QSaltLake Magazine | Issue 344 | February 2023

THE GOOD, THE BAD, THE UGLY OF 2022 • MIKE LEE’S PORN BILL • LOG CABIN REPUBLICANS

PHOTO COURTESY OF HBO MAX

pUBlIsheR/edItoR Michael Aaron desIgneR Christian Allred sales Michael Aaron, 801-997-9763 x1 sales@qsaltlake.com Meda Thompson, 208-576-1444 meda@qsaltlake.com

Rivendell Media, 908-232-2021 ext 200 sales@rivendellmedia.com

natIonal neWs edItoR Craig Ogan

contRIBUtoRs Joshua Adamson Pickett, Diane Anderson-Minshall, Chris Azzopardi, Paul Berge, Jeff Berry, Paul Campbell, Laurie BennettCook, Roger Cox, Stephen Dark, Jennifer Dobner, Mikki Enoch, Jack Fertig, Greg Fox, Oriol Gutierrez Jr., Tony Hobday, Ashley Hoyle, Joshua Jones, Christopher Katis, Alpha Mercury, Sam Kelly-Mills, Craig Ogan, Peter Reynolds, Mikey Rox, Terri Schlichenmeyer, Gregg Shapiro, Petunia Pap Smear, Steven Petrow, Ed Sikov, JoSelle Vanderhooft, Ben Williams, D’Anne Witkowski dIstRIBUtIon Roger Cox pUBlIsheR Q Media Group

The top national and world news since last issue you should know

BY CRAIG OGAN

Sadness for Martina and Kathy

Calamity has struck two sports figures. Tennis great Martina Navratilova was diagnosed with throat and breast cancer. Kathy Whitworth, who had more pro-golf tournament wins than Sam Snead or Tiger Woods, died on Christmas Eve. Navratilova is a cancer survivor and says the prognosis for recovery now is good, too. Treatment will keep her from her commentator duties for the Tennis Channel. Whitworth won 88 tournaments and unexpectedly died at a Christmas Eve party. Her LTR, Bettye Odle, said of the death, “Kathy left this world the way she lived her life — loving, laughing, and creating memories.”

Costly restaurant slurs

A married couple in London was awarded $150,000 after suing a London restaurant for anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination. The couple claimed they had been “bullied for months on end” and endured “constant slurs” from colleagues at the Italian restaurant where one was an employee and the other a part owner. The company withheld partnership dividends and accused the partner of stealing company funds. The other man was a server, experienced antigay slurs, and was threatened with bodily harm. A company WhatsApp account proved company

directors conspired to force a resignation. Said the judge, “The plaintiffs have established they suffered from unwanted conduct as a result of their sexual orientation creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating, or offensive environment for them.”

Poland politicians piqued

The “rainbow symbol” has gotten American music group “The Black-Eyed Peas” in trouble in Poland. Wearing rainbow armbands on a New Year’s Eve telecast in Poland angered some Polish politicians. The band’s performance, seen by an estimated 8.3 million viewers, prompted angry Twitter comments from Pol Pols. The Deputy agriculture minister wrote, “Homopropaganda on TVP for $1 million (Ed: the event’s production cost).” A Law and Justice Party (PiS) figure, tweeted, “It’s not a New Year’s Eve of Dreams but a New Year’s Eve of Deviance.” The offending song, “Where’s the Love?” was dedicated to “those who have experienced hate throughout this year.”

Santos gets Brazilian cut

George Santos, newly elected member of congress from Long Island, New York, has been revealed to be an above-average liar — for a politician — and the lies are getting in deeper and deeper. His lies about his religion, ethnic heritage, and income are well-documented. Then he showed up for his U. S. Congressional swearing-in, not wearing the wedding ring he wore during the campaign, and flashed a supposed white supremacy hand sign during the ceremony. New York Republicans are calling for him to resign, and the new House Leadership is hesitant to put him on committees. Now he is facing scrutiny in Brazil. Brazilian authorities have said they will revive fraud charges against

him for financial improprieties in that country. They dropped the case in 2008 because he could not be found in Brazil. By that time, he had moved on to defraud voters in the U.S.

Bad business In Kenya

Edwin Chiloba has lived a life of danger in Kenya advocating for gay and lesbian rights. The danger became real as Kenyan police were investigating his death. His body was found stuffed in a metal box and left on a rural road in the west of the country. Police said the box contained the body of a man dressed in women’s clothing. He was identified by colleagues at a morgue in Nairobi, Kenya. He was a fashion designer and model. Police have arrested five people, one of which was Chiloba’s partner. Motive speculation ranges from a hate crime for his activism to a romantic conflict involving his partner and other people. Gay and lesbian people in Kenya have experienced discrimination and attacks in a country where sex between men is illegal.

off pecs and biceps and a nice bulge, and was wary of women.

Arizona gov issues LGBT order

Arizona’s new governor, Kaite Hobbs, issued an executive order to protect LGBT state employees and contractors from job discrimination. Arizona is one of nearly 30 states without an LGBT-inclusive antidiscrimination law. The order directs the Arizona government to add sexual orientation and gender identity to rules protecting race, sex, religion, pregnancy, disability, veteran status, and other factors. The amendments will be included in all state contracts or subcontracts.

‘Tar’ tarred by Alsop

Truth, justice, and the American gay

Robert Garcia, who was mayor of Long Beach before being elected to U. S. Congress, employed a gay sense of humor for his Congressional swearing-in. He placed his hand on, not the Christian Bible, but a copy of the U. S. Constitution, his certificate of citizenship, a picture of his parents, and the first Superman comic book that he borrowed from the Library of Congress. Superman was the gayest superhero — one who wore a tight costume to show

Kate Blanchett just won a Golden Globe for her portrayal of a flawed orchestra conductor in the movie “Tár.” She is on track to get an Oscar, too. That did not stop Marin Alsop, the real-life conductor with the most similarities to the movie character, from some criticism. Alsop, arguably the world’s best-known female conductor, said in an interview she had concerns about the movie’s buzz and similarities to her. In the interview, she said, “But once I saw it, I was no longer concerned, I was offended. I was offended as a woman. I was offended as a conductor. I was offended as a lesbian.” Alsop thought the movie was “anti-woman” and missed an opportunity to praise her, oops, “female conductors.” Alsop believes there are many abusive male conductors this film could have been based on.” She was sad “Tár ” put a woman in the role but gave her all the bad attributes of those men. “To have an opportunity to portray a woman in that role and to make her an abuser — for me, that was heartbreaking,” Alsop said.

National legislative action

Political activists are predicting a record flow of LGBT legislation — pro and con — to be introduced in state legislatures, most of which start new sessions in January. Most actions will be in the “T” category of the acronym.

TEXAS leads the league with 35 bills dealing with LGBT issues. Three Texas bills would classify providing gender-related care to minors as child abuse.

CALIFORNIA, KANSAS, KENTUCKY, MISSOURI, MONTANA, NEW HAMPSHIRE, OKLAHOMA, SOUTH CAROLINA, TENNESSEE, TEXAS, UTAH, and VIRGINIA have seen pre-filed bills that will affect transgender healthcare access. Most will restrict care provision up to the age of 18. Some surgical and pharmaceutical therapies will be restricted to age 26.

Second and third opinions for therapies may also be required.

CALIFORNIA’s Sanctuary Law went into effect on the first of the year. The law shields families of transgender youth from criminal prosecution if they travel to California for gender-related health procedures. The law blocks out-of-state subpoenas and prohibits medical providers from sharing information with out-of-state entities.

ILLINOIS will act on similar sanctuary protection. The state house, a full-time legislature, has already increased protections for patients and providers of abortions and gender-related treatments.

MINNESOTA legislation would give the state jurisdiction in child custody cases involving parents who bring their children to Minnesota for gender-related health care.

OKLAHOMA’s proposal would prohibit the distri-

bution of public funds to organizations that provide gender-related procedures to patients younger than 21.

TENNESSEE will strengthen current restrictions on gender care with a proposed ban on altering a child’s hormones or performing surgeries that enable a child to present as a gender different from their sex identified at birth.

SOUTH CAROLINA legislation seeks to require that adults older than 21 obtain referrals from their doctor and a licensed psychiatrist before they can begin gender treatment.

UTAH, which passed restrictions last year on trans girls’ participation in sports, will see adjustments in law due to suits working through the courts.

OKLAHOMA will use recent court rulings allowing restriction on school bathroom usage to regulate how public buildings can provide access.

The state also will raise the age to 26 for those seeking gender care and block gender care from being covered under the state’s Medicaid program.

The American Civil Liberties Union reports little or no legislation which ends or modifies standing LGBT non-discrimination laws. It does report that some states are considering “Religious Liberty” protections which may modify some commercial activity and allow discrimination by adoption agencies affiliated with religious organizations.

An ALCU tracker shows marriage equality and housing non-discrimination do not appear threatened by legislative activity this year.

Restrictions on books and school curriculum are under consideration in Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, and Tennessee. Q

St. George’s LGBTQ community calls for action against councilwoman for foul language in public

Saying, “Our community has never been more divided by this constant cycle of chaos,” leaders of Pride of Southern Utah have asked people in St. George to send letters to the mayor and city council, saying that Councilwoman Michelle Tanner is “an embarrassment” and that something needs to be done “to address the problem.”

At a city council meeting on January 5, Tanner’s media representative used the public comment section to read aloud social media comments and emails that she has received because of her activism against the city’s drag and LGBT community. Tanner and he chose not to modify the curse words during his presentation.

Tanner hired Steve Brazell, founder of Hitman, Inc. to represent her. He is a brand and marketing strategist and specializes in “competition removal” and crisis management. His consultation fee, according to his website, is $10,000, and a monthly retainer starts at $20,000.

“I think it’s critical, here in our city, that no matter what you believe, you are given the opportunity to engage in positive, healthy ways,” Brazell began at the podium of the council meeting where citizens, families, and Boy Scouts were in attendance. “I think producer Steven Warren of the ‘We’re Here’ show said that his show was a ‘love letter’ to the city of St. George.”

“Let me read to you some of the ‘love letters’ from the LGBTQ+ community to one of our own elected officials. And I quote, ‘You are one of the most vile, horrific, disgusting that has ever walked the Earth and you should be burnt to death, you homophobic small-minded idiot.’ From Kai Hargis: ‘Stupid couldn’t even get a drag show banned. We’re more powerful than you Christian dumb .’ Kai continues. ‘Homophobic, worthless …’”

Brazell is then cut off by St. George City Mayor Michelle Randall. “Mr. Brazell, stop. Stop. Stop.”

“This is all part of the First Amendment,” Brazell counters.

“Listen. I get it,” the mayor continues. “You’re Michelle [Turner]’s media person…”

“I’m getting this into the public record that these emails, this communication is just horrific,” Brazell interjected.

“Stop the language,” the may-

or said. Brazell said he agreed, “On Facebook. ‘You’re an awful, terrible person. I hope you get cancer and die a very, very slow, painful death.’ From Drew Paradisco, ‘If you were really concerned about family values and children, you would start holding your church and your priests accountable. Buckle up, buttercup, because Hell hath no fury like a who’s been pushed too far.’”

“I think it’s critical to see both sides of every coin so that you, as leaders that represent our community can start making decisions that affect 94 percent of your constituents,” Brazell concluded.

City Councilwomen Danielle Larkin took offense to saying that the social media comments Brazell read were necessarily from a “side” in the debate.

“I would say that those emails were awful, and they’re also anecdotal. We’re all getting awful emails like that,” she said. “Those emails represent people who spoke poorly. So, let’s not make ‘sides’ in here.”

After an LGBTQ supporter spoke, Tanner jumped in.

“There are plenty of drag queens out there, by the way, who do not agree with doing drag in front of children,” she said. “In fact, I have members of the LGBT community all the time who reach out to me and say, ‘We hate the fact that there’s people within our movement who have taken this to an extreme and are targeting children.’ My good friend is a drag artist and wholeheartedly agrees with not doing certain things in front of children. My brother, who is gay, also agrees. I have lots of friends and family in the LGBT who absolutely do not think it’s appropriate to do mature behaviors, to have mature discussions, in front of children. So, we need to stop this narrative if we’re going to talk about ‘sides,’ it’s not a sides issue. It should be all the sides, across the aisle, should care about protecting children.”

Pride of Southern Utah offered an email template for those who wanted to reach out to city leaders about Tanner’s behaviors.

“In the presence of multiple young children, Boy Scouts, and countless other families tuning into the live stream from remote locations, [Brazell] used the most profane language I’ve ever heard spoken

in a public forum. Prior to Mayor Randall requesting he refrain from cursing, he used both the f-word and c-word multiple times,” the template states.”I am shocked and appalled that Councilwoman Tanner, whose number one talking point is protecting children from mature content, would find this kind of language in a

public city council meeting appropriate.”

“I would like to know what kind of action you, as our Mayor and elected representatives, will be taking to address this inexcusable and reckless lack of judgment,” the template continues, ending with the writer stating they “don’t want this kind of contention and division to be permitted to continue, unchecked.”

Tanner targeted a business that runs St. George’s farmers’ market each Saturday because the owner allowed drag performers to hold a photograph booth with Mrs. Santa and elves in her other business. Tanner failed in pulling the city’s support of the market, which involves waiving park rental fees.

The council also discussed creating “free speech zones” at events in the city that might be more controversial, noting a demonstration by anti-LGBT street preachers standing directly in front of the Pride event stage blocking the view with their towering “Homo Sex is Sin” banners. Tanner spoke against the measure, saying it infringes on free speech.

Steve Brazelle of Hitman, Inc. representing St George City Councilwoman Michelle Tanner. Photo: public meeting video

Utah 2023 Legislative Session LGBTQ bills

Five bills before the 2023 Utah Legislative Session that directly affect Utah’s LGBTQ community are related to transgender surgery issues. Two are fairly identical in that they target surgery or hormone treatments on minors. Another requires schools to notify parents if a child wants to use a different name than what’s on their records. A fourth bill would have Utah’s employee health benefits plan cover gender-confirming surgery for adult state workers. A last bill bans minors from changing their birth certificates.

SB16 Transgender Medical Treatments and Procedures

Sen. Michael S. Kennedy drafted a substitute bill to SB16, which would prohibit Utah doctors from performing “sex characteristic surgical procedures” on a minor.

Before the Health and Human Services Interim Committee hearing during the October interim session of the Utah Legislature, Kennedy said it was “with some reluctance that [he] enter into the policy debate regarding the health care of transgender minors.”

He went on to misstate the policies supported by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health and the Endocrine Society, saying the organizations are against sex changes in minors.

He also characterized such surgeries as “weak” and “novel.”

In his new draft, the bill would require the Utah Dept. of Health to study hormonal and transgender treatments, require the Division of Professional Licensing to create a certification for

providing “hormonal transgender treatments,” and prohibit health care providers from using hormonal treatments for any new patients, threatening such doctors with a malpractice suit.

Transgender advocate Sue Robbins explains the bill in lay-person terms.

“If you take this to a high level to weed out specifics, the bill allows continuing of existing, ongoing treatment programs for minors but will block new treatment programs. A study will be conducted by Health and Human Services and that will be used for future decisions by the legislature,” she said. “We have seen this malpractice verbiage before and it ultimately makes doctors back away from providing healthcare either to remove risk or due to increased insurance. This is a very dangerous insertion.”

HB132 Prohibiting Sex Transitioning Procedures on Minors

Rep. Rex Shipp, R-Cedar City, introduced a bill that is similar to Sen. Michael Kennedy’s SB16 that prohibits sex reassignment surgeries on minors, but includes hormonal treatments as well. His similar bills in the past two years have not been considered by the full legislature because of problems in their drafting. While this bill addresses more of what was called “unintended consequences,” it is more likely that Kennedy’s bill will be the one that moves forward.

SB 93 VITAL RECORDS MODIFICATIONS

Utah SB93 is written to deny minors the ability to change their birth certificate to reflect their desired name. Two similar laws in Idaho

were permanently enjoined in federal court for violation of the Equal Protection Clause. The Idaho cases were not specifically targeted at minors.

The bill does allow for changes to birth certificates that contain certain errors.

HJR 5 Joint Resolution for

Gender Reassignment

Surgical Health Benefits

HJR 5 is a bill sponsored by Rep. Sahara Hayes, D-Millcreek, that would direct the states health insurance provider, Public Employees’ Benefit and Insurance Program, to provide gender reassignment surgical benefits to state employees and beneficiaries.

“Medical professionals have found gender reassignment surgery for adults medically necessary to treat persistent and extended gender dysphoria,” the bill reads. “Many insurance plans and employers in Utah offer gender reassignment surgical benefits.”

The resolution requires the person seeking the surgery to be over 18, to have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria for at least a year

and undergone hormone treatment, changed their name, and presented as their desired gender for a year.

SB100 School District Gender Identity Policies

This bill is being sponsored by Sen. Todd Weiler and would require schools to notify parents is a child seeks to be addressed by a name other than what is on their school records or to use a different pronoun. It further prohibits the school from using the name or pronoun until there is parental consent.

“If every teacher is getting a memo and said, we’re calling Mike ‘Mikell’ or something like that and it’s a school policy – substitute teachers are being informed but the parents are being kept secret, that’s being withheld from the parents – that’s where I think, in my mind, that kind of crosses a line,” Weiler told KUTV News.

Robbins says she is concerned about helping transgender youth stay safe at school.

Weiler said it’s about balancing the needs of the children while also respecting the rights of parents. Q

Making customers happy since 1984!

Utah, Idaho petitions target drag shows as ‘sexualizing children’

A petition started by Utah Tech University adjunct professor Alexis Ence calls upon the Utah Legislature to take action “to protect children from sexualization in our shared, public spaces,” which, she says, means drag shows in “public spaces.”

Saying she is one of the “concerned moms all over the nation,” Ence posted that she realized that the drag show hosted in St. George this summer meant “Utah was not immune to the child-sexualization we see happening all over the United States.”

Because, she wrote, Utah created a “Pornographic and Harmful Materials and Performances law” to “protect children from pornographic/sensitive materials in schools,” and because Utah law requires “blinder racks” to cover 2/3 of a magazine cover that might be offensive, “Clearly, Utah and the U.S. have established precedents for protecting children from sexualized/harmful materials, so why does live, interactive entertainment, like a drag show, get a pass?”

“It shouldn’t,” she surmised. “Shared, public spaces in Utah’s communities should be safe spac-

es for children, unencumbered by adult entertainment (from any sex/ gender/preference),” she wrote.

Over 1,300 people have signed the petition as of press time.

Idaho

A similar petition in Idaho bases its reasoning on the debunked accusation that a drag performer exposed their genitalia onstage at Coeur d’Alene’s “Pride in the Park.”

“There, onstage in the heart of the public park, a drag performer danced provocatively in women’s panties and high heels while grabbing his crotch,” the petition alleges. “

“Some observers reported the drag queen exposed his genitals to an audience that included many children. The local prosecutor refused to bring charges, insisting that the alleged unlawful activity was not captured by videographic and photographic evidence.”

Indeed, Coeur d’Alene police reviewed an uncensored video from a post that went viral that blurred the groin area of the performer, and a second video

as well, and found that “allegations of indecent exposure or other crimes cannot be supported by the evidence.”

The Idaho Family Policy Center insists they saw genitalia in the video.

“Parents need to understand that cross-dressing is often an erotic fetish for drag performers who become sexually aroused when they imitate sexualized behaviors of the opposite sex in public,” the unsigned petition states. “With that in mind, it becomes clear that public drag shows exploit children and other audience members for the depraved purpose of sexually gratifying the performer. Let me be clear: these creeps are using our children as pawns for their perverse sexual desires.”

“To protect our children, the Idaho Legislature must update state laws to address these vile sexual exhibitions in places where children are present,” the petition concludes. “Our children’s innocence — and public virtue — must be protected. Please update state laws to ensure children are not exposed to sexual exhibitions like drag shows in public places.”

SLC, Park City get high rankings for LGBTQ equality.

Other Utah cities, not so much.

Salt Lake City received its second 100 out of 100 rating from the Human Rights Campaign 2022 Municipal Equality Index. The MEI is a nationwide evaluation of 506 cities on how inclusive a municipality’s laws, policies, and services are of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) people.

Park City received a score of 70, second place for the state. Other cities in the state received the equivalent of an “f” grade, with Ogden at 58, West Valley City at 48, Provo at 40, and West Jordan and Orem at 36.

Salt Lake City

Salt Lake City was able to achieve a rating of 100 by getting “Flex Points,” similar to extra credit at school. For anti-discrimination laws, the capital city received 20 out of 30 points, getting credit for nondiscrimination laws for employment and housing, but lacking a law protecting from LGBTQ bias in public accommodations. As an employer, the city was credited for having a non-discrimination policy in city employment, transgender-inclusive healthcare benefits, and an ordinance requiring nondiscrimination policies for its city contractors. The Salt Lake Human Rights Commission earned the city five points, as did an LGBTQ+ liaison for the mayor’s office. Law enforcement received a perfect score for having an LGBTQ liaison and for reporting FBI hate crime statistics.

Flex points were given for having openly LGBTQ elected leaders, city employee domestic partner benefits, the state policy that forbids conversion therapy for youth, and city services for a variety of LGBTQ demographics.

Park City

“Park City has a well-established reputation as a welcoming town for the LGBTQ+ community,” said Mayor Nann Worel. “And we remain committed to listening, learning, and working with the LGBTQ+ Task Force toward continuing to expand inclusivity in our community.”

Park City’s LGBTQ+ Task Force was formed in 2020 to advise on how the City could better reflect its values around inclusivity. In the past year, the LGBTQ+ Taskforce has worked to raise community awareness and visibility on the Wasatch back by hosting a Living Library event, organizing a two-session DEI Training for City staff and local stakeholders with Equality Utah, participating in the 4th of July parade, wrapping the Main Street Trolley in “Ride with Pride” branding for Pride Month, placing progress pride flag banners on Main Street, organizing a Utah Pride Parade entry, and hosting the Queerski event.

“Park City is engaging in the ongoing work of fostering an environment where the LGBTQIA+ community feels included and valued in the community. Although

there is still room to grow, this score is something to be proud of, and it personally makes me excited to be a part of PCMC,” said Task Force liaison Browne Sebright.

Ogden and West Valley City

Both West Valley City and Ogden City had similar scores for municipal non-discrimination laws as Salt Lake, but lacked transgender benefits for municipal employees and an ordinance requiring city contractors to maintain

an LGBTQ nondiscrimination policy. City police do not have an LGBTQ liaison. Ogden does have at least one openly LGBTQ elected official and has a human rights commission, earning it 10 more points than WVC.

Provo, West Jordan, Orem

The bottom three cities received points only because the state of Utah has nondiscrimination policies and protects children from socalled conversion therapy. Q

Goud Maragani shares plans as new president of Utah Log Cabin Republicans

Goud Maragani, who ran for Salt Lake County Clerk last year, garnering 43 percent of the votes to Lannie Chapman’s 57 percent, was elected president of the Utah Log Cabin Republicans in November.

Maragani said that he envisions the conservative LGBT group allowing anyone who wants to attend.

“While giving a place where more conservative gays can meet and talk about issues and policy, anyone can come to our meetings,” he said. “[The group] is not meant to be an echo chamber. Not everyone will agree on everything. That would be boring.”

Maragani first joined a chapter of the national Log Cabin Republicans in D.C., but found it “moribund.”

“When I moved to Dallas, I found a vibrant group where more than 100 people showed up,” he said.

To grow Utah’s group, he hopes to bring in interesting speakers and politicians.

Maragani hopes to have at least one upcoming meeting be a gun safety course.

“Our last meeting, we had a gay

owner of a gun store,” he said. “He has trained more people on gun safety than anyone in the state.”

In the next two meetings, he is asking legislators to come discuss bills that are coming forward in the legislative session that began Jan. 17 and runs through Mar. 3.

The group will meet on the third Tuesday of each month, beginning with a social half hour at 6:30 and the meeting will run from 7 to 8 p.m.

NATIONAL LOG CABIN REPUBLICANS

Log Cabin Republicans began in the late 1970s in California. Similar to today, advancements in our community’s cause drew backlash, including singer and Florida Citrus Commission representative Anita Bryant. Her “Save the Children” campaign was successful in Dade County, Florida. Arkansas and Oklahoma, banning gays and lesbians from holding teaching positions.

California State Sen. John Briggs sponsored a ballot measure he called the “Briggs Initiative” that would ban gay and lesbian educators and permitted the firing of any educator who was determined to be “advocating, imposing, encouraging or promoting” homosexuality. California gay conservatives turned to then-governor Ronald Reagan, who argued “Innocent lives could be ruined,” if the measure passed. The measure failed by over a million votes.

In the wake of the Briggs campaign, gay conservatives in California formed Log Cabin Republicans, and several chapters in states across the country sprang up.

LOG CABIN REPUBLICANS UTAH

In Utah, Log Cabin started meeting in 1993. Its 25 members elected Chris Ryan as president; Robert Matscherz, vice president; Frank Lohmeyer, secretary; and Todd Jones, treasurer.

Ryan called Utah Log Cabin a “moderate Republican club.”

The group’s first issue was to support a bill that would allow people to draw off of their life insurance policy before death. The measure was backed by a number of AIDS groups because the disease was expensive to fight, and a number of people with AIDS needed access to their life insurance policy payoffs before they died. The bill was written by Utah Gay and Lesbian Democrats founder David Nelson. It passed the legislature and then-Gov. Mike Leavitt

allowed the bill to go into law despite heavy pressure from the insurance lobby.

In 2009, then-ULCR president Gordon Storrs ran for Utah State House and in 2012, president Mel Nimer ran for Salt Lake County Commission. Neither was successful in their elections.

Utah governors Jon M. Huntsman and Gary Herbert invited the group for annual receptions at the Governor’s Mansion from 2009 through 2013.

In late 2020, Ryan Woods, also known as Lady MAGA, became president of the organization. One of the first public policy statements under Woods was the group’s support of a Utah Eagle Forum-sponsored bill to forbid doctors from treating a transgender child with hormone therapies or gender-corrective surgeries.

“This has nothing to do with an LGBT issue,” Woods stated, “This has to do with protecting innocent children from procedures that have irreversible and very serious consequences.”

Woods also used the group’s Facebook pages to denounce Democrats and the LGBT community as “Leftist radicals,” a “Leftist Mob,” and “groomers.” He also opened the Facebook group to ultra-conservative politicians, school board members, and uber-right MAGA supporters from across the country.

During Woods’ reign, the group never met with any of Utah’s LGBTQ community organizations, nor supported any of their fundraising events.

MARAGANI’S VIEWS

Maragani’s first policy statement after being elected president was to oppose Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson’s budget, in part, for helping fund a clinic by the Utah AIDS Foundation. The budget passed with the funding intact.

“We do intend to engage in policy matters,” Maragani said. “Log Cabin’s mission statement is broader than just LGBT issues. We believe in limited government, strong national defense, free markets, low taxes, personal responsibility, and individual liberty. Log Cabin Republicans represent an important part of the American family..”

“We must acknowledge that gays are still living normal lives,” he continued. “We can’t just focus on LGBTQ+ marriage and adoption. Other issues are equally important.”

Currently, Maragani hopes to support

a gay man who has type-one diabetes and is fighting his HOA for access to their gym.

“He asked for reasonable accommodation, and the HOA sat on it for four months,” he explains. The Utah Antidiscrimination and Labor Commission ruled that the delay was discriminatory but only fined the HOA $4,000, and would not include attorney’s fees. Maragani says that a large percentage of homes and condos in the valley are under HOAs, and protections are needed.

Another issue they are looking at is the Duty to Report Bill that would require clergy to report any disclosure of abuse by a perpetrator to law enforcement to investigate. Failure to report abuse would be a misdemeanor crime under the legislation, on par with

other professions that are required to report disclosures. Both Rep. Angela Romero and Rep. Phil Lyman have drafted bills that will go before the Utah Legislature this year.

GETTING INVOLVED

Maragani says the group will communicate with its members through social media, including Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, as well as through an email list.

The easiest way to connect with the group is to email utahlogcabinrepublicans@ gmail.com or message them through Twitter.com/utahlcr or Facebook.com/utahlcr

Their next meeting is on Tuesday, Jan. 17th from 6:30 pm through 8 pm in the Aspen Room at the East Senate Building, 120 E. Capitol Street. The February meeting will take place on the 21st. Q

views quotes

‘I hate the word homophobia. It’s not a phobia. You’re not scared. You’re an .’

—Morgan

‘Love is never wrong.’

—Melissa

Freeman

Etheridge

‘There’s nothing wrong with you. There’s a lot wrong with the world you live in.’

—Chris

‘To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.’

—Ralph

Colfer

Waldo Emerson

‘I believe that gender is something between your ears, not between your legs.’

—Chaz

‘Openness may not completely disarm prejudice, but it’s a good place to start.’

—Jason

‘To be afraid is to behave as if the truth were not true.’

—Bayard

‘When all Americans are treated as equal, no matter who they are or whom they love, we are all more free.’

—Barack

‘Being gay is like glitter, it never goes away.’

Bono

Collins

Rustin

Obama

—Lady

‘Love is too beautiful to be hidden in the closet.’

Gaga

BY BRIANA CLUCK

Utah’sHB132, “Prohibiting Sex Transitioning Procedures On Minors,” is an ill-informed bill based not out of fact, but out of fear and resentment for our transgender community.

It’s important to emphasize that “sex transitioning procedures on minors” are vanishingly rare. Section VI of the World Professional Association on Transgender Health standards of care lays out the treatment process for transgender minors.

The majority of this treatment is therapy and social support. Medical interventions in youths are typically restricted to a puberty-suppressing medication of the same kind used to address early periods, growth plate disorders, and other puberty-related conditions.

While hormone therapy is an option for minors, the standards of care state that hormone therapy can only occur in two cases — when the minor is no longer a minor and still maintains a transgender identity, or when the minor has reached the age of medical consent for the state in which they live and have been on puberty blockers in conjunction with therapy for a minimum of four years to determine persistence in identity.

Of note is the lack of any framework by which minors can receive surgery. While the standards of care do have a provision saying some female-to-male clients may be eligible for top surgery (double mastectomy, typically done in conjunction with a nipple graft) after several years of treatment, this is mentioned as a side note, and not as an official WPATH recommendation. By and large,

gender-reaffirming surgery does not happen to minors in the US.

However, transgender minors do exist in the United States. The Trevor Project found that roughly 2 percent of youths identify as transgender.

A project conducted by the CDC found that transgender youth report feelings of isolation, hopelessness, and depression due to a lack of social acceptance and appropriate education about transgender identity and health.

Many transgender Americans report that they have to educate their doctors on what being transgender means and how to treat them, and face discrimination in the medical and legal systems

Moreover, HB132 comes with the precedence of other states which have attempted similar restrictions. For example, the Oklahoma legislature has now proposed “the millstone act,” which would bar medical intervention in transgender people up to 26 years old, well into the age of majority. These bills ultimately come from a misunderstanding of the transgender population and a fear of transgender people, relying on a kind of boogeyman of transgender activists trying to “recruit” children, similar to how “the gay agenda” was portrayed in the 2000s.

We believe that Utah deserves better and can do better than a bill based more on fear and prejudice than on actual facts and medical procedures, and we must urge our elected officials to strike down this bill Q

Brianna Cluck is the Utah County Democrats’ Stonewall Caucus Chair. She advocates for LGBTQA+ rights and is a former president of Provo Pride’s board.

creep of the month

Sen. Mike Lee

BY D’ANNE WITKOWSKI

were hoping your 2023 was going to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, and filthy, you’re going to be disappointed if Utah Sen. Mike Lee gets his way.

If you

On Dec. 16, Lee introduced the Interstate Obscenity Definition Act, which basically seeks to “establish a national definition of obscenity that would apply to obscene content that is transmitted via interstate or foreign communications,” and that includes the internet, according to Lee’s office.

Yep, that’s right. Lee is seeking to ban online porn. All of it. Now all anybody will be left with is cat videos.

According to Vice, there are already “federal communications standards that qualify ‘obscenity’ as content that’s spread with the intent to abuse, threaten, or harass a person.”

And let’s be clear, things like revenge porn or secretly recording someone or sexual abuse of any kind is bad. Those things are crimes and should be.

But Lee thinks that the definition of “obscenity” doesn’t go far enough. His bill would expand the definition to include anything that “appeals to the prurient interest in nudity, sex, or excretion” and “depicts, describes, or represents, an actual or simulated sexual act or sexual contact, actual or simulated normal or perverted sexual acts, or lewd exhibition of the genitals, with the objective intent to arouse, titillate, or gratify the sexual desires of a person” and “lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”

Sounds pretty cut and dried, no ambiguity there at all. Good thing we have a 51-year-old cisgender white guy with an anti-LGBTQ+ history to define it for us all!

Just this year he sought to put parental advisories on TV shows that

contained LGBTQ+ content and opposed the Respect for Marriage Act, calling it “legislation that seriously threatens religious liberty.” He also tried to help Trump overturn the election. So, gross all around.

According to XBIZ, “If the IODA succeeds, and sexual content loses the free-speech protections that have stood for the last 50 years, that would open the door for the government to prosecute every creator or distributor of adult content.”

Good luck with that.

IODA is a ridiculous proposition. Scrubbing the internet of porn is like trying to soak up an ocean using paper towels. And I have no doubt that Lee knows it won’t pass. But this is “setting the stage” legislation.

“I spend a lot of time in anti-porn and anti-sex work forums, monitoring what’s going on in terms of those conversations, and there is obviously a rise in panic around things like pornography and sex education in schools,” Free Speech Coalition Director of Public Affairs Mike Stabile told Vice. “We need to realize and make as clear as possible what they intend to do with the internet, with schools: They want to shut down conversations about sex and sexuality in the public square.”

In other words, Republicans use bills like this to attempt to signal that they are the protectors of moral decency and thus, the protectors of children.

As the New Civil Rights Movement points out, IODA echoes legislation passed in 2018, FOSTA (Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act) and SESTA (Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act) laws, in that it casts such a wide net that it drives sex workers further into the shadows, making the work more dangerous.

Sex work is work. Obviously children should not be part of the sex work industry in any way, and we must work to prevent that.

But if Republicans really care about sex trafficking so much, then they should spare no expense to lift children out of poverty and protect children who live in abusive situations, including LGBTQ+ children who are rejected by their families and end up homeless at unconscionable rates. Instead they demonize poor people, claim LGBTQ+ people are inherently damaged and perverted, and yell about a cabal of Satan-worshipping Democrats and Hollywood elites who are actually lizards masterminding an enormous child sex trafficking ring in underground tunnels, an enterprise only Donald Trump can stop.

But, hey Republicans, do go on about how you’re the party seeking to protect children even though that apparently starts with forcing pregnant people to give birth against their will and stops with keeping kids away from drag queens. Q

D’Anne Witkowski is a writer living in Michigan with her wife and son. She has been writing about LGBTQ+ politics for nearly two decades. Follow her on Twitter @MamaDWitkowski.

who’s your daddy

A stable and thriving environment

by Christopher Katis

The first person I ever really understood was adopted was my friend Anne. She lived just three doors away, and we’ve been friends literally our entire lives. As a matter of fact, our families have been friends going back to our grandparents’ time.

Back when we were kids, it was pretty commonplace not to tell kids that they were adopted. Apparently, people believed the child and parents would never bond if they didn’t share DNA, or that there was something wrong with couples that couldn’t reproduce. But Anne’s parents were always open, honest, and proud parents. Maybe that’s why I always looked to them as role models for Kelly and me as we embarked on our own journey to becoming parents.

For the first time ever, in 2019 the American Community Survey asked respondents if “they are same-sex or opposite-sex spouses or partners.” That seemingly simple question opened the floodgates for the U.S. Census Bureau to gain heretofore unknown insights into the country’s families. They learned that whereas just under 7 percent of gay male couples are fathers, a whopping 22.5 percent of lesbian couples have children. And more than one in five of those kids with gay parents is adopted. The survey also showed that LGBTQ+ people are three times more likely to adopt than straight couples, and twice as likely to foster kids.

As a gay dad whose sons are adopted, reading those stats makes me immensely proud of our community.

And we’re slowly gaining the recognition and respect our families deserve. According to a study commissioned by the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption (yes, the founder of Wendy’s, who was himself adopted), over the past 15 years, we’ve seen some modest progress in the acceptance of gay parenthood.

Back in 2007, just 33 percent of the study’s respondents believed that same-

sex parents could provide a healthy and loving environment for children. By 2021 that number had jumped to 46 percent. At first glance, that’s still a rather disappointing number; more than half of those that answered the question either do not believe or were unsure that gay parents can offer that type of environment.

“While we still have much to do, the Foundation’s 2022 U.S. Adoption and Foster Care Attitudes Survey shows that more Americans are supporting same-sex adoptions and believing that a same-sex couple can provide a safe and loving adoptive family. We are excited that more U.S. families are open to adoption in general and considering foster care adoption at higher rates than we’ve ever seen,” said Rita Soronen, president & CEO of the Foundation.

Actually, none of the categories — single parents, single adoptive parents, those raising adopted kids with a different religion, adoptive parents over 55, and adoptive parents over 65 — hit the 50 percent mark. That’s why the Foundation is actively working to dispel a multitude of myths that often surround adoption.

“We believe that every child waiting in foster care deserves a safe, loving, and permanent home, no matter their age, the circumstances surrounding their journey through foster care, or how they identify themselves,” Soronen added. “We are dedicated to dispelling the myths and misperceptions that too often surround why youth are in foster care and who can adopt these children, which simply creates barriers to permanency. At the heart of our work is an unrelenting commitment to every child’s right to a stable and loving environment in which to thrive.”

That’s exactly what my friend Anne’s parents did — provided a stable and loving environment for their kids to thrive. And not just their kids but every kid that walked through their door. Q

The good, the bad, the ugly of 2022

BY D’ANNE WITKOWSKI

HappyNew Year everybody! Except for people who made it their life’s goal to attack LGBTQ+ people. I hope your New Year sucks.

The good

2022 was much better than the two years before it (I know, it’s a low bar).

We saw some historic wins by LGBTQ+ candidates in the 2022 midterm elections, including the election of the nation’s first openly lesbian governors, TINA KOTEK in Oregon and MAURA HEALEY in Massachusetts. WNBA player BRITTNEY GRINER was sprung from prison in Russia, high profile anti-LGBTQ+ candidates like DR. OZ in Pennsylvania, HERSCHEL WALKER in Georgia and KARI LAKE in Arizona lost their elections, and a bill to protect marriage equality for LGBTQ+ people and interracial couples passed the U.S. House and Senate and was signed by President JOE BIDEN

The bad

Still, many things were not great.

Queer icon and perpetual bright spot in this dark world LESLIE JORDAN died. 2022 saw the repeal of Roe v. Wade and a very clear signal from the ultra-right Supreme Court that they can’t wait to get rid of marriage equality, too (hence the need for the above-mentioned Respect for Marriage Act). There was also the horrific shooting at CLUB Q in Colorado, and widespread protests against DRAG QUEENS

And then there was Florida, where old people go to live out their golden years by clawing back all the progressive wins they’ve seen in their lifetimes.

In 2022, Florida’s “DON’T SAY GAY ” bill passed faster than a hurricane and was championed by GOVERNOR RON DESANTIS, an out and proud homo- and trans-phobe who wants to become our

next U.S. president. While the bill’s stated objective is to keep schools from talking about sexual orientation or gender identity from Kindergarten through third grade, the bill has had wider reaching effects. It’s clear that the intent of the law was to enshrine the idea that LGBTQ+ people are a threat to children under the guise of an education law.

Well, attorneys general across the state aren’t having it. Among other problems, “the law does not define many of its key terms, like ‘classroom instruction,’ so Florida teachers are already censoring themselves out of fear of the law. Indeed, the law allows a parent to bring a civil claim against a school district to enforce its vague prohibitions,” reads a press release from D.C. Attorney General KARL A. RACINE

You read that right. Parents in Florida can sue if they think the teachers in their school are’t anti-LGBTQ+ enough.

Racine and 17 other AGs have submitted an amicus supporting a lawsuit brought by several Florida families opposing the Parental Rights in Education Act. He’s joined by the AGs in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Washington.

“Florida’s law is unconstitutional,” the brief argues according to Racine’s office. “The law is causing significant harms to students, parents, teachers, and other states. Non-inclusive educational environments have severe negative health impacts on LGBTQ+ students, resulting in increased rates of mental health disorders and suicide attempts.

These harms extend to youth not just in Florida, but throughout the country.”

It’s true. Over a dozen other states have proposed bills “inspired” by Florida’s.

The Venn diagram of people who are anti-LGBTQ+ and people who are racist has two overlapping circles.

The ugly

As Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund’s Legal Director DAVID BROWN tells NPR, “What is truly concerning is that these anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been coupled with legislative proposals that forbid teaching about structural racism and slavery, and patriarchy and sexism, on the grounds that these concepts make others uncomfortable.”

But making LGBTQ+ people uncomfortable? That’s OK. That’s the point. Legally dehumanizing people is a green light for violence against them. We saw that play out at Club Q and at drag queen events that drew armed protesters.

“The institutionalization of these bills is an overt form of structural transphobia and homophobia, and it goes against all public health evidence in creating a safe and supportive environment for transgender, nonbinary, queer, gay and lesbian youths and teachers to thrive,” ARJEE RESTAR , a University of Washington professor of epidemiology told NPR.

Of course, that’s exactly the point. Supporters of this kind of legislation don’t want a safe and supportive environment for LGBTQ+ people. They want us back in the shadows, timid and weak. But the closet door has been smashed open. We refuse to go back.

MADDY TURNED HATE INTO HOPE AND STARTED A MOVEMENT

In 2021, the rise of violence against the Asian community made even the simple act of taking public transportation unsafe. So, Maddy started a fund to pay for cab rides for those in the Asian community that needed it most, including women, the elderly, and the LGBTQ+ community. With over $100,000 raised in just two days, she started a movement based on love that lives on today.

Maddy Park Founder, @CafeMaddyCab

Bob the Drag Queen and Eureka, stars of HBO’s

on

in St. George and promoting equality through drag

BY EVE KUCHARSKI

Glitz,

glam, and, oh, just the small matter of changing hearts and minds. That’s a tall order for anyone and the basic setup of every episode of the HBO show “We’re Here.”

But of course, once again in Season 3, drag queens Shangela, Eureka O’Hara, and Bob the Drag Queen use their skills to deliver on that recipe and then some.

On the surface, “We’re Here” is a show about drag queens teaching their craft to queer and allied people in small, conservative towns across middle America. However, look past all of the costumes, makeup, and dance numbers, and it becomes clear there’s a deeper message of acceptance running through each episode.

Drag becomes the conduit for the queens’ drag kids to not only build up, and sometimes actualize, their confidence in deeply anti-LGBTQ+

environments, but it calls attention to the intricate and nuanced realities of small-town life for queer people — all while putting on a once-in-a-lifetime show in the unlikeliest of places.

Bob the Drag Queen and Eureka O’Hara, two-thirds of the iconic drag trio, joined me for an interview about the show’s latest season. They discussed the importance of giving patience to those who want to listen, how spirituality and queerness can intersect, the political environment during each season, and much more.

Every time you head into a new town, there is a bit of resistance, but I felt like it was especially bad this season. There were hostile threats on social media, and then there was the [St. George,] Utah council that was working to cancel your filming permit. Did you feel that way?

BOB THE DRAG QUEEN: We’ve had

‘We’re Here,’

the hubbub

‘THERE MIGHT BE A BETTER WAY, BUT THIS IS THE QUEEREST WAY’

resistance before. I mean, we even had the cops called on us in Season One. Several times, actually [laughs]. And having a whole town trying to shut us down, I don’t know if that’s a reflection of where we are now or if it’s a reflection of where we were at the time, physically. But the political climate has changed. Each season has been a different world. Season One was pre-pandemic; Trump was still president. Season Two was a very tumultuous election year, and we were in the middle of an election year. And now, [with] Season Three, we were ramping up to midterms, we had a new president, and we are getting back out into the world in terms of coming out of lockdown.

EUREKA O’HARA : Yeah, I agree. Bob hit it on the nose. Maybe some of the resistance you faced this time around was partly because more people are aware of the show than before.

BOB: Well, I still wonder if they watch our show. What the hell do they think we’re doing? What are you protesting? What do you think is going on at these shows? Do you think that it’s some kind of orgy? What do you think is happening on stage? Who could protest this?

EUREKA : That’s true. It’s wild. It’s just people being misinformed and not understanding. Misunderstanding is one of the biggest causes of discrimination. Honestly?

I find most of the time that the people that fight against our show the most have not seen an episode of our show. They’ve just heard rumors, or they see drag and they automatically make assumptions. There’s no facts behind their fear tactics; it’s all assumptions. I would love to test these people and say, “Why don’t you watch an episode and see what we’re showcasing before you combat us?”

Eureka, at the Fourth of July parade in Granbury, Texas, there was a man holding up a sign with anti-LGBTQ+ scripture, and he said, “I just want to show that there’s two sides of the story here,” and you were clear that queer people see his message every day.

EUREKA : Yeah, I’m like, in your home, you say these things every day. The people that you live with already know you feel this way. People in your world know this is how you’re feeling. It just frustrates me because I’m like, “No, you want to create this circle of innocence around what you’re doing.” And you want to be like, “Oh, I’m just doing this because of the grace of God.” Well, I also do everything in my life, as a Christian person, as a spiritual person, by the grace of God as well — she’s a Goddess. She’s the God that I believe in, and I was raised Southern Baptist Christian, and I still believe very heavily in that faith. And how dare you tear me down for how I decide to live and for how

I decide to praise? It just goes against everything you say you believe in.

BOB: And as someone who is absolutely not religious in any regard, I want you to know that if you’re reading this, you do not have to justify your life based on anyone’s religion.

EUREKA : Work! And the reason that me, as a spiritual person, is on Bob’s side when he says something like that is because that’s the truest and most honest way of thinking: allowing people to have their own free will. I’m not God. I don’t get to play that part. I don’t get to judge and pick and choose. That’s an interesting point, and at least those people actually stopped to try and listen to you, Eureka. Bob, you were just trying to cross the street in one of the episodes; I think you were looking for ice cream—

BOB: [Laughs.]

And this guy just started shouting at you.

BOB: Yeah, and that’s when I realized that guy didn’t actually want to talk. It wasn’t about God. It was about him. It was about his ego. And even if it was about God, I don’t believe in that, so why do I care? [Laughs.]

You can’t come at me with your religion, telling me that I need to live my life by some rules that you don’t even know what they are. You and your own parishioners can’t agree, and now you want me, someone who doesn’t even believe in it, to go by a set of rules that

y’all can’t come up with?

[Laughs.] I don’t have as much grace for religious bigots as Shangela and Eureka do. I have actually no grace for religious bigots. None whatsoever. I want to say, “ you, don’t tell me who to believe in. Mind your business,” but I didn’t say that on television. [Laughs.]

This show got me thinking about the social pressures that exist in small-town communities and the niceness to your face but the lack of overall kindness to those who are outside the status quo. Do you think that’s why even large and vibrant queer communities are forced to be silent even within their own spaces?

BOB: I always ask myself, “Do you want to be a nice person, or do you want to be a good person?” And every good person isn’t nice, and every nice person isn’t good. You know what I mean?

EUREKA : True.

BOB: I think that a lot of times, people do feel completely silenced in these communities, especially because it’s even harder to combat hate when it’s thinly veiled as love. Because people say, “Well, we just want to protest because we love you, and we don’t want your soul to go to hell.” And then you think to yourself, “Wait. Is it really because they love me? Are they really here just to save my soul?” And then you have to take a step back, and you go, “No, no, no. That’s none of their business.”

Was there something positive about meet-

ing these lovely queer and allied people that you were surprised by this season?

BOB: There’s always something surprising to me. I’m always shocked and gagged when I see the amazing things that our drag kids can do. You know, everyone is remarkable at something. Isn’t it wild? Not just kinda good, but remarkable at something. And sometimes we get to see that not just on stage but in their communities and in how their fellow townspeople see and revere them. I got to see it with my drag kid, Micah, in St. George, Utah, where the community was just like in awe of how remarkable of a person they were.

EUREKA : Same, honestly. We got a chance to work with some really interesting youths, the people that are the new generation. Especially this season, I had an experience with several young people who are a part of the generation that’s coming behind us that wants to create change, and they want to promote progression and equity. It just gives me so much hope in the world. It’s really hard to go into communities that don’t accept you, even when you’re trying to spread love. Bob, you said that it’s not really about the drag, but it’s about giving voice to these queer people. Is that what motivates you both to come back to “We’re Here” season after season?

BOB: Let me be very clear — I sound like Obama, “Let me be clear.” There has got to be an easier, softer way than rolling into a town with a bunch of drag queens [laughs], putting on a show, making costumes, blood, sweat, and tears. This is not the easiest way to be doing what we’re doing. I don’t even believe that it’s necessary that it has to be this. It doesn’t have to be this, it could be something else. But this is what we do. This is what me, Eureka, and Shangela do and happen to be very, very good at. I don’t want to be egotistical and say, “It has to be this, and it has to be us,” because there’s a lot of people

doing a lot of stuff. But I know that what we’re doing is effective. People tell me all the time, “I watched the show with my mom, and my mom used to be extremely homophobic, extremely transphobic, extremely racist, and now we’re actually having conversations about it.” And goddamn it, I like doing it this way. [Laughs.] It’s fun, and it’s glitzy, and it feels fantastic, quite frankly.

EUREKA : And Bob just loves saying goddamn it.

BOB: Goddamn it.

Bob, lastly, I loved the dichotomy of you being out and proud in “BLACK” and the very demure and controlled version of your responses to hate in “We’re Here.”

BOB: Well, thank you, and I would love for you

all to go and check out my music video for “BLACK.” I’m really, really proud of it. It’s me, Basit, Ocean Kelly, and it’s directed by Marvin Brown, one of the creative directors of “We’re Here,” and I love it. Check it out.

EUREKA : Sponsored by Eureka, too, with two big thumbs up, honey. It is big, old, fat, white, pussy-approved, honey. [Laughs.] Eureka, anything that you’d like to leave readers with?

EUREKA : Send love to everybody, let them know that [my new song] “Big Mawma” is coming out, and it’s about caretaking for others and lifting each other up in need, and it’s about celebrating each other, and it’s about body positivity. And, more than that, it’s celebrating the big, fat, juicy heart of big Mawma and also celebrating me and my voice and the gender expression in my voice. I used to be really afraid to sing with my male vocals because I always wanted to be feminine, and I really celebrate my natural male talents as far as stereotypically male vocal talents. And it opened my eyes to loving another little piece of myself, so, hopefully, the [audience] can, too. Everything’s always so much deeper with me. I’m like a poet and didn’t know it, you know? Q

Catch “We’re Here” on HBO Max. Watch “BLACK” by Bob the Drag Queen at youtu.be/0dgcinDYxps and “WERQ!” by Eureka O’Hara at youtu.be/SuGSAIrduYQ

Micah and Bob the Drag Queen

PrEP advocate Damon L. Jacobs gets real (and naked) in splashy web series

BY NEAL BROVERMAN

‘What do you like about your body?”

That’s typically one of the first questions that therapist, life coach, author, PrEP promoter, and longtime HIV activist Damon L. Jacobs asks his guests on his YouTube show, “Tub Talks With Damon L. Jacobs.” This query is posed while Jacobs and his guests (mostly men, but sometimes women, too) are naked and sitting inches from each other in a sudsy bathtub.

The series allows people like a U=U proponent [Randy Davis], a sex writer [Alexander Cheves], a “thickfluencer” [Alex Borsa], a journalist and ACT-UP legend [Liz Highleyman], and even one of President Obama’s HIV experts [Greg Millett] to talk about everything from self-esteem to self-care to substance abuse to sex positivity.

“Tub Talks,” now with dozens of episodes available, is the latest feather in Jacobs’ cap, a New York-based marriage and family therapist who first became known in HIV circles for his early support of PrEP and U=U knowledge. Jacobs spoke to us recently about the origin of “Tub Talks” and why so many people let loose when their clothes come off.

Tell us about your work as a therapist and the kind of folks you specialize in helping. I have been proudly serving the LGBT community as a psychotherapist since 1996, in private practice in New York City in 2010. My work

utilizes facets of cognitive behavioral therapy, Buddhism, and a little bit of Cher, to help people experience peace, power, and pleasure in their daily lives.

How did you get connected with the HIV-positive community? I came out as a teenager in the 1980s, at a time when AIDS was devastating our community.

I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1990, where I loved and lost several friends, coworkers, lovers, clients, roommates, to AIDS. It seemed incumbent on me to challenge my training as a traditional “therapist,” i.e., the kind that sits on their ass in an office all day. If I was going to take my role seriously as a healer, it means standing up, getting out, acting up, fighting back, and doing something, anything, to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS. I started volunteering to facilitate “Rubberward Parties” on college campuses in 1991 and have just continued to work/volunteer in HIV prevention in some capacity ever since.

Your “Tub Talks” series is incredible. Where did the idea spring from? Thank you! I originally got the idea from a friend of mine in San Francisco, Mike Enders, who did his own bathtub series in the early 2010s. I got to be a guest on one of his last shows, and it was the most fun interview I ever had. I thought — what a wonderful way to talk about ideas, hopes, dreams, and struggles, by sitting naked in a bath-

tub with another person! Around that same time, I was talking with my friend Matt about his work as an escort, and how often most of his sessions centered around a naked man telling him his inner thoughts and fears. I realized that as a sex worker, Matt’s clients were often more open and trusting with him than many of my clients were with me — that people, in general, are so much more honest and vulnerable when they are naked than when they have their clothed defenses on.

When I turned 50 years old in 2021, I wrote an online series about the 50 lessons that helped me to get older with power, purpose, and pleasure [50lessonsof50.com]. It was while writing this series that Covid vaccines became widely accessible, rates were coming down, and I was reminded that New York City is home to some of the most interesting individuals in the world. Actors, activists, healers, leaders, educators, entertainers, AIDS historians — wouldn’t it be interesting to capture their experiences and words of wisdom on video? Wouldn’t it be fun to listen to their experiences of aging, healing, grieving, celebrating sexual empowerment, and creative expression while taking a bath together? In the summer of 2021, I asked a few friends if they would be willing to come take a bath with me, and almost all said yes. I started airing these interviews on September 13, 2021, and from there, the momentum went forward.

Yet another source of inspiration was the fact that I continuously go to HIV conferences where people sit around and say, “Why can’t we get people to use PrEP? How do we get people to learn about U=U?” And I’m like — maybe it’s time to try to not do the same thing over and over again and expect different results! What if we communicated and taught about sexual health and pleasure in creative ways that aren’t being done by hundreds of other people? That was part of it as well — could I deliver education and information in a way that is innovative and entertaining? I’m trying!

Have to ask: Have all your guests actually been naked? Yes. Except for one. Do conversations flow easier while folks are squeezed together with little to no clothes

on? Conversations flow so much more naturally when we are naked! Whether it’s in a bathtub, on a beach, by a pool, or in a bed. People’s minds and thoughts are so much freer when they are not encumbered by clothes. I have done so many bullshit interviews in my time — I used to do some red-carpet stuff at the Daytime Emmys and at the GLAAD awards. Those are absolute piffle — they rarely contain any meaning or depth. It’s three minutes of me asking people how they’re feeling and who they are wearing. So I reevaluated during COVID — if I ever was to do interviews again, they have to be real, not fake. They have to contain sustenance, not verbal masturbation. When people are naked, they are real. When people are open, they are able to share words of insight and wisdom that can help change people’s lives. Those are the only kinds of interviews I want to do anymore. Talk a little about how different life is now than two years ago — you’re hosting a bathtub series now and in 2020 we couldn’t even be in the same room as strangers. Right, so this is one of the reasons I waited until 2021 to start filming. I really wanted to start the series back in 2018, but at the time, I was too busy with my private practice and traveling/teaching about PrEP to commit adequate time to the tub. Then COVID hit — and that clearly was not an ideal time either. But by the time I started shooting the first episodes in the summer of 2021, everyone had access to the vaccines. So shooting interviews in 2022 is delightfully different from anything we could have done

safely in 2020, and I’m just so grateful that science and technology made it possible for us to connect and take baths together again. “No masks, no underwear.”

Do you think the worst of monkeypox is behind the LGBTQ+ and HIV+ communities? The data suggest that the worst of monkeypox is behind us. And to me, that makes sense — it’s not like we had to reinvent the wheel here. Effective vaccines were already developed, and the science was already available. It was just a matter of the government and health departments using them — and that has been the biggest disappointment for me. In New York City, the monkeypox vaccine distribution is a complete embarrassment, especially because they just did the same thing with COVID vaccines. They created a system that perpetuates racial disparities in vaccine access. It’s not like we didn’t see this one year earlier with COVID. And I’m skeptical anyone learned their lesson from MPX, either. But yes, I do think that thanks to the eventual vaccine distribution happening now, we are on the other side of what could have been so much more painful and traumatic.

How are you feeling about the state of HIV right now, especially with World AIDS Day this month? Are you hopeful with some of the advances, like injectables and Covid research, or discouraged that we’re not yet at a vaccine or cure stage? I don’t get discouraged so much, as I’m a realist. I’ve been working in this field for 31 years. It was dubious then that we would ever have a vaccine or a cure for HIV, and it’s pretty dubious now. Are there strides forward? Yes.

Are there incredible people working their asses off to make that happen? Yes. Is there sufficient money and funding to make it happen? As far as I know, yes. But HIV is a very tricky virus to cure, and I’m not sure I’ll see a cure or an effective vaccine in my lifetime. Meanwhile — injectable PrEP allows you to reduce your risk of acquiring HIV by nearly 100 percent, and all you have to do is get a shot every eight weeks. What is the effective difference between that and a vaccine?

My hope rests more in people understanding and utilizing biomedical interventions to embrace sexual health and pleasure. We have three FDA-approved ways of using PrEP now and more than 50

FDA-approved medications that help someone living with HIV become undetectable. Some of those drugs only have to be taken once a day. When someone is undetectable, they are untransmittable, meaning they cannot give HIV to their sexual partners [“U=U”]. When I see people organizing, celebrating, and connecting around their joy of sexual empowerment, that is where I feel hope. That is where I’ve witnessed substantial change. Q

Tub Talks with Damon L. Jacobs is at youtube.com/user/DamonLJacobs/ Neal Broverman is the editorial director of Plus magazine. This column is a project of TheBody, Plus, Positively Aware, POZ, Q Syndicate, and QSaltLake Magazine. Visit their websites — thebody.com, hivplusmag. com, positivelyaware.com, and poz.com — for the latest updates on HIV/AIDS.

From one whale to another: watching ‘The Whale’ as a fat queer man

BY SEAN DONOVAN

WhenBrendan Fraser’s character Charlie first appears in director Darren Aronofsky’s new film “The Whale,” he is masturbating to gay porn. Shown first as an anonymous shape sitting on a couch, Charlie is circled by the camera tentatively, as if it’s afraid to approach him too quickly, a reticence that is hard to distinguish as a fear of what Charlie is doing or a fear of what Charlie is.

Regardless, a fear it is, in a film where the dominant emotion alternates between slightly removed shock and condescending sympathy. But this entanglement at the center of the film’s representation leads one to ask: gay or fat, what’s the “shocker” here? Which one is shocking, and which one is the provenance of patronizing faux concern?

Charlie weighs roughly 600 pounds, we are told in the film, and in his physical condition is largely housebound, confined to a small apartment in Idaho where he teaches a writing composition class online. The entirety of the film takes place inside this apartment, a sign of its origins as a play. It’s a device intended to place the viewer in Charlie’s solitary life, interrupted intermittently by visits from his best friend and unofficial nurse Liz (Hong Chau), his estranged daughter Ellie (Sadie Sink), ex-wife (Samantha Morton), and a

Mormon missionary (Ty Simpkins). “The Whale” has attracted publicity and interest as a comeback vehicle for Fraser, a heartthrob in the ’90s and early 2000s who has since faded from stardom. What has acquired less media attention is the film’s notability as the rare film — one privileged to have a great deal of film festival buzz, a major Oscar-nominated director, and a boutique distributor in A24 — to focus on the life of a fat gay man, potentially opening up a community to media representation that often lacks it.

I can’t be alone in facing this kind of representation with fear. When you’re a person of one or several minoritarian identities, seeing a film or television show allegedly “about” someone like you can be a discomforting process of coming face to face with how you are seen in the imaginations of others. Any excitement you had to “feel seen” stands to be outweighed by the disappointment of finding loaded misrecognitions in its place.

Unfortunately, my experience watching “The Whale” was more of the latter. There I sat in the theater, one whale watching another, hoping to find just a trace of connection between the two of us. Instead Fraser’s Charlie, in a fat suit and layers of prosthetic makeup, feels overcome by the baggage of a world

doubly homophobic and tyrannically favoring thin body shapes, rendering the actual lived reality of a fat gay man somewhat sketchy and unconvincing, his consciousness written by belief systems that seek to destroy him.

As a fumbling, awkward teenager, much of my life was defined by keeping my queer sexuality a secret at all costs, scared enough of the straight world around me that, even without a direct threat of physical violence to me personally, I simply couldn’t imagine what a livable queer adulthood would look like. I was in an uneasy purgatory adolescence, seemingly awaiting nothing but gay hell (incidentally, great nightclub idea).

An image that sticks out to me now is from the TV series “Glee,” the first season of which aired in my senior year of high school, when the closet was becoming truly unlivable and I was starting to stick limbs out of it in a confused, furtive panic. Chris Colfer’s character, the young, starchy twink Kurt Hummel, was living a queer life, in all its challenges and pain, as well as its joys and validations.

The show was allegedly inspiring people — theoretically this could have provided a life raft for a young queer! But I looked at Kurt — trim, fashionable, small, cute — and I saw only new layers of blockages that

Sean Donovan

prevented me from imagining a queer life. Sure, someone like Kurt could be gay. So could the fleeting other images I saw — predominantly white men, if not small and twinky like Kurt then chiseled and muscular with an athletic physique, like the pack of men on “Queer as Folk.” But my body, my fatness, seemingly prevented me from finding a legible queer identity. My selflove and healthy self-image has soared since, but the vulnerabilities of queer adolescence are grave and formative.

Brendan Fraser played the kind of beefcake beauty I felt impossibly distant from in the 1998 film “Gods and Monsters,” a biopic of the gay 1930s horror filmmaker James Whale — another gay whale! — deliciously played by Ian McKellen. Fraser’s character Clayton Boone, Whale’s gardener, is certainly curious about his boss’s taboo flirtatiousness with him, when the film’s 1950s setting makes such flirtation criminal. Throughout the film we see Clayton re-conceptualizing his own physicality through Whale’s eyes, learning a new rhetoric of his own desirability that begins to excite him. I wish this openness to being desired existed for Fraser some 25 years later.

Fraser’s casting in “The Whale” — and his own body’s changes, not to the extent of 600 pounds but still weight beyond what mainstream Hollywood finds acceptable in a leading man — lends precious poignancy to the film, buoyed by Fraser’s sparkly eyes and light charisma evocative of his time as himbo par excellence in “George of the Jungle.”

I do believe that Fraser, who came forward as a victim of sexual assault in 2018, has a deep and sincere awareness of the troubled politics of existing in a body in this world, as it changes through different shapes of variable desirability, and as it is exposed to violence.

But Charlie the character’s body rarely coheres as a lived-in body on screen at all, and it’s not just because of the hotly debated fat suit. Sweat stains on his shirts look more like aestheticized ink blots than the signs of a real, sweating

person. When the film shows its cards as a story of depression and grief, Charlie’s obesity a manifestation of his negative emotions, it begins to feel jarringly vague, the man more of a metaphor with arms and legs than a human.

What realities are left unexplored when fat bodies like his stand as signposts for ideas rather than the bearers of complicated lives? The film is at its best when it slows down to capture Charlie’s daily routines, taking note of the difficulties a man of his size encounters, and the strategies he’s employed to get around them. Otherwise, “The Whale” resorts to an assemblage of slurring wet mouth sounds as we watch Charlie eat. Overwrought music cues emphasize how very pathetic the poor man is, living out a hopeless life both shocking and saddening.

Charlie is characterized as a saint and martyr, passively taking the beating of a brutal life. Not every film needs to be a story of joy — certainly people both queer and morbidly obese have more than their full share of tragedies that are worth exhuming and processing through storytelling. But the one-note nature of the film crafts a very limited picture of what the filmmakers think a body like Charlie’s is even capable of feeling.

The ticking clock generating tension in “The Whale” is a health emergency. Charlie’s showing signs of congestive heart failure, with a deeply troubling blood pressure ratio. Despite all this, Charlie refuses to go to a hospital. The reasons for this refusal eventually become clear as part of the film’s soap opera plotting, revolving around interpersonal secrets hidden and revealed, in a perfect example of the film’s failure to generate meaning and nuance out of Charlie’s identities as both a fat and gay man.

Hospitals are not neutral spaces for fat or queer people. Frequently they are places of immense judgment and mockery. Despite efforts to change, healthcare offices for many are reminders of what kinds of bodies and sexualities are most comfortably in tune with dominant pat-

terns of social life. Like every other fat and/or queer person I know, I have had doctors diminish unrelated health concerns due to my fatness (“You just need to lose weight”) and stumble awkwardly over my sexuality in advice about sexual health and wellness. The shame felt in medical spaces is a real danger to queer and fat populations, causing us to avoid them precisely when they are the most needed. These contexts never come up in “The Whale,” to its detriment, as they could have invested the film with the breath of true challenges and barriers facing queer and fat people in the world.

In the play upon which “The Whale” is based, scenes end with the sounds of splashing waves, in reference to the essay on “Moby-Dick” Charlie continually clings to as an example of superlative writing, and in his own existence as a large, doomed animal. Perhaps too theatrical for film, this fantastical gesture is replaced with rain pouring down on Charlie’s apartment, keeping the same water-drenched vibe, but by more realistic means. The play’s version, as small a gesture as it is, allows us to imagine just for a moment whales as figures of serenity, even grace — not aberrations incompatible with their landscape. Large, majestic creatures, the kings and queens of the oceans!

Fat gay men have spent many years, dating to at least the 1970s, if not earlier, using bears as a cultural symbol, identifying not just with their large hairiness but their cuddly appearance, an animal comparison born of affection and warmth. I wonder what this film could have been had it embraced the whale. Media’s ability to conjure new possibilities of ways to be queer in this world can and should encompass a mode of being a fat queer defined not by the fear and shock of outsider’s eyes, but an embracing of self and body. I think Charlie deserves it. Q Sean M. Donovan (he/his) is a graduate student in film and media studies at the University of Michigan and a programmer for the Ann Arbor Film Festival. You can find him at @theseanmdonovan on Twitter.

Nerdvana in the heart of Salt Lake: The Legendarium

BY ALPHA MERCURY

In Salt Lake City, at the northeast corner of Harvey Milk Boulevard and Blair Street (345 East), is a two-story converted residence. Above the entrance, flanked by hanging banners depicting the White Tree of Gondor from The Lord of the Rings and the Rebel Starbird emblem from Star Wars, is a sign reading “LEGENDARIUM.” Upon entering, one finds themselves in a science fiction, fantasy, and horror bookstore and role-play gaming café that is a safe and inclusive space for LGBTQ+ people, with a curated selection of books and merchandise specifically for them and other under-represented communities. Some might say Legendarium is an LGBTQ+ genre fan’s dream — a hybrid of a magical forest with new discoveries waiting around every corner and a friendly inn that Hobbits, Elves, Dwarves, Rangers, and Warrior Princesses would frequent.

wanted to create a space that felt like it was first and foremost a community-safe space for people to go to,” Raelle said. “All members of the family are welcome.”

Being a safe space for queer youth is very important to the Blatters. “We’ve made it clear to any young person that needs a place to go after school, to do homework, to hang out, just to feel safe — is welcome here, and they don’t have to make purchases. There are no caveats for them being here,” Stephanie said.

Growing up as a queer fan of these genres herself, Stephanie wished she had seen herself in these kinds of stories. “I felt like I was alone,” she told me. “The first time I read a science fiction book that challenged gender and had queer characters, I just devoured it.”

anie said. “You wouldn’t be able to have a conversation about it. That’s the most exciting part is when someone comes in, and we can just nerd out about this unique, fabulous, life-changing book. Then they get excited about it … we have such a beautiful community that wants to see small businesses thrive.”

Legendarium not only stocks a selection of science fiction, fantasy, and horror books, graphic novels, young adult and middle-grade books for LGBTQ+ readers, arts and crafts by local artists, café offerings; it also hosts weekly Dungeons & Dragons campaigns, local author events, and writer’s groups. They’ve even had D&D birthday parties. The sisters also informed me that, although they only stock genre books in-store, they can order any book for customers that’s currently available.

Sisters Stephanie and Raelle Blatter are the owners and proprietors of Legendarium. I sat down with them recently to talk about the need for places like this. They relayed that in their experience, authors and publishers of science fiction, fantasy, and horror books and RPG games have become increasingly more forward-thinking, inclusionary, and willing to highlight underrepresented voices. However, some traditional retailers that offer those books and games have been less welcoming to LGBTQ+ people. “We

Legendarium opened its doors at the end of August 2022 and has seen success so far, including hosting a growing community of repeat (sometimes daily) customers and new ones every day. “Seeing that people consistently want to return to this space, that feels like victory right there,” Stephanie says.

A brick-and-mortar bookstore offers a more personalized experience for customers than an online retailer. “When you specialize in a genre like this, you can really highlight interesting reads that people may not even find on Amazon or Goodreads through searches because they wouldn’t pop up,” Steph-

“We’re not trying to compete with Amazon in terms of price or anything,” Raelle says, “we’re just trying to create a space that the community needs and that the community can keep around.” Q

The Legendarium is located at 349 E. 900 South. Reach them at 801-474-6159, info@legendariumbooks.com, their website, Legendariumbooks.com, Instagram @legendariumbooks, Facebook: @ thelegendarium, Twitter: @legendariumbook, Discord: discord.gg/BrRe4Mf9

Alpha Mercury has been a science fiction, fantasy, and horror fan since he watched the Rankin/Bass animated adaptation of The Hobbit on television in 1977. He was eight years old. Alpha Mercury lives with his family in Salt Lake City. Write to him at kink@qsaltlake.com.

Wanda Psyches Us Up

ACROSS

Perkins’ “Psycho” role

Arty gay-friendly district

Begin to wake up

Start of a Sappho title, perhaps

Not now

Name repeated in a Stein quote

Mapplethorpe’s “Dark Rose”

“The African Queen” author

Apple that isn’t a fruit

Start of a quote from Wanda Sykes

Blood classification syst.

Org. in many spy movies

Crossed through

Like the space around Uranus

Ancient provincial governor

Loeb’s partner

Marsupial with a forked penis

Prefix with tubbies

More of the quote

Former senior

Top, to a bottom

“Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” author John

Nero’s tutor

Give the slip to

Gielgud’s john

Chess queen, ironically

Caesar’s lang.

End of the quote

What you can take from me

Staying power, in “Variety”

Kahlo’s cohort

Blazing star

Colorado, to Cocteau

“The Brady Bunch” episode

Emulated da Vinci

Comes together

“Love Affair” costar Dunne

Lack of zip

Musical featuring “Cheek to Cheek”

Carmela of “The Sopranos”

Qmmunity Groups

BUSINESS

LGBTQ-Affirmative Psycho-therapists Guild of Utah

 lgbtqtherapists.com

* jim@lgbtqtherapists.com

Utah LGBTQ+ Chamber of Commerce

 utahlgbtqchamber.com

* info@utahgaychamber.com

LGBT & Allied Lawyers of Utah

 lgbtutahlawyers.com

* lgbtutahlawyers@gmail.com

Utah Independent Business Coalition

 utahindependentbusiness.org 801-879-4928

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  bit.ly/ppauslchiv 654 S 900 E 801-322-5571

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

Weber-Morgan Health Mon., Weds 1-4:30p 477 23rd St, Ogden Appt 801-399-7250

HOMELESS SVCS

VOA Homeless Youth Resource Ctr, ages 15–21 880 S 400 W 801-364-0744

Transition Homes: Young Men’s 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 Stonewall Democrats  utahstonewalldemocrats.org  fb.me/ utahstonewalldems

RELIGIOUS

First Baptist Church

 firstbaptist-slc.org

* office@firstbaptistslc.org 11a Sundays 777 S 1300 E 801-582-4921

Sacred Light of Christ  slcchurch.org 823 S 600 E 801-595-0052

11a Sundays

SOCIAL

1 to 5 Club (bisexual)  fb.me/1to5ClubUtah

* 1to5club@ utahpridecenter.org

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

Flaming Man  menwhomove.org

OWLS of Utah (Older, Wiser, Lesbian. Sisters)  bit.ly/owlsutah qVinum Wine Tasting  qvinum.com Seniors Out and Proud  fb.me/soaputah * info@soaputah.org 801-856-4255

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 Utah Male Naturists  umen.org * info@umen.org

Utah Pride Center  utahpridecenter.org * info@utahpridecenter.org 1380 S Main St 801-539-8800 Venture OUT Utah  bit.ly/GetOutsideUtah

SPORTS

QUAC — Queer Utah Aquatic Club  quacquac.org * questions@ quacquac.org Salt Lake Goodtime Bowling League  bit.ly/slgoodtime Stonewall Sports SLC  fb.me/SLCStonewall  stonewallsaltlakecity. leagueapps.com 385-243-1828

Utah Gay Football League  fb.me/UtahGayFootballLeague Venture Out Utah  facebook.com/groups/ Venture.OUT.Utah

SUPPORT

Alcoholics Anonymous 801-484-7871  utahaa.org LGBT meetings: Sun. 3p Acceptance Group, All Saints Episcopal Church, 1710 Foothill Dr Tues. 8p Live & Let Live, Mt Tabor Lutheran, 175 S 700 E Wed. 7p Sober Today, 1159 30th St , Ogden Wed. 7p Bountiful Men’s Group, Am. Baptist Btfl Church, 1955 Orchard Dr Fri. 7p Stonewall Group, Mt Tabor Lutheran, 175 S 700 E Crystal Meth Anon  crystalmeth.org Sun. 2:30pm Clean, Sober & Proud LGBTQIA+Straight Alano Club, 5056 Commerce Dr, Murray

Genderbands  genderbands.org fb.me/genderbands LifeRing Secular Recovery 801-608-8146  liferingutah.org Weds. 7pm, How was your week? First Baptist Church, 777 S 1300 E Sat. 11am, How was your week? First Baptist Church, 777 S 1300 E

LGBTQ-Affirmative Psycho-therapists Guild of Utah

 lgbtqtherapists.com * robin@lgbtqtherapists.com

Gay Men’s Peer Support Group Tues, 6:30pm  utahpridecenter.org/ mental-health/mens-sg/ * Therapy@ utahpridecenter.org

Parent & Caregiver Support Group Mon 6:45pm  utahpridecenter.org/ youth--programs/

Survivors of Suicide Attempt  utahpridecenter.org/ mental-health/sosa/

Trans & Nonbinary Adult Support Thurs, 6pm  utahpridecenter.org/ programs/lgbtq-adults/ * tnbsupport@ utahpridecenter.org

TransAction Sun, 1:30pm  utahpridecenter. org/adult-programs/ transaction/ Sundays 2–3:30pm

Women’s Support Group Wed 6pm  utahpridecenter. org/mental-health/ womens-sg/

* womensupport@ utahpridecenter.org

Youth Support Group ages 10-14, 14-20  utahpridecenter. org/youth-programs/ YOUTH/COLLEGE

Encircle LGBTQ Family and Youth Resource Ctr  encircletogether.org fb.me/encircletogether 91 W 200 S, Provo, 190 S 100 E, St. George 331 S 600 E, SLC

Gay-Straight Alliance Network

 gsanetwork.org

The OUT Foundation

 theout.foundation  fb.me/theOUTfoundation

Salt Lake Community College LGBTQ+  slcc.edu/lgbtq/

University of Utah LGBT Resource Center

 lgbt.utah.edu 200 S Central Campus Dr Rm 409, M-F, 8a-5p 801-587-7973

USGA at BYU  usgabyu.com  fb.me/UsgaAtByu

Utah State Univ. Access & Diversity Ctr  inclusion.usu.edu/ lgbtqa

Utah Valley Univ Spectrum  facebook.com/ groups/uvuspectrum

Weber State University LGBT Resource Center  weber.edu/ lgbtresourcecenter 801-626-7271

Westminster Diversity Center

Bassis 105, M-F 8a-5p  estminstercollege. edu/diversity

Youth Activity Night ages 10-14, 14-20  utahpridecenter.org/ youth-programs/

the bookworm sez

REVIEW BY TERRI SCHLICHENMEYER

Plain: A Memoir of Mennonite Girlhood

BY MARY ALICE HOSTETTER C.2022, UNIV. OF WISCONSIN PRESS,

$26.95, 160 PAGES

Every kid wants to fit in. The shoes everyone else has are mandatory, and flashing a movie character is key. Same brand of notebook, even the same kind of pens could matter if you hoped to be on the good side of the Popular Kids. Everyone wants to fit in but in the new book, “Plain” by Mary Alice Hostetter, going against the tide can eventually work out fine, too. The table in the kitchen

q scopes

FEBRUARY

BY SAM KELLEY-MILLS

ARIES March 20–April 19

The season for reflection is here. Take a good look at yourself but don’t make quick changes without introspection. The best relationship you can have is one with yourself. Acceptance is a key to happiness.

TAURUS Apr 20–May 20

Though it might seem like a tough act to follow, you have been through a good time and wish for it to continue. You can top the celebrations of the past by embracing a positive outlook.

GEMINI May 21–June 20

Patience is a good thing to have but real change doesn’t come from sitting around waiting for it. Take control and plant the

where Mary Alice Hostetter grew up was a long one; it had to be, to fit twelve children and two parents. The kitchen was the hub of the large Mennonite family, and though her parents never said the L-word, “treats like doughnuts were as clear an expression of love as hearing the words.”

Born in her parents’ bedroom in rural Pennsylvania, Hostetter remembers that there was a strict division between women’s work and men’s work among the pacifist Mennonites. Her father and brothers tended the farm, while her mother tended home and children. And yet, when she was needed, Hostetter was allowed to do “boy’s work,” and it left a heady feeling.

Figuring out her own recipe for soup at age ten was a moment of pride, but Hostetter longed for more. What was it like to have

seeds of change. Then you can rest while perfection flourishes.

CANCER June 21–July 22

Small moves will lead to big results over time. Enjoy the simple pleasures, either alone or with someone you care about. Focus on a relationship you want to improve and enjoy them.

LEO July 23–August 22

Ensure that others hear your message by speaking softly in a small space. The greatest attention comes from intimacy so don’t fear bring a cherished person closer in your inner circle.

VIRGO August 23–Sep 2

The arguments you make today will baffle you tomorrow. Figure out core truths of what you want when dealing with others. It is a good time for love and satisfying encounters, so chill out.

your own bedroom? How would feel to have sunshine on her legs instead of a long dress, for modesty?

At fourteen, she struggled with a main tenet of her faith; at fifteen, she accepted that tenet, attended church, and tried to be a good daughter, but life outside the community beckoned. Hostetter wanted to go to college.

Her parents wanted her to wait and see if she might want a family first.

Her growing up was “such a beautiful way of life,” she says, and “I sometimes felt almost proud I was part of that way of life... until I remembered how eager I was to get away as soon as I could.”

In “Plain,” author Mary Alice Hostetter writes, among other gentle memories, of her mother as a storyteller. Can something like that be inherited? Because Hostetter is a storyteller, too — and a fine one, at that.

If you’ve ever been a fan of “The Waltons” or Laura Ingalls Wilder, you have an inkling of the kind of old-fashioned tales you’ll find in Hostetter’s book. Life is quiet on her parents’ farm, she and her siblings each have two pairs of shoes (one for “good,” one for chores), dinnertime is family time, and modern things rarely appear.

The difference is that Hostetter’s tales are warm, but not cheerful. Proud, but also embarrassed. They chafe with the need to escape, but with one foot still on the farm and despite a quick, surprise happy ending and another kind of L-word, they leave hanging a wonder of what might have been.

But don’t hang. Instead, enjoy this book and leave it on the table, because you might want to read it again. “Plain” is worthy, and short enough to fit in your schedule now. Q

LIBRA Sept 23–October 22

Even a napping cat seems to have much going on in their mind. Remember that calm is an illusion and downtime is a good time to breath. The chaos in your life can be easily remedied.

SCORPIO Oct 23–Nov 21

Letting go of things you don’t understand will help in determining what really matters. Don’t try juggling or you’ll lose all the balls. Simplify your agenda and you’ll see things balance out.

SAGITTARIUS

Nov 22–December 20

True love means spending time with those you care about. Make each moment count with others by putting them first while enjoying a mutual experience. A joint venture is the key element.

CAPRICORN Dec 21–Jan 19

Even when feelings are low, your intentions are high. Pick a focus and let things pan out. It might seem tempting to give up or give in but there is nothing more satisfying than completion.

AQUARIUS Jan 20–Feb 18

Riding the waves of emotional turbulence can seem both scary and fun. The worry will vanish by focusing on someone who keeps you grounded. In the end it’s all about embracing true love.

PISCES Feb 19–Mar 19

The truth is often very compelling so seek it out in your affairs with others. Learn and request to know what others are perceiving. The amusement comes with seeing a personal puzzle solved. Q

Valentine’s ideas

Valentine’s

deep inside hollywood

BY ROMEO SAN VICENTE

Hurricane Bianca whips up a third storm

If you’ve been following drag artist Bianca Del Rio’s “Hurricane Bianca” film franchise — and you are or you’re not living well — you’ll be happy to learn that another one is on the way. On the heels of “Hurricane Bianca” and “Hurricane Bianca: From Russia with Hate” comes “Hurricane Bianca: The Roots of All Evil,” due to shoot in early 2023. Written and directed by “Hurricane” vet Matt Kugelman, the story will follow Bianca as she drives her homophobic-fast-food-chain-owning mother out of business (and we assume chicken sandwiches are somehow involved).

Casting is still underway but so far the supporting team includes Willam Belli (“A Star is Born”), Rachel Dratch (“Wine Country”) and fellow drag superstar Vanessa Vanjie Mateo. We know that the answer to drag queen haters is more drag queens, and if it also involves a “Dynasty”-style family feud, that’s even better. Look forward to this one sometime later in the year.

One to Watch: ‘Willow’ star Erin Kellyman

Queer actor Erin Kellyman plays Jade, the knight-in-training on the Disney+ fantasy series “Willow,” where she’s been given a will-they-or-won’t-they lesbian storyline (answer: yeah, they will). Now the up-andcomer is co-starring in the latest film from acclaimed director Steve McQueen. It’s called “Blitz,” it’s a World War II drama, and that’s that on plot details so far. But Kellyman joins a solid cast: Saoirse Ronan (“Little Women”), Stephen Graham (“The Irishman”), Harris Dickinson (“Triangle of Sadness”), Kathy Burke (“Absolutely Fabulous”) and UK music legend Paul Weller, known for his bands The Jam and The Style Council. Shooting is underway so keep this one — and Kellyman (there can never be enough queers in the cinema) — on your radar for later in the year.

Will

2023 be the year

Dies Dreaming’?

Xochitl Gonzalez’s debut novel, “Olga Dies Dreaming,” was a literary highlight of 2022, and before it was even published, back in 2021, Hulu ordered a series based

on the book. Of course, these things take time and so we wait patiently for the Aubrey Plaza-starring project to come to that streaming platform. It’s the story of Olga (Plaza) and Prieto (Ramon Rodriguez, “The One and Only Ivan”), two Puerto Rican siblings in Brooklyn who face family challenges and difficult truths about their past, set during the days just before 2017’s Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico. And the supporting cast — Jesse Williams, Daphne Rubin-Vega and Liza Colon-Zayas (“The Bear”) — packs a punch. We follow Aubrey Plaza anywhere she goes (especially if we get a sequel to “Happiest Season” where she and Kristen Stewart finally get together) but we’re especially enjoying her dramatic turns of late, so this one is at the top of our watch list.

Mark your queer movie calendar for ‘Knock at the Cabin’

This one went a little under the radar, and that’s to be expected from M. Night Shy-

amalan, whose twist-filled movies reward going in fresh, but his latest, “Knock at The Cabin,” is among 2023’s first queerthemed film releases, and worth noting. Based on Paul Tremblay’s 2018 horror novel, “The Cabin at the End of the World,” it stars gay actors Jonathan Groff and Ben Aldridge (“Spoiler Alert”) as a couple who rent a secluded cabin in the woods with their young daughter (Kristen Cui). And if you’ve ever seen a movie about anyone in a cabin the woods, you know what’s in store. Of course, since this a Shyamalan film, you also might not. Strangers arrive, among them Dave Bautista (“Glass Onion”) and Harry Potter alum Rupert Grint, who hold the family hostage for a very strange reason, forcing them to fight back. Once you’ve caught up on “Tar” and the other queer-themed Oscar hopefuls, you can satisfy your scary movie needs when this opens in early February. Q

Romeo San Vicente knows his “Evil Dead” lore enough to always book a hotel.

Gay stuff at the Golden Globes

BY CRAIG OGAN

The 80th annual Golden Globe Awards included some very queer moments. Starting with the host, breakout gay comedian JERROD CARMICHAEL . Many of the people and programs featured and honored fit the queer bill, too. Big winners included LGBTQ-inclusive films and shows like “The White Lotus,” “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and “Tár.” Also honored were gay TV writer, producer, and director Ryan Murphy — creator of “Glee,” “Pose,” and the “American Horror Story” series.

JERROD CARMICHAEL apologized to “White Lotus” star Jennifer Coolidge, “on behalf of all the gays.” He was referring to her character’s mistreatment on the show at the hands of a “group of evil ‘high-end” gays with mafia ties.”

MICHELLE YEOH, accepting the “Best Actress in a musical or comedy,” gives a shoutout to Jamie Lee Curtis. She exclaimed that Curtis was her “hot dog lover,” a reference to their characters’ hot-dog-like fingers in the film.

Actor and singer ZENDAYA won a Golden Globe for her role as troubled

queer teen Rue Bennett in “Euphoria.”

BILLY PORTER , in a fierce fuchsia tuxedo gown, introduced winner RYAN MURPHY with a passionate speech about making a gay place for himself in the entertainment business. “In the early aughts, when my Black gay ass decided to come out to Hollywood and try my luck at this film and television thing for the first time, I discovered on Day One that Hollywood wasn’t having all this Black boy joy yet,” said Porter. He found acceptance and has been in several of Murphy’s gay-friendly productions.

Murphy received the Carol Burnett Award for Achievement in Television. His acceptance speech was dedicated to and aimed at LGBT actors and productions with whom he’s worked. He said he did that “to make a point of hope and progress.” He recounted that, as a youngster watching television in the 1970s, “I never, ever saw a person like me getting an award or even being a character on a TV show.” Wags said he must have missed all of Bob Cumming’s tv career, any of Merv Griffin and his guests, and the many appearances of Tony Randall.

we get Aubrey Plaza in ‘Olga

Home Come Back’

and personal

BY DARRYL STAMP

lived so far? Would I be missed by my family? Would my friends remember me?

My play“Go

Home Come Back” grew out of my fears during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Reading and hearing about patients whose final conversations took place via FaceTime prompted me to reflect upon my life and my health. Being asthmatic and using inhalers for emergencies since childhood, memories of struggling to breathe came rushing back to me. I ruminated about my own mortality and the possibility of leaving my wife, daughter, and relatives behind. I thought about family members and friends who passed away without having loved ones by their side and wondered what I would say in my final moments.

That thought took me back to an incident in 2008 when I was driving up I-15 North in snowy and icy conditions. I was about to miss my exit ramp and foolishly attempted to cut over at the last minute. I slid on some ice and was about to crash into a wall, and I overcorrected my steering to avoid doing so. The car spun around 180 degrees and headed toward the cars behind me. At that moment, I yelled out, “I can’t believe I’m going to fucking die this way!” I was able to steer my car away from oncoming traffic and landed off to the side of the road just outside of the exit ramp.

In retrospect, I found it interesting that, having been someone who used to believe in God, I didn’t yell out something like, “Oh God, help me!” Years ago, I decided that I didn’t want to revere archetypal religious figures, and I would live my life in the spirit of several religious philosophies instead. I questioned whether I was lucky or if I had experienced a moment of divine intervention. The story of my life flashed in my head like a slideshow of obstacles, failures, regrets, loves, and successful accomplishments. If I died, would I be satisfied with the life I’ve

Then I thought about moments when I sensed the presence of my loved ones in my dreams, or through signs, symbols, even song lyrics while I was awake. I realized how grateful I was for those fleeting moments. Did they come back to let me know they’re watching over me, or to remind me of their love for me? If there was a way to come back, would I return to let my loved ones know that my spirit is with them? But where would I come back from?

These thoughts prompted me to write a play about having a second chance to be with those we love, who we would choose to share a final moment with, and what the afterlife might look like. So, I decided to create a twist on this familiar genre using magical realism

as a catalyst. I created characters that are flawed human beings who explore the real-world implications of their previous lives, and the consequences they face because of their efforts.

I hope audiences who see “Go Home Come Back” will consider that, since we don’t know what tomorrow brings, it’s incumbent upon us to embrace those we love, strengthen our friendships, and act with kindness, compassion, and forgiveness before our lives end.

“Go Home Come Back” is dedicated to the life and “soul vacations” of my mother Julia, and my Aunt Viola. Q

Darryl Stamp is a member of Plan-B Theatre’s Theatre Artists of Color Writing Workshop. His first play, Roar, premiered at Plan-B as part of an evening of short plays titled …Of Color. Go Home Come Back premieres February 24–March 5. Details and tickets at planbtheatre.org — click The Plays.

‘Go

is heartfelt, thought- provoking,

kink alley

Happy Polytine’s Day — End the tyranny of the Monogamy Myth

BY ALPHA MERCURY

In this month that features a holiday celebrating romantic relationships, I want to challenge a cultural assumption about those relationships I’ve always found reductive and limiting.

Is it safe to say that all of us in the LGBTQ+ community, and perhaps those of us in the intersection of that group and the Kink/Leather/Fetish/BDSM community even more, sensed from an early age that we were different? That there was something (or multiple somethings) about us that set us apart from most or all of the people around us?

Those of us who are successful at resisting the messages of shame and stigma about who we are and don’t succumb to ending our lives (as so many tragically don’t) have come to terms with a simple fact: many of the messages we receive from the culture around us simply aren’t true. Some examples: Being gay is unnatural and wrong. Being trans isn’t real. There are only two genders. The only legitimate romantic/erotic relationship is that of one man and one woman in a monogamous, legally-sanctioned life-long commitment. To live happy lives, we who are queer reject nearly all of those messages. Nearly all.

For some reason that I don’t understand, many queer people hold on to the “monogamous” part of the message about what a legitimate relationship is. They think that we can be happily queer in all of our variety, yet also believe that the only possible successful romantic/erotic relationship is with only one other person. We reject the “one man, one woman” part. We reject the “legally-sanctioned” part. We reject the “life-long” part. But many people cling to the “monogamous” part. That’s strange. For me, it’s like accepting that there’s no Santa Claus but still believing in the Easter Bunny or saying you’re vegan and ordering a steak. I call it the “Monogamy Myth.”

Why queer and kinky people believe the Monogamy Myth is not the focus of this exploration. What I’m here to do is challenge that belief. To

encourage people to free their minds and hearts of it. The Monogamy Myth has caused a lot of suffering in human life, and I think we should be free of it, especially as queer and kinky people.

I believe monogamy isn’t even a real thing. I believe it was invented by the Catholic church as a way of controlling women. To believe that you can be all things to your partner, that that person can be sexually satisfied by you and only you for the rest of their lives, strikes me as an exercise in insanity. Yet that is the narrative that is fed to all of us — especially straight women — all our lives by our surrounding culture. If monogamy at that level is the natural order (as religion propagandizes), why do almost half of heterosexual marriages end in divorce over marital infidelity? Because monogamy isn’t the norm in mammalian species. Yet so many of us proceed with the cultural delusion that it is, and that if our partner has sex with — or worse, feelings of love for — another person it is a betrayal worthy of ending the relationship over.

When I realized that all the messaging I’d heard all my life said there was something wrong with the fact that I was attracted to men was complete bullshit, I tossed it and all the assumptions that came with it in the trash bin. Including monogamy. The long-term romantic/erotic relationships I’ve had in my life have been polyamorous. Because that’s what makes the most sense. Love comes from an infinite well. To ration out love as if it’s in limited supply is to do a disservice to yourself and all those who might benefit from that love. Why be so limited? Maybe being kinky helps. Since those of us in the Kink/Leather/Fetish/BDSM community are already far outside the mainstream of what “acceptable” is, maybe it’s easier for us to imagine, create, and sustain partnerships that consist of more than two people.

Please understand that this exploration is in no way an attack on those LGBTQ+ couples who are happily monogamous (unless they’re secretly cheating on each

other.) I’m happy for them. What I’m challenging is the presumption that that romantic/erotic relationship configuration is the only legitimate one and all others are doomed to failure. To me, what’s doomed to failure is entering a partnership where either or both members believe they can satisfy all of the other person’s needs single-handedly for the rest of their lives — and if either of them seeks to satisfy needs elsewhere, there’s been a betrayal, and the relationship should end. Yet polyamorous relationships are usually viewed by the mainstream culture (even by many in our own LGBTQ+ community) as strange perversions that can’t be taken seriously and won’t last.

Are polyamorous relationships easy? Of course not. As with any human endeavor that has no support from the external culture and requires those involved to forge the path alone, the success rate is much lower than those with support. But that’s the fault of the culture, not the endeavor. The specter of jealousy is one that is always seeking to rise and wreak havoc in polyamorous relationships. One member might feel that they are being excluded by the others, and if not dealt with, that can lead to hurt feelings and wanting to leave the relationship. Making sure that everyone is included is something that every member learns and works on together. Polyamory isn’t easy. But neither is monogamy. Relationships aren’t easy! Any relationship worth having is worth working for, no matter what configuration it is. Not easy. But possible. And when it works, there’s nothing better.

So this festive Valentine’s Day month, I urge you to free your hearts and minds of the Monogamy Myth and don’t treat your love as if there’s a shortage of it. There are all kinds of amazing people out there — why settle for just one?

Happy Polytine’s Day! In Kink We Trust. Q

Have thoughts, questions, or comments about this column or anything to do with Kink? Write to me at kink@ qsaltlake.com, and I’ll print them and answer them in an upcoming column. Be safe, and have fun out there!

Alpha Mercury has been an out and proud member of the Kink/Leather/Fetish/BDSM community his entire adult life. He has a degree in Film Production from the University of Southern California and is an author of erotic fiction. Alpha Mercury lives with his polyamorous Leather Family in Salt Lake City.

the perils of petunia pap smear

The tale of Ice, Ice Baby

BY PETUNIA PAP SMEAR

road to Mandalay is fraught with danger and excitement.

The

Last week, I looked at the weather forecast — slushy rain, snow, ice, and freezing temperatures. My breasticles tend to get brittle and crack in the cold. My beehive hair gets all soggy and droops when it gets wet. And my sequined shoes are not well-suited to icy slick pavement. When I slip and fall, the U.S. Geological Survey usually registers it as about a 7.3 quake on the Richter scale. My bones began to ache just thinking about it. So, I decided it was time for this old queen to follow the examples of my sisters, the pink flamingos, and travel south for a brief respite.

Vegas seemed like an eminently doable post-Christmas escape for a desperate queen on a budget. So, I prepared to load up Queertanic, my beloved land yacht, with the barest of essentials.

On the twelfth day after Christmas, my true love told to me: load twelve caftans a flowing, eleven wigs in buckets, ten pairs of breasticles, nine shoes for dancing, eight fans for fanning, seven batteries charging, six bedazzled purses, five golden earrings… four bags of glitter, three pairs of glasses, two sequined capes, and your scooter so that you won’t have to walk.

(Be honest, could you read that without humming the Twelve Days of Christmas?)

After much white-knuckle driving through blizzardy conditions, we arrived in Vegas. God bless the snow tires! We stayed at Mandalay Bay. I needed all my queenly intuition to navigate the intricate and convoluted maze to enter the self-parking terrace. I began to unload the car to travel the quarter-mile distance from the parking terrace to our hotel room. Firstly, I unloaded my electric mobility scooter, Queertanic’s Mini-Me, aka Queerteeny.

I used a bungee cord to attach the handle of my exceedingly large rolling suitcase (have you ever seen a queen with a small case?) behind Queerteeny such that it resembled the little choo-

choo that could. Since we were in Mandalay, I felt like the railroad from the Bridge on the River Kwai. And I set off. I was so proud of my ingenuity.

We proceeded to drive through the parking terrace. Several onlookers applauded my resourcefulness as I drove past them, giving a suitable queenly wave. All was well until we reached the elevator. The little choo-choo that could, couldn’t fit into the elevator. Damn! So, I had to stop and uncouple the suitcase and schlep everything separately into the elevator, then re-couple everything again once we reached the casino floor. Then rinse and repeat when we got to the elevator to our room. So much for that “brilliant” idea.

After we got settled in our room, we decided to go see the Titanic Exhibit at the Luxor Casino, so we headed to the tram that connects the casinos. Queerteeny, when not encumbered with a caboose, is capable of speeds up to eighteen miles per hour. I gave into temptation and opened the throttle and sped through some of the more wideopen areas of the casino floor, performing a delicate slalom maneuver narrowly missing a few tourists. When he caught up, Mr. Pap Smear quietly admonished me that it was probably dangerous and most likely illegal for yours truly to be “bowling for tourists.” Consequently, I slowed down and rode Queerteeny onto the tram to go next door to the Luxor.

As we entered the great atrium of the Luxor pyramid, it suddenly became apparent that I had a here-to-fore unforeseen problem. Queerteeny, just like Queertanic, is pre-programmed to search out any and all buffets. It took all of my strength and willpower to steer her past the buffet and towards the Titanic exhibit. I’m sure, to the casual observer, I might have appeared to be a drunken driver. Once again, the long-suffering Mr. Pap Smear warned me about bowling for tourists.

As we entered the Titanic exhibit, it took all of my queenly skills to drive

Queerteeny slowly through the different rooms of the exhibit without accidentally running into any of the priceless displays. The different artifacts were amazing to see, and the audio story was very moving.

In the final room, there was a large section of the hull of the ship and a huge iceberg with a cold breeze blowing off it. The temperature was set to be very chilly so as to help the observer to feel how it may have been the same as the temperature on April 15, 1912, in the North Atlantic. Just as the audio recording gave a sound of the iceberg scraping the ship, I inadvertently bumped Queerteeny into a wall, and as the ship began to go down, Queetreeny’s left rear tire went flat.

Just like Titanic, Queerteeny went down! I was slightly comforted by the women-and-children-first directive. But then I felt conflicted that the captain, or queen in this case, should go down with the ship. Realizing that the Carpathia would not be rescuing me, I questioned how to get the injured Queerteeny back to our hotel. I improvised by leaning the majority of my weight, mostly breasticles, opposite the flat tire and limped ever so slowly back to Mandalay Bay on two wheels. This story leaves us with several important questions:

1. Do I need to get a license to be a railroad brakeman to couple and uncouple Queerteeny?

2. Should I apply for a patent for the new game, bowling for tourists?

3. Should I assign different point values for each category of person I knock over, such as grandmas and snotty kids?

4. How many extra points for hitting a Mormon Bishop?

5. Could this slalom driving count as training for the winter Olympics?

6. Would a drag queen be allowed with the women and children in the lifeboat?

These and other eternal questions will be answered in future chapters of The Perils of Petunia Pap Smear