The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide articles from September 2003

The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide archives from September 2003

Sept.-Oct. 2003: "Americana" issue.
September 1, 2003... The case of Lawrence v. Texas has been settled, and with it dies a legal monster that started life in 1533, in England, at the hand of King Henry VIII (as part of a drive to punish the Catholic priesthood!). The majority ruling expressly cited...

Does Lawrence v. Texas "change everything"?(Guest Opinion)
September 1, 2003... IN Lawrence v. Texas the Supreme Court invalidated Texas's anti-homosexual sodomy law by invoking a constitutional right to privacy. But it also indicated that constitutional equal protection doctrines would have provided another reason to...

Headline of the month.(BTW)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2003... "When is the C of E [Church of England] going to realise that homosexuality is now more popular in Britain than Christianity?" asked The Guardian of London in a banner headline (7/8/03), citing figures showing that while only 1.7 percent of the...

Follow-up on the news.(BTW)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2003... An earlier BTW told of the plight of Matthew Limon, who was given a seventeen-year prison term after being convicted by a Kansas court of fellating a fourteen-year-old boy. What made it noteworthy was that Limon had turned eighteen only a few...

Candid candidate from Jersey.(BTW)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2003... Martin Morrison, 31, an openly gay Democratic candidate for New Jersey state senator, was called upon by the chair of the Democratic Party of rural Sussex County to withdraw from the race. The call was made not because Morrison is gay but...

Naked ploy.(BTW)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2003... Vast amounts of ink were spilled in Florida last spring on the question of whether Mark Foley of Palm Beach, a Republican candidate for U.S. senator, was gay. While his homosexuality has apparently been an open secret for years, Foley would...

On the way out.(BTW; homophobia)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2003... Retiring Human Rights Campaign director Elizabeth Birch recently recalled an episode in which a notoriously homophobic congressman semi-outed himself at a meeting she and Daniel Zingale had with him in 1995. In a speech last June, Birch...

Koan.(BTW; homophobia)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2003... How do you silence a "day of silence"? A high school principal in San Antonio seemed determined to answer that question when he chose to take his stand against immorality by banning all student participation in the National Day of Silence....

A First Down Under.(BTW)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2003... As Canada moves to full marriage equality and the U.S. throws out the last vestiges of its anti-sodomy laws, Australia is airing its first TV ads for a gay bathhouse. Aired on local TV in Melbourne, the ad is set in a crowded pub where two...

You asked for it.(BTW; drag queens)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2003... When Canadian MP Elsie Wayne gave a speech slamming men who "get dressed up as women on floats" in gay parades, surely she knew that she was skating on thin ice. Well, perhaps not: the 71-year-old Wayne, famous for her flamboyant outfits,...

After many a summer ...(BTW; swans)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2003... Patch, the last of twelve swans donated to Ottawa by the Queen of England in 1967, has died, leaving behind his crestfallen male mate Buddy. The keepers of the royal swan collection say that if they look for a new partner for Buddy, they will...

And in a related story.(BTW)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2003... The Zurich (Switzerland) Zoo began to offer guided tours dealing with homosexuality among animals. During the one-hour program, tour guide Myriam Scharz presented evidence from American biologist Bruce Bagemihl's 1999 book, Biological...

White's view of aging too bleak.(Correspondence)(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2003... To the Editor: For whatever reasons (the threat of loneliness, desire to get laid, fear of dismissal by a community that prizes youth and beauty obsessively), many members of the gay community fear aging and take extraordinary steps to...

Edmund White replies.(Correspondence)(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2003... To the Editor: I must say I didn't much like my interview either, because I found myself addressing questions posed by the interviewer which were ones I'm not much interested in. When I read the completed interview I winced a bit because...

U.S. can learn from the world.(Correspondence)(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2003... To the Editor: I am writing to congratulate you on having finally lived up to the promise of being a worldwide review in your "Not the American Issue" [May-June 2003]. However, it bothers me that your introduction to this issue seems...

Question China's party line.(Correspondence)(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2003... To the Editor: What a surprise to read Philip Gambone's piece on the Shanghai Museum of Sex [May-June 2003 issue] only to find the writer parroting the duplicitous Chinese dogma on the history of homosexuality in China. Mr. Gambone...

Correction.(Correspondence)(Correction Notice)
September 1, 2003... In the July-August issue, a few words were left off the end of Diane Hamer's review of a biography of Natalie Clifford Barney (p. 43), which should have ended: "In the tradition of other salon divas and letter writers like Madame de Stael and...

Beauford Delaney and the art of exile.(Essay)
September 1, 2003... BEAUFORD DELANEY died in a Parisian mental hospital in 1979, alone and impoverished, tortured by alcoholism and schizophrenia. At the time, his closest friend, the author James Baldwin, told people that Delaney's struggle to live as a black...

Oh, what a beautiful morning.(Essay)(Short Story)
September 1, 2003... LET'S JUST SAY they made me an offer I couldn't refuse. I began teaching at the University o Tulsa for the fall term of 2001, planning to be in residence only until the following spring. Bu 'then Oklahoma State got in touch, and I stayed second...

At the Michigan Womyn's Music Fest.(Essay)
September 1, 2003... "For one week in August every year, women only populate the largest town in Oceana County." --Deborah Lewis, "The Original Womyn's Woodstock," in The Woman-Centered Economy, Midge Stocker, ed., 1995. IT'S ONLY JUNE, but I've already...

Appalachian subculture.(Essay)
September 1, 2003... APPALACHIA HAS a bad reputation, especially West Virginia, the only state whose borders lie entirely within anyone's definition of the Appalachian Mountains. Moonshine swillers and feuding hicks--these are the images that most people hold....

Augusten Burroughs on and off the wagon.(Artist's Profile)
September 1, 2003... He's been officially knighted as the literary scene's "New Mad Hatter," according to Book magazine's second annual "Newcomers Issue"--a title Augusten Burroughs readily accepts with a wink-and-a-nudge and a fresh piece of Nicorette gum. ...

Fire Island: the democratic years.(Essay)
September 1, 2003... At the end of his tandem review of my three memoirs, Ambidextrous, Men Who Loved Me, and A House on the Ocean, A House on the Bay, the respected critic Jesse Monteagudo, referring to the last of the three, wrote in a weekly online magazine,...

Philadelphia stories.(Essay)
September 1, 2003... IN HIS DIARIES Christopher Isherwood wrote about going to Philadelphia's, Camac Street Baths when he worked on Philadelphia s Main Line as a conscientious objector. The time was WW II and Isherwood, tiding the train from Haverford into the...

An RV park of one's own.(Essay)
September 1, 2003... DURING THE PAST fifty years, a number of privately-owned tracts in the U.S. have been designated "women's land," meaning that their owners made them available for some set of uses by a wide lesbian or feminist community. Usually these...

A gay wedding (almost) in Waco.(Essay)
September 1, 2003... LET ME tell you 'bout my hometown in the middle of the Lone Star State. I might brag just a little but I really won't exaggerate." Thus begins the jingle created and recorded by a radio station in the 1960's about my hometown. Although I...

Near nothing.(Poem)
September 1, 2003... So little happened that afternoon, car doors, a walk, cigarettes-- the near nothing of pleasure: soft push of a palm-folded earlobe. My skin squirreled you away the way the pines do wind. But...

U.S. sodomy ruling ripples to India.(International Spectrum)
September 1, 2003... Ripples from the U.S. Supreme Court's historic ruling in a Texas sodomy law case have made it all the way to India, where activists are fighting a colonial-era ban on homosexual sex that authorities use to intimidate gay people. (International...

Homoland security: rainbow threat alert.(Humor)
September 1, 2003... It isn't enough that all Americans had to run out and create their own Disaster Supply Kit. For gay men, that included not only the usual duct tape, toilet paper, and drinking water, but also more important things like extra batteries for...

What's behind those glittering surfaces?(Paul Cadmus: The Male Nude)(Book Review)
September 1, 2003... Paul Cadmus: The Male Nude by Justin Spring Universe Publishing 176 pages, $49.95 PAUL CADMUS (1904-1999) catapulted to fame in 1934 at the age of 29. The engine of his ascent was a painting called The Fleet's In!, a highly ribald lampoon...

Letter to Alfred Corn.(Short Story)
September 1, 2003... Alfred, we both know there's little dactylic pentameter that can be spotted and quoted from classic anthologies (although Hephaistion's Handbook on Meters cites "Atthis I loved you once long ago" as an example, without much on Sappho, but...

The heart of compromise.(Man about Town)(Book Review)
September 1, 2003... Man about Town by Mark Merlis Fourth Estate/HarperCollins 360 pages, $24.95 IF WE ARE NOT especially kind to love stories these days, it s because they are not especially kind to us. They re too easy, sentimentally idealized past the point...

Out came Tennessee, in his later plays.(The Undiscovered Country: The Later Plays of Tennessee Williams )(Book Review)
September 1, 2003... The Undiscovered Country: The Later Plays of Tennessee Williams Edited by Philip C. Kolin Peter Lang Publishing Co. 223 pages, $32.95 PHILIP C. Kolin's The Undiscovered Country is a challenging collection of essays that revisit Tennessee...

Tutti fruiti.(The Crimson Letter Harvard, Homosexuality, and the Shaping of American Culture)(Book Review)
September 1, 2003... The Crimson Letter Harvard, Homosexuality, and the Shaping of American Culture by Douglass Shand-Tucci St Martin's Press. 403 pgs, $27.95 THE CRIMSON LETTER--a history of homosexual Harvard--begins with a stellar set-piece: Ralph Waldo...

Exit laughing.(Sex, Lies and Stereotypes An Unconventional Life Uncensored)(Book Review)
September 1, 2003... Sex, Lies and Stereotypes An Unconventional Life Uncensored by Kim Ficera Kensington Books. 288 pages, $14. THE ABILITY to laugh at oneself is sometimes better than money, though not always as easy to come by. If you don't find living as a...

West meets East.(Beijing)(Book Review)
September 1, 2003... Beijing Philip Gambone University of Wisconsin Press. 322 pages, $26.95 A YEAR AGO David Masiello, the narrator and central character of Beijing, lost his life partner to AIDS, but he hasn't been able to "transition" to the next stage of...

The island of Dr. Aaron.(People Farm)(Book Review)
September 1, 2003... People Farm by Steve Susoyev Moving Finger Press. 405 pages, $18. THE TAGLINE for Steve Susoyev's People Farm describes the book as "A largely true story of exploitation, redemption and organic sex in a therapy cult of the early Aquarian...

Epiphany.(Poem)
September 1, 2003... Blue bowl and the coming light high maples glow red-tipped at dawn full gesture of blood returning to limbs, the threat of a surprising golden wind. I am the coming bright side of the triangle, hold myself folded...

Last of the M'anthologies.(M2M: New Literary Fiction )(Book Review)
September 1, 2003... M2M: New Literary Fiction Edited by Karl Woelz AttaGirl Press. 326 pages, $16.95 ONE HAS to greet the appearance of M2M: New Literary Fiction with mixed emotions. While it is good to see this fresh collection of serious gay-themed short...

A Life in 'The building'.(Insurgent Muse: Life and Art at the Woman's Building )(Book Review)
September 1, 2003... Insurgent Muse: Life and Art at the Woman's Building by Terry Wolverton City Lights Books. 240 pages, $17.95 FROM 1976 to 1989, Terry Wolverton lived and worked at the Woman's Building, first as a student and then in virtually every...

Flirting with relevance.(Sky Lounge )(Book Review)
September 1, 2003... Sky Lounge by Mark Bibbins Graywolf. 72 pages, $14. POET Mark Bibbins is delicately attuned to tenderness, warmth. Really, he is. At first glance, his verse seems more interested in teasing out the cold possibilities of language,...

Here is elsewhere.(The Firebrat)(Book Review)
September 1, 2003... The Firebrat By David McConnell AttaGirl Press. 246 pages, $22. DAVID McConnell's luminous first novel, The Firebrat, is a hall of mirrors, a self-reflecting work of art that opens vistas into infinity. At its start Elliot, the narrator, is...

How to do the history of homosexuality.(Book Review)
September 1, 2003... by David Halperin University of Chicago Press. 200 pp., $30. Halperin's title may sound like hubris, and some of the book may seem defensive as the author takes on many of his critics from the last ten years, but Halperin's carefully argued...

The Harvey Milk Institute Guide to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer Internet research.(Book Review)
September 1, 2003... Edited by Alan Ellis, Liz Highleyman, Kevin Schaub and Melissa White Harrington Park Press. 179 pp., $14.95 (paper) Prepared by volunteers and staff of the Harvey Milk Institute in San Francisco, the world's largest community center devoted...

Solitary Sex: a cultural history of masturbation.(Book Review)
September 1, 2003... by Thomas Walter Laqueur Zone Books. 501 pp., $34. This comprehensive historical account of masturbation takes readers firmly by their sticky-sweet hands and deftly leads them from the prehistory of "solitary sex" as it occurs in the Bible,...

Conferences/events.(Calendar)
September 1, 2003... The 28th Michigan Women's Music Festival will be held Aug. 12-17. The price for a week of camping, meals, and all programming and services is $310 to 360. For more info, visit www.michfest.com. Annual International Friendship Weekend...

Announcements.
September 1, 2003... Grant applications being accepted for the Task Force Community Impact Fund sponsored by the NGLTF. $500,000 will be awarded to 10 organizations and projects that advance GLBT equality. For more info, visit:...

One-woman show.(Theatre; I Am My Own Wife)(Theater Review)
September 1, 2003... I am my own wife A new play by Doug Wright Directed by Moises Kaufman IN GENERAL I don't like drag, yet there are times when a man in a dress does something transformative: he comes to embody something other than a camp cliche. Such is the...