Parting Glances: Remember Life! Keep 45 in Mind!
For over 50 years Life magazine informed Americans about what was happening here and abroad. Photos and content were dramatic. Mostly conservative. Occasionally controversial. Once in awhile downright shocking.
Mombian: Of Budget and Bias
President Trump’s proposed 2020 budget, released March 11, reinforces his intention to let foster care and adoption agencies discriminate against LGBTQ people and others in the name of religion, using taxpayer money. There is legislation pending that could stop these religious exemptions to non-discrimination laws, however. Here’s what you need to know.
Creep of the Week: Brenton Harrison Tarrant
“Let’s get this party started.” That’s how Brenton Harrison Tarrant kicked off his livestream video of his massacre at the first of two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Parting Glances: The Queer Occasion of Sin
Perhaps it’s ironic — if not a touch appropriate given his name — but a prominent Villanova University professor is quoted at the beginning of 2019 as saying the Roman Catholic Church is facing its greatest crisis in 500 years.
Ducking Transgender Athletes
Centuries ago, during the witch trials of the medieval era, a unique way of determining who was or wasn't a witch was created. A woman suspected of being a witch would have her right thumb bound to the big toe on her left foot. She would then have a rope tied around her waist, and be thrown into a nearby pond or river.
Parting Glances: Capnippers and Boners Go Gay!
A veterinarian funded study by People & Friends of Cats and Dogs, or P-FCD, reports that “persons of rainbow personality make the best dog owners, but have little influence on pussies, er, cats, although this [...]
Positive Thoughts: I’m an HIV-Positive Gay Man Committed to Racial Justice
The day the universe decided it wanted to see sugar, spice and everything nice, it was June 10, 1991 – the day I was born. Even as a child, I was always talkative and quite the jokester. Winning "Loudest," "Class Clown," and "Most Likely to Work for The New York Times" my senior year of high school proved not only that I could make anyone laugh, but that my banter always led to greater conversation.
Creep of the Week: Marc Short
This week’s column comes to you from both the “But People Can Change” Department and the “Yeah, but no” Department.
Parting Glances: Black, Gay, Detroit Friends (Pt. 4)
For decades, a seeming legitimate requirement asked for admission to Detroit gay bars was three pieces of ID, including one with photo selfie (in or out of drag optional). The request was intended to keep [...]
Let’s Continue the Conversation: Suicide
It is vital that we continue the discussion on suicide with the recent loss of a member of the trans/gender-nonconforming community. Our community shared this advice in Transcend The Binary's recent study, "Finding Our Strength."
Parting Glances Black Gay Detroit Friends (Pt. 3)
I had my picture taken a year ago with actress Lily Tomlin, who was in Detroit — her native city — as speaker for an LGBTQ fundraiser. I was wearing a blue-patterned hoodie I had designed for ArtWear Detroit. And the juxtaposition of my design wear and Ms. Tomlin's vivid popularity was good PR. (For both of us I like to think.)
Creep of the Week: Randy Garber
Oh, hey, did you hear that in Kansas lawmakers are trying to establish the LGBTQ community as a religion? Or, more specifically, they’re trying to argue that LGBTQ people are actually secular humanists so that Kansas doesn’t have to recognize marriage equality anymore; also that gay people aren’t black, I think.
Whatever Happened to? …
As I rework my dissertation into a book manuscript — cutting sections here, smoothing out passages there, tugging at paragraphs like taffy over there, finding the through line — I have been sneaking out and doing some last-minute oral history interviews. Even though many people have told me to stop, that I need to get the book done. I can’t quite help it.
Parting Glances: Black Gay Detroit Friends (Pt. 2)
The year I graduated as a commercial art major from Detroit’s prestigious Cass Technical High School I did not attend my senior prom.
Heroic in its Normalcy
"Supergirl," the television show based on the comic book character of the same name, is currently in its fourth season on The CW Television Network. It is part of the so-called "Arrowverse" of DC-comics based [...]
Mombian: A Mutual Benefit: Letting Employees Define their Families
People and families come in many forms, as any LGBTQ person can attest. Now, Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company or MassMutual, as it's more commonly known, is using that concept to improve upon its already [...]
Creep of the Week: Eric Porterfield
Eric Porterfield is blind, literally. According to his website, Blind Faith Ministries, he lost his eyesight in 2006. But Porterfield is also figuratively blind, in that he apparently is either ignorant of, or refuses to [...]
On the Backlash to The Equality Act and Its Odd Bedfellows
NEWS ANALYSIS Jan. 28, 2019, Heritage Foundation, Washington, D.C.: Four self-defined feminists present on a panel entitled “The Inequality of the Equality Act: Concerns from the Left.” Featured speakers: Jennifer Chavez, lawyer and board member [...]
Parting Glances: Black Gay Detroit Friends (Pt. 1)
As a teenager in the mid-1950s, I listened faithfully to country and western music radio — especially Patsy Cline — and later ‘Senator’ Bristo Bryant’s rhythm and blues after high school class broadcasts. (A favorite [...]
Creep of the Week: James Greene Sr.
By the time this column runs, Donald Trump’s State of the Union address will be over and done with. But as I’m writing this there’s a good 24 hours before the SOTU. I can’t stomach [...]
Valentine’s Day Visibility: To Stay in or Go Out?
As a lesbian, I often feel the urge to be vocally happy in my engagement to a woman. It’s a spiteful parry to a book I keep on my shelf as a joke: "The Unhappy Gays," a messy assortment of Christian ramblings about how queer people are actually miserable, pilfered from the collection of my deceased grandmother.
A Look at LGBTQ Artists in Burlesque
One would think that in the field of burlesque, sex and the discussion of it would be welcome, but this may not always be the case. In 2019 there is open discussion about all things LGBTQ as well as openly gay celebrities, but in the burlesque world, sex and sexual orientation are still considered dirty words by some. Why is this the case? Perhaps the answer to this and many other questions lies in pondering why humans readily embrace some things and people and not others. Normally, that which is deemed different is looked at with suspicion and approached with caution — as is the case with the LGBTQ or queer burlesque performers.
Parting Glances: When Arts’ Gay Fleet Scuttlebutted!
Back in the “good old days” of Great Depression No. 1, following Stock Market Crash ’29 years and years – well, at least a galloping few – before my time, the arts with a capital "A" took a real financial broadsiding.
Lessons in Change: Our Past, Our Present, Our Future
I am a Detroiter, born and raised. So was my mother. My father, although born in Kentucky, grew up in Chatham, Ontario, before settling in Detroit.
Creep of the Week: Donald Trump
Donald Trump is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad president. This is something that has been clear to the majority of Americans from the get-go. Trump’s white evangelical Christian base, however, is largely sticking [...]
Creep of the Week: Karen Pence
Imagine walking into art class one day in grade school and finding that none other than Karen Pence, wife of Vice President Mike Pence, is your teacher. For a lot of kids, such a thing [...]
Parting Glances: You May Say I’m a Dreamer
About a dozen days ago tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow — at my age how can I be sure? — I was gifted with a pair of John Lennon enchantment glasses. Gold-rimmed. Sunset orange. Autumn-tinted. Pre-Donald Trump, to be sure.
I’m Positive
Every HIV story is a sad story. And, generally, it’s always a surprise story for people, something they weren’t expecting. In January 2014, I was dating a guy in Memphis, Tennessee, named Andre. We fell [...]
Positive Thoughts: The Human Spirit Strikes Back
Let’s face it, it’s been a rough one. More senseless shootings, more #MeToo controversies, more attacks on trans and immigrant rights – and more budget cuts affecting those living with HIV. As 2018 drew to a [...]
Creep of the Week: Steve King
Meanwhile, Steve King, one of the most open and unapologetic racists in Congress, while speaking to the New York Times, reminisced about a bygone era and at first there was barely a peep by the media.
Parting Glances: Memories of a Near-Forgotten Past Pt. 4
For five dynamic years — 1940 to 1945 — Detroit was America’s Arsenal of Democracy, a vital source of war materials and weapons. First for England’s defense. Later, for our own. Automotive factories focused on [...]
Riding Our Queer Wave to Create Change
It’s January 2019 and we haven’t had our gay march yet! In 2017 we joined the women. We shared our outrage and fears from the results of the 2016 election of No. 45. It was [...]
Creep of the Week: Stedfast Baptist Church
Welcome to this episode of "Christian Hypocracy: Anti-Gay Christian Edition." It’s been a while since we’ve done one of these so let’s start off 2019 old-school style and call out an anti-LGBTQ public figure who [...]
Parting Glances: Channeling Rainbow Creativity in 2019
As an artist, I’m fascinated with the mental phenomenon known as channeling. In the mid-'90s channeling was a cultural fad with many fans. Channelers brought forth purported messages form ages-old entities and other twilight-zone dimensions [...]
Parting Glances: Christmas with Liberace
My grandmother Lottie Lee Alexander lived with my parents and me from the time I was five until she died in 1954 when I was 18, and had just finished Cass Technical High School where I was a commercial art major.
A Holiday Wish
So, once again, we reach the closing of the year. For many of us, this is a time of trees festooned with tinsel and glass baubles, or nights filled with candlelight or a myriad of holiday traditions. It's a time of gingerbread and gelt, kinara or hanukkiyah, and all sorts of things we hold dear.
Creep of the Week: Mass Resistance
Mass Resistance’s latest focus is on Michigan, my home state, where they are forming a chapter. And MR has a pretty interesting view of how LGBTQ friendly Michigan is.