From the “Odd-And-Queer” file: according to The New York Times Magazine (10-13), Clive Barker the gay writer and director of the film Hellraiser, lives in three side-by-side houses in Beverly Hills with his partner David Armstrong, Armstrong’s teenage daughter, four dogs, fish, geckos, a parrot and pet rats. (The rats are the wild gray ones that had “infiltrated” his house, only to be … adopted.) Barker’s a painter, too, and his “wedding portrait” is a “painting of their two erect penises, one black and one white, tied together with a bit of twine.” Barker has been courted by the Disney Corporation of late in an attempt to alter their image (and make money again).
The Guardian (10-18) reports of the serious split in Jamaica between reggae and gay people. Two gay Jamaican men have been granted asylum in Britain. “Jamaica, where homophobes will fling rocks first and ask questions later, is one of the most dangerous places in the world for gay men and women.” The derogatory words for gay in Jamaica are batty boy, yatty man, or chi chi man. The last term used as a title by a reggae group caused a fuss in local politics, suggesting the government there was run by a cabal of closeted gays. The Prime Minister, P.J. Patterson, went on radio to declare that he had never been homosexual and wasn’t contemplating it in the future. The recent proposed gay march in Kingston, the capital, was canceled because it was quickly noted by many that the local machete factories had sold out all their stock immediately after the March announcement. One homophobic singer, Shabba Banks, has had his music banned in Britain but he’s still popular on the island. Buju Banton has a hit “Boom Bye Bye” that advocates killing gays, but was himself almost killed when his U.S. record company apologized on his behalf to the gay community. The opinion article finishes by laying the blame for the whole situation on the Jamaican government’s head and compares it to the state of affairs in Britain years before with its police entrapment and anti-gay laws.
From the “Hidden-Agenda-But-It’s-OK” file, Dan Savage, the gay sex columnist and author, has a cover story in the Reader (10-18) which is ostensibly about straight swingers, those married hetero couples who have fun, games and adultery with each other. Along the way Dan gets in these zingers: A) even according to the most homophobic conservative Christians, gay people cannot be accused of adultery (they’re not married), B) lust, even within marriage, was thought to be a kind of adultery by early Christians, C) marriage was considered very inferior to celibacy, D) Christian activists rarely crash swinging events to videotape them like they do gay events, E) if all the gay men who would marry if they could, did marry, they would just about match the number of straight couples who swing (so who’s wrecking het marriages?), F) How the Grinch Stole Christmas has a key-exchange scene straight out of the swinger’s clubs, and G) there are three gay bathhouses in Chicago but at least 10 straight swingers clubs. All of this has been excerpted from Savage’s new book Skipping Towards Gomorrah: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Pursuit of Happiness in America.