Productions about gay men in New York City, friendship after the Sept. 11 attacks and love in Mississippi dominated Britain’s prestigious Olivier Awards for best theatre on Sunday.
In a distinctly American-themed night, “The Inheritance”, a play about the generation after the peak of the AIDS crisis, was joint overall winner with four awards: best new play, best director (Stephen Daldry), best actor (Kyle Soller) and best lighting.
Written by Matthew Lopez, the two-part play transposes E.M. Forster’s classic 1910 novel “Howards End” to modern New York, where a group of young, ambitious men ponder their existence and the previous generation’s legacy.
“I don’t have the proper vocabulary … It feels like an out-of-body experience … a bit crazy,” Soller told Reuters after winning the award over other nominees like Ian McKellen and David Suchet.
“To be speaking for a community where there’s so much pain, so much healing to be done, it is just really incredible, very emotional,” he added.
In his acceptance speech, Soller paid tribute to the victims of AIDS and lamented that in some nations people can still be stoned to death for being gay.
“Come From Away”, a musical about the power of kindness among air passengers grounded in Canada after the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, also won four awards including best new musical.
“Company”, a reworking of U.S. composer Stephen Sondheim’s comedy with a woman instead of a man in the lead role, took three prizes including best musical revival.
“Summer And Smoke”, a rarely-staged Tennessee Williams’ drama about love, loneliness and self-destruction set in small-town Mississippi, took two honours for best actress (Patsy Ferran) and best revival.
“I wasn’t expecting it … Nobody knows who I am,” Ferran told Reuters afterwards, clutching a glass of champagne. “I might be slightly hung over tomorrow, don’t tell anyone!”
Prince Charles’ wife Camilla joined stars of British theatre for the glitzy ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall in London.
The Russian River Chamber of Commerce invites you to join us in a celebration of food and wine to kick off the summer season. Celebrate the Rise of the Russian River after the rainy winter. On April 27th, 2019 from 1-4 pm over 30 gourmet restaurants and wineries will be serving up a variety of local Sonoma County foods and delicious wines. The event is taking place in the tree-lined, center of town right next to Trios Restaurant. Nearby you’ll find art galleries and shops to browse after enjoying tastings from world class restaurants and wineries in the casual and relaxed atmosphere of Guerneville along the Russian River. Cost is $50 for unlimited Food & Wine, $30 for food only. Come and enjoy world class tastings from restaurants and wineries along the Russian River. First 100 tickets sold will be entered to win a Magnum of Woodenhead Pinot Noir! Advance Tickets here. A sampling of the wineries and food purveyors sampling for you at the Spring Fling:
The California National Guard will continue to welcome transgender troops despite a military-wide ban.
The Trump administration rule that bans transgender people from serving in the armed forces went into effect on April 12.
However, California’s National Guard has made clear that it will not be following suit in adopting the policy.
Transgender soldiers ‘will remain in’ California National Guard
Major General Matthew Beevers told The Hill that gender identity of soldiers is “the least of our concerns.”
He said: “Every [transgender] soldier or airmen currently serving in the California National Guard will remain in our ranks. We will not treat any soldier or airmen any differently today, than we did yesterday.”
The general added that the guard “will explore every avenue to ensure that [transgender] people who want to serve in the California National Guard are afforded every opportunity to serve.”
He continued: “Anybody who is willing and able to serve state [and] nation should have the opportunity to serve.
“It’s unconscionable in my mind that we would fundamentally discriminate against a certain class of people based on their gender identity.
“That should be the absolute least of our worries.”
California National Guard Major General Matthew Beevers
Beevers added that the guard would “exercise every available avenue” to welcome transgender troops while abiding by the guidelines.
He continued: “It’s a bit frightening where we’re at today.
“However, we’re compelled as military officers to follow the rules of the folks that are elected and appointed above us and we’ll continue to do that.”
13,700 people could face discharge under Trump ban
“After consultation with my generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States government will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the US military,” he wrote.
“Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail.”
Any person who comes out or is outed as trans in the US Armed Forces from April 12 will be discharged, unless they are willing to suppress their identity. The military will not pay for any gender confirmation surgeries, apart from those which will “protect the health” of people who have begun to medically transition.
After April 12, those applying to join the services with a record of gender dysphoria will have to adhere to the gender they were assigned at birth in order to serve. A doctor will have to certify that they have been stable in that gender for at least 36 months, and that they have not medically transitioned.
The US Supreme Court has rejected an appeal by gay death row inmate Charles Rhines amid claims he was given a harsher sentence because of his sexuality.
According to sworn statements from 2016, the South Dakota jury that convicted Rhines may have given him the death sentence instead of life imprisonment because of anti-gay prejudice.
“If he’s gay, we’d be sending him where he wants to go,” Frances Cersosimo noted another juror saying.SPONSORED CONTENT
“We also knew he was a homosexual and thought he shouldn’t be able to spend his life with men in prison,” said juror Henry Keeney in his sworn statement at the time.
Charles Rhines’ many appeals against death row
Rhines made a similar appeal last year. His appeals follow a New York Times reportin 2017 where the jury’s deliberations were used to prove evidence of racial bias in Miguel Angel Peña Rodriguez’s case.
Usually proof of misconduct cannot be used to alter a conviction as the jurors’ thoughts should remain private.
“Mr. Rhines’s case represents one of the most extreme forms anti-LGBT bias can take.”
“Sexual orientation is not immutable to the same extent as race,” Ravnsborg wrote. “No politician has ever proposed constructing a wall to keep homosexuals out of the country.”
“The alleged juror comments here are not clear and explicit expressions of animus toward homosexuals,” Ravnsborg added. “At best, they fall into the category of an ‘offhand comment’.”
Charles Rhines believes he would’ve received life imprisonment rather than the death sentence if he wasn’t gay. (Pexels)
LGBT+ right groups such as Lambda Legal, the National LGBT Bar Association and the ACLU advocated on Rhines’ behalf.
“The constitutional right to a fair trial must include the right to establish whether a verdict or sentence was imposed due to jury bias,” said Ethan Rice, Lambda Legal Fair Courts Project Attorney. “Mr. Rhines’s case represents one of the most extreme forms anti-LGBT bias can take.”
Top leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have reversed a policy that prevented minor children of same-sex married couples from joining the church and participating in its sacred rituals since 2015.
Many conservative churches oppose same-sex relationships and have done so with increased intensity since the second half of the 20th century. In the case of Latter-day Saints, the reasons for opposing same-sex marriage are based in their theology of a “real family,” as willed by God.
However, as a scholar of gender and sexuality in Mormonism, I argue that the 2015 decision to bar children of same-sex parents from the church was tied to the conservative fight against same-sex marriage that was finding an increasing acceptance at the time in courts and elsewhere.
Mormon theology
Mormon theology is based on a divine heterosexual archetype that sets the pattern for all intimate human relationships.
Latter-day Saints hold an ideal that heaven is a domestic paradise where families will live together in eternal harmony. In Latter-day Saints’ view of God, there is a divine Father in Heaven, but also a Mother in Heaven, who are believed to be the heterosexual parents of human spirits.
Mormons protest over the 2015 rule change by church officials that bars children of same-sex couple from being baptized. AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File
When the policy was adopted in 2015, the church deemed same-sex married Latter-day Saints as “apostate” and excommunicated them. This involved removing their names from the records of the church and nullifying any previous rituals.
‘Protecting children’
In order to explain why the children were also deserving of official sanction, the church said it was an effort to “protect” them.
One senior church leader claimed that it was an act of “love” and “kindness” to prevent the children of same-sex families from participating and joining the church. One church leader, Elder D. Todd Christofferson, said, “We don’t want the child to have to deal with issues that might arise where the parents feel one way and the expectations of the Church are very different.”
In the religious practice of Latter-day Saints, a child’s name on church records initiates visits to their home and an expectation of attending church-sponsored activities. Christofferson claimed, that it would not be “an appropriate thing” for a child living with a same-sex couple.
The church even issued an official statement about not wanting to subject children to teachings that their same-sex married parents were “apostates.”
Mormons and politics
What I argue is that the roots of rhetoric of the focus on family goes back to the emergence of the anti-gay politics of religious conservatives starting in the 1970s.
At the time, several preachers and anti-gay activists such as Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, Tim LaHaye and others increasingly spoke out against the gay rights movement as a threat to “family values” that would undermine society. Latter-day Saints joined this opposition.
These conservatives, advocating for “family values,” opposed same-sex marriage. These efforts often relied on claims that same-sex marriage would harm children belonging to same-sex families as well as those children who interacted with them.
In 1977, evangelical activist Anita Bryant launched a national campaign against the gay rights movement, specifically to keep gays and lesbians out of schools, and successfully rallied conservatives to this cause.
Bryant’s campaign was a simple slogan, “Save Our Children,” which depicted gay men and lesbians as pedophiles recruiting young people into “perversion.” Her campaign also suggested that “our children” belonged only to heterosexual people.
Gay rights activists protest against the Mormon Church’s alleged heavy support of the anti-gay marriage initiative in 2008, AP Photo/Reed Saxon
In the 1990s, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints backed campaigns and mobilized members and money to deny same-sex couples the right to create legally protected families.
The policy on children was a response to a U.S. Supreme Court decision earlier that year that legalized same-sex marriage.
What’s not changed
When it was first announced, the policy was deeply unpopular among the rank and file. The truth is that many members of the church increasingly support same-sex marriage.
A Public Religion Research Institute survey found that 55% of Mormons opposed same-sex marriage in 2016. But this number was rapidly declining. In 2015, the same survey had found 66% of Mormons opposing same sex marriages. In one year, it noted, there was an 11-point drop in opposition, with a corresponding 11-point increase in support.
People holding placards at an annual conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City in 2018. AP Photo/Rick Bowmer
In light of this trend, it was no surprise to see the unpopular policy reversed.
The reversal of the 2015 policy, however, does not change the status of same-sex relationships in the church. These relationships are still forbidden and subject couples to potential excommunication. Only their children can once again participate fully in the church without sanction.
In my view, the church faces a real conceptual problem when it comes to imagining same-sex families as “real families” that may include children. How can it support the children of same-sex families when its teachings claim that they are “counterfeit and alternative lifestyles” and not part of the family organization willed by God?
Some of the world’s biggest banks have stopped their employees from staying at hotels owned by the Sultan of Brunei. This follows his decision to change laws which would stone people to death for having homosexual sex.
The new laws include stoning to death for those convicted of sodomy. Those convicted of abortions, adultery or rape will receive a public flogging and the amputation of hands and feet for convicted thieves.
Since the news broke celebrities and businesses have announced they would boycott Brunei owned businesses such as luxury hotels and the national airline.
Now, leading banks have joined the boycott. Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Jefferies and Nomura have removed 45 hotels globally owned by Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah from a list of approved places to stay for all its employees.
Rich Handler, chief executive of Jeffries, told Financial News that the bank ‘supports human rights for all people regardless of race, religion, colour or sexual preference’.
Deutsche made the decision earlier in the month in support of LGBTI rights. Chief risk officer, Stuart Lewis said Deutsche had a ‘duty as a firm to take action against them’.
Dorchester hits back
Some of the hotels affected include the Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles, Paris’ Le Meurice and Hotel Plaza Athénée and Rome’s Hotel Eden. In the UK, multiple Dorcherster Collection hotels were affected.
‘We understand people’s anger and frustration but this is a political and religious issue that we don’t believe should be played out in our hotels and amongst our 3,630 employees,’ the Collection said in a statement.
‘We’re deeply saddened by what’s happening right now and the impact it is having on our employees, guests, partners and suppliers in particular. Our values are far removed from the politics of ownership.’
An appeals court in the Cayman Islands has delayed the implementation of same-sex marriage legalisation in the British Overseas Territory.
The Court of Appeal accepted a government request to halt the legalisation of same-sex marriage that Chief Justice Anthony Smellie of the Grand Court of the Cayman Islands ruled with immediate effect in a historic ruling on March 29.
The government is appealing the ruling and demanded a stay on same-sex marriage legalisation, which the appeals court granted on Wednesday (April 10), the Cayman Compass reported.
“Chantelle and Vickie aren’t trailblazers. They’re just a couple who are in love and who know they want to spend the rest of their lives together. They don’t want to be in court fighting for their right to marry, a right which opposite-sex couples take for granted.”
— Jonathan Cooper
The March 29 ruling came less than a year after Chantelle Day and her partner Vickie Bodden Bush applied for the right to be married in the Cayman Islands, but had their application rejected due to the fact that they are a same-sex couple.
They initially said that they’d be prepared to accept a civil partnership as long as their relationship could be recognised by law, but since their plea was rejected they were forced to litigate to have their relationship officially recognised.
The couple was due to become the first married same-sex couple in the Cayman Islands this week, but will instead have to wait at least until August, when the Court of Appeal will hear the government’s argument and decide whether the March 29 ruling should stand.
Cayman islands delay in legalising same-sex marriage labelled a ‘disgrace’
Jonathan Cooper, a barrister at Doughty Street law firm, who has advised the couple on their case, called the appeals court’s decision a “disgrace.”
“Chantelle and Vickie are at the heart of this story. The Chief Justice of the Cayman Islands has recognised their constitutional right to marry.
“Chantelle and Vickie aren’t trailblazers. They’re just a couple who are in love and who know they want to spend the rest of their lives together. They don’t want to be in court fighting for their right to marry, a right which opposite-sex couples take for granted.
Chantelle Day, Peter Laverack, and Vickie Bodden Bush stand outside the court in the Cayman Island that legalised same-sex marriage on March 29. An appeals court has now blocked the implementation of that ruling to allow a government appeal against it. (Supplied)
“They just want the law to recognise their right to be together. Instead they are treated like pawns in a chess game,” Cooper said in a statement to PinkNews, adding: “They are being demeaned and shamed and it is a disgrace.”
The barrister renewed his call to the Foreign Office and Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt to take action in this case to ensure the couple can marry.
“Hunt needs to stand firm and ensure that Chantelle and Vickie’s ordeal is over. They want a Spring wedding. Is it too much for the Foreign Secretary to grant them that?”
In February, a report from the UK Parliament’s foreign affairs committee called on the government to extend equal marriage—which became legal in England and Wales in 2013 and Scotland in 2014—to British Overseas Territories such as the Cayman Islands.
The study included 2,981 mainly gay and bisexual men. Researchers published their results in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
They found there was an increased risk of acquiring an STI while on PrEP compared to before starting PrEP. But they also found there was no link between that increase and the rate of condom use.
Researchers found it ‘surprising’ that ‘condom use was not a significant predictor of acquiring an STI when using PrEP’.
So, why more STIs?
The study found that an increase in casual sex partners and group sex lead to the STI diagnoses. But also like previous studies found that more regular testing explained the increase in STI diagnoses. But results of the study also showed that about 25% of participants accounted for a majority of the diagnoses and that group experienced high rates of STIs.
‘It’s important to understand that when people start taking PrEP, they also get tested more frequently, so STIs are more likely to be detected anyway,’ said lead author, Burnet PhD student Michael Traeger.
He argued the study results should help better guide STI prevention campaigns for people who take PrEP. Those campaigns should not just focus on condom use, but also reducing the time to STI diagnosis through frequent testing.
‘But as PrEP uptake increases, identifying individuals most at risk of STIs will become increasingly important for informing effective and focused STI prevention,’ Traeger said.
End the PrEP backlash
PrEP sceptics often cite the increase risk of STIs while to criticize the medical treatment.
Associate Professor Edwina Wright argued the findings ‘are a rebuttal to the backlash against PrEP users for reducing condom use’.
Wright is the principal investigator of the PrEPX Study, an infectious diseases physician and clinical researcher. She is also the co-head of the HIV Elimination Program at Burnet Institute.
‘The findings are also important because they highlight the need to target our sexual health messaging about STI risks to a relatively small proportion of PrEP users to help reduce their STI rates,’ she said.
‘We need to address these findings by engaging in more research to prevent STIs including STI vaccines and antibiotics that may prevent STIs.’
Transgender men and women are more likely to have heart attacks than cisgender people, according to a new US study.
The study found that trans men are four times more likely than cisgender men to have had a heart attack. Trans women are two times as likely as cisgender women to have had a heart attack.
The researchers hope that the study—which was published in Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes—will inspire future research into ways to improve transgender patients’ cardiovascular health.
Transgender people may be at higher risk of heart attacks due to ‘social stressors’
Statistics about transgender patients and their history of heart attacks was gleaned from the Behavioural Risk Factor Surveillance System.
In the study, the researchers note trans people may be more likely to have heart attacks because of “an increase in social stressors, health disparity, poor socioeconomic status, and substance abuse.”
“We don’t have enough awareness or enough health care dedicated to this population.”
– The study’s authors
The study says: “Increased stress levels related to neglect, abuse, and mistreatment have been hypothesized to contribute to increased inflammation, which may, in turn, predispose to cardiovascular disease.”
They also note that transgender people are more likely to face unemployment and poverty, which can lead to challenges in accessing healthcare.
The study found that hormonal replacement therapy may put a transgender person at higher risk of heart attacks due to an increase in “inflammatory markers” which can promote blood clots. This is thought to not affect younger transgender people in the same way.
Pexels
Authors of the study say transgender people can be ‘afraid’ of mistreatment from medical professionals
The researchers who authored the study say it is the first investigation of a large cohort of transgender people in the United States that looks at their reported medical history.
Tran Nguyen, a medical student and co-author of the study, told the GW Hatchetthat the health care community “should be more equipped to take care of transgender patients and make them feel welcome in the clinic.”
“You create an environment so that they can come to us and seek the care they need help with.”
She also said transgender patients are often reluctant to seek medical treatment as they can be “afraid” of being mistreated by professionals.
“We don’t have enough awareness or enough health care dedicated to this population,” she said.
Meanwhile, Talal Alzahrani told the GW Hatchet that social stressors needed to be considered in the study.
“Our study would likely raise the awareness among clinical providers and transgender population about the risk of heart attack to emphasize about the importance of primary coronary artery disease prevention in the transgender population,” she said.
Miranda in Milan is an absolute delight. It’s essentially femslash for William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. After the dramatics covered in the original Shakespeare play, Miranda and her father Prospero make it back to Italy. Miranda finds herself confined to her room or carefully led through the halls of the castle with a thick veil over her face. The maids who attend her shy away from her, seeming frightened of her or even disgusted. The worst of these is Agata, a woman who’s in charge of the maids and who basically openly despises Miranda. Miranda hears murmurs of her mother’s name all over the castle. Ferdinand is at his father’s castle in Naples, seemingly forgetting about Miranda, their island marriage forgotten once the women of Italy were back in his sights.
Lonely and bored, Miranda finds herself falling for Dorothea, a maid who just so happens to be a fairly powerful witch. (Dorothea is something of a poet, and her words are beautiful: “Men would lose their art, for you.”) Her magic is no match for Prospero’s, and he doesn’t seem to be living up to his promise to leave his magic on the island. Dorothea gives Miranda a taste of freedom, both in her affection and in teaching Miranda about the secret maze of tunnels running behind the castle walls, a doorway to which is conveniently located in Miranda’s bedroom.
Exploring the tunnels one lonely night, Miranda comes upon her uncle Antonio, chained up in a hidden cell. He’s the one, after all, who usurped Prospero’s throne, and Prospero isn’t exactly the forgive and forget type. In fact, through Miranda’s reminisces, we learn that he’s quite a cruel man who doesn’t have any moral qualms about beating those he views as inferior to himself, like Caliban and Ariel, the island’s native inhabitants, or using magic on his daughter. As Miranda thinks more on her time on the island, she realizes that Prospero often used his magic to knock her out when she saw things she shouldn’t have.
After a mysterious figure leads Miranda to discover her mother’s portrait during a masked ball, Dorothea and Miranda decide to investigate the mystery of what happened to Miranda’s mother–Beatrice died when Miranda was very young, and no one in the castle will give her any answers about what her mother was like or how she died. Will using Dorothea’s magic answer Miranda’s questions, or will it only create new ones, important ones about Beatrice and Prospero’s shady past?
Katharine Duckett paints these borrowed characters beautifully. Self-important, prideful, abusive Prospero with his God complex is utterly believable, and Miranda’s frustrations about the scornful society she’s been transplanted into and wistful remembrances of the island, the only home she had ever known, are perfectly logical for her character in the play. Even with the queer love story between Miranda and Dorothea, Miranda in Milan feels very faithful to the source text.
This quick read is a complete joy. The writing’s excellent, the characters are complex, and the twists, while not shocking to me, were incredibly satisfying and creative. There’s intrigue around every corner and the love that blooms between Miranda and Dorothea, while it does happen pretty quickly, is charming and romantic. My only complaint is that poor Miranda never seems to have options. In The Tempest, she married the first and only eligible bachelor she ever met, and in Milan, she falls hard for the only person who’s remotely kind to her. Would she still love Dorothea if she had free range of the castle, if she were allowed to move about freely with her face revealed to the world? I like to think that she would.
All in all, a terrific read. I would strongly recommend this to anyone who’s interested in queer romance, mystery, magic and the occult, or Shakespeare. Or, honestly, anyone looking for an entertaining, engaging few hours.
Miranda in Milan By Katharine Duckett. Tor Paperback, 9781250306326, 196 pp. March 2019
