Band of Thebes

Hillary-Come-Lately Resents Terry Gross's Questions about Gay Marriage

Years after her husband evolved (July 2009), months after Obama finally did (May 2012), Hillary Clinton was virtually the last Democrat on earth to support marriage equality (March 2013). Now she only wants praise for her lgbt record. Yesterday, Fresh Air host Terry Gross asked about her changing views. Did not go well.

Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia

 With a lofty Metacritic score of 74, twelve months after its premiere at Tribeca, Nicholas Wrathall's documentary Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia storms into theaters this weekend. Stephen Holden says, "Heavily seasoned with epigrams worthy of Oscar Wilde, this entertaining documentary portrays Vidal as a pessimistic political prophet with streaks of paranoia and misanthropy, but a truth teller nonetheless." Dates are:

5/23 IFC Center + Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, New York
6/6 Nuart, Los Angeles
6/6 Ritz At The Bourse, Philadelphia
6/6 Varsity, Seattle
6/6 E Street, Washington D.C.
6/13 Opera Plaza, San Francisco
6/13 Shattuck, Berkeley
6/13 Mayan, Denver
6/13 Midtown Art, Atlanta
6/13 Lagoon, Minneapolis
6/20 Ken, San Diego
6/20 Nickelodeon, Santa Cruz
6/27 Kendall Square, Cambridge
6/27 Palm, San Luis Obispo
6/27 Fleur, Des Moines

Get Gore's book Imperial America: Reflections on the United States of Amnesia or his opus United States: Essays 1952-1992, which won a National Book Award.

"This Boy" Wins Orwell and Ondaatje Prizes

Forget Dave Eggers and his lil bro with their money in cushy California. Alan Johnson was orphaned at twelve in 1962 in London and raised by his sister Linda who was sixteen. They were given a council flat in a condemned building with no electricity and one shared outdoor toilet for all inhabitants. Alan left school at fifteen to stack shelves at a supermarket and became a postman at eighteen. Since then, the one-time Marxist has been Home Secretary, Health Secretary, Education Secretary, Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, and a Labour MP for seventeen years. On Monday, his memoir of childhood This Boy won the Ondaatje Prize from the Royal Society of Literature, which last year honored Philip Hensher's fictionalized account of his husband's childhood, Scenes from Early Life. Now Johnson's memoir has also won Britain's top award for political writing, the Orwell Prize, beating yet another biography of Margaret Thatcher.

Gay History Week: New Mattachine, Normal Heart, Milk Stamp

Two big gay profiles in today's New York Times: 1) Larry Kramer on the decades-long journey to film The Normal Heart, airing on HBO this Sunday, and 2) the successful efforts of the newly revived Mattachine Society of Washington DC, headed by my husband Charles Francis, to find and bring forth hidden legal and political documents of the early and recent gay rights battles. The story, Uncovered Papers Show Past Government Efforts To Drive Gays from Jobs, is currently the third-most-emailed feature on the paper's Nation page. Obviously not every topic could make the article but I was particularly sorry they cut Charles' praise for Allan Berube, the MacArthur genius who wrote Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War II, and the invisible gay blogger who turned Charles on to degayed history and introduced him to Berube's work his fellow Mattachine board members Rick Rosendall and Pate Felts, as well as the many pro bono attorneys at MWE including Lisa Linsky.

Tomorrow is Harvey's 84th birthday and the official release of the Milk stamp.

If You're Keeping Score, It's 16 to 0

Tuesday's ruling, by yet another Bush-appointed judge, Candy Dale [pictured], in yet another conservative state, hardcore Idaho, is the sixteenth consecutive win in court for marriage equality since the Supremes' landmark Windsor decision last June. The number of court defeats since then is zero. Twelve of the sixteen wins have been in federal court and four in state courts. Most recently it's been red states all the way: Utah, Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, Kentucky, Indiana, Tennessee, Ohio, and purply Virginia. Almost all states have been granted a stay pending appeals, to the relief of bigots like Idaho's governor, Butch Otter. Last week in Arkansas, gay marriages began in a few counties; surprisingly, a higher court noted a technicality, which halted the weddings; the judge has since closed that loophole paving the way for clerks to resume issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples; but now the Democrat AG who supports gay marriage is upholding state law and requesting another stay.

Gay marriage is legal in seventeen states and DC. This is how far we've come in exactly ten years. Massachusetts began issuing same-sex marriage licenses on May 17, 2004.

Recovering the Gay Past: The New Mattachine Society's Archive Activism

From tomorrow's Washington Blade:

"...the group’s mission to conduct archival research to uncover long forgotten government documents that show in chilling detail how federal policies were put into place to ban gays from the federal workforce.

“We believe the importance of these documents is the enormous evidentiary and educational value that they have,” Mattachine president Charles Francis told the Blade.

“The evidentiary and educational value of the original archival documents show the persecution of gay people without regard to any valid government purpose,” he said. “Only malicious persecution over and over, and we see that beginning in 1953.”

"Francis was referring to what Kameny and other veteran gay leaders called the infamous Executive Order 10450 issued by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1953 – possibly at the request of then FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.

"The order, among other things, barred from the federal workforce individuals found to be involved with “any criminal, infamous, dishonest, immoral, or notoriously disgraceful conduct, habitual use of intoxicants to excess, drug addiction, or sexual perversion.”

"Although the order didn’t specifically mention homosexuality or homosexuals, it was interpreted by the U.S. Civil Service Commission to mean homosexuals were barred and should be summarily dismissed from any federal government job.

"The order for the first time “equated gays and lesbians with disloyalty,” Francis said. “And that was a catastrophe for gay and lesbian Americans” that “much too little has been written about and much too little is actually known about it,” Francis said.

"One expert who does know about it, gay rights advocate and University of South Florida professor David K. Johnson, author of The Lavender Scare, is scheduled to be one of two featured speakers at a Mattachine Society of Washington forum scheduled for May 21.

"Joining Johnson as a speaker at the event, to be held at the offices of the D.C. law firm McDermott Will & Emery, will be David S. Ferriero, who serves as Archivist of the United States and director of the National Archives and Records Administration."

Read the full story here.

Glenn Greenwald on Growing Up Gay

After several delays, out today is gay journalist Glenn Greenwald's shattering new book No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State [and Kindle]. He gave an impressively frank interview to GQ's Michael Paterniti which is mainly about Snowden, the NSA, the likelihood of his own arrest, and how drastically the US has regressed since Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers, but it also includes this exchange on growing up gay in the 1970s and 80s.

GQ: Was there a formative moment in your childhood that might've cast you in the adversarial role?

GG: Being gay was a big part of that process. I grew up gay in the '70s and '80s, when things were obviously much different than they are now. There was no gay culture for a gay teen in an American suburb, at all. The overriding message was there's something wrong with you, there's something inside of you that's just wrong. It's broken. It's bad. It's diseased. And so it's a pretty harsh message to internalize when you're, like, 11. It leaves you with three different options.

       One is you just keep internalizing it and keep internalizing it and tell yourself that you're this horrible, diseased, broken person. And that's why gay teens kill themselves. Another strategy is to say I'm going to try and convince you that you're wrong, right? I'm going to show you that I'm actually really normal in every other way. That's the gay lobby in D.C., who are just, like, so intent on proving that they're exactly like straight people in every single other way, so please accept us. And then, I think, a third strategy is just to say, You know what? Go fuck yourself. I'm going to be the one to impose judgments on you, and let's examine the propriety of your behavior instead.

 

GQ: How did that play out?

GG:I was always identified as the smart kid or whatever. But I had disciplinary problems starting in seventh, eighth grade. I would just start arguing with teachers. I realized that my ability to reason

Born May 5: James Beard, Del Martin

James Beard knew he was gay when he was seven in Portland and, acting on those impulses as soon as he got to college, was expelled from Reed in his freshman year for "homosexual activity."  He traveled with a theater troupe, spent several years in Europe, came home, and moved to New York still hoping to be an actor. He took a temporary job as a caterer and three years later published his first cookbook, Hors d'Oeuvre and Canapés, in 1940. After three more books he got his own cooking show on television and, in 1955, he established The James Beard Cooking School, which lasted 30 years until his death in 1985. His huge appetites extended to money and fame, leading him to many, many endorsement deals that contradicted everything he preached in the kitchen. Despite a famous temper, he could be a nurturing mentor and loyal friend, and with Gael Greene he founded Citymeals-on-Wheels. He is openly gay in his memoir Delights And Prejudices and his collection of letters Love and Kisses and a Halo of Truffles. Two biographies are Epicurean Delight: The Life and Times of James Beard by longtime friend Evan Jones, husband of legendary editor Judith Jones, and The Solace of Food by Robert Clark.

Del Martin died in August 2008 at 87, widowing a wife with whom she spent 55 years championing the rights of the denigrated and disenfranchised. In 1955, when homosexuality was illegal, she, her life partner Phyllis Lyon, and six other lesbians founded the Daughters of Bilitis in her native San Francisco. By 1960 DOB chapters were active in nine cities nationwide and their magazine, The Ladder, was thriving despite most readers' need for secrecy. Even in friendly waters, they had to fight the tides against lesbians, both among straight women in NOW and gay men in the queer equality movement. Martin addressed the latter situation in her landmark article, "Goodbye, My Alienated Brothers," which appeared in the Advocate in 1970. Two years later, she and Lyon were instrumental in forming the Alice B. Toklas Democratic Club, and they published their seminal book Lesbian/Woman. In 1979 they were honored by a group of medical professionals who wanted to start a clinic for lesbians who lacked health care, and they chose the name Lyon-Martin Health Services. In 1995 they were named separately as delegates to the White House Conference on Aging. Ever the trailblazers, Martin [above right, left left] and Lyon were the very first gay couple to be married in San Francisco in February 2004. If there is anything good about her death, it's that she did not have to see Prop 8 pass three months later. Click here to watch them describes the early hurdles they faced in forming and growing DOB during a time when they could not advertise their existence.

Gay in the Eisenhower White House

Top lobbyist Bob Gray died last month at 92, survived by his partner of 20 years, Efrain Machado of Miami, and now Charles Francis -- former employee, archive activist, president of the Mattachine Society of Washington DC, and Theban spouse -- has made available this on-the-record interview he did with Gray in 2012. The many pivotal moments they discuss include Gray's work in the Eisenhower White House and the Goldwater campaign.

CF: You were appointed to the exact same job as Arthur Vandenberg, Jr. three years after his firing at the hands of Hoover. How did you miss his fate, fired for “health reasons”?

RKG: It took six weeks to get a clearance. I remember how relieved I was when the Naval Department said, “you got your security clearance. I tried to act as nonchalant as I could, even though my heart was pounding. I was still trying to make myself straight, dating women. If I had been in any way sexually active, I would have been outed. I was an open book, working twenty-hour days. That was fulfilling enough for me.

CF: What was it like to be gay in 1956 at the White House?

RKG: You cannot conceive what it was like. Eisenhower was a fair guy, but the law was the law.

CF: But what about J. Edgar Hoover?

RKG: There would be no reason anyone would know my story. I knew I was different, and I knew what I’d do if I were going to be accused. I told myself, “I’ll march right over to J. Edgar Hoover and tell him all about it. Of course, I didn’t know he was a homosexual then.”

...

CF: So how did the gay issue play-out in later years, after you had left Eisenhower?

RKG: I remember the Campaign of 1964 when I was working for Barry Goldwater. LBJ’s closest staff aid Walter Jenkins was arrested at the YMCA and was hospitalized as having had a breakdown. They beat the story to death. The media couldn’t leave it alone; it was incessant. Finally, Johnson had enough, saying “we Democrats are too decent for this….we knew it was a sickness.”

Read the full transcript here. Gray tried unsuccessfully to sue the author of The Power House: Robert Keith Gray and the Selling of Access and Influence in Washington.

A good novel about delusional closeted gay Conservatives in DC in the 1950s is Tom Mallon's Fellow Travelers. A more modern example appears in Christopher Bram's novel Gossip.

Against Tolerance

"Finally," says Michael Cunningham, "a writer and critical thinker has treated queerness with true insight, and proper respect for its complexities and contradictions. Thank you, Suzanna Walters, for bringing so much rigor and balance; such ardent, subtle questioning; such respect for genuine human rights to the horrifically over-simplified term, 'tolerance.'"

Notably, Suzanna Walters announced her fourth book, The Tolerance Trap [and Kindle] with the stronger, shorter subtitle "What's Wrong with Gay Rights" but NYU publishes it today with this longer, blander yawn-bait: "How God, Genes, and Good Intentions are Sabotaging Gay Equality."

Don't let marketing by committee drive you away from a book we need. Leila Rupp says, "Walters has a wicked sense of humor, and in The Tolerance Trap she wields it to argue against tolerance. This is a beautifully written and provocative brief for the integration of queer difference in U.S. society. Combining personal stories with analysis of popular culture, public opinion, movement activism, and trends in gay life today, Walters evaluates where we are in this contemporary moment, showing that we have both come a long way and have a long way to go. And tolerance, she insists, is not the way to get there. After reading this book, you'll never want to be tolerated again."

Eve Ensler says the book "brilliantly and boldly goes where few have gone before. It rattles the cage of tolerance in pursuit of true gay liberation. For gays and straights alike, it challenges us to be more our quirky, original, sexual gorgeous selves and to settle for nothing less than radical love and freedom."

You may remember Walters' other queer book, All the Rage: The Story of Gay Visibility in America.

Idiocy Is the Goal

I think people who doubt this as a possibility didn't learn the lessons of Enron, Lehman, et al: sometimes men at the top really are willing to send the whole train off the bridge for their personal power and gain. Charles Simic nails the stupid epidemic:

"Widespread ignorance bordering on idiocy is our new national goal. It’s no use pretending otherwise and telling us, as Thomas Friedman did in the Times a few days ago, that educated people are the nation’s most valuable resources. Sure, they are, but do we still want them? It doesn’t look to me as if we do. The ideal citizen of a politically corrupt state, such as the one we now have, is a gullible dolt unable to tell truth from bullshit.

"An educated, well-informed population, the kind that a functioning democracy requires, would be difficult to lie to, and could not be led by the nose by the various vested interests running amok in this country... A truly educated populace would be bad, both for politicians and for business.

"It took years of indifference and stupidity to make us as ignorant as we are today. Anyone who has taught college over the last forty years, as I have, can tell you how much less students coming out of high school know every year. At first it was shocking, but it no longer surprises any college instructor that the nice and eager young people enrolled in your classes have no ability to grasp most of the material being taught. Teaching American literature, as I have been doing, has become harder and harder in recent years, since the students read little literature before coming to college and often lack the most basic historical information about the period in which the novel or the poem was written, including what important ideas and issues occupied thinking people at the time."

Keep reading his essay here.

Out Today: Queer Paris, Marriage Miscarriage, Roberts Memoir

  

For her 17th novel and 28th book overall, Francine Prose reclaims forgotten historical queer lives in Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 [Kindle]. In an approving review for the NYTBR, Edmund White called it "a novel of great reach and power." 

NYT reporter Jo Becker's story of how we got marriage equality -- because of Chad Griffin?? -- has at last united the entire gay community... against it. The gay left consideres the book "bullshit," the gay middle says it's "truly horrendous," and the gay right memorably calls it "a fellatial account" by "an ignorant reporter" "who knows nothing of the movement's history." Confirming just how backward and out of touch the straights are when it comes to representing queer lives, Penguin has bizarrely given this high-profile gay success story a jacket fit for a funereal. Forcing the Spring: Inside the Fight for Marriage Equality [Kindle].

Good Morning America star, cancer survivor, and recently out lesbian Robin Roberts releases her inspirational memoir Everybody's Got Something [Kindle].

Born April 13: Frank Murphy, Lanford Wilson, Deborah Batts

 

Frank Murphy was mayor of Detroit (1930-33), governor of Michigan (1937-39), U.S. Attorney General (1939-40), the final Governor-General of the Philippines (1933-35), and a Justice of the Supreme Court (1940-49) appointed by Franklin Roosevelt. Never married, he was romantically involved with Edward G. Kemp, his housemate for most of his adult life. Read more about him in Deb Price and Joyce Murdoch’s excellent book Courting Justice.

Born and raised in Missouri, playwright Lanford Wilson was a founding member of New York's Circle Rep, which first presented many of his dramas. His best-known works include Balm in Gilead, Hot L Baltimore, Fifth of July, Talley’s Folly, and Burn This. Among his many honors are the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award, the Obie Award, and the Pulitzer Prize. In 2004 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He died of pneumonia at 73 in 2011.

Deborah A. Batts grew up in Philadelphia then attended Radcliffe College and Harvard Law School. In 1994 Bill Clinton appointed her to the federal bench, making her the first openly gay federal judge in U.S. history. She is shown above with her portrait, which is the first portrait of a black woman and first of an out person on the walls of Harvard Law School. Now 67, she took senior status two years ago.

Born April 10: Frances Perkins, Michael Alenyikov

Next time we're listing lesbian accomplishments let's remember Social Security, unemployment benefits, minimum wage, the 40-hour work week, overtime pay, and anti-child labor laws -- all of which came into being under the leadership of Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins. The first woman ever to hold a US Cabinet position, only she and Harold L. Ickes lasted in their posts for FDR's entire presidency. Born in Boston in 1880, Perkins double majored in physics and chemistry at Mount Holyoke and got her Masters in political science from Columbia in 1910. As Governor, FDR made her New York's first State Commissioner of Labor. She married Paul Wilson, a manic depressive who was frequently institutionalized, and she lived with her lover, heiress Mary Harriman Rumsey, in Georgetown. A power couple par excellence, they hosted dinner parties said to gather at one table Eleanor Roosevelt, Will Rogers, Margaret Bourke-White, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, and unknown Appalachian folk singers. Rumsey died from a riding accident the week before Christmas 1934. Hiding the true nature of her grief, Perkins carried on with the congressional fight for Social Security, which was enacted in August 1935. Perkins lived to 85 in 1965. Her memoir The Roosevelt I Knew is degayed but biographer Kirstin Downey includes her lesbian relationships in The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life and Legacy of Frances Perkins [Kindle]. Lucy Jane Bledsoe chose it as one of her top reads of 2011.

 

Michael Alenyikov's gay novel-in-stories about brother love and jealousy, Ivan and Misha [Kindle], won the Northern California Book Award, the Gina Berriault Award, and was a finalist for Publishing Triangle's debut fiction award. Born in Kiev, the fraternal twins are raised in New York, where their father who was a doctor is now a doorman, and a gambler, and bipolar. Their mother is dead. When Misha gets a boyfriend, Smith, Ivan feels betrayed. Then things get worse.

Alenyikov was raised in Brooklyn, graduated from Abraham Lincoln High School, attended Queens College, and moved to San Francisco more than twenty years ago. 

Another Republican For Gay Marriage: "It's Very Simple"

Seven months ago Sen. Alan Simpson came to our wedding reception and toasted my brand-new husband as "a smooth-talking son of a bitch." Now this. USAToday reports the ad "will run in Colorado, Oklahoma and Wyoming TV markets, as well as on the Sunday morning talk shows in Washington."

Born March 31: Diaghilev, Chamberlain, Frank, Westenhoefer

  

Celebrate with the brilliant biography of cultural impresario, founder of the Ballets Russes, and Nijinsky lover Sergei Diaghilev [Kindle] who would be 142 today, or with Barney Frank: The Story of America's Only Left-Handed, Gay, Jewish Congressman, 74, or a memoir by the Beverly Hills native and long-closeted mini-series sensation Richard Chamberlain, 80, or a cd from a lesbian comic who came out early, Suzanne Westenhoefer, 53.

Disney Cuts Boy Scouts, NBA Funds Gay Groups, Mayors Won't March

Since he signed with the Nets, Jason Collins' jersey has been the top seller at NBA.com. He chose number 98 to honor Matthew Shepard who was killed in 1998. Last week in Denver to play the Nuggets, he finally met Judy, Dennis, and Logan Shepard. The NBA announced they are donating the profits from sales of Collins' jersey to GLSEN and the Matthew Shepard Foundation.

Time: "The Walt Disney Company announced Saturday it would withdraw funding from the Boy Scouts of America beginning in 2015 unless the scouting organization overturns a policy banning gay leaders."

New York and Boston mayors refuse to march in St. Patrick's Day parades that exclude lgbt people. Bill de Blasio did appear in yesterday's Queens inclusive parade. No word yet if the first compromise in twenty years from the Boston bigots -- who now say they will allow gay vets to march in the military section -- is enough to get Martin Walsh in step.

George Will appeared on Fox to discuss Arizona SB1062 and offer his view that the victims are the bullies: "...This too must be said: It's a funny kind of sore winner in the gay rights movement that would say, 'A photographer doesn't want to photograph my wedding -- I've got lots of other photographers I could go to, but I'm going to use the hammer of government to force them to do this.'... It's not neighborly and it's not nice. The gay rights movement is winning. They should be, as I say, not sore winners."

American, Apple, NFL, Mayors Tell Jan Brewer to Veto AZ Antigay Bill

The Arizona Republic reports a "tidal wave of opposition" to last week's religion-based antigay bill, including big business, the Super Bowl host committee, the local NFL team, 300 demonstrators outside the state house last night, both GOP US senators (McCain and Flake), the mayors of Phoenix, Tucson, Tempe, and Mesa, and three GOP state senators who voted for the bill and now regret their hate. (It passed 17-13.) All are calling on Gov. Jan Brewer to veto the bill. Brewer, a confirmed idiot, hasn't decided what she'll do. Her deadline is Saturday.

Among the 83 companies calling for a veto: AT&T, American Airlines, Apple, and Marriott.

Not sure how he's connected but Delaware Gov. Jack Markell said the 2015 Super Bowl needs to be moved out of Arizona if Brewer signs the law: "If they pass this law and if she signs it, it would seem to me that the NFL may be looking, or should be looking, to move the Super Bowl out of that state. Because, you know, there’s so many places around the country that are welcoming to everybody."

Closer to home, the business fatcats on the Arizona Super Bowl Host Committee released this statement: "We share the NFL's core values which embrace tolerance, diversity, inclusiveness and prohibit discrimination. In addition, a key part of the mission for the Arizona Super Bowl Host Committee is to promote the economic vitality of Arizona. On that matter we have heard loud and clear from our various stakeholders that adoption of this legislation would not only run contrary to that goal but deal a significant blow to the state's economic growth potential. We do not support this legislation. Instead, we look forward to continuing to promote the NFL's values while focusing on the economic momentum apparent in Arizona and capturing the positive worldwide attention associated with hosting Super Bowl XLIX."

George Takei penned an open letter to Arizonans spelling out the obvious boycotts to come: "If Jan Brewer signs this repugnant bill into law, make no mistake. We will not come. We will not spend. And we will urge everyone we know – from large corporations to small families on vacation – to boycott. Because you don’t deserve our dollars."

(Sardonic, apostrophe-challenged photo via)

It's Not Just Arizona: Nine States Push Antigay 'Refusal of Service' Bills

Wednesday, the Arizona Senate voted to allow statewide discrimination under the guise of religious freedom. Intended by conservative Christians to legalize antigay bigotry and undo lgbt protections, the bill inadvertently also creates a free zone for followers of Sharia Law and Satanism to refuse services to anyone based on their beliefs. It passed along party lines, 17 to 13. The Arizona Republic penned an editorial urging governor Jan Brewer to veto the bill -- on economic grounds, because the hate might discourage Google from choosing Scottsdale for their massive new fiber-optic project. 

Eight other states have proposed similar ploys. The Kansas and Idaho bills extend the right of refusal beyond the private sector to police, firefighters, teachers, county clerks, librarians, and DMV, in short, every state or county employee. It passed the Kansas House last week but won't proceed in the Senate.

Also: Nevada, Ohio, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, and even Oregon.

Born February 19: Pim Fortuyn, Beth Ditto

The conservative Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn was openly gay to a degree that's unimaginable here: On national television he explained that he enjoyed the taste of semen, comparing it to a strong liqueur, and he cited his hook-ups with North African and Arab men as "proof" that he wasn't racist. Dutch voters, for and against him, were more interested in his ideas. He wanted to cut government's role in health services and education, he spoke against the "Islamisation of our culture," sounded a warning cry about the dangers of shari'a law superseding the Dutch legal code, and pledged to cut immigration drastically. Yet he was also for euthanasia, for legalized soft drugs, for same-sex marriage, and for reducing the military by combining the army and air force to save money. Although Fortuyn was riding a crest of widespread popularity with fully fifty percent of voters aged 18-30 supporting him (huge in a multi-party system), the Netherlands did not get to have their first ever openly gay Prime Minister, because they had their first assassination in 330 years, since 1672. A white Dutch man shot Fortuyn to stop him from exploiting "the weaker parts of society to gain political power." The motive was unrelated to Fortuyn's being gay. The killer, thirty-two, was sentenced to eighteen years in prison. Fortuyn was fifty-four. Contrarian even in death, Fortuyn was buried twice, first in the Netherlands, then dug up and re-interred in Pordenone, Italy, where he owned a second home.

Grace Kelly, Marilyn, Marlene, and Charlize rock to Beth Ditto in this famous Dior tv spot shot at Versailles [after the jump]. That song, Heavy Cross, from her post-punk band Gossip (formerly The Gossip, formed fifteen years ago in Olympia), was an international smash: With 97 weeks on the singles charts it was the second longest-staying song ever on the German charts (now it ranks sixth). If it somehow makes sense that the Arkansas native who claimed to have eaten squirrel meat growing up would become the indie darling of the alt music world -- playing every festival from Coachella to Glastonbury to SxSW, with NME naming Gossip "the greatest punk rock’n’roll disco soul band on the planet" -- it is perhaps still a surprise, given the extreme body fascism of the billion-dollar beauty industry, that Beth could become a face of fashion. Yet she was Glamour's International Artist of the Year in 2008, appeared nude on the debut issue of London's LOVE magazine in 2009, and in 2010 walked the catwalk herself, opening Jean Paul Gaultier's spring collection during Paris fashion week. In 2012 the band released their fifth studio album and Beth published her memoir Coal to Diamonds [Kindle] co-written with Michelle Tea. Last summer, barefoot in Maui, in a gown Gaultier designed for her, she married her girlfriend Kritsin Ogata, who wore tailored shorts and sneakers. Today she's 33.