GayWisdom

Modern Family

If you don't already watch Modern Family (as good as Glee!) this should encourage you to tune it. (And Alec...I think you ought to give Jesse and shot.)

Marriage Equality: Dollars and Sense

WE can (and should) debate whether or not Marriage Equality is a fight worth fighting for or not. The assimilation of gay folk into an "institution" of such questionable history and stability has never really been talked about in a larger venue, as it needs to be.

But this video breaks it down in the simplest matter of equality. And if one should, or would, choose to be married, then, dammit, one ought to be entitled to all the same rights and responsibilities as the next person.

Bill Bowersock was with his beloved Harvey Frand for 32 years. Both paid into the Social Security system over that time and, in their retirement planning, they counted on both checks to get them through those later years. When Harvey passed away, Bill was not entitled to any of Harvey's benefits, benefits that are granted to heterosexual couples.

Here is a video that was created to tell their story that has been picked up by numerous sources.

Thanks to David Mixner for bringing this to our attention.

Thank You For Your Call from Shawn Nee / discarted on Vimeo.

Argentina: Same-Sex Marriage Among the Carnivores

The Argentine Republic’s legalization of same-sex marriage July 15 came as a complete surprise to those of us who think of Argentina as the land of machismo, meat-eaters – Argentines are the world's biggest carnivores, consuming 70 kilos (154 lbs.) of beef per person – and military coups.  According to “Completely Queer: The Gay and Lesbian Encyclopedia” (1998), “Argentinians endured some of the most brutal campaigns of official and unofficial persecution of lesbians and gay men anywhere in the 20th century.” After the military coup of March 24, 1976, “some 400 gay men were ‘disappeared’ – kidnapped, barbarically tortured, and executed . . . Encouraged by Roman Catholic church leaders, the dictatorship raided and closed gay bars, arresting as many as 1,400 men in a particularly brutal 1978 campaign that took place on the eve of the World Cup soccer tournament in Buenos Aires.  In 1982 and 1983, the last two years of the dictatorship, paramilitary groups assassinated a number of gay men working in the arts. . . .”  But with the re-establishment of democracy in the 1990s, “Buenos Aires emerged . . . as the gay capital of South America, with vocal rights organizations and a lively gay and lesbian media presence.”

 

Argentina’s stormy past and promising present makes it uniquely qualified to lead Latin America in the field of LGBT rights and equality. Civil unions are already recognized in Buenos Aires (2002), the Province of Rio Negro (2003) and the cities of Villa Carlos Paz (2007) and Rio Cuarto (2009). On November 12, 2009 a Buenos Aires court approved the marriage of Alex Freyre and José Maria Bello.  (Though the Buenos Aires government blocked the wedding, the two men were married on December 28 in Ushuaia, in Tierra del Fuego.)  In late 2009 the Argentine Congress took up a bill to change Article 172 of the Civil Code to legalize same-sex marriage. The Chamber of Deputies approved the measure on May 5 and the Senate on July 15.  President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, a friend of the LGBT community, ratified the measure, which took effect a few days later.

 

"From today onward, Argentina is a more just and democratic country," said Maria Rachid, president of the Argentine Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Federation. The law "not only recognizes the rights of our families, but also the possibility of having access to health care, to leave a pension, to leave our assets to the people with whom we have shared many years of life, including our children," she said.

 

It was a hard-earned victory, and Argentina’s LGBT community is right to celebrate it.  But it would be a mistake to think that Argentina has become a queer paradise.  For one thing, machismo is still rampant in that country. Diego Maradona (left), Argentina’s soccer god, reacted the way many Argentinian men would when a reporter at the World Cup – where Maradona coached the Argentinian Team – seemed to question Maradona’s fondness for his players. “No, I have not gone limp wristed," Maradona protested, vehemently.  “But I like to acknowledge and congratulate my players when they play as well as they did today. That was a pleasing result and display. It was a job well done. I still prefer women. I am dating Veronica, who is blond and 31 years old." Though Maradona never misses an opportunity to remind us he’s a jerk, his eyebrow-raising reaction to a reporter’s innocent question indicates that not everything is peachy-keen down Argentine way.

 

Nor is Argentina’s legalization of same-sex marriage approved throughout the land. What goes well in Buenos Aires might not go well in the countryside, where folks are more religious, macho, and carnivorous. The same-sex marriage bill was hotly opposed by the Roman Catholic, Mormon and evangelical churches, which organized a 60,000-person march on Congress to protest the measure. The Cardinal Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, led the fight against same-sex marriage, saying that "children need to have the right to be raised and educated by a father and a mother."  Another opponent, Senator Juan Perez Alsina, called marriage between a man and a woman "essential for the preservation of the species."  Opponents tried to derail the measure by proposing a weak civil unions law as an alternative to “gay marriage,” but they were blocked by astute parliamentary maneuvers.  “I'm proud that we never tried for civil unions, always for complete equality," said Esteban Paulon, the LGBT Federation's general secretary.

 

The legalization of same-sex marriage in Argentina, makes it the tenth country in the world to legalize “gay marriage.”  (The others are Belgium, Canada, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, South Africa, Spain and Sweden). It also puts to shame the United States, where the Defense Of Marriage Act is on the books and a majority of states have constitutional amendments barring same-sex marriage. “Today's historic vote shows how far Catholic Argentina has come, from dictatorship to true democratic values, and how far the freedom-to-marry movement has come, as 12 countries on four continents now embrace marriage equality," said Evan Wolfson, Executive Director of Freedom to Marry. “America should lead, not lag, when it comes to treating everyone equally under the law." Perhaps it helps that Argentina’s religious lobby is not as powerful as the one in the States, or that opposition to same-sex marriage is not a cornerstone of one of its major political parties, as it is with the Republican Party in the U.S.  Here we have a long way to go before we catch up to the “carnivores” of the Argentine Republic.

 

Jesse Monteagudo (jessemonteagudo@aol.com) is a South-Florida based freelance writer. Jesse thanks Daniel Curzon, author of the 1978 gay novel “Among the Carnivores,” for inspiring the title of this article.

Damned Straight

The Tenth Amendment (Amendment X) to the United States Constitution, which is part of the Bill of Rights, was ratified on December 15, 1791. The Tenth Amendment restates the Constitution's principle of federalism by providing that powers not granted to the national government nor prohibited to the states by the Constitution of the United States are reserved to the states or the people.

In an enormous victory for marriage equality, a federal judge in Boston, Thursday, July 8^th, ruled, in two separate cases, that a critical part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) unconstitutional.

In one challenge brought by the state of Massachusetts, Judge Joseph Tauro ruled that Congress violated the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution when it passed DOMA and took from the states decisions concerning which couples can be considered married. In the other, Gill v. Office of Personnel Management, he ruled DOMA violates the equal protection principles embodied in the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.

Jesse's Journal: The Nature of Mating

A few years ago the Zurich Zoo in Switzerland conducted guided tours that centered around homosexual behavior among the zoo animals. Unfortunately, the one hour tours were held in the early evenings, at a time when most animals were asleep. But this did not stop the gay zoo tours from being a success.  Though there was no same-sex activity in evidence, tour guide Myriam Schärz assured her tourists that same-sex behavior is a common part of animal life: “I don’t know of any species that is exclusively heterosexual,” Schärz told “swissinfo”, Switzerland’s news and information platform. “Right here in Zurich we once had a gay flamingo couple who remained partners for life. In Cologne Zoo they have a pair of lesbian penguins who each year steal an egg from one of their neighbors and treat it as their own.”’

 

The last time I wrote about same-sex behavior among the so-called “lesser” species was in 1999. Later that year the standard work on the topic, Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity by Bruce Bagemihl, was published. “On every continent, animals of the same sex seek each other out and have probably been doing it for millions of years,” Bagemihl wrote. “They court each other, using intricate and beautiful mating dances that are the result of eons of evolution. Males caress and kiss each other, showing tenderness and affection toward one another rather than just hostility and aggression. Females form long-lasting pair-bonds - or maybe just meet briefly for sex, rolling in passionate embraces or mounting one another. Animals of the same sex build nests and homes together, and many homosexual pairs raise young without members of the opposite sex. Other animals regularly have partners of both sexes, and some even live in communal groups where sexual activity is common among all members, male and female. Many creatures are ‘transgendered,’ crossing or combining characteristics of both males and females in their appearance or behavior.”

 

According to Bagemihl, “Homosexual behavior occurs in more than 450 different kinds of animals worldwide, and is found in every major geographic region and every major animal group.”  But we don’t need Bagemihl for anecdotal evidence. Hardly a week goes by that we don’t hear stories about same-sex oriented otters or rabbits. You don’t have to go to the Zurich Zoo to learn about “the indiscriminate and almost insatiable sexuality of bonobo apes” or “how gay male dolphins use their lovers’ blowholes for sexual gratification.” Just last year a review paper by Nathan Bailey and Marlene Zuk of the Department of Biology at the University of California in Riverside concluded that “same-sex behavior is a nearly universal phenomenon in the animal kingdom, common across species, from worms to frogs to birds.”

 

“Female western gulls sometimes pair off for several years and mount each other while incubating eggs,” Steve Hogan and Lee Hudson wrote in Completely Queer: The Gay and Lesbian Encyclopedia.  “Similar behaviors have been documented among female sage grouse, male mallard ducks, and female and male greylag geese and turkeys.” According to the authors of Out in All Directions: The Almanac of Gay and Lesbian America, same-sex behavior has been documented in all kinds of animal species, including antelope, bugs, butterflies, cats, cattle,  cockroaches, crickets, dogs, donkeys, elephants, flies, geckos, guinea pigs, hamsters, horses, hyenas, lions, martens, mice, moths, octopuses, orcas, porcupines, raccoons, rats and wasps. “In 1994,” according to the Almanac, “two male flamingos in the Rotterdam Zoo in the Netherlands got the nesting urge and set up a same-sex co-habitation. After the two repeatedly sought to steal eggs from female flamingos to hatch them as their own, the zookeepers decided to provide them with a fertilized egg.  he proud parents successfully hatched their own little chick, and remained faithfully by the side of the baby flamingo for a while.” The whole world knows about Roy and Silo, two male chinstrap penguins at the Central Park Zoo in New York who lovingly hatched and raised an adopted chick, Tango.  (The story of Tango and her two daddies appears in 2005's often-censored children’s book, And Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell.)

 

Gay animal behavior seems to alarm religious conservatives almost as much as the human variety, and they have tried their best to deny it. Those who do admit that same-sex behavior exists in the animal kingdom try to explain it away as being playful antics or dominance behavior to assert hierarchy. “Some conservatives and religious groups now admit that homosexuality is common in the animal kingdom, but many of them have also put forward theories to explain the phenomenon,” said Myriam Schärz of the Zurich Zoo. “Some argue that homosexuality only occurs when animal populations become too large, or that animals only turn to homosexuality when they have no other alternative , , , But there is no evidence to back up the population theory, and there is plenty of proof against the harem argument. Dominant silver-back gorillas, for instance, have frequently been seen engaging in homosexual activity and deliberately shunning available females.”

 

“Humans seem to be the only species where homosexuals are not readily accepted in society,” Schärz said. “Animal societies tend to stay together and accept each other. Of course, animals do get excluded occasionally but that tends to happen if they get injured or if they are not liked, rather than because of their sexuality.” Here is another instance where we humans could learn from the animals.

 

 

Jesse Monteagudo is a freelance writer and animal lover who lives in South Florida.  Send all gay animal tales to him at jessemonteagudo@aol.com.

Theater History

AN EVENING WITH MARIO MONTEZ, DRAG SUPERSTAR

 (left to right: Lola Pashalinski, Mario Montez, Linda Chapman)

...the great drag Superstar who reigned over the New York Underground film and
theater scene from the early 1960s until the mid-1970s.

Presented by the NYU Tisch Department of Performance Studies

Mario Montez and Marc Siegel (he is a Berlin based archivist and found Mario in
Orlando Fl and invited him to the Berlin Film Festival when the Jack Smith documentary
was being shown in 2009...)

in conversation with Ela Troyano and Lola Pashalinski

Tuesday April 6th
7 to 8:30PM

Free.

34 Stuyvesant Street
The Barney Building
Einstein Auditorium
New York City

Seating is limited and is on a first come basis. Please arrive early.

This is a historical event .. two authentic legends talking about the creation of underground theater ,,,off off Broadway .. and the queerness of the Ridiculous Theater company etc.. Mario is 75 and Lola ageless so who knows when next they will be in the same place chatting about history, He worked with Jack Smith and Warhol as well  in Vain Victory, She was an original Ridiculous Theater member and most recently played Gertrude Stein

Time For The Stick

Sex & The City. Indeed.

Rock For Equality

Rock for Equality is a national event to demand equal Social Security benefits for LGBT Americans. This year there will be a rally on April 11th in Los Angeles to demand equal benefits for LGBT seniors.

Please join us in raising awareness about one of the most under recognized and harshly consequential issues in the LGBT movement! Join us at www.rockforequality.org

Queer The Census

 Okay. We know it's a little clichéd – but here's what we want to tell the Census: We're here. We're queer. And we want you to ask us about it. 

It's crazy – the Census wants an accurate count of everyone in the country, and yet, there's NO question in the Census survey that asks if you are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender! 

You read that right: LGBT people are basically invisible in THE survey that is designed to accurately reflect the diverse reality of America's population – and beyond being downright ridiculous, it's also a big problem. 

The census isn't just a numbers game. The data collected every ten years has a direct impact on issues that are critical to every American – issues like health care, economic stability and safety. Census data tells us where we live and how we create family. And when LGBT people are not counted, then we also don't count when it comes to services, resources ... you name it. 

The good news is that you and I can do something about it. It's time to Queer the Census! Join me and sign the petition from The Task Force urging the Census Bureau to make sure everyone is counted. 

Visit Queer the Census to take action now. 

Thanks for your help,

Queer Rising