OCTOBER 1, 1995 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE 25
ON THE AIR OFF THE PRESS
PBS stations to air lesbian-gay miniseries in October
by John Graves
The first installment of The Question of Equality, a four-part documentary mini-series that explores the history of the lesbian and gay civil rights movement, is scheduled to begin airing on public television stations nationwide on October 1 in honor of National Coming Out Day and National Lesbian and Gay History Month.
MARILYN HUMPHRIES
acceptance speech at the Emmy Awards, which were broadcast live on Fox, Close honored the real Col. Margarethe Cammermeyer who was present in the audience, resplendent in her uniform having won her case to remain in the military.
Roseanne will continue to develop the characters of Leon and Nancy this season. Leon, Roseanne's gay boss, is played by Martin Mull and Nancy, Roseanne's lesbian
A Boston youth group rallies at the Massachusetts statehouse in The Question of Equality.
Equality, produced by ITVS, the Independent Television Service, will air on at least two Ohio stations, but it will be delayed. WNEO-WEAO Channels 45 and 49 in Ak-
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LIBERA
Sylvia Rivera, left, who was in the 1969 Stonewall riots, joins friends at an early Gay Liberation rally.
ron and Youngstown will air the series on Saturday nights in October and November, at midnight, beginning October 14. (The lesbian-gay magazine show In the Life will run October 7 at midnight.) Channels 45 and 49 are carried on many Cleveland area cable systems.
WVIZ Channel 25 program director Bob Olive said that the Cleveland PBS outlet definitely would air The Question of Equality, but said that the station had purchased the show too late to air in October and that they would have to air it later this year.
WGTE Channel 30 in Toledo said they are booked up through December, but are still considering the series for a later time. WOSU in Columbus and WCET in Cincinnati both said they will not be airing the series.
Openly gay comic Scott Thompson, costar of HBO's Larry Sanders Show, will host the third all lesbian and gay comedy special, Out There in Hollywood, set to air on Comedy Central October 11.
Jennifer Lewis stars as a lesbian Family Court judge on Courthouse, a new CBS courtroom drama seen Wednesdays at 10pm. The lesbian judge's long term relationship with her lover, portrayed by Cree Summer, will be developed later in the season. Courthouse's executive producer, Deborah Joy LeVine, vows the lesbian couple will kiss before the season is over.
Serving in Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story won three Emmy Awards this year. Glenn Close won the award for Lead Actress, Movie or Miniseries; costar Judy Davis won the award for Supporting Actress, and Alison Cross won an Emmy for Writing, Miniseries or Special. In her
friend, is played by openly bisexual comedian Sandra Bernhard. Roseanne's producers have indicated that a wedding between Leon and another man is in the offing this year.
Singer Sophie B. Hawkins, who is currently in a committed relationship with a woman, and who describes herself as "omnisexual," has a new CD out, As I Lay Me Down, from Columbia Records.
Openly gay pop star Boy George also has a new CD out, Cheapness & Beauty, from Virgin Records. According to a report in the September 4 edition of People magazine, Harper-Collins will publish Boy George's autobiography, Take It Like a Man, in the near future. The magazine also features an article on Beverly Heard, a lesbian whose charges of sexual abuse against Chicago Rep. Mel Reynolds resulted in his conviction and resignation. Heard now lives in Indiana with her lover, Erica Lavender, and is learning how to run her mother's trucking business.
According to a special report in the September 23 edition of TV Guide, the next sensational courtroom battle to be televised after O.J. Simpson will be the October 30 murder trial of Johnathan Schmitz. Schmitz is charged with the shooting death of Scott Amedure, a gay man who revealed he had a crush on Schmitz on the Jenny Jones talk show last year. TV Guide also reports that tabloid shows as well as network newsmagazine shows are lining up interviews with the attorneys, Schmitz, and Jones. CNN will carry live cov-
erage of some of the witnesses throughout the trial. [But will they discuss the homophobia behind Schmitz's "humiliation"? -Ed.]
Thanks to the Cleveland Plain Dealer's "Flying Solo" columnist Laura Yee for her wonderful and sensitive August 25 column about her gay neighbor and the care he shows for friends who are living with AIDS. Yee started her column by saying, “If I am ever afflicted with a fatal disease, lying helpless in a hospital bed, alone and abandoned by those closest to me, one person is certain to visit. John is not a relative, a lifelong friend or someone I have known for any length of time. In fact, I hardly know him at all. He lives next door." Yee went on to talk about the friends John has lost to AIDS and how he would be there to offer his support to all who were dying
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and alone, "even if the person in the next room was the most egregious gay-basher." Now that's real "family values"!
The September 8 edition of Entertainment Weekly magazine features a special, multiarticle report, "The Gay '90s: Entertainment Comes Out of the Closet," on the history and new visibility of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people and their issues in Hollywood. Film critic Joanna Connors wrote an extensive follow-up article to the Entertainment Weekly special report for the Plain Dealer.
Check out the September 19 issue of the Advocate for a look at what's coming up for gay people in the world of entertainment. In the feature interview, Oscar-winning British actress Emma Thompson says that she wants to do a film based on Radclyffe Hall's 1928 lesbian classic, The Well of Loneliness. Thompson, who is married to actor Kenneth Branagh, went on to say that someday she might fall in love with a woman. When asked about possible co-stars for a lesbian role, Thompson said that she would choose someone like Michelle Pfeiffer. Thompson went on to say, “Actually, I find Michelle fantastically attractive. I'm always kind of rushing up to her and kissing her on the mouth because she's so delicious. She's so-o-o delicious. But oh, God, it could be any number of women, actually."
Gaywaves correspondents Jim McGrattan and Dave Haskell tell me that Dian Killian, one of the founding members of the Cleveland Irish Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Organization, will be writing an op-ed article on coming out of the closet in honor of National Coming Out Day for an upcoming issue of the Cleveland weekly Free Times.
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Hope you got to see Andrew Sullivan, the openly gay, Catholic editor of the New Republic on the Charlie Rose Show on PBS recently. When Rose asked Sullivan how he reconciled being openly gay and Catholic, Sullivan replied that he was out of the closet precisely because he was Catholic. Sullivan explained that the foundation of the Catholic faith was truth and that to deny or hide his sexual orientation would be to live a lie.
Sullivan went on to say that the Catholic Church's official position now is that being lesbian or gay is a condition of being and not a choice, that the Catholic faith was his faith too, and that he would not be driven from that faith by bigotry. Funny, that's almost exactly the same thing I said to my priest and my parish when I came out to them this year! Sullivan was on the show to discuss his recently published book, Virtually Normal: An Argument About Homosexuality. The semi-autobiographical work uses Sullivan's personal experience to illustrate his discussion of the relations between the gay and straight communities.
Am I Blue? Coming Out From the Silence is a collection of 16 stories about sexual orientation from Harper-Collins edited by children's book author Marion Dane Bauer. Like Bauer, many of the contributing writers are themselves well-known authors of children's literature.
Marjorie Garber has written a new book, Vice Versa: Bisexuality and the Eroticism of Everyday Life on bisexuality in Western cul-
ture.
Finally, have you figured out what you plan to do for National Coming Out Day this year?
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