About Gary Carnivele

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“Transparent” Shines as Amazon’s Latest Foray into TV Production

After NETFLIX’s phenomenal success creating original content for its streaming service with two Award winning television series, now AMAZON has also stepped into the area which was once the sole territory of network and cable television with the launch of TRANSPARENT it’s very first own series. If you haven’t caught it yet (it’s free for AMAZON PRIME subscribers) then you’re missing out as it is one of the most innovative and enjoyable family dramas that has been seen on television for years.
It’s the story of Mort Pfefferman who has indulged and spoilt his grown-up children for years and now that he has retired he wants to share with them something that is important to him.  When he asks them to gather to hear his news, they all just assume that it’s going to be something very tragic, like having terminal cancer.  What they are not prepared to learn is that Mort is going to become Maura.  This is the female who has been trapped inside him since he was a kid, and now he wants to be true to him (or rather her) self.
The news doesn’t go over too well as these three self-absorbed siblings are all wrapped in their own lives, none of which are going too well.  Sarah the oldest one feels trapped in an unhappy marriage and when Tammy her old college room mate with who she had a serious fling with shows up again, she finds an escape route.
Jay the middle one is a successful music producer and probably the most selfish of the three.  He is used to dating girls young enough to be his daughters, although that goes a little sour when one of them double crosses him at the record company where he works.  He finds salvation in religion.  Well to be more precise, in dating the female Rabbi.  His past will catch up with him in the end as is revealed in the final episode of this first series.
Then there is Ali the directionless brainy one who is too bright to hold down a day job so still relies on her father for handouts that she euphemistically calls ‘loans’. Her love life is equally impossible to define and when she starts dating a transman, her brother Josh jokes that there he is now the only one in his family that still likes ‘pussy’. Except his mother, but the mere thought of even contemplating his aged mother’s sex life is rather stomach turning.
She remarried soon after divorcing Mort years ago and her ancient new husband is now fading fast.  A fact that Shelly is annoyed about as not only is looking after him as his sole carer a great deal of hard work, but it interferes with her own life.
Amazon have billed this as a ‘downbeat comedy’ but what it is in fact is a wonderfully warm and funny series about the extraordinary journey that Maura is taking with such spirit and determination and how her choices are playing out with her family.  It’s an astonishing career-defining performance from veteran actor Jeffrey Tambor who imbues the character with empathy, dignity and resilience even though the transitioning process is not always easy or comfortable. Maura may not be the most natural or charming of women, but somehow Tambor compels us to be so completely drawn to her and so wanting her to succeed.
Great supporting cast that includes Jay Duplass, Melora Hardin, Gaby Hoffman, Kathryn Hain and Amy Landecker.  However the only other scene-stealer in piece (besides Tambor) is veteran actress Judith Light playing the classic Jewish mother/widow to the hilt.
The series is created and directed by Jill Soloway (Producer ‘Six Feet Under’) whose father revealed his own transitioning to her just three years ago. Although she claims that this is not at al autobiographical, she does nevertheless handle this potentially controversial subject superbly showing both remarkable insight and understanding.  They were a few mumblings when the idea was initially announce that they not going to cast a Transgender actor in the lead but no-one could possibly have portrayed Maura as superbly as Tambor. (Soloway did however make this a trans-friendly production hiring 20 in the cast and crew, and more than 60 were employed as extras.)
Transparent is both bold and groundbreaking and is sophisticated quality programing that is usually the Hallmark of BBC or HBO, and I cannot wait for Series 2 to arrive.

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New Study Finds LGBT Vote Was Decisive in Several Close Races in 2014 Election

A new study released today by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law finds that Virginia Senator Mark Warner and Vermont Governor Peter Chumlin would have both been defeated by their Republican challengers in the 2014 election if LGB people had not voted.

“LGB voters are one of the most consistently Democratic voting blocks in the nation,” said Williams Institute Public Opinion Project Director Andrew R. Flores. “When Democrats are elected by close margins, overwhelming support for their candidacies from LGB voters plays a decisive role in explaining their victories as was the case in this midterm election.”

Exit polls from the 2014 US midterm election suggest that 4% of the electorate identified as lesbian, gay or bisexual (LGB), representing the highest recorded LGB turnout in a midterm election since 1998. Among LGB voters, exit polls indicate that 75% supported Democratic congressional candidates in this election.

The report uses national congressional exit polling data in Senate and gubernatorial elections where the margin of victory for a Democratic candidate was less than the estimated percentage of LGB voters in the election.

Had LGB voters stayed home on Election Day, analyses suggest that:
• Republican Ed Gillespie would be the incoming Senator from Virginia instead of incumbent Democrat Mark Warner.
• Republican Scott Milne would be governor-elect of Vermont instead of incumbent Democrat Peter Chumlin.
• Gubernatorial races in Colorado and Connecticut would have been too close to call and may have gone to a recount.

The full report entitled, “LGB Vote 2014,” and co-authored by Williams Institute Public Opinion Project Director Andrew R. Flores and Blachford-Cooper Distinguished Scholar and Williams Institute Research Director Gary J. Gates is available here.

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Sex-Positive Radical Faerie House in S.F. Imperiled

A gathering place for community, and sex, could be leaving San Francisco.

The 14th Street House in San Francisco, a fixture in the Mission since 1988, faces an uncertain future.

Known by some as the Faerie House, the pink Victorian mansion was purchased by members of the counter-culture group the Radical Faeries during the height of the AIDS epidemic.

“It was purchased as a place for gay men to gather and build individual and communal intimacy at a time when bathhouses and other spaces were closing due to the AIDS epidemic,” according to a press release from the house’s organizers. “Since then, this refuge has taken on a multifaceted meaning. Various leather, kink, sex-positive, yoga and pan-spiritual groups have hosted and participated in events that touched — even transformed — the lives of many people in San Francisco and the wider world.”

San Francisco activist Michael Petrelis writes on his blog that the house is important for the city’s gay cultural identity: “There is so little queer space not colonized by commercial interests or intrusive busybodies on the government payroll or receiving state grants, making this house extraordinarily necessary for the natural evolution and development of our communal norms and sexual healing arts.

The house is going on the market in January, but the 14th Street House Project is aligning with the San Francisco Community Land Trust to turn the mansion into a housing cooperative that would shelter 6-8 low- to moderate-income tenants. The group needs to raise $900,000 by the end of the year to make that happen;

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California Business Stops Doing Wedding Photography After Rejecting Same-Sex Clients

 

Urloved Photography, based in the Bay Area of Northern California, have announced they will no longer provide wedding photography after refusing service to a same-sex couple.

 According to Jezebel’s Mark Shrayber, a gay couple recently sought to hire Urloved owners Nang and Chris Mai, but the Mais responded, “Photographing a gay wedding is not the best match for us.” They offered the couple a referral to another photographer, wishing them “the very best!”

The couple complained about the discrimination they experienced — illegal in California — on Facebook, which drew a lot of negative attention to Urloved. The Mais have now responded with a public apology, claiming that their desire for the couple to receive the “service quality they deserve” from someone who shares their personal beliefs were “misinterpreted.” They claimed that they “have been flooded with hate calls, emails, and accusations that inaccurately depict our business,” and announced that they “have come to a difficult decision that we will no longer be in the wedding photography business.”

The Family Research Council took up the Mais’ cause this week, claiming, “In a community that appreciates art and creativity, the loss was an unnecessary one,” juxtaposing their situation with the wedding planner in Phoenix, Arizona who similarly recently refused a same-sex couple service. Same-sex marriage “isn’t just about love,” the anti-LGBT hate group concluded, “it’s about loss, liberty, and livelihoods too.”

But as Shrayber explained in his original reporting on Urloved’s discrimination, there are many legal reasons why a photographer or other wedding vendor might not take a client. “Large weddings and small weddings? Sure, those can be matches or not,” he wrote. “Dates and times? Okay, sorry you were booked.” But it’s against the law in California to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, which the Mais clearly did by explaining that a “gay wedding is not the best match.”

According to Schrayber, the couple who were refused service by Urloved are not planning to take legal action. But, he concluded, “gay weddings are just weddings and they’re also not going to stop,” and “the more we catch people thinking it’s okay to discriminate and call them out on it, the less likely it will be that it will continue to be acceptable.”

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“The Imitation Game” Proves Gay Genious Alan Turing’s Life Worthy of Exploration

‘Sometimes its the people no-one expects anything from who do the things no one expects’ is the oft repeated mantra in this compelling adaption of Andrew Hodges’s biography on Alan Turing the tortured soul who was the British genius who shocked everyone by cracking the Nazi’s infamous Enigma Code which changed the whole tide of World War 2.
Using a series of flashbacks this very classy period drama showed a teenage Turing being bullied at boarding school for being different. The difference in this case being his homosexuality and a streak of autism.  The action moves forward to the outbreak of the War and in one of the wittiest scenes in the movie, 26-year-old Turing, already a Fellow at Cambridge University, is being interviewed by a Navy Commander for a top secret wartime job. Well, it was meant to be secret but Turing shocks the Commander by revealing that he knows its about trying the crack the Germans top secret code, and without even a hint of conventional modesty goes on to insist that he is the only person in the world capable of undertaking this nigh on impossible task.

Set to work in a team under in the leadership of fellow cryptologist, an arrogant Turing totally lacking in any social skills and a complete loner, quickly alienates both his colleagues and his boss, and then totally frustrated at not being able to get his own way writes a letter to the Supreme Commander, none other than  Winston Churchill the Prime Minster. The movie doesn’t explain why, but Churchill himself himself known as quite a maverick, puts Turing in charge of the whole project and he thus gets to start building the expensive machine that he alone is convinced is the only option to crack the code that will enable them to decipher all of the German High Command’s secret messages.

Now that he is in charge, Turing persuades the Head of MI6, the British wartime Secret Service, to allow him to fire some of the classically trained cryptologists and employ some more unusual mathematicians who are also skilled at solving puzzles very fast.  One of the new intake is Sarah Clarke who turns out not just to be as good as her male counterparts but in fact much better, but Turing has to persuade her strict middle-class parents that this male-dominated work away from home was suitable for a young woman.
Clarke and Turing make a great pair both thinking out of the box and on the same wave length and when down the line she announces that her parents want her back home and married, Turing desperate to keep his brightest colleague, instantly proposes to her himself. His homosexuality was a well-kept secret not just because of the nature of his highly-classified work but the mere fact that it was illegal to be so in the UK.

That’s not the only dark secret that he must keep as when he finally breaks the Code the news is kept not just from the public but most of the British Military High Command to ensure that word of their success doest leak back to the Germans. It in effects means playing fast and loose with peoples lives as decisions have to be made to which of the German attacks the authorities should allow to proceed in order not to tip them off that their secret transmissions are no longer secret.

The movie starts and finishes after the war when in 1952,Turing back at Cambridge University as a Professor has his house burgled. The Police Detective sent to check out the robbery thinks it strange that nothing has been stolen and he is also intrigued by Turing’s laissez faire attitude to the incident. On a whim he decides to investigate further and a red flag is immediately raised when he discovers that Turing’s classified (highly secret) war record on file is totally empty. When he looks deeper he does in fact discover that Turing is not a Communist Spy as he had suspected, but he is in fact gay.
At the subsequent Trial the Judge gives Turing the option of a two year jail sentence, or undertaking a case of hormone therapy instead of prison which has been likened to male castration.  A year later, at the age of 41, the brilliant man commits suicide.

It takes a Norwegian filmmaker Morten Tyldum to capture this quintessential British story of this single-minded manic zealot who could crack the most difficult code in the world but could never fathom out the simplest form of human interaction. Genuinely uninterested, and for the most part unaware, of his ability to converse with anyone he considered intellectually insignificant, it gave first-time scriptwriter Graham Moore great scope in making such mundane incidents like ordering lunch into wonderfully funny scenes. Whilst Turing rose to the challenges of being baffled by the intricacies of breaking the Code, it seems like he never wanted to fathom out anything beyond this, and his life outside of work contained no joy at all.

Benedict Cumberbatch gives a tour-de-force career best performance as the troubled genius.  He is a sheer joy to watch as the man driven by the insatiable knowledge that he is right, and so has no time for social niceties that he feels just impedes his progress. We come to like Cumberbatch’s Turing way before his Bletchley Park colleagues do because we can see that there is no hint of malice in his actions at all, and under all that bluff exterior he is quite the charmer. Cumberbatch is nothing short of electrifying.

There is a stellar supporting cast with Mark Strong as the sly manipulative Head of MI6; a stalwart Charles Dance as the Navy Commander who is determined to crack Turing  before he can  crack the Code; Mathew Goode as the lead cryptologist who ends up being the closest male friend Turing eventually makes; and Keira Knightly as Sarah Clarke who’s happy enough solving problems rather than making out with Turing.

There is a wonderful old-fashioned feeling to the whole piece resulting in a crowd-pleasing movie that will delight more than just the members of the Academy Awards.

P.S. 50 years after the War the news of Turing’s success was finally made public.  In 2009 the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown issued a Public Apology on how Turing had been treated, and in 2013 The Queen granted him a posthumous pardon. The machine that Turing created to break the code was the first of what we now know as computers.

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Equality California Launches Campaign to End the FDA’s Discriminatory Blood Donation Ban

Equality California, the largest statewide lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization in California, today launched a mobilization campaign to urge the Department of Health and Human Services and the Food and Drug Administration to end the discriminatory lifetime ban on blood donations from men who have sex with men. EQCA’s campaign called “Every Drop Counts” will mobilize the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community and its allies, including elected officials and community leaders, to advocate for the end of the ban through direct, public advocacy.

Established in 1983 during a time of great fear and little knowledge about HIV or AIDS, the current FDA donor-deferral policy prohibits blood donation by men who have had sex with another man even one time since 1977. In the 31 years since the policy was instituted, the medical community’s knowledge of HIV and its ability to test for it has improved dramatically, but the policy has not been updated to reflect those changes.

“The FDA blood ban is discrimination, pure and simple,” said Rick Zbur, EQCA executive director. “FDA blood donor eligibility policies should be based on modern scientific research and findings rather than archaic assumptions and fears. Ending this discriminatory ban is a priority for our community and we call on our members, supporters and allies around the country to join EQCA in demanding that the FDA end this ban.”

Medical organizations including the American Red Cross, the American Association for Blood Banks, America’s Blood Centers and the American Medical Association have all called for a reevaluation and change of the policy because of its excessively broad nature and advances in blood testing.

In August, Equality California partnered with Assemblymember Richard Bloom to advance an assembly joint resolution — overwhelmingly approved by both the Assembly and Senate — urging President Barack Obama to compel the Department of Health and Human Services and FDA to adopt modernized blood donor policies that do not discriminate against men who have had sex with other men.

The Williams Institute, a national think tank based at UCLA School of Law, estimates that an additional 130,150 men would likely donate 219,200 additional pints of blood each year if the ban were lifted, helping blood banks in the United States which routinely operate with short supplies, especially after significant disasters or national emergencies.

The FDA’s Blood Products Advisory Committee is meeting this year to examine the issue. Equality California is urging supporters to send letters to DHHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell and FDA Commissioner Margaret A. Hamburg publicly calling for an end to the ban. EQCA will present the signatures to officials later this year.

Equality California joins other LGBT organizations, including the Human Rights Campaign and the National Gay Blood Drive, in its efforts to bring about an end to this outdated and discriminatory ban.

Equality California is California’s largest statewide lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization focused on creating a fair and just society. Our mission is to achieve and maintain full and lasting equality, acceptance, and social justice for all people in our diverse LGBT communities, inside and outside of California. Our mission includes advancing the health and well being of LGBT Californians through direct healthcare service advocacy and education. Through electoral, advocacy, education and mobilization programs, we strive to create a broad and diverse alliance of LGBT people, educators, government officials, communities of color and faith, labor, business, and social justice communities to achieve our goals. www.eqca.org

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Equality California calls on Assembly candidate, Young Kim, to denounce mailer attacking LGBT youth

Equality California calls on Young Kim, the candidate challenging Assemblymember Sharon Quirk-Silva in Assembly District 65, to reject and apologize for a misleading mailer sent on her behalf that cynically scapegoats transgender students and plays on unwarranted fears of the electorate.

“The mailer supporting Young Kim blatantly lies about the law and scapegoats lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender kids. Throughout this campaign, Kim has engaged in the same dishonest tactics in an attempt to win votes,” said Rick Zbur, executive director of Equality California. “As a mother and former teacher, Assemblymember Sharon Quirk-Silva has been a staunch advocate for all students, including LGBT students, getting a fair shot to succeed.”

The mailer, which repeats lies about the School Success and Opportunity Act, or AB 1266, arrived in mailboxes this week. The law, which went into effect on Jan. 1, 2014, provides guidance to schools so they can make sure that transgender students, like all students, have the opportunity to do well in school and graduate.

Schools work to meet the needs of all students, and this law is based on policies and practices that are already working well in school districts across California. The law gives guidelines for schools to do what’s best for all students and to work with students and families on a case-by-case basis. That’s why it’s supported by school boards, teachers and the PTA.

Kim has made other false claims about AB 1266, including that it has been a burden on local schools. As reported by the Orange County Register, three of Orange County’s largest unified school districts — Santa Ana, Capistrano and Garden Grove — are already implementing the law and have not reported any concerns regarding implementation. AB 1266 was based on guidelines implemented by California’s two largest school districts for more than a decade with no reported incidents.

Throughout this campaign, Young Kim has attempted to use LGBT youth as a wedge issue in the community. She recently stated that laws protecting LGBT youth don’t “represent the values of the community.”

Equality California is California’s largest statewide lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization focused on creating a fair and just society. Our mission is to achieve and maintain full and lasting equality, acceptance, and social justice for all people in our diverse LGBT communities, inside and outside of California. Our mission includes advancing the health and well being of LGBT Californians through direct healthcare service advocacy and education. Through electoral, advocacy, education and mobilization programs, we strive to create a broad and diverse alliance of LGBT people, educators, government officials, communities of color and faith, labor, business, and social justice communities to achieve our goals. www.eqca.org

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Black Colleges: Stop Discriminating Against LGBT

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Life is not easy for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) students at the nation’s 105 Historically Black Colleges and Universities, where the subject of same-gender-loving people and lifestyles remains largely taboo. The reality is that most black colleges have not accepted sexual identity diversity as an issue with which they need to be concerned. A number of reasons have been suggested — among these, a level of social and religious conservatism within the black community.

Whereas nearly all majority institutions long ago developed programming and institutional support systems to ensure that same-gender-loving persons are able to live authentically, only three HBCUs — Bowie State University, North Carolina Central University and Fayetteville State University — have created a center or dedicated full-time administrative staff to LGBT affairs.

Moreover, few black colleges have codified anti-discrimination policies related to sexual orientation. As a result, the LGBT communities within these schools are vulnerable to unchecked discrimination, forcing many to live in the shadows; masking their identities and suppressing their human potential in order survive. By not valuing and validating sexual identity diversity, black colleges create enormous losses in terms of human capital and opportunities for increased excellence, both for the black colleges, for black LGBT persons, and for society. There are no winners here.

According to the Harvard Business Review, LGBT persons comprise 5 to 10 percent percent of the working public in the United States and, we extrapolate, a substantially larger proportion of college enrollments. Estimates are that family and friends of LGBT persons extend to 60 percent of the American population. In terms of wealth, the LGBT community in the United States represents an $800 billon marketplace that is growing.

Data show that development and execution of a campus-based LGBT diversity and engagement strategy can both improve institutional outcomes and campus climate by providing a welcoming environment that fully engages all students, faculty and staff to contribute their best. Indeed, successful LGBT diversity and engagement strategies can enhance an institution’s reputation, overall student satisfaction, and fundraising opportunities — each providing new levers for marketability. And student and staff morale are lifted when an institution is seen to be inclusive. But perhaps most importantly, fully inclusive institutions garner the best talent, increase employee retention and productivity, and decrease their legal vulnerability.

With a collective enrollment of some 300,000 undergraduate and graduate students annually, black colleges play a critical role in shaping the black community. It is imperative, therefore, that black colleges take a national leadership role as agents of social change by adopting a campus diversity agenda built around the emerging needs of their LGBT communities.

At the core is a recognition that black colleges lag woefully behind their peers nationally in developing welcoming environments for LGBT persons, with most displaying benign neglect and some outright hostility to LBGT concerns. The presidents of these institutions must have the courage to stand up for diversity by aligning their institutions’ operations with their stated values of inclusion.

Black college presidents should invest in 1) understanding their campus climate with an emphasis on LGBT concerns, 2) developing a language and framework to engage with the issues of sexual identity diversity constructively, and 3) creating strategies, plans and the infrastructure to ensure that the needs of their LGBT members are met. Concurrently, all who care about black colleges must step out of the shadows of fear or indifference and help them write a new chapter in their ongoing tradition of inclusiveness.

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Santa Rosa Bishop Not Interested in Catholic Church Acceptance of LGBT Folks

Santa Rosa Bishop Robert Vasa was not among Catholic leaders gathered this week at the Vatican to discuss the church’s stance on a range of hot-button topics including marriage, divorce, homosexuality and birth control.

But Vasa said that if he had participated in the widely reported gathering, he would not have endorsed a preliminary document that signaled a shift in tone about the church’s accepting gay people, unmarried couples and the divorced.

Vasa, who defends the church’s traditional doctrines, on Tuesday downplayed the significance of the interim report. It thrilled progressives and gay rights groups, who have been encouraged by Pope Francis’ inclusive and welcoming message.

But Vasa said the working paper by an assembly of bishops is subject to change and does not alter any of the church’s long-held positions against homosexuality and divorce.

Vasa said if he were attending the bishops’ meeting, or synod, at the Vatican, he would probably have agreed with the criticisms by one church official, Cardinal Gerhard Müller of Germany, the Vatican’s doctrine czar. Vasa said Müller characterized the document as “weak and disgraceful.”

“The headlines say the church is more welcoming to the homosexually inclined person and the divorced. That’s true. It doesn’t mean (the church) is approving the lifestyle, or second marriages, or there is alteration of her doctrinal understandings,” Vasa said.

The document produced by bishops halfway through a two-week meeting on family life said gays had gifts to offer the church and that their partnerships, while morally problematic, provided gay couples with “precious” support.

It said the church must welcome divorced people and recognize the “positive” aspects of civil marriages and even Catholics who live together without being married.

Its message was one of near-revolutionary acceptance and understanding rather than condemnation, according to reports by the Associated Press.

But that message, however tentative, dismayed conservatives already uncomfortable with Francis’ aim to make the church what he has called a “field hospital” for wounded souls that focuses far less on the rules and regulations emphasized by his two predecessors.

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California Schools, Feds Settle Transgender Complaint

A Southern California school district has settled a government claim that it discriminated against a transgender student who said she was forbidden to wear makeup, was harassed by other children and was encouraged to change schools, it was announced Tuesday.

The Downey Unified School District agreed to give the teenager access to the same facilities and activities as other female students, including athletic tryouts and district-sponsored overnight events, according to a statement from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.

Without acknowledging any violations of federal law, the district southeast of Los Angeles also agreed to ensure that the middle-school student wouldn’t be disciplined “for acting or appearing in a manner that does not conform to stereotypical notions of masculinity or femininity,” according to an agreement reached Oct. 8.

The district will also review and revise policies, if necessary, to ensure that transgender students have equal access to school activities; will train administrators about gender-based harassment and will add instruction on gender identity and discrimination to its curriculum, the agreement said.

The district worked with the federal agency to craft the agreement, Superintendent John Garcia said.

“It’s important not to lose sight that we’re talking about … a child,” Garcia said. “And as a school district, we want to make sure that all of our children feel safe and comfortable and supported.”

The student filed a complaint in 2011 when she was in elementary school. She was diagnosed with gender dysphoria before starting kindergarten but continued to use her male name and use the boys’ bathroom until she reached the fifth grade, according to a resolution letter sent by the education department’s Office for Civil Rights to the district superintendent on Tuesday.

That school year, staff confiscated her makeup and made her write an apology letter “for making male students uncomfortable” by wearing it, the letter said.

The student also said she was discouraged from discussing her gender identity with her friends, and that she was frequently teased by other students on the bus, who called her “gay,” “fag,” “bitch” and “whore,” according to the letter.

Garcia said the Downey school district already changed its policies last year to comply with a new California law – the nation’s first – requiring public schools to let transgender students choose which restrooms they use and which school teams they join based on their gender identity instead of their chromosomes.

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