PRIDE 2016 - Wisconsin Gazette

Transcription

PRIDE 2016
24 Sterling silver
The multi-talented
and ubiquitous Sarah
Silverman headlines
the opening night
of PrideFest
8 Remembering Joe Brehm
Milwaukee. She’s
LGBT Milwaukee lost one of its feeling very
most beloved allies in April, but ‘Laverne and
his legacy lives on at This Is It, Shirley.’
the city’s oldest gay bar.
32 The rainbow business
In the early days of gay Pride,
people had to
tie-dye their
own rainbow
T-shirts. Now
businesses see
gold at the end
of the rainbow.
44 Mapplethorpe revisited
Nearly 30 years
after his death,
controversial
gay artist Robert
Mapplethorpe is
getting a fresh
look, with major
exhibits and a
documentary.
Pride 2
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June 2, 2016
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June 2, 2016
Pride 3
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June 2, 2016
U.S. Pride: A calendar of 2016 Pride events
P hoto : D avid Y u
San Francisco City Hall illuminated for LGBT Pride.
Compiled by Lisa Neff
Staff writer
Even before the massive parades in San
Francisco and New York City later this
month, millions of people will go over the
rainbow for Pride.
A glance at the crowded U.S. Pride
calendar — heaviest in June to mark
the anniversary of the 1969 riots at the
Stonewall Inn in New York City and to
usher in the summer.
June
= June: CenLa Pride in Alexandria,
Louisiana; Boqueron Pride and San Juan
Pride in Puerto Rico; Cleveland Pride in
Ohio; El Paso Pride in Texas; NWA Pride
in Fayetteville, Arkansas; Rocket City
Pride in Huntsville, Alabama; Hampton
Roads Pride in Norfolk, Virginia; Utah
Pride in Salt Lake City.
= June 11-12: Pittsburgh Pride; Motor City
Pride in Detroit; Boston Pride.
= July 17: Kenosha Pride.
= June 17-18: Kentuckiana Pride in
Louisville.
= July 23: Reno Pride in Nevada.
= Sept. 27: Austin Pride in Texas.
= July 23-24: Pines Party on Fire Island in
New York; Baltimore Pride.
= Sept. 30-Oct. 2: Gay Days Disneyland in
California.
August
= August: West Street Beach Pride in
Laguna Beach, California; P-Town
Carnival in Provincetown, Massachusetts;
Toledo Pride.
October
= October: Ocala Pride Festival in Florida;
Northern Virginia Pride in Centerville;
South Carolina Pride in Colombia;
Jacksonville Pride in Florida; Tucson
Pride.
= June 17-19: Stonewall Columbus Pride
in Ohio; New Orleans Pride; Olympia
Capital Pride in Washington.
= June 17-25: Heartland Pride in Omaha.
= June 18: Rhode Island Pride in
Providence; Boise Pride; Wilton Manors
Pride in Florida.
Memphis.
= June 18-19: Portland Pride in Oregon.
= Aug. 6: Delaware Pride in Dover;
Delaware Pride Fest in Rehoboth.
= June 18-25: Anchorage Pride Festival.
= Aug. 13: Eugene Pride in Oregon.
= June 18-26: Chicago Pride.
= June 19-26: Houston Pride.
= Aug. 20-21: Charlotte Pride in North
Carolina.
= Oct. 8-9: Atlanta Pride.
= June 19-25: OC Pride in Orange County,
California.
= Aug. 21: Outreach Pride Parade and
Rally in Madison.
= Oct. 16: Central Arkansas Pride in Little
Rock.
= June 21-26: New York City Pride.
= Aug. 26-27: Michigan Pride in Lansing.
= June 24-25: Nashville Pride; Augusta
Pride in Georgia.
= Aug. 28: Silicon Valley Pride in San Jose.
= Oct. 16-17: Winston-Salem Pride in North
Carolina.
= June 24-26: St. Louis Pridefest;
Oklahoma City Pride; St. Pete Pride in
Florida.
= June 25: Central Oregon Pride in Bend;
Cincinnati Pride; Flagstaff Northern
Arizona Pride; Salisbury Pride in North
Carolina; Santa Fe Pride in New Mexico.
September
= September: North Carolina Pride
in Durham; Bluegrass Black Pride in
Lexington, Kentucky; Oregon Coast Pride
in Lincoln City; Sedona Pride in Arizona;
Wichita Pride in Kansas; San Gabriel
Valley Pride in Pasadena, California.
= June 9-12: Albuquerque Pride in New
Mexico.
= June 25-26: Twin Cities Pride in
Minnesota; San Francisco Pride.
= Sept. 6-11: Worcester Pride in
Massachusetts.
= June 26: Seattle Pridefest.
= June 10-12: Milwaukee PrideFest;
Des Moines Capital Pride in Iowa; Los
Angeles WeHo Pride; Capital Pride in
Washington, D.C.; Philadelphia Pride.
= Sept. 10: Pride Outloud Potluck Picnic in
Appleton.
July
= July: Bellingham Pride in Washington;
Deming Pride in New Mexico.
= Sept. 11: Pride Vermont in Burlington and
Oakland Pride in California.
= June 4: Honolulu Pride; Ferndale Pride in
Michigan.
= June 4-12: Central Alabama Pride in
Birmingham.
= June 5: Jersey Pride in Asbury Park; East
Central Minnesota Pride in Pine City;
Queens LGBT Pride in New York.
= June 8-12: Key West Pride.
= June 8-19: Denver Pridefest.
= June 10-11: Kalamazoo Pride.
= July 2: Pride San Antonio.
= June 11: Albany, Long Island and Brooklyn
Prides in New York; Baton Rouge Pride;
Indy Pridefest in Indianapolis; Wyoming
Equality in Cheyenne; OutSpokane in
Spokane, Washington.
= July 9-10: Colorado Springs Pride.
= July 9: Tacoma Pride; Pride Alive in
Green Bay.
= July 15-17: San Diego Pride.
= Sept. 15-Oct. 15: Hispanic LGBT Pride in
Miami.
= Sept. 18: Dallas Pride.
= Sept. 24: Space Coast Pride in
Melbourne, Florida; Virginia Gay Pride in
Richmond.
= Sept. 24-25: Mid-South Pride in
= Oct. 8: Oceanside North County Pride in
California; Orlando Pride in Florida.
= Oct. 21-23: Las Vegas Pride.
= Oct. 22: Savannah Pride in Georgia.
November
= Nov. 4-6: Palm Springs Pride.
= Nov. 15-Dec. 1: Gay Days Fort
Lauderdale.
PRID
E 20
16
= June 3-5: Kansas City Pridefest in
Missouri.
= Oct. 3-5: Fort Worth Pride in Texas.
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Pride 5
June 2, 2016
Global Pride: Celebrations around the world
P h o t o : A lo b o s L i f e
Pride celebrants parade in Tel Aviv.
Staff writer
“Solidarity Through Pride” is the theme
uniting the many LGBT Pride events — picnics and parades, protests and rallies —
taking place in 2016 on six continents and
throughout much of the year.
Some Pride dates around the world …
= June 18-25: Milano Pride in Italy.
= June 22-26: Gay Pride Dublin.
= June 23-28: Mexico City Pride.
= June 24-July 3: Toronto Pride.
= June 25: Paris Gay Pride March.
= June 25-26: London Pride.
August
= August: Cornwall, Cymru, Doncaster and
Kent Prides in the United Kingdom.
= Aug. 2-7: Reykjavik Pride in Iceland.
= Aug. 5-7, EuroPride in Amsterdam.
= Aug. 8-14: Fierte Montreal Pride and
Prague Pride in the Czech Republic.
June
= June: Colombia Pride Diversa in Bogota;
Budapest Pride in Hungary; Edinburgh
Pride Scotia in Scotland; and Istanbul
Pride.
= June 26: Bologna Pride in Italy.
= June 1-4: Tel Aviv Pride.
= June 4: Aarhus Pride in Denmark.
July
= July 1-3: Cologne Pride.
= June 3-12: Edmonton Pride in Canada.
= July 2: Paris Pride.
= June 11: Athens Pride; Bali Pride in
Indonesia.
= July 4-9: Luxembourg Pride.
= June 11-12: Blackpool Gay Pride in
England.
= July 9-10: Munich Pride.
September
= September: Quebec City Pride; Brisbane
Pride; Leicester Pride and Lincoln Pride in
England.
= July 13-17: Limerick Pride.
= Sept. 5-11: Benidorm Gay Pride in Spain.
= July 15-17: CSD Frankfurt in Germany.
= Sept. 26-Oct. 2: Curaçao Pride in the
Caribbean.
= June 13: Roma Pride in Rome.
= June 13-19: Baltic Pride in Lithuania.
= June 17-26: Shanghai Pride.
= June 16-20: Sitges Pride in Spain.
= June 17-26: Oslo Pride.
= June 18-21: Korea Queer Festival and
Parade in Seoul.
= June 27-July 3: Helsinki Gay Pride in
Finland.
= June 29-July 3, Madrid Pride Festival.
= July 16-23: Berlin Pride.
= July 25-31: Stockholm Pride in Sweden.
= July 29-Aug. 7: Belfast Gay Pride.
= July 30-Aug. 7: Hamburg Gay Pride.
= July 31: Vancouver Gay Pride.
= Aug. 10-14, Antwerp Pride in Belgium.
= Aug. 16-21: Copenhagen Pride.
= Aug. 17-24: Mykonos XLsior in Greece.
= Aug. 26-29: Manchester Pride.
= Aug. 26-Sept. 5: Pride Calgary.
October
= October: Johannesburg Pride.
= Oct. 10-18: Gran Canaria: Fetish Week in
Spain.
= Oct. 27-31: Amsterdam Leather Pride.
Alan Cumming
hosts UN LGBT gala
Scottish actor and activist Alan
Cumming says he was pleased to host
the first LGBT gala ever held at the
United Nations, but he also finds it a bit
silly that it’s taken so long.
“Well I think it’s sort of like a little
chink in the armor of bigotry on a
worldwide level because it is symbolic
that this is happening in this institution
and also kind of ridiculous at the same
time that this is the first time anything
like this has happened at the U.N.,”
Cumming said.
The gala in mid-May, sponsored by
Outright Action International, marked
a turning point at the U.N., which only
last August held the first Security
Council meeting spotlighting violence
and discrimination against LGBT
people.
The gala honored Indonesian gay
rights activist Yuli Rustinawati and her
organization, Arus Pelangi, just as her
government was considering a law that
defines threats to national security
so broadly that LGBT and human
rights defenders could be considered
criminals.
Hearing about the proposed law,
Cumming scoffed: “I mean if the state
needs to be threatened with the idea
of equality then good. I hope those
homosexuals do threaten the state. I
mean if they threaten with equality, it’s
not so bad.”
— AP
= Oct. 29: Taiwan LGBT Pride in Taipei.
= Oct. 29-Nov. 3: Canberra Queer Festival
in Australia.N
November
= November: Buenos Aires Gay Pride;
Hong Kong Pride; Gay Pride Brazil in Rio
de Janeiro; Tas Pride Festival in Tasmania,
Australia.
= Nov. 14: Adelaide Pride March in
Australia.
DECEMBER
= Dec. 6: Manila Metro Pride
Pride 6
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June 2, 2016
Take our annual LGBT community quiz
DiD you know?
Staff writer
2. The standard LGBT Pride flag
contains how many colors?
A. 8
B. 5
C. 12
D. 6
3. Gay civil rights icon Harvey
Milk was …
A. A San Francisco supervisor
B. The CEO of Borden Milk
C. Mayor of Los Angeles
D. A Broadway director
4. Playwright Oscar Wilde said
…
A. “Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so
much.”
B. “America is the only country that went from barbarism to
decadence without civilization in
between.”
C. “I am not young enough to
know everything.”
D. All of the above.
5. True or false? k.d. lang publicly came out as a lesbian at a
ball to celebrate Bill Clinton’s
presidential inauguration in
1993.
6. True or false? The International Bear Brotherhood flag
was first flown at a Gentle Ben
convention in 1969.
Crooner k.d. lang.
7. The Continental Baths, a
gay bathhouse in New York,
opened in 1968 and featured
top-notch
entertainment.
Which act did NOT perform at
the club?
A. The Andrews Sisters
B. Sonny and Cher
C. Cab Calloway
D. Charles Nelson Reilly
10. The Greek letter lambda was
selected as an LGBT
symbol by the Gay
Activists Alliance
of New York in what
year?
A. 1982
B. 1964
C. 1955
D. 1970
8. Bayard Rustin was the chief
organizer of …
A. The 1985 Farm Aid concert
in Champaign, Illinois.
P HOTO : W i k i m e d i a
Drag queen Olivia Jones.
The word “drag” is thought to have
come from the acronym for a stage
direction coined by Shakespeare and
his contemporaries. The letters stood
for “dressing resembling a girl.”
first flown at a
“Bears of Summer” celebration
in Chesapeake
Bay in 1995)
7: B
8: C
9: True
10: D.
1. A New York City police raid on
the Stonewall Inn fueled riots,
inspired marches and gave rise
to the gay liberation movement. The riots occurred in:
A. 1999
B. 1969
C. 1889
D. 1949
9. True or false? The
Silence = Death Project originated on Tax
Day in 1987, with an
ACT UP protest at
the New York City
General Post Office.
B. The 1966 Delano Grape
Strike and Boycott.
C. The 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
D. The Millennium March on
Washington for Equality.
Bayard Rustin
Answers:
1: B
2: D
3: A
4: D
5: False (It was
Melissa Etheridge
who did so)
6: False (It was
The riots at the Stonewall Inn in New York’s Greenwich Village are
legendary, the symbolic start of the modern LGBT civil rights movement.
In June, with the focus in the LGBT community turned to commemorating the Stonewall uprising, we celebrate Pride — pride in ourselves,
our community, our legends and our history.
Test your knowledge with WiG’s annual Pride pop quiz.
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June 2, 2016
Pride 7
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June 2, 2016
Beloved LGBT ally Joe Brehm left behind Milwaukee’s
oldest operating gay bar, as well as a legacy of support
By Louis Weisberg
Staff writer
After June Brehm opened the bar This Is
It in 1968, gay people just started showing
up. Perhaps it was because other gay bars
in the area were moving south, speculates Don Schwamb. Once word got out
that This Is It welcomed gay people and
treated them with respect, he said, the rest
became part of Milwaukee LGBT history.
By the time Schwamb was a regular at
the bar in the mid-1970s, it was known as
an LGBT gathering place.
Brehm couldn’t have known at the time
that This Is It would go on to become the
city’s oldest operating gay bar and play
a significant role in the city’s LGBT history — so significant it’s
recognized by the Wisconsin Historical Society.
But she would have liked
it, according to people
familiar with the bar’s
history.
Gay-friendly places
were hard to find in Milwaukee during the 1970s,
said Schwamb, a longtime
activist and volunteer in
Milwaukee’s LGBT community. He is the leading
organizer of the Milwaukee LGBT History Project.
Schwamb
became
a This Is It regular at a
time when, if someone’s
car was vandalized near
a gay bar, the victim
would think more than
twice before notifying
the police. Milwaukee’s
law enforcement officers
were often brutal to LGBT
citizens in those days.
Police also raided bars
and arrested patrons.
They were particularly
P HOTO : D e s a g e s s e / W i k i m e d i a
harsh toward lesbian
or gay bars frequented The façade of This Is It, 418 E. Wells St. The historic bar is
by African Americans. now under the ownership of George Schneider, Joe Brehm’s
Patrons of those clubs partner in the business.
would race for the back
door at the first glimpse
of a badge.
This Is It was different. Schwamb can’t 2010.
Like his mother, Joe Brehm was a staunch
recall a single police raid on the establishment. Until recently, there was no sign on LGBT ally, even though he lost friends and
the building’s façade that signaled This Is had his home and car vandalized because
of it. He solidified the bar’s role as a comIt was a bar, much less a gay bar.
Located at 418 E. Wells St. near Cathe- munity resource, using it to raise money
dral Square, This Is It felt safer than most for HIV/AIDS and other causes. He supof the other bars at the time, which were ported PrideFest, the Cream City Fountucked away on dark backstreets. It was dation, the Milwaukee LGBT Community
also close to the downtown hotels, making Center and other community groups.
Brehm died on April 3 at age 68. His
it a destination for visitors to the city.
Joe Brehm, June’s son, took over the bar loss was mourned not only by the LGBT
in 1980. But even after suffering a stroke, community but the entire city. Days before
she continued to help out at what had his death, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett
become the family business. She died in proclaimed March 31 to be Joe Brehm
P HOTO : Kat e S h e r r y
Joe Brehm standing at his bar in 2007.
Day. Barrett praised him for continuing his
mother’s legacy.
U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin wrote a tribute
in which she said, “Thank you for making
the world a more welcoming, generous and
understanding place.”
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel writer Jim
Stingl penned a moving remembrance of
Joe and a tribute to This Is It. “Joe grieved
customers lost to AIDS, and he was a comforting presence when the gay community
struggled to heal after it was victimized by
serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer,” Stingl wrote.
partnership. But looking back, there were
subtle warning signs that his health was
faltering, Schneider said. He and the bar’s
other employees didn’t worry, though:
“We were thinking, ‘This is your lack of a
healthy diet catching up with you.’”
Last fall, Brehm complained about
numbness in his foot. Not long afterward,
he was diagnosed with ALS, a deadly, progressive disease that kills nerve cells in the
brain and spinal cord. In January, he was
put into hospice care.
Schneider tries to remember Brehm as
he was before the illness set in. He holds
close to his heart the memory of the bar’s
Christmas party in 2014. “He was as happy
as can be, and that’s how we all want to
remember him,” Schneider said.
Brehm wanted the bar to continue after
his death, and he and Schneider had long
conversations about how he envisioned
the future of This Is It without him. He saw
the bar as a legacy to the community from
his mother and him, and he wanted it to be
preserved.
Brehm also asked Schneider to take care
of the business and his family, including his
wife Karen, his two daughters and his two
grandchildren.
“My relationship with Karen was almost
non-existent until he got sick, but now I
call her almost every other day,” Schneider
said.
And there’s not a day that goes by without Schneider thinking of Joe.
“Joe and June had the bar for the first 50
years, and I’m here to make sure it lasts for
another 50,” Schneider said.
Friend and mentor
After Brehm’s death, his partner in the
business, George Schneider, 31, took over
the bar. He plans to bring This Is It more
fully into the social media era, but said
he’d make few additional changes to the
décor.
Schneider was working as food and beverage director at the Iron Horse in the
waning days of 2011 when he decided that
he was “burned out on the hotel scene,” he
said. Schneider was considering a move to
Dallas before Brehm called to say, “There’s
something I want to talk to you about.”
Schneider had tended bar at This Is It for
a year and a half, and Brehm asked him to
stay in Milwaukee and take a full-time job
managing the bar. The two men became
close friends and partners in the business
for the five years preceding Brehm’s death.
“He was a mentor to me,” Schneider
said. “He always said, “Stick to your guns,
George. Sometimes you might be the only
one standing up there, but if you’re true to
yourself, you’re going to end up coming out
ahead in the end.”
Schneider said Brehm appeared to be in
good health for the first few years of their
Did you know?
When Ellen Morgan, portrayed by
Ellen DeGeneres, came out on Ellen
on April 30, 1997, and made television history, about one in five Americans were watching.
|
Pride 9
June 2, 2016
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Pride 10
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June 2, 2016
The GOP’s terribly homophobic week in
Congress shows we still have more work to do
Opinion
U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan
What a difference a decade has made
for LGBT equality in Wisconsin. During
a terribly homophobic week in Congress
last month, I had to stop and remind
myself of that.
In 2006, Wisconsin voters overwhelmingly approved a same-sex marriage ban
in the form of a constitutional amendment. A quarter of self-described liberals
voted for the ban, according to exit polling. The amendment passed in 71 of 72
Wisconsin counties.
In 2016, one decade later, same-sex
marriage is the law of the land.
This brings us to that bad week in
May. The GOP majority proceeded to take
not one or two, but three anti-equality
actions. First, a bipartisan amendment
I authored to restore honor and reinstate benefits for members of the military
who were discharged based solely due to
their sexual orientation was rejected for
consideration. Veterans who have risked
their lives for our country should not be
discriminated against and denied benefits
based on their sexual orientation.
That same week, a bipartisan amendment to strip the National Defense Authorization Act of anti-equality language
allowing federal contractors to discriminate in hiring practices against LGBT individuals was not allowed to come to a vote.
This was despite promises by Speaker
Paul Ryan that the House would abide by
regular order.
The next day, a bill to nullify that discriminatory action secured enough votes
to pass, but House GOP leaders refused
to accept that outcome. They held the
vote open while they cajoled several lawmakers into changing their votes from yea
to nay, which led to an understandable
uproar on the House floor and ultimate
defeat of the amendment.
The GOP majority’s willingness to openly discriminate against the LGBT community across the country simply because of
who we are is out of touch with the sentiment of the majority of Americans. Public
opinion has moved at a rapid pace toward
equality and acceptance.
In 2011, halfway through the past 10
years, we saw the majority of the public
nationwide switch to support of gay marriage. In 2012, Wisconsin elected two
openly gay members of Congress. U.S.
Sen. Tammy Baldwin became the first
openly gay U.S. senator, and I was elected
to Congress.
More progress was made when President Obama promised those of us in the
congressional Equality Caucus that he
would swiftly implement the Supreme
Court’s DOMA decision, which he did
while Congress stalled. We’ve also had
progress on transgender rights, as we
move toward requiring insurers and federal healthcare programs to cover gender
transitioning.
I can also see the change in public opinion as I travel around my district, which is
a diverse mix of rural, suburban and urban
communities. In 2014, I went to a smaller
rural high school to speak to students. As
a member of the House Education Committee, I make it a priority to visit schools
all around my congressional district. During a Q & A period at this school, a teacher
said her class regularly debates current
issues by putting up symbols of a donkey
and an elephant, representing the two different political parties, on opposite sides
of the classroom. Students go to stand on
the side they agree with and want to argue
on the topic.
One class period, she said, the issue
was gay marriage. As students moved
toward their sides, something unprecedented happened — every single student went to the side aligned with “pro”
marriage equality. An assistant teacher
had to stand on the opposite side of the
classroom and play devil’s advocate for
the “anti” side.
And this was a school nowhere
near liberal Madison.
This Wisconsin class,
standing united in support of
marriage equality, took place
fewer than 10 years after the
anti-marriage equality constitutional amendment had
easily passed. I believe that
those students would have
also uniformly rejected the
idea of permitting discrimination against LGBT
individuals in hiring and
in honoring their military
service.
In 2006, just weeks
af ter
Wisconsin
passed its constitutional ban,
I traveled to
Toronto, Canada, to marry
my husband.
I told people
then I would
stay
in
Wisconsin and
k e e p
pushing for
equality
in the state
where I grew
up. Thank you
for joining me in this cause. Every step
forward is taken because people like you
stand up, speak up and organize.
The bad, homophobic week in Congress is further proof — if any more was
needed — that we still have work in our
fight against LGBT discrimination. We
must continue to fight to ensure that no
one faces the threat of discrimination,
regardless of sexual orientation or gender
identify, in hiring or military service or
anywhere in their lives. The past decade is
proof that working together, we can make
gigantic leaps forward.
Democrat Mark Pocan represents Wisconsin’s 2nd Congressional District, which
includes Madison and Dane
County, along with Green
County, Monroe County,
Iowa County, Lafayette
County, half of Rock County and a sliver of Richland
County.
|
June 2, 2016
Pride 11
Pride 12
True crime and untruths
A new book and film explore the
1964 murder of Kitty Genovese
By Lisa Neff
Staff writer
The video, showing a man beating a
woman in a Philadelphia street while a
crowd of people watched, went viral in
May.
Facebook friends shared links. They
referred to other crimes where witnesses
stood by — appalled but apathetic.
Some remembered Catherine “Kitty”
Genovese, who in 1964 was raped and
murdered in a middle-class neighborhood
of Queens, New York.
About two weeks after the murder, The
New York Times covered the crime on the
front page, reporting that 37 people listened or watched from their Kew Gardens
residences as a man repeatedly stabbed
and sexually assaulted the 28-year-old
woman. The headline read, “37 Who Saw
Murder Didn’t Call the Police.”
Other publications followed the Times’
story, and the reports — which hid Genovese’s sexual orientation and ignored her
partner Mary Ann Zielonko — fueled fears
of apathy and urban decay. Sociologists
and psychologists referred to the “Genovese syndrome,” which is the tendency
not to intervene when witnessing an act
of violence.
Science-fiction writer Harlan Ellison
wrote about the killing in his short story,
“The Whimper of Whipped Dogs.” Television — from Perry Mason to Law and Order
to Girls — explored the crime. It’s a pivotal
event in the Watchmen comic series and
dealt with in SuperFreakonomics, as well as
written about in a number of true-crime
books and murder-mystery novels.
Over the years, there were questions
raised and challenges to the earliest
reports. The number of witnesses was far
fewer than first reported and police were
called — at least twice.
The Times, in a 2016 obituary for Winston Moseley, Genovese’s killer, acknowledged the inaccuracies: “The article grossly exaggerated the number of witnesses
and what they had perceived. None saw
the attack in its entirety. Only a few had
glimpsed parts of it, or recognized the cries
for help. Many thought they had heard lovers or drunks quarreling. There were two
attacks, not three. And afterward, two
people did call the police. A 70-year-old
woman ventured out and cradled the dying
Happy Pride Month, Wisconsin!
State Representative JoCasta Zamarripa
is out and proud, serving the people of
Walkers Point & the near south.
R emembeR
to vote
A ugust 9 th !
Paid for by: Forward with JoCasta. Vanessa L. Llanas, Treasurer
Jocasto_16sq_v1.indd 2
THE FIGHT
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June 2, 2016
P h oto : Co r n e l l U n i v e r s i t y P r e ss
No One Helped by Marcia M. Gallo
examines the rape and murder of
Catherine “Kitty” Genovese in a middle-class neighborhood of Queens,
New York.
victim in her arms until they arrived. Ms.
Genovese died on the way to the hospital.”
Two newer projects — a book and a
documentary film — examine Genovese’s
life and death, as well as issues of social
justice and crime, community and apathy.
No One Helped: Kitty Genovese, New York
City and the Myth of Urban Apathy, written by Marcia M. Gallo and published by
Cornell University Press, is a finalist for a
Lambda Literary award, which recognizes
achievements in LGBT-themed work.
Gallo is an associate history professor
at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. Her
book scrutinizes America after
World War II and the uncritical
acceptance of the “no one helped”
On the shelf
story by the press, politicians and
No One Helped is a finalist for a Lambda
general public. She also explores
Literary Award in the category of LGBT
how the murder of Genovese
nonfiction. The awards will be presented in
and the myth of apathy spurred
early June. Other finalists in the category
advancements in social justice, as
include:
well as policing and public safety
• Considering Hate: Violence, Goodness
— including the creation of the 911
and Justice in American Culture and Politics
system.
by Kay Whitlock and Michael Bronski
The Witness is a documentary
from Beacon Press.
that’s received critical acclaim and
• Fading Scars: My Queer Disability
will screen in select theaters this
History by Corbett Joan O’Toole from
month. The film is about GenoAutonomous Press.
vese’s brother, William, who in his
• The Gay Revolution: The Story of the
pursuit of the truth “uncovers a
Struggle by Lillian Faderman from Simon &
lie that transformed his life, conSchuster.
demned a city and defined an era.”
• Modern Families: Stories of
William Genovese, 16 when his
Extraordinary Journeys to Kinship by Joshua
sister died, is the executive proGamson from NYU Press.
ducer of the film.
• Namibia’s Rainbow Project by Robert
Lorway from Indiana University Press.
• What Color Is Your Hoodie? Essays on
Black Gay Identity by Jarrett Neal from
Chelsea Station Editions.
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|
Pride 13
June 2, 2016
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Pride 14
|
June 2, 2016
‘Loving’ re-enacts nation’s first marriage equality case
Avoiding inflated dramatics,
Nichols and his cast sought to
stay true to the Lovings, who
effected change just by being.
By Jake Coyle
AP writer
Jeff Nichols, sitting by the beach, was surprised to notice
a curious calm amid the usually anxiety-ridden premiere
experience at the Cannes Film Festival.
His film, Loving, is about Richard and Mildred Loving,
the Virginia couple whose biracial marriage in 1958 led to
a landmark Supreme Court decision on marriage equality.
“It’s not my story,” said the writer-director, whose
previous films, including the Mississippi River coming-ofage tale Mud and the science-fiction thriller Midnight Special
were original creations. “It’s their story.”
Loving, starring Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga, is told
straightforwardly and simply. Although it has the context of
a civil rights drama, it’s a portrait of a humble, unassuming
love so steadfast that it eventually toppled one of the most
odious legal remnants of slavery-era America — the ban
against interracial marriages.
Without the standard Hollywood histrionics, the film
patiently accumulates considerable force before finally
overwhelming the viewer.
“No one moment adds up to the whole. But if you put
them all together, hopefully, the weight of it gains this
emotional density,” said Nichols. “Part of the cruelty of what
was happening to them was time. Time was being taken
away from them.”
The Lovings didn’t seek the spotlight, but their efforts to
return home after being exiled from Virginia eventually led
to the 1967 Supreme Court ruling of Loving vs. Virginia — a
decision cited in the high court’s 2015 ruling on same-sex
marriage.
Nichols and Edgerton believe the film has obvious
significance at time when religious liberty laws and
bathroom battles are being fought in the U.S.
“It’s kind of shameful to watch and look back and think
50 years ago that that was happening and yet it’s still very
much relevant today,” says Edgerton. “Things are changing,
obviously, but it’s weird to think we’ll look back in 20, 30
years’ time and say that law (gay marriage) changed in
2015.”
Of the many films in Cannes, Loving, which Focus Features
will release during the heart of awards season in November,
(Michael Shannon in the film) in 1966. The photographs
captured their sweet, almost teenage-like manner together.
In one, Richard — a buzz-cut blond country boy — lies with
his head in Mildred’s lap while watching TV.
Nancy Buirski’s 2011 documentary The Loving Story was
also a major inspiration.
“The court case is fascinating, but I just wanted to hang
out in that documentary footage more,” says Nichols. “I
wanted to go around the edges of it. I wanted to go around
the corner of it.”
Avoiding inflated dramatics, Nichols and his cast sought
to stay true to the Lovings, who effected change just by
being.
P h oto : Co u rt e sy
“To me, it’s like this series of checkmates. It tends to
Loving stars Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga. The film
is about Richard and Mildred Loving, the Virginia cou- move and be shut down. Move and be shut down. Have
ple whose biracial marriage in 1958 led to a landmark a voice and be stifled,” says Edgerton. “Finally when the
Supreme Court decision releases that weight, it’s quite an
Supreme Court decision on marriage equality.
overwhelming feeling. It’s a triumphant feeling, but when
Richard proposed in the field, that should have been their
right and freedom at that time.”
Richard Loving died in 1975, the victim of a drunk driver,
is among the most likely to garner significant attention
and Mildred Loving died in 2008.
from both moviegoers and the Academy Awards. The
Loving may be a departure for Nichols in that it’s a trueperformances of Negga and Edgerton have already been
life tale. But it continues the Arkansas native’s interest
widely hailed.
in the preservation of family amid elements out of one’s
“This is the most important film I’ve made and it’s one
control.
of the most important films in history, I think,” Negga told
Choosing to make the film, though, was easy enough.
reporters in Cannes. The Irish-Ethiopian actress — the
When he first shared the trailer of The Loving Story with his
first Nichols auditioned for the role — pursued the part
wife, she told him if he didn’t make it, she’d divorce him.
fervently. “There was no alternative, really. I just really had
“That’s all she wrote. She didn’t sign off or anything,”
to play her.”
recalled Nichols, chuckling.
Both actors drew from the famous images of the couple,
who were photographed by Life magazine’s Grey Villet
Germany to overturn 1000s of gay convictions
From the AP
Germany’s justice minister is drawing
up legislation to annul the convictions
of thousands of gay men under a law
criminalizing homosexuality that was
applied zealously in post-World War II West
Germany.
Heiko Maas’ announcement that he will
seek to overturn the convictions and create
a “right to compensation” came after an
expert study commissioned by the Federal
Anti-Discrimination Agency found that
there is no legal barrier to the annulments.
“We will never be able to eliminate
completely these outrages by the state, but
we want to rehabilitate the victims,” Maas
said in a statement. “The homosexual men
who were convicted should no longer have
to live with the taint of conviction.”
Some 50,000 men were convicted
between 1949 and 1969 under the so-called
Paragraph 175 outlawing sexual relations
between men, which was introduced in the
19th century, toughened under Nazi rule
and retained in that form by West Germany.
Homosexuality was decriminalized in
1969, but the legislation wasn’t taken off
the books entirely until 1994.
In 2000, Germany’s Parliament approved
a resolution regretting the fact that
Paragraph 175 was retained after the war.
Two years later, it annulled the convictions
of gay men under Nazi rule, but not postwar convictions.
The Lesbian and Gay Federation in
Germany said that the Anti-Discrimination
Agency study “makes clear that the
government can no longer hide behind
spurious arguments that annulling the
(post-war) convictions would not be legally
possible.”
Maas said that the study will be taken
into account in drawing up legislation, which
would need parliamentary approval.
“We can only appeal to all political voices
who have struggled with this issue so far
not to use abuse it now for political trench
warfare,” he said.
In February 2015, Urban Outfitters sparked outrage with the tapestry, above right,
resembling a gay concentration camp uniform, left. After being freed from concentration camps following WWII, 50,000 men were convicted and re-imprisoned under the
so-called Paragraph 175 law outlawing sexual relations between men.
|
Pride 15
June 2, 2016
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Pride 16
|
June 2, 2016
Salute to Stonewall
The bar where it all started is to
become a National Monument
By Lisa Neff
Staff writer
The Stonewall Inn is slated to become
the first national monument dedicated to
gay rights.
The monument would comprise the inn
and land adjacent to the tavern, the site of
a 1969 uprising that is viewed as the symbolic start of the modern-day gay rights
movement.
“Stonewall was the spark that ignited
the movement for LGBT civil rights, a
spark which continues to burn around the
world today,” said U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler,
a New York Democrat. “We must ensure
that the events of Stonewall, the persecution of the LGBT community, and the brave
individuals who fought — and continue to
fight — to overcome it are given the place
they deserve in our nation’s history.”
The bar in the Stonewall building closed
in 1969, just months after patrons resisted
the police raid. The space was occupied
by other businesses, including a bagel
shop and a Chinese restaurant, before it
reopened as a bar in the 1990s. In Stonewall’s current incarnation, under new owners since 2006, half the original space
occupied by the bar is now a nail salon.
Co-owner Stacy Lentz said she and her
partners bought the bar “to preserve history and make sure it wasn’t made into a
Starbucks.” She said she is thrilled by the
national monument discussions.
“This solidifies everything we have
worked for to keep the legacy alive for
generations to come,” Lentz said.
Nadler, who has been pressing for a
national monument at Stonewall for years,
‘The Stonewall Rebellion
is a rarity — a tipping
point in history where
we know, with absolute
clarity, that everything
changed.’
said the spot is worth recognizing because
it would “tell the story of the United
States,” as do park sites in Seneca Falls,
New York, dedicated to the women’s rights
movement, and Selma, Alabama, named
for the civil rights movement.
U.S. Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand added, “The
Stonewall Inn is an icon in American history and a national monument designation
at this site would help tell the story of the
equal rights movement in America for generations to come. Every recent victory for
the community, from the repeal of ‘don’t
ask, don’t tell’ to the Supreme Court decision about the right to marry, is a result
of the movement that began at Stonewall
more than four decades ago.”
The Stonewall Inn already is already a
National Historic Landmark and is listed
on the National Register of Historic Places.
Also, it was designated a New York City
landmark last year, the first time a site had
received the designation because of its
significance to LGBT history.
Originally built as stables in the 1840s,
Pridefest
June 10,11,12, 2016
P HOTO : C o u r t e s y
Interior Secretary Sally Jewell at the Stonewall Inn. The Stonewall is listed on the
National Register of Historic Places and as a National Historic Landmark. The site and
the surrounding area are to become a National Monument.
adjoining buildings at 51 Christopher Street
still have the brick-and-stucco facade that
greeted bar-goers June 28, 1969, the night
of the protests.
What began as a police raid escalated into days of street demonstrations
that triggered an activist movement and
prompted gay New Yorkers to stop hiding
their identities and speak out publicly.
“The Stonewall Rebellion is a rarity — a
tipping point in history where we know,
with absolute clarity, that everything
changed,” said Manhattan Borough Presi-
dent Gale A. Brewer.
Patrons at the Stonewall are ecstatic
the area will be recognized as a national
monument.
Jonathan Early called the Stonewall “the
heart of the LGBT movement.”
And as he passed by the bar earlier
this spring, Jesse Furman said, “It really
says something. It is a place of so much
happiness and acceptance. Think about
it. This is America’s landmark for the gay
community.”
The AP contributed to this report.
To the register
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The National Park Service in May
announced that it would add two LGBT
sites to the National Register of Historic
Places:
• The Edificio Comunidad de Orgullo
Gay de Puerto Rico in San Juan, which
served as the meeting hall for the first
LGBT organization in Puerto Rico.
• The Furies Collective house in
Washington, D.C., which was home to
a lesbian feminist collective in the early
1970s.
“The road to civil rights is a long one
and adding these important places to the
National Register will help recognize the
LGBT communities’ fight for equality,”
said Kristen Brengel of the National Parks
Conservation Association.
— Lisa Neff
|
Pride 17
June 2, 2016
Military might After ‘don’t ask,
don’t tell,’ reform is still needed
By Lisa Neff
JUNE 14 to JULY 3
Staff writer
Do ask.
Do tell.
U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan wants ex-service
members to tell about the harm caused
by discharges under the now defunct ban
against gays in the military.
And the Wisconsin Democrat wants
Congress to ask about the harm caused by
the ban years after the its repeal.
Pocan and U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel,
D-N.Y., want the House Committee on
Armed Services to examine the challenges
faced by gays and lesbians discharged
from the military.
Recently, however, the committee
refused to hold a hearing on the bill.
A year ago this summer, the congressmen introduced the Restore Honor to
Service Members Act, which would help
former service members discharged solely
due to their sexual orientation correct
their military records to reflect their honorable service and to restore benefits they
earned.
The bill, according to Pocan’s office, has
113 co-sponsors in the House, including
four Republicans. A companion measure in
the Senate has 38 co-sponsors.
In a letter this spring to Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, who is the chair of the
Armed Services Committee, Pocan and
Rangel wrote, “Since World War II, more
than 100,000 individuals are estimated
to have been discharged from the military
due to their sexual orientation. Today,
thousands of gay, lesbian and bisexual
veterans are tarnished with discharge statuses other than honorable. This status
affects both their access to benefits they
have earned from their service and their
opportunities in civilian life, potentially
hindering employment opportunities and
the right to vote.”
Pocan’s office said even gay service
members who received honorable discharges may face discrimination because
the “Narrative Reason” for their discharge
may refer to “homosexual conduct,”
“homosexual act” or “homosexual marriage.”
In the 1992 race for president, Bill Clinton campaigned on a platform that included a vow to lift a ban against gays in the
military — a prohibition applied in various
ways over the years. But Clinton faced
stiff opposition in Congress and eventually
offered a compromise — “don’t ask, don’t
tell.” The policy allowed for gay people to
serve if they didn’t tell, and military leaders were prohibited from asking about
sexual orientation.
“Don’t ask, don’t tell” was not administered as Clinton proposed, and investigations about sexual orientation continued,
with service members still losing careers
and benefits as had happened for decades
before.
2016 SEASON
JULY 6 to JULY 24
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P HOTO : D e pa r t m e n t o f D e f e n s e
MILITARY MILESTONE: The U.S. Senate in May confirmed the long-stalled nomination
of Eric Fanning to be Army secretary, making him the first openly gay leader of a U.S.
military service. Fanning served as the Army secretary’s principal adviser on management and operation of the service, with a focus on the budget. He was undersecretary
of the Air Force from April 2013 to February 2015, and for half a year was the acting
secretary of the Air Force. He also worked on Defense Secretary Ash Carter’s transition.
The ban was repealed in 2011, allowing gays, lesbians and bisexuals to serve
openly in the Armed Forces.
A year after the repeal, a study from
the Palm Center, an independent research
institute in San Francisco, found:
• Only two service members, both
chaplains, were identified as having left
the military as a result of the repeal.
• The Pentagon reported not a single
episode of violence associated with the
repeal.
• Pentagon data show recruitment
and retention remained robust after the
repeal.
• Survey data revealed that servicewide, troops reported the same level of
morale and readiness after the repeal as
they did before.
• Data also showed trust among troops
improved following the repeal.
The transgender front
Still, nearly five years later, the struggle
for full equality in the military continues
with the campaign to remove barriers to
transgender people serving openly.
Last summer, this effort was boosted
by a vote of the American Medical Association, which adopted a resolution finding “there is no medically valid reason
to exclude transgender individuals” from
U.S. military service and urged that transgender service members be provided with
necessary medical care “according to the
same medical standards that apply to non-
transgender personnel.”
The AMA also said the anti-transgender
policy is out of date.
Four U.S. Surgeons General — Drs.
Joycelyn Elders, David Satcher, Regina
Benjamin and Kenneth Moritsugu —
reached the same conclusion.
This spring, a Rand Corp. study commissioned by the Pentagon and first reported
on by The New York Times found that
repealing the ban on transgender service
would not negatively impact the Armed
Forces and would lead to no more than 129
of the military’s million-plus troops seeking transition-related care each year.
Aaron Belkin, director of the Palm Center, said the Rand report confirmed his
institute’s research on the issue. “Inclusive
policy will not compromise readiness, will
not be costly and will not be difficult to
formulate or implement,” he said.
There have been hints the Defense
Department, which created a working group to examine the issue, could
announce its plan for allowing open transgender service this spring.
Congress likely would play a role in any
reforms, and the House Committee on
Armed Services would get an early review.
U.S. Rep. Adam Smith of Washington
state is the ranking Democratic member
on that committee. He’s a supporter of
lifting the ban on transgender service, as
well as an advocate of equal and fair treatment of gay service members and those
discharged because of their orientation.
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Pride 18
|
June 2, 2016
A frank commencement
address from America’s
only bisexual governor
By Gordon Friedman
Statesman Journal
Willamette University President Stephen Thorsett introduced Oregon Gov.
Kate Brown to a crowd of thousands in
May, as the school’s 2016 commencement speaker.
Her speech had all the hallmarks of a
typical commencement address: She told
the 400-some graduates to find a path,
help others, have ambition and work hard.
And then the governor made uncharacteristic, telling remarks about her personal life — details about being a family
practice lawyer and public servant while
living for years as a closeted bisexual.
Brown said that as a new lawyer in the
1980s, she felt terrified when going to
work, afraid of losing her job if someone
discovered that she was seeing a woman.
Brown has been married to her husband,
Dan Little, for nearly 20 years and has two
step-children.
It was a rare moment when the governor spoke publicly about her sexuality.
“I wanted to share that because people
don’t always appear as they seem,” she
said during an interview at her personal
office in the Capitol.
Though she feared losing her job in the
1980s, Brown wouldn’t be outed publicly
until the mid-1990s, when the Oregonian
published a story about LGBT legislators.
The outing forced her to confront the truth
with her parents, who flew from Minnesota to Oregon after the news broke. They
had a difficult conversation, telling Brown
it would be easier if she were a lesbian.
Brown wrote in “Out and Elected in
the USA,” an online collection of essays
by LGBT elected officials, that some of
her gay friends called her “half-queer.”
Straight friends were convinced she
couldn’t make up her mind.
The most frightening part was coming out to other legislators. Brown, then
a member of the Oregon Senate, served
on a committee where all the other members were white, male and presumably
straight.
“And they didn’t have any experiences
like mine,” she said. “They didn’t know
what it felt like to be afraid to go to work.”
Members of her Senate caucus told
bisexual jokes. In a way, Brown found
It was a rare moment
when the governor
spoke frankly about
her sexuality.
solace in the levity. Bill Markham, an
older, more experienced Republican lawmaker, joked with Brown about the Oregonian article, saying perhaps he now had a
chance with her.
“I was really nervous about how my colleagues were going to relate to me,” she
said. Markham, who “used to flirt with
everybody,” she says, broke the ice with
his comment, enabling them to connect.
Brown didn’t know the implications
of being an openly bisexual legislator.
“There was no one else in the country.
… so it was like, what does this mean? I
was very upfront with it, but I hadn’t put a
label to it,” she remembered.
It wasn’t easy.
In her online essay, she wrote, “Some
days I feel like I have a foot in both worlds,
yet never really belonging to either.”
Since becoming governor in 2015, the
label of being the nation’s first openly
bisexual governor has followed Brown in
the national press. She sighed when asked
if she resents the label. It’s more challenging for her family than for her, she said. “I
think my mother said to me, ‘Do they have
to say it every single time?’”
Brown said that although coming out
takes a lot of strength, it’s important and
worthwhile. She commended Willamette
Bearcats football player Conner Mertens
for coming out in 2014.
“People just don’t get it,” she said. “For
him to do that was really courageous.”
Shortly after being sworn in, Brown
received a letter from a young bisexual
person in Indiana. It stuck with her. “They
felt like my coming out gave them a reason to live, like there’s other people out
there like me,” she said. “That’s what I
was able to say to my mom: This makes a
huge difference to people.”
This is an AP member exchange story.
wisconsingazette.com
updated all day.
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown.
Did you know?
In France, in the 1500s,
“gaie” was used to describe
a homosexual person — male
or female. In the United
States, “gay” was first used
to describe a homosexual person during the WWII era. Left,
a painting of Robert Dudley,
Earl of Leicester, shows the
fashion of the 1560s: Ruff,
doublet, slashed leather jerkin and paned trunk hose with
codpiece.
|
June 2, 2016
4 stores and 2 markets in greater Milwaukee to serve you.
Visit our website for locations and store hours.
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Pride 19
Pride 20
Interfaith campaign
advocates for
transgender rights
P h o t o : P i x a b ay
Some religious institutions are starting to address the participation of transgender
people in their congregations, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center.
By Lisa Neff
Staff writer
They stood for tolerance and kindness.
They stood for inclusion and protection.
They stood for right and against harm.
More than 400 clergy rallied in late
May outside St. Peter’s Episcopal Church
in Charlotte, calling for the repeal of North
Carolina’s House Bill 2 and praying for
freedom from prejudice.
Clergy members from across the state
but also far beyond assembled for the
event, protesting the Republican legislation that rolls back LGBT civil rights and
prevents transgender people from using
public restrooms that correspond with
their gender identity.
“We stand for love in the way that Jesus
expressed it, which means inclusion, which
means acceptance, and which means seeing every person as a fearfully and wonderfully made child of God,” said the Rev.
|
June 2, 2016
Martha Kearse of St. John’s Baptist Church
in Charlotte.
Organized under the banner of “Faith in
Public Life,” the clergy represented Metropolitan Community, Lutheran, Baptist,
United Church of Christ, Episcopal, Presbyterian, United Methodist, First Congregation, Unitarian Universalist, and Catholic churches, as well as Buddhist temples,
Quaker groups and Jewish synagogues
— both reform and conservative.
The faith-based leaders called on North
Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory to seek the
counsel of Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal, who
earlier this year vetoed an anti-LGBT bill,
citing his Christian faith.
“We affirm that all people are beloved
by God and that discrimination based on
gender identity or sexual orientation is
wrong,” the clergy members wrote in a letter to McCrory.
Witnesses to the rally said they were
inspired, and reminded of the role clergy
played in the civil rights movement of the
1950s and 1960s.
“This event might have been lost in all
the news over HB 2 and the boycotts, but
we’ll remember it when we look back on
this time,” said LGBT civil rights activist
Kate Eckerd of Asheville, North Carolina.
“This was a moment, a real moment, when
you look at who was there and where
they came from and what they demanded
because of their faith, not in spite of their
faith.”
The display of faith-based unity against
HB 2 and for LGBT equality surprised Eckerd, who said she gets mixed signals at the
Catholic church she attends.
“The people are good,” she said. “The
message from the priest, not so good.”
The range of
religious trans inclusion
An analysis by the Pew Research Center
finds that some religious institutions are
starting to formally address the participation of transgender people in their congregations and in clergy positions, while others remain steadfastly against inclusion.
The review by Pew found:
• On the negative end of the inclusion
spectrum, the Assemblies of God, Church
of the Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,
Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, and
Southern Baptist Convention have stated
barriers to inclusion. The synod instructs
ministers on how to counsel transgender people and encourage them to seek
mental health treatment while Southern
Baptist Convention in 2014 adopted a
resolution stating that transgender people
can only be members if they repent. The
Mormon church, meanwhile, says people
considering “elective transsexual operations” cannot be baptized or confirmed.
• In the middle, the Church of God,
Presbyterian Church in American, Roman
Catholic Church, and African American
Episcopal Church have no official position
on inclusion and send mixed messages on
the issue. The Catholic church says gender is permanently fixed at birth and Pope
Francis has said gender theory is a danger
to humanity, but the pope has also met
with a transgender man.
• The Evangelical Lutheran Church of
America, Presbyterian Church (USA) and
United Methodist Church have a reputation as inclusive but lack an official statement.
• More definitively, the Episcopal
Church, Reform Judaism, Unitarian Universalist Association, and United Church
of Christ have official statements regarding the inclusion of transgender people.
The Union for Reform Judaism adopted
a resolution in 2015 that “encourages
Reform congregations, congregants,
clergy, camps, institutions and affiliates …
to continue to advocate for the rights of
people of all gender identities and gender
expressions” and “urges the adoption and
implementation of legislation and policies that prevent discrimination based on
gender identity and expression and that
require individuals to be treated equally
under the law as the gender by which they
identify.”
Kennedy: Religious
exemptions can’t trump
civil rights
U.S. Rep. Joe Kennedy is pushing
legislation that would ban religious
exemptions from laws that guarantee
fundamental civil and legal rights.
The Massachusetts Democrat says
the bill is a response to what he calls
ongoing attempts to cite religious
beliefs as grounds to undermine
civil rights protections, limit access
to health care and refuse service to
minority groups.
The bill would limit the use of
such exemptions in cases involving
discrimination, child labor and abuse,
wages and collective bargaining,
public accommodations and social
services provided through government
contracts.
Kennedy says religious freedom is
sacred, but shouldn’t harm others.
Kennedy’s bill would amend the
1993 Religious Freedom Restoration
Act, which he says is used by those
seeking to impose their beliefs on
others or claim that their faith justifies
discrimination.
|
Pride 21
June 2, 2016
Transgender ‘milestones’ took decades
By Jessica Gresko
‘The trend is clearly
toward recognizing
that sex discrimination
law protects against
gender identity
discrimination.’
AP writer
Legal experts and advocates for the
approximately 700,000 transgender
people estimated to be living in the United States say recent headline-grabbing
developments reflect a slowly evolving
change in the law.
“The trend is clearly toward recognizing that sex discrimination law protects
against gender identity discrimination,”
said Suzanne B. Goldberg, director of the
Center for Gender and Sexuality Law at
Columbia University’s law school.
Over the next few years there will likely
be more court cases on that question,
advocates on both sides agreed. Courts
must decide whether decades-old federal
laws that prohibit discrimination on the
basis of a person’s sex also prohibit discrimination based on a person’s gender
identity.
The federal government says yes, but
two important federal laws barring discrimination are not explicit: Title VII of
the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits sex discrimination by employers, and
Title IX of the Education Amendments of
1972, which prohibits sex discrimination
in federally funded education programs
and activities.
Adam P. Romero, a legal scholar at
UCLA’s Williams Institute, which does
research on sexual orientation and gender
identity law and public policy, predicted
more rulings favoring the transgender
community.
The U.S. Supreme Court could ultimately take a case on the protections transgender people have under federal law, he
said, but probably not soon because the
law is “rapidly evolving” and the court
generally doesn’t like to take up an issue
until it has had time to mature. The court
might also feel it doesn’t need to intervene at all if lower courts are moving in
the same direction.
But Matt Sharp, legal counsel for the
Arizona-based conservative legal group
Alliance Defending Freedom, predicted
the issue would reach the high court with-
U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch delivers an announcement on federal policy. “Trans
people were crying all over the country,” said Transgender rights activist Mara Keisling
after Lynch’s remarks. “To have the attorney general of the United States say: ‘I have
your back, DOJ has your back and the president of the United States has your back’ —
it was so important. It was so necessary. People are still crying, crying with relief and
amazement.”
in a few years.
He said lawmakers who wrote Title VII
and Title IX never intended for them to
cover gender identity, calling that a “fundamental redefinition of the law.” If Congress wants to make a change it should
pass legislation, he said.
Before the late 1980s, transgender people didn’t have much luck claiming civil
rights protections under federal law.
In 1977, one court of appeals ruled
that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act didn’t
cover a woman fired for transitioning from
Robert to Ramona. And in 1984, another
appeals court used the same reasoning to
rule against an Eastern Airlines pilot fired
after transitioning from Kenneth to Karen.
But a 1989 Supreme Court case pointing in the opposite direction has proved
to be a landmark, scholars said. In that
case, Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, a
woman wasn’t promoted in part because
some partners felt she didn’t act feminine
enough. The court ruled that the Civil
Rights Act barred not just discrimination
based on a person’s sex but also discrimination based on gender stereotypes.
Courts have subsequently found in
favor of transgender plaintiffs alleging
they were fired or not hired as a result of
being transgender.
Vandy Beth Glenn was fired from her
job with the Georgia General Assembly
after announcing she intended to transition. When she sued in 2008, her lawyers
called her case a longshot, but the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit,
which covers Alabama, Florida and Georgia, ultimately ruled in her favor in 2011.
“I feel like we’ve come so much further
even since then. It’s been pretty amazing,”
she said in a telephone interview.
In April, the U.S. Court of Appeals for
the 4th Circuit, which covers Maryland,
North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia
and West Virginia, ruled in favor of a
transgender Virginia teen who had been
barred from using the boys’ restroom at
school.
Sarah Warbelow, legal director for the
Human Rights Campaign — the nation’s
largest LGBT civil rights group — defined
the series of developments as “milestones” in May.
The attorney general’s speech
announcing the federal government would
sue North Carolina was a “huge public
moment” and “one of those moments you
know you’ve seen history in the making,”
she said.
Transgender rights activist Mara Keisling, executive director of the Washington-based National Center for Transgender Equality, agreed the moment was
“really, really remarkable” but said the
administration wouldn’t have taken those
actions if it weren’t on solid legal ground.
Still, Keisling said, it was emotional.
“Trans people were crying all over the
country,” Keisling said. “To have the attorney general of the United States say: ‘I
have your back, DOJ has your back and
the president of the United States has
your back’ — it was so important. It was
so necessary. People are still crying, crying with relief and amazement.”
Summer lasts three months. A great career is for LIFE.
SUMMER SEMESTER BEGINS Monday, June 13
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MILWAUKEE AREA TECHNICAL COLLEGE
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Pride 22
|
June 2, 2016
PrideFest expands under new director and new structure
By Louis Weisberg
event.
Eric Heinritz has so much on his plate
that you might need a nap after hearing
about it.
But he’s not complaining. His eyes are
bright with enthusiasm as he describes
his new position and the possibilities that
come with it.
In January, Heinritz was named executive director of Milwaukee Pride Inc., a
newly formed LGBT organization with
bold ambitions. First and foremost, the
just-minted 501(3)(c) is putting on PrideFest Milwaukee. Heinritz had fewer than
six months to coordinate the final preparations for “the world’s largest LGBT
festival with permanent grounds.” It’s
an event that draws upwards of 30,000
celebrants to Milwaukee’s Summerfest
grounds every June.
In addition to the long hours and mindboggling array of tasks involved in that
enterprise, Heinritz, 38, also is a single
father of 2-year-old twin girls — Avery
and Zooey.
“With the girls and PrideFest, that’s
been my whole life for the past two years,”
he says with an air.
Fortunately, both Heinritz and PrideFest are hardly starting from scratch. He
served on the board last year, and many
of the volunteers previously associated
with the massive undertaking remain on
board — along with some new ones. The
latter include a group from Fox Valley
Pride, and Tony Snell, who’s been involved
with security at South Carolina Gay Pride,
dating back to the 1990s.
Volunteers like these are essential to
PrideFest, which for more than 25 years
depended entirely on people generously
donating their time and expertise to the
New era
Staff writer
Did you know?
As PrideFest’s first paid employee,
then, Heinritz represents the dawn of a
new era.
Heinritz has an ideal background for
the position, beginning with a degree in
business and a background in human
resource consulting. But his most significant experience is the work he’s done for
Summerfest.
For 14 seasons, Heinritz was the staff
accountant for Milwaukee’s signature
event. He also directed Summerfest’s
food and beverage operations, managing
the same area of the grounds that PrideFest occupies each year.
He’s essentially served as the landlord
for PrideFest, he says.
Among his first items of business was
conducting a thorough review of expenses
and income — what he calls a “forensic
audit.” That resulted in making “a couple
of tweaks” to the budget, he says. He also
began working with the board early this
year to expand sponsorship involvement.
Careful financial planning is essential
for an outdoor event whose success or
failure is impacted by the uncontrollable
factor of Milwaukee’s lakefront weather.
As a hedge against that, this year the
event has been moved back to June 10 to
12, about a week later than usual. That
gives Lake Michigan an extra week to
warm up before the gates open. “When
you look at early June, a week makes all
the difference,” Heinritz says.
When the weather is cool and wet, “you
can have strong attendance numbers but
people don’t stick around as long.” But, he
adds quickly, headliners are also crucial
to success: “Our strongest protection is a
stellar line-up,” he stresses.
With the help of PrideFest’s longtime
partner the Pabst Theater Group, this
year’s stars sparkle. The lineup includes
comedian Sarah Silverman, Blondie,
GGOOLLDD, Big Freedia, Deborah Cox,
Crystal Waters and Gabriel Sanchez’s
Prince tribute.
Better visibility
Sir Ian McKellen, the British actor
who starred in the Lord of the Rings
trilogy and other films, co-founded
Stonewall, England’s leading LGBT
civil rights group.
PrideFest’s 2016 layout comes close to
mirroring last year’s, Heinritz says.
The Health and Wellness area will
remain on the south grounds, where
familiar organizations such as Diverse &
Resilient, AIDS Resource Center of Wisconsin and BESTD (which will provide free
HIV screenings) will staff booths. A total
of 40 organizations are involved this year.
But the Health and Wellness area will
gain greater visibility this year. For the
first time, a “community information
booth” will greet PrideFest visitors “at the
main gate — front and center,” Heinritz
says. Volunteers there will direct people
to the south grounds, ensuring the area
and its services aren’t overlooked.
In addition, “We’ve redesigned and
expanded (the community area) to make
P h o t o : MILWA U KEE P RIDEFEST
New executive director Eric Heinritz is PrideFest’s first paid employee. He started the
job in January.
sure everyone is there in visible spots,”
Heinritz says.
In the community area, attendees
will find the Milwaukee LGBT Community Center, the Loft Lounge, the Stonewall
Tent and the Wom!nz Spot.
Expect to see new vendors at the marketplace this year, he added.
As in previous years, there will be a VIP
area, where patrons can enjoy an excellent view of the Miller Stage, along with
food, drink and other amenities. VIP tickets can be purchased online or at the gate.
The cost is $100 for one day, $225 for all
three days of the festival.
This year the dance pavilion will offer a
comparable VIP area.
Moving forward
After the glitter, paper cups, confetti
and other debris of PrideFest 2016 are
hauled away, Heinritz will turn his attention to building Milwaukee Pride Inc. into
a full-fledged organization that will stage
fundraising events year round to benefit
various community groups. He wants his
group to fill gaps in services for Milwaukee’s LGBT community. “What I want to
do is find out where those gaps are, what
needs are not currently being met by
existing organizations,” he says. “What
we don’t want to do is take on what other
organizations are doing.
“We would like to be a portal where
people could come and use us as a
resource — where we could leverage our
existing partnerships and work together
to solve issues.”
Heinritz directed
Summerfest’s food and
beverage operations,
managing the same
area of the grounds
that PrideFest
occupies each year.
PrideFest already does cross promotions with Pabst Theater Group. For
instance, the Avett Brothers are performing on a different part of the Summerfest
grounds on opening night, and anyone
who attends that concert will receive a
ticket for PrideFest. On Saturday night,
people who attend RuPaul’s Drag Race:
Battle of the Seasons at the Pabst Theater
will receive both a ticket for PrideFest and
a shuttle ride to the Summerfest grounds.
PrideFest will also have a float in this
year’s Milwaukee Pride Parade, and
shuttles will take people back and forth
between the parade and the festival.
These examples are just the beginning, Heinritz says, of what he hopes will
become a win-win relationship between
the new organization and existing community groups.
But first, he and his volunteers must
mount another successful PrideFest.
|
Pride 23
June 2, 2016
PRID
E 20
16
FRIDAY, JUNE 10
LGBT HISTORY PROJECT all
weekend (Arts & Culture Stage)
3:30 P.M.
4O
pening Ceremonies
4:00 P.M.
TICKETs:
13 Abbey of the Brew City Sisters
4 Lady Gia’s Drag Show
11 Zimmer Effect
11 Alyce Hart
15 Tai Chi with Chris Jansen
General Admission
$17 Gate ($15 Advance)
3-Day Weekend Pass
$39 Gate ($36
Advance)
One-Day VIP
$100
Weekend VIP
$225
5:00 P.M.
8 The Glacial Speed
8 TurnAbout
15 Serena Transgendertainer
Extraordinaire
5:30 P.M.
13 Jason Maek & Zaena
4 Grantham Cole
Dance Lounge VIP
$50
Weekend Dance VIP
$135
6:00 P.M.
11 Lauryl Sulfate and her Ladies of
Leisure
11 Siren
15 DJ Peg Dyer
6:15 P.M.
8 Fox Face
6:30 P.M.
4 DJ HME
10 Interfaith Ceremony
6:45 P.M.
11 Damsel Trash
7:00 P.M.
13 Gabriel Sanchez: Prince
Revolution
7:30 P.M.
4 DJ Scotty T
8 Tigernite
8:00 P.M.
11 Faux Fiction
11 Skizz Whores
8:30 P.M.
15 KatieBeth
9:00 P.M.
4 DJ Chomper
9:30 P.M.
13 Sarah Silverman and Friends
10:00 P.M.
4 Jump Smokers
11 TBA
15 Colin Acumen’s Drag King
Extravaganza
SATURDAY, JUNE 11
12:00 P.M.
13 Women’s Voices Milwaukee
8 Children’s area open (12–5 p.m.)
11 The META ARTS Distraction
1:00 P.M.
13 C
ity of Festivals Men’s Chorus
4 D.I.X. DollHaus
8 Kids are People Too!
10 TBA
11 Ruth B8R Ginsburg
15 Kevin Casper
1:30 P.M.
11 E merging Artists Showcase
2:00 P.M.
13 The Upside Band
4 JEGZ
8 Mischief and Magic
10 Stonewall Crafts
15 Zumba with Chris Jansen
2:15 P.M.
11 Jess Vega
3:00 P.M.
4 Furlesque
10 The Black Book: Evoking the
Links of Occultism and Queerness
Using the Salvation Army
11 Claire Kelly
15 The Queer Variety Show
hosted by Myami Richards
3:20 P.M.
13 Ian and the Dream
3:45 P.M.
11 Shaton Andrews
4:00 P.M.
4 Leather Show
8 Mischief and Magic
10 Meet the Brew City Sisters of
Perpetual Indulgence
4:40 P.M.
13 Party Anthem
5:00 P.M.
4 BJ Daniels Drag Revue
8 Vogue Expo
10 Slut Shaming: What It Is, and
How To Stop It
11 Comedy Showcase
11 Roxy Beane
15 Yoga with Danielle Horvath
15 Rose on Fire
6:00 P.M.
13 The Other Shapes
4 DJ Travis Lynch
8 Yeah, Bro Podcast LIVE!
10 TBA
15 Your Voice is Valid hosted by
Nikki Nigl
11:00 P.M.
13 Deborah Cox
SUNDAY, JUNE 12
12:00 P.M.
8 Children’s area open (12–5 p.m.)
12:30 P.M.
6:30 P.M.
4 TBA
7:00 P.M.
8 Gypsy Geoff
4 DJ X-Tasy
8 Casual Vocals
10 Film Screening: ‘Slay Belles’
11 Miltown Kings
11 SistaStrings
15 Corky Morgan
7:30 P.M.
13 Reyna
4 DJ Shawna
7:45 P.M.
11 Miss Lotus Fankh
8:00 P.M.
8 Abby Jeanne Rebel Love
8:30 P.M.
4 DJ Ryan Kenney
15 Lex Allen
8:45 P.M.
13 Big Freedia
9:00 P.M.
11 Hip Hop Showcase
9:15 P.M.
8 Paper Holland
9:45 P.M.
!!FIREWORKS!!
10:00 P.M.
4 DJ Chris Cox
15 Hypnosis with Serena
Transgendertainer Extraordinaire
10:15 P.M.
13 Crystal Waters
1:00 P.M.
1:45 P.M.
13 Eliza Hanson
2:00 P.M.
4 ShayKenn
15 Drag Queen Bingo hosted by
Ester Marie Flonaze
15 Yoga with Danielle Horvath
3:00 P.M.
13 Something to Do
8 Gypsy Geoff
10 LGBT Rights Today Panel
15 The Vagina Warriors: The
Power of the V
15 Serena Transgendertainer
Extraordinaire
4:00 P.M.
4 House of Brooklyn Entertainment Presents: ‘Orgullo Latino’
10 LGBT High School Experiences:
A Conversation
11 Jen Cintron
11 Heather Jean Maywood
15 Moonlight Karaoke with John
Kaspar
4:15 P.M.
13 Slutter
5:00 P.M.
4 DJ Tim Walters
8 Drinks on the House
10 Ask the Sexpert
15 Coming Out Stories with
MPower
5:15 P.M.
13 Salford Lads
6:00 P.M.
4 DJ B
8 Sorry Not Sorry Comedy
Showcase
10 Masculine and Feminine Makeover Show with the Miltown Kings
11 Dumpster Doves
11 Spoken Word Showcase
15 Dixie Kupper Kamp and Kurlers
Revue
6:30 P.M.
13 GGOOLLDD
7:00 P.M.
4 DJ NMF
8 Voyager: A Comedy Show
10 Film Screening: ‘Oriented’
7:30 P.M.
15 Hypnosis with Serena
Transgendertainer Extraordinaire
8:00 P.M.
4 DJ Hector Fonseca
8 ClamJam Comedy
11 Mandy Cappleman
11 The Dots
8:15 P.M.
13 Blondie
9:30 P.M.
4 Coco Montrese
10:00 P.M.
4 Ralphi Rosario
Pride 24
|
June 2, 2016
The Divine Sarah
Comedian Sarah Silverman headlines PrideFest’s opening night
He could be! PrideFest has a long
history of bringing in comedy legends,
including Joan Rivers, Kathy Griffin and
Mo’Nique. What does it mean to you to
perform at events like this?
I love the crowds and the spirit. There’s
such a sense of fun in the air. But make no
mistake, that fun comes with a history of
incredible strength. Letting your freak flag
fly is something, no matter who you are,
that takes great bravery, straight up.
When did you first become aware that
you had gay fans and a following in the
LGBT community?
I never really thought of it that way.
People who like what I do come in all
shapes and sizes. Not sure what the
common denominator is per se. Oh, it’s
meeee! But to be embraced by a progressive community means something to me
and this one feels like home.
The gays have long found a place in
your comedy, for example the “gigantic,
orange, and gay” neighbors on The Sarah
Silverman Program.
I don’t really like saying “the gays” …
I’m not sure why. I suppose I say “the
Jews,” but I don’t say “the blacks.” I guess
because I’m a Jew for all intents and purposes and to group people together of
which I am not one in such a casual way
feels disrespectful. No?
P h o t o : R o b y n V o n Swa n k
Sarah Silverman will conclude the mainstage program on June 10, with her trademark
brand of stand-up comedy.
By Gregg Shapiro
Contributing writer
Sarah Silverman is a stitch. Her timing
and delivery are impeccable and she’s not
afraid to make us laugh (and think) about
subjects we might not ordinarily think of
as comedic material. She does it effortlessly and gets away with it more often
than not.
An Emmy Award-winning comic, Silverman strikes gold via her stand-up
on stage, on television, and on albums
(check out her 2014 Sub Pop work We
Are Miracles). As an actress, Silverman
is able to move confidently from comedy
to more serious subject matter, including
her fantastic performances in Showtime’s
Masters of Sex, as well as her devastating
lead role in the heavy 2015 drama I Smile
Back. If her upcoming appearance opening Milwaukee’s PrideFest on June 10 isn’t
enough for fans, she’ll also be featured
in Popstar, playing the publicist for Andy
Samburg’s comically failing rapper/boy
band member.
Silverman took time out from her busy
production schedule in May to answer
some questions.
Sarah, you are performing at Milwaukee PrideFest on June 10. What are the
first three things you think of when you
think of Milwaukee?
Fonzie, Laverne and Shirley, obviously.
If there was going to be a movie version
of Laverne and Shirley, the 1970s Milwaukee-set sitcom, which of them would you
rather be?
Excellent question, Gregg! My kneejerk reaction is Laverne, but after much
thought, I’d go Shirley. Wait. No. Laverne.
Is Golden Gloves fighter and ballet dancer
Carmine Ragusso an option?
As one of “the gays,” that was not my
intention.
Yes, well for the Sarah Silverman Program I liked the idea of having these
neighbors/friends that were best friends
and happened to also be in love and didn’t
conform to this most basic TV version of
what America says as “gay man.”
As a comedian, how does the 2016
Presidential season compare to previous
election years in terms of material?
I think you know the answer to that. It’s
bananas!
It is! In addition to joining you at Milwaukee PrideFest, comedians Lizz Winstead and Todd Glass will be accompanying you in various cities on your current
tour. What do you like best about working
with Lizz and Todd?
They are two of my closest friends and I
admire them both for their conviction and
bravery and they’re both hilarious. I could
go on and on and on about both of them.
So proud of Todd for living his truth, and
he makes me cry with laughter. Lizz is a
true hero who does her work from her soul
yet puts no weight on it herself. And she
calls everyone Marge — genuinely — as if
everyone’s name is Marge.
What’s next for you?
Popstar, the Lonely Island movie, comes
out June 3, then a movie I did with (the)
awesome Naomi Watts called The Book
of Henry (opens) in August, I think. I’m
shooting a movie now called Battle of the
Sexes about Billie Jean King, played by
Emma Stone, and she’s amazing in it. Then
I’m on the road and come to you guys! I
can’t wait.
Did you know?
In recent years, we’ve seen your serious
acting side on Showtime’s Masters of Sex,
in which you played Betty’s lover Helen,
and in the 2015 film I Smile Back. What is
the most rewarding thing about playing a
dramatic role?
I guess the challenge of not having my
comedy toolbox to rely on, you know?
You recently portrayed Betsy Ross
on the History Channel’s Great Minds
show. As interest in school subjects goes
— including math, science and English,
where does history stand on your personal list and why?
Well, I was madly in love with my high
school history teacher, Mr. Berk. He was
so cool. I was an excellent student, but
because I was so distracted I got a C in his
class. I do remember fighting for partial
credit on a fill in the blanks test where
the question was, “The Prime Minister of
Japan is ____” and I put, “Japanese” which
I felt was inarguably correct.
In his will, Walt Whitman left his
pocket watch to his romantic partner, Peter Doyle. Doyle also kept the
poet’s old sweater, and wrote that he
would put on the sweater and “think
I am in the old times. … Then Walt is
with me again.”
|
June 2, 2016
Pride 25
Bigger than life
Bounce queen Big Freedia returns to PrideFest
Contributing writer
With a large, well-manicured hand in
multiple realms, Big Freedia is on her way
to becoming (drag) queen of all media.
Musically, Freedia can be credited with
introducing hip-hop/house hybrid bounce
music to the public and increasing its
familiarity in the mainstream. In print, her
memoir, Big Freedia: God Save the Queen
Diva!, puts her life experiences into words.
Watching her reality TV show Big Freedia:
Queen of Bounce, we witness her trials,
tribulations and triumphs. And with a role
in the film Heart, Baby — an upcoming
release about an imprisoned boxer who
turns down a chance at freedom if he
participates in the 1984 Olympics — Big
Freedia will further raise her already considerable profile.
To be clear: It’s Big Freedia’s world, we
just bounce in it.
Big Freedia will perform at Milwaukee
PrideFest on June 11, but before then, she
talked to WiG about the new heights she’s
risen to in recent years.
Freedia, since the time I first interviewed you in 2011, much has happened
in your career, beginning with the way
you brought bounce music into the mainstream. What do you think about the
reception of bounce and its future?
Well, I definitely think it’s grown. It
has definitely been accepted around the
world and I’m super excited about that.
That people allow me to come to their
hometowns and be myself and represent
the culture of music that I represent, and
New Orleans, especially.
(Bounce music) will continue to grow.
The sounds are getting bigger; it’s elevating. More artists want to work with and
incorporate bounce music in their music.
I’m very excited about the way things are
going and where they can go.
As you’ve said, you’re “one busy
queen.” One of your biggest gigs is your
reality show, Big Freedia: Queen of Bounce,
which will debut its fifth season on Fuse.
What’s the best thing about having your
own show?
I’m blessed to have my own show and to
have a platform to speak on a lot of different things that are happening around the
world. To have a platform for my music
and a home for New Orleans; a show that
represents our culture, what happens in
New Orleans and what happens with me
when I am on the road.
What are you most excited about in
season five of your show?
I’m most excited to see the roller coaster that I’m going to be on. Where I’m
going, where I’m traveling, what’s going
to be (happening) in the season. Figuring
out at that point in my life what’s happening next. It’s a lot of hard work and determination. I put forth my best effort and
present to the world what’s going on in my
life and (that of) all the people around me.
What can you tell me about Heart,
Baby, the movie you made this year?
It’s about a boxer who was in jail. I’m
one of the featured actors and I’m totally
excited about that. I’m ready to step into
the acting world some more. I’m such a
diverse artist and I’m able to be creative
on a whole lot of levels.
What part do you play?
I’m one of the queens in jail who was the
“mother” of the girls in jail.
You also wrote Big Freedia: God Save
the Queen Diva!, with your publicist Nicole
Balin. What was that experience like?
It brought back a lot of emotions. I had
to revisit a lot of things from childhood
to now. It was a fun experience to jog my
memory for all the things that have happened — or at least to my best recollection. It was an exciting and hard process
for me. We only had a certain amount
of time to get our draft in and finish the
book. We were on a tight schedule. Lots
of hours of talking on the phone to Nicole,
and then her coming to New Orleans and
meeting and going to the places where
I grew up. It was interesting to tell my
life story in that period of time the best
I could. Then to have a finished product
was really amazing.
Earlier this year, Beyoncé tapped you to
be a part of her song “Formation.”
Oh my God!
What was the experience of working
with Queen Bey like for you?
I died at home and came back to life
when I got the phone call. It was so major
for me and for New Orleans and my
career. I was blown away when I got the
phone call.
What did it mean to you that she knows
who you are?
We’d been in contact before I did the
song. She’s been aware of who I am and
what I represent and my music. She’s
been following me. She was a fan first.
In June, you are performing at PrideFest in Milwaukee. What can fans expect
from a Big Freedia Pride show?
They can expect me to bring lots of
energy and love and asses together. It’s
going to be an amazing show. We’re going
to bring it as we usually bring it. We’re
coming to have a happy time at Pride.
We’ll be doing some of the new stuff off
the album and debuting a few of the new
P h o t o : K o u r y A n g e lo
This year might be Big Freedia’s biggest yet, with the bounce pioneer entering the fifth
season of her reality TV show, appearing in Beyoncé’s “Formation” video and filming
the movie Heart, Baby. She’ll appear at PrideFest on June 11.
singles off the album. They will get to hear
some of the new sound of Big Freedia.
We’ve lost some big name musical
acts this year, including David Bowie and
Prince. Have you performed or do you
plan to perform any of their songs when
you play Milwaukee PrideFest or other
shows?
I haven’t gotten that far yet. I have so
many other things in front of me. But I
did do a dedication to Prince at my show
at Jazz Fest in New Orleans. It started
raining right when I was singing “Purple
Rain.” I couldn’t have asked for a better
performance at a better time. In the future
I’ll definitely be dedicating some stuff to
both of them.
If you don’t mind, I’d like to end on a
serious note and ask you to say something about the controversy surrounding
North Carolina’s House Bill 2, also known
as the “bathroom bill.”
I just think it’s a bunch of bullshit. There
were drag queens way before my time and
they will continue after. They’re (Republicans) making a big mockery out of nothing. People just want to be able to govern
us with everything. They should just let
people live and be free to choose whatever bathroom they choose (for) whatever
their preferred gender may be.
I’m definitely going to continue to support those people. I will be at Hopscotch
Music Festival (in Raleigh, North Carolina,
Sept. 8 to 10) and letting them know that
there are people there giving them moral
support. I will be the artist that goes there
and lets them know that. Fuck what the
governor says. Do you and be you and
just live!
PRID
E 20
16
By Gregg Shapiro
Pride 26
|
June 2, 2016
Gabriel Sanchez resurrects The Prince Experience
P h o t o : Ga b r i e l Sa n c h e z
By Colton Dunham
Contributing writer
Over the past decade, Milwaukee-based
artist Gabriel Sanchez has performed the
brilliant works of the legendary Prince —
curled wig, ruffled shirt, guitar solos and
all — as part of The Prince Experience. The
tribute act re-creates the look and sound
of Prince in his more sexualized heyday of
the mid-1980s.
And while Sanchez had temporarily set
aside his purple gear earlier this year, the
unexpected death of the Purple One himself in April at the age of 57 has gotten him
back in the game.
Sanchez’s first foray on a stage as Prince
came about by accident, he says.
“Basically a friend of mine was involved
with a local theater and they wanted to do
Purple Rain live as a play,” Sanchez says.
“He approached me about it and at first I
said no. I’ve never acted before and at that
point, never learned how to play Prince
music. … I told him, ‘Tell me when you guys
are doing it. I’ll buy tickets. I love Prince
and I love that movie. … (but) I can’t do
that. There’s no way. It sounds too hard.’”
Sanchez says his friend eventually wore
him down, which left only the monumental
task of becoming Prince. Despite growing
up with rock, funk and R&B practically a
part of his DNA — and having learned to
play guitar, drums and keyboards as well
as write his own music — Sanchez says
he had a tough time trying to copy Prince.
After a few runs of Prince’s hits on repeat,
he felt comfortable covering the wide vocal
range utilized in Prince songs, but the
dancing was a completely different story.
“That was kind of the funny part because
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I’m really shy when it comes to actually
dancing in front of people and my whole
entire family knew that,” Sanchez said.
“I knew I could dance sexually, but I did
it behind closed doors like when I was at
home by myself getting ready and when I
had music on. When I did it live, my family
thought that was so funny and said, ‘We
didn’t know you could do that!’”
With the vocals learned and the embarrassment of dancing on stage conquered,
Sanchez had just one challenge left: mastering the iconic guitar solos.
“Back then I was more of a rhythm
player so I had to actually learn all the
guitar solos,” Sanchez said. “Someone told
me, ‘If you can’t play the solos, we’ll have
someone on the side of the stage and we’ll
have them play and you fake it.’ I said,
‘Nope. Then I won’t do it.’ It just didn’t feel
right. I worked really hard and learned the
solos, learned the vocals, and watched
(Purple Rain) over and over and over again
so I could study the way he moved just to
get the essence of him.”
The play that weekend was a huge success, so much so that Sanchez decided to
keep his Prince experience going. Gathering top-notch local musicians, Sanchez has
spent more than a decade creating a show
that he describes as high-energy, sexual
and fun — far more than a mere tribute
performance.
To Sanchez, all that effort is worth it for
an artist he considers one of the greatest
of all time.
“I think it’s such real music,” Sanchez
says. ”It comes from a talent with a soul.
... There are some songs that sound like
they were thrown onto the table to make
a hit song. His are more than that. They’re
deeper than that. His songs will live on
forever.”
Sanchez says he was as blindsided as
anyone by the news of Prince’s death. “I
thought it was a hoax,” he says. “I thought,
Gabriel Sanchez has been performing as
The Prince Experience for more than a
decade. He’ll bring a revitalized act to
PrideFest on June 10.
‘This is not real.’” For him, verification
came as local news stations began calling him for comment and texts started to
pour in.
The news brought a sudden surge of
interest in The Prince Experience, and now
that he’s had time to process things, Sanchez is satisfying demand. His original
plans for the year were to perform under
his own name, having booked a gig at Turner Hall in January as a release party for his
first album, Immortal By Sound. Instead,
he’s personifying Prince again, and keeping the spirit and sound of the legend alive.
His appearance at PrideFest will mark
one of the first times Sanchez has performed his expanded show, having secured
a two-hour timeslot that doubles his usual
set. Rather than stay exclusively in the
mid-1980s period he’s specialized in, Sanchez will add music from the back half of
Prince’s career — maybe even ditching the
iconic curled wig and ruffled shirt.
“I’m thinking about doing the post-Purple Rain look as well with the shorter hair
and the different outfits and doing other
songs,” Sanchez said. “I don’t want to do
just the hits and that’s it. Everybody plays
‘Let’s Go Crazy’ and ‘Purple Rain.’ We play
those songs really, really well, but it would
be even better with more songs included.
The show’s going to keep evolving and I
want to build this huge catalogue so it’s
not the same show every time.”
One day, Sanchez will have to call it quits
on his time with The Prince Experience. But
he’s confident that Prince’s sound will live
on long after he puts down his guitar.
|
June 2, 2016
Pride 27
Lauryl Sulfate sets her sights on the patriarchy
By Colton Dunham
Contributing writer
Artist. Activist. Feminist.
These are just three titles that would
aptly describe Lauryl Sulfate, a Milwaukee
musician who has been performing music
described as everything from electronic
new wave and dance rap to “freak-nasty”
nerd punk.
She wasn’t born an artist. As a child, she
sat on the floor and absorbed her mother’s
record collection, then turned to her older
sister’s, sneaking listens while hiding in
the basement bedroom. From 1980s pop
legends like Prince and Madonna to edgier
punk like The Cure, The Violent Femmes,
and The Sex Pistols, she listened to it all.
That musical foundation would lay dormant for many years. In high school, she
was too shy to sing in front of audiences.
It wasn’t until she was a student at the
Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design that
she was drawn to becoming a musician, via
the ideals of performance art.
“I sort of realized that I could take a
punk-like attitude towards it, which was,
‘I don’t have to be trained to do this,’” Sulfate says. “‘I can just do this because it’s
fun to do and if someone wants to listen to
it, that’s great, and if they don’t, that’s fine
because I’m just going to keep making a lot
of loud noise.’”
And so she did — fusing elements of
hip-hop and dance music to create her
own self-taught style.
Lauryl and her Ladies of Leisure are on
tour in June, with a planned stop at Milwaukee’s PrideFest on June 10. Before the
show, WiG caught up with Lauryl to talk
about PrideFest, her activism, her plans
to destroy heteronormativity, and what it
means to be a “bedroom musician.”
For those who don’t know, who exactly
are the Ladies of Leisure?
For a while, I didn’t have a band and
it was hard to find people to work with
who enjoy all the same things and (have)
the commitment level to want to do the
same thing every week to practice. The
band, “Ladies of Leisure,” was actually just
me. My first thought was, “I’ll just record
everything and I’ll record all of the parts
and when I play. I’ll always make some
excuse of where the Ladies of Leisure
are today and why they can’t make it
to the show and it’ll be like a gag.”
A friend of mine (“Bonica Magnett”), who’s a really good singer,
came in and did guest backing
vocals a couple of times, and we
enjoyed working together so
much that I was like, “Would
you like to be my Lady of Leisure?” So I ended up having
one backing singer for quite a
while and she became a member
of the band. I have been working
with another friend of mine (“Lonely Son”) recording things for
awhile and finally convinced
him to be on stage to be the
keyboardist for me. So now I have two
Ladies of Leisure (laughs).
You describe yourself as a “bedroom
musician.” What does that term mean?
I have technology on my MacBook to
make songs. I have it on my iPad. I actually
have it on my phone. But also one of my
bandmates, he actually has a whole studio
set up in his house. He has a studio space
and has a lot more gear than I do so now
we’ve upped our game as far as being able
to record and test things out.
Computer technology has opened up
things amazingly because now there’s
GarageBand and all sorts of ways for people to make noise and give it to people
without having to be trained (or) having a
lot of money or equipment.
Your music has been described as electronic, New Wave, dance rap, and “freaknasty” nerd punk. How would you define
it?
Basically it’s fun music. I want to make
it accessible to people. I listen to a lot of
dance music and I like pop music and I like
hip-hop so it’s a fusion of all these things.
I was a kid in the ‘80s, so ... that’s where
my heart kind of lies musically. It’s kind of
all swirled together. We’ve been compared
to Le Tigre. It’s an apt comparison I think.
There’s a feminist edge to our music and
it’s dancey and punky and has a DIY sound
to it.
You’re also a fervent activist and feminist.
I’m most passionate about speaking out
for women and queer people, people of
color, and people who are traditionally not
heard as much — especially in the larger
pop world. We’re only shown a few kinds
of faces, and we’re shown only certain
viewpoints in the world. A lot of it is really
heterocentric and a lot of it is from a patriarchal point of view.
The music world is very masculine. I
think there’s a lot of derision towards
female pop aficionados and female pop
stars in general. Look at Beyoncé and how
hard she’s had to work to get recognition
for her work. She does amazing work and
she’s really an artist now that Lemonade is
out and people can see what a great artist
she is.
There are still people who want to take
the music that appeals to women and the
music that women make and say, “This
music doesn’t mean as much because
it’s not, you know, Neil Young.” I think if a
musician makes a song that’s on the radio
so frequently because everybody loves it
so much, then it’s obviously a song that’s
important to people. To sort of dismiss it
as being worthless because girls like it is
really doing everybody a disservice.
The most recent public debate over heteronormativity has been in relation to antitrans bathroom laws, which require people
to use the restroom of their birth-assigned
gender rather than the one they identify
with. How do you feel about those laws?
I really feel the anti-trans backlash is
not surprising at all. Queer people have
been pushing really hard for acceptance
for a long time, and we finally have it now
where marriage equality is a thing. We
no longer have to push for that. The most
vulnerable population that people can kind
of turn their homophobia on are trans
people. They’re trying to step up their
game because now it’s no longer okay to
make fun of “regular” queer people. It’s all
out of fear.
I’ve read elsewhere that one of the
band’s interests is “destroying heteronormativity,” the pressure to adhere to traditional gender norms and roles.
I feel strongly about it. I feel like heteronormativity is this myth that we’ve been
taught to live with and the gender binary
is a myth that we’ve been taught to live
with. ... In some ways I’m coming from a
heteronormative position because I’m a
cisgendered female and I have that level of
privilege. But really, I think we’ll eventually
look at history and we’ll be like, “Why did
we try so hard to put people in boxes on
who they are and who they want to be?”
There’s no risk to it. There’s no threat to
anybody else in letting someone be who
they are and that includes gender. I think
we will look at history and see how damaging those gender boxes are to men and
women and everybody between.
I think we’re getting to a point where
we’re starting to understand how damaging the patriarchy is not just to women. ...
I think we’re realizing that feminism can
help men and male-identified people push
out of those boxes as well. You don’t have
to be a certain way. You don’t have to be
macho, you don’t have to be tough.
Let’s talk about PrideFest. How important do you think it is for Milwaukee to
have an LGBT-focused festival?
I think it’s very important for Milwaukee. Every time I go, it’s been a beautiful
place to be for a few days where you’re
surrounded by people who are like family. People who are being themselves in a
space where those gender norms we were
talking about have been exploded more.
Last year when we performed at PrideFest,
it was the first year that they had genderneutral bathrooms. I think that was a really
great step forward and I’d love to see more
things like that.
How would you describe one of your
shows?
They’re fun! I think they’re a little surprising. I don’t think people don’t know
what quite to expect from us because
we’re an unusual band in Milwaukee in
particular. I don’t think a lot of bands in
Milwaukee gear towards electronic dance
music. I do rap and I don’t think people
expect me to rap unless they know what
they’re coming for (laughs).
Do you have any new music planned?
We’re going to be releasing a second
EP, probably three more songs, before
we go on tour. We’re working on a single
that won’t be on either of the EPs.
We’re hoping to make a video for
it and release it on YouTube or
Vimeo. The goal over the next
year when we get back from
the tour is starting to work
on an actual album. ... A lot
of what’s going out on the
EP is songs that we’ve been
playing out for a while now.
When we do an album, it’s
going to be more narrowly focused. It’s going to
have a theme that rides
through it.
P h oto : P r i d e F e st
Pride 28
|
June 2, 2016
Wom!nz Spot lineup aims to attract diverse audiences
By Julie Steinbach
Contributing writer
Producer Sarah Tybring aims to bring
diversity and excitement to the Wom!nz
Spot Lounge and Cafe, the women-centric
performance space at PrideFest.
Tybring and co-producer Terri Meyer
have booked a veritable melting pot of acts
sure to draw an equally varied audience.
“We have a little bit of everything,” says
Tybring. “We tried to appeal to everybody
who might come to our stage. We have so
many local artists of great diversity in our
community to showcase.”
This year is Meyer’s first as a co-producer, Tybring says, and she’s excited to have
her on board. Meyer has a background in
performance and a mind for social justice
and change, both of which have helped her
and Tybring select acts who highlight the
importance of diversity, equality, creativity
and positivity.
Each day of the festival at the Wom!nz
Spot will bring something fresh and unique.
One featured act on June 10 will be returning duo Mississippi Noir. Vocalist Annabel
Lee and drummer Jenna Joanis bring indie
and jazz heritage to their act, with a big
sound and even bigger personality.
Violin and cello duo SistaStrings will
be headlining June 11. Sisters Monique
and Chauntee Ross have performed and
collaborated around Milwaukee and
abroad, opening for Lupe Fiasco and Bone
Thugs-N-Harmony. They’ll be among several hip-hop acts and artists performing in
sequence Saturday evening. “Their creativity is just unbelievable so I was thrilled to
be able to bring them on,” says Tybring.
“As the frontrunner of the hip-hop showcase that evening, they’ll bring such a
wonderful blend of orchestral style with a
street edge that is danceable and fresh.”
The Wom!nz Spot isn’t just a home
for music. Metamorphosis Arts will wow
crowds on Saturday with Meta Art Distraction: daring performances on aerial
silks, chains and hoops. Tybring says master instructor Kim Anderson created the
group to empower women through the arts
of pole fitness, dance and yoga. The group
also will perform on enormous rigs at the
southern end of the festival grounds.
For anyone more into spoken word than
sung, there are plenty of artists devoted
to the art of poetry featured on June 12.
For Meyer, these artists represent a massive library of social and political knowledge and will also bring self-awareness
and body image into the conversation at
Wom!nz Spot. “One artist for example will
speak to body positivity. Others are very
socially aware and have been involved in
Black Lives Matter movements in the city,
and another that will feature saxophonist
Indigo Jade.”
For Tybring and Meyer, PrideFest represents a coming together of the Milwaukee
community in a show of awareness, acceptance and forward thought. “Being able to
P h oto : l e x A l l e n
P h o t o : S i s ta S t r i n g s
P h o t o : Da m s e l T r a s h
be a part of something that creates community is so important, and to be a part of
something that showcases women is also
extremely important. We have so much
togetherness and unity to create and so
Milwaukee’s Pride festival is the perfect
event to create safe spaces while supporting so much art,” says Meyer.
The Wom!nz Spot will
feature diverse femaleled acts including
(clockwise from left)
SistaStrings, Faux
Fiction and Damsel
Trash.
Pride of Milwaukee
Historic Third Ward
www.thewickedhop.com
|
June 2, 2016
Pride 29
Pride 30
|
June 2, 2016
|
June 2, 2016
Pride 31
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Pride 32
|
June 2, 2016
The rainbow business
krabbelaw.com
HAPPY PRIDEFEST
By Kerrie Kennedy
Contributing writer
It was the summer of 1975 when Milwaukee resident Paul
Noonen attended his first gay Pride parade, a loosely organized
protest meant to mimic similar happenings on the West Coast.
About 20 to 30 people showed up in front of the courthouse, he
recalls. So did the evening news cameras.
“As soon as their lights went on, everyone ran,” he says. “People were afraid of losing their jobs, afraid of being evicted.”
Today, that fear of losing a job has subsided a bit as corporate
America embraces Pride.
Just look for the rainbow flag alongside such logos as CocaCola, Anheuser-Busch, Miller Brewing Company, United Airlines
and Smirnoff. Case in point: It is entirely possible to attend PrideFest this year wearing an NFL Player’s Union gay Pride T-shirt, a
Hillary Clinton gay Pride baseball cap, Converse rainbow sneakers and Burt’s Bees Rainbow Lip Balm from Target, while carrying
an Apple iPhone 6 inside a gay PFLAG case. A gay Pride T-shirt
also is available from Apple.
For provisions, there’s Burger King’s Gay Pride Whopper,
launched in 2014, and Absolut’s rainbow vodka.
Corporate America,
LGBT America
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Corporate evolution on LGBT issues
is on full display at Pride celebrations,
says Wes Shaver, who’s served on the
board of directors for Milwaukee Pride
for the past three years and is currently
its president-elect. “Gay Pride festivals
and celebrations have become more and
more attractive to national and larger
organizations,” Shaver says, noting this
year’s sponsors for Milwaukee PrideFest
include Miller Brewing, Sky Vodka, Erie
Insurance, Potawatomi Hotel & Casino,
BMO Harris Bank, Walgreens, US Cellular, and Doubletree Hotels. Over the
past several years, the money from such
sponsorships has dramatically changed
the shape of PrideFest.
“Besides the fact that the presence of
these sponsors drives more attention to
the festival, the money itself has meant
we’ve been able to grow the festival and
offer more programming,” Shaver says.
“What Walgreens alone has contributed
as a sponsor this year has allowed us to build and grow our Health
and Wellness area, where people can learn about everything from
STD testing to healthy living.”
Corporate America was very different when Noonen was diagnosed with AIDS in 1995 and given five years to live. At the time,
Noonen was delivering beer for Miller Brewing Co. He was lucky.
Miller was a supporter of the war on AIDS and the LGBT community. According to Noonen, this was partly because Miller’s lead
chemist was one of the first people to die of AIDS in Milwaukee,
and his contribution to the company was remembered fondly.
Miller was at the vanguard. As recently as 2002, a mere 13
companies received a top score of 100 points on the Human
Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index, which rates American businesses on their treatment of LGBT employees, consumers and investors. This year, more than 400 major businesses
met the criteria to score 100, along with the distinction of “Best
Places to Work for LGBT Equality.”
These included Milwaukee companies Northwestern Mutual,
Manpower Group, Foley & Lardner, Quarles & Brady, and Rockwell Automation. Other major businesses recognized as “Best
Places” included General Electric, General Motors, AT&T, CVS,
Fannie Mae, Ford Motor Company, Chevron, Apple, JP Morgan
and Hewlett-Packard.
While there’s no doubt big business has changed and advanced
the movement, in many significant ways, the movement has
changed big business. In 2004, virtually no U.S. companies
offered transgender-inclusive health care coverage. Today, twofifths of the Fortune 500 and 60 percent of the “Best Places”
offer it, according to data provided by HRC. Also this year, threefourths of the Fortune 500 offered explicit gender identity nondiscrimination protections in the workplace, and 93 percent of
the Fortune 500 offered explicit sexual orientation protections,
up 43 percent and 89 percent, respectively, from 2011.
Sincere commitment
Of course, supporting the community is good business. HRC
projects that the buying power of the nation’s adult LGBT population will reach hundreds of billions of dollars in 2016. That’s a
huge financial incentive for companies to position themselves as
equality supporters. And repeated surveys have shown that LGBT
people, along with their families and friends, go out of their way
to be loyal to supportive companies.
Still, corporate America is aware that LGBT people
today expect more than a donation. They want to see a
commitment to equality.
Five years ago, corporate gay-friendliness might
have been a marketing strategy, says Shaver, but a
lot has changed since then. “Working with these large organizations
and companies and establishing
relationships with them, I think
they’re really coming from a place
of honest interest,” he says.
Working with PrideFest, Shaver
has witnessed that corporate course
correction in action.
“A lot of our sponsors now aren’t
just on the ground to push products, sell services, or collect email
addresses. They are here to help
with the festival and participate.
It goes far beyond just writing a
check, and that’s been a huge cultural shift.”
According to Rena Peng, manager
of the HRC Foundation’s Workplace
Equality Program, aligning corporate values with a company’s reputation as a champion of fairness and
equality is just one aspect of that
shift. The other aspect is a response
to internal pressures.
“Companies engage in positive efforts with the LGBT community not only to appear gay-friendly, but also to attract and retain
talent, create a welcoming and inclusive workplace so that their
LGBT employees can bring their whole selves to work,” Peng says.
By providing equitable policies and benefits across their entire
workforce, companies position themselves to “be on the right
side of history.”
‘Still puts a smile on my face’
While Pride events aren’t protests anymore, they’re not exactly
trips to Disneyland. They’re celebrations, with a whiff of a painful
history that makes them both emotional and personal.
This year, Noonen and his partner Jan are helping out Harbor
Room bar to create a float for the Milwaukee Pride Parade. Plans
include a hay wagon stocked with a crop of young men in tight
jeans and cowboy hats. Noonen — now age 60 — will ride shotgun in a ’53 Chevy pickup that will be towing the
urban cowboys past Milwaukee’s gay bars.
“Pride, to me, isn’t necessarily about Stonewall,” Noonen says. “It’s about my inner feelings,
my refusal to hide, and my wish to express what
still puts a smile on my face.”
PRID
E 20
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June 2, 2016
Little LGBT lessons
A history and activity
book for kids
By Lisa Neff
Staff writer
A new LGBT history from Chicago
Review Press is kid-friendly and momapproved — make that two moms.
Gay & Lesbian History for Kids: The Century-Long Struggle for LGBT Rights is stocked
with stories, quotes, photographs and
nearly two dozen activities.
LGBT parents will be over-the-rainbow
with the book by Jerome Pohlen, a former
elementary school science teacher and the
author of the well-received Albert Einstein
and Relativity for Kids. And so will their kids.
WiG tested the book’s appeal with an
informal book club of six: three parents,
ages 24–57, and three kids, ages 7–14.
The parents described the book as lively,
engaging and informative. The timeline
begins in 570 BC, with the death of the
Greek poet Sappho and continues through
2015, concluding with the U.S. Supreme
Court ruling for marriage equality in all 50
states. The 192 pages contain a condensed
but comprehensive narrative about the
movement and milestones, legends and
the legendary. The story of Harvey Milk
is told, but also those of lesser-known
historical figures, like Gen. Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, who served as George
Washington’s chief of staff in the American Revolution.
Chapters include the early history, the
birth of a movement in the early 1900s,
life in the shadows of the 1940s and
1950s, coming out in the 1960s, mobilizing in the streets in the 1970s, acting up in
the 1980s, setbacks and advances in the
1990s, and the milestone achievements of
this new century. The book opens with an
introduction about “two moms” and concludes with an afterword about “everyday
heroes.”
“I think it has something for everyone,”
said Chrissy Williams of Madison, a mother of two children. “I learned a few things.
Well, actually, I learned a lot.”
The kids focused more on the activities
than the histories.
“It didn’t feel like learning at all,” said
Williams’ 12-year-old daughter, Amy.
The book guides children through:
• Writing a free verse poem after reading Walt Whitman’s “Song of the Open
Road.”
• Inventing a secret language after
learning about Oscar Wilde and an era
when green carnations and red neckties
signaled “family.”
• Singing the blues, with inspiration from
the songs of Bessie Smith, Ethel Waters,
Ma Rainey and Gladys Bentley.
• Practicing “The Madison” after reading
that same-sex couples would be arrested
for touching on the dance floor, so they
began line dancing instead.
• Designing a flag, after reading about
symbolism and the creation of the rainbow
Pride flag.
A favorite activity instructed kids to ask
adults about boycotts they joined and the
results. The kids in WiG’s book club took
the activity to another level and agreed to
boycott “bad people like Donald Trump,”
“kale” and “homework.”
Perhaps the most unusual activity in the
book involves conducting an inkblot test,
using five sheets of construction paper, a
jar of dark poster paint, a pen and a sheet
of notebook paper.
Readers learn that, in the 1950s, sex
researcher and psychologist Evelyn Hooker gave her subjects the Rorschach Test,
seeking clues about how they think by
showing them a series of inkblots. Then
the kids make and conduct the test — an
activity guaranteed to prompt some laughs
and occupy them for at least an hour this
summer.
P h o t o s : C h i ca g o R e v i e w P r e s s
Gay & Lesbian History for Kids offers a condensed, 192-page narrative about the LGBT
rights movement, from the early 1900s to the new century.
Finalists for kids
The 28th Annual Lambda Literary
Awards, also known as Lammys, will be
presented June 6.
Finalists in the category for children’s
and young adult books include:
• Gay and Lesbian History for Kids: The
Century-Long Struggle for LGBT Rights
by Jerome Pohlen from Chicago Review
Press.
• About a Girl: A Novel by Sarah McCarry
from St. Martin’s Griffin.
Were they or weren’t they?
Jerome Pohlen’s LGBT history for kids explores the sexuality of
(below, from left) Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau,
Louisa May Alcott, Herman Melville and Emily Dickinson.
• Anything Could Happen by Will Walton
from Push.
• George by Alex Gino from Scholastic
Press.
• The Marvels by Brian Selznick from Scholastic Press.
• More Happy Than Not by Adam Silvera
from Soho Teen.
• None of the Above by IW Gregorio from
Balzer + Bray/ Harper Collins.
• Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda by
Becky Albertalli from Balzer + Bray/
Harper Collins.
— Lisa Neff
|
Pride 35
June 2, 2016
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June 2, 2016
Cyndi Lauper talks
‘Kinky Boots’ and
a country ‘Detour’
By Michael Muckian
Contributing writer
P h o t o : C h ap m a n Ba e h l e r
Longtime LGBT advocate Cyndi Lauper has embarked on a unique career shift in recent
years, first taking the Tony-winning job of writing music for the Broadway smash Kinky
Boots and now releasing her first album of country music, Detour.
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What do fetish wear, the BBC, Harvey
Fierstein and Cyndi Lauper have in common?
Read on.
Real-life businessman Steven Pateman,
desperate to save his family’s shoe factory in Great Britain, came up with a plan
to make fetish footwear for men. BBC2
latched on to the idea and produced a
documentary about his business for its
Trouble at the Top show. The year was
1999.
Writers Geoff Deane and Tim Firth liked
the documentary and, in 2005, turned
Pateman’s business success story into a
feature length film called Kinky Boots. The
pair changed his name to Charlie Price
and, in an added touch, created the character of Lola, a drag queen who became
Charlie’s partner and footwear advisor.
Tony Award-winning producer Daryl
Roth, seeing the film at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, fell in love with the
concept’s musical potential. She partnered with producer Hal Luftig to test the
idea’s Broadway possibilities.
The project tumbled along until the pair
signed Harvey Fierstein, author of La Cage
aux Folles and Torch Song Trilogy, to write
the book for the show in 2010. In need of
a composer who could write a range of
music, including “club songs,” Fierstein
reached out to pop star Cyndi Lauper.
The LGBT champion, who had just
recorded Memphis Blues with artists like
B.B. King and Allen Toussaint, liked the
idea because it tapped into her early experience with musical theater and signed on.
The rest, as they say, is history. Kinky
Boots was a smashing success, nominated
in 2013 for multiple Drama Desk Awards
and 13 Tony Awards. The show won six
awards, including Best Musical and, for
Lauper, Best Score, making her the first
woman to win alone in that category.
On STAGE
Kinky Boots runs May 31 to June 5
at the Marcus Center, 929 N. Water
St., Milwaukee. Tickets are $32
to $122. Call 414-273-7121 or visit
marcuscenter.org for details.
The show runs in Madison July
12 to 17 at the Overture Center, 201 State St. Tickets are $40
to $119. Call 608-258-4141 or visit
overturecenter.com.
Kinky Boots made its Wisconsin premiere in Appleton earlier this season,
and will make its first appearance in Milwaukee May 31 to June 5 at the Marcus
Center and in Madison July 12 to 17 at the
Overture Center.
WiG caught up with Cindi Lauper
between stops in her current tour to promote Detour, her first foray into country
music, to talk about Kinky Boots, cowboy
songs and LGBT activism.
What attracted you to music in the
first place?
I grew up in Queens in a family filled
with music lovers. It was Broadway musicals at my mom’s house, then when I went
down to my grandparent’s apartment they
were playing Italian crooners like Louis
Prima and Enzo Penza. At Aunt Gracie’s
house, it was blaring AM radio as she
worked in the kitchen. There I heard Patsy
Cline, Hank Williams, Kitty Wells and
Johnny Cash. Back then no one labeled it
“country” music; it was just “hit” music.
As I got older in the 1960s, my cousins
and I discovered rock ’n’ roll and from that
music I learned about the blues. So as you
can tell my taste in music from my childhood has filtered into my music today.
So how did you get involved with Kinky
Boots?
I didn’t have any real background in
musical theater. I did perform in Threepenny Opera with Roundabout Theater on
Broadway, but it wasn’t a very big part
and it was a very short run. I had always
dreamed of writing for Broadway. When
Harvey Fierstein called and asked me to
be the composer for Kinky Boots, I just
jumped at the chance.
Harvey and I have been friends for a
long time so we had a natural rhythm
working together. Not to say it was all
just effortless. We put a lot of time, energy, sweat, laughter and tears into it. He
is Broadway royalty, of course, and an
industry veteran so his guidance through
the process was amazing. He was very
giving to me throughout.
How did you evolve from writing pop
songs to composing an entire musical
score?
During the writing process for Kinky
Boots, I realized that I had to write songs
for everyone in the cast, which meant
writing for voices other than my own.
When I perform my own songs, I often
LAUPER next page
LAUPER from prior page
|
June 2, 2016
Pride 37
Lauper’s ‘detour’ a successful side trip
pretend to be someone other than myself to bring a
certain emotion or intent to a song. In a way, it wasn’t
a huge stretch to put myself in other people’s shoes to
write songs for them.
Can you explain the typical interactions between
you as composer and lyricist and Harvey Fierstein as
author of the show’s book?
Harvey would send me pages of the script and tell me
what the songs needed to say to move the plot forward,
and I’d send him back songs. When ideas would pop
into my head, I’d call him and sing him the melody. But
the book drove the songs.
Kinky Boots is, of course, about an English shoe factory that saves itself by switching to sexy high-heeled
boots. But is there more at work here?
It’s a story about camaraderie and acceptance. It’s
about two people — Charlie and Lola — who think they
have nothing in common, but actually do have a lot in
common. It’s a story of being brave enough to accept
yourself so that you can learn to accept others too.
Speaking of music, what caused you to detour into
country music with your new album?
I have always wanted to work with (Sire Records
founder) Seymour Stein. He was one of the great A&R
guys that shaped music in New York City in the 1970s
and ‘80s. At the time I wasn’t sure what direction I was
heading. But then when I started listening, I found that
the songs I was moved by were country songs from the
same era as the songs on Memphis Blues. I really liked
the idea of doing a companion record to Memphis Blues
and to look at music from both sides of that street.
Switching gears, you have long been an LGBT advocate. How did this start?
It’s simple: I am friend and family to the LGBT community and where I come from you stand up for the people
you love and care about. So, as long as any member of
the community is treated as less than (someone else),
I am going to do whatever I can to stand up for them.
Are you satisfied with the LGBT community’s progress this past year?
We have come a long way, but we still have a long way
to go. We need to celebrate our many successes over
the past few years and use that to motivate us to deal
with what still needs to be fixed.
You can still be fired in over half the states for being
gay or transgender. Up to 40 percent of the homeless
youth in America are LGBT, yet only 7 percent of the
general youth population is LGBT. We know that if we all
work together we can make great changes; we just need
to build upon the momentum of our successes and keep
moving forward together.
PRID
E 20
16
What’s next in your LGBT activism?
The same thing I have been working on for the past
eight years, which is to end LGBT youth homelessness
through the True Colors Fund. We are working to put
the long-term solutions in place to both prevent and
end youth homelessness and urge people to join us in
the effort and learn more about the issue at truecolorsfund.org.
The chameleonic Cyndi Lauper reshapes herself once
again with the release of Detour. Lauper’s first foray into
the Nashville sound may leave listeners wondering what
took her so long to make such an obvious connection.
Lauper wisely leans heavily on classics from the Great
American Country Songbook, and there is nary a miss
among the album’s 12 tracks. The title track may refer
to changes in direction from Lauper’s pop roots, but it
also references the famous western swing tune “Detour
(There’s a Muddy Road Ahead)” that dates back to 1945
and boasts versions by Patti Page, Bill Haley, Ella Fitzgerald and others. Lauper’s take falls right in line with her
predecessors.
Lauper calls on Willie Nelson, Vince Gill and Emmylou
Harris to boost her country cachet, though she certainly
doesn’t need it. She shines brightest on solo songs: the
Patsy Cline classics “Walkin’ After Midnight” and “I Fall to
Pieces.” Coupled with Dan Dugmore’s shimmering pedal
steel, the deliveries are exquisite.
But the strongest bit is her version of Carol Hall’s
“Hard Candy Christmas,” originally written for The Best
Little Whorehouse in Texas. Songbird Alison Kraus joins on
the Sondheim-style vocals, creating a heartfelt country/
Broadway blend.
— Michael Muckian
Pride 38
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June 2, 2016
|
Pride 39
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Pride 40
|
June 2, 2016
StageQ’s Michael Bruno brings LA panache to hometown gigs
By Michael Muckian
Contributing writer
Madison native and current StageQ
board president Michael Bruno has had
quite the career. As a theatrical producer,
gay porn actor, adult film awards show
master of ceremonies and professional
game show contestant, the 60-year-old
has a résumé with a certain je ne sais quoi.
With his return to Madison, though, he
may be embarking on one of his most significant roles yet: continuing StageQ founder Thomas McClurg’s work providing a
stable home for LGBT-themed plays within
Madison’s larger theatrical community.
Much of Bruno’s life may have been
spent far from Madison, but his hometown
is where he first got plugged in to gay culture. After coming out in high school, Bruno
studied theater and drama at both the
University of Wisconsin-Madison and the
city’s Edgewood College, becoming an out
and outgoing member of Madison’s LGBT
and theatrical communities.
A hint of where he’d eventually migrate
came in the late 1970s. Bruno says he had
a chance encounter with a teacher after
performing with the Wisconsin Children’s
Theatre that brought a sharp directional
change to the young actor’s career.
“She was from California and told me
about a wonderful children’s theater in San
Diego,” Bruno remembers. “I always wanted to live on the West Coast, so I thought,
‘Why not apply?’”
The theater was the Old Globe Theatre, a
1935 replica of its London namesake. Bruno
auditioned and was hired.
“It was one of those fortuitous moments,”
Bruno says. “I stayed for one summer, then
came back to Madison.”
He remained in Wisconsin for a few
years after that, working as a bar manager, host and humorist at a variety of the
city’s gay bars: The Back Door, Going My
Way and the speakeasy-style The Barber’s
Closet inside the Hotel Washington.
But the West Coast’s siren song called
him back. This time around, it was as a
contestant on Body Language, a CBS daytime game show taped in Los Angeles. The
young gay contestant proved to be a hit.
“This was 1983 and I won $60,000,”
Bruno says. “It was all in cash, too. No
crappy prizes or porcelain Dalmatians.”
Bruno’s big win was just the beginning.
He entered the game show “circuit” and
over the next few years found that good
money could be made by helping producers
test-drive new game show concepts. That
led to his becoming assistant producer and
contestant coordinator for the game shows
High Rollers and Win, Lose or Draw.
Bruno took other, less prosaic roles in
LA’s entertainment industry as well. He was
hired by Vivid Man, the gay production arm
of San Fernando Valley pornographic filmmaker Vivid Entertainment (best known
nowadays for releasing the Kim Kardashian
sex tape). He may have been the only actor
to keep his pants on.
“The producers were looking for a funny
uncle or someone to provide comic relief in
between the sex scenes,” Bruno says. “I did
that for three years.”
The experience led Bruno to a two-year
gig as emcee of the Adult Video News
Movie Awards, which were held as a benefit for AIDS research.
But it was a piece from “Tea with Bruno,”
the column he wrote for a Los Angeles gay
newspaper, that took him in new directions.
“The show Party came to town in 1996,”
Bruno says. “That was the naked-boy
revamp of The Boys in the Band and I was
asked to review it.”
Bruno liked the production, but his theatrical instincts kicked in and he took jabs
at the show for being staged in the wrong
theater in the wrong neighborhood. The
swipes earned Bruno a call from author
David Dillon, who had an unexpected
response.
“He thanked me for saying the things he
had been trying to tell the local producers
from the start,” Bruno says. “He also asked
me to produce the show in San Francisco.
I had taken this sidestep into game shows
and pornography and missed the theater,
so I said yes.”
Bruno’s production of Party was a success and he went on to form his own theatrical company. His next production was
Dirty Little Showtunes, writer Tom Orr’s
witty reimagining of classic show tunes
with aggressively gay and sexually explicit
lyrics. (“How Do You Solve Your Problem
Gonorrhea” would surely give The Sound
of Music’s morally upright von Trapp family pause.) That show too was a hit, and
in addition to San Francisco, played in Los
Angeles, Seattle and Chicago.
But health issues would make life in LA
less appealing. In 1993, Bruno was diagnosed HIV-positive. Successes and failures
with various California health care providers, and health issues facing his own elderly
mother back in Madison, led to his 2001
return to the Badger state.
“My mother needed hip replacement
surgery and her doctors were refusing to
perform the operation, saying she would
never survive,” Bruno says. “My father had
passed away and I needed to take care of
her health and my own health, so I came
home.”
Bruno thought he would stay in Madison for a year or two at most, but saw an
absence of interactive dinner theater and
gay theater he felt needed to be filled. He
formed Whoop De Do Productions, best
known for Sweet Cannoli Nuptials, a dinner
show modeled after Tony & Tina’s Wedding. He also became involved in StageQ,
starting as both an actor and director and
moving up to board president.
For the past five years he’s also hosted
“Backstage with Bruno,” a blend of live and
taped video segments on Madison’s theater scene that airs weekly on CBS affiliate
station WISC-TV.
“It’s a great gig and gives me the chance
to mention StageQ and other community
theater groups,” says Bruno, who is directing one of StageQ’s Queer Shorts plays
just as he has for the past five years (see
sidebar).
Bruno also has served as editorial consultant for Our Lives magazine and board
member for cultural arts group Dane Arts
and the AIDS Network of Madison. Above
all, he is happy to report that his health is
good.
“Thanks to UW Health and University
Hospital, I’m healthy, drinking my ‘cocktail,’
‘Queer Shorts 2.0’
One of Bruno’s new roles with StageQ
is producing the Queer Shorts series,
although it’s not a job he expected to have
to do.
In 2005, when creator Katy Conley
started Queer Shorts — an annual collection of short plays designed to give
voice to LGBT writers, actors and directors
— she originally intended the series to
last just 10 years. Last year’s installment
marked year 10, and faced with health and
other issues, the board decided to conclude the series as planned.
Madison’s LGBT community and the
show’s fans had other ideas. They raised
such a ruckus that Conley permanently
handed the project over to StageQ’s board,
which now also serves as the company’s
P h oto : M i c h a e l B ru n o
Michael Bruno, a Madison native,
returned to the city 15 years ago, and has
since become a vital member of the city’s
theater and LGBT scene once again.
my T-cells are up and I am doing fine,”
Bruno says. “I was originally told I would
only have five or six years left, but I am a
lucky, long-term survivor.”
What’s more, Bruno’s mother did have
her hip surgery and, at age 100, is doing
just fine too.
“Every day I am grateful,” Bruno adds.
management.
Over the years, themes have emerged
to tie together the average of 10 productions culled from as many as 200 submissions each year, Bruno says.
“This year, the plays are all about how
technology affects the LGBT culture,”
Bruno says. “We had some very nice submissions and we had to choose nine from
the 80 one-act plays we received.”
In addition to producing the series,
Bruno will direct playwright Dan Myers’
Case of the Gays, one of the installments.
Queer Shorts 2.0: The Reboot takes the
Drury Theater stage at the Bartell Theatre, 113 E. Mifflin St., Madison, June 10
to 18. Tickets are $15 or $20 and can be
purchased at stageq.com.
— Michael Muckian
|
June 2, 2016
Pride 41
Partners Wright and Jivoff a true theater ‘power couple’
By Matthew Reddin
Staff writer
They don’t have a snappy portmanteau
nickname like “Bennifer” or “Brangelina,”
but C. Michael Wright and Ray Jivoff qualify as one of Milwaukee’s cultural power
couples.
In their roles at two of Milwaukee’s most
critically acclaimed theater companies,
Milwaukee Chamber Theatre and Skylight
Music Theatre, the couple has helped
shape the city’s artistic landscape over the
better part of three decades.
Wright has been producing artistic
director at MCT since 2005 and Jivoff the
associate artistic director at Skylight since
2009 and interim artistic director for the
2016–17 season.
Given their prominence, it may be
strange to hear that the two came to Milwaukee almost by accident.
In the summer of 1983, Wright was
based in New York City but on the road
as one of the leads in the national tour of
“Master Harold” … and the Boys. Jivoff was
in San Francisco, working for a children’s
theater company after graduating from San
Francisco State University. When Wright’s
show came to town, a friend of Jivoff’s invited him to the opening night party — and the
two hit it off. It’d ultimately be the first day
in their 33 years together.
After stays in San Francisco, Los Angeles
and New York — and a stint of bi-coastal
commuting — they wanted to settle down.
But none of those cities seemed a good fit.
“We were looking for a community to live
in,” Jivoff reflects.
They would ultimately choose Milwaukee, thanks in part to “Master Harold” again.
Years before, while on the national tour,
Wright turned 30 and realized he didn’t
want to continue playing the title role of
Hally — a 17-year-old South African boy
— much longer, despite getting multiple
offers to do so at regional theaters across
the country. “I said to myself, ‘I’ll do it one
more time,’” Wright says. “So I said yes
to the Milwaukee Rep (in 1984). And that
changed our lives, on kind of a whim.”
Through performing in that show and
others at the Rep, Wright had grown enamored of Milwaukee, as had Jivoff. When
Wright got the offer to do a few shows at
Skylight, the couple took that as a signal:
Move to Milwaukee, and just see what
happens.
WIDE INTERESTS, EXPERIENCES
Neither Jivoff nor Wright say their goal
was to end up in arts administration when
they arrived in Milwaukee in the late 1980s.
Their current jobs instead grew organically
out of their own interests, and the freedom
Milwaukee gave them to pursue more than
one of them at once.
“(Milwaukee) seemed like a place where
there was potential that we’d be able to do
all the things we liked doing,” Jivoff says. “I
know I didn’t want to just act, and I don’t
know that there’s that much work to just
act.”
Jivoff’s overlapping interests in theater
and education made him a natural fit as the
drama director at Catholic Memorial High
School, where he taught for 12 years. He’s
also been involved in developing multiple
theater education programs in the city.
Jivoff is a frequent collaborator with First
Stage, which opened the same year he and
Wright arrived in Milwaukee, and he originated Next Act’s education program “Next
Actors” before being hired to develop Skylight’s education department in 1999 and
subsequently becoming associate artistic
director a decade later.
Wright says he arrived in Milwaukee
thinking of himself as an actor but open
to other opportunities; those opportunities came his way quickly. As he got to
know other artists, Wright was invited to
direct and teach, broadening his range of
skills. He discovered he had a knack for
arts administration in 1997, when he was
asked to join the staff of Next Act Theatre
as an associate artistic director. After eight
years, he decided that he wanted to run his
own company, and fate again kept the couple in Milwaukee — MCT’s founding artistic
director Montgomery Davis announced his
retirement, and Wright was selected to
replace him.
One benefit of taking the MCT job was
that it brought Wright under the same roof
as his partner, since both Skylight and MCT
are based in the Broadway Theatre Center
in the Third Ward. But the couple say their
work schedules often keep them on nonintersecting paths during the day. “So many
people think ‘Oh, you probably go there at
9 together and leave at 5 together,’” Wright
says. “No, no, no, no, no (laughs).”
Their day-to-day work patterns speak
to a greater pattern in their professional
careers. Unlike many other theater couples
in the city and state, Wright and Jivoff say
they don’t work together much, either as
fellow actors or in an actor-director pairing.
“I’ve done a lot of children’s theater and
musical theater,” Jivoff says. “It’s more my
type; I’m loud, over the top. … He’s much
more serious — does Chekov and stuff like
that (laughs).”
But as the conventional wisdom goes, it’s
those different personality traits that they
admire most in each other. “He’s my main
advisor and teacher,” Jivoff says. “I get a
ton of advice and guidance from him and he
keeps me calm.”
“For me,” Wright adds, “Ray provides a
sense of levity. He makes it easy to laugh
at some of the absurd situations we find
ourselves in. And even just to remember
not to take it all too seriously. We both are
incredibly passionate about the work … but
it’s important to keep it in perspective.”
OUT AND PROUD
Both Wright and Jivoff say they’ve felt
they can be open about their relationship,
both within the extremely accepting theater community and with Milwaukeeans at
large. They say there’s no denying, though,
that society’s response to gay couples has
P h o t o : MI lwau k e e C h a m b e r T h e at r e
Ray Jivoff (left) and C. Michael Wright have become valued members of the Milwaukee
theater community since moving here almost 30 years ago, and risen to leadership
roles at their companies, Skylight Music Theatre and Milwaukee Chamber Theatre.
shifted dramatically in that time.
“I have no problem at all saying to someone ‘my partner’ now, but I do think when I
first came it was harder. It’s more accepting now,” Wright says. “When we grew up,
things were very, very different. As youths
dealing with being gay, it’s easier now.”
It’s also only in the last decade or so that
Wright and Jivoff have risen to a level of
prominence that people might be aware
of their relationship without being told, as
they’ve taken on administrative positions.
Wright remembers one pivotal moment
about 15 years ago, when they were
mentioned in a Valentine’s Day column
by retired Journal Sentinel critic Damien
Jaques. Jaques interviewed several theater
couples including Wright and Jivoff. “That
made us public figures as a couple. Before
that, whoever knew, knew, and whoever
didn’t, didn’t. Then suddenly there you are
in the paper.”
In many senses, Wright says he and
Jivoff have come to feel their administrative positions make it important for them to
be open about being gay and partnered, to
serve as role models for their community.
“Because we’re in positions of power now, I
think it’s our responsibility to be more vocal
about it,” he says.
Pride 42
|
June 2, 2016
Pride 2016 summer reading list
By Gregg Shapiro
Contributing writer
Whether you’re headed to the beach, the
pool or the park, it doesn’t hurt to take a
book along to pass the time. The 22 LGBTfriendly titles below range from poetry
and fiction to memoirs and non-fiction. In
other words, there is almost something for
everyone.
Poetic license
Now in its second printing, a remarkable achievement for a book of poetry,
Night Sky With Exit Wounds, the full-length
debut collection by lauded gay poet Ocean
Vuong, not only deserves of all the praise it
has already received (including a Whiting
Award), but much of the acclaim that is
sure to follow in its wake.
Award-winning lesbian writer and educator Julie Marie Wade seamlessly merges
the poetry and memoir realms of her work
in Catechism: A Love Story, a dazzling collection of poetic essays about loving others
and learning to love oneself.
Poetry by Jeff Mann, Trebor Healey, Alan
Martinez, Mark Ward, Daniel Allen Cox,
Jonathan Lay, Miles Griffis, Stephen Mead,
and a collaboration by Elizabeth J. Colen
and Carol Guess, are among the selections
found in the anthology Not Just Another
Pretty Face, edited by Louis Flint Ceci.
Results that move you!
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Fictional forays
Taking place in the 24 hours in and
around the time that Rasa, “a gay man living in an unnamed Arab country,” is outed
by his grandmother — putting the lives of
him, his boyfriend Taymour and others in
jeopardy — Saleem Haddad’s debut novel,
Guapa, is a welcome introduction to a new
literary voice.
The late Jackie Collins often included
gay characters in her beach-read novels,
including Dante, the gay brother of Lucky
Santangelo. The “ever-powerful” Lucky is
the main focus of Collins’ final novel, The
Santangelos.
Nineteenth-century literary icon George
Eliot (born Marian Evans) wrote her famous
novels, including Middlemarch, under a
male pseudonym in order for her work to
be taken seriously. Eliot is the subject of
The Honeymoon by Dinitia Smith, about the
author’s brief, late-in-life marriage to the
considerably younger John Walter Cross.
Arriving in time for the 2016 political
season, The Pink Bus, by journalist and
critic Christopher Kelly, takes us on a journey through the life of gay reality TV star
and Texas Senate candidate Patrick Francis Monaghan, following an assassination
attempt during a campaign stop.
YA? OK!
The Great American Whatever, the third
young adult novel by gay writer Tim Federle — described as a “winning testament
to the power of old movies and new memories” — introduces us to 16-year-old Quinn
who, in the midst of mourning the death of
his sister, just might be falling in love.
David Levithan is no stranger to collaboration, writing several novels, including
Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist with Rachel
Cohn and Will Grayson, Will Grayson with
YA legend John Green. He teams up with
Nina LaCour for the novel You Know Me
Well, a “friends at first sight” story told
in alternating chapters about two friends:
Mark and Kate.
Born of YA author Kody Keplinger’s “love
of female friendship,” her fifth novel Run
features bi Bo and sheltered Agnes, who
run away from home and experience lifechanging events that only deepen their
unlikely friendship.
Written and illustrated by Emmy Awardwinning puppet designer and builder Laurent Linn, the fittingly titled Draw the Line
tells the story of Adrian Piper, the superhero character named Graphite that he
draws, and how one can discover one’s own
superpowers in a time of need.
Set about 100 years into the future, The
Chronicles of Spartak: Rising Son by “soldier,
teacher, journalist, state legislator, literary
commissioner” Steven A. Coulter, is the
first in a series told “through the eyes” of
16-year-old athlete Spartak Jones.
The memoir’s the thing
Baptist pastor’s son Garrard Conley
writes about his family’s inability to come
to terms with his being gay in Boy Erased:
A Memoir. Conley spent time at the soul-
crushing ex-gay Christian ministry formerly known as Love In Action, and writes
about that and how he survived the experience.
As any survivor of sexual abuse can
attest, violation knows no sexual identity.
So while The Telling: A Memoir is written
by a straight woman, Zoe Zolbrod, it’s the
kind of book that has the potential to ignite
conversations among every type of reader.
Electronic music legend and activist
Moby (aka Richard Melville Hall), a longtime friend of the LGBT community who
counted gay DJs including the late Frankie
Knuckles and Danny Tenaglia among his
closest associates, tells his story in Porcelain: A Memoir.
Co-written by actress Charlotte Stewart
with Andy Demsky, Little House in the Hollywood Hills, subtitled “A Bad Girl’s Guide
to Becoming Miss Beadle, Mary X, and
Me,” details Stewart’s 50-year career in
movies and on television, including roles
in Little House on the Prairie, Eraserhead and
Twin Peaks, and her friendships with Joni
Mitchell and others.
Long out of print, Blue Days, Black
Nights, Oscar-nominated screenwriter Ron
Nyswaner’s brutal memoir of his decline
into drugs and sexual obsession, has been
reissued with an introduction by director Jonathan Demme and an epilogue by
Nyswaner.
With the lengthy subtitle, “Writers
Reflect on Love, Longing and the Lasting
Power of Their First Celebrity Crush,” coeditors Cathy Alter and David Singleton’s
Crush features contributions by queer writers such as Richard McCann (crushing
on Bette Davis), Shane Harris (on Mark
Hamill) and Roxane Gay (on Laura Ingalls
Wilder’s husband Almanzo). Straight contributors include Jodi Picoult (on Donny
Osmond), Stephen King (on Kim Novak),
and James Franco (on River Phoenix).
If having four lesbian moms isn’t inspiration enough for a memoir such as Queer-
spawn in Love, then Kellen Anne Kaiser’s
own personal journey — including a stint
in the Israeli army and the challenges of
maintaining a heterosexual romance —
certainly qualify as fodder.
A memoir about “raising a gender creative child from toddler to adult,” My Son
Wears Heels by Julie Tarney begins with the
chapter “How Do You Know I’m A Boy?”
She was asked that question by her then
2-year-old son Harry in the early 1990s,
and this book follows the author on her
quest for answers.
Necessary non-fiction
Kevin Mumford, a professor of history
at the University of Illinois at ChampaignUrbana, is the author of Not Straight, Not
White, a history of the role played by black
gay men in the gay rights movement that
stretches from before the March on Washington, in the 1950s, to the AIDS crisis in
the 1980s.
In Fair Play, Cyd Zeigler, “one of the foremost experts on LGBT issues in sports,”
writes about “how sports have transformed
for LGBT athletes,” including Michael Sam,
Britney Griner, Jason Collins, John Amaechi, Billy Bean and Fallon Fox.
|
June 2, 2016
Pride 43
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Pride 44
|
June 2, 2016
Examining Robert Mapplethorpe, three decades later
describe how he lured them to his apartment from bars and used flattery to persuade them to model. A few subjects
claimed they were his lovers, but others
felt that he “used” them for their bodies.
In the words of model Marcus Leatherdale,
“To be in Robert’s world, you either had to
be rich, famous, or sex.”
In contrast to these testaments, a recurring scene shows curators at the Getty
and LACMA gathered around his work
in reverence as if staring down at a holy
shrine, their fingers tracing the meticulous
composition of the images. The juxtaposition shows the duality of his work. It is
appreciated — worshipped, even — in a
high-art context, but remains embarrassing and confrontational to others who view
it from their personal context.
All in all, the most telling aspect of
the Mapplethorpe resurgence is the utter
lack of controversy surrounding it. This
time around, there are no angry politi-
By Rachele Krivichi
Contributing writer
“The thing the world is most afraid of is
the penis.”
That’s the claim Jack Fritscher makes,
partially on behalf of his ex-lover Robert
Mapplethorpe, in the new HBO documentary, Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures. The
film was released April 4 to coincide with
an unprecedented joint exhibition of the
photographer’s work at the J. Paul Getty
Museum and Los Angeles County Museum
of Art, under the name Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Medium. The documentary
offers an opportunity to look back on his
often-shocking body of work and the influence he’s had on the world of photography.
For those who weren’t alive in the 1980s,
the name “Mapplethorpe” might not have
the disquieting effect it had three decades
ago. The openly gay photographer shocked
the art world with his brazen photographs
of male sexuality, nudity and sadomasochistic practices. As fate would have it, he
rose to fame when AIDS was devastating
the gay community, making his work all the
more controversial.
Make no mistake, his photographs were
jarring. A self-portrait with a whip inserted
into his anus shocked. Portraits of black
male nudes shook the status quo of “beauty.” Nudity, sex and blatant objectification
of the penis were as normal to Mapplethorpe as sunsets to Monet. He flaunted this
subject matter as if to say: “This is how I
live; get over it.”
When a large retrospective of his work
called The Perfect Moment opened at the
Institute of Contemporary Arts in Philadelphia in 1989, it caused more than a stir,
proving that the world was, indeed, very
afraid of the penis. Conservative lawmaker
Jesse Helms attempted to cut funding
from the National Endowment for the Arts
because of its support of Mapplethorpe’s
work. In 1990, The Perfect Moment traveled to Washington, D.C.’s Contemporary
Arts Center, where museum director Dennis Barrie was subsequently arrested on
charges of obscenity.
All of this controversy peaked at the
exact time when Mapplethorpe was at his
weakest, due to AIDS. He continued to
work, even as he was dying, and in 1989, at
the age of 42, he passed away in his home.
Although he lived a short life, Mapplethorpe had a tremendous influence on the gay
rights movement, the art world, and the
medium of photography.
In the 27 years since his death, there
have been no ambitious exhibitions of his
work at any major museums until this year,
with the opening of The Perfect Medium
in March. During these decades after his
death, gay marriage became legal, the
AIDS crisis declined and many of the
taboos surrounding homosexuality were
broken down.
In a publication based on the show, Robert Mapplethorpe: The Photographs, curator
Paul Martineau writes, “The authors of this
volume hope that the insights presented
P h oto : A rt B l a rt
Mapplethorpe’s portraits depicted gay men
in meticulously arranged compositions, as
seen in “Ken Moody and Robert Sherman.”
here will bring new light and greater balance to the study of his work.” In other
words, The Perfect Medium is an attempt
to place Mapplethorpe’s work in a current
context after being locked in a drawer for
years.
The Photographs is a massive book, consisting of thousands of prints from The
Perfect Medium and five essays by art critics. Among the most insightful observations is that of Richard Meyer in an essay
called “Mapplethorped:” “Today, the price
of Mapplethorpe’s work at auction, the
critical and interpretive attention it has
received, and its acquisition and display by
prominent museums attest to the fact that
it has indeed achieved something legitimate in the history of art.”
This means Mapplethorpe is now
embedded in the canon of art history. His
portraits are examined by art students for
their formal beauty rather than their erotic
nature, his photographs sell at auctions for
upwards of $300,000 to members of the
cultural elite and museums show his work
alongside other famous art.
But does this mean the rest of the world
has finally accepted the shocking candor
of Mapplethorpe’s vision?
The documentary, Mapplethorpe: Look
at the Pictures, lends further insight. It is
certainly made for a mainstream audience,
abandoning the sterile and official presentation of The Photographs and giving way to
crass language and honesty.
The viewer is presented with some rare
P h o t o : TATE
A young and determined Mapplethorpe is seen here in “Self Portrait,” taken in 1980.
interviews from members of the Mapplethorpe family, including his brother and
sister. His brother Edward and his sister
both claim their family was very strict and
that Mapplethorpe never fully admitted
his homosexuality to his parents. They
agree he was competitive and jealous, and
his work was a source of contention in the
family. His sister Nancy recalls pushing
their mother around in her wheelchair at
an opening of his work and the awkwardness that prevailed afterward.
Some of Mapplethorpe’s photographic subjects also were interviewed, and
cians, protestors or incarcerated curators.
Mapplethorpe may well have been disappointed that his work is less provocative
now as sacrosanct objects in a museum.
And yet, the transformation is a refreshing
reminder of the increasing acceptance of
homosexuality in society.
Is the world still afraid of the penis? As
we march into a more progressive age,
only the audience can answer that question.
|
June 2, 2016
Pride 45
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Pride 46
|
June 2, 2016
Anti-trans NC law prompts an impromptu opera staging
P h o t o : J a s o n E . M i c z e k /A P
Chad Griffin (center), president of Human Rights Campaign, delivers a box of petitions
after a news conference during TurnOUT! NC, a joint project to mobilize LGBT and proequality North Carolinians to deliver tens of thousands of signatures calling for the
repeal of House Bill 2 to Gov. Pat McCrory at the old state capitol building in Raleigh.
By Gary D. Robertson
Associated Press
It’s unlikely an opera has been performed inside North Carolina’s Legislative
Building before, let alone one where the
performance’s lead character is a transgender man.
But when legislators inside the building
passed a law in March directing which
public restrooms transgender people can
use and limiting local LGBT anti-discrimination ordinances, the former North Carolina residents who wrote the The Body
Politic knew where it should be sung next.
Songwriters Leo Hurley and Charles
Osborne brought a stripped-down version
of the show to the building’s auditorium.
After its premiere earlier this year in Bos-
ton, where a group that helps young composers commissioned the opera, the team
decided to return to North Carolina.
“The whole goal of this piece was to
break down barriers between people in our
own communities and foster better understanding through storytelling,” Osborne
said in an interview. “So, we’re like, why
don’t we go where it’s needed most right
now — the North Carolina General Assembly?”
The story is about an Afghan transgender man who leaves his country to escape
the war there and ends up in Chapel Hill,
North Carolina.
Other characters include a drag queen,
conservative widow of a war veteran and
the transgender man’s mother, creating
an eclectic array of musical styles for the
opera.
Osborne, who grew up in Charlotte,
wants repealed the law known as House
Bill 2, which cleared the Republican-controlled legislature and was signed by Gov.
Pat McCrory on March 23.
“We can’t pass laws about people without listening to their needs first,” said
Osborne, the opera’s librettist. He and
Hurley are alumni of the University of
North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem.
Osborne and Hurley invited all members
of the General Assembly and McCrory
to attend. While more than 60 people
attended the performance, only one legislator could be seen in the crowd — the
General Assembly had wrapped up its
formal work week — and some staff members. McCrory was at the North Carolina
coast at a groundbreaking ceremony.
Democratic Rep. Verla Insko of Chapel
Hill, among those in the crowd who gave
the performers a standing ovation, said
the cast offered a compelling message
through song that moves the discussion
along about LGBT issues.
“To me this was part of the conversation,
and we are in a long conversation so that
we can all understand transgender issues,”
said Insko, who voted against House Bill 2.
Hurley and Osborne, who now live in
New York, raised more than $3,000 online
to take the show on the road.
Except for a few props, like a head
scarf and baseball cap, the stage was bare
except for music stands and the performers.
“This is not a protest,” Osborne told the
crowd as the show began, “this is civil discourse through art.”
Did you know?
Nearly 9 million people in the United
States are estimated to be gay or
lesbian. No research has conclusively
proven what causes heterosexuality, homosexuality or bisexuality.
Records of same-sex relationships
have been found in nearly every culture throughout history, with varying
degrees of acceptance.
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Pride 47
Pride 48
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