A really classic sketch from the Daily Show on an inventor of a "GAYDAR device." You can see how young Stephen Colbert is in this one. I’m curious to see a follow up with this inventor. You know… just to see if there’ve been any big life changes since this was taped.
Urban Wildlife – Bear in the Backyard
This is pretty funny. My favorite part might be the pillow rearranging.
Gore Speaks Out for Gay Marriage Rights
Al Gore comes out for Gay couples rights:
Ennis del Mar is dead – RIP Heath Ledger
Heath Ledger is dead.
The story is still breaking and the reasons or causes still unknown. I’m sure we’ll know more as the news media does it’s work of uncovering what can be uncovered.
My partner called me up to tell me the news. Feeling shocked I looked online while we talked to confirm what was true. Then I called Bo up and we talked about the loss. He told me the television stations in New York had broken in with the news.
Is this story right for a blog about Gay Wisdom?
Yes. I believe it is. Ledger wasn’t Gay but he was so successful in providing the film-watching world with one of the most nuanced, aching portrayals of a very real Gay man dealing with living openly and claiming his life — a portrayal we had never seen on the screen before on such a level. With that alone he may have singlehandedly (and with Jake Gyllenhall) provided a powerful service to the larger public about the realities of the homophobic, hetero-orthodoxy LGBT people live in day in and day out.
Beyond all the Brokeback jokes that flooded over us during the movie’s historic run and trophied success, there remained that simple story of these two men who found themselves in love, two men who struggled in a difficult period and place to carve out a loving space for themselves. This was the story that writer Annie Proulx had created to speak of the quiet lives of Gay ranchers she met while living in Wyoming. The critics raved:
"Both Mr. Ledger and Mr. Gyllenhaal make this anguished love story physically palpable. Mr. Ledger magically and mysteriously disappears beneath the skin of his lean, sinewy character. It is a screen performance, as good as the best of Marlon Brando and Sean Penn." the film, critic Stephen Holden
"Ledger’s magnificent performance is an acting miracle. He seems to tear it from his insides. Ledger doesn’t just know how Ennis moves, speaks and listens; he knows how he breathes. To see him inhale the scent of a shirt hanging in Jack’s closet is to take measure of the pain of love lost." the Rolling Stone’s, Peter Travers
In our 2006 White Crane interview with the writer Jeff Mann,:
I will remember Brokeback Mountain as one of the great films of my life. I don’t think any other mainstream movie has ever captured so many of my issues, my passions, and my fears. Most Gay [themed] films are about the urban experience, to which I can only partially relate. The fact that this film dealt with small town and rural experience really resonated with me, since I’ve spent most of my life in such settings. I thought the movie was beautifully filmed and finely acted, and I sympathized very strongly with both of the male protagonists.
Sure, one could look at Brokeback as yet another Hollywood Gay tragedy story, but I always felt it was an honest telling of a past (and for the majority of Gay people still trapped in less free places) and present reality we never see in the movies. And I can’t imagine a more heartwrenching portrayal of such an honest story.
I could go on and on about the portrayal but I think Andrew Hudson, who wrote a really amazing reflection on the movie for our 2006 Cowboy issue, nailed so much of the importance of the film and of Ledger’s amazing portrayal of Ennis.
A few excerpts then from Hudson’s writing:
One night in an upstate Wyoming bar, Annie Proulx noticed how a poor ranch hand in his late sixties looked with longing at the young cowboys playing pool. She wondered if he might be “country Gay,” and conceived “a story of destructive rural homophobia,” the tale of a love between two men shaped, forced by the mountain landscape’s “isolation and altitude,” by homophobic antipathy and denial. She rewrote her story over sixty times in the next months, as she got into a dialogue with her characters, determinedly hunted down the right words.
= = =
We end with the two shirts, but now Jack’s is enclosed inside Ennis’s, to say he lives on in Ennis’s heart. (This reversal was the brainchild of Heath Ledger, who to Annie Proulx “knew better than I did how Ennis felt and thought.”) As [the screenwriter] Larry McMurtry has said: when Ennis visits Jack’s parents, hears what Jack’s father says, finds the shirts in Jack’s room, it becomes a great movie, a tragedy — for he then realizes what he’s missed. We have seen his deep emotional turmoil, but he’s failed to grasp (what we have also seen): Jack’s enormous love for him (even during Jack’s unfaithfulness). We’ve heard Jack’s tender “it’s all right, it’s all right,” repeated in their second lovemaking; said in response to Ennis’s agony when he falls to his knees at the crux of their argument. We’ve felt Jack’s heart.
from Andrew Hudson’s "The Art of Brokeback Mountain", White Crane #68, Spring 2006.
Be Aware. Be Alert. Be Well.
A lot of people are sending us the Lawrence K. Altman article in the NY Times about a new MRSA-related bacterial infection. The S.F. Chronicle is doing its usual sensationalized coverage, as well.
This is why White Crane has a regular columnist, Nurse Daisy (aka Jeff Huyett) who writes the Owner’s Manual health column (it’s also why White Crane sponsors the Gay Men’s Health Leadership Academy.)
I’ve asked Daisy about this. Here’s the general sense of it from Daisy’s professional perspective:
I deal with one to two MRSA abscesses a week in my work as a nurse. Some ain’t so bad, some are so large a patient risks losing a limb or an ear.
The media almost always sensationalizes Gay health issues. Who’s suprised! But, there is an important kernel of worry that should be attended to. These infections can be really nasty and tend to grow really fast. Thus, "waiting to see how it looks tomorrow" can be the difference between a few minutes of inconvenience and losing a chunk of your nose to this serious bacteria. Gay press often isn’t much better in helping us sort health concerns presented in the press.
Too often, queers have shame and guilt connected to their health issues and may delay having something assessed. These articles further stigmatize our sex and our people. But you should be alarmed at this health issue. Treatment for MRSA should not be delayed. If you have a big pus ball larger than a grape, it
almost assuredly needs to be drained to slow the infection spread.
Here are my suggestions:
1. Take good care of your skin inside and out. Drink plenty of water, moisturize your skin, consider humidity in your apartment if it’s dry.
2. If you’ve been a greasy pig over the weekend and had lots of sex with lots of people, wash with soap and water, moisturize, monitor. Nurses aren’t too keen on frequent anti-bacterial soaps.
3. MRSA’S start like a painful, small pimple and within 48 hours can grow into a huge pus ball. If you think you have a MRSA starting, use hot compresses to soak the area to improve circulation. Apply mupirocin (Bactroban) twice a day. I’ve seen some help with Tea Tree Oil
4. Seek help if one of these blossoms and becomes large. There are antibiotics that typically work but one needs to be aware to cover for MRSA and not garden-variety skin infections.
5. If you get an abscess, make sure your provider tests for MRSA if possible.
Take care of each other by mentioning health issues that someone may be letting slide. Sometimes our emotional health prevents us from activating or our drug use dulls our response time. MRSA is one thing that requires some quick thinking.
[The image is Asclepius with his rod, which not a "caduceus," but an ancient Greek symbol associated with astrology and with healing the sick through medicine. "Asclepius’ rod" consists of a single serpent entwined around a staff. Asclepius, the son of Apollo, was practitioner of medicine in ancient Greek medicine.]
Ancestors – One and the Supremes
January 15th is a red letter date in GLBT history, and particularly in the history of Gay publishing (blogger Jim Burroway has a very nice remembrance of this at Box Turtle) and in light of the recent passing of Mattachine assimilationist, Kennith H. Burns in Los Angeles it seems even more trenchant.
Fifty years ago, a Supreme Court unsullied by religion and right-wing fundamentalism ruled in One Inc. v Oleson that a magazine for Gays and Lesbians could be sent through the mail and not be seized as pornography, per se. To be entirely accurate, One Inc. v. Oleson was on the docket for the Court when they decided Roth v. United States, which vaguely held that "pornography" could have "no sociably redeeming value" and the court went on to issue a one sentence per curiam i.e. "by the court" with no assigned findings included, — much as Gore v. Bush was decided, incidentally — that the lower court ruling against One Inc. was inconsistent with Roth so it could, indeed, be published and mailed.
Under the editorial leadership of Martin Block, Dale Jennings, Don Slater and Donald Webster Cory, ONE magazine was a first class product, a dramatic departure from the underground, mimeographed and stapled sheets which were more common at the time. In the throes of McCarthyism, the sophisticated and slickly produced one reached the astounding readership of 2,000 (more, sad to say, than this magazine reaches, now, 50 years later).
ONE’s tone was bold and unapologetic, covering politics, civil rights, legal issues, police harassment (which was particularly harsh in One’s hometown of Los Angeles), employment and familial problems, and other social, philosophical, historical and psychological topics. Most importantly, ONE quickly became a voice for thousands of silent gays and lesbians across the U.S., many of whom wrote letters of deep gratitude to ONE’s editors.
Other founders were Merton Bird, W. Dorr Legg, and Chuck Rowland. Jennings and Rowland were also Mattachine Society founders.
In January 1953 ONE, Inc. began publishing ONE Magazine, the first U.S. pro-gay publication, and sold it openly on the streets of Los Angeles. In October 1954 the U.S. Postal Service declared the magazine ‘obscene’. ONE sued, and finally won in 1958, as part of the landmark First Amendment case, Roth v. United States. The magazine continued until 1967.
ONE also published ONE Institute Quarterly (now the Journal of Homosexuality). It began to run symposia, and contributed greatly to scholarship on the subject of same-sex love (then called "homophile studies").
ONE readily included women, and Joan Corbin (as Eve Elloree), Irma Wolf (as Ann Carrl Reid), Stella Rush (as Sten Russell), Helen Sandoz (as Helen Sanders), and Betty Perdue (as Geraldine Jackson) were vital to its early success. ONE and Mattachine in turn provided vital help to the Daughters of Bilitis in the launching of their newsletter The Ladder: a lesbian review in 1956. The Daughters of Bilitis was the counterpart lesbian organisation to the Mattachine Society, and the organisations worked together on some campaigns and ran lecture-series. Bilitis came under vicious attack in the early 1970s for ‘siding’ with Mattachine and ONE, rather than with the new separatist feminists.
In 1965, ONE separated over irreconcilable differences between ONE’s business manager Dorr Legg and ONE Magazine editor Don Slater. After a two-year court battle, Dorr Legg’s faction retained the name "ONE, Inc." and Don Slater’s faction retained most of the corporate library and archives. In 1968, Slater’s faction became the Homosexual Information Center, a non-profit corporation that survives today.
In 1996, ONE, Inc. merged with ISHR, the Institute for the Study of Human Resources, a non-profit organization created by transgendered philanthropist Reed Erickson, with ISHR being the surviving organization and ONE being the merging corporation. The organization also merged with Jim Kepner’s International Gay and Lesbian Archives. The current organization entitled the ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives onearchives.org is the world’s largest gay and lesbian archives. It is located in Los Angeles near the campus of the Uuniversity of Southern California. It holds the archives of ONE Magazine, ONE INC., and many leaders of the early gay movement including Dorr Legg, Pat Rocco, Morris Kight, and the LA Gay Center, as well as numerous audio and video tapes of ONE INC and other early gay panels and programs.
White Crane stands in awe and respect of those who went before us.
Jesse’s Journal – Folsom Street Blues
Thank God for the religious right. Often when I suffer from writer’s block, a crackpot comes along with some harebrained scheme and I have something to write about. The latest loony toon who’s come to save the day (and this column) is Peter LaBarbera of Americans For Truth, “a newly reorganized national organization devoted exclusively to exposing and countering the homosexual activist agenda.”
According to Wayne Besen, “LaBarbera is notorious for donning leather garb and sneaking into sundry gay S&M bars to take supposedly incriminating pictures of naughty gays. LaBarbera is obsessive with following the seamier side of gay life, even frequenting establishments where gay sex occurs. For him, no bahthouses are too remote to discover, and no dark, grimy dungeons not worthy of explorations. It is no exaggeration to say that the man has probably frequented more gay venues than RuPaul and Mr. Leather USA combined.”
Peter LaBarbera’s latest exposé is of the Folsom Street Fair, a annual gathering of kinky folk in San Francisco that proudly calls itself “the world’s largest leather event.” Not letting a good thing pass him by, LaBarbera crashed this leather party on September 30 in order to expose the depravity within. Since the Folsom Street Fair takes place in Nancy Pelosi’s congressional district, LaBarbera gave a detailed description of the Fair’s naughty bits in a letter that he wrote to the Speaker, hoping no doubt that she would be as outraged as he claimed to be: “I was in San Francisco with a videographer on Sunday, September 30 and verified but a small segment of the most immoral and outrageous sexual behavior that ever disgraced the streets of any American city.”
LaBarbera followed his introduction with a laundry list of debauchery; depraved acts that he assured the Speaker were going on in full view of innocent children. These included “large numbers of men walking on public streets either fully or partially naked; . . . groups of men engaged in orgies on the public street, including acts of oral sex and mutual masturbation; . . . theatrically dramatic sadomasochistic whippings and floggings; . . . ‘Master-slave relationships’ in which one man or woman would ‘walk’ their subservient ‘slave’ with a dog collar and chain” and so on. LaBarbera saved much of his outrage for the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a charitable group of gay men in nun drag that LaBarbera denounced as exhibiting “blatant anti-Christian bigotry.” LaBarbera closed his letter by demanding that Pelosi “condemn these public perversions and use your great influence to stop them from happening in the future in San Francisco.”
As if that wasn’t enough, LaBarbera held a press conference on December 5 for the sole purpose of denouncing the Folsom Street Fair. “Americans For Truth will be airing uncensored videotaped footage, documenting public perversions and nudity at the Folsom Street Fair, an open-air, sadistic sex festival held September 30th on the streets of San Francisco,” LaBarbera promised. Held at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., LaBarbera was joined by fellow fundies Matt Barber of Concerned Women For America and Grace Hurley of Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX). Though LaBarbera’s promise of hard-core, gay leather porn seemed sure to attract a crowd, less than ten people attended his press conference, according to Rebecca Armendariz of the Washington Blade, who was there.
The Folsom Street Fair [www.folsomstretfair.com] is one of four annual events produced by Folsom Street Events, a not-for-profit organization whose mission “is to create volunteer-driven leather events that provide the adult alternative lifestyle community with safe venues for self-expression while emphasizing freedom, fun, frolic and fetish and raising critical funds to benefit local charities.” Earlier this year, the Fair outraged the Catholic League and other Christian groups with its official poster, an obvious parody of Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last Supper” where leather folk of various genders and sexual orientations took the place of Christ and his apostles. [Please visit www.folsomstreetfair.com/fair-info.php for the offending poster.] Though Andy Cooper, Board President of Folsom Street Events, hoped that “people will enjoy the artistry for what it is – nothing more or less,” there was such an uproar that the Fair’s primary sponsor, Miller Brewing, asked the Fair to remove its logo from all promotional materials.
By the time Peter LaBarbera called his press conference, the Folsom Street Fair had become a byword for queer debauchery. The Fair’s infamy reached as far as the nearby city of Vallejo, where openly-gay mayoral candidate Gary Cloutier had to assure a voter that he would not bring a similar leather street fair into their city. And there is no question that San Francisco’s liberal political climate allows a degree of public nudity and kinky sex unheard of elsewhere in the United States. (Compared to the Folsom Street Fair, the Leather Masked Ball in Fort Lauderdale is very sedate.) Using an obvious take on the Last Supper for its official poster was probably a mistake, since it did not do much but give ammunition to the enemy. And even I was surprised to learn that the Fair has no age restrictions at the gates, though Fair volunteers “do inform attendees of the adult oriented nature of our events.”
On the other hand, nobody is forcing Peter LaBarbera and his friends to attend the Folsom Street Fair, though it seems that LaBarbera had a good time while he was there. Those who attended the Fair – and there were around 400,000 of them – knew what they were getting into and were willing to pay good money to get into it. They also raised $350,000 for local charities and contributed millions to San Francisco’s economy.
San Francisco is proud of its liberal political climate, which is why many people hate it. And the crusade against the Folsom Street Fair is, to a large extent, a campaign against “San Francisco values,” which Street Fair President Cooper (like Speaker Pelosi before him) called “values of community, diversity, education, and freedom of self expression.” The religious right hates San Francisco for espousing those values. We only wish that the rest of the USA was more like “the City by the Bay.”
Jesse Monteagudo is a freelance author and gay activist who enjoyed his all-too brief visits to San Francisco and looks forward to his next visit. Write him a note at jessemonteagudo@aol.com
Edward II
I had the immense pleasure of seeing an amazing play recently. What makes the pleasure all the more thrilling is that the play was written more than 400 years ago, by an ancestor who was nothing less than Shakespeare’s chief competition! As we plan the spring issue of White Crane on Ancestors, it was deeply satisfying to see this production made possible by no less than three major Gay allies or ancestors, Christopher Marlowe, Garland Wright and Edward II himself (kudos to the still with us — and with it! — Red Bull Artistic Director, Jesse Berger, too, of course!)
Starting with the historical Edward: he was the first "Prince of Wales." He is the king who established colleges in the universities of Oxford and Cambridge; he founded Cambridge’s King’s Hall in 1317 and gave Oxford’s Oriel College its royal charter in 1326. And yes, he did have a tendency to sort of ignore his "nobility" (pre-shadowing Whitman’s "working class camerado’s" by a couple of centuries) and run around with sexy, young minions. Marlowe took a collection of "favorites" and created the archetypal character of Piers Gaveston to represent Edward’s "proclivities." Companions had been brought over from France to teach the young prince how to be a gentleman. If they only knew. Ahhh…if we only knew.
The late Garland Wright was the visionary director and a leading figure in both the New York theater scene and the regional theater movement in America, most famously as the Artistic Director of The Guthrie Theater. He died at the tragically young age of 52 while in the middle of preparing this production of Christopher Marlowe’s legendary Edward II. His commitment to Gay causes, particularly his opposition to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell brought him to an interest in Marlowe’s Edward.
There is no way I can improve on the review of the play in the NY Times and other places. Does it ring any bells to say this is the story of a leader whose lover distracts him from his duties, tells the story of sexual obsession, religious power and the intersection of the political and personal lives of a flawed leader. Throw in some church/state tensions and you might well be talking yesterday, not 400+ years ago. Add Queer As Folk’s blond boy Randy ("Justin") Harrison in a featured (and, I might add, impressive…newly hirsute-for-this-play Mr. Harrison is virtually unrecognizeable, "boy " no more…this man can act!) role, and you have a damned sexy and theatrically fascinating evening.
It is tempting (and wrong) to believe that the modern GLBT civil rights movement is the first time a movement has attempted to upset the social order (and despite what the assimilationists would have you believe, this is what it’s about, dear ones) and create an alternative to traditional gender roles, definitions of sexuality and hierarchal power structures. It is bracing to realize that Marlowe was doing this 400 years ago, before there was any other word for who we are than "sodomy." There was no "Gay," no "homosexual," no "same-sex love." It was sodomy, plain and simple, and a clear demonstration of the implicit role church has played in statecraft since its earliest days.
Further, this is the story that first turned this writer off Mr. Mel Gibson, waaaay before his drunken, entitled, anti-Semitic outbursts. His gratuitous and flat out historically wrong-headed re-telling of the murder of Edward’s beloved, Piers Gaveston, in Braveheart, where Gibson has Edward’s father (who was dead before any of the gist of the story we know happened) throw Gaveston out of a tower to his death made Gibson persona non grata in my eyes. Hollywood’s traditional "kill the queer" has never been more distasteful to me than it was in that horrible movie.
But, back to happier stories…the king and his beloved frolic on a wildly sexy set, in costumes (and the tasteful lack thereof) that reinvents the whole "suit and tie" Shakespeare fad. This play is gripping, intellectually and visually, from the dimming of the lights to the last ovation.
In a word: Run, don’t walk, to see this play at the Red Bull Theater on 42nd Street. Its run has been extended through the end of January. This is a must-see.
An addition to the household…
So….Happy new year to all of you. We all took a little time off over the holidaze. Traveled a bit. Saw friends and family. Not all of them, but most of them and it was nice. When an operation like White Crane is basically done by two of us, it helps a lot to take a little time off every now and then.
And then, just after New Year’s, my partner Bill and I decided to take a little ride with our friend Bev’s car (she was in Kentucky for the week, and let us use her car while she was out of town…and we take care of her cats, too and then pick her up at the airport.) We’ve been talking…ok, I’ve been talking …about getting a dog. I swoon every time I see a puppy on television. So we decided and agreed to take a ride to the North Shore Animal Shelter to see what they had. Just to see, mind you.
And this is what happened. Or, I should say, and Brewster happened. I swore I wasn’t going to take home a dog. We sort of poked around and played with the puppies, of course. Too cute for words. One set of shepherd puppies were so adorable it just would have broken my heart to split them up. And then there’s the whole matter of housebreaking…and never having had a dog before, I’m a little nervous about these things.
I guess this is one of those proud parent things, but I just don’t the camera is doing my puppy justice. Brewster is full grown, a year old and still every inch a puppy. Still isn’t quite sure what to do with those long legs and is quite comical as he chases after a new toy. And the peeing and pooping in the house is still something we’re discussing. The North Shore Animal Shelter’s idea of "housebroken" and my idea of "housebroken" seem to have diverged somewhere. Fortunately, if one 
has dumpster dived his entire household, it’s not so hard. We all slept together the first night like a good pack should. Bill insisted that Brews get used to his crate last night so he could get his part of the conjugal bed back. Brew balked a bit at first. He made some very sound arguments, but very quickly quieted down (which was one of the things that attracted me to him in the first place…in the midst of all the craziness of a animal shelter with dogs freaking out all over the place, and a lot of sounds and smells going on that he couldn’t understand, Brewster showed only curiousity, and then settled very quickly, lying down at my feet right there in the shelter walk area…underneath all that puppiness is a pretty calm little guy.)
I’m still nervous…but we’re going to go out for a nice long walk now and get to know each other a little more.
WC75 – Table of Contents
White Crane Issue #75
THE BEARABLE
RIGHTNESS OF BEING
Hey there. Below are excerpts from our Winter Bear issue. Please understand that we rely on the support of subscribers to keep going.
So, subscribe today and keep the conversation going! Consider giving a gift subscription to your friends who could use some wisdom!
Columns
Frank Talk
“Strangelove: Or How I Finally Learned To Stop Worrying & Love The Bears” by Frank Jackson
Owner’s Manual
“Hitting thePause Button” by Jeff HuyettPRAXIS “Bear Essentials” by Andrew Ramer
Departments
Call for Submissions
Letters to the Editors
Contribution Information
Subscriber Information
Taking Issue
Dracaena Art by Joe Pop
Bear Spirit Les Wright
Getting To Know My Beast Ed Ehrgott
Beards, Body Hair & Brawn:
Reflections of a Muscle Bear Jeff Mann
Self Portrait Art by Steven Miller
Self Portrait Art by Pi
Wuvable Oaf Comics by Ed Luce
Embracing The Bear Jeffrey Michels
Mid-Morning Art by Frank Muzzy
When The Bears Go Over The Mountain Ron Suresha
Poetry
"Sexual History, with action figures" by Ed Madden
"Before Spring But After New Years" by Keith Jenkins
Culture Reviews
Toby Johnson on Steve Berman’s Vintage: A Ghost Story
Kim Roberts on Walt Whitman’s Franklin Evans
Toby Johnson on Kitt Cherry’s
Art That Dares: Gay Jesus, Woman Christ and More
Jason Mayernick on Sandor Katz’s
The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved!
Toby Johnson on Mark Tedesco’s
That Undeniable Longing: My Road To and From the Priesthood