Tabla de contenidos para January/February 2022 en The Advocate

I’VE SPENT AN inordinate amount of time thinking about love lately. Being thrust into isolation in a pandemic as a single person, there’s been plenty of time to consider my relationships and how at my age I came to be completely alone with my cat (she’s on my lap as I type). A raging serial monogamist in my 20s and 30s, I’ve now been single since my ex-girlfriend and I called it quits after five years in 2013. At first, I was taking time to reassess and just be with myself. It felt important to be OK with being single for a time. There was no expiration date. Now here we are, nearly 22 months since I had my last in-person romantic attraction on a trip to London, and so…

Back in November, nearly two dozen people a day were dying from COVID-19 in South Carolina. But public health wasn’t at the top of Republican Gov. Henry McMaster’s to-do list at that time, when he sicced the state’s Department of Education on a queer-themed book, calling it “obscene” and “pornographic.” “I call on the Department of Education or the State Board of Education, as appropriate, to promulgate statewide standards and directives to prevent pornography and other obscene content from entering our State’s public schools and libraries,” the governor said in a letter to the superintendent of education, specifically targeting Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer: A Memoir (pictured). The autobiographical book from the nonbinary writer and illustrator had been challenged at one of South Carolina’s nearly 500 high schools. It was recommended…

Before there was Will and Grace, there was Kevin and Trudy. And then another Kevin and Trudy. And Ernest and Trudy (pictured). And Keith and Trudy. And… I have been fortunate to have a plethora of friendships in my life, some that have come and gone, some that have endured. My friends include straight men and women, lesbians, bisexuals, and both cisgender and transgender people. But gay men are disproportionately represented. There are those who’ve tried to explain the gay man-straight woman dynamic or, sometimes, pathologize it. But I’m less interested in explanations — I’ve simply met a lot of gay men and liked many of them — than in exploring how they’ve enriched my life. And enrich it they have. It all starts with Kevin. None of these guys…

During quarantine, many of us lost our social skills, and that means that flirting went out the window as did the prospect for romance and love. That’s where the game Thirsty Sword Lesbians comes in. Playing Thirsty Sword Lesbians, created by trans lesbian April Kit Walsh, is like if Dungeons & Dragons took place at a Pride parade, was directed by the Wachowski siblings (The Matrix, Bound), and starred Janelle Monáe, Kristen Stewart, Lena Waithe, and Hayley Kiyoko. In other words, it’s the best tabletop role-playing game (RPG) ever invented. Playing is simple, and it’s in the Powered by the Apocalypse family of RPGs, so if you’ve played any others like Apocaylpse World, Dungeon World, or Monsterhearts, you’ll already have the upper hand. One player will act as the game…

Music legend Johnny Mathis began his recording career in 1956 and shot to stardom after appearing on the popular Ed Sullivan Show on CBS in 1957. That same year, he released his first number 1 hit — and one of his all-time greatest songs — “Chances Are.” Mathis went on to record nearly 80 albums, 18 of which sold over 500,000 copies, and 43 songs that made the Billboard Hot 100. With a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences and a spot in the Grammy Hall of Fame, Mathis has been compared to legendary crooner Nat King Cole, while his contemporaries include performers like Neil Sedaka, Andy Williams, and Barbra Streisand. Mathis, whose voice evokes an unmatched serenity and gentleness, is celebrating 65 years in…

In the opening paragraphs of her memoir, In the Shadow of the Mountains, mountain climber Silvia Vasquez-Lovado plunges the reader into a perilous white-out on Lhotse, south of Mount Everest. A climber who took up the avocation in part to work through personal trauma, Vasquez-Lavado begins her story by convincing herself that traversing the “4,000-foot vertical wall of blue ice” that lies before her is “just a walk, a very long, very steep, potentially deadly walk.” The memoir, which is being made into a film starring Selena Gomez, weaves between Vasquez-Lovado’s often treacherous childhood in Peru where she endured sexual abuse, her subsequent battle with alcoholism (she’s sober for several years now), her love affairs and marriage, and her adventures on the world’s most daring peaks — she’s the first…

BEIJING IS SET to host the XXIV Olympic Winter Games in February, and it’s not just COVID complicating China’s plans for a seamless event. Numerous countries, including the United States, have announced a diplomatic boycott of the competition (a move that keeps those countries’ government officials from attending), mainly because of China’s abuses against the Uighurs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities. Additionally, the Chinese government continues to vilify its LGBTQ+ citizens, going so far as to ban “sissy men” from TV last year. Even if most Chinese athletes are forced to compete in the closet, numerous queer athletes from around the world will represent their countries — and our community — at the Games The following is a partial list of international LGBTQ+ Olympians competing for gold this year.…

The American Library Association Office for Intellectual Freedom counted 839 books targeted for censorship at libraries, schools, and universities in 2019 and 2020. These are some of the most challenged books with LGBTQ+ content or themes Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out by Susan Kuklin Published eight years ago, this collection of profiles of trans and gender-nonconforming youth continues to face parental opposition. One complaint bemoaned the respectful book for “its effect on any young people who would read it.” A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo by Jill Twiss, illustrated by EG Keller Twiss created this picture book — which depicts former Vice President Mike Pence’s pet rabbit as queer — both as a fundraiser for LGBTQ+ organizations and as a troll to the homophobic Trump toady. When…

For 20-odd years, Darryl Demure — better known as drag queen and television host Ms. Demure — has put passion, dedication, and love into hosting a public access talk show for southwest Ohio communities, bringing a whole lot of drag, acceptance, and queerness into viewers’ lives. Today, Harper’s Bazzaroworld Presents the Ms. Demure Show on DATV is hailed as the oldest LGBTQ+ public access variety talk show in the country. Demure, 55, has created a show that is an act of love for her community. It features interviews with community members and celebrities, performances by herself and others, puppet shows, and whatever else the tenured host can think up. Show business was always the goal, Demure says. However, it wasn’t until she was 32 that she stepped into the drag…

After Café Bohemia, the short-lived yet influential New York City jazz club that hosted the likes of Miles Davis and John Coltrane, closed in 1960, the space was transformed by the Mafia into a bar that catered to lesbians. Jay Toole (right) was living in nearby Washington Square Park at the time. Eventually she would get clean, find housing, and become a groundbreaking figure at the Stonewall Rebellion. Having been thrown out of the house when she was 13, Toole quickly accepted when offered a position as a bouncer at the new lesbian version of the famed bar. It’s also the starting point for her great love story. “You’d walk in the front and it would look like a regular bar,” Toole says. Then you would open another door and“walk…

The Greeks called familial love “storge” — the affection that parents have for their children. For our Love Issue, we spoke with Go-Go’s singer Belinda Carlisle, a staunch LGBTQ+ ally, and her gay son, writer and activist James Duke Mason, about the bond between parent and progeny. How would you define familial love? Belinda Carlisle: I would say the first thing that comes to my mind is unconditional love, and that’s it. I mean, that’s the simplest answer. James Duke Mason: I agree with that. I’ve been so lucky that for me, from a young age, I always knew that love was unconditional from my mom and dad, and that definitely gave me the confidence and the courage to be the person that I wanted to be. Do you think there’s…

Whenever we want to see ourselves in the media, we usually head to our favorite low-budget drama series or indie coming-of-age films to get a glimpse of LGBTQ+ life. But as much as we love those intimate, scaled-down narratives, they aren’t the only places we can see ourselves. Sometimes to view our realities, we have to look to the fantastical. And that’s where projects like The Wheel of Time come in. Based on the beloved novel series of the same name by Robert Jordan and helmed by queer showrunner Rafe Judkins, the popular Amazon Prime Video show made history in late 2021 when main character Moiraine (played by Oscar-nominated Gone Girl and I Care a Lot actress Rosamund Pike) was revealed to be in a relationship with another woman, a first…

American ice dancer Karina Manta captures a turning point for queer women in the sport with her new memoir. Ice dancer Karina Manta’s memoir, On Top of Glass: My Stories as a Queer Girl in Figure Skating, begins with an image that, thanks largely to her, no woman in skating will experience again: searching the internet for queer role models and coming up empty. Manta, now 25, came out as bisexual in November 2018. She was only the second female figure skater at the international level to come out, after Japan’s Fumie Suguri in 2014, and she was the first to do so while still competing. Since then, two more female skaters have joined the list: U.S. silver medalist Amber Glenn in December 2019 and Canadian ice dancer Kaitlyn Weaver…

Queer women and nonbinary folks craving stories that reflect them now have podDIVA, the new podcast companion to the United Kingdom’s revered magazine DIVA. Weekly podcast episodes rotate between breaking down the magazine’s print issues with the “DIVA Debrief,” interviews with queer luminaries in “DIVA Dialogues,” and Q&A advice episodes on all things queer with “Dear DIVA.” PodDIVA is a work of love from the LGBTQ+ folks who make the magazine and podcast producer and cohost Rachel Shelley, who learned early in her acting career the importance of doing the work as an ally. Yes, it’s that Rachel Shelley, who starred as lesbian heiress Helena Peabody on The L Word seasons 2-6, then surprised podcast audiences in 2020 when she produced fellow L Word stars Leisha Hailey and Katherine Moennig’s…

WHEN BOOK EDITOR Marcus Watkins upends his marriage and explores a string of new girlfriends in the second season of the HBO Max series Love Life, he inevitably turns to his gay sister, Ida, for advice. In a refreshing change from coming-out stories and messy queer characters, Punkie Johnson’s Ida is a happily partnered lesbian who lends support to her newly single brother (The Good Place’s William Jackson Harper). As siblings can do like no other, she’s also at the ready with a solid familial quip when he screws up. Johnson, best known for Saturday Night Live, where she’s one of three out cast members along with Kate McKinnon and Bowen Yang, appreciates the visibility Love Life affords her character as a Black gay person. It’s the kind of positive representation…

For Jeopardy! champion Amy Schneider, representing the transgender community on television has been worth even more than the $1 million she’s won. “It’s definitely been the most rewarding part of the whole experience,” says Schneider, who is not the first out trans contestant or champ but is the first to qualify for the Tournament of Champions, reserved for the top 15 winners of each season. She’s also the first woman to pass the million-dollar mark. Schneider, who had won 30 consecutive games when The Advocate interviewed her in January, has become a relatable face of the trans community for those unfamiliar with trans people. She says she’s received much positive feedback from trans folks who say she’s helped their parents understand their identity. Schneider, 42, is a longtime Jeopardy! fan,…

For as long as Mary Lambert has graced audiences with her songs, she’s also spoken powerfully about another kind of love story — self-love and overcoming the counterprogramming that often obstructs it. She’s the first to admit that it’s no easy task. “Loving yourself is hard fucking work. It begins by re-training mental patterns, as well as the ability to recognize and rewire your self-talk,” she wrote in a Facebook post from 2016. Today, Lambert’s passion for self-love hasn’t waned — but it has evolved. “I’ve started understanding that there are a lot of cultural systems and mechanisms at play that take part in our own self-hatred and dissatisfaction with our bodies,” she explains. “[The journey to self-love] does require an aspect of self-work and analyzing your relationship to trauma,”…

Hanna & Tugboat Originally from Southern California, Hanna McKellar now resides in Bar Harbor, Maine, with their partner, three roomies, and a 7-month-old domestic shorthair cat named Tugboat. “Tugboat means the world to me,” says McKellar. “He’s a little rascal who likes to chomp on my arm, and tries to lick butter, but I love him with my entire heart.” McKellar identifies as queer, uses she/they pronouns, and feels that relationships with animals can hold an even deeper meaning for LGBTQ+ people, who are sometimes rejected by their biological families. “Pets become part of our families,” they say, “and many in the LGBTQ community have had a difficult history with receiving and giving love in a familial way. I think that because of this, the relationships we share with our…

Keeping a relationship healthy when both partners have demanding careers is challenging enough, but when one of those careers is being a public official, the challenge becomes even greater. Mike Simmons, an Illinois state senator, and his partner, Michael Sullivan, who works for health insurance company Blue Shield, have been dealing with that challenge since early in 2021, when Simmons was appointed to replace retiring Sen. Heather Steans. “Becoming a state senator is an enormous adjustment,” says Simmons, who’s the first out gay state senator in Illinois and the first Black senator from his district, the Seventh, which covers the far north side of Chicago and is where he has spent his entire life. “It’s a big district that’s really diverse,” with about half the population being people of color,…

The Price of Salt, adapted into the beloved film Carol, is one of the pillars of the lesbian fiction world, and rightfully so; it was the first published lesbian novel with a happy ending. But its author, Patricia Highsmith, was a complicated and flawed woman. The new graphic novel Flung Out of Space seeks to give readers a glimpse into the life of the woman who forever changed lesbian media. Written by Lumberjanes co-creator Grace Ellis and illustrated by Cosmoknights creator Hannah Templer, Flung Out of Space tells the story of Highsmith when she was in her 20s, leading up to her first published novels: 1950’s Strangers on a Train (later adapted into a film by Alfred Hitchcock) and of course, The Price of Salt (1952). At the time, Highsmith…

Kelechi There’s something magical about Kelechi’s “vintage romance pop” songs. “It’s for the hopeful romantic in you,” he says. “My music makes you want to dance like no one’s watching, cry without restraint, and sing at the top of your lungs.” Take “Dance in the Mirror,” for instance. The dreamy ode demands you get over your ex with spacey guitar riffs and haunting vocals that quite literally incite you to “get up” and dance through the heartbreak. Kelechi is following it up with “Another Song,” featuring VINCINT, a track for people “who just want to release their pain and pick up the pieces of their broken hearts,” says Kelechi. “Everyone doesn’t just bounce back from heartache. It takes time. But once you do, it feels so good!” Black queer pop…