The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide articles from July 2004

The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide archives from July 2004

July-August 2004: harbingers (out in their time).
July 1, 2004... This issue completes a kind of trilogy of historical themes. The last two issues brought us from ancient times through the 19th century, while this one spotlights 20th-century lives, mostly artists and writers, who began to explore what it...

Democrats waffling on marriage amendment.(Guest Opinions)
July 1, 2004... You've got to hand it to the Bush administration--they take care of their own. From tax breaks for the wealthy to cheating New York City out of 9/11 security funds in favor of "red" states like Wyoming, key Bush constituencies have been...

Is there a downside to same-sex marriage?(Guest Opinions)
July 1, 2004... The fact that the gay and lesbian rights movement has put same-sex marriage at the top of its agenda is not hard to fathom: marriage is the hub from which so many of our cultural, legal, economic, and religious institutions extend. Nothing else...

Election 2004: this time, the stakes are real.(Guest Opinions)
July 1, 2004... When George W. Bush did away with former President Clinton's recognition of June as Gay and Lesbian Pride Month, the White House stated that, "President Bush does not believe in politicizing people's sexual orientation." Yet no president in...

Don't ask!(BTW)(gays and the military)
July 1, 2004... The policy known as "Don't ask, don't tell" was supposed to end the prohibition on gay and lesbian service in the military, but in reality the number of people discharged for being "gay" (or for saying they were) actually climbed for most of...

Hippocratic hypocrisy.(BTW)(Michigan legislation would allow doctors to withhold treatment on moral grounds)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2004... One has to be impressed by the inventiveness, the sheer technical virtuosity, with which the religious Right attacks the problem of undermining the freedom of gay people and others they don't like. The latest ploy is the creation of a...

Another heartthrob bites the dust.(BTW)("The English Patient" based on the life of a gay man)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2004... The English Patient--first a bestselling book, then a blockbuster movie--tells the story of the love affair between Laszlo Almasy and a beautiful Englishwoman in the north African desert. The book's author, Michael Ondaatje, based the character...

And God taketh away ...(BTW)(anti-gay marriage foe Carmen Amedori divorced after husband accused her of child abuse)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2004... A Maryland state legislator made news earlier this year when, at a hearing for a bill that would prohibit same-sex marriage, she demanded to know if witnesses "believe in God." Carmen Amedori (R-Carroll County), who sits in Maryland's House of...

For art's sake.(BTW)(Penguin Group USA cancels reprint of racy romance novel by Lynne Cheney)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2004... A publisher has canceled plans to reissue a racy novel by Lynne Cheney, wife of the Vice President. New American Library, an imprint of Penguin Group USA, was going to reprint Sisters, a historical romance published in 1981 that includes...

Andre Gide's "new self".(Essay)
July 1, 2004... ANDRE GIDE lived for his art. Born to a wealthy family, as a young writer he had no financial worries and he could afford to be experimental in his writing. For a brief time he associated himself with poet Stephane Mallarme and the Symbolist...

Amy Lowell wasn't writing about flowers.(Essay)
July 1, 2004... WHEN I FIRST discovered the poetry of Amy Lowell, I was so taken with a group of her erotic poems that I suggested to my writer friend Judith that she do a one-woman show as Lowell reading her work. She could use the same sort of props that...

Jared French's iconic enigmas.(Essay)
July 1, 2004... IN HER 1993 BOOK on Jared French (1905-1988), the first devoted entirely to this painter, Nancy Grimes remarks on the interpretive difficulties that spring from the painter's private symbolism, difficulties compounded by our inadequate...

When Mike Connolly gossiped ... Lester Strong looks into a Hollywood powerhouse.(Interview with biographer Val Holley)(Interview)
July 1, 2004... HAILED IN 1954 by Newsweek magazine as "probably the most influential columnist inside the [Hollywood] movie colony," Mike Connolly today is all but forgotten. He is someone who deserves to be remembered, however, and on several counts. As...

The year of loving strangers.(Brief Article)(Poem)
July 1, 2004... Sometimes I will touch them in windowless rooms where we impatiently drink our shots of gin, watch inflated, bronzed bodies zoom in and out of view, where the pornography will fail to excite, so the effort to be moved will be...

An Isherwood treasure trail.(Essay)
July 1, 2004... "I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking. Recording the man shaving at the window opposite and the woman in the kimono washing her hair. Some day, all this will have to be developed, carefully printed,...

The gay, the Bi, and the other.(Essay)(excerpt from "Queer Beats: How the Beats Turned America on to Sex")(Excerpt)
July 1, 2004... The following is excerpted from the introduction to Queer Beats: How the Beats Turned America on to Sex, which will be published by Cleis Press this July. IN THE SUMMER OF 1948, Allen Ginsberg sublet a Spanish Harlem apartment from a...

Edmund White, outcast survivor.(Essay)(gay author)
July 1, 2004... IN A 1983 INTERVIEW with Don Swaim, a New York City radio talk show host at the time, Edmund White commented that he had sensed a thousand gay men struggling with their sexuality reading over his shoulder while he was writing A Boy's Own Story....

First Time.(Brief Article)(Poem)
July 1, 2004... It was his idea to burn through like the red head of a cigarette. I bled on the sheets. Afterward we were stone silent in his mother's laundry room, making them clean. I didn't want to. So he bought the chemical egg the mouth...

Clifford Wright, painting Yaddo red.(Essay)
July 1, 2004... IN 1951, when I was 27 years old, working intermittently at menial jobs and trying to keep writing poetry, a fellowship came through for the Yaddo artists' retreat in Saratoga Springs in upstate New York. Poor young poet that I was, the...

C. A. Tripp, sexual emancipator.(Essay)
July 1, 2004... C. A. TRIPP was born in Denton, Texas, a small town not far north of Dallas, on October 4, 1919. His father was an amiable cabinet-making teacher and hardware store proprietor. His mother, the descendant of early settlers, came from a family...

Burn this.(Books)(Homosexuality & Civilization)(Book Review)
July 1, 2004... Homosexuality & Civilization by Louis Crompton Belknap / Harvard University Press 623 pages, $35. TO "LOOK BACK on the history of homosexuality in the West," writes Louis Crompton in Homosexuality and Civilization, is to view...

The Housesitter.(Brief Article)(Poem)
July 1, 2004... I was the nomad among salamanders, I envied him his settled ways. Oh, to have arrived at a satisfactory living arrangement, a still life. ... By that time, his apartment was a place I knew well enough to thread in total dark: when...

Darwinism and diversity.(Books)(Evolution's Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People)(Book Review)
July 1, 2004... Evolution's Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People by Joan Roughgarden University of California Press 472 pages, $27.50 HOW YOU SEE a rainbow depends upon your vantage point. The author of Evolution's...

Posterity is here for Warhol's time capsules.(Books)(Andy Warhol: Time Capsule 21)(Book Review)
July 1, 2004... Andy Warhol: Time Capsule 21 by John W. Smith, Mario Kramer, and Matt Wrbican Distributed Art Publishers 304 pages, $35. BETWEEN September 2003 and February 2004, the Museum fur Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt, Germany, exhibited...

On the Down Low: A Journey into the Lives of "Straight" Black Men who Sleep with Men.(Briefs)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 1, 2004... On the Down Low: A Journey into the Lives of "Straight" Black Men who Sleep with Men by J. L. King Broadway Books. 208 pages, $21.95 Pausing to put a condom on is not something closeted black men living on the "down low" (DL) do,...

Wondrous Strange: The Life and Art of Glenn Gould.(Briefs)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 1, 2004... Wondrous Strange: The Life and Art of Glenn Gould by Kevin Bazzana Oxford University Press. 528 pages, $35. (illustrated) When Mikhail Baryshnikov defected to Toronto while on a 1974 tour he said he knew three things about Canada:...

Between The Palms: A Collection of Gay Travel Erotica.(Briefs)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 1, 2004... Between The Palms: A Collection of Gay Travel Erotica Edited by Michael Luongo Haworth Press Inc. 176 pages, $16.95 (paper) The rudder guiding this collection of erotic travel memoirs is cultural enlightenment, according to its...

Lust in action.(Books)(The Consequence of Sex)(Book Review)
July 1, 2004... The Consequence of Sex by Richard C. Reinhart Alyson Books. 242 pages, $14.95 (paper) FOR MANY of the characters in Richard C. Reinhart's The Consequence of Sex, sex is an easy but ineffective salve for the twin pains of...

Big lights, bright city.(Books)(The Rise of the Creative Class ... and how it's transforming work, leisure, community, & everyday life)(Book Review)
July 1, 2004... The Rise of the Creative Class... and how it's transforming work, leisure, community, & everyday life by Richard Florida Basic Books. 416 pages, $15.95 (paper) ACCORDING TO Richard Florida, there are three conditions that...

Showgirls of key west.(Books)(Drag Queens at the 801 Cabaret)(Book Review)
July 1, 2004... Drag Queens at the 801 Cabaret Leila J. Rupp and Verta Taylor University of Chicago Press. 256 pages, $27.50 FOR YEARS I've been encouraging people I know to write about long-surviving gay institutions. I don't mean community...

Look away.(Books)(The Invisible People: How the United States Has Slept Through the Global AIDS Pandemic, the Greatest Humanitarian Catastrophe of Our Time)(Book Review)
July 1, 2004... The Invisible People: How the United States Has Slept Through the Global AIDS Pandemic, the Greatest Humanitarian Catastrophe of Our Time by Greg Behrman Free Press. 368 pages, $25. GREG BEHRMAN'S new book offers a compelling look...

Age of the Uranians.(Books)(Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century)(Book Review)
July 1, 2004... Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century by Graham Robb W.W.Norton and Company. 342 pages, $26.95 GRAHAM ROBB'S Strangers: Homosexual Love in the 19th Century stands out among recent books for its appreciation of an...

Rites of passing by.(Books)(Backward Glances: Cruising the Queer Streets of New York and London)(Book Review)
July 1, 2004... Backward Glances: Cruising the Queer Streets of New York and London by Mark W. Turner Reaktion Books (London). 191 pages, $27 (paper) BACKWARD GLANCES is not a memoir but a scholar's exploration of something gay men often do...

Maugham in the middle.(Books)(Somerset Maugham: A Life)(Book Review)
July 1, 2004... Somerset Maugham: A Life by Jeffrey Meyers Knopf. 432 pages, $30. One thing that comes through clearly in this new biography by Jeffrey Meyers is that W. Somerset Maugham was not an easy man to know. A multi-talented workaholic...

Sascha Rice on the making of Mango Kiss.(Artist's Profile)(Interview)
July 1, 2004... Born into one of California's best-known political families, Sascha Rice had a lot of expectations heaped on her from a young age. Her famous grandfather, former Governor of California Edmund "Pat" Brown, thought she would follow in the public...

Second thoughts about Hitler's sexual history.(Arts)(The Hidden Fuehrer: Debating the Enigma of Hitler's Sexuality)(Television Program Review)
July 1, 2004... The Hidden Fuehrer: Debating the Enigma of Hitler's Sexuality HBO/Cinemax THE ASSERTION that Hitler may have been homosexual was made by German historian Lothar Machtan in his 2001 book, The Hidden Hitler [reviewed and debated in the...

Not your average tennis champion.(Arts)(Big Bill)(Theater Review)
July 1, 2004... Big Bill A play by A.R. Gurney Directed by Mark Lamos Lincoln Center Theater, New York (until May 16, 2004) THE FIRST LINE of dialogue in Big Bill is "Fifteen-love." In A.R. Gurney's bio-drama of the pre-World War II tennis...