Modern straight women started shrieking in large groups not at the Beatles or even Frank Sinatra; they started in 1921 with Rudolph Valentino. The NY Times Book Review (5-11) looks at Dark Lover: The Life and Death of Rudolph Valentino by Emily W. Leider. The southern Italian idol to guote a magazine of the time: did not ‘… look like your husband. He is not in the least like your brother. He does not resemble the man your mother thinks you ought to marry.’ Though the author is cautious, she does mention that ‘the Sheik’ was never without a male companion, that of his two wives, one was a confirmed lesbian, the last probably, and his last ‘girl-friend’ Pola Negri spent the rest of her years living with a rich Texan, Margaret West. Perhaps that quote should be changed: he’s looking for your husband; he likes your brother and mom’s right—you shouldn’t marry him.
From the ‘They-Hadn’t-Noticed-Till-Now’ file —The Chicago Reader (5-9) in the News of the Weird column tells us that a court in Saskatchewan, Canada upheld a ruling that four Biblical passages condemning homosexuality were hate literature.
The Chicago Sun-Times had a spicy little item (5-2) about a sex scandal at the Air Force Academy in Colorado. Seems a cadet arranged group sex sessions involving at least two dozen men and one woman. Let’s see. If we do the numbers most of the sex must’ve been … DAH! DAH!—same sex.
In foreign news: buried in a story about foreign adoption in the Chicago Tribune (5-11) is a little piece of info that while China has no problem with single foreign women adopting Chinese babies, ‘it does require a statement that the applicant is not a lesbian.’
The NY Times (5-10) profiles Abdurrazack Achmat of South Africa, the gay Malaysian descended hero of people sick with AIDS in that nation. Nelson Mandela has praised him as a role model. Achmat had refused new drugs until all South Africans have access to them. He was tossed out of his home along with his sister, Taghmeda, when they came out. Achmat has become a leader in a civil disobedience campaign to embarrass his government into changing its ways vis-a-vis AIDS patients.
Speaking of that afflication, AIDS scientists, according to the NY Times (5-9) are ‘terrified these days.’ The neo-puritans in the Bush administration have caused these scientists to be very cautious, grant-wise, in using terms such as ‘gay,’ ‘homosexual,’ ‘anal sex,’ ‘transgender.’ The scientists to keep their grants are beginning to speak in code in their e-mails and telephone conversations. Says one scientists: ‘In short, assume you are living in Stalinist Russia when communicating with the United States government.’
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