Μαν. 12.2000

on the airoff the press

Showtime green-lights U.S. version of 'Queer as Folk'

by John Graves

The Showtime cable network has ordered 22 episodes of Queer as Folk, a dramatic series about a group of gay men based on the hit English series of the same name. Showtime plans to air its version of the show beginning in late 2000 or early 2001.

But, Millionaire producer Michael P. Davies told Kuczynski, “Openly gay men have been exposed to both male and female popular culture. We have a remarkable number of openly gay men contestants, and they are really, really good. Openly gay men are killers on this show."

The original show's nude sex scenes, proA long and illustrious career vocative dialogue and frank portrait of the gay scene in London created controversy in the U.K. when it first aired and, according to Variety's Paula Bernstein, Showtime expects that the American version will be just as controversial.

"I am hoping that lightning will strike a **** second time, some of the best things we have put on our air have created controversy," Jerry Offsay, Showtime's president of programming, told Bernstein.

Showtime says production of the American version of Queer as Folk will begin in late June or early July in Toronto, and will be set in a working class setting in an Eastern U.S. city, possibly in New Jersey.

March on TV, from start to finish

Thanks to C-SPAN for once again providing full television coverage of the Millennium March and Rally, and thanks also to Planet Out for web-casting both the March and the Equality Rocks concert.

We're online

The Internet has opened a line of communication for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people who would otherwise be too afraid to communicate with the greater LGBT community, says USA Today in a feature story.

As the man from Planet Out told the estimated 200,000 to 300,000 Millennuim Marchers, "We're here, we're queer and we're online!" Besides PlanetOut (www.planetout.com), the article went on to list the sites of Gay.com (www.gay.com), Gay Financial Network (www.gfn.com), Gay Health

(www.gayhealth.com), Gay Radio (www.gaybc.com) web sites and three e-mail lists (www.queernet.org, www.qrd.org/ electronicemail and www.apocalypse.org/pub/ sappho) as resources.

Mapplethorpe film rated NC-17

According to a report by Bill Higgins in Daily Variety, the Motion Picture Association of America has given Dirty Pictures an initial rating of NC-17, which may be revised with acceptable re-editing.

The Showtime film is based on the 1990 obscenity prosecution of Cincinnati's Contemporary Arts Center director Dennis Barrie for showing the work of the late gay photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.

In a statement, Showtime said, "This is the first response from the MPAA. We and the filmmakers are working with them in editing the film to achieve an R rating."

If the re-edited film fails to get the more acceptable rating from the ratings board, Showtime still has the right to a hearing with the association's ratings appeals board. “But," Higgins writes, "if the NC-17 rating holds, it puts into question whether the pic can be shown during prime time."

Showtime has agreements with some cable companies that exclude airing NC-17-rated material before a certain hour.

The NC-17 rating comes specifically from the cable film's use of seven photographs named in the indictment which are seen briefly during a trial scene, and when the lead character shows them to his wife.

Is that your final answer?

Openly gay men have done very well on the ABC quiz show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, and New York Times reporter Alex Kuczynski has found one reason why.

Kuczynski reports that the people who write the test questions used in screening applicants for the show feel men tend to know more about geography, card games, ship disasters and acronyms for police organizations a little better than women, who they feel excel on questions related to cosmetics and Broadway show tunes.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer noted the passing of Evelyn Irons, a pioneering war correspondent for the London Daily Mail and former New York bureau chief of the Sunday Times of London, and the former lover of Bloomsbury novelist, poet and landscape designer Vita Sackville-West.

According to the PD's obituary, Irons' affair with Sackville-West began in 1931 after Irons interviewed her for the London Daily Mail. This was also just after Sackville-West started her long time relationship with Violet Trefuss, the daughter of King Edward VII's mistress Alice Keppel.

At the time, Irons was also romantically involved with another woman, Olive Rinder, who also fell in love with Sackville-West. The three women maintained a ménage à trois, the subject of a PBS film a few years ago, for a short time until Irons fell in love with another woman, Joy McSweeny, who remained her life partner until her death in the 1980s.

During her long and illustrious career, Irons earned France's Croix de Guerre and was reported to be the first woman war correspondent to enter Hitler's Berchtesgaden retreat after the end of hostilities in Europe in World War II.

No gay African Americans?

Last week, the Call and Post published "Here's to Your Health: Putting an AfricanAmerican Face on AIDS," a 12-page supplement on the AIDS/HIV Initiative of the Cleveland branch of the NAACP.

The special supplement contained some excellent health articles on the disease, local HIV outreach programs to the African-American community and the personal perspectives of several African-Americans living with HIV and AIDS. Notably missing however, was any mention of LGBT African-Americans.

I've noticed that many articles about AIDS in the African-American press try to dispel the stereotype that this is "not just a disease of gay white males" by indicating the disease is becoming pandemic in the African-American community primarily infecting wives, heterosexual prostitutes and drug users.

In their attempts to dispel one stereotype, such articles merely reinforce another: "there is no such thing as a gay (or lesbian) AfricanAmerican."

In the Call and Post supplement there is no specific mention of African-American gay or bisexual men, only a statement that "men who have sex with men represent the largest proportion (38%) of reported cases [in AfricanAmerican men] since the epidemic began."

Upon reading this, it appears that the African-American "men who have sex with men❞ are really heterosexual and only dabble in same-gender sex.

I have heard enough of my African-American brothers and sisters saying they are personally offended by gays comparing the struggle for LGBT civil rights to the struggle for African-American civil rights. As a proud and out bisexual African-American man, I am personally offended when I hear my straight African-American brothers and sisters proclaim, "There is no such thing as a gay (or lesbian) African-American."

While we're on the subject of denial, why do we go out of our way to assume a person is straight unless they specifically indicate otherwise? Those of us who are of African-American descent know, only too well, we have no real closet to hide in. We face discrimination in housing, jobs, relationships and all other areas from birth that can only be ended by taking an open and vocal stand against racism. Even those of us whose mixed racial background would allow us the chance to "pass" as white no longer do so, and take offense when others suggest we do so.

Isn't it time that we as LGBT people stop

putting so much energy into protecting those precious closets? Although it is not my mission to out people against their wishes, I prefer to assume the other person is gay unless they specifically indicate otherwise.

Paparazzi of the hands

When the story came out several weeks ago that researchers had found a connection between finger length and sexual orientation, the tabloids immediately looked to their celebrity photos. After two years of claiming that Anne Heche would leave Ellen DeGeneres "because she used to date men," the tabloids now point

STOP

to her fingers as "proof she really is a lesbian."

The tabs have been on an outing binge lately. Over the last couple of months they have been full of major articles offering “proof” that actors Don Johnson and Kevin Spacey, Attorney General Janet Reno, Senate candidate Hillary Clinton, and even Monica Lewinsky are gay.

John Graves is the producer and host of Gaywaves, an LGBT public affairs show on Cleveland's WRUW 91.1 FM Fridays at 7 pm, and at http://radio.cwru.edu. Dave Haskell, Jim McGrattan and Kim Jones also contribute to this column.

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