Tabla de contenidos para March/April 2022 en The Advocate

Chambersburg, Pa., has become the first municipality in the state to repeal an LGBTQ-inclusive nondiscrimination ordinance. The Borough Council adopted the ordinance last October when it had a Democratic majority. However, a Republican majority was voted back in last November. Chambersburg, a town of about 20,000 people in south-central Pennsylvania, was the 70th and most recent municipality in the state to enact such a law. State law does not cover anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination. The repealed ordinance had banned discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodation for people in the borough on the basis of race, color, sex (including sexual orientation and gender identity), religion, religious creed or belief, ancestry, national origin, familial status, marital status, age, veteran status, and mental or physical disability. Laws like the Chambersburg ordinance are needed to…

Chef Andy Baraghani doesn’t just want to inflame your taste buds, he wants to inflame your curiosity. The gay Iranian-American’s The Cook You Want to Be: Everyday Recipes to Impress (out in April) is more than a simple cookbook. Baraghani wants you to lea r n something about cooking — and in the process, the world. To do that, he’s bringing his whole self to the table: the bullied first-generation American gay kid who liked to put everything in his mouth, the experienced chef, the editor known to spend weeks developing recipes in test kitchens, and the inquisitive world traveler. “I really wanted to represent all the different lessons I’ve learned throughout my life as a cook or chef so far. Lessons I’ve gathered from being a child of Iranian…

It’s January 2020 and Emily Hampshire is about to enjoy the tipping point of Schitt’s Creek’s popularity as it heads into its sixth and final season. She poses on the red carpet at a Screen Actors Guild Awards celebration clad in a sleek suit jacket and a thin plaid tie. Her eye makeup is blue and bold. The look and vibe recall the style of early ’80s British alt singers like Martin Frye of ABC and Bryan Ferry of Roxy Music. Later, she will dub the picture her “most handsome” photo. It’s a look she spearheaded that straddles the invisible gender line prescribed by centuries of patriarchy. And she’s ready to smash it. Fast forward two years later nearly to the day, and Hampshire’s in a downtown Los Angeles studio…

It’s a chilly December night in Nashville, and Jake Wesley Rogers, an of-the-moment glam rocker with an essence infused with the spirit of queer artists who came before him, is seated at his piano at the storied Marathon Music Works venue. Rogers is duetting with his special guest, beloved singer-songwriter Sheryl Crow, on her pining ’90s hit “Strong Enough.” From the queering of a classic song to Rogers’s clothes and makeup, each aspect of the performance seems purposefully curated to meld a queer past with the present. But truly, it’s all just Rogers living authentically. “The only intention [with my music] is that I’m telling my truth,” says Rogers. “And my truth happens to be something that…hasn’t been allowed in the mainstream until recently.” Shuffle through Rogers’s recent videos, and…

Noted dancer and ballet artist Roberto Vega Ortiz has been making history as the cofounder (along with Theresa Knudson) of Ballet22. The only ballet company of its kind, it is composed of cisgender and transgender men, and nonbinary artists committed to breaking gender norms in classical ballet — and allowing all dancers to perform en pointe (roles traditionally available exclusively to cisgender women). Vega Ortiz, who was born in Puerto Rico, has a wide-ranging background in ballet. He has toured extensively in countries around the world including Japan, Italy, Portugal, France, Mexico, United Kingdom, Ireland, and Germany. Based out of Oakland, Calif., Ballet22 was a project realized during the pandemic that offered men all over the world an online community and virtual home to train together en pointe (or with…

The Food and Drug Administration in December approved the use of Apretude, the first long-acting injectable option to prevent HIV infection — a decision that will be a game-changer in the fight against the epidemic. While Gilead’s Truvada pill has been approved for use as pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, since 2012 — and, when taken daily, lowers users’ risks from contracting HIV through sex by about 99 percent — taking the medication without fail has proven to be challenging and off-putting for some. “PrEP requires high levels of adherence to be effective and certain high-risk individuals and groups, such as young men who have sex with men, are less likely to adhere to daily medication,” the FDA states. “Other interpersonal factors, such as substance use disorders, depression, poverty, and efforts…

GLSEN has seen much success in its goal to make schools safer for LGBTQ+ students, but the job is nowhere near finished, says new executive director Melanie Willingham-Jaggers. “We’ve made incredible progress in recent years, and I’m eager to make more progress, but I know that too many of our students still aren’t safe,” says Willingham-Jaggers, who’s the first person of color, first nonbinary person, and first Black woman to head the organization. Willingham-Jaggers, who uses she/they pronouns, became executive director in January. They were named interim executive director a year earlier, when Eliza Byard stepped down after nearly 20 years leading GLSEN, and had been deputy executive director since 2019. Challenges facing the educational system and marginalized students include systemic inequities such as insufficient funding, along with legislation that…

The Andrew Cuomo sexual harassment scandal continues to have consequences for a variety of people and organizations — including accusations of racism against the nation’s most prominent LGBTQ+ rights group. The Human Rights Campaign fired its first Black president, Alphonso David, after it emerged that he helped Cuomo, then New York’s governor, respond to sexual harassment allegations in 2020. David was Cuomo’s in-house counsel before joining HRC. But in a federal lawsuit filed in February, David says racial discrimination, not his work for Cuomo, was behind his termination. Since David was let go last September, some other former HRC employees have also contended there is a culture of racism at the organization. That’s something that HRC’s current leaders deny, along with denying David’s charges. In his suit, filed in U.S.…

In this rollicking memoir, a gay boy from Louisiana with Greek heritage that dates to ancient Sparta ends up in New York City’s underground in the 1970s. Later, there’s an ashram in India, a sociopathic boyfriend, a dead body, and a lot of international drug smuggling. (Readers will discover just how many condoms full of drugs one man can, uh, utilize.) It’s been described as Boogie Nights meets American Hustle but with a young gay man centered. Still, it’s thus far unpublished. We checked in with the author, Louie Mandrapilias, who spent many years working for The Advocate and Out as a graphic designer, about the memoir. Your description of your first night at Studio 54 is lovely. How did it feel to be a formerly closeted gay kid from…

A Strange Loop is likely to throw Broadway audiences for one — in an entertaining and enlightening way. The musical play centers on the experiences of Usher, a queer Black man writing a musical about a queer Black man writing a musical, while working as a theater usher and being assailed by thoughts that threaten to undermine him. It’s already had two acclaimed productions and won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and it’s premiering on Broadway in April at the Lyceum Theatre, one of the first Broadway productions with a Black queer protagonist. And its cast is all LGBTQ+ people of color. Deeply moving yet full of lacerating humor, A Strange Loop is the creation of Michael R. Jackson, who wrote the book, music, and lyrics. It originated with a…

I’ve spent thousands of hours of my life in an opera house and love every second: the huge voices, lavish productions, and outlandish plots. I’ve been hooked ever since college. Yes, there were sometimes stares, sometimes weird comments — “Did you know this was in German?” But having grown up Black and gay in the South, I’m not about to let someone else’s ignorance interfere with something I love. I have a particular fondness for the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. Built on what was the backdrop for the musical West Side Story, the Met is a staggering temple of old white privilege with curving double staircases and crystal chandeliers that ascend to the ceiling. Yet as much as I love the Met, I’ve never seen myself reflected or…

Long before becoming one of the most revered and decorated artists in theater history — writing or starring in shows like Hairspray, La Cage aux Folles, and Torch Song Trilogy — Harvey Fierstein was simply a student at New York’s Pratt Institute, one who had no intention of pursuing a life onstage. “I didn’t want to be an actor. I didn’t want to be a writer. That was not in my vocabulary. Not in my wants at all.” Fierstein had acted in small parts in community theater and school productions, but what he wanted was to become a visual artist like Andy Warhol. Having discovered and fallen in love with Warhol’s drawings of shoes in ads for Bloomingdale’s, Fierstein quickly became a devotee, so when he saw that there was…

Newly released research out of the U.K. has provided a rare glimpse into the world of queer bear spaces and what they represent for the gay, bisexual, queer, and trans men who frequent them. Based on data from focus groups, interviews, and the author’s own auto/ethnographic observations from five U.K. bear spaces, Nick McGlynn, a human geographer at the University of Brighton, interpreted several themes within these communal areas. A bear himself, McGlynn says the project began out of curiosity. He wanted to know what sorts of research had been done on bear spaces, but he discovered that little had been empirically studied. The research that existed seemed to portray these spaces as realms of toxic masculinity, not what McGlynn says he had experienced firsthand in such places. Instead, he…

A quarter of transgender adults in the U.S. face food insufficiency, three times the amount reported by cisgender adults. In a study by the University of California, Los Angeles’s Williams Institute, food insufficiency is defined as sometimes or often not having enough to eat within the past seven days. Researchers found that 25 percent of trans people experienced food insufficiency compared to only 8 percent of cis people, using data collected from July to October of last year in the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey. Williams Institute researchers also found that almost six times as many trans people of color as white cis people experienced food insufficiency at some point in the summer and fall of 2021. Additionally, for the 32 percent of trans adults living below the poverty line,…

Pride Toronto came under fire in January when a former member of the organization accused the group of mismanaging and mispresenting how it handled federal grant money, specifically for projects related to Indigenous queer programs. York University professor and former Pride Toronto member Tom Hooper posted tweets he said showed inconsistencies and other issues in the group’s reporting to the Canadian government. In his investigation, Hooper said he found unauthorized letters of support submitted with grant applications, references to an Indigenous artist’s involvement even after he’d left the project, and commitments to Indigenous communities that weren’t honored. “Though [the investigation] started as a project on the myths of decriminalization [of homosexuality] in 1969, I discovered another story of potentially manipulated documents, misdirection of funds, and other unethical conduct,” Hooper wrote…

As of press time, Florida politicians were debating proposed legislation called Parental Rights in Education — more commonly known as the “don’t say gay” bill. Introduced by Republicans, House Bill 1557 “prohibits classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in certain grade levels; requires school districts to notify parents of health care services; authorizes parents to bring action against school district to obtain declaratory judgment; provides for additional award of injunctive relief, damages, & reasonable attorney fees & court costs to certain parents,” as stated in the Florida legislature’s summary. Longtime educator — and new Floridian — David Thomas (pictured on right) describes just how insidious and cruel “don’t say gay” is: I’ve been in education for over 21 years. I started out as a teacher, taught PE and health,…

How trees communicate with each other. Why fireflies all blink at the same time. The man who saved President Gerald Ford from an assassin and was outed as gay as a result. Those are some of the topics Radiolab has covered in its 20 years on the air, and its eye-opening stories, mixed with music and sometimes a bit of silence, make working on it a labor of love for cohosts Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser. “This is the show I fell in love with. This is where I learned how to do radio,” Miller says. “It asks big questions but in an intimate way,” Nasser adds. “You can feel all kinds of different feelings. You can think all kinds of different thoughts.” With the retirement of Radiolab creator Jad…

What makes an LGBTQ+ anthem? Some are adopted by the community, like the rallying call of “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor. Some are crafted for the gays, as Lady Gaga inspired us with “Born This Way.” And some come straight from the heart of a queer artist who’s walked down a familiar road for many LGBTQ+ people. Those are songs birthed out of a need. “I Know a Place” by MUNA feels like one of those songs. Queer people have long found solace on the dance floor, and this song invites those who hear it to that ultimate haven. The beat drives the track, brought to life by glittery guitar riffs, steady synths, and aching vocals. “It’s hard to love with a heart that’s hurting,” front woman Katie Gavin…

Malcolm Devlin’s And Then I Woke Up is the perfect story for the maddening times we find ourselves in. For every time we’ve said of a loved one who’s gone astray, ‘Dear God, why can’t they just wake up?’—Alma Katsu, author of Red Widow and The Hunger In this deeply engaging and comprehensively reported work, The Engagement: America’s Quarter-Century Struggle Over Same-Sex Marriage, Sasha Issenberg traces the story of marriage equality from its beginnings as a nearly impossible dream to its current status as an essential right. This engrossing account of social change, political will, and human rights arrives as a moment of great urgency. Issenberg’s narrative will inform the efforts of anyone who strives for a more equal country and touch the heart of anyone who has seen their…

Isaac Fellman, author of The Two Doctors Górski and, under his pretransition first name, The Breath of the Sun, won the 2019 Lambda Literary Award for LGBT Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror for the latter. An archivist at a queer historical society in San Francisco, Fellman has a new novel, Dead Collections (Penguin Books), which combines the best of ’90s culture and early internet fandom to weave the story of a budding relationship between a transgender vampire archivist and a widow as they traverse grief and identity. Fellman is the rarity who can combine romance and speculative fiction and appeal to the (queer) masses, and I can’t wait to see what he does next.…