Gay City News - June 7, 2018

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More Homeless Youth Beds, But Concerns Too 04

HOP Takes Heat Over Parade Route Change 10

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DON’T CANCEL THAT CAKE OR THOSE FLOWERS JUST YET ANTI-GAY BAKER PREVAILS, BUT IN A NARROW RULING

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FREE | VOLUME SEVENTEEN, ISSUE TWELVE | JUNE 7 – JUNE 20, 2018

In This Issue COVER STORY Don’t cancel that cake or those flowers just yet 06, 20

PERSPECTIVE Gay ambassador to Germany is a dummkopf 21

REMEMBRANCE Connie Kurtz, activist, artist, dies at 81 08

OPERA Some mountains too high to climb 24

HEALTH Nixon outflanks Cuomo on opioids 14

THEATER Death of disco can’t enliven “Donna Summer� 32

COMMUNITY Hate attack after Queens Pride 16

PHOTOGRAPHY Alice Austen’s larky life 40

“Boys� Party Like It’s 1968 24

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June 7 – June 20, 2018 | GayCityNews.nyc

GayCityNews.nyc | June 7 – June 20, 2018

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YOUTH

New Homeless Youth Beds, But Concerns Too City will house 21 to 24-year-olds, but advocates question dollar amount, priorities BY PAUL SCHINDLER

I

n a highly choreographed event in City Hall’s Blue Room on May 30, First Lady Chirlane McCray and City Council Speaker Corey Johnson announced a three-year, $9.5 million investment in the de Blasio administration’s ongoing NYC Unity Project focused on the needs of LGBTQ youth. The initiatives to be funded include the expansion of three youth drop-in centers’ hours to 24/7, a variety of efforts aimed at building greater family acceptance of queer youth, a confidential foster youth population survey that will include questions about sexual orientation and gender identity and expression, and two new sites in Harlem and Central Brooklyn to facilitate PrEP access among adolescents. And for the first time, the city will fund shelter beds for homeless young people 21 to 24 years old in facilities that are LGBTQ-affirming and supportive. In what the administration described as its “initial investment,” the budget for the fiscal year beginning on July 1 will include $1 million, which will fund 20 shelter beds for one year. Despite the fact that providing shelter options for this age cohort separate from the adult shelter system — which for many young people is dangerous and unwelcoming — has been a long sought goal of youth advocates, the allocation falls well below what both they and Speaker Johnson himself have been calling for. While Johnson’s statements at the event were laudatory toward the administration and McCray, others who have been promoting the issue — including some of the youth who appeared as part of last week’s City Hall program — faulted the announcement both for the shortfall in beds being funded and for the priorities that did not receive attention in the $9.5 million allocation. In early March, the City Council unanimously approved legislation mandating that the city’s Department of Youth and Community

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NYC MEDIA

First Lady Chirlane McCray at last week’s NYC Unity Project announcement she co-hosted with City Council Speaker Corey Johnson.

Development implement shelter services for the 21-24 age range. The Council action followed a dramatic appearance by Johnson at a February 13 Youth Services Committee hearing, where DYCD officials offered testimony about the cost of providing such shelter. In response, the speaker said, “I don’t really care what the amount of money is… when it comes to getting the requisite number of beds to homeless young people, we have to come up with the money. If it’s $4 million, if it’s $7 million, if it’s $8 million, we have to come up with the money. So this Council will continue to push for whatever that amount of money is to expand those services.” On April 10, the Council, in its official response to de Blasio’s preliminary budget, called for a $10.5 million increase in the DYCD budget to provide, among other things, “100 more beds specifically for homeless young adults aged 21-24.” The 100 beds the Council called for would have cost about $5 million versus the $1 million the administration agreed to. Still, Johnson, at the May 30 event, struck an upbeat, even emotional tone. Standing in front of young people wearing NYC Unity Project T-shirts, the speaker recalled, during the previous mayoral administration, “standing on the steps [of City Hall] begging to just keep the funding we had.” In

contrast, the commitment shown by de Blasio and McCray is “unbelievably moving and affirming to these young people, I believe, and to me.” Advocates, however, while careful to note the progress demonstrated by the number of cityfunded beds for homeless youth tripling to more than 750 during de Blasio’s first term, voiced impatience that only $1 million is going toward the new 21 to 24-year-old initiative and raised other questions about the priorities that went into last week’s announcement. In an email message, Jamie Powlovich, executive director of the Coalition for Homeless Youth (CHY), praised both Johnson and McCray for their commitment to addressing homeless youth needs, but added that the $1 million “will only fund less than two dozen new beds, and falls short of the CHY FY19 ask of $4.8M that would more adequately meet the needs of older youth by bringing online 100 additional beds.” Carl Siciliano, founder and executive director of the Ali Forney Center, also expressed gratitude but said the plan is “long overdue,” and then added, “We have over 100 21 to 24-year-olds on our waiting list right now. I urge the city to add at least 100 beds in the coming budget.” He pointed out that more than 20 beds — funded privately — already serve the 21 to 24-year-

old population, so it is possible that the new city dollars will not create any new shelter opportunities but simply pay for existing ones in a different way. Siciliano also questioned whether money going toward family acceptance programs — important as they may be — might be better spent on beds, especially since many of the homeless youth with a history of family rejection that his group encounters come to New York from other parts of the nation or from the Caribbean. VOCALNY’s Jason Walker, who is a facilitator of Queerocracy, a grassroots youth advocacy and leadership initiative, echoed that assessment. He added that even among those homeless youth who grew up in New York but left their homes due to family trauma, poverty and mental health and drug use issues play as big or bigger a factor than simple lack of family acceptance. “Homeless kids need housing,” Siciliano said. “A response to their homelessness needs to be centered on their housing. I am concerned that so much of that response is on ancillary things. I wonder how much money was spent on the subway visibility campaign to make homeless LGBTQ youth more visible. In the years I’ve been working on this issue, they have been visible as hell on the subways because they’ve needed the subways for shelter.” Beth Hofmeister, a staff attorney at the Legal Aid Society’s Homeless Rights Project, said that without taking anything away from the other interventions McCray championed last week, “I agree 100 percent that by definition the youth you are talking about, they are homeless. This is about a fundamental human right.” Acknowledging that it is not clear exactly how many beds are needed to shelter homeless youth under 25, she added, “We are definitely not there yet.” Walker spoke in greatest detail about what he and youth at Queerocracy, a number of whom

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HOMELESS YOUTH, continued on p.43

June 7 – June 20, 2018 | GayCityNews.nyc

GayCityNews.nyc | June 7 – June 20, 2018

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CIVIL RIGHTS

Anti-Gay Colorado Baker Prevails in Narrow Ruling Supreme Court finds Colorado agency showed “hostility” to religious claims BY ARTHUR S. LEONARD

T

he US Supreme Court ruled on June 4 that overt hostility to religion tainted the decision process at the Colorado Civil Rights Commission when it ruled that baker Jack Phillips and his Masterpiece Cakeshop had unlawfully discriminated against Charlie Craig and Dave Mullins in 2012 by refusing to make them a wedding cake. Writing for the court, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy reaffirmed the right of the states to ban discrimination because of sexual orientation by businesses that sell goods and services to the public, but insisted that those charged with discrimination are entitled to a respectful consideration of their religious beliefs when their cases are adjudicated. Five other members of the court — Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Stephen Breyer, Neil Gorsuch, and Elena Kagan — joined Kennedy’s opinion. The majority’s focus on a flawed procedure at the Colorado Civil Rights Commission suggests this ruling, controversial as it is, may be of limited significance in other cases involving claims of religious exemption from LGBTQ nondiscrimination protections. Kennedy found that the Commission failed in meeting the requirement that government be neutral in matters of religion. During the case’s oral argument in December he had signaled this concern, making a troubling observation during Colorado Solicitor General Frederick Yarger’s defense of the state court’s decision against the baker. “Counselor, tolerance is essential in a free society,” Kennedy said to Yarger. “And tolerance is most meaningful when it’s mutual. It seems to me that the state in its position here has been neither tolerant nor respectful of Mr. Phillips’s religious beliefs.” In his opinion this week, Kennedy, pointing to comments made by two Commission members at hearings in the case, said, “The Civil Rights Commission’s treatment of his case has some elements of a clear and impermissible hostility toward the sincere religious beliefs that motivated his objection.” Kennedy continued, “One commissioner suggested that Phillips can believe ‘what he wants to believe,’ but cannot act on his religious beliefs ‘if he decides to do business in the state.’” This commissioner also said, “If a businessman wants to do business in the state and he’s got an issue with the — the law’s impacting his personal belief system, he needs to look at being able to compromise.” At a second hearing, a different commissioner talked about how “freedom of religion and reli-

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MASTERPIECECAKES.COM

Jack C. Phillips, owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd.

gion has been used to justify all kinds of discrimination throughout history, whether it be slavery, whether it be the Holocaust, whether it be — I mean, we — we can list hundreds of situations where freedom of religion has been used to justify discrimination. And to me it is one of the most despicable pieces of rhetoric that people can use to — to use their religion to hurt others.” Kennedy found that in making these remarks, the two commissioners — who had an obligation to be neutral — in fact disparaged religion. He emphasized that the record of the hearings “shows no objection to these comments from other commissioners” and that the state Court of Appeals ruling affirming the Commission’s decision did not mention them either. Precedents Cited by Justice Kennedy Kennedy invoked a 1993 decision in Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. Hialeah, where the Supreme Court held that overtly anti-religious bias by a Florida legislative body that enacted a ban on the ritual slaughter of chickens directly aimed at the practices of a minority religious sect violated the Constitution’s Free Exercise Clause. Even though the law, on its face, was neutral with respect to religion and so would normally be enforceable against anyone who engaged in the prohibited practice, the court found that the openly stated anti-religious sentiments of the legislative sponsors undercut the requirement that government be neutral regarding religious practices. The only reason the municipality had passed the ordinance was to forbid ritual slaughter of chickens by members of this particular religious sect, the court held, and so it was not a neutral law. Similarly in this case, Kennedy said, evidence of hostility to religion by the Commission mem-

bers tainted the process. Kennedy observed that when the high court decided in 2015 that same-sex couples have a fundamental right to marry, it had also noted that “the First Amendment ensures that religious organizations and persons are given proper protection as they seek to teach the principles that are so fulfilling and so central to their lives and faiths.” At that time, dissenting Justices Alito and Antonin Scalia had emphasized the inevitable future clashes as people with religious objections confronted the reality of same-sex marriages, and Scalia — as was his practice when he dissented from Kennedy’s gay rights majority opinions — ridiculed Kennedy’s statements for falling short of addressing that likelihood. Kennedy statements in this case do not suggest that religious objectors enjoy a broad exemption from complying with public accommodations laws. Concurrences from the Left and Right Kagan filed a concurring opinion, joined by Breyer, generally joining the court’s reasoning but disavowing Kennedy’s reliance on evidence from a stunt conceived by William Jack, a religious opponent of same-sex marriage who filed an amicus brief in the case. When he heard about the Masterpiece Cakeshop discrimination charge, Jack approached three other Colorado bakers, asking them to make a cake decorated with pictures and Biblical quotations derogatory of same-sex marriage and gay people, and all three bakers refused his request because they found the desired product to be offensive. Jack filed charges of religious discrimination against them, but the Colorado Commission rejected his charges, finding the bakers had a right to refuse to make cakes conveying messages they found offensive. Jack then argued – persuasively, in the view of Kennedy, Roberts, Alito, and Gorsuch — that the Commission’s different treatment of these three bakers compared to Jack Phillips showed its hostility to religious beliefs. Justice Clarence Thomas, whose separate concurring opinion was joined by Gorsuch, also found Jack’s arguments persuasive. Kagan’s concurrence argued that the case involving the three other bakers was distinguishable. Jack had asked the bakers to make a cake they would have refused to make for any customer, regardless of their religion or sexual orientation, she pointed out. By contrast, Phillips refused to make a wedding cake he would happily have sold to different-sex couples but refused to sell to same-sex couples. Gorsuch, in his separate concurrence, in

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ANTI-GAY BAKER, continued on p.7

June 7 – June 20, 2018 | GayCityNews.nyc

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ANTI-GAY BAKER, from p.6

which he was joined by Alito, argued that the three bakers were discriminating against Jack based on his religious beliefs. He also insisted on distinguishing between a cake to “celebrate a same-sex marriage” and a generic “wedding cake.” Interestingly, Kennedy’s opinion focused on free exercise of religion and evaded ruling on the other main argument advanced by Phillips: that requiring him to bake the cake would be a form of compelled speech prohibited by the First Amendment freedom of speech clause. The Trump administration had come into the case in support of Phillips’ appeal, but limited its argument to the free speech contention, which Gorsuch and Thomas embraced in their concurring opinions. Justice Ginsburg’s Dissent, Joined by Justice Sotomayor Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented in an opinion joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, minimizing the significance of the statements by the two Colorado commissioners. “Whatever one may think of the statements in historical context,” Ginsburg wrote, “I see no reason why the comments of one or two commissioners should be taken to overcome Phillips’ refusal to sell a wedding cake to Craig and Mullins. The proceedings involved several layers of independent decisionmaking, of which the Commission was but one.” The state’s Civil Rights Division and an administrative law judge considered Craig and Mullins’ complaint before it went to the Commission, whose finding was upheld by the Colorado Court of Appeals. “What prejudice infected the determinations of the adjudicators in the case before and after the Commission?,” Ginsburg wrote. “The Court does not say. Phillips’ case is thus far removed from the only precedent upon which the Court relies, Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. Hialeah, where the government action that violated a principle of religious neutrality implicated a sole decisionmaking body, the city council.” Ginsburg focused her dissent on a series of statements in Kennedy’s opinion that make clear that the court’s ruling does not endorse some sort of broad exemption for religious from complying with anti-discrimination laws, including the following: “It is a general rule that [religious and philosophical] objections do not allow business owners and other actors in the economy and in society to deny protected persons equal access to goods and services under a neutral and generally applicable public accommodations law.” “Colorado law can protect gay persons, just as it can protect other classes of individuals, in acquiring whatever products and services GayCityNews.nyc | June 7 – June 20, 2018

AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION

Charlie Craig and David Mullins, whose sexual orientation discrimination complaint against Masterpiece Cakeshop, led to this week’s Supreme Court ruling.

they choose on the same terms and conditions as are offered to other members of the public.” “Purveyors of goods and services who object to gay marriages for moral and religious reasons [may not] put up signs saying ‘no goods or services will be sold if they will be used for gay marriages.’” “[Gay people should not be subjected to] indignities when they seek goods and services in an open market.” All of these statements, Ginsburg noted, “point in the opposite direction” from the majority’s finding that Phillips should win his appeal. The narrowness and potentially limited precedent established by the ruling were well expressed by Kennedy, who wrote, “The delicate question of when the free exercise of [Phillips’] religion must yield to an otherwise valid exercise of state power needed to be determined in an adjudication in which religious hostility on the part of the State itself would not be a factor in the balance the State sought to reach. That requirement, however, was not met here. When the Colorado Civil Rights Commission considered this case, it did not do so with the religious neutrality that the Constitution requires.” The Issue of Free Speech Gorsuch and Thomas would have gone beyond the majority opinion to find a violation of Phillips’ freedom of speech, as well. On that question, Kennedy wrote, “The free speech aspect of this case is difficult, for few persons who have seen a beautiful wedding cake might have thought of its creation as an exercise of protected speech. This is an instructive example, however, of the proposition that the application of constitutional freedoms in new contexts can deepen our understanding of their meaning.” He took the issue no further, however.

What Comes Next The next shoe to drop, which could better clarify the significance of this ruling, may come quickly. The high court, also on June 4, announced it will discuss a similar case, State of Washington v. Arlene’s Flowers, Inc., on June 7; if the case is accepted for review that would likely be announced on June 11. Arlene’s Flowers refused to provide floral arrangements for a same-sex wedding and was found by the state civil rights agency and the Washington courts to be in violation of its public accommodations statute. Arlene’s petition for Supreme Court review was filed last summer, but no action was taken by the court pending a decision on Masterpiece Cakeshop. If the court denies the petition, that would reinforce the view that the Masterpiece ruling is narrowly focused on the evidence of “hostility to religion” by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission. However, the court might grant the petition and send the case back to the Washington Supreme Court for reconsideration in light of Masterpiece. This could respond to Kennedy’s observation that the Colorado Court of Appeals decision did not even mention the remarks made by commissioners that aroused his ire at oral argument and were a significant factor in the Supreme Court’s decision. A remand to the Washington court could implicitly direct that court to examine the record for any signs of hostility to religion at any stage in that proceeding. The Oregon Supreme Court recently heard oral argument in a similar wedding cake case, Klein d/b/a Sweetcakes by Melissa v. Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries. A ruling by the Oregon court could provide the first sign of how lower courts will interpret Masterpiece Cakeshop. That case was instigated not by the same-sex couple denied service but rather by the state’s attorney general, reacting to press reports about the denial. It can be difficult to predict what controversial decisions by the Supreme Court might mean for future cases. Kennedy spelled out his thinking on that, saying, “The outcome of cases like this in other circumstances must await further elaboration in the courts, all in the context of recognizing that these disputes must be resolved with tolerance, without undue disrespect to sincere religious beliefs, and without subjecting gay persons to indignities when they seek goods and services in an open market.” At the oral argument, Phillips and Masterpiece Cakeshop were represented by Kristen K. Waggoner of Alliance Defending Freedom, the Arizona-based anti-LGBTQ religious advocacy firm. Trump administration Solicitor General Noel J. Francisco made his first appearance before the court in that post to argue the administration’s unavailing freedom of speech position. On the other side, David D. Cole, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney, arguing on behalf of Craig and Mullins, joined Colorado Solicitor General Yarger.

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REMEMBRANCE

Connie Kurtz, Lesbian Activist, Artist, Dies at 81 With spouse Ruth Berman, Brooklyn-born rights pioneer at forefront of LGBTQ, feminist activism BY PAUL SCHINDLER

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onnie (Constance) Kurtz, a lesbian activist and an artist who works included paintings, collage, and quilts, died in the home she shared with her beloved spouse, Ruth Berman, in West Palm Beach on May 27 after a long illness. Kurtz would have turned 82 in July. Kurtz was born on July 19, 1936 in Brooklyn and, in 1970, with her husband and two children, moved to Israel, where the family lived for four years. When she returned to the US, she reconnected with her longtime friend Ruth Berman, who had lived in her apartment building in Gravesend, Brooklyn. They fell in love, divorced their respective husbands, and became a couple. They remained together until Kurtz’s death. Everyone knew them as Ruthie and Connie. In 1988, Kurtz was working as a bookkeeper and eating disorder therapist while Berman was a guidance counselor and physical education teacher at Sheepshead Bay High School in Brooklyn. With two other couples, they sued the New York City Board of Education for domestic partner benefits, eventually winning such rights for all New York City municipal employees in 1994. Coming out of the closet on “The Phil Donahue Show” in 1988, the couple talked about the case there and on “Geraldo.” Kurtz and Berman started branches of Parents, Friends and Family of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) in New York and Florida, and in 2000, began serving as co-chairs of the Lesbian Rights Task Force of the New York State chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW). Recipients of the Pioneer Award from SAGE, Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders, the couple, both certified counselors, also founded The Answer is Loving Counseling Center in West Palm Beach, where they worked for more than 20 years. “Connie and her soulmate Ruth have been iconic leaders of our community for decades, which is why the federal legislation SAGE has introduced in Congress on behalf of LGBT elders is named after them,” said Michael Adams, the CEO of SAGE, referring to the Ruthie and Connie LGBT Elder Americans Act. “Words can’t explain how sad we are that Connie has passed. We send our love and condolences to Ruth. And we celebrate and honor Connie’s fierce and passionate legacy, which has made the world a better place for so many of us.” The legislation, introduced in the past several sessions of Congress, would identify LGBTQ older adults as a “vulnerable population,” establish the National Resource Center on LGBT Aging to provide support and assistance to agen-

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COURTESY OF CBST

Connie Kurtz, tz, 1936-2018.

COURTESY OF CBST

Ruth Berman and Connie Kurtz.

cies and organizations serving the community, collect data on the senior LGBTQ population, and prioritize research and development of programs to serve them. Commenting last week about the legislation — and its impact on the care of elders in senior housing and nursing homes — Berman told Gay City News, “It would be so helpful because there are people who are separated from their family and treated horribly, and in a place where they shouldn’t be because they are supposed to be getting care. This will go a long way to make sure these agencies learn they have to treat people decently.” On May 20, 2000, when same-sex marriage was not yet legal anywhere in the US, Kurtz and Berman were religiously married in a Jewish wedding officiated by Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, senior rabbi of Manhattan’s Congregation Beit

Simchat Torah. They were legally married on July 26, 2011, two days after marriage for samesex couples became available in New York State, and Kleinbaum officiated at that ceremony as well. “Connie was a force of nature,” Kleinbaum said. “Everyone who encountered her — even for the first time and even briefly — felt her passion, her love, her fierceness, and her humor. Connie and her love Ruthie changed the world, and never lost the love of life, of art, and of all of her people. I am sending my love to Ruthie and all who are in grief over this terrible loss. A great light has gone out in our world. May her memory forever bless us and may our lives be forever a blessing to her memory.” The story of Kurtz and Berman’s love and activism is captured in Deborah Dickson’s awardwinning 2002 documentary “Ruthie and Connie: Every Room in the House.” “Ruthie and Connie’s story as told through Deborah Dickson’s beautiful film has been a life-changer for many of my students in lesbian and queer history,” said Smith College Professor Kelly Anderson, whose Documenting Lesbian Lives course makes use of the documentary as well as materials from “The Ruth Berman and Connie Kurtz Papers” housed in the Sophia Smith Collection of Women’s History at Smith College and the Lesbian Herstory Archives in Brooklyn. “We can’t help but fall in love with them again and again. To be able to then go into the archives here at Smith and see those same scrapbooks and photos and hold their vivid and colorful history in our hands has been invaluable. They are heroes to so many, but for the Smith students and other researchers who get to view their collection up close it’s pure magic. Their life story is a wonderful portal to the whole range of joy and loss in our lives. My deepest gratitude for their openness and courage and for leaving their stories with us.” The couple retired to Palm Beach County, Florida, where they were continuously active in Democratic Party, LGBTQ, feminist, and #BlackLivesMatter politics. Kurtz was passionately devoted to the causes of women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, and the environment, and she is also remembered for her humor, her energy, and her dedication to pursuing justice and her art. She began to focus particular attention on her art — vividly colored paintings, collages, and quilts — in 1996. In addition to Ruth Berman — her partner, her love, her spouse, her wife, and her co-conspirator — Connie Kurtz is survived by her sister Sally Silverman, her daughter Eileen Ben Or and son Moishe Kurtz, both of whom live

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CONNIE KURTZ, continued on p.43

June 7 – June 20, 2018 | GayCityNews.nyc

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COMMUNITY

Heritage of Pride Takes Heat Over Parade Route Change At town hall, angry response over lack of community input, long-undisclosed planning

DONNA ACETO

HOP’s march director Julian Sanjivan, Detective Carl Locke, the NYPD’s LGBTQ liaison, Patrol Borough Manhattan South Executive Officer James Kehoe, Patrol Services Bureau Executive Officer Fausto Pichardo, and Joseph Gallucci, the commanding officer of the NYPD’s citywide counterterrorism unit, at the June 5 town hall.

BY DUNCAN OSBORNE

T

he organization that produces New York City’s annual Pride Parade and related events first considered a controversial new route for this year’s parade in December 2016, but throughout the first six months of 2017, as it was negotiating a resistance contingent in last year’s parade, it never told activists in that contingent or the

broader community that it was contemplating a change going forward. “My concern is that [Heritage of Pride] has not consulted with the rest of the community,” said Sheri Clemons, who is a stalwart member of the LGBTQ community who regularly turns out for protests and meetings, during a heated June 5 town hall that was organized by Heritage of Pride (HOP), which produces the parade, the mayor’s office, and senior members of the

DONNA ACETO

Sheri Clemons holds up a sign expressing her displeasure with Heritage of Pride’s community engagement.

NYPD. “You have to listen to the community and that also means reaching out and engaging… Everybody should have known that these changes would be disturbing.”

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ROUTE CHANGE, continued on p.11

Parade Route Reductions Began With Cost Concerns In 2010, Bloomberg, NYPD launched effort to keep events to five hours BY DUNCAN OSBORNE

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hile Heritage of Pride (HOP) has been saying that community complaints prompted it to alter the route of New York City’s LGBTQ Pride Parade and move the events associated with the parade out of the West Village, the original impetus for shortening all parades in the city came from an NYPD effort to reduce the costs of policing those events. “The mayor has made it clear that New Yorkers can’t afford a tax increase now, and we can’t take our eyes off the ball when it comes to keeping crime low,” Ed Skyler, a deputy mayor in the Bloomberg administration, told the Daily News in 2010 after the NYPD ordered all

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parades to cut their routes by 25 percent and keep their run times to five hours or less. “Reducing the length and duration of parades across the board is a sensible way to save money in tough economic times.” Paul Browne, the NYPD’s chief spokesperson in 2010, told the Wall Street Journal then that the cuts would save the agency $3 million a year in police overtime costs. Last year’s Pride Parade lasted nine and a half hours. While the demand on HOP that the parade last five hours or less remains the same, no group or person is currently saying that the cost to the city of policing and cleaning up after the parade is the reason for or even part of the motivation for the changes. This year, HOP shortened and re-

versed the parade route so it runs south on Seventh Avenue from Chelsea then east on Christopher and Eighth Streets and then north again on Fifth Avenue to end at 29th Street. Contingents this year are limited to 200 people and the number of floats and vehicles has been reduced. HOP is expecting 41,000 marchers this year as opposed to 55,000 last year. The post-parade pier dance, now called Pride Island, and fireworks were moved from the West Village to Pier 97 on the Hudson River at the end of 57th Street. PrideFest, which, like the parade, takes place on the last Sunday in June, has moved to University Place between 13th Street and Waverly Place from the West Village’s Abingdon Square area.

HOP has said that community complaints led to the changes, though 311 and 911 call records indicate that there were few complaints about last year’s Pride events. The changes did not result from efforts by Community Board 2, which includes the West Village. The NYPD divides uniformed police overtime costs for events into two broad categories — planned for events that have occurred for three consecutive years and unplanned for protests, storms, or natural disasters, according to the city’s Independent Budget Office (IBO). The NYPD saw significant growth in all overtime costs, including events, arrest processing, investigations, and various operations from 1996

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PARADE COSTS, continued on p.11

June 7 – June 20, 2018 | GayCityNews.nyc

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ROUTE CHANGE, from p.10

HOP shortened and reversed the 2018 parade route so it runs south on Seventh Avenue from Chelsea then east on Christopher and Eighth Streets before heading north again on Fifth Avenue to end at 29th Street. Contingents are limited to 200 people and the number of floats and vehicles has been reduced. HOP is expecting 43,000 marchers this year as opposed to 55,000 last year. HOP is making all marchers wear wristbands, a requirement that led to “No wristbands� chants during the town hall. In meetings held last month, HOP said that discussions with the NYPD and other city agencies about the new parade route began in August 2017. HOP ultimately presented the NYPD with six choices and the agency selected the route. While HOP meetings are public, it never announced the new route until after the final decision was made in January 2018. The December 2016 date was first acknowledged publicly in a PowerPoint presentation made at the June 5 town hall, which was held to explain the new march route. The fact that discussions, even if they were only internal HOP deliberations, had begun months earlier and that the group had multiple opportunities to inform the community and activists as they negotiated the 2017 resistance contingent inflamed feelings at the town

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PARADE COSTS, from p.10

through 2014 even as the number of uniformed officers declined. Last year, the Pride Parade and related events incurred just under $3 million in uniformed police overtime costs and the National Puerto Rican Day Parade cost $3.7 million, according to the IBO. The 2016 Thanksgiving Day Parade cost $531,000 and the St. Patrick’s Day Parade cost $967,000 in 2017. There are sporting events and unplanned events, such as guarding Trump Tower during protests, in the city that incur overtime costs that are equal to or much greater than the costs incurred by the Pride Parade or the National Puerto Rican Day Parade. A group of activists with deep GayCityNews.nyc | June 7 – June 20, 2018

DONNA ACETO

Hannah Simpson, a transgender woman who expressed gratitude for the NYPD’s work.

hall, which was already going to be contentious. Ken Kidd, a longtime LGBTQ activist, was the lead negotiator for last year’s resistance contingent, organized to respond to the election of Donald Trump. He described the new route as a “stupid, small, rinky-dink route� and a “march to nowhere.� After the meeting, Kidd told Gay City News that “I was on the phone with them four times a week� and there were other chances for HOP to disclose the plan. “That does not speak well to transparency,� Kidd said during the town hall. Out gay City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, whose district includes major portions of the parade route, including the West

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ties to the LGBTQ and other movements organized under the rubric of the Reclaim Pride Coalition (RPC) have demanded, among a longer list of demands, that HOP provide an “honest and transparent explanation for the dramatic route change.� “We know there was a small number of complaints that HOP said were received after the 2016 and 2017 Pride celebrations,� said Jake Tolan, a Coalition member, in a written statement. “RPC would like to know why such a small percentage of residents were able to vanquish the LGBTQ community from the traditionally LGBTQ-friendly West Village and why HOP, an organization supposedly dedicated to LGBTQ rights, acquiesced so readily to the demonization and banishment of our communities.�

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EMPLOYMENT

Two New Job Discrimination Petitions to SCOTUS Both sides of Title VII sexual orientation question seek high court review BY ARTHUR S. LEONARD

A

t the end of May, the US Supreme Court had received two new petitions asking it to address the question whether the 1964 Civil Rights Act’s Title VII ban on employment discrimination “because of sex” can be interpreted to apply to claims of sexual orientation discrimination. Altitude Express — which employed the late Donald Zarda, a skydiving instructor who claimed he was dismissed because of his sexual orientation in violation of Title VII — has asked the high court to reverse a February 26 ruling by the New York-based Second Circuit Court of Appeals that the district court had erred in dismissing Zarda’s claim as not covered under the 1964 Act. The circuit sent the case back to the district court, holding that sexual orientation discrimination is a “subset” of sex discrimination. Gerald Lynn Bostock, a gay man who claims he was fired from his job as the Child Welfare Services coordinator for the Clayton County Juvenile Court System in Georgia because of his sexual orientation, is asking the Supreme Court to overturn an 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that reiterated its holding last year in Evans v. Georgia Regional Hospital that an old circuit precedent requires three-judge panels there to dismiss Title VII sexual orientation claims. As in the Evans case, the 11th Circuit refused Bostock’s request to consider the question sitting en banc with all its active judges. The question whether Title VII can be used to challenge adverse employment decisions motivated by the worker’s actual or perceived sexual orientation is important as a matter of federal law, especially since a majority of states do not forbid such discrimination within their own jurisdictions. Although Title VII applies only to employers with at least 15 employee — and so leaves regulation of smaller businesses to states and localities — its applicability to sexual orientation discrimination claims would make a big difference for many lesbian, gay, and bisexual workers in much of the nation where such protection is otherwise unavailable. Not one state in the southeastern US forbids sexual orientation discrimination by statute. In Georgia, individuals employed outside of a handful of municipalities are, like Gerald Bostock in Clayton County, out of luck unless the federal law can be construed to protect them. An affirmative ruling by the Supreme Court would be especially valuable for rural employees who are unlikely to have any state or local protection. During the first several decades after Title VII went into effect in 1965, every attempt by

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Altitude Express, which had employed the late Donald Zarda, is seeking Supreme Court review of an appeals court victory by the skydiver’s estate in a sexual orientation discrimination case involving his firing.

LGBTQ plaintiffs to assert sexual orientation or gender identity discrimination claims was rejected by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the agency responsible for overseeing its enforcement, and by the federal courts. Two Supreme Court decisions adopting broad interpretations of the meaning of discrimination “because of sex,” however, have led to reconsideration of that old position. In Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins in1989, the high court accepted the argument that an employer who discriminates against a worker because of that person’s failure to comport with expected sex and gender stereotypes may have violated Title VII. And in Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services in 1998, the Supreme Court, holding that the interpretation of “because of sex” was not limited to factual scenarios specifically contemplated by Congress in 1964, rejected a Fifth Circuit ruling that Title VII could not apply to a case where a man was subjected to hostile environment harassment of a sexual nature by male co-workers. In that case, the court — speaking unanimously through Justice Antonin Scalia, no less! — said Title VII could be applied to “comparable evils” to those envisioned by Congress. Taking these two cases together as precedents, lower federal courts began to interpret sex nondiscrimination laws more broadly, first in cases involving transgender plaintiffs and then, more recently, in cases involving lesbian, gay, and bisexual plaintiffs. The EEOC embraced this movement in the lower federal courts during the Obama administration in rulings reversing half a century of agency precedent to extend jurisdiction to gender identity and sexual orientation claims.

The key sexual orientation ruling is Baldwin v. Foxx from 2015, issued just weeks after the Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling. EEOC rulings are not binding on the federal courts, however, and the agency does not have the power to enforce its rulings without the courts’ assistance. It does, however, have power to investigate discrimination charges and to attempt to persuade employers to settle cases the agency finds to have merit. That EEOC decision encompassed protection from retaliation against employees who oppose discrimination or seek to enforce their rights. Plaintiffs bringing sexual orientation cases in federal courts have had an uphill battle because of the weight of older circuit court decisions rejecting such claims. Under circuit court rules, old appellate decisions remain binding not only on the district courts in each circuit but also on the three-judge circuit court panels that normally hear appeals. Only a ruling en banc by an expanded or full bench of the circuit court can overrule a prior circuit precedent, unless the Supreme Court does so. Some have argued, as the Bostock petition does, that Price Waterhouse and Oncale implicitly overrule those older precedents, including the case that the 11th Circuit cites as binding, Blum v. Gulf Oil Corporation. The Second Circuit ruling in favor of Donald Zarda’s estate specifically looked to Price Waterhouse and Oncale as well as the EEOC’s Baldwin decision to overrule several earlier panel decisions and establish a new Title VII interpretation for the federal courts in Vermont, New York, and Connecticut. Before the Zarda decision, the only circuit court to issue a similar ruling as a result of en banc review was the Chicago-based Seventh Circuit in Hively v. Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana, in 2017. At the time of Hively, two out of the three states in the Seventh Circuit — Wisconsin and Illinois — already had state laws banning sexual orientation discrimination, so the ruling was most important for people employed in Indiana. A three-judge panel of the Eighth Circuit, covering seven Midwestern states, most of which do not have state laws banning sexual orientation discrimination, will be hearing argument on this issue soon in Horton v. Midwest Geriatric Management, where the district court dismissed a sexual orientation discrimination claim relying on a 1989 circuit precedent. Bostock’s petition argues that circuit courts should not treat pre-Price Waterhouse rulings on this question as binding. Under this logic, the Eighth Circuit panel in Horton should be able to ignore that circuit’s 1989 ruling, although it

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SCOTUS PETITIONS, continued on p.23

June 7 – June 20, 2018 | GayCityNews.nyc

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13

HEALTH

Nixon Outflanks Guv on Safer Consumption Spaces As Cuomo delays on de Blasio request, challenger grabs the opioid issue BY NATHAN RILEY

W

hile Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio dance around harm reduction measures to reduce the record-high number of overdose deaths, Cynthia Nixon is embracing Safer Consumption Spaces at events in the city and upstate. Cuomo’s Democratic primary challenger unequivocally supports allowing users to inject in health care facilities where overdose prevention workers can step in and reverse overdoses, while the governor and mayor approach the issue like it’s a political third rail that could destroy them. De Blasio gave the program a yellow light; he’s for it but he wants the cover of the state health commissioner concurring. The delay there has been laid at the feet of Cuomo, who faced interruptions

14

COURTESY OF HOUSING WORKS

Protesters heckled Governor Andrew Cuomo as he accepted the State Democratic Convention’s endorsement for reelection last month.

during his speech at the recent the State Democratic Convention by activists chanting, “End overdose deaths now!” The protesters were removed from the hall and arrested. The following day, State Health Commissioner Howard Zucker sent a letter to a de Blasio aide asking for more information, es-

pecially related to concerns about neighborhood objections, before he would green-light the programs in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and the Bronx — as well as upstate Ithaca, the first locality statewide to authorize such Safer Consumption Spaces. In the meanwhile, the number of deaths keeps rising, with the lat-

est figures for New York City reaching a new high of 1,441 in 2017, 80 percent of them from opioids. More people are dying of overdoses than from homicides, suicides, and vehicular accidents combined. This number averages out to an overdose death every seven hours in the five boroughs, a figure that explains the activists’ sense of urgency. The governor’s hesitation was challenged this past Sunday evening during a campaign appearance Nixon made in Ithaca. Asked about the issue by a local doctor who operates a harm reduction clinic for drug users, Nixon gave Safer Consumption Spaces her enthusiastic endorsement. “If we can show it’s successful here,” the Ithaca Journal reported, “it will explode across the country and save thousands of lives.”

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SAFER CONSUMPTION, continued on p.15

June 7 – June 20, 2018 | GayCityNews.nyc

䉴

SAFER CONSUMPTION, from p.14

The close working relationship between Cuomo and Charles King, the CEO of Housing Works, the AIDS services organization that has pushed the Safer Consumption Space issue hard, has become strained over the governor’s failure to approve the plans in the city and in Ithaca. “I’ve always praised the governor when he did the right thing, but I don’t have any reservations about calling him out when he falls short,” King said in a telephone interview. He added that a personal conversation he had with Zucker convinced him that the health commissioner is on board. Indeed, in his May 25 response to a de Blasio aide, Zucker wrote there is “emerging evidence that SIFs” –— Safer Injection Facilities, another name for Safer Consumption Spaces — have many public health benefits that would “reduce overdose fatalities, lessen public nuisance, and curtail the transmission of bloodborne infections.” In addition, these programs “help

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COMMUNITY

Hate Attack Follows Queens Pride After 26th annual Jackson Heights event, man assaulted, endures anti-gay slurs

DONNA ACETO DONNA ACETO

In green Ts, Counilmembers Jimmy Van Bramer and Danny Dromm with several of their colleagues.

Melissa Sklarz, who is challenging 30th District State Assemblymember Brian Barnwell in the September Democratic primary.

BY CARLOTTA MOHAMED

T

housands of spectators flooded the vibrant streets of Jackson Heights Sunday as dancers, musicians, advocates, and elected officials marched down 37th Avenue from 89th Street to 75th Street as part of the 26th annual Queens Pride Parade and Festival celebrating LGBTQ Pride Month. At the forefront of the parade serving as grand marshals were Queens Borough President Melinda Katz, a supporter of the community during her time in office, Elijah Betts, a non-binary-identified youth who is an active leader at Generation Q, an LGBTQ youth center for ages 13-24 in Forest Hills, and Thomas Krever, representing the Hetrick-Martin Institute where he is CEO. Katz, Betts, and Krever were followed by more than 75 colorful contingents. Afterward, participants attended a festival with a headlining musical performance from Ultra Naté. Just hours after the parade, at around 10 p.m., however, a 25-year-old man at 83rd Street and 37th Avenue was approached by two individuals who yelled anti-gay slurs and punched him several times in the face causing bruising and lacerations. The assault is being investigated as a possible bias crime by the NYPD’s Hate Crime Task Force, police said. The suspects, who fled the scene after the attack, were black males, said police, who offered no further information about them. As Gay City News goes to press, LGBTQ activists and allies in Queens were planning a Wednesday evening press conference on the steps of the Jackson Heights Post Office to condemn the assault, standing in solidarity with the victims of hate-motivated violence. State Senator Jose Peralta, an East Elmhurst

16

DONNA ACETO

Thomas Krever (center), CEO of the Hetrick-Martin Institute, one of the parade’s grand marshals, surrounded by colleagues.

Democrat who had marched in the parade, denounced the attack, describing it as “intolerable.” “I am outraged that attacks against people because of their sexual orientation or gender expression continue to occur,” said Peralta. “There is no room for hate in our community, especially in one as diverse as Jackson Heights. Our diversity should unite us not divide us. We must ensure we all work together to put an end to hate and send a clear message of unity and solidarity.” The first Queens Pride Parade was held in 1993, three years after the murder of Julio Rivera, a gay Latino who was brutally attacked by three men near the PS 69 school playground in Jackson Heights and died from his injuries. Rivera’s tragic death prompted the local LGBTQ

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QUEENS PRIDE, continued on p.18

DONNA ACETO

One marcher remembers Julio Rivera, whose 1990 murder in Jackson Heights spurred the emergence of queer activism in the borough.

June 7 – June 20, 2018 | GayCityNews.nyc

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Members of New York Cheer, the LGBTQ acrobatic group.

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Front Runners, the gay track club.

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Queens Borough President Melinda Katz (with sash), a grand marshal, with former City Councilmember Elizabeth Crowley, State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, and US Representative Joseph Crowley.

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QUEENS PRIDE, from p.16

community to take action, forming several community groups and in time creating the annual Pride Parade and Festival — the second largest such celebration in the New York metropolitan area — to promote pride and visibility in the borough. Each year, the parade has passed by the corner of 37th Avenue and 78th Street named in Rivera’s honor. Out gay City Councilmembers Daniel Dromm of Jackson Heights and Jimmy Van Bramer of Sunnyside and Democratic Congressmember Joseph Crowley, also from Jackson Heights, were among the many elected officials in attendance. Dromm, who chairs the Council’s LGBT Caucus and was a founder of the parade, also expressed outrage about Sunday night’s attack. “It is horrific that a member of the LGBTQ community experienced such violence after Queens Pride, a celebration of who we are,” said Dromm. “While the fight for equality and justice for LGBTQ people in Queens has come a long way… sadly, attacks like these still occur. They are in no way representative of Jackson Heights or our borough,

and we will continue to resist attempts like these, which seek to force us back into the closet.” Jessica Ramos, a Jackson Heights resident who is opposing Peralta in September’s Democratic primary and was recently endorsed by the Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club, a gay political group, marched in Queens Pride, pledging to fight for LGBTQ equality and faulting her opponent for his membership in the Independent Democratic Conference. “New York is the birthplace of the gay rights movement, and we have come so far since then — but there’s more work to do to reach true LGBTQ equality,” said Ramos. “For too long, LGBTQ priorities have been left to the wayside by Republicans in the State Senate and the Independent Democratic Conference senators who voted for Republican leadership.” Ramos’ LGBTQ agenda includes a ban on so-called conversion therapy for minors; increased funding for LGBTQ homeless youth and seniors; the end of gay and trans panic defenses in criminal cases; the Child-Parent Security Act that would end New York’s ban on ges-

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QUEENS PRIDE, continued on p.19

June 7 – June 20, 2018 | GayCityNews.nyc

DONNA ACETO

Drummers raising the volume in Jackson Heights.

䉴

QUEENS PRIDE, from p.18

tational surrogacy; the long-stalled Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act, which has never received a floor vote in the Senate; and the expansion of minority and women-owned business enterprise (MWBE) contracting opportunities to transgender entrepreneurs. In a written statement, Crowley, who is the Democratic county leader in Queens, said that although there has been “incredible progress in the march toward equality,” there’s still a long way to go to ensure the full rights of LGBTQ Americans, especially communities of color. The day after Queens Pride, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a landmark proposal to make birth certificates more inclusive for all gender identities. New York City birth certificates will now include designations for male, female, and a new, third category of “X” to reflect non-binary gender identity, the mayor’s office said. “Pride Month is a time to celebrate how far we’ve come in the fight for equality, and reaffirm our commitment to protecting all New Yorkers from discrimination,” the mayor said in a written statement. “This proposal will allow transgender and gender non-conforming New Yorkers to live with the dignity and respect they deserve, and make our city fairer.” Participants, both LGBTQ and allied, at Queens Pride noted the progress the LGBTQ community has made but pointed to the ongoing challenges of discrimination facing gay and transgender individuals, particularly the continued controversy about transgender access to bathrooms and locker rooms consistent with their gender identity. Sharon John, 62, of Harlem, who GayCityNews.nyc | June 7 – June 20, 2018

DONNA ACETO

Sean Coleman, who heads Destination Tomorrow, a Bronx LGBTQ services group, was among the parade judges.

described herself as a “free spirit,” could easily be singled out in the crowd for her stand-out attire. She was wearing a red hat that said “Pride” with a big colorful bow attached and a long Pride Flag as a cape, while standing on a corner with her black cart filled with Pride Flags, necklaces, and other accessories for sale. “I have a nephew that’s gay and some friends that are bisexual,” said John. “I’m here to show support, and there needs to be a realization that people are people and we shouldn’t judge anyone. I raised my children to be the same way, and I’m happy to be here today.” Nelson Silverio, 30, of Corona, who works at the Latino Commission on AIDS’ Oasis Wellness Center, said it was his seventh year participating in the Queens Pride Parade and Festival. “I’m from the Dominican Republic, so I don’t have the opportunity there to say ‘I’m gay’ in the open,” Silverio said. “Here in the United States, I have the freedom to just be me and celebrate. Pride Month is not just for the LGBTQ community, it’s for all communities, and I invite everyone to come out and celebrate with us.”

19

PERSPECTIVE: Supreme Cour t Insider PUBLISHER JENNIFER GOODSTEIN

jgoodstein@cnglocal.com

In Masterpiece, Baker Wins the Battle but Loses the War

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20

I

n the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, the Supreme Court on Monday ruled for a bakery that had refused to sell a wedding cake to a same-sex couple. It did so on grounds that are specific to this particular case and will have little to no applicability to future cases. The opinion is full of reaffirmations of our country’s longstanding rule that states can bar businesses that are open to the public from turning customers away because of who they are. The case involves Dave Mullins and Charlie Craig, a same-sex couple who went to the Masterpiece Cakeshop in Denver in search of a cake for their wedding reception. When the bakery refused to sell Dave and Charlie a wedding cake because they’re gay, the couple sued under Colorado’s longstanding nondiscrimination law. The bakery claimed that the Constitution’s protections of free speech and freedom of religion gave it the right to discriminate and to override the state’s civil rights law. The Colorado Civil Rights Commission ruled against the bakery, and a state appeals court upheld its decision. In reversing the lower court’s ruling, the Supreme Court focused on how

this particular case was handled by the Commission, which decides cases under Colorado’s nondiscrimination law. The court raised concerns about comments from some of the Colorado commissioners that they believed revealed anti-religion bias. Because of that bias, the court held that the bakery wasn’t treated fairly when the Commission decided the discrimination claim. But — despite arguments from the Trump administration and other opponents of LGBT equality — the court didn’t decide that any business has a right to discriminate against customers because of who they are. Instead, the court’s decision affirms again and again that our nation’s laws against discrimination are essential to maintaining America’s open society and that states can pass and enforce those laws, including in the context of LGBT people. First, the court reaffirmed that lesbian, gay, and bisexual people are entitled to equal dignity. The ruling makes clear that it “is unexceptional that Colorado law can protect gay persons, just as it can protect other classes of individuals, in acquiring whatever products and services they choose on the same terms and conditions as are offered to other members

of the public.” The decision continues, “Our society has come to the recognition that gay persons and gay couples cannot be treated as social outcasts or as inferior in dignity and worth. For that reason the laws and the Constitution can, and in some instances must, protect them in the exercise of their civil rights. The exercise of their freedom on terms equal to others must be given great weight and respect by the courts.” The court also reaffirmed its longstanding rule that states can prevent the harms of discrimination. It noted that while the “religious and philosophical objections” of business owners “are protected, it is a general rule that such objections do not allow business owners and other actors in the economy and in society to deny protected persons equal access to goods and services under a neutral and generally applicable public accommodations law.” The court further recognized the danger of free speech and freedom of religion claims that the bakery advanced in this case, stating, “Any decision in favor of the baker would have to be sufficiently constrained, lest all purveyors of goods and services who object to gay marriages for moral and religious reasons in effect be allowed to put up signs saying ‘no goods or services will be sold if they will be used for gay marriages,’ something that would

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LOSING THE WAR, continued on p.22

PERSPECTIVE: Insider Trading

In Remembrance, Appreciation & Undiminished Determination BY ALLEN ROSKOFF

G

ay New York has lost two giants. On May 12, longtime lesbian activist Adelaide Connaughton unexpectedly passed away. Adelaide worked to elect many LGBTQ people to office and also worked to elect our straight allies. She was the founding vice president of the Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club and remained in that post until her death. Adelaide also worked tirelessly as part of the Candles for Clemency movement. As an employee of the Fortune Society, she devoted herself to the effort to secure the compassionate release of incarcerated people who had

paid their debt to society and to ease their transition to a new life outside prison. When we protested outside the home of Governor Andrew Cuomo to demand the release of elderly people from prison, Adelaide handled all of the logistics. As much as Adelaide accomplished in the fight for clemency, she knew there was much more to be done. A week before she died, Adelaide asked me to take her and two other Fortune Society staff members to visit Judith Clark — whose release she fought so hard for and did not live to see. Adelaide’s life partner of 29 years is Lynn Schulman, who works for the City Council. In 2021, Lynn is expected to make a run for an open Council

seat now held by the wonderful Karen Koslowitz. Currently there are no lesbians in the City Council and the number of women has shrunk to just 11 out of 51 members. Last month, we also said goodbye to longtime State Assemblymember Herman “Denny” Farrell, who died on May 26. We had been friends for decades, and I always knew him to be a loyal, kind, and funny guy. We should never forget that his first act after winning his Assembly race in 1974 was to hold a press conference on the steps of City Hall to endorse the gay rights bill. Denny was pro-gay rights before most people would give us the time of day. In 1985, he ran for mayor against incumbent Ed Koch and City Council President Carol Bellamy and, not surprisingly, he was better on the issues

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INSIDER TRADING, continued on p.21

June 7 – June 20, 2018 | GayCityNews.nyc

PERSPECTIVE: Media Circus

Gay US Ambassador to Germany is a Dummkopf BY ED SIKOV

D

onald J. Trump’s naming of an openly gay ambassador to Germany might be cause for celebration were it not for the fact that the new ambassador’s first tweet in his new job managed to insult the Germans. As reported by the Washington Post as well as LGBTQ Nation, Richard Grenell, who worked briefly for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign before he was forced to resign after being attacked by anti-gay turds like Tony Perkins and Gary Bauer, made history as the first openly gay ambassador named by a Republican, only to humiliate himself and the nation he represents by issuing a command on Twitter that many Germans found rude. As the Post described it, “The offending tweet, written on the heels of President Trump’s announcement that the United States will leave the Iran nuclear deal, declared that ‘German companies doing business in Iran should wind down operations immediately.’ This was widely read as an order, if not a threat. At minimum, it came off as a singularly charmless introduction. As one German Twitter critic drily noted: ‘At least where I grew up the way of saying hello to my host was slightly different: Hi, my name is Richard and I am happy to be in Germany, thanks for having me.’” As LGBTQ Nation noted,

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“Grenell… is just as despicable to women on Twitter as the man who appointed him. Grenell is well known for having twittertantrums, and those indiscretions are coming back to haunt him. During his Senate confirmation hearings… Sen. Chris Murphy, of Connecticut, brought up his tendency to use the social media service like your average middle schooler or current president. Murphy called Grenell’s ‘litany of derogatory comments about women’s personal appearances’ concerning and asked him if he regretted acting in such a manner. Grenell claimed it was ‘never my intention to hurt anyone’s feelings,’ and called himself ‘very caring and very sensitive,’ which anyone who has followed his Twitter account for any length of time will have serious reason to doubt. He then claimed he was simply trying to be funny when he insulted the looks of Rachel Maddow, Callista Gingrich, Hillary Clinton, and Madeleine Albright. Some of his lowlights include comparing Clinton and Albright’s looks, in order to insult them both, saying Maddow looked like Justin Bieber, and fixating on Michelle Obama’s sweat.” This does not bode well for an ambassador to a nation led by a woman, Angela Merkel. Moreover, Maddow looks nothing like Justin Bieber. As John C. Schindler notes in the Observer, “His sole relevant experience was serving as spokesman for the US ambassador to the

INSIDER TRADING, from p.20

affecting us than either of them. And unlike Koch and Bellamy, if Farrell were gay, I have little doubt that he would not have been closeted. Despite his loss, Denny remained an assemblymember and a major part of the fabric of New York, impacting the lives of all for the better. Denny was also a key member of the Candles for Clemency effort. Last year, he went up to Bedford Correctional Facility with me and Manhattan Democratic leader Keith Wright to meet Judith Clark. GayCityNews.nyc | June 7 – June 20, 2018

In my last column, I spoke about bossism in Manhattan’s little-understood judicial process through the manipulation by a few bad apples — including former Shelly Silver employee Joanna Saccone. Recently, Civil Court candidates received a text written by Saccone ordering them to not attend an endorsement meeting by the Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club. Six of the seven candidates showed up anyway, with most of them laughing off her demand not to show. Saccone’s partner in

United Nations from 2001 to 2008. In that role, Grenell, a right-wing ideologue, was noted for his tenaciousness with the media, leading some of them to memorably describe him as ‘unbearable,’ ‘rude,’ ‘arrogant,’ and a ‘bully.’ Over the past decade, Grenell has continued acting that way, especially on Twitter, where his pugnacious dealings with reporters and others have been a subject of both scorn and laughter. In 2012, he deleted nearly a thousand of his most offensive tweets when he served very briefly as spokesman for the Mitt Romney presidential campaign. Since then, Grenell’s online habits have continued and, while that may have been disqualifying in the past, Trump had no qualms about appointing a fellow angry Twitter troll to a sensitive diplomatic post.” It will surprise no one to learn that Grenell has also been under contract with Fox News as a “contributor.” The US Supreme Court tossed the idea of equal protection under the proverbial bus on Monday when it ruled 7-2 in favor of the Colorado baker who refused to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple. As Ariane de Vogue reported on cnn.com, “The court held that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission showed hostility toward the baker based on his religious beliefs. The ruling is a win for baker Jack Phillips, who cited his beliefs as a Christian, but leaves unsettled broader constitutional questions on religious liberty. ‘Today’s decision is remarkably narrow and leaves for another day virtually all of the major constitutional questions that this case presented,’ said Steve Vladeck,

hijacking the system is East Side District Leader Louise Dankberg, whose method of choosing members of the county-level trial court bench has less to do with character or ability than with blind loyalty to her and her judicial delegate machine. Days before the Women’s March in January, Dankberg led the vote to not allow the New York Chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW) to participate in Manhattan’s judicial screening panel. NOW’s crime was that its president, Sonia Ossorio, had lob-

CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at the University of Texas School of Law. ‘It’s hard to see the decision setting a precedent.’ The ruling, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, held that members of the Colorado Civil Rights Commission showed animus toward Phillips specifically when they suggested his claims of religious freedom was made to justify discrimination.” Breitbart’s initial response to the ruling was surprisingly restrained. Ken Klukowski simply reported the facts: “The Supreme Court granted a narrow victory to people of faith on Monday, holding 7-2 that the Constitution did not allow the Colorado Civil Rights Commission to order Christian baker Jack Phillips to bake a wedding cake for samesex weddings because a commissioner said Phillips’ Christian beliefs on marriage were ‘despicable.’ The Court left open for another case the broader question of whether the government can force people of faith to participate in same-sex weddings when the government does not openly show open [sic] hostility to their religious beliefs.” In Twitterworld, Trump’s idiot son, Donald Jr., showed, shall we say, less than full comprehension of the issue when he tweeted, “I am reading about a 7-2 vote. Pretty sure that’s not narrowly... At least 2 dem leaning justices must have agreed.” NO, YOU MORON! WHEN THEY SAY THAT THE COURT RULED NARROWLY THEY MEAN THAT THE RULING WAS NARROWLY FOCUSED, NOT THAT THE VOTE WAS NARROW. As Bugs Bunny would say, “Whadda maroon!” Follow @EdSikov on Facebook and Twitter.

bied against the reappointment of Judge Lori Sattler, who slammed a mother in open court for having an abortion — an action that garnered the criticism of elected officials including Public Advocate Tish James, Congressmember Adriano Espaillat, and City Councilmembers Margaret Chin, Rosie Mendez, and Helen Rosenthal. Against this list of formidable political opponents, Dankberg joined District Leader Josh Kravitz in targeting NOW, calling its criticism of Sat-

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INSIDER TRADING, continued on p.22

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LOSING THE WAR, from p.20

impose a serious stigma on gay persons.� The decision also recognizes that adopting a rule — as advocated by the bakery — that would allow businesses to turn gay people away carries a significant risk of harm. It outlines its own fear that “a long list of persons who provide goods and services for marriages and weddings might refuse to do so for gay persons.� This would result, the decision continues, “in a communitywide stigma inconsistent with the history and dynamics of civil rights laws that ensure equal access to goods, services, and public accommodations.� Significantly, the court cited an earlier case, Newman v. Piggie Park Enterprises, Inc., where it rejected precisely the kind of claims that

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INSIDER TRADING, from p.21

tler “totally inappropriate behavior� that they “didn’t want to reward.� What sexist nonsense! The motion to bar NOW was presented by Kravitz, who is now trying to create a new East Side Democratic club by passing himself off as a progressive. Maybe he didn’t get the memo that progressives don’t bash women rights organizations like NOW for daring to speak up for

the bakery made here. Piggie Park was a chain of barbeque restaurants in Columbia, South Carolina, that claimed its religion required it to refuse to serve Black customers alongside white ones and that applying the 1964 Civil Rights Act would violate its religious freedom. The courts rejected that argument, with the Supreme Court calling it “frivolous.� The court on Monday ruled for the bakery because it “was entitled to the neutral and respectful consideration of [its] claims in all the circumstances of the case,� and the justices in the majority believed the bakery didn’t receive that basic fairness. The court said that “these disputes must be resolved with tolerance, without undue disrespect to sincere religious beliefs, and without subjecting gay persons to indignities when they seek goods and services

in an open market.� All of us deserve a dispassionate evaluation of our claims, either when we face discrimination or are accused of it. Those are principles we can all agree on. Monday’s decision gives a very narrow victory to the bakery. But the court has clearly signaled that the broader rule the bakery was seeking here — a constitutional right to discriminate and turn customers away because of who they are — is not in keeping with American constitutional tradition. There are many other cases in the pipeline that may soon give the court the opportunities to sort through the legal issues at the center of the Masterpiece Cakeshop case. One is Ingersoll v. Arlene’s Flowers, in which a florist shop refused to sell flowers to a gay couple for their wedding. The Washington State Supreme

Court ruled unanimously that the shop had no constitutional right to turn the couple away, and a petition for review by the US Supreme Court remains pending and will be conferenced for possible review on Friday. In the meantime, Congress should pass the Equality Act, which would update our civil rights laws to provide all people with full protection from discrimination. At the ACLU, we will continue working to ensure that the Supreme Court strikes the right balance between equality and the freedoms of speech and religion. In the Masterpiece Cakeshop decision, the court reaffirmed that the latter should not be used to undermine the former.

the rights of women. And men don’t tell women to shut up. Sue Moss of the law firm Chemtob, Moss, Forman & Beyda, one of New York’s largest law firms focused on the practice of divorce, family, and matrimonial law, nominated Sattler at last month’s Democratic Convention. Not very surprisingly, women so often get the short end of the stick in Family Court because men are more likely to be able to afford the hefty retainer fees at firms

like Moss’. I’m sorry to report that former Senator Tom Duane voted for Sattler at the convention. Tom has been close to judicial delegate power broker Saccone for years, and thus made light of Sattler and the abortion issue. I supported Duane in all his City Council races and his bid for Congress. Back then, he spoke as a progressive — but as time went on, he veered away. Inexplicably, he is now a good friend and promoter of anti-gay bigot and anti-abortion advocate Ruben Diaz, Sr., and Carl Kruger, who enraged our community when he voted against marriage equality the first time around in the State Senate and wound up serving a hefty prison term, having been found guilty of corruption. Perhaps Tom’s change in outlook shouldn’t come as a surprise. In 2013, he proclaimed at a rally that gays who opposed Christine Quinn’s mayoral bid must have suffered a traumatic experience in their youth that made us selfloathing. As we all know, most in the LGBTQ community did not support Quinn — not because they were self-loathing, but because they were opposed to her policies and her brand of politics. Progressives fled Quinn after she refused to support the aggressive early incarnations of the Living Wage and Paid Sick Leave bills, two measures that would have benefited mostly low income and working class women,

constituencies real Democrats care deeply about.

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James Esseks is the director of the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender & HIV Project at the American Civil Liberties Union.

In other news, Community Board Three’s district manager, Susan Stetzer, lost her fight to keep Alan Cumming’s East Village’s Club Cumming from having live music and performances. In a recent decision, the State Liquor Authority cited the club as an asset to the community. Stetzer said the SLA approved the license because Cumming is rich and famous. She, as usual, was acting on her own agenda to cleanse the East Village of restaurants and venues that serve alcohol, and of course those include gay establishments. Did anyone tell her that Prohibition ended in 1933? Though many gays have fled living in Stetzer’s community board boundaries, we still have our rights to public accommodations. Why exactly does Borough President Gale Brewer allow this anti alcohol/ nightlife hysteria to continue on her community boards? Allen Roskoff, the president of the Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club, co-authored the first gay rights bill ever introduced in the US. Upcoming: more about how a recently published news report shows just how much damage Community Board Two does to downtown economic development... and more on the continued harassment of an elderly gay member of CB2.

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June 7 – June 20, 2018 | GayCityNews.nyc

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SCOTUS PETITIONS, from p.12

is more likely that success would come only from en banc review. Altitude Express’s petition, by contrast, relies on the Supreme Court’s general disposition against recognizing “implied� overruling, the company arguing that the Second and Seventh Circuits erred in interpreting Title VII to apply to claims that Congress did not intend to address when it was passed in 1964, and that neither Price Waterhouse nor Oncale has directly overruled the old circuit court precedents. While the Altitude Express petition states sympathy, even support, for the contention that sexual orientation discrimination should be illegal, it lines up with the dissenters in the Second and Seventh Circuits who argued that it is up to Congress, not the courts, to add “sexual orientation� through the legislative process. A similar interpretation battle is playing out in the circuit courts of appeals concerning gender identity discrimination claims. However, plaintiffs are having more success with these claims than with sexual orientation claims because it is easier for the courts to conceptualize gender identity — especially in the context of transition — as nonconformity to gender stereotypes, and thus addressed specifically by Price Waterhouse. Although only one circuit court — again, the Seventh — has gone so far as to embrace the EEOC’s determination that gender identity discrimination claims can be considered straight-up sex discrimination without resorting to a stereotyping theory, most courts of appeals that have considered the question have agreed that the stereotyping theory suffices to allow transgender plaintiffs to pursue Title VII claims in federal court. Many have also applied the stereotyping theory under Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972 to find protection for transgender students. If the Supreme Court were to take up the sexual orientation issue, a resulting decision could have significance for gender identity claims as well, depending on its rationale in deciding the case. The timing of these two petitions, filed late in the current high court term after all oral arguments GayCityNews.nyc | June 7 – June 20, 2018

have been concluded, means that if the court wants to take up this issue, the earliest it could be argued would be after the new term begins on October 1. As of now, nobody knows for certain what the composition of the court will be when the new term begins. Rumors of the possible retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy, who turns 82 in July — likely to be the “swing� member on this as on nearly every LGBTQ rights case to date — are rife, and although Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who recently turned 85, and Stephen Breyer, who turns 80 in August, have expressed no intentions of stepping down, they are — together with Kennedy — the oldest members of the court. Justice Clarence Thomas, a decisive vote against LGBTQ rights at all times, was appointed by President George H.W. Bush in 1991 and is the second-longest serving member of the court after Kennedy (a Reagan appointee in 1987). But Thomas, who was relatively young at his appointment, will turn 70 on June 23 — and most justices have continued to serve well past that age — so the occasional speculation about his retirement is probably premature. If the justices are thinking strategically about their votes on taking controversial cases, they might hold back from deciding whether to grant these two petitions until they see the lay of the land after the court’s summer recess. The Altitude Express petition was filed by Saul D. Zabell and Ryan T. Biesenbach of Zabell & Associates, P.C., in upstate Bohemia. The Zarda Estate is represented by Gregory Antollino and Stephen Bergstein of Bergstein & Ullrich, LLP, of New Paltz. The Bostock petition was filed by Brian J. Sutherland and Thomas J. Mew IV of Buckley Beal LLP of Atlanta. The Trump Justice Department sided with Altitude Express in the en banc argument in Zarda before the Second Circuit, while the EEOC, with the majority still made up of Obama appointees, sided with the Estate of Zarda. The Bostock petition seizes on this divided view from the government representatives in Zarda as yet another reason why the Supreme Court should take up the issue and resolve it once and for all.

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My Child Protective Specialist pushed me to get the parenting skills I needed to look after my kids. Shelley, Bronx

ACS CHILD PROTECTIVE SPECIALISTS — Protecting kids, supporting families.

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at

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23

THEATER

Party Like It’s 1968 Splashy, star-studded revival of groundbreaking gay classic still has bite and wit BY DAVID KENNERLEY hen “The Boys in the Band,” the comic drama about a hellish birthday party full of snarky, self-loathing homosexuals, premiered in a fringy venue in 1968, it was slated to run for only fie days. But the frank, nonjudgmental portrayal of this maligned minority, never before seen onstage, caused such a sensation that it transferred to Off-Broadway where it ran for more than 1,000 performances. Over the decades, Mart Crowley’s little play that could has been revived in New York only a couple of times, most recently in 2010 in a modest, immersive production set in a Chelsea loft, where

THE BOYS IN THE BAND

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Booth Theatre 222 W. 45th St. Through Aug. 11 Mon., Thu.-Sat. at 8 p.m. Tue.-Wed. at 7 p.m. Sat.-Sun. at 2 p.m. $60-$199; boysintheband.com One hr., 50 mins., no intermission

JOAN MARCUS

actors would occasionally spill their drinks on audience members crammed into corners of the living room. Many felt the unflinching, unflattering gay stereotypes were

Matt Bomer and Jim Parsons in Joe Mantello’s Broadway debut revival of Mart Crowley’s 1968 “The Boys in the Band.”

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BOYS, continued on p.25

OPERA

Some Mountains Too High to Climb Charles Wuorinen’s challenging “Brokeback” score fights jagged libretto and vocal writing rial music differently from many fellow opera fans. I respected this thorny score on its own terms, though ultimately the work founders on an excess of exposition in the libretto’s short scenes. Plus, however atmospheric and evocative of angst the orchestral sounds, the vocal writing — even with most of the words comprehensibly set — adds little if anything to our understanding of or feeling for the characters. Jacopo Spirei’s post-Madrid production came from Salzburg’s Landestheater. The direction passed muster, no more; some tame petting was about as suggestive as things got, perhaps reflecting the staid ethos of Salzburg. Eva Musil’s set was minimal, just adequate to set the scenes; Susan Roth’s nuanced

BY DAVID SHENGOLD harles Wuorinen’s operatic “Brokeback Mountain,” with a libretto by Annie Proulx herself, originally presented in Madrid in 2014, finally made it to New York City Opera — and North America — as part of the company’s welcome June slot dedicated to operas with LBGTQ content. (NYCO also marches in the Pride Parade.) The spiky, 12-tone cinematic score tailors itself more to the original story’s grit and sinew than to Ang Lee’s romantic, swoonily beautiful film. Those who came seeking melody or post-Puccinian rapture found none. Having grown up during Pierre Boulez’s heyday at the New York Philharmonic, I think I process se-

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SARAH SHATZ/ NEW YORK CIT Y OPERA

Glenn Seven Allen and Daniel Okulitch in Charles Wuorinen’s “Brokeback Mountain.”

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June 7 – June 20, 2018 | GayCityNews.nyc

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just too stale to revisit, and generally the work fell out of favor. But now, beyond anyone’s wildest dreams, the play is getting a splashy first-ever revival on Broadway, powered by openly gay heavyweights like Ryan Murphy (producer) and Joe Mantello (director) and a raft of out-and-proud Hollywood stars. Aside from some judicious cutting, which compresses the play from two acts to one, the text has not been altered from the original. Mantello is bent on mining the comic potential of the material and he succeeds, though sometimes at the expense of the pathos. Make no mistake, this iteration does not shy away from the garish gay stereotypes and, naturally, the dialogue is flecked with antiquated slang, as challenging as it is charming. The plot has more than its share of formulaic contrivances. Yet any rough spots inherent in the 50-year-old text are, by and large, glossed over by the top-notch staging. David Zinn’s dazzling set of an Upper East Side duplex apartment is dominated by brass,

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BROKEBACK, from p.24

lighting proved more help in this regard, though Spirei made little use of the rear projection screen. Bass-baritone Daniel Okulitch created Ennis in Madrid in 2014. Initially looking too old for the 1963 Ennis, he gave a fine, eventually moving reading of a character whose music gets more complex and resonant as he matures into — sadly — “too late love.” Versatile tenor Glenn Seven Allen was a sexy, lively Jack, alert to every nuance of the drama; in operatic terms he’s a spieltenor with good access to head

glass, and burgundy velvet furniture, and is given an otherworldly sheen by Hugh Vanstone’s moody lighting. And then there are the performances, each one more remarkable than the next. The somewhat motley ensemble is led by the superb Jim Parsons, who embodies the unsettled host, Michael, a struggling writer and a lapsed Catholic, with a manic-depressive insouciance that hardens into disdain. Sure, the portrayal is a riff on his neurotic Sheldon on “The Big Bang Theory,” and it effectively amps up the level of comedy in the proceedings. Even more of a hoot is Robin de Jesús as Emory (“La Cage aux Folles”), the clownish “pansy” who brings homemade lasagna to the party and emerges as the Mother Hen of the group. In an alternately hilarious and heart-wrenching turn, de Jesús locates Emory’s pain, fear, and dignity just below the surface. Threatening to steal the show is Zachary Quinto as birthday boy Harold, a self-proclaimed “ugly, pockmarked Jew fairy” who spends hours in front of the mirror

fi xing his face before he can bear to leave his apartment. His exceedingly snide Harold is mannered in every fiber of his being, suggesting a tightly wound bomb on the verge of exploding. Wearing a paisley silk scarf and coral-hued blazer, he’s 32 years old but registers more like 62. Also fine are Matt Bomer as Michael’s nerdy, sexy, pseudo boyfriend, Donald; Andrew Rannells as the slutty Larry; Tuc Watkins as Larry’s bisexual live-in lover, Hank; Michael Benjamin Washington as the conflicted Bernard; Brian Hutchinson as the distraught, supposedly straight interloper, Alan; and Charlie Carver, perfectly cast as the scrumptious, ditzy blond hustler that Emory rented for $20 as a birthday gift for Harold. It’s absolutely no surprise when Michael, an alcoholic who starts the evening sipping club soda, falls off the wagon in spectacular fashion. He devises a wicked party game where each player must telephone someone dear to them and proclaim their love — often a dark secret — that goes more horribly wrong than anyone could have

imagined. It’s tough watching these men wallow in their self-pity, calling each other, and themselves, nasty names with more acrimony than affection. “Believe it or not, there was a time in my life when I didn’t go around announcing that I was a faggot,” Michael sniffs. But this is partly a period piece, after all. It serves as a yardstick to mark just how far the gay community has progressed — and how far it has yet to go. Remember in 1968, homosexuality was largely illegal and considered a mental illness. The Stonewall riots would happen a year later, and some credit the play for helping to stoke the cultural fires, as gay men vowed not to be those self-hating sissies and cower in the closet anymore. When Emory enters the room squealing, “All right this is a raid. Everybody’s under arrest!” and later yells, “Oh my God, it’s Lily Law! Everybody three feet apart!,” he may be joking. But it’s also from actual experience, and this trenchantly witty “Boys in the Band” reminds us there is a harsh sting behind the laughter.

voice. Heather Buck — the original Alma, Ennis’ wife — has created and interpreted much contemporary literature very well, including the name part in Wuorinen’s 2004 “Haroun and the Sea of Stories.” She still looks remarkably youthful on stage and made the character quite affecting (it’s hard to feel for any one else in the piece) but wasn’t in her usual astounding form in executing challenging intervals and throwing off staccato flights. Acting trenchantly, Hilary Ginther (Lureen, Jack’s wife) revealed an individual, beautiful mezzo. Good

cameos came from Christopher Job (Aguirre, the foreman), Melissa Parks (Bartender), Sarah Heltzel (Saleswoman), Brian Kontes (Hogboy) and Jenni Bank (Mrs. Twist, Jack’s mother). At June 2’s matinée, conductor Kazem Abdullah (in a welcome return to New York) and his 24 players — most notably pianist Thomas Bagwell and percussionists John Ostrowski and Eric Poland, whose valiant work largely punctuated the score — did a hard job well. The work’s major misstep is absolutely gratuitous choral work in the scene in which Ennis learns of

Jack’s death (and must guess at its nature). The choral sound added nothing; the repetition of Ennis’ phrases told us nothing either. If the opera has future productions, the creators might ponder cutting that as a useful economy. I’m glad to have seen this project even with its insufficiencies. But how about NYCO scheduling a melodic LGBTQ piece like Gregory Spears’ “Fellow Travelers” for a change? David Shengold (shengold@yahoo.com) writes about opera for many venues.

For more news & events happening now visit www.GayCityNews.nyc GayCityNews.nyc | June 7 – June 20, 2018

25

MUSIC

Totally New Serpentwithfeet, in debut album, delivers on innovation promised by 2016 EP BY STEVE ERICKSON hen the singer who calls himself serpentwithfeet (his real name is Josiah White) released his 2016 debut EP “Blisters,” it was a genuine UFO. If you need a genre tag, one could call him an R&B singer, although he describes his music as “pagan gospel.” In any case, his vocals push a melodramatic impulse toward near-operatic tendencies, and he frequently sang over samples of classical music. The fact that he’s an openly gay man with a pierced septum suggests a certain distance from gospel itself, at least as much of Christianity currently defines it. But African-American singers like Marvin Gaye, Al Green, and Prince have combined a yearning for the flesh and God throughout their work, with the latter two eventually choosing religious conversion (despite a host of extremely sexually explicit lyrics from Prince). Last year, Canadian R&B singer Daniel Caesar’s “Freudian” suggested a return to this vein, with gospel samples and references strewn

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SERPENTWITHFEET “soil” Tri Angle/ Secretly Canadian Jun. 8 release secretlystore.com/soil-serpentwithfeet

throughout. Its title track, however, ended the album on the words “Mama, I lost my faith.” The second single from “soil,” serpentwithfeet’s debut album, is steeped in the duality of sex and religion, with a particularly gay angle. On the surface, “Cherubim,” whose title refers to winged angels, sounds like a gospel song, from its title to the use of choral vocals and the chorus “I get to devote my life to him.” It takes the language that a Christian might use to describe being “born-again,” including references to worTRI ANGLE/ SECRETLY CANADIAN

Serpentwithfeet’s debut alubm, “soil,” drops June 8.

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Snail Mail’s Growth into a Trio With “Lush,” Lindsey Jordan shows off maturing guitar chops BY STEVE ERICKSON nail Mail singer/ songwriter/ guitarist Lindsey Jordan has made a large splash while still a teenager, but she began playing classical guitar at age five while growing up in Baltimore. Essentially working as a one-woman band, she released an EP when she was 16 two years ago. It drew a great deal of attention, and last year she signed with Matador Records, deciding to pursue a career in music rather than going to college. Snail Mail is now a full-fledged band, with the addition of touring musicians Alex Bass on bass and drummer Ray Brown. Jordan is openly lesbian, but she has said she dislikes people focusing on her gender and sexuality instead of her music. The title of “Lush” comes close to living up to its sound. Despite the fact that Snail Mail are just a trio, the production is surprisingly full. Her guitarplaying mixes a variety of tones, from clean and distortion-free to bursts of noise. The band doesn’t venture beyond indie rock, but their

SNAIL MAIL

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“Lush” Matador Jun. 8 release store.matatdorrecords.com/lush

MATADORRECORDS.COM

“Lush,” an album from the three-member Snail Mail, drops on June 8.

inspirations seem to range from Sonic Youth’s most melodic moments to Liz Phair’s first three albums (Jordan used to play in a Phair cover band and recently sat down for a conversation

with the Chicago singer/ songwriter published on the website Pitchfork) to Waxahatchee. Jordan’s voice often sounds rather blank and deadpan. She sings about emotional material while putting her heart on her sleeve only when she chooses, although she’s perfectly capable of expressing passion. Often, the song dynamics and the layers of guitars express her feelings more than her vocals. Snail Mail’s debut EP was fairly barebones. Although Jordan is still the group’s only guitarist, she has learned a lot about using the

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June 7 – June 20, 2018 | GayCityNews.nyc

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ship, and employs it in a love song to a man. Similarly, “Slow Syrupâ€? uses references to rapture and salvation to describe being stuck in the “friend zone.â€? The album takes for granted that even the smallest elements of serpentwithfeet’s life merit immense gravity, along with a sense of humor. “Waftâ€? takes this tendency to the point of parody: it builds up a huge amount of melodrama with lyrics about not wanting to date a man because he wears cologne. “Mourning Songâ€? speaks about the performative nature of grief toward a dead lover. There are no credits for samples of other recordings on this album. Serpentwithfeet produced or co-produced every song on it and played keyboards, too, but he also worked with four co-producers: mmph (who released an EP of experimental electronic music last spring), Clams Casino (who has worked with well-known rappers like A$AP Rocky and Mac Miller), Katie Gately, and Paul Epworth. All of them get credited with keyboards and drums as well, with Gately getting listed for backing vocals and “live samplingâ€? (whatever that means) too. The orchestral sounds on this album are convincing but seem to be electronically generated, and the masses of vocals are probably serpentwithfeet overdubbed. In a statement in his record label bio, serpentwithfeet says, “I’m constantly talking about how black men are always manspreading‌ For a long time I was interested in what would happen if we rebelled against that and we were small‌ I have practiced that smallness and quietness and that’s fine, but now I don’t want to be that delicate.â€?

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SNAIL MAIL, from p.26

studio as an instrument on “Lush� rather than just trying to simulate a live performance or flatly record a song. (Of course, she undoubtedly had a bigger recording budget for this album.) The guitar sounds here are carefully varied, with her choice of more aggressive tones and unusual rhythms planned for maximum impact. “Deep Sea� brings a melancholy French horn into the mix. Snail Mail’s songs are GayCityNews.nyc | June 7 – June 20, 2018

“Soil� explores an AfricanAmerican male identity that’s both forceful and femme. In American culture, this is not very fashionable right now: the British singer Benjamin Clementine or the queer white one-man band Perfume Genius might be the closest comparisons. The most popular solo male R&B singer right now is the Weeknd (aka Abel Tesfaye), who started out making excellent and sonically adventurous mixtapes. But his explorations of the emptiness of drug use and casual sex devolved into a shtick where he embodies a cruel, substance-addled misogynist on album after album to diminishing returns. Serpentwithfeet makes his personality felt in a way that’s over-the-top without ever coming close to machismo. The shock of the new that I heard on “Blisters� continues on “Soil.� Serpentwithfeet has created his own musical world, one that sounds like nothing else out there. Even calling his music R&B feels vaguely racist, although that’s the genre to which it fits closest. But “Soil� has a sonic vocabulary all its own, based on vocals layered a dozen times so that serpentwithfeet can hold a dialogue among himself, synthesized orchestration, and booming percussion. Its gospel influence recognizes the importance of the church to African Americans but also takes its reference points in a direction friendlier to gay men than Christianity historically has been. “Soil� is an album with its own vocabulary, and it demands that listeners accept serpentwithfeet on his own terms. At a time when it often seems like new music just consists of repeating cool influences from the past in various combinations, he delivers true innovation.

getting longer: while no one would mistake them for prog-rock epics, half the album’s tracks clock in around the five-minute mark. When Snail Mail’s first EP was released, Jordan was still in the closet and her love songs were directed toward a gender-ambiguous “you.� She has changed that: “Pristine� is explicitly about a woman. Still, her desire not to be forced into a niche because she’s a

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27

FILM

A Trilogy at 30 Quad revives “Torch Song” adaptation starring Harvey Fierstein, Matthew Broderick BY GARY M. KRAMER he Quad Cinema is offering moviegoers a onenight-only opportunity on June 12 to see the 1988 film adaptation of Harvey Fierstein’s Tony Award-winning 1982 play. And with the recent success of the Off-Broadway production of Fierstein’s “Torch Song,” starring Michael Urie and Mercedes Ruehl, moving to the Great White Way this fall, the film is necessary viewing. The film opens in 1952 Brooklyn, where Ma (Anne Bancroft), is screaming for her son “Ahh-nold.” She soon discovers him in a dress wearing makeup. Cut to New York City, 1971, where Arnold (Fierstein), a female impersonator, is

TORCH SONG TRILOGY

T

Directed by Paul Bogart New Line Cinema Jun. 12 at 7 p.m. Quad Cinema 34 W. 13th St. quadcinema.com

COURTESY OF EVERETT COLLECTION VIA THE QUAD

Harvey Fierstein and Matthew Broderick in Paul Bogart’s 1988 “Torch Song Trilogy,” adapted from Fierstein’s 1982 play.

preparing to go on stage. But first he directly addresses the audience. This proud gay man, with a voice as strong as his personality, ingratiates himself quickly and easily with viewers. He explains in the film’s pre-credit sequence, “There

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TORCH SONG, continued on p.29

Born Free Fellipe Barbosa honors his late friend’s adventures through East Africa BY GARY M. KRAMER he opening scene of “Gabriel and the Mountain,” has two African villagers finding the corpse of Gabriel Buchmann (João Pedro Zappa) on the side of Mount Mulanje in Malawi. This touching character study then flashes back 70 days to recount the experiences Gabriel had, the people who knew him in Africa, and, eventually, his death. Director Fellipe Barbosa, who co-wrote the script with Kirill Mikhanovsky and Lucas Paraizo, fashioned the story out of the disappearance of his friend Buchmann. It is both an affectionate and heartbreaking portrait of a young man full of life and promise. Gabriel is a traveler, not a tourist. He immerses himself in researching and experiencing African life, education, and culture during his

GABRIEL AND THE MOUNTAIN

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Directed by Fellipe Barbosa In English and Portuguese and Swahili with English subtitles Strand Releasing Opens Jun. 15 Quad Cinema 34 W. 13th St. quadcinema.com STRAND RELEASING

João Pedro Zappa in the title role in Fellipe Barbosa’s “Gabriel and the Mountain,” which opens at the Quad on June 15.

gap year before starting a doctorate program at UCLA. He is first seen in Kenya, where he is called a Mzungu, or white man or European, though the word also means wanderer. He has a pair of sandals made for him, goes rabbit hunting with the locals,

and tries to live sustainably, noting that the pocket money he has can buy a child’s education for a year. Gabriel is endearing, even if this Mzungu looks like a fish out of water wearing African print clothes, carrying a Maasai stick and a machete. (Images of the real Gabriel after the end credits show the accuracy of the film’s portrait.)

One goal of Gabriel’s is to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, quickly, and when he meets John Goodluck, a guide, they trek up the mountain. Their journey is not without difficulty — Gabriel gets winded at one point — but he is determined to reach the top, which he does. Gabriel’s nature shines through in this chapter of the film. He is gracious, caring, and gregarious — Goodluck and others recall the dead man with kindness and tenderness — but also foolhardy, stubborn, selfish, and a haggler. All these qualities are evident throughout the rest of “Gabriel and the Mountain” as he travels throughout East Africa having adventures. Barbosa’s film is an intimate epic. While there is gorgeous cinematography of the landscape by Pedro Sotero, a significant part of

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June 7 – June 20, 2018 | GayCityNews.nyc

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TORCH SONG, from p.28

are easier things in this life than being a drag queen, but I ain’t got no choice.” Such is Arnold’s selfawareness and his self-pity. It is a dynamic that sets up the heartbreak to come in his life over the course of the film. “Torch Song Trilogy” milks the tragedy Arnold experiences as he tries to find love and respect from his lovers and family. The first act has Arnold meeting Ed (Brian Kerwin) in a gay bar. The two men spend a few cozy weeks together, even going up to Ed’s rustic country home where a silly odd couple montage is meant to wring laughs (it’s more quaint than funny). Ed, who is bisexual, ends up getting cold feet and starts dating Laurel (Karen Young). Arnold is heartbroken, but there is a poignant scene between the two men in Arnold’s dressing room. This is one of many moments in the film where the characters’ hearts are laid bare, and Kerwin is particularly impressive expressing his anxiety and trying to admit what his character

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GABRIEL, from p.28

the film is shot in close-up, lending an immediacy to the events, giving viewers a “you are there” experience. The location filming is spectacular. The second chapter of the film, set in Tanzania, has Gabriel reuniting with Cristina (Caroline Abras), his girlfriend, who is in Africa for a conference. Their relationship has contradictions; while he loves her, he often treats her poorly. A fight they have — which includes a discussion of whether she will join him

is afraid to feel. Director Paul Bogart worked for most of his career in TV and that shows. He focuses in on the emotions and lets the characters play to each other as if they were on stage. The second act of the film, set in 1977, has Arnold meeting Alan (Matthew Broderick) in the nightclub when Arnold’s act is sabotaged by one of Alan’s friends. Arnold is wary of Alan; he had become wary of commitment after Ed. But Alan woos him, and the two men quickly establish a comfortable domesticity. After an eventful weekend they spend in the country with Ed and Laurel almost derails both relationships, Alan remedies the situation, proving his love by dedicating a song on the radio to Arnold and even asking him to marry him, decades before such a thing was legally possible. “Torch Song Trilogy” also addresses gay adoption, with Arnold and Alan arranging to parent a gay teen, David (Eddie Castrodad). Un-

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TORCH SONG, continued on p.43

in Los Angeles when he resumes his studies — captures the pushpull dynamic between them. Much of Abras’ wonderful, expressive performance consists of her reacting to Gabriel’s words and actions, and viewers will know exactly what she is thinking. Their relationship imbues the film with poignancy given that his death has been foretold. The Portuguese word the two utter — saudade, which loosely translates as “longing” — captures the melancholy of their relationship as

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GABRIEL, continued on p.36

got smut? WANTED: Vintage Male Erotica Magazines Comix Ephemera

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VMEBuyer@gmail.com GayCityNews.nyc | June 7 – June 20, 2018

29

BOOKS

A Family Fierce, Passionate, and Talented Lambda Literary holds its 30th anniversary awards gala

BRIAN CHRISTOPHER SARGEANT/ COURTESY OF LAMBDA LITERARY

Lambda Literary’s outgoing executive director Tony Valenzuela with board president Amy Scholder.

BRIAN CHRISTOPHER SARGEANT/ COURTESY OF LAMBDA LITERARY

Visionary sionary Award honoree Edmund Edm White.

BY KATHLEEN WARNOCK

I

t was a fierce crowd — both in presentation and emotion — that gathered to celebrate the 30th annual Lambda Literary Awards on the day the Supreme Court handed down a decision supporting a bigoted baker. Clad in bright, dark, and fabulous suits and gowns (and shorts and kilts), several hundred literary lions and their friends gathered at NYU’s Skirball Center in Greenwich Village to celebrate outstanding work in LGBTQ literature and drama as well as the tenure of outgoing executive director Tony Valenzuela. “It’s the 30th anniversary, a great milestone,” said the show’s director Charles Rice-Gonzalez (co-founder of the Bronx Academy of Arts & Dance, BAAD). “We’ve got a bevy of stars, and we’re celebrating Tony.” Comedian Kate Clinton hosted, starting with a welcome that drew cheers from the groups of artists she named (with perhaps the loudest cheers for the poets), finishing with thanks to the teachers and the readers. Clinton thanked the Lammies for having her back as host, despite her “triggering name,” and said she hoped we were in the “end days of the Viagracene Epoch,” and that with people boycotting the “National Fascist League” they would use their football-free

30

BRIAN CHRISTOPHER SARGEANT/ COURTESY OF LAMBDA LITERARY

Roxane Gay, who won both the Trustees Award for Excellence in Literature and the Bisexual Nonfiction Award for her book “Hunger.”

Sundays to “make America cake again.” This year, winners who couldn’t be present at the ceremony were given a chance to make an acceptance speech via a recorded video message. Novelist Lucy Jane Bledsoe and performance artist/ poet Alok VaidMenon presented the evening’s first awards, for LGBTQ Children’s/ Young Adult Book, Graphic Novel, and Anthology. Rebecca Podos was the first winner, for her Young Adult novel “Like Water.” Juliana Delgado Lopera’s “¡Cuéntamelo!: Oral Histories by LGBT Latino Immigrants” won in the Anthology category, and Emil

Ferris took home the Lammy for Graphic Novel with “My Favorite Thing is Monsters.” The Lesbian, Gay, and Transgender Poetry Awards were presented by Pamela Sneed and Rigoberto González. Rosamond S. King won the Lesbian Poetry Award for “Rock | Salt | Stone” and said her book’s title was for “people who are told to live on a rock and suck salt and have stones thrown at them.” CA Conrad won the Gay Poetry Award for “While Standing in Line for Death,” and in their video acceptance speech, they thanked “everybody I’ve ever met.” ChingIn Chen’s “recombinant” won for

Transgender Poetry, and they also accepted with a heartfelt video. A video chronicling 30 years of Lambda tracked the organization’s founding from when L. Page (Deacon) Maccubbin, owner of Lambda Rising Bookstore in Washington, DC, published the first Lambda Book Report in 1987 and presented the first awards in 1989 into the 21st century, illustrated with excerpts from ceremonies, speeches, and photos of now-iconic authors winning their first awards. Valenzuela got the evening’s first standing ovation in his remarks with board president Amy Scholder, telling how he was recently asked, “Do the Lammies still matter?” In other words, he said, “Now that you have these rights, do we need your culture?” He spoke about how amidst “a daily assault on decency, we have a community that has your back.” Expressing deep gratitude for his nine years with the organization, Valenzuela then introduced poet Sue Landers, the incoming executive director. Rick Whitaker presented the Visionary Award to Edmund White, with an introduction of “found sentences” from White’s books, a conceit that was clever, funny, and touching. The iconic author and activist walks more slowly these days, but gave a soaring speech, telling the audience “from the very

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LAMMIES, continued on p.31

June 7 – June 20, 2018 | GayCityNews.nyc

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LOOK FOR OUR CIRCULAR IN TODAY’S PAPER!

BRIAN CHRISTOPHER SARGEANT/ COURTESY OF LAMBDA LITERARY

ChikĂŠ Frankie Edozien, winner in the Gay Memoir/ Biography category for his “Lives of Great Men: Living and Loving as an African Gay Man.â€?

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LAMMIES, from p.30

beginning, we are explaining ourselves.� White recalled that an editor once asked him, “Don’t you wish you hadn’t called yourself a gay writer?� “If I were straight, I’d be an entirely different person,� White said. He told of writing to “justify, to celebrate,� and noted that to his earliest readers he was “indispensible,� which was not to praise himself, he said, but a recognition that his work allowed people to identify themselves at a time when there was little else to turn to. Throughout the evening, the idea of pushing back against erasure as a queer artist and creating work for people who don’t have a voice was a running theme. S. Chris Shirley presented the Lesbian and Gay Mystery Awards with Taylor Trensch (from Broadway’s “Dear Evan Hansen�). A.E. Radley’s “Huntress,� and Marshall Thornton’s “Night Drop� took the awards. Michael Nava presented the LGBTQ Studies and Nonfiction Awards. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor’s “How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective� won the Nonfiction prize, and “Punishing Disease: HIV and the Criminalization of Sickness,� by Trevor Hoppe, won the LGBTQ Studies prize. Hoppe told the audience, “There are people behind bars because they have HIV! HIV is not a crime.� Then, urging people to work to change current laws, he added, “Vote in the midterms!� Michele Karlsberg received the GayCityNews.nyc | June 7 – June 20, 2018

Publishers Professional Award. A former publisher, current publicist, organizer, and essential member of the LGBTQ literary community, Karlsberg’s speech rang with gratitude to her mentors and friends, sharing glimpses of memorable moments, including “an evening in a hot tub with Dorothy Allison and Jewelle Gomez, and I was the only one in a bathing suit.� Afterward, Karlsberg said, “I found myself overwhelmed with bittersweet memories of writers that are no longer here with us. Personally it was an emotional evening — I just wanted to represent those that could not be there. I feel it is my responsibility to always call their names. This literary community has been home to me for 30 years — it has saved my life.� Jeanne Thornton and Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, winners of the Judith A. Markowitz Award for Emerging LGBTQ Writers, presented the awards for LGBTQ Drama and Bisexual Fiction and Nonfiction. Barbara Browning’s “The Gift� won for Bisexual Fiction, and the author talked about how in these “distressing times, what can I tell my students? I tell them to keep making experimental love and weird art.� “I didn’t see that coming,� said Roxane Gay, when she was named as the winner of Bisexual Nonfiction for her book “Hunger.� Gay thanked the Lammies for honoring her “memoir about my body in a world that is inhospitable to my body.� Audrey Cefaly’s “The Gulf� won for Drama, and in her acceptance

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31

THEATER

Bad Girls The death of disco and the death of a matriarch fail to enliven two new shows BY CHRISTOPHER BYRNE f you weren’t there, then you probably don’t know. The influence of Donna Summer’s music was both liberating and profound in discos from New York to Los Angeles — and especially places like sleepy Wilmington, Delaware, where underage, deeply closeted gay kids were able to sneak into the only gay disco for miles, mostly hidden on the second floor of an otherwise staid restaurant. It was in these clubs for a brief moment in the dozen years between Stonewall and AIDS that a culture of celebration and release took root on the dance floor. In a time when gay people could be freely discriminated against and abused, the disco was one of the only places to dim all the lights and express one’s identity freely and in community. Donna Summer, like Gloria Gaynor before her, provided the soundtrack — and in many cases the inspiration — for that freedom. Gaynor’s defiant “I Will Survive” gave way to Summer’s “Love to Love You Baby,” which boldly and unabashedly promoted sex purely as hedonistic pleasure. At least in the disco, gay people could throw off the repressed and Puritanical straight world. When so many were forced to live in secret for their own protection, it wasn’t just a dance party. It was a kind of salvation. The story of how all this came about and how Donna Summer emerged as the Queen of Disco, survived her own history of abuse, started a career, became a mega star, turned her back on her fans, seeking religion and a deeper meaning for herself, is the stuff of theater. Given the soundtrack, it’s the stuff of musicals. So it’s horribly disappointing, at the least, that “Summer: The Donna Summer Musical” is such an incoherent, soporific mess. The conceit is that we are at a last concert where stories will be told. Well, stories will be indicated. The

SUMMER: THE DONNA SUMMER MUSICAL

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Lunt-Fontanne Theatre 205 W. 46th St. Tue.-Thu. at 7 p.m.; Fri.-Sat. at 8 p.m. Wed., Sat. at 2 p.m.; Sun. at 3 p.m. $48-$179; ticketmaster.com Or 800-653-8000 One hr., 40 mins., no intermission JOAN MARCUS

LaChanze as Diva Donna, Ariana DeBose as the younger Disco Donna, and Storm Lever as Duckling Donna with the company of Colman Domingo, Robert Cary, and Des McAnuff’s “Summer: The Donna Summer Musical,” at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre.

PEACE FOR MARY FRANCES Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre 480 W. 42nd St. Through Jun. 17 Tue.-Fri. at 7:30 p.m. Sat. at 8 p.m.; Sat.-Sun. at 2 p.m. $25-$100; ticketcentral.com Two hrs., 30 mins., with intermission

MONIQUE CARBONI

Lois Smith, J. Smith-Cameron, and Paul Lazar in Lily Thorne’s “Peace for Mary Frances,” directed by Lila Neugebauer, at the Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre through June 17.

shallow book by Colman Domingo (who abdicated his usually incisive ability to create characters to grind out this pablum), Robert Cary, and Des McAnuff follows the typical jukebox/ bio-show formula. Events are mentioned but never explored. We’re told things but not shown things, and Summer herself is reduced to a one-dimensional character, though played by three actresses. What we’re left with is a biography notable for its tiresome banality and a seemingly intentional resistance to looking at anything beneath the surface of the characters or events. Worse, by sanding off any sharp edges, the producers make a play to

downplay Summer’s controversial abandonment of her gay audience and some of the bad choices she made to present a more palatable image of the star. This makes the book read as false and manipulative and undermines every inherent dramatic conflict in the story. It might have been better had they just done a concert of the 23 songs in the playlist and left it at that. Then, they would have been able to do many of the full songs, rather than the truncated versions mostly seen here. Indeed, once the realization sets in, very quickly, that this is going to be a weak-kneed whitewash, the impulse during the book scenes was simply to shout

out, “Oh, shut up and just sing.” Fortunately, the singing is pretty good. The cast is led by LaChanze as Diva Donna, and her powerful, versatile voice can thrillingly recall Summer’s qualities. There are moments when she inspires goosebumps, and they are the show’s saving grace. Ariana DeBose as the younger Disco Donna has more of the heavy lifting book scenes to do, but she, too, captures most of Summer’s tones and has to negotiate the changes in style over her career. Storm Lever as Duckling Donna is not so successful. She has a powerful voice, but it’s mostly a contemporary belt. To be fair, there’s not much source material for her to work with, but her overall performance is generic, mannered, and dull. She could be any little girl from any sitcom from any era. The rest of the company does

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June 7 – June 20, 2018 | GayCityNews.nyc

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BAD GIRLS, from p.32

a professional job backing up these three with a lot of enthusiasm. McAnuff has not so much directed as played traffic cop, though the scenes at times move with dizzying pace around Robert Brill’s projection-heavy set. Let’s just say that choreographer Sergio Trujillo has done much better in the past and leave it at that. Of course, none of this may matter. “Summer” largely trades on the “Mamma Mia” effect, meaning that a large percentage of the audience for this show for the most part couldn’t really care less about theater or storytelling, certainly at the performance I saw. They just want to go to the souvenir stand and dance in their seats. “Summer,” then is not so much a piece of theater as an attraction. It’s very much like watching a preschool class dance to the Village People singing “YMCA.” It’s got a good beat, and you can dance to it. Just ignore anything else if you don’t want to be overcome by irony. Thus, four decades on, the social and political importance of an era can be jetti-

soned for easy entertainment. This is, after all show business. Just don’t pretend it’s theater. Near the end of “Sweeney Todd,” the murderous pie shop proprietress Mrs. Lovett is confronted by the still living body of the Beggar Woman whose throat Sweeney has just slit. Mrs. Lovett looks down at the suffering woman and screams, “Die! Die! God in Heaven, die!” That’s pretty much how I felt watching the rambling, unformed, even ghastly “Peace for Mary Frances” at the New Group. And it’s not just me. The title character spends half the play talking about how much she wishes she would just expire already. In fact, over a ponderously long two-and-a-half hours, Mary Frances keeps asking, “Why is this taking so long?” The answer rests in Lily Thorne’s tale of a family in turmoil as the matriarch goes into hospice care and long-simmering resentments and recriminations come to the surface. It’s not that the subject matter isn’t fodder for compelling theater — “August, Osage Coun-

ty,” for one, leaps to mind. It’s that Thorne has no idea how to build characters, craft a scene, or introduce any kind of complexity into the situation. This is incessant, flat out exposition, with emotional eruptions, that leaves us nowhere, provides no original insights into the human condition, or goes any further than positing that families can be rotten to one another at times of high stress. Combined with Thorne’s forced and inauthentic dialogue, the result is shallowness usually reserved for sidewalk puddles — or the Donna Summer musical. This is rendered all the more tooth-gnashingly enervating when one considers that this has been directed by the usually incisive Lila Neugebauer and includes a marvelously talented cast, each of whom does what they can with what little they have to work with. Lois Smith is the dying matriarch, and she’s always wonderful, though elements of her character are incongruous, such as how can someone days away from death from COPD leap from bed, run to the window, and raise it to shout

into the yard? I would pay to watch Johanna Day or J. Smith-Cameron eat soup — they’re that wonderful as actresses. Sadly, that would be a whole lot more interesting than what they get to do here. Day plays a recovering addict who is nonetheless mom’s favorite, and SmithCameron plays her sister, a perpetually pouting, passive-aggressive, manipulative astrologist who wants her mother’s love — and more than her share of the inheritance. The script constrains them from giving anything other than one-note performances. There are also two venal granddaughters who are, consistent with the family, completely self-involved and dull with several pointless scenes that dilute the focus of the play even further. It’s not enough that Thorne taps into topics that have a universality — family dysfunction, dealing with aged and dying parents, unresolved pass issues — she has nothing original to say about them. They’re just another awful group of people. A hospice worker says that the family isn’t the worst he’s encountered. But they’re close.

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GayCityNews.nyc | June 7 – June 20, 2018

33

BRIAN CHRISTOPHER SARGEANT/ COURTESY OF LAMBDA LITERARY

C. Riley Snorton, winner of the Trans Nonfiction Award for “Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity,” with Kate Bornstein, who presented the honor, in the background.

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BRIAN CHRISTOPHER SARGEANT/ COURTESY OF LAMBDA LITERARY

The evening’s emcee, comedian Kate Clinton.

LAMMIES, from p.31

speech, she stressed how much the recognition means to getting the work to new audiences. “Tailor-Made” by Yolanda Wallace took the Lesbian Romance Award, and the author was overcome by emotion as she talked about how as a little girl she’d worn Tuffskin jeans to protect herself from taunts and bullying, until “I discovered something to keep my tender skin safe — the written word.” “Love and Other Hot Beverages” by Laurie Loft won the Gay Romance Award, and Loft’s video acceptance speech was a crowd favorite, as her cat sat on her shoulder, alternately staring at the camera and ignoring it. The crowd also loved the titles of the books in the LGBTQ Erotica category, applauding loudly when “His Seed,” an anthology edited by Steve Berman, won the award. In Berman’s recorded speech, he thanked his readers and told us to “eat your vegetables.” Rebecca Solnit, dapper in a dark suit, introduced Roxane Gay again for the Board of Trustees Award for Excellence in Literature. “I’m just a simple straight girl,” Solnit demurred. “But I’m from San Francisco, which helps.” Gay received a standing ovation as she took to the stage, and she told the audience, “I write because I just love writing. I feel free and strong and brave. I feel joy.” She emphasized the pleasure of writing in the face of “expectations placed on the shoulders of marginalized people” who are expected to write about their trauma for public consumption.

34

TAMIK A HERNANDEZ/ COURTESY OF LAMBDA LITERARY

Tony Valenzuela and Lambda Lit’s incoming executive director, Sue Landers.

“I do not want us as queer writers to deny ourselves the pleasure of writing,” Gay said. “I want queer writers to put our work into the world regardless of how that will or will not meet the expectations of those who will read it.” The In Memoriam segment brought a hush to the audience, and people applauded, sighed, and called out names as the faces flashed by on the screen, set to a song by Michael Callen. Perhaps the largest cheer was for Ursula K. Le Guin, and the montage finished with a photo of comic and author Bob Smith. Paula Vogel and Alison Bechdel (who could be called Team Broadway) presented the next set of awards. Annalee Newitz’s “Autonomous,” a novel set in a future ruled by Big Pharma, won the LGBTQ Horror/ SF/ Fantasy category. Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich won the Lesbian Memoir/ Biogra-

phy Award for “The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir.” The author took the stage and said how she’d been told that the book was “too much”: a true crime story about the murder of a child, combining memoir and her own abuse. “I was asked, ‘Who do you think is going to read this? It’s too much!,’” she recalled. “But ‘too much’ is the way it is.” Chiké Frankie Edozien won the award for Gay Memoir/ Biography with “Lives of Great Men: Living and Loving as an African Gay Man.” Kate Bornstein took a break from rehearsals for her Broadway debut (in Young-Jean Lee’s “Straight White Men”) to present, with poet Tommy “Teebs” Pico, the Transgender Fiction and Nonfiction Awards. “With all the right-wing lies going around about trans people, I’m surprised they aren’t nominated for Transgender Fiction,” Auntie

Kate said tartly. “Transcendant 2: The Year’s Best Transgender Speculative Fiction,” edited by Bogi Takács, took the award for Transgender Fiction, and the editor thanked their “spouse person” and “child person” in their video message. “Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity,” by C. Riley Snorton, won the Nonfiction Award. Nancy Bereano, the pioneering founder of Firebrand Books, and Nicole Dennis-Benn, last year’s Lammy winner for her debut novel, presented the Lesbian and Gay Fiction Awards. Carmen Maria Machado won the Lesbian Fiction prize for “Her Body and Other Parties,” and told the audience, via her video speech, “Stories exist whether or not we commit them to the page.” She thanked her publisher and readers and said of her book, “She’s yours now!” John Rechy, the 87-year-old author of the pioneering gay novel “City of Night” (1963), took home this year’s Lammy for Gay Fiction with his “After the Blue Hour.” Kate Clinton, who’d been tracking the evening’s fundraising campaign and urging audience members to contribute, announced that the goal of $10,000 had been met and exceeded, and closed the ceremony, just after 9 p.m., with a few more words of thanks to Valenzuela. The happy crowd milled around the lobby, before dispersing, some for the afterparty at (le) poisson rouge, some for the airport, and the rest off to whatever else was the next stop on their journey. June 7 – June 20, 2018 | GayCityNews.nyc

Events in planning

www.brooklynpride.org FB:BrooklynPrideInc

(watch for updated times, locations, and events not yet listed)

Monday, June 4, 6:30pm Borough President Honors Brooklyn Borough Hall - Brooklyn Heights 209 Joralemon Street

Wednesday, June 6, 7pm – 10pm Ice Cream Social Ample Hills Creamery - Gowanus 305 Nevins St. (at Union St.)

Thursday, June 7th, 7:00pm Brooklyn Pride Comedy Night Club Xstacy – Sunset Park 758 Fifth Ave (at 26th St.)

Friday, June 8th Family Move Night Under The Stars – Black Panther Field Behind Old Stone House – Park Slope 336 3rd Street (bet.4th & 5th Aves)

Thurs./Fri. June 7th & 8th, 4pm -8pm Brooklyn Pride 5K Run Packet Pickup Out of the Closet– Boerum Hill 475 Atlantic Ave. (bet. Nevins & 3rd Ave)

Friday, June 8th, 7pm – 10pm AHF Pre-Pride Day Kick Off Hollow Nickel (backyard) 494 Atlantic Ave. (Nevins & 3rd Aves)

Saturday, June 9th ALL DAY 10:00am – 5K Run Prospect Park West at 15th Street Still time to register before its sold out

11:00am – 5:00pm - MultiCultural Festival 5th Avenue from 1st Street to 9th Street

11:00am – 5:00pm - Entertainment Stages 5th Avenue at 1st Street and 9th Street Two stages of entertainment all day

11:00am – 5:00pm – Family Fun Zone Park at Old Stone House - 5th Ave- 3rd & 4th Sts Family activities, music, arts & crafts

7:30pm – Twilight Brooklyn Pride Parade 5th Ave. from St. John’s Pl. - 9th St Reviewing Stand/MC at 3rd St Marchers, Floats, Music & More

GayCityNews.nyc | June 7 – June 20, 2018

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FILM

Death at the Door Ari Aster’s “Hereditary” fails to get its pitch right

seems about to fall apart at every moment. Peter is a heavy pothead, while his younger sister Charlie (Milly Shapiro) sees hallucinatory images outside when not tagging along with him. The latter leads to tragedy when he takes her to a party. After he inhales a huge bong hit, she tells him that her throat feels uncomfortable; forced to drive her home stoned, he winds up in an accident that kills her. This makes the family’s depression even worse, which is not helped by Annie’s occult consultations with her neighbor Joan (Ann Dowd.) Elements of Aster’s approach evoke influences as seemingly incompatible as John Cassavetes, William Friedkin, and Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Aster uses quite a few camera set-ups straight out of the “master shot school” that’s developed in East Asian cinema over the past 25 years, but unlike directors such as Tsai Ming-liang and Hou Hsiao-

hsien he’s very reticent to let the viewer keep their gaze on an image. “Hereditary” is full of ostentatious camera swirls, as Aster seems to want the audience to know just how stylish his direction is. This leads to shots as absurd as an upside-down image of Annie walking through a hallway, taken from a camera placed on the ceiling. Aster’s use of music is clearly inspired by Friedkin’s “The Exorcist.” At the time, that film was innovative in eschewing a conventional score for selections of dissonant avant-garde classical music whose noise quotient enhanced its tension. In the press kit, Aster praises the score’s composer, Colin Stetson, saying, “There’s something deeply sinister about Colin’s horns… he’s doing amazing things with circular breathing, multiphonics, and percussive valve-work.” And indeed, it’s possible that it would make a rewarding listen in another context. But as a soundtrack for these images, it just goes for loud stabs of aural shock separated by drones, which Aster deploys wall-to-wall over his film in pale imitation of Friedkin’s embrace of composers

like George Crumb and Krzysztof Penderecki. Colette has received much praise for her performance, but to me she comes across as though she wishes she were Dorothy Malone in a Douglas Sirk film. The two younger actors are actually far more impressive. Although Charlie gets killed off relatively quickly, Shapiro, who looks younger than her 14 years, sells the character’s introduction of the film’s paranormal elements. After all, children tend to live in a world where magical thinking prevails and the boundaries between fantasy and reality are much thinner than in adult life. But this fact also brings a degree of ambiguity to her visions of ghostly figures. Peter is clearly feeling something he can’t openly express (or doesn’t want to), and this is more challenging for an actor to bring out than the screaming and endless emoting Colette engages in. Wolff portrays a potent kind of interior chill in “Hereditary.” In the film’s second half, it fully embraces its paranormal elements, and without giving away the ending I can say “Hereditary” winds up in a place very far from its relatively prosaic early scenes. Its trippy turn at first feels refreshing, then goofy: the fatalism and sense of doom underpinning the film are very hard to take as seriously and literally as the film intends us to. “Hereditary” falls flat, more an exploitation of grief and domestic anxiety than a true exploration of them.

Barbosa does not judge his late friend and hero for his reckless or irrational behavior, and he does not necessarily want audiences to do so either. Instead, he shows how Gabriel adjusts to each situation he finds himself in. He gets a cheaper price for a visa he needs by going to a different checkpoint, and he fights with a safari guide who charges his credit card without his permission and does not deliver the tour he desires. He tries, unsuccessfully, to convince a man to let him do a bungee jump after closing time. But he also asks for rides and

guidance from locals, who assist and befriend him. Gabriel’s experiences, often risky, are fascinating and absorbing. When he impulsively decides to get off an uncomfortable bus ride he and Cristina are taking, the couple end up in a Zambian village where their unmarried status is questioned. That leads them to describe themselves as fiancées and ask a local woman about her views on marriage. What could have been a thorny situation turns into something informative. But “Gabriel and the Mountain”

is certainly not lacking in tension. The film’s last act, which leads up to his death, is excruciating, with every moment freighted with suspense. Barbosa slowly teases out when and how Gabriel meets his end. And as this drama unfolds, viewers will reflect back on how well they came to know and care about him, even at his most imprudent. As the title character, Zappa is appealing, portraying a man both irritating and ultimately charming. Barbosa has beautifully honored his friend’s spirit with his lovely, touching film.

BY STEVE ERICKSON irector Ari Aster’s feature debut “Hereditary” is no ordinary horror film. Alas, it’s neither fish nor fowl: stumbling as successful genre fare while masquerading as the family drama it purports to be. Containing two funerals and opening with a title card announcing an elderly woman’s passing, it wears its fascination with death on its sleeve. Only one scene depicts violence, but that’s not its concern at all. Instead, “Hereditary” is obsessed with the effects of grief on the family around which it centers, especially the mother, Annie (Toni Collette). The very talented Gabriel Byrne, who plays her husband Steve, is given comparatively little to do, while Annie’s calmest scenes suggest she’s struggling to contain a panic attack. And Annie’s rarely able to restrain herself: “Hereditary” embraces full-on melodrama to a degree that’s unusual for a horror film. But it’s emotionally vacant, closer in spirit to the repressed daze of Annie and Steve’s teenage son Peter (Alex Wolff), who spends the film’s first half semi-deliberately numbing himself. “Hereditary” opens with the emotional consequences of Graham family matriarch Ellen’s death on her surviving family. Psychiatrist Steve (Byrne played the same occupation to much better effect on the TV series “In Treatment”) struggles to keep things together, as Annie

HEREDITARY

D

䉴

GABRIEL, from p.29

it unfolds and possibly unravels. When they are together, these Mzungus face many Africans eager for their tourist dollars, but when offered clothes or guide services, Gabriel haggles over price or simply walks away. His stubborn need for independence is telling; perhaps he thinks that he can game the locals or is smarter than he is. His arrogance is particularly pronounced in the last act, when he insists on climbing Mount Mulanje without a guide and gear and in sandals.

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Directed by Ari Aster A24 Opens Jun. 8 Citywide

REID CHAVIS/ COURTESY OF A24

Milly Shapiro and Alex Wolff in Ari Aster’s feature debut “Hereditary,” which opens citywide on June 8.

June 7 – June 20, 2018 | GayCityNews.nyc

CATERERS

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8015/23 13th Ave. • Dyker Heights • Brooklyn, NY 11228

718–331–2900 • www.siricos.net • up to 300 Guests GayCityNews.nyc | June 7 – June 20, 2018

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ROUTE CHANGE, from p.11

Village and Chelsea, told Gay City News he was not brought into any discussions of the changes. As Gay City News was going to press, the newspaper learned that Erik Bottcher, Johnson’s chief of staff, met with the mayor’s office and four HOP officers on May 31. They agreed to a community planning process for the march route for 2019 that could result in the route changing again. HOP and a representative of Johnson’s office who spoke at the meeting did not disclose this at the town hall. Julian Sanjivan, HOP’s march director, conceded Tuesday evening that the group had missed the mark. “Could we have done a better job at it?â€? he said during the two-hour town hall. “Clearly, yes, we could have done a better job at it.â€? Last year, the sole demand was for a resistance contingent at the front of the march. This year, a group of activists with deep roots in the LGBTQ and other movements organized as the Reclaim Pride Coalition (RPC) asked for a resistance contingent, a reduced corporate and police presence at the march, including two policefree zones in the West Village, an explanation for the new route, and that members of the Gay Officers Action League (GOAL) march without uniforms or weapons. The Coalition members, who range in age from their early 20s to much older than that, were clearly not inclined to be generous, feeling that HOP has not been accessible. The longstanding complaint that large corporations dominate the parade is a central issue. Activists believe that HOP has torn the march from its roots in an anti-police riot and turned it into a commercial and a celebration. “You think that making something public is the same thing as community engagement and it’s not,â€? said Jeremiah Johnson, a member of the Coalition. “You have to intentionally do that‌ My concern right now is that you guys are party planners with no sense of rebellion.â€? For its part, HOP has responded that community groups and nonprofits continue to make up 65 to 70 percent of the contingents in the parade and even the corporate

contingents are made up of LGBTQ employees. Shortening the parade is not only an accommodation to the city, which must police and clean up after the parade, it is an accommodation to marchers who do not want to wait for hours to step off. The new route is a test in anticipation of the far larger crowd expected next year for the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, which mark the start of the modern LGBTQ rights movement. The reasoning is that dispersing the crowd in Midtown, as opposed to the West Village, gives more public transportation options. A panel comprised of HOP cochair Maryanne Roberto Fine, Sanjivan, three senior NYPD officials, Matthew McMorrow from the mayor’s office, Detective Carl Locke, the NYPD’s LGBTQ liaison, Detective Brian Downey, GOAL’s president, and Lydia Figueroa, GOAL’s recording secretary, spent about 30 minutes presenting to the crowd of roughly 100. When Sanjivan first mentioned the new route, it was greeted with hissing. Police officials and GOAL made presentations that were received politely. Audience questions and comments lasted about an hour and most of the heat was directed at HOP, though police and GOAL caught some flack. When panelists began to respond to the questions during the final 30 minutes of the town hall, there were repeated interruptions. There were two sympathetic moments during the meeting. One came when Hannah Simpson, a transgender woman, praised the police. “What I can say is I’ve interacted with the NYPD on many levels, including sitting in on a hate crime investigation supporting a trans woman of color friend of mine,� Simpson said. “What you don’t hear about on the news are the thousands of officers who are saving lives and respecting us.� The second came when Downey said, as he has before and as HOP has supported, that GOAL members would be marching in uniform. “I will not dishonor Charlie Cochrane and Sam Ciccone by taking off those uniforms,� he said referring to two of the founders of the 36-year-old organization. That comment drew applause. June 7 – June 20, 2018 | GayCityNews.nyc

FAMILY PRIDE

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GayCityNews.nyc | June 7 – June 20, 2018

39

PHOTOGRAPHY

Alice Austen’s Chronicle of the Larky Life Community Center hosts exhibition of pioneering lesbian photographer’s work

COURTESY OF THE LGBT COMMUNIT Y CENTER

Alice Austen captures two female couples from the Darned Club looking out from Clear Comfort in Staten Island across the Narrows to Brooklyn.

COURTESY OF THE LGBT COMMUNIT Y CENTER

Three men from Alice Austen’s “Larky Life.”

BY DONNA ACETO first visited Alice Austen House — a 1690 Dutch farmhouse known as Clear Comfort that faces the Narrows between Staten Island and Brooklyn at the entrance to New York Harbor — more than 15 years ago. I have no recollection of the famed photographer’s partner, Gertrude Tate, being mentioned, so I am overjoyed to have seen “Fine, Bright Day,” a new exhibit at the LGBT Community Center surveying Austen’s work. Although she died in poverty, a result of the stock market crash of 1929, for much of her life Austen (1866-1952) flourished. Family money put her both in a position to travel and gave her the means to own photographic equipment generally unheard of for a woman of her time. She was the first woman to own a car on Staten Island. Ultimately, she died a pauper but not without being recognized for her work. The exhibit at the Center is lovely for what it is. As expected at an LGBTQ venue, it focuses primarily on Austen’s playful photos of her women — presumably lesbian — friends. Playful to us, but probably subversive at the time! Women

FINE, BRIGHT DAY: THE PHOTOGRAPHY OF ALICE AUSTEN

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LGBT Community Center 208 W. 13th St. Through Aug. 31 Mon.-Sat., 9 a.m.-10 p.m. Sun., 9 a.m.-9 p.m. gaycenter.org

COURTESY OF THE LGBT COMMUNIT Y CENTER

A formal portrait by Alice Austen.

together in bed, in sexy pose, or awaiting a third to fall asleep. Others dressed as men or looking very proper but gazing at each other in pairs. She was also a photographer of early female athleticism — gymnasts and bicyclists. Some of these works are subtle, some not so much, but all clearly of the womenloving woman variety. Groups of men (who strike me as gay) are also represented in photos depicting what Austen referred to as “the Larky Life.” One of the pho-

tos of the boys on the beach strikes me as particularly prescient of a Fire Island world to come. These staged portraits are meticulously framed and clever and give us a representation of a time in our queer history that enjoys scarce documentation. Alice met Gertrude in 1899, when Tate was recovering from Typhoid Fever, at a Catskills hotel where Alice had gone on one of her photographic journeys. The women formed an instant bond and returned to the Catskills and the Adirondacks often. A beautiful region, this is where Austen photographed some of her most glorious landscapes. Her talent for perfect lighting and composition was astounding. As a photographer of

people, with no talent for nature, I find it a marvel. For 18 years, while Gertrude’s family fretted over her “wrong devotion” to Alice, she was a frequent visitor to Clear Comfort, Austen’s Staten Island refuge, and spent summers traveling Europe with her, as well. Gertrude finally moved into Clear Comfort in 1917 after her mother sold their Brooklyn home. Although not buried together, their relationship lasted more than 50 years, until Austen’s death. Austen’s skills went beyond landscapes and formal portraits. The Center exhibit is wonderful enough not to get hung up on what is missing, but I must say that her photographs of the docks and dock workers of Staten Island, underrepresented here, are among her best works. Additionally, in this era of street photography by everyone — thanks to the camera phone — it would have been nice to see some of hers. Austen referred to them as “street types” and they are truly outstanding. Still, there is much to enjoy at the Center exhibit. Austen was a prolific lesbian photographer to be proud of — not just for her great talent but also for her strength and independence in what was truly a man’s world. June 7 – June 20, 2018 | GayCityNews.nyc

ADVERTORIAL

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phone conversations. The use of a hands-free device does not lower distraction levels. The percentage of vehicle crashes and nearcrashes attributed to dialing is nearly identical to the number associated with talking or listening.

Daydreaming Many people will admit to daydreaming behind the wheel or looking at a person or object outside of the car for too long. Per-

GayCityNews.nyc | June 7 – June 20, 2018

haps they’re checking out a house in a new neighborhood or thought they saw someone they knew on the street corner. It can be easy to veer into the direction your eyes are focused, causing an accident. In addition to trying to stay focused on the road, some drivers prefer the help of lane departure warning systems.

Eating Those who haven’t quite mastered walking and

chewing gum at the same time may want to avoid eating while driving. The majority of foods require a person’s hands to be taken off of the wheel and their eyes to be diverted from the road. Reaching in the back seat to share some French fries with the kids is also distracting. Try to eat meals before getting in the car. For those who must snack while en route, take a moment to pull over at

a rest area and spend 10 minutes snacking there before resuming the trip.

Reading Glancing at an advertisement, updating a Facebook status or reading a book are all activities that should be avoided when driving. Even pouring over a traffic map or consulting the digital display of a GPS system can be distracting.

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June 7 – June 20, 2018 | GayCityNews.nyc

䉴

HOMELESS YOUTH, from p.4

stood on the stage last week behind McCray and Johnson, saw as lacking in the $9.5 million announcement. In a memo to McCray’s staff outlining their concerns, they noted that only 20 beds — rather than 100 — are being funded; that

䉴

SAFER CONSUMPTION, from p.15

Europe, and Australia to permit drug users to consume drugs under the watchful eye of overdose prevention workers. Should a user go into a deep nod and lose consciousness, staff can provide oxygen or naloxone, a drug that is inhaled and quickly revives a user

䉴

TORCH SONG, from p.29

fortunately, a tragedy changes the couple’s plans. Fierstein’s script nicely handles the social issues it raises in its second act, making clear the characters are looking for nothing more than the right to live like anyone else. The challenge of being an out gay man in 1977 (the film’s setting), 1982 (when the play was staged), and even 1988 (when the film came out) remained daunting in many respects. Even by the time the film came out, its treatment of

䉴

SNAIL MAIL, from p.27

lesbian is evident here as well. The album’s second single, “Heat Wave,” is its most remarkable song. Its guitar sound evokes “Daydream Nation”-era Sonic Youth, mixing aggression with a tuneful quality. Its video is also quite memorable. It cuts back and forth between Jordan playing guitar and her in the midst of a hockey game. She gets surrounded and crushed by men, then forced into the penalty box. But eventually she triumphs, racing around the

䉴

CONNIE KURTZ, from p.8

with their families in Israel, her 14 grandchildren, and 27 greatgrandchildren as well as by Berman’s children and grandchildren. She was preceded in death by her GayCityNews.nyc | June 7 – June 20, 2018

the 15 housing placement specialists the Council has called for are not being funded; that the Council mandate that youth no longer be forced out of youth shelters at 21, which takes effect next January, was not immediately implemented; and that no youth employment initiative was part of the package.

Perhaps most damning is Queerocracy’s conclusion that its members — some of whom sit on the youth advisory board of the New York City Coalition on the Continuum of Care, which brings together a broad range of government, non-profit, and consumer stakeholders in fighting homeless-

ness — “were not meaningfully engaged” in developing the NYC Unity Project priorities announced last week. Queerocracy and VOCAL-NY hope to set up a roundtable with McCray and other administration officials soon to discuss their concerns.

and restores normal breathing. Since the first such facilities were opened in Basel, Switzerland in 1986, these facilities have handled thousands of overdoses, with not a single death reported in more than 100 sites worldwide. It’s too soon to know the impact of Nixon’s endorsement of the program, but the questions being

asked by the state health department seemingly pose few obstacles to moving forward. Zucker asked whether drivers would be allowed to use drugs — to which King tartly replied, “Of course not.” Nor will the facilities provide drugs to clients; those would have to be bought in the illegal market and carried into the Safer Consumption Space.

Zucker also posed the ultimate softball question: “What kind of care is provided after use?” This is the biggest selling point for the approach. The user stays in the center, where help is just steps away. “If you don’t like people nodding out on a street corner,” King said, “let’s give them space to do it indoors safely.”

gay relationships, homophobia, and the characters’ interest in creating a family was strikingly fresh — prefiguring the enormous changes that society has undergone in the three decades since. It is in the film’s last act, however, that Fierstein’s work is most painful and most unabashed. Ed has moved in with Arnold and David and Arnold’s mother arrives for a visit, unaware that her son is a father now. That’s just one of the issues she will have with Arnold, as both characters confront hard truths and dispense one-liners in

equal measure. Their fights — in which each says hateful things to the other — are gripping and impassioned, making for great drama. During a particularly heated exchange, Bogart shrewdly moves in for a close-up of Bancroft at just the right moment. While Ma does not want to talk about Arnold’s homosexuality, that is all Arnold wants to talk about. The contrast is canny, with Arnold’s abrasive voice conveying the repression gay men have long felt. His need and insistence in expressing himself fully at all times

are inspiring. Bancroft and Fierstein’s parts are tailor-fit for the actors who tear into them with gusto. In support, Broderick and Kerwin do quite well in more limited roles. Only Castrodad’s performance feels off, belting every line to the rafters. If “Torch Song Trilogy” in its film adaptation feels stagy at times, humor, heart, and humanity are on full display nonetheless. Viewers will likely need tissues by the end — even if, at moments, they feel their tears are jerked manipulatively.

rink with command of the puck and getting a quasi-mystical command over a glowing puck. Any connections to a male-dominated music scene are purely coincidental, of course. “Lush” closes with the ballad “Anytime,” which consists of Jordan accompanying herself on solo electric guitar with more guitars overdubbed around the two-minute mark and airy electronics near the very end. She asks her partner, “Are you hung up, or do you love me?,” and says, “In the end, you could waste your whole life

anyways/ I want better for you.” It’s a song about trying to let go of one’s lover gently, which rarely goes well. “Lush” documents a band that’s still in the process of getting its act together. Apart from “Heat Wave,” which is one of 2018’s best rock songs, their music sounds good while I’m listening to it, but has little staying power. Snail Mail’s sound has a certain intensity while playing their album, but it fades instantly; Jordan’s songwriting eschews hooks and isn’t particularly memorable. Her

command of the guitar can’t be denied, but there’s still a certain familiarity to “Lush.” 2018 is a year where the sounds of ‘90s indie rock have returned, and Snail Mail fit into that trend, even if Jordan has cited folk music and slowcore bands like Low as influences on her current direction. “Lush” seems like the second step on a path that will one day lead to a major album, but the band isn’t there yet.

parents Elias and Rose Levy. Rabbi Kleinbaum officiated at Connie Kurtz’s funeral at Star of David Cemetery of the Palm Beaches in West Palm Beach on May 30.. Tzedakah/ donations in Con-

nie Kurtz’s memory may be sent to Congregation Beit Simchat Torah (cbst.org); Compass LGBT Center in Lake Worth, Florida (compassglcc.com/support-compass); Old Lesbians Organizing for Change, or OLOC (oloc.org); and BLAST: Bi,

Lesbian, Straight Women Together (meetup.com/BLASTwpb/).

The “Heat Wave” video is at youtube.com/watch?v=-d91Qn8QUks.

Thanks to Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum and Congregation Beit Simchat Torah for providing information and photographs for this article.

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June 7 – June 20, 2018 | GayCityNews.nyc

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