The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide articles from July 2006

The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide archives from July 2006

July, August 2006: "Return Trips".
July 1, 2006... "Return trips" refers to recent issues of this magazine that focused on a range of themes which, for a number of reasons, we wish to revisit one more time. The concept of a unifying theme for each issue has served this magazine well, I...

Equality Riders challenge campus homophobia.(GUEST OPINION)(Column)
July 1, 2006... On April 25th at 7:00 p.m., I arrived at the Hasted-Hunt Gallery in New York City's gay ghetto, Chelsea, where a robust reception for the youthful participants of Soulforce's Equality Ride was being held. The Equality Riders, some of whom have...

Brokeback on my mind.(Correspondence)(Letter to the editor)
July 1, 2006... To the Editor: Andrew Holleran's essay on Brokeback Mountain [March-April 2006 issue] is a wonderfully thorough examination of the impact of this great film on its gay audience. He has put into words many of the feelings and thoughts I...

Author replies to Geltmaker's letter.(Letter to the editor)
July 1, 2006... Dear Editor: What is perhaps most disheartening about Ty Geltmaker's response [May-June 06] to my critique of the idea that Walt Whitman struggled with his self-identity as a gay man is Geltmaker's refusal to engage seriously with the...

A New York riot before the black cat.(Correspondence)(Letter to the editor)
July 1, 2006... To the Editor: I was interested to read the article in the March-April issue on the Black Cat riots in Los Angeles. While the action certainly didn't qualify as a riot, the gay response in New York City to the closing of all the city's gay...

Hockney's wisdom.(Correspondence)(Letter to the editor)
July 1, 2006... To The Editor, I believe David Hockney puts to rest the idea of "gay art" as opposed to "the artist who is gay." As he does so eloquently: "Love is the only serious subject." As a co-owner with my lover of an art gallery on Cape Cod...

A Typo to remember.(Correspondence)(Letter to the editor)
July 1, 2006... To the Editor: Gosh, but to refer to vandalizing San Francisco Library books as "a wonton [sic] act of destruction" (in the May-June 06 issue) seems to stereotype the minority group of Chinese-Americans. Or anyhow imply Gilt by...

Correction.(Correction notice)
July 1, 2006... Due to an editing error, a word in Jim Nawrocki's poem, "From Cole St.," was changed in the May-June 06 issue. Here is the first stanza in its entirety, with "tributes" replacing "tribunes": At your front door all that week new...

Egged.(White House Easter Egg Roll)(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... Controversy came to the annual White House Easter Egg Roll when a contingent of same-sex parents decided to participate in this year's event--and announced their intentions to the media. Sure, it was a "political" tactic of sorts, a public...

Larding it on.(BTW)(Ernie Fletcher declares Diversity Day)(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... Then there's Kentucky Governor Ernie Fletcher, who issued an executive order repealing anti-discrimination protections for GLBT state employees--and did so on the very day that he, Governor Fletcher, had proclaimed as "Diversity Day." In...

Too butch for basketball.(BTW)(Rene Portland punished for pressuring players)(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... Pennsylvania State University fined a women's basketball coach $10,000 after finding that she pressured a player to change her appearance to be more feminine. According to a report (GenderPAC 4/20/06): "Coach Rene Portland reportedly pressured...

Failure to evolve.(BTW)
July 1, 2006... At a March 2006 conference titled "The War on Christians and the Values Voter in 2006," a large number of preachers and politicians, including Congressman Tod Akin and Senator John Cornyn, gathered to discuss how to mobilize "the base" for...

American exodus.(BTW)(same sex couples shift to United Kingdom)(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... Same-sex couples are flocking to the UK in search of a new life where they can take advantage of the Civil Partnership Act that grants gay couples all the privileges of marriage, according to a Human Rights Watch report. Gay couples have also...

The nose knows 2.(BTW)(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... This column reported earlier (July-August 2005) on a study which showed that gay men respond to male and female sex hormones more like straight women than like straight men. Now a Swedish study (by the Stockholm Brain Institute) has come up...

Poland: gay pride parade is attacked in Krakow.(INTERNATIONAL SPECTRUM)
July 1, 2006... ON APRIL 28, 2006, "March of Toleration," a gay parade, was attacked in Krakow. Youth activists of the parliamentary party League of Polish Families threw stones, eggs, bottles, and slurs at peaceful GLBT marchers. The parade was headed by the...

The fortune in David's eyes.(homosexuality of biblical figures)
July 1, 2006... "WHEN THE FIRST Christian pervert, St. Paul, made nature a crime against Christianity, civilization was finished," writes poet Harold Norse in "Nocturnal Emissions" (1973). "Had he been handsome instead of hideous, the whole course of history...

Sexual ambiguity in the life of Disraeli.(ESSAY)(Benjamin Disraeli)
July 1, 2006... WIDESPREAD INDIGNATION at the suggestion that Abraham Lincoln might have enjoyed sharing his bed with other men, that he delayed marriage to make it last as long as he could, and that he occasionally returned to the practice even in the White...

Real cowboys, real rodeos.
July 1, 2006... THE POLITICAL DUST STORM kicked up by the Oscar-winning film Brokeback Mountain, however predictable, found right-wingers railing that yet another symbol of American "family values," the cowboy, was being desecrated. A typical Christian blogger...

'Stemming the rose': A Brokeback Mystery.(Brokeback Mountain )
July 1, 2006... In Brokeback Mountain there's a scene in which the character played by Randy Quaid, Joe Aguirre, refuses to rehire Jack Twist. Aguirre has witnessed Ennis and Jack kissing and wrestling affectionately, and knows what's going on between them....

How they do it in West Texas.
July 1, 2006... ODESSA, IN WEST TEXAS, feels like the remote edge of something in the way you might imagine Vladivostok: far from anywhere, exotic, but not the kind of exotic that attracts tourists. It's an oil town, mainly. Buildings are tacky, functional....

Madchen in Uniform.(Poem)
July 1, 2006... I am smitten, thinking of the suit you wore to our college dance, a dance you did not invite me to and so I showed with a bright blonde in a black dress and we made sure to dance her heels to dust in front of you and your sulky...

A man's own story: Michael Ehrhardt talks with the author of My Lives.(Interview)
July 1, 2006... FOR OVER THIRTY YEARS, Edmund White has been turning the messy, tragic and exalted experiences of life into transcendent and scintillating fiction; at 65, the author shows all the moxy and audacity of an enfant terrible. A blurb for his new...

Merrily we roll along.(Eleanor Lerman's poetry)(Critical essay)
July 1, 2006... FUNNY, MOVING, FURIOUS, and dazzling, Eleanor Lerman's Our Post-Soviet History Unfolds (Sarabande, 2005) sounds the note of the times, the era of American Imperialism, the days of our Bush-filled lives. Lerman is able to capture brilliantly the...

What Ode to Billy Joe (the movie) disclosed in '76.(ART MEMO)
July 1, 2006... Can three decades have passed since I sat in a darkened Manhattan cinema transfixed by the cherubic-faced Robby Benson giving the performance of a lifetime as the innocent and emotionally troubled Billy Joe in the movie Ode to Billy Joe? Any...

Mapping (bi)sexual desire.
July 1, 2006... MY PARTNER in commitment claims he is straight, always has been straight, and could never imagine himself engaging in sexual activity other than with a woman. He says he did not choose his straightness, this is just the way things are. Further,...

Glass Orgasm.(Poem)
July 1, 2006... Dishwasher safe, the glass medical grade, the dildo is hand-blown from the same element as brandy balloons, milk bottles, picture tubes and silicone implant; in other words, it's made of prose. The form is poetry. It jabs as hard as...

A hetero heartthrob onscreen ...(Ivor Novello: Portrait of a Star)(Book review)
July 1, 2006... Ivor Novello: Portrait of a Star by Paul Webb Haus Books (London) 208 pages, $24.95 THE NAME "Ivor Novello" is perhaps only recognized on these shores by those Robert Altman movie fans who saw the director's stylish British...

Becoming a man (it's harder than it looks).(Self-Made Man: One Woman's Journey into Manhood and Back Again)(Book review)
July 1, 2006... Self-Made Man: One Woman's Journey Into Manhood and Back Again by Norah Vincent Viking. 290 pages, $24.95 FROM SHAKESPEARE to Mrs. Doubtfire, gender deception as a plot device usually has a predictable trajectory. The elaborate...

A discernible presence.(Women Together / Women Apart: Portraits of Lesbian Paris)(Book review)
July 1, 2006... Women Together / Women Apart: Portraits of Lesbian Paris by Tirza True Latimer Ruthers University Press. 144 pages, $24.95 MANY LESBIAN READERS are familiar with the discernible lesbian presence in Paris during the long weekend...

Viva Indonesia.(The Gay Archipelago)(Book review)
July 1, 2006... The Gay Archipelago by Tom Boellstorff Princeton University Press. 282 pages, $24.95 IN THE GAY ARCHIPELAGO, anthropologist Tom Boellstorff of the University of California, Irvine, sets out to define, interpret, and reflect upon...

Queries of a 'Jamerican'.(Words to Our Now: Imagination and Dissent)(Book review)
July 1, 2006... Words to Our Now: Imagination and Dissent by Thomas Glave University of Minnesota Press 280 pages (illustrated), $25.95 THOMAS GLAVE describes himself as "a Jamerican" to reflect both his Jamaican and his American heritage....

Desert salon.(The Taos Truth Game)(Book review)
July 1, 2006... The Taos Truth Game by Earl Ganz University of New Mexico Press. 320 pages, $24.95 MYRON BRINIG, whose lifetime virtually spanned the 20th century, is all but forgotten today. His name is rarely found in compendia of gay writers,...

Still coming of age.(America's Boy)(Book review)
July 1, 2006... America's Boy by Wade Rouse Dutton. 340 pages, $24.95 THE CHALLENGE for any writer of a memoir is to make the story interesting to someone else who, unlike a psychotherapist, isn't being paid to hear it. A writer's fame can...

The art was young and gay.(Between You and Me: Queer Disclosures in the New York Art World, 1948-1963)(Book review)
July 1, 2006... Between You and Me: Queer Disclosures in the New York Art World, 1948-1963 by Gavin Butt Duke University Press. 232 pages, $21.95 (paper) GAVIN BUTT'S BACKSTAGE expose of the New York art world of the 1950's careens between artsy...

Days of 1912.(Poem)
July 1, 2006... Outside, the bedlam of the human race Proceeds. The silence in this book-lined space Is metaphorical, conveyed by tone. Aloft, aloof, not lonely but alone, The poet listens, then rejoins the noise To look for gods disguised as...

Carbohydrate loading.(The Rice Queen Diaries: A Memoir)(Potato Queen: A Novel)(Book review)
July 1, 2006... The Rice Queen Diaries: A Memoir by Daniel Gawthrop Arsenal Pulp Press. 252 pages, $16.95 Potato Queen: A Novel by Rafaelito V. Sy Palari Publishing. 267 pages, $14.95 A "RICE QUEEN" is generally defined as a white...

Loves relived.(A Gathering of Angels)(Book review)
July 1, 2006... A Gathering of Angels by Larry Dean Hamilton Sigma Logo Books, 205 pages, $19.95 A GATHERING OF ANGELS, by gay Texas poet Larry Dean Hamilton, relates a remarkable life story through a lyrical, sometimes dreamlike prose style....

The Qualifying Round.(Poem)
July 1, 2006... Use unqualified people The fewer credentials the better. Find the most apt to toot their own bassoon, those whose light never shines under a bushel; it's dark in there and deadly; mushrooms sprout; morels with questionable morals....

A time for speed.(Rose of No Man's Land)(Book review)
July 1, 2006... Rose of No Man's Land by Michelle Tea MacAdam/Cage. 306 pages, $22. "YES, ABSOLUTELY, this was the greatest day of my life," declares Trisha Driscoll, the fourteen-year-old outer suburbanite narrator of Michelle Tea's latest...

Getting Bi: Voices of Bisexuals around the World.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 1, 2006... Getting Bi: Voices of Bisexuals around the World Edited by Robyn Ochs & Sarah E. Rowley Bisexual Resource Center. 269 pages, $14.95 This anthology of personal, accessible narratives, culled from 300 submissions from 32 countries,...

Bi Men: Coming Out Every Which Way.(Book review)
July 1, 2006... Bi Men: Coming Out Every Which Way Edited by Ron Jackson Suresha and Pete Chvany Harrington Park Press. 329 pages, $19.95 It seems safe to say that bisexual men are nearly invisible, even within GLBT culture. While gay men and...

High Pink: Tex-Mex Fairy Tales.(Book review)
July 1, 2006... High Pink: Tex-Mex Fairy Tales by Franco Mondini-Ruiz Distributed Art Publishers. 126 pages, $20. Susan Sontag opened "Notes on 'Camp'" with words that make sense of Franco Mondini-Ruiz: "many things have not been named, and many...

Inside Out: Straight Talk from a Gay Jock.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 1, 2006... Inside Out: Straight Talk from a Gay Jock by Mark Tewksbury Wiley. 288 pages, $24.95 In public, Mark Tewksbury has always credited the 1976 Olympics as a major inspiration for becoming an Olympic champion. In fact, what first...

Conferences/events.(Bulletin Board)
July 1, 2006... National Sexuality Resource Center's fifth annual Summer Institute will be held at San Francisco State U., July 10-28. Call 415-437-5113. Or visit: www.nsrc.sfsu.edu/Index.cfm?Page=72. International Conf. on LGBT Rights will be held in...

Janis Ian: 'Society's Child,' after all.(ARTIST'S PROFILE)(Interview)
July 1, 2006... FORTY YEARS AGO, a preternaturally gifted fourteen-year old walked into pop music producer Shadow Morton's office and got a record deal. A week later Janis Ian was in the studio recording "Society's Child," a folk ballad about interracial...

I am the movie.(Boy Culture)(Movie review)
July 1, 2006... Boy Culture Directed by Q. Allan Brocka FOLLOWING OUR FLING with the faraway world of gay cowboys, Boy Culture returns us to the more familiar turf of contemporary urban gay lives--and thus to a movie that's likely to have none of the...