The Daily Agenda for Friday, March 28

Jim Burroway

March 28th, 2014

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Same-Sex Marriage Arrives in England and Wales. Sometime after midnight tonight GMT (8:00 p.m. EDT), Peter McGraith and David Cabreza, who have been together for seventeen years, will marry that the Registrar’s office at Islington Town Hall, London. It is believed that they will become the first couple to marry in Britain under the new Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013, which will allow same-sex couples to marry in England and Wales. I understand that BBC will be there, so we should have video available sometime later tonight.

The first part of the new marriage law actually went into effect two weeks ago, when marriages conducted in other countries which provide marriage equality became legally recognized in England and Wales. Other provisions still remain to be put into effect, namely the procedures for converting civil partnerships into marriage, which should be worked out later this year. Also later this year, Scotland will begin providing marriage equality for same-sex couples. Northern Ireland remains the only corner of the United Kingdom where there has been no movement on marriage equality. This is despite more than half of residents supporting same-sex marriage, with particularly strong support among Catholics.

Events This Weekend: European Gay Ski Week, Alpe d’Huez, France; Belgian LGBT Film Festival, Brussels, Belgium; AIDS Walk & Music Festival, Ft. Lauderdale, FL; Los Angeles Leather Pride, Los Angeles, CA; Gay Snow Happening, Sölden, Austria; OutBoard, Steamboat Springs, CO; European Snow Pride, Tignes, France.

TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:

From The Advocate, January 11, 1979, page 10.

 
How classy is this: silver and black Marylyn Monroe wallpaper, a sleek see-and-be-seen bar upstairs, a massive industrial-looking staircase which wound its way down to the lower bar and dance floor, cool steel and cable railings, shiny chrome all over the place. The club was très chic-for-1980, winning several design awards and becoming popular with the New Romantics set. Legends partied for two decades, until 1999, which by then was a bit past its coolness date. The location has been a string of restaurants since then, most recently Embassy, which closed in 2013.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Dirk Bogarde: 1921. He was born Derek Jules Gaspard Ulric Niven van den Bogaerde, but his friends and fans called him Dirk. After serving in the Queen’s Royal Regiment in World War II as an intelligence officer, he became one of Britain’s top matinee idols in the 1950s. In the 1960s he decided to do away with his heart-throb image with more challenging roles, including that of the closeted Melville Farr in 1961’s Victim, who resolves to break up an extortion racket that targets gay men. Time magazine, in its review of Victim, called it “a plea for perversion.” “Everybody in the picture who disapproves of homosexuals proves to be an ass, a dolt or a sadist,” Time fumed. “Nowhere does the film suggest that homosexuality is a serious (but often curable) neurosis that attacks the biological basis of life itself.”

Bogarde won critical acclaim playing the sinister Hugo Barrett in 1963’s The Servant, and he took on the gay lead in the 1971 art house film Death in Venice. Warner Brothers tried to drop the distribution of Death in Venice because they feared it would be banned for obscenity, but relented after Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Anne attended the London premiere.

If it was brave for a popular actor to take on gay roles like that, it was doubly brave of Bogarde because he never officially came out. And yet he remained dedicated to his lifelong partner Anthony Forwood, whose death in 1988 after a long struggle with Parkinson’s disease and liver cancer led Bogarde to become an advocate for assisted suicide. Bogarde, by then had quit acting and turned to writing, publishing seven memiors and several novels. Bogarde didn’t come out in any of his memoirs, although he did talk about caring for Forwood. Bogarde was knighted in 1992, suffered a dibilitating stroke in 1996, and died of a heart attack in 1999. It wasn’t until 2004, upon the publication of an authorized biography, that his brother,  Gareth van den Bogaerde, finally acknowledged publicly that Dirk was gay.

If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. Don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).

This your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?

Tom D

March 28th, 2014

In the UK, some interesting stats came out regarding gay marriage opinions over here. I’ve not been able to dig deep into the numbers yet, but it’s mostly positive reading: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-26773016

MattNYC

March 28th, 2014

Maryland legislature passes transgender equality bill

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/maryland-passes-transgender-equality-bill

MattNYC

March 28th, 2014

Tom D, thanks for the link.

Interesting pull quote:

Fr Montgomery, who at 29 is the youngest priest in the diocese of Shrewsbury, said he thought more people might turn down an invitation to a gay wedding were they not concerned they might be regarded as extreme. [Poll reveals 20% would turn down an invitation]

My response to such an explicit RSVP would not be “extreme”–it would be, “Thank you for letting us know you view us as less than human. No need to include us on any future correspondence and we’ll do the same. Have a wonderful life–I know we will have a much better one without your presence.”

MattNYC

March 28th, 2014

And to think I have yet to have my morning coffee and yet so “chatty” ;)

I received a link to this article in my morning mail:

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/03/24/if-gays-can-marry-and-be-fired-for-doing-so/protecting-new-classes-from-discrimination-is-not-enough

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