Gay City News 2010 Pride Issue

Gay City

J U N E 2 4 - J U LY

7, 2010

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VO L UME 9 • ISSUE 1 3

NEWS

TM

2010 Pride

SE BI NE

NEW YORK’S on ly L G B T N ews p a p er

Our Families Glenn Magpantay and Christopher Goeken at their Jackson Heights home with son, Malcolm.

Gay City News looks at CNN’s new documentary about two gay men having a baby on page 8.

PHOTO CREDIT: GRCC

www. g ay c i tynews . c o m © Gay City News 2010 • community media, LLC, All Rights Reserved

24 JUN - 7 JUL 2010

2/ Community

A Focus on Foodies Garden Party 27 served the palette, but skipped the show

BY WINNIE MCCROY

DONNA ACETO

A

month, happy Pride, enjoy the parade, and on behalf of all the people that live in Manhattan, it is great to have the Center right here, in the center of the universe.”

City Councilmen Robert Jackson and James Van Bramer also came to kick off Pride.

“It’s important that we stand together, because no matter what race, color, creed, origin, or sexual orientation, we are all brothers and sisters,” said Jackson, who represents Harlem and Washington Heights.

“The Center has a special place in my heart,” said Van Bramer, who represents a Queens district centered on

City Councilmen Robert Jackson and Jimmy Van Bramer wish a happy Pride to the evening’s guests.

Sunnyside as one of New York’s four openly gay or lesbian councilmembers. “I came out at the Center in 1989 at the gay youth group, and 20 years later I was elected to the New York City Council. So I just want to say we love the Center.”

Christine Quinn, the out lesbian City Council speaker who represents Chelsea ad Hells Kitchen, was absent from the event for the first time in memory; her representatives said budget meetings prevented her from attending.

Among the record 50 par ticipating restaurants, several clear crowd favorites emerged.

The West Village’s North Square restaurant drew a steady crowd hoping to sample its green tomatillo gazpacho topped with fresh steamed shrimp, and herb-crusted salmon with corn-almond salad. The succulent mini tacos from Soho’s Pinche Taqueria were a hit, as were Traif’s BBQ braised sliders brought in from Williamsburg. Dinosaur Bar -B-Que, from Harlem, also set up shop with pork sliders, but got a run for its money from the succulent braised short ribs with applecabbage slaw that Prospect Heights’ Beast Restaurant proffered.

“We came from Brooklyn to help our community, and it’s so nice on the water, it’s lovely,” said

DONNA ACETO

Glennda Testone oversees her first Garden Party as executive director of the LGBT Community Center.

DONNA ACETO

s it has done for near ly three decades, the LGBT Community Center kicked off the annual Pride Week with Garden Party 27, held June 21 at Pier 54, just below West 14th Street at the West Side Highway. More than 2,000 people came out to enjoy food and drink al fresco, while the sun set over the Hudson. The event raised more than $100,000 TK for the Center’s programs.

“We’re proud 365 days a year, but some people come into town just for this,” said Center executive director Glennda Testone.

“They want to see how we do Pride in New York City, and what better place to do it? I think it’s really important for a cross-section of the community to come together and celebrate. It’s really beautiful.”

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer turned out to share a message of solidarity.

“One of the things I learned very early on is just when you think the haters have been put to rest, they keep coming back, whether it’s in Arizona or right here in this borough,” said Stringer. “That’s why we need to have a Center that’s strong, that’s powerful, and when somebody tries to attack somebody else, we’re all in this together, and we collectively fight back.

And that’s what this Pride month is to me — we have to be able to fight back. So enjoy a wonderful

His Highness Imperial Crown Prince Royal Jack and Her Highness Imperial Crown Princess Royal Farrah Moans of the Imperial Court help add glamour to the event.

Sabine, the chef from Beast.

As the delicious artisanal cheeses from Murray’s on Bleecker Street sweated in the evening sun, guests focused their attention on drinks and sweets, availing themselves of cocktails from a Ketel One bar constructed completely of ice and grabbing mini cupcakes from the East Village’s Butter Lane and mom-style desserts from the Treats Truck of Cobble Hill.

Representatives from the Imperial Court of New York turned out in their drag finery to present the Empress Coco LaChine Scholarship Award, $1,000 checks to two worthy college students — Victor Martinez and McKenzie Angelo — for their efforts to further LGBT rights through volunteer community service.

“Our organization has been here for 24 years, and we’re here in support of the entire community,” Empress Anne Tique told Gay City News. “Our organization is made up of all the differ-

ent aspects of the GLBTQ community, so it’s really important to be here and celebrate the Center, its growth, and helping support its continued success.”

Missing from this year’s celebration was the stage show that traditionally provided entertainment for Garden Party guests.

In years past, comedian Kate Clinton would emcee the event, bringing to the stage community performers from the Youth Pride Chorus and Lavender Light Gospel Chorus to rising Broadway stars, drag performers, and vocalists. Several guests remarked on the relatively subdued stage presence at the event, one saying that she felt like much of the community feel had been lost.

Although the participation of area restaurants and gay-supportive corporate sponsors is vital to the success of the Garden Party, future gatherings will hopefully reintegrate this entertainment component into the evening’s events.

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24 JUN – 7 JUL 2010

3

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24 JUN – 7 JUL 2010

4

Important Safety Information and Indication

• Have liver problems, including hepatitis B or C virus infection.

• Have ever had seizures: Seizures have occurred in patients taking a component of ATRIPLA, usually in those with a history of seizures. If you have ever had seizures, or take medicine for seizures, your healthcare provider may want to switch you to another medicine or monitor you.

• Have ever had mental illness or use drugs or alcohol.

Contact your healthcare provider right away if you experience any of the following serious or common side effects: Serious side effects associated with ATRIPLA: • Severe depression, strange thoughts, or angry behavior have been reported by a small number of patients. Some patients have had thoughts of suicide and a few have actually committed suicide. These problems may occur more often in patients who have had mental illness.

• Kidney problems (including decline or failure of kidney function). If you have had kidney problems, or take other medicines that may cause kidney problems, your healthcare provider should do regular blood tests. Symptoms that may be related to kidney problems include a high volume of urine, thirst, muscle pain, and muscle weakness.

• Bone changes. Lab tests show changes in the bones of patients treated with tenofovir DF, a component of ATRIPLA. Some HIV patients treated with tenofovir DF developed thinning of the bones (osteopenia) which could lead to fractures. Also, bone pain and softening of the bone (which may lead to fractures) may occur as a consequence of kidney problems. If you have had bone problems in the past, your healthcare provider may want to check your bones.

Common side effects: • Dizziness, headache, trouble sleeping, drowsiness, trouble concentrating, and/or unusual dreams. These side effects tend to go away after taking ATRIPLA for a few weeks. These symptoms may be more severe with the use of alcohol and/or mood-altering (street) drugs. If you are dizzy, have trouble concentrating, and/or are drowsy, avoid activities that may be dangerous, such as driving or operating machinery.

• Rash is a common side effect that usually goes away without any change in treatment, but may be serious in a small number of patients.

• Other common side effects include: tiredness, upset stomach, vomiting, gas, and diarrhea.

Other possible side effects: • Changes in body fat have been seen in some people taking anti-HIV-1 medicines. The cause and long-term health effects are not known.

• Skin discoloration (small spots or freckles) may also happen.

• If you notice any symptoms of infection, contact your healthcare provider right away.

• Additional side effects are inflammation of the pancreas, allergic reaction (including swelling of the face, lips, tongue, or throat), shortness of breath, pain, stomach pain, weakness and indigestion.

You should take ATRIPLA once daily on an empty stomach. Taking ATRIPLA at bedtime may make some side effects less bothersome.

INDICATION ATRIPLA® (efavirenz 600 mg/emtricitabine 200 mg/ tenofovir disoproxil fumarate [DF] 300 mg) is a prescription medication used alone as a complete regimen or with other medicines to treat HIV-1 infection in adults.

ATRIPLA does not cure HIV-1 and has not been shown to prevent passing HIV-1 to others.

Do not stop taking ATRIPLA unless directed by your healthcare provider. See your healthcare provider regularly.

IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION Contact your healthcare provider right away if you get the following side effects or conditions associated with ATRIPLA: • Nausea, vomiting, unusual muscle pain, and/or weakness. These may be signs of a buildup of acid in the blood (lactic acidosis), which is a serious medical condition.

• Light-colored stools, dark-colored urine, and/or if your skin or the whites of your eyes turn yellow.

These may be signs of serious liver problems.

• If you have HIV-1 and hepatitis B virus (HBV), your liver disease may suddenly get worse if you stop taking ATRIPLA. Do not take ATRIPLA if you are taking the following medicines because serious and life-threatening side effects may occur when taken together: Vascor® (bepridil), Propulsid® (cisapride), Versed® (midazolam), Orap® (pimozide), Halcion® (triazolam), or ergot medications (for example, Wigraine® and Cafergot®).

In addition, ATRIPLA should not be taken with: Combivir® (lamivudine/zidovudine), EMTRIVA® (emtricitabine), Epivir® or Epivir-HBV® (lamivudine), Epzicom® (abacavir sulfate/lamivudine), SUSTIVA® (efavirenz), Trizivir® (abacavir sulfate/ lamivudine/zidovudine), TRUVADA® (emtricitabine/tenofovir DF), or VIREAD® (tenofovir DF), because they contain the same or similar active ingredients as ATRIPLA. ATRIPLA should not be used with HEPSERA® (adefovir dipivoxil).

Vfend® (voriconazole) or REYATAZ® (atazanavir sulfate), with or without Norvir® (ritonavir), should not be taken with ATRIPLA since they may lose their effect and may also increase the chance of having side effects from ATRIPLA. Fortovase® or Invirase® (saquinavir) should not be used as the only protease inhibitor in combination with ATRIPLA. Taking ATRIPLA with St. John’s wort or products containing St. John’s wort is not recommended as it may cause decreased levels of ATRIPLA, increased viral load, and possible resistance to ATRIPLA or cross-resistance to other anti-HIV drugs.

This list of medicines is not complete. Discuss with your healthcare provider all prescription and nonprescription medicines, vitamins, or herbal supplements you are taking or plan to take.

Tell your healthcare provider if you: • Are pregnant: Women should not become pregnant while taking ATRIPLA and for 12 weeks after stopping ATRIPLA. Serious birth defects have been seen in children of women treated during ATRIPLA is one of several treatment options pregnancy with one of the medicines in ATRIPLA. your doctor may consider.

Women must use a reliable form of barrier contraception, such as a condom or diaphragm, even if they also use other methods of birth control You are encouraged to report negative while on ATRIPLA and for 12 weeks after stopping side effects of prescription drugs to the ATRIPLA. FDA. Visit www.fda.gov/medwatch • Are breastfeeding: Women with HIV should not breastfeed because they can pass HIV through their or call 1-800-FDA-1088. milk to the baby. Also, ATRIPLA may pass through breast milk and cause serious harm to the baby.

Please see Patient Information on the following pages.

WWW.GAYCITYNEWS.COM

Patient model.

Individual results may vary.

© 2010 Bristol-Myers Squibb & Gilead Sciences, LLC. All rights reserved.

ATRIPLA is a trademark of Bristol-Myers Squibb & Gilead Sciences, LLC. EMTRIVA, VIREAD, and TRUVADA are trademarks of Gilead Sciences, Inc. SUSTIVA and REYATAZ are registered trademarks of Bristol-Myers Squibb. All other trademarks are owned by third parties.

697US09AB07027/TR5457 06/10

WWW.GAYCITYNEWS.COM

24 JUN – 7 JUL 2010

5

“My entire HIV regimen in one pill daily.

For me, that’s great.”

Phil li p

on ATRIPLA for 2 years

ATRIPLA is the #1 prescribed HIV regimen.* • Only ATRIPLA combines 3 HIV medications in 1 pill daily.

• Proven to lower viral load to undetectable† and help raise T-cell (CD4+) count to help control HIV through 3 years of a clinical study.

• ATRIPLA does not cure HIV-1 and has not been shown to prevent passing HIV-1 to others.

• Selected Important Safety Information: Some people who have taken medicine like ATRIPLA have developed the following: a serious condition of acid buildup in the blood (lactic acidosis), and serious liver problems (hepatotoxicity). For patients with both HIV-1 and hepatitis B virus (HBV), hepatitis may worsen if ATRIPLA is discontinued.

Talk to your doctor to see if ATRIPLA is right for you.

Your doctor may prescribe ATRIPLA alone or with other HIV medications.

Please see Important Safety Information, including bolded information, on adjacent page. *Synovate Healthcare Data; US HIV Monitor, Q2 2009.

†

Defined as a viral load of less than 400 copies/mL.

To learn more, visit www.ATRIPLA.com

24 JUN – 7 JUL 2010

6

FDA-Approved Patient Labeling Patient Information ATRIPLA® (uh TRIP luh) Tablets ALERT: Find out about medicines that should NOT be taken with ATRIPLA. Please also read the section “MEDICINES YOU SHOULD NOT TAKE WITH ATRIPLA.” Generic name: efavirenz, emtricitabine and tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (eh FAH vih renz, em tri SIT uh bean and te NOE’ fo veer dye soe PROX il FYOU mar ate) Read the Patient Information that comes with ATRIPLA (efavirenz/emtricitabine/tenofovir disoproxil fumarate) before you start taking it and each time you get a refill since there may be new information. This information does not take the place of talking to your healthcare provider about your medical condition or treatment. You should stay under a healthcare provider’s care when taking ATRIPLA. Do not change or stop your medicine without first talking with your healthcare provider. Talk to your healthcare provider or pharmacist if you have any questions about ATRIPLA. What is the most important information I should know about ATRIPLA? • Some people who have taken medicine like ATRIPLA (which contains nucleoside analogs) have developed a serious condition called lactic acidosis (buildup of an acid in the blood). Lactic acidosis can be a medical emergency and may need to be treated in the hospital. Call your healthcare provider right away if you get the following signs or symptoms of lactic acidosis: • You feel very weak or tired.

• You have unusual (not normal) muscle pain.

• You have trouble breathing.

• You have stomach pain with nausea and vomiting.

• You feel cold, especially in your arms and legs.

• You feel dizzy or lightheaded.

• You have a fast or irregular heartbeat.

• Some people who have taken medicines like ATRIPLA have developed serious liver problems called hepatotoxicity, with liver enlargement (hepatomegaly) and fat in the liver (steatosis). Call your healthcare provider right away if you get the following signs or symptoms of liver problems: • Your skin or the white part of your eyes turns yellow (jaundice).

• Your urine turns dark.

• Your bowel movements (stools) turn light in color.

• You don’t feel like eating food for several days or longer.

• You feel sick to your stomach (nausea).

• You have lower stomach area (abdominal) pain.

• You may be more likely to get lactic acidosis or liver problems if you are female, very overweight (obese), or have been taking nucleoside analog-containing medicines, like ATRIPLA, for a long time.

• If you also have hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection and you stop taking ATRIPLA, you may get a “flare-up” of your hepatitis. A “flare-up” is when the disease suddenly returns in a worse way than before. Patients with HBV who stop taking ATRIPLA need close medical follow-up for several months, including medical exams and blood tests to check for hepatitis that could be getting worse. ATRIPLA is not approved for the treatment of HBV, so you must discuss your HBV therapy with your healthcare provider.

What is ATRIPLA? ATRIPLA contains 3 medicines, SUSTIVA® (efavirenz), EMTRIVA® (emtricitabine) and VIREAD® (tenofovir disoproxil fumarate also called tenofovir DF) combined in one pill. EMTRIVA and VIREAD are HIV-1 (human immunodeficiency virus) nucleoside analog reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTIs) and SUSTIVA is an HIV-1 non-nucleoside analog reverse transcriptase inhibitor (NNRTI). VIREAD and EMTRIVA are the components of TRUVADA®. ATRIPLA can be used alone as a complete regimen, or in combination with other anti-HIV-1 medicines to treat people with HIV-1 infection. ATRIPLA is for adults age 18 and over. ATRIPLA has not been studied in children under age 18 or adults over age 65.

HIV infection destroys CD4+ T cells, which are important to the immune system. The immune system helps fight infection. After a large number of T cells are destroyed, acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) develops.

ATRIPLA helps block HIV-1 reverse transcriptase, a viral chemical in your body (enzyme) that is needed for HIV-1 to multiply. ATRIPLA lowers the amount of HIV-1 in the blood (viral load).

ATRIPLA may also help to increase the number of T cells (CD4+ cells), allowing your immune system to improve. Lowering the amount of HIV-1 in the blood lowers the chance of death or infections that happen when your immune system is weak (opportunistic infections).

Does ATRIPLA cure HIV-1 or AIDS? ATRIPLA does not cure HIV-1 infection or AIDS. The long-term effects of ATRIPLA are not known at this time. People taking ATRIPLA may still get opportunistic infections or other conditions that happen with HIV-1 infection. Opportunistic infections are infections that develop because the immune system is weak. Some of these conditions are pneumonia, herpes virus infections, and Mycobacterium avium complex (MAC) infection. It is very important that you see your healthcare provider regularly while taking ATRIPLA. Does ATRIPLA reduce the risk of passing HIV-1 to others?

ATRIPLA has not been shown to lower your chance of passing HIV-1 to other people through sexual contact, sharing needles, or being exposed to your blood.

• Do not share needles or other injection equipment.

• Do not share personal items that can have blood or body fluids on them, like toothbrushes or razor blades.

WWW.GAYCITYNEWS.COM

ATRIPLA® (efavirenz/emtricitabine/tenofovir disoproxil fumarate) • Do not have any kind of sex without protection. Always practice safer sex by using a latex or polyurethane condom or other barrier to reduce the chance of sexual contact with semen, vaginal secretions, or blood.

Who should not take ATRIPLA? Together with your healthcare provider, you need to decide whether ATRIPLA is right for you.

Do not take ATRIPLA if you are allergic to ATRIPLA or any of its ingredients. The active ingredients of ATRIPLA are efavirenz, emtricitabine, and tenofovir DF. See the end of this leaflet for a complete list of ingredients.

What should I tell my healthcare provider before taking ATRIPLA? Tell your healthcare provider if you: • Are pregnant or planning to become pregnant (see “What should I avoid while taking ATRIPLA?”).

• Are breast-feeding (see “What should I avoid while taking ATRIPLA?”).

• Have kidney problems or are undergoing kidney dialysis treatment.

• Have bone problems.

• Have liver problems, including hepatitis B virus infection. Your healthcare provider may want to do tests to check your liver while you take ATRIPLA. • Have ever had mental illness or are using drugs or alcohol.

• Have ever had seizures or are taking medicine for seizures.

What important information should I know about taking other medicines with ATRIPLA? ATRIPLA may change the effect of other medicines, including the ones for HIV-1, and may cause serious side effects. Your healthcare provider may change your other medicines or change their doses. Other medicines, including herbal products, may affect ATRIPLA. For this reason, it is very important to let all your healthcare providers and pharmacists know what medications, herbal supplements, or vitamins you are taking.

MEDICINES YOU SHOULD NOT TAKE WITH ATRIPLA • The following medicines may cause serious and life-threatening side effects when taken with ATRIPLA. You should not take any of these medicines while taking ATRIPLA: Vascor (bepridil), Propulsid (cisapride), Versed (midazolam), Orap (pimozide), Halcion (triazolam), ergot medications (for example, Wigraine and Cafergot).

• ATRIPLA also should not be used with Combivir (lamivudine/zidovudine), EMTRIVA, Epivir, Epivir-HBV (lamivudine), Epzicom (abacavir sulfate/lamivudine), Trizivir (abacavir sulfate/lamivudine/zidovudine), SUSTIVA, TRUVADA, or VIREAD. • Vfend (voriconazole) should not be taken with ATRIPLA since it may lose its effect or may increase the chance of having side effects from ATRIPLA. • Do not take St. John’s wort (Hypericum perforatum), or products containing St. John’s wort with ATRIPLA. St. John’s wort is an herbal product sold as a dietary supplement. Talk with your healthcare provider if you are taking or are planning to take St. John’s wort. Taking St. John’s wort may decrease ATRIPLA levels and lead to increased viral load and possible resistance to ATRIPLA or cross-resistance to other anti-HIV-1 drugs.

• ATRIPLA should not be used with HEPSERA® (adefovir dipivoxil).

It is also important to tell your healthcare provider if you are taking any of the following: • Fortovase, Invirase (saquinavir), Biaxin (clarithromycin); or Sporanox (itraconazole); these medicines may need to be replaced with another medicine when taken with ATRIPLA. • Calcium channel blockers such as Cardizem or Tiazac (diltiazem), Covera HS or Isoptin (verapamil) and others; Crixivan (indinavir); the immunosuppressant medicines cyclosporine (Gengraf, Neoral, Sandimmune, and others), Prograf (tacrolimus), or Rapamune (sirolimus); Methadone; Mycobutin (rifabutin); Rifampin; cholesterol-lowering medicines such as Lipitor (atorvastatin), Pravachol (pravastatin sodium), and Zocor (simvastatin); or Zoloft (sertraline); these medicines may need to have their dose changed when taken with ATRIPLA. • Videx, Videx EC (didanosine); tenofovir DF (a component of ATRIPLA) may increase the amount of didanosine in your blood, which could result in more side effects.

You may need to be monitored more carefully if you are taking ATRIPLA and didanosine together. Also, the dose of didanosine may need to be changed.

• Reyataz (atazanavir sulfate) or Kaletra (lopinavir/ritonavir); these medicines may increase the amount of tenofovir DF (a component of ATRIPLA) in your blood, which could result in more side effects. Reyataz is not recommended with ATRIPLA. You may need to be monitored more carefully if you are taking ATRIPLA and Kaletra together. Also, the dose of Kaletra may need to be changed.

• Medicine for seizures [for example, Dilantin (phenytoin), Tegretol (carbamazepine), or phenobarbital]; your healthcare provider may want to switch you to another medicine or check drug levels in your blood from time to time.

These are not all the medicines that may cause problems if you take ATRIPLA. Be sure to tell your healthcare provider about all medicines that you take.

Keep a complete list of all the prescription and nonprescription medicines as well as any herbal remedies that you are taking, how much you take, and how often you take them.

Make a new list when medicines or herbal remedies are added or stopped, or if the dose changes. Give copies of this list to all of your healthcare providers and pharmacists every time you visit your healthcare provider or fill a prescription. This will give your healthcare provider a complete picture of the medicines you use. Then he or she can decide the best approach for your situation.

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24 JUN – 7 JUL 2010

ATRIPLA® (efavirenz/emtricitabine/tenofovir disoproxil fumarate) How should I take ATRIPLA? • Take the exact amount of ATRIPLA your healthcare provider prescribes. Never change the dose on your own. Do not stop this medicine unless your healthcare provider tells you to stop.

• You should take ATRIPLA on an empty stomach.

• Swallow ATRIPLA with water.

• Taking ATRIPLA at bedtime may make some side effects less bothersome.

• Do not miss a dose of ATRIPLA. If you forget to take ATRIPLA, take the missed dose right away, unless it is almost time for your next dose. Do not double the next dose. Carry on with your regular dosing schedule. If you need help in planning the best times to take your medicine, ask your healthcare provider or pharmacist.

• If you believe you took more than the prescribed amount of ATRIPLA, contact your local poison control center or emergency room right away.

• Tell your healthcare provider if you start any new medicine or change how you take old ones. Your doses may need adjustment.

• When your ATRIPLA supply starts to run low, get more from your healthcare provider or pharmacy. This is very important because the amount of virus in your blood may increase if the medicine is stopped for even a short time. The virus may develop resistance to ATRIPLA and become harder to treat.

• Your healthcare provider may want to do blood tests to check for certain side effects while you take ATRIPLA. What should I avoid while taking ATRIPLA? • Women should not become pregnant while taking ATRIPLA and for 12 weeks after stopping it. Serious birth defects have been seen in the babies of animals and women treated with efavirenz (a component of ATRIPLA) during pregnancy. It is not known whether efavirenz caused these defects. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you are pregnant. Also talk with your healthcare provider if you want to become pregnant.

• Women should not rely only on hormone-based birth control, such as pills, injections, or implants, because ATRIPLA may make these contraceptives ineffective. Women must use a reliable form of barrier contraception, such as a condom or diaphragm, even if they also use other methods of birth control. Efavirenz, a component of ATRIPLA, may remain in your blood for a time after therapy is stopped. Therefore, you should continue to use contraceptive measures for 12 weeks after you stop taking ATRIPLA. • Do not breast-feed if you are taking ATRIPLA. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend that mothers with HIV not breast-feed because they can pass the HIV through their milk to the baby. Also, ATRIPLA may pass through breast milk and cause serious harm to the baby. Talk with your healthcare provider if you are breast-feeding. You should stop breast-feeding or may need to use a different medicine.

• Taking ATRIPLA with alcohol or other medicines causing similar side effects as ATRIPLA, such as drowsiness, may increase those side effects.

• Do not take any other medicines, including prescription and nonprescription medicines and herbal products, without checking with your healthcare provider.

• Avoid doing things that can spread HIV-1 infection since ATRIPLA does not stop you from passing the HIV-1 infection to others.

What are the possible side effects of ATRIPLA? ATRIPLA may cause the following serious side effects: • Lactic acidosis (buildup of an acid in the blood). Lactic acidosis can be a medical emergency and may need to be treated in the hospital. Call your healthcare provider right away if you get signs of lactic acidosis. (See “What is the most important information I should know about ATRIPLA?”) • Serious liver problems (hepatotoxicity), with liver enlargement (hepatomegaly) and fat in the liver (steatosis). Call your healthcare provider right away if you get any signs of liver problems. (See “What is the most important information I should know about ATRIPLA?”) • “Flare-ups” of hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection, in which the disease suddenly returns in a worse way than before, can occur if you have HBV and you stop taking ATRIPLA. Your healthcare provider will monitor your condition for several months after stopping ATRIPLA if you have both HIV-1 and HBV infection and may recommend treatment for your HBV. ATRIPLA is not approved for the treatment of hepatitis B virus infection. If you have advanced liver disease and stop treatment with ATRIPLA, the “flare-up” of hepatitis B may cause your liver function to decline.

• Serious psychiatric problems. A small number of patients may experience severe depression, strange thoughts, or angry behavior while taking ATRIPLA. Some patients have thoughts of suicide and a few have actually committed suicide. These problems may occur more often in patients who have had mental illness. Contact your healthcare provider right away if you think you are having these psychiatric symptoms, so your healthcare provider can decide if you should continue to take ATRIPLA. • Kidney problems (including decline or failure of kidney function). If you have had kidney problems in the past or take other medicines that can cause kidney problems, your healthcare provider should do regular blood tests to check your kidneys. Symptoms that may be related to kidney problems include a high volume of urine, thirst, muscle pain, and muscle weakness.

• Changes in bone mineral density (thinning bones). Laboratory tests show changes in the bones of patients treated with tenofovir DF, a component of ATRIPLA. Some HIV patients treated with tenofovir DF developed thinning of the bones (osteopenia) which could lead to fractures. If you have had bone problems in the past, your healthcare provider

7

ATRIPLA® (efavirenz/emtricitabine/tenofovir disoproxil fumarate) may need to do tests to check your bone mineral density or may prescribe medicines to help your bone mineral density. Additionally, bone pain and softening of the bone (which may contribute to fractures) may occur as a consequence of kidney problems.

Common side effects: Patients may have dizziness, headache, trouble sleeping, drowsiness, trouble concentrating, and/or unusual dreams during treatment with ATRIPLA. These side effects may be reduced if you take ATRIPLA at bedtime on an empty stomach. They also tend to go away after you have taken the medicine for a few weeks. If you have these common side effects, such as dizziness, it does not mean that you will also have serious psychiatric problems, such as severe depression, strange thoughts, or angry behavior. Tell your healthcare provider right away if any of these side effects continue or if they bother you. It is possible that these symptoms may be more severe if ATRIPLA is used with alcohol or mood altering (street) drugs.

If you are dizzy, have trouble concentrating, or are drowsy, avoid activities that may be dangerous, such as driving or operating machinery.

Rash may be common. Rashes usually go away without any change in treatment. In a small number of patients, rash may be serious. If you develop a rash, call your healthcare provider right away.

Other common side effects include tiredness, upset stomach, vomiting, gas, and diarrhea.

Other possible side effects with ATRIPLA: • Changes in body fat. Changes in body fat develop in some patients taking anti-HIV-1 medicine. These changes may include an increased amount of fat in the upper back and neck (“buffalo hump”), in the breasts, and around the trunk. Loss of fat from the legs, arms, and face may also happen. The cause and long-term health effects of these fat changes are not known.

• Skin discoloration (small spots or freckles) may also happen with ATRIPLA. • In some patients with advanced HIV infection (AIDS), signs and symptoms of inflammation from previous infections may occur soon after anti-HIV treatment is started. It is believed that these symptoms are due to an improvement in the body’s immune response, enabling the body to fight infections that may have been present with no obvious symptoms. If you notice any symptoms of infection, please inform your doctor immediately.

• Additional side effects are inflammation of the pancreas, allergic reaction (including swelling of the face, lips, tongue, or throat), shortness of breath, pain, stomach pain, weakness and indigestion.

Tell your healthcare provider or pharmacist if you notice any side effects while taking ATRIPLA. Contact your healthcare provider before stopping ATRIPLA because of side effects or for any other reason.

This is not a complete list of side effects possible with ATRIPLA. Ask your healthcare provider or pharmacist for a more complete list of side effects of ATRIPLA and all the medicines you will take.

How do I store ATRIPLA? • Keep ATRIPLA and all other medicines out of reach of children.

• Store ATRIPLA at room temperature 77 °F (25 °C).

• Keep ATRIPLA in its original container and keep the container tightly closed.

• Do not keep medicine that is out of date or that you no longer need. If you throw any medicines away make sure that children will not find them.

General information about ATRIPLA: Medicines are sometimes prescribed for conditions that are not mentioned in patient information leaflets. Do not use ATRIPLA for a condition for which it was not prescribed. Do not give ATRIPLA to other people, even if they have the same symptoms you have. It may harm them.

This leaflet summarizes the most important information about ATRIPLA. If you would like more information, talk with your healthcare provider. You can ask your healthcare provider or pharmacist for information about ATRIPLA that is written for health professionals.

Do not use ATRIPLA if the seal over bottle opening is broken or missing.

What are the ingredients of ATRIPLA? Active Ingredients: efavirenz, emtricitabine, and tenofovir disoproxil fumarate Inactive Ingredients: croscarmellose sodium, hydroxypropyl cellulose, microcrystalline cellulose, magnesium stearate, sodium lauryl sulfate. The film coating contains black iron oxide, polyethylene glycol, polyvinyl alcohol, red iron oxide, talc, and titanium dioxide.

January 2010 ATRIPLA is a trademark of Bristol-Myers Squibb & Gilead Sciences, LLC. EMTRIVA, TRUVADA, HEPSERA and VIREAD are trademarks of Gilead Sciences, Inc. SUSTIVA is a trademark of Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma Company. Reyataz and Videx are trademarks of Bristol-Myers Squibb Company. Pravachol is a trademark of ER Squibb & Sons, LLC. Other brands listed are the trademarks of their respective owners.

SF-B0001B-01-10

21-937-GS-006

ST3962

January 2010

24 JUN - 7 JUL 2010

8/ Media

Now, CNN Tackles Gays in America In “Gary + Tony Have a Baby,” Soledad O’Brien explores the LGBT family

BY PAUL SCHINDLER

LORENZO BEVILAQUA/ CNN

W

ith an eclectic body of documentaries on the African-American and Latino communities completed over the past three years, journalist Soledad O’Brien has built “In America” into a respected, influential, and popular CNN franchise.

Focusing her latest effort on two New York City gay men who called on the aid of an egg donor and a surrogate gestational carrier, O’Brien now extends her reach into the LGBT community.

In what O’Brien said is just the first in an ongoing series of documentaries to be produced under the rubric “Gay in America,” “Gary + T ony Have a Baby” — chronicling the efforts undertaken by Gary Spino and Anthony Brown that resulted in the birth late last year of their son Nicholas — premieres on June 24 at 8 p.m., Eastern and Pacific time, and will be rerun on June 26 and 27, also at 8.

In its narrowest terms, the one-hour documentary explores, in detail, what is surely the most complicated, expensive, and infrequent means by which gay men become parents. Brown, a civil rights and family law attorney, and Spino, a dental office receptionist, estimate that their total costs, inclusive of compensation for the donor and surrogate and all medical, legal, and social service expenses, at $160,000. At a June 15 screening of the documentary, hosted by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and CNN, panelists made the point that only about 1,000 gay men, to date, have had children through surrogacy.

But, in just 40 minutes of airtime, O’Brien tells a far broader story, as well — about the families and communities that Brown and Spino came from and the difficulties each faced as gay youth coming of age in the 1960s and ’70s.

Raised in a Methodist home near Richmond, Virginia, Brown

Gary Spino, Soledad O’Brien, and Anthony Brown at a June 15 screening of “In America: Gary + Tony Have A Baby” at the Paley Center For Media.

faced taunting as a student; his school, he said, was full of graffiti reading “TBIG” — for, Tony Brown is gay. The fellow student he suspects was his chief tormentor is today an out gay man living in New York, who appeared in the documentary and acknowledged that Brown was targeted for being “different,” something that “wasn’t encouraged.”

Though Brown’s parents became aware of the hazing their son habitually faced — culminating in a crisis that led to his withdrawal from the school — he didn’t formally come out to them until he met Spino in his late 20s two decades ago, and then only to his mother at first.

Spino also comes from culturally conservative roots — a small town in central Pennsylvania, where his Catholic family’s priest recently okayed having a petition distributed in church calling for a ban on same-sex marriage. When visiting Pennsylvania, Spino still drives his mother to Mass, but doesn’t go in; a letter he and Brown sent to her fellow parishioners was welcomed by some, but angered others.

In a June 15 interview with Gay City News, O’Brien reflected on what she learned about Spino and Brown’s lives as gay men from their experiences as youths.

“I guess what was the eyeopening part of it is that Tony is

40-something years old and he cried every time he talked about it,” she said of Brown’s recollections from his childhood school days. “It was a pain from his childhood and it is a pain that has seared through his head and into his heart, and it literally has made him a different human being. It was interesting, I thought, when Gary’s brother talked about teasing him and said, ‘Oh, I bet he remembers that like it was yesterday.’ Years later, both of them feel very emotional about that teasing.

It changed them; it hurt them deeply.”

The couple would in time become gay activists, most visibly in recent years on the marriage equality issue; they married in Canada in 2005 and, prior to that, founded the Wedding Party, which for the past decade has done educational work on civil marriage rights.

Five years before they embarked on parenthood through surrogacy, Brown donated his sperm to a New York lesbian couple. In the time since, Spino explains in the documentary, they thought about parenting largely in terms of their relationship to the women’s daughter, Piper.

But Brown and Spino wanted to have their own child. When O’Brien asked the couple, “What about Piper?,” Brown responded, “We’re not her parents. She has two parents.” O’Brien followed up by asking why they

didn’t adopt, to which Spino answered, “I know part of that is ego,” and then pointed to the human instinct, present since the beginning of time, for “seeing your own biological offspring.”

Parenting their son through surrogacy — this time, Spino contributed the sperm — allowed CNN to also explore the role Holly, the egg donor from Florida, and Cindy, the surrogate from North Carolina, played in the story. Neither women use their last name in the documentary, though both appear on camera. Holly, whom we first meet as Brown and Spino pick them up at the airport in New York when she arrives with her mother, says she was confused when the agency she was working with asked if she had any concerns about donating eggs to gay men. Still, her decision to withhold her last name was based on the fact that she was working with two fathers, the documentary reveals.

That hesitancy doesn’t keep Holly, however, from allowing cameras into the surgical room where her eggs are harvested.

Some of the most compelling scenes in the documentary concern Cindy and her husband, John, who have children of their own. Cindy and John are not their real names, and we don’t see their children’s faces. But the parents spend considerable time on camera.

O’Brien describes them as “a rural couple from the South, all motorcycles and tattoos,” and rightly notes that they are “the oddest of matches” for the New York gay activists. The North Carolina couple, we learn, will plow the money Cindy made carrying Spino and Brown’s baby into opening up their own tattoo parlor.

C i n d y t e lls O’Brien that nobody beyond her parents and some very close friends know that the parents of the baby she is carrying are gay men.

The decision for her and John not to use their real names, she explains, is based on avoiding “negative repercussions on people who didn’t agree to do this in the first place.” She adds, “If my grandmother were to know

the entire situation, I think she would give up. She would say, ‘You now, I think I’ve outlived my welcome in this world. So, I’ll see ya later.’”

O’Brien acknowledged that the sensitivity about self-disclosure she encountered in making “Gary + Tony Have a Baby” was “unusual” among her documentary sources.

“For other documentaries I’ve done, people agree and people don’t worry about ‘What is this going to mean for my cousin?’ and ‘What is this going to mean for my sister?,’” she said. “So that is definitely different from other stories.”

O’Brien said, however, that in all documentaries it is necessary to win trust among participants upfront. She said she told Holly and Cindy what she has told many others who have appeared in her work — that if they decide to participate only if their faces are obscured in interviews, “You need to understand that it’s going to look on camera as it does when you watch TV, which is that this person has something to hide. You can’t say, ‘I have no problem with this, but blur my face’ — that’s inconsistent.”

Asked whether she would have moved forward with the documentary if she had not won the level of participation she did from the two women involved in the birth, O’Brien said the question was too hypothetical.

“If the donor said no, and the surrogate said yes, then maybe we could do it,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “If the surrogate said no, I don’t know.

But if the surrogate said, ‘You could do it if you cover my face,’ maybe you could. I don’t know.”

In an 18-month process in which CNN shot about 70 hours of film, cooperation by Holly and Cindy were just two of the variables.

“Documentaries are like that,” O’Brien said. “Sometimes it doesn’t work out and sometimes it’s like — well, that’s a very good two-and-a-half minute piece. And then it doesn’t become a documentary.”

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CNN, continued on p.78

24 JUN - 7 JUL 2010

Politics /9

Keeping His Own Counsel For now, ESPA’s Ross Levi is cautious in his Albany prognostications

W

ith this year’s Albany legislative season winding down and just two-and-a-half months left until Primary Day and four until Election Day, the brand new executive director of the Empire State Pride Agenda, New York State’s LGBT lobby, is circumspect about his near-term expectations.

Ross Levi, who has been with ESPA for a decade and became its leader at the beginning of June, spoke with Gay City News a week after the Senate Judiciary Committee tabled the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act, a move that could spell the end of hope, in this year’s session, for what had been a key legislative priority.

Asked on June 16 whether GENDA might yet be revived this year or if the Senate would finally follow the Assembly’s lead by passing a gay- and transgender-inclusive school anti-bullying bill, he said, “I will say this: The session is not over. We are going to continue up to the very last minute to do everything

we can to move our bills forward, up to and including a law.�

In fact, six days later, the Senate approved the school bullying bill by a 58-3 vote, sending it on to Governor David A. Paterson, a longtime supporter of the measure (see page 15).

Of course, making predictions about what will happen in Albany is often a fool’s errand, and Levi — who is 43 and lives in Stephenstown, southeast of Albany, with his partner — emphasized why at this moment that may be even more true than usual. The state budget is almost three months late –– and consuming the vast preponderance of political oxygen in the Capitol right now –– so getting legislators to work in bipartisan fashion, particularly in the Senate with its razor-thin 32-30 Democratic edge, is very difficult. “There is currently an unusually poisonous atmosphere in Albany,� he argued, “where people are saying one thing, even to constituents or advocates, and then doing something else on the floor.�

Levi noted that earlier this month, on the eve of the Senate approving landmark legislation protecting domestic workers’ rights, the Democratic sponsor announced she had five Republican votes in hand. When the vote was taken, however, only one GOP member, a co-sponsor of the bill, stood with the Democratic majority to approve it. That same toxic partisan climate, in Levi’s view, explains the recent committee vote on GENDA — and conditions his view on how to move going forward in the next few weeks and into the fall election season.

GENDA was brought before Judiciary by its chair, Brooklyn’s John Sampson, the leader of the majority Democratic Conference, who expected to prevail in reporting the measure out to the full chamber, with the support of 11 of the committee’s 12 Democrats and one or two of its 11 Republicans. In an embarrassing denouement to a brief but contentious discussion of the bill, the GOP members voted in a bloc, along with the

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ESPA, continued on p.80

ESPA

BY PAUL SCHINDLER

After more than a decade in Albany, most of it with the Pride Agenda, Ross Levi assumes the helm.

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10

WWW.GAYCITYNEWS.COM

■ HEALTH

Bloomberg Sued Over Proposed AIDS Cuts Housing Works charges city case worker trimming illegal, eviscerating

BY DUNCAN OSBORNE

LOOK WHO’’S

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Celebrate NYC Pride Week with PANDORA BOXX and LA CAGE AUX FOLLES! Macy’s Herald Square, Men’s on 3 Friday, June 25 at 5pm Meet entertainer Pandora Boxx

Don’t miss this opportunity to get up close with Pandora Boxx, the talented performer and finalist on RuPaul’s Drag Race® Season 2, as she kicks off an all-out fashion show featuring “The Cagelles,” the dynamic divas from LA CAGE AUX FOLLES. After the show, Pandora Boxx will pose for photos and send you home with her autograph.

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leading AIDS service organization has gone to federal court seeking a restraining order that bars the Bloomberg administration from cutting nearly a third of the case manager positions at the city’s HIV/ AIDS Services Administration (HASA).

“As this Court has determined, intensive case management, with low caseload ratios as prescribed by this Court, constitutes the ramp that Defendants are required to provide Plaintiffs to ensure equal and meaningful access to the benefits and services to which they are entitled,” Housing Works wrote in a motion argued in court on June 22. “Defendants’ proposal to tear down this ramp is a bla-

HASA to be, ‘unequivocally,’ at trial, prior to the imposition of case manager-to-client ratios,” the motion read. “It would also immediately usher in a return to the ‘devastating consequences’ to which Defendants subjected Plaintiffs for so many years. The harm would be irreparable.”

The case managers enroll people with AIDS in food stamp, Medicaid, housing, and other programs. While private AIDS groups offer many services to their clients, only the city case managers can link people with AIDS to government benefits. Currently, HASA serves roughly 45,000 people with AIDS and their dependents.

Gay City News sought comment from City Hall, which referred that request to HRA. In a statement, HRA wrote, “The

“If implemented, Defendants’ plan will not only violate this Court’s orders, but it will also eviscerate the agency.” tant violation of the law, and most importantly, of this Court’s Orders.”

Facing a shortfall of $4.9 billion in the city’s $63 billion budget for the 2011 fiscal year, which begins on July 1, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg proposed eliminating 248 case managers from the current 850 at HASA to save $4.2 million in the $8.8 billion Human Resources Administration (HRA) budget. HASA is part of HRA. On behalf of several HASA clients, Housing Works sued the city in 1995 over a number of issues related to the HASA’s operations including the ratio of case managers to clients. In 1997, the City Council enacted a law requiring HASA to maintain a ratio of one case manager for 34 clients. That ratio was litigated in the lawsuit and Housing Works won a 2001 ruling requiring the city to follow the 1997 law. The latest motion is asking the court to enforce the earlier ruling.

“If implemented, Defendants’ plan will not only violate this Court’s orders (although it will do that — and blatantly), but it will also eviscerate the agency, thus rendering HASA even more grossly dysfunctional than this Court adjudged

Human Resources Administration has received the plaintiff’s papers and is in the process of reviewing them. However, we do not believe there is any violation of the court order or the local law. Because this is now in active litigation, we will strenuously defend the authority of the Administration.”

The AIDS agency did not receive a restraining order on June 22 and is due back in Brooklyn federal court on June 24 for another hearing before Magistrate Judge Cheryl Pollak.

During his eight years in office, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani repeatedly tried to gut or close HASA. Until this year, Bloomberg has not attempted that. In prior years, the City Council has usually restored any HASA cuts. This year some members objected to the cuts, but it was not clear that they would vote against the budget if it contained the HASA cuts, in part, because they knew Housing Works was likely to sue Bloomberg.

A request for comment from City Council Speaker Christine Quinn on the Housing Works lawsuit and the underlying budget question was not returned as of press time.

WWW.GAYCITYNEWS.COM

24 JUN – 7 JUL 2010

11

iberty L &Justice “God has sent me to proclaim liberty and freedom to those who are bound!” - Isaiah 61

for All!

MCCNY is the Spiritual Center of the Queer community in NYC. Our congregation offers a range of worship services, celebrations, programs and support services, including the Sylvia Rivera Youth Shelter and Food Pantry.

The Reverend Pat Bumgardner says “Taking pride in the truth of who we are and what God is calling to life through us is a life-affirming, good and joyful thing to do. It is a powerful thing to take up the work of God and help set captives, like many of us once were, free. I am proud of all MCC is doing around the world and in our city to make “Liberty and Justice for All” more than a distant dream.”

MCCNY’s Pride Events: Friday, June 25: AIDS Candlelight Vigil, 8:00 pm; Sheridan Sq. Park & Christopher St. Sunday, June 27: Communion Service in the Streets! 12 noon at the MCCNY parade march site (36th & 6th Ave.).

(Come march with the MCCNY float and musical contingent!)

Pride Sunday Services: 9 am, 11 am and 7 pm at MCCNY 446 West 36th St. bet. 9th & 10th Ave.

The Reverend Pat Bumgardner, Pastor a church of lesbian, gay, bisexual & transgender people - open to all

Weekly Sunday Services: 9 am (Traditional), 11 am (Celebration), 3 pm (Mandarin 2nd & 4th Sundays) and 7 pm (Praise & Worship) 446 West 36th St. bet. 9th & 10th Ave. NY, NY 10018 212-629-7440 CHECK OUT www.MCCNY.org for information about our programs, services, and events, including CHURCH LADY BINGO and MCCNY'S JACKSON HALL ART GALLERY.

24 JUN - 7 JUL 2010

12/ Human Rights

Moscow’s Man of Action Nikolai Alexeyev explains the struggle in Russia and the importance of global solidarity

BY DOUG IRELAND

GAYRUSSIA.RU/ KIRILL NEPOMNYASCHIY

N

ikolai Alexeyev, the young Moscow lawyer who has courageously organized Gay Pride demonstrations in that capital city for the past five years despite an official ban on them, has become the internationally recognized symbol of the nascent new generation of liberated Russian queers.

Alexeyev founded GayRussia.Ru, the country’s first non-commercial, humanrights-focused gay news website, which has been a catalyst for organizing activists and encouraging gay community identity. He’s been arrested many times along with his comrades in struggle in peaceful protests — including international actions in solidarity with oppressed gays in other countries — simply for trying to exercise the rights to freedom of speech and assembly that are, in theory, guaranteed by the Russian Constitution and by international treaties to which Russia is a signatory. Those rights have been steadily degraded and ignored under the dictatorial Premier Vladimir

Nikolai Alexeyev is the tireless force at the helm of GayRussia.Ru, the primary LGBT organizing vehicle in Moscow.

Putin, who rules Russia with all the brutality of a corrupt Romanov autocrat.

Alexeyev has repeatedly challenged this erosion of rights, using his skills as a lawyer to bring some 168 court cases challenging Russia’s squelching

of gay demonstrations, taking them first through the nation’s judicial system and from there all the way to the European Court of Human Rights.

A firm believer in civil disobedience and the creative power of bold,

media-savvy actions that have broken the silence about same-sex love which reigned in Russia, Alexeyev and his intrepid, militant activism have been honored by gay rights groups around the world, including Pride events from Sao Paolo to Vancouver.

This week, Gay City News asked the dauntless Alexeyev, who rarely talks about himself, about his emergence as an activist.

DOUG IRELAND: What were the origins and evolution of your gay activism?

NIKOLAI ALEXEYEV: I think it all started in the fall of 2001 when I was sacked from Moscow State University after I said that I will dedicate my postgraduate thesis to research on the legal status of sexual minorities. For the dean of the faculty, this was not acceptable.

They sacked me despite the fact that I’d graduated from this university with excellence two years before. In turn, I sued them in court in Russia, but I lost.

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MOSCOW, continued on p.13

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䉴

MOSCOW, from p.12

So I brought my case to the European Court of Human Rights, and I’m waiting for the court to start considering it for four years already.

After they sacked me, I decided to pursue my gay research on my own, and I published two books in Russia on legal issues of LGBT people. They were the first research ever published on this issue and no publishing house wanted to take the risk to publish them. So, I had to print them myself.

But I literally embraced gay activism in the spring of 2005. After my research, I was trying to understand why nothing had happened in Russia since male homosexuality was decriminalized in 1993. Why is no one campaigning to get equality? Why is nothing happening?

Why do we allow the media to write only stereotypes on gays? Why does no one oppose the populist politicians who want to recriminalize homosexuality? So, I decided to start working on that.

It took me three months to figure out a strategy and to start discussing potential actions with the rest of the LGBT community here in Russia. I launched GayRussia.Ru on the first IDAHO day [the International Day Against Homophobia] on May 17, 2005. I remember that on this day we organized a press conference to release the result of a poll on LGBT issues that we had specially ordered.

24 JUN – 7 JUL 2010 Guess what? No journalist came. That was the start.

Then, I got acquainted with other international activists. There was LouisGeorges Tin from Paris, the founder of the IDAHO day, and Peter Tatchell from OutRage! in London.

At the same time, there was the scandal of the two adolescents being executed in Iran who were presumably executed for being gay. We organized a press conference in July 2005 on the issue of the two Iranian kids to raise awareness in Russia. Five journalists came. At the end, the correspondent of Interfax, the leading Russian news agency, asked me, “What is the gay community planning to organize in Russia?” At the time, I understood that this question was a unique chance. And so I answered that on May 27, 2006 we would be holding our first Gay Pride march in Moscow to celebrate the 13th anniversary of the decriminalization of male homosexuality in Russia.

Two hours later, Interfax called the mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov, who was in the Eastern part of Russia. He said that he would not allow any gays to march in his city. In 2001, there had been a project to organize a love parade in Moscow, but after the mayor said no, the plans were dropped and the organizers disappeared. He probably expected the same outcome this time. Well, bad luck for him! He did not understand that this time the organizers were deter-

mined. By saying ten months in advance that he will not allow the Pride, the mayor created the buzz in the media and put a spotlight on our movement immediately.

In those ten months, we worked hard.

We understood that international support would be key. I was really helped a lot by Louis-Georges Tin and IDAHO, who managed to help me bring activists from more than 25 countries to Moscow.

We had foreign politicians, including a deputy from Germany’s Bundestag, a member of the European Parliament, a vice-mayor of Paris. But also my friend Merlin Holland, the grandson of Oscar Wilde, came. We even had a French pop star.

Part of our strategy was also to impress the Russian media. We needed to show them that they had to get rid of all the stereotypes about gays. While for the media, for the last ten years, a gay man could only be a man dressed like a woman in a pink dress, with the Pride we managed to change this attitude. First, we showed ourselves openly, as we are.

Second, we showed that so many VIPs can come from abroad for a gay festival.

And lastly, we decided to hold our event in what was, at that time, Moscow’s poshest hotel.

You have to understand that in Moscow, the gay life remains discreet and underground, and saunas and bars are often located in places where they’re

13 hard to find. We came out of the cave into the light of day, and we showed that gay issues can be discussed in the same hotel where Gazprom [the state-owned largest contractor of natural gas in the world] conducts its business seminars.

Then, you know what happened with the Pride. The march was illegally banned by the mayor, but as planned we defied the ban. Several of us, including me, were arrested, detained, and fined. The others were bashed by a nasty crowd of religious Orthodox and anti-gay protesters.

Pretty much the same scenario happened in 2007. [See this reporter’s May 21-27, 2007 article, “The Agony of Moscow Pride,” a link to which appears in the online version of this article at gaycitynews.com.]

In 2008, we started a new tactic. We wanted to avoid the confrontation with the anti-gay protesters whose plans to attack us had been announced. So, we announced that we would come in front of the City Hall, but we took 20 journalists in a bus with us, and at the last minute we organized a picket in front of the statue of Tchaikovsky. And in front of the City Hall, where the protesters and the police where waiting for us, four of our guys unveiled a large banner from the top of a building against the mayor of Moscow. Right in front of his windows! A

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MOSCOW, continued on p.84

24 JUN - 7 JUL 2010

14/ Politics

Stark Kagan Anti-Bias Views Emerge As Clinton solicitor general, high court nominee said she’s “biggest fan” of religious opt-outs DUNCAN OSBORNE

PETE SOUZA/ WHITE HOUSE

G

ay and civil liberties groups are asking members of the Senate Judiciary Committee to question Elena Kagan, a nominee for the US Supreme Court, about her views on religious liberty after memos and emails from her time in the Clinton administration suggested she may believe that religious beliefs trump anti-discrimination laws.

“We’re urging the committee to inquire into her current beliefs on that issue,” Michael Cole, a spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay lobby, wrote in an email.

Kagan served in the Clinton White House from 1995 through 1999, and the Clinton Library has released tens of thousands of documents from her time there since President Barack

Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan with President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Bid at the White House on May 10.

Obama nominated her on May 10 to replace Justice John Paul Stevens on the nation’s highest court.

In a 1996 memo, Kagan urged the Clinton administration to join religious conservatives in asking the US Supreme Court to review and reverse a California Supreme Court ruling finding

that the state’s anti-discrimination law overcame a landlord’s religious objections to renting to an unmarried couple.

Calling the court’s decision “quite outrageous,” Kagan wrote “[G]iven the importance of this issue to the President and the danger this decision poses to [the Religious Freedom Restora-

tion Act’s] guarantee of religious freedom in the State of California, I think there is an argument to be made for urging the Court to review and reverse the decision.”

The landlord, who was represented by a pro bono attorney from the right-wing Concerned Women For America, refused to rent an apartment to the couple in 1987. The couple sued in state court, citing a California law that barred discrimination based on marital status. Lambda Legal, the gay rights law firm, filed a brief on behalf of the couple.

Following the 1996 ruling from California’s highest court, a lawyer representing a coalition that included groups that are still some of the most ardent opponents of the gay community contacted Kagan appar ently seeking to have the Clinton administration join their effort to have the US Supreme Court take

the case. The administration did not join that petition, and the court did not hear the case.

The 1993 federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which was meant to strike “sensible balances between religious liberty and competing prior governmental interests,” was considered in a separate case by the US Supreme Court, and in 1997 the court held that RFRA could not apply to state and local laws, only federal law.

Two years later, Congress took up the Religious Liberty Protection Act (RLPA), which was meant to address the court’s objections in the 1997 case.

Gay groups joined fair housing, disability, and civil rights groups seeking to amend the law to exempt discrimination laws from RLPA’s provisions. Kagan, then the solicitor general, acted

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KAGAN, continued on p.83

WWW.GAYCITYNEWS.COM

24 JUN – 7 JUL 2010

15

■ EDUCATION

NY Senate OKs School AntiBullying Bill Dignity law offers protections for sexual orientation, gender identity

BY PAUL SCHINDLER

GAY CITY NEWS

A

t the end of a day when a longstalled LGBT rights initiative suddenly jumped to the front of the line, the New York State Senate on June 22 passed the Dignity for All Students Act (DASA).

The anti-bullying measure, already approved by the Assembly and supported by Governor David Paterson, provides protections based on a number of categories, including sexual orientation and gender identity.

The late evening vote — approval came just after 10 p.m. — was 58-3, with all three no votes coming from Republicans.

The ayes, surprisingly, included Bronx Democrat Ruben Diaz, Sr., a fiery antigay Pentecostal minister, who has been the LGBT community’s political bête noire for nearly two decades.

DASA represents the first time that the Senate has approved any legislation making reference to gender identity. Yet, just two weeks after the Senate Judiciary Committee rejected the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act, in a 12-11 nearly party line split (with Diaz joining the Republicans in voting no), the inclu-

State Senator Tom Duane, the lead sponsor of DASA, marches in the June 6 Queens Pride Parade.

community’s most vulnerable members — transgender youth for whom unsafe schools can be the beginning of a lifetime of marginalization that can include health issues and even homelessness...

“We thank the Legislature for passing the first-ever state law that includes protections based on gender identity and expression,” said ESPA’s Ross Levi. sion of gender identity in the legislation elicited no comment at all during the floor debate.

The Assembly had approved the measure in each of seven successive sessions, but the Senate had to date refused to take up the matter.

“We thank the Legislature for passing the first-ever state law that includes protections based on gender identity and expression,” said Ross Levi, the new executive director of the Empire State Pride Agenda, in a written statement released right after the vote. “This significant law will now protect some of our

We also thank the lead sponsors of this legislation, Assemblymember Daniel O’Donnell and Senator Tom Duane for their perseverance in getting this bill passed.”

In a press conference with more than a dozen of his colleagues the morning after the vote, Duane, an out gay Chelsea Democrat, said, “Once Dignity is enacted, it will be the first time protections for our transgender community will be enshrined in New York law. Dignity is a victory for all school families and is yet

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ANTI-BULLYING, continued on p.16

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16 䉴

ANTI-BULLYING, from p.15

another step in the fight for safety and equality for all New Yorkers.”

Brooklyn’s John Sampson, the leader of the majority Democratic Conference in the Senate, said, “I applaud Senator Duane for addressing this very serious problem and standing up against discrimination and bullying for our young people.”

In a written statement, O’Donnell, who is also gay and represents the Upper West and Harlem, said, “Too many students are bullied based on real or perceived differences with their classmates. Every student deserves an environment free of harassment and discrimination, an environment that allows every child to reach his or her full potential.”

Upper West Side Democratic Senator Eric Schneiderman, a candidate for state attorney general, released a statement in the immediate after math of the vote, saying,

WWW.GAYCITYNEWS.COM

“It sends a strong message that every student in New York State will be treated equally, and with the respect they deserve. And for the first time in history, protections based on gender identity and expression will be included in state law.”

The final lap toward victory for DASA emerged suddenly, when, amidst all the budget chaos gripping Albany, the measure, early in the afternoon on June 22, was put on the calendar for consideration by the Rules Committee, the final step before floor debate. Less than ten hours later, the bill was approved overwhelmingly.

Four days earlier, key New York City officials, including Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, Council Speaker Christine Quinn, and Council Education chair Robert Jackson, sent each of the 62 senators a letter urging them to support the bill, saying, “A school environment free of bullying and harassment is essential to the academ-

ic success of every child…

This law would help ensure that our schools are places in which every child can fulfill his or her academic potential.”

In 2004, the Council passed, over Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s veto, a similar measure, but the administration refused to implement it, citing its executive prerogatives, an argument the Council declined to challenge in court.

Under Klein’s leader ship, however, the school system has implemented the Respect for All program, which it says achieves the law’s goals of addressing bias-related harassment and bullying in the schools.

In a written release, the T ransgender Legal Defense and Education Fund praised the Senate for its vote, noting the historic inclusion of the gender identity category in the bill, and pointing to a recent survey from the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network

(GLSEN) that found that 79 percent of New York’s LGBT school students reported harassment over the past year due to their sexual orientation and 62 percent because of how they expressed their gender.

The Dignity for All Students Act Coalition — a group that includes ESPA, GLSEN, the Anti-Defamation League, the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), and NYSUT, a federation of local unions representing more than 600,000 teaching professionals — said that DASA “will protect children from pervasive bullying and bias-based harassment in the state’s public schools.”

“This is a major victory for children, parents, and educators across the state,” said Donna Lieberman, NYCLU’s executive director. “With this vote, the State Senate has empowered New York’s educators to fulfill their responsibility to provide all students a safe, nurturing learning environment.”

Assembly Member Dick Gottfried wishes you a

Happy Pride!

Congressman McMahon and Congressman Jared Polis from Colorado

Congressman Michael E. McMahon Proudly Representing Staten Island and Southern Brooklyn Fighting for Equality Endorsed by Human Rights Campaign and Stonewall Democrats Wishes you a Happy Pride Paid for by McMahon for Congress, George Caputo, Treasurer.

• Representing Chelsea, Hell’s Kitchen, Midtown, Murray Hill, and part of the Lincoln Center area • Chair, NYS Assembly Health Committee • Same Sex Marriage bill, co-sponsor • GENDA (Transgender rights), sponsor • Leads the Fight for Funding for HIV and other services for the LGBT community Dick Gottfried’s Community Office: 242 West 27th St., ground floor Ph: 212-807-7900 E-mail: gottfrr@assembly.state.ny.us

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â– CRIME

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Keith Phoenix Retrial Winding Up Accused 2008 killer of JosĂŠ Sucuzhanay faces new Brooklyn jury after mistrial

BY DUNCAN OSBORNE

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A

s testimony nears an end in the second trial of Keith Phoenix, the accused killer of JosĂŠ Sucuzhanay, jurors have heard from the five eyewitnesses to the 2008 attack, and listened to Phoenix’s statements in which he admits to beating Sucuzhanay with a bat, but asserts he was acting in self defense. “I see him going like this, reaching for a gun,â€? Phoenix said as he moved his hand toward the waistband of his pants in a 19-minute tape that was played for the jury on June 22. “I hit him four times with the bat. I hit him like in the midsection and then the face.â€?

The Brooklyn district attorney said

Avenue.

On June 17, Nathaniel told jurors that Phoenix rolled down his window and yelled “two faggot ass niggersâ€? upon seeing the brothers. Scott left the car to smash a beer bottle over JosĂŠ ’s head, then Phoenix used a “bat, pole or stickâ€? to beat JosĂŠ, who was lying on the street. Nathaniel saw Phoenix deliver two sets of blows. He heard “bone breaking,â€? the 19-year-old said.

Also on June 17, Kimbale Taylor, who lives on Bushwick Avenue, testified she was awakened by a “thumping noise� and looked out her bedroom window to see “a gentleman who was beating on another gentleman who was lying on the ground.�

The emergency medical technician said she saw two sets of blows made with an

Nathaniel saw Phoenix deliver two sets of blows. He heard “bone breaking,â€? the 19-year-old said. that Phoenix, 30, and Hakim Scott, 27, attacked JosĂŠ and his brother, Romel, after mistaking them for a gay couple as they were walking home early in the morning on December 7, 2008 in Brooklyn’s Bushwick section. The two Ecuadorian immigrants were huddled close together to stay warm. Witnesses said anti-gay and anti-Latino slurs were used. The defense argued that this was an alcohol-fueled dispute that turned vicious.

Phoenix faces multiple second-degree murder, manslaughter, assault, and attempted assault charges, with some charged as hate crimes. His first trial ended in a mistrial on May 11, after 11 jurors wanted a murder conviction and one held out for a manslaughter conviction. That jury did not believe that Phoenix acted in self-defense, nor did jurors believe the attack was a hate crime.

Scott was convicted on manslaughter and attempted assault charges on May 6, though not as hate crimes. The two men were tried together, but with separate juries.

Phoenix, Scott, and Demetrius Nathaniel, Phoenix’s cousin, were returning to the Bronx in Phoenix’s car after attending a party in Brooklyn. They encountered JosÊ and Romel at the intersection of Kossuth Place and Bushwick

aluminum bat, with the second set delivered to the prone man’s head.

Davi Almonte, a cab driver who witnessed the attack and wrote down the license plate number of Phoenix’s car, said he turned away at one point. “I didn’t want to see when his head would break open,� he said on June 15.

He heard “the impact of the bat,� Almonte said.

On June 23, Kuson Nelson said he was returning to his Bushwick Avenue home and heard the driver of a red SUV say, “Look at those two little faggot motherfuckers right there� to “two Hispanic males.� He saw only part of the attack.

Romel testified on June 21, saying that someone exited the car saying “fucking Spanish,� and then he and his brother were attacked. “The driver looked at us with an angry face as if he was upset,� Romel said. “When we were walking toward the house they came out screaming ‘Fucking Spanish’...

It was very fast. They jumped out and they hit my brother in the head with a bottle.�

The bottle shattered and Romel said the shards cut his hands, arm, and chest. He saw a second man “hitting my brother with a bat.�

Testimony is expected to end on June 24 with closing arguments set for June 28.

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24 JUN – 7 JUL 2010

19

SCHNEIDERMAN, MALONEY OUT FRONT ON ENDORSEMENTS In two races being contested in the September 14 Democratic primary, the organized LGBT community is coalescing decisively around common choices.

State Senator Eric Schneiderman, who has represented the Upper West Side since January 1999, is running in a five-way race for state attorney general and has been endorsed by four of the city’s five major LGBT political clubs and the entire gay and lesbian caucus on the City Council — Speaker Christine Quinn of Chelsea and Councilmembers Rosie Mendez of the East Village, Daniel Dromm of Jackson Heights, and Jimmy Van Bramer of Sunnyside. Schneiderman also has the support of two Manhattan assemblymembers, Daniel O’Donnell and Micah Kellner, as well as 2006 AG candidate Sean Patrick Maloney, a former top aide to Governors David Paterson and Eliot Spitzer, and Emily Giske, a member of the Democratic National Committee.

Among the political clubs, Schneiderman has been endorsed by the Stonewall Democrats, the Gay and Lesbian Independent Democrats, Brooklyn’s Lambda Independent Democrats, and the Lesbian and Gay Democratic Club of Queens.

The Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club has endorsed Kathleen Rice, the Nassau County district attorney. Last month, Rice vowed to challenge the Defense of Marriage Act in federal court, saying that it “infringes upon the civil rights of New Yorkers and unconstitutionally deprives the state of its right to provide the full benefits of marriage

to its citizens.” In his position paper on LGBT rights issued last week, Schneiderman made the same pledge. The Massachusetts attorney general is currently in court challenging the federal government’s refusal to recognize same-sex married couples in that state.

Nine-term Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, who represents the 14th District that encompasses Manhattan’s East Side and portions of Western Queens, faces a challenge from Reshma Saujani, a hedge fund attorney who has been an active Democratic fundraiser in the past three presidential elections.

Maloney has shut out her opponent, garnering the endorsement of all nine openly LGBT elected officials in the city and the four gay Democratic clubs active in her district. In addition to Quinn, Mendez, Dromm, Van Bramer, O’Donnell, and Kellner, the incumbent enjoys support from State Senator Tom Duane of Chelsea and Assemblymembers Deborah Glick of the West Village and Matthew Titone of Staten Island. In this race, the Jim Owles Club is on the same page with Stonewall, GLID, and the Queens club. The Washington-based Human Rights Campaign also endorsed Maloney.

Active during the Bush administration in the fight against a constitutional amendment barring marriage by same-sex couples, Maloney is a marriage equality supporter and has introduced legislation to broaden the federal Family and Medical Leave Act to include LGBT families.

— Paul Schindler

Happy LGBT Pride!

Daniel Dromm

New York City Council Member Jackson Heights, Elmhurst, East Elmhurst, LeFrak City, Corona, Rego Park, and Woodside A Proud Openly Gay Elected Official

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APICHA Broadens Its Primary Care

Photo: Scott Nibauer for GPTMC.

■ HEALTH

Dennis Fee and Stephen Carlino Owners, Tavern on Camac

We your people

are making history every day and every night. Plan to visit us soon. If you need a reason, we have plenty of them:

Lower Manhattan Asian healthcare provider moves beyond HIV-positive base

BY PAUL SCHINDLER

W

ith the aid of a $500,000 grant in state healthcare funds, the Asian & Pacific Islander Coalition on HIV/ AIDS has launched an ambitious expansion of its primary care program, enabling the group to offer ongoing health services to a broader population than the HIV-positive clientele it had historically served.

The launch of the more comprehensive program was funded through the New York Health Care Efficiency and Affordability Law — which is providing money to 31 other community-based programs across the state as well — and was formally announced at an open house last month at APICHA’s offices on Lower Broadway near Chinatown.

In recent years, the group’s primary care facility served about 200 HIV-positive people, the bulk of them Asian and Pacific Islander (API) gay and bisexual men. Already, the facility has enrolled about 100 additional HIV-negative clients in its expanded primary care program.

The goal is to serve as many as 400 new clients by the fall.

“This grant opens the way to providing a broader range of medical services, particularly for gay/ bisexual/ [men who have sex with men, or MSM] APIs at high risk for acquiring HIV infection who are not receiving medical care at other clinics,” said Dr. Robert Murayama, APICHA’s chief medical officer. “It is a wise investment in prevention.”

Murayama noted the group’s established track record of cultural competency in serving New York’s diverse API population, which includes a wide range of languages.

As it ramps up its broadened primary care program, APICHA is also seeking designation as a federally-qualified community healthcare center, a type of institution for which the Obama administration’s new healthcare legislation provides financial incentives. According to Zaheer Mustafa, APICHA’s public affairs coordinator, the federal designation is “a stamp of approval [that] reflects the quality of the medical care” and opens up funding opportunities at all levels of government.

Although APICHA was founded 21 years ago by six Japanese-American women to serve the largely unmet needs of API gay men affected by HIV/ AIDS,

the organization has gained a strong reputation among other people of color communities, and the population generally, across New York. Mustafa cited statistics that roughly 79 percent of APICHA’s clients come from people of color communities, with APIs making up roughly half of the total. Over the years it has provided primary care to HIV-positive New Yorkers, women living with the virus, many of them heterosexual, also began accessing services there. About two percent of the group’s clients are transgender.

With its base it Lower Manhattan, APICHA has traditionally served the Chinatown community, where a significant percentage of its clients continue to come from, but its geographic reach is citywide, with significant representation from other parts of Manhattan, Queens — particularly among Flushing’s large API population — and Brooklyn. About 12 percent of the city’s population is Asian and Pacific Islander.

In addition to primary care, APICHA has carried out HIV testing — at a rate of about 3,000 people each year, according to Mustafa — done STD screenings for about 150 people annually outside of primary care, and offered a variety of individual and group support services for populations including gay men, young people, and women.

Even as APICHA has enhanced its profile as a community-based health care facility welcoming to all types of New Yorkers, it recognizes the unique role it has in the city’s Asian and Pacific Islander communities.

A power point presentation presented by Murayama highlighted a range of health disparities experienced by API communities — based on genetic predispositions, behavioral choices, and cultural and economic barriers to care.

Tuberculosis is 24 times more common among Asians than in the general population, and hepatitis B affects up to ten percent of API immigrants to the US. Vietnamese women are only half as likely as whites to have had a Pap smear in the previous three years, and are twice as likely to die from cervical cancer once it develops.

Asian-born women living in the US, especially those from Viet Nam, China, and the Philippines, have a four-times greater risk of dying from breast cancer than women

䉴

APICHA, continued on p.69

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22

24 JUN – 7 JUL 2010

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(PHOTOS: WILLIAM CHARLES ALATRISTE/ NEW YORK CITY COUNCIL)

THE COUNCIL HONORS PRIDE On June 15, the LGBT caucus of the New York City Council — Chelsea’s Christine Quinn, the speaker, and Councilmembers Rosie Mendez of the East Village, Daniel Dromm of Jackson Heights, and Jimmy Van Bramer of Sunnyside — hosted a celebration of Pride Month in the Council Chambers. Those pictured here are (clockwise from top center): Mendez; TV host Wendy Williams; four-time Tony Award winner Audra McDonald; Quinn; Chely Wright, a country singer who recently came out on the cover of People magazine; and the family of Jorge Steven López Mercado, a gay man murdered last November in Puerto Rico.

The slain man’s father (l.), Jorge López, Sr., mother, Myriam Mercado, and brother, Gabriel, appeared with Pedro Julio Serrano of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, a Puerto Rican native who translated for the family, and Mendez.

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24 JUN – 7 JUL 2010

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Your LGBT Assembly Members Assembly Member Deborah J. Glick

Assembly Member Daniel O’Donnell

Assembly Member Matthew Titone

Assembly Member Micah Kellner

PASSED Marriage Equality 2007, twice in 2009

PASSED GENDA 2008, 2009, 2010

PASSED Dignity For All Students

2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010

OUT Front & OUT First

in the march towards equality for all LGBT New Yorkers

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PRIDE TAKES BROOKLYN

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(PHOTOS: DONNA ACETO)

On Saturday, June 12, Prospect Park once again played host to an all-day Brooklyn Pride festival followed by the annual evening march down Park Slope’s Seventh Avenue commercial heart. Among those in attendance were Borough President Marty Markowitz, City Comptroller John Liu, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, and contingents from Gay Men of African Descent and Cheer New York, the LGBT community’s official pep squad.

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Champion Of Liberation Fort Worth Opera premieres Jorge Martín’s rousing “Before Night Falls”

O

ne likes to think the late Cuban poet, novelist, dissident, and gay icon Reinaldo Arenas (19431990) would have joined in the deserved standing ovation that the crowd at Fort Worth Opera on June 6 gave the second performance of “Before Night Falls,” the vibrant, musically substantive, and very touching opera Jorge Martín has made based on Arenas’ posthumously published memoirs.

Let’s hope David Gately’s whole production gets transferred to New York City Opera soon, as it is surely one of the most admirable American operas of recent years; and also one of the few to treat a gay subject without apology, compromise, or undue camp.

Many know Arenas’ story

from the compelling film Julian Schnabel made in 2000 with Javier Bardem in the lead. Composer Martín — himself an openly gay Cuban émigré, though a generation younger than Arenas — actually acquired the rights earlier than that; with Arenas’ late translator, Dolores M. Koch, he fashioned a structure that effectively tells the story in retrospect, as the writer contends with the late-stage AIDS that led to his suicide in New York in 1990.

Raised in a house of “angry aunts,” Arenas found his gay identity early. Initially supportive of Castro’s revolution, like many artists and progressives, he swiftly became disillusioned, both with limits on creative and political expression and with the regime’s hard-line homophobia

䉴

CHAMPION, continued on p.67

FORT WORTH OPERA

BY DAVID SHENGOLD

Jonathan Blalock is Lázaro and Wes Mason is Reinaldo Arenas in “Before Night Falls,” which received its world premiere at the 2010 Fort Worth Opera Festival.

■ BOOKS

Ever Battling Good Taste John Waters talks about his heroes and things that offend even him ROLE MODELS

By John Waters Farrar, Straus and Giroux $25; 320 pages

BY GARY M. KRAMER

GREG GORMAN

W

ho does John Waters, the man who created the notorious “Pink Flamingos,” look up to? He provides a book full of answers in “Role Models,” a hilarious and poignant collection of essays about everyone from Johnny Mathis to David Hurles and Rei Kawakubo.

During a recent chat in the filmmaker’s Baltimore home, Waters discussed why he admires Mathis — whom he describes in the book as “beyond fame.”

“He never gives interviews,” Waters explained. “I have never seen him in the world of show business. He does not participate in fame.”

Yet Waters, who has been working as a filmmaker for almost 50 years, is proud of the fame he has achieved in his career.

“I am the happy medium,” he said.

“Nothing bad happens in my life because of the level of fame I have. I don’t under-

John Waters, sitting in his home in Baltimore, was unapologetic about his love of his celebrity.

stand people that complain about going into show business, a business for insecure people that need other people to tell them how good they are for the rest of their life.”

Waters was on something of a roll with

this theme.

“Generally, you get great tables in restaurants, people give you free things,” he continued. “At the Spirit Awards — and I love the Spirit Awards — they treat you like a Katrina victim. Better than a

Katrina victim! Why do I need a year’s supply of free yogurt? Why not give that to poor people? I’m not complaining. I got a great vacuum cleaner.”

Waters’ house is clean, but cluttered.

“I don’t think I’m a hoarder, but I’m not a minimalist, as you can see…” he cracked.

Artwork lines every wall, and there are piles of books everywhere. He writes that he owns 8,089 titles, and one can’t help but notice the huge coffee table book of Tom of Finland’s work prominently displayed. That volume prompts a mention of the “Outsider Porn” chapter in “Role Models” and Waters’ fascination with the artists/ pornographers Hurles and Bobby Garcia. According to Waters, these artists “break the rules of gay porn.” He acknowledged that they are aroused only by their own work. “They are not doing it to make money. They live outside the law, and outside the porn law. And they are gaily incorrect, because they are celebrating [photographing] people who are basically not that gay friendly.”

As we talked, Waters produced four

䉴

WATERS, continued on p. 66

WWW.GAYCITYNEWS.COM

24 JUN – 7 JUL 2010

photography by jagstudios, knots dingbats by helen dear

You Deserve The Works.

The Works Catering wishes the LGBT community a very Happy Pride 2010.

Since 1997, The Works Catering has helped lgbt couples* celebrate commitment ceremonies, engagements and weddings with farm-to-table menus, welcoming staff, stylish decor—and our community-minded business model: 100 percent of our profits benefit the New York City AIDS organization Housing Works.

Call 212-780-1992 to schedule an appointment or visit us online at theworkscatering.com *New Yorkers Andrew and Jeremy held their engagement party at the historic Housing Works Bookstore Cafe in Soho which is also available for rental.

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24 JUN – 7 JUL 2010

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INDICATION: REYATAZ® (atazanavir sulfate) is a prescription medicine used in combination

with other medicines to treat people who are infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). REYATAZ has been studied in a 48-week trial in patients who have taken anti-HIV medicines and a 96-week trial in patients who have never taken anti-HIV medicines.

REYATAZ does not cure HIV or lower your chance of passing HIV to others.

IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION: Do not take REYATAZ if you are taking the following medicines due to potential for serious, life-threatening side effects or death: Versed® (midazolam) when taken by mouth, Halcion® (triazolam), ergot medicines (dihydroergotamine, ergonovine, ergotamine, and methylergonovine such as Cafergot®, Migranal®, D.H.E. 45®, ergotrate maleate, Methergine®, and others), Propulsid® (cisapride), or Orap® (pimozide).

Do not take REYATAZ with the following medicines due to potential for serious side effects: Camptosar® (irinotecan), Crixivan® (indinavir), Mevacor® (lovastatin), Zocor® (simvastatin), Uroxatral® (alfuzosin), or Revatio® (sildenafil).

Do not take REYATAZ with the following medicines as they may lower the amount of REYATAZ in your blood, which may lead to increased HIV viral load and resistance to REYATAZ or other anti-HIV medicines: rifampin (also known as Rimactane®, Rifadin®, Rifater®, or Rifamate®), St. John’s wort (Hypericum perforatum)-containing products, or Viramune® (nevirapine).

Serevent Diskus® (salmeterol) and Advair® (salmeterol with fluticasone) are not recommended with REYATAZ. Do not take Vfend® (voriconazole) if you are taking REYATAZ and Norvir® (ritonavir).

The above lists of medicines are not complete. Taking REYATAZ with some other medicines may require your therapy to be monitored more closely or may require a change in dose or dose schedule of REYATAZ or the other medicine. Discuss with your healthcare provider all prescription and non-prescription medicines, vitamin and herbal supplements, or other health preparations you are taking or plan to take.

Tell your healthcare provider if you are pregnant, breast-feeding, planning to become pregnant or breast-feed, or if you have end-stage kidney disease managed with hemodialysis or severe liver dysfunction.

Tell your healthcare provider right away if you have any side effects, symptoms, or conditions, including the following: • Mild rash (redness and itching) without other symptoms sometimes occurs in patients taking REYATAZ, most often in the first few weeks after the medicine is started, and usually goes away within 2 weeks with no change in treatment.

• Severe rash has occurred in a small number of patients taking REYATAZ. This type of rash is associated with other symptoms that could be serious and potentially cause death. If you develop a rash with any of the following symptoms, stop using REYATAZ and call your healthcare provider right away: – Shortness of breath – Conjunctivitis (red or inflamed eyes, like “pink-eye”) – General ill-feeling or “flu-like” symptoms – Blisters – Fever – Mouth sores – Muscle or joint aches – Swelling of your face • Yellowing of the skin and/or eyes may occur due to increases in bilirubin levels in the blood (bilirubin is made by the liver).

• A change in the way your heart beats may occur. You may feel dizzy or lightheaded. These could be symptoms of a heart problem.

• Diabetes and high blood sugar may occur in patients taking protease inhibitor medicines like REYATAZ. Some patients may need changes in their diabetes medicine.

• If you have liver disease, including hepatitis B or C, it may get worse when you take anti-HIV medicines like REYATAZ. • Kidney stones have been reported in patients taking REYATAZ. Signs or symptoms of kidney stones include pain in your side, blood in your urine, and pain when you urinate.

• Some patients with hemophilia have increased bleeding problems with protease inhibitor medicines like REYATAZ. • Changes in body fat have been seen in some patients taking anti-HIV medicines.

The cause and long-term effects are not known at this time.

• Gallbladder disorders (including gallstones and gallbladder inflammation) have been reported in patients taking REYATAZ. Other common side effects of REYATAZ taken with other anti-HIV medicines include: nausea; headache; stomach pain; vomiting; diarrhea; depression; fever; dizziness; trouble sleeping; numbness, tingling, or burning of hands or feet; and muscle pain.

You should take REYATAZ once daily with food (a meal or snack). Swallow the capsules whole; do not open the capsules. You should take REYATAZ and your other anti-HIV medicines exactly as instructed by your healthcare provider.

You are encouraged to report negative side effects of prescription drugs to the FDA. Visit www.fda.gov/medwatch or call 1-800-FDA-1088.

WWW.GAYCITYNEWS.COM

On REYATAZ, Wedn esda y Ma ry birthd ’s ay pa rty Thursda y 5:30 C h oi r e practic Bu y new shoes for Latish a

Fight HIV your way.

Please see Important Patient Information about REYATAZ on the adjacent pages.

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24 JUN – 7 JUL 2010

29

how you spend your time is up to you.

Individual results may vary.

Once-daily REYATAZ can help fight your HIV. REYATAZ, a protease inhibitor (PI), in HIV combination therapy: ◆ Can

help lower your viral load and raise your T-cell (CD4+ cell) count

◆ Has

a low chance of diarrhea (shown in clinical trials)

— REYATAZ in combination therapy had a 1%-3% rate of moderate-to-severe diarrhea in adults. ◆ Is

taken once a day with a snack or meal

REYATAZ is one of several treatment options your doctor may consider.

Do not take REYATAZ if you are allergic to REYATAZ or to any of its ingredients.

Ask your healthcare team about REYATAZ www.REYATAZ.com REYATAZ does not cure HIV, and has not been shown to reduce the risk of passing HIV to others.

REYATAZ is a registered trademark of Bristol-Myers Squibb.

All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners and not of Bristol-Myers Squibb. © 2010 Bristol-Myers Squibb, Princeton, NJ 08543 U.S.A. 687US10AB05513 05/10

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FDA-Approved Patient Labeling Patient Information

REYATAZŽ (RAY-ah-taz) (generic name = atazanavir sulfate) Capsules ALERT: Find out about medicines that should NOT be taken with REYATAZ. Read the section “What important information should I know about taking REYATAZ with other medicines?�

Read the Patient Information that comes with REYATAZ before you start using it and each time you get a refill. There may be new information. This leaflet provides a summary about REYATAZ and does not include everything there is to know about your medicine. This information does not take the place of talking with your healthcare provider about your medical condition or treatment.

What is REYATAZ? REYATAZ is a prescription medicine used with other anti-HIV medicines to treat people who are infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). HIV is the virus that causes acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). REYATAZ is a type of anti-HIV medicine called a protease inhibitor. HIV infection destroys CD4+ (T) cells, which are important to the immune system. The immune system helps fight infection. After a large number of (T) cells are destroyed, AIDS develops.

REYATAZ helps to block HIV protease, an enzyme that is needed for the HIV virus to multiply. REYATAZ may lower the amount of HIV in your blood, help your body keep its supply of CD4+ (T) cells, and reduce the risk of death and illness associated with HIV. Does REYATAZ cure HIV or AIDS? REYATAZ does not cure HIV infection or AIDS. At present there is no cure for HIV infection. People taking REYATAZ may still get opportunistic infections or other conditions that happen with HIV infection. Opportunistic infections are infections that develop because the immune system is weak. Some of these conditions are pneumonia, herpes virus infections, and Mycobacterium avium complex (MAC) infections. It is very important that you see your healthcare provider regularly while taking REYATAZ. REYATAZ does not lower your chance of passing HIV to other people through sexual contact, sharing needles, or being exposed to your blood. For your health and the health of others, it is important to always practice safer sex by using a latex or polyurethane condom or other barrier to lower the chance of sexual contact with semen, vaginal secretions, or blood. Never use or share dirty needles.

Who should not take REYATAZ? Do not take REYATAZ if you: t are taking certain medicines. (See “What important information should I know about taking REYATAZ with other medicines?�) Serious life-threatening side effects or death may happen. Before you take REYATAZ, tell your healthcare provider about all medicines you are taking or planning to take.

These include other prescription and nonprescription medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements. t are allergic to REYATAZ or to any of its ingredients. The active ingredient is atazanavir sulfate. See the end of this leaflet for a complete list of ingredients in REYATAZ. Tell your healthcare provider if you think you have had an allergic reaction to any of these ingredients.

What should I tell my healthcare provider before I take REYATAZ? Tell your healthcare provider: t If you are pregnant or planning to become pregnant. It is not known if REYATAZ can harm your unborn baby. Pregnant women have experienced serious side effects when taking REYATAZ with other HIV medicines called nucleoside analogues. You and your healthcare provider will need to decide if REYATAZ is right for you. If you use REYATAZ while you are pregnant, talk to your healthcare provider about the Antiretroviral Pregnancy Registry. t If you are breast-feeding. You should not breast-feed if you are HIV-positive because of the chance of passing HIV to your baby. Also, it is not known if REYATAZ can pass into your breast milk and if it can harm your baby. If you are a woman who has or will have a baby, talk with your healthcare provider about the best way to feed your baby. t If you have liver problems or are infected with the hepatitis B or C virus.

See “What are the possible side effects of REYATAZ?� t If you have end stage kidney disease managed with hemodialysis. t If you have diabetes. See “What are the possible side effects of REYATAZ?� t If you have hemophilia. See “What are the possible side effects of REYATAZ?� t About all the medicines you take including prescription and nonprescription medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements. Keep a list of your medicines with you to show your healthcare provider. For more information, see “What important information should I know about taking REYATAZ with other medicines?� and “Who should not take REYATAZ?� Some medicines can cause serious side effects if taken with REYATAZ.

WWW.GAYCITYNEWS.COM

REYATAZÂŽ (atazanavir sulfate) How should I take REYATAZ? t Take REYATAZ once every day exactly as instructed by your healthcare provider. Your healthcare provider will prescribe the amount of REYATAZ that is right for you.

t 'PS BEVMUT XIP IBWF OFWFS UBLFO BOUJ )*7 NFEJDJOFT CFGPSF UIF EPTF is 300 mg once daily with 100 mg of NORVIRÂŽ (ritonavir) once daily taken with food. For adults who are unable to tolerate ritonavir, 400 mg (two 200-mg capsules) once daily (without NORVIRÂŽ) taken with food is recommended.

t 'PS BEVMUT XIP IBWF UBLFO BOUJ )*7 NFEJDJOFT JO UIF QBTU UIF VTVBM dose is 300 mg plus 100 mg of NORVIRÂŽ (ritonavir) once daily taken with food. t :PVS EPTF XJMM EFQFOE PO ZPVS MJWFS GVODUJPO BOE PO UIF PUIFS BOUJ )*7 medicines that you are taking. REYATAZ is always used with other anti-HIV medicines. If you are taking REYATAZ with SUSTIVAÂŽ (efavirenz) or with VIREADÂŽ (tenofovir disoproxil fumarate), you should also be taking NORVIRÂŽ (ritonavir). t Always take REYATAZ with food (a meal or snack) to help it work better.

Swallow the capsules whole. Do not open the capsules. Take REYATAZ at the same time each day. t If you are taking antacids or didanosine (VIDEXŽ or VIDEXŽ EC), take REYATAZ 2 hours before or 1 hour after these medicines. t If you are taking medicines for indigestion, heartburn, or ulcers such as AXIDŽ (nizatidine), PEPCID ACŽ (famotidine), TAGAMETŽ (cimetidine), ZANTACŽ (ranitidine), AcipHexŽ (rabeprazole), NEXIUMŽ (esomeprazole), PREVACIDŽ (lansoprazole), PRILOSECŽ (omeprazole), or PROTONIXŽ (pantoprazole), talk to your healthcare provider. t Do not change your dose or stop taking REYATAZ without first talking with your healthcare provider. It is important to stay under a healthcare provider’s care while taking REYATAZ. t When your supply of REYATAZ starts to run low, get more from your healthcare provider or pharmacy. It is important not to run out of REYATAZ. The amount of HIV in your blood may increase if the medicine is stopped for even a short time. t If you miss a dose of REYATAZ, take it as soon as possible and then take your next scheduled dose at its regular time. If, however, it is within 6 hours of your next dose, do not take the missed dose. Wait and take the next dose at the regular time. Do not double the next dose. It is important that you do not miss any doses of REYATAZ or your other anti-HIV medicines. t If you take more than the prescribed dose of REYATAZ, call your healthcare provider or poison control center right away.

Can children take REYATAZ? Dosing recommendations are available for children 6 years of age and older for REYATAZ Capsules. Dosing recommendations are not available for children from 3 months to less than 6 years of age. REYATAZ should not be used in babies under the age of 3 months.

What are the possible side effects of REYATAZ? The following list of side effects is not complete. Report any new or continuing symptoms to your healthcare provider. If you have questions about side effects, ask your healthcare provider. Your healthcare provider may be able to help you manage these side effects.

The following side effects have been reported with REYATAZ: t mild rash (redness and itching) without other symptoms sometimes occurs in patients taking REYATAZ, most often in the first few weeks after the medicine is started. Rashes usually go away within 2 weeks with no change in treatment. Tell your healthcare provider if rash occurs. t severe rash: In a small number of patients, a rash can develop that is associated with other symptoms which could be serious and potentially cause death.

If you develop a rash with any of the following symptoms stop using REYATAZ and call your healthcare provider right away:

t TIPSUOFTT PG CSFBUI

t HFOFSBM JMM GFFMJOH PS iGMV MJLFw TZNQUPNT

t GFWFS

t NVTDMF PS KPJOU BDIFT

t DPOKVODUJWJUJT SFE PS JOGMBNFE FZFT MJLF iQJOL FZFw

t CMJTUFST

t NPVUI TPSFT

t TXFMMJOH PG ZPVS GBDF t yellowing of the skin or eyes. These effects may be due to increases in bilirubin levels in the blood (bilirubin is made by the liver). Call your healthcare provider if your skin or the white part of your eyes turn yellow.

Although these effects may not be damaging to your liver, skin, or eyes, it is important to tell your healthcare provider promptly if they occur.

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24 JUN – 7 JUL 2010

31

REYATAZÂŽ (atazanavir sulfate) t

a change in the way your heart beats (heart rhythm change). Call your healthcare provider right away if you get dizzy or lightheaded. These could be symptoms of a heart problem. t diabetes and high blood sugar (hyperglycemia) sometimes happen in patients taking protease inhibitor medicines like REYATAZ. Some patients had diabetes before taking protease inhibitors while others did not. Some patients may need changes in their diabetes medicine. t if you have liver disease including hepatitis B or C, your liver disease may get worse when you take anti-HIV medicines like REYATAZ. t kidney stones have been reported in patients taking REYATAZ. If you develop signs or symptoms of kidney stones (pain in your side, blood in your urine, pain when you urinate) tell your healthcare provider promptly. t some patients with hemophilia have increased bleeding problems with protease inhibitors like REYATAZ. t changes in body fat. These changes may include an increased amount of fat in the upper back and neck (“buffalo hump�), breast, and around the trunk. Loss of fat from the legs, arms, and face may also happen. The cause and long-term health effects of these conditions are not known at this time.

Other common side effects of REYATAZ taken with other anti-HIV medicines include nausea; headache; stomach pain; vomiting; diarrhea; depression; fever; dizziness; trouble sleeping; numbness, tingling, or burning of hands or feet; and muscle pain.

Gallbladder disorders (which may include gallstones and gallbladder inflammation) have been reported in patients taking REYATAZ. What important information should I know about taking REYATAZ with other medicines?

Do not take REYATAZ if you take the following medicines (not all brands may be listed; tell your healthcare provider about all the medicines you take).

REYATAZ may cause serious, life-threatening side effects or death when used with these medicines. t &SHPU NFEJDJOFT EJIZESPFSHPUBNJOF FSHPOPWJOF FSHPUBNJOF BOE methylergonovine such as CAFERGOTŽ, MIGRANALŽ, D.H.E. 45Ž, ergotrate maleate, METHERGINEŽ, and others (used for migraine headaches). t 03"1Ž (pimozide, used for Tourette’s disorder). t 13016-4*%Ž (cisapride, used for certain stomach problems). t 5SJB[PMBN BMTP LOPXO BT )"-$*0/Ž (used for insomnia). t .JEB[PMBN BMTP LOPXO BT 7&34&%Ž (used for sedation), when taken by mouth.

Do not take the following medicines with REYATAZ because of possible serious side effects: t $".1504"3ÂŽ (irinotecan, used for cancer). t $3*9*7"/ÂŽ JOEJOBWJS VTFE GPS )*7 JOGFDUJPO #PUI 3&:"5"; BOE $3*9*7"/ sometimes cause increased levels of bilirubin in the blood. t Cholesterol-lowering medicines MEVACORÂŽ (lovastatin) or ZOCORÂŽ (simvastatin). t 6309"53"-ÂŽ (alfuzosin, used to treat benign enlargement of the prostate). t 3&7"5*0ÂŽ (sildenafil, used to treat pulmonary arterial hypertension).

Do not take the following medicines with REYATAZ because they may lower the amount of REYATAZ in your blood. This may lead to an increased HIV viral load. Resistance to REYATAZ or cross-resistance to other HIV medicines may EFWFMPQ t 3 JGBNQJO BMTP LOPXO BT 3*."$5"/&ÂŽ, RIFADINÂŽ, RIFATERÂŽ, or RIFAMATEÂŽ, used for tuberculosis). t 4U +PIO T XPSU (Hypericum perforatum), an herbal product sold as a dietary TVQQMFNFOU PS QSPEVDUT DPOUBJOJOH 4U +PIO T XPSU t 7*3".6/&ÂŽ (nevirapine, used for HIV infection).

The following medicines are not recommended with REYATAZ: t 4&3&7&/5 %*4,64ÂŽ (salmeterol) and ADVAIRÂŽ (salmeterol with fluticasone), used to treat asthma, emphysema/chronic obstructive pulmonary disease also known as COPD. Do not take the following medicine if you are taking REYATAZ and NORVIRÂŽ together: t 7'&/%ÂŽ (voriconazole).

The following medicines may require your healthcare provider to monitor your therapy more closely (for some medicines a change in the dose or dose schedule may be needed): t $*"-*4ÂŽ (tadalafil), LEVITRAÂŽ (vardenafil), or VIAGRAÂŽ (sildenafil), used to treat erectile dysfunction. REYATAZ may increase the chances of serious side effects that can happen with CIALIS, LEVITRA, or VIAGRA. Do not use CIALIS, LEVITRA, or VIAGRA while you are taking REYATAZ unless your healthcare provider tells you it is okay. t "%$*3$"ÂŽ (tadalafil) or TRACLEERÂŽ (bosentan), used to treat pulmonary arterial hypertension. t -*1*503ÂŽ (atorvastatin) or CRESTORÂŽ (rosuvastatin). There is an increased chance of serious side effects if you take REYATAZ with this cholesterollowering medicine.

REYATAZÂŽ (atazanavir sulfate) FEJDJOFT GPS BCOPSNBM IFBSU SIZUIN $03%"30/&ÂŽ (amiodarone), lidocaine, . quinidine (also known as CARDIOQUINÂŽ 26*/*%&9ÂŽ, and others). t .:$0#65*/ÂŽ (rifabutin, an antibiotic used to treat tuberculosis). t #613&/&9ÂŽ 46#65&9ÂŽ 46#090/&ÂŽ, (buprenorphine or buprenorphine/ naloxone, used to treat pain and addiction to narcotic painkillers). t 7"4$03ÂŽ (bepridil, used for chest pain). t $06."%*/ÂŽ (warfarin). t 5SJDZDMJD BOUJEFQSFTTBOUT TVDI BT &-"7*-ÂŽ (amitriptyline), NORPRAMINÂŽ (desipramine), SINEQUANÂŽ (doxepin), SURMONTILÂŽ (trimipramine), TOFRANILÂŽ (imipramine), or VIVACTILÂŽ (protriptyline). t .FEJDJOFT UP QSFWFOU PSHBO USBOTQMBOU SFKFDUJPO 4"/%*..6/&ÂŽ or NEORALÂŽ (cyclosporin), RAPAMUNEÂŽ (sirolimus), or PROGRAFÂŽ (tacrolimus). t 5IF BOUJEFQSFTTBOU USB[PEPOF %&4:3&-ÂŽ and others). t 'MVUJDBTPOF QSPQJPOBUF '-0/"4&ÂŽ, FLOVENTÂŽ), given by nose or inhaled to treat allergic symptoms or asthma. Your doctor may choose not to keep you on fluticasone, especially if you are also taking NORVIRÂŽ. t $PMDIJDJOF $0-$3:4ÂŽ), used to prevent or treat gout or treat familial Mediterranean fever.

The following medicines may require a change in the dose or dose schedule of either REYATAZ or the other medicine: t */7*3"4&ÂŽ (saquinavir). t /037*3ÂŽ (ritonavir). t 4645*7"ÂŽ (efavirenz). t "OUBDJET PS CVGGFSFE NFEJDJOFT t 7*%&9ÂŽ (didanosine). t 7*3&"%ÂŽ (tenofovir disoproxil fumarate). t .:$0#65*/ÂŽ (rifabutin). t $BMDJVN DIBOOFM CMPDLFST TVDI BT $"3%*;&.ÂŽ or TIAZACÂŽ (diltiazem), COVERA-HSÂŽ or ISOPTIN SRÂŽ (verapamil) and others. t #*"9*/ÂŽ (clarithromycin). t .FEJDJOFT GPS JOEJHFTUJPO IFBSUCVSO PS VMDFST TVDI BT "9*%ÂŽ (nizatidine), PEPCID ACÂŽ (famotidine), TAGAMETÂŽ (cimetidine), or ZANTACÂŽ (ranitidine).

Talk to your healthcare provider about choosing an effective method of contraception. REYATAZ may affect the safety and effectiveness of hormonal contraceptives such as birth control pills or the contraceptive patch. Hormonal contraceptives do not prevent the spread of HIV to others.

Remember: 1.

Know all the medicines you take.

2.

Tell your healthcare provider about all the medicines you take.

3.

Do not start a new medicine without talking to your healthcare provider.

How should I store REYATAZ? t 4UPSF 3&:"5"; $BQTVMFT BU SPPN UFNQFSBUVSF ÂĄ UP ÂĄ ' ÂĄ UP ÂĄ $

Do not store this medicine in a damp place such as a bathroom medicine cabinet or near the kitchen sink. t ,FFQ ZPVS NFEJDJOF JO B UJHIUMZ DMPTFE DPOUBJOFS t ,FFQ BMM NFEJDJOFT PVU PG UIF SFBDI PG DIJMESFO BOE QFUT BU BMM UJNFT %P OPU keep medicine that is out of date or that you no longer need. Dispose of unused medicines through community take-back disposal programs when available or place REYATAZ in an unrecognizable, closed container in the household trash.

General information about REYATAZ This medicine was prescribed for your particular condition. Do not use REYATAZ for another condition. Do not give REYATAZ to other people, even if they have the same symptoms you have. It may harm them. Keep REYATAZ and all medicines out of the reach of children and pets.

This summary does not include everything there is to know about REYATAZ. Medicines are sometimes prescribed for conditions that are not mentioned in patient information leaflets. Remember no written summary can replace careful discussion with your healthcare provider. If you would like more information, talk XJUI ZPVS IFBMUIDBSF QSPWJEFS PS ZPV DBO DBMM What are the ingredients in REYATAZ? Active Ingredient: atazanavir sulfate Inactive Ingredients: Crospovidone, lactose monohydrate (milk sugar), magnesium stearate, gelatin, FD&C Blue #2, and titanium dioxide.

7*%&9ÂŽ and REYATAZÂŽ are registered trademarks of Bristol-Myers Squibb Company. COUMADINÂŽ and SUSTIVAÂŽ are registered trademarks of Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma Company. DESYRELÂŽ JT B SFHJTUFSFE USBEFNBSL PG .FBE +PIOTPO and Company. Other brands listed are the trademarks of their respective owners and are not trademarks of Bristol-Myers Squibb Company. t

1SJODFUPO /+ 64" 1246226A7

F1-B0001B-04-10

Rev April 2010

24 JUN - 7 JUL 2010

32/ Books

E.M. Forster Uncovered In Wendy Moffat’s rendering, reserved British novelist, social critic’s queer blood is warmed

BY MICHAEL EHRHARDT

Y

ou may be familiar with Edward Morgan Forster’s novels firsthand or through the Merchant-Ivory film versions of “A Room with a View,” “Howards End,” and “Maurice” or David Lean’s “A Passage to India.” Either way, Wendy Moffat’s insightful and expansive biography of the great gay British writer, “A Great Unrecorded History: A New Life of E. M. Forster,” serves as an excellent background source on how his rich life and strongly held liberal, anti-imperialist beliefs shaped his best work. Forster’s work took particular aim at Britain’s constipated, straight-laced Puritanism and class system — and by implication its intolerance toward homosexuality.

Moffat, an associate professor of English at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, who had access to his private letters and journals, also gives us a Forster who is far more sexually attuned to himself than one might expect from earlier reports. Forster, who lived from 1879 until 1970, was an unprepossess-

er’s “steadfast scrutiny tested his friends’ nerves.” This included his young admirer Christopher Isherwood, who first met the writer in September 1932 in the Bloomsbury office of Virginia and Leonard Woolf’s Hogarth Press and yearned to become his “disciple.” The two remained life-long friends, and it was to Isherwood’s care that Morgan would vouchsafe his last and secret work, the final typescript of “Maurice,” the gay-themed novel he had suppressed for almost 60 years.

The novel, published a year after his death, was “a revolutionary new genre — a gay love story that ended happily.

It was Morgan’s cri de coeur. For him ‘a happy ending was imperative. I shouldn’t have bothered to write it otherwise. I was determined that in fiction anyway two men should fall in love and remain in it for the ever and ever that fiction allows.’”

As in his earlier novels, most notably “Howards End,” “Maurice” would tackle the stranglehold of social class and hypocrisy, with the added fillip of a homosexual romance between the epon-

“Forster came of age sexually in the shadow of the 1895 Wilde trials, and he learned their lessons well.” ing, weak-chinned, bespectacled momma’s boy, shy and often masochistic.

In the 1920s, his college friend Lytton Strachey nicknamed him the “Taupe,” French for mole. Moffat’s research, however, uncovers a strong resolve and passionate nature underneath his Mr. Magoo persona, which made him an empathetic, even seductive listener.

“This mousy self-presentation was no accident,” Moffat explains. “Forster came of age sexually in the shadow of the 1895 Wilde trials [and died a year after the Stonewall riots!], and he learned their lessons well. Naturally quite shy, he consciously inverted Wilde’s boldly effeminate persona. Where Wilde — and Strachey after him — cut flamboyant and dandified figures, Forster disappeared into the woodwork. Wilde’s bon mots became famous epigrams, but Forster instead chose to draw people inward, to reveal themselves to him as he remained enigmatic. To speak to him was to be seduced by an inverse charisma, a sense of being listened to with such intensity that you had to be your most honest, sharpest, and best self.”

Moffat refers to Forster alternately as Morgan, as friends knew him. The writ-

ymous bourgeois gentleman and the groundskeeper, Alec Scudder. Isherwood had been apprised of the “secret” novel on his second visit to Forster, after leaving Berlin as the Nazis came to power.

“The master appealed to the pupil, and the pupil was overwhelmed,” Moffat writes. “The truth was that to the younger man’s ear, Morgan’s writing about sex sounded ‘antique’ and prudish. The scene when Maurice announces that he’s slept with Alec made him cringe with embarrassment. Morgan had concocted a ridiculous euphemism for making love — the word sharing. “‘I have shared with Alec’, [Maurice] said after deep thought.

‘Shared what?’

‘All I have. Which includes my body.’

“But the novel’s occasional solecisms were almost beside the point. Morgan came from a different time. The man who penned the word sharing could hardly be expected to call himself gay.

Morgan’s lifelong resistance to labeling had nothing to do with caution or cowardice. Whatever the locutions, ‘Maurice’ was passionate and honest… The young

E.M. Forster in a photograph by the fashion and homoerotic photographer George Platt Lynes.

acolyte told Morgan that he admired the novel profoundly, that it was a pioneering work, that he thought it was wonderful and brave. Hearing this, Forster leaned forward and gently kissed Christopher on the cheek. The moment cemented their friendship for life.”

Moffat observes that Forster’s earlier skepticism about the progress of tolerance for homosexuality was hardly unfounded. In the post-World War II era, the history Forster endured as a young man repeated itself, as homosexuals were conveniently turned into scapegoats: “In October 1952, Christopher’s first copy [of “Maurice”] was shepherded by hand, from Cambridge to London to New York to Chicago to Los Angeles, by trustworthy friends, all gay men. They chose this method of delivery to protect both the novel and its author.

“On both sides of the Atlantic, the

Cold War fueled anxiety about the loyalty and patriotism of homosexuals, and the machinery of the state was being used to gather evidence and entrap gay men. In the United States, the House Un-American Activities Committee had begun a ‘lavender scare’ to root out homosexuals, to root out homosexual men in government, who were deemed a security risk because their sex lives made them vulnerable to blackmail. The US postmaster general revived the 80-year-old Comstock laws to prosecute gay men who used the mail to convey ‘obscene, lewd, lascivious or filthy’ materials.”

Forster’s popular early Edwardian era novels, “Where Angels Fear to Tread” and “A Room with a View,” dealt with repressed British subjects confronting the vagaries, mores, and

䉴

FORSTER, continued on p.64

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34/ Film

Secrets Too Well Kept As Asian cinema hurting in the US, festival teams up with Lincoln Center NEW YORK ASIAN FILM FESTIVAL Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater 165 W. 65th St., upper level Jun. 25-Jul. 8 filmlinc.com

COURTESY: SUBWAYCINEMA.COM

Japan Society 333 E. 47th St. Jul. 1-4 japansociety.org Tickets $13-$14 Information at subwaycinema.com

BY STEVE ERICKSON

T

he latest American Jackie Chan vehicle, “The Karate Kid,” grossed $56 million in its opening weekend. His latest Hong Kong film, “Little Big Soldier,” which plays this year’s New York Asian Film Festival, can’t find an American distributor. The days when Ang Lee’s “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” and Zhang Yimou’s

Jackie Chan stars in Ding Sheng’s “Little Big Soldier,” a film that both mocks and participates in the recent trend in Chinese cinema toward bigbudget period epics with nationalist overtones.

“Hero” found large American audiences are well behind us.

The best films from the past few New York Asian Film Festivals — Johnnie To’s “Sparrow,” Koji Wakamatsu’s “United Red

Army,” and Sion Sono’s “Love Exposure” and “Be Sure To Share” — have vanished after the festival, rather than coming back for a theatrical run. Directors like Jia Zhang Ke and Api-

chatpong Weerasethakul have accumulated great reviews and festival awards, but their films rarely play New York for more than two weeks.

This problem doesn’t only

affect arthouse directors; ten years ago, John Woo’s return to Asia for “Red Cliff” would have been a major event, but last year, it was released to widespread apathy. (This year’s festival includes the New York premiere of its full five-hour cut.)

In this depressing climate, the New York Asian Film Festival has teamed up with the Film Society of Lincoln Center. While the festival held screenings at Midtown’s Japan Society as well as Anthology Film Archives and the IFC Center in the past few years, this year’s venues mark a major move north of 14th Street. (Anthology and IFC are holding one-off screenings this year.) The Lincoln Center setting seems to have provided the opportunity to invite a number of big-name guests, including Hong Kong stars Simon Yam

䉴

ASIAN CINEMA, continued on p.68

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24 JUN - 7 JUL 2010

36/ Music

Johnny Probably Was Queer Josie Cotton, recalling an early career flap, is back with her notorious anthem

BY GARY M. KRAMER

S

inger/ songwriter Josie Cotton is best known for asking the musical question, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Johnny Are You Queer?â&#x20AC;?

But the 1982 hit had a queer effect on her career. When she was shopping her first record around, IRS Records offered to sign her â&#x20AC;&#x201D; if she dropped the song â&#x20AC;&#x153;Johnny.â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x153;I had to make a life-altering decision,â&#x20AC;? she recalled in a recent phone interview. â&#x20AC;&#x153;IRS was THE label of choice for musicians in the 1980s, but to compromise myself so early in my career seemed like such a cowardly thing to do. I was very aware once I recorded that song that I would always be the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Johnny Are You Queer?â&#x20AC;&#x2122; girl, but it was a conscious decision on my part.â&#x20AC;?

Despite her integrity, the song became a public relations

nightmare. Although the â&#x20AC;&#x153;Johnnyâ&#x20AC;? was an international phenomenon in the dance clubs, Cotton recounts that â&#x20AC;&#x153;once the political firestorm started Electra [the label that did sign her] got cold feet. They pulled it

community, empowering folks to come out of the closet. But on the East Coast, some gay groups and gay publications really believed â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Johnnyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; was homophobic. Radio programmers were nervous because they

â&#x20AC;&#x153;On the West Coast, it became an anthem in the gay community, empowering folks to come out of the closet.â&#x20AC;? from the charts, stopped filling orders, even canceled the video for â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Johnnyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; the night before the shoot.â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x153;â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Johnnyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; was banned in Amsterdam, but went to number 2 on AM radio charts in Canada,â&#x20AC;? Cotton recalled. â&#x20AC;&#x153;In America, on the West Coast, it became an anthem in the gay

thought it was a gay record. The religious right televised on their TBN network that Josie Cotton was actually a gay man promoting homosexuality, and â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Johnnyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; was used for brainwashing purposes in sleep deprivation programs for Christian re-edu-

ä&#x2030;´

COTTON, continued on p.62

Josie Cotton swears she never went out with Johnny.

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local LGBT leaders and friends WHOSE TIRELESS ADVOCACY FOR LGBT CIVIL RIGHTS BUILDS COMMUNITIES OF INCLUSION AND FOSTERS SUPPORT AND TRUST IN NEW YORK CITY AND BEYOND.

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37

24 JUN - 7 JUL 2010

38/ Theater

US Takes England

BY ANDY HUMM

T

he United States did not beat England in the World Cup despite our upset tie, but American playwrights are dominating London theater at the moment, even if Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, and Eugene O’Neill are speaking to us from their graves. The British are still well represented from Shakespeare and Middleton to the late Simon Gray and some new living voices. And leave it to the National Theatre to put on a Russian play from the 1920s and make it speak to us today.

Thr ee new plays on gay themes were also part of my two-week review. But we start with the Americans.

The hit of the West End is Howard Davies’ searing production of “All My Sons,” led

by David Suchet, Zoë Wannamaker, and Stephen Campbell Moore as the Keelers in the post-war play that made Arthur Miller. This tale of capitalist corruption and its damning personal consequences moves from crashing storm to Midwestern idyll to inexorable tragedy, in a production that surpasses the good one on Broadway last year starring John Lithgow. I won’t go so far as to say that we may need outsiders to tell our stories, but this show should not be missed. (Apollo, apollo-theatre.co.uk; through Sep. 11.)

the Elms.” O’Neill stand-in Robby Mayo (sweetly and movingly played by Michael Malarkey) is ready for the romance of the sea, but a mutual declaration of passion between him and a farm girl (Ruth Atkins, who flips from naive to treacherous) makes him give up his dream, which brother Andy (a solid Michael Thomson) grabs with unpredictable consequences.

The play, on the kind of set (Sara Perks) Beckett’s vanquished dwell in, is full of ghosts –– the kind that haunted O’Neill all his life and will you too, if it gets to our shores as it should.

The aptly titled “Spring Storm,” with Malarkey as the Williams stand-in, repeatedly refers to the gay-baiting to which his character, rich boy Arthur Shannon, was subjected as a child in this Mississippi delta town, and uses it to explain his own awkwardness with women and general alienation.

Ther e ar e pr ecursors of Blanche, Maggie, and a host of Williams’ mature creations, but the play, not produced until the 1990s, succeeds on its own

NOBBY CLARKE

American plays light up the West End

Zoë Wannamaker and David Suchet in Howard Davies’ production of Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons.”

M

terms on a set that looks as if it were hit by Katrina, with players that stick in the mind, especially Liz White’s Heavenly Critchfield looking to break free, and her mother, Esmeralda (Jacqueline King), clawing to preserve a Southern gothic culture long gone with the wind. (nationaltheatre.org.uk; in rep thru Jul. 22.)

T

F

ROBERT DAY

he National Theatre took a laudable leap in bringing two plays from the Royal & Derngate Northampton Theatre to their small Cottesloe house –– O’Neill’s first full-length play, “Beyond the Horizon” (1920), and Williams’ first play, “Spring Storm” (1937). Director Laurie Sansom uses most of the same actors in both plays and runs them in rep. I had the privilege of seeing them both in one day and was gripped not just by their stagecraft but the chance to watch these seminal acts of creation by two drama geniuses come powerfully to life.

In “Horizon,” we are in the scrappy Connecticut farm country later plowed in “Moon for the Misbegotten” and “Desire Under

iller’s “The Crucible” had an atmospheric revival from Timothy Shearer at the Open Air Theatre in Regents Park, where the bare set is surrounded by old growth trees and the elements, capturing the rawness of the New World beset by Medieval religious hysteria, especially in the passionate performances of Philip Cumbus as Reverend Hale and Patrick O’Kane as John Proctor, who accepts execution heartbreakingly rather than give up his name.

“You are pulling down heaven and raising up a whore,” Proctor rails at the judges who have sentenced scores of Salem settlers to death as witches on the word of a girl he once cheated on his wife with. And as much as Miller is using this story to condemn McCarthyism, it is a recurrent theme in human history. (Just closed.) our centuries later, the witch hunts are against gay people in Africa, and Drew Paultz opens “Love the Sinner” in a meeting of Anglican bishops meeting there and debating how to deal with their differences over homosexuality. But the play under Matthew Dunstar’s absorbing direction quickly shifts from an issues debate to the personal conflicts that follow a white, English, bisexual layman, Michael (Jonathan Cullen), who tricks with a black African porter, Joseph (Fiston Barek). While there is

O’Neill stand-in Michael Malarkey as Robby Mayo in Laurie Sansom’s production of Eugene O’Neill’s “Beyond the Horizon.”

an ample airing of the political implications of personal acts, there are also involving human stories, especially that of Michael’s wife, Shelly (Charlotte Randle). (National’s Cottesloe, nationaltheatre.org.uk; through Jul. 10.)

T

homas Middleton’s “ Wo m e n B e w a r e Women” from the Jacobean era is a tale of serious family dysfunction and sexual rivalry that gets a fresh take at the National’s Olivier Theatre. A chart of the betrayals in this one play would end up looking like a London Underground map, but no one inflicts harm or suffers more than splendid Harriet Walters’ middle-aged Livia, who pulls off a believable liaison with young Leantio (Samuel Barnett of “The History Boys”), whose wife is usurped by the Duke of Florence (Richard Lintern). In this modern-dress staging by Marianne Elliott, people are so truly awful to each other that Lord Cardinal (Chu Omambala), brother to the evil Duke, is a welcome voice for morality. (nationaltheatre.org.uk; through Jul. 4.)

T

wo wonderful revivals

by English writers show that the kind of drawing room drama with ample splashes of comedy is far from

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WEST END, continued on p.53

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24 JUN – 7 JUL 2010

Day 1 Of my next treatment regimen: KALETRA once a day with my other HIV medicines.

Ask your doctor if KALETRA once daily is right for you.

KALETRA once daily should not be given to children. KALETRA once daily should not be taken with efavirenz (Atripla® and Sustiva®), nevirapine (Viramune®), amprenavir (Agenerase®), nelfinavir (Viracept®), carbamazepine (Tegretol® and Epitol®), phenobarbital (Luminol®), or phenytoin (Dilantin®). There may be a greater chance of getting diarrhea with the once daily regimen compared with the twice daily regimen.

Use KALETRA® is a prescription anti-HIV-1 medicine called a protease inhibitor that contains lopinavir and ritonavir. KALETRA is used with other anti-HIV-1 medicines to increase the chance of treatment response in people with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1) infection. It is not known if KALETRA is safe and effective in children under 14 days old.

KALETRA does not cure HIV-1 infection or AIDS and does not reduce the risk of passing HIV-1 to others. People taking KALETRA may still get opportunistic infections or other conditions that happen with HIV-1.

KALETRA Safety Considerations

Do not take KALETRA® if you are allergic to any of its ingredients, including lopinavir or ritonavir. Do not take KALETRA with certain medicines, as they can cause serious problems, death, or make KALETRA less effective against HIV. Some patients taking KALETRA can develop inflammation of the pancreas and liver problems, which can cause death. Patients may develop changes in heart rhythm, large increases in triglycerides and cholesterol, diabetes, high blood sugar, changes in body fat, and/or increased bleeding in people with hemophilia. Some patients may develop signs and symptoms of serious infections they already have after starting anti-HIV medicines.

You are encouraged to report negative side effects of prescription drugs to the FDA. Visit www.fda.gov/medwatch, or call 1-800-FDA-1088 (1-800-332-1088).

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For additional information about KALETRA, call 1-866-KALETRA (1-866-525-3872) or visit KALETRA.com.

Please see Brief Summary on adjacent pages.

Model is for illustrative purposes only. ©2010 Abbott Laboratories Abbott Park, IL 60064 039-389303 May 2010 Printed in U.S.A.

39

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40

KALETRA® (kuh-LEE-tra) (lopinavir/ritonavir) Tablets KALETRA® (kuh-LEE-tra) (lopinavir/ritonavir) Oral Solution MEDICATION GUIDE Patient Information What is the most important information I should know about KALETRA? KALETRA may cause serious side effects, including: • Interactions with other medicines.

It is important to know the medicines that should not be taken with KALETRA. Read the section “What should I tell my doctor before taking KALETRA?” • Changes in your heart rhythm and the electrical activity of your heart.

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What is KALETRA? KALETRA is a prescription anti-HIV medicine that contains two medicines: lopinavir and ritonavir. KALETRA is called a protease inhibitor that is used with other anti-HIV-1 medicines to treat people with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1) infection. HIV-1 is the virus that causes AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome).

It is not known if KALETRA is safe and effective in children under 14 days old.

03-A363 KaletraCB-Stndrd(3).indd 1

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CONSUMER BRIEF SUMMARY CONSULT PACKAGE INSERT FOR FULL PRESCRIBING INFORMATION

Read the Medication Guide that comes with KALETRA before you start taking it and each time you get a refill. There may be new information. This information does not take the place of talking with your doctor about your medical condition or treatment.

You and your doctor should talk about your treatment with KALETRA before you start taking it and at regular check-ups. You should stay under your doctor’s care when taking KALETRA.

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• Do not take KALETRA if you have an allergy to KALETRA or any of its ingredients, including ritonavir and lopinavir.

What should I tell my doctor before taking KALETRA? KALETRA may not be right for you.

Tell your doctor about all your medical conditions, including if you: • have any heart problems, including if you have a condition called Congenital Long QT Syndrome.

• have liver problems, including Hepatitis B or Hepatitis C. • have diabetes.

• have hemophilia. People who take KALETRA may have increased bleeding.

• have low potassium in your blood.

• are pregnant or plan to become pregnant. It is not known if KALETRA will harm your unborn baby. Birth control pills or patches may not work as well while you take KALETRA. To prevent pregnancy while taking KALETRA, women who take birth control pills or use estrogen patch for birth control should either use a different type of birth control or an extra form of birth control. Talk to your doctor about how to prevent pregnancy while taking KALETRA. • take KALETRA during pregnancy, talk with your doctor about how you can take part in an antiretroviral pregnancy registry. The purpose of the pregnancy registry is to follow the health of you and your baby.

• are breast-feeding. Do not breast-feed if you are taking KALETRA. You should not breast-feed if you have HIV-1. If you are a woman who has or will have a baby while taking KALETRA, talk with your doctor about the best way to feed your baby. If your baby does not already have HIV-1, there is a chance that HIV-1 can be passed to your baby through your breast milk.

Tell your doctor about all the medicines you take, including prescription and non-prescription medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements. Many medicines interact with KALETRA. Do not start taking a new medicine without telling your doctor or pharmacist. Your doctor can tell you if it is safe to take KALETRA with other medicines. Your doctor may need to change the dose of other medicines while you take KALETRA.

Medicines you should not take with KALETRA. Serious problems or death can happen if you take these medicines with KALETRA: • ergot containing medicines, including: ° ergotamine tartrate (Cafergot®, Migergot, Ergomar, Ergostat, Medihaler Ergotamine, Wigraine, Wigrettes) mesylate ° dihydroergotamine (D.H.E. 45®, Embolex, Migranal®) ° ergonovine, ergonovine and methylergonovine (Ergotrate, Methergine), ergotamine and methylergonovine ° Ergotrate Maleate, methylergonovine maleate (Methergine) • triazolam (Halcion®), midazolam hydrochloride oral syrup • pimozide (Orap®) • the cholesterol lowering medicines lovastatin (Mevacor®) or simvastatin (Zocor®) • sildenafil (Revatio®) only when used for the treatment of pulmonary arterial

5/25/10 10:06 AM

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• If you are taking both Videx® (didanosine) and KALETRA: ° didanosine can be taken at the same time as KALETRA tablets, without food. ° take didanosine either one hour before or two hours after taking KALETRA oral solution.

• Do not miss a dose of KALETRA. This could make the virus harder to treat. If you forget to take KALETRA, take the missed dose right away. If it is almost time for your next dose, do not take the missed dose. Instead, follow your regular dosing schedule by taking your next dose at its regular time. Do not take more than one dose of KALETRA at one time.

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• KALETRA oral solution contains a large amount of alcohol. ° If a young child drinks more than the recommended dose, it could make them sick from too much alcohol.

Contact your local poison control center or emergency room right away. ° Talk with your doctor if you take or plan to take metronidazole or disulfiram. You can have severe nausea and vomiting if you take these medicines with KALETRA. • When your KALETRA supply starts to run low, get more from your doctor or pharmacy. It is important not to run out of KALETRA. The amount of HIV-1 virus in your blood may increase if the medicine is stopped for even a short How should I take KALETRA? time. The virus may become resistant • Take KALETRA every day exactly as to KALETRA and become harder to prescribed by your doctor. treat.

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• Swallow KALETRA tablets whole. Do • KALETRA should not be administered not chew, break, or crush KALETRA once daily in combination with tablets. carbamazepine (Tegretol® and Epitol®), • KALETRA tablets can be taken with or phenobarbital (Luminol®), or phenytoin without food.

(Dilantin®).

hypertension. (See “Medicines that may need changes” and “What are the possible side effects of Kaletra?” for information about the use of sildenafil for erectile problems.)

• alfuzosin (Uroxatral®) Medicines that you should not take with KALETRA since they may make KALETRA not work as well: • the herbal supplement St. John’s Wort (hypericum perforatum) • rifampin (Rimactane®, Rifadin®, Rifater®, or Rifamate®) Medicines that may need changes: • birth control pills that contain estrogen (“the pill”) or the birth control (contraceptive) patches • certain cholesterol lowering medicines, such as atorvastatin (Lipitor®) or rosuvastatin (Crestor®) • certain other antiretroviral medicines, such as efavirenz (Atripla® and Sustiva®), nevirapine (Viramune®), amprenavir (Agenerase®), fosamprenavir calcium (Lexiva®) and nelfinavir (Viracept®) • anti-seizure medicines, such as phenytoin (Dilantin®) carbamazepine, (Tegretol®), phenobarbital • medicines for erectile problems, such as sildenafil (Viagra®, Revatio®), tadalafil (Cialis®), or vardenafil (Levitra®) • medicines for tuberculosis (TB), such as rifabutin (Mycobutin®) • inhaled steroid medicines, such as fluticasone propionate (Flonase®) • inhaled medicines such as salmeterol (Serevent®) or salmeterol in combination with fluticasone propionate (Advair®). Your doctor may need to change to a different medicine • medicines for gout, such as colchicine (Colcrys®) • medicines to treat pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), such as bosentan (Tracleer®) or tadalafil (Adcirca®) If you are not sure if you are taking a medicine above, ask your doctor.

03-A363 KaletraCB-Stndrd(3).indd 2

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Avoid doing things that can spread HIV infection. KALETRA does not stop you from passing HIV infection to others.

Do not share needles, other injection equipment or personal items that can have blood or body fluids on them, like toothbrushes and razor blades. Always practice safer sex by using a latex or polyurethane condom to lower the chance of sexual contact with semen, vaginal secretions, or blood.

What are the possible side effects of KALETRA? KALETRA can cause serious side effects.

• See “What is the most important information I should know about KALETRA?” • Liver problems. Liver problems, including death, can happen in people who take KALETRA. Blood tests in people who take KALETRA may show possible liver problems. People with liver disease such as Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C who take KALETRA may have worsening liver disease. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you have any of these signs and symptoms of liver problems: ° loss of appetite ° yellow skin and whites of eyes (jaundice) ° dark-colored urine ° pale colored stools, itchy skin ° stomach area (abdominal) pain.

• Inflammation of the pancreas (pancreatitis). Some people who take KALETRA get inflammation of the pancreas which may be serious and cause death. You have a higher chance of getting pancreatitis if you have had it before. Tell your doctor if you have nausea, vomiting, or abdominal pain while taking KALETRA. These may be signs of pancreatitis.

• Increases in certain fat (triglycerides and cholesterol) levels in your blood. Large increases of triglycerides and cholesterol can be seen in blood test results of some people who take KALETRA. The longterm chance of getting complications such as heart attacks or stroke due to increases in triglycerides and cholesterol caused by protease inhibitors is not known at this time.

• Diabetes and high blood sugar (hyperglycemia). Some people who take protease inhibitors including KALETRA get new or more serious diabetes, or high blood sugar. Tell your doctor if you notice an increase

5/25/10 10:06 AM

24 JUN – 7 JUL 2010

42

in thirst or urinate often while taking KALETRA. • Changes in body fat. Changes in body fat in some people who take antiretroviral therapy. These changes may include increased amount of fat in the upper back and neck (“buffalo hump”), breast, and around the trunk.

Loss of fat from the legs, arms and face may also happen. The cause and long-term health effects of these conditions are not known at this time.

• Increased bleeding for hemophiliacs. Some people with hemophilia have increased bleeding with protease inhibitors including KALETRA. • Increased risk of certain problems when you take medicines used for the treatment of erectile problems such as sildenafil (Viagra®), tadalafil (Cialis® ), or vardenafil (Levitra® ) with KALETRA: ° low blood pressure. If you get dizzy or faint, you need to lie down.

Tell your doctor if you feel dizzy, or have fainting spells. ° vision changes. Tell your doctor right away if you have vision changes. penis erection lasting more than ° 4 hours. If you are a male and have an erection that lasts longer than 4 hours, get medical help right away to avoid permanent damage to your penis. Your doctor can explain these symptoms to you.

Common side effects of KALETRA include: • diarrhea • nausea • stomach area (abdominal) pain • feeling weak • vomiting • headache • upset stomach These are not all of the possible side effects of KALETRA. For more information, ask your doctor or pharmacist. Tell your doctor about any side effect that bothers you or that does not go away.

Call your doctor for medical advice about side effects. You may report side effects to FDA at 1-800-FDA-1088.

How should I store KALETRA? KALETRA tablets: • Store KALETRA tablets at room temperature, between 59°F to 86°F (15°C to 30°C).

• Do not keep KALETRA tablets out of the container it comes in for longer

03-A363 KaletraCB-Stndrd(3).indd 3

than 2 weeks, especially in areas where there is a lot of humidity. Keep the container closed tightly.

KALETRA oral solution: • Store KALETRA oral solution in a refrigerator, between 36°F to 46°F (2°C to 8°C). KALETRA oral solution that is kept refrigerated may be used until the expiration date printed on the label.

• KALETRA oral solution that is stored at room temperature (less than 77°F or 25°C) should be used within 2 months.

• Keep KALETRA away from high heat.

Throw away any medicine that is out of date or that you no longer need.

Keep KALETRA and all medicines out of the reach of children.

General information about KALETRA KALETRA does not cure HIV-1 or AIDS. The long-term effects of KALETRA are not known at this time. People taking KALETRA may still get opportunistic infections or other conditions that happen with HIV-1 infection. Some of these conditions are pneumonia, herpes virus infections, and Mycobacterium avium complex (MAC) infections.

Medicines are sometimes prescribed for purposes other than those listed in a Medication Guide. Do not use KALETRA for a condition for which it was not prescribed. Do not give KALETRA to other people, even if they have the same condition you have. It may harm them.

This Medication Guide summarizes the most important information about KALETRA. If you would like more information, talk with your doctor. You can ask your pharmacist or doctor for information about KALETRA that is written for health professionals. For more information about KALETRA call 1-800-633-9110 or go to www.KALETRA.com.

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and sodium stearyl fumarate. The film coating contains: polyvinyl alcohol, titanium dioxide, talc, polytheylene glycol 3350, and yellow ferric oxide E172.

KALETRA oral solution: acesulfame potassium, alcohol, artificial cotton candy flavor, citric acid, glycerin, high fructose corn syrup, Magnasweet-110 flavor, menthol, natural and artificial vanilla flavor, peppermint oil, polyoxyl 40 hydrogenated castor oil, povidone, propylene glycol, saccharin sodium, sodium chloride, sodium citrate, and water.

KALETRA oral solution contains 42.4% alcohol (v/v). “See How should I take KALETRA?”.

KALETRA Tablets, 200 mg lopinavir/ 50 mg ritonavir Manufactured by Abbott Pharmaceuticals PR Ltd., Barceloneta, PR 00617 for Abbott Laboratories, North Chicago, IL 60064, U.S.A. KALETRA Tablets, 100 mg lopinavir/ 25 mg ritonavir and KALETRA Oral Solution Abbott Laboratories, North Chicago, IL 60064, U.S.A. 2010, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED * The brands listed are trademarks of their respective owners and are not trademarks of Abbott Laboratories.

The makers of these brands are not affiliated with and do not endorse Abbott Laboratories or its products.

Ref: 03-A363-R7 Revised: April, 2010 This Medication Guide has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

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What are the ingredients in KALETRA? Active ingredient: lopinavir and ritonavir Inactive ingredients: KALETRA 200 mg lopinavir and 50 mg ritonavir tablets: copovidone, sorbitan monolaurate, colloidal silicon dioxide, and sodium stearyl fumarate. The film coating contains: hypromellose, titanium dioxide, polyethylene glycol 400, hydroxypropyl cellulose, talc, colloidal silicon dioxide, polyethylene glycol 3350, yellow ferric oxide 172, and polysorbate 80.

KALETRA 100 mg lopinavir and 25 mg ritonavir tablets: copovidone, sorbitan monolaurate, colloidal silicon dioxide,

5/25/10 10:06 AM

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24 JUN – 7 JUL 2010

43

■ IN THE NOH

Theater World’s Talented Newbies Kate B. as Kit C., Gypsy-Otto DNA, Marlene & Maurice

BY DAVID NOH

KENNY KOMER

I

n these tough economic times, it’s great that the Theatre World Awards, given each year to actors making their New York stage debuts, are still around, with the 66th annual presentation taking place on June 8 at New World Stages.

I loved Michael McKean, presenter for Jon Michael Hill (“Superior Doughnuts,” the single decent new play to open on Broadway this year), recalling that, when he won one years ago, his presenter, Carol Lynley, snottily said, “I don’t know who this actor is,” adding “You can Google ‘Carol Lynley’ later tonight.”

Vanessa Williams, presenter for Michael Urie (“The Temperamentals”), told me sadly that her “Sondheim on Sondheim” has “only three weeks left.

We just did the album yesterday. And, sure, we worked with the man himself a lot on this. It’s wonderful to do his work on a nightly basis but also to learn about his life, and work with a man who’s been on this planet for 80 years and left such an amazing legacy. He always has notes for everyone about his intentions, but they’re all positive. Some are musical or rhythmic, some tell you the backstory, like, ‘When we did this originally in “Company,” you need to make this part of the song sound not as happy as in the beginning, it’s reflective.’”

As for the spectacular striptease she performs during “Ah, But Underneath,” “no problem there –– it’s theater, darling.

Kristen Johnson who starred as Gypsy Rose Lee in a June 14 benefit reading of Lee’s autobiography, “The Naked Genius,” with the most famous of ecdysiasts’ son, Erik Preminger.

She was excited to play theatrical legend Katharine Cornell: “It’s a dream the way Gurney has done a spectacular job telling this beautiful story, which is partially true and made up.” Cornell was a lesbian married to gay director Guthrie

“Everything my mother did was a parody of striptease and sex, poking fun at something she was completely removed from.”

We all got a pile of music last December when we started, and that was in my pile. I learned it and we put it up in the theater, with [director] James Lapine coming up with the whole visual concept with the choreographer. It’s a collaborative effort. And now I’m going out to do ‘Desperate Housewives’ in about a month.”

Kate Burton presented for Bobby Steggert and recalled how, on the first day of rehearsal of A.R. Gurney’s “The Grand Manner,” he introduced himself and she was like “’Yes, dear boy,’ patting his head,” only to have him get nominated for a Tony (among a slew of other awards) the next day.

McClintic (played by Boyd Gaines), and Bobby Steggert is the young Gurney, with Brenda Wehle as Cornell’s producer lover, Gertrude Macy.

“I never saw Cornell act but did see her in the film ‘Stage Door Canteen’ on TCM just the other day,” Burton said.

“Research-wise, I’ve used the play as my road map and am filling in the blanks.

I’ve read some of her writings, Christopher Plummer’s wonderful memoir, and the Tad Mosel biography of her is really our Bible, as we feel that that one is closest to the truth because Gert Macy was his partner dealing with that.

“Boyd and I went up to the Cornell/ McClintic Room at the Performing Arts

Library, which I never knew about, and we literally burst into tears as we walked in. They showed us all their letters and personal photographs, a lot from ‘Antony and Cleopatra,’ which were really helpful to me.”

These awards seriously need our support and help, and you can find out how on their website theatreworldawards. org.

O

n June 14 at Caroline’s, Mint Theater had a benefit reading of Gypsy Rose Lee’s autobiographical 1943 play “The Naked Genius,” starring Kristen Johnson in full throttle diva mode as this most famous of ecdysiasts.

Lee’s son, Erik Preminger, told me, “Had it not been for this play, I would not be here. The show’s original producer, Mike Todd, was the love of my mother’s life, and the play’s central character is named Gypsy. As I read it, I see my mother, the way she talks and acts.

“Mike decided to cast Joan Blondell, he got involved with her, and on opening night told my mother he was finally going to divorce his wife to marry Joan.

My mother was destroyed, and she had a job in Hollywood at the time to star in ‘Belle of the Yukon.’ There she met Otto Preminger at a party and decided to have a child by him –– something that wasn’t going to leave her –– without even telling

him.

“Once the movie was done, she was pregnant and went back to New York without even saying goodbye. When Mike died in a plane crash, his agent called my mother, who locked herself up and cried for three days. When he told Blondell, she said, ‘I hope the s.o.b. screamed all the way down!’ So maybe my mother was better off not married to him.”

Lee married actor Alexander Kirkland “whose name was on my birth certificate. As I got older, I’d hear rumors from family friends who said that Kirkland wouldn’t father anybody because he was gay, and the assumption was that Todd was my father. When my mom told me, unwillingly, at the age of 17, that it was Otto, it was strange, because I’d also assumed it was Mike.

“The country house wedding scene in the play could have been lifted from her marriage to Kirkland, with that hat that was designed by Mr. John with glass grapes, an outrageous hat. She waited 20 minutes at the altar for Mike to come and stop the wedding. He didn’t, but in the play he does. It was her way of rewriting reality, she made a career out of living a fictionalized version of the Gypsy Rose Lee’s life, which then became the real thing.”

Another designer Lee championed was the great Charles James: “Some of her clothes by him are on exhibit now at the Met. She was one of his first high profile clients –– endless long fittings, she paid him a retainer against dresses and was always complaining that he was three dresses behind and still needed money, which was always his story. But he was a good friend, so elegant, and when he came over, although he hated animals, our cat Gaudi would nuzzle into his armpit and drive him crazy.”

Lee is wonderful playing a lesbian club owner in Gerd Oswald’s cult S&M film noir, “Screaming Mimi,” especially when she tells her chorine lover, “Here, we dance with the head, not the feet!”

About her rumored real-life bisexuality: “There certainly was never any indication in our house –– if anything, she was asexual, I think. Everything my mother did was a parody of striptease and sex, poking fun at something she was completely removed from. Her childhood was trouping around with a bunch of boys with her sister [June Havoc] getting all the attention, while she was dressed in boy’s clothes and made to share a sleeper berth with two boys in the act, not the kind of upbringing that makes a person terribly enamored of sex.

䉴

IN THE NOH, continued on p.52

24 JUN - 7 JUL 2010

44/ Theater

Showing Pride Choices and possibilities for a theatrical outing during your celebration mium tickets at $395.

Here are some suggestions you may want to consider.

BY CHRISTOPHER BYRNE

GUSTAVO MONROY

“W

hat should I see when I’m in town for Pride?”

I’ve gotten enough emails and phone calls to know that gay tourists visiting this season often include a trip or two to the theater. True, a lot of good shows are closing, but there’s also much that’s wonderful, and in making your plans you will face, as ever, a choice between time and money. You can go to the TKTS booths — there are three: at 47th and Broadway, South Street Seaport, and Downtown Brooklyn at Borough Hall (see maps at tdf.org.) — and wait in line to save as much as 50 percent. The offerings at TKTS change every day, but virtually every Broadway show has been up there recently, with the exceptions of “The Addams Family,” “Wicked,” “Fences,” and “Jersey Boys.”

You can also look online at theatermania.com and get discounts of 20 to 50 percent. And there’s a recent phenomenon

Broadway AMERICAN IDIOT — Redefining the musical, this moving and exhilarating show will get your heart pounding — and breaking. Green Day’s music is magnificent and the performances are outstanding. The searing look at American culture is apt and insightful, and while the narrative is non-traditional, the story will move you. St. James Theater, 246 W. 44th St.. Tickets at the box office; discounts at theatermania.com and TKTS.

Leslie Jordan in his one man show, “My Trip Down The Pink Carpet.”

in Times Square — hawkers for specific shows handing out discount slips. Look for the aspiring actors wearing sandwich boards.

Or you can do it the old-fashioned way, and walk up to the box offices. I spent an afternoon in mid-June visiting Broadway

box offices, and found good, regular full price seats available for almost any performance — with the exceptions of “Jersey Boys,” which had only $199 premium tickets during Pride week, “Wicked,” which only had single premium seats at $301, and “Fences,” which had only pre-

RED — Closing on June 27, this just won both the Tony and Drama Desk Awards for best play. The story of painter Mark Rothko and his uneasy twoyear interaction with an assistant while Rothko struggles with creating art, this

䉴

PRIDE THEATER, continued on p.55

Tickled to Death An interactive theatrical happening proves mysteriously entertaining

T

he words “audience participation” are usually a red flag to me, so I went to see “Lower East Side Murder — The Ryan Case” with some trepidation. This production by the Live In Theater casts the audience as detectives in small groups traveling outside the theater to gather clues and crack the case. The groups follow a map and, along a 30-minute walking loop, encounter characters in the story whom they question. At the end, the groups reconvene, reveal their theories, and experience the end of the tale. The structure is similar to murder games that have been popular since the 1920s and were, during the 1980s, all the rage.

Despite my initial resistance, I found myself drawn into the tale — and the sleuthing — because of the wonderful work by creator Carol D’Amore and his talented cast. The ability of these actors to create and maintain characters and interact with the audience while wearing 19th century clothing on the streets of Chinatown is not just impressive; it’s what makes this so much fun.

D’Amore and his troupe have their roots in improvisation, and it shows in the best possible way. Of course, only in

LOWER EAST SIDE MURDER MYSTERY — THE RYAN CASE The Live In Theatre 25 Mott St., btwn. Bayard & Worth Sts. Sat. at 6 p.m. $30; liveintheater.com

New York would pedestrians either completely ignore a woman in a long dress trying to sell coal or come to the aid of a woman (regardless of her costume) of easy virtue who appears to be facing particularly harsh questioning from eight people on a street corner.

What’s remarkable, though, is that through bits and pieces of information and character details, what emerges is a wonderful picture of a dark crime along with a convincing sense of lower class life in New York in 1873. As with the novels “The Alienist,” “Time and Again,” and “Winter’s Tale,” the details add dimension to the story — and to the fun.

And this is a great deal of fun. George Crowley plays legendary Police Chief Thomas Byrnes with an endearing and brash Irish quality that is pointedly overthe-top and hilarious. The company also includes Patrick Walsh as the shady landlord, Audrey Crabtree as his cantan-

GREG SCAFFIDI

BY CHRISTOPHER BYRNE

The audience at “The Ryan Case” gathers clues on the streets of Chinatown from the murder victim’s brother, played by Tyler Fischer.

kerous wife, Alyssa Siemons as Sally the streetwalker, D’Amore as a Polish immigrant, and Tyler Fischer as the murder victim’s brother. They are all amazingly adept at moving the story, getting out the relevant clues, and even convincing participants to huddle in doorways or follow them down a street.

D’Amore has said he has other participatory theatrical events planned — of varying styles and from different eras — using the city as a backdrop.

Is it theater? I don’t know. It’s certainly theatrical and a wonderful way to spend an evening. Grab some friends and check it out.

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■ BOOKS

For everyone The Mystery of Minnelli living OUT Loud

Mark Griffin’s bio strips the Technicolor veils from a Hollywood enigma

BY DAVID NOH

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f, in Hollywood’s Golden Age, MGM was the preeminent dream factory, then surely director Vincente Minnelli (1903-86) was one of the foremost purveyors of those dreams. The lushness of his visual imagination, yoked to the studio’s unparalleled technical resources and stable of talented artists before and behind the camera, resulted in films that defined the privileged look and feel of the most powerful studio on earth.

Minnelli’s visions flood the memory banks of any devoted movie lover — the impossibly elegant evocation of fin-desiecle Paris in “Gigi,” the hurly-burly of putting on a Broadway show in “The Band Wagon,” the charismatic dazzle of the once-in-a-lifetime cast assembled for the all-black “Cabin in the Sky,” that lavish, endless dream ballet in the overrated “An American in Paris,” Barbra Streisand practically masturbating with a champagne glass as she croons the beautiful “Love with All the Trimmings” in “On a Clear Day You Can See Forever” (her most gorgeous onscreen moment), and the ebullient Halloween and trolley song sequences of his masterpiece, “Meet Me in St. Louis.”

Minnelli’s reputation as the greatest director in the musical genre is only rivaled by fellow MGM man Stanley Donen. Minnelli was decidedly weaker in non-musical projects, although most of them have his individual eye-filling fillip. What one recalls from his efforts in pure drama are not performances but cinematic tours de force, like the nerve-wrackingly endless waltz scene in “Madame Bovary,” Lana Turner having a breakdown as she loses control of her car in a storm in “The Bad and Beautiful,” or the kaleidoscopic climactic sequence of “Some Came Running,” set at a country carnival.

His comedic efforts, like “The Reluctant Debutante,” “Designing Woman,” “The Long, Long Trailer,” and “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father,” could also be stilted and artificial.

The reasons for this directorial disparity, among many things, are revealed in Mark Griffin’s biography, “A Hundred or More Hidden Things: The Life and Times of Vincente Minnelli,” which attempts to strip the Technicolor veils from this most enigmatic of auteurs. Although married four times — most famously to

A HUNDRED OR MORE HIDDEN THINGS THE LIFE AND TIMES OF VINCENTE MINNELLI

By Mark Griffin Da Capo Press $15.95 in paper; 320 pages

Judy Garland — and the father of Liza as well as another daughter, Christiane (by Georgette Magnani), Minnelli was almost universally thought to be gay, or bisexual at least. Griffin acknowledges early on in his book the race against time he waged while researching the book, as Minnelli’s few real compatriots were all of an advanced age.

He did manage to score some hundred interviews, the majority of which attest to a definite queer bent in the director’s behavior. “Effeminate,” “androgynous,” “campy,” “nervous and mincing,” and “eyeshadow-wearing” crop up again and again in people’s recollections, but, rumors aside, Griffin does not uncover a single actual source attesting to any same-sex relationships or trysts on Minnelli’s part.

The closest he gets is with actor John Angelo, who said that during the filming of “The Story of Three Loves,” “He pinched me. We were both Italian and he thought he was in Rome, I guess...

He cruised a lot of people, now whether they went with him or not, I don’t know.

䉴

MINNELLI, continued on p.50

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48/ Theater

War Torn All’s fair in love and war — but not in Off-Broadway

T

he concept of “Prophecy,” a densely packed drama about scorching conflicts on the battlefield and in the bedroom, was born over tea one day between playwright Karen Malpede and Kathleen Chalfant, the veteran stage actress familiar to fans of “Law & Order,” “Angels in America,” and countless other projects.

It seemed like a splendid idea at the time.

No doubt, Malpede’s instincts were dead-on when she eyed Chalfant as Sarah Golden, the stoic drama teacher grappling with a host of demons. But as marvelous as Chalfant is, even she has trouble making the character credible.

You see, not only is Sarah fighting memories of losing boyfriend Lukas in the Vietnam War — they were anti-war pro-

testers back then but he got drafted — she’s now fighting to retain a promising student, Jeremy (Brendan Donaldson), who has anger management issues stemming from a stint in Iraq and also happens to be a dead ringer for her lost love. Oh, and she’s also tortured by an affair her husband, Alan (played too earnestly by George Bartenieff), had years ago with his associate, Hala (Najla Said). Then there’s that nasty business about having an abortion that left her infertile.

Confused? Not half as stymied as the audience is, slogging through this well-intentioned miasma for two-and-onehalf hours.

Yet that’s just a fraction of the story. Jumping from 2006 in New York City back to the early 1980s and 1970s and then

䉴

WAR TORN, continued on p.52

ARI MINTZ

BY DAVID KENNERLEY

Brendan Donaldson and Kathleen Chalfant in Karen Malpede’s “Prophecy.”

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Celebrating pride

When you look back at the efforts and achievements of LGBT men and women over the years, there’s every reason to be proud. Not just once a year, but every day. Wells Fargo takes great pride in the diversity of the communities we serve. That’s why we continue to make financial contributions to LGBT nonprofits, provide services specific to the needs of our LGBT customers and foster a work environment that doesn’t just accept differences, but celebrates them. Happy Pride. All year round.

wellsfargo.com/lgbt © 2010 Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. All rights reserved. Member FDIC.

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50/ Opera

The Many Faces of Verismo A century ago, Italian opera drew inspiration from all across Europe

BY ELI JACOBSON

䉴

MINNELLI, from p.46

I wasn’t interested really. People said he was gay and yet he married four times.

He kept his gayness in the shadows, I think. But he was always very nice to me. I never said ‘Yes’ to him... but I did get pinched.”

Gay, ambiguously gay, or just, like so many determinedly career-minded men before and after him, heavily closeted to the point of never actually acting out his same-sex desires? That remains unclear from Griffin’s account.

I do know he activated my homo gene at an early age while watching his “Kismet” on TV one afternoon. Howard Keel sang “Fate” on a windy desert; the scene was — apart from his always-resonant baritone — unremarkable, save for the fact that said wind made Keel’s silken harem pants billow around an unmis-

KEN HOWARD/ METROPOLITAN OPERA

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ew York’s Teatro Grattacielo has, for more than 15 years now, revived many obscure verismo titles. Not all have been rediscovered treasures, but each has helped document the variety of musical styles influencing Italian composers from the end of the 19th century until World War II. Debussy, Wagner, Mussorgsky, and Strauss can all be heard in these scores.

Surprisingly few such operas are based in the type of realistic working class melodrama epitomized by Mascagni’s “Cavalleria Rusticana.” Several of these operas applied the veristic musical vocabulary to librettos derived from writers as diverse as Leo Tolstoy and Selma Lagerlöf.

Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari’s “I Gioielli della Madonna” (1911) may well be the strangest hybrid. The piece premiered in Berlin in German. The juicy role of Maliella — a teenage Italian Carmen whose reckless sensuality lures a local gangster and drives her own adoptive brother to desecrate the effigy of the Virgin — attracted divas like Maria Jeritza at the Met and Rosa Raisa in Chicago to star in US revivals in the 1920s and ‘30s.

The Italian premiere did not come until 1953, when an all-star cast failed to deflect critical scorn. The intermezzos from the opera kept the title familiar to concertgoers, but it disappeared from all operatic stages after World War II. Until recently, no recording was available.

The libretto set on the streets of Naples and derived, like “I Pagliacci,” from a newspaper report of a real incident is

Daniela Dessì in the title role of Puccini’s “Tosca.”

textbook Italian verismo. The music, however, is a complex hybrid much like the composer himself, the son of a German father and Italian mother torn between two musical cultures. In this work, Mascagni meets Mahler in Neapolitan back alleys.

The street festival that opened the opera showed the ambition and scope of Wolf-Ferrari’s compositional talent.

A complex multi-part chorus with solo interjections courts cacophony over a layered orchestral texture that seems to

takable semi-erection. Most upsetting to an unsure 13-year-old, I can assure you. How it could have gotten past the censors is as big a question now as the fact that its appearance in a Minnelli film isn’t difficult to understand at all.

As for Minnelli’s weakness with nonmusical projects — in which the space around his performers was not filled by music, décor, and movement — this apparently stemmed from both a lack of interest and a difficulty in communicating with actors. With naturally effusive performers able to easily fill a role, like Garland or Kirk Douglas (Van Gogh in “Lust for Life”), this wasn’t a problem, but Debbie Reynolds once told me that he spent all his time while filming an entire scene rearranging hairpins on a sofa instead of offering her his direction.

Griffin’s book quotes Lauren Bacall

take tonal music to its limit. An offstage chorus with mandolins sings a tuneful little canzone, adding further contrast to the heady mixture. The able baton of music director David Wroe, in a May 24 performance, kept all the strands clear and coherent while reveling in Wolf-Ferrari’s eclectic style.

The cast was committed and able, though lacking the vocal splendor of a Raisa, Martinelli, or Gobbi. Spinto soprano Julia Kierstine needs more focus in her middle voice, but her free and easy top register soared in Maliella’s jagged and rangy vocal line. Lyric tenor Raul Melo worked hard to find the dark dramatic colors of the tormented quasi-incestuous Gennaro, but the effort paid off. The baritone role of the gangster Rafaele has the most tuneful and extractable arias in the piece, which were pleasingly sung by lyric baritone Joshua Benaim. Eugenie Grunewald’s bur nished chest register brought authority and weight to the role of Carmela, the obligatory suffering mother.

That such an interesting and effective score should have been consigned to oblivion is unfortunate and makes one extremely grateful to Teatro Grattacielo for demonstrating just how thrillingly it all works in live performance. The audience at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater responded to the vocal fireworks and orchestral brilliance with enthusiastic ovations.

G

iacomo Puccini was another Italian composer whose compositional style encompassed all the latest musical developments from

saying, “On ‘The Cobweb’ I’d arrive on the set and there he’d be up on the boom, zooming up to the drapes, and I thought to myself, ‘He’s really in heaven now.’... It was all about the goddamned drapes.”

Such an obsession with the purely inanimate and the decorative took its toll, as ‘Cobweb’ author William Gibson observes: “I saw things like Lauren Bacall walking in front of the camera... swinging her ass very sexily and I thought, ‘Has she not read the part?’

This character has just lost her husband and her child. She’s in a state of mourning. She’s not swinging her ass.

But nobody cared about that.”

Minnelli’s superiority as a musical director is obvious, but no more so than the fact that, stripped of the wittily stylized behavior demanded by that genre, the performances in his would-

France and Germany, yet his works have never faced oblivion. In late Spring, the Met unveiled yet another cast in the new Luc Bondy production of “Tosca.” Daniela Dessì cut a rather petite if curvy figure as Floria Tosca, her pouty sensual looks reminiscent of a mature Brigitte Bardot or Claudia Cardinale. Vocally, she was reminiscent of the old Italian sopranos who used to record on Cetra. The smoky pomegranate fruitiness of the middle voice was offset by an accurate but metallic top register. Her experience in the role emerged in several telling textual readings and dramatic insights, but physically she seemed constrained. It was unclear if this was discomfort with Bondy’s production or the physical ailment that sidelined her from a later performance.

It was a revelation to hear two native Italian singers put over the love duet in Act I — both Marcello Giordani and Dessì live and breathe the Puccini idiom, using it as a form of musical conversation. Giordani held high notes like a latter -day Corelli, the natural gold of his tone outshining the occasional vocal dross.

George Gagnidze returned in strong vocal form as Scarpia, but also brought back much of the ridiculous original stage business Bryn Terfel successfully banished earlier in April.

Philippe Auguin’s conducting was accomplished but heavy and oppressive — rather like the sets and lighting. Dessì and Giordani, fortunately, spread some Italianate sunshine in its dark corners.

be earthier dramatic or comic films are often synthetic, if not cartoonish, and wholly uninvolving. His Elizabeth Taylor -Richard Burton vehicle “The Sandpiper” is a positive wallow in the depths of risible low camp, and “Tea and Sympathy,” which must have spoken loudly to him with its issues of homophobia and what makes a real man, is a curiously impersonal work, wholly lacking in eroticism or empathy, as if he did it at an embarrassed arm’s length from subject matter too close to the bone.

I’m glad to see that Griffin makes a case for the under-appreciated “On A Clear Day You Can See Forever” (1970), Minnelli’s second to last film, a colossal financial and critical flop at the time, but which is Streisand’s most

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MINNELLI, from p.50

purely charming outing, with all of the fun, allure, and heavenly tunefulness of her director’s best work. But I didn’t really need to read quite so much about how the film enabled the then insecure 16-year-old biographer to feel self-empowered for the first time.

In examining Minnelli’s oeuvre, Griffin, along with a host of quoted observers — ranging from critics I’ve never heard of to John Epperson (aka L ypsinka) — theorize about all the characters in his films who pretend to be something they’re not, making a case for how this mirrors Minnelli’s conflicted inner nature. Hello? He was a company man — not Ingmar Bergman; he took on assignments, some admittedly closer to his heart than others, from

24 JUN – 7 JUL 2010 disconcerted at first, but later found it charming: “I think he was doing it to try and infuse you with the feeling that he wanted from the scene.”

Ellen Burstyn, however, found it frustrating: “I just couldn’t imagine he wanted me to say the line with him at the same time. But that’s what he wanted. Over and over until I had his rhythm and there was nothing left of mine. I was doing his performance of the character.”

Burstyn also said Minnelli “seemed polite to everyone on the set but me.

He railed at me, humiliating me at every opportunity.” Other witnesses offered similar accounts, demonstrating the filmmaker’s habit, unfortunately not unique among directors, of having a specific whipping boy on the set.

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The Church of the Transfiguration Little Church Around the Corner

Griffin scored some hundred interviews, the majority of which attest to a definite queer bent in the director’s behavior.

“Father of the Bride” and its sequel, “Father’s Little Dividend,” to “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father” and “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” with highly varying results.

An intriguing subject Griffin over looks is Minnelli’s keen rivalry with another prominent MGM helmsman, George Cukor, likewise categorized as an “effeminate” director. There’s a sneaky dig at Minnelli in Cukor’s “A Star is Bor n,” when Judy Garland describes a tackily overblown production number as being bigger than “An American in Paris,” and Cukor once dismissed “Gigi” as being “too ooh la la Frenchified” for his taste.

This rivalry became serious when both directors were considered for the precious screen translation of the stage blockbuster “My Fair Lady.”

“Gigi,” with its Ler ner and Loewe score, Cecil Beaton design, and tale of an ugly duckling transformed into a swan was almost a blatant tryout for the job, and Minnelli would seem to have been a shoo-in. However, his then-wife, the ambitious Denise Radosavljev, reportedly made him ask for too much money and the job went to Cukor. It’s a shame this happened, as the film turned out to be a too-reverent, studio-bound, entirely uncinematic stagy preservation, without a breath of the fresh air which Minnelli, with his more daring visual audacity and know-how, might have injected.

Cukor had a habit of acting out scenes for certain of his actors; more maddening to some, however, was Minnelli’s practice of standing behind the camera mouthing their lines while they performed. Farley Granger was

The book is undeniably wellresearched, and most of it is presented in a thankfully straightforward fashion. But, perhaps in striving for the snappy pizzaz of Minnelli’s best work, Grif fin sometimes indulges in cringe-inducing prose like, “The 65-year -old Minnelli hadn’t directed a theatrical production since ‘Very Warm for May’ way back in 1938 — when Zsa Zsa Gabor was still on her first husband.” Tacky Queen’s English — unsuited to an ambitious biography.

I also wish Griffin had at least mentioned, amidst all his wondering about why Minnelli has never been truly taken seriously as an artist, that the late Stephen Harvey came out with a beautifully produced tome, “Directed

by Vincente Minnelli,” in 1989, which has long stood as the definitive reference work. (Griffin does quote him once without mentioning the book, which he includes in his sources.)

Griffin’s biography does make for a worthwhile read, shedding light on Minnelli’s beginnings as a theatrical wunderkind before hitting Hollywood, as well as making known the existence of that other daughter, “Tina Nina” Minnelli. Like Liza, the younger daughter declined to be interviewed

by Griffin, but — wouldn’t you know it? — seems to suffer from a certain rivalry with Big Sis, who purportedly wants to be known as Vincente’s only child. If that’s true, this could be read as a case of family history r epeating itself, since, adding to his personal mystery, Daddy himself always denied the existence of a brother.

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52 IN THE NOH, from p.43

“She was very good friends with [lesbians] Carson McCullers and Janet Flanner, but I think these relationships were more about respect and admiration than sexual connection.

She was married once to the artist Julio de Diego, the only man I ever saw spend the night at our house. If she had an affair with Carson, which Carson’s biographer claims, it probably was no more than an expression of admiration and affection.”

Lee’s Victorian sexual attitudes were matched by the décor of her famous East 63rd Street townhouse: “Her bedroom was a Victorian child’s fantasy with papier -mâché, mother -of-pearl inlaid furniture which broke if anyone too heavy sat on it. It was first sold to a psychiatrist who loved the idea of taking a bath in this sex object’s tub and couldn’t accept that she was not very sexual. It was next purchased by Jasper Johns, and once I was passing by and put my card in the mailbox and he called me within 20 minutes and invited me over to show me everything he’d done to it. Now, it’s owned by another Lee, Spike.”

“For the opening night of the musical, ‘Gypsy,’ she didn’t wear Charles James but a very understated long

CAROL ROSEGG

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Robert Cuccioli and Jodi Stevens in Jerry Mayer’s in “Dietrich and Chevalier” at the St. Luke’s Theatre through August 1.

Preminger wasn’t thrilled by his father’s recent biography, by Foster Hirsch: “I started reading it and then stopped. Personally, it’s not very flat-

“I’d meet people who’d say, ‘Oh, Chevalier was a Nazi sympathizer,’ and I felt I’ve got to correct this.”

black dress with a simple white blouse and sable stole. She held my hand throughout almost the entire show, and cried over the ‘Little Lamb’ number. It was one of those moments you never forget.”

tering to me. I frankly wasn’t inter ested in reading something that was one person’s take. Otto and I loved each other dearly, and I don’t care what anybody says about it. That’s what I experienced and I thought I’d

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to “Antigone,” “Medea,” and other Greek tragedies, underscoring, I suppose, the timelessness of discord. At the top of the

WAR TORN, from p.48

over to Beirut, we are asked to absorb the impact of a barrage of conflicts that may or may not be connected — three wars (Vietnam, Lebanon, Iraq), clashes between Sarah and Alan, Jeremy and his hot-headed girlfriend (also played

by Said), and Alan and his long-lost terrorist daughter, whom he fathered with mistress Hala (again played by Said).

Then there’s a mediator of sorts, Dean Muffler (Peter Francis James), who tries to expel Jeremy before he causes real trouble. Implausibly, the dean may have been Lukas’ commanding officer in Saigon, and has a murky history with Sarah, though I’m not completely sure.

But wait, there’s more! Interwoven throughout are heavy-handed references

leave it at that. I was the bastard child who came into his family when he was married and had two young children, and he loved working with me on three films. Then I had the ego to go where I’d seen so many fail before and wrote a film for him that was a horrible experience and horrible movie, ‘Rosebud.’

Preminger is working on a new book and does a one-man show, narrating his mother’s life, using the home movies that he and she shot as far back as the 1930s: “Her entire life is documented on film, and we do a Q&A, which both reminds me and inspires me to think about her and what she accomplished.”

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ore showbiz legends appear in “Dietrich and Chevalier,” starring Robert Cuccioli and Jodi Stevens, at St. Luke’s Theater

a fascinating play somewhere. To be sure, there are some piquant passages, like when Hala and Alan’s daughter

Confused? Not half as stymied as the audience is, slogging through this well-intentioned miasma for two-and-one-half hours. show, “Antigone” is described as “a play of opposites” — a prophecy, if you will, of what Malpede’s endeavor will be about.

What an understatement.

That’s not to say that buried deep within this inflated conglomeration isn’t

drives home the horrors that American forces inflicted on civilians, or when Sarah bitterly regrets choosing her career over motherhood.

The land of “Prophecy” is not a hopeful one. Characters are adrift in a sea of

(308 W. 46th St., through Aug. 1; stlukestheatre.com), which recounts the stars’ 1930s romance and subsequent World War II experiences.

The musical’s writer, Jerry Mayer, a veteran TV producer/ writer (“Facts of Life,” “Bob Newhart’), said, “I was fascinated by the book Dietrich’s daughter, Maria Riva, wrote about her, how she was a hero and in danger, entertaining GIs and getting Jews out of Europe.

“I always liked Maurice Chevalier’s singing and energy, and wanted to write about how he went from being the poster boy of France to the goat who was accused of treasonous Nazi collaboration. Researching him, I discovered Nita Ray, the Jewish girl he was married to, who’s still alive.

I’d meet people who’d say, ‘Oh, he was a Nazi sympathizer,’ and I felt I’ve got to correct this.”

Mayer br oke away fr om his St. Louis family construction business by first writing cartoons for Playboy and selling jokes to Phyllis Diller. He began writing plays in a group, and “the first one was ‘Almost Perfect,’ a story about my marriage, now of 57 years. I married Emily at 21, and seven years into it, I thought, ‘What if I had married the right girl, a writer, maybe, and more beautiful than Emily? I met a girl who looked liked Bardot and told Emily, ‘Maybe we’re not right together.’ We had two kids and oh, she was so wonderful, and stuck in there.

“The play’s about a guy who falls in love with his wife and when I did that, Emily blossomed when she realized there was no foot out the door. Now I think I would have absolutely slit my wrists because she would have married a better guy than me. She’s beautifully produced my eight plays.

Contact David Noh at Inthenoh@aol. com and check out his new blog at http:// nohway.wordpress.com/.

recrimination, or, as Sarah intones, “I need to drudge along with the wreck of my life, the wreck of my dreams.” And while Malpede adds a few directorial touches to keep the action lively (overlapping dialogue, interior monologues), she’s simply too close to the material for her own good. Perhaps in the hands of another director, the work could be cut and shaped into a more plausible whole.

Once “Prophecy” reaches its exhaustive, soap-operatic conclusion, we are left numb, with a vague sense that war is hell and intimate relationships can be even worse, yet we must soldier on. Certainly nothing that we didn’t know all too well before we entered the theater.

Its closing this week is really no surprise.

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KEITH PATTISON

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Fiston BarekI as Joseph and Jonathan Cullen as Michael in Matthew Dunster’s production of Drew Pautz’s “Love the Sinner.”

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WEST END, from p.38

dead. In Simon Gray’s “The Late Middle Classes” (from 1999), directed by David Leveaux at the Donmar Warehouse, Holly (Harvey Allpress at the production I saw), a middle class boy of about 13, looks like Bambi –– all arms and legs and in danger of being preyed upon in a post-war island town by virtually every adult in his life. He has a sex-starved mom (deliciously played by Helen McCrory, famous for her film turns as Cherie Blair), seriously uptight dad (Peter Sullivan), and a closeted, repressed piano teacher (Robert Glenister in a bravely creepy performance) –– not to mention the teacher’s agoraphobic mother (Eleanor Bron), who seems to want to eat the kid along with the cake she serves him, so cut off from life she is.

The boy is the best-adjusted per son on the stage, trying to keep the unhinged adults at bay, constrained by early 1950s politeness and its rigid social structure. If this is a glimpse of what Gray, who wrote 40 plays including “Butley,” went through in childhood, it explains a lot of his work. By leavening it with humor ––arising out of these painful encounters, not jokes –– he gives us all hope of surviving our fractious existences. (donmarwarehouse.com; through Jul. 17.)

T

errence Rattigan’s “After the Dance” has rarely been revived since it opened to good notices in June 1939 but lost steam in the runup to war, partly because he saw it as a failure. Watching Thea Sharrock’s evocative production at the National’s Lyttleton, it gave me the feeling that it was the late 1930s and an era of frivolity and “bright young things” was about to end, so seriously do she and her company approach this drama about mostly rich people with domestic problems that might otherwise be hard to care about.

We’re in the sumptuous London home of David Scott-Fowler (Benedict Cumberbatch) and his wife Joan (Nancy Carroll), with the smart set and various hangerson they entertain. The drama arises over the shifting passions of perky Helen (Faye Castelow) for David’s poor relation, Peter (a touching John Heffernan), and then for David himself. All hands are very fine indeed, but the moral heart and standout of the show is Adrian Scarborough’s John Reid, a permanent guest who indulges his indolence simply by being amusing and ends up telling truths in the way only a court jester can.

At a discussion of the play, Sharrock asked me if I thought it would succeed in New York in the wake of Enron’s epic failure. At the risk of offending New York

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Warm wishes for a fantastic Pride celebration!

Assemblyman Jonathan Bing 360 East 57th Street, Mezzanine New York, NY 10022 www.assembly.state.ny.us Email: bingj@assembly.state.ny.us (212) 605-0937

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Chu Omambala as the Lord Cardinal and Richard Lintern as the Duke of Florence in Marianne Elliott’s production of Thomas Middleton’s “Women Beware Women.”

KEEP IT CLEAN. NATURALLY.

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WEST END, from p.53

actors, I would say only with this cast in this deeply English story in the kind of production that only the subsidized National seems able to pull off these days. (nationaltheatre.org.uk; through Aug. 11.)

T

he same goes for Mikhail Bulgakov’s “The White Guard,” also at the L yttleton, in a new ver sion by Andrew Upton directed by the busy Howard Davies. This 1926 play about the Kiev middle class buffeted by war and revolution, perversely, was so favored by Stalin that he went to see it 20 times, despite the fact that Bulgakov was a politically disfavored writer. Upton brings back some of the scenes red-penciled by the Soviet censors and gets us to care about the bourgeoisie as their world is pulled out from under them –– especially Justine Mitchell as Lena, who is trying to hold everything together as her cowardly politician husband (Richard Henders) tries to escape the crumbling city, and Pip Carter as cousin Larion, a would-be poet and one of the few nonmilitary men holing up in Lena’s house.

“I have been fighting since 1914 and for what?” one of the White Guard laments. “We need to learn to be good Bolsheviks now,” says another. (nationaltheatre.org.uk; through Jul. 7.)

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he gay revolution is Jonathan Harvey’s subject in “Canary” –– now closed at the Hampstead Theatre, but touring –– a sort of gay fantasia on English themes covering some of the same ground Tony Kushner did 20 years ago. I loved his “Beautiful Thing,” about working class boys finding each other,

and “Out in the Open,” about a group of gay and straight friends, but here he tries to tackle no less than 50 years of gay history using everything from panto to agitprop, and sadly succeeds less.

Worthwhile for those who don’t know our history from electric shock to the shock of AIDS, but less compelling theater than his finely attuned personal dramas.

“H

olding the Man” at the Trafalgar Studios is a deeply personal story — Timothy Murphy’s adaptation of the memoir by Australian actor-writer Timothy Conigrave (played by Guy Edmonds) about how he met the love of his life, John Caleo (Matt Zermes), at a Catholic boys’ school in the 1980s where they were surprisingly tolerated, only to contract HIV and die.

It also stars Jane Turner, a TV star in Australia, who knew both men, in multiple roles. It was good to take this trip through that awful time, tempered by deep love and much humor, but Murphy seems to have felt honor-bound to include everything that happened to the couple. It could have conveyed more with less, though it does boast a very winning cast. (trafalgar-studios.co.uk; through Jul. 3.)

M

y time in London closed with a knockout –– Roy Williams’ “Sucker Punch” at the Royal Court, about West Indian young men (vibrant performances by Daniel Kaluuya and Anthony Welsh) trying to make it in the boxing ring. I will not pretend that I understood all of the patois, even reading it on the page. But it is a dynamic drama of love and betrayal and trying to make it in a very tough world. (royalcourttheatre. com; through Jul. 24.)

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PRIDE THEATER, from p.44

MEMPHIS — They call it a new musical, and it is, but its structure, story, and score are about as traditional as they could be. Still, it’s got a wonderfully infectious energy, and the lead performances

by Chad Kimball and Montego Glover are outstanding. Plus, it just won the Tony and Drama Desk Awards as best musical. I revisited the show a couple of weeks ago, and it’s only gotten tighter and clearer.

Sergio Trujillo’s choreography is worth the ticket price alone. Shubert Theatre, 225 W. 44th St. Tickets at the box office; discounts at theatermania.com and TKTS. SOUTH PACIFIC — Just hearing the orchestra play this score is reason enough to see this production. I had some quibbles with the direction, but I’m in the minority. I haven’t seen Laura Osnes who’s currently playing Nellie, but you’ll never see an American classic in such a sumptuous performance. (PBS will broadcast it on August 18 — it’s not the same, but if you have to make a choice…) Vivian Beaumont Theatre, 150 W. 56th St. Tickets at the box office; discounts at theatermania.com and TKTS. THE ADDAMS FAMILY — This is a show that’s popular for theater people to hate. I have no idea why. In the classic P.G. Wodehouse/ Jerome Kern vein, this is a completely entertaining show that demands nothing of you and gives you pure entertainment. Nathan Lane, Bebe Neuwirth, and Kevin Chamberlin are all worth seeing. Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, 205 W. 46th St. Tickets at the box office only.

LA CAGE AUX FOLLES — I didn’t like this production, but I’m in a distinct minority; it took all the revival awards. The choice to make it seedy and rundown was daring, and the Cagelles are magnificent. I thought the production lacked heart and bite, and its politics have been smoothed out to a point where Albin and Georges are just eccentric. You decide on this one. Longacre Theatre, 220 W. 48th St. Tickets at the box office; discounts at theatermania. com and TKTS.

PAUL KOLNIK

is rich theater on so many levels, touching on personal struggle, the nature of art, and how time changes everything. Golden Theatre, 225 W. 45th St. Tickets at the box office; discounts at theatermania.com and TKTS. BILLY ELLIOT — This musical is a year old, but still vibrant and exciting, thanks in part to the steady stream of young dancers and Broadway pros who fill the show with energy. The story is predictable, the music a little obvious, but it’s a truly remarkable show technically, and Gregory Jbara is back as Billy’s father, offering one of the finest performances in a musical in recent memory. Imperial Theatre, 249 W. 45th St. Tickets at the box office and intermittently at TKTS.

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John Gallagher Jr. as Johnny in “American Idiot.”

NEXT TO NORMAL — Bipolar disorder. Kind of sets your toes a-tapping.

This popular hit has a strong score and some dynamite performances. The subject matter is stark, but the characters are well-drawn and real. It’s been around for a year, and Alice Ripley has been missing performances of late, though word is her understudy is great. Brian D’Arcy James is back in the role he originated. Booth Theatre, 222 W. 45th St. Tickets at the box office; discounts at theatermania.com and TKTS. Off Broadway MY TRIP DOWN THE PINK CARPET — This is delicious. Leslie Jordan’s oneman tell-all show starts out dishy and bitchy but then reveals the feeling, smart, and charming guy beneath all the showbiz and glitz. He’s remarkably honest and completely irresistible. This is probably the perfect show to see during Pride. Midtown Theater, 163 W. 46th St. Tickets at the box office and TKTS.

KEEP IT CLEAN. NATURALLY.

BLOODY BLOODY ANDREW JACKSON — This show closes June 27, and I’m going back for my fourth time. A smart, evocative, and in-your-face pop-political musical, this is, along with “American Idiot,” at the top among musicals this year. It illustrates the excitement that can happen when very smart people throw form and tradition out the window and create galvanizing theater. This is rich on so many levels — intellectually, historically, and musically. It really shouldn’t be missed. The Public Theater, 425 Lafayette St., btwn. E. Fourth St. & Astor Pl. Tickets at the box office; discounts at theatermania.com.

STUFFED AND UNSTRUNG — This is an improv comedy starring some of the Henson folks and their puppets. They take suggestions from the audience and come up with very funny stuff. The best part is watching what the actors do to make it work, and what you see on the screen. The show varies by the intelligence level of the audience — and their blood alcohol level — but it’s creative, fun, and a welcome change of pace. Union Square Theatre, 100 E. 17th St., at Park Ave. S. Tickets at the box office; discounts at theatermania. com and TKTS.

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he utterly brilliant film â&#x20AC;&#x153;Dogtooth,â&#x20AC;? a story about the odd interactions among the members of a closeknit suburban Greek family, features deadpan humor and shocking violence in equal measures.

At times, the film plays out like theater of the absurd. At several points, the three teenage children line up on all fours and bark like dogs. One hilarious sequence features the familyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s eldest daughter (Aggeliki Papoulia) â&#x20AC;&#x201D; none of the family members has a first name â&#x20AC;&#x201D; dancing in a style cribbed from â&#x20AC;&#x153;Flashdanceâ&#x20AC;? while her brother (Hristos Passalis) plays classical guitar.

The film opens with a tape recorder message announcing, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s new words are â&#x20AC;&#x201D; sea, motorway, excursion, and carbine.â&#x20AC;? Definitions that make no sense follow, but there is a valid reason these words have been selected and described as they are. Later, when one of the daughters wants her mother to pass the salt, she asks for the â&#x20AC;&#x153;phone.â&#x20AC;?

As weird or silly as these episodes are, they are not nearly as provocative as the filmâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s dark moments. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Dogtooth,â&#x20AC;? viewers should be warned, features some rather disturbing scenes. One involves an angry sister suddenly slashing her brotherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s arm with a large, sharp kitchen knife. Other upsetting episodes of violence occur as well, but revealing them would spoil the film.

There are also a series of bizarre sexual encounters involving Christina (Anna Kalaitzidou), an outsider who is blind-

DOGTOOTH Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos In Greek, with English subtitles Kino Releasing Opens Jun. 25 Cinema Village 22 E. 12th St., cinemavillage.com

folded and driven to the familyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s house.

She has passionless, almost clinical intercourse with the son, but seems to prefer being orally pleasured by the eldest daughter. Christina trades a sparkly headband with the girl for services rendered. Later, the daughter asks her sister if sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d like to lick her. It is only the first incestuous scene in the film.

As viewers come to realize what is going on here â&#x20AC;&#x201D; that the parents are trying to protect their children from the dangers of the outside world, but putting them in harmâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s way nonetheless â&#x20AC;&#x201D; â&#x20AC;&#x153;Dogtoothâ&#x20AC;? shrewdly never explains why. Director and co-writer Yorgos Lanthimos builds the suspense by having viewers watch and wait for someone to crack or to rebel. The tension is especially palpable because the filmmakerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s style involves long, static shots that force viewers to pay considerable attention to what is â&#x20AC;&#x201D; or is not â&#x20AC;&#x201D; happening in the frame.

Most of â&#x20AC;&#x153;Dogtoothâ&#x20AC;? takes place on the familyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s estate, and much of the action involves inventive game-playing that doubles as endurance tests. The teens have a contest in which they hold their breath underwater and another where

ä&#x2030;´

OUR HOUSE, continued on p.66

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CHRISTOPHE JEAUFFROY/ COURTESY: SONY PICTURES CLASSICS

60

André Dussollier as Georges and Sabine Azéma as Marguerite in Alain Resnais’ Wild Grass.

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ore than any of his French New Wave peers except JeanLuc Godard, Alain Resnais expanded the possibilities of cinema. His early films were formally and politically radical, taking on subjects like the Holocaust (“Night and Fog”), French colonialism (“Statues Also Die” and “Muriel”), the bombing of Hiroshima (“Hiroshima, Mon Amour”), and the Spanish Civil War (“La Guerre est finie”). Their innovations stemmed partially from his collaborations with writers like Alain Robbe-Grillet and Marguerite Duras, who would soon become directors themselves.

In the 1970s, Resnais’ films turned in a more audience-friendly direction.

His interest in theater and comic books has influenced his work of the past three decades. The results, while always enjoyable, have felt somewhat slight, almost middlebrow. With “Wild Grass,” Resnais has made his best film since 1986’s “Melo.” This latest work is both lighthearted and pessimistic, cute and creepy.

Marguerite (Sabine Azéma), a dentist and amateur pilot, goes on a shopping spree in a shoe store. As she leaves, a robber on rollerskates steals her purse.

He takes the money from her wallet and drops it in a parking garage. Georges (André Dusollier), a family man in his 60s, finds it. Although he finds something sad about Marguerite’s ID photo, he becomes obsessed with her. While he eventually takes the wallet to the police station, he hesitates at first. He starts calling her every day and leaving mes-

WILD GRASS Directed by Alain Resnais In French, with English subtitles Sony Pictures Classics Opens Jun. 25 Quad Cinema, 34 W. 13th St. quadcinema.com

sages on her answering machine. One day, he slashes her car’s tires. Despite these worrying signs, she becomes increasingly curious about him.

Resnais and cinematographer Eric Gautier use light and color with the touch of a great painter. There’s hardly a scene that doesn’t point out its own artificiality. A flight in a plane, late in the film, is blatantly staged. This stylized approach is epitomized by Georges’ trip to a police station. At the back of the frame, cops, shown in silhouette, enjoy a party behind closed doors. In front of them, yellow light streams in through Venetian blinds, while blue light saturates the rest of the images. Resnais’ approach to color makes almost every scene, even ones depicting actions as mundane as Marguerite driving or Georges walking up a flight of stairs, into a feast for the eyes. His use of crane shots yields similarly ravishing results.

Georges’ obsessiveness is paralleled by Resnais’ repetition of certain key images.

Resnais renamed his source novel, originally called “L’Incident” and written by Christian Gailly, “Wild Grass.” The title is significant enough that most of the opening credits roll over a static shot of a scrappy patch of grass poking through

䉴

WILD GRASS, continued on p.68

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䉴

COTTON, from p.36

cation camps in the South.”

Regardless of the responses to the song, does Cotton, who is straight, have a real Johnny as inspiration?

“I’m sure there were many, many, many Johnnys, but I never met him, and I never had that experience of falling for someone who was gay. At least not yet!” Cotton laughed, “It wasn’t interpreted by me as a personal experience; it was more of a character — a pretty, dumb girl who’d fallen for a gay guy.”

The idea of interpretation and performance is very near and dear to Cotton. When she first moved out to LA, she had the acting bug, although she ultimately chose music over acting. “I had to focus on one or the other,” she explained.

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in the exotica/ cocktail / lounge music genre like the soundtracks in those Italian movies of the 1960s. It does something to me, like making me want to shamelessly flirt and run through marble fountains in an evening gown.

All that could just be a conceit for one or another music video, but Cotton claimed she genuinely enjoys playing around with identity and sexuality.

“I’ve fully embraced my own sexuality, but I have always been confused about the role I was cast as a female ’cause I never felt like a girl,” she explained. “I explore that on the new record — probably on every record I ever did.”

She added, “It’s amazing to me I’m not a lesbian.”

And while it remains to be seen if her new work will have the impact her

Her greatest influence, she insisted, is the Italian “sex bomb” Gina Lollobrigida.

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While her music started out New Wave, Cotton has covered ’50s girl group songs, like “Tell Him,” as well as made rocker grrrll songs such as “Maneater” which appeared on her “Invasion of the B-Girls” CD. Her latest musical effort, “Pussycat Babylon,” has a 1960s Asian flavor, and includes two songs she’s per forming this Pride season — the dreamy, atmospheric “See the New Hong Kong” and the rockin’ title track.

Cotton describes her influences as ranging from Tim Burton/ operatic trailer trash to all things Asian — from Japanese toys and anime art, to Mao Zedong. But her greatest influence, she insisted, is the Italian “sex bomb” Gina Lollobrigida.

“I have tried on many dif ferent personas, but I have returned to my original inspiration, she said. Even musically right now I feel most myself

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initial hit did, one question remains: Given all the hullabaloo, does Cotton feel queer fans have embraced her for “Johnny?”

“I made a very controversial record which impacted my career in unfathomable ways and then I disappeared,” she observed wryly. “No one ever knew the whole story and that’s largely my fault. But do I feel I was ever acknowledged for what I went through over a word that wasn’t even my issue? Not by the community at large, but I have been personally thanked countless times by many gay guys — and that’s made it all seem worth it.”

Josie Cotton appears at Dance: 208, LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., Jun. 25, 9 p.m.-1 a.m. (gaycenter.org) and at Susanne Bartsch’s “Vandam” at Greenhouse, 150 Varick St. at Vandam St., Jun. 27, 10 p.m. (212-807-7000).

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24 JUN - 7 JUL 2010

64/ Books 䉴

FORSTER, from p.52

operatic passions of Italian culture, with comic-tragic results. But these were only a warm-up to the richer work to come.

Forster’s romantic notion of men living together in natural affection was inspired by the model set by Edward Carpenter (“a Victorian guru of radical causes”) and his younger lover, George Merrill, whom he met in 1912 when he was in his mid 30s. Carpenter was almost 70 when Forster visited him at his rustic country cottage, where he lived the Thoreau ideal in the tiny hamlet of Millthorpe, south of Sheffield.

Carpenter’s open lifestyle and candor about sex “was an occasion that would utterly change his life,” Moffat writes.

“In the kitchen of the little farmhouse Carpenter set off a spark of ideas. But it was the dark, handsome Merrill, then in his 40s, who (unbeknownst to the old man) made a play for Morgan, touching ‘a creative spring’ which was located — it turned out — ‘just above the buttocks.’”

Moffat tells about Forster as a coddled and effeminate youngster, who was once mistaken for a girl by a servant and then instructed “to go back and correct the misapprehension. Dutifully he returned

James Wilby, in the title role, and Hugh Grant, as Clive, the 1987 Merchant-Ivory adaptation of “Maurice.”

observes: “The man was never identified or found. Mr. Hutchinson even spared the boy the necessity of giving evidence to the police. But the encounter did bring home to Morgan important lessons about how shame and panic could easily be harnessed, even by a young boy, into full-blown hysteria.

“Forster’s novels would be perspicacious in their examination of how the public voice — what he called in ‘A Passage to India’ ‘the herd instinct’ — could do savage and irreparable harm… The

Throughout his long life, Forster would forge many deep relationships with men — ranging from platonic to unrequited to fully sexual. and announced, ‘I’m a little boy.’ ‘Yes, miss’, was the reply.”

In his second term at public school, he would experience a sexual rite of passage when during a walk in the country he encountered a pedophile with a “large mustache, pepper and salt knickerbockers suit, deer stalker cap, mackintosh on arm,” who persuaded Morgan to masturbate him. Forster later records the event in his journal, “He sat on my left — then undid his flies, I forgot how soon, and told me to take hold of his prick. ‘Dear little fellow… play with it…dear little fellow… pull it about.’ I obeyed with neither pleasure nor reluctance. Had no emotion at the time, but was startled at the red lolling tip (my own prepuce covering the gland even at erection) and was startled when some thick white drops trickled out. He rapidly lost interest in me, asked me where I lived (‘Hertfordshire’), and offered me a shilling (‘no thank you’). He didn’t try to handle me and went off quietly.”

Afterward, although unfazed, the boy felt compelled to confess to his mother, who reported the incident to the headmaster, Mr. Hutchinson. Moffat

lesson of the pedophile was the lesson of telling the story to ignorant people in power, and watching them unravel and strike out in predictable ways.”

This incident would be totally reconfigured in “A Passage to India,” when Dr. Aziz is accused of sexually accosting the Englishwoman, Adela Quested, in the Marabar Caves.

Throughout his long life, Forster would forge many deep relationships with men — ranging from platonic to unrequited to fully sexual — from college mates, such as the dark-eyed hottie, Syed Ross Masood, descended from India’s Muslim intelligentsia, to the burly and openly gay Harry Daley, an officer with the Metropolitan Police (“the finest body of men in the world”), “who had grown up in Lowestoft, like one of the unthinkable poor in ‘Howards End,’” and lived at the police barracks. Moffat notes, “Morgan was head over heels in love with the spirit of the place, which he slyly labeled ‘Erection House’… Often he would stay the night and join the men in the mess hall for a tremendous fry-up [breakfast] the next morning… On Harry’s day off they would go to the theater

— to see a Noel Coward play, or Patrick Hamilton’s ‘Rope,’ based on the Leopold and Loeb murder… or to the bathhouse at Harry’s workingman’s club.”

One of Forster’s more notable platonic friendships was with “the icon of British manhood” T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia), whom he allowed, with some trepidation, to read his unpublished homosexual stories. In turn, the author of “The Seven Pillars of Wisdom” revealed the manuscript of his next book, titled “The Mint,” an “uncensored recounting of barracks life, full of foul language and homosocial camaraderie.” Lawrence would decide, ruefully, the book was unpublishable. Forster was to stay with Lawrence at his cottage near Dorset in May 1935, but on the very day he arrived he learned that the “icon” had been hideously injured in a motorcycle accident; six days later, he was dead.

Moffat even brings the flamboyant Liberace into the mix, as she writes how Forster followed with interest the pianist’s first brush with scandal in 1957, when he sued a British tabloid for libel for implying he was gay and won $22,000.

An amusing chapter, titled “Parting with Respectability,” finds Forster in “decadent” Alexandria, where he meets the “palpably artificial and palpably homosexual” ex-patriot Greek poet Constantine Cavafy, the praise-singer of male beauty: “In the dark world of his salon, Cavafy seductively embraced the seedy as the best part of life… The flat was on the Rue Lepsius, known as the to the wags as ‘Rue Clapsius,’ because of the preponderance of whorehouses in the neighborhood. Indeed, the apartment was on the second floor, directly over a male brothel. Cavafy found the location to be efficient and ideal: ‘Where could I live better? Below, the brothel caters for the flesh. And there is the church which forgives sin. And there is the hospital where we die.’”

As a Red Cross volunteer during World War I, Forster was horrified by

the irrational slaughter he saw and felt that “the arbitrary horrors of warmaking were inextricably linked to the horror of persecuting gay men,” Moffat explains. “In these private writings, he began to shape a politics of quiet resistance, to celebrate the power of the individual and to preserve his own kind of human meaning, not within, but against society. These ideas would achieve full flower years later, in the celebrated essays on personal freedom in ‘Two Cheers for Democracy.’”

Opera lovers will find enlightening the chapter on Forster’s friendship with composer Benjamin Britten and his long-time companion Peter Pears, which resulted in the writer forging the libretto for the opera “Billy Budd.”

Forster disapproved of Captain Vere’s cleaving to the rule of naval law and attempted to make Billy less passive, but Britten “routinely chewed up and spat out collaborators.” At its December 1951 premiere, “Covent Garden had perhaps never held so many working class opera goers. Morgan invited many of his closest friends.”

Those interested in the Bloomsbury Group might be taken aback at Virginia Woolf’s casual homophobia; Moffat quotes her referring to her gay acquaintances as “Lilies of the Valley” and most scabrously as “bugger boys.”

Another chapter covering Forster’s time as “the Great Writer” in New York City in 1947 details his delight in the vibrant life of the theater district. His gay hosts, Bill Roerick and his partner Tom Coley, took him to see Gian Carlo Menotti’s “The Medium” and Irving Berlin’s “Annie Get Your Gun.” Moffat notes, “Ethel Merman’s ferocious portrayal of Annie Oakley seduced Morgan, who giddily spent the intermission imitating her singing ‘I’m an Indian too!’”

There is much more to Moffat’s “A Great Unrecorded History: New Life of E. M Forster” than can be encapsulated here. In the “Terminal Note” to “Maurice,” Forster wrote, “If the pendulum keeps swinging in its present direction it might get published in time. But the more one meets decent and sensible people, of whom there are now a good few, the more does one forget the millions of beasts and idiots who still prowl in the darkness, ready to gibber and devour.”

Mof fat, in her prologue, writes, “About a century ago, Forster dedicated ‘Maurice’ to ‘a happier year.’

Perhaps that time is now.” While you wait, her biography will prove rewarding reading. Forster fans might afterward consider revisiting his novels.

Moffat is likely to win Forster new fans among her other readers.

Michael Ehrhardt can be contacted at Menyc3@aol.com.

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65

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66 䉴

WATERS, from p.46

David Hurles photos — portraits of seedy-looking men with impressive erections — that he had in a folder on his desk. These confrontational images dare you to look at the subjects in all their naked glory just as the Alberto Garcia Alix photo “Nacho y Michelle” does. This image, featur ing a woman displaying her asshole and vagina, hangs in Waters’ guest bedroom between bookcases featur ing titles like “Roughhouse Rimmer,” “I Am a Teenage Dope Addict,” and “I Was a Negro Playboy Bunny.” One can only imagine waking up in this slightly surreal room.

Waters seems to court outrage, even

䉴

OUR HOUSE, from p.58

they run around the estate blindfolded — an apt metaphor for their sheltered lives. One sister challenges her sibling to see who will stay under an anesthetic longer. Watching these scenes, viewers will laugh or cringe, or both, although some folks might feel sitting through “Dogtooth” is itself an endurance test. Working out the motives for the strange, often unexplained behavior requires a bit of patience and even more concentration.

Lanthimos delivers a big clue in a

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when it comes to his fashion sense.

Wearing Comme des Garçons clothes designed by Kawakubo, he gets attention that amuses him.

“They write in the papers that I was [at a premiere] in ‘my thrift shop finest,’” Waters said, “but I love that, because you’re not being ostentatious. People think you got beat in the thrift shop. I never tell them this cost money, or it’s from a famous designer.

It made my father crazy. ‘You bought that? And it costs more? It should have been on sale!’”

Waters even modeled for Kawakubo once, wearing too short black pants and a white dress shirt.

“The shirt tail came halfway down to your knees, ragged, like all the way

around,” he recalled.

“Role Models” also reveals something that might jar Waters’ fans — his trademark pencil mustache is enhanced by Maybelline.

“People are surprised?” he asked, incredulous. “In memoirs, you have to reveal some secrets. That’s a fashion secret…. It’s real — here is hair there. You can see it. I just trimmed it. It just needs help. Especially with gray.”

An oft-times purveyor of scandal, Waters himself is sometimes surprised by outrageousness he comes across in society. He writes about “blow roasts,” claiming to be “shocked” when he heard about these dinners popular in some blue collar

male haunts where bull roasts meet blow jobs. Regarding the women who work these events, he said, “It’s the lowest form of show business. Worse than a fluffer! — even though there is no such thing” in the porn business.

Still, Waters understands that blow roasts represent the same sort of cultural extreme that he’s always appreciated. “Filth,” he writes in “Role Models,” “is just the beginning battle in the war on taste.” He may not really dig a blow roast, but he hastened to add, “It’s the middle that I’ve always had trouble with and fled my whole life.”

That’s why John Waters has always been an outsider — and always inspired by others like him.

scene in which the father (Christos Stergioglou) visits an obedience school, where he has taken the family’s dog.

The trainer explains that dogs are “like clay” and that they have to be “molded” by trainers who show the pupils how to behave. The punch line occurs later when the dog is seen in his cage. The parallel to the children’s situation is inescapable.

Neither people nor animals fare especially well in “Dogtooth.” This point is driven home in a darkly funny but also alarming scene in which the son is terrified by a tame animal he discovers in

the backyard.

The brave cast members are all uniformly excellent, with Passalis and Papoulia standouts. Passalis ably uses his facial expressions and body language to convey the mixture of innocence and mischief that makes his character appealing. He also acquits himself quite well in the graphic sex scenes. Papoulia is convincing as a naïve, childlike teen with an innate sense of wonder about the world. The actress’ crackerjack comic timing makes both her delivery of her lines and her dance number unforgettable.

The eldest daughter is the character who garners the audience’s greatest sympathy.

As the film plays out — and Lanthimos provides his arch commentary on the dangers of control and social conformity — viewers will find themselves holding their breath. Some folks will find his outlook unpleasantly and unnecessarily misanthropic — a perspective that has some truth to it. Lanthimos offers no novel message in this film, but his approach is fresh, and that’s why the wickedly funny and incisive “Dogtooth” is a must-see.

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䉴

24 JUN – 7 JUL 2010

CHAMPION, from p.26

— a fact still minimized in the minds of many of my fellow leftists. After smuggled manuscripts received publication and acclaim in France, Arenas was set up for arrest as a homosexual “Enemy of the People.”

After years of silence, he escaped via the 1980 Mariel boatlift — into freedom but also into the pains of exile for an artist and the hostility of the right to his sexuality and the left to his politics. New York proved an erotic carnival, but given the timing of his arrival, as he ruefully noted, his many lovers, not the Castro regime, led unknowingly to his death.

Martín’s alternation of different kinds of musical and dramatic material showed theatrical savvy. There are many striking scenes — the shifting polarities of the boy Reinaldo’s first exposure to revolutionaries and their swift justice; the beach pick-ups and dance sequences — erotic beyond Thomas Mann’s wildest Venetian

rhythms, revolutionary anthems, and, for the New York scenes, some 1980s pop flavor, is “Before Night Falls” the all-toocommon “eclectic” grab bag many American composers have been perpetrating lately.

The vocal writing is considerate and scans well in English and Spanish; more Spanish might have been used, actually. Martín’s choral writing is particularly varied and revealing, and received full justice from Stephen Dubberly’s valiant forces. Joe Illick’s conducting was superb, eliciting committed effort from his players and never drowning the singers.

Gately’s production and Riccardo Hernandez’ set kept thing clear, evocative, and fluid. One odd thing — several characters aged not at all over 20 hard years. The role of Arenas is a marathon for a lyric baritone — Oreste, Silvio, and Billy Budd rolled into one. Handsome Wes Mason, onstage nearly all the time, bravely tackled it with athletic vigor and

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The opera paints a strong portrait of Arenas struggling for aesthetic and sexual freedom. dreams in their realization by John de los Santos’ dancers; the muse-assisted creative sessions on the typewriter; and several Dostoevskian cat-and-mouse encounters with his Fidel-look-alike persecutor, Victor, while a prisoner and dissident.

A few scenes seemed dispensable — the brief return of Arenas’ betraying lover Pepe, the imagined rhetorical duel with Victor over a New Year’s disco crowd in New York, both coverable in a line or two of dialogue — or clearly excessive, as was the “Dies Irae” funeral of his (composite) mentor, Ovidia, who had betrayed him under government pressure. But overall, the opera paints a strong portrait of Arenas struggling for aesthetic and sexual freedom; it deserves to be seen widely, not least in Miami and, one day, Havana.

Though some telling influences have been absorbed — Mahler, Ravel, Prokofiev, Britten, Strauss’ immortalizing “Daphne” shimmer for the luminescent final scene — Martín’s score comes across not as derivative but rather as a full-blooded part of the operatic tradition, its orchestration varied and compelling.

Nor, for all its incorporation of Cuban

obvious dedication; just 23, he commands a good instrument but not yet the practiced technique to avoid sounding — quite understandably — tired after a testing world premiere and studio recording sessions for Albany Records the same week.

Three very pleasing tenors — the out gay Jesús García (Ovidio, a great man brought low), Javier Abreu (Pepe, adorable and pathetic), and Jonathan Blalock (Arenas’ loyal friend/ lover, differently adorable) — excelled in both diction and sensuous lyricism. García has a clarion lyric sound; Abreu, Rossinian, with ease on high; and Blalock, a darkly agile instrument promising for Britten roles.

Bass-baritone Seth Mease Carico made an effective, scary Victor. Courtney Ross, a capable light soprano, sang Arenas’ Moon Muse; and Janice Hall movingly doubled the Mother and the Sea Muse.

It’s heartening that Darren Keith Woods’ ambitious Fort Worth troupe and Albany took the gamble on mounting this fine new work.

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ASIAN CINEMA, from p.34

and Sammo Hung.

Korean director E J-Yong’s “The Actresses” (Jul. 3, 7 p.m.; Jul. 5, 3:40 p.m., Walter Reade) is a must for diva connoisseurs. The rest of us may find it less interesting. A mockumentary starring six actresses as themselves, it takes place in real time during a Christmas Eve photo shoot for Vogue magazine.

Rather than a documentary, it feels like a mediocre Bravo reality show. The first third simulates aimless waiting around a bit too closely, but it’s all preparation for the bonding, emotional revelations and crying that close the film.

The cast does a sterling job, but their material seems all the more contrived for its pretenses to realism. It’s possible that the film loses a lot by being exported; if one knows these actresses’ public personae, their actions might gain a lot of emotional resonance. As it is, the film resembles the dream project of an Us Weekly intern.

I

n recent years, Chinese cinema has produced a wave of big-budget period epics, often with nationalist overtones. Ding Sheng’s “Little Big Soldier” (Jul. 1, 7 p.m.; Jul. 3, noon; Walter Reade) both mocks this trend and participates in it. It’s also a stunning comeback for its star, Jackie Chan, who plays an unnamed soldier. Set in the period before China was unified, it follows Chan as he tries to stay alive through battle after battle by playing dead.

Now 56, Chan isn’t physically capable of the kind of elaborate stunts that initially made his reputation, but his acting has a renewed conviction. The look of “Little Big Soldier” is dingy and gritty — everyone looks like they desperately need a bath. Although basically a comedy, the film’s tone is melancholy, even elegiac, and it evokes Sergio Leone’s mix of humor and violence.

Perhaps that’s why no distributor has come calling.

䉴

WILD GRASS, from p.60

concrete. Resnais keeps returning to the image of a field of tall grass, whose significance is only clear at the film’s end.

In an interview in the film’s press kit, he explains the title’s importance: “This title seemed to correspond to those characters who follow totally unreasonable impulses, like those seeds that make the most of cracks in the asphalt in the city or in a stone wall in the country.”

Alex Réval and Laurent Herbiet’s script honors its literary origins by including a huge amount of voice-over, delivered by several characters. At first, the words seem to overwhelm the images, but Resnais’ playfulness keeps them from doing so. In several places, he dramatizes Georges’ imagination with a split screen.

The use of voice-over produces an effect of

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J

apanese director Yoshihiro Makamura’s “Golden Slumber” (Jul. 2, 6:15 p.m., Japan Society; Jul. 6, 8:30 p.m., Walter Reade) somehow manages to be good-natured — even cheerful and lighthearted — while remaining totally paranoid. Lifting more than a few ideas from Hitchcock, the film follows Aoyaga (Masato Sakai), an innocent man framed for the assassination of the Japanese prime minister. The film’s view of Japan as a dangerous dystopia is far from original.

“Golden Slumber,” however, is surprising in other ways. Its narrative evokes both positive and malign conspiracies, as Aoyaga discovers that he has “many creative friends,” as one character puts it, to aid his escape. At 139 minutes, the film drags a little, as it’s full of digressions, but it never wears out its welcome. Paced more like an art film than a thriller, “Golden Slumber” finds hope in unexpected places.

T

oshiaki Toyoda’s “The Blood of Rebirth” (Jul. 2, 9 p.m.; Jul. 3, 3:45 p.m.; Japan Society) synthesizes the spiritually minded head-trip with the revenge parable, to engaging but not entirely successful results. Set during Japan’s Middle Ages, it depicts a masseur who’s poisoned by a syphilitic lord. Entering the afterlife, he refuses his chance to go to Heaven and instead heads for a spring that offers the possibility of rebirth, so that he can take violent revenge on his lord.

“The Blood of Rebirth” feels both overly opaque and familiar. Andrei Tarkovsky seems like an influence on Toyoda’s visual style; while the cinematography is often beautiful, the film coasts on its looks alone for long stretches. Aided by CGI, Toyoda turns toward abstraction in some of the later scenes, and the results suggest that he could create a fine avant-garde short.

The film is aided considerably by a violindominated score from the rock band Twin Tail, but while intriguing at times, “The Blood of Rebirth” never quite gels. It plays more like a cinematographer’s demo reel than a full-fledged narrative.

complicity between the film and its characters; more than most movies, it seems to tap into their subconscious desires.

Some may find “Wild Grass” overly indulgent of Georges. His stalking of Marguerite is mostly played for laughs, although it grows darker as the film progresses. However, it culminates in an elaborate joke on male vanity, as Georges puts himself and others in danger because his fly is stuck.

Or does it end this way? Like Korean director Jang Sun-woo’s sci-fi whatsit “Resurrection of the Little Match Girl,” “Wild Grass” offers a choice of happy and unhappy endings. Romantics should walk out five minutes early, when the word “fin” flashes on the screen for the first time.

The rest of us can be happy that Resnais, now 87, is still making films as engagingly puzzling as he was in the ’60s.

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ä&#x2030;´

APICHA, from p.21

from the same cultural groups born in America. Cambodian and Vietnamese men smoke at rates up to twice that of males generally in the US. Murayamaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s presentation acknowledged that statistics on the API LGBT community in the US remain limited. The 2000 Census identified about 4,700 API same-sex couples in New York and 38,000 nationwide, though the count of gay and lesbian households from ten years ago is widely considered very conservative.

A study carried out by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force found that members of the Asian LGBT community in the US reported discrimination both within their ethnic communities and in the wider queer community. A survey of South Asians living in Southern California found many respondents inhibited by family traditions from coming out.

Fully two-thirds reported that they lived a â&#x20AC;&#x153;double life,â&#x20AC;? with pressure from family members â&#x20AC;&#x201D; greatest among older respondents â&#x20AC;&#x201D; to marry a partner of the opposite sex.

Like other AIDS services groups, APICHA sees a strong link between discrimination and lack of social and economic supports and HIV risk. Murayama cited a study by the Center for American Progress that found that one quarter of lesbian and gay APIs experience psychological distress, a figure two-

24 JUN â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 7 JUL 2010 and-a-half times higher than the general population and, significantly, four times greater than the heterosexual Asian population. Meanwhile, Census figures show that one-fifth of the US API population lacks health care insurance.

As it gears up to better serve the health care needs of the API LGBT community, with or without HIV, APICHA applauded recent statements out of the White House recognizing the health disparities the group aims to address. In a proclamation issued last month in honor of Asian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, President Barack Obama acknowledged the â&#x20AC;&#x153;significant education and health disparities,â&#x20AC;? the â&#x20AC;&#x153;high risk for diabetes and hepatitis,â&#x20AC;? and the rising number of HIV/ AIDS cases. Significantly, a letter from the White House Office of Minority Health noted, â&#x20AC;&#x153;The number of HIV/ AIDS cases among AAPIs may be higher than reported because of underreporting or misclassification of Asian Americans and other Pacific Islanders.â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x153;It is very encouraging to know that the president of the United States understands our community is severely affected by HIV and that health disparities persist,â&#x20AC;? Therese R. Rodriguez, APICHAâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s chief executive officer said in response to the White House proclamation. â&#x20AC;&#x153;This is a great step forward for us â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a community too often excluded, underfunded, and under served.â&#x20AC;?

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Andy Humm, Sister Mary Lou Steele, SC, Father Bernard Lynch, and Brendan Fay at the June 5 memorial for Father Robert Carter, SJ, who died on February 22.

(L. to r.) Fathers Dan McCarthy, Bernard Lynch, John McNeill, and Robert Carter lead Dignity in New York’s gay pride march in the early 1980s.

BOB CARTER, PRIEST, GAY PIONEER, REMEMBERED The life of Father Robert Carter, SJ, who had the distinction of being the first openly gay Roman Catholic priest in the early 1970s, was celebrated at the LGBT Community Center on June 5 at a memorial organized by gay Catholic activist Brendan Fay. Carter, who died on February 22 at the age of 82, was a co-founder of Dignity/New York in 1972 and an original board member of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) in 1973.

As a college student in the late 1940s, he was

playwright Tennessee Williams’ lover. A Jesuit classics scholar, he worked in later years as a social worker for people with AIDS at Bellevue.

“He invited us to discover the treasure of our God-given sexuality,” said Father Bernard Lynch, who served on the board of Dignity with Carter.

“That was his true vocation. Coming out as a gay man gave his life meaning.”

Andy Humm, who worked with Carter in Dignity in the late 1970s, recalled the quiet things Carter

did, such as standing outside the Eagle Bar on Sundays in the mid-1970s to collect a dollar cover to benefit NGLTF. “He was unpretentious,” Humm said, “but steeped in the very best of our culture” from opera and classical music to literature.

Fay shared that Carter had the courage to go into recovery as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous in the 1970s.

NGLTF’s Sue Hyde recalled how miserably gay

people were treated in this country before Carter and his fellow pioneers emerged, adding, “We thank you, Father Robert Carter, for your steadfast and quiet leadership, for your scholarship, for your life well-lived.”

“He was a Christian gentleman,” said Robert Riley, former president of Dignity/ NY. “I never once heard him raise his voice,” though Carter was outspoken in support of gay rights through public testimony, demonstrations, and TV appearances.

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74/ Editorial ■ LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

A Time for Unity

PUBLISHER & CO-FOUNDER JOHN W. SUTTER

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

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

editor@gaycitynews.com ASSOCIATE EDITOR Duncan Osborne

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Christopher Byrne (Theater), Susie Day, Doug Ireland (International), Brian McCormick (Dance), Dean P. Wrzeszcz

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Betsy Andrews, Seth J. Bookey, Anthony M.Brown, Kelly Jean Cogswell, Dean Daderko, Tate Dougherty, Andres Duque, Michael Ehrhardt, Steve Erickson, Nick Feitel, Jim Fouratt, Joe Fyfe, Deborah Garwood, Erasmo Guerra, Emily Harney, Andrey Henkin, Frank Holiday, Andy Humm, James Jorden, Brendan Keane, David Kennerley, Gary M. Kramer, Arthur S. Leonard, Rachael Liberman, Michael T. Luongo, Lawrence D. Mass, Winnie McCroy, Eileen McDermott, Gregory Montreuil, Ioannis Mookas, Carrie Moyer, Stephen Mueller, Christopher Murray, David Noh, Wayne Northcross, Lori Ortiz, Pauline Park, Sheila Pepe, John Reed, Nathan Riley, Andrew Robinson, Gerard Robinson, Chris Schmidt, Sarah D. Schulman, Jason Victor Serinus, Linda Shapiro, David Shengold, Gus Solomons Jr., David Spiher, Drew B. Straub, Stefen Styrsky, Jerry Tallmer, Stefanos Tsigrimanis, Kathleen Warnock, Benjamin Weinthal, Lee Ann Westover, James Withers, Kai Wright, Susan Yung

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PAUL SCHINDLER

J

ust when it seemed like two years of Democratic Party control of the State Senate — which the gay community worked its heart out to make possible in 2008 — might conclude with nothing of moment to show for it, Albany finally delivered a win to LGBT New Yorkers this week. After a vote hastily arranged for late in the evening on June 22, the Senate voted 58-3 — a jawdroppingly wide margin, given how long the day had been in the making — to approve a school anti-bullying measure that includes protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

It is sign of just how slim the pickings have been for our community, of course, that a law based on the inarguable premise that school children should not be beaten up simply because of who they are is considered a significant milestone in human rights in a state that has for so long fancied itself the nation’s progressive conscience.

Still, glibness ought not be the final word on the matter.

For the first time in state history, the rights of transgender and other gender-nonconforming New Yorkers have been codified in law. Coming two weeks after the Senate Judiciary Committee narrowly rejected a transgender civil rights measure — the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act, or GENDA — the favorable vote

on the Dignity for All Students Act is an encouraging sign that obsessive fear-mongering about men putting on dresses to raid the ladies’ room need not define public policy debate about a marginalized and victimized minority within the broader queer community.

To say that the GENDA debacle two weeks before was dispiriting is the very definition of understatement. The Senate Majority Conference leader, Democrat John Sampson of Brooklyn, had taken the bill to his committee confident that he had the votes to win agreement to advance it to the full floor, where at least some advocates said the ducks were in order for passage. Instead, the committee’s Republicans voted in lockstep, joined by the Democrats’ house homophobe, Ruben Diaz, Sr., to beat back Sampson’s efforts.

The aftermath wasn’t pretty.

Out gay Chelsea Democrat Tom Duane, the lead sponsor on the marriage equality, transgender rights, and bullying measures, said taking the bill to Judiciary was not his idea, pointing his finger at advocates.

The Empire State Pride Agenda, in turn, said it hadn’t been consulted on the matter, a disavowal that didn’t keep Duane from suggesting that the group be asked again.

Meanwhile, the Pride Agenda’s former executive director, Alan Van Capelle, got back in the game on his Facebook page, complain-

ing that Duane had passed up his chance to appear as a guest of the Judiciary Committee to argue for his own bill. For good measure, Van Capelle pointed out that Duane had also been MIA for the Democratic conference meeting that took place in the hours prior to the Senate taking up marriage equality last December — and delivering a devastating 38-24 rebuke to our hopes.

Duane argued that with the majority leader taking GENDA to his own committee, it was reasonable to assume, in advance, that the outcome was safely settled.

In any event, he added, he “was in the building and was given no indication there was a problem” during the committee’s discussion of the bill.

Nobody wants to hear from their leaders that they were available to help but nobody asked.

Nor does our community really care to learn that our lead advocates were not consulted about the timing and procedure for debating our issues. We entrust the Pride Agenda and Duane with advancing our cause in Albany, and we expect from them the same level of proactive leadership and willingness to accept responsibility for outcomes that we are all required to show in our respective workplaces.

Hopefully, the success this week on the bullying bill shows a path forward for tur ning around the fortunes we’ve faced during the current legislative session. If we are to build on that

victory, however, our community needs to put to rest the tensions that have simmered for the past several years, just barely beneath the surface, between our advocates and our elected LGBT officials.

It might be tempting to sweep the Van Capelle-Duane dustup under the rug as the lingering animosities born out of the unsuccessful marriage fight last fall. Anyone who closely followed the yearlong run-up to the December vote, however, knows well that the effort was riven by divisions, not only between ESPA and Duane, but among other advocates as well.

That has to stop. Advocates and legislators have different roles, and tension is inevitable, but our community is too small and too politically fragile to sustain the level of factionalism that beset our efforts in Albany last year.

Ross Levi, EPSA’s new leader, told Gay City News that he and Duane have long enjoyed a good and respectful bond. We are going to take him at his word on that.

But as we move past Pride into the late summer and fall campaign season and then into a new legislative year in 2011, the community must demand that gay and lesbian elected officials and LGBT advocacy organizations put aside any petty differences and focus on the tall orders at hand. That would be something to be proud of.

■ LETTERS TO THE EDITOR >> EDITOR@GAYCITYNEWS.COM

TAKE BACK PRIDE June 7, 2010 To the Editor: To Our Allies and Community Partners: While last year we celebrated the 40th anniversary of our liberation at Stonewall on the last Sunday of June in 1969, we are celebrating another anniversary in 2010.

And we need to do it right.

On the last Sunday in June 1970, Gay Liberation Front and Gay Activists Alliance, in commemoration of the Stonewall riots, staged the first “Gay Liberation Day March.”

Organizers in Los Angeles and San Francisco also held marches that day. We have much to celebrate. As a community we have struggled and fought for our very lives. Together,

we have accomplished what at one time was a fantasy at best. Our sexual liberation has been celebrated every year now for 40 years with what was once a march and is now a parade, in the streets of New York and dozens of other cities across the country and the world.

This year, in light of the major battles we have ahead of us, we are asking for all of you to join us in taking back pride. While we have so much to be proud of in what we have accomplished as a community, this fight is far from over. We want our community to not only remember those who have fought and died before us, but to forge ahead in the struggle — so that our children may one day live truly free and equal lives in this country.

The organizers of Pride Marches around

the country work tirelessly over the course of the year to bring us the most inclusive marches and celebrations in the world. We want to help those organizers by working with them to implement plans for education and protest within our marches.

We know that our community is made up of every race, creed, religious affiliation and political background imaginable. We come from everywhere, from Africa to New Zealand. We represent Conservatives and Socialists. We are made up of Catholics and Buddhists alike. The time has come to embrace our ideals and differences and remember that what we have in common as a community is our strength.

For Pride 2010, we ask that organizers and participants of marches around this

great country take this opportunity to be heard. Yell. Scream. Chant. Wear your chaps and thongs, but carry a sign while you do it.

Put on your most sequined ball gown, but shout for your rights as you flaunt your fabulousness. The sheer number of people who turn out in the streets this June will send a clear message around the world that we are not content with what we have. We are somebody. We deserve full equality.

If you’re marching with a group, ask your group what they are angry about. It could be Marriage Inequality or Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. It could be that in 31 states, you can still be fired for being gay. Please see the “What Are You Angry About” section at

䉴

LETTERS, continued on p.77

24 JUN - 7 JUL 2010

Perspective /75

■ FROM STONEWALL TO ALBANY

Pride and Politics

BY NATHAN RILEY

P

ride is elusive in New York political circles; “partisan,” “dysfunctional,” and “corrupt” are words frequently tossed around to describe state government. Despite insistent invocations of a proud tradition by elected officials here, New York is no longer the nation’s leading progressive state.

But it is also doubtful that it is “the worst”. New York currently labors under a plague affecting the entire nation — tax revenues are stunted and the need for spending grows. There is no easy solution; every compromise requires grueling negotiation. The problems the LGBT community faces in Albany are neither queer nor unique; they are shared by everyone in politics here.

The first Legislature in more than 40 years to have Democrats in charge of both chambers failed to pass marriage equality — failed is actually a bland way to describe the smack-down gay advocates suffered last December. Just two weeks ago, the Senate declined to advance badly needed protections for transgender New Yorkers.

The Legislature also failed to overhaul rent stabilization after years of neglect left the laws riddled with loopholes that hurt tens of thousands of tenants here in the city. But Albany did approve major changes in the notorious Rockefeller-era drug laws.

Not good, but not the worst.

Years of fundraising and elec-

tioneering have helped Democrats without changing the fundamental reality — in the State Senate, passing laws for the LGBT community requires near unanimity by the Democrats and a few Republican votes.

Coping with the Albany reality is painful for progressives. In the run-up to the 2008 election, before the Democrats grabbed control of the Senate, the hope was that a partisan strategy of backing Democrats and opposing Republicans would make it easier to pass laws long shoved aside — marriage equality and transgender civil rights prime among them. I supported this policy enthusiastically.

It dovetailed naturally with the larger national effort to shake the shackles of reactionary thinking imposed by the Republicans under former President George W. Bush. We wanted to topple the bastards, and the voters saw it our way , though only barely here in New York. The Democrats won, but did not overwhelm; they gained a barely workable majority of 32-30 in the Senate.

Even with that narrow mandate — and a brief coup that hobbled the Senate last summer — some Republicans seemed prepared to vote for gay marriage, if only enough Democrats would step up to provide the bulk of the margin. That did not happen at the end of 2009.

The community had the moxie to force a vote on marriage, but that proved to be a dead end.

The State Senate opposed mar-

riage 38-24, with eight Democrat — six of them from New York City! — voting no.

The size of the negative vote surprised us. There was no warning that so many Democrats would desert. Could it be that the Empire State Pride Agenda and State Senator Tom Duane, the openly gay Democrat from Chelsea, could not get an honest answer to the question: “How will you vote?”

Things had gone terribly wrong.

Obviously, supporters of human rights must get back on the horse that threw us, and start soothing the unruly legislators who voted no. Alan Van Capelle reduced some of the tension that had built up in Albany by resigning as ESPA’s executive director. The relationship between the Senate and the Pride Agenda must be renewed.

The group’s new leader, Ross Levi, has the experience to set things right.

In the months leading up to last December’s marriage vote, Van Capelle’s relationship with Duane deteriorated; collegiality turned into fury. Duane’s partnerships with some of his Democratic colleagues are also shaky. Before devising a strategy for a new move, there must be healing.

The uphill struggles to pass both marriage equality and transgender rights legislation have exacted a heavy toll on Duane. The strain sapped his energy and, by all reports, quirky behavior surfaced. Van

Capelle, this month inserting himself back into the debate on his Facebook page, charged that the senator, who is the lead sponsor on marriage, transgender rights, and a long-languishing school anti-bullying bill, was MIA at critical moments. Private meetings among senators of the same party are called conferences; one was held the morning of the marriage equality vote, and in Van Capelle’s account, Duane missed it.

Duane’s job at that meeting was to work with Democratic leaders on crucial matters like whether to move forward with a vote and to answer his colleagues’ questions with the aim of nailing down the votes needed for passage. Critical deals are often made at the last minute during such conferences. Missing that session is not that different from an actor missing opening night. The rehearsals are over; it is time for the show.

It is impossible to know if the bill would have passed if Duane had been there to make an impassioned plea, but we do know what happened when he was absent — one out of every four Democratic state senators voted against the bill.

Duane has fought the good fight for years; now he must start over. Only Tom can solve Tom’s problems. He is out, he has lived with HIV for years, and he has been passionate in his battles for the LGBT community. He has devoted followers. In other words, he has “ownership” of marriage equality, transgen-

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der rights, and safe schools.

Van Capelle’s criticism notwithstanding, Duane achieved victory on the school bulying law on June 22, with a 58-3 Senate vote. The bill now goes to the governor for his signature.

Still, even though Duane is one hundred percent for the gay community, some of his colleagues may want a less passionate broker between the LGBT community and the Senate. Such a person might have been in a position to sound warnings when problems surfaced on marriage last year.

It would be best if Duane demonstrates that he knows there is a problem. He must make it clear that he will not insist on managing this legislation to the exclusion of other leaders and to the detriment of successful outcomes. It is not about the will to win — Duane has that — instead, it about Tom, the entire Senate, and the Pride Agenda working together more productively. It is about Duane recognizing that he must enlarge the number of senators with a voice in the strategy for passing the legislation. It may mean negotiations that will leave members of the LGBT community uncomfortable, but sometimes those tough moments are unavoidable.

Even though our community is the wronged party, we must demonstrate that we can make a fresh start. It may not be right, but it is realistic. It’s the way things are done in Albany — and in capitals around the globe.

■ SNIDE LINES

With Help, Heterosexuals Can Become Gay

BY SUSIE DAY

A

recently released study has found that heterosexuals can, with effort, become gay. Eightysix percent of a survey group of straight women and men were able, through various forms of reparative therapy, to transform their sexual orientation and achieve “good homosexual functioning.”

Dr. Marvin Flabcock, of the American Psychiatric and Floral Design Association, conducted interviews with 200 former heterosexuals who expressed satisfaction at finally becoming “full human beings.” Flabcock said that he cannot

yet estimate what percentage of the larger heterosexual population can become gay, but that if heterosexuals are “highly motivated,” there is hope.

“The secret is self-hatred,” Flabcock stated. “You’ve really got to loathe yourself if you want to lead a normal life.”

Most of the study’s participants said that, in order to effect their sexual transformation, they used more than one form of reparative therapy, including support groups, individual counseling, or dressing up in monks’ robes and flagellating themselves in deserted grade school rest-

rooms. Many of their sexual conversions were religious in nature.

“Praise Jesus!” cried a recently selfavowed lesbian, one of several study participants who agreed to be interviewed for this article. “For years, I was boycrazy, sin-soaked, and born-to-breed.

But my encounters with the opposite sex were quick, empty, and loveless, and I hated the decadent heterosexual culture. Then, through intensive therapy and daily prayer, I was able to uncover a childhood trauma in which I was once yelled at and made to clean the erasers

by a heterosexual math teacher. It really screwed up my sexuality, and gave me terrible math anxiety. But with the help of our Lord Jesus Christ, I saw that girlon-girl action is part of God’s plan for us.

I still can’t do long division, though.”

“Electroshock for me!” exclaimed a newly homosexual male, describing his therapy-of-choice. “Also years and years of institutionalization! I got pretty sick of the Thorazine and the blackouts, but Jesus helped me not to swallow my

䉴

BECOME GAY, continued on p.77

76

24 JUN – 7 JUL 2010

WWW.GAYCITYNEWS.COM

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South Africa’s Dykes, My World Cup Heroes

BY KELLY JEAN COGSWELL

he Soccer World Cup opened June 11 in South Africa, but the country’s toughest players weren’t even at the stadium when Bafana Bafana opened play by battling to an unexpected draw with Mexico. No, South Africa’s dyke players were celebrating the event on muddy rocky fields and in front of TV sets.

The country’s most well known lesbian team, the Chosen FEW, watched the match at the Forum for the Empowerment of Women (FEW), founded in 2002 to advocate for black LBT women. Their soccer team was put together two years later, and took the bronze medal at both the 2006 Gay Games in Chicago and the 2008 International Gay and Lesbian FA Cup in London. In a couple of weeks, they’re off to Germany for Gay Games VIII. Their existence alone is a remarkable accomplishment, a sign of extraordinary determination from those who, as Audre Lorde put it, “were never meant to survive.” In South Africa, a woman is raped every 17 seconds — heterosexuals just because they’re female, and lesbians to “correct” their sexual identity. Many lesbians end up dead, like Zoliswa Nkonyana.

An open dyke and lesbian activist, Nkonyana was tortured and murdered on February 4, 2006 after a confrontation with women who didn’t want her to use the ladies toilet. She was just 19 when she was beaten and stabbed by a group of men who followed her outside.

The trial of her murderers has been postponed more than two dozen times, most recently in March, and it’s hard to imagine her mother and girlfriend will ever get justice. So much for the LGBT equality enshrined in the South African Constitution.

Likewise, in 2008, Eudy Simelane, the openly gay former South Africa women’s international footballer, was raped and murdered. More than 30 dykes (that we know of) have been killed in South Africa in just this decade. Tumi Mkhuma, one of the strikers on the Chosen FEW, was also raped and beaten for being a lesbian, and was lucky to escape with her life. Like most South African rapists, her attacker was not brought to justice.

The violence comes not just from anonymous strangers. Deekay Sibanda, the team’s captain and midfielder, while explaining to a journalist that they weren’t allowed to play in the national women’s soccer because of discrimination against lesbians, added, “Some of the women have been raped and brutalized and chased out by their families.

Many had to leave education — they

think lesbians will contaminate schools.”

Their training conditions are no relief from that brutal reality. In Johannesburg, their practice field is a rocky mess of almost pure dirt that either raises clouds of dust or is transformed by rain into a mass of mud and puddles. Still, it’s worth it. When they step onto that field, 25 embattled dykes are finally at home.

If you look, you’ll find other dyke teams in Port Elizabeth and Capetown.

On June 9, Spanish journalist Lali Cambra posted a blog entry in El País about a match between Luleki Sizwe and Free Gender. The teams were from two black neighborhoods on the periphery of the city of Capetown. The field looked like an abandoned construction site, with bits of brick, rocks, and glass. Three players had to leave the game to get wounds treated. And by the time the match was over, everybody’s legs were covered in blood. Nevertheless, in the match photos, both sides were grinning from ear to ear.

Fumeka Soldaat, the organizer of the Free Gender team, told the journalist that playing soccer is one of the few times these young dykes can feel human.

Young black lesbians often turn to drugs or prostitution when they’re rejected and abused by their families or can’t find work. Soccer teams are hugely important to raise their self-esteem and give them a sense that they’re not alone.

Still, Soldaat said, it’s tough to arrange matches. There’s the cost of uniforms and transportation. They have to come up with refs. And with complicated lives, it’s hard for all the members to find the time to play. There’s also the problem of finding any soccer field at all to host a dyke match, no matter how full of rocks and glass it is.

In particular, they have to work with local leaders to get assurances “that there won’t be homophobic displays or acts of violence.” While Soldaat didn’t seem thrilled by what it took to make the arrangements, she added it was a good tool for consciousness-raising and “normalizing” lesbians in South African society.

As the World Cup continues, it’s these dykes I’ll be thinking about as I watch the soccer giants fall and unexpected heroes arise. Because if queers held a kind of World Cup for battling the homophobic odds with courage and grace, it would surely be South African dykes leading the pack into the final rounds.

Reminder: The New York City Dyke March starts at Bryant Park, 42nd Street at Sixth Avenue, Saturday, June 26, at 5 p.m. Check out Kelly Sans Culotte at http://kellyatlarge.blogspot.com/.

WWW.GAYCITYNEWS.COM

䉴

LETTERS, from p.74

talkaboutequality.org.

We owe it to our community and to those young gay people who are still afraid to say who they are to TAKE BACK PRIDE. Make your signs. Create your chants. It’s time for us all to remember this is a march, not a parade. This is OUR celebration of who we are and it has the potential to once again be something we are ALL truly proud of.

If you would like to march with us, please email us at takebackpridenyc@gmail.com.

Jamie McGonnigal TalkAboutEquality.org Lt. Dan Choi, US National Guard Alan Bounville, Member — Queer Rising, New York Robin McGehee, GetEQUAL Heritage of Pride, Organizers of New York’s Pride events Ann Northrop, Co-host, “Gay USA” Michael Rogers, PageOneQ.com Wayne Besen, Founder & executive director Truth Wins Out Natasha Dillon, Member— Queer Rising, New York Tom Viola, Broadway Cares/ Equity Fights AIDS Robin Tyler, The Equality Campaign David Mixner And dozens of other members of the LGBT community.

For a complete list or to sign on as a signatory, visit talkaboutequality.org or email takebackpride@gmail.com.

24 JUN – 7 JUL 2010

IN SUPPORT OF GMHC

Happy Pride!

June 22, 2010 To the Editor: On behalf of In The Life Media, please know of our support of GMHC’s move (“GMHC Confronts Lease Crisis,” by Paul Schindler, May 27-Jun. 9).

GMHC is an indispensable social service provider and as the oldest AIDS service organization in the world, an important New York City institution. This move is essential to maintain their absolutely critical services to people with HIV/AIDS in New York.

As the leader of an organization that serves the public good, I understand the concerns and challenges of moving clients, staff, and identity to new space. I do not dismiss the concerns raised, particularly by individuals who are recipients of services, but I also know that GMHC is keenly aware of and sensitive to these issues and remains committed to providing the highest quality services.

As I know that Gay City News is interested in this story, it is also my hope that you will consider the many voices in our community that support GMHC.

A PHARMACY THAT CARES BY TAKING THAT EXTRA STEP.

Michelle Kristel Executive Director In the Life Media Manhattan

Continuing to Provide Courteous, Compassionate, Professional Customer Service.

883 Ninth Avenue @ 57th Street

Editor’s note: Glen-Michael Francis, executive director of the GRIOT Circle in Brooklyn, signed on to the same letter, sent under separate cover.

Tel

䉴

BECOME GAY, from p.75

tongue. And now, He’s mighty glad I’m gay.”

Some heterosexual rights groups have criticized the study, charging that its results are skewed by a Christian bias.

They allege that most of the study participants were recruited by the fundamentalist group, Cornholers for Christ, which is part of the “Ex-Straight Ministries,” a coalition that believes Jesus will return to the earth as soon as everyone on it becomes homosexual.

Some of the subjects of this study, however, asserted that religion played only a small part in their sexual conversion. “I did it to get those special gay rights,” beamed a newly converted homosexual. “Now, I can have my own nifty T -shirts, key chains, rainbow flags. Not to mention my very own laws that say it’s illegal to evict me or fire me or beat me to death. I never had that kind of protection as a straight person.

That’s because society hates and fears heterosexuality. As well it should.”

Another study participant described his sexual transition as easy and quick.

“I was your average, red-blooded, straight dude,” he said. “But now, the very idea of sticking my male member in a chick’s private part fills me with dread. Come to think of it, sticking my male member in a chick’s private part filled me with dread before I turned gay. It filled all us average, red-blooded,

straight dudes with dread. Hey, maybe that’s why we all punched each other in the head and called each other ‘faggot’ so much. Whoa. Deep.”

Many scientists and mental health professionals believe that sexual orientation comes from a complex set of factors, including environmental influences and biological components, and that heterosexuality cannot be changed. Priscilla Tubetop, president of the Straight People of Heterosexual Descent Task Force, disputed the study’s findings.

“It is a known fact that straight people have an extra fatty deposit in our heads that makes us ‘that way,’” Tubetop stated. “I mean, no one chooses to be heterosexual — think of the oppressive sex-role stereotypes; the idiotic dating rituals… Besides, so-called experts can skew studies about the human libido to make any political or religious point they want. Actually, our group is about to conduct a study to confirm exactly that.”

Although the American Psychiatric and Floral Design Association has removed heterosexuality from its list of mental disorders, the organization admits that these recent findings cannot be dismissed out of hand.

“We don’t exactly think heterosexuality is a sickness, but we sure don’t mind if you want to spend five to 50 years of your life in therapy trying to get rid of it,” stated Flabcock. “Homosexuality, being the norm, requires no further analysis.”

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78/ Media ä&#x2030;´

CNN, from p.8

As CNN prepared for the June 24 premiere of â&#x20AC;&#x153;Gary + Tony,â&#x20AC;? three such two-and-a-halfminute pieces were rolled out, as part of â&#x20AC;&#x153;In Americaâ&#x20AC;?â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s customary teasing of longer-form documentaries. The shorter segments involved LGBT high school students pushing back against harassment, two black lesbians trying to get approval from their Baptist church in Washington to marry there, and transgenders encountering problems with their transitions.

Some critics have already emerged online complaining that these grittier topics, closer to the struggles faced by many LGBT Americans outside the wealthier gay enclaves in cities like New York and San Francisco, would make more suitable topics for diving into a hardnews examination of â&#x20AC;&#x153;Gay in America.â&#x20AC;?

For now, Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Brien, emphasizing how few of the hundreds of documentary ideas considered each year actually make their way into full-length production,

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will say only that the network is committed to pursuing an ongoing series.

One point made crystal clear during the June 15 panel was that even within the sub-topic of gay and lesbian parenting, surrogacy is a very rare option. Jennifer Chrisler, executive director of the Family Equality Council, cited statistics that one in three lesbian couples and one in five gay male couples in America are

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; both attorneys in their early 40s, went down a far more common route when they decided to adopt four years ago. Appearing on the June 15 panel with Brown, Spino, Chrisler, and GLAADâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Jarrett Barrios, Goeken explained that they expected to have to wait at least a year or two, but that the process moved â&#x20AC;&#x153;abnormally fast.â&#x20AC;? They first applied in May 2006, had identified a birth mother by August,

Even within the sub-topic of gay and lesbian parenting, surrogacy is a very rare option. raising children. That amounts to about two million children being raised in roughly one million households. The thousand or so gay men who have made the choice Spino and Brown did are obviously a drop in the bucket.

Glenn Magpantay and Christopher Goeken â&#x20AC;&#x201D; pictured on the cover of half of the Gay City News print run this issue

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and witnessed the birth of their son, Malcolm, in November.

In a follow-up interview, Goeken explained that the birth mother, who already had children and felt unable to raise another, decided to give the child up for adoption while she was still pregnant. Because the mother earlier had another of her children adopted, Goeken said he and Magpantay were

confident that she would remain comfortable with her decision to have them step in as parents.

The couple pictured on the cover of the other half of the Gay City News print run, Debbie Smith, who is in her early 50s, and Kelly Cipriani, in her mid 30s, own a specialty printing shop in Columbus, Ohio, where they are raising their twin sons, Sam and Max, in the gay-friendly Clintonville neighborhood.

The accident of geography in Americaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s federal system, however, puts Smith and Cipriani, and their children, at a disadvantage compared to the Brown-Spinos and the Magpantay-Goekens.

Cipriani is the birth mother of the two seven-year -old boys, and under Ohio law, Smith cannot adopt them. She is a legal stranger to both her partner and their children.

It may be that their story is in more crying need of being told than Anthony Brown and Gary Spinoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s. As Chrisler pointed out at the GLAAD-CNN panel, the majority of kids being raised by gay and lesbian parents suffer under the legal hardships

that face Max and Sam, but not young Nicholas or Malcolm. That is a fair critique â&#x20AC;&#x201D;and CNNâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s â&#x20AC;&#x153;Gay in Americaâ&#x20AC;? series will ultimately be judged on how well it is able to tackle tougher stories that confront more directly the legal inequalities the nationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s LGBT community continues to face.

But to dismiss this first chapter in â&#x20AC;&#x153;Gay as Americaâ&#x20AC;? as the privileged tale of two affluent, white gay men in New York City is to refuse to reckon with it on its own terms. Brown and Spino were not born with silver spoons in their mouths; they invested the proceeds of an unexpected inheritance from a friend into what mattered most to them â&#x20AC;&#x201D; building a family. And, in their activism, they have contributed considerable sweat equity into building greater opportunity for others.

Most of all, though, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Gary + Tony Have a Babyâ&#x20AC;? deserves credit for bringing to the LGBT experience what too often remains absent in mainstream media accounts â&#x20AC;&#x201D; truth told with sensitivity and a whole lot of heart.

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24 JUN - 7 JUL 2010

Community /79

Pushing City on Homeless LGBT Youth Advocates say mayor’s proposed cut of $6 million will derail diversity commitment

I

n the wake of a report from a mayoral commission on LGBTQ homeless youth that recommends the city increase the number of regulated shelter beds for that population by 200 over the next five years, advocates and the City Council’s Youth Services Committee chair are pressing the Bloomberg administration to restore $6 million in funding for homeless youth programs in the budget currently under negotiation.

According to Lew Fidler, a Brooklyn councilman who heads up Youth Services and has held 14 hearings on the issue in recent years, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s budget proposal for the fiscal year that begins July 1 maintains $6 million in funding for homeless youth initiatives recommended by his administration, but elimi-

nates an equal amount provided in the current budget for efforts the Council has developed in recent years to “diversify” the shelter space available to special needs populations.

That Council initiative has targeted homeless youth traditionally underserved or poorly served in the city shelter system, such as LGBT youth and pregnant girls. Programs that specifically serve LGBTQ youth, such as the Ali Forney Center and Green Chimneys, have been beneficiaries of this funding over the past five years, creating the beginnings of a housing infrastructure for queer homeless youth in New York.

At a rally called by Ali Forney on June 14, Fidler said that each night, 3,800 youths find themselves living on city streets, an estimated one-third to onehalf of them LGBTQ. A census of that population completed

several years ago, he said, found that as many as 183 of them will engage in sex work to get by on any given night.

The rally, held in Union Square Park, drew a crowd of several hundred and featured three speakers — Davell Bleuz, Rashawn Diggs, and Javahn Roberts — who were forced out of their homes as teens because their families did not accept their LGBT identity. Each of the youths spoke about how programs such as Ali Forney, Green Chimneys, and Safe Space had helped them survive and turn their lives around.

Advocates for homeless queer youth argue that traditional programs aimed at homeless youth create environments hostile and dangerous for young people who identify as LGBT. As he has done on many

䉴

HOMELESS, continued on p.81

GAY CITY NEWS

BY PAUL SCHINDLER

City Councilman Lew Fidler addressed a rally for homeless LGBT youth in Union Square Park on June 14.

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ESPA, from p.9

Reverend Ruben Diaz, Sr., a Bronx Democrat, to prevent the bill from advancing.

Senator Thomas K. Duane, the out gay Chelsea Democrat who is GENDAâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lead sponsor, said he was told that two Republicans â&#x20AC;&#x201C;â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Andrew Lanza of Staten Island and upstateâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s George Maziarz â&#x20AC;&#x201C;â&#x20AC;&#x201C; had committed to Democratic leaders that they would support moving the bill along to the floor. When Sampson initially announced the vote tally, in fact, he said Lanza had voted that way; the Staten Islander was left to explain otherwise.

The break of good faith that Duane and others accuse Republicans of on this matter is the sort of treachery Levi sees as all too common in Albany right now. But in his view, focusing on the details of that day in the Judiciary Committee is, to a degree, beside the point. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Getting lost in the procedural weeds on this is only marginally useful,â&#x20AC;? he said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The threshold questionâ&#x20AC;Ś was whether there would be enough votes to pass this when it got to the floor, and I think that the Judiciary vote tells us that last week the answer was no, or it was certainly going to be a struggle.â&#x20AC;?

Under Senate regulations â&#x20AC;&#x201C;â&#x20AC;&#x201C; even if not as a matter of practical politics â&#x20AC;&#x201C;â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Duane could yet push for a floor vote on GENDA by requesting that it go before the Rules Committee, where it has support from either 11 or 12 Democrats out of the 21 members. From Leviâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s perspective, though, the more significant question is whether the measure can be guaranteed of 32 votes should it make its way to the Senate floor.

He did not voice a settled view on that question.

The difficulty of accurately gauging support in the Senate on LGBT issues mushroomed into a major concern after last yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s marriage equality vote â&#x20AC;&#x201C;â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and will influence the way ESPA proceeds during this yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s election campaigns. In December, when the marriage bill failed 38-24, with eight Democrats siding with the entire Republican caucus in opposition, Duane complained bitterly, saying he had been lied to.

Two freshman Democratic senators who had been endorsed by ESPA in 2008 â&#x20AC;&#x201C;â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Hiram Monserrate and Joseph Addabbo â&#x20AC;&#x201C;â&#x20AC;&#x201C; were among the no votes, Addabbo drawing fire by name at the time from Alan Van Capelle, then the Pride Agendaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s executive director. (On the verge of being expelled for a domestic violence conviction, Monserrate was already a political dead man walking when the marriage vote happened.) Duane was cagier than Van Capelle, telling Gay City News the day of the vote that the deception started at the top of the alphabet, an allusion, as well, to Addabbo.

Levi apparently now believes that the faith put into Addabbo in 2008 â&#x20AC;&#x201C;â&#x20AC;&#x201C; by ESPA, Duane, and scores of LGBT volunteers and donors â&#x20AC;&#x201C;â&#x20AC;&#x201C; was misplaced. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We need to be supportive of legislators

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who are supportive publicly of our issues,â&#x20AC;? he explained last week. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Legislators who are willing to be co-sponsors of our legislationâ&#x20AC;Ś We are going to be looking at that column more closely than ever before.â&#x20AC;?

Fond hopes, winks and nods, and even private assurances of support will no longer be enough if the Pride Agenda enforces a co-sponsorship litmus test for any endorsement.

In a climate where a legislatorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s word canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t always be taken at face value, Levi said, â&#x20AC;&#x153;The one thing weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re not seeing is co-sponsors going against their bills.â&#x20AC;?

If recent votes on LGBT issues have strained the relationship between ESPA and some legislators it hoped it could count on, it has also uncovered cracks in its partnership with Duane. Within hours of the failed GENDA committee vote, the Chelsea senator told the Daily News and other outlets that he had never suggested taking the bill before Judiciary, that it was done at the behest of advocates.

But the key advocates â&#x20AC;&#x201D; ESPA and the AIDS services group Housing Works â&#x20AC;&#x201D; told Gay City News they were not part of that strategy. Asked to square his claims with the statements from the Pride Agenda and Housing Works, Duane said, â&#x20AC;&#x153;I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know how to respond. This would not have been my strategy.â&#x20AC;? He suggested the question be taken back to ESPA. The following week, Levi reiterated his statement that â&#x20AC;&#x153;nobody askedâ&#x20AC;? the Pride Agenda for its views on going to Sampsonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s committee.

Van Capelle, gone from the Pride Agenda four months and now a top advisor to City Comptroller John Liu, responded to the GENDA flap by jettisoning his politesse and striking out at Duane on his Facebook page for his failures on both the transgender bill and marriage equality.

Charging that Duane â&#x20AC;&#x153;wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t lift a fingerâ&#x20AC;? on GENDA in Albany, he lashed into the senator for not appearing at the vote in Judiciary, where he is not a member, and for neglecting to attend the Democratic Conference meeting where the marriage equality bill was discussed just hours before that vote last December. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Why do we continue to allow this to happen?,â&#x20AC;? Van Capelle wrote.

Levi offered a far more conciliatory view of any tensions between ESPA and Duane, saying, â&#x20AC;&#x153;I have a very long and good history with Tom,â&#x20AC;? and noting that the two arrived in Albany at the same time. â&#x20AC;&#x153;There are different roles that legislators and advocates play and that will inevitably lead to conflict, and I think thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s okay,â&#x20AC;? Levi said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;It certainly doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t serve us to be petty with each other or to be deceptive with each other. I have reason to be optimistic that we can reach a point where, even when we disagree, we can do so with, in the back of our minds, a fair degree of respect.â&#x20AC;?

Levi, who first moved to Albany in the late 1990s as legislative director for former Brooklyn State Senator Nellie Santi-

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ESPA, continued on p.81

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HOMELESS, from p.79

other occasions, Carl Siciliano, Ali Forneyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s founder, used the occasion of the rally to demand that the LGBT community step up and accept its â&#x20AC;&#x153;responsibilityâ&#x20AC;? to care for its own, an obligation that â&#x20AC;&#x153;has been ignored.â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x153;Why donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t we have a sense of emergency, a sense of crisis?,â&#x20AC;? he asked. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Why arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t our organizations screaming about it? Why isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t our media demanding that it be rectified? I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think the mayor is the key. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think the Council is the key. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think the president is the key. We are the key.â&#x20AC;?

Even as he urged greater engagement by the community, Siciliano was not unmindful of the need for political leadership from elected officials at all levels of government. Citing the imminent release of a report from the Center for American Progress, a progressive policy think tank in Washington, calling for federal efforts to combat LGBT youth homelessness, he urged the Obama administration to issue an executive order forbidding antiLGBT bias in all federally-funded youth shelters.

Reflecting the fine line non-profit organizations funded by the city must walk in their relationship with the mayor, Siciliano applauded Bloomberg for establishing the first municipal commission in the nation to study the problem of LGBT youth homelessness, and then said, â&#x20AC;&#x153;But letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s be real. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s easy to issue a report. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s going to cost an awful lot of money to create the housing that that report calls for and to create the services and supportive care that that report calls for.â&#x20AC;?

Fidlerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s comments suggested that he

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ESPA, from p.80

ago and at the Pride Agenda most recently served as director of public policy and education, is proud of the relationships heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s forged there. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The word Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m hearing from inside the Capitol is that people are happy I am in this position,â&#x20AC;? he said, noting that as a Santiago staffer more than a decade ago, his office was right around the corner from that of Sampson, the current Majority Conference leader.

Although his background is in Democratic politics and thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s where ESPA has recently put its marbles, Levi, who said he was uncertain whether ESPA would make public his new salary yet, talked about the importance of bipartisanship. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Certainly to say that Democrats are our friends and Republicans are our enemies is way too much of an oversimplification,â&#x20AC;? he said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d be wrong to say that looking at party platforms, that the Democrats are our more natural allies. But when it comes down to member to member, there is a lot of good work to be done on both sides of the aisle, and there are roadblocks on both sides of the aisle.â&#x20AC;?

24 JUN â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 7 JUL 2010 had been urged by advocates to be politic in his appearance at the rally. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The organizers of the rally asked me to be gentle today,â&#x20AC;? he said, in opening his remarks. Then noting that the mayor had indicated he was â&#x20AC;&#x153;happy to receive the reportâ&#x20AC;? from the commission he established last fall, Fidler continued, â&#x20AC;&#x153;As we stand here today negotiating the budget for the City of New York, the mayor hasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t included $6 million for shelter beds in New York that was in last yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s budget. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m from Brooklyn and we have a saying there thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s actually Yiddish: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Money talks.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t believe they would have the chutzpah to put out a report calling for an increase in the number of shelter beds for our kids at a time when 50 percent of the money is missing from the budget. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m sorry if thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not gentle, but itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the truth.â&#x20AC;?

Fidler was joined at the rally by City Councilman Daniel Dromm, an out gay freshman legislator from Jackson Heights, who demanded that the LGBT community â&#x20AC;&#x153;begin to receive the fair share of tax dollars we deserve.â&#x20AC;?

Comptroller John Liu, noting that since taking office in January he has discovered millions of dollars in funding going to landlords housing formerly homeless New Yorkers not documented through leases or contracts, said the city could certainly find the money to continue funding the Councilâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s LGBT youth effort.

Liu, who spent eight years on the Council prior to his new post, said he was there to support the work of his former colleague. â&#x20AC;&#x153;You couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t find a stronger advocate than Lew Fidler,â&#x20AC;? he said.

In talking about the LGBT communityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s friends in Albany, Levi emphasized that in both chambers of the Legislature, the African-American and Latino caucuses have shown overwhelming support for gay rights initiatives. â&#x20AC;&#x153;That, in New York, lays to rest the myth that people of color are more homophobic or opposed to marriage equality than anyone else,â&#x20AC;? he said.

Looking beyond the marquee issues â&#x20AC;&#x201D; marriage, transgender rights, and school bullying â&#x20AC;&#x201D; that have dominated LGBT political discussion in New York, Levi emphasized the importance of social justice issues. He pointed to other Pride Agenda initiatives, such as an LGBT social services network that has received more than $50 million in state funding dating back more than a decade and its advocacy of a policy that ensures that transgender youth in the juvenile justice system can wear clothes and be called names appropriate to their gender identity. â&#x20AC;&#x153;It is ironic and frustrating that the Pride Agenda talks about these victories, but all the press and even the community talk about is the vote on marriage,â&#x20AC;? he said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;And we are accused of only caring about marriage equality.â&#x20AC;?

81

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82

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nthony Weiner, a high profile Democratic congressman who represents portions of Brooklyn and Queens, believes the votes are there in the House for the Employment NonDiscrimination Act (ENDA), inclusive of protections based on gender identity as well as sexual orientation, sees some hope in this fall’s elections based on his view “that the only thing worse than the Democratic brand is the Republican brand,” and continues to admit that the only other job he would like is being mayor of New York.

But, in a wide-ranging discussion with Gay City News on June 8, Weiner was most provocative in his assertion that President Barack Obama has so far forged a “timid administration.”

In the wake of the president’s announcement early in June that he was extending some partner benefits to gay and lesbian federal government employees, Weiner was asked what the prospects were, in the near term, for passing the Domestic Partnership Benefits and Obligations Act — which would extend the same federal benefits to gay and lesbian couples currently available under marriage — and for repealing the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act. The Brooklyn Democrat said he doubted whether either measure would move before the November election and also took note of the limited nature of the president’s order regarding federal employees — health benefits, for example, are not generally available under the executive directive.

Weiner then turned to the political excuse that the Defense of Marriage Act provides the president for achieving only incremental advances at best on LGBT partnership and family recognition.

“DOMA becomes a sort of all-purpose cloak for a timid administration,” he said. “Yeah, we want to do more, but there’s DOMA.” Asked directly whether he considered Obama’s team “timid,” Weiner replied, “Yes.” The congressman also cited the public discourse that ensued when the White House announced last month it had

Congressman Anthony Weiner addressed the Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club, an LGBT group, in Chelsea in March.

struck a compromise for allowing the House and Senate to adopt a plan for ending Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell even though a Pentagon Working Group has not yet completed its study of how to implement such a policy change. A day after the compromise was made public, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Admiral Michael Mullen, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, announced their grudging acceptance of Congress’ intentions, but some of the individual service chiefs offered dissents.

“Members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff sent a letter three days before the fucking vote, and you’re the president of the United States,” Weiner said. “That’s insubordination. There was one hand clapping. It would be akin to the president of the United States announcing he supports school vouchers and the secretary of Education sending a letter three days before the vote to say, ‘Oh no, don’t do that.’”

Weiner, who was a persistent critic of the administration for not pushing harder for a public option in the healthcare reform legislation enacted earlier this year, said Obama is too often reluctant to lead on critical issues.

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WEINER, continued on p.83

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WEINER, from p.82

“I think the president wants to do the right thing, but I think there is too much of a tendency in this administration to leave it to the legislators to do the right thing,” he said. “The president talks about using political capital to get things done, but he’s asking Congress to get it done.”

Weiner noted the success two weeks earlier in winning Senate Armed Services Committee and full House approval of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell compromise, but also argued that moving the broader LGBT agenda will require assertive presidential leadership.

“We’re in a good moment now, so I don’t want to piss on anything,” he said.

“I will say that there is this general sense out there that he is not prepared to lead in the classic sense. He says, ‘Okay, there are 218 votes, I’ll sign it.’ This is one of those issues that you need leadership on.”

Despite his critique of the administration on LGBT issues, Weiner is confident that Speaker Nancy Pelosi is committed to pushing ENDA through the House prior to November, and prepared to withstand any effort on the floor by Republicans to kill the measure by offering poison-pill amendments. Some advocates fear that opponents will seek to stir concerns about the inclusion of language protecting transgender Americans, thereby fracturing the majority out gay Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank has worked to build.

Weiner, who voted no on ENDA in

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KAGAN, from p.14

as negotiator on behalf of the administration with different sides in the legislative battle.

“We had a meeting with the religious groups yesterday and are having a meeting with the gay groups Monday to see whether we can work out some kind of rapprochment (sp?),” she wrote in a 1999 memo circulated within the administration. “We’ll let you know as soon as it’s safe to go back in the water.”

In that memo, Kagan was advising then Vice President Al Gore to not take a position on the bill until that rapprochement was achieved. It never was. The bill passed the House in July of 1999, but never had a vote in the Senate.

“I’m the biggest fan of RFRA (now RLPA) in this building, but you should not take this advice right now,” Kagan wrote in the memo. “You’ll have a gay/ lesbian firestorm on your hands. (Alternatively, if you come out for a version of RFRA that has a civil rights carve-out, you’ll have a religious groups firestorm on your hands.)”

The fact that Kagan apparently backed religious exemptions to discrimination laws disturbed HRC. “State anti-discrimination laws that

24 JUN – 7 JUL 2010 2007 rather than support the measure after the gender identity language was stripped out, does not see that concession by the House Democratic leadership being made again this year.

“I am convinced having spoken to Nancy personally and Barney personally, and I think there was a lesson learned last time,” he said of the elimination of the transgender protections. “I think she is committed, and I know Barney is.”

Asked whether he saw the Senate ready to step up to support a fully inclusive ENDA, Weiner said, “A stiff wind coming across the Capitol causes problems for the Senate these days, so you never know.” Politically, however, he said that if Republican opponents of ENDA decide to filibuster the bill, “I don’t think it will be over transgender inclusion.”

Weiner, who for several months had been a leading advocate for ending the ban on any gay man sexually active since 1977 giving blood, continued to voice optimism that the federal Department of Health and Human Services would act to modify or eliminate the policy, which has also come under fire from leading experts, including the American Red Cross. Just three days later, however, the HHS Committee on Blood Safety and Availability voted narrowly against any change to the policy, agreeing only to the position that the current practice is “sub-optimal” and that a report should be prepared to distinguish between highrisk and low-risk gay male donors.

Weiner had suggested that, absent action by HHS, Congress might take up the issue through legislation.

promote equality and address unequal treatment are critical to LGBT Americans, particularly in the absence of strong federal protections,” Cole wrote. “It’s troubling that Elena Kagan questioned the judgment of upholding this California statute and we urge the Senate Judiciary Committee to question Kagan’s current beliefs on the validity of state anti-discrimination statutes and religious liberty.”

On June 21, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which does not take a position on nominees, released a report that detailed Kagan’s views on various issues. That report was sent to Judiciary Committee members.

“We’re urging senators to explore all of these civil liberties, civil right issues,” said Christopher Anders, senior legislative counsel at the ACLU. In his view, the Kagan documents are unclear.

“Reading these emails on their own, there are lots of different ways you can interpret what she said,” Anders said.

Lambda Legal was still reviewing material on Kagan and would not comment until that process was finished.

Requests for comment from Vermont Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy, the Judiciary Committee chair, and New York Democrat Charles Schumer, a committee member, were not returned by press time.

83 “Credico would be more than a breath of fresh air.

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For ten minutes this year, Gay Pride marchers in Moscow were able to march unfettered, holding a 32-foot rainbow flag.

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MOSCOW, from p.40

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MOSCOW, from p.13

great success. No one ever did it before.

In 2009, we decided to host the Pride the same day as the Eurovision Finale took place in Moscow — that’s a European song contest televised all over Europe.

Again, we managed to avoid confrontation with the protesters but not with the police, and 32 of us were arrested and detained overnight. What disappointed me the most is that while we were in jail, the show went on, watched all across Europe, and not a single gay singer — the Eurovision is a very gay-friendly contest — managed to say even a word of support. It was really disappointing.

These people were representing European countries who like to say how democratic they are, but nothing. Not even a word. A lot of hypocrisy…

IRELAND: This year, for the first time in five years, you actually managed to hold a Moscow Pride march, by using a flash-mob technique. Would you describe what happened?

ALEXEYEV: This year we faced a dilemma. Our group wanted to avoid arrests and beatings. Since I am working almost with the same people for five years, we had to find a solution. So, we organized a similar action to the one in 2007. We invited journalists to gather in one place. We put them in a bus and we took them to the secret location where we organized the Pride. For the first time, we managed to march ten minutes, holding a huge rainbow flag 32 feet long! No arrests, no beatings. A success. Everyone was happy, and the photos were wonderful.

We again fooled the Moscow police — the mayor must have been mad at them! The Pride march took place from the railway station which links Russia to Belarus, on the Leningradsky Boulevard which goes to St Petersburg. It was a symbol because Moscow Pride took place between the Minsk Pride demonstration on May 15 and the first-ever St Petersburg Pride planned for June 26.

We all take part in each other’s Prides because, in 2008, we founded the Slavic Gay Pride movement, which is the union of Russian and Belarusian Pride organizers.

IRELAND: Would you tell us about how Minsk Pride and the planned St. Petersburg Pride came about?

ALEXEYEV: When we launched the Moscow Pride campaign in 2005, there were only a few of us. Then, many people joined us. In 2008, I was called on the phone by a group in Belarus who wanted some help and guidance from us to organize a gay pride in Minsk, the Belarusian capital and its largest city. It was with them that we founded the Slavic Gay Pride movement.

The first Slavic Pride was in Moscow in 2009 during the fourth Moscow Pride, when a group of 15 Belarusians came to Moscow. And in May 2010, we organized the second Slavic Pride in Minsk.

With our media experience, we managed to get some media coverage. The march was banned in Belarus as well, and after walking ten minutes, 12 participants were brutally arrested by a very violent police. They were brutal like wild dogs.

In January 2010, I was contacted by a group in St Petersburg called Equality, which wanted to organize their first Pride in St Petersburg. I went there, met them, discussed. Then, we organized in Moscow a meeting of all of us, with organizers from Moscow, Minsk, and St Petersburg, and put out plans for our Pride marches.. I spent three weeks in Minsk before their Pride to help organize it, and I am coordinating with the organizers in St Petersburg.

We also bring our legal experience. I can say that we’re the most experienced LGBT group in the whole of Europe with all the cases we have pending on various issues before the European Court of Human Rights and at the Human Rights Committee of the UN! IRELAND: How about other cities in Russia —what’s happening there?

ALEXEYEV: Moscow and St Petersburg are two very large cities. It is relatively easy to be gay or lesbian there.

Look at us. We’ve existed for five years, and we are confronting everyone openly for five years. In the regions outside our two biggest cities, it is more difficult.

Power in the regions is more centralized and, for example, they are still put-

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MOSCOW, from p.84

ting in psychiatric clinics the journalists who are writing articles against the local power. So, you can guess that it is very difficult for gays to confront the local authorities there.

You need to understand that Russia emerged as a free country only in 1991.

Then, we had a big crisis in 1998. The first priority of people is to enjoy life, travelling, and eventually to have fun abroad and visit Prides in Paris, New York, Toronto. They don’t care much about their rights here. As long as they have a job and money, they are happy.

Russian people — not only gays — are usually very fatalist. They take things as they come. Around us, there are 40 people in Moscow, 15 in St Petersburg, and approximately 30 in Minsk. That’s not much for such a large country, but it does not prevent us from making more noise in the media than any other Pride.

IRELAND: Some of us remember how, in his first campaign, Vladimir Putin played the homophobia card by organizing a press conference with a phony group of very flamboyant and queeny gays to endorse his leading opponent.

Is the gay community in Russia riddled with police agents, agents provocateurs, or stooges of the Putin apparatus who try to discredit and discourage real gay organizing?

ALEXEYEV: The regime is mostly interested in discrediting the opposition, including using the services of prostitutes to put opponents in a sex scandal and sometimes mainstream human rights activists as well. For them, whatever is gay is not serious. They don’t feel that they should be interested in it. This is why I always kept our movement and our activities completely apolitical, separate from electoral politics, and to my mind, it has to stay like that, especially in Russia. You know, if tomorrow the Kremlin starts to put us in jail, do you think someone will care? Does someone care when human rights activists are arrested? Not anymore. They used to care.

But you know, 9/11 changed many things at the international level. Russia used to be very much criticized on Chechnya pre-9/11 and surprisingly much less post-9/11.

Look at what happened with the Russian invasion of Georgia last year. Russia got what it wanted and no one moved.

Europeans have experienced the collateral damages of the fight between Russia and Ukraine on the issue of imported natural gas. When Russia switched off the gas to Ukraine, Western Europe started to be cold as well. The Europeans understand that they have limited margin of maneuver with Russia.

The European Parliament gave the Sakharov Prize last year to several key Russian human rights activists. Well, in reality, that’s a terrible admission of

24 JUN – 7 JUL 2010

85

impotence, because instead of giving prizes, the European Parliament could vote a motion to ban Russian officials who do not comply with the European Convention on Human Rights from entering the European Union! But it’s the gas issue once again. Human rights activists in Russia are the hostages of this geopolitics. And I am including us in that pot.

Look at what happened in Lithuania, Romania, Latvia, Slovenia, Serbia: When a Gay Pride is banned or risks facing violence, all the EU countries and the US and Canada are immediately issuing statements of support. But in Russia, they can’t. Last week, the organizers of St Petersburg Pride asked the US Consulate in St. Petersburg to help in advance of St. Petersburg Pride by screening a documentary, “Beyond Gay, the Politics of Pride,” which features the differences between several Gay Prides around the world, like New York, Vancouver, Sao Paulo, Moscow, Warsaw. The Americans refused, and the excuse was: “We cannot show a Canadian documentary in the US consulate.”

And what about Hillary Clinton, who come to Moscow in 2009 to unveil the statue of Walt Whitman, an American gay poet, hand in hand with the homophobic mayor of Moscow at the same place where we were arrested three weeks before for trying to stage Moscow Pride! She even had a press conference and did not mention anything about gay rights or the banning of our Pride! If this is the new pro-LGBT policy that Hillary Clinton said she wants to introduce in the foreign policy of the USA, well…

But again, geopolitics plays a role here.

It’s not about gas, but the US needs the support of Russia on issues like Iran and North Korea.

IRELAND: Unlike their European counterparts, the US gay institutions and national organizations haven’t been very supportive of what you’re doing in Russia. Would you explain why gay international solidarity must be collective?

ALEXEYEV: At least we’ve managed to have a strong partnership with Gay Liberation Network in Chicago. They once invited me for their Matthew Sheppard march and we decided to continue to work together. Andy Thayer, the cofounder, was with us in Moscow for Pride in 2009 and 2010. Last year he was beaten, arrested, and detained, but still he came back this year. He is fabulous.

Full of energy and passion. When he was detained last year, he refused to be released before the Russians who’d been arrested were freed.

And there’s the background of his trip as well: Because their organization is not well-financed, it is thanks to every member of Gay Liberation Network that Andy could fly to Moscow. That’s a lot of solidarity. How can you compare such sup-

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MOSCOW, continued on p.87

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MOSCOW, from p.85

port with organizations whose activists are “staff” and “paid for their activism?”

I find it a pity that in the US the most courageous activists are not those who are in the spotlight, which instead gets focused on those who are paid by their organization and are frequently not really helping anyone or anything because their first priority is often to make sure to keep receiving grants.

Where is the new Harvey Milk? Where is the spirit of the ’70s? Ironically, now we have the Internet, which helps us to connect on all kinds of social networks. Take the campaign on Iran in 2005. It was publicized after activists from many countries campaigned via Internet. We must all engage in a collective work.

That’s why the International Day Against Homophobia, IDAHO, is a great initiative, because it belongs to everyone.

It gives a platform every May 17 for any person to organize an action. The work of the Paris-based IDAHO Committee is to give some structure by launching a campaign and ensuring its promotion on the international scene. Then, the floor is yours.

You know, for example, I was in contact with a deputy from Luxemburg’s Parliament who raised some support for us.

We organized a joint press conference in Luxemburg in February 2009. On this occasion, I talked to him about IDAHO and said that he could help by putting a motion in his Parliament to have the Day Against Homophobia officially recognized.

Well, three months later, it was done! In some ways, you can say that if May 17 is officially recognized in the Luxemburg calendar as the IDAHO day, it is thanks to Moscow Pride.

IRELAND: Would you describe how you’ve used your skills as a lawyer on behalf of gay rights in Russia?

ALEXEYEV: I have brought many lawsuits against all kind of officials. I sued the mayor of Moscow after he said that Gay Prides are “satanic” gatherings; I sued the governor of the Region of Tambov after he said that gays should be torn apart and their pieces thrown into the wind; I sued President Medvedev for not responding to our request to organize the Pride in the gardens of the Kremlin; and of course I appealed all the bans of all the public actions that we attempted to organize.

As you can guess, I lost all the court cases in Russia, but we are lucky that Russia is a member of the Council of Europe and as a result any Russian can seize the European Court of Human Rights if he feels that the European Convention on Human Rights was breached against him.

But the problem is that many Russians are applying to this court and there is a huge backlog. We are hoping this year to get the final decision of the Court on the bans of Moscow Pride 2006, 2007, and 2008 — the cases have been combined.

24 JUN – 7 JUL 2010 You can’t understand how much we all expect to win this decision. There is no doubt that the case will be resolved in our favour after the European Court made a precedent by condemning the ban of the Warsaw Pride. It will be the first time ever in history that Russia will lose against gays.

But I’d like to go a bit deeper here. The cases that we sent to the European Court are not only going to change things for LGBT people in Russia. They will help all the civil rights defenders, because the decision will not concern only a gay public action but simply the freedom of assembly. And in Russia, it will be much more difficult to ban a march by the opposition or by any other human rights group.

And this is going beyond Russia as well.

For example, my case against the governor of Tambov is about hate speech. If we win, we will set a precedent at the European level which activists in all Europe will be able to use. Our work is not only about Moscow or Gay Pride. Those who think that did not understand what we are doing. We are tackling homophobia everywhere.

For instance, we were successful in having Russia repeal the gay male blood donation ban. Something you still have in the US. We also started a campaign for same-sex marriage in Russia, and we are now lodging this case with the European Court.

Moscow Pride is our platform; it’s our flagship campaign which allows us to be in the media every year. You know, a press conference of Moscow Pride usually attracts over 50 accredited journalists.

And this voice that it gives, we use it to promote our other campaigns.

IRELAND: If readers want to send you a contribution for your work, how can they do that and where should money be sent?

ALEXEYEV: Well, I have been asked this question many times. It is more helpful that people come to Russia to support us when we stage the Pride in Moscow or St Petersburg. And if you can’t, then, better send a donation to Gay Liberation Network in Chicago, at gayliberation.net/ home.html. That will help them to come again to Moscow next year to attend the Pride. If 50 readers out of the tens of thousands copies printed give $20, we can manage to have Andy Thayer back in Moscow. and this is very helpful for us.

As Gay City News was going to press, organizers of the June 26 St. Petersburg Pride march said they’ve asked for police protection in the wake of calls for violent attacks on participants by a number of xenophobic and nationalist websites. To follow this and other gay news from Russia, go to the extensive English-language version of the news website Alexeyev founded at http:// gayrussia.ru/en/. Doug Ireland can be reached through his blog, DIRELAND, at http://direland.typepad.com/.

87

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88/ Theater

Bare Essentials At 20, Broadway Bares still has plenty of tricks tucked into its G-string

GAY CITY NEWS

When “Broadway Bares,” the saucy, sensational burlesque show produced by and benefiting Broadway Cares/ Equity Fights AIDS, was conceived 20 years ago, the world was a decidedly different place.

AIDS had yet to be tamed by protease inhibitors, and prime-of-life members of the theater community were dying at an alarming rate.

Many people now think of AIDS, if they bother to think of it at all, as a scourge in impoverished quarters far, far away, but BC/ EFA knows better. It’s everybody’s epidemic, and, as the creators vowed, the one-night-only annual fundraiser will keep on bumping and grinding until there’s a cure. They’ve raised upwards of $8 million so far.

This year, the energy that blasted from the Roseland stage in “Strip-opoly” felt as urgent and exhilarating as ever. Sure, the stars were out in full force — Vanessa Williams and Kristin Chenoweth each belted out a racy number, and a tophatted Euan Morton made for a dash-

GAY CITY NEWS

BY DAVID KENNERLEY

What’ s truly astounding — but was surely tested in the shower scene — is “Broadway Bares”’ knack for teasing the limits of burlesque without treading on tasteless territory.

ing emcee. Lucy Liu appeared as Miss Community Chest, and later the nearly sold-out crowd was treated to cameos by Alan Cumming, Diana Degarmo, Cheyenne Jackson, Lea DeLaria, Nick Adams,

Charles Busch, Bruce Vilanch, Reichen Lehmkuhl, and many more. And of course, creator and uber-choreographer Jerry Mitchell took his turn, wearing the same skimpy Indian outfit he wore on

“Will Rogers Follies” two decades ago.

But, as everybody knows, the real attraction is the bevy of sweaty, go-for-

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BARE, continued on p.89

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BARE, from p.88

‘Promises, Promises!’?”

And bear in mind, most of the 120 performers onstage — many of whom were too young to walk when “Broadway Bares” was born — are currently in other musicals, which means they donated their precious time and talents for the cause.

What’ s truly astounding is “Broadway Bares”’ knack for teasing the limits of burlesque without treading on tasteless territory. Some people, however, may feel the line was finally crossed with

the Waterworks routine, surely inspired by the acts of derring-do performed at that other flesh-filled Roseland institution, the Black Party. The jaw-dropping sequence featured a veritable fountain of dudes urinating on a begging buddy and unsuspecting audience members (from concealed tanks of what I hoped was water).

The musical accompaniment? A Strauss waltz, I believe, followed by a snippet of James Taylor’s “Shower The People You Love With Love.”

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broke performers who, under the dazzling direction of Josh Rhodes, pour on the charm while stripping off their costumes. And yeah, some of them take it all off, in the most artfully naughty ways.

For me, part of the fun is seeing how the strips are integrated into the goofy theme; “Strip-opoly” proved particularly well-suited for the conceit. The WASP housewives of Connecticut Avenue were invaded by trailer trash vixens, while Orient Avenue conjured a whirl of muscular, chiffon-clad aerialists.

The Railroads were represented by a line of choo-chooing male dancers that boasted one happy caboose. The biggest laughs were from the Boardwalk number, set on the Jersey Shore, where Snookie took one on the jaw and everyone’s fantasy coupling of The Situation and Pauli D came deliriously to life.

The genre-confused score, a patchwork of original and sampled, shamelessly uncredited tunes, ricocheted from Journey to Lady Gaga to Rihanna to Anita Ward and into the wild beyond.

Occasionally, brief comic scenes were inserted, by far the funniest featuring Jackie Hoffman as a police officer arresting Katie Finneran, who recently won the Featured Actress Tony Award. “I’ve never stolen anything in my life,” coos Katie, to which Hoffman deadpans, “How about

GAY CITY NEWS

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24 JUN – 7 JUL 2010

24 JUN â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 7 JUL 2010

PRIDE WEEKEND 2010 SIXTH ANNUAL TRANS DAY OF ACTION Fri., Jun. 25, 4-7 p.m.

March begins at City Hall Park, Broadway at Park Row http://alp.org/tdoa2010 For the sixth year, TransJustice, a project of the Audre Lorde Project, Brooklynâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s queer people of color community center, leads a march through the streets of Lower Manhattan to articulate the demands for justice from New Yorkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s trans and gender non-conforming people of color community and its allies.

Among those groups supporting the action are the LGBT Community Center, the Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project (CHAMP), SALGA NYC, the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, FIERCE!, Soulforce, the Astraea Foundation, Latinos/ as Unidos de New York, SWOP-NYC (Sex Workers Outreach Project-NYC), Queers for Economic Justice, Congregation Beth Simchat Torah, the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund, GAPIMNY, the GRIOT Circle, the Ali Forney Center, the New York City Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project, the Brooklyn Community Pride Cen-

ter, Riot Grrrl Ink, GLOBE, the HetrickMartin Institute, the Transgender Law Center, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the New York Transgender Rights Organization, Lambda Legal, and the African Ancestral Lesbians United for Societal Change.

EIGHTEENTH ANNUAL DYKE MARCH Sat., Jun. 26, steps off at 5 p.m. sharp From Bryant Park 42nd St., btwn. Fifth & Sixth Aves. dykemarchnyc.org Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the time to hit the streets! Make some noise. Be visible. Be heard. Demonstrate, agitate, liberate! Bring signs, banners, drums, giant puppets, flags, hula hoops, or just be there!

The Dyke March is a protest march, not a parade â&#x20AC;&#x201D; we donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t ask for a permit, because we have the right to protest. We recognize that we must organize amongst ourselves to fight for our rights, our safety, and for visibility. Thousands of dykes take over the streets every year in celebration of LBTQ women and to protest against ongoing discrimination, harassment, and anti-LBTQ violence in schools, on the job, in our families, and on the streets.

WWW.GAYCITYNEWS.COM

RAPTURE ON THE RIVER: A WOMENâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S DANCE Sat., Jun. 26, 6-11 p.m.

Pier 54 W. 13th St. at the West Side Hwy. This is the official New York City Pride Week Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Dance, now in its seventh year. The legendary Susan Morabito is the DJ. Tickets are $25 in advance at nycpride. org or boxofficetickets.com, or $35 the day of the event.

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DIXON PLACE HOT FESTIVAL 161A Chrystie St., btwn. Rivington & Delancey Sts. Jun. 26-Aug. 7 hotfestival.org HOT! The NYC Celebration of Queer Culture is an annual six-week festival of theater, dance, music, performance art, literature, and homoeroticism for the whole family. The festival presents 60 shows, each of them a bargain at just $10.

HOT! kicks off on Jun. 26, 6 :30 p.m.- 1 a.m., with a party in Dixon Place new lounge hosted by Anti-Divaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Liz Liguori and Jessie Mann. With their specialty drinks, sexy bartending flair, and famous LGBTQ (and straight!) following, Liz and Jesse have made Anti-Diva the Dixon Place party to be â&#x20AC;&#x153;scene.,â&#x20AC;? the coolest place to end up after the annual Dyke March!

2010 GAY PRIDE MARCH Sun., Jun. 27, noon-6p.m.

Steps off from Fifth Ave. at 36th St. Travels downtown to W. Ninth St., West to Hudson St. Commemorating the 1969 Stonewall Riots, the march will be led this year by Lieutenant Dan Choi, Judy Shepard, mother of slain teenager Matthew Shepard, and Constance McMillen, the Mississippi high school honors student who fought and won the legal right to attend her prom with her girlfriend.

PRIDEFEST Sun., Jun. 27, 11 a.m.-7 p.m.

Hudson St., btwn. Abingdon Sq. & West 14th St

PrideFest is the annual LGBT street fair, which brings together local residents and families, community leaders, and area business owners to celebrate in the street. Free.

DANCE ON PIER: 24 Sun., Jun. 27, 4-10:30 p.m.

Pier 54 W. 13th St. at the West Side Hwy. DJ Steven Oliveri will get the party started, and Freemasons (Loaded UK) are scheduled as the closing DJs. The party will be followed by the annual Hudson River fireworks display.

Tickets are $75 until Jun. 26 at nycpride.org or boxofficetickets.com, or $100 at the door.

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A Summer--long Weekend Festival on the Mulberry Street Pedestrian Mall (Mulberry Street between Canal and Broome Streets)

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Pasta Eating Contest Saturday, July 3rd, 1pm In Front of S.P.Q.R. Restaurant At 133 Mulberry Street (Between Hester and Grand Streets)

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FOR EVERYONE LIVING OUT LOUD WITH PRIDE+JOY MACY’S IS CELEBRATING IN PRIDE PARADES NATIONWIDE! FOR MORE INFORMATION GO TO MACYS.COM/PRIDE

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