The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide articles from July 2005

The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide archives from July 2005

July-August 2005: "since Kinsey".
July 1, 2005... The announced theme of this issue was "sex research since Kinsey," but, as often happens, its center of gravity has drifted somewhat from this exact topic. A few articles do fit the original bill--a research report on "lesbian bed death," an...

How 'gay style' was coopted and corrupted.(GUEST OPINION)
July 1, 2005... Recently a friend emailed me pictures of his new home in San Francisco--a Victorian remodel that cost, well, let's just say that the price rivals some nations' gross national product. When I opened the photos, I immediately recognized the...

How my two mothers got me laid.(GUEST OPINION)
July 1, 2005... A recent study published in the journal Child Development found that, in terms of psychosocial health, school behavior, and romantic relationships, teens with two mothers develop as well as those raised by heterosexual parents. As a high school...

"McGreevey's Ghosts"--and skeletons.(Correspondence)(Letter to the Editor)
July 1, 2005... To the Editor: I have some thoughts on the article "McGreevey's Ghosts" by Andrew Holleran (Jan.-Feb. 2005), which treats Jim McGreevey, the scandal-plagued ex-governor of New Jersey, with a degree of respect and sympathy that he doesn't...

Poland agonistes.(Correspondence)(Letter to the Editor)
July 1, 2005... To the Editor: Regarding "God and Gay Rights in Poland" by Tomek Kitlinski and Pawel Leszkowicz [May-June 2005], I would like to comment on the authors' tendency to neglect facts in the construction of their argument as well as their...

Two views of Armbrecht's France.(Correspondence)(Letter to the Editor)
July 1, 2005... To the Editor: It was a delight to read Thomas Armbrecht's essay in the May-June 2005 issue about the difficulties of being both gay and French. I envision conservative readers choking on their freedom fries and accusing the author of...

Reconciled to the 70's.(Correspondence)(Letter to the Editor)
July 1, 2005... To the Editor: Re Felice Picano's description ("Women, Men, and Early 'Gay Lib'" in the May-June issue) of lesbians pushing a drag queen off the stage during the 1979 New York Gay Pride Celebration: I remember, during the late 1970's,...

How gay was Gilgamesh?(Correspondence)(Letter to the Editor)
July 1, 2005... To the Editor: I am writing with regard to Mr. Stephen Mitchell's Gilgamesh: A New English Version, and to your review of Mr. Mitchell's work. The book sounds great and your review is great with the single exception of Mr. Mitchell's...

Addendum.(Correction Notice)
July 1, 2005... Two articles in our March-April 2005 issue were adapted from presentations made at the Gerber/Hart Library in Chicago on October 17, 2004, at a program commemorating the 25th anniversary of the 1979 March on Washington. The articles were:...

Brazil 1, U.S. 0.(foreign aid for health policy)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2005... Brazil is a country that needs foreign aid; the U.S. is a country that grants aid to countries like Brazil to help them to modernize. It was thus a startling reversal (as reported by The Wall Street Journal) when Brazil turned down a $40...

What the nose knows.(survey on sexual orientation)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2005... A recent study in Sweden revealed that how one responds to human pheromones is affected by one's sexual orientation. While gay and straight men responded differently to male and female pheromones, gay men and straight women had a similar...

The creeps.(BTW)(J. Edgar Hoover, Arthur Finkelstein, Douglas S. Smith, Jr. and James E. West)
July 1, 2005... By all rights the species of man exemplified by J. Edgar Hoover or Roy Chon--the homophobic closet case--should be a thing of the past. Yet he's still with us, as grotesque as ever, only now we get to witness his public disgrace on cable TV....

The visitor.(James Guckert's illigal visits to White House )(Brief Article)
July 1, 2005... The previous "BTW" told of James Guckert, a.k.a. Jeff Gannon, the phony reporter and real male hustler who got access to White House press conferences over a two-year period, and mused that perhaps something would turn up linking Guckert to...

The people vs. the Pope.(sexual abuse of minors by priests)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2005... During the media frenzy that was the papal transition from John Paul II to Benedict XVI, the late Pope's homophobia (and other peccadilloes) went virtually unnoticed. But the election of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger resurrected a thorny issue in...

Sex through the ages.(elderly sexual behaviour)
July 1, 2005... WHEN I WAS IN MY THIRTIES I remember walking by the Empire State Building one day thinking, How did they get people to stop looking for sex long enough to put up a building this big? Years later, I'm home in the evening with my laptop,...

Stress.(Poem)
July 1, 2005... "There I was in my fifties, wearing my late father's pyjamas to water my demented mother's lawn when the princeling next door propositioned me; stress comes in many forms," he said.

On the making of Kinsey and Kinsey: John Esther talks to the director of a groundbreaking biopic.(Bill Condon's biographical movie)(Interview)
July 1, 2005... EASILY THE MOST IMPORTANT biopic of last year was Kinsey, which was written and directed by Bill Condon. By turns serious, poignant, and hilarious, the movie did full justice to the man who was the first to rip the sheets off of American sexual...

Swapping Gum.(Poem)
July 1, 2005... It was the closest we could come to being together at school, swapping gum in the halls, our hands sloppy with syrup and our spit, saving flavor-- it was so sweet, sweet, fellow fool--what did we know ...

Is 'lesbian bed death' for real?(sex research)
July 1, 2005... IT WAS over twenty years ago that a major sex study disclosed what was then a rather startling finding: lesbian couples engaged in sexual activity significantly less frequently than did both heterosexual and gay male couples (Blumberg and...

The circuit party's Faustian bargain.(social aspects of gay men)
July 1, 2005... CIRCUIT PARTIES are weekend-long, erotically-charged, drug-fueled gay dance events held in resort towns across the country. There's at least one major circuit party every month somewhere in the U.S.--New York's "Black Party," South Beach's...

Crystal's sexual persuasion.(ESSAY)(effect of methamphetamine on gay men )
July 1, 2005... THE GAY COMMUNITY has a long history of alcohol and drug abuse above the rate that occurs in the heterosexual population. Research suggests that gay men use drugs in specific situations, such as during sex or during visits to specific...

After Cavafy.(Poem)
July 1, 2005... Asleep in the city of ideas, you wake to find love's bed half empty. Beside you now only a warm depression in the sheets, a strand of black hair --like a sliver left behind by the night-- against white pillow. You roll over,...

A 'strap-on party' for the people.(ESSAY)(Real Sex television program evaluation)
July 1, 2005... ON THE AIR since 1990, HBO's documentary series Real Sex has proven to be hugely popular with millions of cable subscribers curious about the sexual practices and fantasies of their fellow Americans. Ostensibly unscripted and nonfictional, the...

Arthur Dong: lens on homophobic America.(documetary film maker )(Interview)
July 1, 2005... ARTHUR DONG makes documentary films that examine anti-gay attitudes in American culture. His open-ended approach encourages viewers to situate themselves in relation to the issues he investigates, which include homophobia and racism, among...

Bisexuality and the case against dualism.(ESSAY)
July 1, 2005... IT WAS SEEING the movie Kinsey that triggered a heated discussion about bisexuality between me and my girlfriend Meg, whom I had "accused" of being bisexual in light of her history of dating men several years earlier. She vehemently denied that...

Gay youths as 'whorified virgins'.(media image of gay life)
July 1, 2005... MANY YOUNG GAY MEN are perceived by themselves and others as "whores," but it's a label that other gay youth are consciously rejecting. An earlier generation of gay men embraced sexual liberation as the driving goal of gay liberation itself,...

Laud Humphreys' emissary to St. Louis.(friendship with a gay politician)(Critical Essay)(Biography)
July 1, 2005... JEAN COCTEAU proclaimed friendship to be his only politics. "I would rather be celebrated for constancy of the heart than for any doctrine of the mind," he remarked in his essay "On Friendship." Cocteau considered friendship to be an art and...

Life and times of a cinematic original.(Edge of Midnight: The Life of John Schlesinger)(Book Review)
July 1, 2005... Edge of Midnight: The Life of John Schlesinger by William J. Mann Billboard Books. 628 pages, $27.95 AS RESEARCH for Edge of Midnight: The Life of John Schlesinger, author William J. Mann befriended the famed film director and...

Sexual outlaw looking in.(Beneath the Skin: The Collected Essays of John Rechy)(Book Review)
July 1, 2005... Beneath the Skin: The Collected Essays of John Rechy by John Rechy Carroll & Graf. 305 pages, $14.95 IN CHOOSING to show some of his own skin for the cover of his essays now collected as Beneath the Skin, John Rechy remains the...

It happened in Brooklyn.(February House: The Story of W.H. Auden, Carson McCullers, Jane and Paul Bowles, Benjamin Britten, and Gypsy Rose Lee, Under One Roof in Wartime America)(Book Review)
July 1, 2005... February House: The Story of W.H. Auden, Carson McCullers, Jane and Paul Bowles, Benjamin Britten, and Gypsy Rose Lee, Under One Roof in Wartime America by Sherill Tippins Houghton Mifflin. 317 pages, $24. THE SUBTITLE of this...

The 'gay' is redundant.(French Gay Modernism)(Book Review)
July 1, 2005... French Gay Modernism by Lawrence R. Schehr University of Illinois. 201 pages, $38. FRENCH MODERNISM has always been rather "gay." It began with Andre Gide's L'Immoraliste, continued with Marcel Proust's A la recherche du temps...

Straightforward: How to Mobilize Heterosexual Support for Gay Rights.(BRIEFS)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 1, 2005... Straightforward: How to Mobilize Heterosexual Support for Gay Rights by Ian Ayres and Jennifer Gerarda Brown Princeton University Press. 304 pages, $24.95 Every gay man or lesbian in America has at least two heterosexual allies...

Provincetown: From Pilgrim Landing to Gay Resort.(BRIEFS)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 1, 2005... Provincetown: From Pilgrim Landing to Gay Resort Karen Christel Krahulik NYU Press. 256 pages, $29.95 Krahulik has constructed a responsible piece of social research that accurately chronicles Provincetown's evolution from First...

I Am a Red Dress.(BRIEFS)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 1, 2005... I Am a Red Dress by Anna Camilleri Arsenal Pulp Press. 183 pages, $16.95 Anna Camilleri is a second generation Italian-Canadian performance artist and writer. While her memoir begins slowly, with loving and sometimes cloyingly...

Southern Italy: Puglia gets a gay president.(INTERNATIONAL SPECTRUM)(Nichi Vendola)
July 1, 2005... THE STEREOTYPICAL IMAGES of southern Italy as a land of pasta and mafia vendettas needs to be replaced with a new understanding of the Mezzogiorno, as the southern regions of Italy are collectively known. The region now has the distinction of...

The watch queen.(Laud Humphreys: Prophet of Homosexuality and Sociology)(Book Review)
July 1, 2005... Laud Humphreys: Prophet of Homosexuality and Sociology by John F. Galliher, Wayne H. Brekhus, and David P. Keys University of Wisconsin Press. 214 pages, $18.95 LAUD HUMPHREYS was the author of what was in 1970 a landmark research...

Conferences/events.(Bulletin Board)
July 1, 2005... The International Lesbian and Gay Law Association's third triennial conference will be held in Toronto, June 26-29. The conference theme, "Rights are Right," will focus on the rights of sexual minorities around the world. For more info, visit:...

Scenes from the land of Hirschfeld.(Self-Confidence and Persistence: Two Hundred Years of History)(Book Review)
July 1, 2005... "Self-Confidence and Persistence: Two Hundred Years of History" Schwules Museum, Berlin Exhibition and Catalog (189 pages, 12.00 Euros) BERLIN'S SCHWULES museum opened its permanent exhibition in December 2004, featuring 200 years of...

A trailblazing sleeper of the 60's is back.(Winter Kept Us Warm)(Video Recording Review)
July 1, 2005... Winter Kept Us Warm Directed by David Secter Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre IN 1965, a 22-year-old undergraduate student at the University of Toronto set out to make his first feature-length film. The result was...