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from the publisher
We were marrying five years ago today BY MICHAEL AARON
This is a condensed version of an article I wrote Christmas Eve 2013 when Judge Robert Shelby ruled Utah’s laws and Amendmet 3 against same-sex marriage were unconstitutional. walked into the Salt Lake County Complex building, I heard whoops coming from a crowd of dozens surrounded by news cameras, many with cell phones snapping photos. I immediately recognized First Baptist Church pastor Curtis Price, dressed in his black vestments and rainbow-colored stole. The mood was jubilant as couple after couple paraded before several wedding officiants available to marry same-sex couples after the ruling by District Court Judge Robert Shelby that Utah’s Amendment 3 is unconstitutional. In the first same-sex marriage case to have a decision since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled California’s Proposition 8 and parts of the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional, Shelby ruled, “Applying the law as it is required to do, the court holds that Utah’s prohibition on samesex marriage conflicts with the United States Constitution’s guarantees of equal protection and due process under the law. The State’s current laws deny its gay and lesbian citizens their fundamental right to marry and, in so doing, demean the dignity of these same-sex couples for no rational reason. Accordingly, the court finds that these laws are unconstitutional.” “Are you paying attention?” QSaltLake salesperson and writer Bob Henline texted me. Indeed, I was heads-down doing subscriptions and billing for our issue that hit the streets today. I pulled open my email and the first subject I saw made me say something I’d never say in front of my mother. Utah’s Amendment 3 and other marriage laws unconstitutional. I clamored for the official text and read the 53-page document front to back, seemingly not taking a breath the entire read. I hurriedly put up a “Breaking News” story and continued to flesh it out after tweeting and Facebooking it. “I’m on my way to the [Salt Lake] County Clerk’s office,” Henline said in a call that broke through my thoughts. “Two people are down there getting married right now.”
As I
No way, I thought. They won’t give them a license yet. “Text me a photo of the license when they get it.” Minutes later I get a photo text. It’s the license. I think I fainted. In the 80s when I started working in the gay rights movement, I was asked all the time by the press, “Do you think we’ll ever see gay marriage in Utah?” My pat response was always, “We will. It won’t be in my lifetime, but it will happen. But only if we start fighting today.” My timeline was a bit off. Michael Ferguson and J. Seth Anderson had gotten a text of the news of Shelby’s ruling, looked at each other and said, “let’s get down there.” Probably the most romantic marriage proposal anyone’s ever heard. Deputy Clerk Dahnelle Burton-Lee called vacationing County Clerk Sherrie Swensen to see what she wanted to do. “Give them a license,” Swensen said. And she did. With tears of joy in her eyes. The couple was waiting on a wedding officiant to make it legal, when Burton-Lee offered to perform the ceremony. As they were preparing, Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill rushed in and pulled Burton-Lee from the room to discuss the ruling. Burton-Lee turned to the couple and said, “You have a legal, official document in your hands. If you find someone to marry you, do it.” Henline, who was watching and recording all of this, said, “I can marry you. I’m a wedding officiant.” And he did. Henline now has a place in Utah history, alongside Ferguson and Anderson, as participating in the first same-sex marriage in the state. My phone rang again, and my friend Marty Pendry in St. George said he called the Washington County Clerk about a marriage license and was told to call the Attorney General’s office. The person who answered said they weren’t comfortable answering his question and said to call the county clerk back. County Clerk Kim M. Hafen said she’d be thrilled to give them a license, but hadn’t had anyone tell her she could. She said to call County Attorney Brock Belnap, who had just received the
ruling. It was 3 p.m. and Hafen said that they close marriage certificates at 4:30. Belnap said he would read through the ruling and contact the county clerk’s office. At 4:20 p.m., I got a call from Pendry. “They said yes! We are on our way to the county clerk right now. They said yes!” I was already at the Salt Lake County Building by then and made several news people aware that Pendry and his partner Brian Struthers were on their way to the St. George offices to pick up a marriage license. When the couple got there, news people were arriving with cameras. I grabbed Restore Our Humanity’s Mark Lawrence, who filed the case that Shelby ruled on with three Utah couples, and gave him the biggest hug I’ve given in a long time, whispering in his ear, “Thank you for doing this. You did this. This is your day. Congratulations.” When I pulled back he had tears in his eyes and he said, “It’s a good day, huh?” I finally made it upstairs to the actual Clerk’s office. There was a line down the hall. All the way down the hall. Volunteers with clipboards, including many from the Utah Pride Center, were helping people complete their applications. Four clerks were behind the counter processing them and Utah Pride’s Megan Risbon was outside the doors directing them to a half dozen or so officiants, ready to marry them. Suddenly, people called for quiet as reporters rushed around Utah State Sen. Jim Dabakis and his partner Stephen Justesen. By god, if Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker wasn’t there marrying them. Another whoop of cheers. Around 5 p.m. I asked what the plan was for the Clerk’s office, since it was nearing closing time. Sim Gill told everyone to stay put as people started being denied. Twenty minutes later, however, they were unable to reach the vacationing Swensen, so they shut the licensing down. I’ve heard no numbers yet as to how many people were married today, other than Becker married 34 couples. One clerk estimated the number at 120 couples. Of course, the acting Utah Attorney General is saying the state will go to an appeals court for an injunction to stop the weddings. But that can’t happen until Monday at the earliest. In the meantime, hundreds of newlyweds made history. Did this just happen? Q
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news The top national and world news since last issue you should know BY CRAIG OGAN
Store owner, Greek police charged in death gay activist Four Athens police officers and a shop owner have been charged with inflicting “fatal bodily harm” on Zak Kostopoulos, a 33-year-old Greek gay rights activist. He was beaten by a mob after he broke into a jewelry store in downtown Athens. Friends say he was trying to evade a fight that started at a nearby café. He was attacked by a group of people, including the store’s owner, who said after finding Kostopoulos in the store, he thought the shop was being robbed
Tripped up by Tweets Kyler Murray, awarded collegiate football’s prestigious Heisman Trophy, was immediately criticized for Tweets he issued when he was 15 years old using the term “Queer” pejoratively. Murray quickly tweeted an apology. “I apologize for the tweets that have come to light tonight from when I was 14 and 15. I used a poor choice of words that doesn’t reflect who I am or what I believe. I did not intend to single out any individual or group.” In the Oscar world, comedian Kevin Hart decided the aggravation from Twitter critics wasn’t worth it. He decided not to be the host of the upcoming Oscars when 8- to 10-year-old tweets and comedy routines making derogatory jokes about gay people surfaced. He said the quotes
didn’t reflect who he was now and he and evolved and was discouraged the Twitter-verse wouldn’t accept that.
Russia loses in court Looking for an example of the phrase “water off a duck’s back?” Look no further than the European Court of Human Rights ruling that Russia can no longer ban LGBTQ events, like Pride celebrations, ruling Russia violated articles protecting LGBTQ people’s “freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of association with others.”
Pence on World AIDS Day Those joke-sters at the White House had Vice President Pence mark World AIDS Day by announcing the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, an HIV/AIDS program that’s helped millions of Africans since 2003, will be reauthorized. He also announced that $100 million will be given to religious organizations that help prevent the spread of HIV. The irony of Pence being the face of Worlds Aids Day announcements stems from his 2000 suggestion to defunding the Ryan White Care Act, which provides federal funding for HIV/AIDS patients, suggesting the money instead go to conversion therapy programs. He was also the first sitting vice president to speak at the anti-LGBTQ Family Research Council’s Value Voters meeting this year.
Transgender Cultural District for SF The San Francisco Board of Supervisors has designated a portion of the somewhat seedy but gentrifying Tenderloin district as the nation’s first transgender cultural district. The district is mostly around Gene Compton’s Cafeteria, famous for the 1966 two-day riot lead by drag performers and transgender
women, and gay places like the dance and performance space Counterpulse and bars, OMG, and Aunt Charlie’s Lounge. The movement to designate the area is lead by a RuPaul’s Drag Race contestant and performer, Mahogany, in response to plans to build high-end residential and commercial buildings in the area spanning six blocks of the lower Tenderloin and Market Street areas.
School versus GSAs, so ’80s In what seems like “News from the ’80s,” the ACLU of Indiana is suing for discrimination when students at Leo Jr. Sr. High School formed a Gay-Straight Alliance but were forced to follow rules that other student clubs don’t have to follow. The rules the GSA had to follow include not using “Gay” as part of the name. Instead, it had to call themselves the “Leo Pride Alliance.” Pride was allowed if it was defined as an acronym for “Professionalism, Respect, Integrity, Diligence, and Excellence.” They also can’t use words like “gay” and “lesbian” when they’re promoting the group. The GSA couldn’t use school bulletin boards, participate in school activities and couldn’t meet anywhere but one classroom in the school. The ACLU says that the school is in violation of the Equal Access Act of 1984, signed by Ronald Reagan, originally supported by Christian conservatives who were worried that schools would ban Bible clubs.
Gotta watch that mouth MSNBC Morning Joe anchor Mika Brzezinski is being criticized for using what some think is a “homophobic slur” while discussing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s comments about the murder of political activist and journalist, Jamal Khashoggi. The murder has been imputed to the government of Saudi Arabia and
Pompeo has not condemned the Royal Family for the crime, committed in the Kingdom’s consulate in Turkey. Anyway, Mrs. Morning Joe questioned the motivations of the Secretary of State, asking if he was “a wannabe dictator’s butt-boy.” While that is a compliment in some circles, she was criticized by the outrage mob. She apologized saying she should have said “Water Boy,” although that term has sexual connotations of its own.
You couldn’t tell by her choice of customers, but the stripper has standards The current president’s bête noir and alleged paramour for pay, Stormy Daniels, canceled a performance at a Sunrise, Florida strip club because the manager referred to her manager as a faggot. Responding pretty well, she posted a pic of her standing in front of the club flying the bird and stating, “That kind of abuse will not be tolerated … I do not respond well to bullies.”
Dismal science, dismal sense of humor An economist set to discuss the minimum wage was put on hold by a U.S. House committee when an online post he wrote in 2002 was revealed, calling for a tax on gay sex. San Diego University economist Joseph Sabia wrote in a post entitled “Tax Gay Sex,” “Homosexual activity has been responsible for devastating health outcomes — deadly HIV, hepatitis B, and various other sexually transmitted diseases.” Apparently, that passed for humor in his circle of friends, as he claims he was writing satire. Facing censure from his employer, he apologized, saying he was an out gay man in a committed relationship. “I regret the hurtful and disrespectful language I used as a satirical college opinion writer,” he wrote. Q
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Issue 290 | DECEMBER 20, 2018
Researcher: theory of religious influences in Utah LGBT suicides may be overblown BY JOHN HALES
A Utah suicide researcher says the friction between LGBT sexuality and religion in Utah may not be quite the driving factor behind youth suicide as many people believe. Despite a general perception that many of Utah’s youth suicides arise from intolerance toward LGBT people promulgated (though not necessarily intentionally) by teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the state’s suicide prevention research coordinator says that may not be the case. “There’s no data to show that, period,” says Michael Staley, who works in the Utah Office of the Medical Examiner and is the first person who would know, since he leads an effort to collect, compile and analyze suicide information from around the state. He conducts that research at the behest of the Utah Legislature. “We are working to get that data,” he says. While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in 2016 that LGBT youth die by suicide at double the rate of their non-LGBT peers, Staley says data specific to Utah so far doesn’t validate the sexuality-religion narrative. “The people who are driving that narrative are going to be disappointed,” Staley says, while at the same time recognizing that “theoretically, it makes sense.” Given the state’s predominant Mormon faith and the church’s rigid, often equivocal stance on LGBT-related issues, it seems only intuitive that the stress thus induced for LGBT people would influence some toward suicide. Especially when an LGBT person’s family members, under certain interpretations or apprehensions of Mormon beliefs, exhibit “highly rejective” behavior, as a study from the Family Acceptance Project calls it. So it’s little wonder that “Day one in this job, I started getting questions from the media and members of the general public about sexuality,” Staley says.
But his mandate from the legislature is broader than that. He is examining all suicides. “We’re building the most comprehensive database of information about suicide decedents around. That’s huge,” Staley says in an interview with QSaltLake Magazine. In fact, it’s the first undertaking of its kind in the country and, because of the organization of the state’s medical examiner’s office, it’s possible in Utah and only a handful of other states. Staley calls the effort “progressive” and “pioneering.” Staley’s research involves gathering two kinds of information. The first is the findings in official documents: OME investigation records, medical and mental health records, criminal or court records, and the like. The second kind makes up a “psychological autopsy,” and involves, among other things, talking to the people suicide victims leave behind: family and friends. “We’re getting real-time data about suicide that we’ve never gotten before,” Staley says. But that real-time data, as well as other available information, doesn’t validate the narrative of the sexuality-religion-suicide nexus. “I will not ignore that narrative, of course … but I also think it’s a more complex story than just religion and sexuality,” he says. If there is a misperception about that, it begins with another. During a presentation to the LGBTQ Affirmative Therapists Guild of Utah on Nov. 15, Staley asked guild members what proportion of Utah
suicides they thought were made up of youth (LGBT or not) age 10–17. “Most people would say 40–60 percent, and people assume that all these people are LGBT,” he said. But the real numbers may be far lower. Data from the OME shows that suicides of youth age 10–17 make up about 6 percent of suicides per year in Utah. Staley presented information from the CDC that illustrated one of his obstacles: “If you told me to do a [suicide] study of LGBT people, I have no idea who those people are.” The CDC in Atlanta reviewed investigations for 150 youth suicides in Utah. Last year, it reported its findings. Sexual orientation could be determined by actual or even circumstantial evidence for 40 of those individuals. Of those, only six — or 4 percent of the total 150 — could be identified as non-heterosexual; seventy-three percent could not be confidently identified one way or the other. Another obstacle is knowing the exact factor or combination of factors that led to a suicide, and to what degree each factor contributed. Even deeply personal, probing interviews with people closest to a deceased person can only go so far to shed light on that. “We have to abide by what families will allow us to see,” Staley says. Staley, an openly gay man, adds that in a nutshell, LGBT suicide with the LDS church as a factor “is not this overwhelming tidal wave.” He knows he’s going to get pushback. “I hope I didn’t paint a huge target on
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my chest with this group,” he said to the Guild. Nevertheless, “I want to prepare groups like this group to hear that.” But that hardly means that the “intersection between sexuality and religion,” as Staley calls it, is not a factor in suicides, or that religion-based or -justified messages and actions don’t contribute to it. When the final report comes out, he told therapists, “I don’t think anybody’s going to be really satisfied.” To QSaltLake, he added, “This is what I’ve been trying to say all along: Suicide is just not reducible to this one thing, or even one or two things, or three things. It’s many things that add up, and we’re trying to figure out how they add up. “… I’m sure that there will be people who think that our study and our research are flawed, and I probably will agree with them to some extent. But we do our best to get at the truth, and that’s what we have to do.” Kara Posner, a Salt Lake City therapist in private practice who specializes in treating LGBT individuals, agrees that suicide is not a simple issue. “We’re all such complicated creatures,” she says. Posner sits on the leadership committee of the Guild and invited Staley to address the group. “What Michael is doing is invaluable, and I applaud Utah for doing something groundbreaking,” she explains. Posner did not seem disturbed by the disconnect Staley anticipates between the LGBT-suicide narrative — driven as it is by anecdotal evidence — and the direction his research data appears to be headed. Macro data is important for broad-based strategies and approaches; but for the therapist, Posner says, “I’m just working with the person in front of me.” Regardless of either the
statistical data or the broader social narrative, she adds, “What I’m going off of are my clients narrative and their issues, and their pain — and my opinions don’t matter. If they’re an outlier from the data, I just need to deal with their narrative. It doesn’t change their story because the data says something else.” Posner and Staley both said that attributing blame, for instance to a religion or church, is counterproductive. While ascertaining the preventable causes of suicide is important, they agree it’s also important to find and emphasize reasons to live. Posner advocated for “trying to find more love so that people stay alive, rather than contributing to hate by pointing fingers.” “There’s a pretty heavy focus out there in suicide prevention at looking at risk factors and warning signs, and that’s important,” Staley tells QSaltLake. “But there’s this other side of that that is protective factors.” In addition to finding out why suicide is rampant in Utah, he says, people should be discerning: “What about this place keeps people alive, so we can re-invest and tell people and family and peers and friends what it is that keeps people alive, and how to do those more and better. Q Local and national support lifelines that can help support and protect LGBT youth. ENCIRCLE HOUSE – Family and youth support center. Location is in Provo and a new center opening in Salt Lake in 2019. UTAH PRIDE CENTER – A safe space for education, support and events for LGBT youth. Suicide prevention resources: 1-800-273-8255 – NATIONAL SUICIDE PREVENTION LIFELINE available 24 hours 7 days a week. TREVORLIFELINE FOR LGBT YOUTH at 1-866-488-7386. Safe UT App – Smartphone app providing confidential crisis intervention, 24 hours 7 days a week.
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Issue 290 | DECEMBER 20, 2018
Equality Utah releases video on conversion therapy
As a launch to start the conversation on legislation to ban anti-LGBT conversion therapy in the state, Equality Utah released a five-minute video of the stories of several who have gone through it. Narrated mostly by Justin Utley, an out singer-songwriter born and raised in West Valley City, Utah, the video touches on the harm done by such therapies. “For my birthday today, all I ask is for you to take 5 minutes of your day and watch this. And #share it,” Utley posted on his Facebook Page. “I am #bornperfect. I am not a victim. I am a survivor,” he continued. I am standing with Equality Utah to help end this debunked, disproved, and psychologically abusive therapy in Utah in its various forms. I ask you to join me in this effort. Before any more half lies are sold as truth, before any more spirits and hearts are broken, more families divided, or before we lose one more beautiful young life to the silence of a statistic. Equality Utah has called their drafted legislation, “Ethical Therapy for Minors Act,” and will have it introduced at the 2019 Legislative Session that begins in January. “Conversion therapy is a form of psychotherapy with the objective of changing sexual orientation,” Jerry Buie of Pride Counseling says in the video. “In many cases, the conversion therapist or psychoanalytical approach to this may be to deconstruct the family relationships and to get people to look at hidden motives about why they might eroticize people from the same sex.” Other people’s stories are also shown in the video, including Curtis Simmons who was told he’d had a traumatic event in his life, Stephanie Goodfellow was told she didn’t have a strong role model in her life but did have strong female role models, Max Benson who was told his theater and music focus were not masculine enough and he should try basketball, Josh Burningham who was given several reasons and told if those things hadn’t
happened he wouldn’t be gay. Utley says that he believes the psychologist planted false memories that he’d been abused in his childhood. Stories of “holding therapy,” where men would physically hold one another to show that male-male touch didn’t have to be sexual, were told. Goodfellow talks of electro-shock therapy as she was forced to watch lesbian porn. Jason Lindow talked of how therapists told him they would dismantle him and put him back together, since “the pieces weren’t fitting.” Utley talked about thoughts of suicide, which ended up being so strong that
he called his mother to meet him at a hospital. He arrived to find she had been involved in an automobile accident. The video is very poignant and heart-wrenching. Arturo Fuentes talked about his wish to “stop existing” during his therapy. Lindow talks about an attempt to use sleeping pills to either make “it all be over, or I just wouldn’t wake up.” Utley ends the video with the hope that, if someone can’t see the silver lining, that they will make one. The Utah Legislative Session runs January 28 through March 14. Drafts of the bill are not yet available to the public. Q The video is available at bit.ly/UtleyVid
Two gay men to challenge Biskupski for SL Mayor; Arlyn Bradshaw to run for McAdams’ seat So far, three gay men and a lesbian will be on the ballot in 2019 in mayoral races for Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County. As we reported in October, openly gay Salt Lake City Councilman and Utah AIDS Foundation Executive Director Stan Penfold will run for Salt Lake City Mayor against incumbent lesbian mayor Jacki Biskupski. On Dec. 10, outgoing Sen. Jim Dabakis threw his hat in the ring with an “I’m in” Facebook Live video. Dabakis said twice that he’s not “running against anybody,” but “I’m running for my vision and my view of the city.” Dabakis released the results of a poll he commissioned showing he is currently in the lead with 27 percent to Biskupski’s 21 percent if the election were to be held today, though 42 percent said they were undecided. Penfold and Latino business-
man David Ibarra received four and three percent, respectively. The poll showed that Biskupski leads in name recognition at 77 percent to Dabakis’ 71 percent. Penfold has 20 percent name recognition and Ibarra has 24. Dabakis, however, led in favorability, with a 68 percent having a favorable perception of him. Biskupski had a 54 percent total favorability rating, Penfold 51 percent and Ibarra 52 percent. Salt Lake County Mayor Ben McAdams resigned after being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. Openly gay county councilman Arlyn Bradshaw announced Dec. 10 that he would run for the seat. Fellow council person Jenny Wilson, who ran for U.S. Senate this year, and Congressional candidate Shireen Ghorbani have also announced they will run. Q
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Utah LGBT and autism groups connect BY JENNIFER DOBNER
When social worker Shelly Mortensen began to notice the overlap, she scoured the internet for information and started talking to the doctors and therapists she works alongside, hoping to find some answers. Mortensen’s question: How to support and advocate for clients who identify as LGBTQ and autistic? It’s a connection more common than many might expect, but a topic still in the early stages of research and discussion among medical professionals and others who work in both communities. That’s why Mortensen, who works with people of all ages who are living with disabilities, was thrilled to see the Utah Pride Center and the University of Utah’s Autism Spectrum Disorder Clinic partner for a first-of-its-kind training focused on bridging the gap. “Finally,” she said as the Dec. 14 forum got underway at the Pride Center “Something to help my clients.” Organizers spent the day talking about the intersections between the two communities — from historical practices of “otherizing” individuals in both camps — to similarities in diagnostic practices, terminologies and challenges. Included in the discussions were ways to improve access to services, enhanced relationships with family and friends and treatment best practices. The forum is believed to be the first of its kind in Utah and one of only a handful held nationwide, said Jimmy Lee, the Pride Center’s Youth and Family Program Manager. The Center’s interest in hosting, Lee said, was driven in part by the community its served. Of the roughy 150 youth who rely on the center for services, a handful either self-identified or exhibited
behaviors or symptoms consistent with an autism diagnosis. Noting this, staff wanted to makes sure that the center was offering the right support. “Every person who comes through our doors needs a different kind of support,” he said. “And in looking at best practices, there really wasn’t a lot of connection between the LGBTQ community and autism.” Lee looked to LGBTQ activist David Nelson for help. A gay man who wasn’t diagnosed with autism until 2015 — well into his adult life — Nelson was working on ways to enhance accessibility for all at the Pride Festival, including those with autism. Nelson connected Lee with Kristina Cottle Feldman, whom he worked with at the U’s autism clinic. The hope, Lee and Feldman say, is to springboard the December training into a larger conversation across Utah by connecting service providers and their clients with resources that reach across the breadth of the two communities. “We want to say, hey, look how connected these two communities can be,” said Feldman, a psychologist and researcher. “We want to help create a better support system and bring more awareness to providers so that they know there are resources.” It’s not clear just how many in Utah identify as both LGBTQ and autistic — a status sometimes referred to as a double-minority which comes with a myriad of challenges. Feldman said many of her clients struggle to balance the fluidity of gender and sexuality with the rigidity and literal nature of their autism. “That double-minority thing makes it tough,” she said. “The whole world is telling you you don’t fit in (in one aspect of life) and then you don’t fit in even more.”
That’s why its critical to get providers talking and sharing information, she said. Researchers don’t yet understand the connections between sexual or gender identity and autism, Feldman said, but there’s a growing body of research that suggests significant ties. A November article in the autism-focused online magazine Spectrum notes a 2017 study of 9,000 people found that attraction to both same-gender and opposite gender partners was more common among autistic individuals. And in a similar international study, 70 percent of autistic respondents identified as
non-heterosexual — more than double the rate in the general population, according to the article’s author, John Strang, a pediatric neuropsychologist and the director of the Gender and Autism Program at the Center for Autism Spectrum Disorders with the Children’s National Health System in Washington, D.C. Strang says there may be both biological and psychological reasons for the prevalence of sexual orientation and gender diversity among autistic people. “Whatever drives this overlap, life as a double minority — autistic and LGBTQ+ — is complex,” Strang wrote. Q
Ogden Pride seeks substantial funding for a N. Utah LGBT community center Ogden Pride recently launched it’s “largest fundraiser” to date. During the group’s latest future planning summit, the board of directors identified many needs of the community of Ogden and surrounding areas. Those needs include opening a pride center to support the LGBT community in Northern Utah. The group’s two-year, $500,000 fundraising campaign is to purchase and renovate a home or office to create the center. The potential Ogden Pride Center will strive to provide a safe space to support and strengthen the LGBT community and foster an environment to gather in celebration and unity. As well as to educate for a greater understanding of the issues and needs the LGBT community faces, and offer support programs and forage resources that benefit the community. Harrison Spendlove, board president of Ogden Pride, admits it’s a heavily challenging endeavor. “We just don’t have the resources the community needs up north,” he told the
Standard-Examiner. Spendlove also said high on the group’s wish list is finding an actual house to renovate — that way, it has more of a “home feel.” And preferably a house in downtown Ogden that will be “visible to the community as a whole.”
Additionally, the vision of the new center will include a “youth zone,” a resource library, a kitchenette and conference space. He said he envisions the spaces will be interchangeable, and the new center can act as a community gathering place. “I know it’s a tall order, but Ogden has achieved great things in the past,” Spendlove said. Q To donate visit ogdenpridecenter. Or donors may call 801-917-4588 or mail a check to Ogden Pride, Inc., P.O. Box 13353, Ogden, UT 84412.
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Mama Dragons provides monster support for LGBTQ children across U.S. BY EVE KUCHARSKI, ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN BETWEEN THE LINES
As stressful as coming out to one’s family can be, it’s an important step in the lives of all LGBTQ people who want to live open lives. In ideal circumstances, the change in the family dynamic is positive, and serves to bring family together. But even with positive results, it’s not guaranteed that everyone will arrive at full acceptance at the same time. In the case of Utah mom Lisa Dame, she had years to come to terms with the fact that her daughter is a lesbian. Lisa Dame “Not everyone can be there, boom, day one,” Dame said. “And I’ve told gay kids, too, ‘Allow people to evolve and to grow and to change.’ (With) my daughter it was different because I thought she was probably a lesbian when she was young.” So by the time she came out to her in her late 20s, Dame could immediately be supportive. That was roughly five years ago. It was also around that time that Dame also met other women whose children had come out to them and who were struggling in various ways with the news. “It started with Mormon Moms and they found each other through some different Facebook groups and they realized that each of them had an LGBTQ kid. There were nine of them, and they started just messaging each other late at night talking about being Mormon, having an LGBTQ kid and then the Facebook group formed from there,” Dame said. One of those moms reached out to Dame after seeing a status she had posted. Dame was invited to a group they had formed called Mama Dragons. That group still exists today and is no longer strictly Mormon Mother-specific. Its goal is simple: to provide support, resources, and knowledge for the moms of LGBTQ kids. “The name came from one of the moms,” Dame said. “She said that she always felt like a mama bear, but when her child came out to her as gay that she felt like she needed to be much more than a bear; she needed to be a dragon with claws and fire
breath and hard scales to protect her kid.” Before Dame knew it, the group had 150 people and today registers at over 2,000 across the nation. Today, it’s a 501(c)(3) organization and Dame works on its board and public relations team. As much as it has grown over the years, Mama Dragons is still a closed Facebook group. Any mother with an LGBTQ child is welcomed to ask for admittance into the group but they must go through a lengthy vetting process before being given access. “You search on Facebook for ‘Mama Dragons Closed Group,’ request to join, (applicants are) given some questions just to vet a little bit before and then they are contacted by a member of our vetting team and asked more specific things. That’s just so we can keep the group safe and on point,” Dame said. “We are keeping this to mothers. There’s other online groups you can join, but it’s very important to keep this to mothers because it’s just a different dynamic. It just is.” When asked why she feels the mother-specific group appealed to so many people, Dame recalled a time when she met a few of the group’s mothers in person. She said that, for her, it was the overwhelming sense of camaraderie that appealed to her the most. “I just remember the feeling. I was so excited to go and walk into this room with these women I just knew we were going to be my friends and they understood my journey and they understood what I was going through,” Dame said. “We just sat down and right away they said, ‘Tell me about your child. Tell me about coming out.’ It was the first time I had the opportunity to talk to other women about my child coming out, about how ever since she was a little girl I thought she was a lesbian and what did I do with that. I’d been so silent for her whole life and never had anyone to talk to about it (before).” That was the case for a Michigan mom, too. Rhaea Miller of Tecumseh said she happened upon the group while reading a newspaper. She said that before she heard about Mama Dragons, she wasn’t sure where to turn for support. “Personally I had been struggling a little bit in finding a group of people to talk to, because my son had come out to us when he was 15/16 years old and I was having a
Issue 290 | DECEMBER 20, 2018
hard time finding a support group,” Miller said. “Because I didn’t necessarily want to be an activist, I don’t necessarily want to be working for rights, I’m just trying to figure out how to raise my kid.” Miller said that part of the reason she found herself looking for support was that unlike Dame, she was completely surprised by her son when he came out. “He dated girls and had great taste in girls, but I just learned that he was struggling with trying to come to terms with things he was feeling. Initially, he did come out as bi rather than gay. He pulled out (the Kinsey Scale) chart and said, ‘I’m thinking that I’m somewhere in the middle here.’ I think what may have happened is that he met a boy at school who was also struggling the way he was and they also bonded and then ultimately they started communicating. He said that he just felt more comfortable.” Miller said that even though she was always supportive of her son, after more than a year involved with Mama Dragons she’s had help to re-evaluate her initial reaction to his coming out and has been able to restructure her approach to introducing her family to LGBTQ issues. For instance, she’s still grappling to a degree with how to talk to her younger children about her son’s sexuality should they ask. “These are the things that as a parent, I don’t know what to do, but the Mama Dragons group has been a place to go to ask questions to others who have had similar experiences. If you don’t know what you’re doing it’s good to ask other people,” Miller said, adding that the last thing she wants is for her son is for him to be ashamed of his identity. “I’m more proud of my son now for being who he is than I ever thought possible and he’s a good kid. There’s so many things he could be doing as a 17-year-old that would be much harder to miss, so if this is it, we’re OK with it. And at least now he knows who he is and he can be happy with being himself.” Miller said that it’s perhaps because the group’s vetting process to include only those who want to support their children that she’s been able to be so open about her personal struggles and the struggles of her family. She said she hasn’t seen any of the internet-based hate or judgment that commonly shows up on social media platforms either. “In other communities, there are a lot of people that get on there and hide behind their screens and just go crazy on Q
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Salt Lake man says he was assaulted after ghosting a Grindr chat BY MICHAEL AARON
A Salt Lake man who had a conversation on Grindr with another man early Friday morning says he feared for his life after being assaulted by the man, who he says tracked him down. Steven Lopez said he began messaging people on Grindr at 1:30 in the morning on Friday, including one 35 feet away who went by the name “HngVers.” “I messaged him and said, “Hey” as I was chatting with a couple of guys,” Lopez said. “He’d messaged before and we exchanged photos.” He stopped messaging him, however, when he found another man to meet downtown. “As I’m driving to the other guy’s house, he messaged me like six or seven times,” Lopez said. Because he was driving, he didn’t look at the messages as they came in. Lopez met with the downtown man for only a brief time, and as he left he saw someone standing outside the man’s apartment. “I walked out and saw this guy standing on the sidewalk, kind of pacing back and forth,” Lopez said. “I thought that was weird since it was 3:30 in the morning. It looked like he was waiting for someone.” It turned out that “someone” was Lopez. “I started walking towards my car and the guy started approaching me, faster and faster,” he said. “I thought this guy was trying to rob me.” Lopez turned around and saw the guy’s face and says he recognized him as the guy he’d been chatting with earlier that night. “He started screaming at me, ‘So, how was he?,’” Lopez said. “I said, ‘What the fuck, are you crazy? Did you follow me? What the Hell?’” “I started to run to the car and he got me. He hit me from behind and I thought he was going to kill me because he choked me until I felt I was going to pass out,” Lopez alleged. “I fought for my life, screaming. He covered my mouth as he kept brutally attacking me.”
“I fought my way and was able to roll him around so I was on top of him,” Lopez continued. “He had his legs wrapped around me. I screamed ‘Why are you doing this?’” Lopez said he had a choice — fight or run for his life. Since the assailant was able to overpower him again, he decided to run. He ran back into the apartment building he’d just left and called 911 on his cellphone. The assailant didn’t follow, but Lopez said he could see him peering over a fence. Police responded in three or so minutes, Lopez said. He spent three hours with them as they took photos and asked
Qmmunity Historical Society to host Utah LGBT Oratories Utah Queer Historical Society announced the first of a series of oratories the last Wendesday of each month, beginning with “Their History is Your History” on Jan. 30, 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. at the Utah Pride Center, 1380 S. Main Street, Salt Lake City. You can expect this to be a fun evening with a chance to reconnect with friends, meet new people, engage in the question and answer session and enjoy light refreshments. Tours of the Utah Pride Center will be offered after the speech. The Utah Queer Historical Society is a project of the Utah Pride Center established to preserve LGBT histories, memoirs, and artifacts of “who we were and who we are.”
Visit with Father Yule Saturday, Dec. 22 take the family to the Utah Pride Cen-
questions about the assault. Lopez then called his mother in Idaho and went to a close friend’s house, fearing to return home. His mother drove 180 miles to meet his son in the hospital. “It was one of the worst calls a mother could get,” she said. She said that the doctor told her that her son had a concussion, contusions all over his face, and blood in the eye that may limit his eyesight in the future. Lopez said he never gave the man his location, and had the location information turned off on the app. He is unsure how the man found where he had gone. “I just want no one to go through what I just did with this man,” Lopez said about going public with his story. If anyone knows more information about the Grindr profile “HngVers,” they are asked to call Salt Lake City Police at 801-799-3000. Q
ter for some holiday cheer, and to have the chance to meet and get a photo taken with Father Yule and his happy elves. Donations are welcome, but not required. Anything donated will go toward the Center’s Youth & Family Programs. The event runs from 1–4 p.m. at 1380 S. Main St
Unsilenced Night for victims and survivors of domestic violence In October, Rebecca Sullivan’s life was cut short through domestic violence. On Christmas Eve, the community will honor Rebecca and others by gathering to enjoy live music written by both Rebecca and musicians she loved. The evening also includes a silent auction featuring local artists, Ember merchandise available for purchase, and a raffle with prizes and gift certificates from Core Power Yoga, Iconoclad, Desert Rose Jewelry, Shannon of Fallen Angel Tattoo, Coffee Garden, Pig & Jelly Jar, and more. Dec. 24 at Urban Lounge,
241 S 500 East. Doors at 7 p.m. Tickets $5, available at the door.
Women’s March on Utah 2019 The Women’s March on Utah returns Jan. 19 starting at Washington Square Park and ending at the Utah State Capitol in alliance with the Women’s March on Washington. The group will march to “raise and empower Utah’s diverse community of women to lead the fight for pay equity, women’s health, family planning, affordable child care, and equal representation in all fields,” according to organizers. “We will march with and as immigrants, those with diverse religious faiths, people who identify as LGBTQIA, native and indigenous people, black and brown people, people with disabilities, the economically impoverished, and survivors of sexual assault.” Agenda: 10 a.m. – Event start/ Opening statement 10:30 a.m. – March Start 11:30 a.m. – Speakers Start 1 p.m. – Event Ends
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Qsaltlake.com |
Kalen Allen speaks in Lehi, Utah at the Ignite LGBTQ+ Youth Summit, hosted by Encircle LGBT+ Family & Youth Resource Center
Issue 290 | DECEMBER 20, 2018
PHOTO: DYLAN WILKINSON
‘TheEllenShow’s Kalen Allen comes out as gay on the way to Utah for Ignite LGBTQ+ Youth Conference BY JOHN HALES
YouTube and Ellen Show sensation (and now movie star) Kalen Allen signed an Instagram post on Saturday, “Sincerely yours, A proud gay black man from Kansas.” It was the first time Allen — named in the current issue of Hollywood Reporter as the industry’s “next big thing” — had publicly admitted he is gay. It was Utah’s LGBT youth who gave him the gumption him to do it. Allen, along with a handful of other LGBT or LGBT-allied celebrities, was a guest the Ignite LGBTQ+ Youth Summit, held Saturday at Adobe in Lehi. He was going to deliver a message of strength and
support, telling young people to be themselves, be in charge of their own story, be “authentic.” But, he told the audience at the event’s evening concert, “I cannot come on this stage and tell you to be authentic … if I cannot implement that into my own life.” That realization — the need to be both authentic and non-hypocritical — led the rising star to come out to the world just as he was en route to Utah. “I’ve contemplated, erased, and modified countless times what I am about to say. A truth that to most was never really a secret but I kept to myself due to fear,” Allen’s Instagram post, which he later posted also on Facebook, began.
“I can no longer live hypocritically,” he wrote. “I cannot preach of living life authentically and with no regrets when I do not adhere to my own advice.” Allen recently finished shooting for his role in an upcoming Seth Rogen film, In a Pickle. He’s had a pretty quick rise in popularity since being discovered only within the last year by Ellen DeGeneres for his “Kalen Reacts” YouTube videos. At such a tenuous point in a career, coming out —as anyone who has come out knows, regardless of celebrity — is scary stuff. “My heart beats fifty miles an hour at this very moment,” Allen wrote, after admitting that it had been fear that kept him from coming out before now:
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“Fear of losing my mother, fear of losing friends, fear of not being loved unconditionally…” He told the Ignite audience earlier in the day that he made his coming-out posts without even telling his mother beforehand. He spent the day nervous about the implications and possible fallout once the news spread. “Nobody has seen me since I posted on Instagram,” he said. “He’s had a rough day,” said Jacob Dunford, production manager of the Ignite event and also the LoveLoud concert, explaining that Allen wasn’t ready to give an interview to reporters about his decision. Allen said nearly the same thing in another post early Sunday morning: “It’s been a rough 24 hours for me.” Backstage, Allen looked thoughtful and, away from any audience, didn’t (or couldn’t) completely disguise the worry he was wrangling with internally. The Ignite event was produced by Encircle, an organization with the mission “to embrace and sustain every LGBTQ+ youth, every family and every community,” as its website, encircletogether. org, states. In its second year, the summit drew 800 participants including preteens, adolescents, young (and even older) adults, families, and allies. Other concert performers included such LGBT luminaries as Carmen Carrera, the once gay-male drag-queen now turned transgender model; Jeffrey Marsh, a gender-nonbinary person who was once dubbed as “the internet’s most beloved anti-bully” and is the first nonbinary author to have a book with a major publishing house, Penguin; gay singer-songwriters Wrabel and Vincent (both of whom were to thank for the two of the evening’s highest emotional high-points); actresses Alexis G. Zall and Mindy Gledhill; and Utah-based music band Foreign Figures, with lead-singer Eric Michels who only recently came out as gay. They all expressed earnest and palpable concern, support and outreach to the Ignite audience. They all understood; they all empathized. They all had messages that resonated powerfully with people who feel shunned to some degree by their own society; being famous doesn’t necessarily change that. Carrera said it had been difficult being in the modeling industry while being trans
and “trying to figure out who you are.” “I was on RuPaul’s Drag Race,” she said, “and I figured everybody loved me, right? No.” But despite how unwell it might be received, she said, “Always hold on to your story … No matter what situation you are in, there is someone like you. You are not alone.” “Most times and in most situations, people find me disgusting,” said Marsh, whose own story included reconciling with his mother, who, as a Christian pastor, had an incredibly difficult time understanding her child. While LGBT people want so badly to be understood and to be heard, Marsh remind-
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duction booth, which went out mid-song. As stage techs scrambled to restore power, the time was filled by co-emcee Jasmine Fullmer, the program director and “house mom” at Encircle’s Provo center. Fullmer informed the audience of a young person who frequents Encircle who had attempted suicide earlier that day. That person is safe, but it was the impetus behind Fullmer’s impassioned and impactful plea for people to realize they are meant to be here, to find reasons to live and survive. Power was restored; Wrabel again began “The Village” and completed it with a
800 Ignite conference attendees fill the Adobe lobby in Lehi, Utah.
ed the audience that the coin has two sides. “Mom had a million things to say, too.” Vincent touched hearts to the core with his rendition of Coldplay’s “Magic,” which he made personal to the audience: “If you have to ask me, after all, you’ve been through if I believe in magic, yes I do, and it’s because of you.” Wrabel’s performance also led to an outpouring of emotion, though somewhat impromptu. He performed his song, “The Village,” with its message that if the world has a problem with you, the problem is with the world, not with you. That’s when there was a problem with the electrical power to the stage and pro-
PHOTO: DYLAN WILKINSON
poignancy somehow enhanced — rather than spoiled — by the interruption. If the performers gave love, they received it as well. “I just gotta level with you,” Marsh said, “This is the most loved I have felt in a very long time.” Michels said almost exactly the same thing, and Vincent told the audience, “I’m just blown away by how kind you are.” And Allen, who only hours before had come out to the world, and who had been introduced by Miller as himself “the king of kindness,” said, “I don’t’ think I would have made it through this day if I hadn’t been here.” Q
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Issue 290 | DECEMBER 20, 2018
University of Utah Health PrEP Clinic staff on opening PHOTO COURTESY JORGEN MADSEN day in May.
UofU Health’s free PrEP Clinic is a game-changer in HIV prevention BY STEPHEN DARK
When Jorgen Madsen came out to his family in late 2015, his father told the 23-year-old medical student a cautionary tale about the only gay man he knew. His father’s friend had been ostracized by the small, rural Utah town where Madsen grew up in the wake of his HIV diagnosis. Only seven people went to his funeral. “The story of my dad’s friend made HIV very scary for me personally,” Madsen says. “The way that town reacted: people don’t talk about him; he’s one of those secrets. I didn’t want that to be me.” Madsen approached gay life with trepidation. After learning about the dating app Grindr, he downloaded it, only to be traumatized by the dozen men immediately asking him for sex. Madsen took the world of dating very slowly. His first kiss with a boyfriend at the end of their third date was an emotional revelation. “I’d never felt anything more pure, more honest,” he says. Shortly after that date, Madsen went to the hospital for treatment on an old bone break that had painfully flared up. This was the first time he identified himself as gay. “The experience was less than ideal,” he says. Through the walls, he heard the nursing student who had taken down his details tell the doctor, “I’m afraid he’s at high risk, being homosexual.” Medical staff grilled the terrified student about his sexual activity, even though it only amounted to a lip-locking farewell at the front door. “They didn’t
believe me,” he says. “They still screened me for everything. I felt so vulnerable.” An attending opened the door and shouted, “We need an HIV test in here.” Madsen sank further down into his chair. They told him he should start taking PrEP, which stands for Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis. Essentially a one-pill-a-day intervention, it has proven up to 95 percent effective against HIV infection. A Lancet study on “rapid, targeted, high-coverage roll-out” of PrEP in New South Wales published in fall 2018 made international headlines, revealing that PrEP usage led to “a rapid decline in HIV diagnoses.” When Madsen asked why the staff thought he should go on PrEP, they replied, “Well, you engage in risky behavior.” It was just a kiss, he thought. While highly effective in combatting HIV, PrEP is also very expensive. Madsen would have to pay $1,500 a month, half of which his insurance would then reimburse. As much as he wanted to take PrEP, he couldn’t afford it. “I felt like a hypocrite being a medical student and not doing everything I could to be safe,” he says. Afterwards, he sat in his car in the hospital parking lot, humiliation washing over him. As he stared numbly out of the window, he cried. Over the next two years, Madsen got a crash course in the paucity of LGBTQ health resources in Utah. He joined forces with two doctors at University of Utah Health, Susan Keeshin, MD and Adam Spivak, MD, along with a fellow medical
student, Julie Weis, and the local nonprofit Utah AIDS Foundation, to improve health care for the LGBTQ community. Their main efforts laid the groundwork for what at that time was only the second free PrEP clinic in the United States. Madsen and his allies found that while it took a collective effort of passionate, activist-minded medical staff to stake out a new frontier in LGBTQ health culture, inside the clinic it came down to communication between providers and patients to realize their dreams of change. Madsen and the rest of the clinic’s leadership had four goals for the HIV prevention clinic: to serve the LGBTQ community, to educate the community about safe sex, to build trust between patients and LGBTQ-allied and gay medical professionals, and to educate the medical community about LGBTQ health issues. Part of that last goal was learning how to take a patient’s sexual history in a non-judgmental manner. That involves recognizing the role humility plays in HIV care, Keeshin says, especially given the fact that patients are typically underserved. Doctors who work with them, “have to check race, sexuality, and privilege at the door,” she says, “whereas a lot of other specialties you don’t.” In March 2018, the clinic began opening its doors every other Saturday morning from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Spivak and Madsen (the dreamers, the big-vision guys) and Keeshin and Weis (the practical engine of the clinic that keeps it motoring) volunteer their time, along with a rotating handful of medical students, several case managers, and a physician’s assistant. In just six months, the skeletal crew squirreled away in the back of the Redwood Health Center on Salt Lake City’s west side has been all but overwhelmed by its own success. Ninety-eight percent of their patients are young gay men, and close to 40 percent identify as Latino, so the clinic has reached the most at-risk populations with little more than word of mouth. This, however, is just the beginning. One Voice Recovery director Patrick Rezac told Keeshin he’s tried unsuccess-
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fully to get the more than 1,000 patients at his needle exchange and addiction recovery program to go to the clinic. A mobile clinic, they agreed, might well cover that gap. The need for the PrEP clinic was apparent in a 2016 survey conducted by Monica Schwarz Josten, MD, and Keeshin. It showed, Keeshin says, that “primary care providers are very uncomfortable talking about sex,” and did not screen young patients for HIV infections. The majority of survey respondents took the view that their youthful patients weren’t sexually active. Yet results revealed that, in Utah in 2016, youth from ages 15 to 24 accounted for more than half of sexually transmitted infections and 21 percent of new HIV infections. One reason doctors won’t prescribe PrEP, Madsen argues, is that they feel “morally opposed” to it. “They feel it increases promiscuity, increases risky behavior, and doesn’t protect against other STIs [sexually transmitted infections],” he says, “since patients taking PrEP are less likely to use condoms.” While some health officials who battle sexually transmitted infections [STIs] in the gay community link spiking STI rates to PrEP use, Madsen says such concerns are a fallacy. He points to studies showing that STI incidence decrease because patients, in order to keep receiving PrEP, have to get tested for HIV and STIs every three months. From the beginning, Madsen and his cohorts were determined to make the clinic an oasis of tolerance and empathy. Along with PrEP and STI education, they provide peer counseling for patients struggling with stigma, isolation, and depression. “This is a population that’s already marginalized,” Madsen says. “The clinic is a space where we can talk about the excitement of a date they had, or how the family is reacting to coming out.” The Utah Aids Foundation has served as the clinic’s strongest ally, Madsen says, referring uninsured patients to them and helping to organize fundraising events. UAF HIV prevention coordinator Daryl Herrschaft credits Madsen’s persistence for providing UAF and the gay communi-
ty access to decision-makers at University of Utah Health who were able to put this clinic into place. “Madsen was the driving force turning the clinic from a concept into a reality,” Herrschaft says. Even when Madsen’s sitting still, his long legs scissor in one direction, then swing back; his energetic enthusiasm is contagious. “When you work with him, you feel compelled to try to follow through what he’s planning,” Herrschaft says. That same zeal for PrEP access is apparent in the clinic’s other co-founders: Spivak advocates intensely for the underserved, while Keeshin’s steely focus helps to marshal the flow of the clinic’s patients. Part of the clinic’s culture is to be realistic about people’s sexual behavior. “People still do practice high-risk sexual behavior,” Spivak says. “That’s the nature of life. If someone wants to use PrEP instead of a condom, we can talk about that decision. We know PrEP works. That’s what I care about: preventing HIV.”
An emotional connection In 2015, Julie Weis was living in Seattle, pursuing a Master’s in public health, when she learned that her dad had been diagnosed with brain cancer. Then 29 years old, she decided to return to Utah to care for her dying father and signed up for medical school at the U. In her first year, she met and befriended Madsen, who also identified as LGBTQ. (“It’s the least interesting thing about me,” she says with a laugh.) When Madsen shared his frustrations about the lack of dedicated resources and treatment for LGBTQ members with Weis, he also talked about his idea for a free PrEP clinic. Weis was thrilled. While insurance coverage had improved, she
UofU Health HIV PREP CLINIC Open two Saturday mornings each month.
REDWOOD HEALTH CENTER 1525 West 2100 South Call 801-585-2512 Monday–Friday to make an appointment.
believed more work was needed: “There’s a lot of people who are most at need of it who don’t have insurance at all,” she says. In summer 2017, Madsen’s frustration with the lack of resources addressing LGBTQ health issues hit a boiling point. He emailed Spivak, who teaches a fourhour HIV class to medical students at the University of Utah, for help addressing “what barriers our community is facing with the LGBT community and medicine,” Madsen wrote, “and what we could do as students to be involved.” Spivak was excited by the idea, one that had gripped his imagination when it was first suggested to him by a former Utah Aids Foundation employee. A Maryland native, the 43-year-old Spivak was painfully aware of the socioeconomic differences dictated by a change in zip code from the comfortable middle-class neighborhood where he grew up and Baltimore’s downtown, where he first worked as a doctor. “All of my patients were black, largely impoverished, with diseases of abuse and neglect,” he remembers. “I felt passionately that to those who much is given, much is expected.” That’s a perspective shared by Keeshin, whom Spivak brought into the conversation with Madsen. Keeshin was adopted as an orphan in Bolivia and raised by a family in Utah. “I felt like I was given so many opportunities in my life,” she says, “adopted to a family that had the means to get me educated.” Growing up in Utah, HIV first made its mark on Keeshin’s life as a teenager at Skyline High School, when gay friends shared their fears about the future. “One said, ‘I’m going to get HIV and die, and probably half of us will,” she recalls. Keeshin applied to Meharry Medical College, a historically black institution in Nashville, Tenn., to study medicine, drawn in part by the school’s philosophy of serving the under-served. “It’s more of an emotional relationship than I think traditional medicine is,” she says. “Just seeing the interaction of patients and HIV doctors, it’s so close. You share their highs and lows, go to their birthday parties. You’re part of each other’s lives.
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They’re not just a diagnosis.” The level of demand for PrEP had opened Spivak’s eyes. At University of Utah Hospital’s Infectious Disease Clinic, where both he and Keeshin work, about 100 people — all insured white men — are on PrEP, Spivak says. Many uninsured people had gone to UAF for PrEP and been told there wasn’t a way for them to access the drug yet. “These are people who sought out UAF [and] think they’re at risk of HIV,” Spivak says. “Everyone I talk to who thinks that, they’re right. Patients know they want this and they can’t get it. What is the barrier? Gilead [the manufacturer] gives patients the drug for free. The barrier is the system.” In fact, UAF believes that far more people want PrEP than their numbers indicate: “Uninsured people might not seek services believing they are out of financial reach,” Herrschaft writes in an email.
Coming down from the hill In October 2017, Spivak and Keeshin met with Kathleen A. Cooney, then the chair of internal medicine, and showed her data from UAF that demonstrated the unmet need for PrEP in Salt Lake Valley. They told her that only people who had insurance could get PrEP, but they knew people in the city who wanted it and couldn’t get it. Spivak offered a tantalizing proposition: Would you like to stamp out HIV in your own backyard? Cooney gave them a seed grant from her discretionary chair funds to start the clinic. “Then we just relied on our friends,” Keeshin says. The nurse manager at the infectious disease clinic volunteered her time. ARUP provided a manageable price on laboratory tests. A volunteer case manager helped clients access PrEP free via Gilead’s patient assistance program. Communications and IT helped build a website to get the word out. “We asked a lot of people, ‘Hey, can you help us with this?’” Keeshin notes. “And it all came together.” Madsen and Weis worked hard to spread the word about the clinic and attract volunteers among U of U Health’s student body. Madsen organized a training day in late 2017 where 120 first- and second-year students took mock sexual histories from LGBTQ patients. “It can be uncomfortable to sit down with a doctor
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and use big terms,” he says. Rather than desexualize activity by making it scientific, he and other clinic staffers use gay vernacular found on dating apps. The clinic leadership secured free space at Redwood Health Center on 2100 South, east of Redwood Road. The location was crucial: They wanted somewhere neutral, out of the way, and discreet. “We’ve engineered this clinic to try to align it to the patient population we want to treat, as opposed to the standard model of health care,” Spivak says. Its location near West Valley City places the clinic close to many uninsured patients; for those without access to transportation, a TRAX station is nearby. “We wanted to make it a point that we were in the community,” Spivak says. “We wanted to be an equal.”
So much more than an HIV status The clinic leadership announced their plans to the gay community at a World AIDS Day event on Dec. 1, 2017 at Ember, a downtown Salt Lake City venue. With help from U of U Health, UAF and other community supporters organized food and decorations, as well as a candlelit vigil at the Salt Lake City and County Building, which was bathed in red light to mark this seminal day of awareness and remembrance. A crowd of nearly 40 people held a moment of silence to remember those lost to HIV and AIDS, candlelight flickering over their faces. Spivak remembered a young woman and talented artist who had acquired HIV from her ex-husband, who was both abusive and, unbeknownst to her, an IV drug user. She’d gone to the hospital delirious and burning up; two hours later, she was diagnosed with HIV/AIDS and lymphoma. She died two years later. Keeshin recalled a transwoman patient who had been murdered. Madsen thought about how lucky he was to have been born after the AIDS crisis, even as its ripples continue to wash up on his life every day. He thought about an old college friend, a drug-using gay man who struggled so much with his HIV status, his sexuality, and his addiction that he took his own life. “For me, he is a testament that no patient is ever just a disease but a complex human being,” Madsen writes in an email. “His life was
Jorgen Madsen
Issue 290 | DECEMBER 20, 2018
PHOTO COURTESY JORGEN MADSEN
so much more than his HIV status — but that status also impacted every single aspect of his life.” Weis was out of the country at that time, working at a hospital in Rwanda with local doctors treating patients with HIV infections. She saw in horrific, painful detail the price patients paid for the failure to prevent and diagnose HIV infections. “These are people who should have had a fair shake in life, but they were dying,” she says. When she returned to Utah in February 2018, she knew unequivocally that “preventive health care is the way we are going to stop the epidemic in the U.S.” She told Madsen, “I want to be right there with you. I’m in.”
Opening day After building a career in academic medical centers and the massive, bureaucratic machinery of medical research, Spivak found himself in the midst of creating something new. Then, one Saturday morning in March 2018, the first patient entered a room. He had to remind himself to not overwhelm the man with his excitement and enthusiasm. “Don’t get too effusive,” Spivak told himself. “It’s not about you.” Nevertheless, after the first patient came out, the staff cheered. As exciting as opening day was, it also presented a steep learning curve. “A patient comes, then what?” Keeshin says. “That was a little awkward.” She became a traffic controller of sorts, working with Weis to streamline the patient’s intake, first talking to an assistant, then a doctor, and then a case manager to get their paper-
DECEMBER 20, 2018 |
Issue 290 | Qsaltlake.com
work in to Gilead to apply for financial assistance, a three- to four-week process. One patient who attended the clinic when it first opened was “Carlos,” referred by UAF after he went to the nonprofit for an HIV screening. The 39-yearold had thought he couldn’t afford PrEP. Now that he’s on the drug, he says, “I feel more safe when I meet somebody.” Weis expected the clinic to “limp along” in its first year, with patient counts barely breaking into double figures. As the months went by, the five to 10 new patients arriving in the first weeks quickly increased until they had more than 100 patients on their books. “Clearly, their client load is suggesting there’s even more need than they anticipated,” UAF’s Executive Director Stan Penfold says. Patients routinely expressed their gratitude to Spivak for the non-judgmental environment of the clinic, something that he was puzzled about when Madsen had first brought it up. Madsen insisted that the clinic should be LGBTQ-friendly, with staff expected to understand the gay vernacular, but Spivak was surprised at what he felt was obvious: “Of course we’re going to be LGBTQ-friendly,” he thought. Now he understood Madsen’s concerns. “Patients would share really awful experiences in 2018 in Utah,” Spivak says, “of going to physicians’ offices, being singled out, being told to leave, being told ‘we don’t provide that service here,’ ‘we’re not seeing you,’ just really awful stuff where folks are seeking out help and it’s not there for them. I wasn’t aware that this stigma was that extensive, and I’m an HIV doc. I should know that.” Every other Saturday, Weis sees couples dealing with what she calls “leaps of faith,” where one partner takes PrEP so they can stay with someone who is HIV positive. “We decided to get tested together; he came up positive, I came up negative,” is the story she often hears. One Saturday morning saw several return patients, including a couple: one on PrEP, the other positive. “They were very loving,” Weis says. “It was really beautiful to watch them with each other.” They had just learned that the positive man’s viral load had been suppressed through medication. He was undetectable, meaning that the virus was essentially
untransmissable. That’s the ultimate goal, she says: to get an HIV positive person’s viral load so low it’s undetectable, with the negative person they are having sex with on PrEP.
Ambassadors for prep On a mid-October Saturday morning, Spivak stands in the PrEP clinic’s hallway and glances at the consulting rooms. All the doors are closed. At the Infectious Disease Clinic, which Spivak calls “a welloiled machine,” 20 to 30 percent of their appointments are no-shows. At the PrEP clinic, it’s about 10 percent. At a clinic that didn’t advertise until a few weeks before via a free ad on Grindr, every room is full. That’s the first time that’s happened, he says. “Word is out I guess.” Among those who transmitted that word are passionate patient-advocates for PrEP. “Patients were taking pictures of our business cards and putting them on dating apps,” Madsen says. One such advocate is court interpreter Juan Marquez, who Keeshin calls “my PrEP champion.” She adds, “He’s taken it upon himself to put the word out in the Latino community.” Marquez’s introduction to PrEP came while filling out paperwork in a doctor’s office, where a nurse told him about the medication. “It seemed too good to be true,” he says. When he went to see Keeshin for the first time — he has insurance through his job — she told him that taking PrEP was an act of responsibility. After Keeshin told him about the PrEP clinic, Marquez offered information about free PrEP on his Grindr profile for anyone that wanted it. He also posted similar offers on Facebook. “I make sure to say it’s not a gay pill,” he says. “It’s for you if you’re not infected.” He’s had more than 100 people ask for information. On one visit to the clinic, Keeshin asked him, “Did you ever post on this on Grindr? I think some of my patients are your referrals.” Several patients had talked about Marquez’s advocacy efforts through social media, and she’d recognized him from their description of his profile picture on Grindr. That was Marquez’s ah-ha moment. “Wow, people care,” he thought.
FEATURE | QSALTLAKE MAGAZINE | 17
Proud to be Utahn, proud to be gay On Nov. 29, 2018, the clinic and the Utah Aids Foundation hosted its second World AIDS Day fundraiser, Red Party, hosted by Tan France, the star of Netflix’s Queer Eye reboot. “We’re looking to expand,” Madsen says. “We have an overwhelming need in the community for PrEP.” Beyond the fundraiser, Spivak and Keeshin hope to raise $500,000. That would allow them to open every Saturday morning instead of every other one, and also purchase a van to use as a mobile clinic so they can do outreach to addicts, the homeless, street sex workers and other high-risk populations. In October and November, Madsen and Weis interviewed for residency positions at high-profile out-of-state hospitals. Before Madsen co-founded the clinic, he wanted to leave Utah as fast as he could. Now, it’s hard to depart. “This is like my baby,” he says. “I don’t want to hand it off. [The clinic has] given me confidence. It’s given me a sense of purpose. It’s made me very proud to be a gay man.” Marquez has also found his self-assigned work as a clinic advocate rewarding. A young man he’d told about the clinic reached out for information months later. He works part-time work and goes to college thanks to DACA while supporting his single mother. PrEP was a luxury he couldn’t afford, he told Marquez, who responded that the clinic was free. A few weeks later, he got a text with a photograph of a prescription labeled bottle of PrEP. “Look what I just got!!!!” his friend texted, with a smiling emoji. “I’m so excited.” “Omg!!!!!!!!!!!” Marquez texted back. “I’m so excited for you.” “Yass. I’m starting tomorrow.” Spivak spells out just how high the stakes are for Utah and for those at risk of infection. “The only state ever in the country to drive down HIV rates? It’s never happened,” he says. “We. Can. Do. That. We are doing that. We have the opportunity in this small, tight community to stamp all this out. We can end the spread of HIV in Utah.” Q This story was first published in the Newsroom of the University of Utah Health Department website. It is reprinted with permission. Photo: Volunteer staff at the end of the PrEP Clinic’s inaugural day. Credit: Jorgen Madsen
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views
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Issue 290 | DECEMBER 20, 2018
quotes “In our societies it even seems that homosexuality is fashionable and that mentality, in some way, also influences the life of the church ... In consecrated and priestly life, there’s no room for that kind of affection. Therefore, the church recommends that people with that kind of ingrained tendency should not be accepted into the ministry or consecrated life” — Pope Francis in his book, “The Strength of a Vocation”
“If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” — Pope Francis in 2013 to the New York Times
“In more abstract comments, the pope frames gay people as servants of God. But his more direct statements present us as threats, especially in the priesthood or religious orders.” — Eve Tushnet
“For more than 20 years, the Catholic priesthood has been viewed as an increasingly gay profession, making the pope’s comments all the more insulting, and evidence of Francis’s own ‘heterosexual machismo.’” — Ellen Degeneres
“The Pope should be more concerned about paedophiles in the Clergy, rather than gay men.” — Eros Hazel Gloreen
DECEMBER 20, 2018 |
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Issue 290 | Qsaltlake.com
who’s your daddy
Not your mother’s maiden name
clerks that there is no mother’s maiden name, alternatives will be offered. Until that time, kids with two dads are going to excit-
edly grin at DMV clerks and admit they don’t know their mom’s maiden name. Guess what? They’ll still get a driver’s license. Q
BY CHRISTOPHER KATIS
A few
weeks ago, Gus earned his learner’s permit. It’s more than a little disconcerting to see the person whom you taught to use a spoon sitting behind the wheel of an automobile. But at least Gus knows what he doing — my dad taught him to drive years ago, and my cousin’s husband taught him to drive a stick shift when we were in Greece. Of course, tooling around an abandoned parking lot – no matter in which country — is different than heading down U.S. highways. The amusing twist is that Gus prefers to drive with me rather than Kelly. Apparently, Mr. Calm-and-Quiet Kelly stresses our kid out; ironically, I’ve never been known for my patience, but for some reason, I’m as cool as a cucumber when he drives. So why am I sharing this milestone in a teenage boy’s life? Well, like so many other aspects of parenting, our experience is different from our peers’ simply because we’re a two-dad family. When Kelly and Gus were getting everything squared away at the DMV, the clerk asked Gus his mother’s maiden name. With the enthusiasm that can only be mustered by high school sophomores about to start driving, Gus confidently replied, “I don’t know.” The frazzled DMV clerk must have thought the poor kid was a special kind of stupid. So, he repeated himself — twice. Kelly finally jumped in, trying to explain that there was no mother, so there was no maiden name. But in the type of customer ser-
vice you only find at the DMV (and perhaps the post office), the guy insisted the mother’s maiden name was needed. I wonder how he would have handled a two-mom family: “Mother’s maiden name?” “Which mother?” The whole experience served as a reminder that my family is a little different than the so-called norm. And if I’m being honest, I rather dig that about us. Of course, no two families’ experiences are ever going to be the same, but with us — well, it’s always a little something more. It makes us view the world differently. Sure, the DMV clerk didn’t consider that a kid might have two dads. But he also didn’t consider that using a mom’s premarital name is a pretty sexist concept either. More women are keeping their surnames than before. More kids are hyphenated, like ours. A growing number of kids are being given their mom’s surname. And I even knew a couple of guys who took their wife’s last name. The point is that families and family dynamics are changing and evolving, and, personally, I think that’s good for society. What’s exciting to me is that I have a front row seat to that evolution because I’m part of that change. Do I expect that the DMV is going to suddenly offer soon-to-be drivers an alternate unique identifier? Nope. In three years, I fully expect Niko to be asked his mother’s maiden name. But I know eventually, as an increasing number of teenagers tell DMV
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20 | QSALTLAKE MAGAZINE | VIEWS
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Issue 290 | DECEMBER 20, 2018
lambda lore
Utah was the first stop for the AIDS Memorial Quilt in 1989 BY BEN WILLIAMS
It was
announced in January 1989 that Salt Lake City had been chosen as the first stop on the U.S.-Canadian tour of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt. However, only a portion of the quilt was to be on display as it had grown to include 8,288 panels and weighed 16 tons. Only 576 panels of the quilt was scheduled to be shown at the Salt Palace March 16-19. As enormous as the quilt had become, for each panel in the quilt, five other people had died. By bringing the quilt to Salt Lake, it was meant to illustrate the impact of the AIDS epidemic on Utah. Ben Barr, who was the Utah AIDS Foundation director, said that the value of having the quilt come to Utah was that it visually “provides a really safe, non-threatening way to educate kids about AIDS.” David Sharpton, who was the director of the People with AIDS Coalition of Utah, told reporters, “For those of us who have AIDS, the quilt is a part of us. The reality is that one day, there will be a panel with our names.” On March 15, panels of the Names Project Quilt arrived in Salt Lake City where some of them were temporarily displayed in the state capitol building. The three by six foot panels were sewed into squares of twelve feet by twelve feet and some of these larger sections were displayed on walls in the Utah State Capitol Building prior to the opening ceremony. In conjunction with the quilt’s arrival, an interfaith candlelight service was held at St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral, followed by a candlelight procession from the cathedral to the Arts Center south of Abravanel Hall. I attended the service at St. Marks and participated in the candlelight procession which some have referred to as being the first large scale gay action in Salt Lake City. I wrote in my journal an account of the event: “We were there around six fifty and it was already packed. We barely got a seat because there were probably five hundred people in attendance. The service was really moving. We then went outside with our lit candles. The Salt Lake Police had estimated that only fifty people would
attend the march. My, weren’t they way off by tenfold. Curtis Robinson and I walked down South Temple while holding each other and it was so beautiful. The weather held up for all of it. I can’t ever remember another candlelight procession in Salt Lake City. The solemn energy was tremendous as the five hundred of us streamed past Temple Square carrying our candles. I thought about the social significance of us walking arm in arm in front of Utah’s Kremlin. The march ended at symphony Hall with us singing We Shall Overcome.” The next day on March 16, the quilt display was officially opened to the public at the Salt Palace. My observations were written as follows. “The Quilt was displayed in the Assembly Hall of the Salt Palace where Coronation is held. Curtis Robinson said you could feel a level of energy in the air surrounding the event. The walkways were already laid out in the assembly hall but the center squares were empty until the unfolding. Many of the 12 x 12-foot panels sections were already hanging on the walls including twenty-five individual panels of Utahns who had died, including the one I made for Michael Spence whose drag name was Tracy Ross. It was a somber atmosphere within the Salt Palace as if we were at a funeral. At seven the unfolding ceremony began. David Sharpton was the conductor of the event and he introduced the dignitaries who read off the names of people who had died of AIDS as the unfolders laid out the squares to fill the empty spaces. My emotions and senses, as well as those of others participating, were reeling. I didn’t think I’d cry after seeing the Quilt in Washington DC in 1987 but I did. On stage, reading names, were Mayor Palmer DePaulis and his wife, Bruce Lindsey from KSL, Cathleen Block from KUTV, Bruce Barton and Bruce Harmon, Ben Barr, Larry White of the Golden Spike Empire, and many, many more. “The unfolding ceremony lasted about an hour then people began to mill around on the walkways between the squares
to read the epithets. Curtis and I walked arms around each other and looked at the colorful and tragic memorial. While I was viewing the panels I came upon Clair Harward’s. He was the Ogden man excommunicated for being Gay while dying of AIDS. I burst into tears. It was an emotional evening with people weeping, consoling, and hugging each other. I walked home by myself in a slow steady drizzle. Even the heavens are weeping.” On Saturday, I went back down to the Salt Palace several times as I was scheduled to be one of the readers of names. Names of people who had died of AIDS were constantly and consistently being read although out the day and into the evening and many of us were asked to take turns reading so as to avoid fatigue. That was a powerful experience and I really tried to choke back the tears when reading the list I was given with all the single names of just Bill or Billy. No last names. There must have been 30 of them or more and to read one after another nearly broke my heart. I spent much of my time today in the company of Ben Barr and David Sharpton who both looked exhausted. Sunday was the finally day of the AIDS Quilt display in Utah. I had intended to be at the closing ceremony but because of my commitment to taping a program for Concerning Gays and Lesbians, I was unable to do so. “At the KRCL studios I did a program with Becky Moss and Jim Rieger. I wanted to be done by eight to go back to the Salt Palace to see the closing ceremony but we didn’t get finished in time. It was a wonderful program with interviews of people’s reactions to the opening ceremonies. It was a nice tribute and I dedicated the show to Ben Barr and David Sharpton and all the many volunteers who made this event possible. There are too many emotions swirling around me to even articulate one, and write them down. My thoughts are so, so elusive and they melt away as soon as I start to write.” Today, the quilt weighs 54 tons and is composed of more than 48,000 panels dedicated to more than 94,000 individuals. The NAMES Project stages more than 1,000 Quilt displays each year in a variety of venues from schools and universities, corporations and community centers, places or worship and galleries – all in the hopes of making HIV/AIDS real and immediate and turning statistics into souls. Q
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VIEWS | QSALTLAKE MAGAZINE | 21
mister manners
Time to unplug BY ROCK MAGEN
As the
new year approaches, I am sure that many of us are starting to make a list of the resolutions to help reinvent ourselves. Gym memberships, diet plans, and finances are a few of the most common goals which quickly come to mind, but what if there was something even more important which is easier than sweating day after day? Unplug from your smartphone. Now before you run off shouting Mr. Manners is talking blasphemy, take a moment to humor me. If you have ever accidentally “shared” a post that is offensive to a loved one, or vented about a boss and then held accountable at work the next day, you likely know that a few changes to our habits could help prevent these situations. Many of us likely agree that technology adds a lot of ease, convenience, and happiness to our lives. Setting up boundaries is generally healthy and putting up a few of those guard rails when it comes to your screen time isn’t a bad idea, especially if you feel like your days consist of eating, sleeping, and screens. So, what are some of the benefits of unplugging on a regular basis? There is a lot of research on the subject to let us know exactly what those benefits are, but it’s also important to remember that what is feasible for you might not work for others, and vice versa. And like all great compromises, we have to accept that fact. We all have our obligations and uses for technology. The key is finding which boundaries work so you find the balance that works best for your life. Let’s start with a daily routine. Personally, I have found that unplugging after work can make a big difference in your quality of life, health, and happiness. Studies show that when people “unplug” from work-related tasks, such as checking email after hours, they’ve reported feeling fresh and better recharged when beginning work the next day. For anyone who has experienced burn-out at work, this isn’t
too surprising. We can only do so much for so long before feeling exhausted. And constantly plugging into our screens doesn’t help matters. Being woken up by funny tweets and random GIFs from your friends are likely doing nothing for your sleep pattern, much less your mood upon waking up in the morning. And if you’re waking up in the middle of the night to check work emails, that doesn’t suggest anything good because you aren’t giving your brain and body proper time to recharge. Taking this one step further, additional research suggests that the blue light which is generated from our computers and phones also makes it difficult for our bodies to fall asleep, implying that we should disconnect before bed, rather than falling asleep while staring at our screens. We now know that unplugging can increase our quality of life through reducing the exhaustion we feel from a lack of sleep and being overworked, but what are the other benefits which come from being unplugged? By engaging in unplugging from technology, your in-person communication and interpersonal relationships are strengthened because it encourages you to communicate outside the screen- and textbased medium. While technology makes communication super fast and convenient, it also removes body language, tone, and other things that help us understand one another and form bonds. We have all heard the phrase, “you know what I mean,” and by unplugging, we are taking a step back from having to constantly explain ourselves because we will be better knowing how to express ourselves. In today’s technology-driven world, it’s easy to feel like we are constantly plugged in. Whether we’re checking our phones, refreshing our emails, or downloading a movie on our laptops, the reality often is that we’re surrounded by screens. But there are scientifically proven benefits from stepping away from technology — and sometimes, it’s useful to remind ourselves of those benefits. After all, when you’ remaking those resolutions it’s important to remember there is more to life than smartphones! Q
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22 | QSALTLAKE MAGAZINE | VIEWS
creep of the month
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Issue 290 | DECEMBER 20, 2018
Bob Vander Plaats BY D’ANNE WITKOWSKI
When I
was in high school it was common to hear kids say “that’s so gay,” usually to deride something that was thought to be extremely corny or nerdy. Or, well, lame. And I have to admit, I suspect that 4-H got more than its fair share of that’s-so-gays. Honestly, I only had a passing understanding of what 4-H was while growing up. I knew that some kids went to the state fair to eat and then throw up cotton candy on carnival rides, while other kids went to the state fair because they had, like, a pig in the pig contest or something. I didn’t fit into either of those categories, which helps to explain why my 4-H knowledge base is shaky at best. Oh, and the name 4-H “represents four personal development areas of focus for the organization: head, heart, hands, and health” (thanks, Wikipedia! Send them $3). The 4-H website has no farm animals on its front page and kind of looks like Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, and Big Brothers Big Sisters all rolled into one. Millions of kids are involved in one way or another. Even some LGBTQ kids. And here’s the great thing: 4-H wants to include and protect its LGBTQ youth. The not-so great thing, however, is that the Trump Administration does not want them to do that and, according to a detailed investigation in the Des Moines Register, the
administration “pushed the national 4-H youth organization to withdraw” the LGBTQ-inclusive policy. The biggest sticking point appears to have been letting transgender youth use the bathrooms that matched their gender identity. It is a familiar story, one that Trump’s administration really enjoys telling, and believing, even though there is no evidence to justify the right wing’s anti-trans focus. So when 4-H in Iowa published the inclusive guidelines to their website, some people freaked the eff out. One of those freakers was Bob Vander Plaats, president of the conservative Christian organization the Family Leader in Des Moines. According to the Register, he wanted his supporters to reject the policy’s “radical” approach. He claimed that under this policy allows “a man who claims the female gender (without any medical procedure or legal verification) to sleep in the girls’ hotel rooms.” Vander Plaats, whose photo in the Register looks like a headshot for an actor playing a B-movie role as the head of a conversion therapy summer camp for gay teens, is but a bit player in the Register’s investigation. But I’ve chosen to focus on him because comments like his get people killed. This idea that there are men out there who want to slip their hairy calves into a pair of L’eggs so that they
can stride confidently into a ladies’ locker room to ogle and sexually assault women and girls is absurd. It’s also dangerous, painting an already vulnerable population as predators, which pretty much gives a blank check to those who wish to do violence against transgender people. The vast majority of transgender people are not predators. But they are all people. Vander Plaats would like you to forget that part, and his comment about “girls’ hotel rooms” is clearly an effort to dehumanize a group of people who, like all of us, just want to live their lives in a way that makes the most sense to them. I should note that Vander Plaats’s comments are not a surprise. The Family Leader is staunchly anti-LGBT. The very first thing on their “Issues we are focused on” page is marriage, as in, “We believe marriage is a permanent, lifelong commitment between a man and a woman.” This is followed closely by sexuality, as in, “The Family Leader affirms sexual relations within the bond of marriage,
and opposes distortions of sexuality or special rights to those practicing distorted sexual behavior.” Thankfully, the LGBTQ kids of 4-H had someone in their corner: 4-H Youth Development Program leader John-Paul Chaisson-Cardenas. According to the Register, Chaisson-Cárdenas wrote in an email referring to WorldNetDaily, a right-wing website that has an extreme anti-LGBTQ bias and had been covering the 4-H controversy: “I guess I am not sure why we are valuing the propaganda machine of a recognized hate group over the existing rights of LGBTQ youth?” An excellent question, and one that we’ll probably never have an answer for because Chaisson-Cárdenas was canned. He’s not the first and won’t be the last person pushed out by Trump for supporting transgender people. The question is only how many more will there be? Q D’Anne Witkowski is a poet, writer and comedian living in Michigan with her wife and son. She has been writing about LGBT politics for over a decade. Follow her on Twitter @MamaDWitkowski.
DECEMBER 20, 2018 |
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Issue 290 | Qsaltlake.com
sex and salt lake city
staffbox
publisher/editor Michael Aaron
ASSISTANT editor Tony Hobday
New Year’s resolutions
NATIONAL NEWS editor Craig Ogan designer Christian Allred sales Ken Stowe, 801-997-9763 x1
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What the
heck is a resolution anyway? According to Wikipedia “A New Year’s resolution is a tradition in which a person resolves to change an undesired trait or behavior; to accomplish a personal goal or otherwise improve their life,” and approximately 50to 60-percent of us proclaim one each year. Many choose to make changes to their diets and exercise habits. Others choose to focus on mental or spiritual well being. A smaller number dedicate to making financial changes, setting goals to pay off a certain loan, or get out of debt entirely. But what about our sexuality? What about pleasure? It’s rare to hear of someone making resolutions to improve their sexual health;allowing themselves more orgasms; or committing to exploring a fantasy orfetish. What better time than now?
TRY SOMETHING NEW! It can be so easy to get into a sexual rut. Sometimes, that amazing maneuver we once found to be the very best orgasmic trigger of all time, becomes scripted and routine. Make this the year to try something new. Shop for that new toy you’ve been holding off on getting. If shopping in person makes you uncomfortable, look at websites such as GoodVibrations.com where queer andbody positive books, toys and videos can be easily found. Have a question aboutsomething you see? Every employee at Good Vibrations is also a sex educator.Sometimes that new toy, new trick, or new video can be just the thing to takeyou over a new sexy pleasure edge.
EDUCATE YOURSELF! Read books that are informative about sexual expression or gender identities. If reading isn’t your thing, download audible and listen while you drive, clean, sit cozy by the fire, whatever. Make this the year that you gain knowledge about not only yourself, but those you care about too. Educate yourself skill wise as well. Get a book of sexual positions, such as“Classic Sex Positions Reinvented” by Moushumi Ghose; “Curvy Girl Sex” byElle Chase; or “The Guide to Getting it On” by Paul Joannides Psy.D and DaerickGröss Sr. If you have a partner willing
to read and explore them with you, allthe better. If not, take time to get to know your body better so when you arewith a partner you can show them what you’ve learned. This body knowledge willnot only serve you, but also anyone else you physically interact with.
BUILD COMMUNITY! Reach out to that crush you’ve been too shy or nervous to talk to. Take up a rope bondage workshop or tantra class. Visit the Utah PrideCenter. Explore the Utah Polyamory Society. Visit the Utah Cuddle Club and get some of your touch needs met. Join a Meetup group, such as Sex Positive SaltLake City, that explores gender identities, relationship configurations, or sexual expressions. Attend a discussion group that focuses on sexuality. Not finding a community that resonates with you? Consider starting one. Chances are, if you’re interested in a certain something and waiting for someone else to organize it, there are probably others thinking the same thing.
STRIKE A POSE! How many of us like getting our picture taken – really.Most cringe at the thought so suggesting a boudoir shoot can be even moreintimidating. However, the right photographer can make ALL the difference. Maybe you have a certain fetish outfit that you absolutely love but keep hidden in the back of your closet. Maybe you’ve been afraid to expose your full nude body to another person. With the right lighting and pose this could be incredibly empowering. Check out LGBT affirming Cat Palmer Photography, based here in Salt Lake City. Keep in mind, your photos are for you and don’t have tobe shared with any other. Although, you may be surprised at just how amazingthey turn out. Professional photography still too scary? Play with lighting andediting. Create your own sexy selfie session. More than likely the camera onyour phone has some pretty magical photo skills. Whatever the resolution, make it your own, for your betterment. Whatever you’ve been fantasizing about trying, if it’s consensual with any others who may be involved, now is the year to give yourself permission. Q Dr. Laurie Bennett-Cook is a Clinical Sexologist. She lectures internationally and divides her time, and private practice between Salt Lake City, Utah and Los Angeles, California. She can be reached at Dr.LaurieBennettCook@ gmail.com
24 | QSALTLAKE MAGAZINE | A&E
Qsaltlake.com |
CONCERTS
Utah Symphony presents PINK MARTINI’s Joy to the World: A Holiday Spectacular with the Utah Symphony. Portland’s favorite “little orchestra” with vocalist Ari Shapiro (NPR’s “All Things Considered”) joins the Utah Symphony for a holiday celebration that features multi-cultural holiday songs from the band’s best-selling album Joy To The World alongside classic Pink Martini favorites. FRIDAY — PINK MARTINI’S JOY TO THE WORLD Abravanel Hall, 123 W. South Temple., 7:30 p.m., through Saturday. Tickets $27, artsaltlake.org
Tony’s 21 Gay Agenda BY TONY HOBDAY
FUN
Get away from the inversion, have a fabulous time, and raise funds to help people all at the same time. THE BIG GAY FUN BUS heads to West Wendover five times a season and you need to climb aboard! SATURDAY — BIG GAY FUN BUS TO WEST WENDOVER, NEVADA Meet at Club Try-Angles before the bus leaves at noon. Back by 9:30pm. Tickets in advance $25 highly suggested as these usually sell out. biggayfunbus. com
12
DANCE
REPERTORY DANCE THEATRE returns Emerge: The troupe’s 3rd annual (and typically sold out) showcase of the amazing skill and breathtaking artistry of the dancers and choreographers. FRIDAY — EMERGE Black Box Theatre, Rose Wagner Center, 138 W. 300 South, times vary, through Saturday. Tickets $15, artsaltlake.org
4
Issue 290 | DECEMBER 20, 2018
SPECIAL ENGAGEMENTS
A longtime fabulous Utah favorite, DEEDEE DARBY-DUFFIN returns in a new concert Backstage at the Grand. She’s been a staple as far back (that I recall) as the 2010 Different = Amazing benefit show, to as recent (that I recall) as the 2017 Women’s Redrock Music Festival. Enjoy a night of music that will make you laugh, cry, ponder and wonder as DeeDee takes you on a journey of Jazz, Rhythm & Blues, and Soul. Featuring the best talent from around the globe, A MAGICAL CIRQUE CHRISTMAS has it all — jaw-dropping magic, breathtaking circus acts, and the most angelic voices singing your favorite Christmas carols with incredible live musicians. Be transported to the golden age of entertainment by the mind-blowing talents, stunning costumes, comedy, and more cirque-y stuff we’ve come to know and love.
10
THURSDAY — BACK TO BASICS WITH DEE-DEE DARBY-DUFFIN Grand Theatre, 1575 S. State St., 7:30pm through Saturday. Tickets $1020, grandtheatrecompany.com SATURDAY — A MAGICAL CIRQUE CHRISTMAS Delta Performance Hall, Eccles Theater, 131 S. Main St., 4 p.m. and 8 p.m.. Tickets $37.50–60, artsaltlake.org
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A&E | QSALTLAKE MAGAZINE | 25
‘Latter Day Glory’ buries the altitude vs. attitude premise BY TONY HOBDAY
Last week,
a free screening of a new documentary Latter Day Glory was held in Salt Lake City which follows two gay ex-Mormon missionaries as they travel across the United States to confront their past and explore their futures while discussing with other gay Mormons — such as Neon Trees front man Tyler Glenn and Utah State Senator Jim Dabakis — about the rejection, oppression and the reality of a growing number of LGBT suicides within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The film’s co-creators Jonathon Levi Powell, celebrity hair and makeup stylist from Lifetime’s American Beauty Star, and Terry Blas, comic book artist and illustrator, both grew up in the LDS Church. And with a current rise of suicides in the gay LDS community, they address the issue through stories from survivors and families that have lost children, family members and friends, and try to find solutions and outreach to end the suffering.
Ironically — for me, anyway — on the day of the sold-out screening, QSaltLake Magazine, ran a story that points to minimizing the correlation between the LDS Church and LGBT youth suicide. “There’s no data to show that, period,” said Michael Staley, who works in the Utah Office of the Medical Examiner and is the first person who would know, since he leads an effort to collect, compile and
analyze suicide information from around the state. He conducts that research at the behest of the Utah Legislature. “We are working to get that data,” he said. While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in 2016 that LGBT youth die by suicide at double the rate of their non-LGBT peers, Michael Staley, a researcher the Utah Office of the Medical Examiner, said data specific to Utah so far doesn’t validate the sexuality-religion narrative. “The people who are driving that narrative are going to be disappointed,” Staley explained, while at the same time recognizing that “theoretically, it makes sense.” So, to be honest here, after reading Staley’s initial results — and I not being a current or previous Mormon — I walked into the theater leery of yet another LDS doctrine versus LGBT rights film. In fact, as a gay man who’s never been affiliated with a religious entity (and having experienced a difficult week prior to the screening) I was rather irked by this “continuing” soap opera in Utah. Commonly, while I was growing up in the 1970s and 80s, sexuality and sex appeared never to be a bleep on anyone’s radar. (Though, this was in Texas!) Or
maybe everyone just bleeped the bleep. The point is that sexuality is far more fluid today among young people, and more accepted by their peers. Growing up I inadvertently ignored my sexuality until my late teenage years. When I came out to my mother (the only family member I personally came out to), I wept hysterically by the extreme disappointment in myself for being gay. My mom was definitely more level-headed. This roundabout way to my thoughts on Latter Day Glory is twofold. First, and most importantly, is the film’s approach to the subject matter. Director Brandon Deyette (2015’s Proxy) thoroughly engages the audience with a wholehearted appreciation for the complexities and hypocrisies concerning modern-day LGBT life. The interviews are raw — albeit some are uneven at times — and exude emotional responses much like those of depression and anxiety, allowing the audience members to feel the angst. Second, while the film includes adult subjects of heartbreaking repression by the LDS Church, I was reminded of the lack of non-LDS LGBT stories that need to be heard in this state — youth and adult, alike. Q L atter Day Glory is currently playing in festivals. Find more information at latterdayglorythemovie.com.
26 | QSALTLAKE MAGAZINE | A&E
Qsaltlake.com |
OUR QUEER GUIDE For the 2019 Festival, 112 feature-length films have been selected, representing 33 countries and 45 first-time filmmakers. And here is our annual queer guide to the Sundance Film Festival — hosting screenings in Park City, Salt Lake City, and at Sundance Mountain Resort, from January 24–February 3.
U.S. DRAMATIC COMPETITION Presenting the world premieres of 16 narrative feature films, the Dramatic Competition offers festivalgoers a first look at groundbreaking new voices in American independent film. Fifty-three percent of the directors in this year’s U.S. Dramatic Competition are women; 41 percent are people of color; 18 percent identify as LGBT.
TO THE STARS
Under small-town scrutiny, a withdrawn farmer’s daughter forges an intimate friendship with a worldly but reckless new girl in 1960s Oklahoma. Cast: Kara Hayward, Liana Liberato, Jordana Spiro, Shea Whigham, Malin Akerman, Tony Hale. WORLD PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
PREMIERES This is not Berlin MEXICO DIRECTOR: HARI SAMA, SCREENWRITERS: RODRIGO ORDÓÑEZ, HARI SAMA, MAX ZUNINO, PRODUCERS: ALE GARCÍA, ANTONIO URDAPILLETA, HARI SAMA, VERÓNICA VALADEZ P.
Animals After a decade of partying, Laura and Tyler’s friendship is strained by Laura’s new love and her focus on her novel. A snapshot of a modern woman with competing desires, at once a celebration of female friendship and an examination of the choices we make when facing a crossroads.Cast: Holliday Grainger, Alia Shawkat. WORLD PREMIERE
U.S.A. DIRECTOR: MATT TYRNAUER, PRODUCERS: MATT TYRNAUER, COREY REESER, MARIE BRENNER, ANDREA LEWIS
Awkward teenager Adam arrives to spend his final high school summer with his older sister, who has thrown herself into New York City’s lesbian and trans activist scene. Over
INDIE EPISODIC
Girls Weekend
Where’s My Roy Cohn?
U.S.A. DIRECTOR: RHYS ERNST, SCREENWRITER: ARIEL SCHRAG, PRODUCERS: HOWARD GERTLER, JAMES SCHAMUS
1986, Mexico City. Seventeen-year-old Carlos doesn’t fit in anywhere, not in his family nor with the friends he has chosen in school. But everything changes when he is invited to a mythical nightclub where he discovers the underground nightlife scene: punk, sexual liberty, and drugs. Cast: Xabiani Ponce de León, José Antonio Toledano, Ximena Romo, Mauro Sánchez Navarro, Klaudia García, Marina de Tavira. WORLD PREMIERE
U.S. DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION
WORLD CINEMA DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION
Adam
WORLD CINEMA DRAMATIC COMPETITION
the summer, Adam and those around him experience love, friendship, and attendant hard truths in this coming-of-age comedy. Cast: Nicholas Alexander, India Menuez, Leo Sheng, Chloe Levine, Margaret Qualley.
UNITED KINGDOM, IRELAND, AUSTRALIA DIRECTOR: SOPHIE HYDE, SCREENWRITER: EMMA JANE UNSWORTH, PRODUCERS: SARAH BROCKLEHURST, REBECCA SUMMERTON, CORMAC FOX, SOPHIE HYDE
U.S.A. DIRECTOR: MARTHA STEPHENS, SCREENWRITER: SHANNON BRADLEY-COLLEARY, PRODUCERS: KRISTIN MANN, LAURA D. SMITH, ERIK ROMMESMO
Issue 290 | DECEMBER 20, 2018
Roy Cohn personified the dark arts of American politics, turning empty vessels into dangerous demagogues — from Joseph McCarthy to his final project, Donald J. Trump. This thriller-like expose connects the dots, revealing how a deeply troubled master manipulator shaped our current American nightmare. World Premiere
U.S.A. Director: Kyra Sedgwick, Creator: Ali Liebegott When a queer daughter returns home to Las Vegas for a “girls weekend” with her estranged homophobic sister and people-pleasing mother, her gun-toting dad lets it slip that her mother’s cancer is back with a vengeance, forcing her to decide whether or not she can rejoin her family. Cast: Ali Liebegott, Linda Lavin, Amy Landecker, Ken Jenkins. WORLD PREMIERE
DECEMBER 20, 2018 |
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The Dress Up Gang UNITED STATES CREATORS: ROBB BOARDMAN, CORY LOYKASEK, DONNY DIVANIAN, EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: DAVE KNEEBONE, TIM HEIDECKER, ERIC WAREHEIM
Donny, a responsible adult with the innocence and outlook of a child, relies on guidance and life advice from his friend Cory, the dad-like thirtysomething who has been crashing on his couch for quite some time. Cast: Donny Divanian, Cory Loykasek, Frankie Quinones, Andie MacDowell, Christian Duguay, Brent Weinbach. WORLD PREMIERE
Fran This Summer U.S.A. DIRECTOR AND SCREENWRITER: MARY EVANGELISTA
Teenage lovebirds Fran and Angie spend the summer at home while Fran begins their transition. They must face who and what they mean to each other when they visit the beach, their love on display for all to see.
Kado (A Gift) INDONESIA DIRECTOR AND SCREENWRITER: ADITYA AHMAD
Isfi can wear her comfortable pants among her male friends, but has to wear hijab to be accepted at Nita’s house. With two days until Nita’s birthday, all Isfi wants is to prepare the best gift in Nita’s room. U.S. PREMIERE
NEW FRONTIER EXHIBITIONS
Work In Progress U.S.A. CREATORS AND SCREENWRITERS: ABBY MCENANY, TIM MASON
After her therapist dies mid-session and she begins to date a trans man, Abby is forced to re-evaluate her life choices, her dating options and whether or not to confront the woman responsible for ‘ruining her life’: SNL’s Julia Sweeney. Cast: Abby McEnany, Theo Germaine, Karin Anglin, Celeste Pechous, Julia Sweeney, Alison Gates. WORLD PREMIERE
SPECIAL EVENTS
Now Apocalypse U.S.A. DIRECTOR: GREGG ARAKI, EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: GREGG ARAKI, GREGORY JACOBS, STEVEN SODERBERGH
Ulysses and his friends are trying to navigate Los Angeles, as they pursue love, sex and fame. Between dating app adventures, Ulysses grows increasingly troubled as foreboding dreams make him paranoid — or maybe he’s just smoking too much weed. Cast: Avan Jogia, Kelli Berglund, Beau Mirchoff, Roxane Mesquida. WORLD PREMIERE
Lavender U.S.A. DIRECTOR AND SCREENWRITER: MATTHEW PUCCINI
A young gay man grows increasingly entangled in the marriage of an older couple. World Premiere. DAY ONE
INTERNATIONAL NARRATIVE SHORT FILMS
The (ART) oF BE(i)NG U.S.A. DIRECTOR AND SCREENWRITER: JB GHUMAN, JR., PRODUCER: JB GHUMAN, JR.
A visual-sonic journey meant to expand one’s consciousness and emotional capacity through hand-crafted art and multi-dimensional storytelling. Cast: Maraqueen Reznor, Jake Shears, iRAWniQ, JB Ghuman Jr., Mayhem Miller, Hillary Tuck.
Desires of the flesh BRAZIL DIRECTOR AND SCREENWRITER: RAFAELA CAMELO
Blessed be the Sunday, that it is the day to see Giovana. INTERNATIONAL PREMIERE
Belle of the Ball U.S.A. LEAD ARTISTS: RO HABER, SILAS HOWARD, PUSSYKREW, TWIGGY PUCCI GARCON, KEY COLLABORATORS: RENALDO MAURICE, KYA AZEEN MIZRAHI, ROUGE, SASCHKA UNSELD, JENNIFER TIEXIERA, JENNA VELEZ
A VR journey into a futuristic reimagined utopia of queer + trans family and dance made in collaboration with members of New York’s ballroom scene. Cast: Renaldo Maurice Tisci, Kya Azeen Mizrahi, Rouge, Jack Mizrahi, Sinia Reed, Jonovia Chase.
U.S. NARRATIVE SHORT FILMS
Docking CANADA DIRECTOR AND SCREENWRITER: TREVOR ANDERSON
Trevor reflects on his fear of dating. WORLD PREMIERE
28 | QSALTLAKE MAGAZINE | COMICS
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Issue 290 | DECEMBER 20, 2018
DECEMBER 20, 2018 |
PUZZLES | QSALTLAKE MAGAZINE | 29
Issue 290 | Qsaltlake.com
Bohemian Rhapsody 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
Q doku Easy
6
3 5 8 8 6 4 3 9 5 7
1
3
2 7
3
2
2 7 4 8 1 3 1 1 6 4 9 6 8 8 4 2 6 1 4 3 4 2 5 1 3 3 5 2 2 5 6 7 7 4 6 2 5 6 4 1 5 8 6 7 4 8 4 1 7 5 8 3
5
3 9 6
5 3
9 7 6
8
4 1
7 4 8 9 6 3 5 7
2 4 7 4 5 1 1 9 3 8 6 5 6 4 3 1 3 2 8 6 9 2 3 7 4 2 5
3 7
5
3
7
2
6 8
9
6 9
3
2 9 3 1 5 8 6 1 9 3 3 5
47 Queens ballpark of old 48 Most queer 50 Pull down ACROSS 51 Sound like Harvey 1 Erection supporter Fierstein 6 Like recently cut 53 Swan Lake step leaves of grass 55 End of what Freddie 10 Janis Ian’s “At Sevensaid teen,” e.g. 63 Phallic oral pleasure 15 Owen of Closer 64 Wings for Julia 16 Fortune-teller’s Morgan opening 65 “___ Tom” 17 Short story writer (Langston Hughes and poet Bret poem) 18 Dog-___ (shabby) 66 Got to second base, 19 Cabbage salad perhaps 20 Doubleday of balls 67 _The King and I_ setting and strikes 21 Start of what Fred- 68 H2O threesome die said to an upset 69 To the point 70 Makes costumes, Roger in Bohemian e.g. Rhapsody 71 Chaz and family 24 Tooth care org. 25 Wine info, for Anto- DOWN ni Porowski 1 Johnny Mnemonic 26 Direction from Rick actor Rodgers 2 Vanilla 30 You bend them in 3 Land of Sinead gay bars O’Connor 33 Hustler from Min4 Declare firmly nesota 5 Greek sorceress 37 Coin in Lorca’s 6 Prayer book, to pocket Father Mychal Judge 39 Golden Girl McCla- 7 Capital of Norway nahan 8 Get off the breast 40 Rent sign 9 Either wife, right 41 More of what Fredafter the nuptials die said 10 Butler’s burden on 44 Lucy’s gal pal the Tara stairway 45 Mandela org. 11 Working stiffs 46 Anderson Cooper, 12 James Bond oppoto CNN nent
13 Bit from Michael Musto 14 Suffix with musket 22 Head set? 23 “Thumbs up!” 26 Undercover agents 27 First extra inning 28 “Grease ___ word!” 29 Run-throughs on Broadway 31 Mark on the rear of a steer 32 Cup fraction 34 It comes with a lei 35 Opera guy 36 Private Parts author Howard 38 “Shop ___ you drop” 40 Great deal 42 What homophobe Trump got from Access Hollywood, e.g. 43 Glenn Close’s _ ___ Attraction 48 Fruit sugar ending 49 Orgasms, e.g. 52 Up ___ (stuck) 54 Young pigeon 55 Sexologist Shere 56 Role for Bela 57 Confession of mendacity 58 Leave marks on the back 59 “Render therefore ___ Caesar...” 60 Bus. major’s study 61 Patron of people in the navy 62 Untouchable head 63 St. Louis clock setting
30 | QSALTLAKE MAGAZINE | MARKETPLACE
G U R U
V A P E
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Issue 290 | DECEMBER 20, 2018
marketplace
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DECEMBER 20, 2018 |
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marketplace
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MARKETPLACE | QSALTLAKE MAGAZINE | 31
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32 | QSALTLAKE MAGAZINE | QMMUNITY
Qmmunity Groups ALCOHOL & DRUG
Alcoholics Anonymous 801-484-7871 utahaa.org LGBT meetings: Sun. 3p Acceptance Group, UPC, 255 E 400 S Mon. 7p Gay Men’s Stag (Big Book Study), UPC, 255 E 400 S 8p G/Q Women’s Mtg, Disability Law Center (rear), 205 N 400 W Tues. 8:15p Live & Let Live, UPC, 255 E 400 S Wed. 7p Sober Today, 375 Harrison Blvd, Ogden Fri. 8p Stonewall Group, UPC, 255 E 400 S Crystal Meth Anon crystalmeth.org Sun. 1:30pm Clean, Sober & Proud LGBTQIA+Straight USARA, 180 E 2100 S Thurs. 1p Unity In Sobriety, 175 S 700 E LifeRing Secular Recovery 801-608-8146 liferingutah.org Sun. 10am Univ. Neuropsychiatric Institute, 501 Chipeta Way #1566 Wed. noon, 2319 Foothill Dr, #120 Weds. 6:30 pm, Univ Neuropsych Institute, 501 Chipeta Way #1566 Thurs. 7pm, USARA, 180 E 2100 S, #100
Fri. 7pm, UPC, 1380 S. Main 2nd Flr. Sat. 11am, First Baptist Church, 777 S 1300 E
Qsaltlake.com |
Weber-Morgan Health Mon., Weds 1-4:30p 477 23rd St, Ogden Appt 801-399-7250
BUSINESS
HOMELESS SVCS
LGBTQ-Affirmative Psycho-therapists Guild of Utah lgbtqtherapists.com * jim@lgbtqtherapists.com
Volunteers of America Homeless Youth Resource Ctr, ages 15–21 880 S 400 W 801-364-0744 Transition Homes: Young Men’s
Utah Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce utahgaychamber.com * info@utahgaychamber.com Vest Pocket Business Coalition vestpocket.org 801-596-8977 DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
National Domestic Violence Hotline 1-800-799-7233 YWCA of Salt Lake ywca.org/ saltlakecity 322 E 300 S 801-537-8600 HEALTH & HIV
Peer Support for Mental Illness — PSMI Thurs 7pm, Utah Pride Ctr Planned Parenthood 654 S 900 E 800-230-PLAN Salt Lake County Health Dept HIV/STD Clinic 660 S 200 E, 4th Floor Walk-ins M–F 10a–4p Appts 385-468-4242 Utah AIDS Foundation utahaids.org * mail@utahaids.org 1408 S 1100 E 801-487-2323
801-433-1713 Young Women’s 801-359-5545 LEGAL
Rainbow Law Free Clinic 2nd Thurs 6:30–7:30pm UofU Law School, 383 S University St POLITICAL
Equality Utah equalityutah.org * info@equalityutah.org 175 W 200 S, Ste 1004 801-355-3479 Utah Libertarian Party 6885 S State St #200 888-957-8824 Utah Log Cabin Republicans bit.ly/logcabinutah 801-657-9611 Utah Stonewall Democrats utahstonewalldemocrats.org RELIGIOUS
First Baptist Church firstbaptist-slc.org * office@firstbaptistslc.org 11a Sundays 777 S 1300 E 801-582-4921
BUT WITH A CAPE
Issue 290 | DECEMBER 20, 2018
Sacred Light of Christ slcchurch.org 823 S 600 E 801-595-0052 11a Sundays
Queer Friends queerfriends.org
Wasatch Metropolitan Community Church wasatchmcc.org 801-889-8764 Sundays except the 2nd Sunday, 11:15a at Crone’s Hollow, 3834 S. Main
Sage Utah, Seniors fb.me/sageutah sageutah@ utahpridecenter.org 801-557-9203
SOCIAL
1 to 5 Club (bisexual) fb.me/1to5ClubUtah The Bonnie and Clyde’s Social Group bit.ly/BonnieClydeSG Alternative Garden Club bit.ly/altgarden * altgardenclub@gmail.com blackBOARD Men’s Kink/Sex/BDSM education, 1st, 3rd Mons. blackbootsslc.org blackBOOTS Kink/BDSM Men’s leather/kink/ fetish/BDSM 4th Sats. blackbootsslc.org Gay Writes writing group, DiverseCity 6:30 pm Mondays Community Writing Ctr, 210 E 400 S Ste 8 Get Outside Utah bit.ly/GetOutsideUtah Men Who Move menwhomove.org OUTreach Utah Ogden outreachutah.org OWLS of Utah (Older, Wiser, Lesbian. Sisters) bit.ly/owlsutah
qVinum Wine Tasting qvinum.com fb.me /QVinum/
Temple Squares Square Dance Club templesquares.org 801-449-1293 Utah Bears utahbears.com fb.me/utahbears info@utahbears.com Weds 6pm Raw Bean Coffee, 611 W Temple
Salt Lake Goodtime Bowling League bit.ly/slgoodtime Stonewall Shooting Sports of Utah fb.me/stonewall. sportsofutah Venture Out Utah facebook.com/groups/ Venture.OUT.Utah YOUTH/COLLEGE
Encircle LGBTQ Family and Youth Resource Center encircletogether.org fb.me/encircletogether 91 W 200 S, Provo, Gay-Straight Alliance Network gsanetwork.org
Utah Male Naturists umen.org info@umen.org
Salt Lake Community College LGBTQ+ 8 slcc.edu/lgbtq/
Utah Pride Center utahpridecenter.org info@utahpridecenter.org 1380 S Main St 801-539-8800
University of Utah LGBT Resource Center 8 lgbt.utah.edu 200 S Central Campus Dr Rm 409 801-587-7973
SPORTS
Pride Community Softball League fb.me/utahpride. softballleague pcsl@prideleague.com Q Kickball League fb.me/qsaltlake. kickball Sundays, 10:30, 11:30, Sunnyside Park QUAC — Queer Utah Aquatic Club quacquac.org questions@ quacquac.org
USGA at BYU fb.me/UsgaAtByu Utah State Univ. Access & Diversity Ctr usu.edu/ accesscenter/lgbtqa Utah Valley Univ Spectrum facebook.com/ groups/uvuspectrum Weber State University LGBT Resource Center weber.edu/ lgbtresourcecenter 801-626-7271
Embracing the health & resilience of our community Utah’s Inclusive Aquatic Club since 1995 BEGINNERS WELCOME EVERYONE’S INVITED
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DECEMBER 20, 2018 |
Issue 290 | Qsaltlake.com
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MARKETPLACE | QSALTLAKE MAGAZINE | 33
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34 | QSALTLAKE MAGAZINE | A&E
Qsaltlake.com |
Issue 290 | DECEMBER 20, 2018
THANK YOU to our past board members: BRAD CASE
RYAN TAYLOR STEPHEN SHERMAN-MILLS
TO WEST WENDOVER, Nevada Featuring the Matrons of Mayhem
CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR 2019 ELECTS: VICE CHAIR: Kylee Howell TREASURER: Jon Jepsen BOARD: Michael Aaron BOARD: Macklin Brown BOARD: Dara R. Cohen BOARD: Trey Edwards
NEXT BUS:
Sat. January 12
Returning board members can be found on our website at utahgaychamber.com
1 8 5 6 9 7 4 2 3
7 1 9 5 6 3 2 8 4
6 5 8 4 1 2 7 3 9
2 3 4 9 7 8 1 6 5
7 2 5 1 3 8 9 6 4
4 3 8 6 9 7 1 5 2
1 5 9 2 4 3 8 6 7
2 7 6 5 1 8 9 3 4
9 4 3 7 8 5 6 2 1
2 9 8 7 5 6 3 1 4 7 6 5 1 2 9 3 4 8
3 6 7 9 1 4 2 5 8 8 2 1 4 3 6 7 9 5
LIBRA Sept 23–October 22
9 7 3 8 2 4 5 1 6
1 3 4 9 5 6 2 7 8
4 5 1 2 3 8 9 6 7
a surprise appearance. However, be aware of some romantic intentions.
4 6 2 1 3 5 9 7 8
9 6 8 2 4 7 3 5 1
9 7 4 3 8 5 1 2 6
A big change is coming, so be prepared. Nothing is more frustrating than feeling like everyoneis too busy. But it’s a good time for reflection and personal expression. Splurge a little, but don’t venture too far from the familiar. A neat friendwill make
5 2 6 4 7 1 8 3 9
The future seems unclear and a path undefined. This would be fine if you knew the generaldirection things were going. A normal sense of adventure is notably missing,but do no
VIRGO August 23–Sep. 22
8 1 3 6 2 9 4 7 5
GEMINI May 21–June 20
A helping handcomes from a family member. A humble nature will emerge as a result, and a newperspective will shape your outlook. Spend time with those close to you, anddon’t let a moment of anger overcome your sensibilities. Staying calm whenthings heat up is encouraged. The last thing needed right now is deep regret.
5 1 7 3 6 4 2 8 9 4 7 1 6 3 5 8 4 2 7 9 1
Priorities of equal importance flood your agenda. Discouragement ensues without a clear first step, and progress is stalled. Career woes should be handled lightly, while relationship and family matters demand a direct approach. Patience is good, but don’t delay. Draining the pressures of life will provide immediate relief.
LEO July 23–August 22
6 8 4 9 7 2 5 1 3 8 6 2 7 4 9 1 6 3 5 8 2
TAURUS Apr 20–May 20
You’ve kept a big secret for a while. However, everyone already knows what the secret is! Don’t fear letting friends know what defines you, as it will make the worldmuch easier to deal with. Being out of your comfort zone could take time toadjust to, but being exposed can be very liberating. Freedom is a gift to yourself
3 9 2 8 5 1 4 7 6 3 9 5 1 8 2 5 9 7 6 4 3
The path to freedom appears in the form of passion and good spirits. It’s amazing how good someone makes you feel when things get a little tough. Don’t grow dependent on others for happiness, but if an opportunity for it exists, take advantage of it. Strength spawns from coziness, especially in matters of the heart.
CANCER June 21–July 22
8 2 6 7 4 9 3 5 1 6 2 4 8 9 7 1 4 3 2 6 5
ARIES March 20–April 19
3 4 1 2 5 6 8 9 7 5 1 3 4 2 6 5 9 7 3 8 1
BY SAM KELLEY-MILLS
5 9 7 3 8 1 6 4 2 7 8 9 5 1 3 2 8 6 9 7 4
JANUARY
fret. Life continues moving forward and will eventually show itscards. Now is not a good time to gamble, so some caution would be wise
7 8 5 6 1 2 4 9 3
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result in conflict
CAPRICORN Dec 21–Jan 19
Dreams can be frightening if truth is mistaken for logic. Don’t blow things out of proportion without measuring the extent of reality. Family members take advantage of insecurities, so avoid a tragedy before it starts. If things don’t feel right, make the necessary adjustments. Small changes make the biggest of differences.
There is no such thing as a perfect life, but perfect moments are possible. Great moments will occur during this time, especially in business matters. An intriguing opportunity will be a powerful lure. Be cautious with individuals who seem too willing to give. Open arms could be a trap. Set restrictions and stand firm.
SCORPIO Oct. 23–Nov. 21
Running away feels good from time to time. This will ring true during this time, Aquarius. Personal entanglements are bound to get sticky, but a little distance will help in overcoming the mess. Eliminate one problem at a time, and free time will flow your way. Relax with a clear head. A good cry could also be cleansing.
A period of intense emotional strain will lead to an increase of desires. Give in to temptation with a sense of modesty, and satisfaction will be more abundant. Anincrease of finances will come available, but conservation would be wise. Savefor something you really want while being aware of hard times ahead.
SAGITTARIUS
Nov. 22–December 20.
Friends from the past will appear in a quick and surprising manner. Welcome or not, there are memories attached to these people. Buried emotions will rise to the surface. Evaluate your feelings carefully and tread lightly. The past is remembered differently from others. Misunderstandings could
AQUARIUS Jan. 20–Feb. 18
PISCES Feb 19–Mar 19
Feeling through a problem is only part of the process. Embrace both reason and instinct when finalizing a crucial decision. A career development will cause both delight and frustration when too many options become available. The future isn’t certain, but consequences are. Do what feels right to your head and heart. Balance! Q
DECEMBER 20, 2018 |
A&E | QSALTLAKE MAGAZINE | 35
Issue 290 | Qsaltlake.com
gay writes Two Poems BY SAM WALKER
poem for an austrian girl I would compare you to a rose, but pretty flowers never do last long before they start to wither I would compare you to the sun, but someday it will consume itself as stars tend to do perhaps it is an injustice to compare you to anything at all; you are far too strange and far too perfect and I am just a man
the epilogue of an american love story you told me once that you trusted me enough to introduce me to your daughter; she and I will never meet, not as anything more than strangers, but should she ask about the man you knew I want you to tell her everything
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36 | QSALTLAKE MAGAZINE | SPORTS
Qsaltlake.com |
National LGBT sports league to start Salt Lake City chapter BY JACOB BUCK
Stonewall Sports, a national LGBT nonprofit sports organization, founded in 2010, and based in Washington, D.C., is expanding after approving an application for a Salt Lake City chapter. Salt Lake City is the 16th city to be added to this national organization that has over 12,000 athletes throughout the US. It’s also the first West Coast city! The effort to bring Stonewall Sports to Salt Lake City was spearheaded by a new local, the new commissioner Jacob Buck (that’s me). Having a masters in community development and playing sports my whole life I wanted to have this in my new community in Salt Lake City to grow and become more connected. The first thing I did was look for sports to be active and meet new people. I found a couple sports but they weren’t the kind I wanted to play and couldn’t find a centralized league that had more than one sport. While living in Baltimore, I played in a kickball league, and knew people in D.C., and participated with Stonewall Sports in Chicago during my time living there. I met my best friends and built such a strong camaraderie. And I was inspired to bring Stonewall Sports to Salt Lake after knowing the community that can occur, the spirit of giving and the fun going to their events. I’ve heard so many people say I’m so glad I joined this league. “You guys are my best friends” and I was
missing out on a sense of community. Stonewall builds community! From my experience living in Salt Lake for such a short time, we have a large gay population but its so disconnected. People know each other but not really. I want to change this through Stonewall. I have always used sports to build friendships, and to be active with Stonewall Sports you get to give back to the community. We would have mixers with other teams, special team events — Spirit Day is one of my favorites. However, fun is secondary to the mission of Stonewall Sports. Every chapter is focused on giving back to the community as it bills itself as an inclusive sports organization with philanthropy at its core. The Salt Lake City chapter has chosen the Utah Pride Center and Encircle as the league’s charitable partners. We not only want Stonewall Salt Lake to raise funds for both of these local charities but hope to raise visibility in the community. Stonewall Sports also encourages inclusivity and diversity, and this is an important part of the application to bring a chapter to Salt Lake City. I tried to build a diverse team of leaders from throughout the community. I’ve been working with people in the latino, jewish, and other communities to do outreach for our inception. The Stonewall Sports Salt Lake City leadership team is as follows: • Jacob Buck, Commissioner
Issue 290 | DECEMBER 20, 2018
• Kayla Adams, Division Lead • Bryce Jackson, Events Director • James Pumphrey, Treasurer • Matthew Boudrero, Technical Director Stonewall Sports SLC will formally kickoff activities during the January and February months with some dodgeball tournaments. Anyone interested in learning more about Stonewall Sports is invited to come to an information meeting with the leadership team and get more information about the league (date to be announced). Formal play begins in March for our inaugural season with a kickball league. Chapters in other cities play more than kickball — other potential activities include billiards, bocce, bowling, climbing, dodgeball, flag football, softball, tennis, ultimate frisbee, volleyball, and even yoga. We hope to expand and add some of these sports to this league within the next few years. Persons of all skill levels are welcome to participate, there are no try-outs and the league teams will not be separated by skill level. You may join as a team or be a ‘free agent’ and meet other free agents and teams at a ‘Free Agent Social’ that is currently being planned, or join as a full team. In the next few weeks, Stonewall Sports SLC will be rolling out a website and a social media presence to register teams and recruit players and teams. We currently have a Facebook group where people can go and join. The cost to join is not yet set, but is typically $35–45. We also need local sponors to help raise funds. Q Check out “Stonewall: 2018 Highlights” from Joo Kno on Vimeo.
DECEMBER 20, 2018 |
BOOKS | QSALTLAKE MAGAZINE | 37
Issue 290 | Qsaltlake.com
the bookworm sez REVIEW BY TERRI SCHLICHENMEYER
Hiding Out: A Memoir of Drugs, Deception, and Double Lives
BY TINA ALEXIS ALLEN C.2018, DEY ST. BOOKS, $16.99 288 PAGES
“Ready or not, here I come!” Hear that, and if you hadn’t hidden by then, hadn’t found a secret spot, you had a real chance of losing at Hide & Seek. Get out of sight, though, and you might’ve managed to sneak back home, ready to play another game. As in the memoir Hiding Out by Tina Alexis Allen, that game could last for decades. Growing up, Christina Worthington knew her father hated her. Her twelve siblings knew it, too, and they reminded her of it often: she was the youngest, her mother’s “lucky thirteen” and the victim of much of her father’s wrath. Starting at about the age of nine, Tina was also the victim of sexual abuse from two of her then-adult brothers. But she never told anyone about it. Instead, she acted out at school until the nuns were at their wits’ end and her “saint” of a mother was exasperated. At age eleven, a younger teacher finally took Tina under her wing – and into her bed. Two years later, by the time her teacher-lover sent her away, Tina knew she was more attracted to girls than to boys. By her mid-teens, she had a college-age girlfriend who lived near her parents’ Washington D.C.-area house, from which she managed to mostly stay away; there was more comfort in the girlfriend’s
apartment than there was at her childhood home, where hiding her real self was necessary. But no one can hide forever. When her father invited her and her girlfriend to lunch one day, Tina was guarded – and rightfully so, because he figured out her secret and she couldn’t deny. Then he revealed a shocker of his own: he was gay, too. Within weeks, Tina went from hated daughter to favorite; from ignored to invitee to her father’s dinners and clubs. They agreed to keep one another’s secrets from the rest of the family, partying, drinking, and doing drugs until the stress of it all bubbled over, Tina couldn’t take the lies anymore, and her lips spilled the truth. Years later, there was one last secret… Memoirs, by their very nature, are generally focused inwardly, to a greater or lesser degree. Count Hiding Out on the latter side. Starting with a raucous anecdote of sibling rivalry before Christmas Mass, you’re in for more than a look-at-me memoir. This is, in fact, a whole-family tale in which author Tina Alexis Allen puts the focus mainly on her parents, with sibs ringing the action as needed. Using that as a base, tales eke out tantalizingly slowly over the course of this book, and some are shocking, told so casually that you’ll get a “Wait. What?” backlash. Don’t be surprised if you read the occasional sentence twice, in disbelief. Add a tight window of time and a deep unsubstantiated-rumor-type mystery that feels like a character unto itself, and you’ve got a compulsively readable book that’s, at its close, very unique. If a memoir like Hiding Out is what you want for a long winter’s night, then get ready. Q
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38 | QSALTLAKE MAGAZINE | FINAL WORD
Qsaltlake.com |
Issue 290 | DECEMBER 20, 2018
the perils of petunia pap smear
The tale of what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas BY PETUNIA PAP SMEAR
The road
to Las Vegas is fraught with danger
and excitement. So, one morning last month, I was comfortably ensconced in the basement of Chateau Pap Smear, dutifully sorting porn. It’s my life’s ambition to classify and sort all the gay porn on the internet. Sometimes I find myself in a great quandary when a specific photo would fit into more than one category. I used to spend considerable time agonizing over the placement of each precious image, and I would become cranky from the stress. Finally, Sparkles Del Tassel suggested I store a separate copy of the picture in each of the categories into which it belongs. Viola, my life and blood pressure took a sudden turn for the better. (But I digress.) I was cheerily sorting, and Mr. Pap Smear sauntered down the stairs into my “Glitter Grotto”, a place he tries mightily to avoid, and announced that he had several days of vacation and we should go on a D.I. and Saver’s shopping extravaganza road trip. There are only three things in the entire universe that can draw me away from porn sorting — a buffet, a sale on sequins, and a road trip. I packed my bags quicker than you could say “bedazzle.” Unfortunately, in my haste, I inadvertently knocked Mr. Pap Smear down and trampled him (good thing I wasn’t wearing stilettos) while reaching for my suitcase. In a short 15 minutes,
7pm, Jan. 18, Feb. 15, Mar. 15 First Baptist Church, 777 S 1300 E fb.me/matronsofmayhem
Queertanic was on the road heading for Las Vegas, land of buffets, sequins, five Saver’s stores, and two D.I.s. When traveling in Queertanic, Mr. Pap Smear and I can best be described as resembling Richard and Hyacinth Bucket. We often narrowly escape great catastrophe as I direct his driving for an emergency stop at a buffet. We have concluded that, when inside city limits, it’s much easier for me to do the driving, so he can shut his eyes, hold onto the panic handle and pray for deliverance. For a break, we stopped at the D.I. in St. George. Of course, we had to push our way through the throng of Sister Wives shopping for school clothes for their 75 children. Lucky for me, they eschew sequins and such, leaving the sparkles for me. Then, on to Vegas. It was beginning to get dark as we crested the summit overlooking the Las Vegas valley. There is something magical about the sight of all that neon glowing in the desert — the jewel in the crown being the pillar of light emanating from the Luxor pyramid and shining into space. I was driving. We didn’t have hotel reservations, but I was drawn to the Beacon of Gondor, I mean the Luxor Pyramid Light Sabre, like a moth to a flame. We parked in the parking terrace and marched into the world’s largest atrium to check in to the hotel. Of course, the room they assigned us was in the East Tower, literally four blocks away from where we parked Queertanic. As you may know, when I must walk far, I use one of those old people walkers with wheels and a seat on it. Annoyingly, while traversing the half mile into the hotel, every 10 steps I experienced an electric shock strong enough to short out my breasticle lights causing them to blink faster than a slot machine paying out a jackpot. As we passed through the casino, a drunken yet stunningly handsome man in a sailor uniform stumbled up to me. Who knew the fleet was in port and it was fleet week? I was so taken aback by his beauty and mesmerized by the medals on
his uniform that I didn’t realize what was happening. He sat down on my walker and swiped his playing card down my cleavage. He then pumped my arm up and down trying to make my eyes spin into a payoff while slurring, “Come on baby, daddy needs a windfall to pay for the hooker.” Thinking quickly, I blinked my eyes rapidly several times, while trilling my tongue to sound like an alarm siren. I loudly shouted “winner, winner Pap Smear spinner”. He became excited, and he reached down toward my nether regions to grab for “the payout.” While I was tempted to let the handsome stud get “his rewards,” I let discretion become the better part of valor and quickly spun around turning the “other cheeks” as it were. In the process, my purse swung around violently, with the resulting centrifugal force sufficient to knock the man off the walker. As he lay at my feet unconscious, I checked if he had a pulse and was breathing, then I hightailed it for the buffet. We were tired and hungry, and the buffet was closing in 15 minutes. Certainly not enough time to leisurely enjoy the food selection, (generally I like to stretch my buffet in Wendover to a full two hours) but when it’s an emergency, I can pack it away. Caution though, in such an event, watch out ’cause somebody could lose a finger! This story leaves us with several important questions: 1. Would storing hundreds of thousands of sorted porn files on the cloud be termed cloud abuse? 2. Do marriage vows cover spousal tramplings? 3. Since queens are drawn to bright shiny things like moths to a flame, is that where the term “Flaming Queen” comes from? 4. Should I develop a new slot machine with blinking breasticles and call it Pap Smear’s Prize? 5. Should I have let the sailor grab my “payout”? 6. Would I need a prostitution license for that? These and other eternal questions will be answered in future chapters of The Perils of Petunia Pap Smear. Q
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