Category Archives: Gay History

New from Sandi Dubowski…

Parvezsharmafilming 

A JIHAD FOR LOVE
Opens Wednesday, May 21!
Showtimes:
May 21 – Tue May 27:
11:20am, 1:15pm, 3:10, 5:05, 7:00, 9:30pm

"Revealing and moving… a gifted filmmaker." – Wall Street Journal

Four_iranian_refugees_2

A groundbreaking look at Gay and Lesbian Muslims, A JIHAD FOR LOVE uncovers a hidden face of the world’s fastest-growing religion. Shot over five years in 12 countries and produced by Sandi Simcha Dubowski (Trembling Before G-d) this moving documentary explores reconciling faith with sexuality in societies where "debauchery" can be punished by imprisonment and even death.

Embodying the literal meaning of jihad as "inner struggle," the film’s subjects reveal the hopes of a community fighting for its place in the heart of Islam.

The Cockettes Are Coming! The Cockettes Are Coming!

Oh no they’re not…they’re just breathing hard!

Greeksgeerdes2 A COCKETTE SYMPOSIUM

Thursday, June 5. 7:30 – 9 p.m.
LGBT Center, 208 West 13th Street, Kaplan Assembly, First Floor
Admission: FREE, no reservations required.

Join the largest New York gathering of Cockettes since their theatrical catastrophe at the Anderson Theater in 1971. In 1968 this psychedelic-fueled gender bending troupe of men, women, children, Gay, straight and in-between became legendary for their performances at San Francisco’s Palace Theater. At the cultural forefront of Gay Liberation, these bearded hippie drag queens showed generations to come the creative potential within us all. Moderated by Steven Watson, chronicler of the American avant-garde and author of Factory Made, The Beat Generation and The Harlem Renaissance, and hosted by John Waters’ superstar Mink Stole and HRH Lee Mentley of the Hula Palace, the evening promises to be historic. Cockettes scheduled to appear include Scrumbly, Sweet Pam, Rumi, Fayette, Harlow, Jet, Tahara, Sebastian, Toots Taraval, Jim Campbell and Dolores DeLuce.

Contact: Robert Croonquist at rcroon@nyc.rr.com

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

A Cockette Symposium is one of a series of events in New York the first week in June will bring a dozen of the original Cockettes together on the East Coast for the first time since 1971 to mark the donation of the Martin Worman Cockettes / Gay Theater Archives to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Billy Rose Theater Division at Lincoln Center.

The other events include:

The Northeast Radical Faeries and the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence Present

THE COCKETTES ARE COMING:

AN EXTRAVAGANZA TO BENEFIT FAERIE CAMP DESTINY

Monday, June 2. Bazaar, Refreshments and Films from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Performances at 8 p.m.
At Theater for the New City, 155 First Avenue at 10th Street.
Admission, $30. Bake Sale and Bar, Faerie Wares and Services—Priceless

For tickets go to: http://www.faeriecampdestiny.org
For further info contact: Jeff Huyett, NYDayZee@aol.com , 646 263 9137

Rumi Missabu of the Cockettes & the Camaraderie Art Salon present:

A COCKTAIL OF GLAMOR AND ANARCHY

Wednesday, June 4. 8 p.m. with a possible second show at 10 p.m.

At Monkeytown, 58 North 3rd Street between Wythe & Kent, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Bedford subway stop.

Admission FREE with two drink minimum. Dinner reservations encouraged, 718 384-1369

Further info at: mailto:camaraderieartsalon@yahoo.com

The Cockettes

The Cockettes emerged from the communal movement in San Francisco in the late 1960’s. Founded by Hibiscus and other members of beat writer and publisher Irving Rosenthal’s Kaliflower commune, the Kitchen Sluts, as they were first known, would entertain as they delivered food and newsletters from Rosenthal’s Free Press to an intercommunal food network of over 300 households. Known for their outrageous bearded drag, sequins, glitter and camp, the queerly androgynous troupe made street theater and performance history on the stage of the Palace Theater at the Nocturnal Dream Shows, midnight showings of camp film classics. Word of their shows spread by word of mouth and through San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen. The Cockettes were officially discovered by Rex Reed, Truman Capote and Joanna Carson and were whisked off to New York where they were feted by Vogue editor Diana Vreeland and held court at Max’s Kansas City. Their cockeyed optimism was welcomed by many but at odds with the irony and cool of New York during the Warhol era. Those who flocked to see their premiere at the Anderson Theater included Anthony Perkins, Allen Ginsberg and John Lennon. As Sylvia Miles said, “Everybody who was anybody was there.” And they were not amused; the evening was a catastrophe. Angela Lansbury is said to have risen from her seat midway through Act One and exclaimed, “Get me the fuck out of here,” and Gore Vidal quoted Arthur Laurents’ Gypsy, “Having no talent is not enough.” After the glitter settled, the Cockettes returned to San Francisco where they created their most successful shows. Cockettes who became famous in their own right include disco diva Sylvester, Café Society pianist Peter Mintun and Cockette guest star Divine.

The Martin Worman / Cockettes / Gay Theater Archives 

Martin Martin Worman was a playwright, director, actor and lyricist during the height of the Gay Liberation movement in the 1960’s through his death of AIDS in 1993. A Vietnam Era veteran from Paterson, New Jersey, Worman left Fort Dix for a life in the theater in San Francisco where he was a member of the legendary troupe known as the Cockettes. He wrote book and lyrics for several of their most renowned shows including Hot Greeks and Vice Palace which featured John Waters’ superstars Divine and Mink Stole. He was known as “The Cockette Who Can Read” because of his multiple academic degrees, a secret he carefully guarded from the street-based, anti-professional ethos of the time.

Worman continued his musical collaboration with Cockette Richard “Scrumbly” Koldewyn, writing musical revues and plays, most notably the 1972 musical Rickets: A Day in the Life of the Counterculture. Influenced by the theater of Bertolt Brecht, Worman viewed himself as a cultural worker and saw theater as a weapon in the struggle for Gay Liberation. In 1975 he co-founded the San Francisco-based Gay Men’s Theater Collective whose award-winning play Crimes Against Nature was brought to New York. There Worman assisted Robert Wilson and Jack O’Brien, directed Lola Pashalinski in her Obie winning performance of Steven Holt’s Cold, Lazy and Elaine and adapted Sherwood Anderson’s The Man Who Became a Woman for Steven Keats at Theater for the New City. At his death he was Associate Professor of Theater at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, where he adapted Meridel LeSeuer’s Midwest populist writings to the theater. The 90 hours of interviews he conducted with Cockettes in 1987 during the height of the AIDS epidemic include a deathbed interview with disco diva Sylvester. His unfinished dissertation at NYU on the history of the Cockettes became the basis for David Weissman and Bill Weber’s acclaimed documentary The Cockettes.

Worman created extensive archives of his work in the theater, including 600 pages of Cockette interviews transcribed by his partner Robert Croonquist who safe-guarded the archives and is now donating them to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Billy Rose Theater Division at Lincoln Center.

James Brougton’s This Is It

This lovely film from 1971 has been called James Broughton’s "creation myth."  It’s an absolute delight.  It runs at about 9 minutes and with the sitar background becomes a bit trancelike in parts.  The title "This Is It" comes from a poem of James Broughton’s that I had the good fortune to come across years ago while in Port Angeles.  It was printed on a little handcard and I remember thinking, Wow.  Who is this guy James Broughton.  A woman’s voice recites the poem at the 3 minute mark.  Fits beautifully with this film.

Enjoy!

What kind of Gay man are you…?

Because we publish both this blog and the "hard copy" magazine, White Crane, we get on a lot of press lists for various publicists in the entertainment, publishing, recording and fashion business. The sheer stereotypical nature of the kinds of press releases we receive is stunning, really. The only metric that seems to make any difference whatsoever to whoever is sending out the press releases is that they see the word "gay" somewhere in the search, and their feeble little minds automatically assume "fashion" "sex" "consumers" "vacuous dance music" and the most superficial kind of idea of "beauty" imaginable. In fact, using any variation of the term "imagination" in the same sentence is a stretch. Actually having looked at a copy of the magazine, or exploring our website to determine something of what our interests might be seems to be too much to ask.

Fellow_travelers_book_coverThis morning was a perfect example of the stark dichotomy of choices with which we are presented virtually every day. In yesterday’s mail we received the first run of Mark Thompson’s newest book, a beautiful book of his own photography. More on this in a moment.

[Full disclosure: White Crane Institute helped with the production of this book, and we have been sponsoring a touring exhibit of some of the photography in the book, providing it to LGBT communities around the country.]

We were also in receipt of a press release…the second one, now…about some pretty boy cranking out monotonous "dance music" (I love to dance, but what passes for ‘dance music’ these days is, quite simply pathetic.) Shirt open to his six pack, sexuality ambiguously alluded (I’m not big on "sexual allusion" myself…Rosie O’Donnell "alluded" to Tom Cruise for years…and that’s just too weird for words).

Anyway, silly me, I decided to give it a listen, since the publicist (a little more full disclosure here…yours truly was a publicist in the music industry, and a band manager at one point, no less…so I have a soft spot in my heart — not my head, though — for music publicists, and artist trying to break into the biz) had gone to the trouble to send a MP3 file.

The lyrics say it all: Hey…you remember when / I read your mind? / Thoughts of you run through my George  head / and make me want to touch myself / The odds are so right / I know you know I’m the special one…Let’s make love like / we’re strangers…

Like strangers. Wow. Great. With HIV/AIDS making a comeback like it’s a viral Taliban, I hope they use a condom. What a great musical message to put out to young Gay men…a population that is seeing a significant uptick in sero-conversion, we should note. What really burns my admittedly senior citizen ass is the marketing of this cookie-cutter pretty boy, all pumped and smooth like every other cookie-cutter pretty boy, draped in female flesh (used like skin props) and expecting that just because this fellow is (debatably) a) young and b) attractive, that every red-blooded Gay man is going to run right out and buy his drivel music because he has digital abs. Let’s be clear here: his voice is unremarkable. The music is indistinguishable from any other cut on just about any other current "dance music" disc. There is nothing about this–and I use the term very loosely here–"singer" that recommends him other than his shaved body. If you like that sort of thing.

Look at the photos accompanying this post…one is the cover of Mark’s book, Fellow Travelers: Guides & Tribes [Fluxion Editions, 2008] and "the Stranger" with the models who are so weak from hunger they have to lean on him for support. Tell me…which huddle would you want to be in? You want to "make love like we’re strangers," like this bimbo (I really think "bimbo" ought to be the male version and "bimba" the female) suggests? So OK…maybe you don’t want to get all muddy…but those are definitely not "strangers" in that picture. You might actually connect with someone…your own self, for instance… your own history as a queer, like Mark Thompson is documenting in his beautiful book Fellow Travelers?

I hesitated to even talk about the singer, who shall remain anonymous here. Why give shallow exploitative product placement any kind of publicity at all? But the contrast between this dreck, and Mark Thompson’s new book was so dramatic to me, I thought they ought to be thrown into contrast. Mark’s Fellow Travelers book is available in limited edition at http://www.markthompsongayspirit.com/

The empty nutrition of the mess of potage with the six-pack is available…anywhere. In a word: feh.

Gay Men’s Leadership Academy 2008 – West Coast edition

Academy_2008Not to brag or anything…but we were a busy Institute this weekend.

This weekend was also the fourth Gay Men’s Leadership Academy, a sponsored program of White Crane Institute.

We alternate the academies between the west coast and the east coast to make attendance and subsequent networking easier. And, you know…we get bored easily.

East coast academies are held at Easton Mountain and the west coast academies are held in Guerneville at the Wildwood Retreat Center. Both beautiful facilities. Add handsome men, cute young guys and a multitude of bright minds…and you’re talking AWE & WONDER!

We invite you to visit the GMHLA blog set up by the Academy alums. And even more importantly, consider attending. We’re moving Gay Men’s Health into the 21st Century.

Arthur C. Clarke: The Visionary I Knew

By Toby Johnson

ArthurcclarkeMarch 18, 2008, at the age of 90, renowned writer and futurologist Arthur C. Clarke passed away. His death made national news in America—of course. His name, arguably, has been one of the most Arthurcclarkequoterecognizable in the world, if only as creator (with Stanley Kubrick) of the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. He was a leader in consciousness evolution, an expert on space science, and author of over a hundred books.

What won’t be mentioned in most of the news stories, though, is that he was Gay. Of course, that’s using the term inaccurately. He wasn’t a Gay man like the post-Stonewall generation in the U.S., but he was certainly one of us.

Speaking personally, let me report that Clarke had a tremendous influence on me as a young man. I read all his books, emulated his writing style, and even to some extent adopted his post-religious “spiritual” vision of human consciousness. So in the late 1990s, when I learned my friend Kerry O’Quinn, a Gay Austinite and also a science fiction writer, told me he’d met Clarke and carried on a correspondence with him, I jumped at the opportunity to be introduced by mail. I corresponded with Clarke for several years. I wrote about his post-religious spirituality in a couple of my books and cleared my acknowledgement of his sexual identity with him. So I have no qualms Arthurcclarkestarbabyabout my including him in the pantheon of homosexual seers.

An ex-patriate Englishman, Clarke lived most of his adult life as what English society might call a “confirmed bachelor” in an intentional, extended family in the Theravada Buddhist land of Sri Lanka (in fable, the mystical island of Serendip where good fortune and lucky coincidence reign). Though married for a time as a young man, Clarke offered a marvelous example of the contributing, participating life, lived free of the conventions of marriage and childrearing.

He demurred about coming out publicly as Gay, he wrote, because he felt this fact would be used to discredit his ideas. He was 61 at the time of Stonewall, already past the sexual prime in which it’s meaningful to identify oneself as Gay. And, indeed, in 1997, a British tabloid, The Sunday Mirror, ran a story accusing him of having moved to Sri Lanka in order to buy sex from underaged boys, something he found offensive and the accusation distressing. He thought the accusation was really aimed at Prince Charles who was scheduled to knight him—as Sir Arthur—that same year. (At the same time as Sir Elton John, by the way.)

Arthurcclarkechildhoodsend_2He had a cute quip about not being Gay: "At my age now,” he said, “I’m just a little bit cheerful." He wrote that he was quite fascinated with the role homosexuals have played down through time as revolutionary thinkers. (In our correspondence, he expressed great interest in C.A. Tripp’s book about Abraham Lincoln as Gay.) He kept a private collection of writing which is not to be published until 50 years after his death. I’d wager the world is going to receive the open acknowledgement of his homosexuality and of his theory about gay consciousness as revolutionary come 2058.

Science fiction is one of the ways in which the mythmaking function of human  consciousness appears today. 2001, with its final psychedelic imagery and apotheosis of astronaut David Bowman into the Star Child, described human consciousness transcending individuality and merging into some sort of greater consciousness, all explained in scientific sounding terms.

In his renowned novel, Childhood’s End, as scientific prophet, Clarke described a planetary progression to a collective mind (in the novel called “the Overmind”) that is foreshadowed by “psychic powers”: telepathy, telekinesis, clairvoyance, and memory of collective, cosmic events. In that sense, one might say he hypothesized such paranormal powers, long elements of religion and mysticism, to be forerunners and hints at humankind’s future evolution.

Even in the 1950s, when Childhood’s End appeared, he called himself an “agnostic Buddhist,” so he probably didn’t believe in a personal afterlife. Still we might imagine that in his dying, Sir Arthur experienced rising into the Overmind.

In his modern/futuristic way, he has surely been a visionary and “Enlightened Being,” a scientifically-minded prophet who had foreseen, and helped bring about, the modern transformation of consciousness. He was surely an incarnation of the archetype of the homosexual seer.

Writer and multiple Lambda Literary Award-winner Toby Johnson was the second publisher of White Crane Journal.  He lives in San Antonio, Texas and reviews books for White Crane magazine.

Tim Gunn on J. Edgar Hoover – REDUX

Vivianhoover_2Dan first put this on the blog way back in March of 2008. But because Tim Gunn's story relates to a Thanksgiving in his family, I thought it was a worthy piece of humor for this Thanksgiving. Enjoy…

 I recently came across this video of Tim Gunn being interviewed at the 92nd Street Y by Budd Mishkin.   

If you're a fan of Project Runway than  you know Gunn for his sartorial wit and this clip presents an excerpt from what seemed to be a lovely conversation.  Gunn speaks sweetly about the awkward relationship with his father who worked for the FBI. 

Gunn also tells a great story about his father perhaps enabling J. Edgar Hoover's cross-dressing.  It involves Vivian Vance and is quite funny.  You've got to watch it!

WC74 – Dan Vera speaks with Gay Egyptologist Greg Reeder

A WHITE CRANE CONVERSATION

74_niankkhnom1Uncovering
Our Past

Dan Vera chats with Egyptologist Greg Reeder about the  Importance of Honoring the Past of Same-Sex Love.

In 1964 in the ancient necropolis of Saqqara, the Egyptian archaeologist Ahmed Moussa discovered a series of tombs with rock-cut passages in the escarpment facing the causeway that lead to the pyramid of Unas. Soon after, the Chief Inspector Mounir Basta reported crawling on his hands and knees through the passages, entering one of the Old Kingdom tombs. He was impressed with its unique scenes of two men in intimate embrace, something he had never seen before in all the Saqqara tombs.

Meanwhile, archaeologists working on the restoration of the causeway of Unas discovered that some of the stone blocks that had been used to build the causeway had been appropriated in ancient times from the mastaba that had originally served as the entrance to this newly discovered tomb. The archaeologists reconstructed the mastaba using the inscribed blocks found in the substructure of the causeway. It was revealed that this unique tomb had been built for two men to cohabit and that both shared identical titles in the palace of King Niuserre of the Fifth Dynasty: “Overseer Of The Manicurists In The Palace Of The King.”

74_gregreeder Inside the tomb the names of Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep are inscribed as one name over the doorway. In the deepest part of the tomb the identical pair are shown in the most intimate embrace possible within the canons of ancient Egyptian art. The tips of the men’s noses are touching and their torsos are so close together that the knots on the belts of their kilts appear to be touching, perhaps even tied together. Here, in the innermost private part of their joint-tomb, the two men stand in an embrace meant to last for eternity.

The scholar Greg Reeder has done a great deal of writing about the importance of Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep. White Crane spoke with him about these ancient forebears.

Dan Vera:
What do you think the significance of Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep is to Gay people? What can we learn from the ancient world?

Greg Reeder:
It is important for Gay people to know that love between two men was beautifully portrayed in an ancient tomb of the 5th Dynasty in Old Kingdom Egypt. We need to understand that family could be more diverse than so-called normative, present day definitions. Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep were both married to women and had children, but they were still able to share a degree of intimacy that in other circumstances was only shown between husband and wife. Their family not only included their wives and children, but each other. The images of them embracing and kissing are stunning reminders that the ancient world has much to teach us about where we have come from; the ways people adapted to the rules of society and yet were still able to express their same-sex devotions.

Vera:
How did you get involved with his area of study?

74_niankkhnom Reeder:
In 1981 I made my first trip to Egypt with my friend Michael Crisp. We spent two months there in the hopes of gathering material for a book on Egypt’s “sacred geography” – a book that never happened. Before I went to Egypt I was interested in the tomb of Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep because I had seen it referenced in a travel book, which declared that there were scenes of two men embracing each other. We tried unsuccessfully to visit the tomb in 1981. Sometime in the year or so following our visit, I approached Mark Thompson about the possibility of doing a story for the Advocate about the tomb. He was enthusiastic in reply and I set about writing the article and gathering some photographs. The article was published May of 1983. So Mark Thompson gave me my first opportunity to write about the two manicurists.

Vera:
You’ve also written about Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep in KMT, the modern journal of Ancient Egypt. Have other publications carried your research?

Reeder:
My friend Dennis Forbes, who also had worked for The Advocate, started KMT in 1990 with Michael Kuhlmann.  I was involved as staff photographer and then as a contributing editor. Dennis asked me to write a piece for KMT on Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep, which was published in KMT in 1993. I also published a paper on the tomb in World Archeology titled “Same-Sex Desire, Conjugal Constructs, and the Tomb of Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep.”

Vera:
Do you think the case for Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep as lovers is a solid one?

Reeder:
I think it a good one but one that needs to be discussed and debated. The ancient Egyptians of the Old Kingdom had a canon of art they used to depict the conjugal relationship between husband and wife.
My paper for World Archaeology goes into much detail about this. But, simply put, the ways the two men were portrayed embracing has its best parallels to those scenes of husband and wife embracing in other tombs of the period and I use examples from these other tombs to make the case. No matter what the biological relationship of the two men, there can be no doubt that they were expressing a profound intimacy and attraction that may best be described as “lovers.”

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!

For more on Greg Reeder and to see more images from the tomb of Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep, please visit www.egyptology.com