Letters to the Editor
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How We Got the Rainbow
Given the times, readers will not be surprised to learn that lots of drugs and easy promiscuity figure prominently in [Rainbow Warrior]; it was the ’70s. The memoir continues into the plague years, and Baker watches his friends as they waste away and perish. But Baker survived, moving to New York City in 1994 and remaining active in LGBT political life until his death in 2017.
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The Big Picture (in Pictures)
Part [of We Are Everywhere] opens with the memorial held in Los Angeles in 1994 to honor Dorr Legg, cofounder of the interracial homophile social club Knights of the Clock and co-publisher of ONE, Inc., the first homophile magazine in the U.S. Attendees included pioneer gay rights activists Jim Kepner and Morris Kight as well as legendary gay rights activists and rivals Hal Call and Harry Hay…
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What Ayn Rand Hoped You’d Miss
What remains is the problem of reconciling Rand’s professed disgust for homosexuality with her apparent fascination with it in The Fountainhead. Let’s start with the premise that Rand herself was powerfully attracted to men. When entering into the minds of some of her male characters, she may have unconsciously written her own attraction to men into their psyches, finding this a more natural writing task than describing an attraction to women.
MoreThe Unknown Andrea Dworkin
Most people know Andrea Dworkin as the radical feminist who launched a campaign against pornography in the 1980s and ’90s, but this is only one slice of a fascinating life of activism. I’ve recently completed a full-scale biography of Andrea Dworkin that will be published by the New Press in 2020. It’s based on her remarkably rich (and previously closed) archive at Schlesinger Library at Harvard.
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HBO’s Takedown of Michael Jackson
This documentary (Leaving Neverland) is tragic, riveting, and flawed. New challenges to its accounts have come out more recently, as construction documents reveal that a structure on Jackson’s property where [James] Safechuck claims to have been abused in 1992 was only built in 1994.
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A Singer-Songwriter to Watch Out For
If the vocals on Sing to Me Instead don’t give you the chills, you should see a doctor. On a twelve-track album that details numerous relationships, old and new, the strongest of the songs are “Ease My Mind” and “Grow As We Go.” The former, which dabbles in gospel music, allows [Ben] Platt to channel his inner Whitney Houston …
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Tim Miller’s Body Politic
Tim Miller, interviewed by John R. Killacky: QUEER artist-provocateur extraordinaire Tim Miller delights with the publication of A Body in the O (Wisconsin), featuring new stories and performance texts. Four decades into his singular career, Miller continues to mine autobiographical material to create politically charged, multidisciplinary theatrical works.
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Russell Cheney: An Artist in His Own Right
Cheney captured a bleak, stark side of New England, too. His darker paintings, among his best, may well have been a response to Matthiessen’s urging him to explore all of his life experiences.
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The Greek Inspiration for Modern Dance
A vast number of the innovators who helped to bridge the classical world and the modern world were either gay, lesbian, or bisexual, starting with Diaghilev, Nijinsky, Isadora Duncan, and Ida Rubenstein.
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