QSaltLake Magazine - 134 - Aug. 06, 2009

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Staff Box publisher/editor

Michael Aaron assistant editor

In This Issue

JoSelle Vanderhooft arts & entertainment editor

ISSUE 134 • August 6, 2009

National Kiss-in

Main Street Plaza controversy sparks a national event. . . . . . . . . 8

What’s Right with Utah?

A New Yorker says it’s the gay community. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

News

World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Local. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Views

Who’s Your Daddy? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Snaps & Slaps. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Queer Gnosis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Ruby Ridge. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Lambda Lore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Creep of Week. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Gay Geeks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Tony Hobday

A&E

Gay Agenda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Dining Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Crossword Puzzle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Comics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Cryptogram . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Qdoku. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Anagram. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Jacin Tales. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Puzzle Answers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 The Back Page. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

graphic designer

Christian Allred contributors

Lynn Beltran Brad Di Iorio Ruth Hackford-Peer Ryan Shattuck Troy Williams Petunia Pap-Smear

Joseph Dewey Anthony Paull Ruby Ridge Ben Williams Rex Wockner

contributing photographers

David Daniels Laurie Kaufman

Brian Gordon David Newkirk

sales manager

Brad Di Iorio office manager

Need Help Buyingor Selling?

I received the RE/MAX Executive Club Award in 2006

ASSOCIATES

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Brad Di Iorio Shannon Bywater Gary Horenkamp Brandon Hurst publisher

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4 | QSa lt L a k e | issue 13 4 | Augus t 6 , 20 09

Augus t 6 , 20 09 | issue 13 4 | QSa lt L a k e | 5

REX WOCKNER

Q World

Quips & Quotes

By Rex Wockner

❝ ❝How does participating in sub-par theater as

Harvey Milk to Receive Presidential Medal of Freedom

President Barack Obama will award the late gay activist Harvey Milk the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Aug. 12.

Openly lesbian tennis legend Billie Jean King will receive one as well.

“Milk encouraged ... LGBT citizens to live their lives openly and believed coming out was the only way they could change society and achieve social equality,” the White House said. “Milk is revered nationally and globally as a pioneer of the LGBT civil rights movement for his exceptional leadership and dedication to equal rights.”

The award, the nation’s highest civilian honor, may give California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger pause. Last year, he vetoed a bill to make Milk’s birthday a “day of special significance” in California schools, saying Milk mostly had been relevant only in San Francisco.

State Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, has reintroduced the bill this year.

“President Obama understands that Harvey Milk’s legacy reaches far beyond San Francisco, and that his story is an inspiration to everyone who believes in equality and fairness,” said Geoff Kors, executive director of Equality California. “Harvey Milk risked everything to change the course of history and to secure many of the civil rights and protections we enjoy today. In light of Harvey Milk receiving this incredible honor, we urge Gov. Schwarzenegger to sign the Harvey Milk bill into law as a tribute to Harvey Milk’s courageous work to end discrimination against the (LGBT) community.”

In his veto message last year, Schwarzenegger said: “I respect the author’s intent to designate May 22nd as ‘Harvey Milk Day’ and a day of special significance for California public schools and educational institutions to honor Harvey Milk as an important community leader and public official in the city and county of San Francisco.

However, I believe his contributions should continue to be recognized at the local level by those who were most impacted by his contributions.”

Milk settled in San Francisco’s Castro district in 1972 and opened a camera store. He went on to pioneer a populist gay rights movement in the city and, in 1977, was elected to the Board of Supervisors, becoming the fourth openly gay American elected to public office.

He and Mayor George Moscone were shot to death inside City Hall on Nov. 27, 1978, by then recently resigned city Supervisor Dan White, who was angry that Moscone wouldn’t let him un-resign and

Thirty gays, lesbians and friends staged a kiss-in at the San Diego Mormon temple July 22 in solidarity with a gay couple who were arrested in Salt Lake City July 9 for kissing on Main Street Plaza. that Milk had lobbied Moscone not to reappoint White. White’s lenient sentence for the killings (seven years and eight months with parole) led to the famed White Night Riots in San Francisco on May 21, 1979.

“Billie Jean King,” the White House said, “was an acclaimed professional tennis player in the 1960s and 1970s, and has helped champion gender equality issues not only in sports, but in all areas of public life. King beat Bobby Riggs in the ‘Battle of the Sexes’ tennis match, then the most viewed tennis match in history. King became one of the first openly lesbian major sports figures in America when she came out in 1981.

Following her professional tennis career, King became the first woman commissioner in professional sports when she co-founded and led the World Team Tennis (WTT) League. The U.S. Tennis Association named the National Tennis Center, where the US Open is played, the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in 2006.”

IML Bans Barebacking Depictions, Materials

The Leather Market at the annual International Mr. Leather events in Chicago will have a ban on anything related to barebacking, IML founder Chuck Renslow announced July 16.

“The executive committee of International Mr. Leather has decided that it will no longer allow participation in the IML Leather Market by any entity which promotes barebacking or distributes/sells any merchandise tending to promote or advocate barebacking,” Renslow said. “This restriction will also apply to distribution of gifts, postcards or any other information via our facilities.”

“The CDC and local health officials inform us that new infections are on the rise,” he said. “And, while we have had some success developing medications that might make infection more manageable, that accomplishment comes at a price. Not having experienced the

6 | QSa lt L a k e | issue 13 4 | Augus t 6 , 20 09

deaths -- the loss of loved ones -- which preceded these medications, we have an entire generation who may not fully appreciate or comprehend the severity of the situation. Too many in our community believe HIV/AIDS is curable or manageable. Too few understand that HIV/AIDS infections dominate life. We believe that it is our duty to inform and educate.”

Boycott of San Diego Hotel Enters 2ndYear

Gay activists gathered outside the Manchester Grand Hyatt San Diego on July 16 to kick off year two of the gay boycott of the mammoth downtown twin towers.

The boycott was launched after owner Doug Manchester gave $125,000 in early seed money to get Proposition 8 on the ballot. The resulting constitutional amendment re-banned same-sex marriage in California.

Manchester has cited his Roman Catholic faith in opposing same-sex marriage.

Activists claim the boycott has cost the hotel $7 million, a figure that cannot be independently verified.

Author E. Lynn Harris Dies Author E. Lynn Harris, who wrote bestsellers about black gay life, died July 24 at a hotel in Beverly Hills. He was 54.

The cause of death was not reported.

At press time, an autopsy was planned.

Harris wrote 11 novels -- including Invisible Life, Just As I Am, If This World Were Mine, and Basketball Jones -- and a memoir, What Becomes of the Brokenhearted.

“His pioneering novels and powerful memoir about the black gay experience touched and inspired millions of lives, and he was a gifted storyteller whose books brought delight and encouragement to readers everywhere,” said Alison Rich, director of publicity at Harris’ publisher, Doubleday. “Lynn was a warm and generous person, beloved by friends, fans and booksellers alike.”

a grossly exaggerated stereotype demonstrate any sense of pioneer spirit? … [O]n day when we are presuming to honor the very people who sacrificed and toiled to establish this state, can’t we at least feign respect and forgo featuring someone who is not only blatantly disrespectful but also mouths the same tired, green-Jell-O-with-carrots joke?”

—Holladay resident Heather Deans Gay criticizing the Salt Lake Tribune in a letter to the editor for choosing actor Alexis Baigue as the lead in a Pioneer Day Feature.

❝ ❝I am thrilled to see that the newspaper, live theatre,

and I can still stir people in Utah! If everyone in Salt Lake City agreed, would not this town be deadly dull?”

—Baigue in a comment on his Facebook page, responding to comments about the letter.

❝ ❝What crawled up her butt that she would take the

time to write a letter to the editor about this?”

—QSaltLake “Lambda Lore” columnist Ben Williams in a comment to Gay’s letter.

❝ ❝We should never be afraid of brief, unimposing

displays of affection. There is nothing wrong with a hug, a kiss on the mouth, a kiss on the cheek.”

—Facebook posting by David Badash and David Mailloux, organizers of “The Great Nationwide Kiss-In,” in response to recent incidents of harassment and detention of gay and lesbian couples in Texas and Utah for kissing.

❝ ❝“The two individuals believed — albeit mistakenly

— that they had the right to be there. Fairness requires that either that property be not open to the public or you condition that [openness] in a way that the person who comes on understands that it is private property.”

—Salt Lake City Prosecutor Sim Gill telling the Salt Lake Tribune why he will not prosecute Matt Aune and Derek Jones for trespassing, a citation the couple received for their now-infamous LDS plaza kiss last month.

Schwarzenegger Defunds HIV Services

In an effort to balance California’s budget, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger used line-item vetoes July 28 to chop more than $50 million in funding from the state Office of AIDS, including critical funding for HIV viral-load testing.

Schwarzenegger decimated AIDS services across the board, leaving full funding in place only for epidemic surveillance and for the drugs that suppress HIV. Although the cuts curtailed state funding for HIV-related education (an 80 percent cut), prevention (80 percent cut), counseling (70 percent cut), testing (70 percent), primary medical care (50 percent), home care (50 percent) and housing (20 percent), one cut stood out in particular: the termination of all funding for the Office of AIDS’ Therapeutic Monitoring Program.

For some 35,000 Californians whose HIV care is paid for by the state, that program paid for viral-load testing and drug-resistance testing.

Viral-load testing is required in HIV care, as it is the only way to determine if a particular HIV drug cocktail is working in a given patient. Drug-resistance testing comes into play at various junctures, including when a drug cocktail that had been working stops working in a given patient. The two types of testing guide a doctor in prescribing a cocktail that keeps a patient’s viral load undetectable.

Patients whose viral load is undetectable are very unlikely to develop deadly HIV-related infections and are dramatically less infectious than those whose virus is not suppressed.

“These were extraordinarily difficult cuts to make and they are cuts that will have consequences,” said Al Lundeen, spokesman for the California Department of Public Health. “More people will become infected.”

Office of AIDS Chief Michelle Roland, a doctor who treats HIV patients herself, said the Therapeutic Monitoring Program was funded only by state money and, therefore, the program no longer exists. Across the board, the office’s HIV care and support programs now have about half of the funds they had previously, she said.

There are preliminary plans, “which I must emphasize are not final,” she said, to combine the remaining, mostly federal funding of various programs into a single allocation “that can be used flexibly to pay for care and support-related services like medical visits, lab tests, medical case management, etc.”

“So, while there will no longer be a stand-alone TMP program, there will still be on average about half of the funds that have been available to pay for (our) whole array of services,” she said. “Once we figure out how to get this money to

the local fiscal agents, they will need to figure out how best to use the money to pay for the most essential services, among them laboratory testing.”

“It’s not quite as dire as no one will have access, but there will definitely be fewer services for people to access,” Roland said.

If some patients no longer have access to viral-load testing or all patients have access to it less often, apart from the impact on an individual’s health, “a population that is less successfully virally suppressed is more likely to transmit,” Roland acknowledged. “We may see an increase in the HIV rate as a result.”

Roland, who co-founded an ACT UP chapter in the 1980s, also lamented the massive reduction in funding for ordinary HIV testing to see if one has become infected.

“There will be fewer people who know their status,” she said.

In the final analysis, if some California HIV patients lose access to viralload testing, they could get sick and die, despite receiving HIV drugs paid for by the state. And, in the interim, they would be more infectious if, for example, a condom broke during sex.

Advocates expressed extreme alarm over the funding cuts.

“Expecting us to provide appropriate medical care to people with HIV and AIDS without the ability to do viral-load testing is like expecting a surgeon to remove a tumor without being allowed to do an X-ray or MRI to determine its location,” said Lorri Jean, CEO of the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center. “It’s outrageous.”

Equality California called Schwarzenegger’s elimination of monitoring testing “beyond immoral” and “amazingly stupid.”

“To leave hundreds of million of dollars in reserve by cutting an entire program that no one will argue isn’t saving lives is beyond absurd, immoral and unethical,” Executive Director Geoff Kors said in an interview. “The governor needs to announce that he’s going to free some money from his reserves to restore the $8 million needed to fund this program. To pay for people’s medicine knowing that the medicine has to be monitored through testing to make sure it’s working, and then to deny those same people the testing, makes one question if the governor and his staff really understood what they were doing or if they are just playing politics with people’s lives to punish the Legislature for not giving him everything he wanted. It’s amazingly stupid.”

San Diego blogger Mike Tidmus, who has AIDS and frequently writes about HIV issues, said Schwarzenegger’s move also doesn’t make sense economically.

“If someone loses access to viral-load testing and their virus becomes active again, they’re going to develop an opportunistic infection and end up in an emergency room or hospital bed, costing the state more money,” Tidmus said. Q

Augus t 6 , 20 09 | issue 13 4 | QSa lt L a k e | 7

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Utah

Public Kissing Goes National

by Michael Aaron

walks, coffee shops. The LGBT community should be allowed that same right without concern or consequences.”

Unlike other recent kiss-in events in Salt Lake City and San Diego, The Great Nationwide Kiss-In is a national effort.

While the other events have taken place on or near LDS Church property, organizers say this event should be “as noncontroversial as possible.”

“These events are meant to be fun, and emphasize the beauty of love and simple affection between two people,” said Willow Witte, director of Join the Impact. “People shouldn’t be made to live in fear of expressing their love.

Love was meant to be celebrated. We just want people to come, to enjoy the company of the LGBT community, then at 2 p.m. [EDT], everyone will kiss. We want to make this statement about the beauty of such chaste affection, and the right for everyone to share that affection with whomever they choose, in whatever environment suits them.”

Thirty-one cities in the United States and Canada have planned events, with 17 other cities having tentative plans at press time. Towns as small as Pigeon Forge, Tenn., population 5,083, and as large as New York City are participating. Organizers are straight and gay, teenagers and older, first-time and seasoned activists.

It is doubtful that when Matt Aune and Derek Jones were shouting back at Main Street Plaza security officers, they thought their actions would spark a nationwide kiss-in, but that is, indeed, what is about to happen.

Aune and Jones walked through the plaza, owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, holding hands on the way home from a downtown concert. They stopped momentarily within feet of the plaza’s exit, and Aune kissed Jones on the cheek.

Security officers surrounded the pair, demanding they leave the premises.

The discussion escalated to the officers throwing Jones to the ground and cuffing both men, according to surveillance video released last week. They were Salt Lake’s Kiss-In cited by Salt Lake City police for crimi- A woman studying to be a midwife, Ash nal tresspass, but the city prosecutor Johnsdottir, is organizing Salt Lake City’s kiss-in starting at 11:30 a.m. at the declined to press charges.

Their story is but one that hit head- Salt Lake City and County Building.

“Kisses are a simple and innocent lines in the past several months.

A lesbian couple walking through a form of affection that everyone shares,” San Antonio, Texas mall in December Johnsdottir said. “We need to make a were arrested by security and cited strong statement to everyone everywith criminal trespassing as well as where: GLBT couples have the same rights to show affection in public as several other charges.

In El Paso, Texas, a kiss on the cheek everyone else.”

Music, games with prizes, and speechin a fast-food Mexican restaurant led to a gay couple being handcuffed and es from Troy Williams and Sister Dottie threatened with arrest by responding Dixon preceed the noon kiss.

“You don’t need to bring anyone to police on June 29.

These incidents prompted two blog- kiss, you don’t even need to kiss anyone gers to call for a “Great Nationwide that day if you don’t want to,” Johnsdottir explained. “Just come and show Kiss-In” on Aug. 15.

David Badash, of The New Civil Rights your support for simple acts of affection Movement, and David Mailloux, of DYM and people in the GLBT community.”

SUM, have joined forces with the gay in- A Sampling of National Events: ternational grassroots organization, Join A kiss-in will take place at College the Impact, to create the event to “affirm Square, Athens, Ga. the right of all couples — same-sex and “We are a serious group with a seriopposite sex — to publicly acknowledge ous message: We believe in full equal their loved ones, with a kiss.” rights for everyone. We’ll express “It’s truly shocking that, in 2009 — that message in a fun and loving way. with homosexuality decriminalized When the clock strikes 2 p.m., downthroughout the United States, and same- town Athens will join in a nationwide sex marriage legalized in six states joyful kiss,” said event organizer Deb — we are still seeing law enforcement Chasteen, an administrative associate and other individuals harassing and at the University of Georgia. detaining homosexual couples,” MailIn Atlanta, “guest speakers, bands loux said. “In two of the three incidents, and kissing will be amock” in Piedmont the couples only kissed on the cheek. Park, said organizer Edmund Thornton, There’s nothing inappropriate about a political science student at Kennesaw that. There’s nothing illegal about that. State University and Stonewall Chair of Kissing is a beautiful thing; it’s a time- the Young Democrats of Georgia. less show of affection for our loved Charlotte, N.C. will participate in ones. People kiss on the cheek or on the Freedom Park.

“At the end of the day, it never should lips every single day, in any number of public places — airports, subways, side- matter who you are, or where you are: a 8 | QSa lt L a k e | issue 13 4 | Augus t 6 , 20 09

simple kiss is both normal and legal, and nobody should ever try to suggest otherwise,” said coordinator Mitchell Killman, who works in retail management.

A recent high school graduate, Kat Carillo, is organizing Chicago’s kiss-in at Scoville Park.

Fountain Square in downtown Cincinnati, which you’ve likely seen in the opening credits of WKRP in Cincinnati, will be the scene of gay and lesbian couples kissing, organized by Cincinnati Guerrilla Queer Bar and Impact Cincinnati.

Soulforce in Denver is holding a picnic and kiss-in at the 16th Street Mall.

“We will kiss for about 30 minutes (of course, you can take a breather if need be), and then take a stroll down 16th Street to Skyline Park where we can all sit down and have a casual picnic,” said organizer Joshua Dannemann.

Even Edmonton, Alb. in Canada will get into the act at their legislature grounds.

People leaving the Saturday Farmers Market in Fayetteville, Ark. will be greeted by kissers on Fayetteville Square, organized by University of Arkansas student Jonathan Cox, who suggests bringing Chapstick.

Bear Carmack is organizing his first rally ever in Hot Springs, Ark., a city of less than 40,000 residents, at the Garland County Courthouse.

Impact Houston is holding a kiss-in at Discovery Green, a park in downtown Houston.

The event happens to coincide with Orange County Pride, so Irvine, Calif. pride revelers will walk a mile from the city’s farmers market to William R. Mason Regional Park.

“We’ll rally by the farmers market in solidarity with our brothers and sisters kissing across the country at that very moment. Then we’ll take our love on the road as we complete a one-mile walk on the way to OC Pride,” said organizer Chelsea Salem. “As we march along the streets of Irvine we’ll be asking others to join us and show our love, pride and cuddly PG affection at each and every crosswalk.”

High school student Beth Eyestone organized the Little Rock, Ark. protest.

“Both gay and straight couples should be able to kiss whomever they like, wherever they like, If you want to give your better half a kiss, or hold their hand while walking down the street, then you should go for it,” she wrote on her page about the event.

Straight ally Jane Wishon is holding an event at the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, Calif.

“We need straight and gay couples for this event. Or come stag and we’ll find you someone to kiss,” she said.

National organizer David Badash and his partner Caleb Eigsti are using Times Square as the backdrop for New York City’s kiss-in, which will be joined by cast members of The Tempermentals, an off-Broadway show about the relationship between communist and gay activist Harry Hay and Viennese refugee and designer Rudi Gernreich in the pre-Stonewall 1950s.

Six young adults from Soulforce’s

Right to Marry Project will be walking 97 miles in the blistering heat of Phoenix, representing 97 years of Arizona statehood where gays and lesbians did not have full marriage equality.

“Throughout the 97-mile journey, the Equality Walkers feet will hit the pavement to speak to police, city managers, faith communities, elected officials and individuals in diverse districts,” said Right to Marry organizer Meg Sneed.

“These conversations will change hearts, which in turn will change votes, bringing Arizona one step closer to equality.”

Arizonans participating in the kissin will join the walkers at Phoenix City Hall and walk the final mile with them to the Arizona Capitol lawn.

High school student Leo Stokes is organizing a kiss-in at Patriot Park in Pigeon Forge, Tenn., population 5,083, home of Dollywood.

“I am asking all gay, straight, black, and white people to please join me to support a better tommorow — a place were we can all feel safe and accepted,” Stokes said.

Robert Moore, who is also affiliated with Affirmation’s Young Adult program, is organizing Portland, Ore.’s kiss-in at Pioneer Courthouse Square.

Keiner Plaza in St. Louis will be the site of a kiss-in “promotion,” complete with speakers and performers.

“We believe that love is something that should never be forced into the dark. We believe that love is a wonderful thing and a simple kiss of affection should never be punished,” said Federation Of Loving Kindness organizer Michael Brinkley. “This is not a ‘protest’ against the way love is treated, this is a ‘promotion’ of what love should be.”

San Diego is another epicenter of gay activism lately and the kiss-in date coincides with the annual Fleet Week, which is holding a special fundraising event at the gay-boycotted Manchester Grand Hyatt. The event is being held right in front of the hotel, held by Sit In 4 Equality San Diego. San Diego was the first city outside Salt Lake City to hold a kiss-in, starting the swell that is happening nationally.

San Francisco drag queen Anna Conda is organizing a kiss-in at Union Square in the heart of the city. While she is participating for the same reasons as nationally, she says that San Francisco is not immune to the same problems.

“Brett (my partner) and I were removed from a bar on Geary and Hyde [in San Francisco] for kissing a few years ago and we were also removed from the Fillmore [concert hall] during a Faint and Ladytron concert for being gay and just holding hands! It is even here in the safe haven of San Francisco,” she explained.

Paralegal Kate Walsham is organizing a kiss-in at the San Jose, Calif. city hall.

Events are also scheduled in Boston, Erie, Penn., Iowa City, Iowa, Parkersburg, W.V., Philadelphia, San Jose, Calif., Santa Barbara, Calif. and the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Q See GreatNationwideKissin.com

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NOW OPE N TU ESDAY EVE NINGS 4 - 8PM AU G U ST 8

BE HOU DINI W/ ZUCCHINI AU G U ST 1 5

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sat u r day m o r n i n gs j u n e 1 3 – o c to b e r 1 7 8 am – 1 pm historic pioneer park 300 south 3oo west

Rev. Gene Robinson will Address Allies Dinner The annual Equality Utah Allies Dinner will take place Wednesday, Aug. 19 at the Salt Palace Ballroom and group leaders hope to break all records for attendance. “It really is a dinner for the entire community,� said Brandie Balken, who was named the group’s interim director last month. “Families and allies are encouraged to come. This is an evening where you can be present with many other fair-minded Utahns who support LGBT equality. It’s an evening that feels very much like community building. We want it to be inspirational and empowering and have people leave feeling like they have worked to create a more fair and just Utah.�

The evening’s keynote speaker will be Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson, who made history in 2003 when the New Hampshire diocese elected him as Anglicanism’s first openly gay and partnered bishop. His election caused a rift in the worldwide Anglican communion and lead, in part, to a motion at this year’s Episcopal General Convention to allow individual diocese to elect gay and lesbian bishops. Utah’s delegation has supported this motion. “We’re so excited about that,� Balken said of Robinson’s appearance. “It’s beautiful to have a representative of faith at the dinner this year. Being a person of faith doesn’t mean you don’t care about LGBT rights.�

The group also takes advantage of the dinner to present its annual Allies for Equality Awards. This year, awards are going to Salt Lake County Council-

woman Jenny Wilson, Carol Gnade & Lorraine Miller, and the South Valley Unitarian Universalist Society.

Wilson spent three years of her political career pushing for benefits for committed same-sex partners and other long-term dependents of of Salt Lake County employees. The council passed the measure February 17 in a 6–3 vote, ironically on the same day the Utah State Legislature killed two of Equality Utah’s Common Ground Initiative bills.

Gnade and Miller are partners who have both supported the community for many years. Gnade is the former executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Salt Lake and Miller is former owner of Cactus and Tropicals.

Together, they have created the Women’s Redrock Music Festival, now in its third year in Torrey, Utah.

South Valley Unitarian Universalist Society is likely the only church in the state of Utah which is graced with a huge rainbow flag over its entrance.

The church is welcoming to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

Its minister is openly-transgender Rev. Sean Dennison.

Tickets to the dinner are still available and are $100 per plate. A table of 10 is available for $900. The proceeds help the Equality Utah Political Action Committee elect “fair-minded candidates who have demonstrated or expressed their support of Utah’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.�

For more information, visit alliesdinner.org.

Augus t 6 , 20 09 | issue 13 4 | QSa lt L a k e | 9

& tuesday evenings august 4 – october 13

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Utah Homeless Youth Walkers Shine Strong at SLC Gathering On July 25, two Salt Lake City women who have spent the last three months walking across the West Coast to raise awareness of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer homeless youth returned to their home city.

At least for a few weeks.

Chloe Noble and Jill Hardman, who set out for Seattle on May 5, returned to the Utah Pride Center for Operation Shine Salt Lake City, a two-hour event at which Noble and Hardman, and several local homeless youth and their advocates, discussed the challenges gay and transgender homeless youth face.

The women have been holding events like these, dubbed “Shines” after their organization, Operation Shine, in cities such as Seattle, Portland, Ore. and San Francisco. Along the way, the two have been traveling homeless, living out of backpacks and recording much of their journey on video, which they have posted on YouTube under the user name operationshine.

Zach Bale, director of the Homeless Youth Resource Center in Salt Lake City, began the event by telling the crowd of center members, homeless youth and allies some sobering facts about youth homelessness: Nationally, one to three million youth are homeless each year.

“But that’s just a guesstimate,” he added.

Utah’s population of homeless youth who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning hit an all-time recorded high of 50 percent last February, when the resource center surveyed its clientele. At that time, the center told QSaltLake that its queer homeless youth clients usually made up “between 25 and 39 percent” of all youth they serve. Nationally, the average hovers close to 40 percent.

During the day, youth can come to the resource center to take showers, pick up food and clean clothing, and to get help finding housing, meeting educational goals and taking care of mental and physical health needs. But when the doors close at night, Bale said youth most often have nowhere to sleep.

Candice Metzler, a transgender woman and homeless youth advocate, said she could sympathize; she was homeless for much of her undergraduate work at the University of Utah in 2008. Since that time, she has attempted to bring the problems faced by homeless youth — queer youth in particular — to Utah

through the ‘letters-to-the-editor’ of the Deseret News and the Salt Lake Tribune.

She recounted stories of being verbally attacked for trying to help these kids.

“I don’t think people are aware of LGBTQ issues in accessing these resources [for homeless youth],” she said.

“For too long we’ve lived in a country where these issues have not been spoken about,” Metzler continued. Still, Metzler said she was astounded by the resillience of the kids with whom she has worked.

“They will do what it takes to survive, and we should make it so they don’t have to go to those extremes,” she said.

Rep. Jackie Biskupski agreed. Along with a Republican colleague from Utah County, Biskupski, an openly lesbian Democrat from Salt Lake City, is working on legislation to create a charter school for homeless youth. Their plan may be helped along, she noted, by federal money earmarked for charter schools “to help people not being served already.”

The problem, she said, is that the school also needs to build a shelter, because charter school students cannot miss more than 10 days per year — an impossibility for a youth without a home.

“But one of the good things about this is that this representative is from Utah County and he gets it and is willing to work his side of the aisle to get it done,” said Biskupski to applause.

Jude McNeil, the Utah Pride Center’s Youth Programs director, told the crowd about what the center can do for homeless queer youth seeking shelter.

“When kids are kicked out for coming out, they come to the Utah Pride Center thinking we can take care of them,” she said. “And we can’t. We can give them food and a safe place for a few hours. It’s hard to see them leave in the evening.

These kids are overrepresented in the system and there are a lack of services for them.” Because of anti-gay laws, she also said that many professionals in the system were afraid to help them for fear of losing their jobs.

Next, Noble opened the stage up for homeless youth in attendance to speak.

Because many homeless youths have warrants for such things as petty theft and illegal camping, QSaltLake has chosen to use only their first names in this story.

In fact, Dante, a queer homeless youth, mentioned that the mere presence of the Center’s security guards made several of his friends reluctant to speak, because police have often harassed them, torn down their tents and taken the belongings inside. He also mentioned being refused a glass of water in a restaurant.

“We’re not asking to be put on a pedestal, but for the same human rights you would give everyone else,” Dante said.

“To us, we’re just human. We want to understand the world around us, and we’ve never been given the choice.”

Another homeless youth, Mike, mentioned that society often views homeless youth as a threat.

“Being a homeless person I’ve found a lot of us have been mistreated,” he said.

Jody Durrant, a 41-year-old woman

10 | QSa lt L a k e | issue 13 4 | Augus t 6 , 20 09

who was homeless for much of her youth in the 1980s told the crowd that she “couldn’t even imagine being a parent that would kick their kids out.”

“I look at these kids and I see the loneliness in their eyes,” said Durrant, the mother of two children. “The problem is we say on a platform, ‘I’ll do anything,’ but what do we do the next morning?

What’s next?”

Hardman and Noble spoke last, sharing some of their experiences on the trip so far. After recounting the pain of sleeping on a sidewalk and being roused awake and told to move on by police several times a night, Hardman said that she could understand why many homeless people turn to alcohol and drugs.

“It only takes about three days of being hungry, in pain and being constantly dehumanized to start losing their mind,” she said. “They aren’t homeless because they use alcohol and drugs; they use alcohol and drugs because they’re homeless.”

She described the constant search homeless youth undergo to find a bathroom and a safe space to sleep, and of being “surrounded by food and fresh water” in stores “and none of that is available to you.”

“I don’t think people understand what they go through in 24 hours,” she said.

“Tonight over 800 youth in the state are going to sleep in places no humans should have to at night. Why isn’t there a shelter [specifically for homeless youth] in Utah, and why are these children being ticketed for illegal camping when there’s nowhere else for them to go?”

Hartman also said that, paradoxically, some of the worst treatment queer homeless youth receive comes from gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

“We’ve seen that in the Castro, in San Francisco, which is one of the most unsafe places for LGBT youth,” she said.

Noble confirmed this, noting that the Shine in San Francisco helped restart the city’s housing rights commission’s program to place shower stalls for homeless people to use in the Castro — a program that she says business owners opposed 13 years ago.

“They got extreme opposition from Castro business owners, and they shut it down,” she said.

However, both women say they have been cheered by seeing efforts in all cities to help homeless people, and youth in particular.

“What we’re seeing when we walk is activists who work endlessly,” said Noble. “We just need to create a nationwide network” to get them funding and help them work together.

Noble and Hardman will remain in Salt Lake City for the next few weeks to rest up before beginning their walk to Washington D.C. In a July 29 posting to her Twitter account, Noble wrote that the duo “may still be walking pre Christmas season.” Q Catch Noble and Hardman on Twitter at chloenoble and visit their blog (complete with a map of their journey) at pridewalk2009.com.

Q mmunity Our Store Specials Throughout August, Our Store: Your Thrift Alternative, the thrift shop run by the People with AIDS Coalition of Utah, will offer special deals on a number of items. The thrift shop opened its doors in 2008 and is part of PWACU’s effort to become self-sufficient.

The specials are as follows: Aug. 1–7, 20 percent off all shoes; Aug. 8–14, 20 percent off all books; Aug. 15–21, 20 percent off all clothing; Aug. 22–28, 20 percent off all furniture.

Where: 358 S. 300 E. When: Open seven days a week.

Info: yourthriftalternative.org

Book Day at People’s Market The Salt Lake City People’s Market will celebrate Book Day on Aug. 9.

The day will include an author’s tent where local authors will sell and sign their books and give 10-minute readings throughout the day. Participating authors include Will Bagley, Flora Sue Gardner, Eileen McCabe, David Tippetts and QSaltLake assistant editor JoSelle Vanderhooft. Musicians will also play at the venue, including Rick Bracken, Josh Isbell, David Norton and Emily Potter. Market-goers are also encouraged to bring books to trade.

When: Aug. 9, 10 a.m. – 3 p.m.

Where: Jordan Park, 900 W. 10 S INFO: slcpeoplesmarket.org

SLC Pagan Pride 2009 This year’s Pagan Pride celebration, “Embrace the Flames of Change,” will celebrate a number of pagan religious practices that often fall under the banner of Pagan, including: Modern Paganism, Neo-Paganism, ancient polytheism, Asatru, Druidry and Wicca. Activities include Pagan religious ceremony and workshops, craft projects and information about a number of Pagan spiritual practices. All ages are welcome at the gathering, as there will be activities for children.

When: Sept. 12, 10 a.m. – 6 p.m.

Where: Murray Park, 202 E Murray Park Ave., in pavilions 1, 2 and 3 Cost: Free, but attendees are asked to bring one or more non-perishable food items for donation to the Utah Food Bank.

Info: Kenneth Guthrie at (801) 9737006 or saltlakeppd@gmail.com

Many Panels to Discuss Mormons, Gays at the Sunstone Symposium The Sunstone Education Foundation is not the kind of organization many people think about when they think of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Each summer this scholarly organization, unaffiliated with the church and dedicated to Mormon experience, scholarship and arts, holds a symposium centered around “free and frank exploration of gospel truths as they relate to the complexities of today’s society” — a symposium where someone interested in Mormon history, religion, philosophy and literature can find panels, workshops and discussions ranging from the typical (“Forgiveness: The Healing Gift We Give Ourselves”) to the considerably radical (“Sonia Johnson: Mormon Feminist Role Model or Cautionary Tale,” about a Mormon scholar excommunicated for her support of the Equal Rights Amendment).

Perhaps unsurprisingly, programming about the intersections between homosexuality and the LDS Church has been popular at the symposium for many years, and 2009’s conference is no exception. This year, the conference (which emphasizes Mormon women’s contributions to the church and its culture) will boast six offerings about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people inside and outside of the LDS Church.

The interest in gay and transgender issues, said Mary Ellen Robertson, director of Outreach and Symposia at the foundation, has been spurred by the church’s support for Proposition 8, the controversial ballot measure which re-banned gay marriage in California.

Although none of the programming offerings address Prop. 8 specifically.

“When we did our regional symposium in San Francisco in March, one of our closing sessions was a panel discussion about Prop. 8 on a variety of different perspectives,” said Robertson. “What was interesting when we sent out a call for papers in Salt Lake [is that] there was nothing on Prop. 8, not one single thing. I think people are still interested in the issue, but are really fatigued with talking about Prop. 8 since it was in the news so long. I think that people are trying to take a different tack on talking about gay and lesbian issues.”

This “different track” scheduled for the symposium (held at the Sheraton Salt Lake City Hotel Aug. 12-15), includes two sessions lead by Dr. Caitlin Ryan, leader of the Family Acceptance Project at San Francisco State University. In a workshop on Aug. 12 called “Family Life and Gay Youth: The Impact of Acceptance and Rejection on Their Health & Well-Being,” Ryan will discuss the impact that family acceptance and rejection can have on the physical and mental health of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender children. As part of her research, she and

her team are developing a method to help families from several backgrounds support their gay and transgender children and reduce their risks for significant health complications, such as HIV, depression and substance abuse.

On Saturday, Aug. 15 from 4:45–6 p.m., Ryan will give a public interview about her work. Robert A. Rees, author of No More Strangers and Foreigners: A Christian Mormon Response to Homosexuality and co-author of A Guide for LDS Families Dealing with Homosexuality will serve as respondent.

Ryan, said Robertson, is also interested in finding an LDS family willing to participate in her research.

“She let me know she was interested in finding a Mormon family who would be willing to go through this counseling regime with them [Ryan and her team],” she said. “And if they’re willing to be filmed than this also becomes part of their teaching tools and methodologies.”

On Aug. 13, the symposium will hold an 8 p.m. plenary session, “The Dynamics of Power and Authority in the LDS Church.” The speakers at this session, said Robertson, are all LDS individuals who lack full power in the church, including an LDS woman, a black man who could not hold the Mormon priesthood until after 1978 when the church opened the office to blacks, and a gay man. The church teaches that gays may only remain members in good standing by abstaining from sexual activity.

This particular session, said Robertson, came about because of the 2009 symposium’s focus on women.

“We wanted to talk specifically about how priesthood authority and power get used in the church, who has access who does not — we kind of know who doesn’t,” she said. “And one of the people who was part of this discussion said why don’t you included a gay man on the panel because there are restrictions on gay men that don’t exist on other men who want to use priesthood power and authority.”

The conference will also screen two short films. The Constant Process, a documentary by Mormon filmmaker Douglas Hunter about Episcopal priest Susan Russell, whose ordination lead her to come out as a lesbian. Voicings

by Stephen Williams explores the story of a gay Mormon man in a heterosexual marriage, whose “two lives begin to collide” during the course of a night. Both films will screen Aug. 15 and include a Q-and-A period with the directors.

Although Robertson said she had not yet seen Voicings, she noted she was “really excited” about The Constant Process, which came out of the filmmakers friendship with his subject.

“It’s a great film that talks about the intertwining of the spiritual life and sexual orientation of Rev. Russell,” she

said. “The filmmaker is kind of looking at scriptures and saying, ‘Well, what I’m seeing is that Jesus went out and befriended those and spoke with and ministered to those who were on the fringes of his society, so who is on the fringes in my day and age now?’ He felt like gays and lesbians were that marginalized group and said, ‘OK, I’m going to make an effort to understand their needs, their desires, what is part of their religious life.’ [Russell’s] story of coming into a role as clergy and her sexual orientation were inseparable.

They were happening at the same time.

He was able to capture her story on film and bring up some of the tensions and some of the things she [learned] from being a heterosexual soccer mom to a lesbian priest.”

Another session scheduled for Saturday from 11:15–12:45 is “The Gay Mormon Literature Project,” at which a panel of writers will discuss how gay Mormons are portrayed in fiction, plays and film and the themes found in their stories — in work by active and former Mormons as well as non-Mormons.

When asked if Sunstone has always had an interest in gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender issues, Robertson noted that one of the foundation’s earliest organizers, Albert Peck, was gay.

“So I think some of the issues may have been raised at the symposium or some of the sessions come into being in part because of the personal interest that at least one person in the Sunstone planning leadership had,” she said.

But she also attributed the frequent appearance of gay and transgender issues at the symposium to the large number of gay and transgender Mormons in Utah and beyond.

“I think there are enough gay Mormons and gay former Mormons and people who are close to them who are still trying to figure out how do these things go together and do they go together,” she said. “If we try to figure out how to be gay and Mormon or supportive of people who are GLBT and Mormon, how do we best do that?”

And with more and more Utahns reporting they know someone who is gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, Robertson said the need for such programming has never been more urgent.

“I think it’s the personal contact and friendships and understandings that really make the issue pertinent to more than just the gay community,” she said. “I think with the issues making headlines, such as Prop. 8, that there are folks in the LDS community and certainly in the Sunstone community who are saying, ‘Oh, I’m not in concert with what the church is saying about this group of people.’ We’re not comfortable with the political activism the church is involved with on this issue.

And we want to share our views about this. I think for a lot of people it’s personal because it affects people they care about.”

To view a complete program for the symposium, visit sunstonemagazine.com.

U of U Looking for Queer Voices Even though the University of Utah’s Pride Week is months away, the school’s LGBT Resource Center is already looking for contributions for a performance that will debut at this year’s celebration.

Cathy Martinez, director of the LGBT Resource Center said that Queer Voices, the performance in question, will focus on the “personal stories of LGBTQA persons” — the Q and A standing for queer and allies. The project will be a two-hour series of monologues in the same spirit as Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues and the Utah Pride Center’s Breast Dialogues, both of which Martinez cites as inspirations for the evening.

Until Aug. 31, Martinez will be accepting monologue submissions from University of Utah students, faculty, staff and the broader community.

Monologues should run 10-15 minutes, but may be shorter. Writers who like the idea of the show but don’t want to perform also needn’t worry; Martinez added that submissions accepted into the performance don’t need to be read by their authors.

“Our hope is to get folks from the theatre department to help out,” she said.

Monologues should be submitted by mail to: LGBT Resource Center, 200 South Central Campus Dr., Room 409, Salt Lake City, Utah 84112 or by e-mail to Martinez at cmartinez@sa.utah. edu. The performance will be held Oct. 7, 6–8 p.m. in the school’s Social Work Auditorium.

In addition to monologues, the resource center is also looking for submissions to its Pride Week art show, which will be held in the Olpin Student Union Building’s student lounge throughout October. The exhibit has been held in the past to much positive attention and will consist this year, as in others, of “what one considers art,” said Martinez.

“It’s not a big space, but we had a lot of photographs and drawings last time, and some pottery,” she said. “[The space] can’t accommodate big art objects, but if it fits, we’ll put it in there.”

Like Queer Voices, submissions for the art show are open to the university community and Utahns at large.

“We received submissions from as far south as Nephi last time,” Martinez noted. Art, she added, should be framed and prepared for hanging.

To inquire about submitting art, contact the LGBT Resource Center at (801) 587-7973.

Augus t 6 , 20 09 | issue 13 4 | QSa lt L a k e | 11

Utah

Pros Coming to Salt Lake to Talk Addiction

parts of the United States.

After the plenary session, NALGAP will hold a membership meeting open to all who are interested in learning more about the 30-year-old organization. The meeting will most likely be an informal dinner at a local gay-friendly restaurant.

On Aug. 21, Amico will present a morning workshop titled “What Every Counselor Needs to Know in Working with GLBT Clients,” a workshop that he says NALGAP regularly sponsors at this convention.

“The reason NALGAP presents this particular workshop is NAADAC is the largest addiction professional organization in the country, so we like to do the “gay 101” workshop every year, because it gets different people from around the country exposed to GLBT issues,” he said.

Amico said he begins the session by explaining the “alphabet soup” of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender terminology (such as the GLBTQQIA, which includes queer, questioning and intersex people and their allies, and terms like “friend of Dorothy”), as well as a brief history of the gay rights movement in the United States. The latter is particularly important, he said, because the generations before and after the Stonewall Riots in 1969 have different “ways in how they view the world.” He also talks about the stages of coming out, cultural differences among gay and transgender

The National Association of Lesbian and Gay Addiction Professionals and Their Allies almost ditched the National Association of Addiction Professionals conference this year because it was being held in Salt Lake City, home of the LDS Church, which had recently called on its members to support California’s anti-gay marriage Proposition 8.

“The NALGAP board really struggled [with the question of whether] we should participate in this conference or not this year after the Prop. 8 media stuff because there were folks that called for a boycott of Utah,” said NALGAP President Joseph Amico, a gay man who specializes in treating gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people with addiction issues.

“But one of our board members said, ‘You really should ask the LGBT community in Utah how they feel about it.’”

Happily, the board took up that suggestion. Amico said they called the Utah Pride Center to ask that very question, Salt Lake Police have arrested a man and discovered that a boycott was the who allegedly robbed someone leaving last thing many gay, lesbian, bisexual the Trapp and believe more people have and transgender Utahns wanted. been victims.

“It was because of the folks at the Pride Police say that on July 11, a man left Center who said we need the support that the Trapp and was approached by Gary we’re here,” said Amico.

Egnew, who asked for a ride. Once inAmico and many fellow NALGAP side the car Egnew demanded money. members will be some of the many speThe victim said he didn’t have any and cialists in drug and alcohol abuse arEgnew demanded he drive to an ATM riving in Salt Lake City for the conferat a 7-Eleven store to retrieve some. ence, which will be held Aug. 18-22 at Egnew reached toward his pocket and the Little America Hotel. An alphabet threatened to hurt the victim if he didn’t soup of organizations will also particicomply. pate, including the Utah State Division The victim began driving and saw ofof Substance Abuse and Mental Health, ficers and drove to them. Egnew got out the Association of Utah Substance Abuse of the car and began running but was Professionals, the Mountain West Addicquickly stopped and arrested. He had a tion Technology Transfer Center and the large rock in his pants pocket.

U.S. Air Force’s Alcohol and Drug Abuse Prevention and Treatment program. The annual conference will focus on topics ranging from addiction prevention, drugA man accused of beating an Ogden gay free schools and smoking cessation to alternative therapies, conflict resolution man and lesbian in two unrelated inciand working with diverse populations. dents at an apartment complex is schedThe conference also allows professionals uled for trial Aug. 10 at 2 p.m. in Courtroom 3A of the Ogden Second Judicial to earn continuing education credits.

On Aug. 19, writer and columnist District, 2525 Grant Ave. Christopher Vonnegut Allan allegedly Benoit Denizet-Lewis, author of America Anonymous: Eight Addicts in Search of a assaulted Whitney Goich and Wil PhilLife, will address the entire conference lips in two separate attacks at an apartment complex on 3455 Harrison Blvd. for a plenary session from 4-5:30 p.m.

“He’s an out gay man in recovery, on June 2. Allan is accused of attacking and so he’s going to talk about shame is- Phillips inside the apartment of a musues and recovery, which is good for our tual friend and attacking Goich outside community to hear about,” said Amico, the complex a few hours later, as Goich noting that Denizet-Lewis will also read entered to visit a friend. Phillips susfrom his book, which follows the stories tained some bruises but no major injuof eight recovering addicts from various ries, but Goich had to have surgery that 12 | QSa lt L a k e | issue 13 4 | Augus t 6 , 20 09

people, and fundamentals addiction professionals must understand when working with members of this population.

“I’m preaching to the choir at that point, though occasionally I get people coming to my workshop who think I’m going to talk about reparative therapy,” said Amico, referring to a practice rejected by a majority of professional therapists that claims to help gay, lesbian and bisexual people “overcome” or “fix” their sexual orientation.

“I talk about the damages of that, actually,” Amico continued. “But I do tell people I’m not there to change their moral or religious values, but if they have those values about homosexuals being an abomination, that they need to not work with this population if that’s where they’re coming from.”

On Aug. 22, NALGAP Vice President Phil McCabe will present a workshop titled “Trauma Sensitive Treatment for Men with a History of Sexual Abuse.”

Although this workshop is not gay or transgender-specific, Amico noted that many gay and bisexual men have dealt with sexual abuse and resulting trauma, a fact which makes this session of interest to addiction professionals who specialize in working with this population.

Q mmunity

For more information about NALGAP visit nalgap.org. A conference schedule can be found at naadac.org.

Center Golf Classic

SL Police Seeking Possible Strong-Arm Robbery Victims Police are concerned that Egnew may have perpetrated similar criminal acts before and are seeking anyone who may have information on other cases. Possible victims are asked to call Det. James Washington at 801-799-3714 or Sgt. Carl Merino 801-799-3744.

Egnew is described as a 25-year-old white male, 6’2” tall, 170 pounds with brown hair and brown eyes.

Egnew is being held in Salt Lake County Jail on $10,000 cash bail. He has also been charged in separate incidents of driving under the influence of a controlled substance and possession of alcohol by a minor. He was arrested the week before for retail theft in violation of a guilty plea in abeyance for another retail theft in March.

Suspect to Be Tried in Ogden Gay Beating Case night to repair her nose and a torn tear duct. Both victims reported that Allan had shouted anti-gay and anti-lesbian slurs during the attacks, including “I’m not gay!” and a police report says that Allan was intoxicated. Allan has been charged with one count of second-degree felony burglary, which carries a maximum 15-year prison sentence.

In June NAACP Tri-State Conference of Idaho, Nevada and Utah urged prosecutors in the case to apply Utah’s hate crimes enhancement and to seek two counts of second-degree felony burglary against Allan — one for both victims.

The NAACP frequently investigates instances of crimes based on such things

So. Utah HIV Testing

The Tri-State HIV/AIDS Task Force (formerly the Washington County HIV/AIDS Task Force) will hold its monthly free HIV test day on Aug. 8. Testing occurs every second Saturday of each month.

When: Aug. 8, 10 a.m. – Noon Where: Doctors’ Free Clinic, 1036 E Riverside Dr., St. George

Village Mini Golf Social The Village, the Utah AIDS Foundation’s outreach project to gay and bisexual men, and Hermanos de Luna y Sol, its outreach project to gay and bisexual men of Latino heritage, will team up for a mini golf night for one of their many fun activities.

When: Aug. 15, 4:30 – 8:30 p.m.

Where: Mulligan’s Golf and Game, 692 W. 10600 S. Cost: $5.50 per golfer, or $4.45 for golfers in a group of 15 or more Info: Josh Newbury at (801) 4872323 or josh.newbury@utah.edu

Registration will be opening soon for the Utah Pride Center’s 10th annual Golf Classic Tournament, which serves as a fundraiser for the Center. The tournament will be held Aug. 30 at the Stonebridge Golf Course.

Info: utahpridecenter.org

Salt Lake Men’s Choir Seeking New Singers The choir is back rehearsing for their 27th season. October will be a joint concert with the Mountain Jubilee Chorus with a lot of barbershop and 8-part harmony. They are also already rehearsing for the Holiday concert. This is a great opportunity to join the choir as music is just being handed out now. Salt Lake Men’s Choir is not an auditioned choir. They are open to all men who respect the Choir’s mission.

WHERE: Rehearsals are at All Saints Episcopal Church, 17th South and Foothill Blvd When: Thursdays beginning at 7pm. Show up 15 minutes early to get signed in and have a temporary music book handed to you.

INFO: saltlakemenschoir.org

Joel Shoemaker is Leaving SLC IN Magazine and Joel Shoemaker are celebrating three years together before he heads off to Chicago.

Chance to win Kathy Griffin tickets.

WHEN: Saturday Aug 8, 8pm WHERE: Jam, 751 N 300 West COST: $2 donation at door goes to Utah AIDS Foundation

Lagoon Day Will Paint the Park Red

“I’m here for the hottie convention,” was on about a dozen of the hundreds of red T-shirts donned by lesbians, gay men and friends at last year’s annual Q Lagoon Day. Indeed, many park regulars wonder if there is a convention of sorts as the park is awash in red.

This year, says QSaltLake editor Michael Aaron, looks to be shaping up to be the largest turnout ever.

“We received a great coupon rate this year of $20 off a regular pass,” he said.

“We’ve been getting many more people

asking questions and telling us they will be there this year than any other.”

Saturday, Aug. 16 is the day, beginning at 11:00 a.m. The Yellow Pavillion, near the new Jumping Dragon ride, is available for a respite or food break.

A group photo will happen at 4 p.m. on the steps to Dracula’s Castle, followed by bingo at the Yellow Pavillion.

After parties will happen at Club TryAngles and Club Edge.

Tickets are available at Cahoots, Mischievous, Club Try-Angles and Jam.

Spy Hop Offers Queer Filmmaking Class

By Brad Di Iorio Spy Hop Productions, a nonprofit Salt Lake City youth media and education center, has announced a new documentary film program. Officially titled Queer Filmmaking: A 2009–10 Documenting Communities Project, the program will begin Sept. 15 and run for four months at Spy Hop’s downtown studios on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 4–6 p.m.

The free class is open to teens ages 14–19, and no previous filmmaking experience is required. Applications for the class are being accepted through Sept. 8.

The class will be led by Spy Hop’s documentary arts instructor, Frank Feldman, the director of the hit Slamdance short film Vapid Lovelies.

“Spy Hop decided to go with Queer Filmmaking after initial conversations with social activist Chloe Noble and several discussions with the Utah Pride Center,” said Feldman. “Specifically, I wanted to create a class that could empower youth in the gay and lesbian community through the creation of a series of short films.”

Feldman will teach documentary fundamentals including: hands-on camera and equipment training, filmmaking and film editing using the editing software Final Cut Pro. Feldman will also teach the students such things as an overview of queer theory; the history of gay and lesbian characters; how gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people have been represented in the media

— both positively and negatively. The class will give teenagers the opportunity to explore their perspectives on specific issues about the gay and lesbian community, on film. In this current climate of opinion and activism in which many teens identify with the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community, teen voices on these subjects will be expressed through the art of documentary film.

The queer filmmaking class is part of Spy Hop’s Documentary Arts Program, which was created to bring filmmaking professionals together with youth interested in the process of creating documentary film. DAP introduces students to the art and craft of documentary filmmaking and empowers them to find their voices and tell their stories while being mentored. Spy Hop also provides equipment for the class. DAP is funded

by Salt Lake County Substance Abuse Prevention Services, Morgan Stanley Bank, UBS Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and individual donors. Spy Hop Productions is also one of three Utah arts programs to receive $50,000 from the NEA through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Although the program will concentrate exclusively on queer documentary filmmaking, Spy Hop has also guided youth through creating a film dedicated to the gay and lesbian community. This

25-minute documentary entitled Two Loves explores the stories of gay and lesbian Mormons. It was produced as part of the 2006-07 PitchNic Film Intensive Program.

More recently, Brooke Runyan, a soon-to-be junior at Taylorsville High School, produced Red, a five-minute documentary about a fellow student who identifies as pansexual — or genderblind in attraction to others — in the REEL Stories Documentary Program, presented by Spy Hop in conjunction with the Sundance Institute.

“I am straight but really supportive of the gay and lesbian community as I have a lesbian aunt,” said Runyan, who added that she found out about the Spy Hop program in her graphic design class as a sophomore, and then wrote a story on Spy Hop in her journalism class.

She applied for the Spy Hop REEL Stories documentary class, received her acceptance in March, and began attending class every Thursday until mid-July. After that she visited Spy Hop every day to edit her documentary, which recently showed at the Tower Theatre as part of the REEL Stories premiere.

“It has been a real interesting experience and opened up ideas for what I want to do in the future,” she said. “I met tons of people. It was fun.”

Runyan said that Spy Hop interviews teenagers who apply and then gauges each teen’s interest. The organization asked her to come up with 10 ideas for a documentary and the instructors began showing documentaries in class. Born into Brothels: Calcutta’s Red Light Kids, Baraka and Man On Wire were films she watched initially in class at Spy Hop, to get an idea of the different type of documentaries that had already been made.

“I named my documentary Red because the color red on the Pride flag means courageous, and I thought the subject in my movie, Aubrilynn, was courageous for being open about telling her story about her attraction to both sexes,” said Runyan.

The REEL Stories program at Spy Hop was also taught by Feldman. In early April 2009, Sundance Film Festival senior programmer Trevor Groth and 10 shorts filmmakers, including former Spy Hop mentor Jesse E. Epstein (Wet Dreams And False Images), Andrew Okpeaha MacLean (2008 Sundance Film Festival Shorts Jury Winner), and Destin Cretton (2009 Sundance Film Festival Shorts Jury Winner) held a workshop at Spy Hop Productions. Here they spoke to a majority of this year’s students, listened to their story pitches and helped them continue to mold their film concepts for the class.

Spy Hop’s mission is to encourage free expression, self-discovery, critical and inventive thinking, and skilled participation via the big screen, the airwaves and the World Wide Web. Spy Hop is committed to providing safe after school and summertime mentoring programs for diverse youth (K–12) in emerging digital technologies and the media arts. Q

Youth interested in the new Queer Filmmaking program can visit Spy Hop Productions at 511 W 200 S, Ste. 100 in Salt Lake City, or call (801) 532-7500 or e-mail john@spyhop.org.

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Q Views

Letters In Your Face

Editor, I have not made up my mind about same-sex marriage in Maine yet, but the latest tactic used by same-sex marriage supporters in Utah should concern everyone who is fair-minded and loves liberty.

The recent “Kiss-In” on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Church’s Main Street Plaza in Salt Lake City was a blatant “in your face” by supporters of same-sex marriage who were upset at the Mormons for their support of California’s Prop 8.

It can’t be seen as anything else but an attempt to punish them, by engaging in behavior that Mormons believe is immoral while trespassing on their property. They even took their pictures in front of the cathedral.

It tends to show that this movement is not above intimidating religious groups in order to limit their freedom of expression at the ballot box.

I am not Mormon, nor am I particularly religious (weddings and funerals), but I respect and value people who practice their own peaceful religious beliefs. I consider all such practice as a good thing for our country, regardless of religion.

I also value those who have no religious beliefs as long as they respect those who do.

I have no respect for anyone who wishes to embarrass or punish others for different beliefs, whether religious or political.

What are we going to endure next?

Bible studies in gay rights group’s parking lots? Barbecues in PETA’s backyard?

A little more respect paid and a lot less rhetoric spent would be refreshing.

Peter Edgecomb Hallowell, Maine

Gay Marriage Opponents Motivated by Love of God Editor, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “A just law is man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God.” St. Thomas Aquinas said, “An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.” Does one not see that gay “marriage” is an unjust law?

We supporters of traditional marriage don’t want others to redefine marriage for us. The institution of marriage is a sacred union that has

been around for thousands of years as a union of man and woman. We will be called “bigots” and “haters” for taking a stand for our faith. Our religious liberty is in jeopardy and we cannot allow gay activists to quiet us by intimidation, as has happened in California.

Our country was built on JudeoChristian principles. Most, if not all, religions believe that homosexuality is a serious sin and violates the law of nature. Gay activists probably don’t realize that verbal and physical attacks actually bring all religions together, as it has done in California. Catholics, Evangelicals, Mormons and Muslims united to fight this unjust law.

We will continue to fight the attempts of gay activists to redefine marriage for all of us and we do it out of love for God! Mike Rachiele Pittsfield, Mass.

Separation of Church, State, and Hate Editor, Religious agendas are devised to divide, not provide! Why do certain followers of the Christian faith relish in their unprogressive and provocative attacks toward other human beings, who interpret living one’s life as a freedom of choice, rather than based on another’s dictation of “self-righteous moral values”? Their hypocritical, unkind, self-serving, and perverse manifestation to relinquish the rights of others, is nothing more than a convenient smoke screen, under the guise of

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religion’s voracious appetite for power and control! As United States Citizens, Taxpayers, Contributors to Society, Veterans, and first and foremost, Human Beings, we should NEVER have to “ask” for Equality! STOP Religious Interference from consistently manifesting their unconscionable, shamefully fascist and venomous discriminatory dictatorial agenda, preventing anyone they deem “different” from acquiring ALL the Freedoms as United States Citizens we are entitled to!

Dr. Mekah Gordon, Ph.D. Santa Fe, N.M.

Support Our People in Utah Editor, Having lived in Salt Lake City for ten years, I know that Utah’s LGBT people are carrying on a courageous struggle in the shadow of one of the most powerful and homophobic organizations in the country — the LDS Church. Let’s attend Utah Pride events in SLC next June and support our people. Each year, the parade includes returned Mormon missionaries, riding their bikes and carrying the rainbow flag!

Don’t boycott Utah! SHOW UP and cheer on our people! Believe me, a major turnout of LGBT people would scare the bejeezus out of the geriatric cases who run the LDS church and who bring needless suffering into the world. Our Utah brothers and sisters deserve our support.

Harry W. Haines Montclair, N.J.

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QSaltLake welcomes letters from our readers.

Send your letter of under 300 words to: letters@QSaltLake.com QSaltLake reserves the right to edit for length or libel or reject any letter.

Who’s Your Daddy?

Fear of Balls

By Christopher Katis

W

hen I was a kid, my overactive

imagination caused me to obsess over some pretty irrational fears. Particularly dealing with what my parents might have in store for me.

For example, perhaps the smallest infraction would result in them enrolling me in one of those military schools advertised in the back of my mom’s Ladies’ Home Journal. Or maybe next summer I really would be put on the first plane headed to Athens to spend a couple of months with my dad’s extended family in Greece.

But what really scared me was the idea they’d make me play Little League.

That was far more likely to occur than attending Oakridge Military Academy or passing a summer chasing goats with my cousins through the mountains of Arcadia.

My older brothers had played. My dad had coached. I’d even been a batboy!

Ironically, I liked baseball. I still do — and not just because of the players’ tight pants. As a kid I was even slightly good at it. The key word here is “slightly.” But I knew I’d be like almost every other gay kid, exiled to the outfield due to my preference for chasing butterflies rather than fly balls.

So you can imagine my angst when Gus announced he wanted to play baseball this summer. He’s never played before, but he didn’t care. He wanted to try.

I couldn’t very well pawn off my gay childhood insecurities on to him. If he was brave enough to give it shot, who am I to stand in his way. So we signed him up.

For Gus’ age group, a parent/coach pitches. There are no outs and no one keeps score. Each kid bats until he (or she) gets a hit and everyone runs the bases. It’s all over after two innings.

That didn’t sound too bad.

My palms were sweating as we walked into the Spence Eccles Field House for orientation. Gus was assigned his team — the Royals — and received his cap and jersey.

I immediately noticed a pattern: sons came with their dads (or an occasional mom). Except for ours. He came with both his dads. At first the coach was flummoxed about whom to address, but soon figured it was best to try talking to both of us.

“Coach” takes the game pretty seriously. So does his kid. We’re the only team that has batting practice before

the games.

At that first practice, Coach surprised me by asking me to help. I knew it. My nightmare had come true. I was being forced to play Little League, and as I had always predicted, I was sent to the outfield.

As I headed out to field any balls that actually might be hit that far, I saw Gus’ face. He was grinning from ear to ear. His dad had been asked to help. His dad!

In that moment, Gus gave me the validation I’d never even allowed the boys I grew up with the chance to offer me. It took me over 35 years to face my self-imposed fears about Little League, but I did.

I suppose the doubts you have about your athletic abilities are slightly more evolved in your 40s than when you’re 10. After all, no matter how bad at baseball I am, I’m still better than these kids. Well, most of them. Well, some of them.

So I fielded the balls that practice.

Yes, some of them raced through my legs. Sometimes the coach had to jump to catch the balls I threw back to him.

But it was fun. When the other team showed up and we started to play, he asked me to catch.

Tonight I coached first base.

When Gus steps to the plate, I’m there to cheer him on, gently reminding him to choke up on the bat and to keep his eye on the ball. When he reaches first base, I’m waiting for him. We give each other a high-five and he smiles.

At this stage of Gus’ baseball career everything is about having fun. So what if the line-up morphs into a pile of squirming 6-year-old boys inflicting “indian burns” on each other? Who cares if players toss their mitts into the air or do somersaults in the outfield?

They’re having fun. That’s the lesson Gus’ Little League experience is teaching me. I could have had fun.

It’s as if Gus is hellbent on having a normal, straight-boy childhood.

Even the other day we were talking about possibly spending some time next summer in Greece visiting my cousin and her family. When I asked Gus his opinion, he simply said, “Can I stay there by myself without you and Papa for a couple weeks?”

I guess I can always hope he finds the military school ads in the back of my mom’s magazines!

Augus t 6 , 20 09 | issue 13 4 | QSa lt L a k e | 15

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Queer Gnosis Sexual Fluidity:

The Lisa Diamond Ph.D, Interview, Part 2

By Troy Williams

I

n part one of my interview with Lisa

Diamond, we discussed the findings of her new book, Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women’s Love and Desirea. Diamond’s research challenges many of the assumptions that we have about sexual behavior and orientation.

Her research revealed that among women, identity and orientation were often flexible and expansive. These findings stood in sharp contrast to the popular notion of sexual identity as a fixed and stable trait. In part two we explore the troublesome category of bisexuality as well as a new vision for a sex-positive culture.

Troy Williams: My first same-sex experience was with a guy from Spain. I had no doubt he was straight, but we always made the comment, “Well, he’s European ...”

Lisa Diamond: Historically, cases like that have always emerged in the empirical and popular literature. The strategy researchers have taken is to say there are one of two things going on: either he is gay and just in denial, or he’s really straight and just completely confused.

But either way, no one was interested in studying that person as an example of the phenomenon of sexuality and sexual orientation. When these folks showed up in research samples, they’d be deleted. No one was interested in explaining them. It was noise in the data.

TW: It’s not authentic.

LD: Yes, researchers would say it’s not important because it’s pretty unusual.

But what we now know is that it’s not unusual, it’s not exceptional, it’s not noise in the data, it is the data! And we have been throwing it away for many years. Which has not only has led us to develop stunted models of sexuality, but (as you mentioned because this person was from Spain) has impoverished our understanding about the way culture intersects with sexuality. Isn’t that an important question? How do we match up our sense of sexual being with the cultural models that are available to us from our community and society? If we throw away that data then we have no way of understanding that.

TW: We don’t really like the idea of environmental factors being a contributor to sexual orientation.

LS: We really don’t. We have a stunted view of biology and environment. We talk about the environment as if it is so easily separated from what we conceive

to be biological. It’s really the dumbing down of actual science. The idea that we can easily separate them out and say, “you were environmentally gay” and “you are biologically gay” is facile, nonscientific and irresponsible.

TW: Let’s talk about the “problem” of bisexuality. Straight people are suspicious of it.

Gay people are suspicious of it. “Bi now, gay later.”

Is this just a transitional phase or what is it?

LD: People often ask me what is the difference between sexual fluidity and bisexuality.

The confusion about bisexuality is part of why it gets no legitimacy in the culture at large. The Lisa Diamond, Ph.D. bisexual-identified women that I have studied have very different experiences from one another. Two different women will tell very different stories. And it’s that diversity that makes it hard for people to get a handle on. Some bisexual women experience bisexuality as a stable capacity for attraction to both sexes. It is longstanding and early appearing as exclusive lesbianism. And then there were women who I studied who identified as bisexual but experienced their bisexuality as something that had more to do with a particular relationship they were in, rather than a stable trait. They say, “I thought I was heterosexual and then I fell in love with this woman. I don’t know what that means, and I don’t know what will happen in the future.”

That open-endedness is why bisexuality gets stigmatized. Because you have this mix of different experiences it’s hard for folks to get a handle on what exactly it is. That’s why I don’t use the term “bisexual” to refer to orientation at all. I talk a lot about “non-exclusive” attractions. The majority of women who experience any same-sex attractions at all, actually tend to experience attractions for both men and women. Not necessarily 50/50, and in fact the majority of folks lean toward one end or the other.

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But they’ll say, “I’m mainly attracted to women, but if the right guy came along that would be OK.” This is an idea that many people find threatening. It’s much more comfortable for the culture at large to imagine that everyone fits into a gay or straight box.

TW: If we as a culture were to move away from rigid ideas of fixed identities and fixed sexualities, what possibilities open up?

LD: We really need to remember what a negative view our society has of sexuality. We have an unbelievable amount of anxiety about sexuality and especially about childhood sexuality. As a fun thought experiment I’ll ask someone with a young son or daughter, “What is your ideal vision about your child’s positive, wonderful sexuality?” And

Snaps & Slaps SNAP: Sim Gill Cheers to this Salt Lake City prosecutor for not pursuing a bogus trespassing charge against a gay couple detained and (according to security footage) harassed by LDS security kissing on the church-owned plaza between the downtown temple and the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. Apparently the church hasn’t made it clear enough that the thoroughfare, formerly known as Main Street and formerly known as public land, is private property where such vices as (same-sex) kissing are verboten. Of course, we think the issue could have been settled years ago by the church simply making it clear what is and is not acceptable on the plaza. Or, you know, not selling public land to a religious group that owns enough of downtown Salt Lake in the first place … but we digress. Will the church put up signs and gates? Will it hire bouncers like an exclusive New York night club? How many gay, kissing missionaries will we see in next year’s Saturday’s Voyeur?

We don’t have answers to these questions yet, but we’re glad that somebody finally called the church out about the confusing way it has administered its “little bit of Paris” for years.

SLAP: LDS Plaza Security people just look at me and they realize they have no idea of what positive sexual development means. They have no idea how to look at their child or adolescent and say, “Wow, how do I make sure you have a wonderful, erotic life?” We don’t talk about it! We only talk about how to prevent bad things from happening. Fluidity and a broadened version of sexuality could get us to ask the questions: What is healthy sexuality? How can this potentially help someone accept their sexual desires? How can this help us adopt a more accepting and empowering view of sexuality writ large for all individuals at all ages? We need to get over this anxiety about sexuality. It would be an amazing thing if a 13-year-old went into health class and was told, “You are at the beginning of an incredible journey. I’m going to give you some tools and strategies for figuring out what you want and how to get it. But you are in the beginning of an adventure and it’s going to be great!” That would be a really profound transformation.

Lisa Diamond is an Associate Professor of Psychology and Gender Studies at the University of Utah. Troy Williams is the executive producer of KRCL. Podcast the entire interview at queergnosis.com.

Yeah, we watched the tape.

Seriously, guys. Gay smooching and being mouthy (even cussing) isn’t a good enough reason to shove people around — especially if the security camera catching it all will make you look like assholes alter. Their behavior is the most disgraceful thing about this entire disgraceful mess. Why can’t Utah ever appear in the national news for doing something that doesn’t make us all look either bigoted or stupid?

SNAP: National Kiss-Ins Utah isn’t the only state, of course, where gay and lesbian couples have to deal with stupidity and bigotry for sharing a peck on the cheek or lips outside of their own homes. On Aug. 15 U.S. Americans in several cities will stage their own versions of last July’s “kiss-ins” (on public property) to show that hugging, hand-holding and kissing among people of the same sex aren’t shameful behavior. Ours will be held at the Salt Lake City-County Building. Bring your spouse, partner, girlfriend, boyfriend or friends (in any number) and join the fun.

Ruby Ridge Private Arts

by Ruby Ridge

O

K all of you local artists and raging hipsters out there, how come I have never received a memo about the Springville Museum of Art? What is up with that?

I mean, seriously, I see you guys and gals around town all the time, and no one has ever said, “Ruby, you need to get your butt down to Springville and check out the museum, because the place is amazing!” I feel so left out of the cultural loop!

But here’s how I corrected this egregious error: I saw a blurb in the Salt Lake Tribune about the museum’s quilt exhibit.

It looked interesting, despite my initial wave of revulsion due to a) quilts being such a Mormon — State Fair — pissing contest kind of thing (with all of those tearjerky description cards about greatgreat-great-grandmother’s trek across Wyoming in a handcart without A/C and so on), and b) Springville is smack dab in the middle of the heart of dark-

ness, or as it’s listed on the map, Utah County. Eeewww! Despite those obvious flaws, it sounded sort of intriguing, and with my former-stalker-turnedbuddy Kim (an artist by trade) in town from San Francisco, we decided to pile into my new car “Lucretia,” try out the new GPS, and go explore the Badlands.

When we got there, we were both pretty much gob-smacked! For one thing, the museum is this gorgeous (and huge) Mediterranean-style building with glossy tile floors, stucco and skylights for days. Stunning! This is a facility that Salt Lake City — or any metropolitan community — would be envious of. Then on top of the architecture, it has this really diverse collection of sculptures inside and out, and the upstairs galleries have terrific collections of Soviet Art, and superb Western pieces.

Then there is the quilt exhibit, which is really colorful and fun, and not the totally appalling Mo-Fest I thought it

would be. Plus, all of this art and atmosphere is absolutely free.

Kim and I were about halfway through the exhibit when a posse of elderly women came in and started scrutinizing the quilts up close. No, make that really up close. We nicknamed them the “Quilting Mafia.” These brazen biddies completely ignored the “do not touch” signs as they poked and pulled at the fabric, testing every seam. You could see it in their eyes, they had seen it all, and done it all, and they weren’t afraid of death. There’s no telling what they would do to a Salt Lake City slicker and his Californian sidekick, so we just stayed the hell out of their way.

The sheer variety of quilts is really interesting, and the different techniques are so creative.

There are traditional block quilts, distressed fiber art quilts and one with really great color that looked like a stained glass window (which reminded us of those 1970s, slightly cheesy Lutheran Churches where all of the windows and banners are sort of Scandinavian

minimalist and have no eyes — which we adore!).

Later, we overheard the quilt was made by a 12-year-old. I know, 12 years old. Damn! We joked that the old quilting mafia ladies must be horrified by the use of machine stitching and computer templates on the modern quilts.

Chances are, they would probably call the quilter a whore to her face and beat her to death with her own cutting mat. I’m telling you, pumpkins, these bitches were hard core.

Anyway, kittens, the exhibit is up until early September, so Kim and I would wholeheartedly recommend you load up the family sports wagon and trek down to Springville to see it.

Happy trails, darlings! Q

You could see it in their eyes, they had seen it all, and done it all, and they weren’t afraid of death.

You can see Ruby Ridge and the Matrons of Mayhem live and in person, every third Friday of the month at Third Friday Bingo (First Baptist Church, 777 S 1300 E). Bingo on Aug. 21 is Broadway themed and benefits the Salt Lake Men’s Choir (who may delight us all with a song or two).

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Lambda Lore Murder, Music and Manifesto: August 1969

by Ben Williams

T

he most disturbing event in

1969, one that ended the era of hippies being viewed as harbingers of “love, peace and happiness,” occurred August 9. Forty years ago, members of a cult led by Charles Manson, murdered actress Sharon Tate (who was 8 months pregnant) and her friends: Folgers coffee heiress Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowski and Hollywood hairstylist Jay Sebring at Roman Polanski’s rented home in Los Angeles, Calif. Another person, teenager Steven Parent, is often forgotten as the first victim murdered that hot summer night.

In the morning, the LA Times headline screamed of the Tate Murders, as they came to be called. However, many simply regarded the killings as incidental to quirky Hollywood types — perhaps a drug deal gone awry. At least, until the following day when the middle class LaBiancas were found murdered. Now to many Americans, the hitchhiking hippies on the roadsides were viewed as potential homicidal maniacs, and now potential suspects. Gun purchases skyrocketed in Southern California as time passed and the murderers’ identities remained undiscovered (it would take four months for the LA police to break the case). My parents who never locked their doors in suburban Garden Grove began doing so, and would so ever after.

Charles Manson’s criminal record began with his arrest in Utah on Feb. 16, 1951 at age 16. He and two other 16year-old boys had escaped from a boy’s

reformatory in Indiana where Manson claimed he was forcibly sodomized by one of the guards and three juvenile inmates.

Manson said, “The place was filled with warped sadistic bastards.” After taking revenge on one of the perpetrators by beating him nearly to death, Manson took off with his youthful companions and headed for California, stealing cars along the way as a mode of transportation. Just outside Beaver, Utah, a road block set up for a robbery suspect netted the runaways instead. Police arrested Manson for taking a stolen car across a state line which was a violation of the Dyer Act, a federal law. He was held in a Utah jail until he was transferred to federal custody. After that he was sent to various federal reformatories.

A year after he was arrested in Utah, Manson was charged with holding a razor blade to the neck of a fellow youthful offender while he sodomized him.

By August 1952 he had been charged with eight serious offenses including three homosexual acts. His progress report stated, “Manson definitely has homosexual and assaultive behavior.”

Actually, Manson claimed that he used sex to break down the mores of his followers and bend them to his will. At the most, Monson could be considered a bisexual.

Following Manson’s attempt to initiate a race war by bringing on “Helter Skelter,” the Woodstock Music & Art Fair, that quintessential hippie “happening,” took place August 15–18 at Max Yasgur’s Sullivan County dairy farm near Bethel,

1 8 | QSa lt L a k e | issue 13 4 | Augus t 6 , 20 09

N.Y. The fair held that August weekend would never have happened if not for Eliot Tiber, a gay man.

In the spring of 1969, Tiber had turned his barn over to the Earthlight Theatre group from New York City’s Greenwich Village and turned his former bingo room into an “underground cinema.”

He even gave free rent, in his parents’ El Monaco Motel, to film people trying to get a start in the “movie biz.” However, nobody in the county responded to his efforts, and they hated his “Greenwich Village hippie theatre misfits, homosexuals and lesbians, who found a safe haven in the county.”

Tiber said he had led a closeted life in the 1960s, managing his parents’ motel and serving as president of the Bethel Chamber of Commerce. However, he also participated in the “gay scene” in New York City. Tiber stated in his memoir that he was at the Stonewall Inn on the night of the famous riot: “We barricaded the doors to keep the cops out, but when we realized that we outnumbered them, we unblocked the exits and ran out onto the street. A group of us started yelling, ‘Gay power!’ Within seconds, the Stonewall Riot was underway ... A bunch of us rocked a cop car back and forth, and then overturned it. More people, gay men and lesbians, showed up to join us.”

Less than three weeks after Stonewall, on July 15, 1969 Tiber read that the plug had been pulled on the planned Woodstock Festival at Middletown, N.Y. Since Tiber had obtained a permit for a music and art festival event at his motel, he contacted Woodstock promoter Michael Lang and suggested having the festival on his 15-acre farm. When Lang said the venue was too small, he introduced the producers to Max Yasgur and his 600-acre farm, and the rest, as they say, is history.

El Monaco Motel became the headquarters of the music festival for the producers as well as some of the performers, including Canned Heat and Arlo Guthrie.

A half-million people descended on Yas-

gur’s farm, and after the concert he spoke of how all those people spent the days with music and peace on their minds. He stated that, “If we join them, we can turn those adversities that are the problems of America today into a hope for a brighter and more peaceful future.”

About a week after Woodstock, on August 23, a seven-day North America Conference of Homophile Organizations was held in Kansas City, Missouri.

It was the 4th annual such convention, with 24 independent gay groups sending delegates to the conference.

NACHO operated much as civil rights groups had through the first half of the ’60s. The homophile leaders felt that through “education, legal action and voter education,” the heterosexual majority could be won over “by appealing to their consciences.” The homophiles considered that “respectability” could only come by building a “good public image” and by lobbying with Congress and State legislators.

All that changed in 1969 when a radical caucus, supported by the NACHO Youth Committee, emerged midway through the convention.

On August 28, the “Radical Manifesto was presented to NACHO delegates declaring that the homophile movement must be radicalized. “Our fate is linked with these minorities. Therefore we declare our support as homosexuals or bisexuals for the struggles of the black, the feminist, the Spanish American, the Indian, the hippie, the young, the student and other victims of oppression and prejudice. Our enemies, an implacable, repressive governmental system, much of organized religion, business and medicine, will not be moved by appeasement or appeals to reason and justice, but only by power and force.

We demand the removal of all restrictions on sex between consenting persons of any sex, of any orientation, of any age, anywhere, whether for money or not and for the removal of all censorship. We call upon the churches to sanction homosexual liaisons when called upon. We call upon the homophile movement to be more honestly concerned with youth rather than trying to promote a mythical non existent ‘good public image.’ The homophile movement must totally reject the insane war in Viet Nam and refuse to encourage complicity in the war and support of the war machine, which may well be turned against us. We oppose any attempt by the movement to obtain security clearances for homosexuals, since these contribute to the war machine. The homophile movement must engage in continuous political struggle on all fronts.”

After three hours of cantankerous debate, the radical caucus lost all votes to the conservative homophile delegates who saw the manifesto as clearly destroying all the “good will” the homophiles had generated with the establishment. Within a year, however, all the homophile organizations would all be gone, replaced by the Gay Liberation Front. Q

Creep of the Week Peter LaBarbera

By D’Anne Witkowski

T

he topic of health care is

on everyone’s lips, and Peter LaBarbera, president of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, “a group dedicated to exposing the homosexual activist agenda,” is no exception.

Granted, most folks are focused on things like America’s large number of uninsured or the rising cost of caring for the sick and injured. LaBarbera has a much more limited scope: the gays. Specifically, gay men and sex and how it’s bad and the government must stop it.

Speaking July 24 at the 2009 Reclaiming Oklahoma For Christ Conference, LaBarbera called for a government study of the dangerous of homosexual sex. Because, you know, priorities.

“When it comes to combating cigarettes, the government not only restricts, taxes and bans smoking, it also funds and encourages anti-smoking messages and advertisements,” reads Americans for Truth’s Web site.

“Given the immense health risks of male homosexual sex, shouldn’t the federal government do a comprehensive study on the matter, tax sodomitic establishments and educate the public and especially young people about the dangers of ‘gay’ sex?”

One wonders just how LaBarbera thinks the government should restrict, tax and ban gay sex. Given his obsession with the subject, my guess is he’d be happy to take on the volunteer title of gay sex enforcer, much like those old guys who stand on the Texas border with shotguns looking out for illegal immigrants.

It is also worth noting the fact that Americans for Truth about Homosexuality advocates educating “young people” about the horrors of gay sex. Keep in mind, this is a group that believes that LGBT activists are infiltrating schools and corrupting

children. So it’s OK to talk to kids about homosexuality if the topic is gay sex=bad, but not OK if the topic is, say, anti-gay bullying.

Also, the cigarette analogy is not new one. Anti-gay groups have long been batting around the claim that men having sex with other men is more dangerous than smoking. That there has been no valid data indicating as much doesn’t seem to matter.

Science is, after all, the providence of secular heathens.

So what is fueling LaBarbera’s clarion call for such a study is information from the FDA’s Web site about gay men donating blood in the United States. While LaBarbera acts as if this information is new and revelational, the policy has been in place since 1983.

In fact, the policy, which lumps gay and bisexual men in with hookers and junkies and bans them from donating blood for life, has been widely criticized. The Red Cross has called it “medically and scientifically unwarranted.” The executive vice president of America’s Blood Centers has publicly expressed his disappointment over the policy.

Martin Algaze, spokesman for Gay Men’s Health Crisis, has called the policy “archaic and discriminatory because it falsely assumes that all gay men are HIV-positive regardless of their sexual behavior. At the same time, it allows heterosexuals to donate blood even if they have participated in risky sexual or drug-use behavior.”

But hey, never mind that. Let’s do a government study of hot manon-man action, because LaBarbera needs something to replace his dogeared and tattered copy of the Starr Report. Q

‘Shouldn’t the federal government... tax sodomitic establishments and educate the public and especially young people about the dangers of ‘gay’ sex?’

D’Anne Witkowski has been gay for pay since 2003. She’s a freelance writer and poet (believe it!). When she’s not taking on the creeps of the world she reviews rock and roll shows in Detroit with her twin sister and teaches writing at the University of Michigan.

Augus t 6 , 20 09 | issue 13 4 | QSa lt L a k e | 19

20 | QSa lt L a k e | issue 13 4 | Augus t 6 , 20 09

Gay Geeks Fannish Love

By JoSelle Vanderhooft

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o quote Obi Wan Kenobi: “This

is not the interview you are looking for.�

Um. Yeah. About that interview with the A Very Potter Musical guys? Note to self: contacting Harry Potter fans with a message to the effect of “HAY YOU GUYZ LETS DO AN INTERVYOO OK!� right in the middle of a huge Harry Potter convention will probably not yield the results you want. And then sometimes your bathroom floods and you spend the entire week dealing with medical drama of the non-fun, non-House, non-Scrubs kind, and you forget to, I don’t know, like actually set up an interview when the con is over.

In other words, the interview with these scarily talented gentlemen has been delayed on account of my fail.

You’ll see it later this month, and it will be totally awesome.

Excuses, excuses. But sometimes when things don’t work out the way you want, you get to do something else that can be kind of awesome. Like explaining why in the heck anyone would want to spend hours of their precious time writing, directing, producing, stage managing, stage crewing or acting in a musical parody of Harry Potter, for which they will never be paid a cent, and for which receiving a cent would bring down the Warner Bros. lawyers like seagulls on garbage bin (note: the WB owns Harry Potter). And why many geeks, uh, flock to “fan work� like fanproduced stories (fan fiction), fan-produced art (fan art) and projects like A Very Potter Musical when they could very well be reading the books or sitting through Harry Potter and the HalfBlood Prince for the 40,000th time.

The why can be very difficult to explain to people who don’t feel the need to create or seek out fan work. But I’ll try. Did you ever encounter a story — in a book, film, TV show or anything else — you enjoyed so much that you didn’t want it to end? Well, fan work just takes that feeling to its logical conclusion.

And as long as the story’s creators don’t mind, and you don’t charge any money for effectively playing with their toys, it’s usually something the lawyers won’t descend on you like seagulls for doing.

That’s it. Lots of Potter fans like this musical because it plays with a story they love in an affectionate and charming way and keeps it fresh, exciting and alive for us. Which is what the best fan work, in my opinion, does.

Unless, of course, you’re looking

for fan work in which your favorite character(s) is/are getting laid. If that’s mainly what you want to see, well, there’s a whole internet of it out there, given that the internet is for porn, as Avenue Q taught us (and reading QSaltLake, if the damn hackers would just go bother somebody else already). Note that the two do not have to be mutually exclusive. But that is another column for another time.

I’m sure a lot of you are rolling your eyes at this obvious exegesis of fan work. But you might be surprised at how many geeks don’t get it (after all, nothing is worth doing if it isn’t original work or if you can’t be paid for it, right? Right? Right?!?). Or how many geeks find making or enjoying fan work, well, tragically geeky — to which I say OMGWTF and LOL, because, seriously? I tease, of course, because one geek’s pleasure is always another geek’s pain, and that’s not only fine, but probably good. The world, after all, would be terribly boring if we all thought Captain Kirk was better than Captain Picard (or Captain Janeway or Captain Sisko, who is the best Captain.

I’m just saying.). But I bring it up because I wanted to make sure we’re all on the same page before I launch into a big thing about the inherent coolness of the writers and composers behind A Very Potter Musical. Otherwise, I might leave everyone asking what are these people doing, and why aren’t they being dive bombed by a flock of seagulls?

Be sure to tune in next week when we really, really will have an interview, and maybe even some funny pictures from the show. Until next time, brush up on your Harry Potter if it’s been awhile, and be sure to see The HalfBlood Prince if you haven’t already. I usually feel like Harry Potter movies are the equivalent of eating a gigantic Twinkie — fun at first, but not all that nourishing or enjoyable to repeat — but this one is more like a handmade cupcake. It really is that good.

Come and see me this Sunday at The SLC People’s Market Book Day at Jordan Park, 900 West and 1000 South, where I’ll have a table and a reading alongside a bunch of other local authors, including the incomparable Will Bagley. Yes! Now is the time to pick up any and all of my in-print books. I’ll even scribble my name in them. And because bribery is usually a good thing when it doesn’t involve political scandals: “Gay Geeks� readers get a special treat just for stopping by.

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facebook.com/qsaltlake Augus t 6 , 20 09  |  issue 13 4  |  QSa lt L a k e  |  21

22 | QSa lt L a k e | issue 13 4 | Augus t 6 , 20 09

This article appeared in the July 13, 2009 edition of The Nation, the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States Since we thought it would be good to show our readers what is being said about us from outsiders. It is reprinted here with permission.

by Lisa Duggan

F

orget everything you think

you know about Utah. Yes, it’s the reddest state in the union and the headquarters of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). For the past twenty-five years, Republicans have had a virtual lock on statewide offices. Utah hasn’t voted for a Democrat for president since 1964, and last year the state chose John McCain over Barack Obama by almost a 2-to-1 margin.

But here in Salt Lake City, it’s a different story. The city and surrounding counties are a lovely blue. The current and previous mayors--Ralph Becker and Rocky Anderson--are well-known progressive Democrats with excellent records on the environment, gay and civil rights, disability access and other municipal issues, and Salt Lake County, home to four of the five most populous cities in the state, went for Obama in 2008.

Then there’s Salt Lake City’s queer community, whose smart, creative and coalition-building strategies could provide a model for gay activists across the country.

That last claim requires a bit of explanation. Last fall I lived in Salt Lake City.

As a leftist and New York City dyke, I had expected to find a conservative city and a quietly assimilationist gay community. Instead, I was repeatedly blown away by the progressive politics and outright queerness of the capital city, which is about 40 percent Mormon.

To Boycott or Not to Boycott...

I was in Salt Lake City in November when the passage of California’s Proposition 8 generated national outrage against the Mormon Church for its role in sending money and volunteers to help antigay forces take away the right of California’s same-sex couples to marry.

A few national LGBT figures, most notably gay pundit Dan Savage, called for a boycott of Utah to punish its majority Mormon population. In Salt Lake City, I joined a furious crowd, including many gay Mormons and ex-Mormons, at a November 7 protest at the LDS Temple.

The scene was a jumble of mixed messages, with signs ranging from “Love Makes a Family,” to “Separate Church and State,” to “Brigham Young Had 55 Wives, I Want 1!” But no one I saw advocated a boycott. Most seemed to agree with KRCL-FM public radio station personality Troy Williams, referred to by some Utahns as their homegrown Harvey Milk, who challenged Savage on his hourlong program, calling for an influx of queer migrants to the state rather than a boycott. Perhaps a New Queer Pioneer movement, modeled on

the sanctified Mormon pioneers of the nineteenth century, would do more to shrink the impact of LDS antigay bigotry than any boycott ever could.

Not that Utah needs new queer residents to spark political, social or cultural creativity. The city is home to a floridly queer and unusually politically unified LGBT community. Salt Lake City hosts numerous gay bars and businesses, a busy assortment of queer artists and intellectuals, a thriving drag culture and an “extreme” BD/ SM school. At this year’s pride rally, after the annual dyke march on June 6, the city’s residents flocked to the downtown Federal Building to hear local drag celebrity Sister Dottie S. Dixon (Mormon mother of a gay son, as embodied by actor Charles Frost) beseech “the almightly diva S&M Goddess of her Most High,” among other deities, to “help our surgeons ta discover how to perfarm a complete brain transplant, so that Mitt Romney can live with hope fer a better future.” And “while yer at it,” Sister Dixon implored, “if you’ve got any more of them plagues of locus-please send them ta every household that voted fer Preperation 8!”

The rally was sponsored by the rapidly expanding Utah Pride Center, which under executive director Valerie Larabee has more than doubled its budget in the past five years. At the Pride Center, a broad range of local activist groups and LGBT individuals actually talk to each other--in stark contrast to the balkanized landscape of national LGBT organizations. Indeed, perhaps more than in any other city, Salt Lake City’s queer scene resembles the storied days of ACT UP, when mainstream assimilationists collaborated with radical activists to develop talking points, coordinate strategy and change homophobic policy.

This conversation across boundaries is a product of savvy activists and, paradoxically, of the formidable political and cultural barriers created by the Mormon Church and the statewide strength of the Republican machine. In such a political arena, queer flamboyance and tough-minded seriousness have to coexist in order to get anything done. In that sense, as gay activists nationwide take stock of where the gay rights movement has come in the forty years since the Stonewall riots and plot a political future, they should look to Salt Lake City for pointers instead of Boston or New York.

For better or worse, national LGBT politics is now focused on marriage equality. This spring, gay marriage advocates were emboldened by the legalization of same-sex marriage in Iowa, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, which joined Massachusetts and Con-

necticut in the gay marriage column.

New York is poised to become the seventh state on that list, and there are a few other states--New Jersey, Rhode Island, Washington and Oregon--where activists can reasonably expect to pick up another marriage win in the future.

But then they hit a daunting wall: forty states define marriage as being between a man and a woman; and twenty-nine of those, including Utah, have that definition embedded in their constitution, putting such restrictions beyond the jurisdiction of state courts. Absent a Supreme Court decision or Congressional same-sex-marriage legislation, individual state-by-state campaigns to repeal these amendments and pass pro-gay bills remain the best avenue to secure partnership rights for same-sex couples in these states. (The legal odd couple, David Boies and Theodore Olsen, opponents in Bush v. Gore, have filed a federal lawsuit challenging Prop 8 and seeking to legalize gay marriage nationwide, but most gay legal experts consider it a long shot.)

Unfortunately, very little national attention or political talent has been devoted to these states, where the vast majority of Americans live.

Common Ground Initiative

Utah suffers with a so-called Super DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act), passed in 2004 by 66 percent of voters as Amendment 3 to the state Constitution. Amendment 3 goes beyond barring same-sex marriage to bar any “marriage like” legal relationship between same-sex couples. Domestic partnerships offering broad benefits, like those in California, as well as civil unions are off the table, along with marriage, at all levels of government in the state.

You might think that such draconian restrictions would hobble LGBT legislative action in states saddled with constitutional bans that cannot be overturned except by another amendment, especially in those eighteen states with a Super DOMA. But not in Utah! In the wake of the Prop 8 protests last fall, an energized LGBT policy organization, Equality Utah, formulated an ingenious strategy. Drawing on the claims of LDS officials and some conservative state politicians that their support of “traditional” marriage isn’t antigay, and their assurances that they support other basic protections for LGBT citizens, Equality Utah drew up a list of just such protections. University of Utah law professor Cliff Rosky, a member of Equality Utah’s legal panel, branded it the Common Ground Initiative (CGI).

Equality Utah then invited supporters of Prop 8 to demonstrate their lack of antigay rancor by supporting six legislative initiatives on the CGI platform: healthcare rights, fair workplace rights, fair housing rights, inheritance rights, domestic partnerships and clarification of Amendment 3 (removal of the “Super” part of the DOMA). Equality Utah activists also launched a mass public relations campaign to build the Common Ground identity, and now

Common Ground buttons, stickers and signs can be seen all over Salt Lake City, gracing shirts, cars, homes, businesses and lawns.

Polling by the Salt Lake Tribune and Equality Utah showed majority support for the core CGI issues not only in Salt Lake City and County but statewide. In an early January Equality Utah poll, 62 percent of voters supported employment nondiscrimination laws, 56 percent supported fair housing laws and 73 percent supported granting adult designees of state employees health insurance coverage. The Tribune poll also found that 56 percent backed legal protections like inheritance rights and job protection for LGBT people.

The CGI also won the backing of wildly popular Republican Governor Jon Huntsman, who on February 9 surprised the national press by calling for civil unions for same-sex couples and endorsing CGI’s first package of legislation. Huntsman had endorsed Amendment 3 when he ran for office in 2004, but his recent change of mind and support for civil unions is out in front of Utah public opinion, which still opposes civil unions by 70 percent. Many pundits surmise that Huntsman’s switch is aimed at courting a national public as he prepares to run for president (from his likely perch as ambassador to China). But Huntsman didn’t change his position in a political vacuum in Utah. Clearly established pub-

lic support for most of the CGI issues, disarticulated from the national drive for marriage equality, makes Huntsman’s call for civil unions politically viable. The soon-to-be-former governor retains an 84 percent approval rating in his home state.

But despite this outpouring of support and despite dogged work by Equality Utah executive director Mike Thompson (since moved to San Francisco) and staffers Will Carlson, Lauren Littlefield and Keri Jones, who mobilized an army of volunteers energized by the passage of Prop 8, the first three bills to come out of the Common Ground Initiative failed in committee during the 2009 legislative session. A coordinated cadre of antigay legislators schemed to undercut the three bills--covering wrongful death, eliminating housing and employment discrimination and establishing an “Adult Joint Support Declaration” registry--before they could come to a vote on the floor of the Legislature.

The brilliance of the CGI strategy, however, does not lie in the likelihood

of immediate or enthusiastic endorsements from conservative opponents in the Legislature or the Mormon Church.

Rather, the brilliance of the strategy is its ability to refocus public opinion, put conservative opponents on the defensive, shift public perception of the barriers to LGBT equality and broaden the scope of action to include the needs of people living in nonconjugal households, be they straight, gay or other.

Beyond Marriage

Utah’s activists are looking beyond marriage equality in a variety of other ways.

Sometimes forced by Amendment 3 to ask for less than marriage would provide, they are also pushing ahead to ask for more. Challenged in public venues by conservative claims that CGI is just a step toward marriage equality, Equality Utah organizers repeatedly stress a simple but often overlooked fact: many basic rights and protections for LGBT citizens, including some on the CGI list, are not guaranteed by marriage. Housing and employment discrimination, for example, could continue against married or cohabiting couples as well as single people. That point is very well taken in the current political climate, when marriage equality often stands in for all civil equality.

The CGI legislative initiatives also include provisions that allocate benefits to Utahns living in nonconjugal households, those whose primary “next of kin” and interdependent relations are not with romantic or sexual partners--elderly caretaker households or close friends who live together and share finances, for example. Building on the existing provision in Salt Lake City that grants health insurance benefits to the “adult designees” of city employees, one of the CGI proposals would create an Adult Joint Support Declaration. Such declarations would provide a legal mechanism for adults who take responsibility for each other to have hospital visitation, medical decisionmaking and inheritance rights. Though designed to get around Amendment 3, which bars recognition of “marriage like” relationships, including domestic partnerships, the Adult Joint Support Declaration bill would actually extend rights to a far broader range of households than marriage or even domestic partnerships do.

Such proposals begin to make the diversity of households and interdependent relationships visible and highlight the limits of a marriage-focused gay rights agenda that prioritizes the needs of the conventionally coupled.

Such provisions could also make coalition-building easier: get the AARP on board to lobby for medical next of kin, tax and inheritance rights for “Golden Girls” households, or attract libertarians who want to take the state out of the business of “recognizing” sexual or romantic relationships entirely.

Standing up to Opposition

During the 2009 legislative session, notoriously Neanderthal Republican state legislator Chris Buttars was recorded making another in a long series of offensive antigay remarks: They’re probably the greatest threat to America goin’ down I know of. Homosexuality will always be a sexual perversion, but you say that around here now and everybody goes nuts. But I don’t care. What is the morals of a gay person? You can’t answer that, because anything goes. They wanna talk about

being nice? They’re the meanest buggers I’ve ever seen.

Rather than resort to earnest denunciation, gay and progressive Utahns got together to throw a big party--ButtarsPalooza--to thank the legislator for clarifying the nature of the opposition and bringing them all together. Troy Williams of KRCL and Michael Mueller of Utahns for Marriage Equality brought together a coalition of organizations including Utah Jobs With Justice, the Healthy Environment Alliance, the Brown Berets, Trans Action Utah, the Utah Pride Center and the state branches of Planned Parenthood, the Human Rights Campaign and the ACLU. On a soundstage powered by a giant Solar Saucer, speakers mixed with bands and break dancers. Below, on the lawn of the state Capitol, an unprecedented range of progressive forces gathered to demand social justice across all their issues.

Homeless Youth

Nonetheless, the barriers to progressive action are as formidable as the powers arrayed against them. Activists are up against an intransigent LDS hierarchy active in state politics and a state legislature as reactionary as any in the country. LGBT kids in Utah still must cope with an often devastatingly hostile environment outside Salt Lake City. A 2008 survey by the Utah Volunteers of America showed that 48 percent of homeless youth in its outreach program identified as LGBT or nonheterosexual. (A documentary by Salt Lake City filmmaker Natalie Avery tracing the difficult plight of these young people was broadcast last year on the public television station KUED.)

Activists took on the conservative opposition in some new ways as well.

Augus t 6 , 20 09 | issue 13 4 | QSa lt L a k e | 23

What’s Right with Utah?

Continued

Yet until recently, it was illegal to offer shelter to a homeless minor in Utah without parental permission. But now, thanks to the passage of HB22 during the 2009 legislative session, homeless or abandoned youth, including runaways from polygamous families and queer

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kids, can be sheltered by individuals or organizations; notification of the Division of Child and Family Services will prevent criminal charges.

Changing public opinion and shifting demographics lie behind such legislative change, slow as it is. Along with the soaring popularity of departing moderate Republican Governor Huntsman, such changes indicate that the LDS hierarchy and conservative Republican moralists are increasingly out of touch with their constituencies. Most optimistically, my education in Utah leads me to believe that what’s happening here can be a model not only for queer progressive politics in the DOMA states but for organizing at the federal level as well.

Every state has specific local conditions to contend with. But many states, Georgia and Texas for example, might profit from a close look at Utah’s CGI. Both states have Super DOMAs and no statewide job or housing protections for LGBT residents, but they are also home to dedicated activists and vibrant queer communities in Atlanta and Dallas.

CGI’s inclusive strategy might also work well at the national level. During three speeches at the Utah Pride Festival, Cleve Jones, former Harvey Milk protege and founder of the NAMES Project, the AIDS Memorial Quilt, called for an October 11 march on Washington. Jones said that the march would be for “full civil equality,� but he never mentioned marriage equality specifically. Though some news outlets reported that he called for a “gay marriage� march, Jones later confirmed in an e-mail to me that though full civil equality includes the right to marry, he intentionally left out a specific appeal on the marriage issue in favor of a single, more all-encompassing sentence. “We seek equal protection under the law, in all matters governed by civil law, in all fifty states,� he wrote.

The crowds in Salt Lake City reacted to Jones’s call for full civil equality with

the kind of energy and emotion that only marriage politics have been generating at LGBT gatherings for nearly a decade. It can be daunting to try to mobilize constituencies with lists of rights, benefits and a more democratic menu of partnership and household recognitions than marriage only. Even universal healthcare, though broadly desired by queer Americans as much as by any others, fails to generate fiery rhetoric or stoke the energy of crowds. It remains to be seen whether a call for full civil equality can produce mass mobilization, or whether it might soon be reduced to a call for gay marriage only, or worse, to the production of just another commercially sponsored gay parade. The devil will be in the details, which will be settled in the weeks to come.

But my months in the Beehive State have taught me that a call for basic fairness and full civil equality, made in terms that include queers but are not limited to them, can rally progressive action in even the most arid conditions.

Such outside-the-box strategy, focusing on concrete material benefits that cut across constituencies, can help sidestep the polarizing ferocity of gay-marriage politics, which engulfed California last year. “Full civil equality� expressed in these terms extends beyond the conventional conjugal couple to include the distribution of rights and resources to other individuals and households, to homeless youth, transgendered workers, hounded immigrants, impoverished single parents and beyond.

More ambitious, a close analysis of the CGI agenda’s list of benefits can help us realize that universalizing some of those benefits, especially access to healthcare, would obviate the need to attach them to partnerships, households or employment in the first place.

Universalized benefits and broader basic household and partnership recognition beyond the conjugal couple might ultimately make marriage less necessary and desirable across the board.

Indeed, this vision at the center of the right-wing nightmare (we’ll all become unmarried socialists, like in Sweden!) appears to leftist dykes like me as a dream. Perhaps defining queer issues as those that address the needs of most of us (like healthcare or childcare), rather than merely those that address only gay people, can move us out of isolation and into overlapping alliances that might change all our lives for the better.

Instead of advocating domesticity and promoting consumption under the name of equality politics, as the mainstream LGBT movement currently does, we might do something truly weird and definitely queer: look to Utah for inspiration.   Q Lisa Duggin is a professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University. The Nation is “the flagship of the left,� founded in 1865.

2 4  |  QSa lt L a k e  |  issue 13 4  |  Augus t 6 , 20 09

Utah Pride Center Wins National Nonprofit Award The Utah Pride Center is the winner of a new award given to regional, community-based nonprofit organizations serving gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

Sponsored by GreatNonprofits.com, a review site for nonprofit organizations, review site GuideStar and prominent gay blog Queerty, the 2009 Pride Choice Awards recognize organizations serving gay and transgender people that site visitors favorably reviewed. Voting was held on the site throughout Pride Month (June) and the first week of July and results announced July 7. Awards were given in the categories of annual budget (less than $250,000, $250,000 to $1 million and over $1 million) and region.

Winners included Raleigh, N.C.’s Gay Christian Network, The Trevor Project and Keshet, Inc., a Massachusetts-based organization for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Jews.

The Utah Pride Center won in the category “Best of Southwest.” On the Center’s GreatNonprofits Web page, commenters cited the center’s youthfocused programs, “friendly” and “hospitable” staff, “spirit of optimism” and willingness to support the local gay and transgender community as reasons for ranking it high.

“I have been a volunteer at the Utah Pride Center for over two years. As an extremely busy individual with limited time to volunteer, I work with the Pride Center because I believe it is an organization that actually contributes to the community,” wrote one commenter, using the handle Chelsea Volunteer. “Whether it is supporting other LGBT groups in the area or working with queer youth groups on the weekends, the Pride Center is one of the only LGBT groups in Utah that has enough resources to reach a broad set of folks in our diverse community along the Wasatch Front.”

When asked how the organization could improve, most comments focused on the financial — getting more donations and shoring up cash reserves “for stability” — and on getting more people interested in volunteering.

While some may be surprised that the Center won with so few votes (only three appear on its GreatNonprofits page), GreatNonprofits CEO Perla Ni pointed out that competition in the Southwest category was not as intense as in other regions. Nearby gay and transgender nonprofits in Boise and Las Vegas, she said, received no votes at all.

“We’re so thrilled to see how well they did, and their reviews are moving,” she said.

The Utah Pride Center was not alone in being a smaller nonprofit reviewers loved. The majority of the Pride Choice Award winners were much like it — regionally-based with budgets well under those of such national organizations

such as the Human Rights Campaign and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. These large groups also had pages, but received fewer votes than their regional counterparts, said Ni. “My personal theory is that people do give to those larger organizations, but they do so out of obligation,” she said.

“And a lot of people don’t really know what the regional organizations are, whereas the people who have experi-

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ence with a local nonprofit can speak personally about it, and often they’ve had a more personal relationship with those organizations than people have with GLAAD or HRC.” And while regional nonprofits are short on national, or even local, media coverage, “what they do have are these remarkable stories about how they have made a difference in people’s lives.”

Ni said her organization started the contest this year in part to make gay and transgender people aware of what these nonprofits can do for them.

“There are so many that are regionally based, and it’s hard for many people to know what they’re about or to support them,” she said. And by giving those who have “first hand experience” with these organizations a platform to speak out, Ni said she hopes the contest will also attract more financial and volunteer support for these nonprofits.

The Center will receive a certificate, a Web badge for display on their site, and a page on GuideStar.com — a nonprofit report site — that will recognize them as a top-reviewed nonprofit organization.

The placement of reviews on GuideStar, said Ni, is critical because it will add dimension to the site’s report about the Center’s financial information “which in our opinion, for smaller and regional nonprofits, really doesn’t tell the entire story.”

Michael Westley, the Utah Pride Center’s media and special events coordinator, said that the Center was honored to receive the award.

“We’re always pleased to be recognized for our efforts in a group of our peers, and we remain focused on how much more work we have to do,” he said. Q

Augus t 6 , 20 09 | issue 13 4 | QSa lt L a k e | 25

4

) " 65 (": 8 0 :& (&4 1"

Jared Gillett

Q A&E Gay Agenda What’s Q Doing?

by Tony Hobday

It’s an experience going on vacation with someone for the first time. A new friend, Matty, and I went to Lava Hot Springs last weekend. By the time it was over his upper arm looked like an uncooked sausage link (a reaction to pole dancing at Charleys and hugging rocks while river tubing), he slept more than he ate and he whined slightly less than his alcohol consumption. He was definitely far from boring, and I’d go to “la isla bonita” with him any day ... I just pray we don’t get stranded.

6

See Aug. 6

thursDAY — Well-known local artist Jared Gillett’s exhibit ‘Dont’t Stop Until You Get Enough’ is currently on display in Park City. Jared paints ‘alla prima,’ — on one painting until it is complete — working with a wet-on-wet painting process. His initial sketch, color blocking and luscious finishing strokes are all applied during one long stint of work.

Regular gallery hours, through Aug. 30, Phoenix Gallery, 508 Main St., Park City. Free, 435-649-1006 or phoenixgalleryparkcity.com.

7

FRIDAY — This weekend the RCGSE will be hosting three draglicious events for their PWA Christmas Fundraiser. Starting today with a Carnival at 7 p.m. Then tomorrow will be Drag Queen Mud Wrestling at 10 p.m., and then concludes Sunday with a Luau which includes a dinner at 5 p.m. and show at 6 p.m.

Through Sunday, all events at The Trapp, 102 S 600 West. Tickets $5 per event, rcgse.org.

QQ Bringing in such unique female artists like Sarah Bettens, Misty River, Sophie Barton and Mona Stevens, the third annual Women’s Redrock Music Festival could be its finest lesbian gathering yet — they’ll be popping up like dandelions all weekend. True, a lot of guys go to it too, but oddly enough they can’t erect their tents as fast as the girls, leaving them to bunk in the trunk of their Prius’.

5–11pm & Saturday Noon–11pm, Robber’s Roost Bookstore, Torrey. Tickets $20/Friday and $30/Saturday, or $45/2-day pass, redrockwomensfest.com.

8

SATURDAY — Coming back for a second time ... kind of like herpes, is QSaltLake’s Beach Party. Shirtless guys (some sashaying, some strutting) in the newest fashion in swimwear ... ooolala! This fundraiser includes a BBQ, giveaways, photo shoot, underwear auction (I heard that last year Gene Gieber’s skivvies went for 20 cents ... that’s freakin’ hot!) and underwear dance party.

2pm, Club Try-Angles, still a private club for members, 251 W. 900 South. Free to members, 801-649-6663 or 801-364-3203.

QQ Another local independent news source we know as Slug Magazine (woohoo!) presents the first annual Craft Lake City Festival. Sponsored in part by Q, this outdoor alternative arts festival will showcase over 80 vendors specializing in handmade goods such as silk-screened posters, progressive crafts, DIY designs, reconstructed clothing, knitted items, jewelry, letter-

26 | QSa lt L a k e | issue 13 4 | Augus t 6 , 20 09

pressed books and more. Also, live local music will rock all day.

2–10pm, Gallivan Center, 239 S. Main St. Free, craftlakecity.com.

QQ Doug LaBrecque, William Michals and Lisa Vroman will be sharing their vocal talents with the help of the Utah Symphony in Bravo Broadway. This is a tribute to Rodgers & Hammerstein, with such hits as “Climb Every Mountain” (The Sound of Music), “Some Enchanted Evening” (South Pacific) and “Ol’ Man River” (Showboat).

7:30pm, Snow Park Amphitheatre, Deer Valley.

Tickets $15–85, 801-355-ARTS or arttix.org.

13

thursDAY — The Lambda Hiking Club’s annual Llama Trek returns. Let the friendly, lovable llamas (if you’re into spitting, you’ll really love these animals) carry your gear while you enjoy the Sawtooth wilderness over a fun-filled five-day trip.

The trip is set through Monday, Aug. 17, Sun Valley, Idaho. To learn more about the club and/or the trip call 208-241-5171 or visit gayhike.org.

14

friDAY — Between the ages of 13 and 17 I was making out with Danny and

Michael ... well, actually it was with the television screen with them on it. They were the ultra hot dancers of the series Fame, which starred famed choreographer Debbie Allen and pop-hit sensation Janet Jackson.

Anyhoo, the ETC presents Fame!, which tells an exciting story about the passions and dedication shared by a group of young people with exceptional artistic gifts.

Hours vary, Fri–Sun, through August 23, Egyptian Theatre, 328 Main St., Park City.

Tickets $12, 435-649-9371 or egyptiantheatrecompany.org.

15

saturDAY — Having a transgressive, genderfuck and gender-bending appearance and persona, Jeffree Star has become a star ... at least a cyber star.

This model/singer/designer/ladyin-waitng/gardener/jewel thief ... oops! Sorry, I got off track. Anyhoo, I want this 23-year-old to come back to myspace to twitter my yahoo until I google all over her facebook! How about you?

6:30pm, Avalon, 3605 S. State St. Tickets $10, 801-467-8499 or smithstix.com.

QQ He’s been known as Little Hands of Concrete, The Imposter and Napoleon Dynamite. Plus his musical genre ranges from rock to country to punk. So you see, Elvis Costello, with many masks and many talents, will likely provide a mind-blowing concert with the Utah Symphony accompanying him.

7:30pm, Snow Park Amphitheatre, Deer Valley.

Tickets $40–80, 801-355-ARTS or arttix.org.

16

sunDAY — It’s that time again to paint Lagoon red.

QSaltLake’s Gay Lagoon Day (the Gay is silent, though) returns with another raucous group of homos screaming bloody mary on the Log Flume and in the public bathrooms.

Ah, good times, good times! Don’t forget there’ll be bingo and a group photo around 4pm-ish. Wear red to stand out!

11am–10pm, Lagoon, 375 Lagoon Dr., Farmington. Tickets $22 with discount coupon, call 801-649-6663 for coupons.

19

wednesDAY — Tonight is Equality Utah’s eighth annual Allies Dinner. The theme is ‘Common Ground: Stand with Us’ — we literally have to stand the entire night, while having spaghetti with red sauce for dinner.

So don’t wear white! OK, with all wit aside, this dinner is not only a fantastic fundraiser, but it’s great to hobnob. I hate to hobnob unless I’m on the 10th Step of Tony. Damn, I can’t wait for this. Sponsored in part

by Q. 6pm, Grand Ballroom, Salt Palace, 100 S. West Temple. Tickets $100, 801-355-3479 or alliesdinner.org.

UPCOMING

AUG. 25 SEP. 01 SEP. 26 OCT. 24 NOV. 20 NOV. 21

Depeche Mode, E Center Dave Matthews Band, USANA The Killers, E Center David Sedaris, Capitol Theatre Elton John & Billy Joel, ESA Kathy Griffin, Abravanel Hall

Hear Me Out

By Chris Azzopardi

Erika Jayne, Pretty Mess Who is Erika Jayne? On the siren’s listless debut, she’s everyone but herself. A little Britney, a little Kylie and a lot of bad. The sultry singer’s dance nuggets, produced by some heavy hit-makers, feel much like a paintby-numbers book, lacking a singular sound, any defying complexity and overexposing cliches about dance, cosmos and sex.

“Stars” is all Kylie, opening the 14-song disc with a dreamlike aura draped in Jayne’s ethereal coo and a chorus that beats itself into you like a dominant top — one of the better, though borrowed, hand-flailing bumpers.

When the Logo fave goes for slinky and sultry balladeer, like on the unintentionally ha-ha-hilarious “I Lose Myself,” she risks losing more than herself. Like an audience.

“One More Time” is fresh air, a dreamy driftoff closer. When the tracks aren’t blah and electro-mangled, annoying idiosyncrasies — like the “rawr” and “ooh-la-la” intones on “Everybody Wants Some” — ruin any mightbe revelation. So do the avalanche of passé lyrics — “dance the night away,” seriously? It gets better: Sex is an amusement park ride on “Roller Coaster” and “z” is used as a stand-in for “s” on “Just a Phaze.” Let’s hope thiz iz.

Grade: C-

Colton Ford, Under the Covers Colton Ford has balls — and maybe you’ve seen them. But that’s beside the point, because this pair is the kind needed to ambitiously take on newer pop songs like Alicia Key’s “No One”

Save the Date

August 30 Center’s Golf Classic ­ utahpridecenter.org

August 16 QSaltLake Lagoon Day, qsaltlake.com

September 11 PWACU An Evening of Laughter, pwacu.org

August 19 Equality Utah Allies Dinner equalityutah.org

September 18–20 Affirmation Annual Conference ­ affirmation.org

August 22 Pocatello Pride Festival ­ clubcharleys.com

September 19 UAF Walk for Life ­ utahaids.org

Major Events of the Community

September 9 Pride in Pink: After Hours ­ utahpridecenter.org

September 19 sWerve’s annual Oktoberfest ­ swerveutah.com October 10 National Coming Out Day Celebration ­ utahpridecenter.org October 17–21 PWACU Living with AIDS Conference, pwacu.org

Email arts@­qsaltlake.com for consideration to be included in Save the Date.

Augus t 6 , 20 09 | issue 13 4 | QSa lt L a k e | 27

and Mariah Carey’s “It’s Like That” with the bravado of, say, someone who used to screw for money. Ford, a former porn star who released his debut in 2008, is that hairy-chested man, and he gives us an even hairier dance disc of cover songs that flaunt his iTunes most-played list, from Sade to Nirvana and Babyface.

It doesn’t do much else, and how could it?

These songs are current or classic, and every bit an American Idol judge’s worst nightmare, making it hard to see this as more than a self-serving project. Britney Spears might be his biggest asset, as he manages to tackle her B-side club song “Trouble” with the least bit of camp and the most success.

Still, most of “Covers” is an amateur hackjob, cut with the corniest and funniest of a cappella interludes. None of it does justice to anyone involved, least of all Ford, a pretty decent singer. But even with a voice, the hodge-podgy bunch of untouchables on Under the Covers probably should’ve stayed there.

Grade: D

Also Out Brad Paisley, American Saturday Night One of country music’s DILF-iest dudes is also one of its ballsiest: His second single, “Welcome to the Future,” is about progress — from Pac-Man to politics. The hee-haw hottie balances the bittersweet tracks on his best album yet, like faith-based “No”

and “Anything Like Me,” with his wry sense of humor. He’s plastered on a boating trip (“Catch All the Fish”) and strikes down his own gender’s egotism (“The Pants”) — both funny. With him in it, country’s future looks bright.

Catie Curtis, Hello, Stranger This Boston folkie’s no stranger to the folk-pop scene, dropping nine LPs over her 15-year career. Now the achy-voiced musician’s fulfilling fans’ request with a bluegrass/country disc of old songs and covers, dressing them in mandolin, fiddle and banjo to echo the vibe of her live shows.

This organic approach pays off, especially on the Curtis tale “Dad’s Yard,” part of the lighter, less honky-tonk closing half — and the better one. Say hello to Country Curtis.

Anjulie, Anjulie Cute goes far, and this Canadian chanteuse — think Nelly Furtado — probably knows that, framing her lovely candied voice in ’60s soul sounds. Blending world rhythms and hip-hop makes for an entrancing listen on “The Heat,” while the single “Boom” is nifty dance-floor fun. Seismic jolts take a backseat to happy-go-lucky lulls at the tail-end, but Anjulie still mostly has what it takes to make the earth shake.

Chris Azzopardi is wondering if the word “boom” feels like a hooker. Reach him at chris@pridesource.com.

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The Sound and Soul of Misty River

by Joselle Vanderhooft

M

River says she wouldn’t be the musician she is today without dying 18 months ago.

“I was at a jam session and I just dropped, basically, and my friend rushed me to the emergency room,” she said. “I knew that I was really, really sick and I didn’t know why or what it was or anything.”

She remembered going into the hospital — a place she did not often visit, being a believer in alternative medicine — with severe chest pains and a pulse that spiked 111 beats per minute to 170.

As she sat on the table hooked up to a heart monitor, River said her heart just stopped beating. As her friend ran to find a doctor, she said she had what people have called a near-death experience.

“While I was out I did go to the other side, and I came back with all this energy and light and I don’t even know how to describe it,” she said. “It’s very beautiful there.” Her heart began beating on its own, and she has had no heart problems since — though she does say that she gets easily fatigued these days.

“I know I went through a major — some people call it reconfiguration — but I’d come to a point in my life that I isty

was ready to make a big change, and I think that’s how it came about. It was very on the physical level,” she said.

“But basically I came back with a mission to make the planet a better place and to spread as much love and compassion as I could. And really get involved in the issues that are not so pleasant here. That’s what I’m about and what I’m doing.”

Since her experience, River has found that music is her method of spreading love and compassion. In the last 18 months she has played at a number of venues in the state, including — perhaps most memorably for QSaltLake readers — a rally against Proposition 8 held at Salt Lake City’s City County Building last November where she played her electronic keyboard and sang for an audience of at least 1,000.

On the weekend of Aug. 8–9 she will play at the Women’s Redrock Music Festival, along with Utahns like Rita Boudreau and headliner, Belgian rock star Sarah Bettens.

When asked how she has taken the local music scene and the Redrock Festival so fast, River said she doesn’t entirely understand her rise in popularity.

“I’m not quite sure how I got involved,”

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she said. “I don’t do a lot of networking, I just kind of go where spirit takes me. [I think music director] Jeri Tafoya called or e-mailed and said she’d come checked out one of my shows at Café Marmalade [the Utah Pride Center’s bistro and venue for local musicians]. I don’t know how she heard about me, if it was the Prop 8 rally, it could’ve been from that.” She said, however, that she often sets “intentions” to play and ends up playing more or less where she hopes.

But perhaps her willingness to play has something to do with it. Although River said she does not play at bars or bar-like night clubs (not because of disapproval, but because the “Creator” instructed her not to play these venues), River said she does not turn down any opportunity to perform. In her young career she has played at cafés, political rallies and more often than not her porch, for the children in her neighborhood whom she loves. Each performance, each venue, is just as exciting for her as the previous one.

“I feel just as much passion and love for what I’m doing as when I first came back from the other side,” she said. “I remember every place I play very vividly, and I take every stage like it’s the last time I will play.”

And according to River, the “Creator” has had a hand in her career as well.

“Everywhere I’ve played I think I’ve been lead by the Creator,” she explained. “I think he’s had a huge hand in me coming up so fast. To get into Redrock you have to prove yourself in some way, like a rite of passage, so I was like how did I do that?”

Of course, River’s near-flawless, gospel-power voice might have something to do with her popularity, too. Although she plays keyboard, tribal drums and guitar (the latter a skill she only managed to fully learn after her near-death experience), River said her voice is her primary instrument.

“When people come up and say, ‘Woah, you’re just amazing,’ it’s usually having to do with my voice,” she said. Before my near death experience, my voice didn’t sound like it does now. It sounded very different. After I came back and set the intention to bring as much love, help and peace to this world from the other side, my voice changed.”

And what words she sings. While River’s voice is as gentle as it is powerful, the issues about which she sings are often far from soft. Currently her set covers such weighty issues as child abuse, the mistreatment of the environment, war and, of course, the often allconsuming human need for love, comfort and solace.

“It’s basically the same concepts that all the greats have been working on all time — Jesus Christ, Gandhi, Martin

Luther King, but on such a fragile gentle level. I do consider myself a political activist, but I’m not in your face. I’m kind of like a gentle mother that would sit down and teach.”

But the lessons, River insisted, are not her own. Although she writes her own music, she said that the music and words are inspired by the “Creator” and the angels. When writing songs in her apartment, she said that she and her roommate have seen phenomena such as sparkles dancing in the air.

“There was very much a presence there, you could feel it when we walked in,” she said. “I feel it was the angels — no, I know it was the angels. They were helping me write. I take no ownership over these words. They come from a higher place and a much more peaceful place than what is in me. I’m just the messenger.”

A messenger who is very much like a child herself.

“I see everyone as children, I see everyone as innocents. I don’t see race or age or the physical at all, I see spirit,” she explained. “I don’t believe that we have enemies here, I think we have lessons.”

Such as?

“Love each other and treat people the way you want to be treated,” she continued. “The horrible things we see here ... I believe they could all change in a second if we could just grasp that we are spirit and are made of such beautiful light and love. If we could just remember the innocence that we had as a child.”

River is currently in the process of recording her first, self-produced album, Alleluia, which she hopes to release by January to avoid “having it get lost in the Christmas rush.” A sampling can currently be heard at myspace.com/ mistyrivermusic. She called the album her life’s work, and noted that her audiences like the title track the best.

“I can see why; the angels did a beautiful job,” she said. Q

28 | QSa lt L a k e | issue 13 4 | Augus t 6 , 20 09

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Please join us for the 10th Annual Utah Pride Center Golf Classic Sunday, August 30, 2009 ~ Stonebridge Golf Club Please register TODAY online at www.utahpridecenter.org $110.00 per person registration MUST be received by August 14th Sponsorship opportunities available! Contact Marina at 801-539-8800 x 20

Join us for more fun Friday, August 28, 2009 for a Party on the Patio Club JAM (751 N 300 W) ~ Suggested donation Food, Prizes, and Entertainment ~ All proceeds benefit the programs and services of the Utah Pride Center

The Utah Pride Center board, staff and volunteers would like thank our 2009 UPC Golf Classic sponsors for their contributions.

Debby Berdan & Natalie Thornley Turpin & Associates | Michelle Turpin Dabakis-Justesen Fine Art | Jim Dabakis Jane & Tami Marquardt The McCarthey Family Overstock.com no brow coffee & tea Budweiser Roofers Supply | Stephanie Pappas Meditrina Salt QSaltLake Lick Publishing

Indochine Gastronomy Barton Law Office | Kara Barton SentryWest | Jon Jepsen Commcere CRG | Alison Beddard Jones Waldo Equality Utah La’Brett Interiors Argosy University Stonebridge Golf Club Insatiable Magazine

Anderson & Karrenberg | Tom Karrenberg Lisa Killpack Susan Gagnier Morgan Stanley Smith Barney | Allison Smoot Mortgage Financial Group | Sue Pearce John O’Brien Cheryl Kehl Kelly McFalls Farmers Insurance: The Office of Kirk Chester Third Sun Productions | Jocelyn Kearl

Melanie Hamilton Integrity Assessments, LLC | Laura McCormick DJ TiDY b.Elenor Photography Alice Olch Golf in the Round Park City Golf Club Lynnae Sinks Citris Grill

The Utah Pride Center is a community-based organization that provides support, education, outreach and advocacy for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer individuals and their allies, through programs, services and resources.

Please contact us at www.utahpridecenter.org ~ 355 N 300 W, 1st floor, SLC, UT 84103 ~ 801.539.8800

The Dating Diet

• LUNCH • DINNER

Two of Farts

COME IN AND BE HAPPY!ÂŽ

by Anthony Paull

Dad thinks it’s OK if he farts in my face, because he’s recovering from heart surgery, and that’s just part of my new fulltime job as his personal assistant. You see, it’s not him doing it; it’s the medication. It depletes him of the keen ability to hold his butt-cheeks together long enough to make it to the bathroom. “Who ever knew your ass was so loose?� I play with him, rather than argue about the despicable matter for the third time today. Mind you, this I how I grant myself a breather, a short reprieve where I can relax long enough to laugh. Lately, it seems, we haven’t been doing enough of that. Not since dad made it through his quintuple bypass surgery. Five days ago, my brother had phoned me from the ER to relay the information that my father had suffered a heart attack. Now, we’re all back at the house, where I’m woken up daily by the piercing rattle of a cowbell, meaning dad either has to pee or down a pill.

It’s all quite fun, honestly. That is, if you can ignore dad’s irritability due to being void of a smoke. And did I mention his incessant jabs about gay men? “What do you mean you want me to suck on this? I’m not gay. That’s your department,� he tells me, as I hand him a small tube that’s supposed to prevent him from catching pneumonia after the surgery. Sucking and blowing on it is said to stir the fluid in his lungs. “Dad please ... pretend it’s a cigarette,� I reply. Mind you, it’s 7 a.m., and my patience is Lindsay Lohan-thin. “Fine,� he grunts, before attempting the feat, which he can’t seem to do. Of course, he wants me to show him, and oh how he gets a kick out of telling me that I could suck the sand out of a tornado. “Oh, you know me. That’s why I was soooooooo popular in college,� I smile, returning the jab, ever so gently. “Best blow jobs in the tri-state area.� “It’s a shame,� dad huffs to himself. “How did you get like that?�

Good question, I ask myself, while handing him his colorful assortment of meds. Homosexuality: that gift was bestowed upon me at birth. But where did I obtain this nutty personality that lacks a stop switch when it pertains to making the most inappropriate comments at the most inappropriate time?

Picture the intensive care unit. Overhead, white fluorescent lighting blinds dad as a fiery fleet of female nurses hover over him to make sure he’s comfortable. Resting in bed, he has more tubes in him than Keanu Reeves in The Matrix, and each time a nurse is naĂŻve enough to get close, he whispers, sounding oh, so Long Island, “C’mere, give me a kiss.â€? Disturbed, the nurses look to me for assistance.

“Oh, don’t mind him,� I assure them. “In his condition, he can’t even get his dick hard.� Then crickets, followed by a moment of my awkward laughter, as I wave goodbye to the nurses exiting the room.

Dear God, why do I say these things?

Why does life suddenly feel like a bad reality TV show, sans the camera, wherever I go? I’m trying to figure out where it all went foggy, but I’m too busy waving away the gas fumes permeating the house, where dad has decided it’s OK to fart, particularly when I’m standing behind him. “Anthony, I don’t care anymore. I’m tired of keeping up appearances,� he tells me. Then he lets another rip, before voicing an utterly pathetic, “Sorry.� “My God! Will you stop? I don’t want to smell your ass!� I scream.

That’s when I realize: I’ve become my dad. Aiding in his recovery process, I’ve morphed into the potty-mouthed parent who ridicules him for inappropriate behavior, even when I act no better myself. How did this happen? One day, is it inevitable for all of us to become our parents and then poorly parent them just as they have parented us?

Is it merely karma’s way of granting us a chance to return the favor of mashing our brains since birth? Daily, dad and I go back and forth, tirelessly arguing about gay this, straight that, firing off rounds of ammunition in regard to who’s right. I swear, the profanity could decimate the Vatican. Still, I’ve come to realize I wouldn’t want it any other way.

It’s odd; most of us spend a lifetime battling loved ones before we realize that without love, there is no battle, and without battle there is no love.

It took dad nearly dying for me to figure it out. So for me, it’s OK to fight; it means we may not always agree, but at least we care enough to say it. Still, if only dad had another way of showing he cares so much. “The meds ... they’re constipating me,� he moans, as I help him into bed. “It hurts. You don’t know the pain.�

A moment later, he recants the statement. “Well, you like it in the butt, so you probably do.� “No one said love comes easy,� I reply, kissing his bald head. Reaching for his cowbell, he taps it to ensure it’s by his side. It’s hard for him to sleep because he feels that if he stops breathing, no one will remember him. No one will care. “I care, papa,� I offer. And for once, he doesn’t argue the point. Instead, he closes his eyes, farts and loves me enough to fight about it the next morning. Q

Augus t 6 , 20 09 | issue 13 4 | QSa lt L a k e | 3 1

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0QFO GPS -VODI %JOOFS 4VOEBZT o QN 7FHFUBSJBO 7FHBO 'SJFOEMZ #FMMZ %BODFST 'SJ 4BU /JHIUT 'SFF 8JSFMFTT *OUFSOFU "MMo:PVo$BOo&BU -VODI #VGGFU .PO 5VFT PGG 4QFDJBMUZ .FOV *UFNT 8FE 5IVST 'SFF )VNVT XJUI )VLB 0SEFS

&BTU 4PVUI

Meditrina Small Plates & Wine Bar Encouraging gastronimic exploring in tapas tradition 1394 S West Temple Salt Lake City 801-485-2055

The New Yorker The â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;grand patriarch of Downtown SLC restaurantsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; - Zagat 60 Market St, SLC 801-363-0166

Off Trax Internet CafĂŠ Coffee, Wifi and Pool 259 W 900 S 801-364-4307

Red Iguana Best home-made moles and chile verdes in town 736 W North Temple, SLC 801-322-1489

Sageâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Cafe Organic vegetarian, locally grown, fresh 473 E 300 South Salt Lake City 801-322-3790

Squatterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Pub Brewery

Utahâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s favorite microbrewery, great pub menu 147 W 300 S Salt Lake City 801-363-2739

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 Wing Company Wings and beer Trolley Square under the water tower 801-538-0745

To get listed in this section, Coffee, art, jam please call 801sessions, free 649-6663 and gallery West Side 631 W North Temple ask for brad or email brad@ Suite 700, SLC 801-596-0500 qsaltlake.com

Mestizo Coffeehouse

32 | QSa lt L a k e | July 23 , 20 09

ALL “FAMILY” WELCOME Voted #1 Lesbian Club for 4 Years! Thanks! ’s omen W re emie Years r P e’s 14 Lakor Over t l a S lub f C

COFFEE ART

IDEAS

ALWAYS BREWING.....

Mon - Thurs 6:00 am to 10:00 pm Fri - Sat 6:00 am - 12:00 am Sun 7:00 am to 10:00 pm OPEN MIC Mondays music 8pm-10pm Spoken Wednesdays 8pm-10pm Friday night jam sessions 9:30pm-12:00am 631 West North Temple, Suite 700 Salt Lake City, UT 84116 801 596 0500 - mestizocoffeehouse.com

Mestizo shares space with Mestizo Inst. of Culture and Art (MICA). Mestizo is a community space. The MICA Gallery is open to the public and free to use.

Friday, Aug. 14

HOT AUGUST NIGHTS $5 donation benefits the

3737 South State Street

Salt Lake City myspace.com/thepapermoon

801-713-0678 Open: Sun–Fri 3pm–1am, Saturdays 6pm–1am Closed Mondays A private club for members

WEEKLY LINEUP ASUNDAYSA Free Pool, $1 Drafts

AMONDAYSA

Closed for Employee Sanity

ATUESDAYSA

Karaoke w/Mr. Scott at 8pm, $1 Drafts

AWEDNESDAYSA

RCGSE PWA Christmas Fund

All Request with DJ Spinning Free Pool All Day, $1 Drafts, $2 wells

Party All Summer on our Huge Patio

$1 Drafts, Karaoke 8pm til close

PATIO FRIDAYS

ATHURSDAYSA AFRIDAYSA

Top 40 Dance Music All Night with Sexy Female DJs

ASATURDAYSA Women, Women, Women...

Hot DJs Making You Sweat

BOOK ALL YOUR TRAVEL www.papermoonvacations.com

Augus t 6 , 20 09 | issue 13 4 | QSa lt L a k e | 33

Cocktail Chatter The Wonderful World of Whisk(e)y

by Camper English

No matter where you are in the world, whisk(e)y is a pain in the butt to spell because it is spelled differently in the other parts of the world from where you are. It’s appropriate to use the local spelling of other changeablyspelled words like favo(u)r and colo(u) r, but whisk(e)y snobs won’t give you a break.

That’s too bad, because all whisk(e) y starts the same, as grain that is fermented and distilled and then nearly

always aged in barrels.

Scotland makes the most famous whisky (no ‘e’), and most of it falls into two categories. Single-malt scotch comes from a single distillery, but more importantly it is made only from malted barley in pot stills. This means it has a lot of flavor going into the barrels. Some single-malts you may know include The Glenlivet, Glenfiddich and Glenmorangie.

The other major type of scotch whisky is blended scotch, made from mixing the flavorful single-malt with lighter column-distilled whisky.

Together you get a softer (and usually less expensive) liquid. Major brands of blended scotch include Chivas, Johnnie Walker and Dewar’s.

Think of the flavor of single-malt scotch as whole grain bread, and

blended scotch as wheat bread. And for something closer to French bread, we look to the USA. In America, most of the local whiskey (note the ‘e’) is bourbon, and most of the grain used in bourbon is corn.

Bourbon is usually column distilled and always aged in new barrels that give off a lot of flavor. (Scotch is mostly aged in less-flavorful used barrels, which is one reason scotch usually ages for longer than most bourbon.)

Jim Beam and Maker’s Mark are bourbons, and Jack Daniel’s is not considered one due to a slight production difference. Still, it’s a heck of a lot closer to bourbon than it is to scotch.

Much Irish whiskey (with an ‘e’), though produced differently, is similar to blended scotch in its softness and drinkability. Most Canadian whisky

(no ‘e’) is light-bodied and really meant for mixing. Let’s say that Canadian whisky is white bread and Irish whiskey is ciabatta. I know I’m stretching this whole bread analogy here, but is anyone else in the mood for a sandwich?

The Americans and the Scots seem to be the most loyal to their local whiskies. Bourbon snobs will tell you that scotch is good for mixing, and scotch snobs think their favorite tipple is too good even for mixing with ice. There are cocktails that call for specific types of whisk(e)y though: the Bobby Burns, Sazerac, Seven and Seven, and the Irish Coffee deserve to have their native spirits poured into them.

One cocktail works with every whisk(e)y, and that’s the Manhattan.

Naturally, the Scots can’t stand for that and instead insist it be called the Rob Roy. As far as I know the Irish and Canadians haven’t renamed the drink, which is good because then we’d have to memorize these along with all the different spellings of the whisk(e)y that goes into them. Q Camper English is a writer at Alcademics.com.

Bar Guide B D F K L

Bear/Leather Dance Floor Food Karaoke Nights Mostly Lesbian

M N T X

Mostly Gay Men Neghborhood Bar 18+ Area Mixed Gay/Straight of Gay Certain Nights

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:

This electropop band plays the E Center Aug. 25.

HOPED EMCEED _______ ____

PUZZLE SOLUTIONS ARE ON PAGE 43

WEEKLY E VENTS

SUNDAYS

MONDAYS

1. AREA 51

348 W. 500 South • D T X 801-534-0819 • area51slc.com

TUESDAYS

WEDNESDAYS

Dance Evolution

2. CLUB EDGE

251 W. 900 South • D M N 801-364-3203 • clubtry-angles.com

Beer-Soaked Weenies

Wii, Beer-soaked weenies

$1 drafts

4. GOSSIP @ SOUND

579 W. 200 South • D M T X 801-328-0255 • myspace.com/gossipslc

5. JAM

751 N. 300 W • D M N 801-328-0255 • jamslc.com

$1 drafts dj s.i.x.9

6. KLUB KARAMBA

Pachanga Gay Latin

7. PAPER MOON

Free pool all day $1 Drafts

1051 E 2100 South • D M T X 801-637-9197 • myspace.com/manuel_arano 3737 S State St • D K L 801-713-0678 • thepapermoon.info

8. Speakeasy

63 W 100 South • M 801-521-7000

9. TAVERNACLE

201 E. 300 South • K X 801-519-8800 • tavernacle.com

10. THE TRAPP

102 S 600 West • B N D K M 801-531-8727

3 4 | QSa lt L a k e | issue 13 4 | Augus t 6 , 20 09

FRIDAYS

SATURDAYS

Gay 80s

400 W 600 North • D M

3. CLUB TRY-ANGLES

THURSDAYS

$1 drafts Karaoke 9p BBQs on the deck 4pm

Closed Blues Jam w/Bad Brad from KRCL $1 drafts Oldies Night Karaoke w/Kenneth 9pm

Karaoke 8pm $1 Drafts

Karaoke 9p

Pool Tournament

Latin Night $1 drafts, DJ D or BoyToy

Dance!

Nova’s Platinum Pussy Review Superstar House Exchange Fix at Jam Karaoke with DJ:K with Brian G Big City House Top 40 mash-up Dance!

Nova’s Platinum Pussy Review $1 Drafts Country 8-10p Top 40 Dance Free pool Karaoke All Night DJ Iris $1 Drafts Sexy Female DJs Drunken Whirling Rita Waffles & Dervish Boudreaux Wings $1 drafts Dueling Dueling Dueling pianos pianos pianos 9p 9p 9p Hot new DJ Wayne Outdoor patio

Dance, Dance, Dance!

Thump at Jam DJ Tidy Indie, Top 40

Women, Women, Women!

Rockin’ Jukes Every other Week Dueling pianos 9p Hot new DJ Wayne Outdoor patio

CLUB MEMBERS O T E E R F S E EG HAS ITS PRIVIL IP H S R E B M E M

8 T S U G U A , Y A SATURD

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d e n e p o s a h AXâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;3pm, Fri & Sat Nights TR OFF Monâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;Fri, 7am ar Closing!

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S $1 DR Y A D S E U T U YS WEENIES A D N O M U IO D, $1 DRAFTS T A J P /D Y N O TO Q Y B O B B J & AYS D DRAFTS SUNDAYS $1 POOL TOURNAMENTS U FRID T arly! e e iv r r A . ll WEDNESDAYS CE-DANCE-DANCE ALL NIGH u f en we are h w DAN 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 A PRIVATE CLUB FOR MEMBERS AND GUESTS WWW.CLUBTRY-ANGLES.COM SHY? TEXT HIM Augus t 6 , 20 09 | issue 13 4 | QSa lt L a k e | 35 U

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Q Scene

Club Try-Angles was host to this year’s Utah Rebellion July 31–Aug. 2. ROTC-SLC provided entertainment on the hot August day.

Club Edge brought the spooks out with Halloween in July on July 30.

3 6 | QSa lt L a k e | issue 13 4 | Augus t 6 , 20 09

Augus t 6 , 20 09 | issue 13 4 | QSa lt L a k e | 3 7

Q Puzzle

Orientation Express

Across 1 The only reason to tolerate heterosexuality?

6 Bunch of stallions 10 Time line divisions 14 Became erect 15 Poet Khayyám 16 Pain in the derriere 17 South Korea’s capital 18 Telethon request 19 ___ buco 20 Start of a quip from Samantha 23 More of the quip 26 David Hyde Pierce and peers 27 Stump 28 Rosie’s Sleepless in __ 30 Morse’s long one 31 Some commuter trains 32 Lily Tomlin’s A Prairie ___ Companion 33 Nirvana fans in awkward positions?

35 Samantha’s HBO series 41 Like some jackets 42 Fits your first mate’s mast 44 Caesar’s perfect bowling score?

47 Leather sticker 48 Robert Goulet musical

51 Give a hard time to 53 Lacking meat 54 More of the quip 55 End of the quip 58 Blow it 59 Some eagle feathers 60 Richard, of Survivor 64 Harvey’s Hairspray role 65 French I verb 66 In concert 67 Gives in to gravity 68 Longtime lesbian couples often do this 69 Isn’t quite straight Down 1 U. degrees 2 Land of O. Wilde 3 Pal of Pooh 4 Poet Kitty 5 Protection for your head 6 Prepare for S and M porking?

7 Islamic leaders 8 Sitarist Shankar 9 Equestrian event 10 Sticky stuff 11 Data for a headhunter 12 Lash out at 13 Wraps for female impersonators 21 “I Could Have Danced ___ Night” 22 Code of conduct 23 Suffix with bear 24 Durocher and Tolstoy

25 Liberace fabric 29 Student’s book 30 “Stupid me!”

33 From Jan. 1 until now 34 k.d. lang record label 36 Up to one’s ears 37 Bit in the Windy City Times, e.g.

38 Martin of the Daughters of Bilitis 39 Pinball Wizard foul 40 “Son of Frankenstein” character 43 Swine cooler?

44 Forgets to use a lube?

45 Where PrideVision originated 46 “For ___ out loud!”

48 Lost passion 49 Beebo Brinker creator Bannon 50 Chaplain Judge of the NYFD 52 Son of Uranus 53 Nightclub employee 56 David’s brother on Six Feet Under 57 Make less difficult to bear 61 “Get thee ___ nunnery” 62 Anderson Cooper’s network 63 Cocks and bulls answers on p. 43

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: C = O Theme: Quote by Mayor Ralph Becker on fair housing and workplace protections in Salt Lake City.

T hy pcyytwwjl wc jihltphwtkv ltfpitytkhwtck tk coi ptwx.

_ __ _________ __ ___________ ______________ __ ___ ____.

3 8 | QSa lt L a k e | issue 13 4 | Augus t 6 , 20 09

Q doku

Each Sudoku puzzle has a unique solution which can be reached logically without guessing. Enter digits 1 through 9 into the blank spaces. Every row must contain one of each digit, as must each column and each 3x3 square. Qdoku is actually five seperate, but connected, Sudoku puzzles.

Hard

5 4 7

3

4

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4 6 5 4

1 4 2 5 6 7 9

3 1 5

5 8 7 5 6 7

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2 2 8 1 8 9 3 2 6 4 3 4 3 1 8 7 2 7 6 1 6 1 8 4 9 5 3 9 9 3 8 9 1 7 5 6 5 9 6 3 8 4 3 2 9 5 7 2 3 8 1 8 5 9 7 8 2 9 5 3 8 4 2 3 7 8 9 5 6

5 8 6 2

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102 south 600 west 801–355–0999

Q Health

Disclosing Your HIV Status

by Lynn Beltran

O

ne of the first and most common

questions I receive after giving a new patient an HIV positive diagnosis is: Will I be able to be sexually active after this?

It’s an understandable question.

Discussing your HIV status with a potential or established partner can be incredibly challenging for many reasons.

Along with worrying they will never be sexually active again, many men fear being ostracized by their community if word gets out they’re HIV positive.

Now, nothing requires that someone with HIV reveal their status; currently, no laws require disclosure of HIV status, unless you are exchanging sex for money. However, the hope is that the HIV-positive community has a sense of obligation to protect partners.

It is true that many HIV-positive individuals are feeling less obligated to inform their partners of their status than they did 10-20 years ago. It is also true that with the advent of HIV antiretroviral medications, you cannot tell if someone is infected with HIV by simply looking at them. Also, these medications are allowing people to live with the virus and to avoid the opportunistic infections that made them visibly ill in the 1980s and 1990s. Because these drugs have improved HIV-positive individuals’ quality of life and longevity, they are more likely to want to be sexually active as well.

I have often been quoted as saying that the face of HIV has changed dramatically in the past 10 years — and I consider that to be a good thing. But as with everything, there are good things and bad things. The downside to better drugs and better prognoses for people with HIV is, in many cases, the lack of a sense of obligation to either inform partners about HIV-positive status, or to take steps to protect partners by always using condoms.

As I said before, the thing I commonly hear from recently diagnosed clients is: “I’m afraid if I tell a partner or potential partner, they will tell others and no one will ever want to be with me again; I don’t want the community to know about me.” Here is my recommendation: You are not required by law to disclose your status, however you can still protect your partner(s) by always using condoms and lubricant.

Experiment with condoms that work best for you and feel good to you ... and reduce the risk of slipping or breaking.

When condoms and lubricant are used correctly — in other words if the condom stays on — the risk of transmitting HIV is extremely rare to non-existent.

Using lubricant decreases the chance of a condom breaking, so lubricant provides added protection.

Other clients have said: “If a partner doesn’t ask about condoms, I just assume that they are HIV positive and so it is not an issue.” I can assure you that I have given new HIV diagnosis to a number of men who had absolutely no idea that their partner — including a regular partner — was HIV positive.

There simply was no real communication and a lot of assuming. I think we are all pretty familiar with the old adage about assuming, and when it comes to HIV, assumptions can permanently alter someone’s life. I often tell clients that the only assuming they should do is to assume that everyone could infect them with a disease, and therefore take measures to protect themselves. Even if you are in a monogamous relationship, always keep those lines of communication open.

I also recently had a client tell me that he was frustrated with a certain Web site where men often meet other men, because he felt that the men who used the site were not being honest in disclosing they were HIV positive on their user profiles. I could not help but think: But it’s the internet. Isn’t that supposed to be an opportunity to embellish who you are? Again, with this in mind, assume that anyone can expose you to a disease. Also remember there is a very good possibility someone may not even know that they are infected — and so it really does come down to condoms ... yet again.

I realize this article was supposed to talk about how to disclose your HIV status, and I kind of digressed some of the reasons men are not disclosing to their partners. Ultimately, this issue comes down to choosing a path that allows you to want to protect others. As with all sensitive issues, disclosing to a partner requires, well, some sensitivity and timing. It also requires courage, and accepting the possibility that rejection can happen. Those three words “I am positive” can mean that men will not be interested in you sexually, but ask yourself if not disclosing and putting your partners at risk is really who you want to be. If you are simply not finding a way to bring it up, then a real alternative should be condoms. I can’t say it often enough: When used correctly, condoms are incredibly effective in reducing the risk of transmitting HIV during sexual activity. Q For more information on this topic call the Salt Lake Valley Health Department at (801) 534-4601. The Salt Lake Valley Health Department will be offering free HIV testing at Pride Counseling on Monday, August 10 from 5–7 p.m. at 231 E, 400 S. Results will be available within 30 minutes.

Augus t 6 , 20 09 | issue 13 4 | QSa lt L a k e | 4 1

VOTED UTAH’S BEST GAY CLUB 2009

TUESDAY

LIVE@JAM BBQ LIVE music on the patio 7pm DJ S.I.X.9 spins at 10pm

WEDNESDAY SUPERSTAR Karaoke SING a song win a prize 8pm

THURSDAY ALL REQUEST 9pm

FRIDAY FIX with DJ:K & DJ MIKE BABBITT 9pm

SATURDAY THUMP with DJ TiDY 9pm

Now serving food!

Open Tuesday – Saturday at 5pm No Cover – No Membership — 21+ 751 North 300 West - In The Gayborhood www.JAMslc.com

Come get Hunky with Ben Every Sunday night at The Tav

KARAOKE

SUNDAYS AND TUESDAYS DOLLAR DRAFTS Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays OLDIES Mondays DUELING PIANOS Wednesdays through Saturdays

Non-Smoking

Corner of 3rd South and 2nd East for 7 years 801-519-8900 www.tavernacle.com A Private Club for Members

Support the Businesses that Support You

Q Tales

These businesses brought you this issue of QSaltLake.

Make sure to thank them with your patronage.

Jacin Tales Episode 18

A New Day Spa. . . . . . . . . . . . . 801-272-3900

A Wall Built of the Past

ACME Burger Co.. . . . . . . . . . . 801-257-5700 Area 51. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 801-534-0819 Beehive Bail Bonds. . . . . . . . . 801-485-2711 The Beer Nut . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 801-531-8182 Cahoots. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 801-538-0606

Scott Alexander. . . . . . . . . . . . 801-654-2179 Julie Silveous Realtor. . . . . . . 801-502-4507 Skinworks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 801-530-0001 Speakeasy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 801-521-7000 Squarepeg Concerts. . . squarepegconcerts.com Super Star . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 801-649-4691 Tammy Radice. . . . . . . . . . . . . 801-277-0533 The Tavernacle. . . . . . . . . . . . . 801-519-8900 Tin Angel Cafe. . . . . . . . . . . . . 801-328-4155 Trolley Wing Co. . . . . . . . . . . . 801-538-0745

Puzzle Solutions

Ultraperform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 801-577-3006 2 3 1 5 8 4 6 7 9

Dr. Douglas Woseth. . . . . . . . . 801-266-8841

8 6 5 2 9 7 1 4 3

Jeff Williams Taxi. . . . . . . . . . . 801-971-6287

9 7 4 3 1 6 2 5 8

W Lounge. . . . . . . . . myspace.com/wlounge

7 5 9 8 6 3 4 1 2

Utah Symphony/Opera. . utahsymphony.org

1 2 6 9 4 5 3 8 7

Utah Festival Opera. . . . . . . . . . . . . . ufoc.org

3 4 8 7 2 1 9 6 5

Utah Pride Center . . . . . . . . . . 801-539-8800

fingers are like pen to paper, writing the perfect love story on Eddie’s bare body. They move slowly, deliberately with each other as if they’ve been doing it all their lives. And each time they make love, it seems to last a little longer and with more fervor.

Eventually though, suspicion would creep back in after Gabe would leave for work. Eddie would again feel doubt as he’d sit alone in Gabe’s apartment, which would always lead to irrational behavior like going through his medicine cabinet, cupboards and even trash. These erratic actions had lead Eddie to learn a lot in two weeks about Gabe: He is a connoisseur of white wines and gourmet coffees; enjoys easy-tomake, white-trash meals like macaroni & cheese, Marie Callender’s frozen entrees and Hormel chili in a can; he uses Right Guard roll-on deodorant ‘Fresh’ scent; the dozens of discarded Q-tips indicate he’s obsessed with clean ears; he uses Lava soap, which is logical since he’s a mechanic; he doesn’t appear to use dental floss or dryer sheets; several crumpled lottery tickets indicate he’s a gambler — a seemingly addicted one at that since he’d have to drive to Idaho or Wyoming to get the tickets; he doesn’t have many books so either he doesn’t read much or he checks them out from the public library — though

Cryptogram: I am committed to eradicating discrimination in our city.

Anagram: Depeche Mode

3 5 2 8 4 1 7 9 6

Sam Weller’s Books. . . . . . . . . 801-328-2586

1 4 8 9 7 6 5 2 3

Salt Lake Acting Co.. . saltlakeactingcompany.org

7 6 9 3 5 2 8 1 4

Sage’s Cafe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 801-322-3790

4 2 3 6 1 5 9 7 8

Ron’s Rub. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 801-532-4263

5 1 6 7 8 9 4 3 2

Red Iguana. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 801-322-1489

9 8 7 4 2 3 6 5 1

Pride Massage. . . . . . . . . . . . . 801-486-5500

6 1 8 7 4 2 3 9 5

Pride Counseling. . . . . . . . . . . 801-595-0666

4 5 2 9 1 3 7 8 6

Platinum Bodywork. . . . . . . . . 801-528-6734

9 7 3 5 6 8 2 1 4

Planned Parenthood. . . . . . . 800-230-PLAN

5 8 6 7 2 9 4 1 3

Paper Moon. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 801-713-0678

9 2 1 5 4 3 7 8 6

Now Playing Utah . . . . nowplayingutah.com

3 7 4 1 8 6 9 2 5

Meditrina . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 801-485-2055

2 4 8 6 3 5 1 7 9

Mestizo Coffeehouse. . . . . . . . 801-596-0500

7 1 5 8 9 4 6 3 2

MegaPhone, code 4621. . . . . . 801-595-0005

6 9 3 2 1 7 5 4 8

Le Croissant. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 801-466-2537

5 1 7 6 3 2 8 9 4 2 5 6 1 3 7 9 6 8 2 5 4

KRCL-FM. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 801-363-1818

6 9 2 4 7 8 5 3 1 8 7 9 4 6 2 3 5 1 8 9 7

Klub Karamba. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 801-696-0639

4 8 3 1 5 9 7 2 6 1 3 4 8 5 9 4 7 2 3 6 1

Jam. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . jamslc.com

8 7 5 2 3 4 1 6 9 3 2 7 5 4 8 6 9 1 7 3 2

Infinity Electrolysis. . . . . . . . . 801-671-6684

6 3 4 1 9 7 2 8 5 4 9 1 6 7 3 5 8 2 9 1 4

Gossip!. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 801-328-0255

2 9 1 5 6 8 3 4 7 6 8 5 9 2 1 3 4 7 6 5 8

Done To Your Taste Catering. . 435-783-3942

1 9 7 8 3 5 4 2 6

Don Austin. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 801-485-9225

A

2 5 6 4 7 9 1 8 3

The Dog Show . . . . . . . . . . . . . 801-466-6100

through the cabin, “Please be seated, fasten your seatbelts and put your seats in the upright position, we are making our final descent into St. Paul.”

“Would you like to have dinner with me tonight?” Gabe asked.

“Uumm ... sure,” Eddie replied with stunned hesitation.

Shortly after the fact, Eddie was disappointed with himself for jumping into bed with Gabe after dinner that first night in St. Paul. Eddie doesn’t necessarily want to jump in bed with a guy on the first date, but an exorbitant amount of wine has a strange ability to erase his inhibitions.

Yet, that encounter had led, since returning to Salt Lake City two weeks ago, to them spending all their spare time together, which, for the most part, had turned Eddie into a giddy schoolgirl. But sometimes, and as always, Eddie would be overcome with doubt and suspicion, without any real support — just a stony feeling in his gut.

Fortunately, that feeling is also easily erased each time he and Gabe make love. Gabe’s jade eyes glimmer like tropic waters dancing with the sun’s rays as he stares into Eddie’s eyes while inside him. His breath is always warm and calm like a sip of cognac when they passionately kiss. His

8 3 4 1 2 6 5 7 9

Club Try-Angles. . . . . . . . . . . . . 801-364-3203

tinny female voice blasted

3 8 5 9 1 4 2 6 7

Club Manhattan. . . . . . . . . . . . 801-364-7651

7 1 9 2 6 8 3 4 5

Club Edge. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 801-652-6543

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he does keep a stack of pornographic magazines under his bed, along with several bottles of Gun Oil. Once, a few days ago, Eddie had found a green velvet-bound diary, the pages full of hand-written poems. He gently fanned through it, stopping occasionally to read. One, entitled ‘Standing on the Beach’ read:

He jumps when a wave takes form And dances with the rigged cliffs.

He laughs when the ocean sprays And he dreams endlessly like a sunset.

Take flight, I said to my empty wife Embrace his enormous soul and cry I love you For he is listening, and says it to you.

In the deep blue sea, forever lives our boy.

As Eddie’s thoughts wheeled from reading poem after poem with the same theme of death, a folded white paper suddenly slipped out from between the pages of the book. Eddie bent over, retrieved it from the floor and opened it.

Inside a hand-written message read: Gabe, Congratulations on turning 35!

I know how bummed you are about me moving to Boston so I bought an open-ended plane ticket for you to use when you’re ready to come see me.

Also, I want to say that these past few years have been some of the best. I’m glad you came up to me at the bar that night and asked me to play pool.

I enjoy your friendship more than I ever thought possible. You’ve made me a fuller and better person and I love you for it.

Please go see your parents as a favor to me, share your wisdom with them like you did with me.

Always,

Kyle PS – Take care of my little sister, I wouldn’t trust anyone else to do it.

The few days since Eddie found the poetry and the letter from some guy named Kyle, he had been hinting to Gabe about them, saying things like “Hey, we should go to a poetry slam tonight!” and “We should have your parents over for dinner sometime” and “Let’s take a trip to Boston, I’ve always wanted to go.”

But Gabe hadn’t budged, hadn’t offered any insight into what Eddie had found, which was now beginning to make Eddie even more suspicious. Q To be continued ...

Augus t 6 , 20 09 | issue 13 4 | QSa lt L a k e | 43

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