (Nizoral®) - lidocaine (Xylocaine®) - mexiletine - oxcarbazepine (Trileptal®) - perphenazine - phenobarbital (Luminal®) - phenytoin (Dilantin®, Phenytek®) - propafenone (Rythmol®) - quinidine (Neudexta®) - rifabutin (Mycobutin®) - rifapentine (Priftin®) - risperidone (Risperdal®, Risperdal Consta®) - salmeterol (Serevent®) or salmeterol when taken in combination with fluticasone (Advair Diskus®, Advair HFA®) - sildenafil (Viagra®), tadalafil (Cialis®) or vardenafil (Levitra®, Staxyn®), for the treatment of erectile dysfunction (ED). If you get dizzy or faint (low blood pressure), have vision changes or have an erection that last longer than 4 hours, call your healthcare provider or get medical help right away. - tadalafil (Adcirca®), for the treatment of pulmonary arterial hypertension - telithromycin (Ketek®) - thioridazine - voriconazole (Vfend®) - warfarin (Coumadin®, Jantoven®) - zolpidem (Ambien®, Edlular®, Intermezzo®, Zolpimist®) Know the medicines you take. Keep a list of all your medicines and show it to your healthcare provider and pharmacist when you get a new medicine. Do not start any new medicines while you are taking STRIBILD without first talking with your healthcare provider. Keep STRIBILD and all medicines out of reach of children. This Brief Summary summarizes the most important information about STRIBILD. If you would like more information, talk with your healthcare provider. You can also ask your healthcare provider or pharmacist for information about STRIBILD that is written for health professionals, or call 1-800-445-3235 or go to www.STRIBILD.com. Issued: October 2013

COMPLERA, EMTRIVA, GILEAD, the GILEAD Logo, GSI, HEPSERA, STRIBILD, the STRIBILD Logo, TRUVADA, and VIREAD are trademarks of Gilead Sciences, Inc., or its related companies. ATRIPLA is a trademark of Bristol-Myers Squibb & Gilead Sciences, LLC. All other marks referenced herein are the property of their respective owners. © 2014 Gilead Sciences, Inc. All rights reserved. STBC0108 10/14

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COMMUNITY

Best of Gay City Final Round Voting Begins Thousands have joined in already, but it’s not too late BY PAUL SCHINDLER

our votes are in! In voting that took place between October 2 and 26, Gay City News readers cast thousands of votes in 25 categories to rate the best businesses, community services, entertainers and shows, food and drink, and places to live and visit. Now the real fun begins. Firstround voting has narrowed the choices — in some cases, to two clear front-runners; more often to three alternatives that were the most popular; and in a few categories that were particularly competitive, to four finalists. Between now and 6 p.m. on November 7, you can vote again

— this time to pick winners in each category of the Best of Gay City Annual Readers’ Choice contest. Voting — at gaycitynews.nyc/ bestofgaycity — runs from October 30 through November 7 at 6 p.m. We will announce the winners in our November 13 print edition. First-time voters will win a three-day free pass to Crunch Gym. And every time you vote, your name gets entered into the raffle for gifts including an iPad, an iPad Mini, a David Barton Gym membership, and travel on Hornblower Cruises. If you participated in the preliminary round of voting, thanks for being part of our contest. And if you have sat this out so far, there’s still time to register your opinions about the best the Gay City has to offer.

FINALISTS Best Gym or Personal Trainer Crunch: With 11 locations in Manhattan,

four gyms in Brooklyn, two in the Bronx, and one on Staten Island, Crunch has one of the city’s biggest fitness franchises. Visit crunch.com.

DavidBartonGym: With two locations in the Village and one on the Upper East Side, DavidBarton will soon once again have a location in Chelsea. Visit davidbartongym.com. Planet Fitness: This fitness chain is all over the city with a total of 33 locations: nine each in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx, and three each in Queens and Staten Island. Visit planetfitness.com.

Best Salon or Spa West Side Club: The longtime Man-

Best Gay Bar Barracuda: This Chelsea institution,

open from 4 p.m.-4 a.m. daily, has won many Best of contests. 275 W. 22nd St. Visit Barracuda Lounge on Facebook.

Boots & Saddle: Long a mainstay on Christopher St., Boots & Saddle now bills itself as the NYC House of Drag. 76 Christopher St. Visit bootsandsaddlehouseo. wix.com/bootsnsaddlenyc. The Duplex: Since 1950, the Duplex

has offered nightly cabaret entertainment. 61 Christopher St. Visit theduplex.com.

The Eagle: A premiere leather/ levi bar since 1970, what was then called the Eagle’s Nest migrated from West St. in 2001 to 554 W. 22nd St. Visit eaglenyc.com.

Best Lesbian Bar

hattan establishment bills itself as a premier locale for gay and bi men to grab a sauna and relax with like-minded gents. 27 W. 20th St. Visit westsideclubnyc.com.

Cubbyhole: Calling itself New York’s

Manworks: A network of masseurs,

Henrietta Hudson: For more than

Manworks offers a directory of 137 working in New York City. Visit manworks.com.

neighborhood fusion bar, Cubbyhole has been lesbian, gay, and straight-friendly since 1994. 281 W. 12th St. Visit cubbyholebar.com.

two decades, Henrietta Hudson — Bar & Grill has served the lesbian community, with happy hour daily from 4-7 p.m. 438 Hudson St. henriettahudson.com.

GayCityNews.NYC/BestOfGayCity 26

October 30 - November 12, 2014 | www.gaycitynews.nyc

Best Happy Hour

Best Cheap Eats

Boots & Saddle: Long a mainstay on

Dizzy’s Park Slope: From its origins

Christopher St., Boots & Saddle now bills itself as the NYC House of Drag. 76 Christopher St. Visit bootsandsaddlehouseo. wix.com/bootsnsaddlenyc.

at 511 Ninth St., above the Seventh Ave. F station, Dizzy’s later added a location at 230 Fifth Ave. in the Slope. Visit dizzys. com.

Boxers: Open until 2 a.m. nightly and 4

Meatball Shop: With five locations in

a.m. Thursdays to Saturdays, Boxers sports bars are located at 37 W. 20th St and 742 Ninth Ave. Visit boxersnyc.com.

The Duplex: Since 1950, the Duplex

has offered nightly cabaret entertainment. 61 Christopher St. Visit theduplex.com.

Manhattan and a sixth in Williamsburg, the Meatball Shop proved its customer loyalty in the recent Ebola scare. Visit themeatballshop.com.

Pommes Frites: The promise of authentic Belgian fries has made this East Village eatery a sometime-challenging place to nab a table. 123 Second Ave. Visit pommesfritesnyc.com.

Best Cocktail Bourbon on the rocks Cosmopolitan

Best Coffee Café Grumpy: Launched in Greenpoint

in 2005, Café Grumpy now has locations as well in Park Slope, Chelsea, the Lower East Side, the Fashion District, and Grand Central. Visit cafegrumpy.com.

Gorilla: With two locations in Brooklyn — 472 Bergen St. near the Barclays Center and its original shop at 97 Fifth Ave. in Park Slope — Gorilla also has a lively web ordering business. Visit gorillacoffee.com. Irving Farm: With five locations from the Lower East Side to the Upper West Side, Irving also offers online shopping. Visit irvingfarm.com.

Best Date Night Restaurant Bareburger: Promising diners an

all-organic meal, Bareburger, which traces its roots to a small bar in Brooklyn, now has eight Manhattan locations, four in Queens, and two in Brooklyn. Visit bareburger.com.

Boat Basin: This casual, mostly outdoor

restaurant on the Hudson River, has two al fresco dining areas plus a covered rotunda graced by limestone arches. W. 79th St. at the Hudson. Visit boatbasincafe.com.

Best Sweet Shop Big Gay Ice Cream: With shops in

Philly and LA, Big Gay Ice Cream, which started its life with a big gay ice cream truck, has two Village locations: 125 E. Seventh St. and 61 Grove St. Visit biggayicecream.com.

Billy’s: With locations in Chelsea, Tribe-

ca, and near the Plaza Hotel, Billy’s bakery is the baby of two business school buds who make all their food on site. Visit billysbakerynyc.com.

Li-Lac Chocolates: This West Village mainstay (at 40 Eighth Ave.) advertises itself as “stubbornly old fashioned since 1923” — and it hand delivers in much of Manhattan — but it now has a Grand Central outlet and a brand new factory in Brooklyn. Visit li-lacchocolates.com.

Best Pet Care Store The Salty Paw: Located at 38 Peck

Slip at the South Street Seaport, the Salty Paw is the first pet boutique and grooming spa serving the booming residential scene in the Financial District. Visit thesaltypaw. com.

The Spot Experience: With four

locations on the Upper West Side, Hell’s Kitchen, Chelsea, and Tribeca, the Spot Experience offers daycare, grooming, training, overnights, and walking services. Visit thespotexperience.com.

One If By Land Two If By Sea: This dark, cozy brick-walled restaurant with a famed fireplace, has long been a West Village favorite. 17 Barrow St. Visit oneifbyland.com.

Best Delivery

Best App Grindr Scruff New York Times

grubhub.com seamless.com

GayCityNews.NYC/BestOfGayCity | October 30 - November 12, 2014

Best Museum or Gallery Brooklyn Museum: The McKim,

Best Home Design Store

Mead and White Beaux-Arts Brooklyn Museum, the city’s second biggest, has the largest holdings of Egyptian antiquities outside Cairo but faced the wrath of Mayor Rudy Giuliani for a controversial 1999 art exhibition. 200 East Parkway near Grand Army Plaza. brooklynmuseum.org.

Bed, Bath and Beyond: This eclectic emporium, which was a pioneer in the revitalization of Sixth Avenue in Chelsea two decades ago, has four Manhattan locations, three in Queens, and one each in Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Staten Island. Visit bethbathandbeyond.com.

Leslie Lohman Museum of Gay & Lesbian Art: The world’s first muse-

IKEA: The Scandinavian home design

The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Launched in 1870, the Met has

Restoration Hardware: Offering an ever broader array of high end classic looks, Restoration’s Flatiron store at 935 Broadway is eye-popping even for those who hate shopping. Visit restorationhardware.com.

um dedicated to LGBTQ art, Leslie Lohman maintains a collection of 22,000 works, including pieces by Catherine Opie, David Wojnarowicz, Keith Haring, Andy Warhol, George Platt Lynes, and Jean Cocteau. 26 Wooster St. Visit leslielohman.org.

been in its Richard Morris Hunt-designed Beaux-Arts home at 1000 Fifth Ave. since 1902. With more than two million objects in two million square feet of space, it is the city’s largest museum and one of the world’s most influential. Visit metmuseum.org.

Best Show Phantom of the Opera: The winner of seven Tonys when it premiered in 1988, Andrew Lloyd Weber’s “Phantom of the Opera” is now the longest-running show in Broadway history. Majestic Theatre, 247 W. 47th St. Visit thephantomoftheopera. com. American Horror Story: Ryan Mur-

phy and Brad Falchuk’s anthology horror series on the FX network is now in its fourth season. Visit fxnetworks.com.

Cabaret: Alan Cumming is back at Stu-

dio 54 — tricked out to evoke the Kit Kat Klub — as the Emcee, joined by Michelle Williams (through November 9) as Sally Bowles. 254 W. 54th St. Visit cabaret. roundabouttheatre.org.

Best Drag Performer Bob the Drag Queen: The self-

styled queen for the people — and on Twitter self-described as a funny bitch — Bob has kept them rolling on the floor at Barracuda, the Monster, and Boots and Saddles, among many venues. Follow her @thatonequeen.

Hedda Lettuce: Whether hosting her

movie night at the Chelsea Bowtie, turning up on “Project Runway,” on “Oprah,” or in “Broadway Bares,” or headlining at Carolines on Broadway, Hedda, the green queen, has always shown off a dagger wit. Visit heddalettuce.com.

giant, which offers both economy and elegance, has a waterside location in Red Hook, Brooklyn as well as its longtime locations in Paramus and Elizabeth, New Jersey. Visit ikea.com.

Best Cosmetic Surgeon Dr. David Rapaport: A board certified plastic surgeon, Dr. David Rapaport’s office is at 905 Fifth Ave. Visit parkavenueplasticsurgeon.com. Dr. Daniel Baker: A member of the

American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, Dr. Daniel Baker is a professor of surgery at NYU’s Institute of Reconstructive Plastic Surgery and has practiced for more than 25 years. 65 E. 66th St. Visit danielbakermd.com.

Best Gayborhood Chelsea Hells Kitchen Park’s Slope West Village

Biggest Celebrity Crush Jake Gyllenhaal: The straight actor

won — and apparently retained — the hearts of many gay men for his 2005 turn in “Brokeback Mountain.” Visit him at JakeGyllenhaal.com.

Andrew Rannells: This out gay sing-

er and actor has been everywhere in the last few years: most recently as Hedwig, on “Girls,” in the short-lived “The New Normal,” and Tony-nominated in “Book of Mormon.” Visit him on Facebook.

GayCityNews.NYC/BestOfGayCity 28

October 30 - November 12, 2014 | www.gaycitynews.nyc

Best Travel Service

Best Parenting Service

Expedia.com: Launched in 2001 by Microsoft and lat-

Genesis Fertility: Delivering comprehensive care

er spun off, Expedia was one of the early leaders in online travel booking.

GayCities.com: Launched in 2005 as a gay travel re-

for both male and female infertility, Genesis Fertility has a track record of more than 25 years in locations in Park Slope, Downtown Brooklyn, Dyker Heights, and Staten Island. Visit genesisfertility.com.

JetBlue: The low-cost air carrier, based at Kennedy Airport, serves the US, the Caribbean, and Latin America. Visit jetblue.com.

Simple Surrogacy: A Dallas-based full surrogacy agency, Simple Surrogacy has a special practice working with gay and lesbian intended parents, who in New York face the added challenge that surrogacy contracts are not currently legal under state law so the process must take place completely out of state. Visit simplesurrogacy.com.

source, GayCities.com was relaunched three years later to incorporate social media tools to enhance the user experience and build a community of LGBT travelers.

Kayak: Coming into the online travel business a few years after Expedia, Kayak has won high praise in a variety of travel and website surveys and rankings. Visit kayak.com.

Best Vacation Destination New Orleans Provincetown San Francisco

Best Weekend Getaway Asbury Park Fire Island Hudson, New York

Best Health Care Service Callen-Lorde Community Health Center: Dating back more than 40 years to its roots in the St. Mark’s Community Clinic and the Gay Men’s Health Project, Callen-Lorde offers health services to the LGBT community regardless of ability to pay. 356 W. 18th St. Visit callen-lorde. org.

Gay Men’s Health Crisis: Founded by a group of

six gay men in 1981 just months after AIDS was first identified by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, GMHC was the first and remains one of the largest service organizations battling the epidemic. 446 W. 33rd St. Visit gmhc.org.

Hospice of New York: Based in Long Island City, Hospice of New York provides hospice professionals and volunteers in dozens of hospitals and skilled nursing facilities in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Nassau County. Visit hospiceny.com.

MAKE YOUR VOTE COUNT Keep voting for your favorite “Best Of Gay City” for a chance to win an iPad, iPad Mini, DavidBartonGym Membership, Hornblower Cruises and more!

gaycitynews.nyc/bestofgaycity Every voter receives a complimentary 3 Day CRUNCH gym membership | October 30 - November 12, 2014

OPERA

“Klinghoffer” Rises Above the Protests The Met triumphs with John Adams’ dignified, humane opera, hobbled only by Alice Goodman’s libretto

KEN HOWARD/ METROPOLITAN OPERA

Alan Opie and Jesse Kovarsky in John Adams’ “The Death of Klinghoffer,” which opened at the Met to angry protests on October 20.

Classical Nudes and the Making

of Queer History

Curated by Jonathan David Katz

Funded by the John Burton Harter Charitable Trust

October 17, 2014 to January 4, 2015

26 Wooster St., NYC 10013 Tues-Sun: 12-6 pm Thurs: 12-8 pm LeslieLohman.org Made possible in part with public funds from the Fund for Creative Communities, supported by New York State Council on the Arts and administered by Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

BY ELI JACOBSON

pproaching Lincoln C e n t e r P l a z a for the October 20 Metropolitan Opera premiere of John Adams’ “The Death of Klinghoffer,” I felt I was entering a war zone. The park across from the plaza resounded with demonstrators’ speeches — including one from former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani — denouncing the opera as anti-Semitic and pro-terror ist. Stanchions and police tape cordoned off the plaza, and I was stopped and asked why I was there. Entering the opera house, I spotted police and security guards stationed in the lobby and the auditorium – in fact a plainclothes security guard was sitting next to me in the orchestra, scanning the crowd for troublemakers. There was an electric, anxious atmosphere of brewing discontent and potential conflict. In a way, I felt like the helpless passengers of the Achille Lauro in 1985, signing up for a pleasure cruise and ending up a captive audience for a politico-reli-

gious demonstration, afraid for my personal safety. Adams’ 1991 opera dramatizes the hijacking of that Italian cruise ship by four members of the Palestine Liberation Front, who subsequently murdered a wheelchair -bound 69-year -old Jewish New Yorker, Leon Klinghoffer. Even before conductor David Robertson lifted his baton, protesters positioned in the upper rings loudly booed. The same protesters angrily heckled the chorus of displaced Palestinians in the Prologue. During a pause in the first act, one protester chanted, “The murder of Leon Klinghoffer will never be forgiven,” until he was escorted out by security. After Act I ended, a man in a side balcony recited the Kaddish for the title character. But for every boo, there were three or four retaliatory bravos from New Yorkers who wanted to make up their own mind and who valued freedom of speech in the arts and in public discourse. By Act II, most of the protesters had either left or had shot their wad. The horrifying anti-Semitic rant sung by the terrorist character known as “Rambo” passed by in silence — even the most prejudiced audience member could hear in the stabbing bass chords that Adams was depicting blind hatred and evil. At the final bows, a standing ovation and loud cheers silenced those who booed and cried, “If this is art, it is shitty art!” Was this “shitty art”? Is this opera anti-Semitic? No, emphatically no. This production of “Klinghoffer” affirmed the Met’s status as one of the world’s greatest opera companies. I was riveted and involved from beginning to end. John Adams’ oratorio-like structure utilizes reflective extended choral sections, anguished solo narratives, and brief dramatic episodes evoking the Bach passions and Handel’s biblical oratorios. But rather than present only the

KLINGHOFFER, continued on p.40

October 30 - November 12, 2014 | www.gaycitynews.nyc

Planned Service Changes

Mon to Fri 10PM to 5AM Nov 3 – 7 No E between Roosevelt Av and World Trade Center. No F between Roosevelt Av and 21 St-Queensbridge. M and R services end early each night. Travel Alternatives: • Take the 7 between Manhattan and 74 St/Roosevelt Av or Queensboro Plaza. • Take the N between Manhattan and Queensboro Plaza. • In Manhattan, transfer at 5 Av/42 St-Bryant Pk 7F, Times Sq-42 St/42 St-Port Authority 7A, and 34 St-Herald Sq FN. • In Manhattan along 8th Avenue, take the A local instead of the E. • Free shuttle buses run LOCAL between Queensboro Plaza and 74 St/Roosevelt Av making station stops at Queens Plaza, 36 St, Steinway St, 46 St, Northern Blvd, and 65 St. • In Queens, transfer between shuttle buses and trains at 74 St/Roosevelt Av 7EF or Queensboro Plaza 7N.

Stay Informed Call 511 and say “Current Service Status,” look for informational posters in stations, or visit mta.info — where you can access the latest Planned Service Changes information, use TripPlanner+, and sign up for free email and text alerts.

2014 Metropolitan Transportation Authority

| October 30 - November 12, 2014

FILM

The Look of Love BY GARY M. KRAMER

Ghilherme Lobo and Fabio Audi in Daniel Ribeiro’s “The Way He Looks.”

STRAND RELEASING

GARY M. KRAMER: Why did you feel you needed to expand your short into a feature? D A N I E L R I B E I R O : When I thought about this blind character discovering that he was gay, I knew it had to be my first feature. Blindness provides a way to talk about sexuality because Leo had never seen a boy or a girl. His feelings were not based on anything he had seen, it was just how he felt — his other senses. I thought Leo was a character we’d never seen before, and

STRAND RELEASING

he sweet and sunny Brazilian romance “The Way He Looks” is out writer and director Daniel Ribeiro’s feature length version of his excellent 2010 short “Eu Não Quero Voltar Sozinho” (“I Don’t Want to Go Back Alone”). This expanded story, starring the same cast as the short, is one of those rare, happy cases where the feature film improves on the short. The film, which is Brazil’s Oscar submission for Best Foreign Language Film, won the Audience Award for Best Feature at this year’s NewFest in New York. In this engaging coming-of-age story, Leo (Ghilherme Lobo) is a blind teenager whose BFF, Giovana or Gi (Tess Amorim), assists him in school and walks him home. When Gabriel (Fabio Audi) joins their class, he befriends Leo and Gi. When a class assignment forces Gabriel and Leo to work together, the guys quickly form an intimate bond, which causes Gi to become jealous. W h a t m a k e s “ T h e Wa y H e Looks” so magical is that Ribeiro chronicles how the two male teens fall in love. The two never discuss their emotions, but their feelings are manifest in the way their bodies interact. When Gabriel plants a kiss on Leo or the two friends shower together during an over night class trip, the unspoken attraction hangs in the air. Ribeiro met with Gay City News to talk about gay teens and “The Way He Looks.”

Daniel Ribeiro, screenwriter and director of “The Way He Looks.”

Daniel Ribeiro turns film short about a blind gay teen’s romantic awakening into full-length feature this coming of age film would be a good first feature for me to represent who I am. I wanted to keep the same actors because they had a huge chemistry in the short. GMK: There are many scenes involving tactile contact — the boys on the bike, or Gabriel teaching Leo to dance. DR: Sight is something that is very attached to sexuality. The big conflict for Leo is: Does Gabriel like me or not? He can’t use his sight to get the clues. GMK: In Latin culture, it is very common for intimacy to develop between friends. Can you discuss the attitudes queer teens face in Brazil? DR: In Brazil, men don’t kiss on the cheek. Brazil is almost conservative in that way. I wanted to establish that. If two boys are too intimate, people think they are gay. If you kiss a boy, you’re gay. You can hug, that’s okay. We express our emotions easily, but there are rules about being gay, a limit to what you can do and what is considered too much. GMK: Leo is very careful about expressing his emotions. Can you discuss how you constructed his character? He is different when is at home with his family and when

he is at school with his friends. DR: I think we are all like that — adapting — especially someone [like Leo] who is bullied. In places where he has more power [at home], he can be strong. He is able to have a dialogue with his parents. I didn’t want him to be protected by anyone other than Gi and his mother. GMK: Leo’s mother sees him as being very responsible. Do you think gay teens are more mature? DR: I think a lot of young gay people mature really young because they have to deal with something huge in their lives and they have to do it by themselves. Nowadays, it easier for gay teens to be more open, but when I was a teenager, I went through a period where I couldn’t share everything I was feeling. I think a lot of gay people go through that, and they mature really fast and really young. I don’t have Leo question his sexuality, which I went through. I think gay kids shouldn’t have to go through this period of questioning who they are. You need some time to understand what you are feeling, but when you realize you’re gay, it should be okay. GMK: What can you say about the shower scene?

THE WAY HE LOOKS Directed by Daniel Ribeiro Strand Releasing Opens Nov. 7 Village East Cinema 189 Second Ave. at 12th St. villageeastcinema.com

DR: I think there has to be a shower scene in a gay film. In the short, we have the same concept where Leo changes in front of Gabe, and Gabe looks at him and realizes that he can look at Leo and Leo doesn’t realize Gabe is staring. Because they were older, I could do it with nudity and it would be important for the characters. It’s a big deal for gay teens when they have to shower with other people. You can get an erection because your body can’t hide your sexuality. GMK: Gi and Leo talk about their level of laziness. What is your level of laziness? DR: It depends. Right now, it’s big. I’m trying to start a new film. It makes me lazy because it’s so hard. I have to think: What is the story I want to tell next? But when the films starts, it flows and it’s exciting and my laziness goes to zero, because I just want to make the film.

October 30 - November 12, 2014 | www.gaycitynews.nyc

FILM

Role of a Lifetime

Robert Greene lends creative invention to documentary about an actress trying to come back ACTRESS

obert Greene’s past two documentaries, “Kati With an i” and “Fake It So Real,” were impressive, but they didn’t prepare one for the way he’s suddenly turned into an inventor of new forms. His latest film, “Actress,” has as much in common with Douglas Sirk as Frederick Wiseman. Greene picks up on the interest in performance evident in “Fake It So Real,” which followed a troupe of amateur wrestlers in North Carolina, and runs with it. It’s become trendy to insert elements of fiction into documentary, but Greene does it in a way no one else has. He’s made a film about a middle-aged actress trying to salvage her career that falls squarely into a Hollywood tradition running from Billy Wilder’s “Sunset Boule-

Directed by Robert Greene The Cinema Guild Opens Nov. 7 Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center Lincoln Center, 144 W. 65th St. filmlinc.com

vard” to David Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive.” Most of these films end tragically. The finale of “Actress” suggests that Greene is aware of that trope, but his protagonist, Brandy Burre, is struggling her hardest not to be a real-life example of it. While appearing on “The Wire,” Brandy became pregnant with the first of her two children. She decided to retire from acting and move to suburban Beacon, New York with her partner Tim. For a few years, she was satisfied by life as a stayat-home mom, supported by Tim’s restaurant business. Then she got bored and decided to head back

to acting. But it seems impossible for her to find a balance between domestic life and that profession. Her relationship with Tim deteriorates, culminating in a sad Christmas break-up. She spends more time in New York, auditioning for roles. The break-up and her subsequent financial need lend a desperate edge to her quest to get back into show business. “Actress” includes several scenes that stylize Brandy’s everyday life through slow motion, supersaturated colors (especially blaring reds and yellows), and cutting out live sound in favor of her voice-over or music. Ironically, these scenes don’t show anything particularly glamorous; in fact, they generally depict her doing household chores. There are far more dramatic scenes in “Actress,” shot in a matter-of-fact style. Greene demonstrates that the film is at least partially fiction by

CINEMA GUILD

BY STEVE ERICKSON

Brandy Burre in “Actress,” Robert Greene’s documentary about her.

having Brandy repeat a line. One could call the ultimate effect of these devices Brechtian, but they don’t distance the spectator from the film’s action. Even if “Actress” utilizes narrative contrivances, it’s just as gripping as a purely documentary approach. However, Greene seems to want to make the spectator aware he’s telling a story, not documenting an unmediated reality. As directed by him, Brandy seems like a Rain-

ACTRESS, continued on p.39

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| October 30 - November 12, 2014

THEATER

Inside the Play, Inside the Mind

If you’d like to see how a real backstage comedy can be done, then nip down the street to

“Curious Incident” a revelation, a backstage comedy soars, while an offstage crowd bores

BY CHRISTOPHER BYRNE

JOAN MARCUS

Even in an inherently superficial role, Daniel Sunjata manages the best turn in Donald Margulies’ “The Country House.”

Rupert Grint, F. Murray Abraham, Stockard Channing, and Nathan Lane in Terrence McNally’s “It’s Only a Play.”

n “The Country House,” Donald Margulies is so busy knocking off Chekhov, Edna Ferber, and George S. Kaufman that he hasn’t bothered to write much of a play. With echoes of “The Seagull,” “Uncle Vanya,” and “The Royal Family,” this is a tale of actors offstage, but unlike those purloined and more entertaining plays, Margulies has created selfish people doing boring things. Newly minted though it may be, it seems dated and laborious. Set in a country house outside Williamstown, Massachusetts, there is a faded stage star, a TV actor seeking to legitimize his lucrative, if superficial, celebrity in a “serious” play, a dyspeptic daughter, her recently widowed

father with a new girlfriend, and a drunk uncle who wallows in his failure as an actor and playwright and his resentment over his mother’s success. Wind them all up, and then watch them unravel. The inherent problem with Margulies’ writing is that there’s nothing seriously at stake for any of these characters. Vain attempts to relive one’s glory days or rage at a mother perceived as not being supportive enough are so hackneyed as plot points, it would take something truly remarkable to make them interesting in this day and age. Remarkable is decidedly missing from this country house, and if this play is intended as homage to better writers, Margulies has done them no honor. Blythe Danner as Anna, the aging star, brings nothing but

mannerisms to the role. To be sure, that’s what has been written, but she goes from pose to set piece to pose with no apparent investment in what scant interior life the character might have. This is pretty much the case with the rest of the company. Trapped in undeveloped characters, there’s really nowhere for them to go. Best of the lot is Daniel Sunjata, who is playing an inherently superficial character. Eric Lange as the resentful, alcoholic son has been given an almost impossible part to play believably, though he makes a valiant effort. In “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead,” Tom Stoppard wrote, “We’re actors. We’re the opposite of people.” Prior to “The Country House,” I always thought that was ironic.

THE COUNTRY HOUSE

IT’S ONLY A PLAY

THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME

Samuel J. Friedman Theatre 261 W. 47th St. Tue.-Wed. at 7 p.m.; Thu.-Sat. at 8 p.m. Wed., Sat.-Sun. at 2 p.m. $67-$125; telecharge.com Or 212-239-6200 Two hrs., 30 mins., with intermission

Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre 236 W. 45th St. Tue., Thu. at 7 p.m. Wed., Fri.-Sat. at 8 p.m. Wed., Sat. at 2 p.m.; Sun. at 3 p.m. $87-$172; telecharge.com Or 212-239-6200 Two hrs., 40 mins., with intermission

Ethel Barrymore Theatre 243 W. 47th St. Tue., Thu. at 7 p.m. Wed., Fri.-Sat. at 8 p.m. Wed., Sat. at 2 p.m.; Sun. at 3 p.m. $27-$150; telecharge.com Or 212-239-6200 Two hrs., 40 mins., with intermission

the Schoenfeld, where Terrence McNally’s “It’s Only a Play” is getting a starry revival that succeeds on many levels. The play has been updated so that the names the stars drop incessantly are contemporary, but the story of a group of theater people hiding in a Manhattan townhouse’s master bedroom as they eagerly await opening night reviews remains unchanged. Much of the humor of the play comes from the supposed glimpse of backstage nerves and egos as careers hang in the balance. And much of the charm of the current production comes from the stars. Nathan Lane as James Wicker, a TV star who pines to return to Broadway, is at the center of all the interconnecting stories. Lane is at the top of his comic form with an unerring ability to bring down the house with a well-timed explosion or the raising of an eyebrow. Stockard Channing, as the aging film actress looking for artistic redemption on stage, balances hard-boiled with nearly crippling neurosis as well as elegance. Like Lane, she is a subtle comedian who knows how to land a gag. Micah Stock plays a cater-waiter/ would-be actor hired for the evening who is both dim and ambitious. He holds his own brilliantly in the bevy of stars surrounding him. Rupert Grint is the enfant terrible who has directed the play in question, and what starts as a kind of generic character has some surprising and satisfying twists. F. Murray Abraham is the critic Ira Drew, also a would-be playwright and hanger-on. Less successful is Megan Mullally as the first-time solo producer. Mullally can play the comedy, but she gets lost among the other characters. While that might be a directorial choice, she is often hard to hear, though she conveys an endearing innocence and enthusiasm for the theater. Matthew Broderick as the playwright Peter Austin is, as usual, flat and uninteresting. He brings the same whiny cadences to his lines that he’s done in every production from “The Producers”

ONLY A PLAY, continued on p.38

October 30 - November 12, 2014 | www.gaycitynews.nyc

THEATER

A Noir Is Born

Behind-the-scenes melodrama about 1940s Hollywood fails to get the heart racing BY DAVID KENNERLEY

| October 30 - November 12, 2014

CAROL ROSEGG

udging from the poster alone, you might think that “Billy & Ray,” the earnest melodrama now at the Vineyard Theatre, is a love story about a squabbling gay couple in the 1940s. Not quite. The fact-based play, written by Mike Bencivenga, serves up the rocky backstory behind producing “Double Indemnity,” which many credit as the first film noir. A noble idea — the 1944 thriller starring Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray, and Edward G. Robinson ranks 29th on the 2007 American Film Institute’s list of 100 best American films of the 20th century. The Billy in question is Hollywood director Billy Wilder (Vincent Kartheiser) and Ray is hard-boiled detective story author Raymond

Chandler (Larry Pine). The unlikely pair is charged with creating an original screenplay based on a tawdry potboiler about murder, greed, and lust in an era when the Hollywood production code had strict rules about depicting unsavory behavior. No, the men are not gay, but during the arduous creative process under pressure from studio executive Joe Sistrom (Drew Gehling), their stormy relationship begins to resemble that of an old married couple who, deep down, have an abiding affection for each other. The ampersand in the title is well placed. Legendary director Garry Marshall clearly has a feel for truculent, mismatched duos — after all, he changed television forever with comic favorites like “The Odd Couple,” “Laverne & Shirley,” and “Mork & Mindy.” Yet he fails to get a solid grip on

Larry Pine and Vincent Kartheiser in Mike Bencivenga’s “Billy & Ray,” directed by Garry Marshall.

the flaccid “Billy & Ray,” which is not primarily a comedy. The piece is intentionally presented in the same moody noir style as “Double Indemnity” itself — set in a drab office tucked away in a corner of Paramount Studios, where the men labor to produce “pages,” hoping to placate the head honchos lest the project be scrapped. At the reception desk there’s a pert, wisecracking blonde (a stylish Sophie von Haselberg, who recalls a young Bette Midler because, well, she’s her daughter), whose main job is to serve the men bagels and martinis (Ray insists he is on the wagon but

BILLY & RAY Vineyard Theatre 108 E. 15th St. Through Nov. 23 Tue.-Wed. at 7 p.m. Thu.-Sat. at 8 p.m. Sat.-Sun. at 3 p.m. $70; VineyardTheatre.org Or 212-353-0303 Two hrs., 10 mins., with intermission

falls off soon enough.) And yes, the climax takes place on a dark and stormy night with exaggerated shadows. Many elements in “Double

NOIR, continued on p.39

IN THE NOH

Tony’s a Winner Sheldon back on the boards, brilliant “Dear White People,” Hawks & Welles masterpieces BY DAVID NOH

again: “This is the first high profile gig I’ve had in New York since ‘Priscilla.’ So to have such a wonderful showy role is ideal and going to hopefully save me a lot of knocking on casting agents’ doors. Once you’re in a dress, people lock into that image of you, so it hasn’t been easy being seen by casting directors. They say, ‘Oh, yes, we know what he does,’ and there are so many other people available. “I don’t mean to discount ‘Priscilla,’ which was a total life changer for me and got me out of Australia. My aunt, Helen Reddy, and my mother, Toni Lamond, who was an Australian musical hall star, were living in Los Angeles, and they said, ‘Come over here and become an American citizen!’ I kept saying, ‘No, I’m actually getting the dramatic roles I want in Australia [Shakespeare, Pinter, Chekhov] and quite happy with my career.’ But to actually be brought to Broadway in a role that was created on me was a gift and I couldn’t have asked for a better intro.” Sheldon started with the first “Priscilla” workshop, which took five years to get to Broadway, and was never daunted by stepping into

“Once you’re in a dress, people lock into that image of you, so it hasn’t been easy being seen by casting directors.” straightaway went to work on the show ‘Wonderful Town.’ That’s why there’s suddenly no story in the movie and all of these numbers. “They asked the costume designer [Mary Ann Nyberg] if she could design a costume for Cyd for the finale that looks as if she’s going to wind up with Astaire. They wanted the costume to do all the work because there was no scene, so the dress was all glamour and flowers to show that they’re going to get married.” Sheldon is excited to be really trodding the New York boards

Terence Stamp’s high heels in the role. “I looked at the film again when I got the role and thought, ‘He’s playing it very glum.’ I read in an interview where he said he wanted to portray the pain of somebody trapped in the wrong body. I’ve hung out with a lot of Australian drag artists and the character of Bernadette had been a star at Les Girls, a very glamorous nightclub in Sydney, and at the height of her stardom was living the high life of jewels, furs, and parties all night long. So this woman is not walking

BONEAU/ BRYAN-BROWN

roadway’s “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert” was largely a glitzy piece of utterly commercial jukebox fluff, but when Tony Sheldon appeared as Bernadette, the veteran drag queen on a very personal mission, the theater’s temperature changed. For here was the real thing, a brilliant actor, fully possessed of an innate gravitas and shining charisma, making what could easily have been a flamboyant cartoon into a flesh and blood character, deeply glamorous, steeped in a rich and vivid past. He won a deserved 2011 Tony nomination, but, since then, scandalously, has been pretty much off the New York stage, although quite active regionally in shows like “Hello, Dolly!,” “My Fair Lady,” and “Camelot.” So it was with particular pleasure that I read of his replacing Roger Rees in the upcoming Encores! presentation of “The Band Wagon” (Nov. 6-16, New York City Center, 131 W. 55th St.; nycitycenter.org). The show is adapted from the 1953 MGM film — directed by Vincente Minnelli with a dazzling catalogue of songs by Howard Dietz and Arthur Schwartz and a script from Betty Comden and Adolph Green — that ranks high on everyone’s list of greatest movie musicals, a terrifically witty peek into Broadway backstage and the process of putting on a show. The elegant, chummy Sheldon, who’s brought such a touch of class to the theater’s gay community, took a break from rehearsals and told me, “All I know is that Roger Rees took sick and was in the hospital on Friday, and they called me that day to ask if I could learn the part of Jeffrey Cordova [originated by the priceless Jack Buchanan]. He’s very much based on José Ferrer, the multi-tasking actor/ director/ entrepreneur, at the time when he was directing five shows in one season, starring in both ‘Richard III’ and ‘Charley’s Aunt,’ and under-

studying an actor in another production. Even in somebody’s living room, he’s always on and directing people, shifting them around. In the script, he’s English, so I can’t do a direct impersonation of Ferrer, but, in my first scene, he’s playing ‘Hamlet,’ and is at full throttle the entire time. “Douglas Carter Beane has changed the script and other Dietz and Schwartz songs, like ‘Something to Remember You By,’ have been added. Laura Osnes is playing a singer rather than the dancer Cyd Charisse was in the film, so she’s been given more numbers, like ‘Triplets’ with me and Brian Stokes Mitchell, in the Fred Astaire role. “They’ve beefed up Nanette Fabray’s old role for Tracey Ullman, with more scenes between her and Michael McKean as her husband. Beane has her now carrying something of a torch for Stokes and, now that she’s back in his orbit, McKean is getting jealous, with a lot more drama in the second half of the show. Comden and Green actually once told our director/ choreographer Kathleen Marshall that their MGM contract ran out while they were writing the film and they

Tony Sheldon, Tony-nominated for “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert,” appears in the Encores! production of “The Band Wagon.”

around like a wet weekend. “That gave me the freedom to go my own direction. The designers brought all of Terence’s costumes on a rack and were going to put me in them. But he’s built like a pencil and I was more Rubens-esque at the time. They said, ‘We’re going to turn you into Rita Hayworth, an entire new tack, with leopard skin and big hats! It always used to irk me when I’d read on the dreaded message boards, ‘Oh, he’s just doing Terence Stamp’s perfor mance!’ Pay attention people!” When the show got to England, the creators lost confidence in it and took out almost all of the Australian references. “The script was filled with English pop culture references I didn’t even know, at one point even having Queen Elizabeth come on stage with a corgi. I did have to say to them, ‘We’ve got to have the courage of our convictions. Let’s not pander to our non-Australian audiences.’ When we came to Broadway, we had a little more courage, although our producers did insist on having Jerry Mitchell on the payroll as our consultant and David Thompson as a new book writer. A lot of their stuff didn’t end up in the show, and by the time we opened, we decided to just risk it and go with pretty much what we had in Australia. “Bette Midler was brought in as a producer in Toronto, but we never saw her. She wasn’t hands-on but there was her name above the title and I guess she had a lot of money

IN THE NOH, continued on p.37

October 30 - November 12, 2014 | www.gaycitynews.nyc

ROADSIDE ATTRACTIONS

Director Justin Simien on the set of “Dear White People” with Tessa Thompson.

IN THE NOH, from p.36

in it. We were introduced to her, but she wasn’t hanging about, drinking tequila slammers with us.” Sheldon’s T ony night was something less than glamorous: “I knew I didn’t have a snowball’s chance of winning. We were following ‘Hairspray’ and Douglas Hodge in ‘La Cage aux Folles,’ and I thought, ‘They’re not going to go three times for a man in a dress,’ plus our competition, Norbert Butz and ‘The Book of Mormon’ boys, was stiff. “Suddenly, they said, ‘You’re performing on the Tony show and your category is being called out straight after your number.’ I asked, ‘Can I just stand in the wings looking gracious in my frock because I’m not going to win?’ ‘No! You have to get back into your dinner suit and seat, and you have four minutes during the commercial break to do it.’ So Tony night became about me having to change fast, and they made me rehearse it over and over during the day. I was standing there with a stopwatch while they got the makeup off me, and then I was running down flights of stairs to be in my seat so they could say, ‘Tony Sheldon in Priscilla…’ with me, smiling and nodding in my dinner suit. And it was, ‘No, no, no! He was 30 seconds late! Put all that makeup back on him and we’ll do it again!’ “I wanted to be enjoying this but it was all about that moment. The wonderful thing was, as I was arriving for the red carpet, Beth Leavel saw my deer-in-the-headlights expression and just took

my hand, saying, ‘I will walk you through this,’ and she calmed me down. She said, ‘The first nomination is always the worst. When you get your second, you will enjoy it!’ What a wonderful thing to even think a second nomination was a possibility in my future, and so kind. An extraordinary thing happens when you know you’re not going to win. You sort of get depressed with the nomination, a strange feeling of unworthiness and not belonging up there in this exalted company. Tony season is four weeks where you’re just doing press, and I was also nominated by the Drama Desk and League, the Outer Critics, and actually did win a Theater World Award. So every day, while you’re performing, you have to dress up and you’re glad-handing, and I was just crying non-stop. I’ve seen it happen to other people subsequently and been able to warn them, ‘Be prepared because you’re going to go into some weird spiral, so try to be as positive as possible.’” Sheldon has never had a problem being identified publicly as a gay man. “Oh, yes, always out! I used to alarm people when I was 17, doing interviews and the press would ask, ‘What role would you most like to play?,’ and I’d say, ‘Anita in “West Side Story.”’ Press agents were constantly begging, ‘Please don’t say things like this. You’re supposed to be a young butch Aussie!’ “I find that people here just don’t care. It wasn’t quite so in television in Australia: one very handsome leading man of a cop show came

| October 30 - November 12, 2014

IN THE NOH, continued on p.38

JOAN MARCUS

Alex Sharp in “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.”

ONLY A PLAY, from p.34

onward. To be sure, part of what makes this play work is the opportunity for well-known actors to do their shtick, but Broderick’s wore out its welcome a long time ago. It is to McNally’s credit that Peter’s

long speech in the second act is effective, but it would have been nice to see that done by an actor with more depth. Jack O’Brien has directed this as a fast-paced romp bordering on farce, though instead of slamming doors we have percussive jokes. McNally’s sly but loving obser vation of the world of the theater delivers contemporary laughs from a classic storyline. Indeed, after hanging out with these characters in town, who would ever want to go to the country?

In adapting “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time,” Simon Stephens had a serious challenge: how to create empathy for an autistic character who is unable to express emotion. The success is surprising and unexpectedly moving, aided by the electronically driven set from Bunny Christie, which brilliantly

IN THE NOH, from p.37

out and went right back in four weeks later. It backfired on him, so he just shut up after that. Australia is not the tolerant society people imagine. We do have the big Mardi Gras every year, but then it’s sort of, ‘Shut up and get on with it!’ But it seems a waste of time to be hiding and I’ve been with my partner for 35 years. He’s another actor in Australia, Tony Taylor, and my mother was named Toni, so we’re everywhere you look!”

The best new film you can see right now is Justin Simien’s blisteringly smart, funny, daring, and incisive “Dear White People,’ which concerns a demonstration by black students at an elite university over a racist-themed party at one of the residences. It’s one of the very best films ever made about the college experience and accomplishes everything Spike Lee’s clumsy, homophobic “School Daze” tried to do. I moderated a spirited Q&A on its opening night at the Regal Union Square on October 17, with its gorgeous, talented star Tessa Thompson, and it was really inspiring to see how deeply the movie affected the smart, passionate audience. Thompson described how she went on a mission for the role of Sam — one of the great, surely the smartest, embattled American film heroine — the moment she read the script. Inspired by Lisa Bonet’s iconic presence on “The Cosby Show,” she haunted Etsy and other vintage venues to put together her fabulously eclectic wardrobe.

Film Forum is reviving two of my favorite films. Howard Hawks’ exhilaratingly gallant “Only Angels Have Wings” (1939) is one of his very best investigations of men seriously at

evokes what happens in the mind of Christopher, the main character, as he encounters and is overwhelmed by the world. Like many autistic young people, Christopher appears slow because of his literalism and inability to emote, but he is a math genius. The first act is about Christopher trying to discover who has killed a neighbor’s dog — for which he is initially blamed — and his interactions with people who don’t understand him. The second act shifts gears and is largely about Christopher trying to negotiate the larger world and find his way to his mother in London. In essence, the play moves from a small story to a kind of epic. The rapidly changing set focuses excitement on Christopher, and it’s best to just go with that ride and the theatricality of the storytelling. And here’s where the empathy happens: one is suddenly cogni-

work (air mail carriers, here) and how that bonds them, both professionally and emotionally. Cary Grant, full of romantic diffidence and sexy swagger, even garbed in a wide Panama hat, bomber jacket, a couple of low-slung belts, baggy floodtide linen pants, and boots, and squeaky Jean Arthur, enchantingly goofy and lovelorn for him, share a magically rocky chemistry while demonstrating exactly what made them such huge stars and so enduring today. Grant’s ragtag crew — Allyn Joslyn, Sig Ruman, Don Barry, John Carroll and, especially, Thomas Mitchell, as cryptic in his love for Grant as Arthur is blatant — are deeply funny and lovable. Rita Hayworth smolders effectively for the first time on screen as a delicately determined vamp. (Trivia: Arthur’s bathrobe is the same one Katharine Hepburn wore in “Holiday” the year before; Arthur liked it so much, she thought designing a new one was totally unnecessary.)

Orson Welles’ “Touch of Evil” (1958) is simply a wonder, and one of the very greatest film noirs. From its insanely virtuosic onetake beginning that culminates in an explosive car bomb, Welles holds you tight in his masterful grip comprised of sheer technical brilliance, deliciously black humor, and suspenseful South of the Border terror. Abetting him is one of the most fabulously perverse casts ever assembled: Mercedes McCambridge as the butchest of butch dykes on bikes (anticipating a gang rape, she mutters, “I wanna watch”), stutteringly eruptive Akim Tamiroff, hilariously geeky Dennis Weaver, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Marlene Dietrich (as a Mexican fortune-teller who’s seen everything, twice), and Welles himself, as an insanely fat, insanely corrupt sheriff. Even

zant of the overwhelming nature of the world that most of us simply ignore or filter out. Drilled down to a granular level, where even getting on a subway car can be daunting, we begin to gain a deeper understanding of what we miss in our rush and drama. Christopher forces us to stop and think about the world and how we encounter it. Director Marianne Elliott has embraced the dichotomy between the character’s limitations and the overwhelming nature of the world, and her somewhat expressionistic staging is still clearly narrative. With the exception of Alex Sharp, who makes a stunning Broadway debut as Christopher, the cast is an ensemble taking many roles and fluidly filling out his world. This is one of those rare pieces that stays with you and might even make you challenge how you — as someone who counts yourself as “normal” — encounter the world.

Janet Leigh and Charlton Heston, usually the epitome of bland and wooden, respectively, are here jolted into behaving like real, complex, and sensual human beings.

I wish Molly Ringwald had actually talked more than sung at her recent Cafe Carlyle engagement (October 7), as I would have much preferred hearing any story about her storied career as Hollywood’s Golden Girl during the 1980s Brat Pack era than her faltering vocals, which did no justice to the evergreen standards she selected. But there was nary a mention of “Sixteen Candles,” “The Breakfast Club,” or “Pretty in Pink,” although she did encore with a revamped, vampy “Don’t You Forget About Me.” Buster Poindexter (aka David Johansen), who followed her engagement (October 21), more than made up for this, with a terrifically rousing show in which his wonderfully salty humor, expressively growling voice, and killer musical chops were on bravura display. It was a total party, with his to-kvell-for backup band of the ace-ist musicians in the business. His excavation of obscure blues, particularly, from recorded music’s earliest era, is always wonderfully salubrious. His ebullient wife, Mara, resplendent in vintage Versace and Kamali, told me how thrilled they both are with his resurrection of the Buster persona, after touring so long and wide with the New York Dolls. Staying at the Carlyle, of course, ain’t too shabby either. Contact David Noh at Inthenoh@aol.com and check out his blog at http://nohway.wordpress.com.

October 30 - November 12, 2014 | www.gaycitynews.nyc

ACTRESS, from p.33

er Werner Fassbinder character. Her life is falling apart around her, yet this paradoxically opens up new opportunities for her as an actress. She’s a gripping storyteller, but her final tale —which I won’t give away, since it closes the film — makes one wonder if she’s always telling the truth. “Actress” comments on the sexism and ageism of the film industry. Brandy remarks that when she was in her late 20s, her onscreen romantic partners were about a decade older than she. Now that she’s just turned 40, she expects to get offered roles as “the wife or girlfriend.” All the same, more than institutional sexism, her own anxieties seem to be her worst enemy. In fact, the starkest example of sexism she offers up happened in Tim’s restaurant, not Hollywood. About a month

NOIR, from p.35

Indemnity” are echoed in the play. In the movie, the killers are revealed early on. As Billy says, “This is not a who done it. It’s more of a why done it. And a how they done it.” The same could be said about “Billy & Ray.” The chief dramatic tension would normally center on whether or not they actually get the movie made and if it will be any good. Since we already know the answer, the play focuses on why and how it got made, in the form of a character study of these quite disparate men. Problem is, unlike the movie, there’s just not enough intensity. The action sags — it’s missing a compelling dramatic arc. It doesn’t help that the performances are uneven. Pine, who won accolades for Harvey Fierstein’s “Casa Valentina” last season, is engaging as the meticulous, pipe-smoking author battling both Billy and alcoholism. Gehling and von Haselberg do their best to flesh out their stock characters. But television actor Kartheiser, known for playing smarmy Pete Campbell in “Mad Men,” struggles in the demanding role of Billy. His portrayal feels tentative, and his Austrian accent — tough for even seasoned stage actors to pull off without seeming hackneyed —

after giving birth, she suggested that a diaper-changing board be installed in the women’s room, an idea scoffed at as ridiculous by the men who worked there. When Greene began making “Actress,” he intended it as a portrait of a woman who happened to be his next-door neighbor. At the time he started shooting, he didn’t know just how troubled her relationship with Tim was. There are elements of desperation in “Fake It So Real,” but they’re mostly economic: the wrestlers profiled by Greene work crappy day jobs and most of them are aware that they’re never going to make it into the WWE. “Actress” digs really hard into the drama of everyday life, finding plenty of material there. I suspect that whatever happens to Brandy down the road, this will be the film and performance for which she’ll always be remembered.

gets in the way. The play is at its best when imparting fascinating tidbits about the movie’s development. The first writer, Billy’s regular partner, left in a huff and was replaced by a reluctant Ray, a former schoolteacher with zero screenwriting credits. Billy, who is Jewish, fled from Austria for a chance at a better life, but left behind his family, who were exterminated by the Nazi regime. The ending of “Double Indemnity” was changed after initial screenings because Billy felt the original one was overkill. It was nominated for seven Academy Awards and did not win a single one because the studio bigwigs instead pushed the upbeat, family-friendly “Going My Way,” starring Bing Crosby as a crooning priest. “Billy & Ray” offers some savvy comic touches. When Ray says they need to be subtle about the adultery and murder to circumvent the censors, Billy replies, “Subtleties are fine. As long as we make them obvious.” While the play attempts to detail the plot of “Double Indemnity,” there’s no denying it resonates more for those who have actually seen the movie. And if you haven’t seen it, you’ll want to rush home and check it out on Netflix.

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Judeo-Christian viewpoint, the composer and librettist accord the Arab extremists and the Israeli and Western characters their own personalized voice. However, while Adam’s music gives equal depth, dignity, and humanity to every character, Alice Goodman’s libretto is disturbingly unbalanced and tone deaf. Take the opening choruses of exiled Palestinians and Israelis: The Palestinians sing of their lost homeland in nostalgic phrases reminiscent of Verdi’s “Va Pensiero” chorus of exiled Jews in “Nabucco”: “My father’s house was razed/ In nineteen forty-eight/ When the Israelis passed/ Over our street…. I see in my mind’s eye/ A crescent moon./ Of that house, not a wall/ In which a bird might nest/ Was left to stand. / Israel laid all to waste.” (Originally this was followed by a scene depicting the Rumors, a Jewish family in Brooklyn, who bicker over bargain sales, food prices, and trivia — this was permanently excised a year later.) In the current text, the exiled Israelis follow the Palestinians singing: “When I paid off the taxi, I had no money left, and, of course, no luggage. My empty hands shall signify this passion, which itself remembers.” Like most of the words Goodman puts into the mouths of the non-Arab characters, banal self-absorption and petty obsessions over material goods over shadow any sense of social responsibility or personal insight. If Goodman is attempting ironic commentary or social criticism, this is lost on Adams — the music for both

groups has equal seriousness and weight. The hijacker Mamoud, beautifully performed by baritone Aubrey Allicock in his Met debut, sings a lyrical aria describing the migration of birds above the earth that is a vocal and musical highlight. But a feisty older Austrian tourist who barricades herself in her stateroom natters on about rationing the contents of her fruit basket. She concludes: “I prayed and sweated through the worst/ Even if one were going to die/ One would avoid the company/ Of idiots. During the war/ I felt the same.” She equates the Palestinian terrorists with World War II’s Allied troops. In Act II, a British dancing girl vapidly chatters about how the hijacker Omar slipped her cigarettes and how the bread was buttered on the wrong side. This is followed by a lyrical incantatory aria by a Palestinian woman, beautifully sung by mezzo Maya Lahyani, evoking the misery of life and inciting Omar, who is the youngest of the terrorists, to embrace martyrdom: “May we be worth the pains of death/ And not grow old/ In the world/ Like these Jews./ My soul is/ All violence./ My heart will break/ If I do not walk/ In Paradise.” The seductions of religious extremism and political terrorism are evoked in ironically beautiful poetic imagery and hypnotic melody. Immediately after this, Omar shoots Leon Klinghoffer, leaving his bleeding corpse facing the audience in his wheelchair. The extremist Islamic view is given musical and poetic weight and purpose; in comparison, the humane Wester n view seems shortchanged. Both views are left

open to misinterpretation. What we see, the sense of the text, and what we hear are full of internal dissonance. I suspect that Goodman doesn’t know how Palestinians really think and talk, so she bestows on them a poetic diction that is too often rhetorical, abstruse, and pretentious. She patronizes the Western characters and Israelis. The exceptions are the philosophical ship’s captain, who is the moral conscience of the piece, and the Klinghoffers themselves. Leon, who is largely silent in Act I, defiantly confronts the terrorists: “We’re human, We are/ the kind of people/ you like to kill.” The strengths and failures of the composer and librettist come to the fore in the final solo arias for Leon and Marilyn Klinghoffer. After his corpse is tossed overboard, the post-mortem Klinghoffer sings “The Aria of the Falling Body.” Goodman’s text invokes imagery of good furniture exposed to the rain and souvenirs looted from bureau drawers. Adams’ music transcends Goodman’s pointless words, going right to the heart — descending triads and shifting tonalities seeming to pull Klinghoffer into the oceanic depths of human loss, a netherworld inhabited by the victims of man’s inhumanity to man. In contrast, the personal becomes universal in Marilyn Klinghoffer’s searing final lament for her dead husband; here, the words and music come together directly and powerfully. Michaela Martens’ mezzo-contralto voice digs into the suffering common to all victims of political and religious violence, giving this dying Jewish woman the final word. Tom Morris’ (“War Horse”) fluid,

admirably direct production takes a documentary approach, using projected films, photographs, and text to fill in the background. The action scenes aim for cinematic realism, but become more stylized in the extended choral episodes, which utilize dance and mass movement. The entire cast — led by Martens and Alan Opie as the Klinghoffers, Paulo Szot as the agonized Captain, and Allicock, Sean Panikkar, Ryan Speedo Green, and dancer Jesse Kovarsky as the hijackers — are unified in their deep commitment, telling this story with emotional truth. Conductor David Robertson led the magnificent Met orchestra and chorus, who perform their huge and varied duties with wholehearted passion. Peter Gelb’s firm advocacy of the work despite public criticism is fully vindicated. Ten years after “Klinghoffer” premiered, Islamic terrorism traveled to New York City, changing our landscape — physical, political, and psychological — forever. One of the New York landmarks targeted for attack by Al-Qaeda was the Metropolitan Opera House itself. Working 100 yards from the World Trade Center, I witnessed the events of September 11 and had tickets for an opera at Lincoln Center that night. The heightened security at the “Klinghoffer” premiere reminded me of the fears of that time but also how the country has changed in the intervening 13 years. Alice Goodman’s libretto seems stuck in simplistic, politically naive attitudes from the last century while John Adams’ music speaks to us now with greater urgency than ever. Its message should be heard.

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| October 30 - November 12, 2014

Costumed Or Not Daniel Nardicio and Owen Hawk present the XXX Costume Ball clothing-optional love fest. There’s no limit to how low or naked you can get. $200 prize for the best XXX costume. 250 W. 40th St., fourth fl. Oct. 31, 11 p.m.-3 p.m. Tickets are $25 at dworld.us, $30 at the door.

DANCE A Pina Bausch Anniversary at BAM Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch made its New York debut at the Brooklyn Academy of Music 30 years ago, and now the company returns with Bausch’s “Kontakthof,” a classic of the choreographer’s repertoire, performed with the collaboration of Rolf Borzik, Marion Cito, and Hans Pop. BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, 30 Lafayette Ave. at Ashland Pl. Oct. 31 & Nov. 1, 7:30 p.m.; Nov. 2, 3 p.m. Tickets are $25-$85 at bam.org. MATTYEE.COM

THU.OCT.30

Saint at Large in Brooklyn

CABARET Sing Out, Yee! Hawaiian artist Matt Yee, well known on the Atlantis All Gay Cruises, brings his “Outrageous Adult Sing-Along Diva Show” to New York. Yee mixes pop with show tunes and TV show theme songs for an eclectic mix. Laurie Beechman Theater, West Bank Café, 407 W. 42nd St. Oct. 30, Nov. 1, 7 p.m. Tickets are $22 at brownpapertickets. com/event/852914 or $27 at the door, plus a $15 food & drink minimum. Doors open at 6:15 for dinner.

FRI.OCT.31 HALLOWEEN Costumed Magic For the 34th year, Theater for the New City presents its Village Halloween Costume Ball. The party takes over every inch of TNC’s performance space at 155 First Ave. at 10th St. Doors open at 7:30 p.m., Oct. 31, with entertainment beginning at 8 with two continuously running cabarets. Stilt dancers, jugglers, fire-eaters, psychic readers, and burlesque and vaudeville performers are scattered throughout, and American and international delicacies are available at what TNC described as “people’s prices.” At midnight, the Monsters and Miracles Costume Parade begins. Outdoor entertainment on 10th St. btwn. First & Second Aves., free to the public, begins at 4 p.m. Ticket for the indoor fun, where costumes or formal wear are required, are $40 at theaterforthenewcity.net/halloween.htm.

The Roseland Ballroom is closed, and having lost its annual site for the Winter Black Party, the Saint at Large takes the occasion of All Saints Day to check out Brooklyn. BRKLYN WRHS offers a raw space in Greenpoint for a 10-hour musical festival with six of the leading underground DJs from New York and Berlin — nd_baumecker (Ostgut Ton – Panorama Bar), Peter Napoli (Brüt), the Carry Nation (Nita Aviance and DJ Will Automagic), and Wrecked (Ron Like Hell and Ryan Smith). The aim is a return of the gay dance scene to its no-frills, testosterone-driven early ‘70s warehouse roots by bringing together a clan of like-minded souls with a shared passion for music and dance. Greenpoint, Brooklyn warehouse location will be sent to ticket purchasers. Nov. 1, 11:45 p.m.-8:45 a.m. Tickets (advance only) are $60, $150 for All Saints/ Black Party combo at saintatlarge.com.

SUN.NOV.2 PERFORMANCE A Dangerous, Radical Arcade “Longing Lasts Longer” is an evening of dangerous ideas and radical inquiry about what it means to be human right now from Penny Arcade. Equal parts memoir, manifesto, cultural critique, and cri de coeur, the piece is Arcade’s conjuring of the New York of cultural resistance and individual renaissance, set against a live-mixed soundscape ranging from Al Green to John Lennon. Public Theater, 425 Lafayette St., btwn. E. Fourth St. & Astor Pl. Nov. 10, 7 p.m.; Nov. 2-3 & 9, 9:30 p.m. Tickets are $20 at joespub.com.

TUE.NOV.4 FACEBOOK.COM/ THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY

HOMO COMICUS

SAT.NOV.1 NIGHTLIFE

THEATER Dickinson, Alone Again “The Belle of Amherst,” William Luce’s one-woman play of the private yet prolific 19th century poet Emily Dickinson, stars Joely Richardson and is directed by Steve Cosson. Westside Theatre, 407 W. 43rd St. Through Jan. 25: Tue., 7 p.m.; Wed.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Wed., Sat., 2 p.m.; Sun., 3 p.m. Tickets are $79-$99 at telecharge.com or 212-239-6200.

WED.NOV.5 COMEDY 15 Years of Queer Laughs Homo Comicus celebrates 15 years in New York clubs, with an evening hosted — as so often — by Bob Montgomery, who welcomes guests Michael Brill, Claudia Cogan, Tarik Daniels, Jennie McNulty, and headliner Kevin Meaney. Gotham Comedy Club, 208 W. 23rd St. There’s a $20 cover, with a two-drink minimum. Reservations at 212367-9000.

PERFORMANCE Lypsinka, in Repertory With Herself John Epperson performs a rotating best of Lypsinka repertoire with “Lypsinka! The Boxed Set,” “The Passion of the Crawford,” and “John Epperson: Show Trash.” Connelly Theater, 220 E. Fourth St., btwn. Aves. A & B. Nov. 5-Jan. 3. For complete schedule and tickets at $45, visit ovationtix.com.

THU.NOV.6 PERFORMANCE Unseen Warhol at BAM Pittsburgh’s Andy Warhol Museum is celebrating its 20th anniversary, and BAM gets in on the party with “Exposed,” a multimedia performance event drawing on 15 never-before-seen films Warhol captured on his original 16mm camera between 1963 and 1966. The films feature an array of the era’s luminaries, including Taylor Mead, Mary Woronov, Edie Sedgwick, Mario Montez, John Giorno, Marcel Duchamp, Marisol, Donovan, and Warhol himself. The video presentation is accompanied by work by musical composers and performers, selected by curator Dean Wareham (Luna, Dean & Britta), who also performs — including punk icons Tom Verlaine (Television) and Martin Rev (Suicide), Bradford Cox (Deerhunter, Atlas Sound), and Eleanor Friedberger, formerly of the Fiery Furnaces. BAM Howard Gil-

THU.NOV.6, continued on p.43

October 30 - November 12, 2014 | www.gaycitynews.nyc

THU.NOV.6, from p.42

man Opera House, 30 Lafayette Ave. at Ashland Pl. Nov. 6-8, 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $25-$55 at bam.org.

In “Bad With Money,” Ben Rimalower — who previously explored his obsession with La LuPone with “Patti Issues,” to much acclaim — charts his sometimes hilarious, sometimes harrowing struggle to overcome his problem — or go broke trying. “People tend to be familiar now with alcohol and drug addiction — and I’ve got those, too,” Rimalower says. “But spending money I don’t have is really my drug of choice.” Aaron Mark directs. The Duplex, 61 Christopher St. at Seventh Ave. S., Sheridan Sq. Through Nov. 6: Thu., 9:30 p.m. Tickets are $25-$50 at purplepass. com, and there’s a two-drink minimum.

Books Belladonna & the Queer Division The Bureau of General Services — Queer Division and Belladonna* present an evening of readings, featuring Cheena Marie Lo, from Oakland, whose work has appeared in La Fovea, the Poetic Labor Project, and the anthology “It’s Night in San Francisco But It’s Sunny in Oakland”; EC Maxe Crandall, who teaches writing at Columbia, is at work on a critical biography called “Gertrude Stein and Me,” and whose chapbook “Together Men Make Paradigms” was recently published by Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs; and Natalie Peart, who co-hosts the Brooklyn Ladies Textbased Salon. BGSQD, now at the LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., room 210. Nov. 6, 8:30-10 p.m. More information at bgsqd.com.

FRI.NOV.7 FILM Fassbinder’s Legacy Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who made nearly 40 feature films between 1969 and 1982, when he died at age 37, was one of the most prolific and influential European filmmakers of the late 20th century. In melodramas, gangster movies, literary adaptations, and even sci-fi films, he returned obsessively to themes of love, crime, labor, and social and emotional exploitation. He was similarly fixated on his beloved performers — including Hanna Schygulla, El Hedi ben Salem, and Ulli Lommel — who formed a repertory company of sorts whose fierce, complicated devotion to their visionary leader is without parallel. In part II of its “Fassbinder: Romantic Anarchist” program,” the Film Society of Lincoln Center presents more than two-dozen of his films and collaborations with other filmmakers. Fassbinder’s 1982 swan song, the unforgettable “Querelle” (Nov. 23, 1 p.m.; Nov. 26, 8:30 p.m.), based on the Jean Genet novel, follows a Belgian sail-

SAT.NOV.8 COMMUNITY

SUN.NOV.9 BOOKS Transgressive Turks & Sexy Bears FACEBOOK.COM/ THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY

Hey, Big Spender

or and hustler (Brad Davis of “Midnight Express” fame) as he frequents a brothel in Brest run by Lysiane (Jeanne Moreau), and works through a complex relationship with his brother. “Despair” (Nov. 9. 6 p.m.; Nov. 14, 1:30 p.m.) from 1978 stars Dirk Bogarde in a Tom Stoppard adaptation of the Vladimir Nabokov novel about a Russian émigré who manages a German chocolate plant as the Nazis are rising to power. “Lili Marleen” (Nov. 15, 4:20 p.m.; Nov. 18, 8:30 p.m.) is a 1981 melodramatic chronicle of the star-crossed love affair between German cabaret singer Willie (Schygulla) and Swiss-Jewish songwriter Robert Mendelssohn (Giancarlo Giannini), who furtively lends his support to a group of German Jews. 1979’s “The Marriage of Maria Braun” (Nov. 8, 8:50 p.m.; Nov. 13, 6:30 p.m.), one of Fassbinder’s most praised films, centers on resilient women in postwar Germany, their self-reinventions mirroring the nation’s comeback (and its cost), and relates the saga of a poor soldier’s wife (Schygulla) who uses her wiles and savvy to rise as a businesswoman. Walter Reade Theater, 165 W. 65th St. and Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, 144 W. 65th St. Nov. 7-26. Tickets are $13; $9 for students & seniors (with package discounts available) at filmlinc.com.

Ron Suresha reads from his new collection of Turkish folk humor, “Extraordinary Adventures of Mullah Nasruddin,” which deals with taboo topics including bisexuality, adultery, incest, bestiality, and violence — many of the tales repressed for centuries for moralistic reason. He also reads from the new anthology “The Bears of Winter,” edited by Jerry L. Wheeler, with stories of growlingly sexy bearotica sure to make your fur thicken. BGSQD, now at the LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., room 210. Nov. 9, 7-9 p.m. More information at bgsqd.com.

THU.NOV.13 Devil Piss,” hosts Nick Comilla, whose poems have appeared in Assaracus, Poetry Is Dead, Lambda Literary, and HOMO Magazine; Jameson Fitzpatrick, author of the chapbook “Morrisroe: Erasures” whose poems have appeared in the Awl, the American Reader, the Literary Review, and Poetry; and Christopher Soto, a queer latin@ punk poet and prison abolitionist currently curating Nepantla: A Journal Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color. BGSQD, now at the LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., room 210. Nov. 8, 7-9 p.m. More information at bgsqd. com.

BOOKS Body Politics “Man Alive: A True Story of Violence, Forgiveness and Becoming a Man” is a new memoir from Thomas Page McBee, a columnist at Vice, which illuminates the transgender experience through his course to ultimate self-recognition. McBee appears with Saeed Jones, who reads from his new book “Prelude to a Bruise,” which explores how we reckon with our past without being ravaged by it and how we use people, and their bodies, to express ourselves. Word Bookstore, 126 Franklin St., btwn. Kent & Java Sts., Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Nov. 13, 7 p.m. More information at 718-383-0096.

Think Globally, Act Locally Local Futures, producers of the award-winning film “The Economics of Happiness,” hosts a daylong conference, “Voices of Hope in a Time of Crisis,” to launch the International Localization Network. The aim is to bring together advocates of and participants in local – first efforts at change around the world. Speaker include Helena Norberg-Hodge, director of Local Futures, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges, Laura Flanders, a journalist at GRITtv, community finance expert Michael Shuman, Nigerian psychologist and poet Bayo Akomolafe, Brazilian trade and agriculture expert Camila Moreno, and musician and philanthropist Peter Buffett. According to Norberg-Hodge, “The recent climate march in New York City was a powerful expression of the growing demand for change. ‘Voices of Hope’ is building on that momentum to provide a way for people to apply their concerns to practical, strategic solutions.” The Great Hall at Cooper Union, 30 Cooper Sq., Fourth Ave., btwn. E. Fourth St. & Astor Pl. Nov. 8, 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Admission is $50; $25 for activists, $15 for students & low-income at theeconomicsofhappiness. org.

BOOKS More Newfangled Poetry In “Newfangled 4,” Robert Siek, author of the poetry collection “Purpose and

| October 30 - November 12, 2014

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October 30 - November 12, 2014 | www.gaycitynews.nyc 10/24/14 3:41 PM