Category Archives: Bo Young

Arts, Bo Young, Culture, Elders, Entertainment, Humor, Music

The Potency of Noël Coward

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For other reasons altogether, I was in search of the source of the quote:

"never underestimate the potency of cheap music."

Now…a quip of that nature can only have come from a limited handful of sources…I was initially guessing Oscar Wilde…Mark Twain probably said something similar. But no. It was our dear, dear Noël Coward, of course, putting the words in the mouth of his beloved Gertrude Lawrence as she played "Amanda Prynne" in Private Lives (a role he wrote specifically for her, with him playing opposite as "Elyot Chase".)

And so…apropos of nothing other than my own recent reading of The Letters of Noel Coward (a delectable read of the first order)… and, of course, it’s Friday and it’s been a long week…here, ladies and gentemen is the estimable Sir Noël Coward potently–and inimitably–singing one of his own, most famous, but hardly cheap, songs.

Enjoy:

Bo Young, Community, Current Affairs, Gay Wisdom, Homophobia, Men, Religion, Right Wingers, Science

Gays In The Military

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Gay_soldier20040421Lemme see if I have this…you’ll pardon the expression….straight:

Gay people in the military: Bad for unit cohesion.

Convicted felons…you know, manslaughter, sex crimes, that sort of thing: No problem.

The military and the Bush administration, lecturing us on morality: Priceless.

And…could someone explain to me why we’re so damn eager to join up and kill and contribute to a war of aggression?

Are we that desperate? And what is it, precisely, we’re trying to prove? And to whom?

Bo Young, Dan Vera, From the Editors, WC76 - Ancestors

WC76 – Opening Words

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76_whitmanEditors Note
Forebears
by Dan Vera & Bo Young

Bo: So who cares if Tchaikovsky was Gay? I suppose if you’re 16 and in Nebraska…you care. I know when I was 16 and in Lombard Illinois, I cared.

Dan: Well it’s important because most people don’t know. Also we take our cues from history. Our understanding of the present is based on our understanding of what has come before. The lavender past been erased and even though the situation has gotten better, that erasure is still very much in play. That unknowing is still the experience of the grand majority of Gay people who grow up in places where the history’s been scrubbed.

Bo: And popular movies like Alexander can soft pedal his male lover and over-emphasize his wife and kids. The argument of time seems to be on the side of our opponents and would-be oppressors. I can imagine someone looking at this situation, and thinking "How depressing…what good is this to me?"

Dan: But I can also see someone looking at this and saying, “Wow. He was like me?” or “Wow. Maybe I’m not off the mark when my gaydar goes off about so and so.” Because in many cases we have been unable to record the right history because the records of our forebears still remain closed. I think of about E.M. Forster who dies in 1879 and doesn’t have his Gay novel Maurice published until 1970. I mean it’s crazy. But it makes me wonder “who else?” Who else is out there waiting to astound with his truth?

Bo: And I think it’s an important lesson in learning to “read between the lines” and recognize the bias of historians.

Dan: Certainly. Especially because in many of these figures, like the men on the cover of this very issue, their lives were murky, their longings hidden, or the record of their loving destroyed by themselves, or their families or estates.

Bo: In the end it’s like the mother of that boy who wrote to us and wondered if White Crane was appropriate for a 16 year old…we all have homework! If we had been able to learn that there were interesting, important, contributing Gay people out there at that age. Men who loved men, who were shaping culture, and our cultures… it might have eased the journey.

Dan: I also think that knowing the changing fortunes in historical understanding of Gay people makes me more prepared to fight against future changes. Harry Hay was always warning against the false positivism of some historical thinking, the belief that culture is always going up and up. Well, history doesn’t really work that way.

Bo: Indeed. The gravitational pull is usually towards regression, it would seem or at least the status quo…or assimilation.

Dan: This sort of overview is important because it discounts the lie that “I’m the only one” that a lot of people still feel. We still live in a culture that’s rather reticent to speak of these things.

Bo: I thought it was great fun yesterday as we walked down Library way, leading up to the New York Public Library and reading all those brass plaques and noting how many of them were “family,” as you put it, and leading up the grand stairs to see Kerouac’s On The Road scroll. Yet another conflicted member of the "family."

Dan: Yes, that was lovely for all the related material they pulled out from their collections — of the forebears of the Beats and of course all the photographs and letters between the beat community. So many of them Gay. Ginsberg, Burroughs. So many of them hounded, jailed or harassed by the authorities for being open. But still in their Gay skins.

Bo: So what’s your favorite thing in this issue?

Dan: I found Steven Solberg’s piece is quite lovely and in keeping with what has been a recurring thread we’ve been focusing on in our projects. That of recording, observing, and transmitting our culture, that is the thread of our existence.

Bo: I think Steven’s film is going to be an important contribution. Robert Croonquist points out that there’s some documentary film DNA running through the Word Is Out documentary about the earliest days of coming out, to The Cockettes about the San Francisco Castro, post-Stonewall era. And now Bones is a maturing of this community…having elders and recognizing them are different things.

Dan: What did you love in the issue?

Bo: I am also very moved by the writing about Edward II. Here was a man who loved men and he was the king of England…and even he was oppressed. It’s supposed to be “good to be king.” But not if you’re a king who loves another man.

Dan: On the other hand, if he hadn’t been king, that history probably wouldn’t have been preserved. Given the odds against it surviving, it is a miracle it can be in our pages today.

Bo: So the other important lesson here is this idea of “reading between the lines” of history…getting past the prejudices and biases of history and historians. It’s really quite interesting to discover, as we have with the “Gay Wisdom” mailings, that there really is enough material to send something out on a daily basis!

Dan: Yes. We have hundreds of people on that list receiving daily Gay history notes and occasional excerpts from White Crane’s 20 years of publication [www.gaywisdom.org]. But as much as I love knowing the figures that were Gay in the past, I most love their stories and what they left behind. You’ve been reading through Noel Coward’s correspondence of late and I know it’s given you a great thrill to read his written badinage with other Gay writers of the time.

Bo: One of those books you never want to end. The Letters of Noel Coward edited by Barry Day. It’s a chocolate box of reading material. Just like this issue…we hope.

Dan: Yes.

Bo: How much things have changed…and how much they have remained the same. Maybe that ought to be the cover quote. Plus ca change!

Dan: Oui.

This is just an excerpt from this issue of White Crane.   We are a reader-supported journal and need you to subscribe to keep this conversation going.  So to read more from this wonderful issue SUBSCRIBE to White Crane. Thanks!

Bo Young and Dan Vera are editorials mid-wives and co-conspirators in creating each issue of White Crane.  Bo lives in Brooklyn, NY a few blocks from a museum and Dan lives in Washington, DC a few blocks from a Shrine.  Bo is the author of First Touch: A Passion for Men and Day Trilogy and Other Poems. Dan is the author of two chapbooks of poetry.  Visit him at www.danvera.com

If they sometimes seem interchangeable in the minds of White Crane readers it’s because they talk on the phone each day and bask under the shade of the same growing tree, the watering of which they consider their contribution to the continued flowering of gaiety.

You can write them at editors@gaywisdom.org

Photograph of Walt Whitman, Library of Congress archives.

Bo Young, Community, Current Affairs, Health, History, Religion, Right Wingers

The Millennial Memory…

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I was going to defer this commentary until after Dan posted his commentary and addenda to the bowdlerized PBS Whitman hagiography which, while it was a nice attempt, proved once again how subtly Gay people and beautiful same sex love can be written out of history…no sin but omission. But I can’t wait…and since we offered Father John McNeill’s views on things, I feel moved to share my own point of view of this…

The Pope is in America…and everyone is so worked up and excited.

Bush_and_pope Your first clue that this stinks is George Bush is receiving him at the White House. Church and State, once again, cozy at the highest levels. We live in an age of hypocrisy and perhaps the only way to be able to get out of bed in the morning is to at the very least, call it what it is.

I’m particularly taken with the media coverage of it all that, while reminding folks of the “controversy” — that is corporate media’s Mother’s Milk (ka-ching!) — it still manages to gloss over with what is bewilderingly called “balance” these days, with the moony-eyed musings of the “faithful” contrasted with the last seething furious gasps of the thousands of men and boys who have been molested, as though they have equal merit. And somehow they manage to leave out the part where this Pope, in his former job as head of what was the office of the Inquisition in another time, instructed those in charge…those responsible for protecting children (hello Texas!) …to play it out for time so the statutes of limitations would take effect. Bill Maher nails this one beautifully in his recent “Rules.”

But what I am reminded of as we watch the flash and the dash, the pomp and the circumstance, the gold and the satin, the grandeur and the theater of it all, of the Papacy paraded before us as though this was some moral model, is something I was told when I was, years ago, the Parish Council Chairman of Holy Trinity Parish on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

One of my closest friends in those days was a Franciscan priest who was living at the parish (not diocesan, in other words). He shall remain nameless here, because he continues to be a priest…a Gay priest, I might add, who loved his cocktails a little too much…and if reports are true, now the Pastor of a parish in one of the bigger primary states. I loved Michael, and still do, even though I haven’t seen him in years, and I would never want to cause him any embarrassment. Michael was a good friend of the “Saint of 9/11” Mychal Judge, and is the reason I meet Father Judge many years ago.

Anyway…probably the most interesting idea Fr. Michael passed along to me was the idea of the “institutional memory” of the Roman Catholic Church. His point was this: the Church views time in a different way than the rest of the hoi polloi.

I was all ready for some mystical take on time and eternity and what-have-you. But no. WhatGalileo_facing_the_roman_inquisitio  he meant was the Church and its hierarchy view time in a “millennial view.” That was the term he used. A millennial view.  The very long millennial view. In other words: these things shall pass. A century from now, who will remember? Who will be around to remember? The Church will still be there, of course, but generations of regular folks come and go…and they die. They forget. All that is remembered after a while, say a generation…maybe two…ok, three… is the flash and the dash, the pomp and the circumstance, the gold and the satin, the grandeur and the theater of it all. So…a hundred years…a mere blink of an eye, if that, to an institution like the Catholic Church…200 years…what is 200 years to an institution that has been around in cozy bed with the powers of the world for 2000 years? The one thing this millennial view affords is priceless: people will forget. Who remembers the Inquisition? Who, nowadays, even cares? Who remembers what was done to American Indians in the name of Christianity?

Bushcardinallaw And who…a thousand years from now, will remember the hundreds of thousands of boys who were molested, abused? And how the Church worked not to wash it clean with the cleansing light of day, but to hide it away until the secular laws ran out the clock? How does an institution pull off something like an Inquisition and still maintain the illusion of moral probity? How does an institution pull off something like not only the on-going molestation and abuse of thousands of children, but covering it up and paying people off for years…

Sleepy…you’re getting sleepy. Don’t you worry your pretty little head about these matters.

Father will take care of it for you. Rest your head in his satin-covered lap as he bathes you in incense and architecture and unctuous oils and candles…the flash and the dash, the pomp and the circumstance, the gold and the satin, the grandeur and the theater of it all…

And soon you will forget…

Ancestors, Bo Young, Community, Culture, Current Affairs, Elders, Friends, Gay Wisdom, History, Homophobia, Religion, Right Wingers

On the Occasion of the Pope Coming to Town

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Many interesting things come over our transom…this from the esteemed John J. McNeill, on the arrival of Joseph "God’s Rottweiller" Ratzinger (wasn’t this guy on Cheers?) on our shores (traveling under his nom de power "Pope Benedict XVI"):

Toward a Theology of Fallibility

Ratzinger_2When Pope Benedict comes to Ground Zero in New York City he will be greeted byMychaljudgepieta_2 a giant banner with a painting of Michael Judge, the Gay Franciscan priest, whose life is recorded in the documentary, Saint of 9/11. That banner signifies the ambiguous state of many Gay, Lesbian, bisexual and transgendered Catholics toward the Pope. We share the respect and love of the Catholic community for the Vicar of Christ and wish him well. At the same time we are profoundly aware of how wrong he is in his understanding and judgment on Gayness as “intrinsic disorder”. We are deeply conscious that we cannot accept and live out his teaching on homosexuality without destroying our mental and spiritual health. What is bad psychology has to be bad theology. We find ourselves in the same position as children of a homophobic parent, who, while still loving their parent, must separate off and take distance from that parent’s homophobia, if they are to live happy and healthy lives.

We Roman Catholic Gays have found it necessary to undergo the same maturing process in our spiritual lives that Jesus asked his disciples to undergo at the last supper. “I shall ask the Father and he will send you another Paraclete to be with you forever, the Spirit of truth.” (John 14: 16-17) Jesus stressed the point that it was necessary that he should go away in order for the Spirit to come. “Yet you are sad at heart because I have told you this. Still, I am telling you the truth; it is for your own good that I am going, because unless I go, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go. I will send him to you….However, when the Spirit of truth comes, he will lead you to the complete truth.” (John 16: 6-13)

Why could the Spirit of Truth only come after Jesus’ death? Because as long as Jesus remained alive and present, his disciples had their center of authority outside themselves and were not totally responsible for their actions. They were striving to meet the expectations of a provident leader. They had not yet become fully creative and responsible adults. But after Jesus’ death, his Spirit became what Paul saw as the source of the “Glorious Freedom of the Children of God”. “The proof that you are sons and daughters is that God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts: the Spirit that cries, ‘Abba’, Father; and it is this that makes you a son or daughter, you are not a slave anymore’. Pagans were not free but slaves in relation to their gods because they related to their gods in a spirit of fear. John tells us “Perfect love cast out all fear. It is equally true that perfect fear casts out all love.” Christians are free because their God is a God of love who had adopted them into his family. “All who are guided by the Spirit of God are sons or daughters of God, for what you have received was not the spirit of slavery, to bring you back into fear, you have received the Spirit of adoption, enabling us to cry out Abba, Father.” (Rom. 8:14-17)

With the death of Jesus and the coming of the Holy Spirit, the apostles received a challenge as well as an opportunity to mature. As Paul expressed it, “…until we all reach unity in faith and knowledge of the Son of God and form the perfect human, fully mature with the fullness of Christ himself.” (Eph. 4:13). The apostles had to give up the security of a provident leader; they had to begin to find out what God wanted from them from within themselves and their own experience.

In like manner, in our spiritual life, we Roman Catholic Gay people must pass from a passive, dependent role to an active, creative one. For our survival we have a special need to become mature, self-motivated, autonomous people, no longer dependent on outside homophobic sources for a sense of our identity and well-being. We must not let our enemies outside ourselves define us; we must let the Spirit of love that dwells within our hearts define us. As the Catholic philosopher Maurice Blondel expressed it: “Our God dwells within us and the only way we can become one with that God is to become one with our authentic self”.

It is this understanding of the role of the indwelling Holy Spirit that gives me great consolation during these times when the Catholic Church reacts to its Gay members in ignorance and even downright hostility. We Gays should be grateful to God for creating a humanly fallible Church. We are intensely aware that if our parents had been infallible we could never have matured and become autonomous and responsible adults. God blessed us with finite and fallible parents. It was precisely when and where our parents proved fallible that we were challenged to take distance from their authority, make our own choices and be fully responsible for them.

In a similar way, as Gay Roman Catholics we are dependent on the human fallibility of religious authorities in order to develop an adult freedom of conscience. I believe that we are witnessing the coming into being of what I call the Church of the Indwelling of the Holy Spirit. After forty years of ministry with Lesbian and Gay persons, as both priest and psychotherapist, I am convinced that a unique spirituality, special and vibrant, is springing up in the Christian Gay community. It is spirituality totally compatible with a life of Gay sexual love and intimacy. As scripture says “the stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. (Mark 12:18) Gays are leading the way to form a spiritual community based on the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit’s special presence in the Gay Christian community and the unique graces which are enabling Lesbians and Gays to build a mature, autonomous spiritual life are not just gifts meant for the Gay Christian community alone. When God pours out special blessings on one segment of the community, those blessings are meant to flow out and be shared by the human community at large.

Brendan_faye The Church of the Holy Spirit will be a Church in which all are equal, no hierarchy, no clergy as a separate caste, no domination of men over women. Leadership in the Church of the Holy Spirit will be based on careful listening to what the Holy Spirit is saying through the people of God. A recent event makes me believe that God is working overtime to bring about the transformation of the Catholic Church into the Church of the Holy Spirit. President Lech Kaczynski of Poland in a March 17 televised speech to the nation, echoing the Vatican position, warned that the adoption of the European Lisbon Treaty would compel Poland to recognize same-sex marriages, which he linked to the end of “moral order”. To make his point the president used footage of the 2003 wedding of Brendan Fay and Tom Moulton in Canada. As a result of that speech a media frenzy moved Brendan and Tom out of obscurity and they became world famous. Brendan and Tom are devout Gay Roman Catholics who see their marriage as a sacred bond blessed by God. The Holy Spirit is ultimately in charge of the Church and will transform it so that it becomes one with the realm of God. We who are Gay and Catholic pray daily that the hierarchy will hear what the Spirit is saying through the people of God and cooperate with the Spirit’s transformation of the Church.

John J. McNeill John J. McNeill, author of The Church and The Homosexual, Taking A Chance on God, Freedom, Glorious Freedom, and Both Feet Planted Firmly in Midair. The Reverend McNeill can be reached at jjmcneill@aol.com

Arts, Bo Young, Call for Submissions, Community, Culture, Entertainment, Humor, Music

We’ve got your American Idol RIGHT HERE!

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FULL-TIME PERFORMANCE OPPORTUNITY WITH THE KINSEY SICKS!

What could be more thrilling? More life-changing? More fun? More nauseating?

THE JOB:

Sicks The Kinsey Sicks, America’s Favorite Dragapella Beautyshop Quartet, is seeking a serious and skilled performer for a long-term full-time commitment as an actively performing swing. We are looking for:

* Substantial stage experience
* Strong musicianship
* Great talent in comedy and comedic improvisation
* Comfort with drag performance
* Ability to portray a comic character in an ensemble context
* Ability to learn complicated 4-part vocal arrangements in limited time
* Willingness to travel, perform live, and potentially appear on screen
* Willingness to chip in on some of the less glamorous aspects of travel and performance (including stage/dressing room set-up, meeting/greeting audiences, selling merchandise after shows)
* Decent business skills, progressive politics, good communication and the ability to work in a team.

A cappella experience is a plus but not required. Being part of the Kinsey Sicks is incredibly fun. You should be too. We want you to be as excited about what we do as we are. This position is open until filled.

TO APPLY:

Send a resume to info@kinseysicks.com, along with a headshot or recent photo, plus any materials you think would help us see your skills.

AUDITIONS:Sickskinsey

The Kinsey Sicks will be touring throughout the spring and early summer, and we will audition qualified applicants as we tour. Let us know if you can make it to any of the following places:

April 10: Cleveland, OH
April 11-12: Providence, RI
April 13-14: Lincoln, NE
April 16-18: Hamilton, NY
April 23: Richmond, KY
May 11-15: Las Vegas, NE
May 17: New Hope, PA
June 6: Dallas, TX
June 7: Salt Lake City, UT
June 14: Spokane, WA
July 11: San Francisco
July 12: Seattle

Please circulate this email among your friends who perform, or who sing in choruses, or who otherwise are exceptional talents who might fit well with the Kinsey Sicks.

WHO WE ARE:

For over 14 years, the Kinsey Sicks, America’s Favorite Dragapella Beautyshop Quartet, has served up a feast of music and comedy to audiences across the US and abroad. Combining award-winning a cappella singing, sharp satire and over-the-top drag, the Kinsey Sicks tours full time, having performed in 37 states as well as Mexico, Canada and Europe. The Kinsey Sicks have had their own Off-Broadway run at New York’s legendary Studio 54 as well as an extended run in Las Vegas. They have released five CDs and are the subjects of two feature films: "I Wanna Be a Republican," released in 2006, and "Almost Infamous," slated for release in 2008. For more information, visit www.kinseysicks.