American Horror Story's Denis O'Hare: 'Dolce & Gabbana Are A-holes'

The out American Horror Story actor, husband, and father, weighed in Sunday at Paleyfest on Dolce and Gabbana’s rant against so-called nontraditional families.

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Jase Peeples

www.advocate.com/families/2015/03/16/american-horror-storys-denis-ohare-dolce-gabbana-are-holes

What Stories We Tell. Why They Matter.
Beware of stories that come in beautiful packages. Two recent nonfiction books about lesbians in Illinois tell two very different stories. One is a beautiful, hardbound book from the once-feminist publisher Seal Press (now part of a New York-based corporate publishing conglomerate). The other, published by the independent Chicago-based enterprise, Prairie Avenue Productions, is more modest — a paperback original, though available in an edition with color photos. One book tells a vibrant, overlooked story about a lesbian activist whose work shapes our world today; the other offers a closet parable and demonstrates how some people today take advantage of the labor and lives of those in the past who worked for LGBT equality.

Under This Beautiful Dome: A Senator, A Journalist, and the Politics of Gay Love in America by Terry Mutchler (Seal Press, 2014) is the story of Mutchler’s relationship with a state senator, Penny Severns. In 1993, Severns was a rising star in the state democratic party (the book belabors the parallel between Severns and another young party member, Barack Obama). She met Mutchler, who was working as a journalist covering the Illinois state house. The two fell in love, eventually living together and sharing a life that they understood to be committed and “married.” While they had this mutual understanding, they did not share the nature of their relationship with their families or anyone else. They were closeted. To the public, Mutchler was simply a devoted friend and press agent for Severns.

You can imagine how this ends: Severns is diagnosed with cancer. Treatment, struggle, treatment, struggle, death. Severns’s family, not knowing the relationship, quickly acts to exclude Mutchler from Severns’s estate and legacy. It is a sad story. I do not want to minimize the pain and anguish the situation caused Mutchler, but remember this was the mid-1990s. These two women had other options. They could have come out; many courageous gay and lesbian people came out, refusing to live their lives in the closet.

At some points in Under This Beautiful Dome, it seemed like this story was happening in the 1950s or maybe the 1980s. The fact that it was happening in the 1990s makes the book more of a farce than a tragedy. Mutchler’s talent as a journalist makes Under This Beautiful Dome a good yarn, but anyone with a political consciousness recognizes that both of these women made choices that are fundamental harmful to themselves–and to the broader LGBT community.

The fact that Severns and Mutchler hurt themselves is one thing. What galls me about this book is that after Mutchler choses to be closeted and not speak out, she writes this book in 2014 and wants to position herself as a part of the story of the achievement of marriage equality in the state of Illinois. This claim is offensive.

Particularly when Under This Beautiful Dome is considered in tandem with the wonderful biography of Vernita Gray by Tracy Baim and Owen Keehnen. This delightful book, part biography, part oral history, part tribute volume to Gray, provides a rich history of the Chicago-based activist. Subtitled From Woodstork to the White House, Vernita Gray covers Gray’s early years (she was born in Chicago in 1948), her engagement in the civil rights movement, coming out as a lesbian in the 1970s (with rich anecdotes about Chicago lesbian-feminist institutions), and her activism during the last four decades of her life. Gray lived a life worth emulating. She gave to the community in numerous ways. Her death, also from cancer, affected the Chicago community tremendously.

Baim and Keehnen provide an entertaining and highly readable account of Gray’s life. In addition to that, this book is a service to the community in at least two ways. First, it is a way of honoring and respecting the work of an out, African-American lesbians–and making that work more visible. Second, Gray’s life provides an important window into queer history, both in Chicago and in the United States during this period.

Sadly, these two books, both with life stories about lesbians in Illinois are not dueling in the marketplace. Mutchler’s unapologetic story of her own life seeks to capitalize in the advances of gay and lesbian people over the past twenty years; advances to which she did not contribute. Yet, because it is published by a New York-based publishing house, packaged in an attractive way, it gains the attention of readers–and even of the Lambda Literary Foundation which named it one of the finalists for Lesbian Memoir/Biography. Maybe that is appropriate if lesbian now means women who sit back while other women do difficult activist work and then step up when it is easy to take credit for some of it.

Baim and Keehnen’s book, on the other hand, receives less attention. Vernita Gray is the more interesting book, however. It tells the story of a woman with extraordinary integrity, a woman who lived a life that both made a difference to those around her and to the LGBT community in Chicago and nation-wide. Through Prairie Avenue Productions, Baim is increasingly telling these important and overlooked stories. She is a woman worthy of our collective admiration–and support.

Current readers should be aware of what stories are being told and packaged by New York publishing houses and engage in healthy skepticism. Looking beyond the glossies, readers can find gems like Vernita Gray. Future historians, looking for breadcrumbs to understand what was life like for lesbian and gay people in the Midwest during the 1990s, should read Vernita Gray carefully and give Under This Beautiful Dome the little regard it deserves.

www.huffingtonpost.com/julie-r-enszer/what-stories-we-tell-why-_b_6877420.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices&ir=Gay+Voices

Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore's Son Arrested on Drug Possession Charges

Kyler Geoffroy

www.towleroad.com/2015/03/alabama-chief-justice-roy-moores-son-arrested-on-drug-possession-charges.html

How Instagram and a Casting Couch Won Jussie Smollett His 'Empire' Role

The gay actor discussed how he landed the role of Jamal Lyons during a panel discussion at Outfest Fusion.

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Daniel Reynolds

www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/television/2015/03/16/how-instagram-and-casting-couch-won-jussie-smollett-his-emp

Florida Proposes "Stand Outside My Loo" Law
Florida, one of the states known for its infamous so-called “stand your ground” law (“justifiable use of force” law), has now proposed standing its patriarchal ground once again, this time in its “Single Sex Facilities” (what I am calling its “Stand Out of My Loo”) law. If passed by the state legislature, CS/HB 583 would impose criminal penalties on persons who knowingly enter restrooms of a sex not designated on their birth certificates.

Sponsors of this clearly discriminatory bill designed it specifically to ban trans* people from using restrooms that most closely align with their gender identities. Legislators see the writing on the bathroom walls signaling the establishment of gender inclusive restroom facilities throughout the nation, which have existed in a number of nations around the world for decades.

Some may refer to these spaces as “gender neutral,” though “gender inclusive” has become the preferred terminology to describe a space — most notably restrooms and floors in college and university dormitories and in many businesses — denoting a cite of inclusion welcoming individuals of all genders and gender identities and expressions. The terminology “gender neutral” overlooks the actual hierarchal power dynamics among genders, and the implications on the lived experiences of virtually everyone in our society.

Some legislators and community members list a number of objections to gender inclusive facilities: people would become uncomfortable, women would be at greater risk for assault, expense would be great to replace urinals with toilet stalls, it would go (no pun intended) against tradition and other reasons.

Well, let’s take these concerns in order. First, change, any change, often taps into people’s anxieties. As a professor, the beginning of each new semester brings up my anxieties about the materials I have chosen and whether my pedagogical methods have kept up with the state of the art of teaching. After a week or two, I generally relax into a comfortable routine. Actors typically assert that some amount of nervousness actually improves their performances. People often feel anxiety while learning new ideas and concepts, but over time, they accommodate or assimilate this new knowledge into their overall mental library.

Secondly, yes, women have suffered assaults by men entering women’s rooms. Most gender inclusive facilities people are advocating, however, include primarily single-user lockable restrooms. These types of facilities substantially increase safety for all users. In addition, in larger multi-user restrooms, though the clearly stereotypical stick figure wearing the tacky stick dress stuck onto the door announces this as a female-only space, it cannot and has not ensured the occupants’ safety.

Also, cost would not increase or be minimal to change current single-occupant spaces into gender inclusive restrooms. Initial expense would most likely increase to create new single-user restrooms, or if institutions want to convert one or a few current larger multi-user restrooms into gender inclusive facilities, this expense would significantly decrease down the line, and would be outweighed by the benefits.

Gender inclusive restrooms, while nothing new in many locations, in others might be seen as non-traditional, contrary to what has existed before. This is the so-called “lack of prior claim” argument: if it was not here at the beginning of our organization, our culture or our country, then it should not exist now.

We heard this theme voiced and written during the fight against the institution of slavery and against “Jim Crow,” when women began to organize for the right to vote, at the start of labor union organizing, calls for direct voting of U.S. Senators rather than leaving it to state legislators, movements to abolish gender-based clothing mandates and other restrictive gender roles, demands for marriage equality and many other progressive social, cultural and political changes.

The current bifurcated restroom designation contradicts the realities of peoples’ sexed bodies, gender identities and gender expressions. Many intersex people define neither as “male” nor as “female.” Which restroom must they choose, or which are they allowed to choose? The “sex” designation typed onto many trans* peoples’ official records assigned to them at birth simply do not accurately and integrally reflect their actual gender identities. They had no power or control at the time of their birth to list the category that most matched their actual gender identities, and many laws today make it extremely difficult and expensive to permit any changes.

Gender must be seen as a continuum rather than as constituting binary oppositions. Doctors assigned me “male” at birth, but I define myself more as gender-fluid. While I do not specifically identity as “trans*,” I never related to the “he, him, his” personal pronouns. I feel uneasy when anyone refers to me as “a guy” or as “a bachelor,” when men want to talk “man to man,” or tell people to “man up!” These terms are simply social artifice and hold no meaning for me. Thanks to the ground breaking work of my colleague, Davey Shlasko, I am employing the pronouns “they,” “their,” “theirs” as singular pronouns more closely aligned with my gender.

Basically, the criticism of maintaining bifurcated restroom facilities rests upon one primary foundation: cisgender male privilege. By permitting only cis-Johns and not Janes into their Johns, even in single-user facilities, cismen will perpetuate their unearned benefits. The ol’ boys club will remain safe and secure, keeping the gender infidels outside the perimeters as the barricades hold firm.

Other states in addition to Florida are considering similar laws. In Texas, for example, a proposed bill, HR 2801, includes a provision that would offer students $2,000 for reporting and claiming “mental anguish” for having to share restroom facilities with students of another sex.

The proposed laws will further marginalize and intimidate trans* and intersex people, and will function as supplementary reinforcements to the shields guarding cismen their unearned entitlements. They will use these shields to continue to float, as many have always, unconsciously and uncritically down the mainstream of gender inequality.
________________________

Thank you Genny Beemyn for your insightful editorial suggestions.

www.huffingtonpost.com/warren-j-blumenfeld/florida-proposes-stand-ou_b_6877550.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices&ir=Gay+Voices

Jane Lynch proud of Glee's message of urging kids to 'find your own choir room'

‘There are people in the world who you can trust who love you – find those people’

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gregh

www.gaystarnews.com/article/jane-lynch-proud-glees-message-urging-kids-find-your-own-choir-room160315

Anti-LGBT Bills Defeated in West Virginia, Fairness and Equality Prevail

On Saturday in West Virginia, the legislative session came to an end at midnight, in effect killing extreme anti-LGBT bills which had failed to move forward.
HRC.org

www.hrc.org/blog/entry/anti-lgbt-bills-defeated-in-west-virginia-fairness-and-equality-prevail?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss-feed