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Last year I wrote that "resolutions are a reminder of the things we didn't do the year before and hope to get around to in the year to come."  I followed that remark by my wish list for 2009.  This year I thought we would review last year's list and see where we are today.

In PA:

• That Governor Rendell uses his vast political clout to persuade the Pennsylvania Legislature to pass an anti-discrimination bill that includes both sexual orientation and gender identity.  This would also include the need for an immediate amendment to the Commonwealth's Hate Crimes Legislation to include not just sexual orientation and gender identity, but the handicapped as well. (Update: Not even close.  This man who made the political queer bar crawl famous has failed to deliver on his promises to our statewide community.  Edward Rendell may be considered our friend but has proved that he is not our ally, and that makes all the difference.)
• That Pennsylvania Legislators stop discriminating against queer people and immediately pass the amendments to both anti-discrimination and hate crimes legislation.  For goodness sake, we're living in 2009, soon to be 2010! Any delay is both senseless and disrespectful. (Update: Pennsylvania Legislature demonstrated this past year that they are incapable of moving as a whole governmental body, granting what is truly good for the people of their state.  Now is the time for serious political action to take place so that real change comes to the Keystone State by voting in true allies and not just "so called" political friends.)
• That term limits become not just a topic of conversation but a reality.  It has been said by some that equality comes from political action.  If there is truth to this statement, then we need to start pushing for term limits for ALL of our elected officials. There is nothing that will affect change and growth and development on the political landscape faster then term limits. It will help to eliminate the problems that come with career politicians and help to create a whole new generation of public servants with new and fresh ideas. (Update: Need I say more.)

In NJ:

• That New Jersey Legislators correct the State's flawed Civil Union Laws that failed to provide true marriage equality with all the benefits granted to heterosexual marriages.  Do it and be proud to become the first state to legislate marriage equality to same-sex couples! (Update: After a year where same-sex marriage looked possible in the Garden State, we find that with the recent election of Republican Governor Chris Christi that fence sitting legislators started to balk at their support for queer marriage equality.  The measure looks more likely to fail than to pass before Jon Corzine leaves office on January 19.)
• That New Jersey Legislators pass Assembly Bill 804, the New Jersey Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act, so that medical doctors can prescribe a beneficial form of medical treatment to their patients. (Update: The bill passed the New Jersey Senate by a 22-16 vote earlier this year and now awaits a vote in the Assembly. If passed, the Garden State would become the 14th state to legalize the medical use of marijuana.)

In Philadelphia:

• That term limits (they're so important I needed to mention it twice) be imposed on members of City Council. But there seems to be a catch.  Term limits can only come about by a change in the City Charter. I've been told that the only way to change the Charter is by an action of City Council. Isn't this a nice Catch-22? Are there any lawyers out there with some ideas? How do we impose term limits on members of City Council? (Update: This wish remains the same.)
• That a dialog is started on the concept of a charter school for some of the city's queer youth and their peer allies. This is one of those emotional hotbeds of a subject; either for or against it. The future of our youth is worth such dialog. (Update: With anti-queer hate crimes on the rise against queer students, this is more an imperative than it was last year.  The concept for the Barbara Gittings School for Equality should move forward and come to fruition.)

Nationally:

• That "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," the law that states that queers must hide their sexuality while serving in the military, be repealed. (Update: Perhaps this year.)
• That the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which bars the recognition of same-sex marriages, be repealed. (Update: Perhaps this year.)
• That the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which would prohibit employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, is enacted into law. (Update: Under consideration in both the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate.)
• That Congress enacts federal hate crimes legislation that includes sexual orientation and gender identity protections. (Update: PASSED!)
• That we continue to advance our fight for marriage equality in order that our unions receive the over 1,400 benefits and privileges that heterosexual married couples currently receive. (Update: The national trend of rejecting same-sex marriage continued in 2009.  It appears our only hope is relief from the courts.)
• That there's a reduction in the continually growing number of hate crimes against queer people. (Update: Perhaps this year.)

Internationally:

• That the United Nations resolution decriminalizing homosexuality is approved. (Update: Perhaps this year.)
• That the government-sanctioned murders and torture of queers be eliminated by tyrannical governments. (Update:  In 2009, we were reminded that the world is a violent place for queers with anti-queer hate crimes, and murders on the rise, and nations such as Uganda seeking to criminalize homosexuality. Iraq also needs to be mentioned here and there are, unfortunately, a growing list of other nations.)
• That this is the year that the world is given the cure for HIV/AIDS. (Update:  Today could be the day!)

The New Year's Wish List for 2010 basically remains unchanged from 2009 as does my personal sentiment to ALL--that each of you, my friends, family, and readers, may you be filled with great happiness, wonderful health and a cheerful sense of humor.

May 2010 bring with it great victories on our road to full equality!

Queer-friendly actor/activist Susan Sarandon just always seemed to be having so much damn fun doing whatever she's putting her time, energy and talent into doing. The Oscar-winning 63-year-old, New Jersey native but long time resident of New York City gets to play, for the first time ever, a grandmother in the screen adaptation of  the Alice Sebold's novel, "The Lonely Bones" (now in theaters nationwide.) Sarandon spoke recently with journalist Deborah Caulfield Rybak (Delta Sky, December 2009) about how much enjoyment she really got out of playing Grandma Lynn, "the family member least likely to hold the clan together after her granddaughter's murder--at least at first glance."  Of her character, Sarandon explains: "She's so self-involved and consistently inappropriate and unsentimental, but ultimately she's the one who lets the light in. I don't think I ever utter a line without a drink or a cigarette, and I have just ridiculous hair and lashes in the beginning. It's always so much more fun to play the bad guy and to make an unsympathetic character funny."

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I must confess that I have always been fascinated with the work of queer art photographer George Platt Lynes. Like Gertrude Stein who recorded in her diaries that the first time she saw a Henri Matisse painting that "she kept looking and looking and looking," so, too, it is with me and my reaction to Platt Lynes' images. While in his heyday in the 1930s and 1940s, shooting everybody who was anybody, from queer fellow photographer Cecil Beaton, queer artist/writer/designer Jean Cocteau to lesbian writer Stein herself, he became totally enraptured with the male body and dedicated himself near the end of his life (he died prematurely at 48 of lung cancer in 1955) with his artistically erotic images of male nudes. He lived life to the fullest as both a dandy and aesthete, and was befriended by who's who in the worlds of art, fashion, design, dance, and photography, including the queer ballet impresario Lincoln Kirstein. Of his individual style and iconographic imagery, the photography critic Vince Aletti wrote of Platt Lynes: "He focused on ideal athletic types but appreciated the range of masculinity. He understood the appeal of something that was less rigid." Always ahead of his time as an artist, Platt Lynes influenced a whole generation of queer photographers who followed him, including Robert Mapplethrope, Herb Ritts and Bruce Weber. The articulate and insightful Weber wrote of Platt Lynes' male images: "Lynes photographed a lot of men who knew how to fix a car, but the difference was that he made them look as if they had gone to Yale."

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Homage needs to be paid to one of the most prestigious queer scholars, writers, historians, activists, of our time, Martin Duberman, distinguished professor of history emeritus at Lehman College and the Graduate School of the City University of  New York, founder/director for ten years of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at the CUNY Graduate School, author of 20 books, and recipients of numerous literary, academic and scholarly awards and, most recently, a memoir, "Waiting to Land" (The New Press, 2009). Duberman recounts in entries, written from 1985 to 2008, the mostly political trials and tribulations of everything from his teaching days to his activism on the campus and in the streets.  He shares his own personal struggles whether they're intellectual or emotional, endearing the writer along the way to his point of view and his dedication to the movement and the cause of queer rights. Here's one of his early entries, dated November 10, 1985, during the HIV/AIDS pandemic, when very little was clear or generally agreed upon. Duberman writes: "Discussing AIDS in my class on Thursday, the students split over the issue of whether to close down the gay bars and baths, with some shocking venom expressed about the danger people contaminating the general population. Then Friday [the writer/psychologist] Helen Singer Kaplan's letter to the Times rang change on that theme: gay people somehow 'owed' it to the general population to submit themselves for blood tests--with no awareness shown of the moral hypocrisy inherent in treating gay people like scum for generations and then demanding that they behave like saints, of the victims being told they should sacrifice themselves for the greater peace of mind of their oppressors."