14 Camp Classics We Can't Stop Quoting — Bad Girls Edition
These over-the-top tales of bad behavior are the films we love to love — and love to hate.
Adam Sandel
Category Archives: NEWS
My "Ferguson Novel"
My "Ferguson Novel"
I once introduced a best-selling thriller writer at a reading here in Michigan and mentioned–among other things–that he was a finalist for some award. When he got to the podium he quipped, “You know what a finalist means, don’t? It means you didn’t win.”
Everyone laughed at his self-deprecating humor. He wasn’t as famous then as he is now. He hadn’t made multi-million dollar deals with his publisher, hadn’t seen movies of his books, and hadn’t become a kind of go-to guy when writers wanted blurbs for their upcoming books.
But despite the joke, being a finalist does means a lot. Given how many books are submitted in any genre for any contest, it means that your book really stood out, really grabbed the judges’ attention. And this year my suspense novel Assault With a Deadly Lie is a finalist for a Midwest Book Award in the Mystery/Thriller category. I’m thrilled, pun intended.
The book explores the devastating impact on a happy, successful gay couple living in a quiet college town when their lives are savaged by police and they’re subsequently coping with PTSD as well as stalking and much, much, worse without any idea why this is happening to them.
I started the novel five years ago when there wasn’t any national discussion about out-of-control cops, unnecessary SWAT teams, unarmed men being shot dead by cops, tiny Midwestern towns stocking up on armored personnel carriers, and overly-militarized police forces. Now, after 24 books in genres from memoir to historical fiction and beyond, I suddenly find myself having published a book that seems ripped from the headlines.
I’ve won a number of literary prizes before, including a Lambda Literary Award, and Assault With a Deadly Lie might be passed over for another book. But it was chosen by judges who were obviously not homophobic, for one thing, and willing to pick a book with gay content. More importantly, it was chosen at an important point not just in my career but in our national discussion about police violence. To me, that’s always going to be something to treasure.
Lev Raphael’s Nick Hoffman mystery series and other books can be found at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
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How The Religious Right Is Conspiring to Put Discrimination Back Into Law
How The Religious Right Is Conspiring to Put Discrimination Back Into Law
How the religious right is conspiring to put discrimination back into law.
Chadwick Moore
Another Event Moves; Gay Hotel Owners Apologize for Ted Cruz Dinner Party
Another Event Moves; Gay Hotel Owners Apologize for Ted Cruz Dinner Party
One of the owners says he was unaware of how virulently Ted Cruz opposes LGBT equality before hosting the dinner at his home.
Lucas Grindley
Op-ed: Drag Race's Prison-Themed Challenge Raised Uncomfortable Questions
Op-ed: Drag Race's Prison-Themed Challenge Raised Uncomfortable Questions
Orange jumpsuits may have prompted more discussion than the show intended.
Matt Baume
Gay Hotelier Ian Reisner Apologizes For Hosting Dinner For Antigay Ted Cruz, Calls It Terrible Mistake
Gay Hotelier Ian Reisner Apologizes For Hosting Dinner For Antigay Ted Cruz, Calls It Terrible Mistake
I am shaken to my bones by the e-mails, texts, postings and phone calls of the past few days. I made a terrible mistake. I was ignorant, naive and much too quick in accepting a request to co-host a dinner with Cruz at my home without taking the time to completely understand all of his positions on gay rights. I’ve spent the past 24 hours reviewing videos of Cruz’ statements on gay marriage and I am shocked and angry. I sincerely apologize for hurting the gay community and so many of our friends, family, allies, customers and employees. I will try my best to make up for my poor judgement. Again, I am deeply sorry.”
— Gay Hotelier Ian Reisner in a note posted to his Facebook page to address the furor about his association with antigay presidential candidate Ted Cruz, which included hosting a dinner in his home and which led to AIDS/HIC fundraiser Broadway Bares canceling its show at the Reisner-owned 42 West
Jeremy Kinser
Gay Businessman Ian Reisner Apologizes For Hosting Ted Cruz Event
Gay Businessman Ian Reisner Apologizes For Hosting Ted Cruz Event
WASHINGTON — Ian Reisner, a gay businessman who hosted an event for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in New York this week, apologized on Sunday after furious backlash from the gay community.
Reisner and his longtime partner Mati Weiderpass hosted a “fireside chat” with the presidential candidate, who reportedly softened his notoriously anti-gay tone at the event by claiming that, if one of his daughters were gay, “I would love them just as much.” News of Cruz’s appearance prompted a boycott of the two men’s businesses.
In a statement posted to his Facebook page on Sunday, Reisner sought forgiveness for his “poor judgement,” explaining that he did not do his homework on Cruz’s record on marriage equality before agreeing to host the event.
“I am shaken to my bones by the e-mails, texts, postings and phone calls of the past few days. I made a terrible mistake. I was ignorant, naive and much too quick in accepting a request to co-host a dinner with Cruz at my home without taking the time to completely understand all of his positions on gay rights,” he said.
“I’ve spent the past 24 hours reviewing videos of Cruz’ statements on gay marriage and I am shocked and angry. I sincerely apologize for hurting the gay community and so many of our friends, family, allies, customers and employees. I will try my best to make up for my poor judgement. Again, I am deeply sorry,” he added.
Weiderpass posted a photo of Cruz in his home Wednesday night on his Facebook page.
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Bruce Jenner, the Hottentot Venus and Me
Bruce Jenner, the Hottentot Venus and Me
Over the last year, I have been asked many times about Bruce Jenner.
Those around me are aware that I am a therapist and activist working with many transgender individuals, and who lectures about these issues publicly. What’s more, I identify as trans* and genderqueer myself, so it is understandable that, when speculation arises about an individual in the public eye possibly being trans*, people in my circle turn to me.
“What about his hair?” people ask. “His body seems to be changing and he’s so secretive. Have you seen his nose?” “Was he wearing nail polish?” “What about how his family is treating him?” And lastly, “Are those… breasts?”
I have thus far kept my mouth firmly sealed shut.
I can’t help but consider history. The “Hottentot Venus” was a stage and sideshow exhibit; for several years in the early part of the 19th century, Saartjie Baartman, a woman and slave born around 1789 in South Africa and sold to a circus showman, was paraded around London and France for the captivation of the masses. She was displayed naked except for a beaded skirt, though accounts say she sometimes wore a skintight bodysuit. She was different; she was a big woman with a particularly large bottom and labia, as well as dark ebony skin, still uncommon throughout Europe except in slaves… the sum of which only accentuated that her shape and mannerisms were utterly unlike those of the prim, Caucasian women of Europe. She was compared occasionally to an orangutan rather than a woman. Saartije, or more accurately Saartije’s body, was the exhibit.
She was scrutinized by anyone with the price of admission. Every inch was subject to public ridicule, open for public discussion. She had become an exotic, fetishized object valued only for her ability to fascinate.
In the end, her celebrity gone, she died poor and in obscurity.
And my own story feels relevant. I transitioned many years ago in college. I was acutely aware that those who had known me as “Larry” could witness I was changing, and though I never hid, now my classmates were gossiping. One September I was approached in the cafeteria and asked if I’d had surgery that summer. I was stunned; I suddenly realized I no longer retained control over information about my identity, or even about my body, in a way that wasn’t the case for other. I wondered if I could ask about what was hidden within the asker’s pants in response. “You show me yours, and I’ll show you mine,” I wish I had replied. Somehow I recognized it wouldn’t be equally okay.
As humans we seem to have a need to question that which we do not understand. The “strange” thing we see can make us uncomfortable; it does not conform to our interpretation of the world, so we are intrigued and feel compelled to peek. We may simultaneously shove the strange thing away. “It” is other than “us,” — odd and different. “It” is bizarre. Perverse. Often unacceptable.
And as gender is a fundamental way we categorize individuals, when we encounter an individual who does not easily fit within the box that matches the gender they were assigned at birth, we have a natural curiosity, a desire to figure out, and an intuitive need to talk.
Bruce has now made a decision to share his transition publicly, a choice that required a great deal of courage. I have nothing but sympathy for his history of suffering, and I applaud his taking charge of his own narrative. On a much lesser scale, I made the same choices and now talk openly about myself when I speak in public, though it is unclear how much of a choice Saartje could make for herself.
Regardless, questioning and possibly altering one’s gender is agonizing and deeply personal. It can rend your family apart, cost your career, relationships and significant amounts of money, even if you are fortunate to have the financial and social privilege to undergo the changes. The process can take years, an entire lifetime.
Everyone who transitions does so somewhat publicly, though not all of us have cameras focused on our every move. When we speak of Bruce, hopefully we can remember that Bruce is, at heart, a person, and give him the dignity he is due.
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PFLAG Canada's Stunning Tribute to the Gay Couples of the Past Who Were Never Able to Legally Marry: VIDEO
PFLAG Canada's Stunning Tribute to the Gay Couples of the Past Who Were Never Able to Legally Marry: VIDEO
This video tribute to all the couples of the past who were never allowed to marry by law is sure to leave a lump in your throat.
Watch, AFTER THE JUMP…
[h/t Good As You]
Kyler Geoffroy
Gay Youth Group in Israel Reaching Out to Arab LGBTs
Gay Youth Group in Israel Reaching Out to Arab LGBTs
In Jaffa, an LGBT organization seeks to begin a dialogue, according to a story from Haaretz.
Thom Senzee
www.advocate.com/world/2015/04/26/gay-youth-group-israel-reaching-out-arab-lgbts
