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S E R V I N G G AY, L E S B I A N , B I A N D T R A N S G E N D E R N E W Y O R K

TRUMP RAMPS UP

WAR ON

TRANSGENDER IDENTITY Pages 04-06

ANDY HUMM

Hundreds of trans and gender non-conforming New Yorkers and their allies, including out gay State Assemblymember Daniel O’Donnell, O’Donnell turned out at Washington Square Park October 21 to protest Trump administration plans to define away transgender Americans.

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FREE | VOLUME SEVENTEEN, ISSUE TWENTY TWO | OCTOBER 25 – NOVEMBER 7, 2018

In This Issue COVER STORY Trump ramps up anti-trans war 04 & 06

FILM AIDS in 1985: when words fail 21

POLITICS Cynthia Nixon says don’t vote for me 09

Gone before we see him 22

PERSPECTIVE Beauty & the beast in gay Paree 16

THEATER Stars of “Daniel’s Husband” celebrate hat trick 24

WHAT’S DOIN’ IN THE GAY CITY Prime listings for Halloween 18-19

Three extraordinary limited runs on stage now 26

He was the champion...

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October 25 – November 7, 2018 | GayCityNews.nyc

Volume 2 | Issue 4

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GayCityNews.nyc | October 25 – November 7, 2018

3

COVER STORY

Trump Ramps Up War on Transgender Identity Hundreds protest in New York; in DC, marchers descend on White House

BY ANDY HUMM

T

he Trump administration has opened up its broadest assault yet on transgender people, moving to adopt a legal definition of gender as never-changing and determined at birth by external genitalia.

Led by the Department of Health and Human Services, where antitransgender activist Roger Severino heads the Office of Civil Rights, the goal is to get the Departments of Justice, Education, and Labor to join in imposing the new definition through regulations that will have a better chance of being upheld now that Brett Kavanaugh has solidified a 5-4 right wing majority on the US Supreme Court.

The new definition is designed to deny health and social services to transgender people and to allow legal discrimination against LGBTQ people in general.

The New York Times broke the story Sunday morning after obtaining a copy of an internal HHS memo. Response from the LGBTQ activist community was swift and sharp across the nation.

In New York City, hundreds of people huddled in the cold in Washington Square to condemn the move and vow resistance.

Chase Strangio, a transgender attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, said that as extreme as this new attack is, “It is the continuation of a system that has always been in place.”

He added, “Efforts to erase us will not be successful. We exist because we’re here.”

Strangio emphasized that laws that protect transgender people “have not changed” — from state and local anti-discrimination laws to a growing body of federal case law that holds that such discrimination is forbidden under Title XII provisions of the 1964 Civil Rights Act forbidding sex discrimination and related sex discrimination provisions of other federal statutes.

That is precisely what the Trump administration wants stopped.

4

ANDY HUMM

Chase Strangio of the American Civil Liberties Union addresses the crowd.

ANDY HUMM

Tatenda Ngwaru, 30, an intersex activist from Zimbabwe, addresses the crowd.

And the Supreme Court has held off hearing appeals of lower court decisions affirming that sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination is illegal sex discrimination until Kavanaugh was in place.

Tatenda Ngwaru, an intersex activist from Zimbabwe, said, “This is an attack on our realities.”

Tony-winning actor Sara Ramir-

ez said, “If today is a wake-up call for you, then where have you been?”

Referring to the president, actor, writer, and activist Indya Moore said, “We must fight narcissism with community.”

The Times story says that representatives of civil rights groups have been meeting with administration officials for more than a

year endeavoring to tone down its worst elements, including genetic testing of trans people as the final arbiter of their identity.

But the reactionary officials in place in the Trump administration — catering to the religious right — are determined to get the Justice Department to approve the new definition of gender before the end of the year.

Longtime gay activist Christopher Hennelly posted on Facebook, “This is frightening. We will end up having to create underground resources to care for our brothers and sisters.”

He added, “Once they change this in regulation it means death for many. CMS (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid) determines what gets covered under all health plans that it reimburses. Not getting hormones is equivalent to not getting insulin or high blood pressure medication.”

Strangio distributed seven action items, online at out.com/ news-opinion/2018/10/21/hellno-memo-7-action-items-protecttrans-and-gnc-people, in response to the HHS memo calling on the community to focus on the Yes on 3 campaign in Massachusetts to defeat a referendum repeal of transgender rights on November 6, getting the vote out for the midterms, contributing to trans-led groups and bailout funds, participating in the Notice and Comments Periods when the Trump administration announces the new regs that are then subject to public comment, and supporting trans and nonbinary journalists. He also urged cisgender people to “educate yourself to make sure you’re challenging the notion that there is a binary and coherent notion of ‘biological sex.’”

Veteran gay activist Jon Nalley, 59, said he was in Washington Square Park because “we have to stick together when we are attacked. We’re still fighting for access to abortion and birth control.

As a person with HIV, they’ll take

➤ TRUMP RAMPS UP, continued on p.5

October 25 – November 7, 2018 | GayCityNews.nyc

SLUG

ANDY HUMM

Tanya Walker, founder of the New York Transgender Action Group, at Sunday evening’s demonstration.

➤ TRUMP RAMPS UP, from p.4 away access to our drugs” if we don’t make a stand now.

Cathy Marino Thomas of Gays Against Guns, told Gay City News, “Now that we’ve purged the IDC [the rogue Democratic caucus] from the State Senate, I expect GENDA [the long-stalled Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act], and if we don’t get it I’ll be visiting a lot of state senators.”

Maru Won Jin held an “End Cissexism” sign and said she was there for her transgender spouse.

“I’m Zen Buddhist and we’re all connected,” she said.

Transgender filmmaker and artist Tourmaline, 35, said, “We’re still here and they can’t erase us… We need to take care of each other and fight back.”

Dylan Kapit, 24, said, “We’re going to show up and we’re going to vote.”

In a written statement, Mayor Bill de Blasio said, “To all trans and non-binary New Yorkers: we see you and we will fight this. Every human being has a right to define their own identity.”

The mayor just signed legislation making it much easier to change your gender marker on your birth certificate with no medical certi-

fication required and, for the first time, choose a non-binary X designation.

At a Monday morning press conference at the Human Rights Campaign offices in Washington, national LGBTQ groups were joined by other leading civil rights organizations in denouncing the administration’s efforts. Sharon McGowan, the legal director and chief strategy office at Lambda Legal, said her group and others “knew this was coming,” noting not only Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ move against protections for trans students in his second day on the job — the start of a host of maneuvers to undermine transgender rights in federal law — but also the appointment of Severino, who has a long and well-documented history of antagonism toward LGBTQ rights, to a high profile post that did not require Senate confirmation.

As the press conference ended, the groups on hand, which also included the ACLU, Freedom for All Americans, PFLAG, and the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, began a march to the White House, led by the National Center for Transgender Equality, “to rally against the Trump-Pence administration’s impending attack on the LGBTQ community.”

GayCityNews.nyc | October 25 – November 7, 2018

➤ JUMP, continued on p.5

5

COVER STORY

Trump Anti-Trans Regs Vulnerable to Challenge Proposal flies in face of science, court rulings, but SCOTUS could change that

BY ARTHUR S. LEONARD

T

he proposal by the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) floating within the Trump administration to adopt a regulatory definition of “sex” limited to genital and chromosomal sex, as reported by the New York Times on Sunday — startling as it was — is consistent with the position that Attorney General Jeff Sessions took in a memorandum he circulated within the Justice Department about a year ago.

In that memo, Sessions rejected the argument that laws prohibiting discrimination “because of sex” would extend to discrimination because of gender identity.

Similarly, he rejected coverage for sexual orientation discrimination claims under laws banning sex discrimination.

HHS is seeking the Justice Department’s endorsement for its proposal, and hopes to persuade other departments and agencies to adopt the same definition.

The Times report described this in its headline as “defining transgender out of existence.” Even if a bit overblown, that characterization is roughly accurate for purposes of administrative application of existing federal statutes and regulations.

Any such proposal would have to go through an extended process required under the Administrative Procedure Act before it was published in the Code of Federal Regulations. It must first be published in the Federal Register and opened up to receive public comments.

Public hearings could also be held.

After the conclusion of this “publication and comment” period, the agency would study the public’s input and and then publish a final regulation in the Code of Federal Regulations, accompanied by an explanation of what it means and is intended to accomplish, summarizing the comments received and the agency’s response. It would not become “law” until its final publication in the Federal Register and

6

WHITEHOUSE.GOV

Attorney General Jeff Sessions, seen here with President Donald Trump in 2017, voiced views roughly a year ago consistent with the proposal on transgender rights currently being ciruculated by the Department of Health and Human Services.

the Code of Federal Regulations.

Even then, final publication is never the end of the story for a matter as controversial as this.

Individuals and organizations affected by a new regulation may immediately challenge it in federal court. Claims could be made that it violates constitutional rights or, on a more mundane level, that it is “arbitrary or capricious” and so invalid and not enforceable. Challengers could also argue that it is not authorized by the underlying law it is intended to interpret and is inconsistent with that law’s policy and purpose.

HHS’s proposed regulation, adversely affecting the rights of transgender people under numerous federal laws, would be subject to serious challenge as being “arbitrary and capricious” because it declares as a “fact” something that is contrary to widely held professional opinion in relevant scientific and medical fields. The regulation is also inconsistent with the way numerous courts have interpreted federal laws and rules prohibiting discrimination based on sex.

The notion that sex can be reduced to a simple matter of chromosomes or genitalia — and that everybody can be easily and per-

manently classified as male or female based on a birth certificate notation reflecting a doctor’s visible observation of a newborn’s genitals — has been widely rejected in recent decades in numerous peer-reviewed scientific journals and treatises and, as significantly, by numerous federal courts.

The contention by its HHS authors that their proposed definition is “scientific” is laughable.

It is a definition inspired by politics

and

reli-

gious ideology.

The contention by its HHS authors that their proposed definition is “scientific” is laughable. It is a definition inspired by politics

and religious ideology, and is of a piece with the spurious “factual findings” of the Mattis Memorandum on transgender military service submitted to the president in February. Several federal courts have already rejected that memo as probably violating the constitutional rights of transgender people.

A similar definition adopted as part of a Mississippi statute — which purports to protect those who hold the view that sex is a simple and unchanging matter of chromosomes and genitalia from any adverse treatment under state law — was viewed as probably unconstitutional by a federal judge, partly on the ground of violating the Constitution’s prohibition on an “establishment of religion” as well as its requirement for “equal protection of the laws.” The Mississippi law was preliminarily enjoined from going into effect, although the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals later held that the plaintiffs in that case lacked formal standing for their lawsuit, vacating the injunction. But a new version of the lawsuit continues.

Perhaps more relevantly, on September 19, a federal judge in Denver ordered the State Department to issue a gender-neutral passport to Dana Zzyym, an individual identified as female on their birth certificate, but who does not now identify as either male or female and who sought a passport with an “X” rather than an “M” or an “F.” The court found the State Department’s insistence that everybody identity as M or F “arbitrary and capricious” in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act and beyond its authority under the passport statute. An “X” passport for Zzyym was ordered.

The court did not find it necessary to take up any constitutional issues, having resolved the case on statutory grounds.

Regulatory definitions adopted by government agencies must be based on documented facts, not

➤ VULNERABLE, continued on p.7

October 25 – November 7, 2018 | GayCityNews.nyc

➤ VULNERABLE, from p.6 religious or ideological beliefs. And those agencies do not have authority to amend statutes or overrule court interpretations of statute in their administrative rule-making.

In fact, this HHS proposal is late to the game, with numerous federal courts, including many courts of appeals, already having ruled, for example, that the ban on sex discrimination in insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act — the department’s immediate concern here — extends to gender identity claims. Federal trial courts have ruled in recent weeks that Wisconsin must cover gender transition medical costs for trans state employees based on the ACA, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Similarly, a Minnesota employer’s self-funded health plan was ordered to cover gender transition costs to comply with the ACA. Earlier, a federal court found the Iowa Medicaid program’s refusal to cover gender-affirming surgery for trans Medicaid partic-

ACLU.ORG

Aimee Stephens, who prevailed at the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals on her claim that her firing by a funeral home because of her transgender status was unlawful sex discrimination.

ipants unlawful. And, years ago, the US Tax Court ruled that gender-affirming surgery counts as medically-necessary treatment for purposes of the medical expense tax deduction, overruling decades

of adverse precedent.

There is also a mountain of federal court decisions recognizing the existence of transgender people in the context of prison conditions, employment discrimina-

tion, housing discrimination, and equal credit and educational opportunities. Federal statutes even refer explicitly to gender identity in the context of violence against women and victimization in hate crimes.

Recognition of the concepts of gender identity and transgender individuals are now deeply woven into the texture of federal law, although a religious litigation group has petitioned the Supreme Court to review a gender identity discrimination case in the hopes of persuading the court to roll back the protection for transgender people under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. The high court is expected to announce soon whether it will hear an appeal by the Harris Funeral Homes in Michigan of a Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that their firing of a transgender employee, Aimee Stephens, was illegal sex discrimination.

Unfortunately, if the court were to rule for the employer, that would deliver the result HHS is seeking: the exclusion of transgender people from the protections of federal law and policy.

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7

COMMUNITY

HOP Critics Plan Separate 2019 Civil Rights March Reclaim Pride Coalition says talks with Pride Parade organizers went nowhere

BY DUNCAN OSBORNE

A

coalition that has been challenging the producer of New York City’s annual Pride Parade to limit the corporate presence in that event is calling for a separate “civil rights march” in 2019 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, which mark the start of the modern LGBTQ rights movement.

“LGBTQ+ resistance and liberation are woven through the decades-long history of Pride, and we must honor that and continue the fight on the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion,” said Ann Northrop, a longtime activist and member of the Reclaim Pride Coalition (RPC), in an October 16 press release.

Heritage of Pride (HOP), which produces the city’s annual Pride Parade and related events, has been under fire by activists since 2017 when it reluctantly admitted a resistance contingent to the parade. That contingent showcased community opposition to Donald Trump, a celebrity who won the White House in 2016.

This year, activists unsuccessfully sought to limit the police and corporate presence in the parade and the policing of the parade. Among other demands, activists sought a resistance contingent this year, which they won. At the start of this year’s organizing, there was a clear understanding among the RPC members that they were also focused on the 50th anniversary.

RPC members have attended HOP public meetings and have held private meetings with the organization, as well, seeking to change the tenor of next year’s parade. Publicly, RPC members have said that HOP organizers are little more than party planners who have no interest in the LGBTQ community’s history or politics.

Activists sought a 2019 march that looks more like the early marches that featured community groups and small businesses that if not LGBTQ-owned were directly serving the queer community.

“They are not willing to do that,” Northrop told Gay City News, referring to HOP. The first march marking the 1969 riots happened in 1970. Since then, the event has been contested both within and from outside the LGBTQ community. HOP was incorporated in 1985 and there have been persistent complaints about the corporate presence in the parade. In recent years, corporate sponsors, whose cash funds much of the parade and related events, have been allowed to purchase a spot at the front of the parade. While community groups still comprise most of the parade contingents, the corporations dominate the event with large

8

DONNA ACETO

The Resistance contingent in this year’s LGBTQ Pride Parade.

DONNA ACETO

Sheri Clemons at a June 5 town hall hosted by Heritage of Pride.

floats and many marchers.

The RPC will have an organizing meeting for its 2019 march on December 5 at the People’s Forum on West 37th Street. Northrop told Gay City News that the city is receptive to the march.

She has been contacted by the city’s Office of Citywide Events Coordination and Management, and Corey Johnson, the out gay speaker of the City Council, has expressed his support.

“I actually think that it would be more powerful to have something for Stonewall 50 more in line with the March for our Lives and the Women’s March,” Johnson said on the October 3 episode of Gay USA, the weekly cable program.

“I don’t like all the corporations having the big floats and being at the front of the parade ahead of everyone else… That’s not in the spirit of the

gay rights movement and what we did.”

Northrop hosts Gay USA with Andy Humm, a Gay City News contributor. Johnson was a guest co-host on that episode.

“They are all totally friendly to our march,” Northrop told Gay City News. “The sticking point is the scheduling.”

The RPC members are also objecting to an HOP proposal to hold the opening ceremony of next year’s events at Barclays Center in Brooklyn. Operating rights to that venue are owned

by Mikhail Prokhorov, a Russian oligarch and billionaire. It is operated, in turn, by AEG Facilities, which is owned by Philip Anschutz, a Colorado billionaire and funder of conservative and anti-LGBTQ organizations, politicians, and causes.

“Heritage of Pride has a long track record of sucking up to corporations at the expense of those who live and died for LGBTQ+ liberation, but HOP potentially funding our own political enemies, by renting out a property that homophobe Philip Anschutz’s company manages, sinks to a new low, especially on the 50th anniversary of Stonewall,” Brandon Cuicchi, an RPC member, said in the press release.

While Anschutz now says he no longer funds anti-LGBTQ groups, his history of funding such causes dates to at least 1992 when he gave $10,000 to Colorado for Family Values, the group that sponsored a state ballot initiative that barred lesbian, gay, and bisexual people in that state from seeking anti-discrimination laws except through a state ballot initiative.

The initiative invalidated laws that banned discrimination based on sexual orientation in three Colorado cities. The measure passed, but was struck down by the US Supreme Court in 1996.

As is typically the case, HOP did not respond to a request for comment.

October 25 – November 7, 2018 | GayCityNews.nyc

POLITICS

Cynthia Nixon Says Don’t Vote for Me Though technically on WFP line for Assembly, she supports Deborah Glick

BY LINCOLN ANDERSON

V

illage Democratic district leader Arthur Schwartz may be touting the candidacy of Cynthia Nixon for Assembly over longtime incumbent Deborah Glick — even though Nixon’s campaign has been saying she is supporting Glick. But last week, the one-time gubernatorial hopeful, in an exclusive statement to Schneps Community News Groups, pointedly urged voters not to vote for her.

“I’m aware that my appearance on the ballot has become a story,” Nixon said. “I would like to clarify the situation. There may be those who want to use my presence on the ballot to confuse or mislead voters. I want to be clear: Please do NOT vote for me, vote for Deborah Glick. Her consistent work on progressive issues is needed in Al-

DONNA ACETO

Cynthia Nixon meeting with a group of LGBTQ people of color in August during her gubernatorial campaign.

bany.”

Though Nixon lost to Andrew Cuomo in September, she had already secured the Working Families Party line for the general election. Not wanting to draw votes away from Democrat Cuomo, Nixon and the WFP had a fall-

back plan: she would switch to the 66th Assembly District WFP ballot line. Cuomo has now accepted the Working Families line for governor.

Short of moving out of state, that was the only way Nixon could get off the gubernatorial line.

The State Legislature’s first out lesbian or gay member, Glick has represented the Village-based district for 28 years. Commenting on Nixon’s statement, she said, “As we get close to the election, this is when people will pay attention, and I’m very grateful that she has made that position clear. I’m glad that she has been so clear and forceful in her support for me.”

As for Schwartz’s “campaign” for Nixon, Glick said, “I don’t understand Arthur’s obsession with me.

I am not now or in the future going to engage with Arthur.”

Even though Nixon is saying don’t vote for her, Schwartz said

it might not matter. “That doesn’t mean people won’t vote for Cynthia,” he said, adding, “and it’s a way of expressing displeasure with Deborah. We’ll see what happens.”

Regarding his campaign methods, Schwartz said, “I will tell people to vote for Cynthia. How I’m going to do that beyond email, I don’t know yet.” He previously said he has an email database of names of 10,000 “prime voters” from a short-lived run against Glick in the Democratic primary two years ago, Asked if he would send a mailer, Schwartz said, “And pay $5,000?

Too expensive.”

A group that is putting resources into the race — for Glick — is the WFP. Bill Lipton, the group’s state director, said the party will do robocalls and a press conference to make clear she is the WFP’s “endorsed candidate,” even if not on its ballot line.

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9

CIVIL RIGHTS

Fast Food Chain’s Evidence Rebuts Bias Claim Texas Chicken & Burgers files photos, videos showing it served trans customers

BY DUNCAN OSBORNE

T

exas Chicken & Burgers has responded forcefully to a lawsuit accusing a Harlem outlet of the fast food chain of refusing to serve five transgender and gender nonconforming customers by including video stills in a court filing showing the five apparently being served and a credit card receipt that the chain says shows that one of the five paid for the food they charged they were never permitted to order.

“As more fully set forth herein and as confirmed by clear, unambiguous photographic and other documentary evidence, the Plaintiffs… paid for the food they ordered and were served the food they ordered,” the company wrote in response to the lawsuit that was filed in state court on August 5.

The plaintiffs — Daniele Marino, Deja Smith, Jahmila Adderley, Janovia Chase, and Valerie Spencer — and their attorneys held a press conference outside the Stonewall Inn on August 9 and linked the lawsuit and the restaurant’s actions to the LGBTQ community’s history and ongoing battle for equality under the law.

“These folks are demanding to be heard,” 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, said at the press conference. “This sort of bravery is exactly what we need at this moment… New York has zero tolerance for transphobia and homophobia.”

Ben Crump, a civil rights attorney, is working on the lawsuit with Weitz & Luxenberg. He flew from his office in Florida to attend the August 9 press conference. Recalling past scenes of civil rights activists who have prompted action to promote or defend civil rights, Crump said at the press conference “We’re going to see if the transgender community can get justice when it’s on video.”

The allegation was that the five were refused service because they

10

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.

are transgender or gender nonconforming when they visited the chain’s outlet on Frederick Douglass Boulevard early in the morning on May 28.

The chain is not only denying that, but has countersued for defamation. In its court filing, the company included date and timestamped video stills showing the five standing at the outlet’s counter apparently ordering food and then later being offered that food. It also included date and time-stamped order and credit card receipts. The date and time stamps on the stills and receipts show the ordering and transactions occurring at about the same time over roughly seven minutes.

While there is no name on the order and credit card receipts, Paul Pennock, an attorney with Weitz & Luxenberg, wrote in an October 22 response to the chain’s countersuit that the plaintiffs “Admit that Deja Smith gave her credit card to the cashier.” Pennock did not respond to an email seeking comment.

On May 28, Smith used her cellphone to record what occurred in the restaurant after the time when they say they were refused service so if that refusal occurred, there is no known record of it. Smith posted two videos of the encounter on her Instagram page. One received more than 15,500 views and the second more than 33,600 views.

“I am sharing this with all of my

12k+ social media followers,” Smith wrote on Instagram on May 28. “@ texaschickenandburgers your Racist and/or Transphobic cashiers basically refused my group of #Trans and #GenderNonComforming friends service in the midst of serving white and cis patrons… I can’t believe this happened in 2018. I am outraged and emotionally shaken.”

The videos received widespread distribution on social media and the press conference was also covered by mainstream and LGBTQ media. Actress Laverne Cox posted one of the videos on her Instagram page where it has received nearly 330,000 views.

“It’s not about the chicken tenders,” Cox wrote on May 28. “It’s about being refused service and being treated like a second class citizen. I love my friends and I am so sad and disappointed and angry this happened to them but I know it happens to trans also gender nonconforming people everyday far too often especially when they are of color.”

As of October 23, those videos were still on Instagram. Cliff Schneider, who represents Texas Chicken & Burgers and is the managing partner at Cohen Schneider Law, declined to comment. The company is seeking an apology and damages.

“The allegations as set forth in the Plaintiffs’ Complaint were pled with intentional disregard for the

truth, and the efforts undertaken

by Plaintiffs on social and traditional media to paint TC&B as an organization that condones and engages in discrimination of any kind are wholly without merit and do nothing other than strengthen TC&B’s damages for defamation,” the company wrote. “Plaintiffs’ claims should be denied in their entirety, TC&B’s counterclaims should be sustained and damages awarded to TC&B accordingly and an apology should be issued

by Plaintiffs to TC&B for the harm they have inflicted.”

The original allegation was that the five were first ignored when they attempted to order and were then told that there was no chicken in the restaurant, which was close to closing. The chain said that the five refused the food after it was prepared and they were given a cash refund. The company posted a statement on its Instagram account on May 29.

“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 company said.

October 25 – November 7, 2018 | GayCityNews.nyc

NEWS, IN BRIEF BY ANDY HUMM Kavanaugh Tacks to Right of Gorsuch At oral arguments at the US Supreme Court on October 10, the justices took up the issue of whether ICE must detain immigrants guilty of even minor crimes committed long ago. Justice Brett Kavanaugh said a 1996 law passed by Congress demanded it and made no provision for a bail hearing.

That was too much for the Trump-appointed Justice Neil Gorsuch, who asked government lawyers if there was “any limit” on their power in these cases. He followed up on Justice Stephen Breyer’s question whether an immigrant could be detained “on his death bed, after stealing bus transfers” half a century ago. The government lawyer insisted there was no time limit on these infractions.

Gorsuch was seen as potentially joining the court’s more liberal members in striking the law down as he did in an immigrant detention law he found unconstitutionally vague.

Kavanaugh positioning himself

to the right of Gorsuch is startling, given that one of Gorsuch’s first written opinions, in June 2017, dissented from the high court’s finding that the 2015 marriage equality ruling necessarily meant that the wife of an Arkansas birth mother has the right to be listed on the child’s birth certificate. Gorsuch found that it was not settled law that the marriage decision implicated all the rights and benefits different-sex couples enjoy.

Kavanugh’s Ethical Violations and Conflicts More than a dozen ethics complaints have been filed against Justice Brett Kavanugh — on matter ranging from his partisan tirade before the Senate Judiciary Committee late last month, when he said “What goes around comes around,” to his lying under oath in confirmation hearings in both 2004 and this year about his involvement in accessing documents stolen from Democratic committee staff in 2002 when he was an aide to President George W. Bush.

Chief Justice Roberts has referred the complaints to Timothy Tymkovich, the chief judge of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Colorado. The UK Guardian has obtained proof that Kavanaugh was a key player in 2001 as a Bush aide getting the “staunch conservative” Tymkovich confirmed despite his record of strong opposition to LGBTQ rights. As aolicitor general of Colorado, Tymkovich unsuccessfully argued the Romer v. Evans case before the Supreme Court in 1996 — defending the state’s Amendment 2 that barred the state or its municipalities from enacting civil rights protections for LGBTQ people. Kavanaugh’s advocacy helped secure Tymkovich’s confirmation, and now Tymkovich is in charge of adjudicating the ethics complaints against Kavanaugh.

Justice Department’s New Civil Chief Is Anti-Gay Crusader Eric Dreiband, an attorney with the firm Jones Day who defended the University of North Carolina in its honoring of that state’s anti-LG-

BTQ “bathroom bill” and fought to allow anti-LGBTQ discrimination by medical providers who cite their “faith”-based objections under the Affordable Care Act, was confirmed on a party-line vote to head the Civil Rights Division of the US Justice Department.

Dreiband now responsible for overseeing enforcement of all federal civil rights laws and what’s left of the Voting Rights Act. At Jones Day, he often represented corporate clients defending themselves against discrimination claims.

Schumer Gives McConnell an Inch... And Guess What?

Eager to let his members go home and campaign for the November 6 midterms, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, New York’s senior senator, made a deal October 11 with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the dour Kentucky Republican, to allow votes on 15 more Trump-nominated right wing judges for the federal courts and

➤ NEWS, IN BRIEF, continued on p.13

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GayCityNews.nyc | October 25 – November 7, 2018

11

REMEMBERANCE

Final Rites for Matthew Shepard Gay college student, murdered 20 years ago, to be interred at Washington National Cathedral

BY PAUL SCHINDLER

M

atthew Shepard, the 21-year-old college student who died 20 years ago on October 12, days after suffering a brutal homophobic attack from two men in Laramie, Wyoming, will finally be laid to rest at the Washington National Cathedral on October 26.

“We’ve given much thought to Matt’s final resting place, and we found the Washington National Cathedral is an ideal choice, as Matt loved the Episcopal Church and felt welcomed by his church in Wyoming,” said Judy Shepard, Matthew’s mother, in a written statement. “For the past 20 years, we have shared Matt’s story with the world. It’s reassuring to know he now will rest in a sacred spot where folks can come to reflect on creating a safer, kinder world.”

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other hate-fueled harassment and violence. A release this week from the foundation noted that there have been 22 known murders of transgender people in the US this year, and that, since 2016, the rate of bias attacks against Latinx and Muslim Americans has risen even faster than against LGBTQ people.

“Due to the environment that the current administration has impressed upon us, our work is more relevant than ever,” Jason Marsden, the foundation’s executive director, said in an email release.

In 2009, President Barack Obama signed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr., Hate Crimes Prevention Act. Byrd was an African-American man murdered in Texas in 1998 by three white supremacists, who dragged his body three miles tied to the back of a truck.

Judy is quoted in published reports explaining that at the time of Matthew’s death, the family was concerned that the notoriety of the murder would attract undue attention and perhaps even vandalism at a gravesite in Wyoming. The Westboro Baptist Church, then headed by Fred Phelps who led a God Hates Fags ministry, picketed Shepard’s 1998 funeral.

Matthew cremated remains will be interred in the cathedral, along with those of approximately 200

College student Matthew Shepard was murdered 20 years ago this month in Laramie, Wyoming.

other people, including President Woodrow Wilson and Helen Keller and her teacher Anne Sullivan.

The Shepard family will participate in a service of thanksgiving and remembrance on October 26, which will be officiated by the Right Reverend V. Gene Robinson, the first out gay bishop consecrated in the Episcopal Church, and the Right Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington.

The Very Rev. Randolph Marshall Hollerith, dean of the cathedral, said, “Matthew Shepard’s death is an enduring tragedy affecting all people and should serve as an ongoing call to the nation to reject anti-LGBTQ bigotry and instead embrace each of our neighbors for who they are. In the years since Matthew’s death, the Shepard family has shown extraordinary courage and grace in keeping his spirit and memory alive, and the Cathedral is honored and humbled to serve as his final resting place.”

In a release announcing the service and interment, the Shepards noted the cathedral’s long encouragement of the LGBTQ community’s full participation in its congregation.

The service will take place at 10 a.m. on October 26 at the cathedral, 3101 Wisconsin Avenue in Washington.

October 25 – November 7, 2018 | GayCityNews.nyc

NEWS, IN BRIEF BY ANDY HUMM ➤ NEWS, IN BRIEF, from p.11 then adjourn. Schumer’s rationale was that they would be confirmed eventually by this Senate and the most Democrats could do was slow down the process.

Republicans, however, did not completely adjourn. With almost all senators out of town, a skeletal group of Republicans held “hearings” on still more judicial nominees from the far right, including for the first time someone who actually worked for Alliance Defending Freedom, the anti-LGBTQ group responsible for bringing most legal actions aimed at limiting the community’s rights and allowing religious people the right to discriminate based on First Amendment free exercise claims.

Allison Rushing, 36, interned for the group and has been nominated for the Richmond, Virginia-based Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.

She graduated from law school in 2007 and not only has no experience as a judge, but does not even have the 12 years of legal experi-

ence necessary for the American Bar Association to consider her qualified to serve as a federal judge.

Trump has also nominated an out gay conservative, Patrick Bumatay — an éminence grise at age 40 — who belongs to an LGBTQ law association in California and who claims the distinction of assisting in the nominations of John Roberts, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. Of late, he’s been advising Attorney General Jeff Sessions on opioids and organized crime.

Florida Judge Throws out Public Sex Charges Police arrested 19 men in a sting operation for having sex at the Pleasure Emporium sex shop and theater in Hollywood, Florida, in July. Judge Ginger Lerner-Wren found that the establishment is not a “public place” under the law and police had no business interfering with “consensual sexual activity” in a place where patrons had “a reasonable expectation of privacy.”

One of the detectives on the case said the activity in the Emporium “offended” him and that “patrons solicited and groped him” the SunSentinel reported. The judge said that there were many barriers in place to protect patrons from seeing or participating in sexual activity.

Some of the 19 men had already pled guilty to a misdemeanor offense and were supposed to get their criminal record expunged if they complete a diversion program.

Lawyers for those acquitted have offered to help them if they want their cases reopened.

Uruguay Approves Sweeping Trans Rights Law While the Trump administration continues its assault on transgender rights and humanity, the leftist Congress in Uruguay on October 18 passed a law that gives its people the right to gender confirmation surgery and hormone treatments.

It also mandates that one percent of government jobs be set aside for transgender people and that a pen-

sion fund be established for trans people who were persecuted by the right-wing military government from 1973 to 1985.

Anti-Gay Mob Brutally Murdered Iraqi Boy Shocking video out of Baghdad that emerged over the past two weeks shows a delicate 14-yearold boy, identified as Hamoudi alMutairi, being stabbed to death in the streets near his home because he was perceived to be gay. As his killers stabbed him, they taunted him and joked. He could be heard plaintively calling for his mother as he died at the scene. Video of the attack was shot by a member of the mob that attacked the youth, and then circulated on the web.

Catholic Pharmacist: No Medication for You! Rachel Peterson needed a prescription for misoprostol filled to treat her for an impending miscarriage to avoid sepsis, but the phar-

➤ NEWS, IN BRIEF, continued on p.15

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GayCityNews.nyc | October 25 – November 7, 2018

13

CRIMINAL JUSTICE

Legal Pot Movement on Two Fronts Last Week State Assembly holds hearing while lobbying firm hosts Manhattan summit

BY NATHAN RILEY

T

he Albany County district attorney made an impassioned plea for taxing and regulating the sale of marijuana to adults at a State Assembly hearing October 16, saying ending the war on pot is a logical next step in the process that began in 2004 with the repeal of the draconian Rockefeller era drug laws.

David Soares, who is also the president of the New York State District Attorneys Association, said there is disagreement on this issue within that group but that “several” DAs had similar views. Soares has intensively studied Colorado’s example as the first state to permit adult use of marijuana and emphasized that the new tax revenues from legalization must restore “vulnerable” communities where residents have been arrested by the tens of thousands while pot use by white New Yorkers was overlooked by law enforcement.

“Real Courage,” he told a joint hearing of several Assembly Committees on adult use of marijuana,

14

NEW YORK STATE ASSEMBLY

Albany County DA David Soares, who is also the president of the State District Attorneys Association, spoke out in favor of marijuana legalization at an October 16 Assembly hearing.

is about addressing the “aftermath” of the war on drugs, winning the peace with a plan for “reconstruction” of neighborhoods unsettled by mass incarceration. Simply closing the illegal market for pot could have grim consequences; dealers could replace what is on their shelves with opioids.

“If you don’t recycle the money, you’re buying yourself a bigger problem,” Soares warned.

Proposed legislation creating a tax and regulate system provides for community reinvestment. Spon-

sored by Manhattan Democratic Senator Liz Krueger and Assemblymember Crystal Peoples-Stokes, a Buffalo Democrat, the measure creates a marijuana revenue fund from tax receipts — net of administrative and oversight costs — that would funnel 25 percent to the State Education Department, 25 percent for drug treatment and public education, and 50 percent for community reinvestment.

Specific regulations implementing the legislation would be drafted by a new bureau in the State Liquor Authority, which was established in 1933 to create from scratch a system of legal liquor sales following the repeal of Prohibition. The SLA would repeat this mission by licensing and managing the production and sale of legal marijuana.

A cornerstone of the SLA is a system favoring small business ownership of retail outlets, Krueger told a conference, also held October 16, organized by Capalino+Company, which is recruiting clients that would benefit from a regulated market. Under this approach — which represented a persistent theme touched on at the event that drew roughly 200 people — residents of low-income neighborhoods would be given an opportunity to go into business as retail sellers of legal marijuana.

Billed as the “Cannabis Summit: Developing a Sustainable Cannabis Economy in New York,” the Capalino event featured a keynote addresses by Melissa Mark-Viveri-

to, the former City Council speaker who is now a senior official at the Latino Victory Fund, and Melissa Moore, the deputy state director of the Drug Policy Alliance, a leader in the movement to end drug prohibition.

Krueger’s bill would permit people with marijuana convictions to petition for a review of their criminal justice records. Marijuana convictions complicate the abiity of some to access jobs and scholarships for which they are otherwise qualified.

In his hearing testimony, Soares strongly supported this objective, saying, “We must work to seal and reclassify” previous convictions and “move from stigma to opportunity.”

Krueger voiced particular pride that her bill would respect New Yorkers who object to second-hand smoke. Tenants in smoke-free buildings would be prohibited from smoking pot at home. Doctors, she said with a sly grin, believe that inhaling a burning leaf of any kind is dangerous.

Soares — responding to questions from the Assembly panel chaired by Dick Gottfried from Manhattan, the Health Committee chair, Joe Lentol from Brooklyn who heads the Codes Committee, and Manhattan’s Linda Rosenthal, chair of the Committee on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse — devoted a lot of time to addressing the risks of drivers being stoned. Currently, the police bring charges as soon as they smell pot, but with legalization that trigger would disappear.

The Albany prosecutor said police would have to be trained in drug detection, and if a reliable blood test were developed police labs would need additional funding. He recommended that anyone refusing a blood test have their license suspended.

In any discussion of plans for legalizing pot, Krueger acknowledged, the elephant in the room is a proposal from Governor Andrew Cuomo that is likely to be part of the budget he unveils next year.

The governor’s wishes would hold center stage in Albany.

October 25 – November 7, 2018 | GayCityNews.nyc

NEWS, IN BRIEF BY ANDY HUMM ➤ NEWS, IN BRIEF, from p.13

macy that will.

macist at a Meijer supermarket in Petoskey, Michigan told her she was just trying to abort her fetus and “as a good Catholic male” he would not fill her prescription. He also would not refer her to someone who would — even though her doctor said that her fetus was not viable and a delay in taking the medication would subject her to risky surgery. She had to drive three hours to find a pharmacy that would sell her the necessary drug.

The American Civil Liberties Union is suing the supermarket chain on her behalf. Meijer issued a statement saying it “strives to treat customers with dignity and respect.” The store didn’t say whether it fired the pharmacist, just that he doesn’t work there anymore. Company policy does allow pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions in some conscience cases, but they are then required to get another employee to fill it or to transfer the prescription to a convenient phar-

Out, Advocate Owners Give Big to Anti-LGBTQ GOP Oreva Capital now owns Out magazine and the Advocate. Adam Levin and Maxx Abramowitz who founded and operate Oreva have donated to a whole bunch of antiLGBTQ Republican elected officials, including Senator Dean Heller of Nevada and Representative Devin Nunes of California. Nunes’ California colleague, Dana Rohrchaer, another beneficiary of Levin and Abramowitz’s largesse, even opposes fair housing laws that protect gay people.

Stacey Abrams Breaks Atlanta Pride Barrier Stacey Abrams In the midst of a tight race for governor of Georgia, Stacey Abrams, the Democratic nominee, on October 14 became the first major party candidate to march in the Atlanta’s LGBTQ Pride Parade.

Abrams’ Republican opponent, Brian Kemp, is not only opposed to

LGBTQ rights but is using his position as Georgia secretary of state to suppress the African-American vote.

That said, Kemp was revealed this week to be advertising his candidacy on the gay hook-up app Grindr — likely unintentionally.

Marriage Updates from Around the Globe Taiwan will hold two referenda on gay relationships this fall. Since the Constitutional Court there has mandated that the country give equal rights to gay couples, the right wing has put forth a proposal limiting marriage to different-sex couples and providing civil unions for same-sex couples. The LGBTQ rights movement has qualified another proposal that would open marriage to gay couples. Both will be on the ballot on November 24.

If gay couples are limited to civil unions by the referenda, activists have vowed to go back to the Constitutional Court for an explicit grant of equal marriage rights.

In Honduras, opponents of

same-sex marriage were able to meet with members of the country’s high court to express their displeasure at an impending ruling opening marriage to gay couples — following a ruling earlier this year from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights that binds all member nations in Latin America to institute marriage equality.

President Juan Orlando Hernández said he that personally opposes same-sex marriage, but that all people should be treated with “dignity” and he will abide by the ruling of the Honduran judiciary.

Poland’s high court has ruled that both members of a same-sex couple can register as parents.

Thailand is set to approve samesex unions — falling short of equal marriage to the consternation of activists.

In Austria, the government finally accepted a court ruling from December that gay couples can marry. The plaintiff couples are allowed to marry now and one of them did this month. All others can marry starting January 1.

IT’S MORE THAN A ROOFTOP

It’s how the Brooklyn Navy Yard helped us become one of North America’s top ten solar producers. Learn more at coned.com/solar

GayCityNews.nyc | October 25 – November 7, 2018

15

PERSPECTIVE: Understanding the Rights We’ve Won PRESIDENT & PUBLISHER Victoria Schneps-Yunis

Immigration Benefits Available To Same-Sex Couples

CEO & CO-PUBLISHER Joshua Schneps FOUNDING EDITOR IN-CHIEF & ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER PAUL SCHINDLER

editor@gaycitynews.com ASSOCIATE EDITOR DUNCAN OSBORNE

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS DONNA ACETO (Photo Editor) CHRISTOPHER BYRNE (Theater), SUSIE DAY (Perspective), BRIAN McCORMICK (Dance)

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Seth J. Bookey, Anthony M.Brown, Kelly Jean Cogswell, Andres Duque, Michael Ehrhardt, Steve Erickson, Andy Humm, Eli Jacobson, David Kennerley, Gary M. Kramer, Arthur S. Leonard, Michael T. Luongo, Lawrence D. Mass, Winnie McCroy, Eileen McDermott, Mick Meenan, Tim Miller, Donna Minkowitz, Gregory Montreuil, Christopher Murray, David Noh, Sam Oglesby, Nathan Riley, David Shengold, Ed Sikov, Yoav Sivan, Gus Solomons Jr., Tim Teeman, Kathleen Warnock, Benjamin Weinthal, Dean P. Wrzeszcz

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BY PABLO G. VELEZ

E

ight years ago,on November 9, 2010, Edith Windsor sued the US government in the Southern District of New York for discriminating against her in not allowing her to claim the federal estate tax exemption given to widows when inheriting from their deceased spouses. Although she had been lawfully married under New York Law to her late spouse, Thea Spyer, the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) did not recognize her union at the federal level.

After a three-year battle, the Supreme Court struck down DOMA as unconstitutional and afforded samesex couples all federally recognized marital rights. This monumental decision meant that same-sex couples could now petition for Legal Permanent Resident (LPR) status for their families.

Since immigration law is federal law, US citizens and Legal Permanent Residents in same-sex relationships, until the 2013 decision in Windsor, were barred from petitioning for status for certain relatives. It is important to recognize that since the repeal

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Pablo G. Velez is a managing attorney at Velez & Cipriano, PLLC, which practices in areas of immigration and naturalization, business, and insurance law.

PERSPECTIVE: A Dyke Abroad

Beauty and the Beast in Gay Paree

BY KELLY COGSWELL

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by City Media LLC. Send all inquiries to: Gay City News, One Metrotech North, 10th Floor, Brooklyn, NY 11201. Phone: 212.229.1890 Written permission of the publisher must be obtained before any of the contents of this paper, in part or whole, can be reproduced or redistributed.

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of DOMA, all Americans can petition for the status of their spouses, stepchildren, and fiancées using the following criteria: Spouse of a US Citizen: A US citizen with a same-sex spouse is now eligible to petition for their spouse’s LPR status. The only requirement is that the couple be legally married in the jurisdiction where the ceremony took place. The spouse can enter the US with a valid immigrant visa after interviewing at the local consulate, receiving their Green Card shortly after arrival. If the foreign national spouse is already present in the US, they can petition domestically through US Citizenships and Immigration Services (USCIS). This includes the ability to apply for work as well as travel authorization allowing them to leave and re-enter the US while their interview is pending.

Spouse of a Legal Permanent Resident: Green Card holders with same-sex spouses can also petition for their spouse’s LPR status. The same process applies in which the foreign spouse interviews at the local consulate for an immigrant visa.

However, the difference between this and being a US Citizen sponsor is

that the foreign national spouse may only interview while in the US if they can prove that they are legally present throughout the entire duration of the process.

Stepchild of a US Citizen: The US citizen stepparent may also petition for the natural or adopted children (under 21 years of age) of their samesex foreign spouses, as long as the couple were married before the child’s 18th birthday.

Stepchild of a Legal Permanent Resident: The LPR stepparent can also petition for the natural or adopted children (under 21 years of age) of their same-sex foreign spouses, but the foreign stepchild must be lawfully present in the US throughout the entire process.

Fiancée of a US Citizen: A US citizen may petition for their same-sex foreign national fiancée to enter the US in order to be married within 90 days of entry. Once legally married, the foreign national spouse may apply for LPR status. This includes the benefits of remaining in the US during the process, and receiving work and travel authorization to leave the US while the Green Card is pending.

P

aris’ Place de la République can be so beautiful, especially at night, when the street lamps shine and the central figure of Marianne towers benignly against the dark sky, representing the Nation. Seen from a distance, she makes it easy to imagine that liberty and equality and fraternity are all gloriously within reach.

In reality, I avoid actually walking through the plaza even if my girlfriend and I are staying just a few blocks away. It stinks of testosterone. Demos begin or end there, sometimes turning violent. Skater boys slam their boards down on the concrete and roar past pedestrians. At all times groups of men hang out rolling cigarettes and drinking cans of beer with the glazed

and satisfied eyes of colonizers.

At dusk, on October 8, two dykes got attacked there. They were sitting on a bench, about to have a picnic dinner, when some man came over and started insulting them. Then he punched one in the face, busting up her jaw. Somebody intervened before it could get worse, and the guy took off. At least the next day, the two women filed a police report.

Last Tuesday, in a nearby neighborhood, the president of Urgence Homophobie, Guillaume Mélanie, got bashed. He tweeted a selfie of his battered face. “Tonight, it was my turn.

Homophobic attack as I left a restaurant. Broken nose. Shocked. Blood everywhere. I’m gay, and this is 2018.”

Before that it was another. Before that another. All over the city. In the suburbs. Across the country. Trans

women face the most deadly violence.

In August, Vanesa Campos, a sex worker from Perú, was killed when she tried to stop a group of men from robbing a client in the Bois de Boulogne, a sprawling public park of more than 2,000 acres on the outskirts of Paris.

Last year, on average, a homophobic attack was reported in Paris every three days, according to the police, who now say that incidents “of a homophobic nature” are down 37 percent this year. An increase in calls to queer hotlines, though, seems to indicate that violence is up. It’s impossible to have clear figures. Maybe people are calling the hotline instead of the cops. Or more people are calling because they feel safer than they used

➤ BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, continued on p.17 October 25 – November 7, 2018 | GayCityNews.nyc

PERSPECTIVE: Media Circus

The Terrifying Stupidity of Erasing People What must it be like to wake up one morning and find that you have been vaporized? It must be odd, to say the least. You’re there; you can’t help but be there. You’re still you, after all. But somehow you’re not there anymore. You’re not anywhere. You no longer exist.

That is exactly what happened to our transgender brothers and sisters. They woke up one morning and found that they had all gone poof, just like that.

“Trump Administration Trying to Define Transgender Out of Existence: NY Times,” ran the headline from Reuters. The reporter, Daniel Trotta, went on to explain how this amazing disappearing act worked: “The government of US President Donald Trump is attempting to strip transgender people of official recognition by creating a narrow definition of gender as being only male or female and unchangeable once it is determined at birth, The New York Times reported on Sunday.

“The Department of Health and Human Services has undertaken an effort across several government departments to establish a legal definition of sex under Title IX, the federal civil rights law that bans discrimination on the basis of sex, the Times said, citing a government memo that it obtained.”

“That definition would be as either male or female, unchangeable, and determined by the genitals a

person is born with, the Times reported.”

Although I would like to try this vanishing trick on certain people, Donald J. Trump first and foremost among them, the whole thing is so patently stupid and yet so dangerous, so absurd and knuckleheaded, that I literally gagged on my morning coffee when I read it on Sunday.

“They are saying we don’t exist,” said Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Rights, in an interview. Issuing this statement was a very difficult feat, considering that Keisling doesn’t exist and therefore cannot be expected to say anything.

If it wasn’t so terrifying, it might actually be funny.

But it is terrifying. To render a whole category of human beings nonexistent by way of an edict would be the first step to fascism, except of course for the fact that the Trump administration has already taken so many steps down that road that we’re already hearing the sound of jackboots.

Trotta explained the circumstances this way: “A spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) declined to comment on what she called ‘allegedly leaked documents’ but cited a ruling by a conservative US district judge as a guide to transgender policy. Ruling

on a challenge to one aspect of the Affordable Care Act, US District Judge Reed O’Connor in Texas found in 2016 that there was no protection against discrimination on the basis of gender identity.”

(Reed’s district court is the goto venue for anti-LGBTQ litigation groups.)

One of the core concepts in gender studies is that sex is biological while gender is cultural, meaning — to put a gloss on a very complicated set of thoughts — sex is about genitals whereas gender is about practically everything else. We can change genders fairly easily; all you need to do is wear clothes that don’t conform to the expectations of sex. And not to medicalize the situation too terribly much (a gender studies no-no), sex reassignment surgeries have been performed since 1931, so there’s nothing much new with that particular concept.

The only light in this hellish story came the following day, when the ever-superb Jennifer Finney Boylan’s column appeared on the Times’ op-ed page.

“I was surprised to learn on Sunday morning that I do not exist,” she began. “This will come as sad news to my children, to whom I’ve been a mother for over 20 years now. It will come as a shock to my wife, too, to whom I’ve been married for 30 years. It would have been a disappointment for my mother,

as well — the conservative, evangelical Christian Republican, who, when she learned I was transgender, two decades ago, said, ‘I would never turn my back on my child...’

“It is so disappointing, then, and more than a little embarrassing, to learn I’m imaginary — a creature no more real than the cyclops, or a hippogriff [Pssst — I had to look it up, too, having never read a single Harry Potter book]. President Trump and company should be prepared for the consequences of this decision — because the people most likely to be disappointed in this Glum New World will be themselves.

“They will be disappointed to find themselves — if they are men — standing in a men’s room with me. Even though I have breasts and a vagina and a clitoris (and I do thank you for asking), in the new world that they’re creating I’ll be right there in the boy’s room with them, checking my bra straps and putting on eyeliner — you know, because of the Y chromosome that they insist is the only gender marker that matters.

“Don’t like this world? Well, you could have left us alone... All it will do is make people suffer.

“Can any good come out of this miserable moment? Well, I can hope that this will inspire people, more than ever, to fight back — not

➤ BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, from p.16

me. I’ve known dykes who didn’t even go to the ER after a beating. As for a trans woman, every time she leaves her house she’s fair game for insults, even if she’s just doing her laundry. How often would she pick up the phone? Or tweet?

Homophobes are increasingly vocal right now in France because the government is close to legalizing artificial insemination for single women and lesbian couples. (It’s currently only available to straight couples.) And there’s a chance dykes might still be banned. Last year, the Conseil d’Etat, the Council of State which advises the government, ruled that it was not discriminatory at all, but in the “general interest” to exclude lesbians from artificial insemina-

tion. They recently reiterated that “it wasn’t opposed to the principle of equality for a lawmaker to create different sets of rules for different situations.”

Journalists often make things worse. As in the US when it comes to abortion, it’s typical for talk shows to create all male panels from across the political and religious spectrum for the sole purpose of discussing an issue that doesn’t affect them at all. Ditto for some print journalists who just interview men.

As usual, even the most progressive journalists indulge purveyors of anti-gay rhetoric characterizing people like me as pervs, unfit parents, destroyers of the family, of the Nation, of the world.

If only. If only I could destroy

the world — as it is. I’d start by eviscerating those journalists and politicians who frame this as an abstract “ethical issue,” or even as a “debate” like any other, no more grave than a discussion over whether or not one prefers Pepsi over Coke. No, this is a question of human rights that for us are dead serious. Are we equal or not? Are we part of the human fraternity?

Are we even allowed to walk freely down the street without being harassed, or beaten? Killed?

I’ll let you know. The new bill about artificial insemination will be introduced in Parliament at the end of this year, and debated in 2019. Huge right-wing demonstrations are expected. And with them even more violence.

to. Or maybe there really are more attacks.

It’s also hard to say just who is getting bashed. Sunday, queers packed the Place de la République for a rally against violence. And according to one speaker, a fag is victimized once every three days, and dykes once every ten days. But dig a little deeper, he said, and the research shows lesbians rarely report attacks.

I’m not surprised. We get harassed all the time, if not as dykes, as women. You’d have to have SOS Homophobia and the cops on speed dial. I’ve never reported any of the times I’ve been called a fucking dyke, or had something thrown at

GayCityNews.nyc | October 25 – November 7, 2018

➤ ERASURE, continued on p.33

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WHAT’S DOIN’ IN THE GAY CITY theaterforthenewcity.net Or 212-254–1109

ADAM ON HIS OWN In “Adam Minus Josh,” by Dan Fingerman, Adam and Josh have been together for eight years... only now they’re not and everyone has an opinion. Fingerman’s new comedy examines the chaos of gay dating culture, skewers our need for social media, and gives voice to Adam who must now navigate an entirely new dating world while trying to figure out who he is and what’s next. “Adam Minus Josh” features David Edwin, Lindsey Lake, Jesse Reid, and Marc Sinoway. Dennis Corsi directs.

Theaterlab, 357 W. 36th St. Oct. 25 at 7:30 p.m.; Oct. 26 at 8 p.m.; Oct. 27 at 2 p.m.

Oct. 28 at 5 p.m.; Nov. 1 at 7:30 p.m.; Nov. 2 at 8 p.m.

Nov. 3 at 2 p.m. & 8 p.m. $25 at adamminusjosh.com

Oct. 26 at 10:30 p.m. $7 at ticketfly.com/event/1770168skint-prom-from-hell-brooklyn $10 at the door

THE MUSIC OF BILLY STRAYHORN Fourteen-time Grammy Awardwinning Cuban music legend and multi-reed artist Paquito D’Rivera teams up with dynamic “shapeshifter” pianist John di Martino and his trio to present an evening of the music of Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington.

Flushing Town Hall, 137-35 Northern Blvd. at Linden Pl. Oct. 26 at 8 p.m. $25/ $20 for members & students/ free for teens flushingtownhall.org Or 718-463–7700

HALLOWKWEEN! Hallowkween is a spook-tacular party benefiting the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus. Dance the night away with ghosts, ghouls, fierce kweens, and nightlife monsters of all varieties. Dress to impress in your best costume. Featuring DJ Nicky BoomBox. There’s a costume contest with prizes and a pick-aprize auction. All proceeds directly benefit the chorus.

Hudson Terrace. 621 W. 46th St. Oct. 26 from 8 p.m.–3 a.m. $40 at nycgmc.org/events/2018/ 10/16/hallokween $45 at the door

PROM FROM HELL HALLOWEEN PARTY “Are we going to prom or to hell?”

– Veronica Sawyer, “Heathers.” This Halloween season, the answer is both — at the skint’s Prom From Hell Halloween Party, which exorcises the demons of proms past with a Halloween blowout featuring music of the 1980, ’90s, and 2000s spun by DJs Brendan and Bianca, horror movie projections by Music Video Time Machine, a photo booth

by Nikki, and spiked drink specials.

What to wear? Dress as Dragula, a Black Magic Woman, Laurie Strode, dead ringers, a broken subway tile.

Those who conjure the best looks can enter the costume contest and be rewarded with prizes.

Littlefield, 635 Sackett St., btwn.

Third & Fourth Aves., Gowanus

BAAD! HALLOWEEN The Bronx Academy of Arts & Dance presents a Halloween party and open stage — an evening of costumes, dancing, and artful fun emcee’d by Appolonia Cruz. Everyone is everyone is invited to sing, dance, read, or perform for the open stage beginning at 8:30 p.m. Doors open at 7 p.m.

2474 Westchester Ave. at St. Peter’s Ave. Oct. 27 at 7 p.m.

Free; BAADBronx.org Or 718-918–2110

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JONATHAN SL AFF

Hot Lavendar Swing Band at Theater for the New City’s Halloween Costume Ball.

AUDREY SILVER: JAZZ STANDARDS & ORIGINALS Audrey Silver will be accompanied by a remarkable group of musicians as she sings original works, jazz standards, a French song, and

a contemporary piece. Silver’s next album, “Let Me Know Your Heart,” featuring six original songs, will be released in 2019. Silver performs with Bruce Barth on piano, Alex Pope Norris on trumpet, and Paul Beaudry on bass.

The Cornelia Street Cafe 29 Cornelia St., btwn.

Bleecker & W. Fourth Sts. Oct. 28 at 6 p.m. $10 cover, with $10 food & drink minimum Corneliastreetcafe.com Or 212-989–9319 THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY HALLOWEEN COSTUME BALL Nonstop theater, a costume competition, and ballroom dancing bewitch the East Village in Theater for the New City’s 42nd annual Village Halloween Costume Ball. This unique festival is a grand comingtogether for real witches, everyday New Yorkers, and artists alike. An explosive fall tradition, the event is held annually on October 31 and celebrates artistic creation and fertilization, taking over all four of TNC’s theater spaces, plus its lobby and the block of E. Tenth St. btwn.

First & Second Aves. More than 1,500 wildly-clad celebrants gather for dancing, dining, showing off costumes, and viewing acts from the cutting-edge of cabaret and theater. Costume or formal wear required.

Theater for the New City 155 First Ave. at E. 10th St. Oct. 31 at 4 p.m. outdoors; doors open at 7:30 p.m. $20 admission plus cheap eats & drink

THE MADONNATHON HALLOWEEN PARTY To celebrate its 15th anniversary of Madonna madness, Madonnathon throws a Halloween party conveniently located near the end of the legendary Greenwich Village Halloween Parade at Highline Ballroom. Die-hard, fun-loving Madonna fans will get into the groove, paying tribute not only to Madonna’s music but also her ever-evolving looks and influence on our lives. Hosted by creator Cathy Cervenka, Madonnathon features live performances, including Amber Martin, Tammy Faye Starlite, Shannon Conley, Brian Charles Rooney, the Williamsburg Salsa Orchestra, Erin Hill & her Psychedelic Harp, Zoe Friedman, and Hibiscus.

A costume contest will award winners for Best Madonna-inspired Look and Best Overall Halloween Look.

Highline Ballroom, 431 W. 16th St. Oct. 31 at 8 p.m. $25 at highlineballroom.com or 212-414–5994 UNCLE FESTER AND HIS GIRLS Uncle Fester rises from the dead to welcome you to his home away from home. Duane Park turns into a bevy of broken beauties as they salute all things macabre! Master Freak Albert Cadabra spooks the magic out of you as he does slight of hand and bizarre magic to salute all the spirits as Uncle Fester’s girls do their ghastly best to spook their clothes right off! The evening includes the show with a threecourse dinner.

Duane Park 308 Bowery at Bleecker St. Oct. 31 at 7 p.m. $65plusbeveragesatduaneparknyc. com/halloween.html CARRYING.ON Carrying.On” is a special edition of the monthly queer storytelling show TELL, hosted and curated

by Drae Campbell. “Carrying.On” features Iranian-American actor, transgender activist, and writer Pooya Mohseni and Virginia-born comedian and activist Elsa Waithe,

➤ WHAT’S DOIN’, continued on p.19

October 25 – November 7, 2018 | GayCityNews.nyc

➤ WHAT’S DOIN’, from p.18

nual-party-tickets-50461138624

who will be sharing their own true stories as well as narratives around the themes of life, death, and carrying on. Vie Paula presents an opening musical set.

Bureau of General Services — Queer Division LGBT Community Center 208 W. 13th St., room 210 Nov. 1 at 7 p.m. bgsqd.com or 646-457–0859 Suggested donation is $10

JUDY: HER OWN WORDS, JASON POWELL’S VOICE Her words. His voice. In 1964, hot on the heels of an historic comeback concert at Carnegie Hall and the triumph of producing a successful weekly variety television series for CBS, Judy Garland decided to write her memoirs. Encouraged by her publisher to put her memories on tape to be transcribed later, the recordings Garland made alone at home revealed a deeply pained woman largely unknown to the public.

Those tapes are now the basis of “The Book That I’m Going to Write,

By Judy Garland,” adapted and performed by Jason Powell.

Jerry Orbach Theater 1627 Broadway at W. 50th St. Nov. 3 at 3 p.m.; Nov. 4 at 6 p.m.; Nov. 5 at 7:30 p.m. $25-$33 at ticketmaster.com/TheBook-That-Im-Going-to-tickets/ artist/2547564

QUEER|ART: THE ANNUAL PARTY & EXHIBITION Queer | Art’s 2017-2018 Queer | Art | Mentorship Annual Exhibition, “Here & Not Yet,” opens on Nov. 1, 7-10 p.m. in conjunction with the 2018 Queer | Art | Prize.

The exhibition includes work by current Fellow Eames Armstrong, with new works of film, literature, performance, and visual art

by Justin Allen, David Antonio Cruz, Marco DaSilva, Federica Gianni, Lucas Habte, Ryan Haddad, Lamya Haq, Jarrett Key, Madsen Minax, and Zoe Schlacter. The exhibition runs through Dec. 31.

The opening night party honors Queer | Art’s $10,000 winner of the Sustained Achievement Award, Vaginal Davis, whose films, performances, and lectures have, for more than four decades, explored multiform facets of queer punk, “terrorist drag”, and the Black/Latino experience. The party is hosted

by Moe Angelos and Ryan Haddad, with music by DJ Sissy Elliott.

LGBT Community Center 208 W. 13th St. Nov. 1 from 7-10 p.m.

Pay what you wish, but you must RSVP eventbrite.com/e/queerart-the-an-

TROPHY BOY SCREENING & CAST Q & A “Trophy Boy” is the directing debut of British actor Emrhys Cooper (“Vanity,” “Desperate Housewives,” “CSI:NY,” “Blackish,” and “Person of Interest”). This 13-minute short is based on Cooper’s own social media experiences and witnessing how detrimental it can be to one’s sense of self. Cooper premiered it at Cannes, and he is now working to develop it into a TV series.

Bureau of General Services — Queer Division LGBT Community Center 208 W. 13th St., room 210 Nov. 3 at 7 p.m. bgsqd.com or 646-457–0859 Suggested donation of $10

Let YOUR voice be heard & let it match YOUR TRANS identity Speech therapist who will help you develop YOUR T R A NS speaking voice Specializes in changing speaking voice & articulation Uses breathing techniques, vocal cord techniques, resonation practice, auditory & kinesthetic training Co-create a therapy plan (may range from 6 months to a year) Offers 30 minute session with exercises at convenient Manhattan location Offers affordable rates (session(s) may be shared by 2 people) Susan Grabina, SLP is a speech licensed therapist (#005814)

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VMEBuyer@gmail.com GayCityNews.nyc | October 25 – November 7, 2018

19

FILM

He Was the Champion In biopic, Freddie Mercury is elusive but goes ou out on top

BY STEVE ERICKSON he official credits of the Freddie Mercury biopic “Bohemian Rhapsody” are deceptive. Due to Director’s Guild of America regulations that only one director can be credited, Bryan Singer receives that billing. However, he stopped showing up to its set three months into its shoot, was fired by 20th Century Fox, and replaced by British director Dexter Fletcher. While Fletcher completed the film, it’s anyone’s guess who shot exactly what footage in the version of “Bohemian Rhapsody” now in release. If the film has a consistent look, it may be due to the assistant director or editor rather than either Singer or Fletcher. Key emotional scenes between Mercury (Rami Malek) and his lovers and managers are consistently shot in near-darkness with spare, stylized lighting throughout.

Still, “Bohemian Rhapsody” feels inadvertently elliptical. At 135 minutes, it didn’t need to be any longer — its pacing probably would have suffered. But the film would have benefited from devoting more than five minutes of screen time to Jim Hutton (Aaron McCusker), whom it presents as Mercury’s savior from a life of drugged-out decadence (depicted in a PG-13 manner) and bad decisions. The script shortchanges every character except Mercury, making them play second fiddle to his needs and desires. Even if it sometimes makes him look like a jerk, it never lets us forget that his star shone brighter than everyone around him (including the surviving members of Queen, who came up with the idea to produce this film in 2010).

“Bohemian Rhapsody” follows “Love, Simon” as this year’s second full-fledged studio release about an LGBTQ protagonist. Singer is openly bisexual, but he’s repeatedly been accused of raping teenage boys (with a civil suit filed last December). Those stories go back more than a decade, and as a result I doubt anyone sees his direction and production of the “X-Men” se-

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Rami Malek (center) as Freddie Mercury in “Bohemian Rhapsody,” with Brian May (left) and Joe Mazzello.

ries sending an allegory about the LGBTQ civil rights struggle into multiplexes as a source of pride for our community.

But “Bohemian Rhapsody” was made by more than one person, and the work of Malek, Fletcher, and Queen themselves should not become collateral damage from Singer’s behavior. Whatever the influence, the film has an odd time figuring out how to depict Mercury’s queerness. It can’t decide if he was really bi (as he tells his girlfriend Mary, played by Lucy Boynton) or gay (as she responds to him after that revelation, feeling used as a beard). That question has extended to much of the posthumous writing about the singer.

Mercury’s closet door now seems wide open during his lifetime, from Queen’s very name to the Castro Street clone image of his most famous period (which one Queen member likens to a Village People member at a 1980 party) to the lyrics of songs like “Killer Queen” and “The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke.”

Early scenes of “Bohemian Rhapsody” show Mercury happily living in what amounts to a polyamorous relationship with Mary and his manager Paul (Allen Leech) — even if that’s not what he calls it and the sexual aspects of his life with Paul

go unstated — cruising a man at a gas station bathroom while on tour in America, casually calling himself a “queen” in conversation with other Queen members, and chatting on air with a DJ who is even campier than he is. He makes remarks about being outrageous and a misfit, which only make sense given his ambiguous sexuality.

“Bohemian Rhapsody” also emphasizes that he came from an Indian background even if most Queen fans mistakenly thought Mercury was white.

Things only go downhill after he puts a name to his sexuality. The film has trouble envisioning early ‘80s gay life as anything other than a doomed path to contracting HIV. The scene that cross-cuts Mercury’s trip to a leather bar with the recording of “Another One Bites the Dust” (a rather pointed choice of a Queen song) could have come from William Friedkin’s “Cruising.”

Then the film seems to recognize its missteps, introducing Jim as his final lover and a positive gay influence on his life. Still, it never takes the effort to make Jim feel like a real person (although he was, his photo appearing during the end credits) rather than a narrative device.

“Bohemian Rhapsody” gives Mercury the happy ending he didn’t get

in life by closing with Queen’s performance at Live Aid in 1985, six years before his death. Part of the reason this film took eight years to produce is that Sacha Baron Cohen, the original choice to play Mercury, dropped out because the band conflicted with him over the relatively light and sunny direction they wanted it to take. Closing “Bohemian Rhapsody” with an exhilarating 10 minutes of Queen hits performed at Live Aid (convincingly re-enacted by Malek) counters the common tendency to depict queer lives tragically, even if the decision to have Paul, Mary, and Jim stand together backstage happily watching the show is a step too far into corniness.

For once in a celebrity biopic, this ending puts the focus on music, something the film tries less successfully to do throughout by depicting the writing and recording of “Bohemian Rhapsody” itself as well as “We Will Rock You.” The film is a decidedly mixed bag, feeling thoroughly confused, but ultimately it manages to honor Mercury’s talent.

BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY | Directed

by Bryan Singer and an uncredited Dexter Fletcher | 20th Century Fox | Opens Nov. 2 citywide

October 25 – November 7, 2018 | GayCityNews.nyc

FILM

When Words Fail At the height of AIDS, a coming out that remains unspoken

BY GARY M. KRAMER ut gay writer/ director Yen Tan’s poignant, quietly powerful drama “1985” has Adrian (Cory Michael Smith), a gay man, returning home to Fort Worth for what is likely his last Christmas. The words gay and AIDS are never spoken in the film — a deliberate conceit on Tan’s part — but they inform this perceptive drama, based on the director’s earlier short film of the same name.

“1985 was the year Reagan said the word AIDS publically for the first time,” Tan said during a recent interview via Skype. “I like this idea of the audiences putting that together. That’s a provision of making an AIDS drama now.

We don’t have to educate viewers.

People can read between the lines.

They know Adrian is sick and closeted. You experience his homecoming in his shoes and feel the weight of his burden to hide that truth.”

Adrian is visiting his conservative parents Eileen (Virginia Madsen) and Dale (Michael Chiklis) and his younger brother Andrew (Aidan Langford). The atmosphere is claustrophobic, and Tan captures that in every still shot and pregnant pause. Adrian’s discomfort also extends to keeping his status from his family and former best friend Carly (Jamie Chung).

In doing so, Tan creates a series of delicate scenes that explore the familiar theme of homecoming in a new way.

“I wanted to tell a coming out story where the person doesn’t come out,” he explained.

This approach also prompted Tan to film “1985” on film and in black and white.

“Visually I wanted to explore the 1980s in an unconventional way,” he explained. “We don’t think about the 1980s in black and white, and we think AIDS was a black and white issue then. Aesthetically, it felt right. If viewers remember those days, they do it in stark, not colorful ways. We didn’t want to make the film nostalgic for

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Cory Michael Smith in Yen Tan’s “1985.”

the era.”

This effort to be colorless is effective. It emphasizes the characters and their interactions, all of which are deeply moving.

AIDS narratives in cinema, Tan observed, are “generally from people who were activists or living with it and had to tell their family. I wanted to tell a story where people didn’t have an opportunity to come out in a direct sort of way. What are the consequences when you don’t tell your family that you’re dying?”

One of the most striking scenes in the film involves a discussion Adrian has with his mother, where the characters talk around the topic of Adrian’s sexuality — not about it. This complicates the idea of acceptance, but it is very authentic, especially in the Bible Belt of that era.

“I wanted to get to that in the film — how the characters arrive at acceptance in indirect ways,” Tan said. “Compromise isn’t the right way of putting it, but it’s dealing with the other person’s unwillingness to talk about it. The scene where Eileen talks to Adrian in the car, she has a sense of what he’s not saying but she’s not willing to confront him. She says, ‘You don’t have to tell me until you’re ready, but I’ll try to be ready when you

GayCityNews.nyc | October 25 – November 7, 2018

are.’ It’s emotionally specific. It’s a very real thing for her and people of that era living in Texas. If you know you have to deal with it in a way that might be the most rational.”

Likewise, Adrian’s relationship with his younger brother Andrew forms an interesting narrative thread as Andrew’s masculinity is described as shifting from sports to drama, and his music choices change from Top 40 to alternative. It is deliberately ambiguous if Andrew is — or will turn out to be — gay, but Adrian picks up some signs. Even if viewers think Andrew is not gay, Tan wants folks to understand that he’s going to be an outsider and not feel like he belongs.

“1985” is a very personal film as a result of Tan’s delicate approach here. It is sure to engender emotion, if not jerk tears, from people who experienced the AIDS crisis firsthand, as well as queer folks who were just coming out at that time. Tan talked about his own experience in 1985, when he was 10.

“It was the year when I vividly identified myself as gay,” he recalled. “Michael J. Fox was popular. I had this idea of watching him in ‘Back to the Future’ where I wanted to be him, and then ‘Teen

Wolf,’ where I wanting to be with him. Rock Hudson’s illness and death were also headline news. It was horrific, and there was a sense of this disease as bad, that it only affects a certain type of people. So, it was coming to terms with my identity, and that identity would lead to death. At 10, that’s a simplification that happens, so that was profound, and how I viewed my sexuality even up to this point.

I was scared of sex after I came out in the 1990s.”

He continued, “That’s one of the important things I was trying to do in the film. I was going back in time to tell myself at 10 that there’s a distinction between being gay and the disease. Gay can be a beautiful experience and not tied to the baggage of AIDS. It’s my form of therapy. It’s conveyed in the message Adrian leaves for his brother. It’s important for people to hear that.

We didn’t get to hear that from the lost generation of people ravaged from the disease. This was my way of breaching that.”

The message, like the film, is inspiring.

1985 | Directed by Yen Tan | Wolfe Releasing | Opens Oct. 26 Quad Cinema, 34 W. 13th St. | quadcinema.com

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FILM

Gone Before We See Him “Boy Erased” fails to enliven the characters we should care for

BY GARY M. KRAMER he well-meaning drama “Boy Erased,” based on Garrard Conley’s memoir about his experiences in a gay conversion therapy program, is a TV movieof-the-week dressed up as Oscar bait. Written and directed by Joel Edgerton, the film is geared largely toward heterosexuals unfamiliar with the insidious practice.

At the start of “Boy Erased,” Jared (Lucas Hedges) is being taken to a daily refuge program run by Victor Sykes (Edgerton) to “assess” and “cure” him of his homosexuality. Jared’s parents, Marshall (Russell Crowe), a Baptist preacher, and Nancy (Nicole Kidman), a bleachblonde Southern belle, have decided this treatment is the best — if not only — option for their son.

However, as a series of extended flashbacks show, Jared is not guilty of sexual sin — as Sykes and his parents believe — rather, the totality of his sin is desire. Though he does “think about men,” he does very little in the way of acting on his same-sex attractions. Oddly, Jared

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Théodore Pellerin and Lucas Hedges in Joel Edgerton’s “Boy Erased, which opens November 2.

presents himself more as bi-curious than gay, as if Edgerton wants to make “Boy Erased” palatable to the very audience — straight parents — that needs to hear the message.

And the message is important. The horrors of conversion therapy are well documented, yet statistics in the film’s end credits indicate that 36 states still allow gay conversion thera-

py among minors and 700,000 LGBTQ people have been subjected to it. Edgerton, however, cudgels viewers with a slow-motion sequence in which one of the boys in the program is beaten repeatedly by family members and others as if to knock the gay out of him. It’s a heavy-handed scene in a film that often lacks nuance.

Many characters in “Boy Erased” try to “pray the gay away,” and there are discussions about behavior and choice — debating if LGBTQ folks are “born this way” or “choose” to engage in queer activities. A preachy comment about being born a football player tries to defend the therapy program’s approach, but a better sequence, in which Jared visits a doctor (out lesbian actor Cherry Jones), who discusses science, God, and free choice, shows that there can be clearer thinking on homosexuality and faith.

Other comments by Sykes and the teens address what it means to be a “real man,” “faking it until you make it,” and “becoming the man you are not” — all core notions among folks who believe in conversion therapy. But a ma-

➤ ERASED, continued on p.23

A Subtle Inevitability A black teen’s story told outside the usual rhythms

BY STEVE ERICKSON he central incident in “Life and Nothing More,” made in Florida by Spanish director Antonio Méndez Esparza, comes 90 minutes in. This film doesn’t exactly depart from narrative, but its reliance on a three-act structure isn’t clear early on thanks to an elliptical style. Méndez also wrote the script. While Santiago Oviedo edited it, the decisions to begin and end each scene on odd beats are probably those of Mendez, too. If he were a drummer, he wouldn’t stick to the rigid pulse of a metronome’s beat and tempo.

His choices also suggest that he doesn’t know everything about the characters, even if he wrote a film about them. Before teenager Andrew (Andrew Bleechington) can answer his school counselor’s question about his role models, “Life and Nothing More’ cuts away.

Single mother Regina (Regina Williams) struggles to get by financially and raise her two children. She’s scared that 14-year-old Andrew will follow his father’s path into jail. But she hates the fact that her life is “work and my

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Regina Williams and, several rows ahead, Andrew Bleechington in Antonio Méndez Esparza’s “Life and Nothing More.”

kids,” as she tells her boyfriend Robert (Robert Williams, no relation). Andrew starts walking around with a knife, which leads her to kick him out of their apartment. That in turn sets the stage for a dangerous encounter.

“Life and Nothing More” knowingly flirts with certain tropes about African-American life, revealing a more complex underlying reality. Andrew’s father is serving a lengthy jail sentence for attempted assault. Cultural conservatives (not all of them white) frequently blame the

problems of African-American youth on the fact that so many of them are raised by single mothers like Regina (usually without examining the reasons why their fathers might be missing from the picture). But Andrew’s father tries hard to remain a positive part of his son’s life, even behind bars, constantly writing letters and doing his best to let Andrew visit him.

Regina’s ability to discipline Andrew is limited by how many hours she must work to take care of them. Given that her mood is constantly prickly — when she and Robert have a long talk in a parking lot, she starts by saying she hates men — she could easily have become a stereotypical Angry Black Woman. The scenes where she goes on interviews for menial jobs she needs to supplement her income as a waitress show that she’s facing a lifetime of hard work for little reward. Her pissiness is put into the context of American poverty and seems quite justified.

And her son is s growing up to share it. We’re a long way from the ironically glossy, Pop Art surface of Sean Baker’s “The Florida Project,”

➤ NOTHING MORE, continued on p.23 October 25 – November 7, 2018 | GayCityNews.nyc

➤ ERASED, from p.22 nipulative scene of Sykes bullying the teens is cringe-inducing for all the wrong reasons. Viewers are supposed to feel pity for the youth, but the characters are too one-dimensional to carry off the moment.

Several of the youth aren’t fully formed, distinguished more by their hair color or body type than any other characteristic.

In cataloging the “moral inventory” required by the program, Jared reflects back on his relation-

➤ NOTHING MORE, from p.22 even if that film’s characters share the same dead-end existence.

Mendez spent two years making “Life and Nothing More,” half of that time devoted to casting nonprofessional actors. He cites Italian neo-realist screenwriter and theorist Cesare Zavattini as an influence. But for a film that’s grounded in reality and based in extensive research with poor African-American Floridians, judges, public defenders, and teachers, this isn’t a

ships with Henry (Joe Alwyn) and Xavier (Théodore Pellerin), which are, respectively, tough and tender.

The encounters seem important, but we’re given too little in the way of Jared’s feelings about them.

Hedges’ performance never makes Jared’s internal struggle feel real.

He plays Jared’s emotional turmoil with simply a perpetually troubled look on his face. The boy being “erased” is never fully sketched out in the first place.

What the film does best is to focus on the parents and their role

in Jared’s situation. Nancy talks about “hurting to help,” telling her son that “parents want to protect their kids,” but it is not until she senses Jared is in danger that she begins to change, shifting into ferocious Mamma Grizzly mode.

Kidman is less successful than Crowe in silently conveying the internal conflict these parents feel.

His awkward conversations with Jared give the film ts few moments of juicy dramatic tension. In support, Edgerton plays Victor Sykes broadly, like a cartoon villain.

simple “slice of life.” It gives a damn about life to a degree few American films do these days, but the “slice” is carefully stylized and built.

The film’s storytelling leaps from scene to scene, most in a different setting. Barbu Balasoiu’s cinematography frequently deploys an uncanny, non-naturalistic glow for the interior lighting. It’s not nearly as radical as RaMell Ross’ impressionistic documentary “Hale County This Morning, This Evening,” which also depicts AfricanAmericans in the South, but there

are points of contact.

Andrew winds up in a confrontation that would probably go down much differently or not happen at all were he white. But he’s uninterested in acting deferential to defuse the situation, and he only really makes a mistake near its end, even if the results leave him facing serious consequences. Still, it’s the kind of incident that leads to media reports about how black youth are “no angels,” even if they’ve been killed by cops. Mendez directs both his characters and the audience

“Boy Erased” is a clunky redemption tale that tries too hard to be crowd-pleasing and as a result glosses over the issues at stake, particularly for the vulnerable teens who suffer at quack science’s hands.

BOY ERASED | Directed by Joel Edgerton | Focus Features | Opens Nov. 2 | Angelika Film Center, 18 W. Houston at Mercer St.; angelikafilmcenter.com/nyc | AMC Loews Lincoln Square, 1998 Broadway at W. 68th St.; amctheatres.com

toward that turning point: looking back at the film’s end, it seems inevitable. But he’s a brilliant craftsman who can conceal the work he undertook to move the story in that direction. “Life and Nothing More” both captures an American reality and pulls it apart to make a point, without dishonoring the people whose lives it’s based on.

LIFE AND NOTHING MORE | Directed by Antonio Méndez Opens Oct. 24 | Film Forum, 209 W. Houston St. | filmforum.org

“A NIFTY GLIMPSE OF GAYS GONE BY.” — Michael Musto, Out Magazine

A NEW MUSICAL IN THE HEART OF NYC’S MIDTOWN EAST ARTS DISTRICT

ENTER TO WIN VIP TICKETS VISIT: https://www.gaycitynews.nyc/midnight

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In 1965, it’s also against the law. So in the back room of The Never Get, an illegal Greenwich Village gay bar, they put together a show called Midnight—But, as the lovers hurtle towards the end of the decade, they find themselves caught in a passion they can’t control and a political revolution they don’t understand.

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23

THEATER

To Have and To Fold When one half of a male couple believes in gay marriage but his partner says “I don’t” on t

BY DAVID KENNERLEY aniel’s Husband,” Michael McKeever’s jolting tragicomedy about a long-term gay couple at loggerheads over tying the knot, is a play that refuses to quit. The original version, staged by Penguin Rep in upstate Stony Point a couple of years ago, proved so popular that it quickly transferred to the Cherry Lane Theatre for a limited run, courtesy of Primary Stages, with the cast and creative team intact.

And now 18 months later, in a rare hat trick, the play is back, this time at the Westside Theatre OffBroadway for an open-ended run.

Remarkably, the entire five-member cast was able to rejigger their schedules to reprise their roles yet again.

Gay City News caught up with Ryan Spahn (“Gloria”) and Matthew Montelongo (“A View From the Bridge”), the out gay actors who portray Daniel and his wouldbe husband, Mitchell, between rehearsals to chat about the evolution of the piece.

So why revive this production?

According to Spahn, the lead producer Ted Snowdon and his husband discovered the play about a year before the rest of the team got involved. It was such a smart, romantic, albeit gut-wrenching story delving into issues of fidelity and compassion, Snowdon wanted to share it with as many people as possible.

“He made it his mission to do a commercial, open-ended run,” Spahn said. “It was important to him personally and professionally.”

Montelongo is thrilled to be part of this third go-round.

“I’ve enjoyed every production,” he said. “I felt the previous run might have ended too soon. It had more life in it, and I had more texture to bring to it as an actor. I’m delighted to revisit it with the same cast.”

“D

24

CAROL ROSEGG

Matthew Montelongo and Ryan Spahn in Michael McKeever’s “Daniel’s Husband,” directed by Joe Brancato, begins an open-ended run at the Westside Theatre this week after two successful earlier runs.

Not that a seamless remount was guaranteed. In a turn almost as dramatic as the plot twists onstage, Leland Wheeler, who plays Trip, a boytoy of the couple’s friend Barry (Lou Liberatore), was packed up and set to relocate to Los Angeles. But on the day Wheeler bought his plane ticket, he got a call urging him to stay and do the play.

“We are blessed to have the entire group back together again,” Montelongo said, noting that the cast had developed a shorthand with each other, giving them a jump-start on the rehearsal process.

“Daniel’s Husband” has continued to evolve. It takes place in the present day, and while the script remains essentially the same, director Joe Brancato has added new design and dramaturgical elements that expand and deepen the production’s vision and keep it ofthe-moment. (Don’t expect, however, topical references to Trump or Melania or Kavanaugh.)

“We’ve made some tonal adjustments,” Spahn noted. “The plot hasn’t changed, but the motivation of certain characters has changed.

There are aspects about the play that are going to feel different.

Those who saw it before should come see it again.”

“It’s not a period piece like ‘The Boys in the Band,’” Montelongo added. “We want to be truthful and aware of how it’s landing with audiences in 2018 while still honoring the text and the living playwright, who worked with us to find the most relevant way possible.”

If the bond between Daniel and Mitchell has grown deeper with each staging, the ties between the actors who portray them have intensified as well. Even out of character, they tend to finish each other’s sentences.

“We’ve been together as a stage couple for one-third of the time that our characters have been a couple,” Spahn said with a laugh.

For the record, both actors are in longtime relationships and are not married. As it happens, Spahn is partnered with none other than Michael Urie, and Montelongo with Ivan Quintanilla, an actor and travel writer.

Given the current political climate, where the White House has taken a hate-filled, hard right in recent months, does the play resonate more forcefully than before?

According to Montelongo, in rehearsals the cast debated about how the play might register with today’s audiences. They wondered

how people would respond when there is more anxiety about issues surrounding rights of LGBTQ folks and other minorities.

“Every single day, the play becomes more and more a living, breathing argument,” Spahn said.

“The arguments seem more loaded than they were just a couple of years ago.”

Early in Act One, Mitchell admits disdain for gay marriage, but later clarifies that it’s the outmoded institution he has a problem with, not the right for same-sex couples to marry.

“Mitchell believes it’s a religiousbased institution and a consumerbased tradition,” said Montelongo.

“It’s an ideological thorn in his paw. He also makes a different argument. He doesn’t think gay people should aspire to be like straight people. What’s the nobility of that?

It’s more noble to be outliers in society.”

Daniel, on the other hand, is an architect who dreams of having a beautiful, splashy wedding.

“He wants the fanfare,” said Spahn. “He longs to be baptized in front of the entire world, proclaiming, ‘We love each other. We are married. This is us!’”

Spahn admits he is concerned that LGBTQ folks are increasingly under the microscope and being attacked by demagogues.

“I feel that our own livelihood and safety are in peril because of bigots who feel the need to speak out in anger and behave in aggressive ways. That truly alarms me.”

“I worry more about the erosion of our individual rights,” Montelongo said. “Making it easier for EMTs not to pick us up in ambulances.

Or for bakers not to make us wedding cakes. Lately I’ve been thinking that the federal protections conferred by marriage make gay people feel safer as individuals.”

Of course, that assumes that gay marriage will not be gutted by a vindictive US Supreme Court.

➤ DANIEL’S HUSBAND,

continued on p.27

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25

THEATER

Extraordinary People Three exciting, character-rich shows that score

BY CHRISTOPHER BYRNE ith the smooth precision of a perfectly aimed snooker ball dropping into a corner pocket, Richard Bean’s adroit and amusing comedy “The Nap” has dropped on Broadway. The British import from the author who brought us “One Man, Two Guvnors” is as breezy and undemanding as it is charming and often hilarious.

Set in Sheffield, England, on the eve of a world snooker tournament, the play tells the story of Dylan Spokes who has escaped his working class, go-nowhere background by becoming an internationally ranked player of this billiards-like game. As Dylan readies for the tournament, he finds himself surrounded by a cast of outrageous people — his eager father, his transgender backer, the “integrity officers” who show up out of nowhere and threaten his ability to play, and his blowsy, alcoholic mom and her crazy boyfriend. All of them want a piece of Dylan, and he’s asked to throw a round of the tournament so some unknown billionaire gamblers can make a killing.

Surrounding a more or less normal guy with extreme characters and thrusting him into insane situations is a classic comic trope.

The many twists and turns will leave you laughing and remind you of Martin McDonagh in a lighter mode. What makes the whole crazy contraption tick is that there really is something believable at stake for Dylan, which gives all the insane plotting and surprise reveals a level of relatable humanity, right down to his love interests.

There is plenty of verbal and physical comedy and a real-time snooker match at the end featuring a ringer from the game’s real world, Ahmed Aly Elsayed. The whole affair is directed with a fast-moving flair by Daniel Sullivan, and the superlative cast is just about perfect. Ben Schnetzer, as the hapless snooker star at the center of the action, is a master of both the un-

W

26

JOAN MARCUS

Ben Schnetzer and Johanna Day in Richard Bean’s “The Nap” at the Friedman through November 11.

JOAN MARCUS

Mare Winningham and Stephen Bogardus in Conor McPherson’s “Girl from the North Country” at the Public Theater through December 23.

derstated take and the mounting hysteria as events cascade around him. Johanna Day is wonderful as his drunk, opportunistic mother, and Thomas Jay Ryan as her downat-heels beau is suitably seedy.

Max Gordon Moore is very funny as Dylan’s manager with a changing wardrobe of brilliantly colored suits, and John Ellison Conlee is Dylan’s doting dad. Bhavesh Patel and Heather Lind are quite good as the integrity officers ostensibly trying to preserve snooker’s purity. In a good bit at the end, Lind almost stops the internationally televised snooker event cold. And a wonderful reason to see this show is the wonderful work of Alexandra Billings, a transgender actor, as Dylan’s backer Waxy Bush (you can see where the jokes are going).

Given to delicious malapropisms, Waxy is much more than meets the

eye, as the plot thickens.

To say more would be to give away the jokes, and that would be unfair. Like any McDonagh play or classic British comedies like “Noises Off,” the fun is always in the surprises.

It just seems wrong to call “Girl from the North Country” a jukebox musical. As a collection of Bob Dylan songs woven into a story, that’s what it is. Yet, leave any preconceptions about this type of entertainment in the lobby because this heartbreakingly beautiful musical is absolutely stunning.

Rich in narrative, character, and humanity, it is a distinctly American tale in the realistic tradition of Steinbeck, Saroyan, and Odets.

The spare but lyrical book is by the Irish playwright Conor McPherson.

It’s a tale of a group of people strug-

gling to make it one day at a time in a boarding house on the brink of foreclosure in Duluth, Minnesota as the winter of 1934 closes in. As in Harry Hope’s bar in “The Iceman Cometh,” each character has a plan for escape, and yet that never seems to materialize, so they settle for the best they can get.

The dozen or so main characters are types — the avuncular doctor, the con man, a one-time big shot and his sexually frustrated wife, the boarding house owner trying to hold on with a sick wife while seeking solace in the arms of a boarder.

McPherson, however, has given each an original voice, and story’s emotional impact is so powerful because we recognize the prevailing archetypes.

The phenomenal cast includes such New York stalwarts as Mare Winningham, Stephen Bogardus, Marc Kudisch, David Pittu, Luba Mason, Tom Nelis, and Robert Joy, all of them performing at the peak of their talent. Under McPherson’s direction, the staging, storytelling, and carefully developed characters create a beautifully understated picture of a scary world on edge.

And then there’s the music. Audience members who know the Dylan songbook will be more familiar than I with the songs, yet each was alive with poetic imagery and singing that will take your breath away. From the precise choral work to impassioned renditions of such classics as “Like A Rolling Stone,” “Hurricane,” and “Forever Young,” the music illuminates characters and moments with pure theatricality.

The sets and costumes by Rae Smith are beautiful and appropriate, and Mark Henderson’s lighting helps us come to see that the darkness can be as compelling as the light.

This is a somber tale. There is loss, disappointment, and even death, but it is also a tale of spirit, survival, and the will to go on.

So, call it a jukebox musical if you must, but it’s a welcome evolution

➤ EXTRAORDINARY, continued on p.27

October 25 – November 7, 2018 | GayCityNews.nyc

➤ EXTRAORDINARY, from p.26 of the genre — and the most exciting show in New York right now.

Adam Gwon’s marvelously appealing musical “Ordinary Days� is about four young people trying to make connections in big, bad, New York City. While that’s certainly a familiar story, the 17 numbers in this sung-through piece tell it with freshness and heart that are always entertaining and at times surprisingly moving. First seen at Roundabout in 2009, it’s getting a delightful revival by Keen Company on Theatre Row. Warren is lost, looking for something to devote his life to. Deb has run away to grad school to avoid life. When Warren finds Deb’s lost thesis notes, the two form a quirky friendship in front of a Monet at the Met. Claire and Jason are trying to make a traditional relationship work and negotiating the challenges of cohabitation. There’s not much more to it than that.

Gwon’s tunes are well-crafted and tuneful. His lyrics, rich in structure, meter, and internal rhyme, reveal the characters and relationships, exposing their internal lives as they look for answers and try to make it all work.

The cast is splendid. Kyle Sherman is endearingly goofy as Warren. Whitney Bashor, excellent as Claire, has a beautiful soprano

➤ DANIEL’S HUSBAND, from p.24 Montelongo added that “Daniel’s Husband� has activated his anxieties about caring for the people he loves and being denied access to them in a hospital setting.

While Montelongo believes gay marriage is one of the most important civil rights movements in his lifetime, he asserted that there are other burning LGBTQ issues that still must be addressed. It doesn’t protect trans people, queer people of color, or queer kids from being bullied or beaten. Or stop them from being kicked out of their homes or committing suicide.

To be sure, the one-act drama is about more than gay marriage; it considers the fragile bonds of family. Daniel’s mother (Anna Holbrook), a formidable presence, drives a wedge between the two

and powerfully delivers one of the most emotional songs in the piece.

Marc delaCruz is funny and often wonderfully befuddled as the guy trying to figure out the girl. Sarah Lynn Marion as Deb is a knockout.

With a gorgeous voice and perfect comic timing, she hits every moment perfectly.

As long as people arrive in New York, hoping for magic, this show will resonate with audiences. It’s hopeful, realistic, and true — everything you need to try to make it here.

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men. Montelongo believes the piece is also about being open to change and finding compromise. “How do people who are deeply in love negotiate their opposing views?,� he said. “One wants children, the other doesn’t. One is religious, the other isn’t. How do you have these kinds of conversations?

It is really hard to do.�

Despite the heavy subject matter, life isn’t a complete bummer for the two leads in this piece. As Spahn put it, “The play explodes with surprising bursts of humor.

Which is what we need right now.�

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27

THEATER

Burning at Both Ends Daring musical featuring Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poems gives off lovely light

BY DAVID MITCHELL KENNERLEY dna St. Vincent Millay wasn’t just a poet, she was a culture-shifting rock star. Not only did she win the Pulitzer for poetry in 1923, but at the height of her fame toured America and filled top-notch venues like the Hollywood Bowl. Rabid crowds adored her. You might say she was the Katy Perry of her day.

So it’s hardly a stretch that her exuberant, profound poems should be set to music. Which is exactly what the Transport Group has done in its gutsy, exhilarating new show, “Renascence,” named for the epic lyric poem that landed Millay squarely on the literary map forever. She wrote it in 1912 when she was a mere 19, impoverished and living in Camden, Maine.

Directed by Jack Cummings III and Dick Scanlan (who also wrote the book), “Renascence” is infinitely more than a bio-drama with music.

It’s also a theatrical exploration of identity and artistry, with a genre-busting structure as bold

E

CAROL ROSEGG

Jason Gotay and Hannah Corneau in Dick Scanlan and Carmel Dean’s “Renascence,” directed by Scanlan and Jack Cummings III, at the Abrons Arts Center through November 17.

and expansive as Millay’s poetry itself. To its credit, the piece defies easy description.

Six highly skilled actors portray the poet (Hannah Corneau) and central characters in

her orbit: her devoted mother (Katie Thompson), deadbeat father (Donald Webber, Jr.), supportive sisters (Mikaela Bennett and Danny Harris Kornfeld), and amorous editor (Jason Gotay).

Yet they also play a raft of supporting roles such as her benefactor, her publisher, competing poets, and various lovers, male and female. All the while expertly belting out songs with lyrics based on Millay’s poems and letters. Carmel Dean composed the lush, mellifluous score.

Underscoring how the red-haired poet challenged gender norms — in addition to being defiantly bisexual, she was known as “Vincent” to family and friends, and often wore mannish attire — the script calls for a male to play Millay’s youngest sister Kathleen, and her female benefactor. Without wigs or dresses, Kornfeld embodies both roles with sensitivity and flair.

If it’s not always clear who’s singing what, well, that’s the point. Its ethereal mood, and the humanity, they’re most after here, and they

➤ RENASCENCE, continued on p.29

When Disco Entered Politics Reissued, Bronski Beat’s “Age of Consent” remains timely

BY STEVE ERICKSON ronski Beat’s 1984 “The Age of Consent,” now being reissued with more than an hour’s worth of radio sessions, remixes, and unreleased demos, invented its own sub-genre: protest disco.

Singer Jimmy Somerville’s falsetto evoked female vocalists like Donna Summer (whose “I Feel Love” they covered) and Gloria Gaynor, as well as Sylvester, but the album’s very title was meant as a political statement. At the time, heterosexuals could legally have sex in the UK at 16, but gay men could not do so until 21. Thus, we were legally considered pedophiles and could be prosecuted for consensual sexual behavior that was perfectly acceptable for straight teenagers and young men.

It was also released the year that the HIV virus was discovered as the cause of AIDS, but at a time when groups like Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Soft Cell, and Culture Club (even though Boy George was semi-closeted at the time, despite his penchant for drag and glam clothing) were bringing gay imagery to pop music. But

B

28

then or now, having a hit single with an indictment of the damage caused by homophobia, as Bronski Beat did with “Smalltown Boy,” is rare.

That song never uses the word “gay,” but it’s very easy to figure out why the bullied boy it describes has become a runaway.

“The Age of Consent” sounds surprisingly eclectic now, especially if you’re only familiar with the dance-pop vibe of “Smalltown Boy” and “Why?” “Junk” is the only song featuring electric guitar. “Heatwave” has a French chanson vibe, with prominent accordion and percussion supplied by a tap dancer. “It Ain’t Necessarily So” uses clarinet, piano, and choral vocals to preserve the show tune influence. (It was originally written by George and Ira Gershwin in 1935 for “Porgy and Bess”). A jazz flavor persists on “Love and Money,” which brings back the clarinet. Their disco and pop influences are far more prominent than among some of their peers of the time, who were basically rock bands that jumped on the electronic bandwagon. In that respect, it helps that Somerville’s voice comes across so ambiguous in its gender; I imagine some people heard Bronski Beat songs on the radio or in a night-

club and guessed he was a woman.

Bronski Beat obviously covered “It Ain’t Necessarily So” because its attack on the flaws of literal religious interpretation can be directed toward Christian homophobia. Somerville’s politics extended beyond gay issues. The point of “No More War” is obvious from its title, but the song contrasts passionate vocals with a mournful melody and downtempo arrangement. “Junk” treats pop culture and mindless consumerism as addictions. “Love and Money” opines that “money is the root of all evil.” These lyrics are not exactly subtle, but they’re still relevant. “Smalltown Boy” continues to apply to youth in 2018, and “Junk” could be re-written with references to cell phones and the Internet.

After an album largely devoted to the pain of oppression and a critique of the ills of British society, the last two songs on “The Age of Consent” get around to the subject of love. “Need A Man Blues” is rather bittersweet, but “I Feel Love/ Johnny Remember Me” ends “Age of Consent” on a note of triumph. Bronski Beat achieved that op-

➤ BRONSKI BEAT, continued on p.29 October 25 – November 7, 2018 | GayCityNews.nyc

➤ RENASCENCE, from p.28 succeed brilliantly.

Scanlan’s script is infused with flashes of contemporary, anachronistic wit, as are the period-agnostic costumes, designed by Ásta Bennie Hostetter. All in service of making the work more otherworldly, yet accessible.

“Renascence” artfully captures key moments in Millay’s early career. Desperate for the $1,000 firstplace cash prize, she enters a contest sponsored by a pioneering New York publisher (full disclosure: the

➤ BRONSKI BEAT, from p.28 timism, however, by covering Donna Summer’s 1977 classic, which is one of the greatest and most inventive disco songs ever recorded, by copying Giorgio Moroder’s hypnotic production to lesser effect without adding anything new to it (beyond integrating it into a medley with a song originally recorded in 1961).

The lineup that made this album split almost immediately, with Somerville leaving in 1985 to form

publisher is Mitchell Kennerley, who happens to be my grandfather). Of some 10,000 entries, the top 100 will be published in a volume titled “The Lyric Year”; her magnificent metaphysical poem about rebirth makes the cut.

Millay exchanges steamy love letters with the book’s editor (presumably Ferdinand Earle, not named in the piece). She is shown having illicit trysts with Kennerley, one of many such dicey affairs she enjoyed without shame.

Drama develops surrounding whether the cocky poet will actual-

ly snag the grand prize. When she enters Vassar College, sponsored by wealthy arts patron Caroline B. Dow, friction develops when Millay spends more time cavorting with her classmate, Elaine Ralli, than honing her craft.

Millay’s poetry, with its formal rhyming couplets about the vagaries of modern life and love, shimmers with a sense of yearning, rebellion, and sacrifice, all from a brash, female perspective. She introduced evocative phrases like “burning a candle at both ends” and “what lips my lips have kissed”

into the English lexicon.

This musical stage adaptation isn’t just a reverent tribute to a sensual landmark poem written over a century ago. It renders Millay’s poetry fresh and relevant for a new generation. In effect, its own kind of renascence.

the Communards — keyboardists Steve Bronski and Larry Steinbachek hired a new singer — and then going solo in 1989.

The bonus material on “The Age of Consent” includes a four-song BBC radio performance with one non-album gem, the Gothic torch song “Memories,” two instrumental demos, and one full-fledged, unreleased song. The package also contains five different versions each of “Why?” and “Smalltown Boy.” The original 12” remix of “Why?” is a

marvel, with a harsh, proto-glitch edge featuring overdubs of electronic percussion and vocals built up to a jarring, confrontational passage. But as with the extensive Pet Shop Boys reissues that compile remixes and B-sides, only the most hardcore fans are likely to get through the whole 150 minutes in one sitting.

“The Age of Consent” helped set the stage for contemporary LGBTQ pop artists like Troye Sivan and trans singer Kim Petras. But this

album’s lyrics have a political urgency and direct focus that sprung from the crises of the 1980s. They’re so blunt that I wonder if songs like “No More War” would’ve been more effective if they were phrased more artfully, but the times seemed to demand a direct intervention. Right now, the re-release of “The Age of Consent” makes a lot of sense.

RENASCENCE | Transport Group | Abrons Arts Center, 466 Grand St. at Pitt St. | Through Nov. 17: Tue.Sat. at 7:30 p.m.; Sun. at 3 p.m. | $60-$80 at transportgroup.org | Two hrs., 30 mins., with intermission

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29

Piper Laurie’s Boundless Energy A veteran actress busier than many half her age

BY DAVID NOH iper Laurie, at 86, is having quite a year with the release of two movies, “Snapshots,” directed by Melanie Mayron of “Thirtysomething” fame, and the attention-garnering “White Boy Rick.”

In the first, she plays the disapprovingly feisty, homophobic mother of a woman tentatively finding her first lesbian love, and in the latter she is the mother of Matthew McConaughey, a shady gun seller, and stoic wife to Bruce Dern.

I leapt at the chance to gab with this bluntly honest and altogether winning lady.

She enjoyed making “Snapshots” but said, “I just wish we’d had more time to prepare, but you can’t stop when you’re on a tight schedule so we filmed it upstate last summer. It was 90 degrees almost every day. I don’t know how we survived [laughs], the heat took the curl right out of my hair.”

Asked what woman she might consider as a lover, Laurie thought for a bit and answered, “Maybe Marlene Dietrich. She was a wonderful, underrated actress, too, I just saw and enjoyed

P

SUNNY BAK

Piper Laurie and Brooke Adams in Melanie Mayron’s “Snapshots.”

her in ‘The Devil is a Woman.’”

It’s hard to think of an actress who has had a more varied career than Laurie. Signed to a seven-year contract at Universal when she was 17, after auditioning with a monologue from Tennessee Williams’ “This Property is Condemned,” one of her early quality pictures among a morass of largely programmer junk was “Until They Sail,” with Paul Newman and featuring Joan Fontaine, Jean Simmons, and Sandra Dee as her sisters.

“I did enjoy that one, filmed in Australia and the backlot of MGM. Jean Simmons was lovely.

We were very good friends and lived near each other. We would take walks together, and pass our ex-husbands’ houses [laughs]. She wasn’t drinking when I’d see her and she gave lovely tea parties. I really miss her, one of my few actress friends.

“I thought Joan Fontaine was a bitch, frankly. During rehearsals, she brought up the name of some elegant person that I’d been dating, and she made sure that I knew that she’d also dated him. That wasn’t very sisterly. That didn’t matter much, actually, as we didn’t have much to do with each other, scene-wise.

Laurie never got to actually meet the two queens of Hollywood, Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, but at age 16 she did audition for the part of evil Veda in “Mildred Pierce” (which went to Ann Blyth). “But I did not have Joan Crawford to work with. A studio executive played Mildred for me, this handsome, blonde guy named Bill Orr. They did not sign me.”

➤ PIPER LAURIE, continued on p.34

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October 25 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; November 7, 2018 | GayCityNews.nyc

➤ ERASURE, from p.17 just trans people — but our spouses, and our children, and our allies, too. Their numbers will include people not unlike my late mother — conservative Republican women who just can’t stand to see their children bullied by the one person in the country who ought to be most concerned with keeping us all safe.

“Don’t like this world? Mr. Trump, you could have left us alone.”

It has become increasingly difficult for me to write anything of value; I can say that our country has been kidnapped by stupid people only so many times before even I get bored. Trump rallies look like Nazi rallies; Trump’s lies — like the one about how the thousands of Central Americans trudging north through Mexico are doing so because of “the Democrats,” and on and on and on. They are so pervasive and so outrageous that they’re impossible to argue without losing your mind in the process.

I’m beginning to think that ostriches have the right idea.

A fun fact to know and tell: By this point we are all familiar with the name and gruesome fate of Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post columnist who walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and came out dismembered. Watching Trump flail around for a reasonable response to what was obviously a barbaric murder committed at the behest of his pals in the Saudi royal family has been like watching Maxwell Smart, the ridiculous detective in the 60s sitcom “Get Smart”: “Would you believe it was ‘a plot gone awry?’

Would you believe it was done

by ‘rogue killers?’’”

But in all the coverage I’ve seen and read of the Khashoggi murder, I haven’t seen anything about the fact that Jamal Khashoggi was the nephew of the sleazebag arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi. As Stephen Kinzer wrote in Adnan Khashoggi’s obituary in the Times on June 6, 2017, “His appetites were gargantuan, beyond the limits of vulgarity. At the peak of his wealth, he presided over 12 estates, including some in Europe and the Middle East; a 180,000-acre ranch in Kenya; and a two-floor Manhattan residence at Olympic Towers, next to St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue, that was made from 16 existing apartments… He owned a 282-foot yacht, Nabila — used in a James Bond film and later sold to Donald J. Trump — and three lavishly refitted commercial-size jets.

His parties were known for rivers of champagne, bevies of women, international celebrities and endless personal attention from the host, known to his many friends as A. K.” Well, I remember that A.K. attempted to buy a little respectability in the 1970s by offering scads of money to Swarthmore, Bryn Mawr, and Haverford colleges to launch an Arab Studies center. If I’m not mistaken, Swarthmore and Bryn Mawr actually considered taking the money before being shamed into saying no thanks. Only Haverford, which attempts to run itself on nonviolent Quaker principles, made it clear right off the bat that an arms dealer’s millions were not enough to turn the college’s moral code on its head.

Follow @EdSikov on Twitter and Facebook.

Visit us at www.GayCityNews.nyc GayCityNews.nyc | October 25 – November 7, 2018

33

OPERA

Jonas Kaufmann’s Met Return Long absent tenor welcome, but “La Fanciulla” not ideal vehicle

BY DAVID SHENGOLD eal expectation filled the Met auditorium October 17 as we awaited the return of matinee idol tenor Jonas Kaufmann to the company after four cancelation-filled years. Munich’s star tenor joined the run of “La Fanciulla del West” midway in the role created by Enrico Caruso at Puccini’s Gold Rush-set opera’s world premiere in 1910. It was salutary to have him back, charisma and artistry much in evidence. But Dick Johnson is not “his” part vocally, certainly not in a theater the Met’s size. He’s excelled in “Tosca” here and “Don Carlo” elsewhere, but in this role he sounded rather too baritonal and, except at a few moments, slightly small-scale.

The character was beautifully traced, and he and the visually ideal Minnie of Eva-Maria Westbroek exuded real chemistry, so there was much to enjoy (beyond Puccini’s score, maybe his fi nest achievement). If Westbroek had secure notes above an A she’d be ideal, as she has the needed vocal warmth and style.

But her Bs and Cs only occasionally told as more than pitched yells — a frustrating if endearing showing. Seen from the auditorium, Zeljko Lucic’s Jack Rance (the third point

R

➤ PIPER LAURIE, from p.30 Universal, however did, and it was a mistake.

Laurie never got to act in the kind of material she wanted “and I kept trying to break my contract when I realized that Universal was making the kinds of movies they did and I would never get any good material. Finally, after five years I was able to break it, and I came to New York as quickly as I could, to work in the theater and TV. I studied with Sandy Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse.”

Laurie appeared as Laura to Maureen Stapleton’s Amanda in the revival of “The Glass Menagerie.”

“It was a very important time for me. I love that part, such a treat and also working with Maureen, an extraordinary person and actress.

Tennessee was around for all the rehearsals and performances when we tried it out in New Jersey. I thought this must have been B.S., but apparently Tennessee told everyone that I was the first person who ever really got my character right. He liked what I was doing, and it was thrilling.”

Laurie recalled working for Douglas Sirk, “in a movie I’d forgotten, ‘Has Anybody Seen My Gal?,’ a charming movie and we got along well, although I had a really stupid part... My

34

in the opera’s triangle) seemed rather casual dramatically, but if too soft-grained his baritone avoided its usual pitch issues and sounded healthy.

Marco Armiliato seems to have lost the ability to invigorate complex scores: the orchestral playing was — as almost always at the Met — of high quality. But Puccini’s wonderful rhythmic effects (like the ostinato underlying the poker game) went for little and in general the show felt underarticulated musically. The high points were definitely the interaction of Kaufmann and Westbroek in Act Two, plus his surefire Act Three aria. Westbroek seemed tired by the third act’s wonderful scene of Minnie pleading for Johnson’s life, so that ensemble was notable mainly for baritone Michael Todd Simpson in Sonora’s stirring endorsement of forgiveness.

Oren Gradus made a big, blotty bass noise.

More than that — in artistry and feeling as well as dynamic control — is needed to put over the wonderful episode involving Jake Wallace, the camp minstrel, making everyone homesick.

Several other year in/ year out comprimario management favorites gave acceptable but hardly outstanding performances. Two veterans sounded very healthy: Richard Bernstein

(Bello) and MaryAnn McCormick (Wowkle). In the key role of Nick the Bartender (sometimes played as Minnie’s gay best friend), the company had a real asset in Carlo Bosi — clear, very well-projected tone and words and intelligent stage work. American bass-baritone James Creswell made a fine debut in a one-night appearance as Ashby, the Wells Fargo agent. His instrument has presence and quality and he fit well into the ensemble. Lanky and handsome enough for a movie cowboy, Simpson made a compelling Sonora. The fighting looked convincing due to the mastery of consultant B. H. Barry, with whom I was lucky to work decades ago as a college student actor.

I have no doubt that some of the issues here will be ironed out for the October 27 HD showing. The third act’s awkward, nature-free set will matter less, and certainly Kaufmann and Westbroek’s chemistry and detailed characterizations will emerge well via camerawork.

“Fanciulla” merits hearing.

part was really stupidly written and I have a problem remembering lines when they are really dumb. It’s hard for me to retain them. I had trouble with one scene in which I had to make an entrance and say this line with a lot of other actors involved. Three or four times I just messed up and Sirk was just ferocious, shouting at me with his deep voice, as insulting as he could possibly be. He called for a prop man to bring a drawing board to write out my line.

It was just humiliating and I never forgave him for being so insensitive.”

Sirk made a star of Rock Hudson, who started at Universal with Laurie and was a good friend. “He became a really fine actor who could handle Sirk’s soap opera stuff marvelously well.

We were very close, hung out together and he was just charming and funny. I was naive then.

He never made a pass at me and I just figured I wasn’t his type. I guess I wasn’t! [Laughs.] I wasn’t aware that he was gay and am not even sure I understood all of that.”

Another Hollywood god she encountered was Paul Newman. Four years after working with him in “Until They Sail,” they worked together again in “The Hustler,” which crowned her early career, earning her first of three Oscar nominations. Her portrait of complex, suicidal, alcoholic Sarah who overthinks everything and rails at

having no other identity but as “the girlfriend,” is so searing she makes this already tough Robert Rossen film even more lacerating.

“I didn’t think about my part at first, I thought about the script. I was doing a play at the time and kind of procrastinated reading the script as quickly as I should have. I sat down with it finally and by page three or four I wanted the role even though she doesn’t enter ‘til page 40. The writing and the story got me and I just hoped that I would fit in.”

What was it like to play intimate scenes with that chiseled face and those penetrating baby blues inches away from you?

“He very much underrated his own acting and in reality he was lovely man and a wonderful actor who kept growing. I kind of never really understood who my character was, she was so many things. It was really all playing with Paul, and he sort of guided me to the way it should happen.

“I kind of bore myself telling the same story but the first day, we were all sitting around the rehearsal table, Paul was right across from me, reading from the script. Oh boy, it was hard to concentrate looking at his face. It honestly took a two weeks to see him as just a guy who loved his two beers, gregarious and talking to people.”

In the online version of this piece at gaycitynews.nyc, David Shengold also writes about the Met’s “Aida” staging by Sonja Frisell. Shengold (shengold@yahoo.com) writes about opera for many venues.

October 25 – November 7, 2018 | GayCityNews.nyc

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October 25 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; November 7, 2018 | GayCityNews.nyc