on the airoff the press

Even Jones says talk show suit was based on homophobia

by John Graves

The wrongful-death civil suit brought against the Jenny Jones Show by relatives of Scott Amedure, a gay guest who was murdered by another guest after they appeared on the show, is the subject of Crime Stories on Court TV Saturday at 6 pm, repeating Thursday at 8 pm.

Jenny Jones talked to TV Guide columnist J. Max Robins about the case and the jury's $25 million judgment against her show.

Jones told Robins: "The whole premise of the case [that Schmitz was "humiliated” by a gay man saying he was attracted to him on

Golden Threads

Continued from page 11

Winer and Eaton, inspired by Burton, “realized that the only thing to do was to finish it and to tell the story."

The finished film, motivated by and immersed in Burton's great spirit, is indeed a radical piece of work and ground breaking in its look at a demographic that is highly invisible and caught in a vicious cycle of increasing marginalization.

"The baby boomers are aging,” Winer said, "and I believe that we are going to see elders claim and reclaim rights and make their voices heard like never before."

"But," Winer warns, "today we are also more afraid of aging than we have ever been before. In our daily lives, especially in socalled sophisticated urban centers, we tend to erase old people. The urban pitfall of invisibility can become more extreme as you age." It is this invisibility that Burton was making visible through her exemplary life and Winer and Eaton's film is sure to bring out of the closet the world of aging lesbians.

During our interview from their Chelsea apartment in New York, Winer refers to her voice-over at the end of the film where she says, "Christine was free."

"Obviously, Christine is not free," Winer says of the seeming paradox. “She's dependent on others after the stroke, she's in a nursing home, she can't communicate fully. But when you consider that she has maintained her values, her voice and her identity, she is free."

Through Winer's lens, this is “an amazing achievement we get to witness." As Burton herself says in the film, life is about "freedom from conventionality, and freedom is fear-. lessness."

Winer and Eaton both agree that aging in America today is fraught with a void brought on "by a loss of traditional spiritual connections." Winer said that in the "resulting void many of us have no way to relate to illness and death and this has to be faced." Winer and Eaton also express gratitude to be of their generation (fifty-somethings). "I think when we were young we were less assaulted by commercialism and issues of image than the younger people people we see today. We grew up in a time when a lot of value was placed on other less materialistic priorities," Winer concluded.

Eaton speaks vividly of how during her formative years in Kentucky and Indiana, "we lived in extended families with several generations living" in great proximity. It is indeed the personal and geographic fragmentation of the American family that is partly responsible for our warehousing of the elderly. In this increasing devaluing of our senior citizens we have also completely desexualized them. Many younger people have a problem with imagining their grandparents and even their parents having sex. How much less then, does our culture want to acknowledge gay sex amongst our seniors?

*There is no doubt that we in our culture, have roots that are still very anti-sexual and puritanical," Winer explained. "Christine grew up in a very puritanical environment and she used Golden Threads to challenge herself and other women to open up, enjoy

national TV] was based on homophobia. Would there even have been a trial if the person with the secret crush was a 350-pound woman? I don't think so. Somehow Feiger [Jeffrey Feiger, the plaintiff's attorney] wants us to believe it's okay to think someone has been humiliated to the point of murder because another man says he has a crush on him. There's something terribly wrong with that kind of thinking."

Jones told Robins that, even with knowledge of his mental health problems, she wasn't sure if Schmitz should have been kept off the show

"How many people in this country are

themselves and see pleasure as a good thing."

The film is radical in that it is up close and personal about the romantic and sexual desires of the attendees at the Golden Threads weekend at Provincetown.

"The women were coming there for lots of reasons," Winer said, "including love, partnership, friendship and sexual intimacy."

The film is also important in that it forces us to acknowledge that the health care profession has a lot to learn about acknowledging and caring for the gay and lesbian seniors of this country. People spend a lifetime coming out and then confronted with their golden years there seems to be a push to return to the closet as seniors. But the changing realities, catalyzed by the inimitable force of people like Burton, prove that in nursing homes today it is no longer "just grandpa and grandma" in the words of Eaton.

In fact, some of the film's most touching moments are when Burton, confined to a wheelchair and unable to communicate with all her faculties, challenges her speech therapist to explode conventional gender norms.

The speech therapist asks Burton to talk about a picture of a woman standing by her car as a flat tire is being changed by a man. Burton emphatically insists, broken speech and all, that it is the woman who should be changing the tire. This episode is a humbling reminder that if those of us in good health and youth could make half the changes that Burton made after 80 and after her stroke, the world would be infinitely wiser and better.

This film is not just a must-see for the demographic it portrays, but a valuable experience for everyone. Winer and Eaton certainly hope so, and are eager that young

people in particular see it.

"Christine is so authentic," Winer praises, "that she reaches across barriers and touches people." Burton's greatest gift to her friends and followers and to the audiences of this film is that she proves that resignation in life, at any stage and any station, is unacceptable. Eaton says that, “Burton enlightens us to the universal themes and issues of dealing with self-esteem and shame."

Last December, Christine Burton received a lifetime achievement award from SAGE, Senior Action in a Gay Environment. Her lifetime's achievements are epitomized in a song featured in the film which proclaims, "I am what I am, and I don't need no excuses." At the SAGE ceremony Burton stole the show and received a well deserved standing ovation.

Winer and Eaton's film is an honest, touching, brave and sometimes quirky homage to a woman who made change with her every aging footstep.

"Each one of us is is a thread in the fabric of humankind," says Burton. “Each of us is necessary in our own way. If we reject anyone it's like taking a thread out of the fabric."

P.O.V., PBS's award-winning showcase for independent non-fiction films, will broadcast Golden Threads nationally on June 8. In Cleveland, the film can be seen June 8 at 11 p.m. on WVIZ. It will be repeated on Sunday, June 13 at midnight, also on WVIZ. Golden Threads can be seen in Cincinnati on Friday, June 11 at 11:30 pm on WCET. ♡

alcoholics or have been in psychiatric care?" Jones asked. "His suicide attempt, even if we had known about it, was years before he came on the show. Should we have not booked him if we knew all that? Not necessarily."

Schmitz's guilty verdict in the 1996 criminal trial was overturned on a technicality and is scheduled to be re-tried in August. A kiss deferred

Mark Schwed, in his "Hollywood Grapevine" column in TV Guide, reports that NBC's Will & Grace taped a same-sex kiss between Eric McCormack's Will and guest star Miguel Ferrer which was cut when the episode aired April 29.

According to Schwed, NBC said that "creatively, it didn't work." Schewd talked to executive producer Max Mutchnick who said, "It was a disaster on film. I just couldn't get it to work."

Schwed reports Mutchnick, who is gay, did not rule out the possibility of scene with a same-sex kiss and told Schwed, "When it's right, it'll be there. I'm going to do it.”

Mauresmo talks about coming out

Nineteen-year-old rising tennis star and out lesbian Amelie Mauresmo is the subject of a four-page feature story by Andrea Land in the June issue of Tennis Match magazine.

In the article, Mauresmo talks to Land about coming out to the world as a lesbian at the Australian Open this year, her lifepartner Sylvie Bourdon and her tennis hopes for the future. Mauresmo responded to homophobic remarks to the press by fellow tennis star Martina Hingis and attempts by the WTA to suppress the story of her coming out.

"Why should I be worried about revealing

that I am gay?" Mauresmo told Land. "What are the repercussions? I feel good, with the relationship and how my life is going. I have nothing to hide. I decided to be open with this at the beginning because I did not want to live my life worrying about anything. And what people say does not bother or affect me.'

""

On the influence of her life-partner on her tennis game, Mauresmo said, “Finding Sylvie and having such a good personal life now has made the difference in my tennis. It had been -missing part of my life. Looking up at Sylvie during the matches gave me that little extra support I needed. She gave me strength." Louganis to appear on Just Say No

USA Today reports that gay, HIV-positive Olympic diving champion turned actor Greg Louganis will appear in the comedy Just Say No as part of a Pride '99 series being staged by Chicago's Bailiwick Repertory.

Louganis, talking about his life out of the closet in a recent Chicago Tribune interview, said, "I am happy with where I am... who I am. I am learning the difference between secrecy and privacy."

The epicenter of the AIDS epidemic

Correspondent Steve Sternberg visited South Africa, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe for an extensive report on the AIDS epidemic in Africa that filled several full pages of the May 24 issue of USA Today. 'Black and Gay' story was excellent

Kudos to the new African-American newspaper Cleveland Life for the excellent, multipage cover story “Black and Gay in America," written by managing editor Shelley M. Shockley (formerly city editor of the Call & Post), and an accompanying gay-positive editorial by Cleveland Life publisher Jon Everett.

For her article, one of the most extensive on the subject that I have ever read in the African-American press, Shockley spoke to nationally known gay African-American authors E. Lynn Harris and Ricc Rollins as well as Larry Webb, co-founder of Cleveland's Black Out Unlimited, a cultural and educational organization, and Celeste, a lesbian mother and professional who lives in Cleveland.

In his editorial, Everett talked about the misconception that African-Americans are homophobic.

He concluded, “As a quality and widelyread newspaper, it is our job to profile all aspects of the African-American community. It is our goal to erase the negative stereotypes that have been attributed to African-Americans and present the truth. Many African-American leaders... are showing that the statement ‘black people are homophobic' is not true. Like many others, it is just an ignorant generalization.” Roseanne begins Pride Month early

It looks like Roseanne, apparently inspired by recent interviews with Ellen DeGeneres and her mother Betty, couldn't wait for June and kicked off Pride month early with a starstudded, all-lesbian show that aired on May 27.

Rosanne's guests included comics Suzanne Westenhoefer, Kate Clinton and Maggie Casella joined by activist Chastity Bono and the lesbian rock group The Murmurs. The guests were perfectly at ease being their lesbian selves in front of a very appreciative, mostly lesbian audience. They also chatted with a group of lesbian couples and their children at a lesbian bookstore in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Later in the show, Roseanne gave away a Caribbean cruise for two on Olivia Cruise Lines to a lucky woman in the audience.

John Graves is the producer and host of Gaywaves, a lesbian-gay public affairs show on Cleveland's WRUW 91.1 FM Fridays at 7 pm. Dave Haskell, Jim McGrattan and Kim Jones also contributed to this column.

D.L. Dunkle & Associates

A LESBIAN & GAY PSYCHOTHERAPY PRACTICE

Debra L. Dunkle, LISW

Jane Miller, MSSA, LSW

Martha Webb, CCDC, LPC

John O'Connor, LISW Lisa Gilbert, MD

Offering Professional, Confidential Services To Individuals, Couples, And Groups.

12417 Cedar, Suites 21-24 Cleveland Heights, Ohio 44106

216-229-2100