The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide articles from March 2005

The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide archives from March 2005

March-April 2005: "back to the future".(Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln)
March 1, 2005... "Back to the Future" attempts to capture the dual themes of this issue: several articles assess the current state of the GLBT rights movement and its prospects, while others look to moments in our past for inspiration at this critical time in...

Attention, liberal shoppers!(Column)
March 1, 2005... Do you care much that greasy ol' Pizza Hut gave tens of thousands in PAC money to the Republican Party last year? How about the fact that Taco Bell stopped pumping out their happily toxic semi-rancid meat-like substances just long enough to...

Company's research elaborated.(Correspondence)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2005... To the Editor: Kudos for the valuable feature on GLBT research in your January-February issue. The insights will be important to many of us, and I am grateful our work has been cited as well as the critical work performed by Dr. Lee...

Explaining the gay income gap.(Correspondence)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2005... To the Editor: The G & LR editors' excellent "Survey Says..." [Jan.-Feb. 2005] points out a number of anomalies and seeming contradictions in research on the GLB population that I believe may be resolved by a single factor: namely, that...

No more moaning about our setbacks!(Correspondence)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2005... To the Editor: The articles in the last issue [Jan.-Feb. 05] on the election and the state of the gay rights movement, like most everything else from the gay media and its "experts," is all so much doom and gloom. It dawned on me to...

No more hiding!(Correspondence)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2005... To the Editor: Gay marriage has revealed truths that gay America has ignored for too long. We underestimated the ignorance of straight Americans and conservatives are capitalizing on this, using fear as a political organizing and...

Correcting a common misconception.(Correspondence)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2005... To the Editor: I first learned of Alice Walker: A Life by Evelyn C. White in the pages of this journal. As one who read and admired Walker's The Color Purple, I immediately obtained a copy of the biography and found it hard to put down....

Pentagon pranks.(BTW)
March 1, 2005... A spokesperson for the Department of Defense has confirmed a report that Air Force officials wanted to develop a gay conversion chemical weapon in 1994. The proposal, part of a plan from Wright Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, was to develop...

Don't tell rummy!(BTW)(Thyroxine causes lesbianism)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... A clinical study at Minot State (ND) found that women who take slimming or thyroid pills during pregnancy are unusually likely to produce homosexual children. Thyroxine, which is used to treat thyroid deficiency, as well as amphetamine-based...

God's mysterious waves.(BTW)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... The Tsunami disaster that befell south Asia in late December did not go unexploited by the most extreme elements of the Fire-and-Brimstone crowd. The notoriously homophobic Westboro Baptist Church of Kansas issued a statement thanking God for...

Lying with a straight face.(BTW)(abstinence programs in US teaching lies about sex)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... The movie Kinsey reminded us what zany things young people used to be taught about sex--that pregnancy can result from mutual masturbation, for example--and we could all feel a bit smug about their naivete. Well, a Congressional study has been...

Making marriage hurt.(BTW)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... The prospect of same-sex marriage coming to a state near you has produced a number of responses designed to make sure it can't happen here. One of the more reactionary ideas, harking back to a time when divorce was next to impossible, is the...

Second thoughts.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... The power of the Internet was on display when two national organizations were called on the carpet and forced to reverse earlier decisions: 1. When Human Rights Campaign executive director Cheryl Jacques left her post after only a year, it...

The gay artist as critic.(ESSAY)(Book Review)
March 1, 2005... OSCAR WILDE'S The Critic as Artist didn't identify its author as gay, but any 1890's reader with social experience instantly caught on: stylish fluency, irony, witty dismissals, camp, and a preference for art when it is highly wrought were...

C. A. Tripp's journey to Lincoln.(INTRODUCTION AND EXCERPT)(Book Review)
March 1, 2005... THE INTIMATE WORLD of Abraham Lincoln is a set of essays about different aspects of Lincoln's personality and sexuality. It is not a biography. Its account of Lincoln is not even chronological. I mention this because some readers of the...

Unlocking Lincoln's sexuality.(INTRODUCTION AND EXCERPT)(Excerpt)
March 1, 2005... The following is the Preface from the recently published book by C. A. Tripp. The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln (Free Press, 2005). FOR MORE THAN a quarter century, especially in the late 1990's, print media have carried numerous...

Origins of the Kinsey revolution.(ESSAY)(Biography)
March 1, 2005... IN THE LATE 1930's, Alfred Kinsey had what he thought was a rather simple idea: given that no one had the slightest idea what people really did and did not do sexually, and given--as he discovered from a questionnaire he distributed to his...

Truth be told (either by me or someone else who inevitably speaks up).(Brief Article)(Poem)
March 1, 2005... Truth be told (either by me or someone else who inevitably speaks up), was a crazy teen fresh from the farms with a cockwalk two feet off the ground and boots to match. No pasture knew me like the Lutherans back home: (lies). I've made...

What now for marriage equality?(ESSAY)
March 1, 2005... NEARLY 5,000 same-sex couples have been issued licenses to marry in Massachusetts since May 17, 2004, a development that has unleashed waves of political backlash as leaders have tried to undermine the Supreme Judicial Court's decision in...

Listening to the "Yes on 36" voter.(ESSAY)
March 1, 2005... DID THE 2004 ELECTION demonstrate that Americans oppose gay rights? After traveling to Oregon and spending ten days volunteering with the effort to defeat that state's anti-gay constitutional amendment, I came away concluding that this was not...

Diary of an unassimilated traveler.
March 1, 2005... University of Oregon, Eugene, September 28, 2004 It's the first meeting of the school year for the LGBT student group, and their lounge is completely packed--every chair is taken, and so is every space on the floor. Luckily, the organizers...

Clarification.(Brief Article)(Poem)
March 1, 2005... Last night I followed a man around a bar hoping to brush against his green T-shirt to feel the pad of his chest against my shoulder or arm, but before that he danced with his shirt off, tucked in the white band of his underwear,...

Robert Irwin: photographer of the sensory.(ARTIST'S PROFILE)(Critical Essay)
March 1, 2005... THE MALE NUDE has been a staple of photography since shortly after the invention of cameras and film over a century and a half ago, although for much of that time it was an underground staple owing to various conservative, sexophobic and...

Breakthrough: the 1979 National March.(ESSAY)
March 1, 2005... TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO, on October 14, 1979, an estimated 75,000 to 125,000 lesbians and gay men from all across America marched on Washington at a moment in the movement's history that was remarkably different from the current one. This was the...

The 1979 March's place in history.(ESSAY)
March 1, 2005... HOW WE ALL seem to love anniversaries! Think about the masses of folks who show up each year for Pride Marches in June, for St. Patrick's Day parades, for Mexican Independence Day celebrations. Anniversaries provide moments for civic...

Cultivating one's metaphors.(BOOKS)(The Gardens of Emily Dickinson)(Book Review)
March 1, 2005... The Gardens of Emily Dickinson by Judith Farr Harvard Univ. Press. 350 pages. 26.95 EMILY DICKINSON inhabited a world of daisies, calla lilies, bourbon roses, sweet sultans, and verbena (among other flowers), not only in her...

Treasures of the overlooked.(BOOKS)(American Ghosts)(Book Review)
March 1, 2005... American Ghosts by David Plante Beacon Press. 288 pages, $24. ISAT DOWN to read American Ghosts with high expectations. Here, after all, is the personal story of David Plante, author of fourteen books, including the famed...

The antiquarians.(BOOKS)(A Passion to Preserve: Gay Men as Keepers of Culture)(Book Review)
March 1, 2005... A Passion to Preserve: Gay Men as Keepers of Culture by Will Fellows University of Wisconsin Press. 280 pages, $30. Steve: We don't have children. Adam: We have taste. --Paul Rudnick, The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told ...

Adam and Steve.(BOOKS)(Gilgamesh: A New English Version)(Book Review)
March 1, 2005... Gilgamesh: A New English Version Translated by Stephen Mitchell Free Press. 290 pages, $24. GILGAMESH IS the first significant work of literature in history--not Western history, but all of history--an epic that was first written...

How the heartland was lost.(BOOKS)(What's the Matter with Kansas?)(Book Review)
March 1, 2005... What's the Matter with Kansas? Thomas Frank Metropolitan Books. 320 pages, $24. FOR THE MILLIONS of Americans, including most gays and lesbians, who awoke on November 3, 2004, aghast to find maps of the United States awash in Bush...

A life on trial.(BOOKS)(Isherwood: A Life Revealed)(Book Review)
March 1, 2005... Isherwood: A Life Revealed by Peter Parker Ranom House.815 pages, $39.95 DIARIES ARE curious things. They are private records, but when they document the lives of public figures, those divisions become murky. In the case of...

A magazine of bare, naked ladies.(Brief Article)(Poem)
March 1, 2005... Look on this wonder! / The sprawl and fullness of babes, the bosoms / the bending forward and backward / the / perfect, varied attitudes / You linger to see / love-flesh / lost in the cleave of / in the heave of / immeasurable / massive...

The sky was the limit.(BOOKS)(Paul Bowles: A Life)(Book Review)
March 1, 2005... Paul Bowles: A Life by Virginia Spencer Carr Scribner. 409 pages, $35. AMONG THE WRITERS whose names are associated with the Beat Generation--Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, and the rest--perhaps only Paul Bowles...

Coming out, Indian style.(BOOKS)(Babyji)(Book Review)
March 1, 2005... Babyji by Abha Dawesar Anchor Books. 356 pages, $13. SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLD Anamika Sharma is an overly earnest, overachieving high school girl in a hurry. As the head prefect at her academically rigorous and slightly progressive high...

In the looking glass.(BOOKS)(Insult and the Making of the Gay Self)(Book Review)
March 1, 2005... Insult and the Making of the Gay Self by Didier Eribon (translated by Michael Lucey) Duke University Press. 447 pages, $22.95 SOME GAY READERS might hesitate to pick up a book about insults. Indeed, many gay and lesbian people...

Streets of San Francisco.(BOOKS)(Harold's End)(Book Review)
March 1, 2005... Harold's End JT LeRoy Last Gasp. 48 pages, $19.95 JT LeRoy's new novella Harold's End has the shape and feel of a personal diary or journal. Small in size and squarish in shape, the book sports a black cover (under the dust...

Ukraine: is there hope in Orange?(INTERNATIONAL SPECTRUM)
March 1, 2005... "WE'RE left outside Ukrainian politics," lesbian activist Natalia Nahorna told me in an interview. "People are not tolerant to minorities here. It will take years to change." Nahorna has done research on lesbian life in Ukraine and organized...

Conferences/events.(Bulletin Board)(Calendar)
March 1, 2005... The 12th GLBT Expo--plus Same Sex Wedding Expo & Passport magazine's Travel Show--will be held Feb 26-27, 2005, at the Jacob Javitts Center in New York. The Gay & Lesbian Review will be there! For more info, visit: www.rdgroup.com. The...

Renee's baby.(BOOKS)(Tarnation)(Movie Review)
March 1, 2005... Tarnation Directed by Jonathan Caouette Wellspring IT IS HARROWING to watch, but Jonathan Caouette's Tarnation is a stunning, one-of-a-kind achievement. Screened at Cannes and around the world, Tarnation was made for a couple...