Band of Thebes

Yesterday Minus the Gays

Considering it was an idea hatched just four weeks ago, yesterday's nationwide protest of Prop 8 Day Without a Gay received a titanic amount of media coverage, including complete guidelines, newspaper articles, tv reports, and a debate on Fox. Publicity is greatest impact such events have, so ignore the Chronicle's assessment that DWAG "fizzled." Whatever DWAG was, it wasn't a failure. (An awesome aspect of a gay walkout is that it's tricky for the haters to find a way to be against it. What are they going to do, angrily demand gay people should be more visible?)

Without DWAG, nobody would have been writing gay articles. Even during Pride, papers do not run these Gee, look how many gays! overviews. And yes they tilted toward OMG, No Gays??? Who Will Blowdry Your Hair!?!? rather than who will fix your truck, who will heal you, who will represent the people of Idaho in the US Senate, etc. Though I love the Los Angeles Times' use of "ungayed," the real equation with gay contributions erased would be yield the null set. With novels it would be: From current fiction subtract James' characterization, Proust's use of memory, Forster's connections, Woolf's stream of consciousness, Isherwood's I Am a Camera point of view, and Capote's reportage, leaving readers of literature...Peanuts? 

Marc Shaiman's "Prop 8: The Musical"

Starring Neil Patrick Harris, Alison Janney, Jack Black, Maya Rudolph, Margaret Cho, John C. Reilly, Andy Richter, various people who must be from tv, and creator Marc Shaiman at the piano.

The Dictionary of Homophobia by Louis-Georges Tin

No irony here: I can't post adequately about The Dictionary of Homophobia because I have to get ready for the Prop 8 protest outside the LDS temple.

The work of more than seventy scholars in fifteen countries, The Dictionary of Homophobia: A Global History of Gay & Lesbian Experience, "includes over 175 essays on various aspects of gay rights and homophobia as experienced in all regions in Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and the South Pacific, from the earliest epochs to present day." According to the cover copy:

Subjects include religious and ideological forces such as the Bible, Communism, Judaism, Hinduism, and Islam; historical subjects, events, and personalities such as AIDS, Stonewall, J. Edgar Hoover, Matthew Shepard, Oscar Wilde, Pat Buchanan, Joseph McCarthy, Pope John Paul II, and Anita Bryant; and other topics such as coming out, adoption, deportation, ex-gays, lesbiphobia, and bi-phobia. In a world where gay marriage remains a hot-button political issue, and where adults and even teens are still being executed by authorities for the “crime” of homosexuality, The Dictionary of Homophobia is a both a revealing and necessary history lesson for us all.

Doug Ireland wrote in Gay City News, "this well-illustrated, wide-ranging collection of nearly 200 mini-essays is a rich, rewarding, enlightening, and often entertaining read that belongs on the bookshelf of every sentient, self-respecting queer."

Originally published in France in 2003, the book's editor is Louis-Georges Tin, whom you know as the founder of IDAHO [The International Day Against Homophobia] now observed in more than seventy countries. He's also a significant leader in France's black activist community, having founded CRAN after the November 2005 riots. And he's an expert on French poetry of the 1600s. He's thirty-three.

TIME's "Most Influential" Poll Is 3.38% Gay

Don't even try to decode the "reasoning" behind the nominees for TIME's 100 Most Influential People list or why in the world there are 207 of them. A very quick glance that no doubt missed many relevant names found six gay men and one lesbian. It's not Ellen, even though she recently trounced Oprah (#25 here) in a poll of favorite talkshow hosts.

Given how utterly preposterous the whole list is, it's pointless to become enraged over our exclusion. But still. Influence is one of the things we do best as original thinkers and early adopters, yet they think we comprise 7 of 207 or 3.38% of the possible list? And seriously do hang onto to something solid and immovable when you read that one of the nominees is graphic designer Chip Kidd. He's dead last, or two below Eliot Spitzer.

Did I mention #1 is Rain? Yes, Rain. You can't fault TIME for the voting, which clearly proves fansites are sending their readers directly to their nominee page, but you can criticize the editors for their very lame and sloppy choices and for not offering the option of write-ins.

I don't want to fight about this, but of course Carine Roitfeld deserves her spot.

Read the whole list here. Rankings as of Tuesday:

7. Perez Hilton
74. [Ang Lee]
88. David Sedaris
134. Adam Moss
139. Suze Orman
151. Matt Drudge
203. Nick Denton
207. Chip Kidd

Anti-Gay Violence in Iraq Worse Since Invasion

Molly Hennessy-Fiske of the Los Angeles Times files a long report from Baghdad, interviewing many Iraqis who say that gay life was better and more open during Saddam's reign and that anti-gay harassment, beatings, and murders have increased substantially since the U.S.-led invasion of their country in 2003. Human rights groups and the United Nations report that increasingly the attacks against gay people are being perpetrated by militia and the police. This follows the October 2005 fatwa against homosexuality by a leading Shiite Muslim cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who said anyone having sex with same gender partners "should be killed in the worst, most severe way." An Iraqi gay-rights advocate based in London, Ali Hili, runs a website on the issue, including memorials to the murdered. Iraq's minister of human rights, Wijdan Mikaeil said her office has not received complaints of attacks on gays.   

Read the fully story here.