Browsing: November-December 2007
November-December 2007
Blog Posts
That Trip Did Her Good
WHEN GEORGE JORGENSEN became a woman and renamed herself Christine some fifty years ago, she made headlines around the world. Richard F. Docter sat next to Jorgensen by chance at a banquet one evening several years ago, and since he’s a behavioral psychologist, he wanted to get some idea of how Jorgensen felt about modern transsexuals and cross-dressers. The result is a new biography, Becoming a Woman: A Biography of Christine Jorgensen …
MoreArt Critic + Party Boy + Diarist =
ALTHOUGH HE DIED IN 1994, Leo Lerman is still, thanks to the diligent efforts of editor Stephen Pascal, sharing his stories and comments about everyone who was anyone in New York for half a century-and still making us all envious of the frenetic, joyful, art-filled life he led.
MoreSir Ian McKellen on Acting, Truth, and Being Out
REVERED as one of the greatest actors of our times, Sir Ian Murray McKellen never felt he was doing his best work until he came out publicly at the age of 49. A private man who considered it nobody’s business what his sexual orientation was, McKellen kept mum about it until 1988 …
MoreThe Silent Death of Shanghai’s First Gay Hotline
THE OWNER of Lai Lai’s, Shanghai’s only dance venue for low-income gays, was screaming over the five-piece band. She accused our small contingent of safer sex outreach workers of attracting police scrutiny, telling us to get out of her dancehall and never come back. Dr. Tong Chengliang, sex education specialist and director of HomoHeart, the city’s first specifically gay hotline and outreach organization, told his volunteers to grab their bags of condoms and gay sex literature and leave. Even in relatively open Shanghai in the summer of 2005, police harassment in China was so commonplace that Tong just shrugged his shoulders and said, “We’ll try again next week.”
In December of that year, …
MoreTrevor Hailey, Guide to the Castro, Dies at 66
Trevor Hailey, who created and led for sixteen years the internationally known “Cruisin’ the Castro” walking tours, died of a stroke on June 13, 2007, at age 66. A woman of tremendous warmth and enthusiasm, she presented the gay and lesbian history of San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood in a way that was accessible, informative, and exciting to everyone: …
MoreHappy Holidays! or The Phoniest ‘War’ of All
… [the] “war on Christmas,” Gibson charged, is really a “war on Christianity.” This theme emerged more explicitly in 2006. Vision America’s Rick Scarborough convened a conference titled “War on Christians and the Values Voters in 2006,” where speakers denounced “moral relativism,” “hedonism” and “Christophobia.” Not surprisingly, several speakers denounced the “gay agenda.” …
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The Lure of the Library
EDITOR KEVIN BENTLEY, wielding the laid-back wisdom of some bohemian writing instructor, assigned the contributors to his latest anthology a deceptively simple task: write a story involving gay sex and good books. Have fun, kids; follow your bliss! His class responded with the memoirs and short stories that comprise Sex by the Book …
MoreIn Defense of Pecs
PLANTED MODESTLY in the middle of this new study is its pithiest assertion: “Simply put, in urban America, being gay comes with a gym membership.” Of course this is an overstatement, but it expresses the extent to which working out has become a significant part of everyday life for many gay men.
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Short Reviews
Short reviews of A Queer History of the Ballet, Valentino: A Dream of Desire, Dog Years, Come Out and Win, and Out Law: What LGBT Youth Should Know about Their Legal Rights.
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