G LR k January–February 2022 Sexual Awakenings The Gay Lesbian Review WORLDWIDE MARTIN DUBERMAN—C.A. Tripp’s Homosexual Matrixon the Couch JAMES GILBERT — Midnight Cowboy’s New Kind of Love JOHN COPENHAVER — Femmes Fatales as Sexual Liberators FINLEY FREIBERT — The Bringer of Arthouses JEFFREY ESCOFFIER — Early Porn & Gay Identity Portrait of Willa Cather as a Young Artist, BY ROSEMARY BOOTH $5.95 US & Canada Wakefield Poole
f new titles rom er “ There ATheor JAFAR A genre most un ry, Th e necessar to, durin s. s f ef r nfi a erly TSQ: Tr T T t f a k Tr ns F y a ef l f a r s f a y’ r P y f f k en U ’ if k Ga ’s a Disco Ball Between Us y of Blac y L e IS. ALLEN -transcending meditation on one of the dertheorized periods in Black queer histos a Disco Ball Betwe s is a timely and y account of what the period leading up g, and after the long shadow of the 1980s or the current moment in Black queer ma ing. At once poetic and play ul, s the boundaries of traditional scholarship, ng a methodolog or analyzing Black ulture.”—E. ATRICK JOHNSON k Trans Feminism UIS BEY Outdoo s quis Be s deeply cre tive andfiercely tive book, Black tran eminism describes f wo ldly inhabit tion and a radica orm izing power and r usal in ways th t are tingent on identit .... Blac a eminism us to gesture to all th t we wan rom this ut do not yet know how to name.” NIFER C. NASH ranssexual/ ransvestite e TT HARSIN DRAGERand S PLATERO, issue editors of ansgender Studies Quart (8:4) yInsurgencies l An tomy of U t Manliness ON B. ROSS nsu gencies is a model of car ul historical rary analysi rom a scholar who has made ible mark on masculinity studies, black and queer of color critique. Ambitious and hing in scope, this book is a stunning work insurgent geniu ”—C. RILEY SNORTON S. Allen Jafa / a y of lack gay ife een us w s a disco ball bet There’ theor B l ri k s f mean worldit pushe providi queer c Blac MARQ Blac “In Mar imagina a kind o of theor not con allows world b —JEN The Issu EMME LUCA An issue Siss A Racia ss Marlon B. Ro Sissy Insurgencies Social T E V sy I MARL “Sis and lite an indel studies, far reac of sissy Sexology andIts Afterlives JOAN LUBINand JEANN ACCAR issue editors An issue of ext (148) dukeupress.edu O,
The Gay & Lesbian Review January–February 2022 • VOLUME XXIX, NUMBER 1 The Gay & Lesbian Review/WORLDWIDE®(formerly The Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review, 1994-1999) is published bimonthly (six times per year) by The Gay & Lesbian Review, Inc., a 501(c)(3) educational corporation located in Boston, Mass. Subscriptions: Call 844-752-7829. Rates: U.S.: $35.70 per year (6 issues). Canada and Mexico: $45.70(US). All other countries: $55.70(US). All non-U.S. copies are sent via air mail. Back issues available for $12 each. All correspondence is sent in a plain envelope marked “G&LR.” © 2022 by The Gay & Lesbian Review, Inc. All rights reserved. POEMS &DEPARTMENTS Stars That Went Out Last Year 10 MARTHAE. STONE Our annual farewell to some LGBT people who made a difference James Ivory Has a Lot of “All” to Tell 15 CAL SKAGGS The great director on his life with Ismail Merchant and... others One Night in Bangkok 18 ANDREWHOLLERAN A dive into the city’s boy market—where true love canbe found “In porn there are scripts at various levels.” 21 JEFFREY ESCOFFIER The G&LRtalks with an expert on early gay male cinema Build It, and They Will Come 24 FINLEY FREIBERT Shan Sayles created the arthouses and produced the gay films C.A. Tripp’s MatrixDeconstructed 27 MARTINDUBERMAN When the author of The Homosexual Matrixsat down with critics CONTENTS FEATURES REVIEWS GUEST OPINION— Major UN Vote Recognizes Sexual Minorities 5 OUTRIGHTACTIONINT’L CORRESPONDENCE 6 BTW 8 RICHARDSCHNEIDER JR. ART MEMO —What Ever Happened to Alec and Maurice? 17 COURT STROUD ART MEMO —Midnight CowboyGave Us a New Kind of Love 20 JAMES GILBERT ART MEMO — Femmes Fatales, Queer Rage, and Me 30 JOHNCOPENHAVER POEM— “Natalie Clifford Barney Convenes a Meeting...” 32 KIMROBERTS POEM— “Cryin’ glory” 40 TIMOTHY H. BURGER POEM— “Listening to William Byrd (d. 1623)” 48 JOHNHARRIS CULTURAL CALENDAR 49 Christopher Elias —Gossip Men 33 MARKMORAN Timothy W. Bintrim, et al., eds. —Willa Cather’s Pittsburgh 34 ROSEMARY BOOTH Brian Broome —Punch Me Up to the Gods 36 RICHARDM. BERRONG Aaron S. Lecklider —Love’s Next Meeting 37 MICHAEL SCHWARTZ Jeffrey Escoffier —Sex, Society, and the Making of Pornography 38 VERNONA. ROSARIO Pajtim Statovci —Bolla 41 GIANCARLOLATTA BRIEFS 42 Eva Baltasar —Permafrost 43 JEANROBERTA E. J. Levy —The Cape Doctor 43 DALE BOYER C. Winter Han —Racial Erotics 44 REGINALDHARRIS Brandon Taylor —Filthy Animals 45 CHARLES GREEN Marco Wilkinson —Madder: A Memoir in Weeds 46 PHILIP GAMBONE Nghi Vo —The Chosen and the Beautiful 46 MICHELE KIRICHANSKAYA Bethan Roberts —My Policeman 47 WILLIAMBURTON Janis Ian, songwriter —The Light at the End of the Line 50 JOHNR. KILLACKY WEBSITE: www.GLReview.org • SUBSCRIPTIONS: 844-752-7829 • ADVERTISING: 617-421-0082 • SUBMISSIONS: Editor@GLReview.org Editor-in-Chief and Founder RICHARDSCHNEIDER JR. ____________________________________ Literary Editor MARTHAE. STONE Poetry Editor DAVIDBERGMAN Associate Editors SAMDAPANAS PAULFALLON JEREMYFOX CHRISTOPHER HENNESSY MICHAELSCHWARTZ Contributing Writers ROSEMARYBOOTH DANIELA. BURR COLINCARMAN ALFREDCORN ALLENELLENZWEIG CHRIS FREEMAN PHILIP GAMBONE MATTHEWHAYS ANDREWHOLLERAN IRENE JAVORS JOHNR. KILLACKY CASSANDRALANGER ANDREWLEAR DAVIDMASELLO FELICE PICANO JAMES POLCHIN JEANROBERTA VERNONROSARIO Contributing Artist CHARLES HEFLING Publisher STEPHENHEMRICK Webmaster BOSTONWEBGROUP Web Editor KELSEYMEYERS ____________________________________ Board of Directors STEWART CLIFFORD ART COHEN(CHAIR) EDUARDOFEBLES DONALDGORTON(CLERK) ROBERT HARDMAN DAVIDLAFONTAINE RICHARDSCHNEIDER, JR. (PRESIDENT) MARTHAE. STONE THOMAS YOUNGREN(TREASURER) WARRENGOLDFARB(SR. ADVISOR EMER.) WORLDWIDE The Gay & Lesbian Review® PO Box 180300, Boston, MA 02118 Sexual Awakenings WORLDWIDE January–February 2022 3
of study and discussion. To those who insist that bathhouses and pornos represent the underside of gay culture, Jeffrey Escoffier argues here that porn played a crucial role in the creation of gay identity by presenting, and legitimizing, the very thing by which that identity was defined. In an interview, Escoffier shows how porn began organically in the ’60s when amateurs with home movie cameras started writing scripts—there had to be a plot!—that allowed men to get naked together and eventually to touch, to become aroused, and to have full-on sex (by the mid-1970s). But viewers needed a place to watch these films—this was long before VHS—so the gay arthouse was born. The first ones arose in New York and San Francisco, where an entrepreneur named Shan Sayles led the way, as documented here by Finley Freibert. Meanwhile, the Sexual Revolution was in full swing in the larger culture, and gay themes even found their way into mainstream films. James Gilbert maintains that Midnight Cowboy (1969), which is widely seen as an early “bromance,” depicted a highly charged relationship between a bisexual hustler and a lonely misfit who’s desperate for love. Going back in time, John Copenhaver looks at the noir films of the 1940s and finds an LGBT prototype in the femme fatale figure who inhabited this world. It was all about slipping through the straight male straitjacket and finding a way to be free. RICHARDSCHNEIDER JR. THIS ISSUE’S THEME has a subtitle: “The postwar origins of LGBT sex culture.” The “sexual awakenings” of the title are ones that began to stir after World War II and culminated in the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s and ’70s. It’s true that everyone woke up to sex in a new way in this era after a long slumber, but developments in the LGBT world were always on a separate track, albeit one that intersected with the cultural mainstream at critical points. The illegality and taboo nature of homosexuality meant that developments in socializing and sexualizing would happen in a more furtive realm, but this pariah status undoubtedly freed gay culture to seize the vanguard when it came to sexual self-expression. By “sex culture” I mean the movies, the books, the venues, the technologies for hooking up that are in general use at a given time. Today we have Grindr and Scruff and pornographic apps and websites for use on devices large and small. Back in the 1950s, the technologies that make today’s sex culture possible were a distant dream, and the U.S. was in the “Scare” years—first the “Red” and then the “Lavender,” when homosexuals were singled out as public enemies whose lives could be destroyed if their secret was exposed. And yet, it was in this era that LGBT forces were stirring for both political and sexual liberation. It is the latter that concerns us here: the origins of indoor cruising venues; the rise of live-action gay movies; the birth of gay sexuality as a subject Winter Dreams: “Sexual Awakenings” FROM THE EDITOR 4 The G&LR ( '&**!% .,! *).! *12 "!2101. .,! +# -"0 / ! $!) 0 !*1!0. ! & & & %" B%+#/>@ >%+(H>(E %$$8%B$A;" ;" /"#/-FA>&(! #F%J %-;/$ 1F%>>., % #8()A;/>FJ ="! !;":$ +A>> 74%>$ FA+A"%$( 8(C/A8(+("$>@ ()%+#(! &A> >(+A"%8> $; >$;8A%" 5%8$A" 2/-(8+ (( ' %$ %##("( ' (" ="! ;" *#8A"G(84A"D <;8 =)%AF%-F( %$ =+%I;"@B;+ 9630 .%$-+&!3 #1/&!4+23 "!54 !31 "/-+2 =/$&;8 ;< +* )('&%# !$ "/.-& <8(( !;'"F;%! %$ B;FF(G(> . A"BF/!A"G ;"( +;"$& 8("$% LK /50 . ,+542 * 2) ('2-4&/45 +3 - . ?"A)(8>A$J ;< 2(F%'%8( , F
An amendment to exclude the reference to sexual orientation and gender identity was proposed by Nigeria on behalf of a group of countries, but the effort failed in a vote of 90 opposed, 58 in favor, and 13 abstaining. A separate amendment was also proposed to exclude a reference to women and girls in all their diversity; it also failed. Commented Sahar Moazami, UN Program Officer at OutRight Action International: “Explicit inclusion of the fact that there are barriers to accessing free and fair elections based on sexual orientation and gender identity in the resolution adopted today is no small feat. It builds on progress in recognition of the human rights of LGBTIQ people at the UN, and shows that the institution is looking at identity from a complex lens. The vulnerabilities and risks LGBTIQ individuals face across the globe are diverse, ranging from violence and hate, to barriers accessing services such as healthcare, or, indeed, accessing free and fair elections.” The resolution includes other references to diversity in all its forms. It was co-sponsored by 87 states, showing growing, cross-regional support for the resolution as a whole, including the explicit reference to sexual orientation and gender identity. ____________________________________________________ OutRight Action International works to eradicate the persecution and inequality of LGBTIQ people worldwide. Headquartered in New York, OutRight has recognized consultative status at the UN. Major UN Vote Recognizes Sexual Minorities OUTRIGHTACTIONINTERNATIONAL DURING the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), the Third Committee adopted the resolution “Strengthening the role of the United Nations in the promotion of democratization and enhancing periodic and genuine elections,” which included an explicit reference to sexual orientation and gender identity. This is only the second UNGA resolution that explicitly mentions these two categories. The Third Committee is one of six committees of the General Assembly. It deals with human rights, humanitarian affairs, and social issues. It has been a key body of the UN for recognizing the human rights of LGBT people. The resolution on elections is renewed every two years. This year the resolution focused on gender-based barriers to conducting free and fair elections. Paragraph 7 of the resolution recognizes limitations in access based on a number of characteristics, including sexual orientation and gender identity. Specifically, Paragraph 7 calls on states “to take measures to eliminate laws, regulations and practices that discriminate, directly or indirectly, against citizens in their right to participate in public affairs, including based on race, color, ethnicity, national or social origin, sex, sexual orientation and gender identity, language, religion, political views or on the basis of disability [our italics].” GUEST OPINION January–February 2022 5
Cather Forms of Address To the Editor: I enjoyed Andrew Holleran’s review of Melissa Homestead’s bookThe Only Wonderful Things [Nov.-Dec. 2021 issue] about the long-term relationship between Edith Lewis and my distant cousin, Willa Cather. What I was most taken with, however, were several references to the fact that the two women referred to each other as “Miss Cather” and “Miss Lewis,” and how that fact might cast some doubt on the closeness of their partnership. You see, when I was a kid, I distinctly remember my beloved paternal grandparents—as much as they cared for each other—addressing each other only as “Mrs. Cather” and “Mr. Cather,” never by their first names (at least when other people were around). While I didn’t think much about it as a child—my grandfather died in 1959 when I was twelve—I’ve often thought about it as an adult. Like his cousin Willa, my grandfather had family roots in Virginia through both of his parents. Willa spent the first nine years of her life in that state, so perhaps this way of referring to one’s “spouse” was an old Virginia custom—or possibly even an old Cather family tradition. Patrick Cather, Birmingham, AL TheSixBooks of Mary Meigs To the Editor: What a thrill to encounter Martin Duberman’s article on Mary Meigs [in the Sept.- Oct. 2021 issue]! He does a wonderful job of evoking Mary as the endlessly creative and relentlessly self-critical person she was. Her friends included Mary McCarthy, Elizabeth Bishop, Marianne Moore, and Jane Rule, and she was lovers, for a time simultaneously, with two women who were among the most important writer-activists of their time: Barbara Deming and MarieClaire Blais (perhaps the most prolific and celebrated novelist of Québec), Mary would certainly be a prime candidate for a fulllength biography. I am grateful to Duberman for making this case so well. But a few corrections are in order. Mary wrote more than four “richly autobiographical” books. In addition to Lily Briscoe: A Self-Portrait, The Medusa Head, In the Company of Strangers, andThe Box Closet (from which I assume Duberman has much of the information about her privileged childhood), there was also her last memoir, The Time Being, which recounts her love affair, at age 77, with a woman in Australia who began writing Mary fan letters after seeing her in the filmThe Company of Strangers. And, not insignificantly, there is Beyond Recall (Talonbooks, 2005), a collection of her last writings, which I compiled and edited, and which, while not exactly a biography, was nominated for a Lambda Book Award in that category. In both of these books, Mary’s characteristic unblinking honesty and uncensored gaze, along with her magnificent wit, are trained on the subject of old age. Lise Weil, Montréal, Canada Canada’s Best-Known Playwrights To the Editor, I was pleased to learn of Brad Fraser’s new memoir All the Rage, which was reviewed by Nils Clausson in the SeptemberOctober issue. However, the reviewer made two odd claims in the review: that Brad Fraser is “Canada’s best-known playwright”; and that he is “Canada’s only gay playwright to have achieved international success and recognition.” As important as Fraser’s work is, neither of these statements is true. Michel Tremblay, a gay playwright whose work is internationally renowned, is certainly better known than Fraser. He writes his plays first in French, Canada’s other official language, so he is well-known wherever French is spoken. And there are other contenders for “best-known” status, playwrights both straight and gay, including George F. Walker, Michael Healey, the openly gay Morris Panych, and John Herbert (the author of Fortune and Men’s Eyes). Thad McIlroy, Vancouver, Canada On the Lost Art of Letter Writing To the Editor: I cannot remember the last time I wrote a letter to an editor, but for more reasons than can be listed here, I cannot refrain from commenting on the letter in your May-June 2021 issue from Tim Cameron of Danby, Vermont. In it he cogently lays out his concern with Michael Musto’s essay about Facebook, with which I found myself in general agreement, until I came to the last paragraph. While Musto had touted the pleasures of “blocking” unsympathetic people from your Facebook account, Cameron recommended closing your Facebook account altogether and shifting to other means of communication. He offered various options, if I may quote: “Rather than connecting with random acquaintances in this way, why not call a friend to keep in touch? Send an e-mail to just one person to say Hi—or make plans to see them in person when this pandemic winds down.” These sound like lovely things to do, especially during the Covid-19 isolation. What saddens me is that his list of ways to communicate doesn’t include humankind’s simplest, oldest, and most personal mode of communicating, save whispering in someone’s ear: pen and paper. I urge readers of your “Correspondence” page (an appropriate place for a discussion of this issue) to try it. I guarantee that just a brief letter or even a personal greeting on a postcard from the stationary store will result in deep gratitude and happiness in the recipient. Or they might try making their own cards, enlisting the help of their children or grandchildren. As a writer and former college professor, I believe that it would be one loss too many for our society, for our very culture, if we stopped engaging with one another through letters. Archivists that I worked with at the Library of Congress worried every day about the loss of any record of the process of both literature and science, because there are no drafts left behind when we work on our electronic devices. For example, all the notes, edits, and rewrites that existed between Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot throughout Eliot’s writing of The Waste Landwould be lost to us if they had worked on computers. If we continue the tradition of writing cards and letters, I predict that one day our children, grandchildren and great grandchildren will thank us for it. Krandall Kraus, Concord, CA Correspondence Take The G&LRReaders’ Survey Your chance to tell us what you think about the magazine! www.research.net/r/theGandLRsurvey2021 6 The G&LR
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Schramm George Seeber Arthur Allan Seidelman Laurence Senelick Camilla Serrano Jeffrey Sharlach Kenneth Sherrill Nicolas Shumway John Silva Patrick Sinclair Eric Slater Walter Smalling Jr. Donald Mitton Smith Dennis Sondker David H. Spear Neil Spisak F.J. Spulnik David Staats Joanne Staton Charles Strang Charles Studen Ron Suleski Jerl Surratt Thomas Tallerico Kevin Taylor David Teeter Robert Teller John Thomas James Thomas Bruce Thompson Kenneth Tom Thomas Tracy & Jerry Cook Herbert Treger James Uhrig Glenn Underwood Dr. R.O. Valdiserri Ralph Virkler Robert W. Melton John Wade R. Richard Wagner Robert Walker Bryce Ward Clyde Watkins Allan Weinreb Matthew Weissman Diana Westbrook Lyndon Wester Mel White Michael Williams James Williams Allan Wing & Frank Barringer David Winkeljohn George E. Wolf Lawrence Wolf Paul Wolfson Jason Wong David G. Wood MD W. Preston Woodall Jr. DO Gene Woodling Gary Wright Joe Young Brian Zeiden & Brian Bartlett Floyd M. Zula
decision says about the magazine’s readership. Despite a 2019 rebranding to feature more artistic and less explicitly sexual content, Playboy’s readership is still overwhelmingly straight men, and it’s their gaze that sells magazines. So apparently the sight of a gender-bending gay man is not a turnoff at all for many readers. Indeed that inference was not lost on the Christian spokesperson, who worried that this will further muddle the division between the sexes and could cause some men to drift toward “nonbinary” options. Ah, the fragility of heterosexuality. Disaster Man After 55 years as host of The 700 Club, televangelist Pat Robertson has at last stepped down. He’s best remembered in the LGBT community for his incessant attempts to connect natural disasters with gay rights—always after the fact, of course, when the prophesying is easy. What was so galling— or entertaining—was the sheer zaniness of the connections he’d posit. For example, when Hurricane Katrina slammed New Orleans in 2005, he didn’t reach for the obvious “Sodom and Gomorrah” sermon about the Big Easy. Instead, he pointed out that Ellen DeGeneres was hosting the Emmys that year, and Ellen hailed from New Orleans, and she’s a lesbian, and God hates lesbians. QED! Sure, sometimes the link between a disaster and Blue Utah As of last Election Day, four out of six councilors in Salt Lake City identified as LGBT, giving them a clear majority on the city Council. Salt Lake is by far the largest city in Utah, which has one of the most Republican electorates in the U.S., revealing a voting pattern that repeats itself across the country. It reminds us that the Great Divide inAmerican politics is not between regions or social classes but between those islands of tolerance called cities and whatever lies beyond the inner suburbs. In any case, in becoming one of a handful of communities where LGBT people hold a majority of seats, the city with the Mormon Tabernacle joins the ranks of Palm Springs, California, and Provincetown, Massachusetts. Roll Over Hugh You wouldn’t expect to see a roast turkey on the cover of Vegetarian Times—or a gay man on the cover of Playboy. But there he was on last October’s issue: YouTube star Bretman Rock, who appears in a bunny suit and a bare chest. The religious Right reacted on cue: “Playboyhas gone from degrading women to erasing women,” said a spokesperson, prompting a feminist writer to point out the irony of their complaining about the absence of a woman being degraded on the cover of Playboy. But the more interesting question is what this BTW 8 The G&LR BEACON.ORG AVAILABLE IN PRINT, AUDIO, AND EBOOK A love letter to the legendary Black and Latinx LGBTQ underground subculture, uncovering its abundant legacy and influence in popular culture. An engaging exploration of what it means to be asexual in a world that’s obsessed with sexual attraction, and what the ace perspective can teach all of us about desire and identity. “Through prose that pops, dips, and kicks off the page and with an analysis that reads the children $-* "3(# &#- /-22-.!$0 +'%%*1%)) and Blackness, Ricky Tucker’s And the Category Is. . . is snatched for the gods! Tens across the board!” —E. Patrick Johnson, author of Honeypot “This book will inspire you to interrogate every assumption you’ve made about yourself, your sexuality, and your relationships. Aceis a revelation. We can’t stop thinking about it.” —Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman, authors of Big Friendship Engag i ng New Books Ce l ebrat i ng Que er Exper i ences
the place destroyed was a bit more direct, as when he attributed a hurricane that hit Orlando to Disney World’s pro-gay policies. Such a connection between disasters and gayness would lead one to assume that the gayest areas would be the most vulnerable to God’s wrath. So, one researcher ran some numbers to test this hypothesis in a piece that appeared in our Sept.-Oct. 2001 issue. What Janis Walworth found was that the states with the highest percentage of LGBT people were significantlyless likely to be hit with disasters, while those with a low proportion, many in the South, were especially disaster-prone. Twenty years later, the disasters are coming faster and more ferociously than ever, and God’s wrath has nothing to do with it. U.S. Exports Robertson’s wrathful God is also on hand in Ghana these days as the country debates a law described as “the most homophobic document the world has ever seen.” The bill is the handiwork of Brian Brown and the American-led evangelical World Congress of Families (WCF). Homosexuality is already illegal in the Christian-majority country, but the new bill will increase the maximum prison sentence from three to five years. What’s novel about the Ghana bill is that it will put people at risk merely for associating with LGBT people, which led one paper in Ghana to state that it “compels Ghanaians to police gender and sexuality in their homes, workplaces, and everyday lives.” It’s the same kind of creative thinking that the WCF and its allies brought to Russia when Putin was looking for a way to suppress homosexuality without banning it outright. The solution was the 2013 ban on so-called “homosexual propaganda,” i.e. any advocacy or defense of LGBT rights, which effectively shut down any gay rights movement. Clearly the reason these American crusaders have gone abroad is because North America hasn’t proved fertile ground for these efforts to persecute LGBT people—so far. Smithers Smitten An episode of The Simpsons that aired at press time finds a lonely Waylon Smithers longing for and then finding a boyfriend, with Homer acting as the proud matchmaker! And the bf is the super-rich and debonair fashion designer Michael DeGraff. Everything seems to be going so well as the billionaire wines and dines the smitten Smithers on moonlit patios. But just when it seems DeGraff will whisk Smithers away for good, we learn that he’s moved his factory to Springfield—and it’s a toxic sweatshop that’s literally killing the workers and everything else in town. Yikes! Waylon will have to break it off and return to his job with Montgomery Burns. What’s fascinating is the town’s reaction to the news that DeGraff is a louse. “Wait, I thought they were supposed to be better than us!” exclaims Homer. Marge and others join the chorus of astonishment that a gay man could be evil. So, this is the popular image of LGBT people in these times (at least in Simpsons-land)? Who knew? Perhaps it’s part of a general sense that straight white men have made such a hash of things, everyone else is virtuous by comparison. At any rate, Smithers returns to his old life, but the Circle is not completely Demonic: he ends up gaining an adorable puppy who will “love him unconditionally.” January–February 2022 9 "!321/-++) 0-.,! 3-*( - '(&%.%!$ 4)+ $/ ,IA%;: %:5""'5 1/>!!5 '/:" ># > .>5 #;'>&(';%)" 4>#(" )/#$! ($" :%=/ E)$#' :$ ';'/#- 7 '/%;2%)"C @# =$!! !'>: ($2 #(' &%/"'E)'/&'" >;' ;'!>#$8'!5 2$/%; %/'- +)# *(' &(%$&' $#"'!A $" > # 9 .>5 "'I)>!$#5C &%/?)'/&' %A ;'!$.$%/ >/: #(' 'I>2$/>#$%/ %A #(' &%/#$/)'" +*7 ).885 (2,'7,1 C 4262 0.-2,9 >/: $"987531 /6 /%8'!" $/&!):' G%+';# D);"#B" 4;'8$%)" C 'H%%96 3FCJJ <>4';+>&96 30KCJJ &%,,5622'3$#2/ 269 - 1((), .22'3 - .-50,3 +*26), - 1/-420 - "!76573 $&2%82#87 !,.' *( '&% '('&'$# "!#!$%! '( ;9975 3"1$(/-% +(/)(>< :>>8 6 >4 &2! 0'&1 >( $ .&$"&"'#>,1)<$% /@#1 ?"$'%!/= *((' &(% $#" !975 391$755/"9$- , +7%) 7$ ;"%:857% - 64%392 0.00
IN KEEPING WITH our annual custom, we remember some people who left us during the past year—activists, writers, performers, educators, and artists who made a significant contribution to the LGBT community. They left this mortal coil at ages ranging from 28 to 94. All dates are in 2021 unless otherwise indicated. ACTIVISTS MARCIAFREEDMAN, activist, died on September 21st at age 83. Raised in West Orange, NJ, her self-described “leftist upbringing” influenced her later career. While a doctoral student in philosophy at Stanford, she was invited to teach at the University of Haifa, Israel, where she remained for fourteen years. There she became involved in Israel’s nascent feminist movement and joined a political party that focused on civil rights. When it won three seats in 1977, she was asked to take one, and served for four years in the Knesset, where she was the first open lesbian. She returned to the U.S. in 1981, moving to Berkeley, where she organized for LGBT and women’s rights and established the Lesbian and Gay Aging Issues Network. Her memoir Exile in the Promised Landwas published in 1990. She is survived by her daughter and granddaughter. SALLY MILLER GEARHART, activist and writer, died on July 14th at age 90. She was remembered by this writer in the November-December 2021 issue. JAMES HORMEL, ambassador, died on August 13th at age 88. Born in Austin, Minnesota, he was the grandson of the founder of Hormel Foods. He majored in history at Swarthmore and earned a law degree from the U. of Chicago, where he later became dean of students and established a program to encourage law students to enter public service. He held numerous political and philanthropic posts, supporting the arts and bothHIV/AIDS and breast cancer efforts. He funded the James C. Hormel Gay & Lesbian Center at the San Francisco Library and served on the board of the Human Rights Campaign. Bill Clinton’s 1999 appointment of Hormel as ambassador to Luxembourg made him the first openly gay ambassador in U.S. history. He is survived by his husband, Michael P. N. Araque Hormel. LOIS JOHNSON died on October 31, 2020, at age 89. Born in Stoneham, Mass., she took a master’s degree in journalism at IN MEMORIAM Stars That Went Out Last Year MARTHAE. STONE Martha E. Stone is the literary editor of this magazine. Boston University and produced educational programs at WGBH-Boston in the early 1960s. She was president of the Boston chapter of Daughters of Bilitis (DOB) and was active in Boston’s LGBT Aging Project, among other LGBT causes. At the time of her death, she was working on a book chronicling the lives of lesbians in the DOB. She is survived by her life-long partner and wife, Sheri Barden. Both were featured in the 2010 documentary Gen Silent. KAYTOBINLAHUSEN, activist and photojournalist, died on May 26th at age 91. She was remembered by this writer in the November-December 2021 issue. HOOVER LEE, activist and champion of global LGBT human rights, died on February 11th at age 83. He was a founding member of the Association of Lesbian and Gay Asians and an early organizer of the Gay Asian Pacific Alliance, where he mentored new members. He also helped found or coordinate numerous progressive political campaigns and causes in the Bay Area. Beloved by many, he was known as a bridge-builder. He was employed for much of his life by the city of San Francisco as a transit manager with the municipal railway. He was the recipient of many local awards from both the LGBT and straight communities. He is survived by his life-long partner. COLINROBINSON, writer and activist, died on March 4th at age 58. Raised in a small town in Trinidad, he lived for a time as an undocumented immigrant in the U.S., going on to receive degrees in anthropology and management from NYU and The New School. In the 1990s, he cofounded the Audre Lorde Project and Caribbean Pride, both based in Brooklyn. In 2009, he founded and was the executive director of the Coalition Advocating for the Inclusion of Sexual Orientation: Sex and Gender Justice, serving Trinidad and Tobago. In 2000, he was selected Grand Marshal of the Brooklyn Pride Parade. His 2016 poetry collection was titledYou Have You Father Hard Head. His work was published widely in Caribbean-focused literary journals. One obit stated that his LGBT work in Trinidad was “herculean, long-lasting, and transformative.” JOSEPH SONNABEND, AIDS researcher, died on January 24th at age 88. Born in Johannesburg, he was educated in South Africa and Edinburgh, beginning his training at the National Institute for Medical Research in London. He moved to New York in the early 1970s to continue research begun in London on interferon. By 1978, he was volunteering at the Gay Men’s Health Project in Greenwich Village, and started his own clinic to treat sexually transmitted infections. An openly gay man, he was scientific advisor to Richard Berkowitz and Michael Callen, who wrote the first book on safer sex, in 1983, How to Have Sex in an Epidemic. 10 The G&LR
Among the organizations he founded or cofounded were AIDS Medical Foundation (later known as amfAR) and Community Research Initiative, serving as its medical director for almost a decade. When he retired, he returned to London, the home of several family members who survive him. CARMEN VÁZQUEZ, activist, died on January 27th at age 72. Born in Puerto Rico and raised in Harlem, she was expelled from high school for kissing another girl. She went on to earn a master’s degree in education from CUNY. In 1975, she became the founding director of the Women’s Building in San Francisco, later helping to establish the Lavender Youth Recreation and Information Center and the LGBT Health and Human Services Network. She also helped bring lesbians of color to the forefront of San Francisco’s politics in the 1980s and ’90s. When she returned to New York, she became the first director of public policy for the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center, and in 2020 she received a SAGE Award for her leadership in LGBT aging. ARTISTS ANDPERFORMERS CARL BEAN, singer, preacher, and AIDS activist, died on September 7th at age 77. Born in Baltimore, he was heavily involved in his church, and openly gay, from his earliest years. He moved to New York in his teens and later to L.A., recording gospel songs. Motown, which had acquired the rights to the 1975 disco songI Was Born This Way, asked him to cover it. It was the first time that a major record label had released a gay-themed single. It inspired him to seek ordination in 1982, and in 1985 he founded L.A.’s Unity Fellowship Church. The church’s focus was welcoming people and groups who’d felt unwanted in mainstream churches. His memoir, written with David Ritz, was titled I Was Born This Way: A Gay Preacher’s Journey Through Gospel Music, Disco Stardom, and a Ministry in Christ (2010). NOAHCRESHEVSKY(born Gary Cohen), composer, died on December 3, 2020, at age 75. Born in Rochester, New York, into a nonmusical family, he changed his last name to honor his grandparents. He began to play the piano at age six and attended the Eastman School of Music in Rochester. He worked as a pianist at bars and restaurants, eventually taking degrees at SUNY-Buffalo and Juilliard. He founded the NewYork Improvisation Ensemble, a thirteen-piece jazz group that debuted in New York’s Judson Hall in 1967. But he preferred to work in the studio, cutting and splicing magnetic tape, later using samplers and digital audio and ambient sounds, often exaggerated and with humor. He taught at several institutions, including Brooklyn College. He is survived by his husband, David Sachs. ALIX DOBKIN, folksinger–activist who coined the term “women’s music,” died on May 19th at age eighty. She was born in New York and grew up in Philadelphia, where she graduated from Temple U. She began gigging in Greenwich Village in the early 1960s and became an activist in 1970. Her 1973 debut LP, Lavender Jane Loves Women, was one of the first lesbian albums ever recorded. To produce it, she formed her own company, Women’s Wax Works. She continued as a music producer into the 1990s. She was a board member and co-director of Old Lesbians Organizing for Change (OLOC). Her last of several January–February 2022 11 memoirs was titled My Red Blood: A Memoir of Growing Up Communist, Coming onto the Greenwich Village Folk Scene, and Coming Out in the Feminist Movement (2009). She is survived by her daughter and her family. LOUISE FISHMAN, painter, died on July 26th at age 82. Born in Philadelphia, where both her mother and aunt were artists, she studied art intensely first at Temple and later at the U. of Illinois, where she studied painting and printmaking. She later moved to New York. In a 2016 interview, she recalled that she felt Abstract Expressionism to be “an appropriate language for me as a queer.” In her “Angry” series in the 1970s, she worked to display anger felt by women in her consciousness-raising group and gave each canvas the name of a well-known woman who’d been wronged. She is survived by her spouse, Ingrid Nyeboe. ARI GOLD, dancer and musician who also performed under the names Sir Ari and GoldNation, died on February 14th at age 47. He grew up in the Bronx with Orthodox Jewish parents who were never able to accept him as gay. After a career as a child singer and actor, he graduated from NYU. Later mentored by RuPaul, he released many albums and singles over the past
lanthropist and behind-the-scenes advocate for feminism, gay rights, and reproductive rights. She was predeceased by her partner, 1960s pop singer Lesley Gore. FREDERICK WESTON, artist, died on October 21st at age 73. Growing up in Detroit with his mother and grandparents, he graduated from Ferris State University in Big Rapids, MI. He moved to New York, hoping to become a fashion critic, but settled for marginal employment in gay clubs and baths. His first “art commission” was wallpapering the gay bar Trix with erotic collages. He went on to create collages using magazines, fabrics, photos, and discards from photocopy shops. Overlooked until discovered later in life by Visual AIDS, he said in a 2008 interview that “being Black and male in this world colors my every dream.” SOPHIEXEON, producer and musician, died on January 30th at age 34. Born in Glasgow, her father started taking her to raves as a child, and she began to create her music. She worked with some of the biggest names in the music business, including Lady Gaga and Nile Rogers, moving to L.A. in 2015. She was nominated for a Grammy in 2018 for her LPOil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides, and she came out in the same year. Revered as a trans icon and known for her innovation and creativity, her “high-intensity electronic productions pushed the boundaries of 21st-century pop,” in one critic’s words. PLAYWRIGHTS, DIRECTORS, ANDPRODUCERS BOBAVIAN, choreographer, director, and producer, died on January 21st at age 83. Born in Manhattan toArmenian immigrants, he started dancing as a pre-teen, attended the College of Fine Arts at Boston U., and studied at the Boston Ballet School. In 1960, he was cast for an international tour of West Side Story, where he met choreographer Michael Bennett, with whom he would become a close collaborator. They shared Tony Awards for choreography for A Chorus Line (1975) and Ballroom (1978). Avian was the lead producer of Dreamgirls and involved in many Broadway hits. His memoir Dancing Man: A Broadway Choreographer’s Journey, was published in 2020. He is survived by his husband Peter Pileski. GREGORY BARRIOS, playwright, died on August 17th at age 80. Born in Victoria, Texas, he joined the Air Force and later majored in English at the U. of Texas at Austin. He spent a short time with Andy Warhol in 1967, making an experimental film, BONY (Boys of New York), which captures a day in the life of the Factory. His multifaceted career included stints as a journalist and an activist. His plays include Rancho Pancho, about Pancho Rodriguez, Tennessee Williams’ lover in the late 1940s. (Rodriguez may have served as the model for Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire.) An activist in Latinx causes, he taught in L.A. in the 1980s and ’90s and was on the executive board of the National Book Critics Circle. His collection My Life: The Poem I twenty years, several of which, including Where the Music Takes You, charted on Billboard’s Dance Club Songs. He performed with Cyndi Lauper and Diana Ross and collaborated with Boy George. Gold described himself as an “out and proud gay pop music artist at a time when many feared that being open about their sexuality would ruin their careers.” LENNKELLER, photographer and filmmaker, died on December 16, 2020, at age 69. Born in Evanston, Illinois, she moved to New York after high school, and fell in with artists and radicals in the AfricanAmerican community. Moving to the Bay Area in 1975, she discovered photography and filmmaking, and received a visual arts degree fromMills College in Oakland. Self-described as “a proud butch lesbian,” she started the Bay Area Lesbian Archives (BALA), which at first was an informal, personal collection of mostly ephemera from local bars, but is now seen as the largest lesbian archive on the West Coast. She is survived by her daughter and by her former partner, Elizabeth Summers. PATRICKO’CONNELL, founding director of Visual AIDS, died on March 23rd at age 67. Born in Manhattan, he majored in history at Trinity College in Hartford, CT. A few years later he became director of Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center in Buffalo. In 1989 he developed the “Day Without Art” campaign, a yearly event when galleries and museums covered their artworks to honor lives lost to HIV/AIDS. In 1991, he initiated the wearing of red ribbons and helped organize “ribbon bees” for their production and distribution. The U.S. Postal Service issued a red ribbon stamp in 1993. JOHN O’REILLY, collage artist, died on May 20th at age 91. Growing up in Red Bank, NJ, he knew he was gay from an early age and aspired to be a priest. He received an MFA from the Art Institute of Chicago, later working part-time for almost thirty years as an art therapist at the Worcester [Mass.] State Hospital. He credited the psychiatric patients there with giving him insights for his artwork, which he made in near obscurity for most of his life. Everything changed when he was chosen to be featured in the 1995 Whitney Biennial. His art, which he called montages, was done entirely by hand, without digital assistance, and involved cutting, tearing, and pasting images related to gay porn, art history, and the use of found photos from many sources. He is survived by his husband, sculptor James Tellin. LOIS KAHANER SASSON, artist and philanthropist, died on December 30, 2020, at age eighty. Born in Brooklyn to a financially comfortable family, she attended NYU and worked as a jewelry designer, selling her creations to high-end department stores and exhibiting in art galleries. Bracelet designs included some that spelled out “Sisterhood Is Global.” In late 1992, she designed the lapel pin depicting the AIDS ribbon, with proceeds going to Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. She was a phi12 The G&LR
Never Wrote, New and Selected Poetry 1968-2021, is expected to be published posthumously. DOUGLAS CRAMER, television producer and cofounder of the L.A. Museum of Contemporary Art, died on June 4th at age 89. Raised in Louisville, Kentucky, he made his way to New York and started working as a production assistant at Radio City Music Hall. After taking degrees in English from the U. of Cincinnati and Columbia, he tried his hand at playwriting but switched to arts management, going on to become head of Paramount Television. Alone or in partnerships, he produced such hits as The Odd Couple, Dynasty, and The Love Boat. (Andy Warhol’s portrait of Cramer led to Warhol’s guest appearance on a 1985Love Boat episode.) He is survived by his husband, artist Hubert Bush. MITCHDOUGLAS, literary agent, died on November 5, 2020, at age 78. Born in Murphysboro, Kentucky, he received a bachelor’s degree in theater from the University of Kentucky. He went on to became the general manager at the Jenny Wiley Theatre in Prestonsburg, Kentucky. Beginning in the mailroom of ICM talent agency, he quickly climbed the ladder of success, working there for thirty years as a literary agent before starting his own company. He represented Tennessee Williams, Manuel Puig, and Lanford Wilson, among many other familiar names. He is survived by his partner, Leonardo Rendon. ROGERENGLANDER, music producer and director, died on February 8th at age 94. Born in Cleveland, he knew from his early years that he wanted to be a conductor. After studying drama, composition, and theory at the U. of Chicago, he took a job as stage manager for the debut of Leonard Bernstein’s production of Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes at Tanglewood. He was working at CBS in 1958 when he and Bernstein began collaborating on the Young People’s Concerts, which he directed for many years, winning the Emmy Award in 1965 for directorial achievement. He is survived by his companion, Michael Dupré. WAKEFIELDPOOLE, film director, died on October 27 at age 85. Born in Jacksonville, Florida, he studied dance and toured worldwide in the 1950s with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, and worked as a dancer, choreographer, and director in New York in the ’60s. Inspired by the poor quality of gay porn available in 1971, he created a higher-quality film set on Fire Island titled The Boys in the Sand, which drew crowds when it was shown in New York. After directing a number of other erotic films, he switched careers and attended the French Culinary Institute, becoming a corporate chef in Florida. His 2000 memoir, expanded in 2011, was titledDirty Poole: The Autobiography of a Gay Porn Pioneer. He was the subject of the documentary “I Always Said Yes”: The Many Lives of Wakefield Poole (2010). JEAN-CLAUDE VANITALLIE, playwright, director, and performer, died on September 9th at age 85. Born in Brussels, he and his family escaped the Nazi invasion in 1940 and settled on Long Island. While at Harvard he studied theater and wrote his first plays. After graduation, he moved to Greenwich Village, where he adapted and wrote scripts for early TV. He began writing and directing for experimental theaters in NYC, such as La MaMa January–February 2022 13
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