Few contemporary composers would transform a cathedral commission into an opportunity to create a pantheistic, subtly subversive statement of universal brother/sisterhood. But that is exactly what Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) did when, in response to a commission for the combined choirs of England’s Winchester, Salisbury, and Chichester cathedrals, he set his “Chichester Psalms” (1965) in Hebrew rather than Latin. Not only that, but he entrusted the first performance not to a traditional cathedral all-male choir, but to a mixed, adult choir accompanied by the New York Philharmonic. Comment

“Coming Out Under Fire” (1994) examines the origins of the military’s policy against gays in the World War II era. “Licensed to Kill” (1997) investigates convicts jailed for murdering gays. And “Family Fundamentals” (2002) profiles the gay children of religious fundamentalist parents. Comment

Donna Payne, Keith Boykin, Mandy Carter, and Alvin Williams. Comment

Duncan Roy in New York this week. Comment

The office of the Queens medical examiner has ruled the death of Guillermo Sanchez, a 21-year-old Mexican immigrant, as a suicide. The morning of December 1, maintenance workers discovered Sanchez’s body hanging from a tree deep inside the expanse of Flushing Meadows Park at a spot within eyesight of the massive globe that commemorates the 1964 World’s Fair. Comment

Lisa Roy’s “untitled, bar stools, 20 x 30” at g–module. Comment

In what looks like a major defeat for opponents of gay rights in California, the Campaign for California Families missed a key filing deadline in its campaign to roll back the state’s new domestic partnership law, AB 205. Comment

“Cleopatra’s Wedding Present” is that unusual book that captures the reader from the first page with its invitation to a world where most Westerners have never ventured. Comment

It has been said of the New York Times that it underwent a transformation more than a decade ago. The Gray Lady, which had been so hostile to homosexuals that it would not use the word “gay” in its pages, had turned pink. Suddenly, the Times was gay all over. Comment

Melissa Ferrick has three club dates this month. (PHOTO BY: Greg Kessler) Comment

Let’s call her Liberal Lady. She isn’t quite aware of it, but in her own way, she’s an enemy of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community. Comment

Mayor-Elect Gavin Newsom. Comment

News reports about former Vice President Al Gore’s endorsement of Howard Dean have, in my opinion, placed far too much weight on its role in placing an establishment and centrist imprimatur on the former Vermont governor’s presidential aspirations. Comment

In the hands of director Tim Burton, “Big Fish,” a comedy-drama about a son reconnecting with his father on his deathbed, is more fun than it has any right to be. This winning, whimsical yarn may be a bit sentimental at times, but it is also darkly funny and frequently magical. Comment

One week after Shepard died, activists in New York’s gay community called for a march on October 19, starting at 59th Street near the Plaza Hotel and terminating further down Fifth Avenue at Madison Square Park at a candlelight vigil. The organizers expected 200 people, but an estimated 5,000 people showed up, and more people joined the march as it proceeded down the street. Comment

Dutch, Titan, Shadow; background: Minx, Masque, Ark, Volt, Suave, Glitch, Fable, Alloy, Fenix. Comment

Stephanie King, Matsuhide Nakashima, and Tiffany Mills. Comment

John Rechy is the author of many books, most notably, the gay classic “City of Night” (1963). His latest novel, “The Life and Adventures of Lyle Clemens,” has just been published by Grove Press. Comment

Subject. Comment

Dennis Kucinich, flanked by GLID’s president, Brad Hoylman (r), at UNITE protest against H&M in SoHo on Sunday, December 7. Pamela Doan Comment

Several Democratic presidential contenders re-leased plans to combat the worldwide spread of AIDS on December 1, World AIDS Day, as Tommy Thompson, Secretary of Health and Human Services, visited Zambia and committed U.S. resources in an effort to curtail the disease that is devastating Africa. Comment

NYC WeekHoward Dean flanked by former vice Pres. Al Gore and City Councilmember Bill Perkins Comment

African American gay and bisexual men are about to get caught in a train wreck. I know this because the Chicago Sun Times just told me that in a December 4 story about men living on the down low. Comment

In 1957, Elvis recorded one of the most melancholy Christmas songs of all time. “You’ll be doin’ all right, with your Christmas of white/But I’ll have a blue, blue Christmas,” he crooned in “Blue Christmas.” Looking to outdo the King in the tears-in-your-eggnog department this Christmas is drag star Jackie Beat, who debuts her sixth annual holiday show, “Blew Christmas,” at Fez on December 17. Comment

You may have read in Billy Master’s deliciously cheeky Filth column (www.filth2go.com) that “Taboo”’s producer ROSIE O’DONNELL is planning to take over the role of Big Sue when pregnant actress Liz McCartney takes maternity leave in early 2004. Comment

“Contra/Post,” at the James Graham Gallery, features six artists whose play on formal considerations tie them together. Joe Fyfe, James Hyde, Ross Knight, Ruth Root, Nancy Shaver, and Dan Walsh share this small gallery space reminiscent of an East Village storefront from yesteryear. Comment

Browsing for a gift for that friend with the literary bent? Perhaps you’ve considered queer pulp fiction. Instead, you might think about scoring a fistful of tickets to Lesbian Pulp-O-Rama’s holiday show, “A Very Pulpy Christmas” at HERE. Comment

Richard Easton plays Henry IV, Michael Hayden plays Prince Hal. Comment

Just before the lights went down for the second act of “Taboo,” Rosie O’Donnell, the producer, addressed the audience, a critic’s night, saying, “Thirty-one standing ovations. We must be doing something right. I want to say to all the critics here, we love you. To all those outside…” and she raised both arms above her head with middle fingers extended. Comment

The number one priority of right wing groups across the country is amending the constitutions of the United States and the states themselves, particularly Massachusetts, to limit marriage to a man and a woman. But infighting on the right and hesitation by moderates and even some prominent conservatives may thwart the efforts to codify anti-gay discrimination through such routes. Comment

The ink was barely dry on the Massachusetts State Supreme Court’s gay marriage decision, and the Republican Party was trying to use it as an election year issue to divide Americans. But this issue should not be a polarizing one. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t treat all Americans equally no matter what their race, religion or sexual orientation. That’s why I welcomed the Massachusetts court decision with open arms. Comment

After speaking about his crystal meth addiction in front of hundreds of his peers at a November 16 town meeting, Peter Staley confessed he had not slept the night before and he had almost skipped the event. Comment

The classical world is continually being addressed anew in art and literature. In her new translation of Sappho’s verse “If Not, Winter,” Anne Carson combines the verbal and visual by utilizing the whiteness of the page, magnifying the absence surrounding Sappho’s work. The poems, extant as scraps of text, appear on the page as bare fragments, surrounded by blankness. This is how this ancient world appears to us, in bleached, isolated shards that seem to hold traces of an ideal world of beauty and wisdom that we somehow hope can inform the present. Comment

Just one day after the nation marked the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Pres. John F. Kennedy, the city of San Francisco kicked off a week-long memorial to Harvey Milk, the gay civil rights hero and city supervisor, who was shot to death along with Mayor George Moscone 25 years ago this week. Comment

The number one priority of right wing groups across the country is amending the constitutions of the United States and the states themselves, particularly Massachusetts, to limit marriage to a man and a woman. But infighting on the right and hesitation by moderates and even some prominent conservatives may thwart the efforts to codify anti-gay discrimination through such routes. Comment

The Queens Pride House in Woodside played host on Saturday, November 22 to a preview of “Los Pajaros: Vuelven a Volar” (“The Birds: Fly Again”), a play based on a Mayan Indian […] Comment

The kids’ faces light up as they eye their riches. The celebration dance they perform and the jubilant song they sing—a precocious ditty about a boy named “Roosevelt Petrucious Coleslaw”—is downright joyful. Comment

Guillermo Sanchez, a 21-year-old gay immigrant from Mexico, was found dead in Flushing Meadows Park the night of November 30. To all appearances, the young man had hung himself with a scarf from a tree, but Paul Priore of Queens, Sanchez’s boyfriend, questions if the young man committed suicide or foul play accounts for the death. Comment

Dec. 4-Dec. 10, 2003 Comment

Euan Morton as Boy George and George O’Dowd as Leigh Bowery. Comment

“We’re going to get it done,” New York City Council Speaker Gifford Miller (D-East Side) told Gay City News of the Equal Benefits bill that would compel city contractors to treat the domestic partners of their employees the way they do spouses. But while chief sponsor Christine Quinn (D-Chelsea, Greenwich Village) had predicted a vote in the full Council by the end of the year, Miller said, “I’m not sure about ‘by the end of the year.’ The year is almost over.”  The bill had its first hearing in the Contracts Committee on November 13 and encountered no opposition except from the Bloom Comment

Most opera companies, especially in America, make ends meet doing a very few “standard repertory” of works: the bread-and-butter French and Italian well-known names, with the occasional “Salome” or “Eugene Onegin” to enliven the mix. We in New York are far luckier, but even with two major houses and several concert opera groups, there are still many highly interesting scores one could go a lifetime without hearing live. Anniversaries can help out. Comment

(PHOTO BY Gay City News) Comment

While in my 20s, I hustled during financially desperate times, and did so with no major qualms, which I see now as typical of the young. I’m now in my late 50s, and haven’t had sex for many years, a decision I willingly made. Comment

e Comment

The ruling in favor of Lisa Barrett, who is representing herself in the lawsuit, demonstrates the importance of the growing body of published court decisions in empowering transgendered prisoners to assert their interests in the courts. Comment

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (DCD) has announced $49 million in HIV prevention grants that require grantees to prove that their efforts are effective and focus more on doing prevention among people who are already infected with the virus. Comment

November 21, 2003 Comment

News Briefs Comment

After several months of worry in the gay and lesbian community that the U.S. Supreme Court’s Lawrence decision striking down sodomy laws and the move toward same-sex marriage in Canada might be spawning a shift to the right in Americans’ attitudes, the good news may be that the backlash has blinked. Comment

“Down? Tired? Depressed? (you may be elegible),” 2003, charcoal wall drawing. Comment

It was a cold, rainy day in Boston when I looked up at the old news zipper above the Harvard Square subway kiosk and read that Harvey Milk and George Moscone had been assassinated that day in San Francisco. Comment

Richard McCullough, 29, has been in custody since his surrender on May 15, following a police manhunt after the attack. Comment

It takes about 15 minutes to grope your way into “21 Grams” and start to make sense out of what’s going on. This is because director Alejandro González Iñárritu and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga and editor Stephen Mirrione have chosen to play a game of what smart-ass kids used to call 52 Pickup. Comment

The Wisconsin legislature voted 63-33 to support an effort to overturn Gov. Jim Doyle’s veto of the state’s Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) last week, falling one vote short of enacting the legislation. The Democratic governor said the bill was “mean-spirited.” He also said it was unnecessary since marriage is already defined as being between a man and woman in Wisconsin. Thirty-seven states have passed local DOMAs and Ohio is in the process of considering one. Minnesota already has a law banning same-sex marriage, but two right wing legislators there would now like to enshrine it in their state constitut Comment

Just one day after the nation marked the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Pres. John F. Kennedy, the city of San Francisco kicked off a week-long memorial to Harvey Milk, the gay civil rights hero and city supervisor, who was shot to death along with Mayor George Moscone 25 years ago this week. Comment

November 19, 2003 Comment

As Claude J. Summers notes in “The Gay & Lesbian Literary Heritage,” Wilde was “one of the most accomplished writers of his generation, but quite apart from his actual literary achievement, he is significant as a symbolic figure who exemplified a way of being homosexual at a pivotal moment in the emergence of gay consciousness, the crucial final decade of the nineteenth century.” Comment

Arnold Schwarzenegger was piquantly overwhelmed as he took to the stage, the maddening crowd chanting his name over and over: “I felt their energy running through me like this fantastic pump,” Arnold said. “They were screaming, flashbulbs were going off, I was caught up in the strange, unreal splendor of it.” Comment

Eric Rodriguez, like most people living with HIV and AIDS, has a complex relationship with the word “positive.” Having lived with the virus since October of 2000, Rodriguez knows first hand that the task of educating oneself about options and maintaining a positive outlook in the face of a life-threatening illness can seem formidable to say the least. Comment

DAMIAN S. BUSHART, 22 Comment

An operatic revival doesn’t always mean that the original production is literally brought back to life. Sometimes it’s more like a gourmet meal reheated in a microwave oven. The Metropolitan Opera’s second run of the late Herbert Wernicke’s staging of “Die Frau Ohne Schatten” (first seen two years ago) unfortunately follows this rule; the performance on November 21 offered only intermittent excitement both musically and dramatically. Comment

What would you do if you could know how your actions today would affect history, how the ripple caused by one choice would resonate over decades, even a century? If you could know the result of what you did today, would you make a different choice? Comment

It takes about 15 minutes to grope your way into “21 Grams” and start to make sense out of what’s going on. This is because director Alejandro González Iñárritu and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga and editor Stephen Mirrione have chosen to play a game of what smart-ass kids used to call 52 Pickup. Comment

It takes about 15 minutes to grope your way into “21 Grams” and start to make sense out of what’s going on. This is because director Alejandro González Iñárritu and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga and editor Stephen Mirrione have chosen to play a game of what smart-ass kids used to call 52 Pickup. Comment

Funk’s mother, Gloria Pacis, called his sentence “a gross injustice.” She also said that she prefers her son in jail rather than facing combat in Iraq or elsewhere. Pacis is unequivocally opposed to the war in Iraq and is a peace activist who regularly appears at anti-war rallies and demonstrations denouncing the foreign policy of the Bush administration. Comment

While advocates for same-sex marriage insist that the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s decision last week means that licenses will be issued to gay and lesbian couples by May 2004, state leaders are still pursuing a civil union plan that they assert will comply with the court order and a state constitutional amendment to undo it. The politicians’ plans to thwart the drive for marriage come despite new polls showing most Bay State residents in support of the court’s decision, written by Chief Justice Margaret Marshall who grew up in apartheid South Africa and once said, “Justice is not hypothetical to me.” Comment

After a stressful autumn, the New York Philharmonic is looking forward to some holiday cheer with two “Don’t Miss” events. Comment

But there’s a cure for anyone eager to shake off Broadway’s recent maladies, and it takes only two-and-a-half delightful hours at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre to do so. Comment

This summer, New York City rolled out what has the potential of being the most significant housing initiative since the 1980s: Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s “New Housing Marketplace.” If fully implemented, the mayor’s plan could produce and preserve 65,000 housing units during the next five years. Comment

A New York State Education Department hearing officer, Dr. Joel M. Douglas, upheld the firing of Terence Brunson, a tenured social studies teacher at Morris High School in the Bronx, for his anti-lesbian speech and actions at the school. Comment

As law enforcement scrutiny of protest groups is increasing nationwide, some Brooklyn activists are charging that the police beat and harassed them outside a party early in the morning on November 16. They charged that some of the police action was homophobic in nature. Comment

Houghton Miflin Comment

Free HIV Testing Comment

I’m flying home for Thanksgiving weekend, back up to Michigan. I think it was last year when you said that the holidays are definitely not a good time to talk to family about being gay or lesbian. You said that it is a stressful time and that it will only make your family think you’re determined to mess things up or something like that. With all of the stories in the news about gay marriage, it’s going to be hard not to talk about it. I’m sure they will bring it up and all throw out opinions. There are 23 people coming for dinner to my parents’ home. I told my parents I am a lesbian a year and Comment

Federal appeals courts on opposite coasts have split over the Board of Immigration Appeals’ refusals to grant asylum to two gay men from China. The two decisions reflect a fundamental disagreement about the evidentiary weight to be given to airport interviews of newly-arrived asylum applicants by U.S. immigration officials, Comment

A federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study found that HIV diagnoses in 29 states grew 5.1 percent from 1999 to 2002, with rates among African Americans remaining high, but stable and Latinos and gay and bisexual men showing significant increases. Comment

Following a town meeting at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center that drew hundreds of people who are concerned about rising HIV infections among gay and bisexual men, participants continue to offer a range of suggestions on efforts to address the crisis. Comment

built by a decade’s frugality Comment

with earth tones and organic brushstrokes Comment

the viewer with an evocation of master work Comment