Anna from Queens

When I was a kid - like, a REALLY YOUNG KID...maybe 8 or 9 - my grandfather found a copy of Valley of the Dolls, and gave it to me. It had the word "dolls" in the title, and he figured it was a book for girls. And he knew I liked to read. So I read it. My parents, who knew it was NOT a book for little girls, didn't stop me from reading it. They let me read anything in which I showed an interest. I loved it. This led to me watching the movie, which got regular air play on NYC's 4:30 movie.

I was delighted that the role of Neely was played by Patty Duke, who I knew from The Patty Duke Show (which I watched in reruns, and loved, because it took place in Brooklyn Heights, which was just a spit away from Park Slope) and The Miracle Worker, which also got regular play on the 4:30 movie.

I was too young to know the word "camp," but certainly not too young to understand the concept that, sometimes, things are so bad, that they're excellent. After that, it was ON. I never missed Valley of the Dolls when it aired.


I was quite a bit older when I realized that Patty's performance as Neely was adored by queer people the world over, and older, still, when I found out that she embraced this fandom with all her heart. She was OUR GIRL, from way back. Anna - this outer-borough girl who loved her gays as much as we loved HER...who was ordained as a minister for the sole purpose of being able to officiate at same-sex weddings....who would speak at screenings of Valley of the Dolls at The Castro because she loved us and we loved her...who opened up about the hell her childhood had been and the mental illness she had lived with for so long...who fought for research into mental illness, and public understanding of it, and an end to the taboos we have around it.

People who only knew her as one of the identical cousins might find it difficult to believe she was radical, but she was radical as fuck. And she was ours.

Rest in peace, Anna.

Dropping The Gauntlet

It's a personal rule of mine to be respectful of other people's religious beliefs or systems of faith. I may not agree with what a lot of people think is the whole point of this thing called life, but that shouldn't stop me from being respectful of the things people believe in or the way in which they choose to worship. 

At this moment, though, all bets are off. 

The specific details aren't important or of a reportable nature but the bare bones facts you do need to know are thus: a member of the Church of Latter Day Saints with whom I have professional contact has expressed a reluctance to have business dealings with a male homosexual colleague because he doesn't want to be recruited by a homosexual to do things which are in opposition with his religion. 

Like I said, all bets are off.

I have NEVER heard of gay people knocking on random doors in an effort to recruit people into fagdom. NEVER. I HAVE, on the other hand, had Mormon idiots knock on MY door, looking like Latter Day Stepford Children in their white shirts, and backpacks and pocket protectors, and try to recruit ME into THEIR freakish, fucked up, simple-minded, homophobic, misogynistic, lemming-laced, pedophilic cult. Gays don't have an army of recruiters, like so many Port Authority pimps, who are sent out to find more suckers. You, gullible-vestment-wearing-fool-who-believes-Jesus-spent-his-wild-20s-bumming-around-Utah...sure as hell do. They're called MISSIONARIES.

A River Runs Through It

Last week, one of America's anti-same-sex marriage pundits (you know the guy...his name has become synonymous with "the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the by-product of anal sex") said he'd "die to stop same-sex marriage."  My first first reaction? Great, let's kill him. My second reaction? Asking myself how people can be so stupid that they refuse to see when they are fighting a losing battle.

People who waste time and energry opposing same sex marriage are a lot of things: close-minded, ignorant, selfish, self-rightous, intolerant, bigotted. They're also just stupid. That's what I've finally come to see as the plain truth. People who fight the inevitable are stupid. If you were to jump into a raging river, the kind of river where white water rafting is popular, and stand there, hoping against hope to stop the water from getting past you...if you were to do this, I'd tell you that you were stupid. If you were to place a penny on train tracks, in the hopes that it would stop the 5:15 dead, I'd tell you that you were stupid. If you were to hand out bible tracts, believing you could talk hormone-raging teens from wanting to have sex, I'd tell you that you were stupid. If you think you can stop same-sex couples from loving one another, building lives together, forming families and, yes, getting married? You are fucking stupid. Because the movement for equal rights isn't a trickle. It's a roaring rapid. It's an express train without breaks. It's a horny 16 year old boy who'll fuck a jagged hole in the wall, if only he can get close enough. Maybe you can cause a ripple in the flow of water, or get a train to slow down for a second, or force a couple of teenaged lovers to find a more clandestine place to secretly have sex, but you won't stop these things. You can't. And you really, truly are stupid if you think otherwise.

This is what it's like in America, today, when it comes to same-sex couples. While you (yeah, stupid, I'm talking to you) rant and rave about how same-sex marriage will destroy family values, gay couples all over America are getting together, setting up lives, and even getting married. In short, they're quietly proving just how stupid you are. And they're not doing it less than they did before you started acting like a dog with a bone about this issue. They're doing it more often, and more publicly. Even if they're not getting legally married, they're buying homes together, starting businesses together, raising children together.  The minute one state allowed same-sex marriages, the flood gates were opened. And you cannot stop a flood. (There's a joke there, about a dyke, but I'm not going to be the one to make it.) YOU CANNOT. And you're stupid to try.

Last week, my good friend, Thom, married a man named Adam in a quiet, dignified ceremony in New York. Thom and Adam have been together for 20 years. They own two homes together. They collect art. They travel. They support a dozen charities. They throw intimate dinner parties. I've thought of them as a married couple for years. For all intents and purposes, they have been. Now, it's even recognized by law. They win. You lose, stupid. It's a done deal. It's over. The river is picking up momentum, and you're about to be toppled over and drowned. You can go home and lick your wounds, now. Or you can die fighting a losing battle. Be my fucking guest.

Hate to say "I told you so"...

When I said it during the presidential elections - that I was not pro-Obama, because he was clearly not planning on doing anything to move gay rights along - his staunch supporters, in between bouts of gushing syrupy praise over their new Messiah, told me I was racist. After all, what reason other than the fact that Obama was black could I have for not LOVING him? I reminded them that, actually, Obama is of mixed race as, technically, so am I.

And then the elections were over and we had a new president. Hurrah! Even I was glad. Not because Obama was the living, breathing cure for AIDS that his blind fandom had painted him to be, but because he wasn't George W. Bush.

Time passed, and he did lots of things. Mostly good things. He even did a bunch of things he said he'd do if elected. He did nothing to promote same-sex marriage. Fair enough - that's exactly what he promised he'd do: NOTHING to support an idea he doesn't believe in. Even if he DID believe in it, once upon a time, not even that long ago. No surprises there; a politician changing his mind about an important issue in order to garner favor.

A couple of people I know, people who were staunch supporters of Obama...people who are gay, voiced their "disappointment" in him. How, I asked them, could they be disappointed in a man who had stated, in no uncertain terms, that marriage is for heterosexuals, only? How could they be angry and surprised that a man who would invite one of the nation's most vocal homophobes to deliver the inaugural invocation speech would end up to be less than a friend to his gay voters? How, I asked them, could they be so naive?

"He's doing a lot of good,"they'd answer, "He's still pretty amazing. Give him time. He just needs time. He'll come around. He's trying to bring people together."

How, I wondered, could smart people, people I liked and cared about and usually respected, have deluded themselves into believing that denying a whole sector of society our civil rights was a strategy for "bringing people together"? How did otherwise rational people convince themselves to still talk about their love for a president who did not even acknowledge as legitimate the love two people share for a lifetime, on account of their genders? How and why do smart people become stupid?

In October, I blogged about the hypocrisy of the whole "the world isn't ready...just wait" argument. I spoke about Del Martin, who died after 50 years of waiting for the world to be ready. Still, people I knew, people I liked, people I respected said to me, "But, the president is AWESOME. Just wait. you'll see. He's done a lot of good."

If we had a president who was denying women the vote, or blacks an education or Asians the right to work, I would not tolerate the stupid, naive, ignorant excuse-making of his supporters. Our president thinks its perfectly okay to let fags go to war -maybe even die defending this nation - as long as they keep their mouths shut about who they like to fuck. That is the long and short of it. This week's DOJ actions say it all. That's inexcusable. At worst, our president is a homophobe. At best he's a spineless coward.  Any gay person who defends Obama's lack of movement on the gay rights front can just call himself Uncle Tom: you're like a black person who thinks Rosa Parks was uppity and Dr. King had a big mouth. It feels dirty and obscene to even type those two examples, but they're the best and most accurate comparisons I can think of. If you're a gay person and you think other gays who refuse to support a president who continually denies us our civil rights are stirring up trouble or "don't understand what Obama is doing", you're a fucking idiot, and you should probably turn in your toaster.

And you know what? I FUCKING TOLD YOU SO.

Good Night, Lady

A couple of days ago the world lost Dixie Carter. If you listened hard enough, you heard an audible sigh from the LGBT community. Actually, you didn't have to strain your ears too much, because the mourners were so many. Dixie Carter, you see, was a rare gem: as iconic to gay women as she was to gay men. Where gay men and lesbians often come to figurative blows over how the world should be, what qualities we should look for in our idols, and exactly how important man-made constructs are when it comes to gender, Dixie Carter was the great equalizer. An icon we all adopted and loved. And it's all thanks to Julia Sugarbaker.

The Boys

The gay boys I know loved Dixie Carter/Julia Sugarbaker because she was bigger than life. Brash. Always well put together. A torch singer. Funny as hell. She was like - and I say this with love and respect - the best fucking drag queen you could ever hope to see. A lady, in the most traditional sense of that word.

The Girls

We loved Dixie Carter/Julia Sugarbaker because she was a strong woman. Her own boss. Practical. Not afraid to speak her mind. A woman who valued sisterhood and the friendship of other women. Witty as hell. A lady in the most nontraditional sense of that word.

Dixie's Julia Sugarbaker took the word "lady" and turned it on its ear. She wasn't a lady just because she was trained in old school Southern gentility, but because she managed to never let go of that composure, even when she was reaming someone a new one. Many people would say that a "lady" knows her place. Julia Sugarbaker knew her place, alright - up front and center. And, if a "lady" knows when to keep quiet, the lady Dixie Carter brought to life knew when to speak the hell up. She was a living example that being a "lady" has bugger all to do with accessorizing, and EVERYTHING to do with finesse, decency, and standing up for what's right.

The butchest butches and the femmiest femmes loved you, Julia Sugarbaker, as did bears, twinks, and every flavor in between. Maybe in part because we live in a world that often wishes we would sit down and shut up - two things you never, ever did until you were damned good and ready.

We will miss you Dixie Carter: actress, singer, stroppy woman, friend of the gay community. And, yes, a Republican.

Mad Men, Mad Times: Art Imitates Life

"It's makes me wonder about civil rights. Maybe it's not supposed to happen right now."

On tonight's episode of Mad Men, this was Betty's comment to Carla, the black house servant. They were discussing the 1963 bombing of a church in Birmingham that left four little girls dead. Four murdered children, and Betty's response wasn't about finding the murderer or drawing a line once and for all on hate crime and racism. Betty, an ultra-privileged white woman living the American Dream instead questioned if the time was right for "negroes" to get a little bit of equity. Maybe, the implication was, black America should just wait.

If this business of suggesting that the disenfranchised not make so much noise and piss off their oppressors sounds like a deja vu it might be because serendipity called for Mad Men to air on the night of the day that tens of thousands of gays and lesbians marched on Washington to demand their basic civil rights. It's also the day after our president, Barack Obama, made a speech before the Human Rights Campaign in which he spoke vaguely and without commitment about his intention to champion equal rights for gays and lesbians in the United States.

If you're anything like me, you found Betsy's "Maybe it's not supposed to happen right now" appalling, and all too familiar. By her twisted, privileged logic, those four little girls from Birmingham died not because of the murderous act of a cowardly bigot, but because of the black community's impatience. Betty believes in desegregation in theory but, really, how dare they expect equity a mere 100 years after the civil war!

This is exactly the sentiment Barak Obama puts forth every time he talks about his deep and abiding belief, in theory, in equal rights for gays and lesbians: sure, you queers deserve some satisfaction, but not right now...and the more you hem and haw about it, the more problems you're going to cause for yourselves.

When Obama says that he intends to do away with the military's Don't Ask/Don't Tell policy, but wriggles his way out of committing to a time line he's echoing Betty Draper's half-assed, not-in-my neighborhood brand of liberalism. In 2009, looking back at this logic in action in 1962 on a fictional television drama is appalling. Seeing it in action today, in real life, and from the leader of the most powerful nation in the world? Unacceptable.

© 2009 Lana M. Nieves

Limited Licensing: I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the Creative Commons Attribution license, granting distribution of my copyrighted work without making changes, with mandatory attribution to Lana M. Nieves and for non-commercial purposes only. - Lana M. Nieves

Thank you to FlyingPeanuts for use of her photo.