"SEX IN AN EPIDEMIC"
Director: Jean Carlomusto
Trevor's Rating: 2.5 / 5 Stars

This documentary is a strange mix of things -- an attempt to throw everything about AIDS from the start to the present into one confused film. Archival footage is rarely identified, creating confusion over whether the interview you're watching was conducted by the filmmaker or was just rescued from the annals of history. It became clear watching interviews of people I knew were dead that the filmmaker had done little of her own work. In fact, she basically stole the entire concept of the film Sex Positive, chopped it down to 20 minutes, and inserted it into the film without credit -- the kind of thing that if done on a written work would be called plagiarism.

Indeed, this is one of those films that is well intentioned but poorly executed. There is plenty of interested archival footage, but it is sloppily stitched together without a strong narrative structure. Unlike We Were Here, this film lacks the kind of clear focus and narrow scope that made that film so powerful. It pretends to be telling a national HIV story, but it's really about New York City. What happened there did not happen in San Francisco, and those differences go unspoken in the film but were clear. ACT UP happened in New York for a reason, but we don't hear about that because the film has no concept of its geographic specificity.

This film will be a resource for those looking for archival footage, and a random array of interesting but vaguely related facts. Here's a trailer:

"DZI CROQUETTES"
Director: Raphael Alvarez and Tatiana Issa
Trevor's Rating: 4.5 / 5 Stars

What a charming film! Many of you will be familiar with The Cockettes, San Francisco's infamous drag troupe that ruled in the 1960s and 70s. Less of you will be familiar with Brazil's amazing counterpart, "Dzi Croquettes" (a title they came up with while eating the French fried food). The director Tatiana Issa's father worked as part of the group's technical staff, and she grew up with the troupe around them. There is clearly a lot of love packed into this gem of a movie, with each of the 13 cast members getting due attention and care.

This is both a feature and a flaw of the film, and it's inherent in documentary making. So many stories to tell. So little time to tell it in. But I cannot fault the film for it, for the stories are so incredible that I cannot imagine having to cut any of them. The troupe had a long and fiery road to fame, with plenty of fights and trists and romances along the way. Their performance style is simply uncanny -- a kind of pastiche of numerous genres that come together to create something fabulously unfamiliar, exciting, and totally queer. It's not like the drag you see on Ru Paul's LOGO show. It's performance art.

What is particularly incredible is that they came into fruition at a tumultuous time for Brazil: an oppressive dictatorship whose grip on the nation was ever-tightening. The film specifically sites the impact of AI-5 (Ato Institucional Número Cinco), which shut down Congress and suspended many civil rights. The government had no way of understanding the Croquettes -- their performances were not explicitly against the regime, and thus they managed to slip under the radar and convince the government that they were harmless. Given the censorship that was going on at the time in Brazil, this is truly amazing.

Liza Minelli -- of all people! -- was instrumental in bring the group international acclaim. She helped them secure precious media coverage after she had seen them in Brazil. She's always a wonder to watch on screen, and it was really very generous of her to make time to be interviewed for this piece. Even Josephine Baker herself had a hand in bringing the Croquettes fame: Before she died, she told the theatre owner that they should take over her spot at the show. Just a few days later, she died on stage. The theatre owner kept her wish, and their run at Paris was hugely successful.

I'm dying to get my hands on a video of once of their performances. They're truly incredible. In this trailer below for the film, you'll get a taste. Get your hands on this wonderful film if you can! Enjoy!

This is a truly fascinating public television documentary -- "Take This Hammer" -- from the 1960s featuring James Baldwin touring San Francisco and meeting with African-American leaders. Footage from San Francisco State University's Digital Information Virtual Archive, copyright WNET.org. Here's their description:

KQED's mobile film unit follows author and activist James Baldwin in the spring of 1963, as he's driven around San Francisco to meet with members of the local African-American community. He is escorted by Youth For Service's Executive Director Orville Luster and intent on discovering: "The real situation of Negroes in the city, as opposed to the image San Francisco would like to present." He declares: "There is no moral distance ... between the facts of life in San Francisco and the facts of life in Birmingham. Someone's got to tell it like it is. And that's where it's at." Includes frank exchanges with local people on the street, meetings with community leaders and extended point-of-view sequences shot from a moving vehicle, featuring the Bayview and Western Addition neighborhoods. Baldwin reflects on the racial inequality that African-Americans are forced to confront and at one point tries to lift the morale of a young man by expressing his conviction that: "There will be a Negro president of this country but it will not be the country that we are sitting in now."

Enjoy!

A pioneering figure in 19th century efforts to advance public understandings of same-sex relations, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs published a series of essays in 1862 arguing for the equal treatment of "Urnings" -- or men who engage in "Man-manly love." This was somewhat similar to a proto-homosexual, but Ulrichs describes urnings as something of a third sex -- a man's body with a woman's sensibilities. My favorite and unintentionally hilarious quote from this text:

Our sexual drive is one that demands periodical satisfaction, be it complete, be it incomplete. The latter consists of petting and absorbing that magnetic current that flows from the body of a young man, which is transmitted to us through physical contact with him.

The legal institution of marriage is not the institution for us. There is not priest or justice of the peace who would bind in marriage one of us and our beloved. Therefore, the natural state of the species exists for us, as it does fro the birds in the sky and the animals in the field; ie., marriage cannot be the prerequisite of a moral license for gratification in any relationship, at least as long as priests and justices of the peace are lacking. -- Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, "The Riddle of Man-Manly Love: The Pioneering Work on Male Homosexuality" (1994 / 1862), p. 40.

Here here, old boy! LOL. Seriously, the essay is pretty amazing. Click here to download a PDF of it!

Well color me proud! Our very own Chris Bartlett is featured today in a New York Times story on social marketing for the dead. Chris has jumpstarted the Gay History Wiki, which is a project that attempts to gather the bits and pieces of Philadelphia's gay history 1960-present on one little site. Archiving those who died of AIDS is a key part of that project. From the Times piece:

Beginning in 2005, Mr. Bartlett began assembling the names of every gay male Philadelphian who died after being diagnosed with H.I.V. or AIDS, searching obituaries and the Names Project registry of people commemorated by the AIDS quilt, combing through records of social clubs and the rosters at St. Luke and the Epiphany, the Philadelphia church that took on the task at the epidemic's height of "burying the people no one else would," Mr. Bartlett said.

Inspired by Steven Spielberg's Shoah project, a Holocaust memorial, in 2007 Mr. Bartlett built a database on wikispaces.com, the free portal that invites editorial interventions, and by the end of last summer was ready to broadly promote his site. Unlike the AIDS quilt, an intensely elegiac but largely static artifact, the Gay History Wiki is a sprightly free space open to posts and tags, to biographical data added and amended by survivors for their vanished friends.

[snip]

Beyond the novelty of this approach is something equally important, Ms. Schulman of the Act Up Oral History Project suggested: the opportunity to fill in blanks in a haphazard narrative. "The AIDS story has been limited to depictions of doomed individuals," and not impassioned, ad hoc communities, she said.

A conviction that gay men and women and their friends came to one another's assistance during the crisis -- improvising buddy systems, treatment groups, food banks and other survival networks -- fueled Mr. Bartlett's pursuit, as he recreated a mesh of lives that unexpectedly turned out to have meaning for a cohort of young gay men.

"Everyone knows AIDS is a big issue, but for people 25 and under, it's not really a topic of discussion," said Evan Urbania, a 29-year-old marketer who regularly visits the Gay History Wiki. "I'm a social media guy, and the importance of involving the stories of people who have passed on, particularly as a gay man whose development was influenced by people who are 20 or 30 years older, is very powerful to me."

Oh, Chris! I'm tearing up a bit just reading this! Thanks for all you do, honey! xoxoxoxoxooxoxox

Yesterday, in a presentation by Nadine Hubbs -- UM's resident queer scholar of music theory -- gave a talk on queer country music. Notably, she played this AMAZING song from Country music artist David Allen Coe, released back when Anita Bryant was leading her crusade against gays in the 1970s. Well, the lyrics speak for themselves:

Fuck Anita Bryant
Who the hell is she?
Telling all them faggots
That they can't be free
Throw that bitch in prison
Then maybe she'll see
Just how much those goddamned homosexuals mean to me

Because they...
Wash your clothes
Clean your cell
Help you drain your hose
Give you smokes
Laugh at jokes
Sew up all your clothes
Rub your feet
Beat your meat
Heaven only knows
What I'd do without those homosexuals

They all
Read and write
Fuck all night
Clean your fingernails
Help you dress
Play you chess
Lay you down some rails
Be your wife
Take your life
In a jealous rage
Who says we don't need them homosexuals

I tell you
Some are big
Some are small
Some are in-between
Some are yellow belly queers
And some of them are mean
Some are killers
Some are thiefs
Some are singers too
In fact Anita Bryant
Some act just like you

AMAZING.

My friend Rostom, speaking of the pioneering gay historian, John Boswell pictured above. What a handsome devil!

The fabulous Chris Bartlett has penned a review of the Gus Van Sant's Harvey Milk biopic, Milk, for Lifelube. The film opens nationwide on November 26th. Here's a nice blip from Bartlett's take, which you can find in full here:

Penn as Harvey Milk is really incredible. Milk protégée Anne Kronenberg reported many a double-take during the filming-- they just look so much alike! And Penn also brings out the wonderful paradoxes in Milk's behavior-- the flirtatiousness, the naiveté, the seriousness, the genius, and the bullying. And Penn plays Milk as I always had imagined him-- a mensch on a mission. There is such a sense of self-awareness and destiny. It's also possible from viewing Penn's performance to see what it means to be a leader-- the commitment that is required, the cost to relationships and family, and the charisma and charm that is required to generate a Tribe.

And to me the main story of the movie is the power of Tribe-building. Harvey does it with genius-- including all of the folks who, until the 1970s, had largely been outside political power networks. In the film, we see Milk's deft ability to build a coalition of progressive people-- gays, people of color, elders, union rank-and-file, youth, and others. Though he was a gay leader, he was far greater than that. As he says, he is there to lead "all the people".

There are rumblings of folks calling for another March on Washington. From JMG

This week we're beginning to see the rumblings of a call for another March On Washington. Could the lightening of 1993 strike again? Or would we see another scandal-ridden fiasco like the 2000 Millienium March? Would it be remotely possible to organize and conduct another March without the overlords of the Human Rights Campaign? Should we? How would we marshall our new and eager army of young queers? These kids are champing at the bit for a shot at their own Stonewall, their own Queer Nation. The LGBT world of the 21st century is larger, younger, and I think, smarter. I would love to watch.

If you don't remember, 2000's "Millenial March on Washington" was a fucking fiasco. HRC's power play in organizing that event made for a political nightmare, with the fallout continuing for years to follow (see herefor an overview of the criticisms, which include racism, exclusionary, top-down organizing methods, and financial mismanagement).

After the HRC fallout from ENDA (just Google "transgender HRC ENDA" to find out what that was all about, or see my post on the debate here), I don't think HRC is well poised to organize a cohesive LGBT national event. Talking to folks around the country, I hear a lot of resentment towards HRC after the debacle, and thus I think any national march organized by them would be a complete and utter disaster.

That said, I think there is a great energy to tap into after Prop 8 failed in California to really mobilize collectively around this issue. I think that queers that are suspicious of marriage for its tendency to privilege certain kinds of relationships over others I think have largely come to realize the symbolic and economic important of this victory, and aren't as stridently opposed to organizing for it any longer. I could be wrong there -- but that's my read on the situation. So I think we're at a moment that an inclusive, grassroots March effort could be successful.

But everyone's gotta be at the table, and that means that HRC can't hijack the effort.

So exciting! Here's the trailer for Gus Van Sant's upcoming biopic on San Francisco gay rights pioneer Harvey Milk. He was shot to death in 1978 -- along with SF Mayor George Moscone -- by recently resigned SF Supervisor Dan White. At the trial for the murder, White cited his consumption of junk food as evidence for the depression he claimed led him to commit the murders (this later became known as the "Twinkie Defense"). He was sentenced to only seven years in prison. He served five years, was paroled, and went on to commit suicide two years later. Oy.

Sometimes I feel like I was born in the wrong generation! After posting that video in the previous post featuring Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin speaking at the GLBT Historical Society, I began exploring the society's Youtube account, which features tons of amazing archival footage from various events throughout queer history (beginning in the 40s). Here's a few gems I thought you might enjoy from the 1980s:

1) The Hayward Rah-Rah's (later renamed Cheer SF, who are still going strong today) perform in this clip from 1986 at the Track and Field Festival. They were formed in 1980 as the first all-volunteer, adult cheerleading team in the country, and became an important morale-boosting facet of the community when AIDS hit in the mid-80s:

2) Disco sensation Sylvester's "40th Birthday Party" in 1985 -- actually two years before his real 40th birthday. He died three years later from AIDS-related complications:

3) On Friday, October 6, 1989, San Francisco police conducted a sweep of the Castro district in response to a small, peaceful march protesting federal neglect of people with AIDS. The nearly 200 police cleared a 7 block area, with many protesters beaten. Patrons in stores and restaurants, as well as residents, were trapped inside for hours. Video by Patrick Henry, local producer and video store owner.

4) Stand-up comic Danny Williams performing at the National March for Gay and Lesbian Rights in San Francisco. You'll notice that his wit / bitchiness is reserved for the police, government, and gay bashers -- not other gay men:

Sad news from San Francisco. Del Martin, one of the founders of the Daughters of Bilitis, passed away after a long period of declining health. She was 87. She is survived by her partner of 58 years, Phyllis Lyon.

Losing a titan like this is always devastating. She lived a good life, though, and accomplished much in her time. The Chronicle has a nice lengthy bit on her history of activism alongside her partner, Phyllis Lyon, including a timeline at the end:

She and Lyon met in Seattle in 1950 while both were working as journalists for a trade publication. Their friendship turned into a romance two years later. In 1953, on Valentine's Day, the couple moved into a Castro district flat in San Francisco.

After helping found the Daughters of Bilitis, they started a newsletter, called the Ladder, which grew into a magazine focused on lesbian politics and culture.

In the first issue, Ms. Martin set the tone for how she would lead the rest of her life when she wrote: "Nothing was ever accomplished by hiding in a dark corner. Why not discard the hermitage for the heritage that awaits any red-blooded American woman who dares to claim it?"

Cleve Jones took that message to heart when he met the couple in 1972. He was a student at Arizona State University, and the duo went to speak to a gay liberation organization.

"For a kid just out of high school, listening to them was a life-altering experience," said Jones, who later moved to San Francisco, where he worked as a student intern in the City Hall office of gay Supervisor Harvey Milk and founded the Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt. "They were so confident, so unapologetic, so radical."

And, added Kendell, from the National Center for Lesbian Rights, "so fearless. In every social movement, political movement, there's someone who transcends their time. For lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, Del Martin was one of those people."

Friends and family plan to hold a public tribute to Ms. Martin in the near future. Details have not been set.
Del Martin

-- 1921 - Born on May 5 in San Francisco

-- 1950 - Met the love of her life, Phyllis Lyon

-- 1955 - Co-founded groundbreaking lesbian organization Daughters of Bilitis

-- 1960 - Took over as editor of the Ladder, a monthly lesbian magazine

-- 1964 - Helped found the Council on Religion and the Homosexual, formed to overturn laws that criminalized homosexual behavior

-- 1972 - Co-wrote with Lyon the book "Lesbian/Woman"

-- 1972 - Co-founded with Lyon the Alice B. Toklas Democratic Club, the first gay political club in the United States

-- 1976 - Published the book "Battered Wives," which focused on domestic violence

-- 1976 - Appointed chairwoman of the San Francisco Commission on the Status of Women

-- 1995 - Served as a delegate to the White House Conference on Aging

-- 2004 - Wed Lyon in the first of about 4,000 same-sex weddings sanctioned by San Francisco but later ruled invalid by the California Supreme Court

-- 2008 - On June 16, married Lyon again, this time with the blessing of the state Supreme Court, which found the state ban on same-sex marriage illegal

Here's a video of Phyllis and Del speaking at the GLBT Historical Society in 2002, telling the story of the The Ladder

Phyllis, if you're out there, I'm so sorry for your loss.

Just got this notice -- sounds like a good time!

Dear friend. The Community Initiative in collaboration with GLBT Historical Society has organized a town hall meeting on the state of activism in our queer communities and what the focus of our activism should and can be in the future. The discussion led by Paul Boneberg (founder of Mobilization Against AIDS, current E.D. of the Historical Society and former board member of The Community Initiative) will center on two different perspectives; activism we need to have within our own communities and activism around issues in the greater world outside our queer communities.

The intent of this forum is not only to discuss and move issues forward, but also to try to kick-start a renewed to queer activism across a larger segment of our communities. The idea has been thrown around of trying to start an "activist boot camp".

The organizers of the forum are really hoping that the conversation will be very interactive between everyone in the room. So please help us in encouraging all activist minded people to attend so they can bring their issues to the table. Any help you can lend in helping to get the word out and about this important event is appreciated.

Thanks and looking forward to seeing you at the GLBT Historical Society.

*****************

Queer activism 2008 and beyond.
What's next on the agenda?

An interactive panel discussion.

Wednesday August 13, 2008
7:00pm
at the GLBT Historical Society
657 Mission Street #300 (between 3rd and New Montgomery)
San Francisco, CA94105

Bring your issues with you!

Panelists include:

Claire Bohman (Co-chair of SF Pride at Work)
Alyssa Contreras (feminist, genderqueer, race and political activist)
Steven Foreman (queer youth and health activist)
Rick Loftus, MD (gay men's health activist)
Tommi Avicolli Mecca (housing rights and other progressive activism)
Jim Meko (neighborhood activist, member of the SF entertainment commission)
John Newsome (co-founder of And Castro 4 All)

This community forum has been coordinated by The Community Initiative, an activist organization of queer men working to create community. Paul Boneberg, GLBT Historical Society Executive Director will be the evening's moderator.

The event is free. Current show at the GLBT Historical Society is: Fun, Frolic, Fetish: 25 Years of the Folsom Street Fair.For information about the forum, please contact

info@sfgmci.org

415.820.9606

OBITUARY:

GAY HISTORIAN ALLAN BERUBE

By Wayne Hoffman

Gay historian Allan Berube, award-winning author of "Coming Out Under Fire," died on December 11, 2007. He was 61.

His death was due to sudden complications following the discovery of two stomach ulcers, according to his close friend Jonathan Ned Katz, a fellow gay historian.

Berube was, for decades, an independent historian and community activist. He first came to progressive political activism in opposition to the Vietnam war, working with the American Friends Service Committee in Boston in the late 1960s, after dropping out of the University of Chicago. After coming out in 1969, he joined a "gay liberation collective household," and later moved to San Francisco to join a gay commune for craftspeople. He remained in San Francisco for many years, and was one of the founders of the San Francisco Lesbian and Gay History Project in 1978. His slide shows about women who dressed and passed as men – and married other women – were welcomed by enthusiastic audiences around the country.

Berube is best remembered for his groundbreaking work of gay history, published in 1990: "Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War II." The Lambda Literary Award-winning book, which was later adapted by Arthur Dong into a Peabody Award-winning documentary, was often cited in Senate hearings on the military's anti-gay policies in 1993.

Martin Duberman, distinguished professor of history emeritus at the City University of New York, called Berube's book "superb…not only in terms of his prose style, which was absolutely lucid and even elegant, but also in terms of the very fine-spun analysis. Allan was not one to create shallow generalizations about either a given individual or a series of events. He was utterly meticulous and utterly careful. No one will ever, I think, have to redo the book on World War II, and you can almost never say that about a historian or a given piece of historical research."

In 1996, Berube received a "genius grant" from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for his work.

For the past decade, while living in New York City and the Catskills, Berube had been working on a history of queer working class men in the Marine Cooks and Stewards Union in the 1930s and '40s, a project for which he received a Rockefeller Residency Fellowship in the Humanities from the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at CUNY.

Berube traveled the country presenting slide shows about his current research, and lectured on gay and lesbian history at Stanford University and the University of California, Santa Cruz. He wrote stories for numerous publications, including Mother Jones, Gay Community News, The Advocate, The Washington Blade, Out/Look, and the Body Politic. He also published articles in several anthologies, including "White Trash" (which included a rare personal essay in which he recounted his childhood in a trailer park in Bayonne, N.J.) and "Policing Public Sex," in which he detailed the history of gay bathhouses.

"Allan took great pride in his role as a community historian," said John D'Emilio, professor of history at the University of Illinois at Chicago and author of several books on gay history. "He loved the excitement that his talks and slide shows generated in an audience, and he loved that he, a college dropout, had written a book that made a difference in the world. He was an inspiration to everyone who knew him, as sweet and kind and genuinely moral a human being as anyone could hope to meet."

For the past several years, Berube lived in Liberty, N.Y., in the Catskills. There, he owned a bed & breakfast, and operated Intelligent Design, a store selling mid-century modern collectibles. Berube's partner, John Nelson, said, "Allan just loved it when people walked into the Liberty story, looked around, and were happy."

Berube was twice elected a trustee of the village of Liberty.

"Allan was extremely proud of helping to preserve Liberty's historic character," said Katz. "Allan initiated the successful nomination of Liberty's whole Main Street as a historic district, saved from demolition a major building with a classic 1950s façade, and bought and renovated the Shelburne Playhouse, one of the last remaining performance halls that were once part of the area's many hotels."

In addition to Nelson, Berube is also survived by his mother and three sisters.

As if I didn't have enough on my plate this semester, I'm also going to be interning at the GLBT Historical Society. I e-mailed them in December regarding their archives of gay / lesbian periodicals from the 1970s. What I want to do is take their physical archives of 1000s of periodicals and digitize them - scan them into a computer, create PDFs, and make those documents accessible online.

This is the first project of its kind that I'm aware of. It's mammoth in scope - I'm only one person. But it's extremely exciting and I'm looking forward to pouring over these classic publications.

I start Saturday!

I got an e-mail today from a UNC student looking to ask me a few questions about my time at UNC working as an LGBTIQ student organizer. We did the entire thing over e-mail, so I had a transcript ready. I wanted to share it because I think some of the questions helped me think through what my time at UNC meant to me and what it will probably mean to my future. Many of the questions refer to the GLBT-SA, the undergraduate student organization at UNC Chapel Hill.

Q: What was your major at UNC?
A: Political Science with a minor in Sexuality Studies

Q: What are you doing now?
A: I'm a graduate student at San Francisco State seeking a MA in Human Sexuality.

Q: What position have you held with the GLBTSA or LGBTQ at UNC?
A: When the GLBT-SA was initially formed in the Spring of 2002, I served as Activism Co-Chair for the organization. From the Fall of 2002 to the Spring of 2004 (my sophomore and junior years), I served as GLBT-SA Co-Chair. For most of that time period, I also served as webmaster for the organization.

Also, during my sophomore year, I founded what was then called the North Carolina Unity Conference. During my senior year, we changed the name of the conference to the Southeast Unity Conference to reflect its growth in attendees from other states in the Southeast. I served as Director of that event for my Sophomore, Junior, and Senior years at UNC.

Q: How long were you affiliated with this group?
A: I was working for the GLBT-SA throughout all four years at UNC.

Q: How did you get involved?
A: The group was founded out of Pamela Conover's course in sexual identity politics, POLI 73 (officially known as "The Politics of Sexuality"). I was asked to serve on the board by its founding President, Alice Newton.

Q: Before coming to UNC, did you know that you wanted to become involved in something like this?
A: I made a decision before I came to college to be openly gay, but I never truly anticipated the role I would play in campus activism. I had only done very minor work in the area before coming to Chapel Hill, as I had grown up in the conservative Southeast area of Charlotte.

Q: What are some of the things that you feel leads ppl to become active in this type of organization?
A: I believe that the first and foremost reason that people come to GLBT-SA meetings is that of wanting to belong. A great many UNC students come to Chapel Hill from conservative areas across the state. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people are often marginalized and made to feel as though their desires and lives are sinful, abnormal, and shameful. This is exasperated in the conservative South where "traditional values" -- those of the fundamentalist Christian right -- are considered to be the norm.

Also, I think students come with a desire to lead and be involved in something that creates positive change in LGBTIQ communities. There are frankly very few opportunities to do so before many students come to college, and I think many students come to UNC with a lot of pent up energy and a healthy dose of angst.

Q: What are the things that you feel were most influential for you in becoming a part of (founding) this group at UNC?
A: As the only openly gay person in my high school, I knew what it meant to be considered a second class citizen. I had friends in high school who were gay but couldn’t come out because their parents had indicated that to do so would be a one-way ticket to the street corner. However, I don’t want to make it sound as though I am saddened or regretful of the climate in which I grew up. It is thanks to the homophobia and heterosexism that I was enveloped in growing up that I was able to become so politically aware and active in different movements. Had I lacked these experiences, I probably wouldn't be as interested in different oppressions -- not just homophobia -- like racism, sexism, and class oppression.

Q: What are some of the things that you did outside of UNC that are related to this group (civil rights, social groups, etc.)?
A: Most of my work during my college years was related to UNC – my many roles in the organization kept me quite busy. However, between my junior and senior years at UNC I spent a summer in Boston, Massachusetts working for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. It was the summer of 2003 and there was so much happening politically for LGBTIQ Americans at the time. On June 26 of that year, the Supreme Court issued its ruling in the case of Lawrence v. Texas, which ruled that sodomy laws were unconstitutional based on a Constitutional right to privacy. I helped organize a mass rally in Boston that summer (if you Google my name, 100s of hits will appear from the publicity for that rally in Copley Square). Also, 15-year old black lesbian Sakia Gunn was brutally stabbed to death in Newark, New Jersey and the NGLTF did some work organizing a Boston youth community response to that heinous hate crime. Finally, it was the summer that preceded the Massachusetts Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Goodridge v. Massachusetts Department of Public Health, which ruled that same-sex couples had the right to marry based on the state constitution. I was lucky to sit in on several meetings in which we planned the response to the decision. To my surprise (and their credit), everyone at the table expected a positive decision. When the decision was released in the Fall of that year, I knew I had been a part of something historically important.

Q: How about some of the things that you do not related to this group (do you play a sport, are you involved in religious groups, or in an environmental group pr something of that sort)?
A: My first and foremost priority at UNC was the GLBT-SA and the Unity Conference. I had no time or energy to devote to other interests.

Q: Where do you see this group going in the future?
A: This is increasingly hard to say as the time between my graduation and the present increases. I only can say that I hope the organization sticks to the principles that we purposefully injected into the Constitution. I'm referring here to those principles of being a politically motivated organization that is interested in working to end not just homophobia, but also other oppressions such as sexism, transphobia, racism, and class oppression. We intentionally put quite a bit of language to that effect into the Constitution to preserve accountability in the future once the founding members had left.

Q: Is there anything that you would have liked to change about the movement here (more or less focus on something, etc.)?
A: Had you asked me this question when I was still at UNC, I could have probably rattled off a dozen things I would like to see changed about the GLBT-SA and campus LGBTIQ politics in general. However, the more I see and experience campus politics elsewhere, the more I realize that the GLBT-SA is doing some of the most cutting-edge, radical work in the entire country. I don't think any other college LGBTIQ organization can claim the kinds of successes in size and activity that the GLBT-SA can claim. No other organization I'm familiar with organizes a regional conference, a biannual drag show, publishes its own magazine, and still manages to organize a whole host of other activities.

Q: Is there any other movement that you can see yourself being involved in, in the future, if you ideally speaking had enough time and energy?
A: My life's work is in the LGBTIQ socio-political movement. I'm interested in connecting with other social movements, but I'm here to stay.

Q: What were your personal goals for yourself, as they related to this group? Did you achieve them?
A: I never really set out goals that I could achieve or not achieve. Most of my work was really made up as I went along. My politics changed as the years went on -- so too did my aspirations for the GLBT-SA. I'm most proud of two things: my work directing the Southeastern Unity Conference and my work with the nation's oldest campus LGBTIQ publication, LAMBDA. I could have done things differently and not made a few mistakes along the way, but that would have required that I knew the answers ahead of time -- and I don't think any organizer can attest to being so omniscient.

Q: Was the group making progress towards them?
A: Yes, I’m quite sure that the GLBT-SA has done an immense out of work towards creating a campus climate that is informed and accepting of LGBTIQ people.

Q: If so, then how so?
A: I can remember my first year at UNC feeling incredibly uncomfortable by the sheer lack of open dialogue on LGBTIQ issues on campus. If the GLBT-SA has done anything, it has been exponentially increasing that dialogue. Illustrative of this fact is a small rally we had my first-year at UNC to respond to a hate crime on campus. I think maybe 20 people attended the small march. My senior year, however, when a student was attacked on Franklin Street because of his sexuality more people gathered in the pit for a speak-out against the crime than I have ever seen before. The Chancellor was present! It was phenomenal. That could never have happened my first year. GLBT-SA created the infrastructure to respond efficiently and effectively to such incidents.

Q: What are the ways in which you think your Parents and or family had an influence in your involvement? Were they supportive?
A: When I came out to my parents as gay at the age of 14, one of the first things they responded with was a concern that I was going to get AIDS and die. The year was 1997 and the HIV/AIDS epidemic among gay men was considerably worse than it is today in 2005. However, I still knew that these kinds of stereotypes were hurtful and factually incorrect. From that day on, I wanted to work to end this kind of stereotyping. After a great many conversations and a bit of family therapy to boot, they became much more supportive of my identity and I think their willingness to support my graduate studies in Human Sexuality illustrate that.

Q: Were you involved in a group like the GLBTSA or LGBTQ before coming to UNC?
A: I was just barely involved with a youth group in Charlotte called "Time Out Youth." However, I find that many LGBTIQ youth groups treat everyone who comes through their doors as victims and as troubled youth. I was out by the time I came to Time Out, and I didn't need the kind of support they were offering. Other than Time Out, there weren't any opportunities to be involved in LGBTIQ organizing in Charlotte of which I was aware.

Q: Was there any influence (person, event, etc) here that convinced you to become involved?
A: During my first year at UNC I lived in Granville Towers. At some point during my Spring semester, my suitemate and his friends attempted to break down my door while yelling homophobic and threatening epithets. I moved out into the campus dorms shortly there-after for the remainder of the semester. This instilled in my mind the real physical danger that LGBTIQ people face, even on college campus.

Q: As you were growing up, were there influences from your church, youth groups, sport groups, celebrities, sports stars, or some other type of media that you feel might have had an influence on your involvement now?
A: As I've said before, I occasionally attended an LGBTIQ youth group in Charlotte. I only credit that organization to my interests and involvement now because, I think, they were characteristic of one of the single biggest failures of our socio-political movement. They didn't teach us LGBTIQ history or attempt to give us something to believe in. All of the youth groups that I’m familiar with nationally are interested in preventing the kids coming from killing themselves. They're often run by well-intentioned heterosexual social workers -- which may be nice, but it's just not effective. I think that is a massive failure and is the driving cultural force behind the surreal lack of knowledge of LGBTIQ history among young LGBTIQ people today. I think that's why we're seeing so many young LGBTIQ people who are completely disinterested in activism and politics -- they have no knowledge of the history that precedes us to make them feel compelled to get involved.

Q: Last Question. If there was one message that you could get everyone on the world to really listen to, what would it be?
A: Homophobia, sexism, racism, class oppression, trasnsphobia, and other forms of oppression are connected. You cannot ever end one without attacking them all. After all, no one is singularly gay, black, poor, or female. We are combinations of many different kinds of identities. It takes asking ourselves the question that Durham-based activist Mandy Carter instilled in me, "Justice or Just Us?"

Those who know me, know that since the musical "RENT" hit Broadway I was a groveling fan. It spoke to me - as it did so many other queer people - in a way that no other popular medium had until that time. My parents got me tickets to see a traveling version of the play in 1999 in Charlotte, North Carolina. I was hooked.

When I was senior in High School, I organized a Broadway Revue with three songs featured from the musical: "Light My Candle," "Seasons of Love," and "Out Tonight." The event raised nearly $1000 for the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative. It was Fall 2001 - this was the closest I could come to doing LGBTQ activism in North Carolina.

It will come as no surprise, then, that when I learned this brilliant musical was going to become a feature film I was both excited and nervous. The fact that many of the original Broadway cast members were to be tapped for the cinematic endeavor was promising. The director, Chris Columbus, seemed unusual but not a sure sign of danger.

I got a chance to see a midnight showing of the film tonight at the Metreon here in San Francisco. What a thrill to be in a room with 1000 other hardcore Rent fans, I thought. San Francisco surely would be the 2nd best city in which see the film that first evening (NYC, obviously, being 1st). I showed up with my friend Jackson to find a room of 1000 teenagers who were barely alive when the musical debuted. I suppose everyone who was of the original "RENT" generation is now somewhere in their late 20s to mid 30s. They all have day jobs. As someone who came out full-force in 1997, I consider myself a (albeit young) member of that first generation.

I didn't let the crowd deride my enthusiasm for the event, however. The film, in a bold move, opens with the musicals most well-known number, "Seasons of Love." Each of the main characters stands on an otherwise empty stage in front of a deserted theatre. Despite a few bumps, though, the film starts off strong and delivers an experience that is poignant (if a bit melodramatic).

I was sold wholeheartedly until the movie veered dramatically off course with (SPOILER ALERT) the introduction of a completely inappropriate side-story. For the unaware, one of the major plot lines revolves around the relationship between Joanne, a straight-laced black lesbian lawyer, and Maureen, a flirtatious white performance artist who performs to promote issues related to homelessness in NYC.

Now, anyone who knows this musical will be appalled to hear what I am about to tell you. Maureen and Joanne, in the movie, get MARRIED. Well, okay, there was no gown or cake - but there was a get-down-on-my-knees "pop the question" moment that made my stomach churn. I grabbed Jackson's arm in disbelief and sat, aghast, at the unfolding events that included a fancy reception at a hotel. And, at that moment, I thought I heard the distant rattling of Jonathan Larson rolling over in his grave.

Now let me be clear: this musical is set in 1990. If we think back to 1990 and the state of the gay and lesbian political movement, it becomes striking just how unbelievable this would have been. This was a time when AIDS was still the lens through which most LGBTQ activism was done. Matthew Shepard had only just graduated from middle school. Marriage was NOT - I repeat, NOT on the table. It simply wasn't even conceivable to the vast majority of LGBTQ Americans. Director Christopher Columbus was playing on cultural capital of the present that he inappropriately projected into the past.

With that said, the rest of the film is stirring. There are few moments of contrived, awkward dialogue and cheesy shots of Roger in what looks to be the Grand Canyon ("finding himself," I presume). However, the zany energy of "La Vie Boheme" translated marvelously and the reprise of "I'll Cover You" was as moving as ever. This was truly Collins' (Jesse L. Martin) and Angel's (Wilson Heredia) film - they stole the show time and time again. Martin gives us an outstanding and heartfelt performance that brought laughter and, of course, those gut-wrenching tears with his mournful delivering of "I'll Cover You." Their words never felt static or forced, which can't be said for some of the other cast members.

Angel's painful death opened up the floodgates; a sniffling silence filled the otherwise rambunctious audience. I cried not just for Angel, but for all those young beautiful men who were taken from us. I cried reflecting upon what could have been -- the voices that were silenced. What books could have been written? What songs could have been sung? What fights could have been won? We will never know. "RENT" reminds us of this massive funeral that, for queer communities, was the 1980s and early 1990s. Our community was mercilessly robbed and, reflecting on that loss, it's clear that we still haven't recovered.

It's been up for a while I just forgot to post the link:
here

Enjoy!

The ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) AIDS activism of the 1980s and early 1990s was built around a singular expression of rebellion: Silence = Death. The idea was that if our government and our culture continued to live in silence about the American AIDS epidemic, we would only be greeted with an ever-increasing death toll and, ultimately, the erasure of sexually active gay men. ACT UP's powerful slogan jolted many into action and helped transform the organization into a powerful political entity that created real policy change in Washington.

Today, the slogan smacks of the past. Its mention does not bring to mind any current crisis, but harkens back to another time when almost an entire generation of gay men was lost to HIV. We live today in a world of protease inhibitors. A positive test result no longer represents the first nail in the coffin. HIV has shifted, for those who have access to the expensive medications, from terminal to chronic, from untreatable to manageable.

A new generation of young gay men has come to age without the looming specter of AIDS constantly at the horizon. We do not know what it means to see a community nearly crumble and to have weekends filled with memorial services for friends, lovers and mentors. Moreover, those who did know such a reality - the gay men surrounded by the AIDS crisis of the 80s and early 90s - are not around to tell us about it. The marked decline in dialogue between young gay men and their older counterparts has hurt our community. We - the young gay men of the 21st century - have no mentors to describe to us what it was like, then. We easily take for granted the dead whose bodies have paved the way to our present existence.

History can, for our people, be understood as something passed down from one generation to the next. Among those communities that face prejudice, the mainstream does not take notice of our accomplishments or failures. The likes of Harvey Milk or Harry Hay will not be found in any high school textbook. To survive, we must do the work ourselves. The decline in intergenerational dialogue among gay men has gravely perverted this process. Our history is disconnected. The result is a young generation of gay men that for many knows of no gay history beyond Ellen.

Without our history readily available, we - the young gay men of the 21st century - are forced to fend for ourselves. We have grown of age alongside the Internet and have developed new meanings of community electronically. In this modern, electronic age, our geographic isolation no longer demands that we travel to gay ghettos like the Castro to find others who identify similarly. Moreover, gay spaces have appeared in communities across the nation, even in the likes of rural North Carolina (where, for instance, in Fayetteville the gay bar is a double wide trailer). We are everywhere. Our numbers growing and our presence increasingly less clustered, we have managed to build new understandings of what it means to be gay.

For a time, it seemed that we were doing so while at the same time reducing new HIV infections. After the introduction of protease inhibitors, new infections among gay men were on the decline year after year after year. Yet, today we find ourselves in an undeniably uncomfortable situation. The 21st century has brought with it a rumored rise in unsafe sex, raising the potential for a reversal of the past decade's trend.

Skeptics of the rumors should simply log on to any of the gay male webspaces and spend just a few minutes flipping through profiles. It does not take long to find someone looking for "Raw," "Bare," or "Natural" sex. Gay male E-culture has helped strengthen the movement against consistent condom use. Gay male social pundits have been quick to place the blame squarely on young gay men's shoulders. “Grow up," they say, “and quit your irresponsible fucking."

However, critics seem to be missing something. It is through no fault of our own that we find ourselves in this predicament. No one told us any better. We have few mentors to pass down a communal knowledge of not just history but also sex, bodies, and politics. Our High School Sex Ed courses certainly did not teach us anything of value. Sex education campaigns, even when present in our lives, often promoted either fear or abstinence, two options not particularly compelling to a gay man coming to terms with his sexuality.

Today, though, as we see more evidence that risky sex is on the rise, gay men will face a choice to either continue in silence towards an uncertain future. Or, we can choose to proactively tackle the rumors and help stem the push towards unsafe sex. We must be willing to talk openly and honestly about sex and our sex lives -unafraid to make mistakes or ask questions. We must conceptualize the consistent use of condoms as not the mere act of an individual to protect or not protect simply himself. Instead, we can begin to understand it as an act of a community member done in the interests of all gay men. Condom use is an expression of love not just for our sexual partners, but also for all gay men.

It is clear that now is the time for us all to think deeply and choose wisely. This is not just a decision for gay men 18 to 30 to make. Anyone who came out after the introduction of protease inhibitors understands HIV/AIDS similarly. We stand at a crossroads that lead to two very different realities for what it will mean to be gay in just a few short years. Dialogue is essential. It's up to you to start the conversation. Silence = Death.