Out-spoken Canadian lesbian Muslim author Irshad Manji says things in The NY Times Magazine (12/21/03) that may put her in the company of Salman Rushdie in terms of animosity towards her: ‘I accept the possibility that my sexual orientation might be a sin. But only my creator can make that judgement. But here’s a question: The Koran says that everything God made is, quote, excellent, and that nothing God has made is, quote, in vain. If the creator did not wish to create me a lesbian, then why didn’t he create somebody else in my place? And given how explicit the Koran is that God has deliberately designed the world’s breath-taking multiplicity, I wonder how my critics can justify their utter condemnation of homosexuality.’ Ms. Manji’s book The Trouble With Islam is due out here this month.
Clarence Page in the Chicago Tribune (12/31/03) quotes new California governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, as asking for the impossible already: ‘I think gay marriage is something that should be between a man and a woman.’
From the ‘Orville-Have-You-Heard-This?’ file: The NY Times (12/13/03) reports that not only does Brazil claim its turn-of-the-century pilot, Alberto Santos-Dumont, flew before the Wright brothers but even that there is a cover-up of Santos-Dumont’s ‘darker, tortured side,’ his ‘lady like’ demeanor, his ‘feminine timidity,’ his, ahem, homosexuality.
Books you might want to check out in 2004: C-SPAN 2 (12/27/2003) on its Book TV program featured (at 1:15 in the morning!) Billy Bean talking about Going The Other Way: Lessons From A Life In And Out Of Major League Baseball. (Bean was persuaded to put himself in the public spotlight by Matthew Shepard’s mother, who told him young gay people needed to see a gay major league baseball player.) Design For Living: Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontaine by Margot Peters, as reviewed in The NY Times Book Review (12/14/03) tells us the famous married acting couple probably never had sex with each other (but Lunt did with Noel Coward who wrote his famous menage á trois play Design For Living for the three of them to star in). Queer Street by James McCourt (NY Times Book Review 12/14/03) a slightly convoluted tale of gay urban life in the 20th century; Self-Portrait by Jack Pierson (NY Times 12/18/03) is a book of photographs of unidentified naked men. Pierson does not himself appear in the book, so it is an autobiography of his taste.
And you may wish to see something of a masterpiece which is apparently (but only apparently) constructed entirely of murderous lesbian stereotypes. Monster as reviewed in The NY Times (12/24/03) stars Charlize Theron as Aileen Wuornos, real-life serial killer of six men. See last week’s Windy City Times for interviews