The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide articles from May 2003

The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide archives from May 2003

May-June 2003: not the American issue.(exporting gay rights)(Editorial)
May 1, 2003... That this is "not the American issue" is not a political statement but instead a comment on the odd fact that the cover of this "international" issue sports a parody of the iconic American Gothic. But it seemed the best way to salute Dell...

Correspondence.(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 2003... Earlier Letter Clarified To the Editor: I find your publication enjoyable and worthwhile and am therefore gratified to learn that your decision to publish Ian Young's article (Jan.-Feb. 2002) does not represent editorial advocacy of...

High noon for equality at the Supreme Court. (Guest Opinion).(historians file amicus brief in case challenging Homosexual Conduct Law, Texas)(Column)
May 1, 2003... On March 26, the United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a challenge brought by Texas residents John Lawrence and Tyron Garner to that state's Homosexual Conduct Law. Among the dozens of legal briefs filed by advocacy groups seeking...

Bill C-250 = do not cite bible. (BTW).(court rules that Bible was used as hate literature, Saskatchewan)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... A Canadian provincial court has ruled that certain passages of the Bible can be construed as hate literature if placed in a particular context. The Court of Queen's Bench in Saskatchewan upheld a 2001 ruling by the province's human rights...

Out comes Olsen. (BTW).(cartoon character Jimmy Olsen may be portrayed as gay in upcoming Superman movie)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... That this is the third BTW in a row to address the sexual orientation of a cartoon character suggests a trend of some kind. This time it's Jimmy Olsen of "Superman" fame who seems poised to come out of the closet (phone booth?) in the...

Bottoms up! (BTW).(anal sex implied by television ads)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... Another odd trend is the occurrence of subtle but pointed references to anal sex in some very high-profile commercials, notably those introduced during the Super Bowl. Anheuser-Busch continued the trend in this year's batch. In one, a clown...

Battle of the Queens. (BTW).(case brought by gay employee against Leona Helmsley)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... "Leona's Leather Nightmare!" and "Leona sez beau wore her undies!" blared the front pages of New York's tabloids (esp. the Post). The Leona in question was of course Leona Helmsley, the billionaire real estate heiress, "queen of mean,"...

Post gay. (BTW).(New York Post's "outing" of gay men)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... If the Post had a field day with the Helmsley story, the paper had a field month with a series of stories that purported to "out" a number of famous athletes, notably two baseball players: Mike Piazza, a current catcher for the Mets, who was...

The 'Conspiracy' of the 'Homintern'. (Essay).(cultural homophobia)
May 1, 2003... THERE WAS NO such thing as "the Homintern." It existed only as a camp joke or an imagined plot. The Comintern, or Communist International, was a real organization set up by Lenin in 1919 and dissolved in 1943. The camp term "Homintem" is often...

Women's lib hits london, 1972. (Essay).
May 1, 2003... IT WAS A SUNDAY afternoon in 1971 when I found myself driving around an uncharacteristically empty Piccadilly Circus with a clipping from The Sunday Times in hand. The words "Women's Liberation" in the headline had caught my eye, and I was...

Spain and the 'Mediterranean Model'. (Essay).(gay and lesbian rights)
May 1, 2003... IN SOME 200 YEARS, Spain has gone from a country that imposed the death penalty for sodomy to one that legally recognizes same-sex couples. Most of this progress has taken place over the last thirty years, notably since the death of fascist...

Poland: the shock of the homoerotic.(visual art and homosexuality)(Critical Essay)
May 1, 2003... IT'S A BUSY FRIDAY NIGHT at the Cocoon, the main gay club in Krakow, one of the largest clubs in Poland. The former cinema is full of bodies: male, female, and in-between. Young men dance ferociously, disappearing from time to time into the...

Robert Friend: A life in poetry. (Artist's Profile).(Critical Essay)
May 1, 2003... WHEN I read the poems of Robert Friend, I always sense the relationship to my own poetry. It is true that W. H. Auden and Constantine Cavafy were major influences on me almost from the beginning, but first there was Robert Friend: A...

Out and down and living in Israel. (Essay).(Palestinian gay men experience vicious abuse at home, life of prostitution in Israel)
May 1, 2003... 'I DON'T WANT to live this life," says Doodi, nineteen, as he smokes a cigarette and looks out onto Nachalat Binyamin Street in Tel Aviv. "If I could get a real job, I would. I don't want to be a prostitute." Israeli society once thrived...

Passing in India. (Essay).(lesbian Fulbright scholar discusses gay rights in India)
May 1, 2003... IT WAS IN EARLY MAY, 2001, that I got the news that I had been granted a Fulbright scholarship in India. The award for a lecturer in women's studies seemed like a perfect fit. Yet my excitement was tempered with a little concern about what life...

How to be gay in Beijing. (Essay).
May 1, 2003... GAY MEN AND LESBIANS comprise an estimated three to four percent of China's 1.2 billion people, which yields a range of 36 million to 48 million people. If the real number lies at the midpoint of that staggering estimate, the total number of...

Shanghai's Museum of Sex. (Essay).(Museum of Ancient Chinese Sex Culture, Shanghai, China)
May 1, 2003... HALFWAY UP the stairs to the second-floor entrance of The Museum of Ancient Chinese Sex Culture in Shanghai, one comes to a landing. There, set up on a pedestal, a kitschy, 19th-century porcelain statue of Guanyin, the goddess of compassion,...

Night Hood. (Books).(Outlaw: The Lives and Careers of John Rechy)(Book Review)
May 1, 2003... Outlaw: The Lives and Careers of John Rechy By Charles Casillo Advocated Books. 256 pages, $14.95 IN 1958, at the age of 27, John Rechy astonished the literary world with the publication of his short story, "Mardi Gras," in the...

Fresh Figs.(Poem)
May 1, 2003... Fresh Figs The trouble with figs is Not the sticky juice That flows down my cheek When I massage one in half With my lips, Or those rosy pink fibers That tickle my nose and my tongue As they slip toward my throat. Not how...

Fathers who aren't in heaven.(The Man I Might Become: Gay Men Write about Their Fathers)(Book Review)
May 1, 2003... The Man I Might Become: Gay Men Write about Their Fathers Edited by Bruce Shenitz Marlowe & Co. 320 pages. $16.95 IN THE DAYS when homosexuality was considered an illness and doctors and therapists were only interested in causes and...

Syntactical seduction.(Edgewater)(Book Review)
May 1, 2003... Edgewater Ruth L. Schwartz Perenniel. 128 pages, $12.95 RUTH L. SCHWARTZ is not the first poet to wrestle with desire and constructions of the body, nor the first to set up images of the natural world as reflections of the human...

The makers of a movement look back.(Before Stonewall: Activists for Gay and Lesbian Rights in Historical Context)(Book Review)
May 1, 2003... Before Stonewall: Activists for Gay and Lesbian Rights in Historical Context Edited by Vern L. Bullough I HAVE to confess that I approached Be fore Stonewall expecting more duty than pleasure. I assumed that the book, a collection of...

Running with the Woolfs.(Lytton Strachey and the Search for Modern Sexual Identity: The Last Eminent Victorian)(Book Review)
May 1, 2003... Lytton Strachey and the Search for Modern Sexual Identity: The Last Eminent Victorian by Julie Anne Taddeo Harrington. 192 pages, $19.95 (paper) VIRGINIA and Leonard Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, Clive and Vanessa Bell, Roger Fry, Duncan...

Anthony Blunt: His Lives. (Briefs).(Book Review)
May 1, 2003... by Miranda Carter Picador. 590 pages (illustrated), $18. Cambridge-educated, gay as a handbag, and a Soviet spy, Anthony Blunt rose high in the art world, even becoming curator of the Queen's household paintings. British intelligence...

Gender Talk: Sexism, Power and Politics in the African American Community. (Briefs).(Book Review)
May 1, 2003... Beverly Guy-Sheftall and Johnetta Cole One World. 298 pages, $24.95 The co-authors of this book, Beverly Guy-Sheftall and Johnetta Cole, both of Spelman College, have written an important critique of gender politics in the black community....

In the Absence of Men. (Briefs).(Book Review)
May 1, 2003... by Philippe Besson (trans. by Frank Wynne) Carroll & Graf. 176 pages, $20. In this biographical novel, Philippe Besson has attempted to climb into the extravagant world of Marcel Proust. Translated from the French by Frank Wynne, In the...

Tale and true from Canada.(Love and Other Ruins)(The Queen of Peace Room)(Book Review)
May 1, 2003... Love and Other Ruins by Karen X. Tulchinsky Polestar Book Publishers / Raincoast Books 317 pages, $15.95 The Queen of Peace Room by Magie Dominic Wilfrid Laurier University. 113 pages, $19.95 VANCOUVER-BASED...

When being bad was good.(The Sperm Engine)(Book Review)
May 1, 2003... The Sperm Engine by Richard Greco Green Candy Press. 204 pages, $13.95 DOES the world need another book about New York's pre-epidemic halcyon days? Can there possibly be anything new to say? Stephen Greco's sexy and elegant The...

Country matters.(The Round Barn)(Book Review)
May 1, 2003... The Round Barn by Suzi Wizowaty University Press of New England. 256 pages, $24.95 THE Round Barn is a post-feminist, post-gay novel set in the Burlington, Vermont, area, specifically around a museum that's clearly modeled on the...

In the Old Days.(Poem)
May 1, 2003... In the Old Days he said, the neighborhood boys would flock to the Acres, the ring of oaks just below the Museum, by the river. They'd love it. They'd ask to see you again. They'd want to know the time.

Serve and tell.(Brothers and Others in Arms: The Making of Love and War in Israeli Combat Units)(Book Review)
May 1, 2003... Brothers and Others in Arms: The Making of Love and War in Israeli Combat Units by Danny Kaplan Southern Tier Editions. 276 pages, $39.95 ($19.95 paper) AT FIRST glance, Danny Kaplan's Brothers and Others in Arms looks like an...

Weepers. (Arts).(Talk to Her)(Far From Heaven)(The Hours)(Movie Review)
May 1, 2003... Talk to Her Directed by Pedro Almodovar Far From Heaven Directed by Todd Haynes The Hours Directed by Stephen Daldrey ONE OF THE THINGS that Stonewall supposedly eliminated (though playwrights like Tennessee Williams...

It takes a jock.(Take Me Out by Richard Greenberg)(Theater Review)
May 1, 2003... Allen Ellenzweig Take Me Out by Richard Greenberg Directed by Joe Mantello Walter Kerr Theater, New York WHEN Richard Greenberg's play Take Me Out first played downtown at The Public Theater several months ago by way of London's...

Conferences/Events.(Calendar)
May 1, 2003... Equality Forum (formerly Pridefest America) conference will be held in Philadelphia, April 28-May 4, 2003. "Equality Forum highlights the vibrant international GLBT civil rights movement." For more info, call 215-735-7356; e-mail...