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News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyDecember 3rd, 2011
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Manilla, The Philippines.
Also This Weekend: Gay Days at Disney, Hong Kong, China.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
New York Business Group Says People with AIDS Should Be Forced to Work at Home: 1985. Just as the state of New York was about to release a report showing that workplace AIDS discrimination complaints had gone up 500 percent that year, the New York Business Group on Health, which advised 265 businesses, including Bloomingdale’s and New York Telephone Co., recommended that employees diagnosed with AIDS should be required to work from home. How a salesperson at Bloomies was supposed to work from home wasn’t explained. Remember, this was long before the Internet made telecommuting even a remote possibility for some. Ron Najman of the National Gay Task Force blasted the proposal. “It’s counterproductive, and it leads to de facto discrimination,” he said. “It’s opening the door to tolerating hysteria and panic.”
TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Allan Bérubé: 1946. He is best known as the author of the best-selling book, Coming Out Under Fire, about the stories of gay men and women who served during World War II. The book, which drew on GIs wartime letters, interviews with veterans and declassified military documents, Bérubé revealed a history that had previously been hidden. What’s more, his timing was prescient; the book came out just three years before “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was enshrined into law. The book earned Bérubé an Lambda Literary Award for outstanding Gay Men’s Nonfiction. The book was made into a documentary
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Leo
December 3rd, 2011
Thank you for the tribute to Allan. I had the opportunity to meet him and get to know him during his time in NYC. He was working on a book about the intersection between the largely gay cabin stewards that worked the ocean liners that crossed the atlantic and how they were unionized and on some level they were the first group of homosexuals to be organized economically and politically. And how this organization may have helped inform the nascent gay rights movement.
He was an interesting, smart, informed and yes sexy man. And I was lucky to have crossed paths with him.
F Young
December 4th, 2011
@Leo
“He was working on a book about the intersection between the largely gay cabin stewards…”
By the way, this was the subject of a book called “Hello Sailor: the Hidden History of Gay Life at Sea” co-authored by Dr. Jo Stanley.” He also curated a museum exhibit by the National Museums Liverpool that travelled to the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax, Canada, where it just closed.
Entitled “Hello Sailor!” the exhibit deals with the gay steward subculture aboard British ocean liners from the 1950s to the 80s. At a time when you would be thrown in jail or beaten up if you were a gay man ashore, ocean liners offered sanctuary for gays.
Gay stewards regularly performed lavish drag shows for the crew and passengers that were highly popular. They had their own secret language known as Polari. There were also gay marriages at sea, but they were not legally recognized.
http://mygsa.ca/node/6398
http://museum.gov.ns.ca/mmanew/en/home/whattoseedo/hellosailor.aspx
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