September 14th, 2014
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Athens GA; Benidorm, Spain; Burlington, VT; Nags Head (Outer Banks), NC.
Other Events This Weekend: Folsom Europe, Berlin, Germany; Kings Island Pride Night, Cincinnati, OH; Best Buck in the Bay Gay Rodeo, San Francisco, CA; International Bears Week, Sitges, Spain.
TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:
“No establishment shall make facilities available for the purpose of sexual activities where anal intercourse, vaginal intercourse, or fellatio take place. Such facilities shall constitute a threat to the public health.” So reads the New York state code in Section 24-2.2. The code was adopted in the early 1990s over the objections of HIV/AIDS advocates. New York City had been closing down bathhouses since the mid-1980s. But the Wall Street Sauna somehow managed to escape all of those efforts until 2004, when a New York Appeals Court sided with the City and ordered the Sauna closed.
The Sauna’s opened in 1974, and its location one 1 Maiden Lane just four blocks from the New York Stock Exchange made it instantly popular with area businessmen. An article for the Village Voice in 1976 described the Sauna as “where businessmen get their rocks off during the lunch hour (it’s called “funch”).” After the AIDS crisis led to the shuttering of other bathhouses and sex clubs, the Wall Street Sauna soldiered on with the owners insisting, implausibly, that men were not using their facility for sex. Finally the New York Heath Department ordered the Sauna closed in February, 2004, but part of the sauna reopened a week later after the owners agreed to a court order that all sexual activity would be prohibited. But health inspector reported seeing sexual behavior in April, and the city appealed the lower court’s ruling. On July 8, the state appeals court sided with the city and ordered the Sauna closed once and for all.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
► Disgusting Depravity: 1822. The following notice appeared in the September 14, 1822 edition of The Times of London:
DISGUSTING DEPRAVITY — On Monday last Benjamin Candler, late valet to the Duke of Newcastle, was committed to Lincoln Castle by Sir R. Heron, Bart., charged with an unnatural offence. On the same day was committed to the same place by the Alderman of Grantham, William Arden, Esq., of Great Pultney-street, Golden-square, London, charged with the same offence; and on Tuesday was committed to the Castle , by the Alderman of Grantham, John Doughty, of Grantham, joiner, charged with the same. A discovery of the abominable intercourse which had been carried on it, it is stated, was made through the circumstance of a letter from Rantham, intended for the valet at Clumber, but accidentally not addressed on the outside, falling into the hands of the Duke of Newcastle. His Grace, on discovering the nature of the contents, proceeded with due caution for furthering the purposes of justice, and the consequence has been the commitment of the above persons to Lincoln Castle for trial at the next assizes. The person committed as an Esquire, was apprehended in London after the first examination of the others at Grantham, and was brought down in safe custody in one of the mail coaches on Sunday morning. We understand that he had apartments at Grantham during the last hunting season.
The “unnatural offence” was a capital crime, and the three men were hanged at Lincoln Castle on March 21, 1823.
► 25 YEARS AGO: ACT UP Protests At NY Stock Exchange: 1989. Chaining themselves to a banister at the New York Stock Exchange and unfurling a sign reading “SELL WELLCOME,” five AIDS activists protested the price set by Burroughs Wellcome for AZT, the only drug that had been approved in the U.S. to fight AIDS. Burroughs Wellcome had been charging from $7,000 to $8,000 per year for the drug, which was far beyond the ability for many people to pay. Four days later, Burroughs Wellcome announced a twenty percent reduction in the wholesale price of the drug. A spokesman denied that the announcement was connected to the high profile protest.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
► 60 YEARS AGO: David Wojnarowicz: 1954-1992. In November of 2010, G. Wayne Clough, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, made the executive decision to remove a short silent film A Fire in My Belly by David Wojnarowicz from the National Portrait Gallery’s exhibit “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture.” The film, which included a twelve-second scene of ants crawling over a crucifix, was denounced by the Catholic League’s Bill Donohue as anti-Catholic “hate speech.” Clough removed the video after complaints from soon-to-be House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), but he neglected to consult co-curator, gay activist and art historian Jonathan David Katz, about the decision. “It was an incredibly stupid decision. I am flabbergasted that they rose to the bait so readily,” he said in an interview after the video was removed. The irony, which was not lost on anyone, is that the whole point of “Hide/Seek” was to highlight the role of sexual difference in American portraiture, including the effects of marginalization (hence, the “hide”). Katz saw history repeating itself:
In 1989 Senator Jesse Helms demonized Robert Mapplethorpe’s sexuality, and by extension, his art, and with little effort pulled a cowering art world to its knees. His weapon was threatening to disrupt the already pitiful federal support for the arts. And once again, that same weapon is being brandished, and once again we cower.
Wojnarowicz, who at 37 died of AIDS in 1992, wasn’t one to cower, although he certainly had the kind of life experiences which might have encouraged him to do so. Born in Red Bank, New Jersey he grew up with an exceptionally cruel and abusive father. After his parents divorced, he and his siblings were bounced back and forth between parents — at one point, his father kidnapped them and took them to Rural Michigan — until they finally ended up with their mother in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen. By the time he was sixteen, he ran away from home and was living on the streets. He supported himself through prostitution and became fascinated with the social outcasts he met in abandoned warehouses and on street corners. His graffiti soon morphed into elaborate paintings on the walls of abandoned buildings. At one point, he spent some time in Paris with his sister, where he became more serious about photography and painting. When he returned to New York, his unique brand of confrontational street art found an audience alongside other underground artists like Keith Haring (who Wojnarowicz didn’t get along with).
Wojnarowicz had a combustible personality. When one gallery damaged one of his paintings and refused to repair it, Wojnarowicz retaliated by taking a tire iron to the gallery’s pristine white walls. In 1989, Wojnarowicz wrote a blistering essay, “Postcards form America: X-rays from Hell,” which blasted several public figures, Cardinal O’Connor in particular (“this fat cannibal from that house of walking swastikas”). The essay appeared in an exhibition catalogue, prompting the National Endowment for the Arts to rescind its funding for the show. This made Wojnarowicz the newest bogeyman for the religious right. But when the American Family Association’s Donald Wildmon copied, distorted, and disseminated Wojnariwicz’s image in a pamphlet as part of a campaign against the NEA, Wojnarowicz sued the AFA and won a historic Supreme Court case which is forever enshrined as David Wojnarowicz v. American Family Association (see Apr 8).
Which, of course, makes the Smithsonian’s actions in 2010 all the more relevant. Here is the version of A Fire in My Belly which led the Smithsonian to crumple like a bad suit against Donohue’s charges of blasphemy. This same video was also projected onto the exterior walls of the National Portrait Gallery during a protest over the Smithsonian’s censorship.
David Wojnarowicz’s life is chronicled in Cynthia Carr’s definitive biography Fire in the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz, which was released in 2012.
► Ben Cohen: 1978. The former England Rugby Union player for Northampton Saints and Sale Sharks, Cohen was already a well-liked gay icon before retiring from professional rugby in 2011. He often speaks highly of his gay following, a fan base which he has rewarded by almost never wearing a shirt. In 2010, he released this video as part of the “It Gets Better” project and, since retiring, he has devoted his time to the Ben Cohen StandUp Foundation, which he established as the world’s first foundation dedicated to combating anti-gay bulling and homophobia. He was inspired by two things in his life: his father was killed when he stood up for an employee who was being attacked, and Cohen’s clinical deafness (he has about a 33% hearing loss in each ear) has made him keenly aware of how being different can make someone stand out.
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).
And feel free to consider this your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?
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Hue-Man
September 14th, 2014
“A controversial law school proposed in British Columbia hit another hurdle Saturday after members of the Law Society of New Brunswick passed a resolution directing its council not to accredit it.”
[Trinity Western University] “requires all students and staff to sign a covenant barring same-sex relationships.”
Now let’s hear from the organization that seeks to discriminate (prepare your irony armor):
“Earl Phillips, Trinity Western’s executive director, expressed concern with the members’ resolution.
“Difficult decisions involving fundamental rights and freedoms should not be decided by popular vote,” said Phillips.”
Scorecard: “To date, bar associations in Alberta and Saskatchewan have approved accreditation — although Saskatchewan has put its decision on hold along with Manitoba.
Law societies in Ontario and Nova Scotia voted against accreditation, which caused the school to challenge those decisions in the courts in both provinces.”
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/n-b-law-society-members-vote-against-accrediting-trinity-western-1.2765815
Ben in Oakland
September 14th, 2014
Next you’re going to tell us that these people, like all of the rest of them that have issues with other people being gay, are total hypocrites.
When are you going to stop oppressing people?
Next thing we know, you’ll either enslave them, jail them, or put them into the ovens.
Hue-Man
September 14th, 2014
Why is this case any different from the B&B owners or the wedding cake bakers? Why would a university have the right to discriminate in determining who it considers worthy to buy its services? (The obvious real-world consideration is why would lesbians and gays want to do business with gay-haters unless they had to?)
I don’t have any issue with religious organizations discriminating on their own turf – unmarried priests, hats on/hats off, whatever, but those discriminations should end at the front door. I know the right-wing nutjobs insist on shoving their cults down our throats whenever possible but they don’t allow any limitations of what happens within their cults.
Finally, consider the hypothetical case of the Sharia Western University Law School: their motto, “no dogs, no infidels, no women.” Wouldn’t rejection of these law graduates be automatic?
Ben in Oakland
September 14th, 2014
I’m assuming you did know I was engaging in a maintain of snark.
I agree with you, of course. Do whatever you want within the four walls of your church or your home. We both have an objection to the wall of solid irony that comprises their case.
But as we all know, what’s sauce for the goose does not make a sauce for the propaganda.
Ben in Oakland
September 14th, 2014
Mountain, not maintain. Damnable, devilish spell check.
Hue-Man
September 14th, 2014
BInOak. I identified the snark and should have acknowledged it. The cafeteria christianism hypocrisy spurred my second comment – the bakers will sell to adulterers and murderers but not to lesbians getting married. Similarly the TWU covenant ignores all the other sinners from their book of myths but concentrates on the ones they want to hate. They literally had to choose who to bar while accepting $$$ from rapists, child abusers, wife beaters, murderers, and other deviants. I hope they use that in their promotional material:
“Our law graduates may have beaten their wives and husbands, may have robbed banks, and attacked women and children but they are not sinful icky gays.” It’s worked for the NFL.
(BTW, I’ve given up on typos as the price we have to pay. I’ve caught myself typing its when I meant it’s and lead instead of led now seems to be the norm. “Its not worth the fight.” snark)
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