In its ‘The Lives They Lived’ annual biography The New York Times Magazine (12-29), among others, highlighted Harry Hay. Eulogist Armistead Maupin reminds us of Hay’s founding of the Mattachine Society so that ‘no boy or girl approaching the maelstrom of deviation need make that crossing alone,’ Hay’s lover Will Geer (who became TV’s Grandpa Walton), another lover Rudi Gernreich (of ’60s topless swimsuit fame), and the founding of the Radical Faeries.
The New York Time’s Op-Ed page (12-28) has Superman commenting on the new gay superhero, the Rawhide Kid. In a series of letters to a much-agitated Lois Lane, the Man of Steel says his tights are tight because they’re FUNCTIONAL; his relationship with superboy, Ms. Lane, is not suspect because ‘we’re the SAME PERSON’—vis-a-vis Batman and Robin—no, there is nothing wrong with a ‘muscular grown man and a limber teenage boy who aren’t related enjoying each other’s company’ and finally no, I can’t have dinner on Friday, ‘I have to polish the trophies in my Fortress of Solitude.’ The Rawhide Kid, according to the Sun-Times (12-10), debuted in 1955, which makes him a contemporary of I Love Lucy, but he ‘always dressed much better than the other cowboys.’
The Sun-Times (12-15) reports that Sir Ian McKellen, while starring as Gandalf the wizard in The Lord of the Rings, was whisked off to Wellington, New Zealand’s only gay bar, only to find it was Drag King Night. A quote from the reporter ‘I’m here with one of the most famous gay men in the world, and it’s bloody lesbian night.’ McKellan had a fabulous time anyhow.