July 1, 2008.
Being a retiree, and having time, if not money, I spent several hours in my local library yesterday, just to see what was in the magazines.
I had liked the current issue of Time, which I get for $15 a year as a senior citizen (a term Don Slater hated) but can’t see every publication, and Jim Kepner would be nuts by now with all the good coverage on our issues in lots of publications, much less tv soap operas.
The July issue of GQ magazine has a great long article on Bishop Gene Robinson.
The June 11th issue of The New Republic has a 2 view article on the California marriage decision. One view is that it, and this is the Don Slater view, is that it is wrong to say we are a “suspect class” and it could hurt the cause. It could be a victory in the battle but could prolong the war for a decade due to backlash. I think that was the Jeffrey Rosen view.
The other view is that we would have had to face the issue sooner or later, just enjoy it and don’t worry the amendment may not pass — the view of Richard Just.
I see no email address for the publication, but someone should thank them for the discussion and make the obvious point that — for us this is a win-win situation — we will not have lost something we never had and, as it says, this is an education process that has to take place anyway. It may be costly for us, but think how much time, energy, and money the bigots are having to waste — including the Catholic and Mormon churches. That alone would make it something Slater would have to be a part of.
Names are not exclusive, and so what two names jumped out at me in different publications: “Dale Jennings,” in San Diego — and the letter (I think it was in American History) was talking about an article that told about J. Edgar Hoover’s desire to end habeas corpus and arrest all the dissidents he disliked — the claim is that arrangement for jails has been made already.
And in a religious magazine, Charisma or Christianity Today, there is mention of a “Paul Cain” in regard to a religious event in Lakeland FL, and I gather he has been accused of sexual violations (hetero).
And in the same type of book on black civil rights history like the one I recently reviewed on Bayard Rustin, here in The Nation is a review of a book that should mention him, but the review does not and yet has coverage of the same issues — use of Communistic issues to attack the movement yet that may have been a source that helped it.
And here is coverage of a black, cross-dressing lesbian feminist, named Pauli Murray, and this is in the 1940s I think, but she was involved in some type of March on Washington that I think was before Rustin’s. The book is Defying Dixie: Radical Roots of Civil Rights, by Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, published by Norton. I think she either went to Howard later and may have taught law.
And finally, the question in New Orleans Magazine about an early bar — and it is the My-O-My, which I knew about but never went to, a female impersonation bar on the lakefront in New Orleans.
And this is only a few publications.
Poor Jim Kepner. He would not have been able to do the news section even if he spent 24 hours a day. What a wonderful problem though: almost every article is favorable. Even a mention of the marriage in either Charisma or Christianity Today (or maybe Christian Century, but I don’t think so as it is a liberal publication anyway) which refers to the logical way to handle it saying: things can be immoral but not illegal.
I think we miss a lot by not going to our library once in a while and just seeing what we have missed. Again, I know of no LGBT publication that covers such things. I glance at things like Queer News, but it is limited in what it covers.
