Band of Thebes

Born March 20-22: John Boswell, Zackie Achmat, Stephen Sondheim

Native New Yorker Stephen Sondheim, the winningest composer in Broadway history, has earned eight Tonys, eight Grammys, seven Drama Desk awards, an Obie, an Oscar, and a Pulitzer Prize. Last year he turned 80 and was feted with major special concerts by the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center, the New York Pops at Carnegie Hall, the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall, and assorted stage and screen legends at benefits by the Roundabout Theatre Company and the New York City Center. Also, they renamed the former Henry Miller Theatre on 43rd Street in his honor. Arlington Virginia's acclaimed Signature Theatre created the Sondheim Award, of which Sondheim was the premiere recipient, Angela Lansbury the second, and next will be Bernadette Peters. Last October, Knopf published Sondheim's Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954-1981) with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes, this coming October they'll release Look, I Made a Hat: Collected Lyrics (1981-2011) with Attendant Comments, Amplifications, Dogmas, Harangues, Wafflings, Diversions and Anecdotes. A great lover of puzzles and games, he contemplated giving up theater to write mysteries, and did co-author two whodunnit screenplays; The Last of Sheila, co-written with Anthony Perkins, won them an Edgar. Sondheim did not have a live-in boyfriend until 1992, when he was 61; he and dramatist Peter Jones lasted seven years.

Born of Indian parents in South Africa in 1962, Zackie Achmat grew up in the "coloured" community and was always a rebel for equality. By the time he was ten he was a total bookworm and gained special permission to use the whites-only library for reading, but he was still prohibited from using its restrooms. When he was fourteen, during the Sowetto Uprisings, he set his school on fire to convince his classmates to join the boycott. As an active member of the illegal ANC for years, he was jailed many times before apartheid ended and the ANC's Nelson Mandela was elected president in 1994. That same year Achmat co-founded the National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality, and in 1996 South Africa had become the first nation whose Bill of Rights bans discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Building on lessons from the gay rights and anti-apartheid movements, in 1998 Achmat created the Treatment Action Campaign [TAC] to fight aids through prevention, to increase awareness, and to get medicines to the poor. Immediately he gained worldwide attention by announcing he was HIV+ and would refuse to take his drugs until they were available to all South Africans. Among the many ways TAC has changed lives is by helping to erode the shame and stigma of HIV, proclaiming one's positive status with bold t-shirts rather than hiding or lying. Winning numerous legal and public relations victories against the government and international pharmaceutical corporations, Achmat finally resumed his meds when he was very ill in August 2004, anticipating correctly that in November the Ministry of Health would announce its plan to distribute ARVs widely. The New Yorker ran an excellent profile of him written by Samantha Power in 2003, and the following year the American Friends Service Committee nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize (which went to Kenya's Wangari Maathai). In 2008, he married his partner Dalli Weyers, 25, in a terrific wedding where the traditional caketop figures of a bride and groom were replaced by a king and a cowboy.

When Publishing Triangle ranked the 100 Best LGBT Nonfiction Books of all time, they included works by Plato, Freud, Foucault, Faderman, Duberman, et al., and their undisputed choice at #1 was Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality by John Boswell, a history professor at Yale. He was 33 when it was published in 1980. Newsweek said it was, "an astonishing work of scholarship that ranges with ease over fourteen centuries...What makes the work so exciting is not simply its content -- fascinating though that is -- but its revolutionary challenge to some of Western culture's most familiar moral assumptions." Specifically, he proved that the Roman Catholic Church hadn't always been antigay, had either been indifferent to or had actually celebrated male - male love until the twelfth century. No surprise, Boswell was attacked by some conservative academics who thought he was promoting a gay agenda and by some gay people who said he was a Church apologist. Ultimately the complaints only added to the book's popularity because it was impeccably researched; it won the 1981 American Book Award for history.

After writing the first book about the widespread practice of child abandonment in medieval times, Boswell returned to gay topics and the early Church in another groundbreaking work, Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe. This time he argued the Church actually condoned certain male - male relationships with ceremonies that could be seen as precursors to gay marriage. Again, the book was brilliantly researched; again, the uproar; but the public debate was cut short: Boswell died of aids in December 1994 when he was 47. At Yale, he helped start the Lesbian and Gay Studies Center, and his pre-modern history courses were immensely popular, among the top ten in enrollments. He is said to have written his comments on student papers in perfect medieval calligraphy.

67% of U.S. Fourth Graders Fail Reading Proficiency

omg cn u bleev! srs? 2 funy!

To hear old-timers tell it, reading used to be a basic skill for American schoolchildren. Now, it's a luxury of the elites. Q: What do you call a state with less than half of its fourth graders passing the standard reading test? A: The best in U.S.!  Congratulations to reading champ Massachusetts, whose 47% proficiency rate among 10-11 year-olds crushes the national average of 33%. (In 1992 it was 29%.) New England sweeps the top four spots: MA, CT, NH, VT, while overall the West and the South scored lowest. Full results and analysis from the NEA.

If you needed any further proof of the increasing gap between the two Americas, mull this: Based on six criteria, Washington, DC was just named America's Most Literate City, while the NEA test results rank the capital dead last in fourth-grade reading proficiency with 17%.

Among eighth graders, the results are worse. Massachusetts has only 43% and DC 14%.

The image above, via ZDnet, really ought to be a photo of politicians cutting education funds.

Study: LGBT Youth 40% More Likely To Be Punished by School, Police

In a first of its kind study published today, researchers at Yale have discovered that lesbian and gay teens are about forty percent more likely to be given harsher punishments by schools, police, and courts than their straight classmates. Compiling data from 15,000 middle schools and high schools nationwide, they found:

"substantial disparities between gay and straight teens in school expulsions, arrests, convictions and police stops. The harsher approach is not explained by differences in misconduct...

"The most striking difference was for lesbian and bisexual girls, and they were two to three times as likely as girls with similar behavior to be punished," said Kathryn Himmelstein, lead author of the study, published in the journal Pediatrics."

The Washington Post quotes Andrews Barnett, director of SMYAL, "This is a symptom of school administrators, teachers, court officials, police officers - anyone who works with youth - not necessarily being equipped to handle the challenges" faced by the teens in their care, he said. "It's much easier to punish the youth than to work with them and figure out why they may keep getting in fights and what is leading to this behavior."

New Yorker Comment, Hosting Webchat on Gay Rights Today at 3:00pm

In conjunction with her Comment piece on anti-gay bullying, gay teen suicides, gay rights, and the current political muddle, The New Yorker's Margaret Talbot will host a live webchat on gay rights today, Monday October 18, at 3:00pm ET. Talbot's piece is a standard compilation of recent events (bad) and recent survey results (good). She attributes the current rise in antigay hate crimes to a backlash against lgbt progress rather than a higher rate of reporting the incidents.

Talbot builds her argument to this final anti-technology paragraph attacking the erosion of privacy more than the attackers and the school/political culture that allows them to flourish. And she adds this odd, last twist -- "there’s such a thing as violating your own privacy, too." In suggesting that emerging gay teens not tweet, film, or blog about their queer experiences, is she promoting prudence or the closet?

"The problem is a culture of exposure that is far more advanced than any efforts to combat online cruelty. Bullying feeds on weakness, anger, and, lately, the systematic undervaluing of privacy. (Paladino, by the way, has had his own problems with boundaries. He has admitted to forwarding e-mails depicting bestiality and recounting racist jokes that some people find as disgusting as he finds gay-pride parades.) Young people discovering their identity and their desires need a zone of privacy where they can be who they are, perhaps in the company of another human being, without feeling that somebody else might be tweeting it, filming it, or blogging about it, or that maybe they themselves ought to be—there’s such a thing as violating your own privacy, too. The unobserved life is so totally worth living."

Lesbian Former Vassar President Virginia B. Smith Dies at 87

Vassar president from 1977 to 1986, Virginia B. Smith has died at age 87. The NYT describes her as "a lawyer and economist who helped shape the contours of higher education as president of Vassar College, as a high public official in Washington and as a member of influential private research groups."

One of the most fascinating -- and unexplored -- details in her obituary is that she is survived by Dr. Florence Oaks, her partner of fifty-seven years. They've been together since 1953. A little perspective: They'd already been together fourteen years when, in 1967, Mike Wallace announced in CBS Reports: The Homosexuals that the homosexual is neither capable of nor interested in a longterm relationship. A little more perspective: After fifty-seven years together, Oaks is not eligible to receive Smith's surviving spouse social security benefits, as she would be if they were a straight couple even if they had divorced in 1963. Social security has so much extra man-woman-love cash lying around that they will pay every ex-spouse of the deceased worker full benefits, as long as they had been married at least ten years and unless the widow/widower remarried before age sixty. Which seems to indicate if you remarry heteroly after sixty you can double dip (or triple dip) receiving widow/widower benefits for both or all three of your deceased spouses, as can her or his other surviving exes. But the government doesn't have a penny for you godless fickle gays' pretend relationships, whose sole purpose is to destroy the sanctity of the matrimonial merry-go-round above. Fifty-seven years.

Thanks to Brian Mulligan, a Vassar student under Smith, for sending the obit.

LGBTQ Presidents in Higher Education Holds Its First Meeting

Nine openly gay presidents of colleges or universities gathered in Chicago recently to form a new organization for lgbt academics in leadership positions. One of the co-hosts, Charles Middleton, president of Roosevelt University, said queer academics "need to be taken off the exclusion list." He and Raymond Crossman, president of the Adler School of Professional Psychology, invited twenty-five presidents, and the nine who attended expect their number to grow significantly in the coming years.

According to a story posted on Inside Higher Ed, "the group will focus on leadership development for those who are gay presidents or who aspire to be, professional development for gay people at all levels of academe, and on education and advocacy to promote equity and diversity." 

President of the University of Maine at Farmington since 1994, Theodora Kalikow said, "My advice is to be out since you are a baby or as soon as possible. But then, the reason we get these positions is by being really excellent at what we do. That's the most important thing. You have to believe in yourself, not set lower expectations, and find the place that's the right match."

Hampshire College president Ralph Hexter acknowledged "there are sectors in higher education where this is a very difficult issue." He said, "we all know there are many, many others who for whatever reasons -- their regions, their personal situations, their institutions -- are not out," adding, "but maybe more people will look at us and say, 'Hey, these people are OK.'" He said, "It's important for gay and lesbian leaders in higher education to see a path."

Having earned degrees from Harvard, Oxford, and Yale, Hexter has been president of Hampshire for five years. Three years ago he married Manfred Kollmeier and celebrated with the campus.

The group has chosen the name LGBTQ Presidents in Higher Education. They will meet again in a few months and at the 2011 American Council on Education conference.

The Other Side of Groping

With the inane ramblings of Eric Massa dominating the news, it's no surprise the stories about groping end up emphasizing the absurd and the comic. Compared to other sexual violations, Massa's actions seem mainly ridiculous, portrayed with amusing verbs. Tousling. Tickling. "Snorkeling." In contrast is last month's trial of Dan Brock, an ex-principal of a conservative Christian school in Colorado. Two male former students accused him of sexually touching them. Brock's school-issued computer had been wiped clean but investigators could retrieve all its data and it was loaded with gay porn. Brock, married with children, was portrayed in the trial as a family man committed to family values. The jury acquitted him. A week after the not guilty verdict, one of his accusers, Zach Scadden above, killed himself. Brock's attorney says the former principal is looking for another job in education.

Gold, Gold, McGreevey, & Jennings on CRISIS: Growing Up Gay

Friday night was brutally honest. At the 82nd & Broadway B&N, furniture mogul and activist Mitchell Gold [far left] along with three of the forty contributors to his new anthology Crisis: 40 Stories Revealing the Personal, Social, and Religious Pain and Trauma of Growing Up Gay in America discussed the torment of gay youth.

Mitchell Gold said as a young man, the minute he was happy, he'd remember he was gay and his joy would dissolve. He had a pact with himself that if he couldn't change his feelings he would kill himself at twenty-one.

Kevin Jennings [pictured far right], as founder of GLSEN and its Executive Director until a week ago, was the most comprehensive on the topic. He said we need to "reconceptualize the whole topic of homophobia and call it child abuse." It is a form of abuse to leave children in an environment of constant danger and fear. At schools, 60% of lgbt kids who are harassed don't report it; of the 40% who do report it, the number response to what actions the school took to correct the situation is "nothing."

Jennings said he believes the lgbt people who make it through this abuse, "spend most of their adult lives trying to overcome it." He cited

* rampant substance abuse

* obsession with muscle ("scratch any muscle queen and you'll find a kid who was picked last in gym class")

* overcompensation in fabulousness ("because you weren't fabulous at thirteen")

* LGBT people sometimes are cruelest to other LGBT people

All of these are consistent with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Former New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey [second from right] came out later than the other contributors. He spoke eloquently in complex paragraphs about gay rights in general, the "inevitability of gay marriage," the legal "necessity that we all must be fundamentally equal," and his current studies in seminary and work with prisoners.

Entertainer Ari Gold [no relation; second from left] had his first gay experiences at sixteen and came out at eighteen, a great rarity at Yeshiva. He found out later that after he graduated he continued to be the butt of jokes by the faculty to their classes, and one teacher even mocked Ari's being gay in a question on a student quiz.

The thirty-seven other contributors to the book include: Gene Robinson, Mel White, Nate Berkus, Howard Bragman, Richard Chamberlain, Candace Gingrich, Jim Hormel, Donna Red Wing, Jorge Valencia, Bob Witeck, John Amechi, Tammy Baldwin, Billy Bean, Barney Frank, as well as many other adults and a number of current students. Martina Navratilova wrote the introduction. (Gold said it was "really difficult" to get people to revisit their unhappy childhoods.) The first piece I read was by Friend of Thebes Bob Witeck, who had a better time of it than most, in part because he was always as wise as he is now: He knew enough then to call the Mattachine Society, and he talked to Frank Kameny who sort of changed his life. Also, Bob is funny. Anyone who was ever fourteen will love his essay.

Gold lives in North Carolina and also runs a group called Faith in America, dedicated to fighting religious-based anti-gay bigotry. He emphasized that he is more optimistic today than he was a year or two ago. The night before the B&N event, he appeared on Charlie Rose. Rose loved the book. As fate would have it, Tom Brokaw was shilling BOOM! in the other half of the show. Rose told Brokaw in the green room that he really had to read Crisis and that it had given him "a very different perspective on gay rights." Buy it for yourself and, as Gold suggests, give a copy to your school or favorite former teacher.

Hanna Rosin's Atlantic Article on Trans Children

Somewhere in a deep-South town with no stoplights but lots of Confederate flags, in a double-wide trailer next to an evangelical family with anti-gay bumperstickers on their white van, live the Simms family: Tina, her husband Bill, their daughter Madison, their son Travis, and Tina's child from a previous relationship, an eight-year old biological boy Brandon who has always known he is a girl. Always. As a toddler, he draped towels or scarves on his head to approximate long hair. As soon as he could, he dressed in his mom's clothes, drew himself as a girl, loved Barbie and mermaids, hated his penis which he tucked under himself, and said of being born a boy, "God made a mistake." 

His behavior might be familiar to anyone who saw Ma Vie en Rose, but it knocked his mother Tina for a loop. She started taking him to therapists when he was four. Eventually Tina's mother taped a Barbara Walters 20/20 segment on trans children, and, discovering Brandon was not the only child in the world with gender assignment issues, Tina bought a computer. She joined a listserv for parents of trans kids, and later, she got the whole family to a national conference for parents of young trans people. A seven year-old holding a balloon puppy approaches Brandon:

“Are you transgender?”

“What’s that?” Brandon asked.

“A boy who wants to be a girl.”

“Yeah. Can I see your balloon?”

At the conference Tina meets a host of experts, becomes friends with a lesbian mom from Seattle, and learns about a drug option for Brandon. Puberty blockers stop some of the changes that would have to be reversed with expensive surgery later in his life. Other parents discuss their children's success with the drugs. Huge decisions loom.

Did I mention Tina and Bill are both army vets? And that Bill doesn't see things the way Tina is trying to? He says, "A boy's a boy and a girl's a girl." Also: "You're ruining his f---ing life!" The evangelical neighbors do unto others by refusing to carpool with them anymore. Brandon loses his best friend, a girl.The whole family faces trade-offs between honesty and acceptance.

Hanna Rosin has written a great, comprehensive article on an overlooked subject. Make time to read it. And give the Atlantic more props, following last year's stellar piece "The Kingdom in the Closet" on gay life in Saudi Arabia. 

ONE Museum of LGBT History Opens in Los Angeles

Beating London by years, the city of West Hollywood donated a former storage garage to the ONE Archives for a museum of gay history, which opened Saturday, on Coming Out Day. The inaugural exhibit looks at Los Angeles' gay pride parades from the beginning. The president of the board and curator of the collection is Joseph Hawkins, a professor of gender studies and anthropology at USC. He tells the LA Times the artifacts "show that we've been having this fight for a very long time, longer than most people think." Early editions of ONE's magazine call for "homophile marriage" as far back as 1953. Future exhibits will be devoted to lesbian pulp fiction and photographs of nude musclemen. Starting small, the space is 600 square feet and is open for four hours three days a week: Fridays from 4:00pm to 8:00pm, Saturdays and Sundays from 1:00pm to 5:00pm at 626 N. Robertson Blvd. Admission is free.

Photos by Anne Cusak/LAT.

UK's First Gay Museum Planned for London

In late 2011, Jack Gilbert executive director of Proud Heritage, hopes to open Proud Nation, the UK's first museum devoted to gay history. Located in London's King's Cross area, it will include longterm loans of artifacts ranging from 3,000 year old papyri to the door of Oscar Wilde's jail cell to the Gay Love jumpsuit Alan Wakeman wore in the gay pride march of 1972. A cross section map of Apethorpe Hall will show visitors the secret passage James I [pictured] used to get to the Duke of Buckingham's bedroom and a secret, multi-layered map from the 1950s identifies gay hookup sites when homosexuality was illegal. Gay activist superstar Peter Tatchell has promised to donate material that will illuminate William III's sexual orientation. Other items will tell the story of the Ladies of Llangollen, the lesbian icons of the 1770's. Gilbert is quoted in an article in this morning's Independent:

"It's an invisible history which couldn't be told because it couldn't be researched, but that has changed now," he says. "It will be serious on one level, because we believe that, to have full equality our history, our culture and the full diversity of our lived experience has to be to be recorded and represented. But it will be fun, too."

The idea arose during the 2004 mayoral elections, when Darren Johnson, the Green Party candidate, suggested a gay museum. The Lottery Fund is supporting the plan, but not everyone in the UK's Museum Association approves of the idea. One questionnaire to the curating community was returned anonymously with the comment: "This isn't what I pay my MA subscription for – the association is to support the museum profession, not to promote filthy perversions among the young and impressionable."

Born June 25: Larry Kramer, Rictor Norton, George Michael

Wouldn't it be awesome if Larry and Rictor joined George on stage tonight for his concert at the Forum in Los Angeles? The pop superstar turns 45 today and says this will be his last tour. Unlikely. But other things he said in a recent interview sounded more true: "The nature of being gay is that you are forced to challenge the general perception, otherwise you have to accept that something is wrong with you. Maybe that gives gay men the perspective that many have turned into art."

Born May 14: Magnus Hirschfeld

The German Jewish physician began advocating for gay rights in 1896. In 1933, Nazis destroyed his institute for sexual research, burning the thousands of books in his library, filmed for widely seen newsreels. He is a colossus. Last week, Berlin officials renamed a portion of the promenade along the Spree River in his honor.

Mr. Uriel Gomez, Not Your Average Wisconsin Prom Queen

It's prom season again, which guarantees big dresses, bigger hair, and the biggest gap between students' and school officials' views on gay participation. Uriel Gomez, an 18 year-old senior at Park High in Racine, Wisconsin (pop. 81,000), came out to his classmates four years ago as a freshman and now got enough votes to appear on the final ballot for Prom Queen. His buds said, more or less, "Uriel! No way!" and the school administration said, more precisely, "Uriel, no way." A popular kid, Gomez was also voted onto the boys ballot for Prom King. He told a teacher he definitely wanted to stay on the girls list for Prom Queen. The teacher said talk to the student activities director, Mr. Kirkvliet. The local paper, the Journal Times, reports Mr. Kirkvliet and other officials "weren't thrilled," and removed his name from the ballot for queen because, “It’s the same for everything. Boys are boys. Girls are girls.” Students totally disagree. Amanda Peterson, for one, doesn't want democracy shushed.

“I don’t think the student voice should be shushed just because (the school) doesn’t agree with it,” said Amanda Peterson, a Park senior and one of Gomez’s friends. “Prom is supposed to be fun, anyway. I don’t see what the problem is.”

Senior Mark Harris agrees.

“I don’t understand how people can be offended by this when it’s not their prom,” Harris said. “King and queen is the tradition and people don’t like it when you mess with a tradition. If anything, we’re accepting the tradition. We’re just kind of putting a 2008 tweak on it.”

Holy cow! Just learned that prom is a ginormous deal in Racine, "a city that for the past 50 years has been annually gripped by prom mania!" Park High was the subject of an 80 minute documentary in 2006 called The World's Best Prom, and they have the footage to prove Racine's passion. Bleachers! Townspeople line up to watch the kids walk the red carpet into the dance. Televised locally! NOW how much do you want Uriel Gomez to be queen?

Born April 2: Camille Paglia

For lesbian post-post-feminist firebrand Camille Paglia, context is everything. So rather than showing a snippet of an interview, her full discussion with Charlie Rose is available here.

Although it's easy now to suppose a provocateur of such flair and rigor and self-described egomania would always find a platform, Paglia waited nine years to see the publication of her breakthrough book of cultural criticism, Sexual Personae. Five agents and seven publishers rejected it between 1981 and 1985 when Yale finally accepted it. They did not publish until five years later while Paglia taught, tweaked sections, and added new essays. The book sold moderately well before it was named a finalist for a National Book Award. When Vintage released the paperback in 1991, it became a tremendous bestseller and she became a star. Paglia appeared on dozens of talk shows and brought a volcanic pop intellectualism to a nation weaned on the prepackaged chipper inanities of morning tv.

Because she's so caustic and brilliant and downright incendiary, it's safer to let her work speak for itself. Don't let that scare you, and do read her serious work. (Her Salon essays can feel like a series of random Post-It notes.)

Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990).

Sex, Art, and American Culture (1992)

Vamps and Tramps (1994)

Break, Blow, Burn: Camille Paglia Reads 43 of the World's Best Poems (2006)

Queer Kids Rule: Lesbian Cuties and Gay Princes

Look for yourself. The seniors of Waukegan High School forty miles from Chicago knew what they were doing last week when they voted these two lesbians, Brandy Johnson and Lupe Silva, both 17, “cutest couple” for next spring’s yearbook. Lupe and Brandy met in drama class last year and have been together ever since. Their school does not have a Gay Straight Alliance, but Brandy said, “Our relationship inspired others to be open.” Although students and school officials have not had any problem with the unprecedented queer victory, Lupe admitted, “My mom is OK with it, but only to a certain extent.”  Among the other 25 categories voted on and honored with special pictures in the yearbook are “biggest flirt” and “best body.”

Last month the juniors at Davis High School in California elected a gay couple, two 16 year-old juniors Kiernan Gatewood and Brandon Raphael, as princes to the Homecoming Court. (Only seniors can be King or Queen.) Their school does have a GSA, whose co-president is a senior named Chandler Fox. He said, “I don't know, I just think it's awesome. I want people to know about it so maybe it can happen at another school.” Brandon said, “We wanted to be nominated and win.” Kiernan said, “Just like anybody else.” Other students were quoted as being happy yet nonplussed by the election results but very surprised that the school administration let it stand. The boys rode through town together in the Homecoming Parade and received nothing but cheers.

Arlington OKs Ex-Gay Propaganda to Schoolchildren

After first refusing an ex-gay advocacy group permission to distribute its materials to high school students, Arlington County, Virginia is now allowing the group to give its leaflets to schoolchildren as young as five. The group, Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX), promotes "conversion therapy," claims that no scientific study shows that people are born gay, and offers "ex-gays" as "living proof that homosexual orientation is not fixed permanently." Their leaflets can now be distributed in any elementary or junior high school in the county. Arlington's school spokesperson Linda Erdos told AP, "If there's anything distributed that's upsetting to parents, they would need to address those concerns to PFOX."