From the 'Cowboys-Without-Cowgirls' file: The Chicago Sun-Times ?/15) welcomes us all to Gay 2004 where Brokeback Mountain, a movie adaptation of an Annie Proulx short story about the love of two young cowboys is casting its net over various gorgeous young (well, gorgeous and mostly young) actors— Viggo Mortensen, Brad Pit, Jude Law, Johnny Depp, Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger are in the running. Ang Lee will direct but skeptics are wondering if the Hollywood habit of 'de-gaying' will occur.
Disposable, about Andrew Cunanan, the gay murderer who killed Chicago's Lee Miglin and fashion designer Gianni Versace is in the works in California, reports the Tribune Ƒ/12). Many people are expressing dismay at the proposed musical.
Louis Crompton has written a major work, Homosexuality and Civilization, according to The NY Times ྫྷ/13/03). Crompton surveys most of the ancient and modern world and finds the biggest villain against variant sexuality to be Christianity: the pagan and classical worlds generally thought more highly of homosexuality.
From the 'Vinegar-Or-Honey' file: Jennifer Beals, in reference to her new TV show, The L Word, is quoted in The NY Times Ƒ/11): 'Now I'll never be able to compliment a woman on her skirt again without her thinking I want to have sex with her.'
Maureen Dowd in The NY Times Ƒ/8), quoting The Washington Post on lesbian love sweeping Washington high schools: 'You can see this new trend on Friday nights outside Union Station, sweethearts from high schools around the Washington area, some locking lips. ... These girls pack Ani DiFranco concerts and know Tatu lyrics by heart. Their attention is usually directed exclusively at each other, but not always: a group of girls at a private school in Northwest Washington charge boys $10 to watch the girls make out in front of them.' Dowd goes on: 'Long regarded as the least glamorous of all minority groups, lesbians are now cover girls.'
Tom Howard, who with his partner has adopted three children, and who gave up his job as a medical professor to stay home with the kids, is quoted in The NY Times and re-quoted in the Tribune Ƒ/14): 'I can truly empathize with the women's movement now. I know that I've committed career suicide.
The Reader ྫྷ/12) has a lead article, 'Sex and Transsexuals,' which dissects the controversy in J. Michael Bailey's new book, The Man Who Would Be Queen: the Science of Gender-Bending and Transexualism. Bailey, the chairman of Northwestern University's psych department, holds to the views that all men going through sex-reassignment surgery either A) are very homosexual and want to be penetrated my a man, or B) they're fixated on having a vagina. Critics say that Bailey has reduced their deeply felt idea that their body is the wrong sex to a kind of fetishism. While a few transsexuals agree with Bailey, many (especially academic) transsexuals have launched Web sites and published articles disagreeing with him.
