14
GAY PEOPle's ChroNICLE AUGUST 7, 1998
EVENINGS OUT
Magazine tells story of gay teens across America
The August 6 issue of Rolling Stone features a 14-page special report, "To Be Young and Gay," in which author David Lipsky uses stories from across the country to create a broad and compelling portrait of lesbian, gay and transgender youth. The piece is refer-
"I wanted to get a sense of the extremes that these kids find themselves in.'
enced in an inset box on the cover.
"
Even on the contents page, the magazine manages to set this article apart by inserting a letter from the editor, written by Managing Editor Robert Love.
Love writes: “To Be Young and Gay' is the result of Lipsky's six reporting trips (more than 10,000 miles of travel), during which he was threatened by the police, gay organizers and by one boy's very irate father."
Lipsky himself said the boy's father got
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"right in my face and growled, 'Don't let me catch you 'round my son again.' ” But even with such obstacles in his path, Lipsky decided he had to keep going back “because I wanted to get a sense of the extremes that these kids find themselves in. Some had left school, others had been asked to leave their homes. I found their bravery inspiring."
Every gay teenager Lipsky spoke with had their own coming-out story. He reports that as adolescents have their first sexual experiences at younger ages today, (fifteen is the average), gay and lesbian teenagers too are addressing their
TO BE YOUNG AND GAY
A Special Report
BEASTIE POYS
sexuality earlier and earlier. In the pro-Back in the Game
cess, Lisky writes, they are "forging a pattern and template for gay teenage life in America the same way their predecessors did for gay adult life in the seventies and eighties."
"It's all uncharted territory," Lipsky adds, "how to have boyfriends and girlfriends at school, how to introduce parents to lovers, how to learn how to be in a relationship at the same time that you're learning so much else."
Lipsky begins the piece light-heartedly, describing a fifteen-year old who came out in
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front of a national audience when he appeared on the CBS newsmagazine 48 Hours some time ago. The boy told Lipsky, "My mom said, 'I know you [smoke]. But I just don't want to see you on national TV smoking.'
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Lipsky writes, "In 1998, parents might be more unhappy having friends and relatives know that their child smokes than that their child is gay."
But Lipsky does not take lightly the plights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth, specifically addressing the discrimination, the harassment, the increased rates of destructive behavior and suicide attempts such youths face. At one point, Lipsky writes,
"I walk out of the [restaurant]... and there are a couple of cowboys sitting on the front bumper of a truck. They look me over coolly. I think for a second that I'm going to get beaten up. It's the first time I've ever had that feeling."
Lipsky details the experience of Jamie Nabozny, a young gay man who made history last year when he sued the Ashland, Wisconsin school district where he attended high school, and received a settlement of $900,000 as compensation for years of mental, emotional and physical brutalization. He uses Nabozny's case as a springboard for comparing legislative protections for lesbian and gay youth in different states, as well.
He speaks with Kelli Taylor and other Salt Lake City students about a 1996 controversy involving their attempts to form a gaystraight alliance in their high school, and asks them about the suicide of one of the group's founders, Jacob Orosco.
One of Jacob's schoolmates tells him that "There's just that feeling... with everything he'd done and gone through: 'Well, if Jacob was this stud of a guy who was so out there and so ready to take on the world and he couldn't do it, what makes me think that I can?" Lipsky also goes to youth group meetings, joins the kids for coffee and meals, and shows them to beabove all else-human.
Even if you are not a regular Rolling Stone reader, be sure to pick up this issue. ✓
Compiled from press material from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and Rolling Stone magazine.
'Campy extravaganza' features 7 Osmonds
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Chack of
David Osmond, center, is joined by his six brothers in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber's Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, a musical rainbow ride through Canaan and ancient Egypt, is playing at Cleveland's Palace Theatre for a limited one week engagement, August 11 to 16.
Theatre buffs from Chevrei TikvaCleveland's synagogue with an outreach to the lesbian and gay community—are planning to attend the Thursday, August 13 performance of the show about the trials and tribulations of one of Israel's favorite sons.
Described as "a campy glitzy extravaganza" by New York Newsday, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat re-tells the story of Joseph, who is sold into slavery by his 11 jealous brothers when their father Jacob gives him a fabulous coat of many colors. He is resold to the wealthy Potiphar, whose wife fails to seduce Joseph (some biblical scholars have questioned whether any woman could have seduced him). Potiphar has him thrown into jail, but be-
cause of Joseph's power to interpret dreams and to predict Egypt's seven prosperous years and seven lean years, he becomes the Pharaoh's right-hand man.
The show has a retro appeal for those born before the arrival of Generation X. Headlining the new national tour as Joseph is David Osmond, son of Alan Osmond, brother to Donny and Marie and a member of the '70s group The Osmond Brothers. Also starring in the show are six of David's seven brothers, ranging in age from 14 to 22, who along with David, have been performing as The Osmond Second Generation. Rounding out the cast as the Narrator is Broadway stage actress Jodi Benson, who provided the voice of Ariel in Disney's The Little Mermaid.
Tickets for the show are priced between $25 and $45, and can be purchased at 216241-6000. To see the show with Chevrei Tikva, call 216-321-4031 or 440442-2858.