The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide articles from March 2006

The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide archives from March 2006

March-April 2006: "lingering controversies".
March 1, 2006... "Lingering controversies" tend to cling to those events that have become iconic, having entered the realm of myth, like the storming of the bastille or the Crash of '29, where the facts themselves have often been forgotten. Several such...

How Abramoff funded the anti-gay agenda.(GUEST OPINION)(Jack Abramoff)(Column)
March 1, 2006... One aspect of the corruption and bribery mega-scandal shaking Washington that's swirling around conservative lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and which hasn't gotten much mass media attention, is how a lot of dough from Abramoff-controlled slush funds...

Don't boycott Israel's World Pride 2006!(Correspondence)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2006... To the Editor: This is in response to a call for a boycott of World Pride by Farris Wahben in the current issue [Jan.-Feb. 2006]. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force has endorsed World Pride, which will occur in August 2006 in...

On being an ex-'ex-gay'.(Correspondence)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2006... To the Editor: Thank you for publishing Mark Benjamin's piece on the ex-gay agenda [Nov.-Dec. 2005]. I became a born-again Christian in my freshman year in college in 1982, because I knew I was gay and didn't want to be. In 1986-87,...

Inventing gay culture in the 70's.(Correspondence)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2006... Dear Editor, Thanks to Ritch C. Savin-Williams' for his piece on GLBT youth [Nov.-Dec. 2005]. I am a couple of generations ahead of the people he studied, but his findings feel familiar. I came out at age 28 in the 1970's in San...

The Internet can also combat loneliness.(Correspondence)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2006... Dear Editor: Andrew Holleran in his essay "Laptops and Loneliness" (Jan.-Feb. 2006 issue) overstates the negative influences of computers on gay and lesbian life. In many ways the effects are no different from those on straight life. But...

ISBN's would help some readers.(Correspondence)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2006... Dear Editor: When I begin searching for any one of the books covered in the G & LR, I usually have the publisher's name. However, what with many authors having similar names, without an ISBN I am often adrift in a sea of book titles. I'm...

Correction.(Correction notice)
March 1, 2006... Michael Shernoff's article in the Jan.-Feb. 2006 issue, "The Heart of a Virtual Hunter," contained an error in the following sentence: "I was lamenting that since the closing of the Lure Manhattan was without a gay bar." It should instead have...

"Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?".(Ford Motor Co.'s advertising in gay magazines )(Brief Article)
March 1, 2006... The Ford Motor Company just can't catch a PR break. Last year the religious Right launched a boycott after Ford earmarked some funds for gay arts groups in Michigan, only to call off the boycott when many car dealers protested. But the American...

This from the AP.(American Civil Liberties Union supports Lonnie Latham's case )(Brief Article)
March 1, 2006... "The Reverend Lonnie Latham, sixty, was charged with a single misdemeanor count of offering to engage in an act of lewdness. If convicted, he faces up to a year in jail and a fine of up to $2,500. As he was leaving jail he said, 'I was set up....

We fear, ergo we spy.(BTW)(surveillance of domestic organizations)(Brief article)
March 1, 2006... Among the groups targeted by the Bush administration for secret, illegal surveillance were a number of domestic organizations with no conceivable link to Al Qaeda. As reported by The New York Times, the organizations identified as being under...

It's official.(BTW)(gay population and their rights)(Brief article)
March 1, 2006... From time to time this journal has delved into the question of what proportion of the human population is gay or lesbian. Most everyone agrees that the figure is not as high as Kinsey's "ten percent" but not as low as the religious Right would...

Annals of etiquette.(same sex marriage laws)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2006... Same-sex marriage has raised serious moral questions, but what about the problems it creates for the rules of protocol? Two stories surfaced recently: 1. In South Africa, where an eleven-judge panel has legalized same-sex marriage, the...

E-naming names.(same-sex marriage law)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2006... Massachusetts is still the only state that recognizes same-sex marriage, but the Right is using every legal strategy to overturn it. They've now collected enough signatures to force the question onto the 2008 ballot, barring other legal...

A tale from the crypt.(BTW)(Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep)(Brief article)
March 1, 2006... Scholars are taking a new look at a 4,000-year-old Egyptian tomb that's been billed as "the first depiction of a gay kiss" (Independent, UK, 1/2/06). The tomb was found in the necropolis at Saqqara, south of Cairo, in 1964, one of the largest...

The magic mountain.(Brokeback Mountain)(Essay)
March 1, 2006... STANDING IN LINE for Brokeback Mountain the afternoon it opened in Washington at a little theater near Dupont Circle, I saw two kinds of people: silent gay men of a certain age, and clusters of laughing college students. For the former, the...

Israel: island of tolerance in the Mideast.(society)
March 1, 2006... I AM STRUCK by those on the left whose hostility to Israel is so total that they ignore the fact that, by the values important to liberals, conditions inside Israel are greatly superior to those within any of its Arab neighbors. This does not...

Months, weeks ...(Poem)
March 1, 2006... "XIV" (pub. 1870), Paul Verlaine (1844-1896), probably to Arthur Rimbaud The foyer, then a narrow gleam from a lamp where Reverie under its glow leans and presses a finger to its brow. A glance upward would be tangled now with...

Lincoln, sex, and the scholars.(Abraham Lincoln)
March 1, 2006... "I have heard him [Abraham Lincoln] say over & over again about sexual contact. 'It is the harp of a thousand strings.'" --Henry C. Whitney to William H. Herndon, June 23, 1887 IT IS A TRUISM that Abraham Lincoln was incompetent with...

Sex Talks with Girls.(Poem)
March 1, 2006... "When sleeping in the same bed with another girl, old or young, avoid 'snuggling up' close together... and, after going to bed, if you are sleeping alone or with others, just bear in mind that beds are sleeping places. When you go to bed,...

Did Oscar Wilde set back gay rights?(Essay)
March 1, 2006... AS GLBT PEOPLE, or at least those in Europe and North America, have approached the mountaintop and can at last cast their eyes on the promised land of true liberation, we are in the process of redefining our identities, which also means...

L.A., 1/1/67: the Black Cat riots.(Essay)
March 1, 2006... "We are that little band the Future will celebrate!" --Dale Jennings, "An Address to the Mattachine Society Banquet Upon Receiving for ONE Magazine The 1953 Achievement Award," Tangents, Nov. 1953. ON THE ELEVENTH NIGHT of February...

Tom of Finland: sexual liberator?(Essay)
March 1, 2006... IN THE SUMMER of 2005, I was contacted by the Tom of Finland Foundation about the possibility of my writing a brief Foreword for a collection of the gay artist Tom of Finland's drawings, an expensive, large-format book to be published this year...

What made Stonewall different?(Stonewall Riots)(Essay)
March 1, 2006... Editor's Note: "Stonewall" has become one of those iconic events in history, like the storming of the Bastille or the bombing of Pearl Harbor, whose significance has little to do with the "facts on the ground," as today's journalists might call...

Was lesbian separatism inevitable?(Jill Johnston)(Interview)
March 1, 2006... LESBIAN NATION was one of those books whose title said it all. The book itself was a series of essays published in The Village Voice from 1969 to 1972, written in the brash, brilliant, free-associating style for which Jill Johnston is...

How 'the 70s' became a morality play.(Gay Sex in the 70s)(Critical essay)
March 1, 2006... IS IT POSSIBLE to talk about gay sex in the 1970's without talking about HIV/AIDS in the 1980's? Are we justified in presenting the 70's as the decade in which gay men had anonymous sex in public parks, backrooms, and bathhouses, all under the...

XXXXIII.(Poem)
March 1, 2006... Ghost thou art and to ghostliness thou shalt return, God who brings on the Light and the Darkness and Asteroids, the moon and sun battling it out for our attention, ten hours of sex today, my legs and breasts back, they're all so beautiful...

Reflections on "Song of the Loon" at forty.(ART MEMO)(Book review)
March 1, 2006... Imagine the wilderness of 19th-century Oregon. Burly, broad-chested trapper men paddle canoes upstream exploring nature's brute beauty, hunting, foraging, and sleeping under the sky. Sensuous noble savages that you encounter offer revelry,...

Exceeding the love of women.(When Heroes Love: The Ambiguity of Eros in the Stories of Gilgamesh and David)(Book Review)
March 1, 2006... When Heroes Love: The Ambiguity of Eros in the Stories of Gilgamesh and David by Susan Ackerman Columbia University Press 336 pages, $45. "VERY PLEASANT hast thou been unto me," David laments for his fallen friend and possible...

The human comedy begins at home.(The Commitment: Love, Sex, Marriage, and My Family)(Book Review)
March 1, 2006... The Commitment: Love, Sex, Marriage, and My Family by Dan Savage Dutton. 293 pages, $24.95 ANYONE WHO'S FAMILIAR with his widely syndicated sex-advice column, "Savage Love," may think Dan Savage an unlikely contributor to the...

Not a trifling romance.(Sweet Creek)(Book Review)
March 1, 2006... Sweet Creek by Lee Lynch Bold Strokes Press. 300 pages, $15.95 FROM THE MID-1980's to the late 90's, Lee Lynch was one of the most prolific authors of the lesbian-feminist literary renaissance. Her first novel, Toothpick House,...

Was Islam ever accepting?(Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500-1800)(Book Review)
March 1, 2006... Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500-1800 by Khaled El-Rouayheb University of Chicago Press. 210 pages, $32.50 SOME MONTHS AGO, a disturbing picture appeared in a number of gay and lesbian publications. It showed...

Margaret Cho is a one-woman tornado.(ARTIST'S PROFILE)(Interview)
March 1, 2006... "Well-behaved women rarely make history," observed Harvard professor Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. Margaret Cho is not a well-behaved woman. Cho is best known as a stand-up comedian who's been a trailblazer in breaking down repressive taboos and...

On 'coming out' as a Jew.("Writing a Jewish Life: Memoirs")("Secret Anniversaries of the Heart: New and Selected Stories")(Book Review)
March 1, 2006... Writing a Jewish Life: Memoirs by Lev Raphael Carroll & Graf. 192 pages, $14.95 Secret Anniversaries of the Heart: New and Selected Stories by Lev Raphael Leapfrog Press. 248 pages, $15.95 LEV RAPHAEL was one of the...

Tales of a longtime survivor.("Let's Shut Out the World")(Book Review)
March 1, 2006... Let's Shut Out the World by Kevin Bentley Green Candy Press. 203 pages, $14.95 IN 2002 Kevin Bentley's Wild Animals I Have Known: Polk Street Diaries and After was published, complete with an eye-catching cover photo of two young...

The American Diaspora.("Lipshitz Six, or Two Angry Blondes")(Book Review)
March 1, 2006... Lipshitz Six, or Two Angry Blondes: A Novel by T Cooper Dutton. 430 pages, $24.95 IN LIPSHITZ SIX, or Two Angry Blondes, T Cooper writes the story of four generations of the Lipshitz family. In 1903, after an especially horrific...

Dark Side of the Moon.(Poem)
March 1, 2006... is playing as you pull down his zipper Onomatopoeia, you say because you're going off to college in the fall majoring in English where you will understand boys like you. A song is playing to the rhythm of his hand...

Conferences/events.(Bulletin Board)
March 1, 2006... "Sex Work Matters" conf. will be held March 29-30, at CUNY and The New School, New York. GLBT issues will figure prominently. For more info, visit www.sexworkmatters.com. URI Symposium on GLBTQ Issues will be held April 19-22, 2006, at the...

That double meaning of "In Cold Blood".(Capote)(Movie review)
March 1, 2006... Capote Directed by Bennett Miller United Artists & Sony Pictures Classics IN HIS 1965 "non-fiction novel" In Cold Blood, Truman Capote tried to see the world through a grain of sand. But he never considered whether the grain of...