Gay City News - August 16, 2018

Corporate Sponsors Buy Pride Parade Placement 05

Trump Trans Military Ban Catches More Flak 08

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Peppermint’s Broadway Breakthrough In “Head Over Heels,” Sex & Gender Revels Never End Page 18 PHOTO CREDIT

© GAY CITY NEWS 2018 | NYC COMMUNITY MEDIA, LLC, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

FREE | VOLUME SEVENTEEN, ISSUE SEVENTEEN | AUGUST 16 – AUGUST 29, 2018

In This Issue COVER STORY Peppermint’s Broadway breakthrough 18

REMEMBRANCE John Glines, gay theater pioneer, dies at 84 12

POLITICS Labor Department co-signs bias 04

EDITORIAL Stand with the nation’s free press 14

CIVIL RIGHTS Restaurant chain slammed for trans discrimination 06

MUSIC Object as Subject is not asking 21

HISTORY NYPD & early gay rivalries 10

2

The age of discovery: “We the Animals” 20

IN THE NOH Bob Fosse’s work finally gets a serious reading 24

August 16 – August 29, 2018 | GayCityNews.nyc

O C C A B TO XIC O T S I

S I H T S I E LIF N O N C I X TO

GayCityNews.nyc | August 16 – August 29, 2018

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POLITICS

Labor Department Directive Co-Signs Discrimination Trump administration offers government contractors broad religious opt-out

BY ARTHUR S. LEONARD

A

new directive from the US Department of Labor is construing three recent Supreme Court rulings as well as two executive orders from President Donald Trump to allow contractors doing business with the federal government to discriminate based on their religious beliefs.

The August 10 directive, which came from Craig E. Leen, the acting director of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP), a Labor Department unit, could undermine the protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity that former President Barack Obama had added to the federal government’s contracting guidelines.

The first court decision Leen cited is Masterpiece Cakeshop v.

Colorado Civil Rights Commission, the Supreme Court’s June 4 ruling that reversed a lower court decision against a Denver-area baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.

Significantly, the high court in that decision did not rule that businesses have a general right to deny services to gay couples based on the owners’ religious beliefs. Instead, finessing that issue, the majority found that the lower court’s ruling had to be reversed because the Colorado Civil Rights Commission had exhibited overt hostility to religion in its treatment of baker Jack Phillips, whose refusal to provide his services to the same-sex couples was based on his religious objections to samesex marriage.

The evidence for this “hostility” boiled down to public statements by two commissioners, one of whom accurately summarized the legal rule that religious beliefs do not excuse a business from complying with state anti-discrimination law, and the other characterizing the use of religion to justify discrimination as “ugly.”

Justice Anthony Kennedy’s decision for the court emphasized that

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WHITEHOUSE.GOV

The Department of Labor has now followed suit in the wake of executive orders and memoranda from President Donald Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions giving broad scope to those who claim religious objections to complying with federal laws and regulations.

generally businesses do not enjoy a right to discriminate based on the owners’ religious beliefs, and that a “neutral forum” free of overt hostility to religion could enforce the anti-discrimination laws against a religious objector.

Kennedy’s ruling also contended that the Commission had shown additional hostility to religion by dismissing charges brought by a man who complained that several bakers refused his request to make cakes decorated with religiously-based anti-gay scriptural quotes and slogans. The majority clearly believed the Commission was insufficiently evenhanded in dealing with cases involving religious views.

But Leen’s directive, consistent with the two Trump executive orders and a memorandum issued last fall by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, reorients the Masterpiece Cakeshop issue as “discrimination” against religious individuals when they are required to comply with non-discrimination requirements that conflict with their religious beliefs.

“Recent court decisions have addressed the broad freedoms and anti-discrimination protections that must be afforded religion-

exercising organizations and individuals under the United States Constitution and federal law,” Leen wrote, painting individuals and businesses who want their religious beliefs to take priority over any contrary legal obligations as “victims.”

Twisting recent Supreme Court opinions to support this assertion, Leen summarized Masterpiece Cakeshop as holding that “the government violates the Free Exercise clause when its decisions are based on hostility to religion or a religious viewpoint.”

Leen summarized the 2017 Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc., v. Comer decision, where the Supreme Court held that a state could not categorically disqualify religious organizations from receiving state funds for nonreligious purposes, as meaning that the “government violates the Free Exercise clause when it conditions a generally available public benefit on an entity’s giving up its religious character, unless that condition withstands the strictest scrutiny.”

That case involved Missouri’s denial of funds to a religious school for repaving its playground, based on a state constitutional provision

against providing taxpayer money to religious institutions.

Finally, Leen summarized the Supreme Court’s notorious 2014 5-4 ruling in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby as holding that “the Religious Freedom Restoration Act [RFRA] applies to federal regulation of the activities of for-profit closely held corporations.”

Hobby Lobby involved a demand by a business corporation owned by a small group of devout Catholics that it not be required to provide contraception coverage for their employees as required by the Affordable Care Act. Very few federal contractors subject to federal anti-discrimination rules, which apply only to substantial federal contracts, are “closely held corporations,” so that characterization of RFRA does not seem particularly relevant to the cases where Leen’s directive is likely to be implicated.

Leen also cited Trump’s Executive Order 13831, which states, “The executive branch wants faithbased and community organizations, to the fullest opportunity permitted by law, to compete on a level playing field for grants, contracts, programs, and other Federal funding opportunities,” and Trump’s Executive Order 13798, which says, “It shall be the policy of the executive branch to vigorously enforce Federal law’s robust protections for religious freedom.

The Founders envisioned a Nation in which religious voices and views were integral to a vibrant public square, and in which religious people and institutions were free to practice their faith without fear of discrimination or retaliation by the Federal Government.

Federal law protects the freedom of Americans and their organizations to exercise religion and participate fully in civic life without undue interference by the Federal Government.”

Sessions’ memorandum ran with these themes, asserting that the government should generally

➤ RELIGIOUS OPT-OUTS, continued on p.6 August 16 – August 29, 2018 | GayCityNews.nyc

COMMUNITY

HOP Admits Corporations Buy Parade Placement At town hall focused on Stonewall’s 50th anniversary, critics keep pressure up

BY DUNCAN OSBORNE

T

he organization that produces New York City’s annual Pride Parade and related events said that its contracts with parade sponsors allow those companies to purchase a place in the parade, but do not guarantee that their contingents would be included in the three-hour live broadcast of the parade on local broadcast TV. “I can tell you that there are some multiple-year agreements that include float participation or vehicle participation,” said Maryanne Roberto Fine, a co-chair of Heritage of Pride (HOP), during an August 13 town meeting held at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center. “There have been contracts that will give a range, but nothing that would specifically say you will be on the broadcast…

There are contractual obligations to placement.”

While community groups and non-profits comprise most of the contingents in the Pride Parade, which commemorates the 1969 Stonewall riots that mark the start of the modern LGBTQ rights movement, for-profit companies dominate the event because they use large floats and can field more marchers. Complaints about those companies are longstanding, but in 2017 and particularly in 2018 activists with deep roots in the LGBTQ and other movements began to more aggressively press HOP to limit the corporate presence in the march among other demands.

While activists have long suspected that sponsors can purchase a spot in the parade, inevitably toward the front, this was the first confirmation of that from HOP. It offends activists because the companies are effectively buying a status that they never worked for and have not earned. That the companies are privileged misrepresents the broader community, activists said.

“The issues that our community is working on are not being represented in the best way in this GayCityNews.nyc | August 16 – August 29, 2018

DONNA ACETO

Eugene Fedorko, who marched as early as 1970 and 1971 in New York’s Pride Parade, said the event’s current “focus” is an insult to the movement’s original activists.

march,” said Cathy Marino-Thomas, a longtime LGBTQ activist, at the town hall. “We have a media opportunity for three hours every year now, thank you very much, but nothing that this community is working on is represented in those three hours.”

While some in the community see the corporate floats as evidence of the community’s success and improved status in the US, Eugene Fedorko, who was in the 1970 and 1971 marches, objected to the current nature of the parade and how it misrepresents of the community’s history.

“I cannot believe the focus of the parade has been taken from the heroism of the early activists and their political points,” he said.

“Corporations were nowhere to be found in 1970 and ‘71… Now they are acting as though they threw the first brick on Christopher Street in 1969… It’s a huge insult to the early activists and the current activists.”

In 2018, activists organized as the Reclaim Pride Coalition and, like 2017, demanded a resistance contingent in the parade, which they won. They opposed the required use of wristbands to identify marchers, a practice first employed this year that will not be repeated in 2019. They objected to the new route, which began in Chelsea, headed south on Seventh Avenue, east on Christopher and Eighth

DONNA ACETO

Maryanne Roberto Fine, a co-chair of HOP, seen on the left with Sue Doster, the group’s director of strategic planning, acknowledged that some agreements with corporate sponsors guarantee coveted early spots in the lengthy line ine of march.

DONNA ACETO

Activist Emmaia Gelman termed any guarantee of parade placement based on corporate sponsorship “disgusting.”

Streets, and then north on Fifth Avenue to end at 29th Street. It is unknown if that route will be used in 2019, which will mark the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots.

Chelsea residents were unhappy with the parade being staged in their neighborhood.

“This has to be done differently next year,” Paul Groncki, the chair of the 100 W. 16th St. Block Association, said at the town hall. “The impact on Chelsea residents was immense. I had complaints from almost every block in the neighborhood.”

The new route was supposed to shorten the parade’s run time. In 2017, the parade, which always begins at noon, ended at 9:38 p.m.

This year it ended at 9:14 p.m. The parades in 2016 and 2015 were each

about eight hours long. In 2010, the NYPD, which issues parade permits, issued an edict requiring that all parades last no more than five hours. The Pride Parade, which is among the four largest public events in the city, has not been close to five hours long in years.

While activists this year were initially focused on demands related to the 2018 parade, they were aware early on that they would also need to tackle 2019, given the significance of the Stonewall anniversary. A concern at the town hall was that HOP may have already signed agreements that require HOP to put sponsors at the front of the parade.

“Stop selling places in the parade,” Emmaia Gelman said.

“That’s disgusting.”

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CIVIL RIGHTS

Restaurant Chain Slammed for Trans Discrimination Five charge Harlem’s Texas Chicken & Burgers with refusing service, claiming “no chicken”

BY DUNCAN OSBORNE

F

ive transgender and gender non-conforming people have sued Texas Chicken & Burgers charging they were effectively refused service at one of the chain’s Manhattan locations this past spring because, they believe, they are transgender and gender nonconforming.

“These folks are demanding to be heard,” said Gennaro Savastano, an associate in the appellate unit at Weitz & Luxenberg, a law firm, and president of the LGBT Bar Association of Greater New York. “This sort of bravery is exactly what we need at this moment… New York has zero tolerance for transphobia and homophobia.”

The group visited the chain’s outlet on Frederick Douglass Boulevard in Harlem on May 27. Daniele Marino first attempted to order for the group and was ignored, then Deja Smith tried to order and received the same response. Eventually, an employee told the group that there was “no chicken” in the restaurant despite cooked chicken being visible behind the counter.

“We were told that there was no chicken,” Smith said during an August 9 press conference that was held across the street from the Stonewall Inn, the site of the 1969 riots that mark the start of the modern LGBTQ rights movement. “We were told that there were no chicken tenders.”

A white cisgender man then stepped to the counter and ordered chicken and was served chicken.

While he told the group that he had been served chicken, he also told them he did not want to get involved. At that point, Smith used her phone to record a two-minute

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RELIGIOUS OPT-OUTS, from p.4

refrain from enforcing federal laws against people and businesses that have religious objections to complying with them.

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DUNCAN OSBORNE

Attorney Ben Crump, Jonovia Chase, attorney Gennaro Savastano, Daniele Marino, Jahmila Adderley, and Deja Smith at the August 9 press conference outside the Stonewall Inn.

video in which the white cisgender man confirmed that he had been served chicken and a young Asian woman appeared to be volunteering to assist the group.

“I don’t know why it is that when we went to the register there was no chicken, but when that young man right there went to the register there was chicken,” Smith can be heard saying in the video.

A man behind the counter waved his hand and said, “No video” when asked if he had just told the group there was no chicken in the restaurant.

On May 29, the company posted a statement on Instagram.

“We take all concerns raised by our customers very seriously, just as we take our obligation to treat our customers, employees, and other stakeholders with the utmost degree of respect in an environment free of any form of discrimination,” the company said.

The statement added, “While

we regret that our customer did not receive the level of service we would expect from all employees… after a thorough and swift review of the situation, we are confident that the situation was caused by an honest mistake made by the employee when stating that particular food items were sold out, and not the product of any intentional discriminatory treatment as it is portrayed in the video.”

The lawsuit was filed in state court in Manhattan on August 9.

Reached by phone, Waheed Khosdal, the chief operating officer at Texas Chicken & Burgers, said, “We haven’t been served with anything so I can’t make any comment.”

The suit alleges that Texas Chicken & Burgers violated the city and state human rights laws when it refused to serve the group because they are transgender and gender non-conforming. The city human rights law has barred dis-

crimination based on gender identity since 2002. In 2015, Governor Andrew Cuomo used an executive directive adding gender identity as a protected class to the state law.

Jahmila Adderley, Jonovia Chase, and Valerie Spencer are the other plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

Spencer lives in Los Angeles and did not attend the August 9 press conference.

Civil rights attorney Ben Crump is working on the lawsuit with Weitz & Luxenberg. He flew from his office in Florida to attend the August 9 press conference. Referring to the May 29 statement by Texas Chicken & Burgers, Crump said, “It really was a very poor excuse.”

Recalling past scenes of civil rights activists who have prompted action to promote or defend civil rights, Crump added, “We’re going to see if the transgender community can get justice when it’s on video.”

Leen’s directive, in turn, instructs the OFCCP staff and notifies federal contractors that, in essence, they can discriminate in employing people or providing services under federal contracts if

they are doing so based on their religious beliefs.

The Supreme Court arguably opened the door to this kind of thinking in the Hobby Lobby and Trinity Lutheran cases, but

it is a stretch to cite Masterpiece Cakeshop for this purpose in light of the mention Justice Kennedy made in his majority opinion of

➤ RELIGIOUS OPT-OUTS, continued on p.28 August 16 – August 29, 2018 | GayCityNews.nyc

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GayCityNews.nyc | August 16 – August 29, 2018

7

MILITARY

Trump Trans Military Ban Keeps Catching Flak Three new federal rulings largely side with plaintiffs seeking to block policy

BY ARTHUR S. LEONARD

T

wo federal district judges and a US magistrate judge have issued new rulings — largely adverse to the government — in lawsuits challenging the Trump administration’s policy to ban military service by transgender individuals.

After the San Francisco-based Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals refused to lift Seattle District Judge Marsha Pechman’s preliminary injunction against the policy on July 18, she issued a new ruling on July 27 granting the plaintiffs’ motion to compel discovery and denying the government’s motion for a protective order that would shield President Donald Trump from having to respond to any discovery requests.

The Justice Department immediately announced it would appeal this ruling to the Ninth Circuit.

Pechman had previously denied motions for summary judgment in the case, having found that there was a need for discovery before such a ruling could take place.

On August 6, DC District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who had issued the first preliminary injunction against the policy last year, issued two decisions. In one, she rejected the government’s request to vacate her preliminary injunction against Trump’s plan announced last summer as moot since Defense Secretary James Mattis, in February, sent the president a memo outlining a “new” policy. Kollar-Kotelly agreed with Pechman that the “new” policy is not essentially different from the “old” one Trump had articulated.

Kollar-Kotelly did, however, grant the government’s motion to dismiss Trump as an individual named defendant in the case.

And, on August 14, Magistrate Judge A. David Copperthite, to whom Baltimore District Judge Marvin J. Garbis had referred discovery matters in Stone v. Trump, another one of the pending cases, issued a ruling granting in part the plaintiffs’ motion to compel discovery of deliberative materials in

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DEFENSE.GOV

President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary James Mattis.

Trump and Mattis’ development of the new policy the administration is seeking to implement.

Garbis has other motions to rule on in the case in Baltimore, and another suit challenging the proposed transgender ban is pending in federal district court in Riverside, California, where the judge is considering motions similar to those filed with Judges Pechman, KollarKotelly, and Garbis.

To recap for those coming late to this story, Trump tweeted a ban on transgender military service on July 26, 2017, and issued a memorandum a month later describing the policy in slightly more detail, tasking Secretary Mattis to propose a plan for implementation by late February 2018, with the goal of implementing the policy by March.

Trump’s memo specified that Mattis’ previous directive to allow transgender applicants to join the military effective January 1, 2018, was to be indefinitely delayed, since the president’s policy would not allow transgender people to enlist.

When Trump issued his memo, Mattis announced that no action would be taken against current transgender personnel pending implementation of a new policy, but there were reports of trans service members seeing promotions and desired assignments canceled, as were some planned medical procedures.

Mattis’ memo to the president in February proposed some modifications to the policy Trump put forward last August. Trans person-

nel who were already serving and had transitioned and were “stable” in their preferred gender would be allowed to continue serving, based on a determination that the investment in their training outweighed whatever “risk” they posed to military readiness. Trans individuals who had not transitioned or been diagnosed with “gender dysphoria” would be allowed to enlist and serve, provided they refrained from transitioning and served in the gender identified at birth. Otherwise, those diagnosed with “gender dysphoria” would be prohibited from enlisting or serving, and those who could not comply would be discharged.

The Mattis proposal was based on a “finding” — from a rigged special committee dominated by committed opponents of transgender service — that allowing trans people to serve in the military is harmful to the operational efficiency of the service. This conclusion was based on no factual evidence and oblivious to the fact that transgender people had been serving openly without any problems since the Obama administration lifted the prior ban at the end of June 2016. It also flew in the face of Pentagon conclusions that were the basis of the Obama policy change.

Four lawsuits had been filed in response to the summer 2017 policy announcement, and in a matter of months the four district courts had issued preliminary injunctions, having found it likely the plaintiffs would prevail on their ar-

gument that the policy violates the Fifth Amendment’s Equal Protection requirements. Given these injunctions, the Defense Department allowed trans people to submit applications to enlist beginning on January 1 of this year, after losing a last-ditch court battle to continue the enlistment ban. There have been reports, however, that the applications received are getting very slow processing, and all indications are that few have been accepted for service.

Trump responded to Mattis’ February 2018 memo by “withdrawing” his prior memo and tweet and authorizing Mattis to adopt the implementation plan he recommended.

The Justice Department then filed motions in all the lawsuits seeking to lift the preliminary injunctions.

Their argument was, in part, that the “new” policy was sufficiently different from the one that had been “withdrawn” as to moot the lawsuits. They further contended that the plaintiffs who were already serving and would be allowed to continue serving under the “new” policy no longer had standing to challenge the policy in court. And Justice argued that the plaintiffs’ attempts to conduct discovery in the case should be put on hold until there was a definitive appellate ruling on the government’s motion to lift the preliminary injunctions.

On April 13, Judge Pechman rejected the government’s motion to lift the preliminary injunction, having already ordered that discovery proceed. In his initial tweet, Trump claimed he had consulted with generals and other experts before adopting the policy, but the identities of these people were not revealed and the government — making generalized claims of executive privilege — has stonewalled any attempt to discover their identities or any internal executive branch documents that might have been generated on this issue.

Similarly, the February memorandum released under Mattis’ name did not identify any individu-

➤ TRANS BAN, continued on p.9 August 16 – August 29, 2018 | GayCityNews.nyc

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TRANS BAN, from p.8

als responsible for its development, and naturally the plaintiffs are also seeking to discover who was involved in putting it together and what information they purported to rely upon.

Pechman’s July 27 order to compel discovery specified the materials sought by the plaintiffs, and pointed out that under evidentiary rules any claim of executive privilege against disclosure is subject to evaluation by the court.

“The deliberative privilege is not absolute,” she wrote. “Several courts have recognized that the privilege does not apply in cases involving claims of governmental misconduct or where the government’s intent is at issue.”

Under Ninth Circuit precedents governing Pechman’s decisionmaking, the question is whether plaintiffs’ need for the materials and for accurate fact-finding overrides the government’s interest in non-disclosure. Factors involved in making that determination include the relevance of the evidence, the availability of other evidence, the government’s role in the litigation, and the risk that disclosure would hinder frank and independent discussion regarding contemplated policies and decisions. In invoking privilege, the government must “provide precise and certain reasons for preserving the confidentiality of designated material.”

Pechman had previously determined that discrimination because of gender identity involves a “suspect classification” regarding the Constitution’s requirement of equal protection, which means the government has the burden of proving that there is a compelling justification for the discrimination.

Here, however, the government has articulated only a generalized judgment that service by transgender individuals is too “risky” based on no facts whatsoever. Pechman concluded in granting the plaintiffs’ discovery motion that “the deliberative process privilege does not apply in this case.”

The government had moved for a protective order “precluding discovery directed at President Trump.”

Even though the government conceded that Trump has “not provided substantive responses or produced a privilege log” listing specifically GayCityNews.nyc | August 16 – August 29, 2018

what information has to be protected against disclosure, the Justice Department contended that “because the requested discovery raises ‘separation of powers concerns,’” the plaintiffs must “exhaust discovery ‘from sources other than the President and his immediate White House advisors and staff’ before he is required to formally invoke the privilege.”

Pechman noted that so far the government has refused to provide any information about how the policy decision was made and has failed to identify the specific documents and other information for which it claims privilege. In a footnote, she commented, “The Court notes that Defendants have steadfastly refused to identify even one general or military official President Trump consulted before announcing the ban.” As a result, she found, there was no basis for her to evaluate “whether the privilege applies and if so, whether Plaintiffs have established a showing of need sufficient to overcome it.”

Indeed, in a prior decision, Pechman concluded as far as the record stands, it looks as if Trump made the whole thing up himself without relying on any military expertise.

From that perspective, she has preliminarily rejected the government’s contention the policy is owed the deference normally extended to military policies adopted based on the specialized training and expertise of Pentagon policy-makers.

Judge Kollar-Kotelly’s August 6 ruling focused on an issue that Pechman had previously decided: whether the plaintiffs had standing to continue challenging the policy after Mattis’ memo supplanted the “withdrawn” earlier policy announcements. She had little trouble determining that all the plaintiffs — even those currently serving who would be allowed to continue serving under the “new” policy — still had standing, which requires a finding that implementing the policy would cause them harm.

“The Court rejects Defendants’ argument that Plaintiffs no longer have standing because they are not harmed by the Mattis Implementation Plan,” Kollar-Kotelly wrote, stating that “the effect of that plan would be that individuals who require or have undergone gender transition would be absolutely disqualified from military service, indi-

viduals with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria would be largely disqualified from military service, and, to the extent that there are any individuals who identify as ‘transgender’ but do not fall under the first two categories, they would be allowed to serve, but only ‘in their biological sex’ (which means that openly transgender persons would generally not be allowed to serve in conformance with their identity).”

In addition, those who have transitioned and are now serving would be doing so under the stigma of being labeled as “unfit” for military service and presenting an undue risk to military readiness, and would likely suffer prejudice regarding assignments and their treatment by fellow service members, as well as emotional harm.

“The Mattis Implementation Plan sends a blatantly stigmatizing message to all members of the military hierarchy that has a unique and damaging effect on a narrow and identifiable set of individuals, of which Plaintiffs are members,” Kollar-Kotelly wrote. They would be serving “pursuant to an exception to a policy that explicitly marks them as unfit for service. No other service members are so afflicted. These Plaintiffs are denied equal treatment because they will be the only service members who are allowed to serve only based on a technicality; as an exception to a policy that generally paints them as unfit.”

She pointed out that beyond stigmatization, the Mattis plan “creates a substantial risk that Plaintiffs will suffer concrete harms to their careers in the near future. There is a substantial risk that the plan will harm Plaintiffs’ career development in the form of reduced opportunities for assignments, promotion, training, and deployment. These harms are an additional basis for Plaintiffs’ standing.”

Kollar-Kotelly rejected the government’s contention that these harms were only “speculative.”

Agreeing with Judge Pechman, she rejected the claim that Trump’s “withdrawal” of his August 2017 memorandum and the substitution of the Mattis plan made the existing lawsuits moot, finding that the “new” plan was merely a method of “implementing” the previously announced policy. The Mattis plan, like the policy Trump announced last August, “prevents service by

transgender individuals,” and the minor deviations from the complete categorical ban were not significant enough to make it substantially different, Kollar-Kotelly concluded.

Kollar-Kotelly did, however, grant the government’s motion to partially dissolve the injunction as it applies personally to Trump, and granted the motion to “dismiss the President himself as a party to this case.” Should the plaintiffs prevail on the merits, an injunction aimed at the Defense Department’s leadership preventing the policy from taking effect will provide complete relief, she pointed out.

The plaintiffs had complained that removing Trump from the case as a defendant would undermine their attempt to discover the information necessary to make their case, but the judge wrote that “it would not be appropriate to retain the President as a party to this case simply because it will be more complicated to seek discovery from him if he is dismissed. To the extent that there exists relevant and appropriate discovery related to the President, Plaintiffs will still be able to obtain that discovery despite the President not being a party to the case.”

In the Baltimore case, Magistrate Judge Copperthite this week issued a ruling granting in part the plaintiffs’ motion to compel discovery of deliberative materials regarding Trump’s July 2017 tweet, his August 2017 memorandum, the “activities of the DoD’s so-called panel of experts and its working groups” who put together the memorandum ultimately submitted by Mattis to the president in February, and deliberative materials regarding that Implementation Plan and the president’s subsequent March memorandum, “including any participation or interference in that process by anti-transgender activists and lobbyists.”

Copperthite, noting that a motion is pending before Judge Garbis to dismiss Trump as a defendant in the case, declined to rule on the government’s request for a protective order that would shield the president from having to respond to discovery requests directed to him, “pending the resolution of the motion” before Garbis. Cooperthite wrote that “no interrogatories or

➤ TRANS BAN, continued on p.27

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HISTORY

Cops In Middle of Early Gay Internecine Jockeying In Stonewall’s wake, old and new guard competed as NYPD looked on and infiltrated

BY DUNCAN OSBORNE

I

n early 1970, Dick Leitsch was feeling the pressure of an emerging radical faction that was replacing the Mattachine Society of New York (MSNY) and other political groups that held significant roles in the LGBTQ movement since the ‘50s.

Leitsch, who had been an MSNY officer since 1965 and was a force in LGBTQ politics nationally as well as in New York City, was also troubled by the police department’s continued “gross harassment of the Continental Baths,” an Upper West Side bathhouse, and its “outrageous violations of the rights of customers,” he wrote in a January 14, 1970 letter to the department.

“Mr. Leitsch further stated that he wants to cooperate with the police, however, it would be impossible for him to direct the members of the Mattachine Society if they were continually harassed by the Department,” Frank Bianco, a detective in the police department’s political surveillance unit, wrote in a March 12, 1970 report.

A shorter February 3 report about Leitsch’s letter indicates that Bianco met with him between January 14 and February 3.

There is nothing in the reports suggesting that Leitsch knew that Bianco was spying on Mattachine and the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) when they met.

The letter is not in the files of the NYPD’s political surveillance unit that are now held by the city’s Department of Records and Information Services at the Municipal Archives. Gay City News could not find the letter in a searchable database of LGBTQ community records administered by Gale, a unit of Cengage, a publiclytraded company that supplies content and tools to the education and library markets.

Bianco quotes the letter and paraphrases Leitsch in both reports. “[T]here is a power struggle taking place at this time between the Mattachine Society and the Gay Liberation [Front],” Bianco paraphrased Leitsch saying. “He added that the Mattachine Society has attempted to get favorable legislation passed in an orderly and lawful manner, however, this process is too slow for the homosexual community.”

The situation was “potentially incendiary” and could lead to more “Christopher Street rioting,” Leitsch wrote. He issued a warning and perhaps made an offer.

“I don’t feel like I’m ‘selling out my brothers’ by tipping you off that Gay Liberation Front plans to ‘zap’ the cops during one of the Continental Bath [sic] raids,” Leitsch wrote in the letter.

Bianco reported that Leitsch said in the inter-

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DAVD/ COURTESY OF WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Through the 1960s, Leitsch did not see eye to eye with Washington, DC, Mattachine founder Frank Kameny, seen here in the 2010 LGBTQ Pride Parade in that city.

ANDY HUMM

The Mattachine Society of New York’s Dick Leitsch, seen in Manhattan’s 2017 LGBTQ Pride Parade, saw his leadership of the LGBTQ movement here challenged in the wake of the Stonewall riots. .

view following his letter that he had been “emotionally driven” when he wrote and was not, in fact, aware that GLF planned such an action.

“He assured the writer that he would inform this Department if he knows or hears of such plans,” Bianco wrote.

For 13 years, MSNY had effectively had New York City’s LGBTQ community largely to itself save for those occasions when Frank Kameny, who founded the Mattachine Society of Washington, DC, and whom Leitsch disliked intensely, came to the city or state to speak.

MSNY did make a difference in the lives of LGBTQ people, but like any political organization, it tended to exaggerate its accomplishments and assume that temporary victories were permanent.

But following the 1969 Stonewall riots, GLF, a new militant group, had quickly altered the landscape and Leitsch needed a victory — such as an end to the harassment at the Continental Baths — that he could bring to the community.

Leitsch, who passed away in June, did not get his win and, in November 1969, GLF descended on the meeting of the Eastern Regional Conference of Homophile Organizations (ERCHO) in Philadelphia.

“The reason we went was that we believed the politics of the homophile movement were at a finish,” Jim Fouratt, a longtime LGBTQ activist, told Gay City News. “The single-issue politics of the homophile movement was rejected by the men and women in the Gay Liberation Front.”

Fouratt had trained in the radical Diggers movement and the Living Theater. His police

NYC MUNICIPAL ARCHIVES

A 1970 NYPD memo by Detective Frank Bianco details a letter he received from Mattachine’s Leitsch.

file notes his multiple arrests during protests in the ‘60s. A “Hippie leader in the East Village area,” Fouratt was “present at a tree planting on St. Marks Place” on August 12, 1967, his file says. That planting occurred in the middle of the street. The same year, he showed “his contempt for The Establishment by eating money at the New York Stock Exchange,” according to a Daily News article in his file.

Fouratt was one of a half dozen GLF members who disrupted the ERCHO conference.

“It was more of a Yippie influence than the

➤ INTERNECINE JOCKEYING, continued on p.11 August 16 – August 29, 2018 | GayCityNews.nyc

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Jim Fouratt, seen here several years ago, was involved in a variety of radical groups throughout the city, before joining the post-Stonewall Gay Liberation Front, which posed a challenge to Mattachine dominance of the queer movement.

䉴

INTERNECINE JOCKEYING, from p.10

Diggers,” he said. “The politics of spectacle, the Marshall McLuhan capture the media.”

Their reception was decidedly mixed. In 1971, the Gay Activists Alliance in New York City, a GLF rival, sent an appeal to “All Gay Groups and Newspapers” seeking documentation of GLF disruptions of meetings and conferences. The appeal named Dan Smith, Ralph Hall, and Fouratt as notable offenders.

In response, Foster Gunnison, a longtime MSNY volunteer who also ran the Institute of Social Ethics (ISE) in Connecticut, said of Fouratt at the ERCHO meeting, “I came within a hair of pasting him at the conference.” Before he knew their names, Gunnison called Fouratt “Vinegar” and Earl Galvin, another GLF member, “Sugar” to describe their roles at the meeting.

In a November 1969 report to ISE colleagues, Gunnison wrote, “I was appalled by what I perceived to be their domination of the conference and the agenda, their proposals and philosophy such as I could determine the latter, and their degree of organization and tactics, and above all their unbelievable crudeness, rudeness, and vulgarity.”

A report on the ERCHO conference to the MSNY board says, “The GayCityNews.nyc | August 16 – August 29, 2018

movement must be open to everyone, the gay hawk as well as the gay dove, the homosexual Tory as well as the homosexual socialist. Only one thing is demanded — a fundamental loyalty to the American system of representative government. There is absolutely no place in either ERCHO or [the North American Conference of Homophile Organizations] for the out-and-out revolutionary.”

The January/ February 1970 newsletter of Philadelphia’s Homophile Action League (HAL) was moderate in its view of the conference. A lot of time was spent in “verbal tugs-of-war between the radical faction” and “the liberals,” the newsletter reported. The debates “often shaded over into some very entertaining theater,” but “were by no means a waste of time. They offered all of us who are involved in the movement the challenge of reevaluating our thinking… and they presented us with alternative philosophies which will ultimately be useful whether they are accepted, rejected, or adopted in part.”

Despite any objections, the ERCHO meeting adopted most of the proposals put forward by the GLF contingent. It endorsed “sexual freedom without regard to orientation,” “freedom to use birth control

➤ INTERNECINE JOCKEYING, continued on p.31

11

REMEMBRANCE

Gay Theater Pioneer John Glines Dies at 84 First winner to come out at the Tony Awards, in 1983, he nurtured huge talents

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John Glines (right) last summer with his husband by Chaowarat Chiewvej, celebrating by Chiewvej’s birthday.

Glines playing Orgon in Molière’s “Tartuffe” at Yale Drama School in 1955.

BY ANDY HUMM

J

ohn Glines had already made lots of LGBTQ theater history when he became the first person to thank a same-sex partner at the Tony Awards, in 1983, accepting the honors for his production of Harvey Feirstein’s “Torch Song Trilogy.” Glines, who died from complications from surgery and emphysema at 84 on August 8 at his home in Bangkok, Thailand, started a gay theater and arts group with Barry Laine and Jerry Tobin in 1976 in New York, daring to call it The Glines and producing such out lesbian and gay playwrights as Jane Chambers, Robert Patrick, Doric Wilson, and Fierstein prior to their more mainstream success.

In 1985 he told Playbill, “Nine years ago, [gay] playwrights and actors didn’t use their own names; a gay play meant something pornographic. I thought by using my own name, it would be a forerunner — it would force others to do the same.”

Fierstein, on Facebook, wrote, “John Glines gave the world, ‘IT’S NOT EASY BEING GREEN’ [from ‘Sesame Street’] & he gave me my career. Producing ‘TORCH

12

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Glines with his friend Mary Sillers in Normandy, during a 1953 “grand tour of Europe.”

SONG TRILOGY’ despite all odds...

Not resting until he’d moved it to Broadway... That took vision, guts, determination, and all the money he’d made from ‘Sesame Street.’

Bravo, John.”

Prior to his theater work, Glines worked on both CBS’ “Captain Kangaroo” show and PBS’s “Sesame Street.”

When “Torch Song” won Best Play just two years after public health recognition of the AIDS crisis, Glines said on the national telecast, “This is a stupendous and miraculous moment, and I would like to accept this in memory of Jane Chambers and Billy Black-

well and in honor of all my brothers and sisters.” After thanking Fierstein and others in the company, Glines concluded, “And lastly but most importantly to the one person who believed and followed the dream from the very beginning who never said, ‘You’re crazy and it can’t be done,’ I refer to my partner and my lover, Lawrence Lane.”

Writing last year in The New York Times, Stuart Emmrich said he and his partner, Barry, “were shocked. It was the first time either of us had seen a real-life gay man openly acknowledge a romantic relationship on network TV, much less on an awards program.”

The Times did not cover Glines’ historic speech in its next day coverage, but did quote Natalia Makarova who won for Best Supporting Actress in a Musical for “On Your Toes” thanking her husband “who didn’t help much but wasn’t in the way.” And the newspaper noted that Tommy Tune, who won two Tonys for “On Your Toes,” wore “a bright pink shirt and pink bow tie” and thanked his sister.

The then-closeted gossip columnist Liz Smith in her widely read column pronounced Glines’ speech “disgusting.”

When Glines and Lane returned to Brooklyn that night, his neighbors were there to cheer him. But two days later his curb was spraypainted with “Die, Faggot. Die” and he got a death threat on his answering machine.

“I had thanked my lover on television,” Glines told The Los Angeles Times in 1989. “There are people who bash fags, kill them.

Sure, I was frightened. How do you get over it? You read Martin Luther King and think, ‘My God, a man lived with that his entire life.’ So you do what you have to do. I knew what I was saying on television was crucial to gay people. And on

➤ JOHN GLINES, continued on p.13 August 16 – August 29, 2018 | GayCityNews.nyc

Envelope stamps from the Stamp Out AIDS project Glines created in 1987.

䉴

JOHN GLINES, from p.12

the other end of the death threats was the outpouring of mail from all over the country — people saying how much what I’d done had meant to them.”

Glines went on to produce the first AIDS-themed play on Broadway, William Hoffman’s “As Is” in 1985, winning another Tony nomination.

With AIDS raging in 1987, he founded Stamp Out AIDS to raise a million dollars to fight the epidemic — selling stamps that people could use like Christmas or Easter Seals. He enlisted the participation of stars such as Helen Hayes, Pearl Bailey, Vivian Blaine, Ellen Greene, Richard Dreyfuss, and Estelle Getty.

In 1992, Glines was a founding board member of Broadway Cares/ Equity Fights AIDS, whose longtime executive director, Tom Viola, wrote on Facebook, “John will always be a part of our legacy.”

Singer/ composer Tom Wilson Weinberg wrote, “It was my good luck to work with John and The Glines in the late ‘70s and then again in the early ‘90s. His intellect, theater savvy, hands-on participation, and good communication were inspirational.”

John Glines was born October 11, 1933 in Santa Monica, and he graduated from the Yale School of Drama in 1955. After his work in children’s television, he turned to playwriting, including “The Desert of My Soul” in 1976 and the longrunning musical “Gulp!” in 1977 with Robin Jones and Stephen Greco.

At The Glines he put on Chambers’ “Last Summer at Bluefish Cove,” Wilson’s “A Perfect RelationGayCityNews.nyc | August 16 – August 29, 2018

ship” and “Forever After,” Robert Patrick’s “T-Shirts” and “Untold Decades,” and “An Evening with Quentin Crisp” among many others, including his own “Men of Manhattan,” a collection of 10 gay vignettes. The Glines also produced the documentary “Hero of My Own Life” about living with AIDS in 1986.

Among the actors and writers who worked with The Glines were Matthew Broderick, Charles Busch, Allen Ginsberg, Lou Liberatore, Jonathan Hadary, Armistead Maupin, Pat Bond, Felice Picano, Ned Rorem, Vito Russo, Robin Tyler, Audre Lorde, Edmund White, Dan Lauria, James Purdy, John Rechy, Fisher Stevens, and Jack Wrangler.

In 1994, he produced Howard Crabtree’s legendary gay costume farce, “Whoop-Dee-Doo!,” winning his third Drama Desk Award.

Philip Crosby, managing director of the Richmond Triangle Players, an LGBTQ theater group now in its 25th year in Virginia, wrote, “He enabled all the LGBTQ theaters across the country to have the courage to produce the works we do.”

Glines is survived by Chaowarat Chiewvej, a former Buddhist monk. They married in New York in 2014. A memorial service is being planned, time and place to be announced.

Richie Jackson, one of the producers of the Broadway revival of “Torch Song” this fall, told Playbill that he once pitched an NYU student production to Glines and Lane, who “wanted to support a young gay theater student attempting to produce gay theatre.” Jackson called Glines “a fierce activist and his weapon of choice was art.”

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FOUNDING MEMBER

T

he necessity of a trusted free press to the health of American democracy has been undisputed since the founding of our republic — until now.

Over the past year and a half, the journalists of our free press have been slandered as “Enemies of the People” — not by a foreign power or a fringe group, but by the president of the United States, the nation’s highest officer sworn to protect the Constitution enshrining the First Amendment rights those journalists exercise daily for the benefit of us all.

But Donald Trump’s casual use of this Stalinist epithet — banned in the Soviet Union shortly after Nikita Khrushchev came to power in the mid-1950s!

— is only the most egregious example of a yearslong campaign to destroy public trust in the news media and erode the ability of the Fourth Estate to hold our government and politicians and other key actors in society accountable.

From denouncing factual reporting as “fake news” to the proliferation of websites pushing propaganda, conspiracy theories, and outright lies

a monthly basis, but only recently began revealing after four years in office and only because of relentless pressure from the news media.

Just as Fox News joined other reporters in denouncing the White House’s recent exclusion of a CNN reporter from an event because of aggressive questioning, we join in objecting to our mayor’s thuggish treatment of a local reporter Post doing their job.

The work our reporters do in the neighborhoods we cover and the institutions — public, non-profit, and corporate — we report on is as important as reporters taking leaders to task at the White House and at City Hall.

And attacks on the work we do don’t only erupt in frontal assaults, they also come in the insidious and increasingly common practice of turning over the basic responsibility of responding to legitimate press inquiries to public relations spinmeisters who have no working knowledge of the underlying issues we explore and are simply paid to deliver prepackaged “messaging.” In an increasingly complex society and economy, all large institutions have an obligation to transparency

in their operations. Paying lip service to that obligation is simply not enough.

Editors and reporters across the nation are standing together this week to denounce the attacks demonizing our profession and seeking to sabotage our ability to hold the people in power accountable for their actions.

And we ask you, the readers we work for, to stand with us.

Defending our free press from attacks by politicians and special interests should be a cause that rises above party, ideology, race, ethnic identity and nationality, sexual orientation, gender and gender identity, or any of the other fault lines along which some are seeking to divide our country. It goes to the heart of what America stands for and is vital to the survival of government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

As women’s rights pioneer and investigative journalist Ida B. Wells wrote in 1892, “The people must know before they can act, and there is no educator to compare with the press.”

Please join us in upholding and protecting that cherished value.

Les Goodstein CEO Community News Group & NYC Community Media

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Jennifer Goodstein Publisher Community News Group & NYC Community Media

Bill Egbert Editor Downtown Express, Bay Ridge Courier, Bay News & Mill-Marine Courier

Anthony Rotunno Deputy Editor Brooklyn Paper, Park Slope Courier

Paul Schindler Editor Gay City News & Manhattan Express

14

as legitimate reporting, the role of America’s free press is under attack — and with it, our nation’s founding values.

Without a free press that is justly trusted as a source of impartial truth, politicians and special interests have unchecked rein to lie, dissemble, and manipulate reality with impunity. Without journalists who are free to question public officials and demand information on government actions, the institutions that are supposed to protect and serve us cannot be trusted to do either. Without political leaders who respect the value of our free press to the American way of life, the world’s first constitutional democracy fails in its historic role as a beacon of freedom to all of humanity.

Trump is by no means alone, however, in the systematic attack on the role of the free press. On August 12, Mayor Bill de Blasio had a New York Post reporter hauled away by police after he asked the mayor for comment on that newspaper’s recent story on the many meetings he and his top aides have had with lobbyists — meetings that de Blasio had pledged as a candidate to disclose on

Zachary Gewelb Editor TimesLedger Newspapers Scott Stiffler Editor Chelsea Now

Laura Guerriero Publisher Bronx Times August 16 – August 29, 2018 | GayCityNews.nyc

PERSPECTIVE: Snide Lines

Speaking Truth to Powerlessness: The Mad Activist Goes Pundit

BY SUSIE DAY

“B

ut, Mabel, you really think The New York Times will review my book? Masha Gessen will write a blurb? WOW!” That’s me on the phone, Dear Activist Diary. I’m talking to my literary agent — in my mind. In real life, I’m here at my proofreading job at Penguin Random House — where you can’t stop me from fantasizing about my surefi re success as a world-famous pundit once my book is published!

“What, Mabel? My book translated into 15 languages? You’re right! People everywhere must absolutely read what I say about Trump and his fascist administration. MSNBC will interview me? My global book tour will make me how rich? Oh, Mabel!”

I stop fantasizing and go back to proofi ng book jackets: “Lyrical Literary Blockbuster! Destined to Become a Classic!” Is “blockbuster” one word?

Publishing, as you know, Diary, is a dying industry. That doesn’t seem to bother us writers. In fact,

death probably eggs us on — especially in the age of Trump.

See, I live in a left-to-liberal world of information and opinion, where every sentient being believes that they possess a unique, individual Voice, capable of naming and nailing global and domestic crises. This is a world where ego collides with altruism, and you’re only as good as your last humanitarian sound bite.

I confess, Dear Diary: my ego is mangling my altruism. I secretly think, “If only I can write about climate change correctly, the Earth will be saved. Heck, even if we all die tomorrow in a nuclear blast, at least I’ll have published something!”

Never before have so many people competed to convey, in just the right, resounding words, the devastation of what the US president and his ilk are doing to the world.

Word-use, we believe, is the last remaining way to fight Trump.

Ergo, I must join the ranks; I must become a pundit!

Every minute, people like Arundhati Roy, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Masha Gessen, Robin D.G. Kelley, Noam Chomsky, Trevor Noah

— name your own favorites, Diary — speak truth to our powerlessness. These are people of brilliance, even genius, who offer us newspaper columns, poems, essays, interviews, standup comedy, and books that educate, inspire, clarify. Every day, I learn from them.

It’s just that I can’t talk to them, Dear Diary. And I want to join the conversation!

Lunchtime. I head for a sushi joint I frequent, bringing you, Dear Diary, and a new book on US foreign policy by Noam Chomsky.

Aware of cultural ironies, as my chopsticks pile pickled ginger on California rolls, I glance through Noam’s preface.

I imagine myself attending a televised Noam Chomsky lecture.

I see myself stand and, for nine minutes, struggle to articulate a trenchant question about Iraq. I see Noam take maybe nine syllables to eviscerate my premise and convince thousands of strangers of my morbid stupidity. I realize, Dear Diary: Pundits scare me.

Wait. I have options. Instead of trying to impress Noam with my question, couldn’t I stand up and

ask how we can connect Noam’s lecture with what we might do to stop the US’ destroying the Middle East? And why am I eating alone?

Back at work, I reflect. Inside or out of the pundit-world, we all have Voices. We non-pundits think things, too: some brilliant; some not so. But way too often, we don’t really talk to each other.

Sure, I suggest that my friends read a great Charles Blow column, or post a Samantha Bee routine on Facebook. I tweet about immigrant children in the US: “Trump — Kidnapper in Chief.” But even if my tweet goes viral, what does it fucking DO? It’s like we’re kettling ourselves with competing social media memes. Offl ine and away from media, we sometimes discuss issues we care about, but we tend to focus more on our favorite pundits, and less about what we can do to change anything.

I return to proofreading: “A Pathbreaking Account of the Deep Equality of EVERY HUMAN BEING, Told by a Guy Who’s Way Smarter than You, so buy this book!”

I stop. I call my agent.

“Look, Mabel. We both know I’m not writing a book. It’s not that I shouldn’t — but the system

➤ POWERLESSNESS, continued on p.16

PERSPECTIVE: Media Circus

It’s Just Acting — But Mostly Outraged

BY ED SIKOV

“A

TLANTA — Saying it would violate his deeply held religious beliefs, area pornographer Chet Kirkendall, a 57-year-old Christian who frequently films explicit amateur videos for his clients, confi rmed Friday he had denied service to a gay male couple that wished to hire him to direct their sex tape. ‘I’ve been in this business 25 years, and I strongly believe rim jobs, facials, and other hardcore sex acts should only take place between one man and GayCityNews.nyc | August 16 – August 29, 2018

one woman, or one man and two women, or in some cases five men taking turns with one woman — but never two men,’ said Kirkendall, who told reporters that after a career directing hundreds of gang bangs, scenes of ‘barely legal’ teenagers, and a variety of stepmother-themed material, he wasn’t about to violate his traditional Christian values by filming man-on-man action. ‘I take my work very seriously and am always proud to capture on video the sacred union of a man thrusting deep inside a woman and then cumming on her tits, or sometimes her face. God con-

dones such sucking and fucking, but in His eyes, filming homosexual men bringing each other to orgasm through anal sex or vigorous fisting would be an abomination. It’s right there in the Book of Leviticus.’ Asked whether he also would have denied service to a lesbian couple, Kirkendall refused to give a defi nitive answer, saying it might be permissible to accept such a job ‘as long as it was two hot chicks.’”

This brilliant story, which I simply had to quote in full, comes from The Onion.

On a more serious note, the actress Ruby Rose has given Twitter the big kiss-off by deleting her account after a whole lot of her fellow tweeters went berserk over the announcement that she’ll play a lesbian Batwoman. Fox News’

Tyler McCarthy reported last week that “Batwoman will be introduced in December during The CW’s annual crossover between its existing DC Comics shows, ‘Arrow,’ ‘The Flash,’ and ‘Supergirl.’ While only the main trio will make up this year’s crossover event, the series all share a single, connected TV universe that also includes ‘Legends of Tomorrow’ and ‘Black Lightning.’ Those shows feature many LGBT characters, but Rose’s Batwoman will be the fi rst to lead a series.”

What is The CW, you may be asking? I had to look it up on Wikipedia. It’s a broadcast television network owned by both CBS and Warner Bros — hence its name, the C coming from CBS and the W coming from Warner Bros.

➤ JUST ACTING, continued on p.16

15

➤ JUST ACTING, from p.15 Rose became teary on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” McCarthy reports: “I feel like the reason I get so emotional, growing up watching TV, I never saw somebody on TV that I could identify with, let alone a superhero. I have always had this saying — I mean, not me, Oscar Wilde — which is ‘Be yourself because everyone else is taken.’ So I always live by that motto, and the second motto when I came into the industry was ‘Be the person that you needed when you were younger.’ I feel like one motto led to another.”

In other words, Rose is an out lesbian, which makes the uproar particularly inexplicable.

McCarthy writes, “Rose’s fi nal tweet before shutting down her Twitter saw her lament the fact that people were saying she can’t play a lesbian character because she is not a lesbian. Rose, however, has identified as a lesbian since she was a child. ‘Where on earth did “Ruby is not a lesbian therefore she can’t be batwoman” come from — has to be the funniest most ridiculous thing I’ve ever

➤ POWERLESSNESS, from p.15 is rigged. In order to succeed, I must convince the world that I’m the greatest, most eloquent and perceptive being alive today. I’m not; I just have a Voice. Also, Mabel, stop making me think that I’m nobody unless I’m famous.

Shut up, Mabel.”

On my way home, I run into a demonstration in Inwood. This is a community protest against a

thetic Unite the Right 2 rally held in our nation’s capital last weekend depicts two Antifa counter protesters holding a banner that reads “Nazi Jagoffs Fuck Off.” Unless you are from Pittsburgh, you may not know what a jagoff is. I will teach you.

A jagoff is not a person who jerks off. A jagoff is more like a jackass. Children think nothing of employing the term in school, because people in Pittsburgh use the word jagoff in a way that’s devoid of any sexual connotations.

A variation of the term — jaggin’ — is so far removed from any connection to masturbation that a school kid could say it to a teacher and nobody would blink an eye: “I was jus’ jaggin’ ya,” which means something on the order of “I was just pulling your leg.”

So for me, seeing a sign that refers to “Nazi Jagoffs” is a trip dahn memory lane.

Sorry. That should be down memory lane. Once I get going with Pittsburghese, I can’t help myself.

read. I came out at 12? And have for the past 5 years had to deal with “she’s too gay” how do y’all flip it like that? I didn’t change,’ she reportedly tweeted prior to deleting her account.”

Syfywire’s Henry Barajas notes that “the Batwoman that Rose is expected to portray was made famous by [authors] Greg Rucka and JH Williams III back in 2010.

In the series, the character was expelled from the United States Military Academy for coming out of the closet.”

Barajas adds, “Despite getting praise from ‘Orange Is The New Black’ co-star Laverna [sic] Cox, Green Arrow himself Stephen Amell, and of all people Mariah Carey — it wasn’t enough to stomach the constant bigotted [sic] tweets from users that didn’t know Rose nor [sic] the fictional character is gay.”

So there are two distinct categories of Twitter trolls: those who are upset that Rose is a sexual carpetbagger and those who think that Batwoman shouldn’t be a lesbian. My personal feeling is that anyone who spends that much time on Twitter and gets so worked up over a TV actress’ tweet

should turn off their phones, take a double dose of Xanax with a vodka chaser, and shut the fuck up.

city rezoning proposal that would allow 30-story buildings to gentrify one of the last affordable neighborhoods left in Manhattan.

The people here are neighbors — some of the thousands of residents and small business owners who’ll likely be displaced if rezoning passes. I decide to join them.

“Vote No! Protect Immigrant Working Families!,” we chant.

Okay, maybe not “Lyrical Literature.” But honest, inclusive, angry

— and spontaneously beautiful.

Noam Chomsky couldn’t possibly improve on this. Who knows; maybe every protester here would love to have a book contract.

Who cares? Our lives in Trump’s America are being consumed by consumers richer than we’ll ever be, but here, we’re together, hearing each other, begging New York City to listen, some of us getting arrested… It’s like: “BE the Pundit You Wish to See in the World.”

Epilogue: NYC didn’t listen, Dear Diary. We lost. But every day, I see people like those at that demonstration. Every day: in laundromats, bodegas, restaurants, on line at the bank. This is the conversation — this is where our Voices need to be.

cials, Ruben Diaz, Jr., has evolved and become a vocal and unequivocal supporter of marriage equality, for many years now. He has attended same-sex weddings (including serving as the witness at one!) and has a large number of out LGBT staff, including his chief of staff since his fi rst day in the Assembly — almost 23 years of partnership, longer than most relationships. While an assemblymember, Ruben was the

author and lead sponsor of legislation that would prohibit defendants from using the Gay Panic Defense, and, working with his out lesbian niece, Ruben fought for the overturn of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

As borough president, Ruben has actively recruited and appointed LGBT members to Bronx community boards, including the

Late-breaking news: Disney just announced that it has cast a straight actor in the studio’s first gay movie role. Jack Whitehall, a British comedian, will play what has been described as a “hugely effete, very camp, and very funny” character in “The Jungle Cruise,” which is based on a Disney Parks attraction. Twitterdom went nuts over the fact that this groundbreaking gay character will be played by a straight guy. While I realize that there is a valid point to this critique, it’s also important to acknowledge that it’s acting, and that not so very long ago many straight actors didn’t dare take a gay role lest people assume that they were gay themselves.

I fi nd it more upsetting that the studio that once, long ago, made Pinocchio, Bambi, and Dumbo is reduced to fi nding inspiration in a theme park ride. And no, I wasn’t fond of “Pirates of the Caribbean,” either.

My favorite photo of the pa-

Follow @edsikov on Facebook and Twitter, unless he gets trolled and deletes his accounts.

Susie Day is the author of “Snidelines: Talking Trash to Power,” published by Abingdon Square Publishing.

PERSPECTIVE: Let ter to the Editor

A Bronx Tall Tale August 14, 2018 To the Editor:

W

ho the heck is Allen Roskoff, a Manhattan resident, who has never lived in the Bronx, never worked in the Bronx, and who does not come

16

up to our Bronx LGBT events, to tell us what to think about our Bronx elected officials? (“LGBTQ Rights in the Bronx — Then and Now,” Aug. 2) He does not speak for us and he is quite off in his assessment of the Bronx borough president.

Like so many other elected offi-

➤ BRONX TALE, continued on p.17 August 16 – August 29, 2018 | GayCityNews.nyc

PERSPECTIVE: Insider Trading

History Still Very Much Resonates Today

BY ALLEN ROSKOFF

H

aving recently seen “Angels in America” on Broadway made me recall my own brushes with Roy Cohn — a notoriously evil character in Tony Kushner’s magnificent play and, of course, in real life. In the late 1970s, Roy was having dinner with a young gay guy at the gay Uncle Charlie’s Restaurant on Third Avenue in the high 30’s. I was at the table across from Cohn with Doug Ireland, the late famed gay activist and Gay City News contributor. I asked Cohn if he supported our Gay Rights Bill, and he said no because he didn’t think gays should be schoolteachers. I replied that I knew one homosexual lawyer who shouldn’t be allowed to practice law. That ended that discussion.

The owner of Uncle Charlie’s Restaurant was the equally notorious Lou Katz, who later fled the country after the brutal stabbing death of 37-year-old Michael Moriarty who had developed a relationship with Katz’s 20-year-old former lover. Katz was then 58 years old and the year was 1986. Katz was convicted in absentia of first-degree manslaughter, and in 2002 was apprehended in Panama where he had been living under an assumed identity. Katz was brought back

➤ BRONX TALE, from p.16 fi rst transgender board members on three separate boards. He has appointed LGBT members to all of the Health and Hospital Corporation community advisory boards in the Bronx. He has funded a wide array of LGBT organizations with capital funding and fought to secure additional funding for many others — including but not limited to the fi rst LGBT senior housing to be built by SAGE, in Crotona Park, and the CallenLorde Health Center on Third Avenue. He has been an active and vocal supporter of Destination Tomorrow. This January, Ruben

GayCityNews.nyc | August 16 – August 29, 2018

to the States and arrested. Last heard from, he was housed at the Green Haven Correctional Facility in upstate Stormville.

Twenty of us went as a group to see Angels in America, including Councilmembers Ritchie Torres, Rafael Espinal, and Carlos Menchaca, State Supreme Court Judge Doris Ling-Cohan, who issued the famous 2005 decision recognizing the right of samesex couples to marry in New York (overturned a year later by the Court of Appeals), and former State Supreme Court Judge Emily Jane Goodman, who in 1970 represented the Gay Activist Alliance pro bono and was the first lawyer to get us law-breaking sodomites out of jail.

The Reverend Al Sharpton is opening a Civil Rights Museum in Harlem — a roughly $100 million project. Keeping his deep commitment to the LGBTQ community, I have been chosen to be one of the three trustees of the museum, which will tell the story of the fight for civil rights, including from a black, Latino and LGBTQ perspective. I consider being named to the board a great honor and will work hard to keep our histories alive.

But there is also trouble in

hosted the Bronx LGBT Career Fair at Hostos Community College, and this June he had the Pride Flag raised above Borough Hall.

Ruben was a leading voice condemning Councilmember Cabrera for the Uganda video, something Roskoff conveniently forgets or omits, and backed State Senator Gustavo Rivera in both of the races between him and Cabrera. Ruben was one of the two most important endorsements in securing the election of Councilmember Ritchie Torres, alongside former Councilmember Jimmy Vacca, who has also been attacked frequently by Roskoff.

West Harlem and no one is doing anything about it. The Democratic Party selected flamboyant Pastor Al Taylor as the new assemblymember to fill the vacancy left last year by Denny Farrell’s retirement. Taylor is head of the Infinity Mennonite Church in Harlem and won’t perform same-sex weddings, justifying his bigotry as Republicans do: by hiding behind religion. Taylor is not much different from Jack Phillips, the baker and owner of the Masterpiece Cakeshop in Colorado who refused to make a cake for a same-sex wedding. Taylor is now running in the September primary for a full term with establishment support. His name appears on campaign literature of elected officials and candidates who are friends of our community. West Harlem Democratic clubs support Taylor and welcome his presence at their events. Any club that espouses support for the LGBTQ community must disavow Taylor. Activists must continue to expose Taylor for what he is: a bigot.

Civil Court Judge J. Machelle Sweeting, also hailing from Harlem and elected last year, recently issued a mean-spirited and unnecessary decision denying a young boy the right to attend his aunt’s same-sex wedding. The mother was left to figure out a last moment resolution with the boy’s increasingly antagonistic father that allowed the youth to attend.

However, this decision caused unnecessary hardship and stress and raises underlying concerns

about this judge presiding over future cases important to our community. I wonder what Sweeting will say about this case when she runs for State Supreme Court?

The borough president hosts one of the largest LGBT Pride celebrations in the city each June and has an active LGBT Policy Task Force, which ensures LGBT issues are inserted into all discussions in his office.

Those of us who live in the Bronx know the truth and know a hit-piece when we see it.

Kenny Agosto, Clarisa Alayeto, Sean Coleman, Fabio and Hector Cotza, Justin Westbrook-Lowery, Audrey DeJesus, Lewis Goldstein, Michael Ivory, Francisco Lazala, Louise Marchena, Blaise McNair, Maria Provenzano

stand by everything in my column. The Bronx leadership supports homophobes and anti-choice elected officials and is morally bankrupt. I lived in the Bronx for 14 years, oversaw all social service contracts there while executive staff member to former New York City Comptroller Harrison J. Golden. I was involved with economic development in the Bronx when I served as assistant vice president of the New York State Economic Development Corporation under Governor Mario Cuomo and held monthly meetings in Co-op City while serving for eight years on Public Advocate Mark Green’s community affairs unit.

Allen

Roskoff

responds:

I

I have polled many of the past officers of the Gay Activists Alliance about gaycotting next year’s parade marking the 50th anniversary of Stonewall.

Each year, our numbers dwindle but our commitment to activism remains alive, and we have all agreed to not march. We are planning a statement and will be reaching out to others.

We never wanted a parade to begin with. The annual commemoration of Stonewall began as a march demanding equal rights and sexual liberation. It was later hijacked by Heritage of Pride and has turned into an advertisement for the likes of Citibank and selfpromoting politicians. In the days of Donald Trump, do we really want to see our elected officials dancing down the street as though our lives are not on the line? Do we need to share the street with members of the police department whose fraternal organization serves solely for self-promotion while the NYPD arrests us for smoking joints?

I have suggested to the mayor’s office that it withhold the permit from Heritage of Pride and give it back to the people. Why isn’t the City Council demanding this also? Cancel the parade and let us march for our rights without corporate intrusion and reactionary forces infiltrating our movement.

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THEATER

The Sex and Gender Revels Are Unending Classic works inspire two wonderfully contemporary and timely shows

JOAN MARCUS

Peppermint and the ensemble from Jeff Whitty and James Magruder’s “Head Over Heels,” directed by Michael Mayer, at the Hudson Theater.

JOAN MARCUS

Taylor Iman Jones and the company in “Head Over Heels.”

BY CHRISTOPHER BYRNE f Ron Chernow’s weighty biography “Hamilton” seemed an unlikely source for a smash hit musical, how much more unexpected is it that Philip Sidney’s 1590 five-book epic, “The Arcadia,” should be the source material for the deliciously hilarious “Head Over Heels?”

Sidney’s tale is ponderous, to say the least, and getting through the Middle English of the original is heavy work indeed. Parts of its elaborate plot were even lifted

by Shakespeare for “King Lear,” leaving mountains of material behind. As conceived by Jeff Whitty, who wrote the original book, and adapted by James Magruder, “Head Over Heels” is an explosion of over-the-top silliness, color, and exuberance.

More importantly, director Michael Mayer and choreographer Spencer Liff bring such intelligence and comic brilliance to the whole undertaking that this high-energy great time is the first solid hit of the new Broadway season. And as you may know, the whole shebang is set to the songs of the Go-Go’s.

So, while one might be tempted to call this a jukebox musical, it’s really in a class by itself. In fact, in its comic sense and vaudevillian antics, it’s reminiscent of “A Funny

I

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JOAN MARCUS

Nikki M. James and the cast of Shaina Taub’s musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night,” directed by Oskar Eustis and Kwame Kwei-Armah and presented as part of the Public Theater’s Public Works program at Central Park’s Delacorte Theater through August 19.

Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” which was based on the plays of Plautus.

The plot is a hodgepodge of tricks and tropes that include royal weddings, threats from oracles, disguises, surprise revelations... and sex. Lots of sex. All you really need to know going into this is that the land of Arcadia is defined by its own beat. We know this because the fantastic opening number is, in fact, the Go-Go’s hit “We Got the Beat.” When King Basilius learns that his country and his court are at risk of losing the beat, they try to outrun the warnings of Pythio,

the Oracle of Delphi. It doesn’t work out quite as well as he hoped.

Sprinkled in all of this are tales of a lowly shepherd disguised as an Amazon warrior, a straying wife, and the awakened passions of a daughter being married off for the good of the country. To anyone with even a passing knowledge of favorite Elizabethan plots, much of this will seem familiar, but the writers have updated this with some delightful genderbending surprises and a contemporary sense of humor both witty and broad. There are also nods to Sidney’s original language as the

shepherd Musidorus declaims in florid prose, only to have everyone yell, “Speak English!” The songs seem to fit organically into the piece, which is no small feat, and part of the fun is anticipating which one is next as the plot works up to it. Tom Kitt has done a great job orchestrating and arranging the songs so they feel consistent within the context of the score and maintain the brightness and energy of the originals.

The company is wonderful. Notably, Broadway veteran Rachel York is hilarious as Gynecia, wife to King Basilius. She plays the broad sex comedy perfectly as Gynecia lusts after Musidorus after she realizes the Amazon is a guy.

Bonnie Milligan is wonderful as the vain older sister Pamela who resists being married off, only to discover that her true love is her waiting woman Mopsa, a delightful Taylor Iman Jones. Alexandra Socha is terrific as Philoclea, the younger, plainer daughter who’s in love with Musidorus and determined to marry him over the objection of her father. As Musidorus, Andrew Durand delivers a superb comic performance that balances the endearing and the ridiculous.

Peppermint as the oracle Pythio is great. She has the distinction of

➤ UNENDING REVELS, continued on p.20 August 16 – August 29, 2018 | GayCityNews.nyc

FILM

The Ballroom Scene Gail Freedman captures same-sex dancing’s grace, m spirit, and athleticism

BY GARY M. KRAMER ot to Trot” is director Gail Freedman’s fabulous, crowd-plea si n g documentary about same-sex ballroom dancing. The film profiles two couples, Ernesto Palma and Nikolai Shpakov in New York and Emily Coles and Kieren Jameson in San Francisco, over four years, starting in 2012. Freedman gracefully captures the beauty and energy of the dancers — as well as the tensions that arise — as they prepare for the 2014 Gay Games and a nail-biter of a competition.

Freedman wisely allows viewers to get to know — and in the process care about — all her subjects, who discuss their coming out, their family life, and their health. “Hot to Trot” shows how dancing provides inner strength and a sense of community to these men and women.

The filmmaker recently chatted, via Skype, about her film.

“H

GARY M. KRAMER: Do you dance ballroom?

GAIL FREEDMAN: I danced when I was younger, but it was more modern, ballet, and jazz. I didn’t have a background in ballroom, but now I want to take lessons.

KRAMER: What were your criteria for the couples you profiled?

FREEDMAN: I met Emily and Kieren on my first shoot at the 2012 April Follies. I knew right away I’d use them. They were great dancers, attractive, and really comfortable with me and in front of the camera.

They had interesting backstories.

They were a well-oiled machine.

I also wanted a male dance couple. I wanted one that was new, to see what happened with a new partnership. I met Ernesto in New York and within five minutes, he told me his entire life story. But he didn’t have a dance partner at that time. When Ernesto wanted to go to the Gay Games, he convinced GayCityNews.nyc | August 16 – August 29, 2018

CURT WORDEN/ FIRST RUN FEATURES

Ernesto Palma and Nikolai Shpakov in Gail Freedman’s “Hot to Trot.”

Nikolai, who never danced samesex ballroom before.

But he went to an event with Ernesto and they danced, and we talked, and it was clear that this was a really interesting combination. I started shooting them together and then I wanted to learn more about Nikolai. I shot a get-toknow-you session, but he opened up and we used a lot of that footage in the film. It was very liberating and meaningful. I knew they were keepers.

KRAMER: One of the important things about shooting dance on screen is to show the full bodies. You do that throughout “Hot to Trot,” but you also do shoot a few close-ups to capture the emotions and the dancers’ concentration on their faces. Can you talk about your approach to filming?

FREEDMAN: Joel Shapiro, who was my primary cinematographer and has shot a lot of dance, which I had not, said there are all these rules — which we broke: you show the whole body, you don’t break the frame, you don’t move your camera.

But we couldn’t be on the floor during competition. Rehearsing was a different story. I wanted sweaty close-ups, gasping for breath, and a hand on a back and the sweep of the room and the gorgeousness of the choreography.

KRAMER: There is an intimacy in the partnerships that I think

you capture well. We feel the bond between the couples. Can you talk about this — how the couples relate and respond to one another?

FREEDMAN: Most dance couples are not life couples. They practice 20 hours a week. These relationships are difficult to navigate.

There’s this creative tension between Ernesto and Nikolai, which is good for the film, and I think in the film it was good for each of them that they expressed that.

Ernesto says, “Nikolai gives me what I am not, and I give him what he is not.”

KRAMER: We get to know the dancers, their struggles in their personal lives, their relationships with their parents and their partners. I love the dignity they all had.

Can you talk about how you presented them?

FREEDMAN: LGBT rights are the civil rights issue of the time.

We have a core gay audience, but I really wanted the film to have a crossover mainstream appeal.

I didn’t want to make a teachypreachy film. You got to know these people where their humanity, in its fullest sense, just unfolds. I didn’t know what was going to happen with their lives. We were going on this journey together. They all have dignity, and they were gracious enough to let me in and share that.

They trusted that I would portray them in an honest, not saccharine way.

KRAMER: It’s interesting that most of the subjects in your film, including the competitors, are largely foreign. Why do you think that ballroom is not bigger in the US or among gays and lesbians?

FREEDMAN: I think it’s becoming bigger in the US, but dance in general, and ballroom in particular, is much more prominent in European culture. That doesn’t happen as much here. Same-sex dance began in Europe, so a lot of dancers and LGBT dancers came to America because of acceptance, and that helped build the culture here. “Dancing with the Stars” helped. Latin dance doesn’t require as much space, and in New York there aren’t many places to dance standard.

The immigration thing is interesting. I didn’t set out to make that a sub-theme, but it became a strong and important part of the story — the intersectionality of marginalized communities. It became intentional, where originally it was a happy coincidence.

KRAMER: There is also an emphasis on community and the importance of self-expression. What observations do you have about how the LGBT community engages ballroom?

FREEDMAN: I think that there is something about the supportiveness of the community that is not mirrored at a mainstream competition. Everybody cheers for everyone else, even if they screw up and their competitors get a better score. It’s small-p political even as they express their creativity and artistry.

It’s important to them. Dance is a sport at the Gay Games, and not at the Olympics. And you can be amateurs. It’s about inclusion, personal best, and community. That’s why same-sex dance will continue to thrive.

HOT TO TROT | Directed by Gail Freedman | First Run Features | Opens Aug. 24 | Quad Cinema, 34 W. 13th St. | quadcinema.com

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FILM

The Age of Discovery “We the Animals” tests a boy’s familial bonds

THE ORCHARD

Raúl Castillo (facing) with Isaiah Kristian, Evan Rosado, and Josiah Gabriel in Jeremiah Zagar’s “We the Animals.”

BY GARY M. KRAMER ustin Torres’ messy, heartbreaking novel “We the Animals” has been adapted for the screen by director Jeremiah Zagar, who co-wrote the script with gay playwright Dan Kitrosser. The result is a messy, heartbreaking, and compelling film full of hard-edged realism and moments of magical realism.

The story concerns three brothers, Jonah (Evan Rosado), Manny (Isaiah Kristian), and Joel (Josiah Gabriel), who live in upstate Utica with their volatile father, Paps (Raúl Castillo) and their fragile mother (Sheila Vand). The brothers are close, and mostly fearless,

J

➤ UNENDING REVELS, from p.18 being the first transgender woman to create a principal Broadway role, and she does so with verve, presence, and unmistakable style.

“Head Over Heels,” funny as it is, never veers into camp, staying true to its admittedly contrived plot. In a comic context, the piece takes important themes of gender identity and acceptance very seriously.

It’s no spoiler to note that in

20

playing in the nearby woods and wrecking havoc in the house with their noise and wild antics.

Jonah, the film’s protagonist, is the youngest and most sensitive of the three. He crawls under their shared bed at night to secretly draw images that become animated from time to time (courtesy of Mark Samsonovich). He loves his mother and is enamored of his father, but his parents do not always get along.

“We the Animals” is an impressionistic film that focuses more on mood than plot. There are moments of drama — as when Paps leaves the family after an upsetting incident — but what are most palpable in the wake of his absence are the hunger, heat, and desperation the

kids feel being left alone with Ma, who is depressed and won’t cook, or eat, or even get out of bed.

Zagar films many scenes in closeup, capturing the intimate details of the characters as they eke out a life. Chasing the kids through the woods and catching their faces as they hide behind a shower curtain as Paps tries to seduce Ma make for enchanting scenes that reflect the innocence and mischief of childhood. Cinematographer Zak Mulligan bathes the film in a natural light that offers brightness, if not exactly warmth, and this adds to the film’s burnished tone.

“We the Animals” digs into some heavier themes as the kids meet a nearby young man who shows them pornographic videos. Manny

and Joel are excited by most of what they see but express disgust at a snippet of two men having sex.

But Jonah is intrigued by this, and his same-sex attraction later comes out in his dreams and drawings. In time, he begins hoping to act on his feelings with the older neighbor.

“We the Animals” is more of a coming-of-age tale than a coming out story. There is a loss of innocence as Jonah and his brothers grapple with their parents’ fighting, but mostly the film lets the kids be kids, stealing food, slapping their father in humor and anger, and hiding under a sheet chanting, “body heat, body heat.”

One of the best scenes in the film

true Elizabethan fashion after all the hijinks are over, identities revealed, true lovers united, and wrongs righted, Arcadia has come to see itself in a new light — one where everyone is loved for who they are and how they understand themselves. That may be wishful thinking in real life, but, then, this is a musical and, for sheer joy, you can’t beat that.

bubbling through the Delacorte in the new, musical version of “Twelfth Night” is thrilling and inspiring.

The 90-minute adaptation created

by Shaina Taub, who created last year’s splendid adaptation of “As You Like It,” is part of the Public Theater’s Public Works program.

Forming partnerships with arts organizations throughout the city, the Public runs workshops and much more, and members appear with professional actors in the Central Park production.

Taub’s setting of “Twelfth Night” was first seen in 2016 and, under the direction Oskar Eustis and Kwame Kwei-Armah, it’s a joyful romp through a favorite Shakespeare play, enlivened with Taub’s original music and rich and clever lyrics that complement the romance and comedy of the play. In this production, Taub also serves as music director and plays the fool Feste.

Speaking of joy, the rush of color, music, and community feeling

➤ AGE OF DISCOVERY, continued on p.25

➤ UNENDING REVELS, continued on p.21 August 16 – August 29, 2018 | GayCityNews.nyc

MUSIC

They’re Not Asking “Permission” from Object as Subject is a “bitch wave” declaration

BY STEVE ERICKSON Tunes genre tags are rarely very creative. I can’t count the number of rock albums I’ve downloaded that are described as “Alternative,” a term no one has seriously used since about 1992. In protest of the way African-American singers automatically get classified as R&B, Frank Ocean labeled his mixtape “Nostalgia/ Ultra” as “bluegrass.”

The LA “queer feminist art-punk band” Object As Subject gives the listener some idea where they stand by calling their debut album “Permission” “bitch wave.” Led by singer/ violinist/ percussionist Paris Hurley, they combine elements of post-punk with the riot grrrl movement.

It’s not apparent from listening to “Permission,” but Object As Subject’s live act is very theatrical. If punk is supposed to equal spontaneous anger and even an embrace of amateurism, a live performance of Object As Subject’s “Thrown to the Wolves” available on YouTube shows a band that carefully choreographs its performances, as Hurley dances in unison with another woman onstage. The band’s current live lineup includes former Hole drummer Patty Schemel and two members who dance, sing backing vocals, and pound on tom-toms.

Rather than having a guitarist, Object As Subject relies on bassist Gina Young cranking up the distortion on her instrument and playing extremely loud.

Most of “Permission” is a wall of sound created with fairly minimal means: just Hurley’s voice, Young’s bass, and a barrage of percussion. Hurley also performs in the band Kulture Shock, but she began as a classical violinist.

She returns to it on the two-minute instrumental, “iii,” that closes the album on a note of beauty and peace that resembles Eastern Eu-

i

➤ UNENDING REVELS, from p.20 Well over one hundred people in all fill out the cast — in two alternating ensembles. The principals, in addition to Taub, make up the professional company that includes the sparkling and gamine Nikki M. James as Viola, the woman who disguises herself as a man, Cesario, to serve the Duke Orsino in his suit to Olivia. Olivia, a compelling Nanya-Akuki Goodrich, will have none of the Duke but Cesario catches her eye. When Sebastian, Viola’s fraternal twin played by the charismatic Troy Anthony, shows up, confusion and comedy ensue as Olivia GayCityNews.nyc | August 16 – August 29, 2018

SHOOG MCDANIEL / OBJECTASSUBJECT.COM

Object as Subject’s “Permission” will be released on August 17.

ropean folk music.

For most of the album, it’s hard to make out what exactly Hurley is singing. The opening moments of the very first song, “Yeah, You Want Me (To Believe)” bury her vocals under feedback and tom toms. Throughout “Permission,” Hurley tends to use her voice as an instrument, but the lyrics that are audible consist of feminist statements: that song’s first intelligible line is “burn your makeup and set yourself free.” Object As Subject’s songs tend to repeat one line like a mantra: “Construction Man” goes through some dynamic changes, with surprisingly pretty backing vocals, but centers around the line “I see you.”

The very name of Object As Subject makes their feminist perspective clear. “Pom Pom Moves” complains, “Pussy, pussy/ That’s all

takes him for Cesario, Orsino rages, and Viola gets all bolloxed up.

The comics are played by Shuler Hensley as Olivia’s hard partying uncle Sir Toby Belch, Daniel Hall as the lovesick Sir Andrew Aguecheek, and Patrick J. O’Hare as Fabian. As Malvolio, Olivia’s puritanical steward, Andrew Korber is wonderfully funny, breaking into a production number about his eventual marriage to Olivia that brings the entire company on stage. As revenge for tamping down on their revelry, Malvolio has been tricked by Toby, Andrew, and the rest into thinking he’s beloved.

The text has been well cut, and the entire

you want us to be.” A recurring theme through the album is escaping limitations men place on women. But while the weakest riot grrrl bands simply Xeroxed female-led punk and postpunk groups from the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, Object As Subject has built from that period into something new. The swagger of its sound speaks volumes. Despite having clear politics, the band avoids preaching. In a statement from Hurley, she explained the meaning of the album’s title: “This record is a permission slip to my deepest self, granting her all the allowance and approval she needs to take up space within her own life. It is a ritualistic destruction of the long-held myth that my existence, my talent, my joy, my magic, my anger, my brilliance, my desires, and my voice are harmful to others unless used entirely in service of their needs, ideas, or dreams.”

The extent to which Object As Subject’s music is dominated by percussion evokes Bow Wow Wow and early Adam & the Ants, although the band doesn’t share those groups’ pop sensibility. Siouxsie and the Banshees’ debut album “The Scream” also seems like a clear inspiration. In the brief length of “Permission,” the band includes four interludes running two minutes or less, which give breathing room from the nonstop anger. If Hurley’s vocals generally consist of yelling, she knows how to sing in a more conventional register and work with backing vocalists in harmony, as well. The 48-second interlude “Benediction” is an a cappella showcase for overdubbed vocals.

“Thrown To The Wolves” is the album’s longest and most fully developed song, with fairly quiet verses building to a noisy chorus.

These days, punk often means a nostalgia trip or something mixed with so many other

➤ OBJECT AS SUBJECT, continued on p.22 production staged to take best advantage of the huge company and make this Illyria an exceptionally appealing destination.

HEAD OVER HEELS | Hudson Theater, 141 W. 44th St. | Tue., Thu. at 7 p.m.; Wed., Fri.-Sat. at 8 p.m.; Wed., Sat. at 2 p.m.; Sun 3 at p.m. | $49-$299 at thehudsonbroadway.com or 855801-5876 | Two hrs., 15 mins., with intermission TWELFTH NIGHT | Delacorte Theater, Central Park | Through Aug. 19 at 8 p.m. | Free at publictheater.org | Ninety mins.

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MUSIC

Black Voices Coming Together As Blood Orange, out gay Dev Hynes draws on, amplifies a community’s richness

BY STEVE ERICKSON ev Hynes wears many hats. He’s worked as a musician, producer, and/ or songwriter for artists like A$AP Rocky, Carly Rae Jepsen, Solange, Florence and the Machine, FKA twigs, Kylie Minogue, and Blondie. As a solo artist, he’s used two different “band” names: Lightspeed Champion and Blood Orange. He’s a black gay Brit who has lived in New York since 2007. But his industry connections ensure that Blood Orange’s new album, “Negro Swan,” is probably one of the few indie releases to include a feature

by Puff Daddy.

Hynes’ own music is less commercial than most of the songs he’s worked on for other people, yet it’s in the same alt-R&B universe as Solange’s EP “True,” which he co-wrote and coproduced.

“Negro Swan” goes for spare arrangements, with Hynes’ vocals (usually multi-tracked) over simple keyboards or guitars and a drum machine. The neo-soul movement hangs over this album, as Hynes’ falsetto vocals evoke D’Angelo.

The Internet’s “Hive Mind” suggests that they’re kindred spirits, and in fact, the band’s singer/ guitarist Steve Lacy pops up here on “Out On Your League.”

The album is a collaborative effort where Hynes’ production and songwriting supports a polyphony of voices. Without the aggressive heterosexuality and misogyny, it has an oddly similar feel to Dr. Dre’s three solo albums, showcasing his production but sharing the spotlight with a large cast of other rappers. This first becomes apparent on “Hope,” where Puff Daddy speaks about his anxieties about receiving love in dialogue with female vocalist Tei-Shi. Hynes’ own vocals are unmistakable but relegated to the background.

Many performers, including lesbian actress Amandla Sternberg and the jazz group Onyx Collective, offer vocal and instrumental contributions. Transgender writer and activist Janet Mock contributes spoken word intros to many songs, which are obviously well-intentioned but

D

➤ OBJECT AS SUBJECT, from p.21 genres that the label only makes sense as an attitude. On the other hand, teenagers who grew up either on hardcore or the many bad pop-punk bands that became huge in the wake of Green Day’s “Dookie” would probably find it bizarre that Patti Smith’s “Horses” and Tele-

22

DOMINCORECORDCO.US

Blood Orange’s “Negro Swan” is the latest offering from music industry utility player Dev Hynes.

sometimes come across platitudinous. Blood Orange’s songs come off better when they incorporate the same sentiments into their lyrics.

Hynes has said “Negro Swan” is an “exploration into my own and many types of black depression, an honest look at the corners of black existence, and the ongoing anxieties of queer/ people of color.”

This includes a lot of genre-stretching, with the aid of his guests: “Holy Will,” featuring singer Ian Isiah, dabbles in gospel. “Chewing Gum,” with vocals from rappers A$AP Rocky and Project Pat (whose voice is electronically pitched down to a sinister crawl), is libido-driven hiphop. It begins with Hynes asking a lover, “Tell me, what you want from me?” against Project Pat’s mantra about his search for the truth, and ends with Rocky going into detail about his sex life, followed by a verse from Pat at half the beat’s tempo. This combination of perspectives suggests several versions of Prince’s quests for sex and love jammed into one song.

“Negro Swan” has a jazzy air — both in the choice of chords and instrumentation like flute, electric piano, and saxophone — throughout.

It has points of contact with British singer/

vision’s “Marquee Moon,” which both feature 10-minute long songs, were ever considered punk, yet they’re crucial building blocks in the ‘70s New York scene that arose around CBGB. Object As Subject has a tremendously aggressive sound, but the band’s avoidance of guitars and emphasis on percussion mean that they’re not copying a conventional punk rule-

songwriter King Krule, but Blood Orange lacks his punk sensibility and eclecticism. He carefully layers his vocals both to harmonize with himself and to work in counterpoint with his guests.

The production has a low-budget quality: the drum machine programming makes no attempt to sound like real percussion and the keyboards are often watery. Given Hynes’ background producing and writing songs for popular artists, the indie feel of “Negro Swan” is obviously intentional.

Hynes has specific ideas about the difficulties blacks have expressing themselves and showing their identities as three-dimensional people in a racist society, and he lets everyone from Mock to Puff Daddy state them rather than saying them himself, often keeping his own voice in the background. “Negro Swan” ran the risk of feeling like a lecture on the importance of selfesteem, but if it literally spells out its message of hope in one song’s title, Hynes made a good bet in opening the album up to a wide range of black voices. He’s clearly the guide here.

At the same time, “Negro Swan” says something about the value of community not through its lyrics — though “Take Your Time” says “you can’t keep placing yourself above” — but by rejecting the temptation to use the album as a vehicle to promote Hynes as a star on his own.

(That’s implicit in his use of the name Blood Orange even though he plays all the instruments.)

Mock’s words on this album about how black trans women are taught to make themselves small resonate beyond that specific context; “Negro Swan” draws on R&B’s past to express perspectives that have long been shoved into pop music’s closet.

If the album embodies progressive politics, its musical conservatism limits it: large portions could have been played on a 1980s “quiet storm” radio show without anyone noticing the difference if they didn’t pay attention to the words.

BLOOD ORANGE | “Negro Swan” | Domino USA | Drops Aug. 23 | dominorecordco.us

book. And if their lyrics are generally hard to understand, their feminist perspective is embodied as much by the overall force and fearlessness of their music as by anything specific Hurley sings.

OBJECT AS SUBJECT | “Permission” | Lost Future | Drops Aug. 17 | objectassubject.com August 16 – August 29, 2018 | GayCityNews.nyc

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FANTASY PHOTOGRAPHY 3031 Quentin Rd., Brooklyn NY, (718) 998-0949 www.fantasyphotographyandvideo.com NY PHOTO VIDEO GROUP 1040 Hempstead Tpke Franklin Sq., NY 11010 11 Michael Avenue Farmingdale, NY 11735 Office: 516-352-3188 Joe Cell: 516-445-8054 Peter Cell: 516-343-6662 www.nyphotovideogroup.com info@nyphotovideogroup.com ONE FINE DAY PHOTOGRAPHERS 459 Pacific St., Massapequa Park (516) 690–1320 www.onefinedayphotographers.com ZAKAS PHOTOGRAPHY info@zakasphotography.com www.zakasphotography.com

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TO BE INCLUDED IN THIS DIRECTORY CALL (718) 260–8302 GayCityNews.nyc | August 16 – August 29, 2018

23

Fosse Iconography The dance master’s work seriously and divertingly dissected

BY DAVID NOH he sinuous, snaky, seriously sexy moves of Bob Fosse have got to be the most recognizable choreography in the world, endlessly quoted and imitated to the point of cliche. In 2013, Sam Wasson wrote a mesmerizing, tell-all biography of him, seemingly leaving out no cigarette, drug, or nubile chorine the complex, hard-living genius ever touched. It exhaustively covered his kaleidoscopic life, and now we have the best book ever written about Fosse’s work itself: “Big Deal: Bob Fosse and Dance in the American Musical,” by Kevin Winkler.

It must be said the Bob Fosse has been particularly lucky in this scribe, as well, for Winkler, a former dancer himself, knows the art form inside and out and has the lucidity and clean, detailed, yet unfussy approach of a real writer to aptly delineate Fosse’s undying contribution to it.

Once executive director of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, Winkler worked on the book for about six years and, happily in this challenging time for publishing in general, never had to arduously shop his project round.

“I did a presentation about Fosse at a conference in Washington, DC,” he told me over lunch at charming West Village landmark Sweet Life.

“Someone from Oxford Press was there and, when I got back to New York, he contacted me and asked if I would be interested in doing a book on Fosse as part of their Broadway Legacy series. I felt the need to do it, because there was no academic book about his choreography, only about his personal life.

“Writer friends of mine assured me that you don’t get rich writing academic books, but libraries and schools have already bought a lot of copies and we’ve gotten some good reviews.

Kirkus liked it and Joan Acocella wrote a favorable review for The New York Review of Books.”

To Winkler, what’s striking about Fosse is that his basic weakness — his limited dance vocabulary — is perhaps his strength as well: the turned-in toes, cocked and arched backs, serpentine and jazzy hand gestures so easy to parody. Indeed, choreographic lingua franca visually mirrors the familiar hypnotically dogged, Middle Eastern-sounding trademark vamp and sophisticated brassiness of the John Kander/ Fred Ebb songs they so often accompanied (“Cabaret,” “Chicago”). The fact that he was able to take these basic moves — both sexy and a little daffy — and create so many dazzling and different dances was true mark of his brilliance.

T

24

OXFORD UNIVERSIT Y PRESS

Bob Fosse’s body of work gets a thorough and thoroughly entertaining review in Kevin Winkler’s new book.

Author Kevin Winkler.

Brilliant too, was the way he incorporated dance into his films, which, like me, were Winkler’s first introduction to Fosse.

“Something about his musicals was so different from the others. While in high school I saw the film of ‘Sweet Charity,’ in which the dances were more dramatic and very carefully placed in scenes, and after that film came ‘Cabaret’ in 1972. Forget about it!

“From the opening, with Joel Grey popping up on the screen to the very end when the camera pans to reveal the Nazis, I felt like he was inventing a new cinematic language for musicals. And when he layered dance into the narrative, you knew you were seeing something completely different that maybe took you aback a little. I sat through the movie twice and had to explain that to my worried mother, waiting for me at home.”

The film may have jettisoned a lot of the musical’s book involving Sally Bowles’ endangered Jewish landlady and the rise of the Nazis to make it more of a Liza Minnelli vehicle, but I also remember how — made as it was just three years after Stonewall — affirming it

was for me, with my burgeoning but closeted sexuality, in its presentation of gay men as handsome, charming, witty, and fun, for what seemed like the very first time on film. Michael York and Helmut Griem, as the bisexual Baron, were mad-sexy and charismatic, nothing like the stereotyped mincing Paul Lyndes and Charles Nelson Reillys who had long impersonated us, or the suicidally depressed weirdos and losers of movies like “Advise and Consent,” “The Best Man,” “The Sergeant,” “Victim,” “The Staircase,” “Reflections in a Golden Eye” and the basically no-fun zone represented by all “The Boys in the Band.”

“When I moved to New York, I saw all of his shows,” recalled Winkler, “‘Pippin,’, ‘Chicago,’ ‘Dancin’,’ and I remembered how effortlessly he could create eroticism on the stage, sculpting the body with lights like the ballet in ‘Pippin,’ of all his women falling all over him, in a kind of Kama Sutra arrangement, fucking with gender, etc.”

Winkler actually met Fosse when he was in the chorus of a revival of the show “Little Me,” on the day that the Great Man was brought in to fine-tune the choreography. Doing lifts was never a dance area in which he sparkled, Winkler admitted. But when Fosse finally came

➤ FOSSE ICONOGRAPHY, continued on p.25 August 16 – August 29, 2018 | GayCityNews.nyc

â&#x17E;¤ AGE OF DISCOVERY, from p.20 has the brothers mimicking their dad while they riding in the back of a flatbed truck, hanging over the sides watching the landscape pass by upside down.

The filmâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s magic comes from the cumulative power of the episodes that shape Jonahâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s life. He panics in an early scene where Paps tries to teach him how to swim in a lake.

And there is a curious scene where Paps digs a grave in the backyard, only to have Jonah lie on the muddy bottom and imagine himself floating above the ground.

â&#x17E;¤ FOSSE ICONOGRAPHY, from p.24 down the chorus line â&#x20AC;&#x201D; whoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d all worn their best rehearsal outfits for the him â&#x20AC;&#x201D; to our author and asked him to do a lift, donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t you know that sheer terror made him do the best one of his life, hoisting his partner up like the Colossus of Rhodes.

An impressive number of interviews were garnered for the book, but Winkler said, â&#x20AC;&#x153;I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t go crazy, trying to track down everybody, but concentrated on those who had worked in shows with him, like Tony Walton, the set designer of the dazzling original production of â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Chicago,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; on whom he often relied, and who won the Oscar for the movie â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;All That Jazz.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Also, Jules Fischer who did the lighting for his shows and was a producer of â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Dancinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;â&#x20AC;?

One get Winkler got who particularly fascinated me was Suzanne Charny, for me the ultimate Fosse dancer, in the â&#x20AC;&#x153;Rich Manâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Frugâ&#x20AC;? number in â&#x20AC;&#x153;Sweet Charity,â&#x20AC;? who, with her pendulous ponytail and â&#x20AC;&#x153;serpentine intensity,â&#x20AC;? as Rex Reed once described, positively defines his style. â&#x20AC;&#x153;She lives in LA and was very sweet. Sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s an artist now, a sculptor, I believe, and told me she was cast in the film because of her look, so tall and she could really bend her spine all the way back, practically into a right angle. She got some more work out there in TV, and when Raquel Welch got sick, Bob Hope took her to Vietnam to entertain the troops. She said when he brought her onstage to do her go-go number, all the men cheered and she felt like a GayCityNews.nyc | August 16 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; August 29, 2018

The possibilities and anxieties of childhood are conveyed here, but the scenes also serve as metaphors for Jonahâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s budding sexuality. His easy intimacy with his father and brothers is comfortable until it isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t.

When he kisses his mother full on the mouth, she shuns him. His fantasy about kissing the neighbor man might, of course, end badly if acted upon. This buried tension informs the film and provides a narrative thread that builds to the stunning conclusion.

The performances by the three kids are terrific; they have a camaraderie that feels natural, never

forced. They play well together, and even the few times it becomes two against one it doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t remain that way for too long. Evan Rosado offers a remarkable debut performance as Jonah, his portrayal resonating in the way he carries his small body as if the weight of the world were on his shoulders.

In support RaĂşl Castillo (who shined in HBOâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s â&#x20AC;&#x153;Lookingâ&#x20AC;?) impresses as Paps, a man who, always looking for a break, never quite does the right thing. When he talks about being stuck in poverty after one particular setback, it is devastating. In support, Sheila

Vand holds her own against Castillo, being both tough and vulnerable as her life grows increasingly more unbearable. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We the Animalsâ&#x20AC;? is a tough story, but also life-affirming. It races along like a child going every which way before stopping in its tracks and landing an emotional wallop.

real sex symbol!â&#x20AC;?

Sometimes, unfortunately, even the most dedicated biographer can seriously fall out of love with his subject when, however great the achievements, personal flaws and failings may alter oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s view of a person. I asked Winkler how he felt after devoting all this time and effort to a man who, by many accounts, was not easy. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I came away with the feeling that, for all his neuroses and complexity, Fosse was basically a decent man. I went through his papers in the Library of Congress, and they were filled with long letters from young dancers asking him for career advice. Would you believe he answered every single one of them, telling them all to study ballet for a strong technique, stay in school, and go for any opportunity to be on and learn about the stage? â&#x20AC;&#x153;There were also many surprising letters from dancers who had failed their auditions for him, amazingly, thanking him for his respect, attentiveness, and patience.â&#x20AC;?

Along with all of Winklerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s seriously rewarding analyses of Fosse dances, this eminently readable book is chockful of the kind of juicy showbiz lore we all crave. For instance, that was Fosseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s vest Liza Minnelli wears in the â&#x20AC;&#x153;Mein Herrâ&#x20AC;? number in â&#x20AC;&#x153;Cabaret.â&#x20AC;? Barbara Cook was originally considered for the multi-octave role of Little Mary Sunshine, the sob sister reporter in â&#x20AC;&#x153;Chicago,â&#x20AC;? before the tradition began of always casting it with a man in drag. Fosse worked for a minute on â&#x20AC;&#x153;Funny Girl,â&#x20AC;? before being replaced, due to his enmity

with its producer Ray Stark, and was responsible for turning the hit song â&#x20AC;&#x153;Peopleâ&#x20AC;? from a trio, as originally planned, to that big fat star-making solo for Streisand.

Also, he devised the staging of her â&#x20AC;&#x153;Hello, Gorgeousâ&#x20AC;? entrance in the show. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Rich Manâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Frugâ&#x20AC;? number was full of nicknames for the various moves: the haughty, stickup-the-ass way the men walked was the â&#x20AC;&#x153;Danny Kaye traveling step.â&#x20AC;? The way the women moved

was the â&#x20AC;&#x153;Marion Marshall walk.â&#x20AC;?

Marshall, an obscure actress once married to Stanley Donen, had a pelvis-first, slouching stride, typical of debutantes of the 1950s, which choreographic magpie Fosse never forgot.

WE THE ANIMALS | Directed

by Jeremiah Zagar | The Orchard | Opens Aug. 17 | Angelika Film Center, 18 W. Houston St. at Mercer St.; angelikafilmscenter.com/nyc | Landmark at 57 West, 657 W. 57th St.; landmarktheatres.com

BIG DEAL: BOB FOSSE AND DANCE IN THE AMERICAN MUSICAL | By Kevin Winkler | Oxford University Press | $29.95 | 368 pages

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25

OPERA

Bernstein’s Ambitions at Critical “Mass” For polymath’s centenary, Mostly Mozart resurrects 1971 Kennedy Center commission

BY ELI JACOBSON n his lifetime (which began exactly 100 years ago this August 25), Leonard Bernstein was a polarizing figure.

To some he was an angel of musical talent: a virtuoso pianist, an expert proselytizer for all forms of music in the mass media, and a genius composer and conductor of classical music, jazz,and Broadway.

But the classical music critical establishment demonized his showmanship, ego, eclectic tastes, and self-promotion, deploring what they perceived as vulgarity and a breaking down of established divisions and standards. A true polymath, Bernstein was trying to be too many things at once to succeed at one, many said.

The 2018 Mostly Mozart Festival programmed a staging of Bernstein’s 1971 “Mass” in celebration of the centenary of his birth. The contradictions of the man and his music resonate through this controversial work, which addresses Vietnam-era political, social, and spiritual conflicts that are more relevant than ever in our newly polarized America. Commissioned

by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis for the opening of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, this two hour “theater piece for singers, players, and dancers” contains everything but the kitchen sink. Bernstein took the Latin Tridentine Mass of the Roman Catholic Church and threw in new English texts by Stephen Schwartz (fresh off of “Godspell”), with contributions by Paul Simon and himself. The cast of more than 200 performers present music ranging from classical to Broadway to contemporary rock.

President Richard Nixon, warned by the FBI that the notoriously leftist Bernstein was programming “coded anti-war messages” into the piece as part of a plot “to embarrass the United States government,” conspicuously boycotted

I

26

RICHARD TERMINE

Nmon Ford and the company performing Leonard Bernstein’s “Mass,” as part of the Mostly Mozart Festival.

the premiere.

Many questioned what a very secular Jewish composer like Bernstein could bring to the Catholic Mass (dedicated to the memory of the nation’s first Catholic president). The initial critical response to the “Mass” was decidedly mixed with conservatives like Harold C. Schonberg dismissing it as “fashionable kitsch,” but its reputation has risen over the years.

Bernstein’s “Mass” concerns the crisis of faith experienced by The Celebrant (the splendid baritone Nmon Ford), a young hippie preacher turned Catholic priest.

The forces of Man and God are represented by an orchestra (the Mostly Mozart Orchestra led by Louis Langrée), an adult chorus (the Concert Chorale of New York led by James Bagwell), a children’s chorus (the Young People’s Chorus of New York City) with the spiritually conflicted congregation of Street Singers (a motley crew of classical and pop singers) backed up by a cadre of dancing Acolytes.

Elkhanah Pulitzer recreated her staging for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which expertly mixed groovy day-glo period elements with stark modernist elements

that stood outside a specific time and place (the central white altar with neon cross designed and lit

by Seth Reiser). Laurel Jenkins’ vernacular choreography had both dancers and singers boogieing down the aisles of David Geffen Hall.

The show begins with a dissonant pre-recorded “Kyrie Eleison.”

Nmon Ford as The Celebrant enters in T-shirt and jeans with a guitar on his shoulder and sings “A Simple Song,” a plaintive folk prayer extolling simple faith that veers into rock in its second verse: “God loves all simple things; For God, is the simplest of all.” After this, The Celebrant dons increasingly blingy cassocks leading Latin choruses in a style influenced

by Mahler but which also borrows heavily from the Bach Passions.

The “rock” songs performed by the Street Singers challenge the orthodoxy with “Me Generation” philosophical tropes: “I believe in God, but does God believe in me?” The Celebrant suffers a crisis of faith brought on by the doubts of his followers and destroys the altar. But a child (the radiant voiced Tenzin Gund-Morrow) sings a reprise of “A Simple Song,” and The Celebrant’s

faith is restored and the congregation comes together in harmony.

Bernstein’s evocation of Mahler sounds derivative, and his command of ‘70s rock and roll is not as idiomatic as his jazz and Broadway compositions. (Should he have farmed the rock music out to his literary collaborators Schwartz and Simon?) Somehow, Bernstein’s innate theatricality binds it all together along with his passionate commitment to his message. Ford’s Celebrant combined simple direct diction with a stirringly rich Verdian baritone voice that also could produce floating tenor sounds in the upper register (the role has been cast with both baritone and tenor voices). Ford never overpowered the music with operatic grandeur and added Gospel inflections where appropriate.

Langrée’s light and fleet conducting was characterized by transparent textures and constant forward motion that kept this unwieldy work from bogging down under the weight of its far flung ambitions and pretensions. Just keeping the enormous varied armies of performers on the same page is a great achievement in itself.

Is the “Mass” a dated artifact of its time? Is it a pretentious hodgepodge of derivative musical styles?

I found myself deeply moved by it — the divided, disillusioned America that Bernstein viewed in 1971 with Watergate looming around the corner resonated with me in 2018.

I was born into that America.

Also, Bernstein’s vision of The Celebrant trying to bring his divided congregation together in harmony spoke to me powerfully as a way forward into a better future.

This text could have been written today or tomorrow: “O you people of power, your hour is now. You may plan to rule forever, but you never do somehow! So we wait in silent treason until reason is restored, and we wait for the season of the Word of the Lord. We await the season of the Word of the Lord.”

Word. Preach, Lenny.

August 16 – August 29, 2018 | GayCityNews.nyc

â&#x17E;¤ TRANS BAN, from p.9 document requests will be directed to President Trump as a party, but may be directed to other parties pursuant to this Memorandum Opinion. If the Motion to Dismiss is denied, the Court will revisit the issue of the protective order as to President Trump.â&#x20AC;?

Cooperthite faced a practical dilemma in dealing with the governmentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s requests to shield Trump from discovery. â&#x20AC;&#x153;On July 27, 2017, President Trump tweeted transgender persons would no longer be able to serve in the military and as for any deliberative process, simply stated this policy occurred after consulting with â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;my Generals and military experts,â&#x20AC;&#x2122;â&#x20AC;? he wrote. â&#x20AC;&#x153;There is no evidence to support the concept that â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;my Generals and military expertsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; would have the information Plaintiffs request. There is no evidence provided to this Court that â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;my Generals and military expertsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; are identified, in fact do exist, or that they would be included in document requests and interrogatories propounded to the Executive Branch, excluding the President. By tweeting his decisions to the world, the President has, in fact, narrowed the focus of Plaintiffsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; inquiries to the President himself. The Presidential tweets put the President front and enter as the potential discriminating official.â&#x20AC;?

Cooperthite, here, is raising the real question as to whether discovery that doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t include Trump is at all meaningful, since the ultimate legal question in the litigation is the intent of the government in adopting the ban which is, at bottom, the presidentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s intent. On the other hand, discovery directed at Trump raises serious questions about separation of powers and the traditional respect for the confidentiality of internal White House policy deliberations, as Kollar-Kotelly noted in her ruling. â&#x20AC;&#x153;So many factors are unknown at this juncture in the litigation,â&#x20AC;? wrote Copperthite. â&#x20AC;&#x153;It is unknown whether Plaintiffs can obtain the information necessary from the non-Presidential discovery to define the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;intentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; of the government with respect to the transgender ban.

Defendants offer as an alternative, a stay of discovery with respect to the President, until the Motion to GayCityNews.nyc | August 16 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; August 29, 2018

Dismiss the President as a party is decided. If the President, as the discriminating official, tweeted his transgender ban sua sponte as alleged, this Court sees no alternative to obtaining the intent of the government other than denying the protective order with respect to President Trump.â&#x20AC;?

However, he wrote, precedents â&#x20AC;&#x153;instruct this Court to give deference to the executive branch because â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;occasions for constitutional confrontation between the two branches should be avoided whenever possible.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;â&#x20AC;?

So Copperthite decided to put off deciding the protective order issue until after Judge Garbis decides whether to dismiss Trump as a party, but for now will order the defendants only to comply with discovery requests directed to defendants other than Trump, Secretary Mattis, and the secretaries of the individual military branches.

The possibility that Trump will be ordered to submit to questioning under oath in at least one of these cases remains a reality, but any attempt by the plaintiffs to do so would undoubtedly arouse spirited opposition from the Defense Department, officially based on claims of privilege, but realistically due to the likelihood that Trump would perjure himself under such questioning. Recall the historical precedent: The House of Representatives voted to impeach President Bill Clinton based, in part, on the charge that he committed perjury during questioning before a grand jury by the special counsel investigating his affair with Monica Lewinski. At least in that case, the House considered presidential perjury to be an impeachable offense.

Plaintiffs in the Seattle case, Karnoski v. Trump, in which the president remains a defendant, are represented by Lambda Legal and pro bono attorneys from Kirkland & Ellis. Plaintiffs in the DC case, Jane Doe 2 v. Trump, are represented by the National Center for Lesbian Rights, GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD), and pro bono attorneys from Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr LLP and Foley Hoag LLP. Plaintiffs in the Baltimore case, Stone v. Trump, are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Maryland, and pro bono attorneys from Covington & Burling LLP.

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ä&#x2030;´

RELIGIOUS OPT-OUTS, from p.6

two other cases: Newman v. Piggie Park Enterprises, a 1968 decision holding that a Southern barbecue restaurant chain could not refuse to serve black customers based on the ownerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s religious belief in racial segregation, and Employment Division v. Smith, a 1990 decision holding that people do not enjoy a Free Exercise right to refuse to comply with state laws of general application that are on their face neutral with respect to religion.

Writing for the Supreme Court in the Employment Division case, Justice Antonin Scalia suggested that allowing individuals to claim exemptions from the law based on their individual religious beliefs unless the government could prove that it had a compelling interest was not required by the First Amendment. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Any society adopting such a system would be courting anarchy, but that danger increases in direct proportion to the societyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s diversity of religious beliefs, and its determination to coerce or suppress none of them,â&#x20AC;? Scalia wrote.

Although the courtâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s decision in Employment Division was unanimous, it is worth noting that four of the justices concurred in an opinion arguing Scalia had gone too far in his majority opinion in contending the government need not show there was an important government interest that justified burdening an individualâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s free exercise of religion â&#x20AC;&#x201D; in that case, a Native American denied unemployment benefits when he was fired after flunking his employerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s drug test due to his religious ritual use of peyote.

Enforcing religiously neutral anti-discrimination rules is not â&#x20AC;&#x153;hostility to religionâ&#x20AC;? by the government. It is undertaken to prevent categorical discrimination based on personal characteristics, such as race, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity.

Notably, the federal laws and regulations that OFCCP is supposed to enforce already do not apply to government contractors that are religious corporations or associations or religious educational institutions, â&#x20AC;&#x153;with respect

to the employment of individuals of a particular religion to perform work connected with the carrying on by such corporation, association, educational institution, or society of its activities.â&#x20AC;?

It should also be noted that Justice Samuel Alitoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s opinion for the court in the Hobby Lobby case responded to concerns raised by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburgâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s dissent by denying that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act could be invoked as a defense in an employment discrimination case.

How this will all play out if OFCCP refuses to hold contractors to their non-discrimination requirements in situations involving LGBTQ victims of religiouslymotivated discrimination is yet to be seen, but the portents are not good in light of Trumpâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, where, if confirmed, he would join the conservative majority in place of Justice Kennedy.

In this context, it is particularly troubling that Justice Neil Gorsuch, Trumpâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s first Supreme Court nominee, in his concurring opinion in the Masterpiece Cake-

shop case, implied that the court should reconsider its holding in Employment Division v. Smith.

In response to Leenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s directive, the National Center for Transgender Equality warned of a â&#x20AC;&#x153;broad license to discriminate,â&#x20AC;? while noting that the Department of Labor, at the same time, removed language from its website about nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people and the limited scope of allowable religious exemptions. â&#x20AC;&#x153;This is an attempt to encourage businesses to take taxpayer dollars and then fire people for being transgender,â&#x20AC;? Harper Jean Tobin, the groupâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s director of policy, said in a written release. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Religious organizations have ample protections under federal law, but they are not allowed to use federal money to discriminate against people.

The language of this directive is so broad and so vague because it is part of a long line of attempts by this administration to sow confusion and encourage any employer to act on their worst prejudices. No employer should be allowed to use taxpayer dollars to fire someone because of who they are.â&#x20AC;?

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䉴

INTERNECINE JOCKEYING, from p.11

and abortion,” “freedom to ingest the drugs of one’s choice,” freedom “from society’s attempts to define and limit human sexuality,” and “Freedom from political and social persecution of all minority groups.” Some individual groups, including Philadelphia’s HAL, would later disassociate themselves from some of these items, which was allowed under ERCHO rules.

The meeting did not, however, support a proposal to endorse the November 15 Moratorium March on Washington, an anti-Vietnam War protest, but delegates did support urging members to join the march “as homosexuals,” according to the HAL newsletter.

Most significantly, with Kameny chairing the ERCHO meeting, it voted to replace the Annual Reminder Day with marches on the last Saturday in June in individual cities across the country that would commemorate the Stonewall riots. Members were to urge this action on peers across the country.

The Annual Reminder Day demonstrations had occurred every July 4 at Independence Hall in Philadelphia since 1965. Kameny presided over the event, which had a strict dress code requiring men to wear a suit with a white shirt and tie. Women had to wear dresses. Men had to be clean-shaven with a recent haircut. The “wearing of beards will be discouraged,” the rules said.

Picketers marched in single file carrying only approved signs. The purpose was to represent LGBTQ people as employable.

The new form of Annual Reminder Day would make the event “more relevant” and “reach a greater number of people and encompass the ideas and ideals of the larger struggle in which we are engaged — that of our fundamental human rights,” the resolution said. The resolution, which also said, “No dress or age regulations shall be enforced in this demonstration,” passed unanimously with only MSNY abstaining.

“I thought a lot about those early years and how harsh we were toward Frank Kameny and others,” Fouratt said. “We were not opposed to the [Independence GayCityNews.nyc | August 16 – August 29, 2018

NYC MUNICIPAL ARCHIVE

A July 1969 memo by Patrolman John S. Pritchard detailing what he observed at a Mattachine Society meeting.

NYC MUNICIPAL ARCHIVE

A handwritten memo from Detective Bianco discussing the possibility of picketing by the Gay Liberation Front.

Hall] action, but we felt that the assimilation politics that it represented were not the politics of the moment. We felt we were making a revolution and we wanted everyone to be free.”

The annual meetings of the North American Conference of Homophile Organizations in 1969 and 1970 were also disrupted and ultimately steered in a more radical direction by GLF contingents.

That group never met again after 1970. ERCHO also dissolved.

In New York City, the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) was established in December 1969 by former GLF members who could not tolerate that group’s essential anarchy. By 1972, there were GLF and GAA chapters across the country in sufficient numbers that at least 64 as well as other radical groups were represented

at a Chicago meeting that drafted a set of demands they planned on presenting to the Democratic and Republican Party Conventions.

They had some success at the Democratic Convention, according to Lillian Faderman’s “The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle.”

MSNY was represented at the Chicago meeting, but by Jim Owles, a GAA founder. Kameny proved to be more resilient than his early New York Mattachine peers and attended the Chicago meeting as well as a second in Washington, DC. By 1971, Leitsch had been accused of misappropriating funds from MSNY and removed from the group. That same year, MSNY told GAA that it was shutting down and proposed a merger of the two groups. Whether that was done legally is unclear, but it was done in fact. Former GAA members ran the group for several years.

Leitsch and MSNY were not alone in initially missing the significance of the Stonewall riots, but they persisted in that posture longer than other groups. In his biography of Vito Russo, “Celluloid Activist: The Life and Times of Vito Russo,” Michael Schiavi wrote that Leitsch and MSNY had been “hopelessly eclipsed” by the radical groups.

In “Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution,” the definitive account of that event, David Carter notes MSNY’s “ambivalent response” to the riots and quotes Martha Shelley, a former member of GLF and Daughters of Bilitis, an early lesbian group, describing a Mattachine meeting on July 9 immediately after the riots. Shelley was part of a committee that was tasked with organizing a demonstration. Leitsch burst into the room when the group grew loud.

“He was really upset,” Shelley said in Carter’s book. “He thought we were going to have another organization. There were seven gay organizations in New York, some consisting only of two people and a newsletter. He wanted there to be one organization, with him at the head of it. So we reassured him, ‘Oh no, we’re not starting an organization. We’re just a march committee.’”

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