BOOK TRAILER: Gay In America

TRAILER: PBS' Out In America

Airing this Wednesday at 8pm nationwide.

Chris Crocker On Femme Vs. Butch

Early YouTube superstar Chris Crocker (who's looking quite different these days) delivers a rant about the tension between masculine and feminine gay men.

San Francisco's Eagle Tavern Closes

My pal Ned just texted me the above photo of the front door of San Francisco's Eagle Tavern. According to JMG reader Craig, insiders suspect there's much more to the story than a lost lease.

HomoQuotable - Larry Kramer

"I am a gay person before I’m anything else. I’m a gay person before I’m a white person, before I’m a Jew, before I’m a writer, before I’m American, anything. That is my most identifying characteristic and I don’t find many people who would say that. The polls say the same thing: People do not identify themselves as gay. And that’s too bad. In fact, it’s tragic. It will prevent us from ever having what we deserve, I believe." - Larry Kramer, in an interview with Salon.

LAUNCHED: DJ Neil Lewis Podcasts

My pal Leif Wauters is spearheading an effort to post the sets of the late and legendary DJ Neil Lewis, whose epic work is considered by many to represent a pinnacle of San Francisco nightlife.

Welcome to the premier podcast of Neil's recorded sets from his nights at Pleasuredome. Each release represents both sides of an audio cassette tape recording that has recently been digitised. Although I'm not an audio engineer, I have done my best to remove any gaps and to generally beef up with quality of the recordings but some unavoidable warbling and glitches remain. Please allow these imperfections to remind you that this is simply an attempt to share the joy of Neil Lewis' music what was adored by dancers, flaggers and other DJs around the world until he took his life in 2004. Please share these podcasts far and wide as they represent what some would consider the best of a golden age in dance music. There will be a new release roughly every couple of weeks until the collection has been completely shared. If you enjoy what you hear, please consider making a donation to San Francisco Suicide Prevention as a "Friend of Neil Lewis" so they can continue the critical work of keeping our troubled loved-ones amongst us.

I made most of my San Francisco friends on Neil's dance floor and even just a few minutes into this podcast, I'm flashing back to people I haven't thought about in many years. Appropriately, this first posting begins with Chicane, the gloriously serene trance act that came to represent Neil's unique style. Bookmarked.

CNN Covers Born This Way Blog

Nice piece from the author of Born This Way Blog, which posts childhood photos that seem to predict the subject's future gayness.

Gay Black History Month

Black Gays March In LA's MLK Day Parade

A coalition of African-American gay groups marched in yesterday's Martin Luther King Day Parade in Los Angeles. Among those attending: The Barbara Jordan/ Bayard Rustin Coalition, The Here to Stay Coalition, Black Lesbians United, In the Meantime Men’s Group, At the Beach Los Angeles Black Pride. Hit the link for more on the event.

Out Magazine Releases Sex Survey

Out Magazine has issued its first-ever sex survey of its readers. The sample size is small, 1000 people, and the results are only indicative of folks who read Out, not the LGBT population as a whole. Still, there's some interesting factoids such as the above.

HomoQuotable - Steve Weinstein

"[T]he majority of gay men and lesbians want nothing more than to raise families behind picket fences. There are other signs of increasing conformity in the gay world. Leather is seen by most younger men as more silly than hot. While they may exercise, younger men mostly don’t strive for Adonis physiques. It goes on. (Lesbians are way ahead of the curve on this. They’ve been mating and nesting for years.)

"Is this bad? Probably not. We’ve been fighting for acceptance. Now that we’re getting it, it’s up to us to do what we want with it. If younger gay men and lesbians want the same things as their straight counterparts, so be it. Have we lost something? Probably. Just as blacks lose their jive and soul when they become middle-class suburbanites, and Jews lose their Yiddishkeite, so we shed the camp, the bitchy humor, the diva worship, and the other facets that defined “gay” for so long. Most people, however, would consider it a fair tradeoff." - Steve Weinstein, writing for Edge On The Net in response to yesterday's JMG post about Jonah Goldberg's column on the "homosexual bourgeoisie."

The Rise Of The HoBos

Conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg says that the repeal of DADT is yet another example of the rise of the homosexual bourgeoisie, a gay culture that rejects its uniqueness for an integrated heteronormative lifestyle.

Two decades ago, the gay left wanted to smash the bourgeois prisons of monogamy, capitalistic enterprise and patriotic values and bask in the warm sun of bohemian "free love." And avant-garde values. In this, they were simply picking up the torch from the straight left of the 1960s and 1970s, who had sought to throw off the sexual hang-ups of their parents' generation along with their gray flannel suits. [snip]

Of course, the lunacy of the bohemian free love shtick should have been obvious from the get-go. When Michael Lerner, a member of the anti- Vietnam War "Seattle Seven," did marry, in 1971, the couple exchanged rings made from the fuselage of a U.S. aircraft downed over Vietnam and cut into a cake inscribed in icing with a Weatherman catchphrase, "Smash Monogamy." The gay experiment with open bohemianism was arguably shorter. Of course, AIDS played an obvious and tragic role in focusing attention on the downside of promiscuity. But even so, the sweeping embrace of bourgeois lifestyles by the gay community has been stunning. [snip]

Many of my conservative friends often act as if there's some grand alternative to both the bohemian or the bourgeois lifestyles. But there isn't. And given that open homosexuality is simply a fact of life, the rise of the HoBos — the homosexual bourgeoisie — strikes me as good news.

It's always been said that the ultimate goal of the gay rights movement is its own extinction. But Goldberg is correct in predicting that with that extinction will come an inevitable fading of what we now know as gay culture. Some will say that's a good thing. I disagree.

TRAILER: Sydney Mardi Gras 2011

Polari Listed As Endangered Language

Polari, the inventive and colorful slang language once used by some British homosexuals, has been listed among thousands of languages headed for extinction.

The slang, used as a code among some gay people when homosexuality was illegal, is on an online database created by University of Cambridge researchers. The free website has been developed by researchers at the World Oral Literature Project and includes records for 3,524 world languages, from those deemed “vulnerable”, to those that remain well understood but are effectively extinct, like Latin. [snip] Polari was originally used by market traders and sailors and some believe can be traced back as far as the 16th century. It has its roots in English, Italian, Yiddish, canal, theatre and Gypsy languages. Until the 1970s, it was used by a small number of gay people as a private communication method to avoid hostile attention and develop an identity. Some words, such as ‘naff’ and ‘camp’, are now in general usage.

Here's a couple of clips about the hit British radio show Round The Horne, in which two of the characters spoke mostly in Polari.

HomoQuotable - Kevin Troughton

"For many gay men 'straight-acting' is highly attractive, but 'straight' is even more so. So if you're looking for a description of yourself that will have the maximum appeal on your dating profile and can't use 'straight', for obvious reasons, maybe 'straight-acting' isn't so bad. It's clear and descriptive, and it's fit for purpose, providing that you can overlook the implication that '-acting' means you're just putting it on. [snip]

"And what if the pressure to be 'straight-acting' gradually squeezes out camp behaviour? Will we have lost something important? Perhaps we should be pleased to see it go, an unnecessary relic of a time when gay men risked prosecution and when a lisp and a limp wrist were a relatively safe way of communicating your sexuality to other men. Or maybe it would be a sell-out, allowing ourselves to be railroaded into behaving like straight men – and, what is more, the kind of straight men who are most likely to give us homophobic abuse or a beating.

"Perhaps gay men should view 'camp' in the same way as we view a minority language or regional accent, something to nurture and encourage, even if we don't speak that way ourselves." - Guardian UK columnist Keven Throughton, in a piece titled "The End Of Gay Men Being Camp."

Black Gay News From No More Down Low

I posted the first episode of No More Down Low TV several weeks ago. This latest installment covers public displays of affection in the black gay community, the rise of YouTube star Antoine Dobson, and more. Part Two of this episode is here.

Swag Tuesday

Courtesy of the publisher, today's Swag Tuesday prize is Mary Ann In Autumn, the latest in legendary gay author Armistead Maupin's Tales Of The City series. Mary Ann In Autumn is now available online and at booksellers nationwide.

More than twenty years have passed since Mary Ann left her husband and child in San Francisco for the allure of a television career in New York. Now, a pair of personal calamities has driven her back to the city of her youth and into the arms of her oldest friend, Michael “Mouse” Tolliver, newly wed and happily ensconced with a much younger husband. Grateful for the temporary refuge their cottage offers, Mary Ann, now at the unnerving age of fifty-seven, licks her wounds and begins to take stock of her mistakes. With the help of the Internet, Facebook especially, and a few old friends, she begins to reengage with life, only to confront fresh terrors when – out the virtual blue – her speckled past comes back to haunt her in an unexpected way. Caught in her orbit is a cast of intriguing players whose stories play out against her own: her estranged daughter, Shawna, a popular sex blogger; Jake Greenleaf, Michael’s transgender gardening assistant; socialite DeDe Halcyon-Wilson and her wife D’orothea; and the legendary Anna Madrigal, Mary Ann’s former landlady at 28 Barbary Lane.

I read Mary Ann In Autumn during (appropriately enough) my flight to San Francisco last month and can report that it's every bit as delightful as the previous books in the series. As always, I most identified with Mouse (raised in Orlando, escaped to San Francisco, a single memorable night as a go-go boy) and that parallel continues in the new book with Mouse's middle-aged bear identity. Spooky!

We have three copies of Mary Ann In Autumn to give away. Enter to win by commenting on this post and please remember to leave your email address in the text of your comment. Entries close at midnight on Thursday, west coast time. Publicists: If you'd like to take part in Swag Tuesday on JMG, please email me.

RELATED: Armistead Maupin is currently making appearances to support Mary Ann In Autumn throughout the U.S., Britain, and Australia. On December 9th, he'll be reading at the Barnes & Noble at Lincoln Center in Manhattan. Hit the link for locations near you.

COVER SHOT: The Out 100 Of 2010

Out Magazine sends us the cover for the 16th annual Out 100 issue.

Entertainer of the Year — Ricky Martin: “I am Hispanic, and I am a gay man, and they both struggle. Is it a big responsibility? It can be as big as I want it to be,” Martin tells Out. Embracing both fatherhood and new status as a gay role model, Martin, who opens up in his new memoir, Me, looks forward to teaching his twin boys acceptance and love and a day when he proudly walks them down the red carpet!

Diva of the Year — Johnny Weir: “Every little boy should be so lucky as to turn into me,” Weir declared unapologetically after two Canadian broadcasters suggested he undergo a “gender test” during the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. With his flair for flamboyance and commitment to glamour, Weir never shies away from controversy—or pageantry.

Artist of the Year — Julianne Moore: “I don’t think a movie like The Kids Are All Right could be made if this wasn’t the way that families are living today all over the United States,” Moore states. The actress, a four-time Oscar nominee, began her activism some 25 years ago after her first experience with what would become the AIDS pandemic.

Newsmaker of the Year — Rachel Maddow: Growing up in the time of the AIDS pandemic gave Maddow a compelling perspective on the state of gay activism, especially now in the age of Obama. “We continue to have a sort of lackadaisical gay political movement that has a relationship with Democrat politicians that doesn’t serve gay rights: ‘We want to be close to you.’ Beautiful! But if we’re not getting anything for that, then it’s actually counterproductive.”

Stylemaker of the Year – Nate Berkus: Oprah protégé Berkus recently became the first openly gay man to host a daily nationally syndicated television show, and the guru is not taking that responsibility lightly. “Having a daily show is an opportunity for me not to push a political agenda, but to speak out for tolerance and understanding and equality,” he notes.

Quote Of The Day - David Frum

"Halloween is overwhelmingly an adult holiday. This year, for example, Americans spent an estimated $800 million on costumes for children, $1 billion on costumes for adults. Where did that adult dress-up party begin? As best we can tell: in San Francisco's Castro neighborhood. In the 1970s, that neighborhood emerged as the heart of a new home-owning, bourgeois, coupled gay community. A local variety store had long sponsored a Halloween street festival for kids. In the 1970s, the street festival transitioned into an adult party of lavish costumed theatricality. The 'Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence' -- a troupe of transvestite nuns -- got their start here.

"The Castro Halloween party spread to other gay neighborhoods in the 1980s: Greenwich Village, West Hollywood, Key West, Florida. In 1994, University of Florida anthropologist Jerry Kugelmass published a book on the new trend, Masked Culture, describing Halloween as an emerging gay 'high holiday.' And after a while -- the straights imitated. From the spread of disco in the 1970s -- to the habit of paying money for sparkling waters such as Perrier -- culminating in Halloween, gays have incubated and developed major cultural trends. Straights adopt, and then ungratefully forget whom they are adopting from." - Conservative columnist David Frum, writing for CNN.com

HomoQuotable - Mike Alvear

"Why do so many effeminate gay men prefer in their partners the very masculinity they've bleached out of themselves? The obvious answer is that they're attracted to their opposites. But that answer only goes so far. Effeminate men may lust for their masculine counterparts but most masculine men don't return the favor.

"Effeminate men get hoisted on their own chiffon petards. The more they take on effeminate characteristics the less able they are to attract the kinds of guys they want to sleep with. This is a mating absurdity. Imagine birds trying to attract mates with red and white plumage when the objects of their affection are attracted to yellow and green. The mis-matched mating call of the merry marys brings up a great question: If effeminacy is counter-productive to attracting the kind of sexual partners you want, then why not butch it up? Is it because like being gay, being effeminate isn't a choice?

"Nobody knows what fuels the gay flame -- nature or nurture. Some believe gay guys turn sissy because they're naturally nelly and some think it's because they're conforming to a culture that expects it. I've always maintained that effeminacy is like obesity. Sometimes it's glandular, but mostly it's cultural. There's an undeniable Pansy Vortex in gay life. You fall into it with baggy jeans and a t-shirt and climb out of it with spandex up the crack of your ass." - Mike Alvear, writing for the Huffington Post.

Read the entire essay.

RELATED: A lot of you took issue with Alvear's last essay quoted here.