Archives for April 2015

Gays in the Military

12/04/2015 By ACOMSDave Leave a Comment

Edirotial:

Since 12 January 2000 The MOD’s policy is to allow homosexual men, lesbians and transgender personnel to serve openly, and discrimination on a sexual orientation basis is forbidden. It is also forbidden for someone to pressure LGBT people to come out. All personnel are subject to the same rules against sexual harassment, regardless of gender or sexual orientation.

In the Republic of Ireland, an obvious close neighbour of the United Kingdom, which had carried some of its interpretation of law over from the time that the United Kingdom ruled there, there has been no preclusion since 1993 when male homosexuality was decriminalised in the Republic of Ireland. Since 1993 there has been significant change to make sure that there was no discrimination in terms of public policy. At the same time as an equal age of consent was introduced for heterosexual and homosexual persons, the Irish Defence Forces announced that they would be treating heterosexual and homosexual members equally. Relationships between senior and junior ranks would continue to be forbidden, as is common in most militaries. There would also be no harassment of gay officers and no questioning of members about their sexuality.

Obviously, the argument that LGBT personnel should not have had to hide their sexuality and therefore impact on their work could be made, and indeed during the Second World War, when morale and efficiency were most crucial, as Britain faced the threat of Nazi invasion, vast numbers of gay people were allowed to serve in combat units, some quite openly. There is sufficient evidence to prove that Britain operated different standards when it was caught short of recruits during history.

We all make judgements in hindsight, and history shows that often rules and laws are made which are nonsensical; this would seem to have one of those times!

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Further reading:

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Serving with PRIDE: From a 92-year-old WWII veteran to soldiers in Afghanistan – the men and women who fought wars AND prejudice

Photo essay book, Gays in the Military, released by New York photographer Vincent Cianni
Individual stories tell the history of homosexuals in the military
Many were discharged because of their sexuality and suffer ongoing psychological damage
Rape, assault and bullying remain prevalent
Being gay was considered a criminal offense in the U.S. military until 1993

By JOEL CHRISTIE FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

PUBLISHED: 15:30, 11 April 2015 | UPDATED: 16:52, 11 April 2015

A New York-based documentary photographer has spent three years traveling the U.S. photographing and interviewing gay veterans and servicemen to share their stories of suppression, sadness and silence in a moving photo essay.

Vincent Cianni, 63, said he embarked on the project, Gays in the Military, to better understand why homosexuals would enlist in the military to begin with; voluntarily signing up for a system that did, and in many ways still does, oppress them.

‘It seems I spent most of my life uninterested in knowing about the military because I supported peace, the fight to end violence and injustice, and the sanctity of life,’ the photographer told Vice.

‘I couldn’t understand why anyone would join the military, much less why gay people would join the military, an organization that shunned them.’

Pieced together, Cianni’s photos show commonalities between the subjects despite their different journeys, from a 92-year-old WW2 veteran to young soldiers who recently returned from Afghanistan.

Many were discharged because of their sexuality, others were raped, assaulted and bullied, causing ongoing psychological damage.

A major turning point for gay people in the military came in 2011 with the overturning of Dont Ask Don’t Tell (DADT), a discouraging policy signed by Bill Clinton in 1993 that continued a ban on gay soldiers enlisting, but stopped investigations and ‘witch hunts’ into whether soldiers were gay.

The bill was designed to protect the soldiers by keeping their sexuality a secret, however it forced them into the closet and further internalized their struggles.

Gay and in the military: Zachary Werth (left), says he was discharged from the Army National Guard in 2010 because of his sexuality, while his boyfriend, Dustin Hiersekorn (right) left the Marine Corps due to medical reasons. They are one of the couples who appear in Gays in the Military, a stunning photo essay by Vincent Cianni documenting the stories of homosexual soldiers

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Veteran: Paul Goercke, of San Francisco, is a World War II veteran who served in Okinawa, Hawaii and Saipan, said there was ‘no evidence of gay life’ when he enlisted with the Merchant Marines when he was 18

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‘The person I was dating was older than me and had been in the Navy quite a bit longer. She grew up under the old regime where there were active witch hunts to catch gay people in the act to get them out. I learned that culture and I was terrified the whole time I was in,’ says Heather Davies (left), of Round Rock, Texas. She was a lieutenant in the US Navy from 1989 to 1998

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Togetherness: Matt McCary (right) was arrested in 2000 after being singled out by a fellow airman. He was discharged from the US Air Force within five days. David Cochenic (left) received Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal, and Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal. The two were photographed in Orange Park, Florida

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‘I was eighteen when I joined the United States Marine Corps in 1989. Because it was pre-Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the questions were asked about sexual orientation. I already knew I was gay, but I was consciously trying to suppress it,’ says Eric Alva, of San Antonio, Texas. He was the first US military casualty in Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2004

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‘I wanted to think about kissing her, but I tried very desperately to force it out of my mind. I became obsessive about running and dieting; the more I exhausted my body, the less energy I would have to think about that,’ reveals Debra Fowler, of Lowell, Massachusetts. She was a Korean linguist in the US Army from 1986 to 1988

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‘I’m like everybody else. I have a job. I have a career. I want the same things: a home, family, everything else. I’m not any different.’ Don Bramer, of Washington, DC, a Lieutenant O-3 in the US Navy, says. He has served since 2002 and is still serving

Before DADT, which was enacted in 1993, homosexual behavior was considered a criminal offense within the military.

‘In many cases, the people I interviewed and photographed had no recourse to their discharge,’ Cianni said.

‘At times, their entire record of serving in the military was expunged as if it never happened.

‘Participating in the project served to regain their dignity and their history of serving.

‘During the interviews they revisited difficult experiences, sometimes experiences they had forgotten about.

‘It was an emotional catharsis for many of them.’

Gays in the Military was published by Daylight Books in May 2014.

It is archived at the David M. Rubestein Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Duke University and is available as an exhibition and multi-media installation.

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‘I was three years old the first time I had a sexual experience with my grandmother. That continued until I was 17 years old. When I was eight years old, my stepdad and step-granddad started sexually abusing me, and in rather horrible ways. I’m PTSD from Vietnam. I also have cancer from Agent Orange exposure. I’ve been HIV positive since 1987, full-blown AIDS since 1994, and I have Hepatitis C since 1989. Dying is not my responsibility; it’s part of nature. I recognize not all battles can be won,’ says Bert Bares, of Houston, Texas. He served three tours of duty in Vietnam – receiving numerous commendations including the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star

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‘I left the Navy to be with someone. It would not have worked out well. I would have been faced with periodic deployments given my specialty, and (my partner) didn’t like the deployments, so I decided to leave. It’s difficult to hide a gay relationship. When you’re single, the fifth senior officer on the ship, and always being the one who shows up alone at formal functions, it’s difficult to maintain a charade. I grew accustomed to the fear of what would happen if I were caught. But I also knew that if something did happen, I would not ever admit that I was gay,’ Larry Baxley says. The Washington, D.C.,-native resigned from the Navy in 2005

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‘As far as actually getting into a real gay relationship, that didn’t come until the military. In the Officer Basic Course there was an attraction between me and another woman but it never became a whole lot; the circumstances were not right. When I was at Fort McClellan was really when I started acting on my sexuality. When I left McClellan, I went to Fort Ritchie and had a relationship with the company commander. I was the executive officer. We had a relationship only until she was reassigned,’ says Nancy Russell, of San Antonio, Texas. She is a retired Lieutenant Colonel of the US Army

Irish gay couple turned down by multiple landlords

11/04/2015 By ACOMSDave Leave a Comment

Reprinted from Pink News

2^nd April 2015, 12:18 PM
Naith Payton

Ian Begley and Eric Wan have been looking for somewhere to live together for two months

House-hunting pair speak out about the constant struggle to find a place to live.
Ian Begley and Eric Wan are currently living with Mr Begley’s parents but are trying to find a place of their own.
Mr Begley points out that many factors are against them – “My boyfriend is a recent accounting graduate, he’s currently unemployed so it’s not the ideal situation to move out.” – but that they have been turned down on multiple occasions specifically because they are gay.
He told RTE 2FM: “We’ve been persistently looking, but we’ve been turned down countless times by landlords who say they don’t want to let gay couples into their home.
“The first time it was a Polish man. He seemed really nice, he was interested in getting to know who we are. On my way up he said, ‘Are you and your girlfriend going to be here anytime soon,’ I said I’m with my boyfriend. There was a pause, until he said, ‘You’re gay guys. Oh well, that changes everything. I won’t have gay people living in my house.’
“I’d be getting emails back saying we don’t let gay people into our house. A Moldavian landlord said, ‘You’re gay are you? I’m not sure if we can allow you. There’s a child in the house and I’m not sure what the parents would think about it. We’d have to get all occupants of the house together and have a vote about whether you can stay.’
“I ring up landlords and we have banter over the phone. Once I say I want to move in with my boyfriend, there’s always that long awkward silence, and an awkward laugh and then they say, ‘No unfortunately not, I don’t agree with the gay lifestyle, or we wouldn’t know what to expect.’”
“I’ve got it in writing several times. Yesterday, there was a man who emailed me back saying, ‘We don’t let gay people in here, didn’t you read the ad, we have a child.””
Mr Begley is a journalist, and he and Mr Wan have been together for 18 months – and have been house hunting for two of them. They say they spend all their free time looking for a place to live.
“I’m optimistic and confident we’ll get through it but its disheartening.”

Ulster University probe into academic’s anti-gay rant on Facebook

10/04/2015 By ACOMSDave Leave a Comment

Researcher brands homosexuality a ‘bizarre fetish’ in online debate on Ashers Bakery case

Republished from Belfast Telegraph BY DEBORAH MCALEESE – 09 APRIL 2015

Dr Mark Gilfillan stressed the remarks were his own personal views made during a “very limited online conversation”

The Ulster University has publicly distanced itself from one of its academics after he launched a scathing attack on homosexuality.

Dr Mark Gilfillan is now under investigation by the university after he used his Facebook account to describe homosexuality as a “bizarre fetish that has resulted in 72% of new cases of HIV”.
He also quoted from an article claiming to have found a “conclusive link” between homosexuality and “sexual predation targeting children”.
In a clear bid to distance itself from Dr Gilfillan’s comments the university said the views he expressed were “in no way supported by the university which prides itself on being inclusive and on welcoming staff and students of all backgrounds and beliefs.”
A spokeswoman for the university added: “This individual was commenting in a solely personal capacity and not as a university representative… the university is currently investigating the matter.”
Dr Gilfillan is a Research Associate in Irish Jewish History at the university. His main research area is British Jewish history in the late 19th and 20th centuries covering the social history of British Jewry, immigration issues and responses to the Jews.

According to his university profile he also has “strong interests in the Holocaust, the history of anti-Semitism, immigration and ethnicity in modern British history”.

In an email to the Belfast Telegraph last night Dr Gilfillan said that his contract with the university had expired at the time he made his comments.
He added that the remarks he made were his own personal views and stressed they had been made during a “very limited online conversation with a handful of participants”.
Dr Gilfillan made his comments during a public Facebook debate on the case of Ashers Bakery – the Christian-run business that refused to bake a cake promoting gay marriage because of their religious beliefs.
Outraged members of the gay community have described his views as “disturbing” and “deeply offensive”.
He began his comments by stating: “God or no God, there’s no such thing as homosexuality. Just a bizarre fetish that has resulted in 72% of new cases of HIV coming from the population group practicing this fetish even though they represent under 2% of the population at large.”

He added that gay culture “includes being applauded by morons while gyrating half naked in the presence of children during their equally bizarre parades”.

Dr Gilfillan then complained that “disgust” at homosexuality “is outlawed” and “called bigotry instead”.

“Why can’t one simply be disgusted by the practice, by hundreds of thousands of disease infected men, of a bizarre fetish, accompanied by a sick and oversexualised ‘culture’?” he asked.

He also quoted from an article claiming to have found a “conclusive link” between homosexuality and “sexual predation targeting children”.

“The only reason ‘gays’ are indulged in modern society is because we now worship minority status,” he went on to state.

He then added; “These people, and their fate, are tragic. They deserve sympathy. I see no reason why they should be encouraged, however, or indulged in their belief that their parody of marriage is valid.”

Dr Gilfillan was unavailable for comment when contacted by the Belfast Telegraph yesterday.

An online news and entertainment site that offers support to the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) community described the academic’s comments as “scathing and deeply offensive”.

They accused him of posting “a profoundly disturbing, horrifically homophobic analysis of the gay community” and said his “unhealthy beliefs and prejudices” are “worrying considering he is currently in a position of influence within the university”.

Profile

Dr Mark Gilfillan is a research associate in Irish Jewish History at the University of Ulster, where he graduated with a PhD in history in 2012. His main research area is British Jewish history in the late 19th and 20th centuries covering the social history of British Jewry, immigration issues and responses to the Jews. He also has strong interests in the Holocaust, the history of anti-Semitism, immigration and ethnicity in modern British history. Dr Gilfillan is also editor of the bulletin of the British Association for Jewish Studies.

Study Finds UK Gays, Lesbians Still Face Job Discrimination

10/04/2015 By ACOMSDave 1 Comment

Editorial: Job discrimination has for many minority areas, been a major problem. What is interesting from this study, is that parallels can now seem to be drawn with where discrimination use to happen between men and women when they were interviewed for jobs, and the man seemed to get the job even though the woman was equally if not better qualified. And the same thing also happened during the racial discrimination (indeed there may be evidence that both are still occurring).

But those of us who live in Northern Ireland, discrimination could become even more of a problem if the ‘Conscience Law’ is allowed to passed in Stormont.

We are now in election ‘fever’ time, and when the candidates come around your doorstep (if they even do) then make certain to ask them what their views on this law are, and how they will vote. Also ask them about other area of LGBT law and support, like for instance support for LGBT people in care homes.

If you don’t have the full picture on the candidate you are voting for, how can you make an informed decision.

Republished from Study Finds UK Gays, Lesbians Still Face Job Discrimination

By Rick Nauert PhD

A U.K. study finds that discrimination against gay and lesbian job seekers is commonplace within both private firms and the public sector.For the research, Dr. Nick Drydakis of Anglia Ruskin University studied 144 young people, all first-time job seekers, making 11,098 applications.

The study, published in the journal Human Relations, found that gay applicants of both sexes are five percent less likely to be offered a job interview than heterosexual applicants with comparable skills and experience.
The firms who offer interviews to gay male candidates pay an average salary of 2.0 percent less than those who invite heterosexuals for interview ($34,377 compared to $35,081). For lesbian women the average salary is 1.4 percent less ($33,628 compared to $34,131).
The discrimination was skewed by job sector. Gay men receive the fewest invitations for interviews in traditionally male-dominated occupations (accounting, banking, finance, and management jobs), whereas lesbians receive the fewest invitations for interviews in traditionally female-dominated occupations (social care, social services, and charity jobs).
In the accounting, banking, finance, and management sector, the study found 74 occasions when only the heterosexual candidate was offered an interview and not the gay male candidate with comparable skills and experience. There were no cases of only the gay male candidate being offered an interview.
Similarly, there were 63 examples when only heterosexual women were offered an interview in the social care, social services, and charity sector, but no examples of only the lesbian candidate being offered an interview.
The study was carried out with the help of 12 students’ unions at universities across Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Of the 2,312 students who volunteered for the study, Drydakis was able to match 72 students whose CVs mentioned having a prominent role in their university’s LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) society with 72 students whose skills and experiences were identical, but whose CV didn’t indicate their sexuality.
The participants were all third-year undergraduates, 21 years old, British nationals and unmarried. They were all predicted to achieve an upper second class degree (2:1).
In pairs, the 144 students applied for 5,549 jobs (11,098 separate applications) that had been advertised on 15 of the U.K.’s leading recruitment websites over a two-month period.
Drydakis comments: “Because of the limited research carried out so far into the experiences of gays and lesbians in the labor market, the disadvantages and discrimination they experience has gone unnoticed and therefore unchallenged.
“Despite measures to encourage openness and discourage discrimination, including the introduction of the Equality Act of 2010, it is evident from my research that gays and lesbians are encountering serious misconceptions and barriers in the job market.
“It is also clear that people who face biased treatment in the hiring process must spend more time and resources finding jobs, and firms lose potential talent as a result of biased hiring.”

The Boys In The Band

09/04/2015 By ACOMSDave Leave a Comment

Actors: Kenneth Nelson, Peter White, Leonard Frey, Frederick Combs, Cliff Gorman
Directors: William Friedkin
Writers: Mart Crowley
Producers: Dominick Dunne, Joe Allen, Kenneth Utt, Mart Crowley, Robert Jiras
Format: Colour, DVD-Video, Widescreen, NTSC
Studio: Paramount

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Time remembers the seminal stage play and film “The Boys in The Band”, which made its film debut 45 years ago on 17 March 1970, making history because it was one of the first American films to focus on gay characters. Adapted from Mart Crowley’s 1968 off-Broadway play, and directed by William Friedkin, the movie, funded by the CBS television network, was a candid illustration of gay life in New York at the time, and its’ realism helped it succeed.

The original 1968 Off-Broadway, New York stage cast and production | Unknown photographer | San Francisco Sentinel | 15052
The film featured Kenneth Nelson, Leonard Frey, Cliff Gorman, Frederick Combs, Keith Prentice, Robert La Tourneaux, Reuben Greene, Peter White, Maud Adams and Elaine Kaufman (the last two uncredited on the movie titles).
Sascha Cohen puts the film into context:

To the generation of gay Americans who came of age amidst the positive imagery of the contemporary LGBT rights movement — pride, love, rainbows and the message that “It Gets Better” — the plight of these men can look unrecognizable. With its bitter angst and grim outlook (the film’s most famous line is “show me a happy homosexual and I’ll show you a gay corpse”) The Boys in the Band feels like something of a relic.
But in 1970, it was a milestone for gay representation in Hollywood. For decades, homosexuality did not appear onscreen at all; the 1930 Motion Picture Production Code, enforced until 1968, prohibited the portrayal of “sex perversion.” Although a handful of characters from classic films — Plato in Rebel Without a Cause, the “sissy” cowardly lion in The Wizard of Oz and the murderous aesthetes in Hitchcock’s Rope — managed to slip past the censors, those who would interpret such figures as gay are stuck reading subtext. In The Boys in the Band, on the other hand, gay desire and identity are explicit; each character announces his presence as a “fairy” or a “queen.” The film helped make the gay community culturally visible during a moment in which openly discussing homosexuality was still taboo, and many Americans had yet to encounter an “out” gay man in person.

Mart Crowley’s commented, “What did I have to lose?” to explain how a fey Hollywood failure wrote the play in a week, won a five-day workshop way off-off Broadway that turned into the event absolutely Everybody Had to See, then turned down big Tinsel town money to insist the 1970 film be made with its original, very brave, cast of unknowns,

wrote Seán Martinfield of the San Francisco Sentinel, reviewing the event “The Making of The Boys” which took place at San Francisco’s 33rd Frameline Film Festival, in an undated article.

The dick pic test: are you happy to show the government yours?

09/04/2015 By David McFarlane Leave a Comment

Editorial. In the past I have written about government intrusion into our lives, about government high tactics (police confiscation of cameras during marches), indeed even about surveillance. I make no apologies for highlighting this article to all our readers, who I am sure (in the main) have never sent a naked ‘selfie’ of themselves to their lover – but be warned the government is watching you! (Tongue in cheek)

We rarely care about our privacy and surveillance in general terms, but when it comes to specifics we can get very defensive.

Someone looking at pornography on a computer

‘GCHQ did attempt to add some automated filters to protect its staff from seeing too much adult content, but noted there was “no perfect ability” to do this.’ Photograph: Alamy

@jamesrbuk
Wednesday 8 April 2015 16.05 BST
If you’re doing nothing wrong, and have nothing to hide from your government, then mass surveillance holds no fears for you. This argument might be the oldest straw man in the privacy debate, but it’s also a decent reflection of the state of the argument. In the UK’s first major election since the Snowden revelations, privacy is a nonissue.
This is a shame, because when it comes down to it, many of us who are doing nothing wrong have plenty we would prefer to hide.
One student learned that lesson in a hurry a few years ago. He had lent his lecturer – who happened to be me – his laptop to do an online demo as part of a presentation to his postgraduate class. All went well until a new Firefox tab was opened. When you do this, Firefox helpfully previews nine windows from your recent internet history. Unfortunately for the student concerned, five of these showed stills from hardcore porn videos. The material was legal, matched his stated sexual orientation, and was relatively vanilla – nothing he’d necessarily wish to hide – but it’s safe to say he’d rather it hadn’t been projected to his classmates.
The rest of the planned lesson had to be abandoned because of interruption (“What was the title of the one in the top left again? Was that the Busty Milf Teacher one?”) And instead the students got a crash course in internet privacy and anonymity. You have never seen a class so attentive.
We rarely care about our privacy in general terms; when it gets to specifics – can I read your text messages? – we tend to be more defensive. And when we get anywhere near the sexual realm, we get very defensive indeed.
That’s a truth the US comedian John Oliver realises to a much greater extent than many of his journalistic colleagues. In a segment during an interview with Edward Snowden, he vox popped people in Times Square on mass surveillance, only to be received with apathy and confusion. Then he suggested the government was collecting their dick pics – to a unanimously furious
Chatting to the host afterwards, Snowden acknowledged that lots of NSA and GCHQ activity does indeed hoover up dick pics . But he offered some slight reassurance. “Well, the good news is, there’s no program named the Dick Pic Program.”
The strange thing is, there’s something that comes pretty close: the UK intelligence agency GCHQ has collected so many dick pics they’ve become something of a problem for the organisation.
The problem arose, as it were, through a capability codenamed Optic Nerve, which allowed the agency to identify and hoover up any Yahoo webcam imagery that crossed its various bulk interception points across the internet. Rather than just collect the information for specific surveillance targets, the system hovered up virtually everything it saw. In what must surely rank as the most predictable complication in history – though it still apparently took the agency by surprise – it turned out a substantial quantity (up to 11%) of what it was intercepting were pornographic pictures. GCHQ did attempt to add some automated filters to protect its staff from seeing too much adult content, but noted there was “no perfect ability” to do this. Reassuringly (or disturbingly, depending on your point of view), policy documents reminded GCHQ staff that “dissemination of offensive material is a disciplinary offence”.
Such is the reality of modern internet surveillance: the UK’s intelligence agency has, quite literally, taken and stored material from a camera in your bedroom. The UK government has collected what must be one of the world’s largest collection of dick pics (and, for that matter, tit pics), stored them, and on a regular basis viewed – even if unwillingly – quite a lot of them.
And like any disreputable teenager, or modern five-eyes government bound by intelligence-sharing treaties, it will have shared quite a few of those pics with its friends. UK intelligence is typically and automatically shared with the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Thanks to the actions of Edward Snowden in leaking documents, of reporters spending months studying them, and editors brave enough to publish the results of that work, we now know about this.
It is currently perfectly possible, and perfectly legal, that a government employee has seen you naked. The question is, are you bothered? Because when we talk about surveillance reform, this is what we’re talking about.

Gay marriage to be recognized by largest Presbyterian Group

09/04/2015 By David McFarlane Leave a Comment

The change was approved by a majority of the church’s regional bodies – called presbyteries – on Tuesday following the recommendation of the Presbyterian General Assembly last year.
“With the positive vote on (the marriage amendment), our denomination steps forward into a new chapter – one that values our past journeys of faith, respects the importance of pastoral discretion in congregational matters, and yet offers to the world a compelling witness about how God’s grace is active in loving, mutual relationships,” the Rev. Randy Bush, pastor of East Liberty Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, said in a statement.
Tuesday’s vote changes the definition of marriage in the church’s constitution from “a man and a woman” to “two people, traditionally a man and a woman.”
This will allow gay couples to be married in congregations under the jurisdiction of the Presbyterian Church, though the change was clear to leave the decision to marry couples to the discretion of the officiant.
The Presbyterian Church has about 1.8 million members in 10,000 congregations and is among the largest Protestant denominations in the US.
The constitutional change comes as gay marriage has picked up unprecedented momentum in the US. Currently, 37 states allow gay marriage and 13 have banned it.

June is GLBT Book Month!

06/04/2015 By David McFarlane Leave a Comment

June is GLBT Book Month!

Reprinted from GLBT News – On: April 5, 2015

Via press release
CHICAGO — The American Library Association (ALA) has designated June 2015 as GLBT Book Month™, a nationwide celebration of the authors and writings that reflect the lives and experiences of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community. GLBT Book Month™ is an initiative of the American Library Association and is coordinated through its Office for Diversity, Literacy, and Outreach Services and the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Round Table.
Originally established in the early 1990s by The Publishing Triangle as National Lesbian and Gay Book Month, June 2015 will mark the first commemoration of GLBT Book Month™ to be held under ALA’s auspices.
“The Publishing Triangle, which has been a leader in positioning GLBT books at the forefront of literature, had the foresight to initiate this event almost a quarter century ago, and we are very proud to continue this important observance.” said ALA President Courtney Young. “We are incredibly appreciative of the historic work and brave first steps taken by many authors and publishers over the past 50 years to bring recognition to GLBT literature.”
To help libraries mark the occasion, ALA has launched the GLBT Book Month online resource center, featuring tipsheets and downloadable materials. Also featured will be an ALA Graphics poster and bookmark available for purchase highlighting “This Day in June,” written by Gayle E. Pitman, illustrated by Krystna Litten, and published by Magination Press, an imprint of the American Psychological Association. Pitman’s book about gay pride is the 2015 winner of the Stonewall Book Award, Mike Morgan and Larry Romans Children’s and Young Adult Literature Award.
GLBT Book Month will culminate with many GLBT events and programs at ALA’s 2015 Annual Conference in San Francisco. ALA will kick off its annual conference’s Opening General Session with speaker Roberta Kaplan, “superstar litigator” and adjunct professor at the Columbia Law School whose involvement in United States v. Windsor helped to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Other programs at Annual Conference will include a preconference on library outreach to GLBT people, sessions on curating the history of GLBT activism, the evolution and acceptance of collecting LGBT materials in libraries, use of GLBT materials in libraries, serving transgender patrons and the Stonewall Book Awards Program.
ALA’s support of quality GLBT literature includes the awarding of the prestigious Stonewall Book Awards, which have honored the very best in gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender books since 1971, including adult literature, non-fiction, and children’s and young adult titles. Additionally, ALA compiles two annual bibliographies of notable GLBT books, including the Rainbow Books list featuring recommended titles for children and young adults, and the Over the Rainbow book list for adult literature and non-fiction titles.
To learn more, please visit www.ala.org/glbtbookmonth.
About the American Library Association
The American Library Association (ALA), the voice of America’s libraries, is the oldest, largest and most influential library association in the world. Its approximately 56,000 members are primarily librarians but also trustees, publishers and other library supporters. The association represents all types of libraries. Its mission is to promote the highest quality library and information services and public access to information.
About GLBTRT
The Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Round Table of the American Library Association is committed to serving the information needs of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender professional library community and the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender information and access needs of individuals at large. GLBTRT is committed to encouraging and supporting the free and necessary access to all information, as reflected by the missions of the American Library Association and democratic institutions. The GLBTRT was founded in 1970 and is the world’s oldest professional organization for GLBT people.

Cell Block Tango – Broadway Backwards 2015

06/04/2015 By David McFarlane Leave a Comment

Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS

Published on 14 Mar 2015

Highlights from Broadway Backwards 2015 included Chicago’s “six merry murderesses” were represented in a sexy, all-male version of “Cell Block Tango” featuring Joshua Buscher-West, Marty Lawson, Alfie Parker Jr., Waldemar Quinones-Villanueva, Alex Ringler and Ryan Steele.

An exuberant, exhilarating and emotional evening of performances by Broadway’s best made for a poignant celebration of the 10th anniversary of Broadway Backwards.
The 2015 edition of the event, held March 9, raised a record $466,717 for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS and The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center.
The sold-out show included 20 audience-pleasing numbers and multiple standing ovations for Tituss Burgess, Lena Hall, Florence Henderson, Norm Lewis, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Lillias White and more Broadway favorites, as well as a special appearance by 2014 Kennedy Center Honoree Lily Tomlin.
Broadway Backwards is the annual celebration where gays and lesbians see their stories told through the great songs of musical theatre, sung by their favorite Broadway performers.
This year’s fundraising total surpassed the previous record of $423,182, set last year. In its 10 editions, Broadway Backwards has raised more than $2.4 million for Broadway Cares and The Center.
Broadway Backwards creator Robert Bartley again directed and choreographed the show. Also returning were Mary-Mitchell Campbell as music supervisor and Tim Rosser as music director. Production Stage Manager Peter Lawrence led a team of 12 stage managers. Adam Roberts served as associate choreographer with lighting design by Ryan O’Gara and costume design by Bernadette Banner.
Broadway Backwards began as a grassroots concert performed at The Center in 2006. The event grew quickly, performing next Off-Broadway and subsequently in Broadway theatres.
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Book Review: The Official History of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality and its times; Volume 1: A Space to Breathe, 1954–1973

06/04/2015 By David McFarlane Leave a Comment

A review of Amiable Warriors: The Official History of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality and its times; Volume 1: A Space to Breathe, 1954–1973 by Peter Scott-Presland(Published by the Paradise Press, London, 2015) (£35.00 hardback, 640pp, illustrated)

Peter Scott-Presland is our amiable guide to this compelling, entertaining, informative and inspirational history of the formative years of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality. This “history of small things” is extraordinarily well-told, and engrosses our interest from start to finish despite its length. Extensive use of primary sources and numerous interviews bring the events alive and help us understand how a large social movement can grow from small local initiatives and individuals’ personal interests. A central theme of this history is the “bravery in small things”, as thousands of CHE members write letters to local newspapers, organise social events and discussion groups, come out to their families and their local communities, with their demands for equality slowly causing a sea-change in attitudes: both society’s attitudes to gays and gays’ attitudes to themselves.
CHE of course did not arise from nothing. Scott-Presland begins with a short review of the “homophile” movements in Germany and the Netherlands and the United States, as well as the early British sex-reformers such as Edward Carpenter. Many early figures from the 1950s also played their roles in the early reforming development of the movement: Peter Wildeblood, Rupert Croft-Cooke, and the setting-up of the Wolfenden Committee which in 1957 recommended the decriminalisation of sex between consenting men over 21 in private, which was to become law in 1967. Hence the overriding focus of the early history of the gay movement was upon law reform, public education, and counselling; the vaguer concept of “equality” and an end to “discrimination” were still inchoate concepts in the 1950s and 1960s.
The two great figures of this early history are Allan Horsfall and Antony Grey. The two men typify the split that was to bedevil the gay movement: the North West Homosexual Law Reform Committee in Manchester, run by Horsfall, and the Homosexual Law Reform Society in London (run by Grey). It was essentially a class divide: working-class Northerners versus middle-class Southerners. The HLRS in particular was obsessed by “respectability” and was constrained by the feeling that it should not advocate anything that would be perceived to be too radical by the honorary members listed on its letterhead. This often meant that it could not focus specifically upon homosexuality, but had to be inclusive of all sexualities. The force behind all this was the Albany Trust, run by Antony Grey, with prominent heterosexual sexologists on its board. The Trust had to maintain the fiction that it was broadly concerned with all sexualities in order to receive funding from institutional donors and prominent individuals, even though in fact it was almost exclusively directed towards gays. One might say that Antony Grey was rather canny in thus achieving the main purpose, but the fact that “Antony Grey” never used his real name – Edgar Wright – in the public forum is symbolic of his “behind the scenes” approach to reform. Allan Horsfall, in contrast, was a working-class son of a publican and a prospective Labour Party candidate, and always used his real name and even published his home address. Nevertheless, the membership of the NWHLRC was also predominantly heterosexual at the beginning.
Both organisations, early on, were especially focused on counselling, dealing with the problems of self-loathing homosexuals in the closet, who had no way to meet others. This lack of meeting places – especially social and not just sexual sites – was a central concern for the gay movement for many years.
This is a history of people rather than a history of ideas. Although Scott-Presland gives individual spotlight biographies to all the major players in the movement – including Leo Abse, Glenys Parry, Griffith Vaughan-Williams, Peter Norman, Ray Gosley – it is difficult not to form the view that this early history consists of the working out of the tensions between just two men, Horsfall and Grey, as they struggle for the control or independence of their two organisations. At times the documentation of this early history consists simply of incestuous letters between Horsfall and Grey congratulating themselves on how many letters they have written to the press and on how many speaking engagements they had performed, and swapping newspaper cuttings documenting their achievements. There is hardly any sense that other people were involved in their campaigns. Horsfall was sometimes naively idealistic but a powerehouse for action, while Grey was more politically astute but over-cautious. The early campaigning efforts were regularly dampened by people like Antony Grey and Leo Abse (the MP who had pushed the 1976 Sexual Offences Act through Parliament) urging Allan Horsfall not to rock the boat. Even while the heterosexual membership of the Homosexual Law Reform Society dwindled and it became a modern gay campaigning group, nevertheless it became just the Sexual Law Reform Society in 1970, with a solitary secretary: Antony Grey.
Ironically it was the passing of the law in 1967 that led to organisational chaos in both the NWHLRC and the HLRS (and Albany Trust), for neither knew quite what to aim for once the law reform had been achieved. A “gay space” became a major focus, and many years would be spent in trying – and failing – to set up CHE-owned social clubs as a more healthy alternative to the commercial gay pub and club scene. These were to be called Esquire Clubs, and to be organised along the lines of the COQ clubs in Denmark, but CHE never quite succeeded in getting a brewery on board, and never raised enough money to fund physical premises. There was also the problem that Leo Abse and the Home Office specifically objected to the emergence of gay social clubs, which they felt would be an unwanted result of legalisation – the ideal result in their view would be for homsoexuals to lead discreet private lives rather than be publicly visible and associating with others. This, they felt, would result in separation rather than integration. Antony Grey, who always felt that VIPs and leaders of Society were necessary for the success of any campaign, came down opposed to social clubs; as a result the NWHLRC severed its relations with the Albany Trust, and the power and influence of the Albany Trust gradually declined.
By 1969 the NWHLRC had become CHE – the Committee for Homosexual Equality – a significant change from “law reform” to the wider issue of “equality”. (Though it wasn’t until 1971 that “Committee” was changed to “Campaign”.) The great mover behind this phase was Paul Temperton, whose social political background was typical of early CHE members: he worked for the British Humanist Association, the Manchester Non-Violent Action Group, the National Council for Civil Liberties, and the Anti-Apartheid movement. Social activism came to the fore while the counselling focus of the old school receded. For this period from 1968 to 1973 Scott-Presland gives a very detailed study of press campaigns, newspaper advertisements for membership, complaints to the Press Council, and meetings with local councils and institutions.
The proliferation of local CHE organisations becomes almost overwhelming. Each regional group is given its proper focus, because each region was autonomous, and there were always very weak links between the regional groups and the national CHE executive. This was perhaps its main failure as a campaigning organisation, but also its strength at encouraging social solidarity. The origins of each group are carefully documented; they were almost always started by an individual person who became the convenor (or a pair of lovers who became joint convenors) and who worked to get together a critical mass of about twenty members. While there were very formal links between each region and the national executive, there were virtually no links at all between one local group and another local group. Every would-be member of a group was vetted by a representative appointed by national headquarters – usually the talented journalist Roger Baker. Liverpool and Manchester remained strong regional powerhouses, but gradually the working-class membership was superseded by a middle-class membership, for reasons not fully explained, perhaps not even explainable. Advertising in newspapers and journals reached mainly a middle-class audience, hence recruited more middle-class members, and as CHE became more professional, it also became more middle-class. Also, women’s issues did not much occupy CHE, and it increasingly lost its lesbian membership.
A lengthy chapter on London systematically goes through each of its thirteen groups, often with extracts from interviews with its first convenors – notably Roger Baker, Brian Sewell, Peter Robins, Peter Norman, and Jackie Forster. Because of geographical concentration, the London groups all associated with one another (unlike groups scattered across the country outside London), and from April 1971 all the London groups held “mass meetings” at which larger goals and strategies were proposed, and work towards shared aims was distributed among groups. However, everything was still highly bureaucratic and hence cumbersome. Rules of debate dissipated too much energy.
One important product of these pan-London activities was the formation of the counselling group FRIEND. Individual convenors had lacked the professional skill and funds necessary for really effective counselling, hence the use of formally trained volunteers was a great advance. Money was raised for training and for staffing a telephone service, and maintaining offices. By the end of 1972 they had 50 befrienders, plus 12 professional therapists, a Centre in London, with branches in Manchester, Liverpool, and several other cities. During all of FRIEND’s activities, there was the inevitable power struggle between Antony Grey and the leaders of FRIEND regarding the future of homosexual counselling services. The Albany Trust refused to accept the structure proposed by FRIEND and stopped supporting it financially. FRIEND became independent and grew, while the Albany Trust became marginalised. (However, FRIEND would formally split from CHE in 1975–6 in order to obtain charitable status and government money, which was not possible while it remained allied with a campaigning organisation – a problem the Albany Trust had faced earlier.)
CHE continued essentially as a social support provider rather than a campaigning organisation. Each group was in effect a discussion group rather than a campaign group; a number of speakers regularly went around the circuit giving their talks, e.g. Roger Baker talking on drag (on which he had written a book). In addition to the regular Discussion meetings, there were regular Winter Fairs, Winter Talks, Jumble Sales, Summer Balls, coach trips, Christmas parties, bingo and lotteries, and a host of events very similar to those organised by the ladies of the Women’s Institutes. As the London groups expanded, some became special interest groups for those interested in music, writing, film, sports, rambling, bird-watching, and so on. These were hardly political action groups. The long-lived London Monday Group met at the Chepstow Arms in Notting Hill for over 15 years, with a regular programme of well-known speakers and lively disccussions, followed by drinks and socilising. Many long-term friendships were formed there, but it might be hard to document any specific “social change” it might have achieved. Scott-Presland argues (not very convincingly in my view) that these special interest groups were an important factor in the development of gay identity, specifically the notion of “being gay” while engaged in non-gay activities. By mid-1973 London CHE had some 20 local groups plus 15 special groups, with 1,000 members; CHE across the country had a total of some 70 local groups with 3,500 members.
So by late 1973, although the Campaign for Homosexual Equality did not create a coherent national campaigning movement with a coherent ideology, it nevertheless had succeeded in its main objective: the creation of “a gay space” in which people with a shared sexual orientation could come together in a broadly social space rather than a narrow subculture whose main aim was sex. This is not to say that sex was not important to the development of the friendship networks formed within CHE, but the real aim was a modus vivendi, a way of life, for homosexuals within society rather than a separate twilight world on the margins of society. The community it had helped forge was an astonishing achievement and deserves the full and careful treatment it receives here. The development of an effective campaigning organisation after 1973 will be the subject of the next volume in this projected three-volume official history.