The Radical Homosexual Agenda [RHA] logo incorporates the group’s Regulation Pink Gasmask�, which has been donned by members since 2006 while they pursue their perilous mission fighting the American mainstream – an environment which they argue, and few would dispute, is presently toxic for queers.
They’re back. The RHA loves a parade – for a good cause. Even if they may be more sensitive than some folks about the Lesbian author of the outrage against which they’ve been protesting, being queers themselves, the RHA has been fighting for all of America on this one.
Five months ago this young, spirited New York civil rights group stepped off from City Hall Park on a sunny afternoon in a colorful un-permitted parade of fellow citizens (both homosexual and otherwise engaged) to protest New York City’s new and totally-unconstitutional police rule restricting freedom of assembly and speech. On Saturday, in another “Parade Without a Permit”, they take their costumes, props and merry bands, bicycles and carts and strong legs on a more ambitious, a more public tour. This time the neighborhood will be the dense residential and commercial blocks of the West Village, the district represented by City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. Quinn is the main target of the RHA’s anger because of her prominent role in the promulgation, without review, discussion or vote, of draconian rules which cede dangerous arbitrary power to the police.
This hot new band of activists and its growing numbers of allies will together be doing their best to broadcast that Quinn’s position as an out queer with a progressive, largely queer constituency on which she has built her career up to now is totally at odds with her position on a principle of law so fundamental to the political life of a free society. The RHA and its friends have other serious complaints about our ambitious Speaker’s positions and agenda, but this issue trumps everything else: The right to speak and to demonstrate about any subject is on the line in this city today.
The parade assembles in Washington Square Park at 7 pm this Saturday, September 29, at the edge of the central fountain. The event is absolutely not envisioned as an arrest scenario by any of its organizers, so everyone is encouraged to join the serious merriment.
For more information, see the RHA’s new, James Wentzy-built website. I have it on good authority that there will be no speeches on Saturday, so maybe a visit to the site is an even better idea than it would be prior to most demos; everyone should be ready with a good sound bite at these things.
NEWS FLASH: It’s just been confirmed that the Stonewall Veterans are going to be a part of this parade, front and center. Now I’m thinking, pink-and-black-draped pedicab chariots conveying our noble ur-rebels through the streets past the sites which were the scenes of their triumphs almost forty years ago. Take that, all you soft, smug folk who ever imagined you could even be the cuttings of the giants who opened the doors you pass through so easily today.
[image from the RHA]
Category: Queer
why was Craig taken down and Vitter not?
(but right, even laudable, if I paid women for quickies)
The Republicans have trashed and now unceremoniously sacked one of their very own worthy gentlemen for soliciting consensual, uncompensated sex with another person. Senator Craig was forced to resign only days after his sensational misstep (with another man) was reported in the media.
A year ago another model Republican, Representative Mark Foley, was hounded out of office for a peccadillo even less “awful” than that committed by the married-with-three-children Senator from Idaho. Foley, an unmarried man, sent suggestive emails and sexually explicit instant messages to young adult men who had formerly served or were at the time serving as Congressional pages.
A third Republican luminary, Senator David Vitter, admitted early in July to regularly soliciting the services of a female prostitute. There has been no investigation and no movement to oust Vitter from his elected position or party responsibilities, and in fact on his return to the senate floor later in the month Vitter was greeted with a standing ovation by his Republican peers.
Why is there such a difference in the way their colleagues treated these three members of Congress? Craig and Foley happened to be of what their former friends would call the homosexual “persuasion” but Vitter seems to be fixated on the role of lusty heterosexual.
Oh, there is the thing about the toilet venue of Craig’s ruinous flirtation (Americans are obsessed with potties – all potties) and also the extraordinarily-significant fact that should Vitter resign his seat it would be filled by a Democrat named by the Democratic governor of Louisiana. Unfortunately for Craig the Governor of Idaho is a Republican. Foley’s was an interesting case: It suggests that here the Republicans’ sincere bigotry might have gotten the better of them since their hand-picked candidate to replace the homo failed to make it in the election which followed his resignation. Of course it could also have been the product of an excessive self-confidence, one which wouldn’t have survived the last year of spiraling Republican disasters.
Of course I’m not going to contrast any of this with the Democrat’s treatment of Jerry Studds and Barney Frank [neither lost his job], the Republican attitude toward Presidential sex, or toward Congressional corruption involving real crimes with real victims. And while I’m not speaking of real victims, I’m not going to speak about the real, countless, world-wide victims of the first eight and one half years of this Republican administration.
“Hypocrisy” is far too mild a word for this stuff.
[image by Tom Toles via Washington Post]
cop sitting in toilet stall enticed Senator Craig for sex
ruins of public toilet in ancient port of Ostia
Okay, even if no one has asked, does anyone want to know my take on the Senator Craig homosex arrest story? Well, it was actually my second thought, the less-than-honorable gentleman being a Republican, but it became paramount a few seconds after I began to read the arresting officer’s account of the incident in Roll Call, the capitol Hill newspaper.
I think it’s called “entrapment” when it happens to the people we think of as the good guys.
Isn’t anyone else out there concerned about the fact that police officers in Minneapolis are being paid to sit inside airport bathroom stalls to trap guys interested in getting off?
[image from darkcreek]
“Slava Mogutin & Justin Beal” in the back room at Bortolami
Slava Mogutin Joey San Francisco, 1999 archival C-print mounted on aluminum 30″ x 20″
Slava Mogutin Yellow Billboard Moscow, 2004 archival C-print mounted on aluminum 30″ x 20″
There’s nothing about this installation on the gallery’s site, so I’m not sure about its status or (perhaps more importantly for visitors) its dates. I’m referring to an intense show of some work by Slava Mogutin and Justin Beal which I saw in the small room at Bortolami almost two weeks ago. Since I’m unable to call to the gallery office at this time of night, I’m going to assume it will remain up until August 31, when the show in the larger space closes.*
These ten photographs by Mogutin, sweetly-badass Russian poet and American visual artist, were made over a period of the last seven or eight years. I’ve seen some of them before, but I enjoyed the intelligence, the humor, the sophistication, the intimacy, the eroticism and the beauty in all the work on those walls as much or more than I have ever enjoyed his art before – which is to say, a lot.
Unfortunately I missed capturing an image of either of Beal’s elegant floor sculptures, but I’m looking forward to seeing more of this artist’s work. The furniture-size pieces at Bortolomi are composed, as they often are, in a mostly-monochromatic construction with at least one transparent element and any number of other re-configured common objects.
*
UPDATE: The gallery has now told me that “back room” will be open until August 28.
Sinbad was gay?
Kerwin Matthews, “flesh-and-blood Sinbad”
Why didn’t somebody tell us?
Kerwin Matthews, the actor who played Sinbad in the 1958 film, “The 7th Voyage of Sinbad“, died July 5 in his home in San Francisco. The NYTimes obituary says that his death “was confirmed by his lover of 46 years, Tom Nicoll”.
Yes, the film was aimed at a young audience, but we weren’t too young to fall in love with the beautiful and dashing hairy-chested Sinbad. Who could possibly have imagined that he wasn’t as straight as everyone else (everyone except me, of course, and all the other queers of whose existence I would have no suspicion until years later)?
My favorite part of the short item in this morning’s paper is this sweet memory recalled by his partner:
Except as Sinbad and Gulliver, Mr. Nicoll said, Mr. Mathews was never satisfied with merely playing action roles.
He always wanted to do light comedy, or something more weighty, he said.
Then, in 1963, Mr. Mathews was cast as Johann Strauss Jr. in the Disney television production The Waltz King.
He was most proud to play Strauss, Mr. Nicoll said, and that he had to conduct the Vienna Philharmonic. Whether they actually followed him I dont know, but he tried very hard.
More from the San Francisco Chronicle, and one more visual treat, a publicity shot for “The 3 Worlds of Gulliver” (1960):
Matthews as Dr. Lemuel Gulliver
[the first image from play.com, the second from briansdriveintheater]
“Where do Homosexuals Get All Their Energy?”
Brandon Kelley
I’m not much of an advertisement for an energetic homosexual at this moment so I was curious about “Where do Homosexuals Get All Their Energy?”, this piece in last week’s The Onion. I read it straight through to the end. This was unusual for me, because I normally find the paper’s headlines much funnier than the full satirical narratives. Hey, I’m busy.
Sometimes I really am a very energetic homosexual, but right now I’m sitting at the breakfast room table at one in the afternoon, after a leisurely reading of the morning papers (and an old Onion). I’m about to leave the apartment with my partner (although there’s no rush) for a visit to the Metropolitan on a beautiful afternoon, leaving it to someone else to clean and put everything in order at home while we’re gone.
The satirical weekly’s Brandon Kelley (the writer’s pseudonym*) would describe my lifestyle differently. He starts out with a general comparison and continues with an elaboration on contrasting staight/gay competencies:
Boy, am I beat. And it’s not like I have some crazy life where I’m working three jobs and going to night school. No, I just have one job and a small apartment. I don’t even have a pet to look after. Even so, it seems that no matter what I do, there’s always more. If they put another eight hours in the day, I might be able to catch up on the laundry list of chores I have, or even just my laundry, if I were lucky. But you know who really gets it done? Homosexuals.
I know what you’re saying: Brandon, you’re just perpetuating the stereotype that homosexuals are superhuman. That is totally not true. All I’m saying is, with their boundless energy and talents, they make us straight guys look bad.
I’ll add an excerpt which brings this post back to one of this site’s foci:
And don’t remind me about those gallery openings. After a hard day of work, I was barely able to drag my ass down to the last one. I told myself, I’m not doing this again anytime soon! But it would never occur to homosexuals to think those things. The moment I walked in, there they were, dressed impeccably and criticizing the choice of wine.
*
I understand the portrait images used are those of the staff and their friends
[image from The Onion]
arrested in NY for reciting First Amendment to police officer
(too much free speech)
An AP story in Newsday reports that Reverend Billy was arrested Friday night while loudly reciting the First Amendment to police.
Could anything make it more clear what’s going on in this city? It’s time for all New Yorkers to form a larger critical mass of resistance to this dangerous lunacy before we’ve lost our liberties for ever.
Gothamist tells us that a press release the blog received after the arrest of a man whose day job consists largely of exhorting people to abandon the products of large corporations and mass media, observes that “while the NYPD surrounded and intimidated last night’s Critical Mass cyclists, a line of several hundred shoppers formed just across the street to purchase the new iPhone, blocking pedestrian traffic and forcing people to walk in the street.” Whoa! This is all way, way beyond irony.
Go here, to Matt Semel’s annotated flickr set of images, for a good-humored, inside look at Friday night’s bike ride and the police tension which preceded it.
[image by Konstantin Sergeyev from revbilly.com]
Chris Quinn asks our civil rights to “take one for the team”
in this case an objective clearly worth a monstrous sacrifice
Was the sacrifice of our right to assemble and speak just a matter of “taking one for the team“? And if it was, what will there be left to win if the team makes the finals?
I sent an email out to a few friends last night after picking up a copy of this week’s Gay City News. I had hoped to find an article on Chris Quinn which might explain to her larger core community why I and so many others are upset with her these days.
There was an article, but I left wondering how anyone not familiar with the subject of her collaboration and authorization of what is euphemistically referred to as the Police “Parade Rules” might be able to figure what the fuss is about.
I wrote, in part:
We can see that our most prominent community newspaper isn’t really interested in the interests of its community, but rather, in its designated hero’s ability [in the words of one person quoted in the article] “to take a stand on issues she believes in that aren’t always popular among different constituent groups”, or, to excerpt another quote from a member of the community used in the article, “any elected official’s need to balance the concerns of many groups”.
I received an interesting reply from Andy Podell, one of my addressees, and he agreed to be quoted. It’s the best explanation I’ve come across for what looks like a totally baffling decision from a former community street acitivist, but although I don’t consider myself politically naive its implications disturb me:
One of the unspoken rules in American politics is that politicians who come from minority communities must show the big boys that they can be tough on their own constituency. Chuck Schumer and George Bush are not required to slap the community around that elected them to show that they’re impartial. But Hilary Clinton and Christine Quinn are required to reassure those in power that they no longer represent their voting base. The battle for representative democracy is over before it begins.
So, does this suggest we’re better off not supporting minority politicians? I’m throwing this out mostly as a provocation; I’m depressed, but maybe not yet that depressed.
[image from perfectduluthday]
RHA and Queer Justice League march for assembly rights
We were colorful, loud, beautiful and cute, joyful and fierce, and we never really stopped moving, even when the march did. One of the group described himself today, after eleven hours of sleep, as a survivor of “the anarcho-queer olympics that was our participation in the parade.
The crowd was crazy about this “unpermitted” band of RHA and Queer Justice League activists, even if the serious message of their visuals and their chants might initially have escaped some of the people shrieking with glee behind the barriers on each side of the street. I walked down Fifth Avenue from somewhere in the 50’s and all the way to the river, and I never heard a single discouraging word.
In any event, on Sunday thousands of people saw the pink and white flyers we handed out and should be able to understand today that this group and its reason for being there on the streets related more closely to the original Stonewall than anything else in this 38th anniversary march.
I’ve uploaded some additional (thumbnail) images of these animated street lobbyists below [click to enlarge]:
NYPD secretly granted permits to Dyke Marches for years
Friday night’s NYC Dyke March
In the middle of everything else he was balancing this weekend Tim Doody of The Radical Homosexual Agenda [RHA] forwarded this I-Witness Video item to me on on Saturday, when I only read it very quickly. It seemed so fantastical that I wanted to check out the story before I repeated it, but no one I talked to outside of the RHA this weekend seemed to have heard anything about it. Actually of course, I should never have had any doubts about it since the byline is that of Eileen Clancy, the video activist who was instrumental, along with many others, in exposing the lies and political arbitrariness of the NYPD arrest sweeps and citizen lockdowns during the RNC.
This is only an excerpt, from a story which only gets more interesting in a public transcript included in the remainder of the full text:
Saturday, 23 Jun 2007
by Eileen Clancy
Through the spring and summer months, the New York City Police Department has continued its campaign to shut down, suppress and contain political demonstrations, often in a completely unreasonable, ill-informed and even insulting manner. Recently, the Police Department has outright refused or stalled permits for events organized by the African Diaspora Education Society, Gays and Lesbians of Bushwick Empowered, the PrideFest and the Audre Lorde Project’s Trans Day of Action.
Yet, even as many groups scramble to assemble pro-bono teams of attorneys to fight for permission to hold events, the NYPD has secretly issued a parade permit to the largest annual unauthorized political gathering on a Manhattan street, the 15th annual New York City Dyke March. Later today, tens of thousands of lesbians and their supporters will sally forth onto Fifth Avenue in a parade of lesbian visibility without knowing that their display has received the seal of government approval.
That’s right, unrequested by and unbeknownst to the organizers, the NYPD has granted legally permitted status to the Dyke March and has done so for years.
How do we know this? Because Assistant Chief Thomas Graham, the commander of the Disorder Control Unit and the NYPD’s expert on managing political demonstrations, says so in sworn testimony.
When I first read this story I felt like I was having a through-the-looking-glass moment. Then I got really mad. For years an alert and dedicated citizenry has been working very hard, putting their energy, time, jobs and money on the line, to exercise Constitutional rights which the police and their political allies refuse to recognize, but all along the constabulary has been justifying their occasional and apparently random passivity internally, and protecting their own rights and freedom of movement, by officially granting permits not requested.
It’s incredibly patronizing, of course, but much more is going on here. Nothing may better illustrate the arbitrariness of police power in New York City, where not only does the NYPD make law on its own, but it can [appear to] violate those laws whenever it so chooses.
[image from Nicole Marti‘s Flckr page]