The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide articles from May 2004

The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide archives from May 2004

May-June 2004: distant mirrors.
May 1, 2004... It came as a rude awakening. Just when we were getting used to the idea that "we are everywhere," just as we were rediscovering our forbears in places like ancient Athens and Renaissance Italy, Michel Foucault came along (by the 1980's) and...

Expanding the GLBT tent.(Correspondence)(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 2004... To the Editor: Samuel Delany's essay "Alphabet Soup in Provincetown" [Jan.-Feb. 2004] reads like a well-intentioned plea for inclusiveness to the established literati of lavender letters, but it oddly struck me as the voice of a...

With Beauford Delaney.(Correspondence)(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 2004... To the Editor: I side with Christopher Capozzola and David Leeming about Beauford Delaney's sexuality being furtive [article in the Sept.-Oct. 2003 issue and debated in subsequent issues], since he patronized the same jack-off movie house...

Spirituality slighted by Gay Media.(Correspondence)(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 2004... To the Editor: Thank you for reviewing my book Gay Perspective: Things Our Homosexuality Tells Us About the Nature of God and the Universe (Nov.-Dec. 2003). I won't complain about the review (any review is better than none), but in its...

Correction.(Correction Notice)
May 1, 2004... Two errors crept into Greg Varner's review of Art--A Sex Book in the March-April issue: the artist of the book's cover illustration is Mike Kelley; and the author of the review is the former arts editor for the Washington Blade.

Marriage has always been a civil institution.(Guest Opinion)
May 1, 2004... When the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth in 1620, among the first things they did for the well-ordering of their new commonwealth was to institute the Dutch custom of civil marriage with which they had become familiar during their long sojourn in...

Knight family drama.(BTW)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... The son of California's most prominent opponent of gay marriage exchanged vows with his partner in San Francisco last March, as David Knight, son of state Senator William "Pete" Knight, married his boyfriend of ten years, Joseph Lazzaro. The...

Calling dick's bluff.(BTW)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... George Bush's decision to push for a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage has put at least one Administration official on the spot--and the Log Cabin Republicans (LCR) plan to jawbone it in a national ad campaign. Vice President Cheney,...

Eyeless in Central Park.(BTW)(homesexuality in animals)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... Studies of homosexuality in animals have opened up yet another front in the religious Right's campaign to stamp out tolerance wherever it may erupt. A wave of new studies has been confirming that homosexual behavior is commonplace in the animal...

Nothing to impair.(BTW)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... Even as the Supreme Court was weighing the case of Lawrence v. Texas last year, Justice Antonin Scalia was delivering a keynote speech in Philadelphia for the Urban Family Council, an advocacy group waging a legal battle against gay rights....

Creeping Orwell watch.(BTW)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... Previous BTW's have reported on the Administration's efforts to sabotage government funding of research related to HIV and sexual orientation. Now a large study by the Union of Concerned Scientists has reported, among many alarming findings,...

Marriage of the absurd.(BTW)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... Just how irrational are marriage laws was a question that writer-prankster Dan Savage set out to answer last March. What would happen if he and his partner of ten years applied for a marriage license in their hometown of Seattle? So Savage and...

The varieties of Greek love.(Essay)
May 1, 2004... IT IS OFTEN ASSUMED that same-gender relationships followed a stereotypical pattern and set of protocols in ancient society. In classical Greece this would take the form of pedagogical pederasty associating a man (usually before the age of...

New pedagogy on ancient pederasty.(Essay)
May 1, 2004... IT MAY SEEM difficult to say anything new and fresh about same-sex desire and love in the ancient Greek and Roman world. After all, the publication of Sir Kenneth Dover's Greek Homosexuality in 1978, the first major publication in the...

Something about Mary.(Essay)(Critical Essay)
May 1, 2004... IT SEEMS THE GODS will have their revenge, or at least their ironic outcomes. Thus we owe it to a woman and a lesbian to have written the most authentic and beautiful prose about romantic love between men in all of literature. In eight novels...

Eunuch power in old Byzantium.(Essay)
May 1, 2004... FOR MOST of the last 4,000 years, all major, long-running imperial regimes from one end of Asia to the other have had one common feature: the presence of eunuchs in management. Members of the castrated caste were key officials and advisors...

Queen Anne's ladies.(Essay)
May 1, 2004... THE ONE THING that the average, educated Brit tends to know about Sarah Churchill, the first Duchess of Marlborough and ancestor of both Sir Winston Churchill and Princess Diana, is that she had an intimate relationship with Queen Anne, the...

Sapphists in the Luxembourg gardens.(Brief Article)(Poem)
May 1, 2004... "Alice look here at the herbaceous border keeping thyme as guard of the older roses. Look at nature's brush in the bright red poppies-- flame in the garden." Fall will deaden all but the noble herbs, who prove their...

Fra Luigi Sinistrari on Lewdness.(Essay)
May 1, 2004... GAY PENITENTS would have found Fra Luigi Sinistrari an understanding confessor, in spite of all that scary talk about torture and flogging and burning at the stake. When you get past the fierce rhetoric of the Inquisition, you find a childlike...

When Captain Cook met Kalanikoa.(Essay)
May 1, 2004... THE "HAWAIIAN RENAISSANCE" began in the 1970's as a rediscovery of the Islands' native cultural heritage and a revival of the Hawaiian language, arts, and hula. And yet, all this revitalization of the past has strangely overlooked one...

1904: the first lesbian feminist speaks.(Essay)
May 1, 2004... "THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT is a historical and cultural necessity. Homosexuality is a historical and cultural necessity, and homosexuality is an obvious and natural bridge between man and woman." With this pronouncement in a speech delivered just...

The stranger.(Books)(William Burroughs and the Secret of Fascination)(Book Review)
May 1, 2004... William Burroughs and the Secret of Fascination by Oliver Harris Southern Illinois University Press 287 pages, $45. FOR ALL the macho swagger of Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady, particularly in Kerouac's 1957 novel On the Road,...

Asian nations set their own gay course.(Books)(Mobile Cultures: New Media in Queer Asia)(Book Review)
May 1, 2004... Mobile Cultures: New Media in Queer Asia Edited by Chris Berry, Fran Martin, and Audrey Yue Duke University Press 306 pages, $21.95 ANY SCHOLARLY BOOK with Hello Kitty on the cover is bound to turn my head. (Hello Kitty is a...

When I think of you now.(Brief Article)(Poem)
May 1, 2004... my heart is like the screen door slamming on the old house on one of those breezy nights as each thin wind nudged in, the rickety wood beating against its aching hinge, welcoming fireflies and mosquitoes, smashing photos against...

Boys gone wild.(Books)(Same-Sex Affairs: Constructing and Controlling Homosexuality in the Pacific Northwest)(Book Review)
May 1, 2004... Same-Sex Affairs: Constructing and Controlling Homosexuality in the Pacific Northwest by Peter Boag University of California Press 335 pages, $60. (paper $24.95) WHETHER FOUND in the alleys of Seattle's Skid Row, the lumber...

Deep in the heart of Damascus.(Books)(Cleopatra's Wedding Present: Travels through Syria)(Book Review)
May 1, 2004... Cleopatra's Wedding Present: Travels through Syria by Robert Tewdwr Moss University of Wisconsin Press 245 pages, $24.95 ODDS ARE GOOD that no one at the Pentagon has read Cleopatra's Wedding Present, even though it was first...

Collected Stories.(Briefs)(Book Review)
May 1, 2004... Collected Stories by David Leavitt Bloomsbury. 525 pages, $24.95 (paper) This volume brings together Leavitt's short fiction from three earlier collections: Family Dancing (1983), A Place I've Never Been (1990), and The Marble...

Original Youth.(Briefs)(Original Youth)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2004... Original Youth by Keith Fleming Green Candy Press. 224 pages. $19.95 For those familiar with Edmund White's many gay novels, and for those who've wondered just how autobiographical they really are, Keith Fleming's Original Youth...

Queer Eye for the Straight Guy: The Fab 5's Guide to Looking Better, Cooking Better, Dressing Better, Behaving Better, and Living Better.(Briefs)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 1, 2004... Queer Eye for the Straight Guy: The Fab 5's Guide to Looking Better, Cooking Better, Dressing Better, Behaving Better, and Living Better by The Fab Five Clarkson Potter, 256 pages (illustrated), $27.50 I've never seen an episode...

Behind the closet door of 1920's Harlem.(Books)(Gay Voices of the Harlem Renaissance)(The Splendid Drunken Twenties: Selections from the Daybooks, 1922-1930: Carl Van Vechten)(The Collected Writings of Wallace Thurman: A Harlem Renaissance Reader)(Book Review)
May 1, 2004... Gay Voices of the Harlem Renaissance by A.B. Christa Schwarz Indiana University Press 209 pages, $21.95 (paper) The Splendid Drunken Twenties: Selections from the Daybooks, 1922-1930: Carl Van Vechten Edited by Bruce...

A poet who saw unity in oppression.(Books)(Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde)(Book Review)
May 1, 2004... Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde by Alexis De Veaux Norton. 512 pages, $29.95 VISIONARIES are like extremists, embarrassing and annoying, making so much out of so little: they identify problems that the mediocre among us...

Oedipus, shmoedipus.(Brief Article)(Poem)
May 1, 2004... It is the bitter truth that everyone marries their mother. Or rather, after some years your mate turns into you mother. And the incest prohibition kills the lust that brought you together in the first place. But if...

"I wanted that blue.".(Books)(Trace Elements of Random Tea Parties)(Book Review)
May 1, 2004... Trace Elements of Random Tea Parties by Felicia Luna Lemus Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 252 pages, $23. FIRST you fall in love with the title. You imagine mismatched pieces of fragile china, translucent, in delicate greens and floral...

Haunted household.(Books)(The Room Where I Was Born)(Book Review)
May 1, 2004... The Room Where I Was Born by Brian Teare University of Wisconsin Press. 112 pages, $14.95 THE TITLE of Brian Teare's debut volume of poetry, The Room Where I Was Born, proves apt: it is indeed about origins, about confronting how...

Confederacy of lushes.(Books)(Liquor)(Book Review)
May 1, 2004... Liquor by Poppy Z. Brite Three Rivers Press. 352 pages, $13.95(paper) NEW ORLEANS, described in the cover synopsis as "America's most sublimely ridiculous city," is perhaps also America's most often misrepresented, at least where...

Civil union's first draft.(Books)(Civil Wars: A Battle for Gay Marriage)(Book Review)
May 1, 2004... Civil Wars: A Battle for Gay Marriage by David Moats Harcourt. 288 pages, $25. CIVIL WARS is a chronological account of Vermont's landmark adoption of a law mandating civil unions in December 1999. As editorial page editor for the...

Cases in point.(Books)(Queer Street: The Rise and Fall of an American Culture, 1947-1985)(Book Review)
May 1, 2004... Queer Street: The Rise and Fall of an American Culture, 1947-1985 by James McCourt Norton. 577 pages, $29.95 "I CAN imagine a book made up entirely of examples," wrote the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. This is the first of many...

Straight expectations.(Books)(Anything But Straight)(Book Review)
May 1, 2004... Anything But Straight by Wayne Besen Harrington Park Press (Haworth). 311 pages, $16.95 (paper) A FEW years ago, Wayne Besen got a call informing him that John Paulk had been spotted in a Washington, D.C., gay bar called Mr. P's....

Egypt: human casualties of the culture wars.(International Spectrum)
May 1, 2004... Taher (not his real name) was eighteen, a law student, and terrified when I met him. One of his best friends had just been arrested, charged with consensual homosexual conduct--a crime under Egyptian law. Taher himself knew first-hand what can...

Comrades in each other's arms.(Film)(Yossi & Jagger)(Movie Review)
May 1, 2004... Yossi & Jagger Directed by Eytan Fox Israeli, 2002 (U.S. DVD release 2004) In Hebrew with English subtitles YOSSI & JAGGER exists in the space between the feature film and the documentary. Based on a true story, this well-made...