Indholdsfortegnelse for November - December 2020 i The Advocate

IN FEBRUARY OF this year, I traveled to Pittsburgh to visit the set of Clea DuVall’s holidaythemed romantic comedy Happiest Season, which stars Kristen Stewart (Abby) and Mackenzie Davis (Harper) as a couple navigating family dynamics at Christmas. While on set at a country club where they were shooting a party scene, I marveled as DuVall quietly commanded the film. Despite the crowds of extras and the cast that included her stars Stewart, Davis, Mary Steenburgen, Victor Garber, Mary Holland, Alison Brie, and Aubrey Plaza, she sat down with me twice that evening to discuss the power of the story she was creating. With my focus continually on the history of LGBTQ+ representation (I was, after all, in the presence of a lesbian icon), I gently floated the narrative that…

61% of players who didn’t participate in Pride Night games admitted using homophobic language within the previous two weeks. 38% of hockey players who participated used similar language within the same time period. 69.3% of those not playing in Pride Night games reported hearing antigay slurs from teammates. 54.1% of players in Pride Night games reported hearing such slurs. 91.6% of players polled believed, “A gay player would feel ‘very’ welcome on my team.” Source: Monash University in Australia.…

Donald Trump has, by almost any measure, been the worst president in U.S. history, or at least within the memory of people living in 2020. But for some reason, he has remained popular with a sizable segment of Americans. This issue of The Advocate went to press before the election results were in, but no matter what the outcome, the question remains of why Trump’s diehard fans stayed that way. Yes, he’s made some people happy with his tax cuts and appointments of right-wing judges, and he is beloved by white supremacists and conspiracy theorists, but he has downplayed a pandemic that has taken the lives of more than 218,000 Americans and caused an economic crash. One would think his personal style, bullying, and insults would alienate many people. Yet,…

38 million number of people living with HIV globally. 1.2 million number of Americans living with HIV as of 2018. 690,000 number of people who died of AIDSrelated illnesses in 2019, down from 1.1 million in 2010. 90% reduction in a 10-year goal the U.S. government set in 2019 for new HIV infections. 90-90-90 UNAIDS’s goals for 2020: 90% of all people with HIV around the globe diagnosed, 90% of those living with the virus on antiretroviral treatment, and 90% of those on treatment achieving viral suppression. 81-81-88 where the world was before COVID-19 derailed many HIV/AIDS efforts. Sources: UNAIDS and The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention…

Pose’s breakout star, Ryan Jamaal Swain, always knew he wanted to be a performer. The showbiz bug bit him at 4 years old after he’d finished a tap routine and he relished in the applause so much that he couldn’t bring himself to exit the stage. Thus began his serious pursuit of the arts. As a child in Birmingham, Ala., Swain studied ballet, jazz, and modern hip-hop dance. He performed with several dance companies before turning to acting at the Alabama School of Fine Arts. He went on to earn a BFA at Howard University and study at the British American Drama Academy in Oxford, England. His hard work and late nights at rehearsals paid off in 2017 when Swain, then 23, landed the role of Damon Richards in Ryan…

Naomi Wolf’s latest book, Outrages: Sex, Censorship, and the Criminalization of Love, was initially scheduled for publication last year. But after its release in the U.K, the publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, abruptly canceled its U.S. distribution and even directed “librarians to destroy the book,” says Wolf, a feminist author known for The Beauty Myth. It’s an odd parallel to the content of Outrages, which details the censorship and destruction of LGBTQ+ literature in 19th-century England. Now expanded and released by a new publisher, Outrages traces the rise of statesponsored censorship and homophobia to an explosion of infectious diseases in the 1800s, after which “filth” was seen not just as a personal issue but a public one. The British government later expanded its reach to words and ideas it considered dangerous…

While studies consistently show that the majority of those in the LGBTQ+ community are religious, it is also these religious institutions that are the source of great trauma for queer people. Growing up, Darnell L. Moore, author of No Ashes in the Fire, “was a church boy who maintained a theology that was queer-antagonistic.” He went to Princeton Theological Seminary in search of a safe place to question his religion fully. “[It’s where I gained] my ability to push back against what I consider to be violent theologies, theologies that kill the spirit and which can often lead, at least in my case, to incidences of suicidal ideation because you’re taught to believe that this God who is love somehow withholds their love from you,” he tells LGBTQ&A, The Advocate’s…

KRISTEN STEWART Hair ADIR ABERGEL Makeup JILLIAN DEMPSEY Stylist TARA SWENNEN ON KRISTEN: RTA jacket and shorts ELLIATT white button-up Stylist’s own socks Thom Browne shoes CLEA DUVALL Hair RICHARD MARIN Makeup GEORGIE EISDELL Stylist MARY INACIO ON CLEA: Bella Freud suit Stella Luna boots DuVall’s own necklace MACKENZIE DAVIS Hair BOBBY ELIOT Makeup MÉLANIE INGLESSIS Stylist KARLA WELCH ON MACKENZIE: Celine suit x karla T-shirt Anita Ko collar necklace and bracelet Davis’s own gold chain necklace Stuart Weitzman shoes Holiday and movie magic converge on a below-freezing February evening in a Pittsburgh suburb. Film crew members bustle on the grounds of the Fox Chapel Golf Club, where earlier that day, they’d made snow to emulate a white Christmas. Meanwhile, in a moment of pure serendipity, Mother Nature lays down…

It was an extraordinary year by all accounts. By late March of 2020, memes and sentiments flooded social media. It was the year folks wanted to forget or jump past to 2021 for a fresh start as health and economic concerns bore down. Through the pandemic, the uprisings over police brutality against Black people and systemic racism in the country, and a hyperconservative judge taking Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s place on the Supreme Court, there was innovation, resilience (something LGBTQ+ people know a thing about), and a few bright lights. Leslie Jordan and Schitt’s Creek kept us laughing while Pete Buttigieg made history. Some folks learned all about the mother of sourdough and others became experts at the art of the virtual meeting. Here are the events that shaped the year…

HAVING JUST TURNED 30 this year, comedian, actress, producer, director, and nowauthor Kelsey Darragh has racked up some impressive achievements, despite being a self-proclaimed “proud three-time college dropout.” After making a name for herself as a video producer and development partner at BuzzFeed Motion Pictures and helping build one of Facebook’s most popular comedy pages, the female-driven SOML, Darragh also gained notoriety by hosting her own web series, Ladies’ Room. Currently, the out bisexual entertainer keeps herself busy making appearances across multiple platforms, including the streaming show Dating #No Filter, her hilariously relatable podcast Confidently Insecure, and her YouTube channel — where she candidly discusses everything from abusive relationships to her present healthy open relationship with boyfriend DJ Jared Lucas to her struggles with chronic pain and sobriety (trigger warnings…

There’s a line in Harvey Fierstein’s Bella Bella, about the firebrand politician and feminist Bella Abzug, that is completely of-the-moment, although referencing a U.S. president from 45 years ago. “Gerald Ford, who has forevermore proven that no matter what you do, you can get away with it as long as you have powerful friends,” Abzug says in the play. She could just as well be referring to Donald Trump and his cronies. And that’s the way Fierstein, who eventually stepped in to play the role, intended it. Bella Bella ties America’s past to its present, especially in terms of the treatment of women who enter the boys’ club of national politics. The 2016 presidential election and the sexist treatment of Hillary Clinton, akin to how Abzug was treated, was the…

It’s not easy to watch The Obituary of Tunde Johnson. The drama shows a Black gay teen, Tunde Johnson (Steven Silver), being killed by the Los Angeles Police Department. Death is no escape for Tunde, however. Each time he dies, he wakes up and it is once again morning. By the end of each day, like a nightmarish Groundhog Day, he will once again be shot or choked to death by police officers. It was not an easy film to create either, says director Ali LeRoi. However, LeRoi sees the subject matter as vital when Black death plays on a violent time loop in America. “How many times do we have to tell a version of this story before any sort of serious action is taken around it?” LeRoi asks.…

Even in a world as full of uncertainty as the current one, indie rocker Heather Reid of the Murmurs fame is noticeably optimistic. “If I’m going to be on this earth, I am going to find the light and I want to have the best time being here,” she says over Zoom on a sunny morning. Two years after being diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, Reid has moved from Los Angeles to Bend, Ore., where she surrounds herself with the things that heal her — the music of Stevie Wonder and Tina Turner, being in nature, meditation, and her family. She also doesn’t stop moving forward. “I want to get this work done,” she says with a light in her eyes. “I think as an artist, if you don’t do…

The Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt has gone virtual. All of the 48,000 individual panels have been digitized in a pixelating partnership between the National AIDS Memorial and AIDS Quilt Touch. Visitors to AIDSMemorial.org can now search for panels dedicated to friends, loved ones, and famous figures. They can also navigate a digital interface to scroll around the quilt in its entirety and zoom into specific sections. The project is a “labor of love” from developers Anne Balsamo, Dale McDonald, and Jon Winet, who spent almost two decades digitally stitching together high-resolution images of the quilt. They and a team of collaborators worked in conjunction with the Names Project Foundation with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities to complete the complex project. While the experience of viewing the…

In the late ’90s, Clea DuVall started making a name for herself in Hollywood, appearing in high school shows and movies like Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Can’t Hardly Wait, The Faculty, and She’s All That, and the drama Girl, Interrupted alongside Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie. She usually played “alternative” or “goth” girls, the type of character beloved by LGBTQ+ fans. But it was her role as a teen lesbian at a conversion camp in 2000’s classic indie comedy But I’m a Cheerleader that established her as a queer icon. This December, Lionsgate is releasing a special 20th Anniversary Director’s Cut of the film. DuVall could’ve rested on her lesbian laurels, but instead, she returned to queer roles when she played a bisexual fortune teller in HBO’s Carnivàle from 2003…