Lez Keep It Real

I touched on the democratic forum that was held on LOGO yesterday, and while I still am not ready to endorse any candidate just yet, I thought I’d stay on topic and highlight one of the most awkward moments of the evening.

For those of you who didn’t have an opportunity to catch the ground-breaking event, I hope that you will see it on a rerun because it is so very important and a key piece to the upcoming Presidential election. The panel of inquisitors consisted of Melissa Etheridge, Johnathan Capehart (from the Washington Post) and Joe Solmonese from the Human Rights Campaign. Bloomberg News columnist Margaret Carlson mediated. Every question was phrased appropriately and obviously researched for each particular candidate. However, there was one question in particular (posed by the raspy “Yes, I am” singer”) that made me feel uncomfortable even though I was sitting thousands of miles away on my worn-in couch, with my feet up, and a nice glass of red wine in my hand - I still felt the need to shift my body.

Before she asked any of her questions, Melissa was courteous, almost over complimentary, self-depreciating and at times, even innocently cute when introducing herself or speaking candidly with each candidate.

But, with Gov. Bill Richardson, Melissa wasted no time with small talk. Johnathan Capeheart captured the “Oh, no he didn’t moment” brilliantly while also touching on some key points in giving us an overall assessment of the forum itself.

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I’m sure that most of you heard about the democratic forum held on LOGO that centered around GLBT issues. I watched it and plan on endorsing a candidate later on in the week. It was a landmark event and I was happy that I was able to devote some time to educate myself on the candidates for 2008.

I’m really apathetic when it comes to politics, but this time around I plan on voting based on more than just my gut. I want to know where each candidate stands on the issues that will affect my every day life. I’m moderate and therefore would vote for either a democrat or a republican as long as I felt they were the right person for the job. Needless to say, I was extremely disappointed in the fact that the all of the republican candidates declined to having a forum of their own on LOGO.

Rep. Denni Kucinich was one of six candidates who participated in the forum. He is so evolved for a politician, it’s almost unreal. And while I admire his spirit and am thankful for his support and voice in backing GBLT issues in congress, I know that the odds of him getting the democratic ticket are next to none. I know because of things like this …

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As most of you know, I am a writer. I write poetry, columns, articles, short stories and novels all while using my creative powers in the world of advertising as a full time copywriter.

I’ve had a good year as far as publishing goes … and now I am famous.

Well … famous in Buffalo, NY that is - as far as The Hamburg Sun News is concerned.

As my publications become available, I’ll post them in this blog. Stay tuned for the publication of Best Lesbian Love Stories: Summer Flings, published by Alyson Books due out in October. I have a story entitled, The Sight of Her, which will be included in the anthology.

Hey I’ll admit it … I’m not afraid of a shameless plug!

the hamburg sun news, buffalo ny, best lesbian love stories: summer flings, alyson books

This week’s Come Out & Play post continues to spotlight Marco, a well-known character from the hit show, Degrassi.

Basically, Degrassi is a totally awesome show! (That’s my inner 80’s child coming through!) There’s an openly gay character on the show named Marco DelRossi. His inner struggle with coming out was made into a two-part episode a couple of years ago. It was brilliantly scripted and just as wonderfully acted. Other episodes followed, revolving around his coming out to his family and friends. I thought I’d show it as a series, breaking it down in video clips from YouTube.

Remember the days when you’d watch a film in class, knowing you wouldn’t have to sit through another lecture for at least a week because that’s how long it would take to get through the film in the amount of time the class allotted. Well, think of this as a Come Out & Play 101 film! It’s broken up into nine parts.

(If you are confused and missed the introduction of Marco’s story, go here for a refresher. To view the other parts of Marco’s story, click on the Come Out & Play category on the right hand side to watch parts 1-5!)

This is Marco’s story part 6:
Make sure to come back next Friday for the sixth part of Marco’s coming out story! Trust me, it only gets better!

Tune in every Friday for the Come Out & Play series, featuring coming out stories of celebrities, every day people, personal reflections, advice, tid bits and everything else concerning the complicated world of coming out!

Got an interesting coming out story to tell? Contact me and I will feature it in an upcoming post of Come Out & Play.

degrassi, marco delrossi, come out & play, coming out story, canada, gay and lesbian issues

This week’s Notable Lesbian is:

Betty Berzon
January 18, 1928 0 January 24, 2006

Betty Berzon was an American author and psychotherapist known for her work with the gay and lesbian communities. She was among the first psychotherapists to assist gay and lesbian clients. After coming out as a lesbian in 1968, she began providing therapy to gays and lesbians, and in 1971, she organized the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center as well as an organization of gays and lesbians within the American Psychiatric Association, which declassified homosexuality as a mental illness two years later. Berzon was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1986. She was treated by mastectomy and her cancer remained in remission for many years. The cancer returned in 2001, and Berzon died on January 24, 2006. She is survived by Teresa DeCrescenzo, the president of Gay and Lesbian Adolescent Social Services, whom Berzon met in 1973 and married during a mass wedding ceremony at the 1993 March on Washington.

Interesting tid bit:
Berzon’s books included Positively Gay (1979), Permanent Partners (1988), and The Intimacy Dance (1996). Berzon also wrote a personal memoir, Surviving Madness, a Therapist’s Own Story (2002) in which she discussed her previous suicide attempt and institutionalization. The book received a Lambda Literary Award for excellence in gay and lesbian writing. For many years, she wrote an advice column on gay relationships for PlanetOut.

Read the Gay.com obituary

If you have a suggestion for a Notable Lesbian, e-maill me at lyndsey.darcangelo@451press.net or use the contact form above and I’ll highlight her in an upcoming post.

Betty Berzon, Theresa DeCrescenzo, breast cancer, positively gay, permanent partners, the intimacy dance, lamda literary award, gay and lesbian adolescent social services

This happened to me yesterday. True story. I’m driving home on my late afternoon commute, perfectly content to be listening to the Avenue Q soundtrack with my windows rolled down and a steady breeze circling through the entire interior of my 2003 Echo, when traffic slows and becomes congested.

I don’t panic or curse because hey … it happens.

I inch along until my exit, which isn’t too far away at this point, turn on the off ramp and pull in behind another long line of cars waiting behind an incredibly slow stoplight. We are waiting to turn left onto Harlem Rd., which is overcrowded with construction workers and life-sized versions of numerous Tonka Truck vehicles.

The stoplight changes very slowly because of the obstruction and allows maybe four or five cars through at a time. This does not upset me in the least, as I have the wonderful cast of Avenue Q there with me in the car, keeping me company.

Suddenly, I hear a faint scream. I glance in my rearview and a woman, dressed in business attire and Gucci sunglasses, is steering her little sports car off to the side of the road to see if she can get around the line of cars in front of her. Of course, there’s no room and if she goes any further she’ll end up in a ditch. I’m instantly amused by her, and watch as though I’m watching a suspenseful television program where even if you have to go to the bathroom so bad it hurts, you wait for a commercial because you don’t want to miss a minute of it.

She pulls her car back onto the road and bursts wildly into a temper tantrum. Mind you, this woman is pushing forty years old at least. She pounds the steering wheel, honks her horn and lets a tapestry of obscenities fly free from her mouth so loud that I can hear them clearly from the front seat of my own car. I laugh at her impudence, amazed that a grown woman would act in such a way or let such an unforeseeable circumstance anger her to such a point that she believes honking her horn and casting evil eyes at the construction workers will somehow get her to her destination quicker.
When the cars don’t move, shocking I know, she holds up her hands in frustration. How dare the people in front of her abide by traffic laws and regulations? She has places to go, people to see!

I’m laughing uncontrollably now, and I think that she notices. My intent isn’t to mock her or be rude, I am just genuinely entertained by her antics.

The cars eventually move, as anyone with an ounce of patience would have known they would. I get closer to stoplight; about five cars remain in front of me when it turns green again. And, just as I approach it turns red. So, like any normal, sensible human being who is well-aware that red means “stop,” I hit the breaks. Well, this was apparently the last straw for Ms. Gucci Sunglasses. She lays on the horn, tells me to “eff off” and is absolutely appalled by the fact that I didn’t go through a red light so that she could hitch the front of her car to my bumper and weasel her way through as well.

My amusement shifts, and I feel as though I’m being singled out simply because I happen to be in the car in front of her. I casually stick my arm out of the window, point to the light and hold up my hand as if to say, “It’s a red light lady. What did you expect me to do?” She returns with another friendly “eff you” and a “give me a break” for good measure. Then she frantically digs her cell phone out of her purse, clamps it to her ear and begins illuminating the person on the other end with her sad story. She is the victim, and I am the evil driver in front of her keeping her from her extremely important appointment.

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TORONTO, Ontario — With a rapidly growing, comprehensive resource directory that ranges from Arts & Entertainment to Travel & Real Estate, Gay-Villager.com is fast becoming the one stop destination for visitors seeking resources within the LGBT community.

The directory features free full page microsite listings with photo uploads, web and email links, as well as content information. The beauty of this new style of directory is that you get a visual, along with the standard information, which, in cases of seeking vacation accommodations, you can view the facilities and decorative manner in which the hosts have to offer.

Understanding that there is a lot of wealth in this niche market, the owners of the website are also aware that there are a lot of people that can’t afford to pay for this kind of exposure, and this gives them the opportunity to be visible in the community and use the listing as their own personal website.

For those seeking more prominent exposure, “featured” options and banner advertising is available. There is also a category for Non-profits and Social Clubs for those wishing to connect with others that have the same interests or are supporting a cause, as well, a new free Real Estate Listings category for agents.

Since its inception in 2006, the directory is breaking the 1,000 listings mark and gets new listings every day. Traffic numbers have risen to approx. 10k visitors a week in this short time, and continues to build.

Above and beyond the Community Directory, Gay-Villager features a Personals Section and Chat for Men and Women, helpful links and postings for Gay Pride celebrations across North America.

In short, Gay-Villager has created a complete resource site for the LGBT community, connecting businesses and individuals through Canada and the U.S.

So go on and check it out!

gay-villager.com, canada

I’m all about giving props to people who I feel deserve a nice, sound pat on the back for a job well done. John Corvino, a columnist for 365gay.com and philosophy professor at Wayne State University in Detroit, wrote a column about Hairspray, not the aluminum can but the movie, and examined the relationship between race and homosexuality. It was such a well-written and extremely thought-provoking piece that I wanted to share it with the Lez Keep it Real audience.

When I was in junior high I used to sit at the “black” lunch table in the cafeteria, much to the shock (and occasional ridicule) of my white schoolmates. The seating was not officially segregated, but with rare exceptions African-Americans sat together, and I sat with them.

It wasn’t a grand political statement or a conscious act of solidarity or anything high-minded. On the contrary, it was a reluctant acknowledgment of my outsider status. While members of the white, mostly affluent student majority called me a “fag,” the black students were nice to me, and I felt more comfortable around them.

Some years later I started going to the gay beaches on Fire Island, where I noticed a number of interracial straight couples. Interestingly, the “straight” part stuck out more than the “interracial” part—which, I later learned, was their main reason for choosing the gay beach. “We get a lot of flak at the straight beaches,” they told me. “But gays are cool about it.” Fellow outsiders, once again.

I thought about both of these events recently as I watched the movie Hairspray, the 2007 incarnation of the 1988 John Waters film (later a Broadway musical). One of the film’s most poignant moments occurs when Penny , a working-class white girl, and Seaweed, a black male, reveal their relationship to Seaweed’s mom, Motormouth Mabelle (played by Queen Latifah).

“Well, love is a gift,” Mabelle responds. “A lot of people don’t remember that. So, you two better brace yourselves for a whole lotta ugly comin’ at you from a never-ending parade of stupid.”

Many have speculated about whether and how Hairspray counts as a “gay” movie. Of course, there’s the John Waters provenance, the drag lead character (originated by Divine and played on Broadway by Harvey Fierstein), and the inherent campiness of movie musicals. But the most profound connection lies in its message of acceptance: Hairspray celebrates forbidden love in the face of “a never-ending parade of stupid.” It’s a theme gays know well.

Gay-rights opponents often object to comparisons between the civil-rights movement and the gay-rights movement. Race, they say, is an immutable, non-behavioral characteristic, whereas homosexuality involves chosen behaviors; thus it’s wrong (even insulting) to compare the two.

Even putting aside the fact that “civil rights” are something we’re all fighting for—equal treatment under the law—this objection flounders. It misunderstands the nature of racism, the nature of homophobia, and the point of the analogy between the two.

Although race is in some sense “an immutable, non-behavioral characteristic,” racism is all about chosen behaviors. The racist doesn’t simply object to people’s skin color: he objects to their moving into “our” neighborhoods, marrying “our” daughters, attacking “our” values and so on. In other words, he objects to behaviors, both real and imagined. What’s more, discriminating on the basis of race is most certainly chosen behavior. Calling race “non-behavioral” misses that important fact.

At the same time, calling homosexuality “behavioral” misses quite a bit as well. Yes, homosexuality (like heterosexuality) is expressed in behaviors, and some of those behaviors offend people. But one need not be sexually active to be kicked out of the house, fired from a job, or verbally or physically abused for being gay. Merely being perceived as gay (without any homosexual “behavior”) is enough to trigger the abuse.

Even where chosen behaviors trigger the abuse, it doesn’t follow that they warrant the abuse—any more than blacks’ choosing to marry whites (and vice versa) warrants abuse. So the insistence that race is immutable whereas homosexuality is behavioral, even if it were accurate, misses the point. Gays, like blacks, face unjust discrimination, often in the name of religion, that interferes with some of the most intimate aspects of their lives. Hence the analogy.

I’m not denying that there are important differences between race and sexual orientation (or between racism and heterosexism). Gays and lesbians do not face the cumulative generational effects of discrimination the way ethnic minorities do, and we have nothing in our history comparable to slavery or Jim Crow. On the other hand, no one is kicked out of the house because his biological parents figured out that he’s black. There are plusses and minuses to the lack of generational continuity (as well as the other differences)—and little point in arguing over who’s worse off.

Early in Hairspray, the young lead character announces, “People who are different—their time is coming.” We “different” people have much to learn from one another, as the never-ending parade of stupid marches on. ~365gay.com

Coincidentally enough, I just saw Hairspray last week and loved every musical minute of it. John Travolta was … um, quite scary, Amanda Bynes was incredible cute and hilarious, Zack Effron was perfect, and James Marsden was surprising. But, my favorite performance was given by the Queen herself, Latifa. And my favorite line of the movie came straight from her character’s motormouth.

“Well, love is a gift. A lot of people don’t remember that. So, you two better brace yourselves for a whole lotta ugly comin’ at you from a never-ending parade of stupid.”

hairspray, queen latifa, motormouth mabelle, 365gay.com, john corvino, zach effron, amanda bynes, james marsden, john travolta

Sometimes it’s easier to get a point across after a situation occurs rather than before … it’s as if people need to “see” it before they “believe” it. The GLBT population has been campaigning for the past few years on behalf of gay marriage and why we not only deserve, but need the same benefits and legal rights just as much as any other heterosexual couple because without them our hands are tied.

We aren’t making waves and speaking out because we want to “lessen the sanctity of marriage” or “make a mockery of such a union.” We are standing up and speaking out because of situations like this …

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This week’s Come Out & Play post continues to spotlight Marco, a well-known character from the hit show, Degrassi.

Basically, Degrassi is a totally awesome show! (That’s my inner 80’s child coming through!) There’s an openly gay character on the show named Marco DelRossi. His inner struggle with coming out was made into a two-part episode a couple of years ago. It was brilliantly scripted and just as wonderfully acted. Other episodes followed, revolving around his coming out to his family and friends. I thought I’d show it as a series, breaking it down in video clips from YouTube. Remember the days when you’d watch a film in class, knowing you wouldn’t have to sit through another lecture for at least a week because that’s how long it would take to get through the film in the amount of time the class allotted. Well, think of this as a Come Out & Play 101 film! It’s broken up into nine parts.

(If you are confused and missed the introduction of Marco’s story, go here for a refresher. To view the other parts of Marco’s story, click on the Come Out & Play category on the right hand side to watch parts 1-4!)

This is Marco’s story part 5:
Make sure to come back next Friday for the sixth part of Marco’s coming out story! Trust me, it only gets better!

Tune in every Friday for the Come Out & Play series, featuring coming out stories of celebrities, every day people, personal reflections, advice, tid bits and everything else concerning the complicated world of coming out!

Got an interesting coming out story to tell? Contact me and I will feature it in an upcoming post of Come Out & Play.

degrassi, marco delrossi, come out & play, coming out story, canada, gay and lesbian issues

This week’s Notable Lesbian is:

Ruth Ellis
July 23, 1899 - October 5, 2000

Ruth Ellis was a pioneer in courage as well as civil rights. She came out as a lesbian around 1915 and graduated from Springfield High School in 1919, at a time when fewer than 7% of African Americans graduated from secondary school. In the 1920s, she met the only woman she ever lived with, Ceciline “Babe” Franklin. They moved together to Detroit, Michigan in 1937. Ruth became the first American woman to own a printing business in Detroit. She made a living printing stationery, fliers, and posters out of her house. Throughout her life, Ruth Ellis was an advocate for the rights of gays and lesbians, as well as for the rights of African Americans. She became a role model for African Americans, lesbians, and seniors. The Ruth Ellis Center, built after her death, honors the life and work of Ruth Ellis. The center is one of only four agencies in the United States dedicated to helping homeless LGBT teens and young adults. They have a drop-in center and street outreach program as well as housing teens and young adults in an emergency shelter and transitional living programs.

Interesting tid bit:
Ruth and Babe’s house was also known in the African American community as the “gay spot”. It was a central location for gay and lesbian parties, and also served as a refuge for African American gays and lesbians. Ruth and Babe stayed together for over 30 years. Babe died in 1973. Ruth lived to be 100 years old, and was the oldest living lesbian in America.

Learn more.

Visit The Ruth Ellis Center.

If you have a suggestion for a Notable Lesbian, e-mail me at lyndsey.darcangelo@451press.net or use the contact form above and I’ll highlight her in an upcoming post.

ruth ellis, the ruth ellis center, ceciline babe franklin, notable lesbians, gay spot

I’m just going to let this particular little ditty speak for itself …

(Johnson City, Tennessee) The minister of a Baptist church has been charged with indecent exposure and driving under the influence, and police officers say he propositioned them.

Tommy Tester, 58, of Bristol, Va., was wearing a skirt when he was arrested last week after allegedly urinating in front of children at a car wash, police said.

Police also said Tester offered to perform oral sex on officers who were sent to the scene.

Authorities identified Tester as the minister of Gospel Baptist Church in Bristol and an employee of Christian radio station WZAP-AM in Bristol.

There was no immediate response Tuesday to calls to the church and Tester’s home.

WZAP issued a statement Monday asking for prayers and saying Tester had been suspended during an investigation.

“We pray this matter can be quickly resolved,” WZAP owner Al Morris said in the statement.

Tester was released on $1,000 bail. A hearing is scheduled for Oct. 25. ~ 365.com

Sigh.

The more this happens, the more I chuckle to myself and think … And we gays are the ones with the issues?

Please Advise: this post is not meant to say that all members of the Christian faith are wacked out. I am a spiritual person myself and I do share many of the same Christian beliefs as others. What I have issue with aren’t the many Christians out there who preach love for every human being, but those Christians who preach hate against homosexuality all while simultaneously exposing themselves to little children, engaging in illicit sexual encounters with the same sex and dabbling in drugs.

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baptist church, tommy tester, indecent exposure, 365gay.com