Thursday, May 17, 2012
Anti-Gay Virginia Lawmaker Explains His Decision To Block Gay Judge: ‘Sodomy Is Not A Civil Right’
Anti-Gay Virginia Lawmaker Explains His Decision To Block Gay Judge: ‘Sodomy Is Not A Civil Right’: pEarlier this week, the Virginia House of Delegates rejected Tracy Thorne-Begland, a former Navy pilot and top Virginia prosecutor, for a seat on Virginia’s lowest ranking trial court because, in the words of Del. Bob Marshall (R-VA), Thorne-Begland’s gay “lifestyle is exactly contrary to” his obligation to uphold the state constitution. On CNN this morning, [...]/p
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Obama Confronts GOP’s Anti-Gay Agenda, Threatens Veto Of ‘License To Bully’ Bill
Obama Confronts GOP’s Anti-Gay Agenda, Threatens Veto Of ‘License To Bully’ Bill: pThe Obama administration announced yesterday that it would consider vetoing two bills put forth by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, both of which contain anti-gay provisions. In its one Statement of Administration Policy, the White House outlined numerous reasons it opposes the House version of the National Defense Authorization Act, which contains a military “license [...]/p
Monday, May 14, 2012
GOP Rep. Lankford Explains Why It Should Be Legal To Fire Someone For Being Gay: ‘It’s A Choice Issue’
GOP Rep. Lankford Explains Why It Should Be Legal To Fire Someone For Being Gay: ‘It’s A Choice Issue’: pRep. James Lankford (R-OK) told ThinkProgress last week that he believes someone should be able to be fired for his or her sexual orientation. In a conversation on Capitol Hill, Lankford expressed his strong belief that being gay is a choice, and that LGBT workers should not be protected from workplace discrimination because it’s something [...]/p
Sunday, May 13, 2012
Wall Street Journal Editor Shrugs At Romney’s Anti-Gay High School Bullying: ‘So What?’
Wall Street Journal Editor Shrugs At Romney’s Anti-Gay High School Bullying: ‘So What?’: pAn article in The Washington Post last week outed Mitt Romney, the likely Republican presidential nominee, as a bully in high school who once targeted a presumed gay classmate. Romney has said he does not remember the incident, but he added that they used to play pranks at his prep school that may have gone [...]/p
Friday, May 11, 2012
Former Romney Classmate Describes ‘Bullying Supreme’ – A ‘Pack of Dogs’ Who Targeted ‘Different’ Boy
Former Romney Classmate Describes ‘Bullying Supreme’ – A ‘Pack of Dogs’ Who Targeted ‘Different’ Boy: A high school classmate of presidential candidate Mitt Romney told ABC News today that he considers a particular prank the two pulled at Michigan’s Cranbrook School to be “assault and battery” and that he witnessed Romney hold the scissors to cut the hair of a...
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Romney was the guy who bullied you in high school
From Washington Post: By Jason Horowitz, Updated: Thursday, May 10, 11:07 AM
BLOOMFIELD HILLS, Mich. — Mitt Romney returned from a three-week spring break in 1965 to resume his studies as a high school senior at the prestigious Cranbrook School. Back on the handsome campus, studded with Tudor brick buildings and manicured fields, he spotted something he thought did not belong at a school where the boys wore ties and carried briefcases. John Lauber, a soft-spoken new student one year behind Romney, was perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality. Now he was walking around the all-boys school with bleached-blond hair that draped over one eye, and Romney wasn’t having it.
“He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!” an incensed Romney told Matthew Friedemann, his close friend in the Stevens Hall dorm, according to Friedemann’s recollection. Mitt, the teenaged son of Michigan Gov. George Romney, kept complaining about Lauber’s look, Friedemann recalled.
A few days later, Friedemann entered Stevens Hall off the school’s collegiate quad to find Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut Lauber’s hair. Friedemann followed them to a nearby room where they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors.
The incident was recalled similarly by five students, who gave their accounts independently of one another. Four of them — Friedemann, now a dentist; Phillip Maxwell, a lawyer; Thomas Buford, a retired prosecutor; and David Seed, a retired principal — spoke on the record. Another former student who witnessed the incident asked not to be named. The men have differing political affiliations, although they mostly lean Democratic. Buford volunteered for Barack Obama’s campaign in 2008. Seed, a registered independent, has served as a Republican county chairman in Michigan. All of them said that politics in no way colored their recollections.
“It happened very quickly, and to this day it troubles me,” said Buford, the school’s wrestling champion, who said he joined Romney in restraining Lauber. Buford subsequently apologized to Lauber, who was “terrified,” he said. “What a senseless, stupid, idiotic thing to do.”
“It was a hack job,” recalled Maxwell, a childhood friend of Romney who was in the dorm room when the incident occurred. “It was vicious.”
“He was just easy pickins,” said Friedemann, then the student prefect, or student authority leader of Stevens Hall, expressing remorse about his failure to stop it.
The incident transpired in a flash, and Friedemann said Romney then led his cheering schoolmates back to his bay-windowed room in Stevens Hall.
Friedemann, guilt ridden, made a point of not talking about it with his friend and waited to see what form of discipline would befall Romney at the famously strict institution. Nothing happened.
(What’s your opinion: Are Romney’s high school actions relevant to his campaign?)
Romney is now the presumed Republican presidential nominee. In a radio interview Thursday morning, Romney said he didn’t remember the incident but apologized for pranks he helped orchestrate that he said “might have gone too far.”
His campaign spokeswoman, Andrea Saul, said in a statement that “anyone who knows Mitt Romney knows that he doesn’t have a mean-spirited bone in his body. The stories of fifty years ago seem exaggerated and off base and Governor Romney has no memory of participating in these incidents.”
Campaign officials denied a request for an interview with Romney. They also declined to comment further about his years at Cranbrook.
After the incident, Lauber seemed to disappear. He returned days later with his shortened hair back to its natural brown. He finished the year, but ultimately left the school before graduation — thrown out for smoking a cigarette.
Sometime in the mid-1990s, David Seed noticed a familiar face at the end of a bar at Chicago O’Hare International Airport.
“Hey, you’re John Lauber,” Seed recalled saying at the start of a brief conversation. Seed, also among those who witnessed the Romney-led incident, had gone on to a career as a teacher and principal. Now he had something to get off his chest.
“I’m sorry that I didn’t do more to help in the situation,” he said.
Lauber paused, then responded, “It was horrible.” He went on to explain how frightened he was during the incident, and acknowledged to Seed, “It’s something I have thought about a lot since then.”
Lauber died in 2004, according to his three sisters.
Romney came of age during his six years at Cranbrook. First as a day student and later as a full-time boarder, he embraced and became emblematic of the Cranbrook way — a strict disciplinary code and academic rigor that governed the school by day and a free-wheeling unofficial boys code of “Crannies” at night. Wherever the action was, so was Romney. He wrote the most letters to the girls at the sister school across the lake and successfully petitioned to get placed in the top classes. He was not a natural athlete, but found his place among the jocks by managing the hockey team and leading megaphone cheers for the football team. Although a devout Mormon, one of the few at the school, he was less defined by his faith than at any other time in his life. He was a member of 11 school organizations, including the Spectator’s Club and the homecoming committee, and started the school’s booster outfit, the Blue Key Club.
It was at Cranbrook where he first lived on his own, found his future wife and made his own decisions. One can see the institution’s influence on his demeanor and actions during those years, but also how it helped form the clubbiness and earnestness, the sense of leadership and enthusiasm, apparent in his careers as a businessman and a politician. “He strongly bought in to community service,” said Richard Moon, a schoolmate at the time. “That hard work was its own reward.” What is less visible today is what was most apparent to his prep-school peers: his jocularity.
Now, nearly half a century later, Romney’s presidential campaign has turned to the candidate’s youthful antics as evidence of his capacity for harmless, humanizing pranks and as an indication of his looser, less wooden self.
“There’s a wild and crazy man inside of there just waiting to come out,” Romney’s wife, Ann — a graduate of Cranbrook’s sister school, Kingswood — attested in a television interview this month, evoking what she saw as his endearing and fun-loving prep-school persona. Many of Romney’s peers from his high school days echo that version of the candidate, describing him as the humble son of an automobile executive-turned-governor who volunteered at the nearby mental hospital. They recall an infectious laugh, a characterization first documented in his senior yearbook.
“If you should ever by chance be walking down the [Stevens Hall] corridor at 2:00 a.m. and hear rising tones of boisterous, exuberant laughter, you are almost sure to find its source is Mitt Romney,” the yearbook reported. “A quiet joke, a panicky laughter and another of the Friedemann-Romney all-night marathon contests has begun.”
But Friedemann and several people closest to Romney in those formative years say there was a sharp edge to him. In an English class, Gary Hummel, who was a closeted gay student at the time, recalled that his efforts to speak out in class were punctuated with Romney shouting, “Atta girl!” In the culture of that time and place, that was not entirely out of the norm. Hummel recalled some teachers using similar language.
Saul, Romney’s campaign spokeswoman, said the candidate has no recollection of the incident.
Teachers were also the butt of Romney’s brand of humor.
One venerable English teacher, Carl G. Wonnberger, nicknamed “the Bat” for his diminished eyesight, was known to walk into the trophy case and apologize, step into wastepaper baskets and stare blindly as students slipped out the back of the room to smoke by the open windows. Once, several students remembered the time pranksters propped up the back axle of Wonnberger’s Volkswagen Beetle with two-by-fours and watched, laughing from the windows, as the unwitting teacher slammed the gas pedal with his wheels spinning in the air.
As an underclassman, Romney accompanied Wonnberger and Pierce Getsinger, another student, from the second floor of the main academic building to the library to retrieve a book the two boys needed. According to Getsinger, Romney opened a first set of doors for Wonnberger, but then at the next set, with other students around, he swept his hand forward, bidding the teacher into a closed door. Wonnberger walked right into it and Getsinger said Romney giggled hysterically as the teacher shrugged it off as another of life’s indignities.
“I always enjoyed his pranks,” said Stu White, a popular friend of Romney’s who went on to a career as a public school teacher and has long been bothered by the Lauber incident. “But I was not the brunt of any of his pranks.”
In later years, after Romney went on a Mormon mission, married and raised five sons, he seemed a different person to some old classmates. “Mitt began to change as a person when he met Ann Davies. He gradually became a more serious person. She was part of the process of him maturing and becoming more of the person he is today,” said Jim Bailey, who was a classmate of Romney’s at Cranbrook and later at Harvard.
* * *
By the 1950s, George and Lenore Romney had cracked the Motor City firmament and made their home in the exclusive enclave of Bloomfield Hills. When it came to educating their children, the clear choice was Cranbrook.
Built in 1927 by George Booth, publisher of the Detroit News, and named after his father’s alma mater in Kent, England, Cranbrook stood out as an architectural gem in the Michigan woods. Modeled on British boarding schools with “forms” instead of grades, “prefects” instead of RAs, “masters” instead of teachers, it also boasted the work of famed Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen. Cranbrook had all the trappings of an elite school where kids walked around like junior executives and, as Tom Elliott, Class of 1966, recalled, learned mantras such as, “Remember who you are, and what you represent.”
“If you went to Cranbrook,” said a classmate, Peter “the Bird” Werbel. “You were crème de la crème.”
The Romney children walked under arches reading “A Life Without Beauty Is Only Half Lived”; past a field overlooked by Greek-style sculptures where the Detroit Lions practiced; and then a statuette of the school’s symbol, the archer from Book V of Virgil’s “Aeneid,” who “aimed an arrow high.” (In the mug honoring Romney’s Class of 1965, a naked woman replaced the aiming archer.) They looked out of leaded-glass windows in the academic buildings, crossed the spruce-spotted quad lined with modernist fountains and sleek statues of coursing hounds. They studied in reading rooms featuring frescoes and marble friezes. In the chandeliered dining room, students waited on fellow students and sat on straight-backed spindle chairs bearing the school’s insignia of a proud crane. After dinner, they wiped their mouths with cloth napkins.
In 1959, Mitt Romney enrolled at Cranbrook as a 12-year-old seventh-grader.
For the most part, the school broke down along the usual lines of jocks and brains, popular kids and introverts, all trained with the expectation of joining the next generation’s elite. The students gave one another chummy nicknames. There was Moonie and Butch, the Kraut and Flip. Romney, his name short to begin with, was playfully teased with chants of Wiiillard, Wiiillard by his friends.
Ron Sill, a Romney classmate especially attuned to the counter-culture of the 1960s, rolled his eyes at the dance instruction and lessons on how to hold a teacup and properly shake a man’s hand. He preferred to listen to folk music in the coffee shops of neighboring Birmingham. Taro Yamasaki, the son of the architect of the World Trade Center and several Bloomfield Hills houses, then went by the name Michael and encountered what he called a “veiled racism.” “I was a linebacker in football,” said Yamasaki, who went on to become a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer. “And the coaches would call me Kamikaze.” Sidney Barthwell, the son of a prominent Detroit pharmacist, was the only African American student in Romney’s class from the seventh through 12th grades. Now a Detroit magistrate, he said he tried to introduce some west Detroit swagger to the school, but it was, he said, “pretty Republican and pretty waspy.”
There was a significant Jewish contingent, and several of those students said they never sensed any obvious prejudice. During Romney’s tenure, there were also Middle Eastern exchange students, usually from Kuwait.
Abdulhadi M. al-Awadi, a Kuwaiti student, had fond memories of the school and the respect and special attention he received from teachers. He recalled Romney as the “son of Governor Romney” who was “very sociable.” When some students put up pictures of Israeli statesman David Ben-Gurion in the hallway near his room, he did not believe it was meant intentionally to offend him, but he was bothered by it. “It’s human nature. But they did it. That’s their right.”
Faisel F. al-Abduljadir, a Kuwaiti student spending his senior year at Cranbrook in part to improve his English, said the teachers and students went out of their way to treat him with respect, showing consideration for his celebration of Ramadan and bathing requirements. But he acknowledged being “angry” about a caption under his picture in the senior yearbook that read, “Take a left at the next Synagogue.”
Religion was not much of an issue for the students. There was mandatory chapel time on Tuesdays and Thursdays when they sang Episcopalian hymns and the school song, “Forty Years On,” but it was studiously nondenominational. The campus’s elegant Christ Church had a Star of David, an Islamic crescent, and Yin and Yang sign above its wooden door. The Mormon Romney joined Jews and Protestants on Cranbrook’s Church Cabinet, which focused on community service.
Some students admired Romney for what they saw as his lack of airs, saying he did not trade on his father’s status as an auto executive and governor. Romney even came in for teasing because American Motors, the company his father ran, was considered at the bottom rung of the big auto hierarchy, below General Motors, Ford and Chrysler.
“Boys in a boys’ school can tease and make fun of almost anything,” said Bailey, a scholarship student and head prefect of the school who described Romney at the time as an awkward adolescent with a penchant for practical jokes. The children of other auto executives would taunt Romney for the Ramblers he and his father drove. “That’s not a car, that’s a bicycle with a dishwasher for an engine,” Bailey recalled them saying.
Others noticed a distance between themselves and Romney. “I was a scholarship student and he was the son of the governor,” said Lance Leithauser, now a doctor, who attended the school with his brother, Brad, now a noted poet. “There was a bit of a gulf.” Even a close pal like Friedemann felt that distance; their friendship was confined to the dorms. When Romney left the campus on weekends, he never invited him. “I didn’t quite fit into the social circle. I didn’t have a car when I was 16,” Friedemann said. “I couldn’t go skiing or whatever they did.”
Lou Vierling, a scholarship student who boarded at Cranbrook for the 1960 and 1961 academic years, was struck by a question Romney asked them when they first met. “He wanted to know what my father did for a living,” Vierling recalled. “He wanted to know if my mother worked. He wanted to know what town I lived in.” As Vierling explained that his father taught school, that he commuted from east Detroit, he noticed a souring of Romney’s demeanor.
Romney was bowled over by the wealth of some of his friends. He briefly dated Mary Fisher, the daughter of the philanthropist and diplomat Max Fisher, who acted as a finance chairman to George Romney’s political campaigns. At her house, he watched the James Bond film “Goldfinger” in the family’s private theater before it was widely released. He reported excitedly back to Friedemann about the theater, noting that the seats even had numbers.
The largest chasm of all at Cranbrook was between the boarders and the “day boys.” Students within the limits of Detroit’s Eight Mile Road had the option to attend the school without boarding. The requirements for enrollment as a day student were generally tougher, leading day boys to consider themselves academically superior. Day boys also had the freedom to leave campus when school let out late in the afternoon. Often those with cars would gas up at nearby service stations, cruise Woodward Avenue and plot “how and where we could get some beer,” said Gregg Dearth, who went by the nickname Daiquiri Dearth. Drugs were generally unheard of, but day boy parties often included someone downing beers or toting bottles of scotch.
Romney began his Cranbrook career as a day boy and quickly adapted to the school’s unofficial code. He was prohibited by his religion from drinking alcohol but excelled at elaborate practical jokes.
During spring break of his senior year, when most of his friends went to Florida for vacation, Romney stayed behind to make movies for an upcoming Cranbrook talent show. For one, he filmed his friends Stu White and Judy Sherman seated at a table to dine on fine china on a Woodward Avenue median as their friend Pike John, now deceased, acted as the waiter. Romney filmed the luncheon until a police officer pulled up. “And that was it,” Sherman said.
But in a well-known prank in which Romney flashed a police siren and, bearing a fake badge and cap, approached two friends and their dates parked on a dark country road, there was a stronger undercurrent of fear to the incident than commonly conveyed. Candy Porter, a Kingswood boarder from a small town in Ohio, had a strict 11 p.m. curfew. As Romney and his Cranbrook pals played out the joke, pretending to be shocked over empty bourbon bottles in the trunk, Porter thought of the dorm mothers waiting at the door and the threat of expulsion. “I just remember being like a deer in headlights,” she said. “I just remember being terrified.” Once she realized it was all a prank, and was safely back at her dorm, Porter joined in the laughter.
Romney’s sense of humor ran through his family.
Sherman, a friend of the Romneys from high school, recalled Ann telling her about the time Romney and his older brother, Scott, dressed up in white coats and wheeled a gurney up to the Birmingham train station to meet their aunt. When she got off the train, they rushed her away as if to a madhouse.
* * *
By the time Romney started dating Ann in his senior year, he had immersed himself into the Cranbrook culture. In 1962, when his father won the governorship and his parents moved to Lansing, he entered the boarding life as a resident of Stevens Hall, named after the school’s first headmaster. From the inside, Cranbrook was an entirely different place.
“The day students,” said Steph Lady, a boarder and now a screenwriter in Hollywood, “it was like they didn’t even go there.”
Romney breathed Cranbrook day and night.
He met the Kingswood girls at the Get Acquainted Dance in the school gym. There was the Chateau de Noel girl-ask-boy dance at Christmas, and the World A-Fair, in which students dressed up in the garb of other nations. He sang in the Glee Club and started the Blue Key Club, an organization of students who “know the campus and Cranbrook traditions well” and served as ambassador to parents and prospective students. The school newspaper noted that his “diligent and capable leadership” of the homecoming weekend, where he delivered a “brilliantly hilarious monologue,” earned him a citation reserved for “students whose contributions to school life are often not fully recognized through already existing channels.” He was co-chairman of the Speculators Club and played a leading role in the American Field Service, which helped bring foreign students to the campus. He also served a leadership role on a student cabinet organization and during his senior year took a bus with some Kingswood girls to volunteer at the nearby state mental hospital. There, he danced to spinning 45s and talked and ate chips with the young patients.
“His altruism was apparent then and is apparent now,” said Candy Porter, who volunteered with Romney at the hospital. “I just remember him being really nice,” said Mary Fisher.
Romney also found time to contribute to the school paper as a special correspondent at the funeral of President John F. Kennedy. “Mitt Romney Comments on Kennedy Funeral,” read the front page headline on the Dec. 17, 1963, edition of the Crane. “Note: Personal comments and observations made by Mitt Romney in Washington, Nov. 25, 1963.”
“The old Washington theory of relativity, briefly: one is important only until a bigger brass appears, was blatently [sic] obvious for whenever before have we had the top potentates of the world here to outrank our dignitaries? We all recall the day when we saw a senator of the like in some big, black limosine [sic] drive through our town. Most likely our mouths were hanging wide open as our Mommies and Daddies told us the man out there was a very important person who worked in Washington.”
* * *
Even without extracurricular activities, Cranbrook demanded long days. The morning bell rang at 7 and breakfast was served in the dining hall at 7:30, coat and tie required. After breakfast, students returned to clean their rooms in anticipation of white-gloved senior prefects who scoured the bed frames for dust. After classes and study hall at 9:30, students could go beneath Stevens Hall to the school store, where the boys received letters, via an inter-school postal service, from the girls at Kingswood. Some were perfumed.
The letters Romney wrote were delivered to the Green Lobby in Kingswood. Around 10:15 every morning, the girls, all wearing saddle shoes, hoped to hear their names called amid walls of rich green tile, and banisters, benches and clocks all in the art deco style.
“The person who wrote the most consistently was Mitt,” said Lyn Moon Shields, who dated Romney in the fall semester of 1964. Gentlemanly and fun, Romney was her best date in her six years at school. He called every evening and picked her up in his powder blue Rambler and drove her up and down Woodward Avenue on weekends, and to school dances where she wore blue-green formal dresses and he a dark suit and tie. “Things were so innocent,” she said. “We kissed each other, I think Mitt would admit to that.” One day, she said, Romney just stopped calling. He had taken an interest in a Kingswood sophomore. “They got intentional about their relationship very soon,” Shields said of Mitt and Ann.
Like every other student, Romney completed a rigorous workload that made most college requirements seem easy by comparison. Between the seventh and eighth grades, the faculty selected a dozen or so students to enter an advanced-placement program. Romney at first was not among the chosen, and he objected. “He went into the headmaster and convinced him that ‘I should be in this,’ ” John French, who had been friends with Romney since they served together as Cub Scouts, recalled Romney telling him. “He had gumption. He had his sights on what he wanted to achieve.”
The time after class was set aside for sports. Romney was not a natural athlete, according to classmates. He wore the Cranbrook “C” on his white tank top as a cross-country runner, but the greatest impression he made in that pursuit was collapsing near the finish line during a meet — although his perseverance won him admiration and applause. He was more at home on the sidelines, cheering the football team on as a member of the Pep Club, chanting such cheers into a megaphone as “Iron them out. Iron them out. Smooooth.”
He participated on the school’s hockey team as its manager, lugging a duffle bag full of pucks and sticks. Dressed in suit and tie and three-quarter coat, he rode the bus with the uniformed players and kept stats in the coach’s box at the cold outdoor rink. The team’s senior year began with promise, but ended badly. The players took out their frustration on the ice, getting into brawls with Lakeview and Catholic Central. During one fight, Maxwell pulled the jersey over the head of an opposing player and pummeled away. Romney dashed onto the ice, slipping and sliding in his Brogan wingtips in an apparent attempt to break up the fight.
During the winter of Romney’s sophomore year, the faculty assigned him and Maxwell to mop the floors of the academic halls, part of a World War II-era program meant to instill a work ethic in the students. During their six-week detail, the two old friends had long, rambling conversations about religion, and Maxwell pressed Romney on how he could believe in Mormonism.
As Maxwell later recalled their discussion, he asked Romney, “How can you believe that thing about the tablets?” referring to the divine gold tablets Mormons believe were discovered in New York and translated by Joseph Smith.
Romney, he said, responded, “What about the Virgin birth and the holy trinity?”
“I don’t believe that either,” Maxwell responded. The discussions ultimately came down to a faith vs. reason equation.
“You simply have to have faith,” Romney concluded.
“That’s a cop-out,” Maxwell said.
While there were seeds of Romney’s future devoutness at Cranbrook, he was then more interested in goofing off. In the evenings, he cut loose with Friedemann, a scholarship kid from the small town of Romeo, dubbed the Kraut. The two boys stayed up late, joking around and racing mops like racehorses up and down the hallway.
One regular in the Stevens Hall revelry was the school’s security guard, Chester. In police uniform, chubby and middle-aged, Chester would let Romney and Friedemann examine and play with his gun. In the student yearbook, Romney posed with his arm around Chester wearing thick black glasses, similar to those the guard wore, but also a ski hat and a silly Jerry Lewis expression. At the Swingin’ Sweeney Dance, Romney pointed a toy gun under his chin as two girls shook hands in front of him. A photo of the pose ran in the yearbook above the caption, “Give a guy enough rope and he’ll hang himself.”
Romney spent months trying to convert Friedemann, the son of New Deal-worshiping Democrats, to the Republican Party. He asked to meet his friend’s grandmother, so that he could convert her, too. “He talked politics all the time,” Friedemann said. “It was more big government versus small government. He was a business guy back then.”
Romney’s political and personal idol, George Romney, was never far away. Once Crawford Elder, a student a year behind Romney, saw the governor in the basement under Stevens Hall getting a haircut from Everett Arthurs, the school barber and part-time bartender at faculty cocktail parties. When Ev, as he was widely known, dropped dead after a round of golf, Gov. Romney eulogized him at a tree dedication ceremony on the quad, a few steps away from his son’s room.
* * *
After lights out, John Lauber often left his door open. Larry Olson and some other boarders would check for the hall monitor they called Sneaky Pete and slip into Lauber’s room. From there, they would crawl out his window, climb over the bushes and scurry off campus to Lone Pine Road, where a pizza truck regularly parked. Sated, they would climb back through the window and check on the bottles of apple juice that they hoped fermenting grapes would turn into hard cider. Then Lauber and his friends played poker until the early morning.
When Lauber’s younger sister, Betsy, visited the campus, she said she found him happy and sporting a preppy look. He took her to an off-campus party at a fellow student’s house where they danced to Motown records and laughed.
But he was always a bit different from the rest. During breaks from school, he worked as a mortician’s assistant. He spent more time devouring books than making friends in clubs.
“He was very quiet, not a jock,” said Steph Lady. “Very soft-spoken. I know nothing, probably gay, but who knows. We were so stupid and naïve. I know there was homosexuality there but we didn’t even have a word for it. And there was homophobia then, too.”
On an overcast Saturday, David Craig, a senior prefect and day student, drove his car down Martell Drive along the school grounds and saw a figure duck into the hedges. He thought the person might be trespassing and stopped, only to find Lauber puffing on a cigarette. In a move that he said he later regretted as an excess of the “dorm trooper” mentality instilled by Cranbrook, Craig reported Lauber to the headmaster. Soon after, Lauber was expelled.
“He just disappeared,” Lady said.
Sudden disappearances at Cranbrook were not unheard of. Students might pass a dorm neighbor on the way to class and come back hours later, with all their belongings gone and their beds stripped by maintenance staff. Bad behavior and bad grades were not tolerated.
Ben Snyder, who as an assistant headmaster later spearheaded the school’s effort to recruit inner-city students, said Cranbrook in Romney’s time “had its standards and applied them briskly when needed.” As chairman of a group of faculty members and students who were in charge of discipline, he described a strict school in which offenders could be “dismissed, period.” Snyder could not recall dealing with any transgressions involving Romney. “I wouldn’t expect to see him,” Snyder said of the disciplinary tribunals. “The family was so straight, they don’t do those types of things.”
On June 12, 1965, Romney concluded his Cranbrook career at a commencement ceremony at the Christ Church, in which his father delivered a keynote address reported on by the local papers.
“This is a special occasion for us as a family,” George Romney told the gathered boys before emphasizing that religion and “the one girlfriend whom you finally take the greatest interest in” and good health habits were critical for a successful life. So, he said, was character. “Developing character is going to be more important than your education from now on.” The ceremony concluded with all the boys singing a final rendition of their school song, “Forty years on.”
“Forty years on, when afar and asunder
Parted are those who are singing today,
When you look back, and forgetfully wonder
What you were like in your work and your play,
Then, it may be, there will often come o’er you,
Glimpses of notes like the catch of a song –
Visions of boyhood shall float them before you,
Echoes of dreamland shall bear them along,
Follow up! Follow up! Follow up!”
Forty years on, Mitt Romney accepted the school’s 2005 Distinguished Alumni Award.
A year earlier, John Joseph Lauber died at a Seattle hospital.
The boy few at Cranbrook knew or remember was born in Chicago, grew up in South Bend, Ind., and had a hard time fitting in. He liked to wander and “had a glorious sense of the absurd,” according to his sister Betsy. When the chance to get out of Indiana presented itself, he jumped at it, and enrolled at Cranbrook. He never uttered a word about Mitt Romney or the haircut incident to his sisters. After Cranbrook asked him to leave, he finished high school, attended the University of the Seven Seas for two semesters, then graduated in 1970 from Vanderbilt, where he majored in English.
He came out as gay to his family and close friends and led a vagabond life, taking dressage lessons in England and touring with the Royal Lipizzaner Stallion riders. After an extreme fit of temper in front of his mother and sister at home in South Bend, he checked into the Menninger Clinic psychiatric hospital in Topeka, Kan. Later he received his embalmer’s license, worked as a chef aboard big freighters and fishing trawlers, and cooked for civilian contractors during the war in Bosnia and then, a decade later, in Iraq. His hair thinned as he aged, and in the winter of 2004 he returned to Seattle, the closest thing he had to a base. He died there of liver cancer that December.
He kept his hair blond until he died, said his sister Chris. “He never stopped bleaching it.”
Researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
Mitt Romney Outed As Anti-Gay High School Bully
Mitt Romney Outed As Anti-Gay High School Bully: pLast year’s string of heartbreaking suicides by young members of the LGBT community who had been bullied by their classmates led hundreds of celebrities, sports teams, politicians and ordinary citizens to record “It Gets Better” videos. Even President Obama recorded one. One politician who has not: Mitt Romney, who has been relatively silent on the [...]/p
Wednesday, May 09, 2012
Tony Perkins Claims His Children Are Not Gay Because ‘We Are Teaching Them The Right Ways’
Tony Perkins Claims His Children Are Not Gay Because ‘We Are Teaching Them The Right Ways’: pAs North Carolinians headed to the polls to support Amendment 1, a measure that outlaws marriage equality, civil unions, and domestic partnerships in the state constitution, the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins appeared on CNN to argue that people can become gay because of the “environment they’re raised in” and blamed their marriages on high [...]/p
Saturday, May 05, 2012
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Joel Osteen: ‘The Scripture Says That Being Gay Is A Sin’
Joel Osteen: ‘The Scripture Says That Being Gay Is A Sin’: pMega church leader Joel Osteen reiterated his belief that “the scripture says that being gay is a sin,” telling Fox News’ Chris Wallace Monday morning, “my faith is based on what I believe the scripture says and that’s the way I read the scripture.” Asked if gay people are entitled to equal rights, Osteen insisted [...]/p
Friday, April 27, 2012
What Everyone Who Uses The Internet Needs To Know About CISPA
What Everyone Who Uses The Internet Needs To Know About CISPA: pCongress is on the cusp of passing a new bill that could threaten any internet user’s civil liberties. The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, a digital equivalent of allowing the government to fight perceived threats by monitoring which books citizens check out from the library, passed the House yesterday and will now be taken [...]/p
Friday, April 20, 2012
Missouri Advances ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Bill
Missouri Advances ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Bill: pJust two days after Tennessee advanced its infamous ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill, the state of Missouri referred to committee a measure that would eliminate discussions of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in public schools, prohibit teachers from addressing bullying based on sexual orientation, and likely ban gay-straight alliances. HB 2051 states: 170.370. Notwithstanding any [...]/p
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Monday, April 16, 2012
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Saturday, April 14, 2012
Friday, April 13, 2012
White House Bombarded With Questions About Why Obama Punted On Issuing Anti-Discrimination Order
White House Bombarded With Questions About Why Obama Punted On Issuing Anti-Discrimination Order: pWhite House spokesperson Jay Carney sought to explain the administration’s decision to punt on issuing an executive order that would have prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in federal contracting. Responding to multiple questions from NBC News, Washington Blade, and Metro Weekly, Carney engaged in an eight minute back-and-forth with [...]/p
U.S. Presses First-Ever Charges Under LGBT Hate Crimes Law
U.S. Presses First-Ever Charges Under LGBT Hate Crimes Law: pFor the first time in history, the United States government has issued an indictment in a case that involves a hate crime based on the victim’s sexual orientation. Defendants David Jason Jenkins and Anthony Ray Jenkins of Kentucky allegedly kidnapped Kevin Pennington, took him into a secluded part of a state park, and beaten until [...]/p
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Marcus Bachmann Is Still Practicing Ex-Gay Therapy
Marcus Bachmann Is Still Practicing Ex-Gay Therapy: pA second undercover investigation conducted by a documentary filmmaker has discovered that Bachmann & Associates — the Christian counseling clinics owned by Marcus and Michele Bachmann — is still offering discredited ex-gay therapy to its gay and lesbian patients. This is the second expose to uncover reparative therapy in the Bachmann-owned business. According to the [...]/p
Monday, April 09, 2012
Study: Homophobes May Have ‘Unacknowledged Attraction To The Same-Sex’
Study: Homophobes May Have ‘Unacknowledged Attraction To The Same-Sex’: p“Homophobia is more pronounced in individuals with an unacknowledged attraction to the same sex and who grew up with authoritarian parents who forbade such desires,” a series of physiological studies conducted by scientists at the University of Rochester, the University of Essex, England, and the University of California in Santa Barbara conclude. “Individuals who identify [...]/p
Sunday, April 08, 2012
Saturday, April 07, 2012
Sunday, April 01, 2012
How Not to Advertise Burgers: McD's CEO Turns a Gay Molehill Into a Culture War Mountain
From CBSNews.com: McDonald's (MCD) COO Don Thompson just said the worst thing he possibly could regarding his company's French ad featuring a gay teenager: He told the Chicago Tribune that it would not be airing in America because "I'm a Christian" (although, he added, he doesn't "impose" his beliefs on others) and it only aired in France because that's "the cultural norm in another part of the world."
Thompson's veiled implication is that being gay -- or, in the case of the French ad, a closeted gay teenager -- isn't the "norm" in the U.S., and that's part of McDonald's "core values."
This is a business blog, so let's put aside the whole debate about whether being gay is a non-issue or a heinous threat to civilization, and instead focus on whether Thompson's flub is good for selling burgers. Quick answer: It isn't. It makes McD's look stupid and inconsistent, and creates a political debate that will do nothing to help McD's brand.
Thompson had ample warning that the gay ad was going to be a hot-button issue here in the U.S. -- where, in case you've been living under a rock, gay rights are controversial. So he should have been prepared to answer whether McD's will run the ad in the U.S. Instead, he dragged religion into it and made a lazy argument about what's normal, while simultaneously insisting that he was making no judgments. Most bizarrely, his argument rests on the premise that being gay is OK in France but not in the U.S.
Here's what he said:
Tribune: A French TV ad featuring a gay teen and his father has stirred some controversy -- not there, but here. Can you talk about that?
Thompson: It is an example that markets, cultures are very different around the world. (For instance), I've never shied away from the fact that I'm a Christian. I have my own personal beliefs and I don't impose those on anybody else. I've been in countries where the majority of the people in the country don't believe in a deity or they may be atheist. Or the majority of the country is Muslim. Or it may be the majority is much younger skewed. So when you look at all these differences, it's not that I'm to be the judge or the jury relative to right or wrong. Having said that, at McDonald's, there are core values we stand for and the world is getting much closer. So we have a lot of conversations. We're going to make some mistakes at times. (We talk) about things that may have an implication in one part of the world and may be the cultural norm in another part of the world. And those are things that, yes, we're going to learn from. But, you're right, that commercial won't show in the United States.
Thompson had no reason -- religious, ethical or business -- to drag religion into this debate. Being a Christian has absolutely nothing to do with whether you're for or against gay rights. Liberal Christians (who also eat cheeseburgers) will be groaning in dismay at yet another civic leader who has managed to link their religion to the anti-gay cause.
Conservative Christians will seize on this and make an unnecessary and damaging link between McD's and the anti-gay agenda, in much the same way that eating at Dominos Pizza (DPZ) became synonymous with supporting the pro-life movement in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This is not what McD's needs right now, as a business.
That's just the beginning. Thompson will probably end up being pilloried on The Daily Show, The Colbert Report or other late-night shows, and may have to issue a politically correct supplementary statement reaffirming that McDonald's doesn't discriminate against gays and non-Christians in the U.S. It will be embarrassing.
So, what should Thompson have done? It's a tough one because airing the ad in the U.S. would be consistent -- and ethical -- but would have generated a similar amount of publicity. The key is in the argument Thompson clumsily failed to make in the Trib interview: Different ads are relevant to different audiences. The commercial could have been aired on MTV or Comedy Central in the evenings, or in liberal markets such as New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami and New Orleans. Thompson could have simply said his company was addressing its own market research in a neutral manner and then moved on. Whether you're for or against gay rights, being gay-friendly has no business downside, as Campbell Soup and General Electric both demonstrate.
Opportunity lost.
Thompson's veiled implication is that being gay -- or, in the case of the French ad, a closeted gay teenager -- isn't the "norm" in the U.S., and that's part of McDonald's "core values."
This is a business blog, so let's put aside the whole debate about whether being gay is a non-issue or a heinous threat to civilization, and instead focus on whether Thompson's flub is good for selling burgers. Quick answer: It isn't. It makes McD's look stupid and inconsistent, and creates a political debate that will do nothing to help McD's brand.
Thompson had ample warning that the gay ad was going to be a hot-button issue here in the U.S. -- where, in case you've been living under a rock, gay rights are controversial. So he should have been prepared to answer whether McD's will run the ad in the U.S. Instead, he dragged religion into it and made a lazy argument about what's normal, while simultaneously insisting that he was making no judgments. Most bizarrely, his argument rests on the premise that being gay is OK in France but not in the U.S.
Here's what he said:
Tribune: A French TV ad featuring a gay teen and his father has stirred some controversy -- not there, but here. Can you talk about that?
Thompson: It is an example that markets, cultures are very different around the world. (For instance), I've never shied away from the fact that I'm a Christian. I have my own personal beliefs and I don't impose those on anybody else. I've been in countries where the majority of the people in the country don't believe in a deity or they may be atheist. Or the majority of the country is Muslim. Or it may be the majority is much younger skewed. So when you look at all these differences, it's not that I'm to be the judge or the jury relative to right or wrong. Having said that, at McDonald's, there are core values we stand for and the world is getting much closer. So we have a lot of conversations. We're going to make some mistakes at times. (We talk) about things that may have an implication in one part of the world and may be the cultural norm in another part of the world. And those are things that, yes, we're going to learn from. But, you're right, that commercial won't show in the United States.
Thompson had no reason -- religious, ethical or business -- to drag religion into this debate. Being a Christian has absolutely nothing to do with whether you're for or against gay rights. Liberal Christians (who also eat cheeseburgers) will be groaning in dismay at yet another civic leader who has managed to link their religion to the anti-gay cause.
Conservative Christians will seize on this and make an unnecessary and damaging link between McD's and the anti-gay agenda, in much the same way that eating at Dominos Pizza (DPZ) became synonymous with supporting the pro-life movement in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This is not what McD's needs right now, as a business.
That's just the beginning. Thompson will probably end up being pilloried on The Daily Show, The Colbert Report or other late-night shows, and may have to issue a politically correct supplementary statement reaffirming that McDonald's doesn't discriminate against gays and non-Christians in the U.S. It will be embarrassing.
So, what should Thompson have done? It's a tough one because airing the ad in the U.S. would be consistent -- and ethical -- but would have generated a similar amount of publicity. The key is in the argument Thompson clumsily failed to make in the Trib interview: Different ads are relevant to different audiences. The commercial could have been aired on MTV or Comedy Central in the evenings, or in liberal markets such as New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami and New Orleans. Thompson could have simply said his company was addressing its own market research in a neutral manner and then moved on. Whether you're for or against gay rights, being gay-friendly has no business downside, as Campbell Soup and General Electric both demonstrate.
Opportunity lost.
Friday, March 30, 2012
Mitt Romney Secretly Gave Race-Wedging NOM $10,000 In 2008
Mitt Romney Secretly Gave Race-Wedging NOM $10,000 In 2008: pRecords show that Mitt Romney secretly funneled $10,000 to the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) in 2008 through the Alabama chapter of his Free and Strong America PAC. Alabama’s lax financial disclosure laws helped keep the donation hidden until a NOM whistle-blower shared it with the Human Rights Campaign. The donation was made just weeks [...]/p
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Top 10 Highlights From NOM’s Race-Wedging, Donor-Hiding, Victim-Playing Confidential Strategies
Top 10 Highlights From NOM’s Race-Wedging, Donor-Hiding, Victim-Playing Confidential Strategies: pThe fallout has begun from the National Organization for Marriage’s failed attempt to circumvent Maine’s campaign finance disclosure laws. The Human Rights Campaign has published four of NOM’s confidential strategic memos from 2009, which explicitly confirm many of the insidious tactics LGBT bloggers have been documenting for years. Most alarming from the memos is NOM’s [...]/p
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Gay Men Being Drugged and Robbed
From SFWeekly.com: "San Francisco police are asking gay men in the Castro to be a little more judicious about who they take home from the bar after a night of drinking.
It seems there have been too many instances laltely in which older gay men are being targeted by (straight) criminals who are coming into gay bars, flirting with men, and then robbing them after they take them home.
Sgt. Chuck Limbert, the LGBT liaison for the Mission District, tells us that one victim recently called him to report an incident where he was drinking at a Castro bar when a really good-looking man walked in and bought him a drink. The two began talking and after some time, the hottie suggested they go home together, Limbert said.
"[The victim] said he wasn't making good decisions, that his vision was blurry and he didn't know what was going on," Limbert said. The two went to the victim's apartment, where he started vomiting. When he came out of the bathroom, the suspect grabbed the man's computer and demanded the victim's password. When the man refused to give it to him, the suspect hit him, and the victim ran out of the apartment, screaming.
Limbert said after that call, he was in the Castro off-duty, when other gay men approached him, telling him they, too, had been victims of similar crimes. "They would say 'I took someone home and passed out and woke up and my credit cards were gone,' and another said he went home with someone and woke up and his entire wallet was missing," Limbert said.
As a gay man and resident of the Castro himself, Limbert decided to alert the community of these nefarious crimes, none of which are happening at any particular bar. He met with a local merchants group and offered tips to help stop gay men from becoming victims.
Bartenders and businesses should be mindful of those who have clearly had too much to drink; hail them a cab, or at the very least ask them if they are okay. Patrons should also be aware of who they are mingling with -- ask to see someone's ID before you take them home, and if you can, jot down their driver's license number before you two go home together, Limbert said.
"I think this has been going on but for a long time, but it's not being reported, because there's a perceived embarrassment associated with it," Limbert said. "People don't want to be perceived as being that naive."
It seems there have been too many instances laltely in which older gay men are being targeted by (straight) criminals who are coming into gay bars, flirting with men, and then robbing them after they take them home.
Sgt. Chuck Limbert, the LGBT liaison for the Mission District, tells us that one victim recently called him to report an incident where he was drinking at a Castro bar when a really good-looking man walked in and bought him a drink. The two began talking and after some time, the hottie suggested they go home together, Limbert said.
"[The victim] said he wasn't making good decisions, that his vision was blurry and he didn't know what was going on," Limbert said. The two went to the victim's apartment, where he started vomiting. When he came out of the bathroom, the suspect grabbed the man's computer and demanded the victim's password. When the man refused to give it to him, the suspect hit him, and the victim ran out of the apartment, screaming.
Limbert said after that call, he was in the Castro off-duty, when other gay men approached him, telling him they, too, had been victims of similar crimes. "They would say 'I took someone home and passed out and woke up and my credit cards were gone,' and another said he went home with someone and woke up and his entire wallet was missing," Limbert said.
As a gay man and resident of the Castro himself, Limbert decided to alert the community of these nefarious crimes, none of which are happening at any particular bar. He met with a local merchants group and offered tips to help stop gay men from becoming victims.
Bartenders and businesses should be mindful of those who have clearly had too much to drink; hail them a cab, or at the very least ask them if they are okay. Patrons should also be aware of who they are mingling with -- ask to see someone's ID before you take them home, and if you can, jot down their driver's license number before you two go home together, Limbert said.
"I think this has been going on but for a long time, but it's not being reported, because there's a perceived embarrassment associated with it," Limbert said. "People don't want to be perceived as being that naive."
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Shootings prompt changes in East St. Louis liquor sales
From Stltoday.com: BY PHILLIP O'CONNOR • poconnor@post-dispatch.com > 314-340-8321 | Posted: Sunday, March 11, 2012 4:14 pm
EAST ST. LOUIS • Two shootings over the weekend outside two nightclubs left one man dead, two wounded and prompted the city on Sunday to suspend non-casino liquor sales after 1 a.m. until further notice.
The earlier closing hours marked an about face by Mayor Alvin Parks, who last month rejected a call by U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, to rein in the city’s club scene.
"Ultimately, the city of East St. Louis will do whatever it deems necessary to bring about an environment that is as healthy and as safe as it can be,’’ Parks said in a written statement released Sunday.
About 4 a.m. Saturday two men, ages 21 and 27, were shot as they walked to their car in the 200 block of Collinsville Avenue after leaving the nearby Club Flava, according to East St. Louis Police Chief Michael Floore.
"Apparently, they had gotten into it with some other guys during the course of the night," Floore said. "A car pulled up and opened fire on the two guys."
The men, both of St. Louis, were taken to an undisclosed hospital with what Floore described as non-life threatening wounds. Police have not located the suspects, whom Floore said are also from St. Louis, and fled the scene in a gold-colored vehicle.
The second shooting happened about 4 a.m. Sunday in the 100 block of Collinsville. The victim, Steven H. Holmes, 23, of East St. Louis was shot as he walked to his vehicle in the parking lot behind Club 103 after being denied entry.
He died later at a hospital. Police say a suspect in the second shooting remained at large Sunday afternoon.
Not long after Holmes was killed, shots were fired at three East St. Louis homes. It’s unclear whether those shootings were connected to Holmes’ death, Floore said.
After the shootings near the two entertainment venues, East St. Louis police spokeswoman Francella Jackson said the city had suspended all non-casino liquor sales after 1 a.m. until further notice. She says it was done "in order to restabilize the community’s health and safety."
The city also suspended Club 103’s liquor license and Club Flava’s business license until disciplinary hearings scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday. Both hearings could lead to license revocations and closure of the businesses, a city press release said.
Parks was in the audience last month when Durbin criticized the city for not doing enough to crack down on late-night liquor store sales and club operations, which he said create an "atmosphere of violence."
East St. Louis has one of the highest crime rates in the country, according to statistics. Durbin said the city’s crime rate is four times the state average and twice that of the city of Chicago.
Parks resisted Durbin's pleas, saying the clubs had already been reined in by requiring them to have extra security.
He also said sales tax the clubs bring in helped fuel the local economy and said he hoped Durbin would find federal money to help the city hire more police officers.
Floore, the police chief, said community marches and other measures had been undertaken to try to stop the violence.
"But obviously that’s not happening," he said. "We need more officers."
EAST ST. LOUIS • Two shootings over the weekend outside two nightclubs left one man dead, two wounded and prompted the city on Sunday to suspend non-casino liquor sales after 1 a.m. until further notice.
The earlier closing hours marked an about face by Mayor Alvin Parks, who last month rejected a call by U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, to rein in the city’s club scene.
"Ultimately, the city of East St. Louis will do whatever it deems necessary to bring about an environment that is as healthy and as safe as it can be,’’ Parks said in a written statement released Sunday.
About 4 a.m. Saturday two men, ages 21 and 27, were shot as they walked to their car in the 200 block of Collinsville Avenue after leaving the nearby Club Flava, according to East St. Louis Police Chief Michael Floore.
"Apparently, they had gotten into it with some other guys during the course of the night," Floore said. "A car pulled up and opened fire on the two guys."
The men, both of St. Louis, were taken to an undisclosed hospital with what Floore described as non-life threatening wounds. Police have not located the suspects, whom Floore said are also from St. Louis, and fled the scene in a gold-colored vehicle.
The second shooting happened about 4 a.m. Sunday in the 100 block of Collinsville. The victim, Steven H. Holmes, 23, of East St. Louis was shot as he walked to his vehicle in the parking lot behind Club 103 after being denied entry.
He died later at a hospital. Police say a suspect in the second shooting remained at large Sunday afternoon.
Not long after Holmes was killed, shots were fired at three East St. Louis homes. It’s unclear whether those shootings were connected to Holmes’ death, Floore said.
After the shootings near the two entertainment venues, East St. Louis police spokeswoman Francella Jackson said the city had suspended all non-casino liquor sales after 1 a.m. until further notice. She says it was done "in order to restabilize the community’s health and safety."
The city also suspended Club 103’s liquor license and Club Flava’s business license until disciplinary hearings scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday. Both hearings could lead to license revocations and closure of the businesses, a city press release said.
Parks was in the audience last month when Durbin criticized the city for not doing enough to crack down on late-night liquor store sales and club operations, which he said create an "atmosphere of violence."
East St. Louis has one of the highest crime rates in the country, according to statistics. Durbin said the city’s crime rate is four times the state average and twice that of the city of Chicago.
Parks resisted Durbin's pleas, saying the clubs had already been reined in by requiring them to have extra security.
He also said sales tax the clubs bring in helped fuel the local economy and said he hoped Durbin would find federal money to help the city hire more police officers.
Floore, the police chief, said community marches and other measures had been undertaken to try to stop the violence.
"But obviously that’s not happening," he said. "We need more officers."
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Thursday, March 08, 2012
Homeless youth: the next battle for gay equality
By VERENA DOBNIK, Associated Press – 1 hour ago
NEW YORK (AP) — Iro Uikka clutches his throat as he describes the violent clash that led to spending his nights sleeping in New York City subway cars.
"When I told my mother I was gay, she grabbed me by the neck and threw me out," he says. "Then she threw my coat on top of me and shut the door."
That was five years ago when he was 18, still living at home in Florida.
Uikka is among tens of thousands of homeless youths across America who are LGBT — lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. Most are on the streets because they have nowhere else to go — outcasts who leave home after being rejected by family members or flee shelters because residents bully or beat them.
LGBT young people represent a dramatically high proportion of an estimated 600,000 or more homeless youths across the country — between 20 percent and 40 percent, according to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy Institute. But only about 5 percent of youths identify themselves as lesbian, gay or bisexual, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"We've won battles for gay marriage and gays in the military," says Carl Siciliano, founder and executive director of the New York-based Ali Forney Center, the nation's largest organization for LGBT youth. "This is the next frontier, the next battle: helping these youths."
The White House has taken notice. Members of the Obama Administration are hosting a national conference on housing and homelessness in America's LGBT communities on Friday in Detroit. They'll discuss these issues with advocates, community leaders and the public.
Detroit City Council President Charles Pugh, who is openly gay, is one of the participants.
"I take this discussion personally because I know too many people who have been kicked out of their homes because of their orientation," he told The Associated Press. "To get this kind of attention from the White House is exactly what we need to raise conscientiousness and to help parents find a way to deal with their kids' orientation."
Detroit has the only nonprofit agency in the Midwest that focuses on LGBT youth — the Ruth Ellis Center, co-host of the Friday conference. But the largely voiceless, powerless youth are fighting to survive from coast to coast.
They live on streets, in subways and train stations, on river piers, in parks and abandoned houses. They're robbed, raped and assaulted. Some are murdered.
And they're invisible to most Americans.
Lesbian, gay and bisexual youth are about four times more likely to attempt suicide than their straight peers, according to the CDC. And one in three is thrown out by their parents, according to data collected from youth across the country by the Family Acceptance Project at San Francisco State University.
Some youth use "survival sex" to land in a warm bed, or they move from home to home of friends and acquaintances.
In the past, Ryan Kennedy resorted to survival sex. He lists his education on Facebook as "Urban Survivalism at University of NYC Streets." He adopted a rebellious middle name for his page, calling himself "Ryan TransEquality Kennedy."
"I wouldn't be alive today if I didn't get some help," says Kennedy, a transgender youth whose Connecticut family threw him out at 15. He says he was a girl who felt like a boy. He's now transitioning to male.
After years living on the streets, Kennedy, now 22, has a bed thanks to The Door, a New York nonprofit that offers shelter, food, counseling and job training programs.
On any given day, there are almost 4,000 homeless youths in New York City, and at least 1,000 are LGBT, according to a 2008 census released by the City Council.
Meager government funds and private donations cover about 350 New York beds for homeless youth. Hundreds more are on waiting lists, providers say.
In recent years, the New York state Legislature has cut funding to support homeless youth programs in general by about 70 percent.
Somehow, these vulnerable Americans survive, without beds.
Each night, some fill tables at a fast-food shop off Manhattan's Union Square. One is a lively 19-year-old bisexual man from Virginia.
When he leaves in the late evening, Baresco Escobar goes to the far end of Brooklyn to sleep in an abandoned house with dozens of homeless kids, covering bare floors with blankets and cuddling for warmth.
"Home is where you're supposed to have stability, unconditional love, support, a foundation," he says. Instead, back in Virginia, "I was in a place of dysfunction, with expectations that didn't apply to me — full of judgment, discrimination and hypocrisy."
Escobar goes to the Ali Forney drop-in center on Manhattan's West Side, which offers clothing, counseling, workshops in life skills, showers, laundry facilities and HIV testing. A nurse is available for quick checkups, sending clients for follow-ups with doctors.
Escobar does not live in Ali Forney's emergency housing units, which have a total of only 47 beds in Brooklyn and Queens assigned for a few months at a time. The center also has limited transitional housing where residents get coached on how to prepare for job or school interviews.
The Ali Forney Center opened in 2002. Siciliano named it after a transgender youth who was kicked out of his home at 13. He was found shot to death on a Harlem sidewalk in 1997, at 22. By then, he had become a counselor to his homeless friends.
Siciliano knows of five other LGBT youths who were killed in New York over the years.
Despite the hardships, the city is a magnet for young people who grew up with conservative traditions, whether among immigrants from Caribbean and Asian countries or parts of the United States where residents are less accepting of sexual diversity.
Gizmo Lopez, 19, comes from a staunchly Catholic family with Puerto Rican roots. She now sleeps on the subway.
"I'm bisexual, and my stepfather didn't approve; he said it's wrong," said the teenager, whose mother died two years ago.
Her stepfather moved to Puerto Rico with her two half-brothers, leaving her behind — alone in the family's apartment on Manhattan's Lower East Side. One afternoon, when she came home from school, "I found a pink slip on the door."
She was evicted.
"I took my stuff, cried and left," she says. "We're nomads."
In the Midwest, the only nonprofit agency for LGBT youth is Detroit's Ruth Ellis Center, which offers meals and other basic services and has 10 beds.
The support saved Demetrius Smith, an 18-year-old who left his great-grandmother's Michigan farm years ago because "she whipped me, and she beat me with an umbrella because she thought I acted like a girl."
He bought food and other necessities by working as an escort. That ended last August. An older friend is letting Smith stay with him and the teenager is finishing high school.
Siciliano believes there's a new reason for the rising number of LGBT youths seeking shelter. As some states legalize gay marriage and the military welcomes openly gay soldiers, "Many kids think, 'Oh, I'm ready to come out,'" he says.
As a result, the average age of young people declaring their sexuality — or at least sharing their doubts about it — has dropped dramatically in recent years to as young as the early teens, according to the Family Acceptance Project.
Some families are not ready for them, nor are segments of society, he says. Each rejection turns into a homeless youth looking for a bed. And there aren't enough.
"These kids are the collateral damage of our cultural wars," Siciliano says.
Copyright © 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
NEW YORK (AP) — Iro Uikka clutches his throat as he describes the violent clash that led to spending his nights sleeping in New York City subway cars.
"When I told my mother I was gay, she grabbed me by the neck and threw me out," he says. "Then she threw my coat on top of me and shut the door."
That was five years ago when he was 18, still living at home in Florida.
Uikka is among tens of thousands of homeless youths across America who are LGBT — lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. Most are on the streets because they have nowhere else to go — outcasts who leave home after being rejected by family members or flee shelters because residents bully or beat them.
LGBT young people represent a dramatically high proportion of an estimated 600,000 or more homeless youths across the country — between 20 percent and 40 percent, according to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy Institute. But only about 5 percent of youths identify themselves as lesbian, gay or bisexual, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"We've won battles for gay marriage and gays in the military," says Carl Siciliano, founder and executive director of the New York-based Ali Forney Center, the nation's largest organization for LGBT youth. "This is the next frontier, the next battle: helping these youths."
The White House has taken notice. Members of the Obama Administration are hosting a national conference on housing and homelessness in America's LGBT communities on Friday in Detroit. They'll discuss these issues with advocates, community leaders and the public.
Detroit City Council President Charles Pugh, who is openly gay, is one of the participants.
"I take this discussion personally because I know too many people who have been kicked out of their homes because of their orientation," he told The Associated Press. "To get this kind of attention from the White House is exactly what we need to raise conscientiousness and to help parents find a way to deal with their kids' orientation."
Detroit has the only nonprofit agency in the Midwest that focuses on LGBT youth — the Ruth Ellis Center, co-host of the Friday conference. But the largely voiceless, powerless youth are fighting to survive from coast to coast.
They live on streets, in subways and train stations, on river piers, in parks and abandoned houses. They're robbed, raped and assaulted. Some are murdered.
And they're invisible to most Americans.
Lesbian, gay and bisexual youth are about four times more likely to attempt suicide than their straight peers, according to the CDC. And one in three is thrown out by their parents, according to data collected from youth across the country by the Family Acceptance Project at San Francisco State University.
Some youth use "survival sex" to land in a warm bed, or they move from home to home of friends and acquaintances.
In the past, Ryan Kennedy resorted to survival sex. He lists his education on Facebook as "Urban Survivalism at University of NYC Streets." He adopted a rebellious middle name for his page, calling himself "Ryan TransEquality Kennedy."
"I wouldn't be alive today if I didn't get some help," says Kennedy, a transgender youth whose Connecticut family threw him out at 15. He says he was a girl who felt like a boy. He's now transitioning to male.
After years living on the streets, Kennedy, now 22, has a bed thanks to The Door, a New York nonprofit that offers shelter, food, counseling and job training programs.
On any given day, there are almost 4,000 homeless youths in New York City, and at least 1,000 are LGBT, according to a 2008 census released by the City Council.
Meager government funds and private donations cover about 350 New York beds for homeless youth. Hundreds more are on waiting lists, providers say.
In recent years, the New York state Legislature has cut funding to support homeless youth programs in general by about 70 percent.
Somehow, these vulnerable Americans survive, without beds.
Each night, some fill tables at a fast-food shop off Manhattan's Union Square. One is a lively 19-year-old bisexual man from Virginia.
When he leaves in the late evening, Baresco Escobar goes to the far end of Brooklyn to sleep in an abandoned house with dozens of homeless kids, covering bare floors with blankets and cuddling for warmth.
"Home is where you're supposed to have stability, unconditional love, support, a foundation," he says. Instead, back in Virginia, "I was in a place of dysfunction, with expectations that didn't apply to me — full of judgment, discrimination and hypocrisy."
Escobar goes to the Ali Forney drop-in center on Manhattan's West Side, which offers clothing, counseling, workshops in life skills, showers, laundry facilities and HIV testing. A nurse is available for quick checkups, sending clients for follow-ups with doctors.
Escobar does not live in Ali Forney's emergency housing units, which have a total of only 47 beds in Brooklyn and Queens assigned for a few months at a time. The center also has limited transitional housing where residents get coached on how to prepare for job or school interviews.
The Ali Forney Center opened in 2002. Siciliano named it after a transgender youth who was kicked out of his home at 13. He was found shot to death on a Harlem sidewalk in 1997, at 22. By then, he had become a counselor to his homeless friends.
Siciliano knows of five other LGBT youths who were killed in New York over the years.
Despite the hardships, the city is a magnet for young people who grew up with conservative traditions, whether among immigrants from Caribbean and Asian countries or parts of the United States where residents are less accepting of sexual diversity.
Gizmo Lopez, 19, comes from a staunchly Catholic family with Puerto Rican roots. She now sleeps on the subway.
"I'm bisexual, and my stepfather didn't approve; he said it's wrong," said the teenager, whose mother died two years ago.
Her stepfather moved to Puerto Rico with her two half-brothers, leaving her behind — alone in the family's apartment on Manhattan's Lower East Side. One afternoon, when she came home from school, "I found a pink slip on the door."
She was evicted.
"I took my stuff, cried and left," she says. "We're nomads."
In the Midwest, the only nonprofit agency for LGBT youth is Detroit's Ruth Ellis Center, which offers meals and other basic services and has 10 beds.
The support saved Demetrius Smith, an 18-year-old who left his great-grandmother's Michigan farm years ago because "she whipped me, and she beat me with an umbrella because she thought I acted like a girl."
He bought food and other necessities by working as an escort. That ended last August. An older friend is letting Smith stay with him and the teenager is finishing high school.
Siciliano believes there's a new reason for the rising number of LGBT youths seeking shelter. As some states legalize gay marriage and the military welcomes openly gay soldiers, "Many kids think, 'Oh, I'm ready to come out,'" he says.
As a result, the average age of young people declaring their sexuality — or at least sharing their doubts about it — has dropped dramatically in recent years to as young as the early teens, according to the Family Acceptance Project.
Some families are not ready for them, nor are segments of society, he says. Each rejection turns into a homeless youth looking for a bed. And there aren't enough.
"These kids are the collateral damage of our cultural wars," Siciliano says.
Copyright © 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Archie gay marriage comic sells out in face of boycott call
Conservative lobby One Million Moms' campaign for Toys R Us to withdraw wedding issue from sale falls flat
Alison Flood
guardian.co.uk, Friday 2 March 2012 06.00 EST
Archie's happy ending: detail from the cover of now sold-out gay wedding issue
Despite attempts by a conservative American mothers' group to have it pulled from sale, the new Archie comic, which features a gay marriage, has just sold out.
Tracing the adventures of the teenagers Archie, Betty and Veronica in the small town of Riverdale, the Archie storyline has been running for 70 years and is one of America's most popular comic series. Its publisher described the marriage of Kevin Keller, the series' first gay character, in the latest issue as "a historic moment", announcing yesterday that the Life with Archie #16 had sold out.
The strong sales follow a call from the American Family Association's website One Million Moms for Toys R Us to stop selling the new Archie issue. The conservative Christian group is concerned that "children are now being exposed to same-sex marriage in a toy store". "Please remove all the same-sex 'Just Married – Archie' comic books immediately from your shelves. My decision to shop in your stores depends on it," they have written to the retailer.
Homosexuality is a topic which is "too complicated" for children to understand, say the mothers, and "a trip to the toy store turns into a premature discussion on sexual orientation and is completely uncalled for".
But Archie Comics co-chief executive John Goldwater has said that the company "stands by" the new issue. "Riverdale is a safe, welcoming place that does not judge anyone. It's an idealised version of America that will hopefully become reality someday," he said.
"We're sorry the American Family Association/OneMillionMoms.com feels so negatively about our product, but they have every right to their opinion, just like we have the right to stand by ours. Kevin Keller will forever be a part of Riverdale, and he will live a happy, long life free of prejudice, hate and narrow-minded people."
Announcing yesterday that the Kevin Keller issue had sold out, Goldwater said that Archie's fans "have come out full force to support" the gay character. "He is, without a doubt, the most important new character in Archie history. He's here to stay," Goldwater added.
© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.
;
Alison Flood
guardian.co.uk, Friday 2 March 2012 06.00 EST
Archie's happy ending: detail from the cover of now sold-out gay wedding issue
Despite attempts by a conservative American mothers' group to have it pulled from sale, the new Archie comic, which features a gay marriage, has just sold out.
Tracing the adventures of the teenagers Archie, Betty and Veronica in the small town of Riverdale, the Archie storyline has been running for 70 years and is one of America's most popular comic series. Its publisher described the marriage of Kevin Keller, the series' first gay character, in the latest issue as "a historic moment", announcing yesterday that the Life with Archie #16 had sold out.
The strong sales follow a call from the American Family Association's website One Million Moms for Toys R Us to stop selling the new Archie issue. The conservative Christian group is concerned that "children are now being exposed to same-sex marriage in a toy store". "Please remove all the same-sex 'Just Married – Archie' comic books immediately from your shelves. My decision to shop in your stores depends on it," they have written to the retailer.
Homosexuality is a topic which is "too complicated" for children to understand, say the mothers, and "a trip to the toy store turns into a premature discussion on sexual orientation and is completely uncalled for".
But Archie Comics co-chief executive John Goldwater has said that the company "stands by" the new issue. "Riverdale is a safe, welcoming place that does not judge anyone. It's an idealised version of America that will hopefully become reality someday," he said.
"We're sorry the American Family Association/OneMillionMoms.com feels so negatively about our product, but they have every right to their opinion, just like we have the right to stand by ours. Kevin Keller will forever be a part of Riverdale, and he will live a happy, long life free of prejudice, hate and narrow-minded people."
Announcing yesterday that the Kevin Keller issue had sold out, Goldwater said that Archie's fans "have come out full force to support" the gay character. "He is, without a doubt, the most important new character in Archie history. He's here to stay," Goldwater added.
© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.
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Tuesday, March 06, 2012
Monday, March 05, 2012
Sunday, March 04, 2012
Friday, March 02, 2012
Thursday, March 01, 2012
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
One Million Moms Threatens to Boycott Toys ‘R’ Us for Carrying Archie Comics
One Million Moms Threatens to Boycott Toys ‘R’ Us for Carrying Archie Comics: pIf you need any more proof that conservatives don’t just want to protect their own kids from material they find objectionable, they don’t want anyone to have any access to it, ever, check out the One Million Moms freakout over Archie Comics at Toys ‘R’ Us. They’re writing to the chain: As a mother and [...]/p
Monday, February 27, 2012
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Friday, February 24, 2012
Gov. McDonnell Says Marriage Equality Should Be Left To The States, But Claims Gays Make Inferior Parents
Gov. McDonnell Says Marriage Equality Should Be Left To The States, But Claims Gays Make Inferior Parents: pVirginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) said that he respected Maryland’s right to decide the issue of marriage equality, just one day after that state passed legislation same-sex marriage. “The beauty of our regulators under the 10th amendment…is that states are the laboratories are democracy and innovation and they have the freedom to make different choices,” [...]/p
Arlen Specter: Santorum Is Too Anti-Gay To Be President
Arlen Specter: Santorum Is Too Anti-Gay To Be President: pFormer Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter said he would not support his former colleague Rick Santorum in his bid for the presidency, claiming that Santorum’s view on gay people and women are too extreme to “represent America.” “When you have Senator Santorum’s views, so far to the right, with his attitude on women in the workplace [...]/p
Thursday, February 23, 2012
TX GOP Senate Candidate Craig James Claims That Being Gay Is A Choice That Will Be Punished By God
TX GOP Senate Candidate Craig James Claims That Being Gay Is A Choice That Will Be Punished By God: pTexas Republican senate candidates Craig James, a former NFL player, and Ted Cruz went after former Dallas mayor Tom Leppert (R) for marching in a gay pride parade during a debate yesterday in an effort to portray Leppert as “pro-gay” and out of touch with conservative values. Both men pledged to stay away from gay [...]/p
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez Loses Her Hair Stylist Over Gay Marriage Opposition
New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez Loses Her Hair Stylist Over Gay Marriage Opposition: pAn openly-gay hair stylist in New Mexico is protesting Gov. Susana Martinez’s (R) opposition to same-sex marriage by refusing to style her hair unless she changes her position on the issue. KOB Eyewitness News 4 reports that Antonio Darden, “a popular stylist who runs Antonio’s Hair Studio in Santa Fe, said he cut Martinez’ hair [...]/p
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Santorum: The Democratic Party Is About ‘Homosexuality’
Santorum: The Democratic Party Is About ‘Homosexuality’: pDuring a 2008 “Press & People of Faith in Politics” forum, Rick Santorum described to the Democratic Party as “the party of Woodstock,” and accused lawmakers of “prey[ing] upon our most basic primal lusts.” Asked to name a couple of words he’d heard attached to religion and politics in his years in the Senate, Santorum [...]/p
Monday, February 20, 2012
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Local News Investigates The ‘Hidden Crisis’: Kids Put Out ‘Like Trash’ Just For Being Gay
Local News Investigates The ‘Hidden Crisis’: Kids Put Out ‘Like Trash’ Just For Being Gay: pThere are approximately 1.6 million to 2.8 million homeless young people in the United States and a disproportionate number — 20 to 40 percent — are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender. LGBT youth often run away from home because of family conflict and then “face overt discrimination when seeking alternative housing, which is compounded by [...]/p
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Pelosi: Democratic Party Should Come Out For Full Marriage Equality
Pelosi: Democratic Party Should Come Out For Full Marriage Equality: pHouse Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D) — a long time supporter of the LGBT community and proponent of marriage equality — is calling on the Democratic party to include marriage rights for gays and lesbians in its 2012 party platform, Metro Weekly’s Chris Geidner reports. Pelosi’s backing comes in response to Freedom to Marry’s new [...]/p
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
BREAKING: Washington Governor Signs Same-Sex Marriage Bill
BREAKING: Washington Governor Signs Same-Sex Marriage Bill: pGov. Chris Gregoire (D-WA) was visibly emotional as she signed legislation legalizing same-sex marriage in Washington, making the Evergreen State the seventh in the nation to offer marriage equality for gay and lesbian couples. Suporters cheered “thank you, thank you” as Sen. Ed Murray (D) — a sponsor of the measure — introduced Gregoire and [...]/p
Friday, February 10, 2012
Thursday, February 09, 2012
JC Penney CEO: ‘Ellen Represents The Values Of Our Company’
JC Penney CEO: ‘Ellen Represents The Values Of Our Company’: pJC Penney CEO Ron Johnson spoke out this morning in defense of the company’s new partnership with Ellen DeGeneres. The conservative group One Million Moms has called for a boycott against the store for “jumping on the pro-gay bandwagon,” but both JC Penney and DeGeneres have defended the partnership. Johnson told CBS News that he [...]/p
Wednesday, February 08, 2012
Monday, February 06, 2012
Sunday, February 05, 2012
Saturday, February 04, 2012
Santorum To Gay Man: You Don’t Deserve ‘Privilege’ Of Marriage Because Gay Unions Don’t ‘Benefit Society’
Santorum To Gay Man: You Don’t Deserve ‘Privilege’ Of Marriage Because Gay Unions Don’t ‘Benefit Society’: pRick Santorum told a gay man in Fulton, Missouri Friday afternoon that he didn’t deserve the “privilege” of marriage because his same-sex relationship does not “benefit” society in the same way that opposite-sex marriage does. Marriage, Santorum explained is an “intrinsic good” in which gay and lesbian people should not be allowed to partake in: [...]/p
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Sunday, January 01, 2012
Wednesday, June 08, 2011
Long running gay St. Louis nightclub closes
From Stltoday.com: Long-running gay nightclub the Complex, 3511 Chouteau Ave., is closing, confirms owner Howard Meyer.
The nightclub's last day of operation will be June 22, with a special night planned. Also, special events will take place leading up to the closing.
Rumors of the Complex closing have circulated for years, and Meyer has always rebuffed them, but this time it's for real.
"I can't be here because of my health, back surgeries, and when the owner's not here, when the cat's not here, the mice will play. And I'm losing my ass," he says.
He blames the bartenders for giving away 25 percent of his liquor inventory for better tips, something he couldn't manage in his absence.
He decided a month ago to shut down the Complex after 20 years, and says he finally feels relieved.
"I've been miserable," he says.
In later years at the Complex, Meyer has tried becoming more diverse, including the 2009 opening of the Chill lounge downstairs in the same building.
The nightclub's last day of operation will be June 22, with a special night planned. Also, special events will take place leading up to the closing.
Rumors of the Complex closing have circulated for years, and Meyer has always rebuffed them, but this time it's for real.
"I can't be here because of my health, back surgeries, and when the owner's not here, when the cat's not here, the mice will play. And I'm losing my ass," he says.
He blames the bartenders for giving away 25 percent of his liquor inventory for better tips, something he couldn't manage in his absence.
He decided a month ago to shut down the Complex after 20 years, and says he finally feels relieved.
"I've been miserable," he says.
In later years at the Complex, Meyer has tried becoming more diverse, including the 2009 opening of the Chill lounge downstairs in the same building.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Thursday, May 05, 2011
NYC Beige Party Ends After 15 Year Celebrity Filled Run
From NYT: DOLLY PARTON and Gloria Gaynor singing an impromptu duet. Britney Spears supposedly skipping out on her check. Jocelyne Wildenstein showing off her nip and tuck.
They were all part of the mix at Beige, the fashion-y, mostly-but-not-all-gay party held Tuesdays at the B Bar on the Bowery. Started in 1994 by Erich Conrad, it may well be downtown’s longest-running party, bringing together celebrities, club kids, handsome young strivers and both the up-and-comers and has-beens. The festivities always last late into the night, out in the garden during warmer months.
But next Tuesday, Beige is coming to an end, at least in its current spot. Mr. Conrad blames the new luxury apartment across the street, whose residents have already flooded the local community board with noise complaints. Below, reminiscences from 16 years of groovy Tuesdays.
PARKER POSEY, actress.
I first went to Beige a year or two after the movie “Party Girl” came out in 1995. I’d already met Erich out dancing at the club Don Hill’s. I remember him talking about the concept of Beige: that it was the color of ’70s Halston, off-kilter strange glamour. But also things that were in-between. Like a stew. It’s not a soup and it’s not a meal. Granola is very beige, whereas cereal is not.
Eartha Kitt was there one night. I leaned in next to her so a photographer could take a picture, and as she reached to grab my face, her long fingernail went up my nose and gave me a nosebleed. I had to ask for a dinner napkin and walked around for an hour afterward telling people I’d been scratched by Catwoman. Eartha never realized she did it.
ANDY COHEN, producer, Bravo TV.
I had my 30th birthday party at Beige 13 years ago. Lady Bunny D.J.’d and Ricki Lake came.
One night about three years ago, I brought NeNe Leakes from “Real Housewives of Atlanta” and Vicki Gunvalson from “Real Housewives of Orange County.” They were astounded by how attractive all the guys were. NeNe and Erich really bonded, sitting there whispering, going super-deep. I brought Natasha Richardson there once when she was doing “Cabaret” on Broadway, and she was like: “Who are these people? Where do they come from?”
DEREK NEEN, doorman from 1994 to 2010.
Jocelyne Wildenstein came almost every week for five or six years. She was gracious and lovely, very shy and sweet. “May I come in?” she’d kind of purr. Then she’d sit in Banquette 42, 43 or 44 with Erich, the coveted spots that faced the garden. Alexander McQueen would come. He was always very low-key and sweet, unlike our good friend Boy George, who was there quite often.
On many nights the line for Beige would snake all the way around the corner to Marion’s restaurant. I’d fast-track the right people up the little steps, always keeping in mind who was a regular through the long, cold winter. We had a code word: Wreck Beach. That’s a famous nude beach in Vancouver where I live now. Erich would tell anyone fabulous to just say to me at the door, “Wreck Beach.” That’s how I knew they were a friend of Erich’s.
BOY GEORGE, performer
When you’re in New York, it’s the first port of call to locate people because you know everyone cool will be there.
Five years ago, I discovered this Brooklyn electro band, Avenue D. I was looking everywhere to find the lead singer, Debbie D. And lo and behold, she was a waitress at Beige.
Another time, I was cornered by Jocelyne Wildenstein trying to kiss me. She’ll deny it, but she was quite forward. I told her, “No tongue!”
It’s that kind of club: it’s so cool it hurts. It was a temple of gorgeous freakdom.
CHRISTIAN GIACOMETTI, maître d’hôtel.
Charo came one night. She asked the D.J., Jon Jon Battles, to play a CD of her music and then she cootchy-cooed around the room performing, lip-syncing. I followed her with a flashlight for a spotlight.
JON JON BATTLES, waiter turned D.J.
One night Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake came in when they were dating, with a table of people. Jocelyne Wildenstein and Joan Collins were also there, at separate tables.
Britney’s table orders a round of drinks, then gets up to leave without paying. I asked Erich, “Is Britney comped?” He said, “No, she has to pay.” So I run down the street and knock on the window of her S.U.V. and say, “You didn’t pay.” She was very aloof, said nothing. “How much is it?” one of her friends asked. I hadn’t brought the check, so I made up a figure, $300. It was in all the papers that the poor waiter got stiffed, but what annoyed me is they didn’t even use my name!
Justin was nice, though. He touched my hand.
MICHAEL MUSTO, night-life columnist, The Village Voice.
Celebrity drop-ins were pretty frequent, and I was always amazed to spot people like Kirstie Alley and Lucy Lawless there, and less shocked when I’d find Calvin Klein, Rupert Everett or a Pet Shop Boy.
But since Beige brimmed with attitude, so many of the cute guys there ended up going home alone. The craziest the crowd got at Beige was putting a little extra mousse in their faux hawks, or popping the collars on their Marc Jacobs shirts.
I likened it to Liz Taylor because you thought it would always be there.
SOPHIA LAMAR, transsexual Beige hostess.
I was at Beige from the beginning. It just worked organically, the right mix of fashion people, straight, gay, rockers, metrosexuals, editors. Patti LaBelle used to come and sit with P. Diddy’s mother. They loved the scene. Beige was a party but also a restaurant, so people who denied that they went to nightclubs could say, “Oh, I’m just having dinner.”
ERICH CONRAD, founder of Beige.
Calling it Beige was my idea. Beige was everyone’s least favorite color during the early ’90s, so it was tongue in cheek. I wanted to have a fun clubhouse, a canteen with a mix of all kinds of people, after the heaviness of AIDS in the ’80s.
Then it became hyper-chic and the supermodels started coming: Linda Evangelista, Amber Valletta, Naomi Campbell. People didn’t want press in the ’90s when they went out, unlike today, so we were a safe place for them because we had a no-cameras policy.
One night I was sitting in a banquette between Dolly Parton and Gloria Gaynor. They started reminiscing about a duet they were supposed to do once long ago and then started to sing it. ...
I feel quite sad, but I hope somehow I can retranslate it somewhere else.
Interviews have been edited and condensed.
They were all part of the mix at Beige, the fashion-y, mostly-but-not-all-gay party held Tuesdays at the B Bar on the Bowery. Started in 1994 by Erich Conrad, it may well be downtown’s longest-running party, bringing together celebrities, club kids, handsome young strivers and both the up-and-comers and has-beens. The festivities always last late into the night, out in the garden during warmer months.
But next Tuesday, Beige is coming to an end, at least in its current spot. Mr. Conrad blames the new luxury apartment across the street, whose residents have already flooded the local community board with noise complaints. Below, reminiscences from 16 years of groovy Tuesdays.
PARKER POSEY, actress.
I first went to Beige a year or two after the movie “Party Girl” came out in 1995. I’d already met Erich out dancing at the club Don Hill’s. I remember him talking about the concept of Beige: that it was the color of ’70s Halston, off-kilter strange glamour. But also things that were in-between. Like a stew. It’s not a soup and it’s not a meal. Granola is very beige, whereas cereal is not.
Eartha Kitt was there one night. I leaned in next to her so a photographer could take a picture, and as she reached to grab my face, her long fingernail went up my nose and gave me a nosebleed. I had to ask for a dinner napkin and walked around for an hour afterward telling people I’d been scratched by Catwoman. Eartha never realized she did it.
ANDY COHEN, producer, Bravo TV.
I had my 30th birthday party at Beige 13 years ago. Lady Bunny D.J.’d and Ricki Lake came.
One night about three years ago, I brought NeNe Leakes from “Real Housewives of Atlanta” and Vicki Gunvalson from “Real Housewives of Orange County.” They were astounded by how attractive all the guys were. NeNe and Erich really bonded, sitting there whispering, going super-deep. I brought Natasha Richardson there once when she was doing “Cabaret” on Broadway, and she was like: “Who are these people? Where do they come from?”
DEREK NEEN, doorman from 1994 to 2010.
Jocelyne Wildenstein came almost every week for five or six years. She was gracious and lovely, very shy and sweet. “May I come in?” she’d kind of purr. Then she’d sit in Banquette 42, 43 or 44 with Erich, the coveted spots that faced the garden. Alexander McQueen would come. He was always very low-key and sweet, unlike our good friend Boy George, who was there quite often.
On many nights the line for Beige would snake all the way around the corner to Marion’s restaurant. I’d fast-track the right people up the little steps, always keeping in mind who was a regular through the long, cold winter. We had a code word: Wreck Beach. That’s a famous nude beach in Vancouver where I live now. Erich would tell anyone fabulous to just say to me at the door, “Wreck Beach.” That’s how I knew they were a friend of Erich’s.
BOY GEORGE, performer
When you’re in New York, it’s the first port of call to locate people because you know everyone cool will be there.
Five years ago, I discovered this Brooklyn electro band, Avenue D. I was looking everywhere to find the lead singer, Debbie D. And lo and behold, she was a waitress at Beige.
Another time, I was cornered by Jocelyne Wildenstein trying to kiss me. She’ll deny it, but she was quite forward. I told her, “No tongue!”
It’s that kind of club: it’s so cool it hurts. It was a temple of gorgeous freakdom.
CHRISTIAN GIACOMETTI, maître d’hôtel.
Charo came one night. She asked the D.J., Jon Jon Battles, to play a CD of her music and then she cootchy-cooed around the room performing, lip-syncing. I followed her with a flashlight for a spotlight.
JON JON BATTLES, waiter turned D.J.
One night Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake came in when they were dating, with a table of people. Jocelyne Wildenstein and Joan Collins were also there, at separate tables.
Britney’s table orders a round of drinks, then gets up to leave without paying. I asked Erich, “Is Britney comped?” He said, “No, she has to pay.” So I run down the street and knock on the window of her S.U.V. and say, “You didn’t pay.” She was very aloof, said nothing. “How much is it?” one of her friends asked. I hadn’t brought the check, so I made up a figure, $300. It was in all the papers that the poor waiter got stiffed, but what annoyed me is they didn’t even use my name!
Justin was nice, though. He touched my hand.
MICHAEL MUSTO, night-life columnist, The Village Voice.
Celebrity drop-ins were pretty frequent, and I was always amazed to spot people like Kirstie Alley and Lucy Lawless there, and less shocked when I’d find Calvin Klein, Rupert Everett or a Pet Shop Boy.
But since Beige brimmed with attitude, so many of the cute guys there ended up going home alone. The craziest the crowd got at Beige was putting a little extra mousse in their faux hawks, or popping the collars on their Marc Jacobs shirts.
I likened it to Liz Taylor because you thought it would always be there.
SOPHIA LAMAR, transsexual Beige hostess.
I was at Beige from the beginning. It just worked organically, the right mix of fashion people, straight, gay, rockers, metrosexuals, editors. Patti LaBelle used to come and sit with P. Diddy’s mother. They loved the scene. Beige was a party but also a restaurant, so people who denied that they went to nightclubs could say, “Oh, I’m just having dinner.”
ERICH CONRAD, founder of Beige.
Calling it Beige was my idea. Beige was everyone’s least favorite color during the early ’90s, so it was tongue in cheek. I wanted to have a fun clubhouse, a canteen with a mix of all kinds of people, after the heaviness of AIDS in the ’80s.
Then it became hyper-chic and the supermodels started coming: Linda Evangelista, Amber Valletta, Naomi Campbell. People didn’t want press in the ’90s when they went out, unlike today, so we were a safe place for them because we had a no-cameras policy.
One night I was sitting in a banquette between Dolly Parton and Gloria Gaynor. They started reminiscing about a duet they were supposed to do once long ago and then started to sing it. ...
I feel quite sad, but I hope somehow I can retranslate it somewhere else.
Interviews have been edited and condensed.
New York’s Most Fabulous Gay Party Closes Next Week
From Gawker.com: "If you were a young, attractive, in-the-know Manhattan homosexual in the past 15 years, you've probably—no, definitely—been to Beige, the popular, swanky Tuesday night Gay-list party. Hate to break it to you, boys, but it's closing.
You will no longer be able to hob nob with celebrities, air kiss fashion people, or pose in your polo shirts pretending like you're too pretty to talk to anyone. The party, which started in 1994, is finally coming to an end after this coming Tuesday.
Promoter Erich Conrad, who has been throwing the party for longer than most of its attendees have been out of the closet, blames the closure on a condo building next door whose tenants have been complaining that the whispers, cackles, and cat calls from the open-air garden at B Bar are far too loud. "
You will no longer be able to hob nob with celebrities, air kiss fashion people, or pose in your polo shirts pretending like you're too pretty to talk to anyone. The party, which started in 1994, is finally coming to an end after this coming Tuesday.
Promoter Erich Conrad, who has been throwing the party for longer than most of its attendees have been out of the closet, blames the closure on a condo building next door whose tenants have been complaining that the whispers, cackles, and cat calls from the open-air garden at B Bar are far too loud. "
Monday, May 02, 2011
Historic San Francisco gay bar shuts its doors
From San Francisco Examiner: Historic San Francisco gay bar shuts its doors — at least for now.
Saturday marked the last night of the landmark Eagle Tavern, a SoMa leather bar and institution for the neighborhood’s gay community. San Francisco artist Jim Leff, left, takes one last picture of the place. (Dan Schreiber/The Examiner)Mike Talley said his family back home in Tulsa, Okla., disowned him, and it wasn’t just because he was gay. He was also into leather. “Leather was over the line,” he recalled. “Thirty days later, I was living in San Francisco, and I had found home.”
And like many gay men who sought refuge in The City in the ’80s, he wound up at the Eagle Tavern, a quintessential leather bar that shut its doors — at least for now — on Saturday night, after 30 years as an institution.
Out on the back porch Saturday afternoon, the final-day crowd was in a nostalgic mood. Final pictures and videos were being captured and chalked messages on the walls said things like, “I broke my jaw here in 1993,” and “I left my heart at the Eagle.”
“If we hadn’t seen our friends in a while, they would always end up here on Sundays,” said patron Scott Van Hyde. “You didn’t have to be anything, or wear anything special. Just show up. Just easy.”
Sundays were when the bar held its famous beer bust fundraisers benefiting all kinds of charities, including those for AIDS research.
The disease was the bane of the gay community in the ’80s, which was the heyday of SoMa leather bars that have since — and now perhaps officially — faded into history.
There was a time when many American cities had “Eagle” bars, a sort of label for gay-friendly. A few remain, including one in Dallas, where owner Mark Frazier contemplated buying the San Francisco outpost from its two owners, John Gardiner and Joe Banks.
But negotiations with the building’s landlord faltered after rent was increased by 20 percent, and Frazier backed out. Bar manager Ron Hennis also expressed interest in ownership but declined requests for an interview and said in a Facebook message that he won’t discuss ongoing negotiations.
San Francisco Supervisors Jane Kim, Scott Wiener, and David Campos sent a letter to San Francisco police in mid-April that highlights the cultural importance of the Eagle and calls for the department to “closely scrutinize” any liquor license transfer that changes the business.
Wiener, who along with Campos is openly gay, said he has been to the Eagle many times as a patron.
“It would be a big loss to The City,” Wiener said. “It looked like it was completely dead, but at least the landlord might be negotiating again.”
Patron Richard Olivia said the bar, at its core, represents all that is “San Fransexual.”
“You don’t feel like you’re in the Castro with the clones, or in the Tenderloin with the trannies,” Olivia said. “You can come here, and it’s everyone.”
Saturday marked the last night of the landmark Eagle Tavern, a SoMa leather bar and institution for the neighborhood’s gay community. San Francisco artist Jim Leff, left, takes one last picture of the place. (Dan Schreiber/The Examiner)Mike Talley said his family back home in Tulsa, Okla., disowned him, and it wasn’t just because he was gay. He was also into leather. “Leather was over the line,” he recalled. “Thirty days later, I was living in San Francisco, and I had found home.”
And like many gay men who sought refuge in The City in the ’80s, he wound up at the Eagle Tavern, a quintessential leather bar that shut its doors — at least for now — on Saturday night, after 30 years as an institution.
Out on the back porch Saturday afternoon, the final-day crowd was in a nostalgic mood. Final pictures and videos were being captured and chalked messages on the walls said things like, “I broke my jaw here in 1993,” and “I left my heart at the Eagle.”
“If we hadn’t seen our friends in a while, they would always end up here on Sundays,” said patron Scott Van Hyde. “You didn’t have to be anything, or wear anything special. Just show up. Just easy.”
Sundays were when the bar held its famous beer bust fundraisers benefiting all kinds of charities, including those for AIDS research.
The disease was the bane of the gay community in the ’80s, which was the heyday of SoMa leather bars that have since — and now perhaps officially — faded into history.
There was a time when many American cities had “Eagle” bars, a sort of label for gay-friendly. A few remain, including one in Dallas, where owner Mark Frazier contemplated buying the San Francisco outpost from its two owners, John Gardiner and Joe Banks.
But negotiations with the building’s landlord faltered after rent was increased by 20 percent, and Frazier backed out. Bar manager Ron Hennis also expressed interest in ownership but declined requests for an interview and said in a Facebook message that he won’t discuss ongoing negotiations.
San Francisco Supervisors Jane Kim, Scott Wiener, and David Campos sent a letter to San Francisco police in mid-April that highlights the cultural importance of the Eagle and calls for the department to “closely scrutinize” any liquor license transfer that changes the business.
Wiener, who along with Campos is openly gay, said he has been to the Eagle many times as a patron.
“It would be a big loss to The City,” Wiener said. “It looked like it was completely dead, but at least the landlord might be negotiating again.”
Patron Richard Olivia said the bar, at its core, represents all that is “San Fransexual.”
“You don’t feel like you’re in the Castro with the clones, or in the Tenderloin with the trannies,” Olivia said. “You can come here, and it’s everyone.”
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