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Gay marriage play ‘8′ goes national during 2012

eric — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 21:15:48 +0000

For anyone who missed the star-studded, one-night-only Broadway debut of the gay marriage play “8” or can’t get to Los Angeles this spring to see George Clooney lead a West Coast version, there’s hope: The play is coming to a theater near you.

The only bad news — no Clooney.

The pro-gay marriage American Foundation for Equal Rights and partner Broadway Impact are sponsoring dozens of productions ofDustin Lance Black’s play starring local actors across the country this election year. It’ll be shown in states where marriage battles loom, including Maine, Maryland, New Hampshire and North Carolina.

Adam Umhoefer, the foundation’s project director, said the glitzy Broadway show and upcoming California counterpart help fund getting the play mounted elsewhere. “Those big tent-pole shows bring attention to the play so that all these other groups across the country can work on their productions,” he said.

The play is mostly culled from the transcripts of the 2010 federal court battle that dealt with the legality of Proposition 8, the ballot initiative that outlawed same-sex marriage in California.

Black’s play was first performed on Broadway as a one-time benefit reading in September starring Morgan Freeman, Ellen Barkin, Anthony Edwards, Bradley Whitford, John Lithgow, Cheyenne Jackson, Christine Lahti and Rob Reiner, who is developing a film based on the trial. The Broadway event raised more than $1 million and Clooney will lead his own starry version in Los Angeles on March 3.

Todd Glass Comes Out

eric — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 20:39:18 +0000

Todd Glass, a veteran of “Last Comic Standing” who has appeared on “Louie” and other shows, came out as gay in an interview for Marc Maron’s “WTF” podcast.

Glass, 47, said he wanted to come out because of recent suicides by gay teens. “I cannot listen to stories about kids killing themselves any longer without thinking, ‘When are you going to have a little blood on your shirt for not being honest about who you are?’” he said.

Maron had promised last week that the show, which aired Monday, would be a first. The interview futher established “WTF” as the comedy world’s go-to show for serious introspection.

Glass, a native of the Philadelphia area, is a fixture of the L.A. comedy scene and hosts his own podcast. He suffered a heart attack after a show in April 2010 with Sarah Silverman and Jeff Ross.

Michele Bachmann vs. the 8-Year-Old

eric — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 16:29:56 +0000

GOP presidential candidate Michele Bachmann learned that protesters often come in adorable packages. A video captures the Minnesota congresswoman greeting 8-year-old Elijah and his mom at a signing event for Bachmann’s book, “Core of Conviction: My Story,” in South Carolina.

The candidate, who is an outspoken opponent of same-sex marriage, met her match with the soft-spoken, pint-sized activist. The video shows Bachmann leaning in to listen closely as the youngster whispers, “My mommy’s gay, but she doesn’t need fixing.”

Bachmann bolts back up and manages a “bye bye” as mother and son walk away.

This isn’t the first time that Bachmann has faced challenges to her stand on gay rights from the younger set. Last week, Bachmann was questioned by a teen about her opposition to gay marriage.

Watch it here!

Students suspended after suicide of gay NY teen

eric — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 14:24:01 +0000

A high school in upstate New York has suspended some students after the suicide of a bullied gay teenager.

Jamey Rodemeyer’s suicide at age 14 on Sept. 18 drew national attention, including laments from Lady Gaga over the loss of another promising life to bullying.

Police in the Buffalo suburb of Amherst investigating the death uncovered five bullying episodes at Williamsville North High School, but cited difficulties in prosecuting the case in announcing last month that no charges would be filed.

Buffalo News reports that the Williamsville Central School District concluded its own investigation into Rodemeyer’s death last week by suspending some North High School students. School officials declined to say how many students were suspended or how long the suspensions will last.

The Out 100 Picks People of 2011

eric — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 14:23:18 +0000

Out magazine’s people of the year are led by a “Legend” in writer Larry Kramer, a “Stylemaker” in model Andrej Pejic, and “Artist of the Year” Jesse Tyler Ferguson – plus comedian Kathy Griffin as “Entertainer of the Year.” They lead off this year’s Out 100 list, with their covers being released today. See the cover models’ photos on the following pages.

See the complete Out 100!

On Fire Island, Blaze Destroys Hub of the Gay Social Scene

eric — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 14:19:43 +0000

The Pavilion dance club, the locus of the social scene in gay-centric Fire Island Pines, was destroyed Monday night in a spectacular fire that illuminated the eastern horizon opposite Long Island.

On Tuesday morning, the fire was still exhaling ghostly trails of gray smoke into the dank sky above Great South Bay. On the muddy ground in front of the charred skeleton of the Pavilion, a soot-stained male mannequin dressed in a black swimsuit was the only recognizable survivor of the mayhem: the building — sealed, closed and hurricane-proofed for the off-season — was unoccupied. Its contents were incinerated.

Jon Wilner, a Pines resident whose real estate office was in the Pavilion building, said that besides patronizing its parties, he had twice brokered its sale: “I watched this building when it was being built, and last night I watched it burn down,” he said. “It’s a horror. For anyone who lives or rents here, they feel like it was their building, too. It represents their lifestyle, and the Pavilion was the place where they could celebrate it.”

Forty-three Long Island fire companies responded to the blaze, which began around 8 p.m., with 400 firefighters working in shifts through the night to try to contain the damage to a tinderbox of a summer community that, like much of Fire Island, is defined by a series of wooden structures connected by boardwalks that snake through groves of pines and bamboo hedges.

Firefighters from Long Island commandeered the Fire Island Empress, a ferry docked in Sayville, to take them across Great South Bay on Monday night. The fear was that the fire, not thought to be suspicious, might spread to adjacent structures, including the local Fire Department headquarters, and nearby residences, most of them boarded up for the winter. That did not happen, in part because of a southerly breeze. Only one residence was damaged after the wind blew embers across Pines Harbor and onto its roof. It, too, was unoccupied.

But there was no chance of saving the Pavilion, which a team of investors — led by Andrew Kirtzman, a former NY1 and WCBS-TV newscaster and author — bought for $17 million in 2010 in a deal that gave it control of 80 percent of the Pines’ commercial properties. The building housing the Pavilion was rebuilt after the 2006 season.

Mr. Kirtzman, 50, wandering around the periphery of the wreckage on Tuesday wearing a fireman’s jersey and a bereaved expression, had expressed a desire to transform the Pavilion and his other Pines properties, including the Blue Whale restaurant, known for its low tea — early evening drinks — into “a gay utopia.”

The Pavilion was the site of high tea, actually an enormous dance party. Mr. Kirtzman’s other properties were undamaged, but the Pavilion was the one to which he was most sentimentally attached.

Mr. Kirtzman, who owns a house down the boardwalk from the Pavilion, said he and his business partners, Seth Weissman and Matt Blesso, had not yet considered what to do next.

“This is so jarring,” he said. “It’s shocking to me. I was here 10 days ago and everything looked perfect. The Pines needs a beautiful night club. To the people who live in the Pines, the Pavilion was like our church. I first went to the Pavilion in 1981, and when I got out in the middle of that dance floor, I was blown away by how stylish and decadent and quasireligious it all felt.”

Along with the Pavilion building, where high tea drew celebrities like Tom Ford, Calvin Klein and Madonna, the adjacent LaFountaine building, containing seven Pines businesses, including the Sip n’ Twirl disco, a pizza parlor, a clothing shop and two real estate offices, was ruined.

Nicole LaFountaine, 42, a third-generation Fire Islander and the owner of her family’s 1980 building, said she arrived on the scene at 9:30 p.m. on Monday and was confronted by “an enormous fireball burning into the sky.”

“The responders did a crazy great job of containing the fire,” said the bleary-eyed Ms. LaFountaine, who as chairwoman of the board of Fire Island Pines fire commissioners had spent the night at the firehouse coordinating the firefighters’ efforts.

She said the loss of the Pavilion and the Sip n’ Twirl was doubly inconceivable. “I grew up here, and this place is all about the beaches by day and the night life after dark,” she said. “We’re a resort community, which means we’re only as good as our entertainment, and that was our hub. The Pavilion was famous famous.”

The original complex was built by an enterprising Ziegfeld girl, Peggy Fears, in the 1950s, and bought by John B. Whyte, a model, in 1966. Local lore claims that disco, with its multitasking D.J.’s manning two turntables to create a seamless segue from one dance tune to the next, was born at the Pavilion. Mr. Whyte sold to Anthony Roncalli and Eric von Kuersteiner, veterans of the Pines, in 2004; they in turn sold the complex to Mr. Kirtzman and his partners.

Joseph Geiman, the spokesman, commissioner and former chief of the Fire Island Pines Fire Department, said the blaze was initially fought in pitch blackness because the Long Island Power Authority had “killed the grid, the same as they did for Hurricane Irene.”

“So when I arrived,” Mr. Geiman said, “there were five or six local responders working in the dark. Until we got our lights set up, the fire was the only source of illumination. And you could hear propane cylinders exploding one by one, almost like missiles flying out of nowhere. We call that bleve: boiling liquid expanding vapor explosives.”

Mr. Geiman, 57, a Pines summer resident for a decade, said the fire had wiped out a business and night-life destination “that was the bread and butter of this community.”

“To lose the Pavilion is devastating for us and for Andrew,” Mr. Geiman said.

Once firefighters finished hosing down the remains of the building, “we’re bringing in the payloaders to knock everything down,” said Mr. Geiman, who was hoarse from breathing smoke fumes for 17 hours. “It’s too dangerous to leave it.”

Mr. Kirtzman said he would be watching the bulldozers and wrecking balls from a respectful distance: “It will be a funeral.”

NH rep drops gay marriage amendment

eric — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 13:57:07 +0000

The sponsor of a constitutional amendment to prohibit gay marriage has decided not to pursue the measure next year to clear the way for a debate over repealing New Hampshire’s law legalizing the unions.

State Rep. David Bates, the Windham Republican who also is sponsor of the repeal bill, told The Associated Press on Tuesday he wants to let the Legislature consider repealing the law enacted under Democrats two years ago before debating a constitutional change — a process that would take longer to implement.

“The bill to change the meaning of marriage back to what it was in statute is well on its way,” Bates said.

Bates said he did not want to risk having lawmakers choosing between two measures: the bill and a constitutional amendment.

“It would complicate the decision for legislators if there was another alternative out there,” he said.The legislative process seems the appropriate way to decide the issue, he said. If a constitutional amendment is used, millions of dollars in out-of-state money would flow into New Hampshire on both sides of the issue, he said.

“I don’t think that’s the way people want it decided,” he said.Constitutional amendments need three-fifths vote of the membership of both houses to be placed on the ballot and two-thirds approval of the voters to be adopted.

Same-sex marriage is legal in New York, Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and the District of Columbia. Another 30 states have constitutional amendments banning gay marriage.

Gay Rights Advocate Axel Axgil Dies at 96

eric — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 17:46:12 +0000

Axel Axgil, whose struggle for gay rights helped make Denmark the first country to legalize same-sex partnerships, died here on Saturday. He was 96.

The cause was complications from a fall, the Danish gay rights group LGBT Danmark said.

In 1948 Mr. Axgil was a founder of that organization, one of the oldest gay rights groups in Europe, originally known as the Association of 1948. He was fired from his job when his role in the organization was made public.

In 1955 Mr. Axgil, then known as Axel Lundahl-Madsen, and his partner, Eigil Eskildsen, with whom he had lived since 1950, were convicted on pornography charges and sentenced to short prison terms for running a gay modeling agency that sold pictures of naked men. While in prison, they melded their first names into the shared surname Axgil as a public show of defiance.

Axel and Eigil Axgil later ran a resort hotel that catered to a predominantly gay clientele.

In 1989, after years of lobbying by the Axgils and other advocates, Denmark became the first country to allow same-sex civil unions when the Danish Parliament passed a law giving homosexuals most of the rights and obligations of marriage, although not the right to adopt a child. (That right was granted last year.) Other countries in Europe soon followed suit.

On Oct. 1, 1989, at City Hall in Copenhagen, Axel and Eigil Axgil were the first of 11 same-sex couples (all male) to exchange vows under the new law.

Chaz Bono, Amy Poehler among stars in anti-bullying PSAs

eric — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 13:33:20 +0000

GLAAD is breaking out the star power for its new “Amplify Your Voice” PSA campaign against LGBT bullying.

Chaz Bono, “Jersey Shore” star Vinny Guadagnino, Amy Poehler, Shaquille O’Neal, Rashida Jones, Tori Spelling and husband Dean, Dustin Lance Black and the cast of the teen drama “Pretty Little Liars” are among the stars who’ve filmed the public service announcements, which all tout the campaign slogan, “No matter who you are, you have the power to make a difference.”

The campaign stems from a partnership between Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and the American Federation of Teachers.

The PSAs are being launched the week before October 20’s Spirit Day, the annual occasion when Americans are asked to wear purple to show support for lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender youth.

New York teen bullied even in death

eric — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 14:12:06 +0000

Weeks after the suicide of 14-year-old Jamey Rodemeyer in western New York, school officials, police and lawmakers are grappling with ways to prevent the kind of schoolyard bullying being blamed for his death.

The openly gay teen’s parents Tim and Tracy Rodemeyer are calling for changes in how New York schools handle the kind of chronic harassment that drove their son to kill himself outside their suburban Buffalo home on September 19.

“It’s the only thing that’s keeping us going, to try and get the word out,” Tracy Rodemeyer told Reuters.

Already the move has resulted in proposed state legislation aimed at stopping online taunts, known as cyber-bullying.

It comes in the wake of neighboring New Jersey enacting the nation’s toughest anti-bullying law after the suicide last year of a gay Rutgers University student who was bullied.

At the start of this school year, New Jersey officials worried tight budgets might make it difficult to uphold the law, which requires a uniform response to each and every incidence of bullying, including corrective action plans and time frames for intervention.

In Buffalo, meanwhile, a painful reminder that little has changed came last week when a student at the school Rodemeyer attended was suspended for continued taunting of the teen even after his death.

This time the target was his 16-year-old sister at a school dance just hours after she attended a wake for her younger brother on September 22.

“It sickens me,” their father said of reports that some students chanted “better off dead” when dance organizers played a song in Rodemeyer’s honor by his favorite singer, Lady Gaga, who has memorialized him in her anti-bullying comments.

“Your mind just spins at 100 miles per hour. How can someone do that? I don’t understand how someone could be so cruel,” Tracy Rodemeyer said.

“Everybody has a story about bullying but never, never have I ever seen it where somebody would be happy that someone is dead from their actions.”

Superintendent Scott Martzloff posted a message on the district’s web site condemning the dance incident and saying a student believed to be responsible was suspended.

Police continue to investigate Rodemeyer’s death to determine if criminal charges should be brought against some of the teens accused of harassing him, officials said.

The high school freshman had talked to his mother about being gay for the first time about a year ago. In May, he contributed an online video to an international campaign called “It Gets Better,” designed to help young gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people confirm their identity and survive the pitfalls of being different.

She said the teasing that followed Rodemeyer through grade school and into high school included taunts of “fag” and “girly girl” hurled at the boy who kept mostly female friends.

While his online message in May was one of hope, his mother said it is clear now that he put up a strong front to hide the deep hurt within.

School guidance counselors and social workers met with Rodemeyer over the years but none seemed to strive to help him, his father said. One counselor’s advice was simply to stop spending time with girls, he said.

One big problem is that harassment may seem endless for some teens, deepening their despair, said Dr. Stuart Green, of the New Jersey Coalition for Bullying Awareness, who helped draft the New Jersey anti-bullying legislation.

“In 12 years of taking phone calls from parents I’ve never once gotten a call where a parent was upset about something that happened yesterday. It’s months and years,” he said.

The proposed legislation in New York to make it easier to prosecute online bullying is aimed at creating a “chilling effect” to discourage the harassment, said Rich Azzopardi, spokesman for state Senator Jeffrey Klein, author of the bill.

“Years ago, drunken driving wasn’t viewed as a big deal, even though it has the potential to kill people. What we’re doing with bullying is changing people’s perception of it,” Azzopardi said.

For the Rodemeyers, that shift can’t come soon enough.

“We’re really supposed to be learning from our mistakes and this is the next biggest one,” Tracy Rodemeyer said.