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queerVOICE
I Was A Gay Servicemember
James Duggan ©2008 |
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It was November of 1976. I was in my senior year in high school. At that time, I had had enough of school and, frankly, no interest in going to college. What was I going to do with my life now? I decided that I would early enlist in the Air Force and begin my military service immediately after I graduated.
By July of 1977, I was already at Lackland Air Force Base, San Antonio, Texas, beginning my basic training.
While I was only 17, I was fully aware of my sexuality. I was only one among 50 other guys to prepare to serve my country with honor and pride. I work, studied, exercised and showered with these total strangers and never once was there an awkward moment between me and my heterosexual counterparts. We were all there for one thing--to make it thorough basic training without pissing off the TI (training instructor).
After basic training, I was sent to Lowry Air Force Base in Denver. After 21 weeks of schooling, this by-then 18 year old servicemember was assigned to Minot Air Force Base, in North Dakota, were I worked at inspecting, maintaining, and repairing the internal components of the nuclear warheads that sat atop our nation's Minuteman II ICBM, this included the neutron generators and plutonium canisters.
I found it very strange that I could be 18 and work on real nuclear warheads but if I were queer I could not. I could not understand the logic in the rule that queers could not serve. But, of course, we were and are.
I met many hard working queers while I was in the Air Force. It wasn't very difficult to do. To me, there just seemed to be so many of us. I met my first love while I was stationed in Denver; sadly he died much too young (but that's another story).
Today the United States military has the only law (Don't Ask, Don't Tell) in the country that allows queers to be fired just for being who they are. Like many others, I believe that the ban on queers in the military is clearly outdated, unfair, prejudicial and--needs to be lifted immediately.
Opponents of out queers serving in the armed services believe that it is better for unit cohesion and morale to keep the ban. To allow out queers to serve, they argue, would negatively affect performance, professionalism, and morale.
Proponents point to the overwhelming evidence from countries from around the world that now allow out queers to serve in their armed services that the dire predictions of those who wish to continue such policies as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" fall by the wayside.
In the 1940's, our military and congressional leaders strongly opposed the integration of the Armed Forces, but on July 26, 1948, in the face of overwhelming opposition President Harry Truman signed Executive Order No. 9981, declaring that it is "the policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion or national origin."
Today the United States Military is the most integrated organization in the world. The naysayers were wrong on the negative effects integration would bring to the military and they are wrong today on allowing queers to serve openly.
Besides the United States of America, Turkey is the only other country in NATO that bans queers from serving openly. Actually, Turkey will be forced to change its policy when they enter the European Union. This means that the U.S. military is currently serving side by side with out queers from other countries, all sharing showers, barracks, foxholes and work spaces alike.
In the United States most police and fire departments allow out queers to serve in their ranks, as well as, the FBI, CIA, and Secret Service--all without dire consequences!
Yet the United States Military is kicking out 2 queers a day!
Since "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was instituted in 1993 over 58 linguists fluent in Arabic have been thrown out of the military, as recently as June of 2007, just for being queer at a time when the Military is suffering serious shortage of Arabic translators. This happened even as intelligence agencies complained about a shortage of linguists fluent in Arabic and how the military itself is desperate for Arabic translators. Winning the war on terror depends on having such servicemembers serving within the military.
The United States government needs to immediately lift the ban on out queers serving in our Armed Forces. This ban fortifies and perpetuates a false homophobia among our heterosexual servicemembers where polls show that there is overwhelming support among them for lifting the ban and accepting queers, serving with them side by side, and it weakens the military while making it less prepared to fulfill its duty.
The fight to lift the ban is not just good for queers but it is good for our nation. We should only support a policy that is just and right and fair. Join the fight . . . help to lift the ban!
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12th Street Gym - Philadelphia |
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What It Looks Like From Here
A Qt Exclusive
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 Our beloved queer actor/playwright Harvey Fierstein is really pissed. The darling of Broadway's "Hairspray" and the celebrated playwright of the award-winning (now) queer classic, "Torch Song Trilogy," recently bashed, none other that the hand that has been primarily feeding him for the past several years, the Great White Way.
"There's so little future in theater," Fierstein told the audience assembled for a luncheon for New Dramatists, "because our wonderful critics don't know what the fuck they're talking about."
According to New York (June 9, 2008), Fierstein was all gloom-and-doom about the current and future state of affairs for original playwrighting. And, yes, he was on a really serious rant, seasoned with plenty of expletives from the dias.
His newest project and work, "A Cultured Affair" (that Fierstein also wrote himself) was officially "panned" by the army of New York theater critics.
"Here's what happens to good playwrights: They spend five years of their life on a new play, then critics come in and kill it," he said, "So they just go to Hollywood and get paid $50,000 a week to write shit."
Fierstein observes that these playwrights don't return to New York or the theater. "They do one show; they get bad notices, and they say, 'Fuck it. I'm never doing that again.'"
Does this mean that we won't be hearing from Fierstein ever again, at least, as a writer?
Knowing Fierstein both professionally and personally, somehow I don't think that a creative "queen" can ever be ultimately silenced. Fierstein's voice will be heard from again--loud and clear, I'm absolutely sure of it.
Queer celebrity coupling: Domestic partner or husband?
Who doesn't enjoy queer celebrity gossip? Certainly, I can't get enough of it.
"[We're] not having a commitment ceremony," "Grey's Anatomy" queer cast member, T. R. Knight, told the press last month at the Cannes International Film Festival, according to gossip columnist Ned Erhbar in METRO (Metro Weekend, June 6-8, 2008).
While rumors in the media abound about Knight's next move with his 19-year-old boyfriend, Mark Cornelson, about the debate over commitment ceremony versus sex-same marriage, many unidentified sources claim that they have the scoop on the Knight-Cornleson pairing.
Of course, you might ask: "What's the big rush?" If they wait two weeks, Knight can actually get a marriage license in the State of California where the queer lovers both live.
Still, whatever type of service they decide, intimates close to both Knight and Cornelson say that a special party will be held at "a trendy West Hollywood hotspot."
Gee, imagine a queer couple in the entertainment world partying in WeHo?'
Queer designer dons pink, right down to his underwear!
Color him pink! Queer industrial designer Karim Rashid now divides half his time dressing in pink and half his time dressing in his signature white. We're talking head to toe--just to let you know. I mean Rashid isn't the first artist/celebrity to be known for always dressing in all-white outfits, that tradition has been contributed to from everyone from Somerset Maughan to Tom Wolfe but pink, the adopted "queer" color from triangles during World War II to dollars (you know "pink dollars," a term coined by Madison Avenue in the 1990s to describe LGBT spending habits in America), is entirely another story, I mean, color.
Rashid, in an interview in New York (February 25, 2008), was prodded about his new fascination with wearing pink. In asking the winner of numerous design awards and one of his many claims to fame, including the creation/invention of the "Garbo" (trash can), he attributed his interest in pink to his mother. "Sometimes I think it's because my mother dressed me in pink when I was a child. She wanted me to be a girl." How about that for gender-bending?
Prodded further by the magazine's interviewer, Rashid related the fact that a grown man wearing pink made people "smile."
(Philadelphians might know Rashid's work during his stint at the University of the Arts or his first-ever restaurant design anywhere in the world, Morimoto, that the trendsetting restaurateur Stephen Starr hired him to do long before others scoffed him up for major design undertakings around the world.)
Mixing his two favorite colors, white with pink, Rashid has been photographed wearing pink sneakers with white and black accents.
Of course, Rashid was asked about what he wears under the suit, shirt and tie. "The only place in the world that sells men's pink underwear is American Apparel," he eagerly replied. We just don't know if he's talking boxers or briefs.
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Chiropractic and Sports Rehabilitation |
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I Wish I Had Said That: |
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"Why does your sexual orientation have to be predominant? It is like saying I'm really good friends with a black person or that woman is a good friend of mine. If you're gay it doesn't make any difference, I look at you as a whole person . . . I suppose when somebody was very ghetto-ized gay than we would not have too much in common, because obviously I'm not male and I'm not gay."
music icon Annie Lennox (QMedia, January, 2008)
"We'll never get tired of the game, 'Which Character From Sex and the City and The Golden Girls Are You?' but it you're a Miranda or a Dorothy, own it. Not everyone can be Carrie and Blanche."
actress Tori Spelling ("Can I Be Blunt?" OUT, June/July 2008)
"[Eddie] Redmayne is. . .queer, in the old sense: physically detached, with only his bulgy eyes signaling his inner panic. In its frigid way, 'Savage Grace' is potent. It makes incest a state of mind."
David Edelstein on reviewing "Savage Grace" directed by Tom Kalin, starring Julianne Moore, Stephen Dillane with a screenplay by Fernando Valezquez (New York, June 2, 2008)
I'm Glad I Never Said That:
"I have a lovely psychiatrist who works with me in my office trying to turn homosexuals away from what they are engaged in. I'm happy to put any homosexuals in touch with this gentleman. "I have met people who have turned around and become heterosexual. They are married and are having families."
Iris Robinson, MP, wife of First Minister of Northern Ireland Peter Robinson while making comment on the beating of a 27 year old man by a gang of queer-bashing thugs
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Thom's Event Tips
Another Qt Exclusive
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This Month:
Friday, June 20-Saturday, June 28
"Six in the City," the sixth annual Philadelphia Gay & Lesbian Theatre Festival, continues with several productions and performances, throughout the city, at several venues, including "Q: The Songs of Martin & Biello," music by Dan Martin and lyrics by Michael Biello, directed by Bill Felty, and musical direction by Rob Blackwell. The must-see production celebrates the longtime creative collaborative duo of Martin and Biello (biellomartin.com) who have amassed a critically acclaimed body of work that this 80-minute performance without intermission will entertain audiences in Philadelphia like they have in cities from New York City to Chicago, 8 p.m., Walnut Street Studio Theatre 5, 825 Walnut Street., Fifth Floor, Center City, Philadelphia.
For more information, visit pgltf.org
Wednesday, June 25
Out and About Sendak? The Rosenbach Museum & Library, 2008-2010 Delancey Place, Center City, Philadelphia, just came out of its venerable closet by hosting world-famous author and illustrator (Where the Wild Things Are, In the Night Kitchen and Outside Over There, among a career full of other books), Maurice Sendak, talking about his life as a gay man and artist, with the museum's own Bill Adair, Hirsig Family Director of Education. "The gallery talk will explore Sendak's characters, drawings and stories and how his sexuality is played out in these extraordinary works," according to Adair. The event is being held in conjunction with, "There's a Mystery There: Sendak on Sendak," a major retrospective of over 130 examples of his work from the museum's own vast collections, now through May 3, 2009. All events are free, including the gallery talk, with museum admission, $10 adults, $8 for seniors, 6 p.m. This is an extremely rare opportunity to hear Sendak talk about his private life and sexual orientation's impact upon his work.
For more information, call 215.732.1600; visit rosenbach.org
Thursday, June 26
Won't you join us for this very important and worthy campaign? A Benefit Call for the Repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" military policy towards GLBT personnel hosted by the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) and Garth Weldon, with a "meet-and--greet" for SLDN's new executive director, Aubrey Sarvis, with special guest, Army Sgt. Darren Manzella, an active duty officer who has served in Kuwait and Iraq, and publicly came out on "60 Minutes," from 6-7:30pm, The Prime Rib at the Warwick Hotel, 1701 Locust St., Center City, suggested donation begins at $50, for cocktails and hors d'oeuvres.
For more information, call 215.772.1701; visit theprimerib.com
For those wishing to serve on the benefit host committee, call Thom Cardwell at 215.284.4100 or email thom.cardwell@BUCKmonkey.net
For more information about SLDN, call David Hall at 202.621.5419; visit sldn.org/events
Looking Ahead:
Thursday's in August:
It'll be a Bumpy Bette(r) Month! Camp Bette: Hollywood legend Bette Davis is celebrated upon the marking of her 100th birthday, with four special FREE screenings in honor of her incredible career, featuring "Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte" directed by Robert Aldrich, on August 7; "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane," directed by Robert Aldrich, on August 14; "All About Eve," directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, on August 21; and "Now, Voyager," directed by Irving Rapper, on August 21. All screenings will be held at 8 p.m. outdoors, bring your own chairs and blankets, sorry no rain dates, outside International House, 3701 Chestnut St, University City, Philadelphia.
For more information, call 215.895.6540; visit www.ihousephilly.org
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August is Better in Philly |
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HughE on the Qt @ the TONYS
HughE Dillon - photographer
©2008 |
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∆ Lily Tomlin and Deanna Dunagan, who won the 2008 Tony Award for "Best Actress in a Play" for her performance in August: Osage County!
∆ Cheyanne Jackson, the hottest gay man on Broadway, currently starring in Xanadu.
∆ The ever fabulous Liza Minnelli.
∆ Laura Linney, who played Maryanne in Armisted Maupin's PBS Series Tale of the City.
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