From the ‘No-Doubt-Soon-To-Be-A-Made-For-TV-Movie’ file: The Independent (9-29) could not make up the incredible story of Ernest Hemingway’s son Gregory, ‘…a furtive cross-dresser,’ manic depressive, transsexual, who died in the women’s annex of the Dade County, Fla., jail. Now the last of his four wives and five of his eight children are fighting over his estate. The children’s argument is that when Gregory married his last wife, Ida, he’d already had his sex-change operation, and since Florida doesn’t recognize same-sex marriages Ida shouldn’t (and they should) inherit.
Neil Steinberg in his Chicago Sun-Times column (10/10) conjures up the ghost of Jon-Henri Damski, the gay Chicago journalist and writer (dead these five years) as a sort of antidote to what Steinberg calls the new ‘Queer Eye’ stereotype. Damski of course looked like ‘… he slept in the hallway’ of a fleabag hotel, not at all like the Fab 5. The column indicates this stereotyping of gays (for good, not evil) may be a historical necessity but eventually will be thought of as a ‘Stepin’ Fetchit’ moment in gay history.
Time magazine (10/13) has a report from the ‘gay frontier’ in Wyoming and the changes the state has gone through since the murder of Matthew Shepard there five years ago. A number of prominent local people have come out: Casper City Councilman Guy Padgett, for example. There is a campus gay group, Spectrum, at the U. of Wyoming in Laramie. Matthew Shepard’s mother Judy travels the state and nation urging lesbians and gays to live openly. It is agreed by all that homophobia remains common in the state, but at least it’s a bit more muted.
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