MOROCCAN EXPATRIATE Abdellah Taïa has spent the last eight years in France, writing, acting in films, and living the dream of being an intellectual in Paris. The jacket copy for Salvation Army broadcasts that Taïa is, or is reckoned by some to be, “the only gay man” writing about a country in which homosexuality is still a crime.
MoreTHE ESSAYS collected by Philip Kolin in this volume expand upon historian David Bergman’s observations concerning “the genealogy of transformation that occurs as successive generations of gay writers work through each others’ material, transfiguring a homophobic trope into a somewhat celebratory one.”
MoreTHE January inauguration of President Barack Obama saw unprecedented levels of GLBT participation. With hope in the air, expectations for forward movement on civil rights ran high. But the Obama transition sent mixed signals, leading some to question prospects for follow-through on promises made to the GLBT community.
MoreMORE THAN half of the world’s remaining sodomy laws-laws that criminalize consensual homosexual conduct-are relics of British colonial rule. This is the conclusion of a major study by Human Rights Watch released late last year in a 66-page report titled “This Alien Legacy: …
MorePRIOR TO moving to Lebanon, I’d joke with my friends, saying that I was traveling back in time to a world that resembles that of the late 1960’s in North America: a country that lacks openly gay public spaces and where the vast majority of homosexual men are closeted due to a strict patriarchal system. Unlike the Americans in the 60’s, however, these men have on-line chat sites, the most popular of which are Manjam.com and Gaydar.co.uk.
More… The first feature-length documentary on gay themes to win an Oscar, The Times of Harvey Milk depicts with startling frankness and immediacy Harvey Milk’s political ascendancy as the first openly gay politician elected to public office in a major U.S. city.
MoreLARGER THAN LIFE, the statue of John Betjeman (1906-1984) in the newly renovated St. Pancras International Station in London serves as a reminder of the late Poet Laureate’s love of rail travel. But its proximity to the Victorian Midland Grand Hotel has an added poignancy, for the hotel’s dining room was the scene of one of Oscar Wilde’s public humiliations.
MoreWITH THE DEATH of John Costelloe, the actor who played Jim “Johnny Cakes” Witowski on The Sopranos, fans of the landmark TV series (1999-2007) lost an important player in the show’s most gay-positive, and perhaps most crucial, story line. The 47-year-old actor and former New York City firefighter shot himself late last year in his basement bedroom in Brooklyn.
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… Jordan’s one-person show and his new memoir of the same title tell the story of how he got to where he is. While not a leading man, he has been able to have a very successful career as an actor.
MoreWhat was particularly striking about the campaign to enact Prop 8 was
the extent to which proponents went out of their way to claim that the
new provision would not take rights away from gay couples.
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