Innehållsförteckning för April - May 2014 från The Advocate

RATHER BY ACCIDENT, this issue has taken on a subtheme, one of challenging behemoth, established institutions: GMHC, which was for many years the juggernaut in battling AIDS; the Mormon Church, the global religion of 14 million members that, as an institution, leads the fight to prevent gays and lesbians from marrying in California; and even Britney Spears, undeniably a gay icon. I imagine that we’re going to get a lot of correspondence calling our good sense and provenance into question. Much of what we do in LGBT media and activism is taking on fights, but still, I’m girding my loins for this first one in particular. It’s a look at whether Britney Spears should be considered a gay icon in the classic sense. The answer, in short, is no—not yet.…

With the election last June of Hassan Rouhani as Iran’s president, there were hopes for a Persian Spring that would improve human rights for the country’s struggling LGBT community. Those hopes have not been borne out. Two new studies addressing the plight of the LGBT community in the Islamic Republic—and a detailed letter from human rights organizations to Rouhani—mandate an alarming conclusion: Iran’s authoritarian regime continues to enforce anti-LGBT repression, and sanctions that reflect lethal homophobia remain codified in law. Rouhani declared prior to his election victory: “All Iranian people should feel there is justice” and “Long live citizen rights!” His rhetoric proved to be empty. The United Nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Dr. Ahmed Shaheed, published a scathing indictment…

1 About 1 in 3 Americans who say they were raised Catholic no longer identify as Catholic. Ten percent of Americans are former Catholics. 2 Less than a quarter of Catholics attend weekly Mass, while 38% of Protestants say they go to church weekly. 3 About a quarter (27%) of American Catholics described themselves as “strong” Catholics in 2012, down more than 15 points since the mid-1980s. At 54%, “strong” Protestants make up twice that share. 4 In England and Wales, the church ordained only 16 clergy members in all of 2009. 5 The Church’s own members are breaking rank. Women are now entering the priesthood without the Vatican’s blessing. 8 Even the Pope quit. Pope Benedict only got a 40% approval rating from Americans by 2010—that’s Gerald Ford post-pardoning…

THIS ALL BEGAN with a visit to Ward 86, the nation’s oldest HIV/AIDS clinic. Founded in 1983 at San Francisco General Hospital, Ward 86 was, for many years, a death camp with a dreamy view of palm trees and California sky. In the early ’80s, the average life expectancy of patients admitted there was 18 months—it was where people went to die. It was ground zero in America’s battle with AIDS, and where so much of the epidemic’s early iconography was crystallized: rag-and-bone bodies wasted from pneumonia or encephalitis, catatonia, seizures, bedside vigils. It seemed only appropriate to begin where the epidemic began. Jeff Sheehy, the ward’s communications director, is courteous but puzzled. “There’s really nothing much to see,” he says. “It’s just a clinic.” Sheehy’s response would have been…

MEXICO’S THIRD GENDER The first thing most people notice about muxes (pronounced MOO-shay) is that they appear to be men dressed as women. Some have had their breasts enhanced, others have nose jobs. But most wear long hair, dresses, and some makeup. The majority of muxes start young, in their teens, and are trained in womanly ways by family and friends, taking their place in a Zapotec cultural tradition that predates the Spanish colonizers. Now their traditional role has become that of caretaker. “Sons and daughters get married and have families of their own, so the person that stays to care for the parents is the muxe,” explains Pedro Martinez Linares, a well-known muxe who began his training at age 13. “That’s why they are so highly valued.” Like their…

How I found the truth in the cliché “you can’t help who you fall in love with” DEAR RYAN AND SAM, I can’t think of anything more public than telling you both that I love you in this forum—unless the three of us were on a Jumbotron in a stadium somewhere and broadcast on national television. But that’s not the only reason I am writing. After all, most of the people close to me know you both and know how I feel. But it makes me smile to write it now, and it underscores the last two years with you both. It’s something I didn’t think was possible, and I have deep respect for those things that, despite my once feeling they were impossible, come to be. I hesitated to…

LOVE IN PUTIN’S RUSSIA Contributor Chadwick Moore spent time in Russia on assignment, assessing what daily life is like for gay Muscovites under the antigay Putin regime. Several readers referred to it in terms like “Eye-opening,” and “educational.” And a few more sent simple messages of compassion, presumably to the subjects of the article: “May they all be safe from harm,” and “xxoo.” Reader David Ladabouche shared his own memories of his time in the U.S.S.R.: “I was in the Soviet Union before it broke up and gay people couldn’t let straight friends or relatives know for fear of prison and being thrown out of state owned apartments and loss of employment. Putin was in the powerful KGB then and is bringing all this back to the modern day Russia.…

It was a night made in homo heaven when queer chanteuse Justin Vivian Bond sat down to talk with three-time Tony Award winner Carol Channing about her 70-plus years of iconic performing on the 50th anniversary of the premiere of Hello Dolly! The event, produced in January at New York’s Town Hall by gay nightlife fixture Daniel Nardicio, was called Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: An Intimate Evening with Carol Channing and Justin Vivian Bond, and attendees spoke out on the important issues. Carol Channing is nearly 93 and still working. I expect to retire: Before age 55 4% Age 56–65 19% (“and eat ramen”) Age 65–70 12% After 70 8% I won’t retire, I’ll keep working 42% (“I love my job”) I’m already retired 8% I don’t work 8% (“I don’t…

INEVER WENT to the doctor. I never got sick. At age 45 I still had a body that turned heads. I was indestructible. After ignoring flu symptoms for weeks, I finally got checked out. Since I was at the doctor’s anyway, I agreed to a battery of tests, including a screening for HIV. Why not? I always played safe; I only had sex with people who were negative, and, after all, I was indestructible. A few days later, the doctor called and asked me to come back in. I will never forget the kindness and sadness I saw when he looked directly into my eyes and said, “I’m very sorry to tell you that you have AIDS.” Shock and amazement, followed by anger, filled my mind. I was furious with…

The public awareness campaigns surrounding HIV/AIDS have been a staple of urban billboards, bus shelters, and LGBT magazines for decades. The messages promoting prevention and testing have taken every possible tack. But which message works best? Do the menacing ads promote stigma? Do the ads with muscled, smiling men reduce the urgency of testing? The images’ transformations over the years tell the story of developing priorities and innovative strategies, and a growing awareness that HIV doesn’t discriminate. Smart Card The Play Smart cards are one new strategy that uses provocative art—sexy pin-up images from queer artists including Paul Mpagi Sepuya and Slava Mogutin—to combat HIV. The packs include two trading cards (the reverse side of each has safer sex information), a sticker, and condoms and lube. Visual AIDS (VisualAIDS.org), which…

In life, the gay filmmaker and artist Derek Jarman was a polarizing figure. In death, he represents an alternative to the new gay credo of marriage, mortgage, and monogamy. On the morning of December 22, 1986, Derek Jarman was diagnosed as HIV-positive. In addition to being a controversial filmmaker, author, set designer, gardener, and queer activist, Jarman was also an avid diarist. He wrote many things in his diary on the day of his diagnosis, among them this gem: “We must fight the fears that threaten our garden, for make no mistake, ours is the garden of the poets of Will Shakespeare’s sonnets, of Marlowe, Catullus, of Plato and Wilde, all those who have worked and suffered to keep it watered… Pull yourself together and put on the best of…

Singleness, at least legally, was one of the hallmarks of being gay. Now everyone, even sitcom characters, are pressuring us to get hitched. FOR YEARS, assorted family members would periodically wonder why I wasn’t married. “Because I’m gay” was the obvious response, an easy way to rationalize my glaring lack of ring-wearing and vow-keeping. Well, nowadays that answer just doesn’t cut it any more than I’m cutting a three-tiered cake with tiny wax men in tuxedos on top. Ever since same-sex marriage became legal in New York State in 2011, it hasn’t been quite so simple to explain my impenetrable bachelorhood. “Why aren’t you married?”—a question that comes not only from cousins but from virtually everyone these days—can suddenly only result in one answer: Because I’m a loser, I guess.…

The civil rights movement of the 20th Century has been a good template for LGBT rights—except on employment. Why? We’re still missing a key executive order of the kind that helped level the playing field for racial minorities. The only thing as stunning as the reversal of fortune for marriage equality from 2004-2014 is the way in which workplace fairness for LGBT Americans has languished at the federal level. True, the Senate made an impressive push to pass employment protections last year, but the House of Representatives remains a sizeable hurdle to their final passage. The juxtaposition is particularly interesting if you compare the progression of the gay rights movement to that of the civil rights movement of the 20th century—a model LGBT leaders and historians have often looked to…

How many times has Britney Spears been declared a gay icon? In the last year alone, both the Village Voice and the Guardian did so, and those were just in response to her “Work Bitch” single, in which Spears exhorts the listener: “You want a hot body? / You want a Bugatti? / You want a Maserati? / You better work bitch.” Six songwriters are credited on that track. As to the quality of the singing, it’s hard to say. “Work Bitch” doesn’t actually involve much. And not once in the twohour E! documentary I Am Britney Jean, an extended infomercial for her new twoyear Las Vegas residency, does Spears sing on camera, warm up her voice, or rehearse any new arrangements. Her dancing, at least since “Toxic,” has seemed…

When the news broke that same-sex couples in Utah were lining up at the Salt Lake County courthouse to marry, a collective “what?” erupted from court watchers and pundits. Really? Utah? It’s the most Republican state, having gone red in every presidential election since 1968. Utah? Are you sure? Though the overturning of the state’s constitutional ban was the action of a federal judge and not the electorate, nevertheless it happened in a state where religion influences politics to an outsized degree. Over 62% of Utah’s population is Mormon, and in 2008 exit polls, 75% of voters in Utah elections identified as Mormon. What the church says, covertly and overtly, often determines the political course of the state. But Mormonism is unlike other, older religions. Its capacity for change has…

The temperature is mild on a recent afternoon, but the wind still whips off the water of the Hudson River as one walks west on 33rd Street from Manhattan’s Penn Station through a massive construction site that is the city’s much-anticipated Hudson Yards mega-development. Finally, inside a towering concrete bunker that houses the Associated Press, one finds GMHC, the country’s first AIDS agency and a pioneer in HIV services and prevention. The organization has made this its home since 2011 after moving here from Chelsea, its longtime base. The ground-floor entrance, separate from the building’s main entrance, feels cold and cinderblocky, but upon arriving on the sixth floor, one finds a convivial, multiracial crowd of about 100 HIVpositive clients, many over the age of 50, some with obvious disabilities from…

The organization that began as a separatist recordproducing collective came to symbolize all that defined lesbianism. Then they set out to sea. MY HUSBAND, JACOB, is scooping mango-shrimp salsa onto his platter when he realizes that standing next to him at the buffet aboard this city-sized Holland America cruise ship is Col. Margarethe “Grethe” Cammermeyer, one of the most visible, highest-ranking lesbians to fight the military’s now-defunct “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. He blushes, turns to her to say hello but manages only to stammer, “Thank you.” He meant for her service, her legacy, her willingness to come out and fight the good fight on behalf of all queer soldiers. But I’m sure she thought he was just a geeky trans boy thanking her for passing that bowl of chips.…

AFTER HIS BREAKOUT performance in Bridesmaids, Irish actor Chris O’Dowd hopes to engage more gay fans this spring with his Broadway debut as oafish simpleton Lennie in Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck’s 1937 play about Depression-era migrant workers—even if they’re mostly there to see James Franco. —Brandon Voss You’ve spoken about how your role in Bridesmaids as Officer Rhodes, Kristen Wiig’s love interest, positioned you to women as a heartthrob for the first time. Have you also seen a spike in interest from gay men? From time to time, when I’m feeling my lowest, you guys pipe up and make my day on Twitter. Maybe it was the uniform—and hey, I’m turned on by the Irish accent myself. Regardless, thanks for coming along for the ride. Starring opposite James…