Issue 123 • March 5, 2009
2009 Spring Arts Guide Buttars Opens Mouth, Inserts Hoof ... Again Buttars-Palooza and Oscar Night Photos Vote for Utah’s Most Fabulous Ken Garff Boycott Called Off Troy Debates Pig Sex with Gayle Ruzicka
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2 | QSa lt L a k e | issue 123 | M a rch 5 , 20 09
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❝ ❝Buttars-Palooza, with its goal of throwing ‘a lively
‘Milk’ Gays the Oscars
The Academy Awards offered some gayer-than-usual moments Feb. 22 as the movie Milk snagged two Oscars. Accepting the award for best actor, for his portrayal of gay icon Harvey Milk, actor Sean Penn said: “You commie, homo-loving sons of guns. ... For those who saw the signs of hatred as our cars drove in tonight, I think that it is a good time for those who voted for the ban against gay marriage to sit and reflect, and anticipate their great shame and the shame in their grandchildren’s eyes if they continue that way of support. We’ve got to have equal rights for everyone.” And openly gay Dustin Lance Black, accepting the trophy for original screenplay, gave a shout-out to gay kids. “When I was 13 years old, my beautiful mother and my father moved me from a conservative Mormon home in San Antonio, Tex., to California, and I heard the story of Harvey Milk,” Black said. “And it gave me hope. It gave me the hope to live my life. It gave me the hope one day I could live my life openly as who I am and that maybe even I could fall in love and one day get married.” “If Harvey had not been taken from us 30 years ago, I think he’d want me to say to all of the gay and lesbian kids out there tonight who have been told that they are ‘less than’ by their churches, by the government or by their families, that you are beautiful, wonderful creatures of value and that no matter what anyone tells you, God does love you, and that very soon, I promise you, you will have equal rights federally across this great nation of ours.” In Singapore, where gay sex is illegal, MediaCorp TV deleted portions of Black’s and Penn’s speeches from its re-broadcast of the awards. MediaCorp/Channel 5 censorship manager David Christie said the broadcast “would have been in serious breach of the MDA (Media Development Authority) Programme Code if such controversial content was not editorially managed.” “The code explicitly disallows content that sympathizes with, promotes or normalizes such a lifestyle from being broadcast,” he said. The Asian satellite TV service STAR also censored the two men’s speeches, dropping the audio each time the word “gay” or “lesbian” was uttered. STAR beams into more than 50 countries to some 300 million viewers.
Drag Queen Elected Homecoming Queen Students at George Mason University in Fairfax County, Va., elected a gay drag queen as homecoming queen Feb. 14. Senior Ryan Allen, who ran for the honor as Reann Ballslee, beat out two women for the crown. “It was just for fun,” Allen told the Washington Post. “In the larger scheme of things, winning says so much about the university. We’re one of the most diverse campuses in the country, and ... we celebrate that.”
Colorado Senator in Anti-gay Rant
Colorado state Sen. Scott Renfroe, RGreeley, unleashed a six-minute antigay diatribe on the floor of the Senate Feb. 23 during debate on a bill to allow gay state employees to share health benefits with their partners. He equated gay sex with murder and adultery and seemingly suggested that people who engage in gay sex commit “detestable” acts worthy of “death.” Colo. State Sen. Scott Renfroe Renfroe said: “Homosexuality is seen as a violation of this natural creative order, and it is an offense to God. ... Leviticus 18:22 says: ‘You shall not lie with a man as one lies with a female. It is an abomination.’ Leviticus 20:13 says, ‘If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act, and they shall surely be put to death.’ ... When we create laws that goes (sic) against what biblically we are supposed to stand for, I think we are agreeing, or allowing to go forward, a sin which should not be treated by government as something that is legal. ... We are taking sins and making them to be legally OK, and that is wrong. That is an abomination. ... And
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I’m not saying that this is the only sin that’s out there. Obviously, we have sin. We have murder, we have all sorts of sins. We have adultery. And we don’t make laws making those legal. ... All sin is equal. That sin there is as equal to any other sin that’s in the Bible.” The bill passed.
Hawaii House Passes Civil Union Bill
Hawaii’s House of Representatives passed a civil-union bill Feb. 12 by a vote of 33-17. The measure now advances to the Senate Judiciary Committee, where its fate is unpredictable. Republican Gov. Linda Lingle has not taken a position on the legislation. The proposal would grant civilunion couples all the state-level benefits, protections and responsibilities of marriage. Hawaii presently has a reciprocalbeneficiaries law that grants registered same-sex couples limited spousal rights. Similar limited laws are in place in Maine and Washington. Five states — California, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oregon, and Vermont — and Washington, D.C., have full civil-union laws that grant all state-level spousal rights. Massachusetts and Connecticut let gay couples marry, and New York recognizes same-sex marriages from states and countries that permit them. The other countries that let gay couples marry are Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, Norway, South Africa and Spain.
and fun celebration of our diversity and inclusion of all in a fair and just society’ – a party instead of a protest – is the sort of new and innovative activism that many in California and New York could learn from ... They are still holding Buttars accountable, but by promoting a positive image rather than shaking an angry fist.” —Former QSaltLake editor Jere Keys, blogging about the party held at the State Capitol in the wake of Sen. Chris Buttars’ anti-gay remarks.
❝ ❝We need to come together. These are the people who
work with you, who you employ, who you give housing to. We want people to see that we’re real. We don’t want to be compared to radical Muslims.” —Pride in Your Community founder Elaine Ball, telling Salt Lake Tribune columnist Rebecca Walsh about her group’s dedication to public service.
❝ ❝The kind of bone-deep, dehumanizing hatred
Buttars spews is dangerous.” —Rebecca Walsh
❝ ❝Waddoups’ equivocation is a slap in the face to
his own constituents. He’s indirectly told every American who holds a biblical view of sexual morality and who rightfully believes that radical homosexual activism poses a grave threat to our American culture, that they should be ashamed of these traditional beliefs – that they should keep these beliefs to themselves.” —Matt Barber, of the ultra-conservative litigation group Liberty Council, scolding Sen. Michael Waddoups for removing Buttars from two committees after his anti-gay remarks.
❝ ❝Buttars’ comments ruin the religious right’s
schtick. Their entire image depends on being portrayed as innocent Christians being attacked by “rabid homosexual activists” … Buttars reminds people of a crotchety old man who wildly waves his cane as he spews venom and tries to keep from soiling himself.” — Pam’s House Blend blogger Pam Spaulding
A World Premiere by Matthew Ivan Bennett April 3-19, 2009 | Studio Theatre @ the Rose Wagner DI ESPERIENZA is a dissection of the man, myth and self-doubt of Leonardo da Vinci, widely considered the most diversely talented person ever to have lived. Coincides with Leonardo da Vinci's 557th birthday (April 15). Featuring Kirt Bateman, Jesse Harward, Tracie Merrill and Teresa Sanderson. Developed in partnership with The Leonardo and the Utah Shakesperean Festival's New American Playwrights Project. 355.ARTS or planbtheatre.org
Buttars Demoted After Anti-Gay Rant by Michael Aaron
Former KTVX News reporter Reed Cowan released an audio clip of his upcoming documentary of an interaction between him and Sen. Chris Buttars on gays and gay marriage, where Buttars calls gays “immoral,” “taken over by the radical side,” “destroyed the Canadian Boy Scouts,” “diseased,” an “abomination” and “the meanest buggers” he’s seen. ABC 4 News reporter Chris Vanocur was the first television reporter to make the comments public, and he could not even air parts because ABC 4 said they were “not appropriate for its news content.” QSaltLake was able to get a 16-minute audio file where Buttars rambles through a slew of topics as well as a shot video clip where Buttars says that “pig sex” is involved in the gay community. The video was since taken down. In it, Buttars attacks gays, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Utah NAACP for an assault on the U.S. Constitution and destroying the foundation of American society. (See sidebar story.) All for One Initiative founder Jacob Whipple called for Buttars’ resignation over the comments. The Human Rights Campaign asked for an apology. “The Senator again made inflammatory, derogative, demeaning and insensitive remarks which were mostly aimed at the LGBT community and their allies, including the ACLU,” Whipple stated in a release. Equality Utah demanded neither an apology or Buttars’ resignation. “An apology would not rationalize nor take back his hurtful words and disrespectful attitude,” said board chair Stephanie Pappas. “I can only ask that reasonable Utahns around the state reject this kind of damaging speech.” The Human Rights Camaign called for the Senate to censure Buttars. “Comments like these spread ignorance and fear — promoting an
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Michael Aaron
Q Utah
atmosphere of violence against LGBT Americans,” said an HRC statement. “They have no place in the discourse of our elected officials.” Even the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints released a statement comdemning Buttars’ tone. “From the outset, the Church’s position has always been to engage in civil and respectful dialogue on this issue. Senator Buttars does not speak for the Church.” Buttars said he was disappointed Cowan released the audio tape, but refused to resign or apologize. “I believe traditional marriage is the foundation of our civilization and I’ll continue to support public policy that strengthens traditional marriage. I will also continue to oppose policy that undermines that foundation,” Buttars wrote on the Senate majority blog. Senators met for two hours Friday, Feb. 19, in a closed-door session; after which Sen. Chris Buttars left the Utah State Capitol Building through a private exit. Sources said he was sent home to talk to his family to determine his next course of action. The following morning, Buttars was sitting at the head of his committee, obviously having decided to hold fast. That morning, Senate President Michael Waddoups announced the decision to remove Buttars from the Judicial Standing Committee in a press conference behind Senate chambers. Buttars will retain his seat on the Senate Rules Committee, the committee which all bills must go through to be discussed in committees or the Senate floor. This is the second time Buttars has lost the chairmanship of his committee; the first after his “black baby” quip last year drew fire for racial bias. Waddoups said that this decision was not a punishment for what Buttars said. He said that the decision “frees Sen. Buttars to feel more at ease in saying how he personally feels without feeling like he’s speaking on behalf of his committee or the legislature.” “There has been a lot of discussion on this issue,” Waddoups continued. “I can’t express how distracting it has been to the legislative process in the last 24 hours.” “We want the citizens of Utah to know that the Utah Senate stands behind Sen. Buttars’ right to speak. That we stand behind him as one of our colleagues and his right to serve in this state. We think he’s a stalwart. We think he’s a Senator that represents the point of view of many of his constituents and many of ours,” Waddoups said. “We agree with many of the things he said. We may disagree with some of them. We may disagree with some of the ways he said it. But we stand four-square behind his right to say what he feels he wants to say
Sen. Chris Buttars at his desk shortly after being removed from two judiciary committees for anti-gay remarks. and needs to say.” Waddoups hesitated on calling the decision a punishment, and said that those who feel the Senate did not go far enough, others feel they went too far. As Waddoups was trying to leave the press conference after just six minutes on the floor, KRCL producer and QSaltLake columnist Troy Williams shouted a question, asking Waddoups to “respond to the gay community who feel like they have been hurt and maligned by Sen. Buttars and what role do we have as citizens of this state, working for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Do we have the same equal rights that you have?” “I believe all citizens are guaranteed under the Constitution certain rights. And if someone is a citizen of this state and this country then they have equal rights,” Waddoups said before being whisked out of the room even as a question was being asked about a gay teenager’s fears over Buttars’ statements. Later, on a radio talk show, Waddoups admitted that the decision was made because there was an agreement between Buttars and party leaders that Buttars was not to speak on gay issues because he was a “lightning rod.” Buttars remained defiant after his removal. “I was disappointed to learn of the Utah State Senate’s censure on Feb. 20, 2009. However, this action will not discourage me from defending marriage from an increasingly vocal and radical segment of the homosexual community,” he wrote on the Senate
majority blog. “In recent years, registering opposition to the homosexual agenda has become almost impossible. Political correctness has replaced open and energetic debate. Those who dare to disagree with the homosexual agenda are labeled ‘haters,’ and ‘bigots,’ and are censured by their peers. The media contributes to the problem. Increasingly, individuals with conservative beliefs are targeted by a leftleaning media that uses their position of public trust as a bully pulpit. This pattern of intimidation suppresses free speech.” “I’m a grown man and I can take my knocks. When it comes right down to it, I would rather be censured for doing what I think is right, than be honored by my colleagues for bowing to the pressure of a special interest group that has been allowed to act with impunity,” he finished. A resolution calling for lawmakers and other Utahns to be respectful in their disagreements, written by Sen. John Valentine, R-Orem, before Buttars’ remarks, passed March 2. While not in response to Buttars’ remarks, Valentine noted them as an example. He said that Utahns should “have robust discussions on their merits, not on personalities or personal attacks.” An online poll on ABC 4’s Web site showed that over 92 percent of respondents disagree with the comments made by Buttars. Newspaper editorials across the state also denounced him. Q
What Buttars Said A 16-minute audio clip of the interview for Reed Cowan’s upcoming documentary on Proposition 8 and the LDS Church were made available to news media by Cowan. The clip starts out with Buttars saying, “Well, the gays are extremely organized, and very aggressive and they are always trying to be treated equally as married people. I oppose that.” He calls recent attempts to pass pro-gay measures “sneaky,” and laughs after saying, “I’ve killed every one [pro-gay bill] they’ve brought for eight years.” He claims that gays had a “gay convention of the states around here” and voted him “public enemy number one” and he was the community’s number one target. He says the community “brought two strategists in from back East and they spent a quarter of a million dollars trying to beat me. They didn’t do it, obviously.” U.S. Constitution “I believe the Constitution is something that was inspired of God. The way these people are destroying the Constitution is by saying the Constitution is a living document, so it’s subject to change, he said. “But truth don’t change.” “So they say, ‘well, marriage is between a man and a woman and that’s changed. Look around, look at al these combinations.’ Combinations of abominations as far as I’m concerned.” Sexual Perversion “To me, homosexuality will always be a sexual perversion. And you say that around here now and everybody goes nuts. But I don’t care,” he said, going on to say he doesn’t believe the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will ever change their opinion on gays and lesbians because the Proclamation on the Family is “all about gender.” “They say, ‘I’m born that way.’ There is some truth to that, in that some people are born with an attraction to alcohol. One drink and you’re gone,” he went on. “But if someone tells ya, or if you have gay marriage and you got two mommies and no daddies, they grow up believing that’s okay. And they say, ‘well we don’t indocterate [sic] our kids.’ Well, my goodness, call me stupid, but if you are living with those people and you love ’em, then you’re gonna figure that’s okay.” Gay-Straight Alliances and the ACLU’s ‘black hearts’ “Their number one goal is to proselyte the youth,” he said. “That’s why I threw them out of the schools because I said, ‘no, it’s not a friendship club, that’s a recruiting station.’ And there was 13 high schools and junior highs that had one and they’re all gone but two, and I don’t think they’ll go ‘cuz, the way it’s written, the principal has the right, without recourse to the principal, to make a decision if that club’s right for the school. … They got in and they
said they was gonna sue and the ACLU, bless their black hearts, come in and say, ‘Well, we’ll sue you.’ And personally, the principals were scared.” No More Nice Gay “Oh, Gayle and I have been called every name in the book,” he said. “We have to have a big dictionary to look up everything they’ve called us.” “But they’re mean. They want to talk about being nice, they are the meanest buggers I’ve ever seen. They’s just like the Moslems. Moslems are good people and their religion is anti-war. But it’s been taken over by the radical side. And the gays are totally taken over by the radical side.” Promiscuity “There’s just many studies that talk about how long a gay marriage averages, how many partners a gay person has and he might even say he’s married to in a lifetime. And you outta get ahold of those because if I told you what it was you wouldn’t believe me,” he said, quickly following up with, “Well, it’s about 15. Not sex partners. There’s a lot more sex partners.” Supreme Court Buttars says former president Bush, “like him or love him,” saved America by appointing two conservative Supreme Court judges, but warned that if Obama “puts in Ginsbergs,” then all the work he and other ultra-conservatives have done will be “trumped.” Morality “Well, I believe the whole thing is immoral,” he said. “You see, if you say to me, ‘Quit shoving your morals down my throat, Buttars,’ my answer to you is: ‘You know my morals. What’s yours?’ What is the morals of a gay person? You can’t answer that. Because anything goes. So, now you’re moving towards a society that has no morals. There’s never been a nation survive that’s done that.” Employment Nondiscrimination Buttars claimed that Rep. Christine Johnson’s bill seeking employment and housing nondiscrimination was “affirmative action,” that would “give the gays privilege in hiring and employment. So it doesn’t matter if I’m the most skilled, you get the job.” Media Buttars went on to say that the “liberal media” was after him, especially the Salt Lake Tribune, which as turned, in his mind, to the “Salt Lake Tabloid.” He also said that Gay Pride numbers are largely inflated and that half of the people attending are from out-of-state. Insurance Buttars says he’s against expanding insurance benefits to gay and lesbian couples. “There’s a lot of dollar costs. You take their trying to have insurance rights the same as a man and a woman. Now, when
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you’re married, the insurance company can quantify, we got this many married people so they run their underwriting,” he said. “You have no way to do that with gay people and you’re going to take on paying for all the extra, most often, diseases, and that’s huge. And now you, as a straight, get to share that cost. That’s what I’m talking about. Those kinds of diseases are not exclusive with gays, but they represent the huge majority.” Destroying America “But I get accused of being a homophobe and everything else you can name, and that won’t change,” he said. “I’m the wall they hit and they say that. They say, ‘this is the man who stood in the way of our agenda for eight years. He has to go.’” “I believe that you will destroy the foundation of American society because I believe the cornerstone of it is a man and a woman and a family. It is, in my mind, the beginning of the end. Oh, it’s worse than that. Sure, Sodom and Gomorrah was localized, this is world-wide. You can’t tell me that something was going on in Sodom and Gomorrah is not going on wholesale right now and to a large degree among the gay community … The underbelly is they do not want equality, they want superiority.” “I believe that, internally, they are the greatest threat to America going down that I know of.”
Darker Side: Pig Sex “I can tell you the darker side. I know all about it. I had a lady call me last night that I know well to talk about one of the underbellies,” he said before a long pause. “It’s too ugly to talk about. I’m not going to talk about it.” Cowan is heard in the background to say “okay,” but Buttars immediately interrupts him. “One thing’s called pig sex,” he said. “It’d make you sick. They do things that are just unthinkable.” Cowan Googles “Pig Sex” and reads Buttars the definition from urbandictionary.com: “A sexual act that is considered outrageously dirty such as water spots, defecation, male-on-male bondage, group-sex and bestiality.” Cowan asks Buttars if that is what is going on in the gay community. “Yes,” Buttars replied. “You didn’t get real graphic about how it takes place though.” Transgender “I don’t know why they act out like they do. You know some of them dress so bizarre. You take the transsexuals. Which they want to now be called transgender. They gotta get a kinder word. It’s like abortion. I mean, pro-choice sounds pretty cool.”
Q Utah Last Common Ground Bill Dies HB 160, the final bill in Equality Utah’s Common Ground Initiative died Feb. 18 in the House Judiciary Committee. None of the four bills, all targeted at getting more rights for Utah’s gay and transgender citizens, will make it onto the Senate or House floors for debate. Sponsored by Rep. Jennifer Seelig, D-Salt Lake City, HB 160 sought to allow two unmarried adults living together — whether a gay or straight romantic couple or two unmarried adults with commingled assets — to apply for an Adult Joint Support Declaration that would give them inheritance rights and the right to make medical decisions for a partner who is incapacitated. In her opening remarks, Seelig mentioned that the bill was not just for gay couples, but for a number of other individuals, particularly those who need more protection in the current chilly economic climate. “People are needing each other more and more to survive, to stay in their homes,” she said. Clifford Rosky, an associate professor of family law at the University of Utah, spoke next, stating that without the protections of HB 160, a number of Utahns would continue to be passed over by the state’s inheritance laws. Rosky also addressed an argument that Common Ground opponents have used throughout the session: that passing any of the proposed bills would be a “slippery slope” to gay marriage. “I don’t use terms like this lightly, but that claim is false,” he said. Further, he explained that Utah’s situation was different from California’s. When California’s Supreme Court justices ruled that same-sex marriages could be performed, California had no constitutional ban on them. Utah, on the other hand, added Amendment 3, which defined marriage as the union between a man and a woman, to its constitution in 2004. “Utah courts can’t ignore Amendment 3 or overrule it,” said Rosky. Rosky also said that HB 160’s protections would also make it easier for qualifying Utahns to make medical decisions for their partners and inherit upon their partner’s death. He said that often such Utahns do not file necessary paperwork for these rights because doing so can be too compli-
cated, and the lawyer’s fees needed to do so too prohibitive. “It’s just a fact of life that most people don’t prepare for death or disability before it’s too late,” he said. As in the case of all the other Common Ground bills heard this session on Capitol Hill, HB 160 received extensive public testimony both in favor of and against its passage. Those who testified for it included Equality Utah’s Manager of Public Policy Will Carlson and out lesbian Kim Hackford-Peer (partner to QSaltLake columnist Ruth Hackford-Peer). Even though she had a legal document giving her hospital visitation priority, Hackford-Peer said she was still barred from the room when her partner underwent amniocentesis
before the birth of their second child. “I could not be there to hold her hand or to help her feel safe,” she said. Stan Rassmussen of conservative and self-described pro-family think tank the Sutherland Institute, Gayle Ruzicka of Utah Eagle Forum and former Rep. LaVar Christensen testified against the bill. Rassmussen argued that the necessary documents to create wills and advance health care directives were available to the public on the Utah Division of Aging and Adult Services’ Web site, and that HB 160 would only “confuse” Utahns if passed. Sandra Rodrigues of America Forever, the anti-gay organization behind a controversial advertisement against the Common Ground Initiative in the
Feb. 15 edition of the Salt Lake Tribune and the Deseret Morning News, also testified against the bill. Rodrigues cautioned committee members that passing HB 160 would encourage children to embrace homosexuality, and thus eventually “vote down Amendment 3,” the constitutional amendment banning gay marriage in Utah. “If you pass this bill, you endorse homosexuality, and children will understand they can do this [be gay] when they grow,” she said. The bill failed to go to the House floor for debate on a vote of 4-7, with Rep. Mark Wheatly, Rep. Brian King and openly lesbian Reps. Jackie Biskupski and Christine Johnson voting in its favor.
Equality Utah: Common Ground Will Go On Just days after the last Common Ground Initiative bill died in committee, Equality Utah held a public meeting to tell gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Utahns and their straight allies what the gay rights group plans to do next. The initiative was initially named Common Ground because it sought to find agreement between gays and the LDS Church on protections for gay people to which the church did not object. These included workplace and housing nondiscrimination protections, probate and inheritance rights, and the right to make medical decisions for a partner in case of his or her incapacitation. Equality Utah Director Mike Thompson began the meeting by thanking his staff and the broader community of gay and straight people for their help in promoting the four bills that comprised the initiative. “We have never had support from the community the way we have in the last few months. This is amazing and humbling and tells us we’re going to get somewhere,” he said, noting that the legislative hearings on each bill had been attended mostly by Common Ground supporters. Thompson pointed out that polls conducted by Equality Utah, the Deseret News and the Salt Lake Tribune which showed that a majority of Utahns support basic protections for gay and transgender people were promising. Still, Thompson told the crowd (who filled the Salt Lake County Council chambers) that those who expected change to happen in one legislative session would be disappointed. Rather, he likened the push for gay rights in Utah to the campaign of President Barack Obama, who waged a long, two-year effort to move into the national spotlight. “We have never stepped into the arena the way we have this year,” he said.
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In the coming months and years, Thompson said that Common Ground would become a four-pronged approach. First, it would focus on getting protections for gay and transgender people passed in municipal governments. As an example of this, Thompson mentioned Salt Lake County’s adult designee program, which allows county employees to include unmarried partners — or any non-spouse adult — on their insurance plans. The Salt Lake County Council passed this proposal on Feb. 17. Thompson said Equality Utah would also lobby candidates they endorse to advance equal workplace and housing protections in their cities and counties, if they are elected. Next, Thompson said Equality Utah would focus on coalition-building with like-minded groups, such as labor and environmental organizations. “We need to think about this differently than we did in the past,” he said, noting that Equality Utah and Utah gay and transgender people must work for the good of the broader community. He also mentioned that Equality Utah would continue its educational outreach to communities, and maintain an “approachable” attitude by conducting itself with “decorum and respect.” “That’s who we need to be to be effective as an organization,” he said, adding that the group did not discourage those who preferred to be more confrontational in their work. “It works for us. We’re not telling anyone else how to do it,” he said. Thompson also said that individuals interested in advancing Common Ground could help in a number of ways: by volunteering to registered voters in the districts of legislators who voted against the Common Ground bills; holding house parties for “fair-minded” candidates; and
talking to their employers about domestic partner benefits. He also encouraged individuals to run for local office, look into working on city and county boards that have vacant seats, or volunteer for gay-positive election campaigns. In illustrating the good that a volunteer can do, Thompson mentioned Gordon Storrs, a member of the Log Cabin Republicans and former legislative hopeful who had worked on Gov. Jon Huntsman, Jr.’s campaign for office. In February, Huntsman drew widespread support as well as criticism for publicly stating that he is in favor of the Common Ground Initiative, and civil unions for gay couples. “You never know the relationships that can be created if you serve in a campaign and believe in the person who’s running,” said Thompson. Overall, he told those gathered to keep talking about the issues: by coming out, volunteering at community festivals, or writing letters to local newspapers. “People talk about what they’re told about, so let’s tell them,” he said. In closing, Thompson challenged the audience to find five people and five businesses who are not currently common ground supporters and talk to them about coming onboard. The more people who support Common Ground, he said, the more pressure legislators who voted against the bills this session will feel to rethink their votes. Ultimately, he encouraged people to “stay engaged and enthusiastic,” and not to feel discouraged by defeat. “No other community, nowhere in a red state, is doing the work this community is doing around this issue,” he said. “We have the opportunity to offer hope to organizations in Alabama, Oklahoma, Arkansas, that it can be done here.” For more information on Common Ground visit equalityutah.org.
‘Deseret News’ Editors Demoted Over Gay Stories On Feb. 24 the Deseret Morning News demoted two editors, reportedly for their resistance to pulling or editing stories about controversial topics — including Proposition 8 and gay rights — to be more “acceptable” to LDS readers. According to The Salt Lake Tribune reporter Glen Warchol, Deseret’s assistant managing news editor Chuck Gates and business editor Julianne Basinger were demoted to the post of “special writer” and copy editor, respectively. Deseret News states government editor Josh Loftin told KCPW host Jeff Robinson that Joe Cannon, the paper’s editor-in-chief, had enacted a policy several months ago to slant or pull controversial stories for “financial reasons, not political reasons.” LDS Church leadership, he added, had no part in his decision. “Basically, he believes the Mormon reader wants news that is sensitive to their beliefs, and if it is not through a Mormon filter necessarily, it’s definitely written with the Mormon reader in mind,” he said. “It only applies to a small, but significant, portion of the news we cover.” This portion, said Loftin, includes
such hot button topics as gay rights, Proposition 8 and state liquor laws. The changes, he added, could come in the form of comments (for stories on liquor laws) on how to “rephrase the church’s position on these things — their often cryptic position” to actually not running a story “because it as not written with the proper tone.” “Or as in the case of Proposition 8 [not running a story] because it [reported on] accusations or criticism of the LDS Church’s stance on that,” he said. Loftin told Robinson that he did not doubt that Cannon was acting strictly to keep the newspaper financially viable in a time when newspapers across the country are facing financial hardship. “He honestly believes this is the way to save the newspaper,” he said. “But in doing so, he has made the decision that saving the newspaper means sacrificing the value of the newspaper.” Cannon’s takeover of the paper in 2006 stirred controversy because of his past role as Republican state party chairman and lobbyist and his lack of any newspaper experience. When asked how the Deseret News’
staff had responded to these policies, Loftin said there had been “significant battles with Joe Cannon ... about journalistic ethics and standards.” And when the announcement of the editors’ demotions hit the news office, Loftin’s government reporters and political editor Bob Bernick decided to pull their bylines — the information identifying the writer of an article — from their stories. The bylines were replaced with “By Deseret News Staff.” “We decided as a show of support for Chuck and Julianne, as well as a protest of the decision [to demote them],” said Loftin. He noted that reporters were not punished for the move. Although the paper is owned by the LDS Church, the Deseret News has long been regarded by many as an unbiased daily newspaper. And Loftin said he was sad to see that changing. “I think we were carving out our inches as the best daily newspaper in the city, and that is being undone to become the best Mormon newspaper in the city,” he said. “We all have the goal of making it a respectable newspaper ... and part of that is reporting news that maybe isn’t something Mormon readers necessarily want to see or read, but it’s probably important that they do,” he added. The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation said that Can-
non’s policies could harm the paper in the long run. “In a move that could lead to the stifling of fair, accurate and inclusive coverage of LGBT and other issues, the Deseret News runs the risk of abandoning basic journalistic standards necessary to remain recognizable as a credible media source,” wrote Western Media Field Strategist Adam Bass in a statement.
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Q mmunity Power and Privilege Monologues
Equality Utah, Sutherland Debate Gay Rights Local gay rights group Equality Utah and the Sutherland Institute, a conservative think tank, squared off in a public debate on gay marriage that touched upon California’s Proposition 8, gay marriage, whether homosexuality and gender identity are choices or innate and Equality Utah’s Common Ground Initiative, four failed legislative bills targeted at giving more rights to gay and transgender Utahns. The Sutherland Institute invited Equality Utah’s staff in January to debate, which Equality Utah accepted. The debate itself took place on the night of Feb. 19 in the University of Utah Law School’s Sutherland Moot Court Room, in front of a full house. Team Equality consisted of Equality Utah Manager of Public Policy Will Carlson, University of Utah law professor Clifford Rosky, therapist Lee Beckstead and openly gay Sen. Scott McCoy, D-Salt Lake City. “Does disagreeing on one thing mean not agreeing on anything?” asked Carlson in his opening remarks. He went on to discuss the importance of the protections sought by the Common Ground Initiative, including inheritance rights, the ability to sue in cases of a partner’s wrongful death, and protections from housing and job discrimination for gay and transgender people. He objected as well to the Sutherland Institute’s argument that passing these and other protections would lead to gay marriage in Utah. Noting that Utah’s constitution forbids gay
Former Utah Rep. LaVar Christensen, BYU’s Shirley Cox and Bill Duncan, director of the Sutherland Institute Center for Family and Society listen as Paul Mero speaks at a debate over gay marriage. marriage, Carlson said: “This slippery slope argument is false, and it belongs on a playground. The truth is bills in the Common Ground Initiative are not about special rights, but about protecting each other.” Team Sutherland consisted of Sutherland Institute president Paul Mero, former Utah representative LaVar Christensen, BYU College of Family field education director Shirley Cox and Bill Duncan, director of the institute’s Center for Family and Society. In speaking for his team, Mero thanked Equality Utah for accepting the invitation to debate. Although he said his opening remarks would be “intentionally provocative” in order to “push this debate,” he added that he and the Sutherland Institute respected Equality Utah. “But the fact remains, we don’t just disagree with the Common Ground Initiative, but every reason behind it,” he said. Mero called sexual orientation, the idea of gender identities other than cisgender male and female, and the belief that families are based on love, not “intergenerational ties” “illusions.” He also criticized Equality Utah for conducting an “unprofessional poll”
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to determine that the majority of Utahns support protections for gay and transgender people. “Your initiative feeds on the notion that you have these magical rights to do whatever you want,” he said. In alternating rebuttals and question-and-answer periods, the two sides discussed arguments for and against the initiative that have been widely discussed during this legislative session. They included the link between economic stability and stable families (of all varieties); studies on the effectiveness of gay parents; whether homosexual sex is a health risk; Biblical prohibitions against gay sex; and whether or not granting similar rights to gay and transgender people had lead to gay marriage in California. In Equality Utah’s closing arguments, McCoy said all of the Sutherland Institute’s objections still did not address a very real problem: the fact that gay and transgender people have no legal recourse if they are kicked out of their homes, no right to sue if a partner dies from medical malpractice, and no automatic right to inherit a partner’s property. “We have seen nothing more than allegations that we are living in a fantasy world, but I would argue that you are,” said McCoy, who sponsored one of the Common Ground Initiative bills. “What is an illusion as we have learned tonight is that it’s an illusion that passing the Common Ground bills would lead to gay marriage in Utah.” “What we never hear is an intelligent, honest and compelling [answer] on where they’d draw the line in extending these rights to other people,” Mero said in his closing remarks. He asked if Equality Utah would be comfortable extending legal protections to polygamist families, or a brother and sister in a sexual relationship who had promised not to reproduce. Both teams then took questions from the audience, which expanded on points covered in the debate. Q
The University of Utah’s Women’s Week Celebration committee is now accepting monologue submissions for a performance to be held during the weekly celebration. The theme for this year’s week is “Evolving Equity: Challenging Power and Privilege.” To coincide with this theme, monologues should be centered on writers’ experiences of institutionalized racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism and other forms of societally-sponsored discrimination. Submissions should be less than five minutes in length. Selected monologues will be performed by the writer or by a student performer, if requested. The performance will be held March 27 at the I.J. and Jeanné Wagner Jewish Community Center, 2 North Medical Dr. Deadline: March 6 Info: Mail to Jo Merrill tmerrill@ sa.utah.edu or Kim Hall khall@ sa.utah.edu or Women’s Resource Center, University of Utah, 200 S. Central Campus Drive, Room 411, SLC, UT 84112.
Sexual Violence Survivors The Rape Recover Center, the Utah Pride Center and the LGBTQ Affirmative Therapists Guild of Utah will sponsor two evenings sessions on sexual violence (i.e. rape, molestation, incest, dating violence, sexual abuse and exploitation and other forms of sexual trauma) as it effects gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and questioning people. Topics to be covered will include the impact of sexual trauma on relationships, mental health, and sexuality; how to support a loved one who is a survivor; and resources for survivors and their loved ones. Licensed clinical social workers Jim Struve and Robin Friedman will conduct a session for men on March 12, and Friedman and Donna Hawxhurst, Ph.D. will conduct a session for women on March 26. Survivors, secondary survivors (partners, spouses, family and friends of survivors) and the general public are welcome to attend. When: Men’s session March 12, 6:30–8:00 p.m.; Women’s session March 26, 6:30–8:00 p.m. Where: Salt Lake City Main Library, 210 E 400 S, Meeting Room C. Info: (801) 467-7282 or raperecoverycenter.org. Cost: Free
E-mail: Gays, Anarchists to Attack LDS Conference A bizarre e-mail claiming that up to 200,000 gays and anarchists plan to disrupt the LDS Church’s General Conference in April has been making the rounds on the Internet, much to the dismay of local gays. The e-mail, which KSL reported has been circulating for months, starts by urging recipients to pray for Mormons and for Salt Lake City. The e-mail’s author begins by saying that a friend’s father, who works for the Salt Lake City Police Department, is putting in long hours “doing riot-control training” in anticipation for “an influx of 10,000 to 200,000 Gay [sic] protesters” who have “already ... applied” for permits to protest during General Conference. It then makes the claim that the gays will likely become violent. “But what really worries the police
are that the gay protest groups have aligned themselves with a couple of anarchist groups who make it their goal in life to cause as much trouble as possible,” the e-mail continues. “These are the groups that show up at protests and you have anarchists running through the streets throwing bricks, Molotov Cocktails, and what not, breaking windows, burning cars and businesses, and attacking innocent citizens and by standers [sic]. Their only goal is to provoke a reaction from the police and the citizenry.” SLCPD spokesperson Detective Dennis McGowan told KSL that the training mentioned in the e-mail was nothing more than routine crowdcontrol techniques the department conducts every year. “You know, thanks for the opportunity, though, to get this out to every-
one that, as far as our concern at this point in time, these are rumors and everyone can stand down,” he added. As of press time, no gay groups have applied for permits to march during General Conference weekend. However, an equal rights group called Equalnox had planned to hold an event in Salt Lake City on March 21 in which people of all faiths, religions, races and sexual orientations were invited to rally for universal equal rights. The event was cancelled, organizers say, because they could not get a permit from the city. Local gay rights group Equality Utah denounced the e-mail as fearmongering. Will Carlson, the group’s manager of public policy, said that the only project the local gay community had discussed doing over General Conference weekend was “a service project for at-risk communities.” “We know this is not true, but even if it were, we wouldn’t support it,” he said.
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Cafe Marmalade Offers Up ‘Chris Buttarscotch’ Lattes their sugar can also order the Chris Buttarscotch Be Damned — a caffeinated version of the drink that slyly references the LDS Church’s prohibitions of members drinking tea and coffee. Buttars is a member of the church. Although the Chris Buttarscotch has yet to appear on the café’s menu board, Huerta and Montoya have spread the word to customers, who are lining up to buy. Not surprisingly, it was the most requested drink during the Feb. 20 press conference where Sen. Michael Waddoups removed Buttars from chairing two senate committees for his bigoted remarks. Many locals saw Waddoups’ actions as a slap on the wrist for Buttars. “Everyone was really pissed off, so we all treated ourselves to a Chris Buttarscotch Be Damned. It’s a good celebration drink,” said Huerta. The Chris Buttarscotch will be on the menu for one or two weeks, and then move into the recipe files. However Huerta said that it will still be made on request after that time. So, will we see a White Chocolate Waddoups, a Gayle Ruzicka Rooibos or a Latte-var Christensen any time? “Right now it’s just Chris Buttars, but maybe we’ll start specialty legislative drinks. That’s a good idea,” laughed Huerta. Buttars may always have a sour look on his face. But the new drink bearing his name is pretty sweet. With or without caffeine, the Chris Buttarscotch ranges from $2.50 to $4 depending on how much of Buttars you want.
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Since 2001, Sen. Chris Buttars has driven progressives, gays and anyone with a sense of shame to drink. In 2009 it’s payback time. The Chris Buttarscotch is the newest specialty drink to grace the menu at Café Marmalade, the Utah Pride Center’s downstairs bistro. But it’s not a response to the West Jordan Republican’s now-infamous anti-gay tirade for documentarian Reed Cowan’s camera. Café Marmalade employees Jazz Huerta and David Montoya and customer Drew McGee came up with the idea a few weeks before Buttars called gays and lesbians “probably the greatest threat to America going down.” “We were just sitting around and David was like, ‘we should make a drink called the Chris Buttarscotch,’ and I was like, ‘that’s awesome,’” said Huerta. The trio designed the drink as a giant in-joke for the Senator’s outrageous behavior. Along with the obvious butterscotch, this chai tea drink contains white chocolate, in reference to one of Buttars’ comments that many saw as racist. During the 2008 legislative session, Buttars said of a bill he did not like, “This baby is black ... it’s a dark, ugly thing.” The drink also includes vanilla (“because he wants everyone to have boring, normal sex,” Huerta explained) and pistachio flavored syrup. “It’s a nut, because he’s crazy,” Huerta laughed. “It’s also [a nut that is] hollow and elusive, because he never comes up unless he’s saying something.” Those who like a little sin with
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Businesses Come OUT for Equality Three Salt Lake City businesses have announced their support of an Equality Utah initiative to secure basic legal protections for gay and transgender Utahns. On Feb. 26, Golden Braid Books, Oasis Café and Faustina restaurant, a triumvirate of businesses owned by Joel and Jill LaSalle, became the first in the state to join Come Out, Utah!, a coalition of businesses that support Equality Utah’s Common Ground Initiative. Started as a series of four bills that were roundly defeated in the 2009 general legislative session, the initiative has now become a broader effort to secure such things as domestic-partner health insurance and housing and workplace nondiscrimination protections for gay and transgender Utahns. Joel LaSalle announced the business’ participation in a press conference held in the courtyard between Golden Braid Books and Oasis Café. Until the legislative session’s end on March 12, LaSalle said his businesses would donate 25 percent of their profits to Equality Utah — to help them further their work in passing equal rights legislation in municipalities around the state. “Everyone needs to come together,” he said. “Businesses, people, families. The higher your position in this community, the higher level of courage it will take to come out for these issues.” The press conference included remarks from Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon, who unveiled the county’s new logo, which includes the word “Diverse” on the emblem. Earlier in February, the Salt Lake County Council passed a proposal extending health insurance benefits to non-spousal adult designees of county employees, including same-sex partners. Corroon thanked Equality Utah for launching the Common Ground Initiative. “Those issues they asked us to come together on will make our state a better place to live,” he said. Corroon called the fact that gay and transgender Utahns can still be fired, or evicted from their housing, because of their orientation or gender identity “shameful” and “a disgrace.” “These are not special rights. These are basic human rights for all of us,” he said to loud applause. Openly gay Sen. Scott McCoy also spoke. Arriving late due to legislative
Joel LaSalle, owner of Golden Braid Books, Oasis and Faustina, speaks in support of the Common Ground Initiative
business on Capitol Hill, the Democrat joked that he had nearly received a speeding ticket en route to the press conference. But McCoy was all business when he thanked Salt Lake businesses for “opening another front in [the] battle” for gay rights in Utah. Although McCoy admitted that “it can be crushing” to see bills like his own that would have let a same-sex partner sue in the case of wrongful death die, McCoy reassured the crowd that the bills would someday pass. “You’re on the side of right and doing the right thing,” he said. “Let’s get it done.” In his closing remarks, LaSalle encouraged the crowd not to hate gay foes such as Sen. Chris Buttars, R-West Jordan, who made headlines late last month for anti-gay remarks made to documentary filmmaker Reed Cowan. “We ask you tonight to know that
his hate is immature, uneducated and unfounded, and we should treat it as such,” he said. “There is no more room in this world for hate. We should have pity on him for his lack of depth.” To counter prejudice in people such as Buttars, LaSalle urged those gathered to talk to their families, friends and coworkers about the need for gay rights legislation. “We ask you to come out again and again until this battle is won,” he said. Since Feb. 26, at least 20 businesses from all over the state have ‘come out’ in favor of the Common Ground Initiative. Interested businesses may join their number with a $50 donation to Equality Utah. For this money, their contact information will be listed on Equality Utah’s Web site. They will also receive a decal to put in their storefront window. Q To see a list of participating businesses, visit equalityutah.org.
Diva Las Vegas with ROTC-SLC The Righteously Outrageous Twirling Corps of Salt Lake City is inviting you and your friends to join them in their trip to Las Vegas Pride next month. They have extended their deadline to purchase tickets for the trip in hopes of filling up the bus. The tickets allow non-ROTC-SLC members to hitch a ride with the gayfriendly color guard troupe to sin city April 30–May 3. For the third year in a row the troupe will be performing in the 2009 Vegas Pride Parade in competition for the coveted first place trophy, which ROTC brought home last year. The trip package includes transportation on a charter bus and double-occupancy hotel accommodations at the Plaza Hotel by the Fremont Experience for four days and three nights. The bus trip down will also feature
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bingo hosted by the inimitable Utah Cyber Sluts. Cost is $185 per person, and can be paid in two installments of $92.50. To purchase tickets visit ROTC’s Web site rotcslc.com and click on the Vegas ’09 link. Click the “Buy Now” button to pay with Paypal. The deadline for purchasing tickets is March 15. At press time plenty of seats were still available. Contact Mark Robinette, ROTC SLC assistant director, at (801) 390-3060 or uttrvlguy@hotmail.com with any questions. The schedule for the bus trip is as follows: Thursday, April 30: Leave SLC for Las Vegas Friday, May 1: Night Parade at 8:00 p.m. (ROTC-SLC performs) Saturday, May 2: Pride Festival 11:00 a.m. – 10 p.m.
Pride Community Softball League sign ups have opened for team and individual registration. Sponsorships for teams are also available. Individual players who do not have and are seeking a team should email Eliza Goodman with their name, sex, contact information and positions they can play. Applications should be submitted online. League play will begin with an open house on April 4 and will be held Sundays at Jordan Park’s southwest field, 1060 S 900 W. Deadline: March 6 Info: prideleague.com (“2009 softball registration” link) or pcsl@prideleague.com. If your team needs players contact Eliza Goodman at egoodman@slco.org or (801) 270-7260.
Queer Prom 2009 The Utah pride Center’s youth program, Tolerant, Intelligent Network of Teens, will present Queer Prom 2009: So Excited this April. Queer Prom is an annual event for gay and transgender youth and their straight allies. When: April 18 Where: Salt Lake City Downtown Library, 210 E 400 S Cost: $5 in advance and $100 at the door. Tickets will be on sale soon. Info: bonnie@utahpridecenter. org, (801) 539-8800.
GLBT Marching Band Community activist Dominique Storni is looking for people interested in forming a gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender marching band to perform during the Utah Pride Parade. Storni is looking for musicians who have had some experience in marching band, music teachers familiar with typical marching band instruments (drums, horns, etc.), and donations of sheet music. For those who cannot play an instrument but who have interest in helping, Storni is also in need of a support crew. Info: dominiquestorni@hotmail. com
Ken Garff Boycott Ends A group that opposed California’s Proposition 8 has called an end to a boycott against one of Utah’s largest car dealers. Californians Against Hate called for the boycott two weeks ago because of a $100,000 donation made by Katharine Garff to efforts to pass the controversial measure, which re-banned gay marriage in California. Californians Against Hate was started in July of last year to draw attention to major Proposition 8 donors — those who contributed $5,000 or more to help pass the measure. On Feb. 27, Californians Against Hate announced that they were calling off the boycott after “a wide-ranging and very productive” meeting with CEO John Garff on Feb. 22 with Californians Against Hate founder Fred Karger, as well as an investigation by the California Fair Political Practices Commission into the LDS Church’s non-monetary donations to pro-Prop. 8 campaigns. Karger has dubbed this investigation “Mormon Gate.” According to Karger, a reporter asked him if he would meet with the Garff family while in town. Karger said he would, and was in John Garff’s office within hours. “John Garff and his father, Robert Garff, later met with Utah philanthro-
pist and leader in the national LGBT community, Bruce Bastian,” said Karger. “The purpose of that meeting was to share perspectives and to discuss a variety of issues in an effort to find mutual respect and understanding.” “I believe that both Robert and John left the meeting with a better understanding of my work, the LGBT community, and the emotional significance of the passing of Proposition 8 to our community,” said Bastian. “I believe the Garff family now fully understands how sensitive and important this issue is to our community and to their friends and neighbors.” “I believe we all came away from those meetings with a greater level of mutual respect and understanding,” said John Garff. Bastian added that he was “grateful to the Garff family” for their willingness to listen “to the community in which they reside and do business.” Although Californians Against Hate has dismantled the Web site for the Ken Garff boycott, it is still urging boycotts of other companies owned by Proposition 8 major donors. These include A-1 Self Storage and Manchester Hotels, three hotels owned by San Diegan Doug Manchester. For more info: californiansagainsthate.com.
Rachel Maddow to Speak in SLC In the past, the Utah chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union has invited many illustrious guests to speak at its annual Bill of Rights Celebration, including columnist and commentator Molly Ivins and Daniel Ellsberg, the former military analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers to newspapers during the Vietnam War. This year, openly lesbian MSNBC pundit Rachel Maddow will join their ranks. Since August last year, Maddow has hosted the news show bearing her name that runs after pundit Keith Olbermann’s popular Countdown. According to Anna Brower, the ACLU of Utah’s development director, the organization was interested in getting Maddow to speak in part because of her past work with the ACLU’s National Prison Project (a program focusing on the treatment of HIV-positive prisoners) and her appearance on a panel at a 2008 ACLU conference. The panel was titled “Looking Ahead: Political Realities of a Post-Bush America” and also featured authors Ariana Huffington and Glen Greenwald. As Brower explained it, an ACLU Utah board member who “knows somebody who knows somebody” got her in touch with Maddow, who accepted the invitation. “She’s out, she makes no qualms about that, no attempts to hide that,”
said Brower. “It’s a part of her identity and work, but at the same time she’s extremely committed to The Bill of Rights and civil liberties issues. This is just her passion, civil liberties.” Shortly after accepting, Maddow signed on with MSNBC to do her own show. But happily, said Brower, Maddow said she negotiated to keep her prior speaking commitments. “She won’t really have an opportunity to do this again,” she said. When asked what Maddow would speak about during her half-hour address, Brower guessed “probably about the civil liberties landscape now, about the new [presidential] administration, and what work needs to be done given what has happened in the last eight years” under George W. Bush. “We’re going to give her a lot of flexibility to decide what she wants to talk about,” she added. The evening will also feature other programming items, such as recognition of this year’s ACLU of Utah’s Student Activist Scholarship recipients. The Bill of Rights Celebration will be held at the Salt Palace on May 16. Tickets are $100 or $60 for individuals living on a fixed income. For more information or to purchase tickets visit acluutah.org/BOR09.htm.
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Warm Weather is Coming!
Q Views Guest Editorials Just Breaking Ground by Mike Thompson Equality Utah
A
comment made by
Rep. Christine Johnson during the noontime Common Ground Interfaith Service keeps ringing in my head: progress is the result of many small steps built one on another. For the very first time, we had a coordinated, pro-active, multi-bill effort to secure basic rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Utahns and their families. Progress. An energetic, enthusiastic, engaged community of people pursued common ground. Progress. I won’t sugarcoat it or pretend. To watch each of our bills fail in committee was tough, really tough. Yet, we have made progress and we will continue to work until our progress produces a fair & just Utah. Speaking of progress, by a vote of 6-3, Salt Lake County Council approved extending health insurance, dental coverage, extended funeral leave, life insurance and a variety of other protections to unmarried partners of County employees. It took a few years but thanks to Councilwoman Wilson’s leadership, that progress produced results! Throughout this legislative session, Equality Utah has continually stated, the Common Ground Initiative is not a 2009 Legislative Agenda. In fact, we’re just breaking ground on Common Ground! Q
Living in Fear Because of Who You Are by Joe Solmonese,
Human Rights Campaign
E
very day, someone you care
about crosses the street, takes the long way to class, or wonders if this is the day the taunts turn to blows. Every day, somewhere in this country, an LGBT person confronts the real threat of violence. Yet even though anti-LGBT hate crimes are on the rise, there are no federal protections against these attacks. But that can change, if we all act urgently.
The Matthew Shepard Act would finally cover LGBT people under our nation’s hate crimes laws. Hundreds of HRC activists will be on Capitol Hill Thursday talking with their lawmakers about this bill – will you back them up with an email? Tell Congress to pass the Matthew Shepard Act – take action before our big lobby day Thursday! A battle is brewing in Congress over hate crimes. Two years ago, the House and the Senate both passed this bill. If George W. Bush’s veto pen hadn’t stood in the way, it would surely be law today. 2009 marks our best chance yet to get this bill signed into law. But this is far from a done deal. Our opponents will not be silent and they will try to drag this debate into the gutter. At this very moment, they’re gearing up to bombard Congress with bald-faced lies about the Matthew Shepard Act. They will claim that the bill will criminalize pastors and their sermons, endanger Christianity, and end free speech – yet the bill expressly protects speech and only applies to physical violence. (Stay tuned for a big new campaign we’re launching later this week to combat the lies of anti-LGBT groups.) We can’t let lawmakers be intimidated or misled by this despicable propaganda. We will lose votes unless YOU make sure Congress under-
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stands the truth about this bill. Take action now. The manipulative campaign to pass Proposition 8 was a bitter reminder: opponents of equality are well-funded, well-organized and they fight dirty – especially when their backs are to the wall. By flexing our grassroots muscle today, we’ll give America’s leaders the support they need to stand strong on our full 2009 agenda: a fully inclusive hate crimes bill, a fully inclusive Employment NonDiscrimination Act (ENDA), benefits for same-sex couples, increased HIV/AIDS funding, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and more. The hate crimes debate will set an important precedent for those debates as well. And it all starts Thursday, when we lobby Congress face to face. The road to full equality starts here. It starts today. And we need you on board. Tell Congress: you can’t leave LGBT people out of hate crimes protection. Then send a quick note to friends and family asking them to take action, too. We must create a groundswell by Thursday when we will be meeting with representatives and senators about the bill. Thank you so much. I hope this is the first of many 2009 legislative battles we will win together. Q
QSaltLake Welcomes Letters from Our Readers Love a story written in this issue? Hate one? Did a columnist piss you off or tickle your funny bone? Want to say something to the world? Send a letter to the editor — we love feedback! Please keep your letter under 300 words and email it to letters@qsaltlake.com. Your letter, if published, may possibly be edited for length, suitability or libel. No one wants to go to court.
Queer Gnosis Debating Pig-Sex at the Capitol by Troy Williams
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I had three throw down arguments with Gayle Ruzicka at the Capitol. The first was friendly. I thanked her for uniting the gay community. And I gently chided her by mentioning the fact that everything is trending in our favor — and that eventually the Supreme Court will strike down DOMA laws across the nation. She said, “Over my dead body.” With a big smile on my face I responded: “Gayle, I’m going to live longer than you!” She laughed nervously and told me how much she still loved me. You see, Gayle and I have history. For a short while after I returned from my LDS mission I volunteered for the Eagle Forum. It’s true. It was my way of suppressing my nascent sexuality. Since we all know how brain-fucked newly returned missionaries are, please don’t judge me too harshly; I eventually got over it all. But yes, for a time I was pals with Gayle. She always reminds me how much she loves me. But then a few days later she sent out an emergency e-mail to her phone tree detailing the dark confrontation she had with a “very militant homosexual” who was intent on pushing a radical gay agenda. So the next day I went back up to the Capitol to confront Gayle again. She was all excited to see me, as usual, but we threw down again. I berated her for using fear-mongering to rally her troops. She explained that yes, I was the most militant homosexual she had met, and that I should take it as a compliment. To which, OK, I conceded. She again reminded me how much she loved me. The next time we threw down was on the morning of Feb. 20, when I attended Sen. Waddoups’ press conference on the fate of Chris Buttars. Now, being the producer of RadioActive, I’m supposed to have all of those objective, journalistic, impartial ethics. But given the nature of the show, I’ve always considered myself an activist first and a journalist second. So when it was clear that Waddoups was not going to engage the press with meaningful answers to our questions, I started to feel my inner rage boiling. Then all my objectivity flew out the window and I became über gay activist as I started n two weeks
demanding that Senator Waddoups address the gay community. He wouldn’t look me in the eye. He stuttered and stumbled over his words and quickly rushed out of the room. I plopped myself down next to Gayle in the Senate chambers. She was wearing her Chris Buttars pin. I said: “So let’s talk about ‘pig-sex,’ Gayle. Do you know what that is?” “Troy, you know me, I don’t expose myself to pornography ever.” I responded, “Gayle, the man you support is lying about the gay community. He’s lying about me. He is
It’s a brand new day for queers across the country. It’s a bold new day in Utah. telling people that gay men engage in ‘pig-sex’, where they defecate on each other during sex. Did you know he is saying these things?” “Troy,” she said, “I have never heard him say these things.” “We have the audio, Gayle. You are supporting a man who is spreading lies about the gay community.” By this time, the reporters were all around us snapping pictures. “Troy, we are in the Senate chambers. This is not an appropriate place to have this conversation.” “Oh, we’re having it, Gayle, right here, right now,” I said. She was becoming visibly uncomfortable. “If you’d like to talk about this privately, I’d be more than happy.” “Nope, Gayle, Buttars started this. He is lying about us. You are supporting a liar, Gayle. Lying is immoral. Your god doesn’t speak well of liars.” She was slowly trying to work herself away from me — but the room was packed. She shouted out to the others: “Troy here used to volunteer
for Eagle Forum.” “That’s right, Gayle!” I responded. “I learned everything about activism from you.” And then she marched out. This time she didn’t say she loved me. That’s the best of my memory. I think defiance and outrage is good. Buttars, Ruzicka, LaVar Christiansen and Paul Mero are all on notice. It’s time we all got in their faces. The gay community is no longer going to cower and sit quiet. We will no longer allow them to disparage our community with lies. We will no longer be silent, timid or afraid. It’s a brand new day for queers across the country. It’s a bold new day in Utah. The old power guard is shifting. Even the LDS Church wants to distance itself from Buttars. Governor Huntsman supports the Common Ground Initiative. Salt Lake County is supporting gay employees. It’s happening. After I left Gayle I walked down to talk to the America Forever gay-haters — the ones who ran the anti-gay ad in the Salt Lake Tribune. They stood together with gags over their mouth protesting the suppression of their hate speech. I thanked them for their ad. I told them that I never wanted them to be silent. And that I hoped they would place even more ads in the paper. And I told them, by the way, the picture of those two guys kissing was “way hot!”. The more Gayle, Buttars and America Forever keep up their hate rhetoric, the better it is for all of us. I don’t want Buttars removed from power. I want him right where he is. We could not have asked for a greater blessing. As long as he keeps opening his mouth, we become stronger. The more he spreads his toxic bile, the more mainstream Utah will say, “Wait a minute. This is not how I think or feel.” Don’t be discouraged. It’s all for the higher good. And it’s all going to be OK. Everything is trending in our favor. It’s a great day to be queer in Utah. Let’s just keep celebrating our lives and loving each other. Social change is happening right now. We are stronger than we sometimes feel, so let’s have a little faith and enjoy the ride. Q Troy Williams blogs at queergnosis.com.
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Ruby Ridge The Vagina Idealogues by Ruby Ridge
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K, muffins, I am not such a complete bastard that I won’t give credit where credit is due. Rep. Carl Wimmer, despite being a hardcore right-wing ideologue, did a very cool thing at the capitol last month by removing the America Forever activists who were insulting Rep. Christine Johnson. It starts to restore my shaken faith in Utah politics and civil behavior, so kudos to him. It also doesn’t hurt that he looks just like a University of Wyoming lineman I dated way back in the day, but I digress. QSaltLake exposed the ragtag “America Forever” protesters as failed immigration activists who found that being anti-gay was far more profitable. Despite their grandiose name they are essentially a handful of people with an incoherent Web site (don’t even get me started about their abysmal newspaper
ads), who seem to crave media attention like the freaks that surrounded the O.J. Simpson trials. The more I think about this tacky “group” of protesters, the less I understand their logic. Because technically Christine Johnson isn’t wasting vaginas, but Scott McCoy sure as hell does! Why didn’t they go after him? Out of curiosity, I took a peek at the America Forever Web site. It was pretty appalling in that “we talk directly to God and speak for him, but we can’t figure out how to use spell check” kind of way. Seriously, petals, their rambling manifestos would bore Ted Kaczynski to death. But just like the couple running the Standard of Liberty Web site, they know how to inflate their importance to make it sound like they represent hundreds of thousands of people. Maybe there’s a
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lesson there for us? I find it interesting that the America Forever crew quote a 20-year-old rant from ultraconservative Representative William Dannemeyer of California. What makes that so intriguing, cherubs? Well, A) It’s so discredited and outdated it’s laughable, and B) Paul Mero of the Sutherland Institute was Dannemeyer’s press secretary (and also super-antigay Orange County Representative Robert Dornan’s chief of staff). These guys were so far right of the
Technically, Christine Johnson isn’t wasting vaginas, but Scott McCoy sure as hell does far right fringe that it’s scary these groups even bring up their memory. Many of you are too young to remember California’s LaRouche Initiative (Prop 64), which wanted AIDS declared a communicable disease so that everyone with AIDS could be rounded up and put on a prison island. Well, Dannemeyer and company were the guys who actually supported it. LaRouche later went to jail for fraud, but trust me kittens, at the time, Prop 64 made today’s Prop 8 push look trivial. In fact, my very own Mr. Ridge was arrested for ripping up LaRouche petitions outside a supermarket in Los Angeles. He went to court fully prepared to go to jail, but ended up doing 100 hours of community service visiting AIDS patients at L.A. County Hospital. What can I say? He was young, impulsive and had no priors, and I couldn’t be more proud. But back to present day. I have to wonder how many phony conservative fronts like America Forever and Standard of Liberty are out there? These groups comprise a tiny number of people, yet they get all sorts of media exposure with their inflammatory talk radio rhetoric and made-for-V stunts. But what I really want to know, pumpkins, is how many of them are just shills for the more extreme agendas of the John Birch Society and the Sutherland Institute? Enquiring minds want to know! Ciao for now, babies! Q You can see Ruby Ridge live and in person at 3rd Friday Bingo every third Friday of the month at 7:00 p.m. at First Baptist Church, 777 S 1300 E in Salt Lake City. You may worship her by bringing offerings of incense and zero trans-fat snack foods.
Snaps & Slaps SNAP: Buttars-Palooza Since Proposition 8 became California law, we at QSaltLake have lost track of the number of gay rights rallies, protests and demonstrations our community has held. While we’re glad to see the community be so active, we’re just as glad to see a damn big party once in a while. Especially when the damn big party appropriates Buttars’ name to talk about real threats to our community (such as institutionalized racism, climate change and economic inequality). Partying while being socially responsible? Why can’t every day be like this?
SLAP: Stupid Mormon E-mail Forwards It’s just too easy to administer a verbal slap to Sen. Chris Buttars, whenever he shoots his mouth off about gays, Brown vs. Board of Education or “dark, ugly black babies.” It’s also too easy to slap his Republican enablers for saying they agree with “some” of Buttars’ anti-gay statements, but spinelessly refusing to say which ones. So instead we’d like to slap the clown(s) responsible for composing the terror-mongering and blatantly false e-mail about the hoards of queers (anywhere from 10,000 to — get this — 200,000!) descending on Utah to disrupt LDS General Conference ... with a little help from some “anarchist groups,” the kind who throw “bricks, Molotov cocktails, and what not.” And here we thought that bearing false witness against one’s neighbors was anti-Christian. Seriously, guys. Twohundred thousand queers and their anarchist buddies? Who somehow managed to get permits from Salt Lake City to blow shit up? If you’re going to panic about something, make sure it actually makes enough sense to deserve panic.
SNAP: Out Businesses Proving once again that Utah is ahead of its elected representatives, businesses across the state have thrown their support behind Equality Utah’s Common Ground Initiative — which is now a long-term plan to gain more rights for gay and transgender Utahns. Spearheaded by the triumvirate of businesses Golden Braid Books, Faustina, and Oasis Café, Out businesses now include cleaning services, grocers, salons and web designers — many of which are not gay owned. Bravo to these courageous businessmen and women for coming out in support of justice. Readers, be sure you come out, too, and support them with your pocketbooks.
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Lambda Lore Same-Sex Marriage in Utah by Ben Williams
hirty-three years ago, the
Salt Lake Tribune editorial board did something they do not espouse today: they endorsed marriage between same-sex couples. Although, to be fair, the board probably was not endorsing same-sex marriage, so much as saying that there was no impediment to such matrimony in Utah. On Tuesday, Jan. 6, 1975, two women applied for a marriage license in Salt Lake County. The County Clerk’s office turned the couple away and referred them to the Salt Lake County Attorney’s office for a ruling. However, the women did not seek out a decision on whether they could get a license. Instead, they must have contacted the Tribune, who then contacted the attorney’s office the following day. According to the newspaper, a spokesman in the Salt Lake County Attorney’s office said, “Utah statute does not specifically prohibit marriage between members of the same sex.” On the basis of this comment, the Salt Lake Tribune executive editor wrote an editorial on Jan. 8 saying, “Two women who had applied for a marriage license in Salt Lake County probably should have been issued one, according to Utah law.” The Tribune did not mention the women’s names, but they may have been Camille Tartagila and “Shirley,” two lesbians who had their marriage publicly acknowledged in the November–December 1975 issue of the Gayzette, edited by Babs DeLay. This wedding announcement is the first I can find for a same-sex couple in Utah. In it, the couple is just referred to as Camille and Shirley, because while same-sex marriage might not have been illegal in Utah in 1975, sodomy certainly was. The wedding was held at a gay bar called The Rusty Bell, located at 996 S. and Redwood Road. Owners Paul Douglas, Mack Hunt and Jim Beveridge had just opened the tavern the previous July. This location would become more noted for being the home of the premier lesbian bar in the 1980s, Puss N Boots. Rev. Bob Darst, who had just resigned from the Grace Christian Church on Halloween of 1974, agreed to perform the ceremony. Grace Christian Church had splintered from the Metropolitan Community Church of Salt Lake City two years earlier, and had a membership of nearly 50 at the time of the wedding. The Rusty Bell’s owners as well as Camille and Shirley may have been members or had some kind of association with the church, since The Rusty Bell held fundraisers for the church. Camille and Shirley were engaged for over a year when they were married on Nov. 20, 1975, in a double ring ceremony. “Marty,” a member of the first Imperial Court of Utah (later the Royal Court of the Golden Spike Empire) as “Queen of the Realm” was “best man,” and “Hilda” was matron of honor. The Gayzette reported that “Shirley wore a white satin gown of her own design and Camille wore a baby blue pants suit.” After the exchanging of vows, a reception was held “immediately afterwards with an abundance of champagne and wedding cake.” The article went on to say that the ceremony was not illegal since “No marriage license was required as the state of Utah does not recognize gay marriages as
yet.” Shirley then stated, “To us the vows are as legal as any other marriage ceremony. The license makes no difference to us because we take our marriage vows very seriously.” While the article also stated that the wedding between Shirley and Camille “was the first wedding to be held at The Rusty Bell since the bar opened,” it may have been the only one. No other weddings have been found to have occurred. Camille Tartagilia went on to become Prince Royale III Camille of the Imperial Court of Utah with “Marita Gayle” her Princess Royale. I suspect that Marita Gayle was her “best man” at the wedding. An
interesting note: Tartagilia was also involved in gay activism and a member of Women Aware, the group that helped organize the boycott of homophobe Anita Bryant at the Utah State Fair. As time went on, The Rusty Bell, which was also the home of the first coronation of the Royal Court of the Golden Spike Empire, closed and reopened as Puss N Boots in 1981. Today the location is home to K & K African Market, “specializing in African and Middle Eastern groceries” and The Outer Rim, “an all-ages music venue.” Mack Hunt would go on to open a series of bars in the 1980s, most notably Back Street — which is now a burnt out hulk at 108 South 500 West. Its last incarnation was Club Ice across from the Gateway. Paul Douglas died in 2005 as I believe Jim Beveridge did. But some things never change. Some 33 years later, Utah still does not legally recognize same-sex marriage. But we can optimistically add, “as of yet.” Q
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Bullshattuck The Emperor is Out of the Closet, but Has No Clothes
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by Ryan Shattuck
had that same dream agaIn
last night. No, it wasn’t the dream where my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. Nor was it the dream where Jake Gyllenhaal and I have sex in a big bowl of pudding. Rather, it was the dream where I return to high school — on purpose — and deliver a speech at my graduation in front of a crowd of thousands. I look down, and I’m not wearing pants. Then my shirt disintegrates and I am standing there completely naked, in front of everybody. Standing up in public, only to be embarrassed by one’s vulnerability. Good thing that never happens in real life. Right? Am I Right? It’s probably difficult to see, but I just raised my shoulders as I said this, much like a New York taxi driver. At this moment, the gay community finds itself caught up in one of the most important civil rights battles it has faced in recent history — that of gay marriage. Many of us are doing work behind the scenes: by donating money, e-mailing our friends and family about why gay marriage is important to us, and — most importantly — updating our Facebook statuses. A select few are at the forefront of this battle organizing rallies, appearing on the nightly news and acting as the public face for the modern gay rights movement. But wait a minute. What exactly
is marriage? And why exactly do we want it? Any straight couple who has been married for many years will agree that marriage isn’t just hospital visitations, writing wills, changing last names and other fun pastimes. Marriage is also a lot of hard work. It requires commitment, responsibility and unfortunately ... having sex with just one person. Wait, what? Mono ... mono ... monogamy? Hold on, let me grab my dictionary. Unfortunately, many in the gay community — both in Utah and elsewhere — have forgotten why, exactly, we want marriage. We know that we want marriage, but only if doesn’t involve that whole ‘sacrifice’ thing. We convince ourselves that monogamy is heteronormative, and that just because we’re engaged or married to someone, that doesn’t mean we can’t sleep with as many people as we want. At the same time, we continue to be surprised that America has not fully embraced the idea of non-monogamous marriage for gay men. C’mon Straight America. It’s not as if we’re involved in bathroom trysts, hooking
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up on Manhunt, or having anonymous SM and WS sex with PNP! I may have just revealed way too much information about myself. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not naive enough to believe that monogamy is for everyone, or that open marriages cannot work. I certainly believe that the modern human being is far too complicated to be shoehorned into the exact same mold as the rest of the six billion people residing on this planet. Nevertheless, I take issue with those who advocate publicly for the institution of monogamous gay marriage, and yet privately have sex with anyone who has a pulse and a penis. It’s as if some of us involved with the gay marriage movement have failed to grasp the simple concept that silent examples are often more powerful than bleating rallies. If monogamy isn’t for everyone, then is it still fair to hold ourselves to a higher standard? Absolutely. Ted Haggard preached against homosexuality, and was rightly scorned for his gay affair; Larry Craig supported the antigay Federal Marriage Amendment, and was justifiably mocked for his bathroom rendezvous; Gayle Ruzicka claims to protect the ‘traditional’ family, and was therefore criticized for failing to protect her own son from drugs and death. Those who talk the talk are consequently required to walk the walk. Simply put: If we want marriage, then should we then not prepare ourselves for marriage? Anti-gay opponents constantly look for every crevice they can find
We continue to be surprised that america has not fully embraced the idea of nonmonogamous marriage for gay men
in the gay community, so that they may drive their wedge into the gay marriage movement. Pun intended. We must refrain from providing them with such a crevice. Pun intended. If we demand that Republicans and those on the Christian Right refrain from hypocrisy, should we not apply such standards to our own community? Even Dustin Lance Black — whom everyone knows I would marry in a heartbeat and a chapel — has inserted himself into a public light as the face of the gay marriage movement. Thus, he must now act the part. Like any other regular person, he undoubtedly has regrets from his past. But there’s no question that many in the gay community await his example, while anti-gay opponents await his vulnerabilities. Neither history nor the equal rights movement have ever been fair or just. When Barack Obama became president, he understood that as the first African-American president in the United States, he was afforded far less room for failure than were his predecessors. This also goes for the first generations of gay men and women to marry. While future generations of gay men and women will be afforded more room for mistakes and imperfections, the gay man and woman of 2009 should view mistakes and imperfections as a luxury. I admit that I’m imperfect, and have been involved with more people than I care to admit. But if I believe in marriage, I too must set a better example than I have during the past 27 years of my life. I mean, 21 years. We never know who is watching. Either way, perhaps it’s time the gay community demonstrate to the United States and beyond that it is mature enough and prepared for marriage — the monogamy, the sacrifices, the everything. Anything less is simply embarrassing. Like delivering a speech in public without pants. That’s a dream you can’t wake up from. Q
Gay Geeks Cities Written on Skin by JoSelle Vanderhooft
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ne of the cooLest thIngs about
writing a column on gay and transgender-related geeky stuff is that sometimes, the people whose work you rave about are not only fellow geeks, but also your friends. Like Catherynne M. Valente. Cat has been a friend for several years now, and she writes some of the most deliciously weird, haunting and unforgettable fantasy novels in some of the most stunningly beautiful prose you’ll ever read. Just what do I mean when I say unforgettable? Well, take her 2005 novel Yume no Hon: The Book of Dreams, which follows the adventures of a mythological and consciousness-hopping Japanese ghost; or 2006’s The Grass-Cutting Sword, a lively and deeply feminist take on Shinto creation stories. Or better yet, take her Orphans Tales duology, two books of intricately interwoven original fairy tales in the tradition of The Arabian Nights and that won her both the coveted James Tiptree, Jr. Award (for science fiction/fantasy exploring themes of gender) and the Mythopoeic Award, for fantasy written on an epic theme. Although her work is certainly epic, Cat isn’t just another Tolkien knockoff in a market overcrowded with Tolkien knockoffs. She is a brilliant young writer whose command of language, character development and all-around style surpasses that of many authors three times her age. And now she has released her sixth novel, Palimpsest: a tale of a sexually transmitted city. I told you her work was deliciously weird, didn’t I? Palimpsest (which also happens to be the name of the city in question) follows the adventures of four people who arrive at its borders through passionate encounters, one night stands, and marital congress: Sei Amaya, a Japanese train enthusiast; November, a lonely California beekeeper; Oleg, an even lonelier New York locksmith; and Ludovico, an Italian bookbinder. Each has had sex with an individual bearing a strange, map-like tattoo on his or her body — a tattoo that represents a section of Palimpsest, a decadent city of sentient trains, clockwork insects, frog-headed women and strange desires which can only be reached in the sleep that follows sex with an ‘infected’ person. When they awaken, the four protagonists
find that they have not only a tattoo on their skin, but an aching desire beneath their skin to return to Palimpsest, and to find others who have been similarly marked. It’s a strange, achingly beautiful world of wonders that, as you may have guessed, is also a damn sexy read. And what I like best about this book is that Cat isn’t one of those writers who is all daring and provocative about sex, just so long as it stays comfortably and squarely heterosexual. In the first 50 pages of Palimpsest, we are treated not only to heterosexual encounters, but lesbian and gay ones as well. Like this one, between November and the woman who first brings her to Palimpsest: the daughter of a Chinese restaurant owner named Xiaohui. November glanced down at the scrap of white paper [from a fortune cookie] in her hand. It read: Is not my daughter sweet? But she was not, November found, when she kissed her outside the restaurant, under the washed-out constellations. She tasted like flour, flour and salt. Their breasts pressed tight together between two fog-dewed overcoats, the ache of it half-painful and half-pleasant. Xiaohui took her to a little apartment above a grocery store, and they fell together just inside the doorframe, awkwardly, like great beasts too eager for niceties. She bit November’s lower lip, and there was blood between them then. “You need me,” said Xiaohui breathlessly, pulling November over her, sliding hands under her belt to claw and knead. “You need me.” This is what makes the book for me, geeky ones. So much erotic writing concerns itself only with the act of sex, and not the act of having sex with an individual who has his or her own particular tastes, movements and personality. Worse, much of it also centers on impossibly beautiful people — just check out the leather-clad asses on the covers of most paranormal romances these days, if you don’t know what I mean. But Palimpsest shows desire for what it really is: something that effects and infects people of all ages, races, orientations and, yes, levels of physical attractiveness. While these facts should elicit a huge “no, duh!” from any thinking, feeling person, you’d think that most publishing houses would have also read the
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memo. Sadly, no, nor the memo explaining that sex between real human beings in all its messiness is actually way hotter to read about than the ruttings of pretty vampire hunters, or pretty vampires, or pretty vampire vampire-hunters, or whatever is making most science fiction, fantasy and horror books with sex at their core spin this month. You see, Palimpsest isn’t a paranormal romance, nor is it erotica (you know, the polite term for a stroke book). Rather, it’s a book about the urgency of desire that is sexy because it is honest about all forms in which desire comes. It’s a book I’m going to re-read and treasure, and I hope that you will, too. Not only because it’s awesome, but because of a sad economic reality: the Tolkien knockoffs and the vampire romances are, quite literally, often a dime a dozen. But truly good novels about sexuality are as rare and precious as ... well, as Palimpsest itself. And those of us who love good, meaningful writing should nurture them and their creators. So put down that soulless epic fantasy and buy Palimpsest. I guarantee you won’t be disappointed. Q
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SPRING ARTS GUIDE In the battered economy we’re facing, it’s even all more important now to support the arts in Utah. And though it’s tough, the arts community is not holding back on continued quality works. This spring choose a few innovative new shows, big broadway hits, incredible dance performances and more to keep the arts aligned and well in Utah.
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Cirque Éloize: Nebbia Always A Carnival by Tony Hobday
Jeannot Painchaud, co-founder of Cirque Éloize, states that the pre-creation process for circus arts takes a year to a year-and-a-half. Then the troupe and crew spend “six months in the studios” preparing sets and costumes, and rehearsing. Keeping within Painchaud’s timeline, it has been since April 2007 that Cirque Éloize has traveled through Salt Lake City. They had performed Rain, the second installment in The Sky Trilogy — written and directed by Daniele Finzi Pasca. Finally, this May, the troupe returns to Kingsbury Hall with the final chapter, called Nebbia, of Pasca’s intimate story. Drawn from Pasca’s childhood, the trilogy opened with Nomade in 2001, a journey of an “endless sky,” reflecting on different cultures and celebrations. And then came Rain, encouraging us to embrace whatever comes from the sky, “sun or rain ... but unexpected things [too]: messages, signs, promises.” Now in the final chapter, Nebbia, Italian for fog, Pasca remembers from his childhood, “The fog would float down ... I’d watch as lovers chased after one another, I’d see camels, elephants, soldiers returning from war. Once I even saw myself float by. I was all grown up, driving a red car. It was often, or should I say always, a carnival ... .” Painchaud adds that Nebbia is about not seeing clearly, but then embracing “your buddy” and meeting friends. “It’s about nostalgia,” he also adds. Cirque Éloize formed in 1993 and according to Painchaud what is special about the troupe is that they pay “big attention to the casting” of the performers. They search for artists with multiple talents or at minimum who are not afraid to “explore all of their talents.” For instance, the company finds great quality in the young artists of Montreal’s National Circus School, a 25-year-old institution, of which Painchaud is also an alumnus. The school has “in the past three years offered new classes like dance and theatre.” There are also voice teachers to help the students with their vocal range. There are many other circus schools around the globe — in Europe, South America, Australia and in the United States — from which the troupe scouts. In Nebbia, 11 performers (of seven nationalities) are on stage at any given time, but “seems like 15 or 20” because they are doing many things together. There are jugglers, and hand-to-hand, trapeze, trampoline and aerial artists. The entire group sings and acts and play instruments, including the flute, violin and flugelhorn. Also, a new apparatus device, created by Daniel Cyr, called the Star, is introdcued in this, the final chapter. And of course, there has to be a clown. “it’s like writing a theatre piece,” says Painchaud. “With a theme. And we’re talking about dance and music. Some people would say we’re ‘close to a musical’ and some would say we’re ‘acrobatic theatre.’” Painchaud believes the success of Cirque Éloize comes from their French-Canadian-roots culture “crossed together” with American and European culture. He also says, “If you were to ask Daniele [Finzi Pasca], he’d say ‘it’s like in a kitchen; if you have the right ingredients, the right spice and if you give it the right amount of love and attention’ it’ll be a success.” Cirque Éloize: Nebbia performs May 2 at 2 p.m. and 7:30pm, Kingsbury Hall, 1395 S. Presidents Cir., UofU. Tickets $19–45.50, 801-581-7100 or kingtix.com.
Even funnier than your wedding night.
The
Marriage of Figaro by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Christopher Larkin, Conductor David Gately, Director
z
March 14 ~ 22 Wedding days can be crazy. Especially in the hands of Mozart. For tickets call 801-355-ARTS or visit utahopera.org.
OPERA SEASON SPONSOR
Shiebler Family Foundation Bill and Joanne Shiebler
M a rch 5 , 20 09 | issue 123 | QSa lt L a k e | 21
SPRING ARTS GUIDE Salt City Kings’ Brotherhood by Tony Hobday
Women who dress up in ‘drag’ as men and perform for the community used to be virtually nonexistent in Salt Lake City until seven years ago. That fact encouraged Sean LiQue to “form an online chat group to see if there were other drag kings in Salt Lake.” She found that there were, and so Sean and four newly-found cohorts joined up to start a performance troupe. “Our first year, we were just an entertainment goup,” says Sean. “We did it to get more people in the bars, to have fun.” Sean felt, however, that it could be more, should be more. Her original conception of a drag group was
because she “needed more.” Today, it has become more, the troupe has become more. They’ve evolved into a dedicated charity group of male impersonators, called the Salt City Kings, who raise funds not only for local organizations but for individuals in emergency need as well. During the months of August through April the Kings perform a monthly show, to packed crowds, raising money for groups like the Utah Pride Center, People with AIDS Coalition and The Cancer Association. The shows are performed alternating months at Paper Moon, Salt Lake’s premier lesbian club, and the Brass
…step ahead.
P r e s e n t s
f o l a c i s u M e h T , s l a c i s Mu sical! the Mu Directed by Jim Christian
Five composers – one production! Don’t miss this satire of musical theatre!
March 4-14 7:30 pm
Box Office 801-957-3322
Tickets on Sale Now! - www.the-grand.org
Rail in Ogden. During their offmonths, May through July, the Kings remain busy by assisting other fundraising groups including the Queer Utah Aquatic Club and the Royal Court of the Golden Spike Empire (Salt Lake’s premier drag queen troupe). They also hold special events for community members in dire need. “Last year during Christmas there was this family that the Court [RCGSE] was helping and when we looked into it, we wanted to participate,” says Sean. They raised additional money as well as donated food and other necessities to the family. And hitting too close to home, the troupe had pulled together and raised an emotionally moving amount of money for Sean’s sister, whose child had passed away. “We raised enough money to pay for the tombstone and $400 in medical bills,” remembers Sean. “If people come to us and show a need for it [money], we’re willing to do it, for sure,” Sean states. However, the Kings refrain from involvement in political and legal fundraising as an “ethical” choice. Currently there are six Kings: Sean LiQue, Drake LiQue, Adam Saddler, Bo Flex, Ben U. Over and Luther Cummington (the newest addition to the group). And then there’s the Kit Kat Girls, the troupe’s life partners and crew. Occasionally you’ll find this cackle of “female-female” impersonators on stage as a group or with their subsequent partners, but in truth, they are the troupe’s greatest behindthe-scenes support. “They make sure are ties are straight,” quips Drake. “They clean up after us and make sure we don’t lose stuff,” adds Sean. The troupe also encourages additional performers to join their “family.” But it’s not a simple task. Just like any job out there, those interested in becoming a King must fill out an application and go through the interview process. They must also perform a 3-minute audition. And finally they go through a 60-day probationary period to see if “they’re a good fit.” They have to have a true understanding of what the group is about, “the ideals behind it.” “This is serious stuff that we do,” says Ben. However, there is a lot of lightheartenedness to them as well. Their weekly meetings “to brainstorm ideas” appear to be more folly than focus, focus, focus. There’s a sense of real comaraderie as they prepare
dinner together, blindly ask for each other’s credit cards and joke with each other. Apparently Ben is a good kisser — Sean and Adam were ordered, during the interview, not to make out with him. In addition, a few of the QSaltLake staff were privy to the unqiue relationship among the Kings at last year’s Southern Utah Pride, as they had neighboring campgrounds. Though little sleep was had that weekend, a great appreciation for the Kings prompted an article. Upcoming performances, closing out the season, are Let’s Duet for Love, Mar. 20 at the Brass Rail and Fight Out the Night, Apr. 17 at Paper Moon. The first, which was performed last month at Paper Moon, includes a number of romantic duets by a King and his Kit Kat Girl. The donations raised go the the Kings’ Fund for the Future, a group holding-account for emergency funding to community members in need. The second, an annual show now in its third year, is Sean’s “baby.” It’s a night of “powerful” and “inspirational” entertainment. “It’s not sappy,” iterates Sean. It’s about encouraging victimized people, as Sean admits like herself, to be survivors. Proceeds raised at this very personal show benefit the Rape Recovery Center. The Kings would like to thank Toni Fitzgerald of Paper Moon for all her support. “It’s [Paper Moon] our home,” says the troupe. To learn more about the Salt City Kings visit myspace.com/saltcitykings.
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SPRI NG ARTS
CALENDAR THEATRE & DANCE Academy of Performing Arts academyofpa.org
Electra and Antigone Apr. 2–6
Ballet West balletwest.org
The Treasures of the Ballet Russes Mar. 27–Apr. 4 Innovations May 14–23
Broadway Across AmericaUtah broadwayacross america.com
Wicked Apr. 8–May 3, Capitol Thtre Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Jun. 9–14, Capitol Thtre
DESERT STAR THEATERS desertstar.biz
American Fork Idol Mar. 26–Jun. 6 James Blonde Agent 7-11 in Casino Real Jun. 11–Aug. 22 Snooty and the Beast Aug. 27–Nov. 7
EGYPTIAN THEATRE COMPANY
egyptiantheatrecompany.org
Barrymore Jul. 9–19
GRAND THEATRE the-grand.org
The Musical of Musicals! The Musical Mar. 4–14 Four Guys Named Jose May 6–16
HALE CENTRE THEATRE
halecentretheatre.org
Phantom Feb. 24–Apr. 18 Treasure Island Apr. 27–Jun. 6 Hello Dolly Jun. 13–Aug. 1 The Scarlet Pimpernel Aug. 11–Sept. 26
ODYSSEY DANCE THEATRE odysseydance.com
Shut Up & Dance Mar. 18–28
PINNACLE ACTING COMPANY
UofU MODERN DANCE dance.utah.edu
Senior Concert Mar. 11–14 & Apr. 2–4
pinnacleactingcompany.com
College of Fine Arts 60th Anniv. Gala Mar. 13
Charley’s Aunt Jun. 11–27
Student Concert Apr. 16–18
Three Days of Rain Aug. 20–Sept. 5
PIONEER THEATRE COMPANY pioneertheatre.org
Dial M for Murder Mar. 20–Apr. 4 Miss Saigon May 1–16
PLAN-B THEATRE COMPANY planbtheatre.org
Di Esperienza Apr. 3–19 And the Banned Slammed On May 30
PYGMALION THEATRE COMPANY
pygmalionproductions.org
The Passion of Sister Dottie S. Dixon May 1–16
REPERTORY DANCE THEATRE
WASATCH THEATRE COMPANY
wasatchtheatre.com
kimball-art.org
Diane Tuft, Lloyd Platt and Sandy Brunvand Currently through Mar. 15 Papel Chicano: Works on Paper from the Collection of Cheech Marin Mar.21–May 3
PHILLIPS GALLERY
phillips-gallery.com
Gary Vlasic Mar. 20–Apr. 10
Charette Mar. 7
Dave Malone May 18–Jun. 12
Chairs Apr. 9–12
SALT LAKE ART CENTER
Surfaces Apr. 23–25
SALT LAKE ACTING COMPANY saltlakeactingcompany.org
End Days Apr. 1–26 Saturday’s Voyeur Jun. 3–Aug. 16
UofU BABCOCK THEATRE theatre.utah.edu
Ring Around the Moon Apr. 1–12
UofU STUDIO 115 theatre.utah.edu
Splendid Heritage: Perspectives on American Indian Art Currently through Jan. 3, 2010 Re-Act Currently through May 10 Art Now: Recent Work of UofU Art Faculty Mar. 11–May 11
Concerts, ART EXHIBITS Opera & Special KIMBALL ART Engagements CENTER
Earl Jones Apr. 17–May 8
ririewoodbury.com
umfa.utah.edu
Sugar Bean Sisters Apr. 30–May 17
rdtutah.org
RIRIE-WOODBURY DANCE COMPANY
UTAH MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS
slartcenter.org
Blindsight: A New Perspective on Painting Currently through May 23 Branded and on Display Currently through May 23 Contemporary Trends in Video Art: Paul McCarthy Mar. 21–May 23
UTAH ARTS ALLIANCE utaharts.org
Todd Powelson and Clarence Bowman Currently through Mar. 28
All in the Timing Mar. 26–29
Chris Dunker Mar. 31–May 2
A Season in Hell Apr. 16–19
Suzan Rasmussen and Lynette Seiter May 5–30
An Evening of Adventure with Keith and Viviane Mar. 27–28 A Hero’s Life Apr. 10–11 Rach 2 with Jon Kimura Parker Apr. 17–18 Beyond Sibelius Apr. 29–30
Utah Festival Opera, Logan ufoc.org
Utah Opera
B.B. King
No Doubt
utahopera.org Marriage of Figaro Mar. 14–22 Don Pasquale May 16–22
Apr. 14 smithstix.com
May 25 ticketmaster.com
Rock the Folk OUT Tour
B-52s
Lily Tomlin Mar. 20, Wendover wendoverfun.com
David Archuleta Mar. 27 ticketmaster.com
Stewart Lewis, Tom Goss and Jake Walden Apr. 24 myspace.com/rockthefolkout
Jun. 20, Wendover wendoverfun.com
Blue October
Don Pasquale May 16–22
Mar. 31 smithstix.com
The Mikado Carmen Camelot Cavalleria Rusticana I Pagliacci Jul. 8–Aug. 8
Fall Out Boy Apr. 13 smithstix.com
Britney Spears Apr. 14 ticketmaster.com
Kingsbury Hall kingsburyhall.org
Bobby McFerrin Mar. 7 College of Fine Arts 60th Anniversary Gala Mar. 13 Arlo Guthrie Mar. 29 Lyric Opera: Little Women Apr. 24–25 Cirque Eloize Nebbia May 2
Salt Lake Men’s Choir
saltlakemenschoir.org
Spring Concert Mar. 14, Rowland Hall-St. Marks Lincoln Campus Summer Concert: Music of the 60s Jun. 13, Libby Gardner Hall
Spyhop productions spyhop.org
Annual Benefit and Auction Apr. 30, Rose Wagner Ctr
Utah Symphony
60th Anniversary Gala Celebration The Arts Unfolding A Gala Performance features outstanding work from all areas of the College of Fine Arts and world premiere of ZIJI, a work commissioned by the College for this event from Emmy and Grammy award winning composer Patrick Williams and internationally acclaimed performer and choreographer Edgar Zendéjas. Join us for this exceptional evening of music, film, theatre, dance, visual art and celebration.
Friday, March 13 8:00 PM, Kingsbury Hall.
utahsymphony.org
An Evening in Vienna Mar. 6–7 Evening at the Pops Mar. 20–21 Cowboy Jamboree Mar. 21
M a rch 5 , 20 09 | issue 123 | QSa lt L a k e | 23
www.KingTix.com www.finearts.utah.edu
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M a rch 5 , 20 09 | issue 123 | QSa lt L a k e | 25
SPRING ARTS GUIDE Playwright Ponders Leonardo’s Sketches and Sex Life by JoSelle Vanderhooft
U
Matthew Ivan Bennett has come a long way in his relatively short career in the theatre. In the last 12 years, he has performed with the Utah Shakespeare Festival’s educational tour (as Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream), has become the resident playwright at Plan-B Theatre Company and written 11 full-length plays (seven of which have been produced or read before an audience). And now at just 31 years old, Bennett has achieved a feat that few American playwrights ever see on the right side of the grave: a professional theatre has devoted nearly an entire season to his work. Three of the four plays in Plan-B’s 20082009 are by Bennett: October’s Frankenstein (an adaptation of the classic horror novel as a live radio drama); Block 8, a play about the World War II Japanese internment camp near Delta, Utah; and April’s Di Esperienza, about the life of Renaissance man Leonardo da Vinci. Bennett will also be one of the playwrights participating in And the Banned Slammed On, an evening of 10-minute plays celebrating the First Amendment. “I’m very flattered they’re doing a full season of my plays,” said Bennett, adding that the season came together somewhat by chance when he was slated to write the radio play, and producing director Jerry Rapier wanted to do Block 8 “because of increasing political consciousness on the internment issue.” To round out the season, Rapier added Di Esperienza (Italian for “Of Experience”), which Plan-B commissioned in 2005. The play, which received a reading in 2008 as part of the Utah Shakespeare Festival’s New American Playwrights Project, depicts Leonardo at the end of his life asking a question that he wrote throughout many of his famous notebooks: Have I achieved anything? Tormented by thoughts that he has finished nothing, the artist is visited by three of his unfinished works: Judas Iscariot, La Gioconda (the Mona tahn
Lisa’s real name), and Isabella d’Este, a noblewoman whose portrait he sketched but refused to complete. Along with stripping away the mythology around Leonardo to reveal the doubting, all-too-human man beneath, Bennett also said he hopes to explore a long-standing historical question about the Italian master’s personal life. Was Leonardo gay? Historians who argue that Leonardo was gay commonly note that the artist never married and surrounded himself with a flock of young, male apprentices. Perhaps most compellingly, at age 24 Leonardo was arrested along with several other young men on charges of practicing sodomy. Although such accusations were regularly made in Renaissance Florence — fueled, perhaps, by the fact they could be made anonymously — and Leonardo was eventually cleared, historians have long cited the incident as evidence of the artist’s homosexuality. As Bennett explains it, Leonardo’s earlier 20th century biographers largely skirted the question of his sexual orientation. “It was difficult to find information about that at all,” he said, noting that one 1920s biography even attempted to whitewash the sodomy accusation. “The biographer was clearly a Christian and wrote it off by saying, you know, clearly an artist who would paint such a gorgeous Madonna couldn’t be a homosexual,” he said. “It was really sort of disgusting the way they chose to ignore it.” In his research into Leonardo’s life, Bennett said he turned largely to two sources: Serge Bramley’s Leonardo: The Artist and the Man, and Leonardo’s famous notebooks of sketches, inventions and dissections, which the artist had intended to publish during his lifetime. “Bramley pointed out what had been pointed out to me before,” said Bennett. “If you look at the notebooks, there are an abundance of drawings of boyish men and the backs and buttocks of men. There are two times as
‘If you look at the notebooks, there are an abundance of drawings of boyish men and the backs and buttocks of men’
26 | QSa lt L a k e | issue 123 | M a rch 5 , 20 09
many [sketches] of men as women in the notebooks.” “And it goes beyond that too,” he continued. “There are some very personal sketches.” These, said Bennett, include a drawing of a male anus next to an opening flower, and a few blatantly scatological pictures — drawn, perhaps, by one of Leonardo’s servants, who sometimes contributed to the notebooks. One of these depicts a penis with legs walking towards a dark hole labeled “Salai,” the nickname (meaning “offspring of Satan”) of Leonardo’s favorite — and frequently trouble-making — protégé who appears in many of his drawings. While Bennett said he deals with the issue of Leonardo’s sexuality in Di Esperienza, he does not answer it definitively. “[Quotes from the notebooks] don’t’ necessarily say ‘yes, Leonardo was a homosexual,’ but rather confuse the whole issue,” he explained, noting that Leonardo once wrote of copulation as “disgusting,” and human genitalia as ugly. “While he explored homosexuality
he might have been asexual,” he said. Ultimately, Bennett hopes that Di Esperienza will help audiences understand the great Renaissance master as first and foremost a human being. “As accomplished as he was, he was preoccupied with self-doubt,” said Bennett. To illustrate his point, he then took a folio of the notebooks from his bookshelf and read one of Leonardo’s musings: “As a kingdom divided against itself is destroyed, so a mind divided among different studies is confused and weakened.” “It’s fascinating that a polymath wrote that,” he said. “He was clearly masterful in so many things, but he must’ve felt it wasn’t good enough. I feel like if people can come to the play and see that Leonardo da Vinci had a little self-doubt, they can feel better about themselves.” Q Di Esperienza will run April 3–19 at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center’s Studio Theatre, 138 W. Broadway. Tickets are $20 and may be purchased by calling (801) 355-ARTS or visiting arttix.org. At press time, April 3 and 4’s performances had sold out.
Fabulous People Jerry Rapier is a Big Homo by JoSelle Vanderhooft
S
ometimes, good things happen on
Jerry Rapier’s bed. After all, that was the place where he was sitting nine years ago when he and Plan-B Theatre Company Managing Director and sound designer Cheryl Ann Cluff decided to make a go of managing the ground-breaking theater company. A few months before, Rapier (pronounced ruh-PEER) had signed on with the then-11-year-old company to direct its production of Brian Friel’s Molly Sweeney. As he tells it, his job became “bigger than that really quickly.” “There was a lot of transition things happening with Plan-B, and before we started rehearsals for the show, it was unsure if the company would stay afloat or be done,” he remembers. At the time, Rapier was working at Park City’s Egyptian Theatre as a producer, a job he held from 1999–2001. The transition from doing musical theatre to being the producing director of a “small, intimate” venue known for doing socially conscious work took some adjusting, he says, but was a challenge he was up for. When Rapier and Cluff took over, Plan-B was struggling along in the basement of Salt Lake Acting Company. One year later, the company had moved to its current home at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center, and its fortunes were taking a turn for the better. How did the two, along with Plan-B’s dedicated actors, designers and crew, turn the company around? “Over the years we had some really touchstone productions,” explains Rapier. “But the first of those was the Laramie Project.” Moisés Kaufman and the Tectonic Theatre Project’s groundbreaking 2000 play about the murder of gay college student Matthew Shepard “really put us on firm footing in many ways and changed the direction of our company,” he says. “It was a strong donor base and extended our audience.” Next, the company took on a number of other groundbreaking plays, including the cult rock musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch, openly gay playwright Terrence McNally’s A Perfect Ganesh and the premier of LDS playwright Carolyn Pearson’s critically acclaimed Facing East, about the struggles of a Mormon couple to come to terms with their gay son’s suicide. “Every few years we seem to find something that touches the nerve of the community at large and brings new people through our doors, which is heartening to see,” says Rapier.
Under Rapier’s direction, the company also took on a new mission: supporting the work of Utah writers and socially conscious plays about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. “It was clear that it was a voice that needed to be heard,” says Rapier. “And the bottom line is I’m a big homo.” Over the last nine years, Plan-B has continued to grow its subscriber list and creative staff. And as any theatre worker will tell you, such growth in a relatively small theater company means more work for everyone — especially the management. Together, Rapier and Cluff oversee all aspects of the company, from fund raising and public relations, to marketing, grant-writing and, of course, play development. And then there are those miscellaneous jobs that, while smaller than selling tickets, are no less important. “Right now I’m checking on the laundry for this evening to make sure the actors’ costumes [for current production Block 8] are fresh so they don’t blow each other off the stage with bad B.O.,” he laughs. When he’s not workshopping a new play or picking up dry cleaning, Rapier can often be found helping out gay rights groups in the state. Currently, he serves on the Human Rights Campaign’s national board of governors, and he has been known to help other organizations with such things as event planning. Sometimes he can also be found in the director’s chair. To date he has directed shows for over a dozen Utah theater companies — including almost all of the Actors Equity companies. He also tries to work with other arts organizations to cross-promote their works. “I believe there can be a lot more of that type of work,” he says. “[Working together is] an area that desperately needs growth and people need to work harder towards. [There needs to be] more awareness of what other companies are doing so we can figure out more ways to support each other.” And sometimes he’s just playing with his Wii. “I’m kind of addicted to Wii tennis at the moment,” he says of the popular video game system. “More time is spent playing Wii than I would admit. I’m supposed to be refined and beyond that, but I have to play a little Wii every day.” But when it comes to putting together a good show, Rapier is all business. “I expect a lot of people who work for us, or people in any show I work on,” he says. “I always want to be sure that the focus is not on the individual actor, but on the show itself and how we’ll bridge the gap between the stage and audience.” “I think too often people forget the audience, and I don’t mean that you need to pander to them, but it doesn’t really matter what you’re doing if you don’t think about the audience,” he continues. “It really takes the audience to bring a play to life.” Q Visit Plan-B online at planbtheatre.org.
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coming up: Bravo Broadway • may 1-2 Season Sponsor:
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M a rch 5 , 20 09 | issue 123 | QSa lt L a k e | 29
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DROP OFF TO: Club Jam The Trapp Club Try-Angles Paper Moon
Utah Pride Ctr Mischievous Cahoots Tavernacle
ENTRIES MUST BE POSTMARKED OR FAXED BY APRIL 15, 2009. DEADLINE! ALL RULES AT QSALTLAKE.COM
30 | QSa lt L a k e | issue 123 | M a rch 5 , 20 09
OTHER
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BEST RADIO STATION
FABULOUS PEOPLE S FABULOUS GROUP Q FABULOUS
NAME
DAY PHONE
BEST ADULT TOY STORE
BARTENDER/BARBACK/SERVER BEST PERFORMER
BEST SOCIAL GROUP
BEST POLITICAL/SERVICE GROUP
BEST QSALTLAKE COLUMNIST BEST STORY OF THE PAST YEAR
BEST RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATION BEST SPORTS ORGANIZATION BEST GROUP TO DONATE TO
BEST IMPROVEMENT QSALTLAKE COULD MAKE:
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$104,000 1 Bed / 1 Bath
1866 W. GOLDRUSH CIRCLE
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650 NORTH 244 WEST
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TAKE A VISUAL TOUR AT: www.marmaladesquare.net
JULIE SILVEOUS
REALTOR® Urban Utah Homes & Estates 801-502-4507 (Cell) 801-595-8824 (Office) julies@urbanutah.com
www.urbanutah.com
801.747.1236 Office 801.755.1794 Mobile 801.303.9075 Direct Fax steven.simmons@chl.cc
LAST CHANCE! YELLOW PAGES CLOSING SOON.
“Now, more than ever, we must know who supports us and we must support them.” —Patrick York, organizer of Utah’s Candlelight for Equality Vigil
Now, more than ever, it is time to advertise directly to Utah’s gay and lesbian community.
Utah’s gay and lesbian yellow pages • 801-649-6663 • info@theqpages.com M a rch 5 , 20 09 | issue 123 | QSa lt L a k e | 3 1
QSaltLake’s ‘Candle-a-bra’ at last year’s Bra Auction at Paper Moon. See Mar. 13
Q A&E Gay Agenda Lucky As A Vapid Lovely In A Rah-Rah Bra by Tony Hobday
I’m agnostic teetering on atheism, and even after watching Bill Maher’s documentary Religulous the other night — I fell off the couch in hysterics, mind you — I am still agnostic teetering on atheism. However, the film did confirm my belief that all too many twolegged sheep aimlessly follow each other in circles. I’m glad I’m not one of them, mostly because wool is too itchy but also because to be one would be boring and nauseating.
5
thursDAY — A unique quality to film and video in the visual arts is the timed sequence, which allows for the construction or deconstruction of narrative. Mexican video artist Ximena Cuevas explains, “My favorite game [as a child] was to climb over fences, to hide under tables, and to listen to the everyday conversations of strangers. From that invisible perspective, I would reconstruct the lives of those people.” In Someone Behind the Door, Cuevas assumes the role of unseen ‘eavesdropper of the visual,’ collecting and combining fragmentary moments from lives as seen through the camera. Hours vary, currently through Mar. 14, Salt Lake Art Center Projects Gallery, 20 S. West Temple. Free, 801-328-4201 or slartcenter.org.
7
SATURDAY — Writing isn’t easy, but it is easy to ramble, insult, plagiarize, whine, sound stupid, defame, ridicule and rant. See how I did that. Anyhoo, like so many wirters I need to Get in Control: Managing the Writing Process. This three-day workshop will help with writing management systems (from writer Don Merrill). The workshop also includes publisher Brenda Rogers, who will share tips on organizing the self-publishing process. 1–3pm, today, 14th and 21st, SLCC Community Writing
Center, 210 E. 400 South, Ste. 8. Fee $40, 801-957-4992 or slcc.edu.
QQ Returning for its fourth year is Repertory Dance Theatre’s Charette, a wildly entertaining dance competition. Guest choreographers including Cynthia Fleming, Aaron Wood and Marilyn Berrett go head-to-head to create the most fabulous dance number in “record time,” which probably means less than 10 minutes since it’s a
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one-night competition. Talk about something not being easy ... I feel like a wussy little writer. 7pm, Jeanne Wagner Theatre, Rose Wagner Center, 138 W. Broadway. Tickets $50, 801-355-ARTS or arttix.org.
8
SUNDAY — If you missed seeing the local short film Vapid Lovelies at Slamdance this year, tonight you’ll have another chance during the Cans-n-Reels Fundraiser. By the way, the movie won the Spirit of Slamdance Award, which is great because it’s a very spirited film directed by cutie-patootie Frank Feldman and stars the charming Chris Lemon, David Luna and Daniel Beecher. Also being screened is Frank’s documentary Natural Family Values. Donations go to Equality Utah, the Pride Center, Utah AIDS Foundation and Bridge.
8pm, Brewvies Cinema Pub, 677 S. 200 West. Suggested Donation $5 and canned food items, 801-870-8352.
13
FRIDAY — Friday the 13th two
months in a row. How creepy! Well, for the gay boys this event may seem a little creepy, too. But it’s a helluva lot of fun. Paper Moon’s Pink Party & Bra Auction is back. People and organizations decorate bras that are then auctioned and the money raised goes to breast cancer research. Plus it’s Toni’s birthday ... yay! So go bid on QSaltLake’s Rah-Rah Bra.
7pm, through Saturday, Paper Moon, a private club for members, 3737 S. State Street. Tickets $6–8, 801-713-0678 or myspace.com/thepapermoon.
QQ Closing out the University of Utah College of Fine Arts’ 60th Anniversary Gala Celebration is The Arts Unfolding. This landmark celebration, Mar. 7–13. features music, dance, theatre, film and visual art. The showcase piece of this evening will be the premiere of Ziji, a commissioned work. Acclaimed composer Patrick Williams will create the score for the 25-minute work choreographed by Edgar Zendéjas. Students from the Departments of Ballet and Modern Dance, and the School of Music will perform the piece. 8pm, Kingsbury Hall, 1395 E. Presidents Cir., UofU. Tickets $10–15, 801-581-7100 or kingtix.com. For full lineup of daily events, visit finearts.utah.edu.
14
SATURDAY — The sequel to The Barber of Seville is Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro. Set in a castle in Seville, Spain in the late 18th century, this is an opera of love triangles. Figaro is set to marry the beautiful Susanna. Susanna is constantly repelling the repeated advances of the Count. A creditor of Figaro, Marcellina, plans to advert Figaro’s nuptials and allow him to settle his debt by marrying her. Cherubino, the page, is lovesick over the Countess. And the Countess seeks to reattract the attentions of her husband. Oh lord!
7:30pm, through Mar. 22, Capitol Theatre, 50 W. 200 South. Tickets $13–72, 801-355-ARTS or arttix.org.
17
TUESDAY — Gene at Try-Angles will be serving corned beef and cabbage in corn-rolls and a bunny suit this St. Patrick’s Day. Club Jam will be offering green beer for a buck. Trolley Wing Company will serve a traditional Irish stew. So let someone make a wish on your four-leaf clover tonight and I guarantee you’ll find a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Don’t Drink and Drive!
UPCOMING EVENTS
MAR. 20 Lily Tomlin, Peppermill Concert Hall, Wendover MAR. 27 David Archuleta, E Center MAR. 31 Blue October, The Depot APR. 13 Fall Out Boy, Saltair APR. 14 Britney Spears, ES Arena JUN. 20 B-52s, Peppermill Concert Hall, Wendover
B Scene by Tony Hobday
Here are the top picks for happening events that if you skip out on, you’re not a commie homo-loving son-of-a-gun as you should be, and that’s just plain rude of you. So here are some homo-loving events.
14
SATURDAY — What can I say about the Salt Lake Men’s Choir besides that these choir boys are not as innocent — well some, like Dennis McCracken, outright don’t claim to be — as they may want you to believe. The SLMC Spring Concert will certainly get you in the mood for spring, as well as confession. The spring concert has an intimate feeling to it with a number of traditional classical pieces. But as usual some of the classical numbers will have the Dennis McCrack-up twist to them. And in light of the current legislative session, I’m sure they will add some interesting Buttars-spread lyrics. Their spring concert, again this year, also hits the road to sunny St. George. I’ve been a SLMC roadie before, but Dennis put a quick end to that ... and that’s all I’m allowed to say about it. 7:30pm, Rowland Hall-St Marks Lincoln Campus, 946 E 800 S. Tickets $15, 1-800-838-3006 or saltlakemenschoir.org.
Save the Date Major Events of the Community april 17, 2009 Day Of Silence dayofsilence.org
June 5–7, 2009 Utah Pride utahpride.org June 20, 2009 HRC Utah Gala hrcutah.org June 25–28, 2009 Utah Arts Festival uaf.org
april 18, 2009 Queer Prom utahpridecenter.org
July 24–26, 2009 Utah Bear Ruckus utahbears.com
april 24, 2009 Rock the Folk OUT Tour myspace.com/rockthefolkout
August 1–2, 2009 Park City Arts Festival kimball-art.org
August 7–8, 2009 Redrock Women’s Music Festival, Torrey redrockwomensfest.com August 19, 2009 Equality Utah Allies Dinner equalityutah.org August 30, 2009 Center’s Golf Classic utahpridecenter.org October 17, 2009 PWACU Living with AIDS Conference pwacu.org Email arts@qsaltlake.com for consideration to be included in Save the Date.
18
WEDNESDAY — The annual three-program repertory showcase, beautifully called Shut Up & Dance, returns for yet another year of new, high-energy artistic works. Program One includes a returning favorite The Can Can Club and Degrees of Separation. Program Two has a montage of eclectic dance pieces called Dancescapes and a world premiere piece called Interruptions. Program Three is a modern reworking of a classic ballet called Giselle. Now, I have seen nearly every production by Odyssey Dance Company over the past three years, and they always provide astounding, entertaining and unique performances. Don’t miss this one! 8pm, through Mar. 28, Kingsbury Hall, 1395 Presidents Cir., UofU. Tickets $20–40, 801-581-7100 or kingtix.com.
M a rch 5 , 20 09 | issue 123 | QSa lt L a k e | 33
Cedars of Food Lebanon
Restaurant Review Les Madeleines Bakery by Chef Bryan Woolley
A
re you tired of having the
Open for Lunch & Dinner Sundays 5–9:30pm Vegetarian/Vegan Friendly Belly Dancers Fri. & Sat. Night Free Wireless Internet All-You-Can-Eat Lunch Buffet $8.99 Catering Available
same food day after day? As a chef, I even find myself caught in this rut now and then. Normally, I love sandwiches, meat, potatoes and a great dessert. However, today I was filling frisky. I wanted to live life dangerously. Perhaps this feeling was due to the warmer weather or the
152 East 200 South HUKA AVAILABLE 801-364-4096
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smell of spring in the air. Either way, I needed a lunch that would match my mood and allow me to kick my heels up in excitement. I found myself walking into Les Madeleines Bakery, which is located at 216 E 500 S. The bakery felt warm and inviting when I entered: The long glass case of baked goods lured me closer and closer until finally I was standing at the counter ready to order. I looked at the woman behind the counter and asked for something different ... something out of the ordinary for lunch. I then found a table, sat down and anxiously awaited my lunch. The bakery was humming with activity. People all around me were devouring the last morsels of their lunches before hurrying back to work. Some came in and bought baked goods to be rushed off and devoured at their leisure. After a short wait, my lunch arrived. To my pleasant surprise, it was not the ordinary “lunch” sandwich. In this world of calorie-counting, carb-crunching craziness, I was being served a sesame chicken salad wrap. This probably sounds harmless or even rather ordinary. However, this was not an ordinary wrap. It was chicken salad wrapped in rice paper. The transparent rice paper let me see the freshly roasted chicken (not processed chicken) that had been
carefully seasoned and wrapped in butter lettuce. It was like staring at a chrysalis anticipating that something wonderful was about to happen. I took a bite and the flavors were delicate yet bold, different and refreshing. The textures were chewy but crisp, soft and spicy. I couldn’t recall having experienced so many sensations while eating lunch. Miso dressing and edamame complimented this wonderful dish, making it not only nutritious but delicious. Quite the change from the French fries and ketchup so many of us are used to at lunch. While enjoying it, I had the opportunity to visit with Romina Rasmussen, the bakery’s owner. When she described her inspiration for creating my lunch as “boredom,” she had my full attention. Recently, she and a colleague had talked about how they were bored with lunch foods. Out of that conversation came the wonderful meal I had enjoyed. Thank goodness for boredom! It was refreshing to visit with someone who was thinking outside the “lunch” box, and who shared a passion for food that went beyond the ordinary. If you are feeling frisky and wanting to kick up your heels, I’ve found the perfect lunch. Go enjoy a sesame chicken salad wrap and have an “out of the lunch box” experience at Les Madeleines Bakery.
é f a C Med
SUNDAY BRUNCH IS FUN ONCE AGAIN! Ten Great Menu Items, including Omelets: Pesto, Greek, Western, Shrimp & Asparagus, Denver Breakfast Burrito Beef Steak & Eggs Pork Loin & Eggs Saffron Cream Benedict
420 East 3300 South Salt Lake City 493-0100 Monday - Thursday 11:00am to 10:00pm Friday - Saturday 10:00am to 11:00 pm Sundays 10:00am to 9:00pm
Dining A list of gay-friendly restaurants listed in TheQPages. Find your gay and lesbian yellow pages at most places QSaltLake is distributed. Au Naturale Eclectic menu of quality sandwiches, wraps, sushi, sides 900 E 2100 South Salt Lake City 801-466-8888
Bambara Restaurant New American Bistro menu w/ a “World of Flavors” 202 S Main St Salt Lake City 801-363-5454
Cafe Med Best casual Greek/ Mediterranean dining in town 420 E 3300 South Salt Lake City 801-493-0100
Cedars of Lebanon Authentic Lebanese, Armenian, Israeli, Moroccan, huka 152 E 200 S, SLC 801-364-4096
Market Street Grill Salt Lake’s finest seafood restaurant with a great brunch.
2985 E 6580 S, SLC 942-8860 48 W Market St, SLC 322-4668 10702 S River Front Pkwy, S. Jordan 302-2262 260 S 1300 E, SLC 583-8808
Market Street Oyster Bar Salt Lake’s showcase for dining, conversation, fresh oysters 2985 E 6850 S, SLC 942-8870 54 W Market St, SLC 322-4668 10702 S River Front Pkwy, South Jordan 302-2262
Nick-N-Willy’s Hand made pizza you can eat here or take-n-bake. 4536 S Highland dr Salt Lake City 273-8282 1890 Bonanza dr Park City 435-658-4872
Red Iguana Best home-made moles and chile verdes in town 736 W North Temple, SLC 801-322-1489
Sage’s Cafe Organic vegetarian, locally grown, fresh 473 E 300 South Salt Lake City 801-322-3790
Squatter’s Pub Brewery Utah’s favorite microbrewery, great pub menu 147 W 300 S Salt Lake City 801-363-2739
To get listed in this section, plese call 801649-6663 and ask for brad or email brad@ qsaltlake.com
COME IN AND BE HAPPY! ®
Squatters Roadhouse Grill 1900 Park Ave Park City 435-649-9868
Tin Angel Cafe Mediterranean bistro style 365 W 400 South Salt Lake City 801-328-4155
Trolley Wings Company Wings and beer Trolley Square under the water tower 801-538-0745
• LUNCH • DINNER
For all your catering needs! We do all special occasions: • corporate events • special events • weddings • box lunches
801.466.2537
1578 South 300 West lecroissantcatering.com
PAWS F R WINE SUNDAY MARCH 15 7–9pm
Benefits the Humane Society of Utah $30 advance, $35 door For info and tickets, call 801-485-2055
Meditrina Small Plates & Wine Bar Encouraging gastronimic exploring in tapas tradition 1394 S West Temple Salt Lake City 801-485-2055
Mestizo Coffeehouse Coffee, art, jam sessions, free gallery on the West Side 631 W North Temple Suite 700, SLC 801-596-0500
The New Yorker The ‘grand patriarch of Downtown SLC restaurants’ - Zagat 60 Market St, SLC 363-0166
St. Paddy’s Day OPEN @ 10AM • STUCKI’S FAMOUS IRISH STEW! • ICE COLD BUD LIGHT ALUMINUM BOTTLES $2.50 • ICE COLD MURPHY’S CANS $3.00 • PATIO UNDER THE WATER TOWER IN TROLLEY SQUARE
OPEN DAILY AT NOON
801-538-0745
M a rch 5 , 20 09 | issue 123 | QSa lt L a k e | 35
3 6 | QSa lt L a k e | issue 123 | M a rch 5 , 20 09
QHealth What If I’m Diagnosed with HIV? by Lynn Beltran
T
o many peopLe,
hIv Is a thIng of the past. Patients often come to our medical clinic and are surprised that we offer testing for HIV because they believe it no longer exists. Others simply expect to become infected with HIV at some point during their lives, but see infection as a concern they don’t have to confront right now. Some suspect they are infected, but won’t get tested because they don’t want to hear those three little words: you have HIV. The reality is HIV still exists, and it’s thriving right here in Salt Lake County. By “thriving” I simply mean that the number of people becoming newly infected with HIV is increasing. This is occurring primarily within the gay community. One thing that concerns me most is men who refuse to be tested are denying themselves appropriate health care. Granted, the state of our country right now has left many of us with a significant level of anxiety, and adding an HIV diagnosis to that anxiety may well feel like more than one can endure. So to help curb some of that anxiety, I wanted to walk everyone through the process of receiving an HIV diagnosis, because I always believe that knowledge is power. The most expedited and popular form of testing right now is called rapid HIV testing. This is a very simple test in which results are available within 15–30 minutes. If the rapid test comes back positive, a confirmation test is then required. The Salt Lake Valley Health Department, the Utah AIDS Foundation and the Utah Pride Center offer rapid HIV testing on a regular basis to the community. You can also request an HIV test through your private medical provider. Know, however, that this will most likely come in the form of a traditional test in which results may take up to a week to be returned. If you receive an HIV test at a community agency, you have the opportunity to meet with a counselor both before and after your test. Agencies strive to always deliver a positive (or a negative) result in the most compassionate manner; doing so commonly involves a question-and-answer session. It is always important to me to empower patients who receive a positive diagnosis. I do this by giving
them information on how to play an active role in securing a positive outcome for their health. This means strengthening their immune system. It is true, after all, that receiving an HIV diagnosis is no longer a death sentence. Antiretrovirals are extremely effective in allowing people with HIV to lead long lives. After the Q-and-A session, we set up an appointment for them with a health care provider who specializes in HIV. If someone is uninsured, she or he is most often referred to the Ryan White program. This program provides coverage for HIV-related health care expenses. At this point, I often identify the patient’s additional needs and make referrals for social support or counseling. It is important for a newly diagnosed HIV patients to understand that they are not alone in this process. We may also discuss how to tell others about the diagnosis if the patient chooses. I emphasize that HIV patients are never required to tell anyone about their HIV status — including an employer — and that their medical records are extremely protected. I want to reiterate that HIV is no longer a death sentence. These days it is often likened to diabetes: You can live with it provided you engage in behaviors that allow you to manage it. That being said, I still want to point out the simple fact that HIV is a disease you want to avoid or prevent at all times. Managing a chronic disease is very challenging, and it often requires lifestyle changes. The side effects from antiretrovirals can be extremely taxing, and the emotional trauma is most often significant. Medical intervention is most successful when a diagnosis occurs early and the patient and the provider actively manage the disease. Of course, you have to be diagnosed first before you can get to that point. Don’t avoid this diagnosis if you know or suspect that you have been at risk. There are many resources available in Salt Lake County that can help to make a new diagnosis bearable, and reduce anxiety and other emotions that you may experience. Q If you would like to find out more about HIV resources in the community, please call the Salt Lake County Health Department at (801) 534-4601.
CLUB
S ’ K C I R T A P ST. DAY 17 H C R A M , Y A TUESD
to e c n a h c r u o y s Don’t misrish and kiss the I e’s famous enjoy Geneef & cabbage! corned b 21 H C R A M , Y A SATURD
T H G I N 80s CH 27 FRIDAY, MAR M A J R A E B
S $1 DRAFTS Y A D S E U T ▼ AYS WEENIES D N O M D, $1 DRAFTS J ▼ /D S Y IE TO N E Y E O W B J & RAFTS AYS D L NIGHT D L ID A 1 R $ E F C S N ▼ Y A A S T -D D E N N E C SU OOL TOURNAM A AFTERNOONS, DANCE-DAN P S arly! e Y A e D iv S r E r N A D . N ll E WED u R f B en we are h w JUKEBOX WITH s t S h Y A ig n D R y a U T d OPEN DAILY AT 2PM A r S Satu & y a id r F n o s 251 W 900 S 801-364-3203 line E BAR Avoid the long OUR SCREENS THROUGHOUT TH 1/2 BLOCK FROM 9th S TRAX STATION ON WWW.CLUBTRY-ANGLES.COM A PRIVATE CLUB FOR MEMBERS SHY? TEXT HIM M a rch 5 , 20 09 | issue 123 | QSa lt L a k e | 3 7 ▼
▼
The Dating Diet
nd at over can be fouon from ti 200 loca sGeorge, t. S to an g Lo including all:
E XC E PT S U GAR H O U S E
OTHER SELECTED LOCATIONS: (From North to South)
LOGAN: Borders Utah State Univ. OGDEN Bookshelf Weber State Univ. Egyptian Theater Grounds for Coffee Roosters Brass Rail CLEARFIELD Grounds for Coffee LAYTON Barnes & Noble SALT LAKE CITY All Libraries A Cup of Joe Apple Fitness ASI Tattoo Avenues Bakery Bagelry Bangkok Thai Big City Soup Brewvies Broadway Centre Cafe Sha Sha Cafe Trang Cahoots Cinegrill Club Try-Angles Club Sound Club Heads Up Cocoa Cafe Desert Edge Pub Eggs in the City Emigration Market First Unitarian Green Street Hyatts Magazines Jitterbug Coffee KCPW Studios Knuckleheads
Lamb’s Grill Liberty Heights Fresh Mazza MCC Mischievous MoDiggity’s Nostalgia Oasis Cafe Paper Moon Pinon Market/Cafe Pride Counseling Radio City Lounge Red Butte Cafe Red Rock Brewing Regency Theatres Royal Eatery SL Coffee Break SL Community College Sorenson Multicultural Ctr Squatters Pub Squirrel Bros StoneGround Tavernacle The Bakery The Center The Other Place Tower Theatre Trapp Trapp Door Univ. of Utah Urban Bistro Urban Lounge Virgin Megastores SUGAR HOUSE 21 21 Coffee Blue Plate Diner Cockers/Sparks Dancing Crane Fiddler’s Elbow Free Speech Zone Millcreek Coffee SL Pizza & Pasta Tea Grotto Westminster Wild Oats
SOUTH SALT LAKE All For Love Alternative Eyewear Bagelry Cafe Med Century Laundry LaPuente MURRAY 24 Hour Fitness Bubba’s BBQ WEST VALLEY Century Laundry Gringo’s SL Community College Wise Guys Comedy TAYLORSVILLE Coffee Club Just Add Coffee 24 Hour Fitness Beans and Brews PROVO Borders MOAB Back of Beyond Books CEDAR CITY Blue Kat Cafe ST. GEORGE Kaleidescope Cafe Xeteva Gardens
Not on this list?
Want to be? Call 1-800806-7357 or email tony@ qsaltlake.com
Exposed to Love by Anthony Paull
My boyfriend will not be thrilled with what he’s about to read. You see, like the other encouraging souls in my social circle, he doesn’t like it when I write about him. But that’s why I love to do it. It keeps him on his toes, which lends hand to excitement. And the truth is excitement is exactly what our relationship has been lacking. God, how it pains me to admit that for once, I don’t have the perfect relationship, and that it’s normal for me to step outside of my relationship for awhile to figure out what the hell is wrong. So picture it. There’s completely fucked-up me, and I’ve downgraded from a queen-size bed, complete with a soft blueberry-colored duvet and an awesome boyfriend, to a twin-size mattress with no sheets. Yeah, I’m that loser who opted to move in with his father after separating from his boyfriend. Oh, and dad ain’t down with me being gay; that’s the fun part! Now, instead of getting anal sex, I get anal-yzed at the dinner table, where dad’s current topic of choice is why Anthony should prefer tits over dicks. Sorry. I know! I know! I’m cursing a lot, and I’m bound to get more hate mail for it, but the reality is I don’t care. This is me. I say what’s on my mind, and sometimes it’s not appropriate or remotely poetic, but it’s me. And for the last six months, I haven’t focused on me because I’ve been too preoccupied with making him (my boyfriend) happy, and now I’m Lost. Yes, that’s Lost, with a capital L. And just like on the popular TV series, my problems became all too clear while stranded on a deserted island. You see, for our annual vacation, my boyfriend decided it would be ‘fun’ to book another cruise to the Caribbean. And while I wanted to tell him how tired I was with the idea of going to sea every year, I kept quiet. Hence, the reason I’m in this whole predicament. “Just be quiet and do as your told!” my boyfriend’s mother later instructed me in a British tone, as we skipped over turbulent waves on an excur-
3 8 | QSa lt L a k e | issue 123 | M a rch 5 , 20 09
sion to an ‘exclusive’ private island where we planned to snorkel. Oh yes, I forgot to mention, his mother was invited, too. Romantic, huh? Pardon me while I break out the lube. “Um, I’m really not feeling well,” I confessed, turning sea-sick green from the boat ride. Even better, when we arrived, I sadly realized there was no toilet in which to puke. As for towels and refreshments? Well, those weren’t being provided either. I suppose that was the exclusive part. The locals, I was informed, weren’t into toilets. Apparently, they crap on bushes and pee in the water. Which was fine and dandy, except I had to pee and the water was freaking freezing. “I really have to piss!” I kept telling my boyfriend, while being stranded for three hours. Mind you, I still felt like puking and I was sweating under the cap of a black hoodie, because even though the water was glacial, the sun was frying my skin. “Then go in the water!” he finally snapped, as his mother began to walk laps around the island, dead set on turning a bad experience into a positive one. “I’m exercising!” she proudly proclaimed as I passed her on my trek to the water. “Good for you. I’m going to piss my pants!” I replied. Lucky her, I failed to mention that something was also knocking on the open door of my butt. And no, I’m not talking about my boyfriend’s penis. God, I wish! So there I was, wading in the glacial water, pretending to be on a mad hunt for sea shells. Every time I dipped my shaking hand below the icy surface, I’d take a tiny squat and release, before turning to realize that most of the islanders had been watching me. For the first time I felt EXPOSED for being the liar I’d been for far too long. God, tell me I’m not broken! Please, tell me this is what inevitably happens when you’ve been with someone for so long. That the fun somehow dissipates, even if your love for that person is tireless and strong. Why, why, why does this happen? I feel as if I’ve been tricked, led down a road once filled with roses and love poems only to be dropped off at a dead end where I’m hollow, cold and quivering each night I attempt to sleep alone. The truth is I left. It was my decision. I felt like I was being suffocated from being in a relationship where every day, every vacation, was planned and banal. In the process, I avoided him, and as much as he won’t
admit it, he was doing the same to me. The end result was I felt so neglected and ugly that I could no longer look myself in the mirror without turning out the light. I was so busy going to the gym, eating right and searching for sexy clothes to make him see me again that I lost who I was. And I don’t want to lose that person because I like him. So this is what happens when you don’t talk about where you stand on the inside, because where you stand on the outside looks perfect. I can’t change what I’ve done. If I could, I would have told him that I didn’t want to go on another snorkel excursion just because it was fun the last seven times. I would have much rather jumped in a cab with him and told the driver to take us where the hell ever and see what happened. And my boyfriend, he would have been OK with that, because even if we had been sitting in a puddle of pee, being with me would have been fun enough. Because that’s love. So here I am steering down uncharted waters, asking for your advice. I don’t know where this journey will lead, but that feels OK because I know you, my unyielding readers, have been in my shoes in this mad, riddling universe called The Dating Diet. Q Anthony Paull is a random writer who randomly sent a dating article into a random periodical, and the rest is history. His Web site is at anthonyypaull.com
Cryptogram
A cryptogram is a puzzle where one letter in the puzzle is substituted with another. For example: ECOLVGNCYXW YCR EQYIIRZNBZN YZU PSZ! Has the solution: CRYPTOGRAMS ARE CHALLENGING AND FUN! In the above example Es are all replaced by Cs. The puzzle is solved by recognizing letter patterns in words and successively substituting letters until the solution is reached. This week’s hint: G = Z Theme: Rep. GOP chairman Michael Steele’s response to legalizing civil unions.
lu, lu lu. cajv cuskb cf bu vajv tux? cajv jxf pus, gxjqp?
__, __ __. ____ _____ __ __ ____ ___? ____ ___ ___, _____?
Anagram An anagram is a word or phrase that can be made using the letters from another word or phrase. Rearrange the letters below to answer:
Out singer Sacha Sacket had his acting debut in which film?
venom bonerS ________ ___
PUZZLE SOLUTIONS ARE ON PAGE 47
e
7
Q Scene
David Daniels was onhand during the Buttars Palooza party at the Utah State Capitol and the Utah AIDS Foundation Academy Awards Party. See more at daviddanieslsphotography.com
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Q doku doku Level: EASY
8 6 9 8 4
9
2 1 5 8 7 4 7 2 6 8 4 3
Each Sudoku puzzle has a unique solution which can be
Each Sudoku puzzle has a unique solution which can be reached logically without guessing. Enter digits 1 through 9 into reached logically without guessing. Enter digits 1 through 9 into the blank spaces. Every row must contain one of each digit, as the blank spaces. Every row must contain one of each digit, as must each column and each 3x3 square. Qdoku is actually five must each column and each 3x3 square. Qdoku is actually five separate, but connected, Sudoku puzzles. seperate, but connected, Sudoku puzzles.
3
4 9 5
7 6 5 2
8
1 9 2 8 4 7 9 2 3 6 4 9 9 6 8 5 6 2 7 1 3 8 3 7 2 9 5 2 9 7 6 3 8 5 7 4 3 6 4 5 7 6 4 4 1 8 6 5 3 7 7 5 6 4 2 9 8 8 6 9 7 5 8 6 9 9 3 1 8 2 1 4 2 6
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4 1 5 3 2 9 4 6 3 9 7 6
8
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S A T U
R
D A Y S
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42 | QSa lt L a k e | issue 123 | M a rch 5 , 20 09
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Q Puzzle
The Oscars About the occupations of gay or gay-adjacent Oscars
Across 1 Give the once-over 5 Bouncer for Amelie Mauresmo 9 Peter the Great, and more 14 Kipling’s Rikkitikki-___ 15 East of Eden director Kazan 16 Beginning to come? 17 Cut 18 PAC of seniors 19 Annoy during a blow job? 20 Job title for Oscar de la Hoya 23 Use them to go down 24 Sign of a Broadway hit 25 Ho’s instrument 28 Ejaculate 31 Defeated George Frenn 33 Poet Kitty 37 Job title for Oscar Wilde 39 Genre for Marvin Gaye 41 Home st. of Harper Lee 42 Ancient erection 43 Job title for The Office’s Oscar Martinez 46 CK One emanation 47 Like a virgin 48 Biathlete’s slats 50 You need it to get to 365gay.com 51 Part of a chorus line?
53 Kidman who won an Oscar for 9-Down 58 Job title for The Odd Couple’s Oscar Madison 61 A dentist may stick it in your mouth 64 Room for 26-Down 65 Andrew Van de Camp, for one 66 Open-mouthed fivesome 67 Barbra’s Funny Girl guy 68 Screws up 69 Kind of light for Joel Schumacher 70 Campbell of The Company 71 Castro, in S.F. Down 1 Cooks, as fruit 2 Non-asker/nonteller in training 3 City of Lorca’s homeland 4 Untouchable target 5 Endures like a hairy guy? 6 What ENDA ought to be 7 Old money, to Pasolini 8 One of Caesar’s stones 9 2002 film in which Virginia Woolf is a character 10 A gentleman might pull it out for his date 11 Michelangelo’s output 12 Breakfast on Pluto actor Stephen
13 Pose for Diana Davies 21 Work unit 22 What fruits do in orchards 25 Asked on bended knee, perhaps 26 Artist Frida 27 Penetrate 29 Strip under the futon 30 Football’s Papa Bear 32 Mambo king Puente 33 Chef Des Jardins 34 Cocteau contemporary Maurice 35 Remove the top from 36 Exchange at Provincetown Town Hall 38 American, to Auden 40 Sex toy that comes from behind? 44 Peter on the piano 45 The Woodsman of Oz and such 49 Title for Derek Jacobi 52 Flaming queen’s crime? 54 Referred to 55 SNL’s Cheri 56 Looks at a hottie in a bar 57 Adolf’s intimate Rohm 58 Fruit flavor for gin 59 Crack the whip at, e.g. 60 Navratilova, for one 61 U.S. terr. that’s now two states 62 Concern of Rev. Spahr 63 Threesome on a sundial Answers on p. 40
QSaltLake is brought to you by our advertisers. Please support them and thank them loudly. 4 4 | QSa lt L a k e | issue 123 | M a rch 5 , 20 09
Cocktail Chatter Colder, Smaller, Weaker: Better Martinis by Camper English
The diplomatic way of defining the “best martini” is as “the martini that you like the best.” But, really, if you’re pulling a jug of vodka out of the freezer and pouring it into a glass, you’re not drinking a martini at all. You’re drinking a glass of cold vodka. Add olives and you’ve got vodka with a snack. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I drink cold vodka all the time, and who doesn’t enjoy a string of olives for dinner? But a martini is a mixed drink, necessitating more than one ingredient to mix into it. The working theory is that the martini started as a spinoff of the Martinez, a cocktail made with sweetened gin, sweet vermouth, maraschino liqueur and bitters (with a lemon twist). As tastes in cocktails shifted away from sweet drinks, the “Dry Martini” made with dry vermouth became more popular, and eventually most everybody forgot about the bitters. Vodka didn’t become an option until later. Given the variations over time, you could rightfully order your martini made with gin or vodka, sweet or dry vermouth or none at all, bitters or not, olives or a twist — and you could find a published recipe to back it up. None are the “right” way to make a martini, but I would encourage experimentation to find the way that’s right for you. While jumbo-size martini glasses used in many bars provide a lot of liquor for the dollar, by the time you get to the bottom half you’re drinking room-temperature alcohol. That is bad. Or worse, it’s a warm salt bath if you’ve got the extra-large-sized olives in there that help to heat it up. The very classiest of bars serve their martinis in very small, very cold glasses — with an additional quantity of the drink in an ice-chilled container on the side. That is lovely. At home, I use vintage (small) glassware and keep the remainder cooling the strained drink in the freezer. Do not fear vermouth. Try it and you might find you actually like it — but probably not the 4-year-old, mostly full bottle gathering dust in the back of your liquor cabinet. Use a fresh bottle. Vermouth spoils like wine after opening, so buy small bottles and keep them in the refrigerator to lengthen their life span. Ice, too, is an ingredient in the drink. If you keep your vodka or gin in the freezer, not much water will melt into your martini. Dilution brings the drink down to a manageable level of alcoholic strength to keep you from making that too-strong scrunchy face that gives you wrinkles. A martini should be refreshing, not painful. The shaken-versus-stirred decision is not worth the weight given to it. Shaking adds ice chips and air bubbles that make the drink look cloudy and taste fizzy, whereas stirring results in a clear and smooth cocktail from the get-go. I prefer a stirred martini when I’m at a nice cocktail lounge, but I do often shake them at home. Not because it tastes better, but because shaking is more fun.
Camper English is a cocktails and spirits writer and publisher of Alcademics.com.
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M a rch 5 , 20 09 | issue 123 | QSa lt L a k e | 45
Depot 4 6The | Q S a l t Lisa ak eprivate | i s sclub u e 1 2for 3 members | M arch 5 , 2009
Support the Businesses that Support You
Q Tales
These businesses brought you this issue of QSaltLake. Make sure to thank them with your patronage.
by Petunia Pap-Smear
T
he road to choir practice is fraught
with danger and excitement. My weekly trek from Logan to Salt Lake to attend choir practice with the Salt Lake Men’s Choir can be arduous in the best of times, but this particular expedition was a little more than I bargained for. Sardine Canyon was closed due to snowfall, so I was forced to go the long way through Tremonton, ”Land Of Big Hair.” Just west of the town of Beaver Dam, (what an unfortunate name) the storm had developed into a full-fledge blizzard complete with white-out conditions. How can a Queen be expected to create a grand promenade when her adoring public (I have to pay them you know) can’t even see her clearly enough through the driving snow to notice that the eye shadow actually matches the nail polish. Keeping the royal chariot from playing demolition derby on the road was quite a challenge? Although if push came to shove, I think my 6000-pound Buick, Queer-Tanic, could hold it’s own and make me proud. I just kept chanting the line from Fried Green Tomatoes, “remember, I’m older and have more insurance,” over and over again to calm me down. Queer-Tanic was bucking 12-inch snow drifts across the road. Rounding a corner I suddenly came upon a seven car pile up. I was forced to brake very hard to avoid adding my contribution to the growing stack of wrecked cars. Luckily, Queer-Tanic stayed as straight as Ted Haggard used to profess to be,
Puzzle Solutions
however the large truck following behind me almost ran up my tail pipe. This brings to mind the saying to which I have aspired to live my life: “Back door guests are the best!” (Double meaning absolutely intended.) I noticed while checking my mascara in the mirror that the bright yellow sports car following the truck was also engulfed in the wreck. I’m sure the cute driver needed me to administer mouthto-mouth but alas, I could not stop the forward momentum of the Queer-Tanic juggernaut, lest we ended up like a marooned icebreaker, stranded in the middle of an ice flow unable to proceed any further, and be forced to eat baby seals. As distressing as that imagery was, the dream of procuring a new sealskin coat caused me to become positively giddy with excitement to help dispel my panic. Perhaps Nanook of the North, the cover model from “Eskimo Quarterly” could trek across the frozen tundra to rescue me. I’d gladly let him melt my igloo. With my heart warmed by these pleasant thoughts, and the road behind me now blocked by eight crashed vehicles thus barring any hope of return to Logan, I turned up the volume on my ABBA tape, and continued to plow gay-ly forward in the turbulent storm. I pondered that if conditions got worse I might indeed be forced to stop and perhaps have an encounter with that frisky moose I mentioned in a previous chapter. Certainly there would be ample room in the back seat of QueerTanic for even “moose sex.”
Cryptogram: No, no no. What would we do that for? What are you, crazy?
Anagram: November Son
8 7 4 5 6 1 9 2 3
3 9 2 6 5 4 1 8 7
6 5 8 1 7 3 2 4 9
7 4 1 8 2 9 6 3 5
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8 7 3 9 6 1 4 5 2
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3 9 1 2 5 4 6 7 8 5 9 1 4 2 3 7 9 8 5 1 6
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6 8 4 1 9 7 5 2 3 8 7 4 9 1 6 2 4 5 3 7 8
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4 8 5 2 3 7 6 9 1
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3 9 4 7 8 5 2 1 6 3 5 8 7 4 9 8 6 3 5 1 2
7 5 2 6 3 1 8 4 9 7 6 2 1 3 5 4 7 2 8 6 9
1 8 6 2 9 4 3 5 7 1 4 9 2 6 8 1 5 9 4 7 3
4 2 1 5 9 8 6 3 7 8 7 5 9 2 6 4 3 1
8 9 3 6 1 7 2 5 4 4 6 3 1 7 8 5 9 2
5 7 6 3 2 4 1 9 8 9 2 1 5 4 3 6 7 8
6 8 7 9 4 5 3 2 1 5 4 9 8 1 2 7 6 3
3 1 2 7 8 6 9 4 5 6 1 8 3 5 7 9 2 4
9 5 4 2 3 1 7 8 6 2 3 7 4 6 9 1 8 5
A New Day Spa. . . . . . . . . 272-3900 Area 51. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 534-0819 A Touch of Class. . . . . . . . 447-4567 Au Naturale . . . . . . . . . . 466-8888 The Beer Nut . . . . . . . . . . . 531-8182 Bliss Nightlife. . . . . . . . . . 860-1083 Blue Boutique . . . . . . . . . 485-2072 Cafe Med . . . . . . . . . . . . . 493-0100 Cahoots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 538-0606 Cedars of Lebanon. . . . . 364-4096 The Chewin’ Dog. chewin-dog.com Club Manhattan. . . . . . . . 364-7651 Club Try-Angles. . . . . . . . 364-3203 Diamond Airport Parking.347-4255 The Dog Show. . . . . . . . . 466-6100 Egyptian Theatre. . . 435-649-9371 Gossip!. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 328-0255 The Grand Theatre. . . . . . 957-3322 Jam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . jamslc.com KRCL-FM. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363-1818 Lake & Assoc. . . . . . . . . . 994-2353 LastMinuteCruisePro.com Michael Picardi . . . . . mpicardi.net MegaPhone. 595-0005, code 4621 Mestizo Coffeehouse . . . 596-0500 Meditrina. . . . . . . . . . . . . 485-2055 Paper Moon. . . . . . . . . . . 713-0678 Pride Counseling. . . . . . . 595-0666 Pride Massage. . . . . . . . . 486-5500 Pygmalion Productions . . . . . . . pygmalionproductions.org Teleperformance. . . . . . . 257-5990 TheQPages. . . . . . . . . . . . 649-6663 Red Iguana. . . . . . . . . . . . 322-1489 Redwood Tax. . . . . . . . . . 295-6789 Ron’s Rub. . . . . . . . . . . . . 532-4263 Sage’s Cafe. . . . . . . . . . . 322-3790 Salt Lake Men’s Choir. . . . 581-7100 Sam Weller’s Books . . . . 328-2586 Julie Silveous Realtor. . . . 502-4507 The Tavernacle. . . . . . . . . 519-8900 Tin Angel Cafe. . . . . . . . . 328-4155 Utah Pride Center . . . . . . 539-8800 W Lounge. myspace.com/wlounge West Wendover . . . . . . . . . . westwendovercity.com Jeff Williams Taxi. . . . . . . 971-6287 Dr. Douglas Woseth. . . . . 266-8841 Xpose Photography. . xposellc.com
The Perils of Petunia Pap-Smear The Tale of The Snowbound Hostess
I was finally able to make it to choir practice, however with traumatized nerves and a newly acquired appreciation for studded snow tires. When I purchased them I thought they were called studded snow tires because they were installed by beefy, hunky STUDS. Worth any price in my book. Who knew that it also meant there were metal spikes poking out of the tires and could also be so practical for winter driving? Hmm, metal spikes and rubber, can anyone say S&M? During my much less eventful drive back home that night, I was pondering what else today’s well prepared Boy Scout Queen should carry in her car to best prepare for future snowy rides through Sardine Canyon and beyond, aside from the obvious items of nail file, lip stick, BeDazzler, homemade macramé leather sling and portable glory hole booths. Suddenly I had an epiphany. Is “epiph” a verb? Anyway, I “Epiph-ed” that since the slush on the highway contained all that road salt, it would be perfect for preparing margaritas. I could just keep some mixer and crystal stemware in the trunk and violà, serve up some scrumptous libations to my neighboring stranded motorists and create a roadside happy hour faster than Ted Haggard can claim to have gone through reparative therapy and declare “I’m cured.” Fortunately in my case, the rear seat of Queer-Tanic is large enough to serve as a wayside motel should my neighboring motorists imbibe beyond the legal blood-alcohol limit. But of course I must keep my “Donna Reed” pleated poodle skirt neatly pressed and my silver serving tray polished and ready at all times. We should all remember the Boy Scout Queen motto: “Be Prepared,” to be the consummate hostess at all times. The moral of this story is: there’s nothing to calm your nerves unraveled from winter driving better than a little “moose sex” and a cocktail with new friends. Bearing in mind, that the road to anywhere is not only fraught with danger and excitement, it also provides the opportunity for an industrious Queen to earn her hospitality merit badge. Like always these events leave us with many eternal questions: 1. Do they can sardines in Sardine Canyon? 2. If you lived in Beaver Dam, would you dare print that on a business card? 3. Which kind of beaver is Beaver Dam named for? 4. Do Eskimos have “shrinkage issues” in the cold? 5. If I engaged in snowbound sex, would I be in danger of becoming a “Frigid Bitch?” 6. Do I need a Hotel License for QueerTanic’s back seat? 7. If I am careful to avoid using “Yellow Snow” would I need a liquor license to serve the margaritas? These and other important questions to be answered in future chapters of: The Perils of Petunia Pap-Smear.
M a rch 5 , 20 09 | issue 123 | QSa lt L a k e | 47
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