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LGBTQ

    COMMUNITY

    Transgender Rights: ‘Change Can Happen Here’

    As federal proclamations threaten trans people, a call to action is heard here

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — As legal protections for transgender people are stripped away at the federal level, the effects are being felt far beyond Washington. That is true even here in Provincetown and neighboring towns that pride themselves on acceptance and on their depth of experience in and knowledge about queer history.

    An executive order signed by the new president in January directed the Dept. of Health and Human Services to investigate youth gender dysphoria treatment. The resulting 400-page report, released on May 1, questioned the legitimacy of gender-affirming care and cast doubt on the validity of trans identities altogether.

    Transgender residents of the Outer Cape say these kinds of orders and the resulting policy proposals feel like personal attacks as well as a call to action.

    “When Donald Trump became president again, I had clarity and focus that I didn’t expect,” said James, a local trans activist who asked to be identified only by first name because of worries about his safety. “He is trying to take away everything that lets me exist as a human being on this Earth.”

    “My only choice,” he said, “is to fight him.”

    Some dimensions of the fight for trans rights are local, though. And they’re not all easily won, even in predominantly progressive Provincetown, James said, describing the constant work of explaining his existence and involvement in creating a more inclusive infrastructure.

    At this spring’s town meeting, Provincetown passed Article 20, which expanded gender-inclusive access to public restrooms. James said the effort required months of pressure. “The town has not gone along willingly,” he said. “It has taken a lot of work on our part to get them to believe this is a real issue.”

    Implementation of the measure will still take time. Bringing facilities into compliance with state standards for gender-inclusive design requires planning and funding. “You hang Trans Pride flags as if you believe that I belong here, and yet I can’t use a bathroom in my own town,” James said. “It feels like asking for a hall pass.”

    The Hall Pass Project is now James’s effort to illuminate the everyday barriers faced by trans residents and to call for a broader coalition of support. “I’m a person who is being discriminated against,” he said. “It’s not really my job to fix that discrimination. It’s the job of the community.”

    Sam Sewell, who lives in Provincetown and identifies as “gender playful,” believes the town’s reputation doesn’t always match reality. “If people are coming to town because we’re marketing ourselves as ‘Everybody’s welcome,’ then we should walk the walk,” Sewell said.

    Sam Sewell, who lives in Provincetown, says reality doesn’t always match the ideal. “If people are coming to town because we’re marketing ourselves as ‘Everybody’s welcome,’ then we should walk the walk,” Sewell said.

    An area where Sewell says people need to come together more is one that transcends questions of gender identity. Sewell is working to create alternatives to Provincetown’s alcohol-heavy nightlife. To that end, they’ve organized sober-inclusive events like pool hangs and earlier dance parties. “There are a lot of people in recovery in the sapphic community, in the trans community, and just in general,” Sewell said.

    Sewell also wants to see more outreach and opportunities for nonbinary people in the town’s cultural institutions. “I’d like to see some of the bigger entities in town reaching outside of their programming comfort zones, like really taking a leap,” they said.

    In Eastham, nonbinary artist and educator Robin Huibregtse is pushing for structural change. In March, they petitioned the select board to designate Eastham a gender-diverse sanctuary town. “The designation would make you feel like you can rest your shoulders a little bit and know that your town has your back,” Huibregtse said.

    Artist and educator Robin Huibregtse believes small community acts, such as starting a human rights committee or youth group, are a way to fight the notion that nonbinary people should go “back in the shadows.” (Photos by Emily Schiffer)

    Progress on the designation has since stalled. And though Huibregtse said the Outer Cape feels safer than much of the rest of the country, that safety isn’t guaranteed. “There are people even here,” they said, who would like nonbinary people to “go back into the shadows and be quiet. I refuse to do that.

    “I wish the violence that happens to trans and gender-diverse people was more in the forefront of public attention here,” Huibregtse continued. “It can often feel ignored, like few are fighting back against it.”

    Huibregtse said that meaningful progress could start with something as simple as a human rights committee or LGBTQ youth group modeled after We Thrive, a center in Hyannis where youth gatherings are meant to be peer-led and free from judgment. “Young people through this model learn about each other and realize that people are really not very different at all,” the nonprofit’s website says.

    “Those are small steps that would have a big impact,” Huibregtse said.

    Some progress is already underway, especially among elder residents. Eastham’s Senior Center launched a monthly LGBTQ group for queer elders last year, following a local needs assessment. It includes members from Eastham and neighboring towns.

    “We’d love to do more things that are multigenerational,” said Joan Lockhart, a COA board member and co-liaison to the group. “We’re hoping that the Lower Cape Pride activities happening the weekend of June 13 to 15 will help bridge some of those connections.”

    Lockhart said some group members expressed fear after the presidential transition. “They were asking, should we take down our Pride flags? Should we remove the stickers from our cars?” she said. “But I don’t think any of them have.”

    For Kristen Becker, founder of the Summer of Sass program in Provincetown, visibility is more than symbolic. It’s a form of protection. The program brings LGBTQ young adults from less-accepting parts of the country to live and work in Provincetown for the summer, offering jobs, housing, and community.

    “There’s a real attempt to dilute queer joy right now,” said Becker. “We want to make it as concentrated as possible.”

    This year, to avoid issues with Real ID and passport scrutiny at airports, Becker’s team arranged travel for participants by bus and train from Indiana, Oklahoma, Maryland, and rural California. One trans applicant from Florida dropped out after his family decided it was time to leave the U.S. and move to Canada.

    As for the effect of the federal administration’s positions on the people she wants to help, Becker is glad to be rooted on the Outer Cape.

    “The more distant the federal government gets from anything I’ve ever been able to recognize, the less I care to rely on it,” said Becker. “I want to stay as community-driven as possible.”

    That was a view shared by all those in a gender-diverse group that spoke with this reporter: local action is important. There were corollaries: every petition and every gathering is a refusal to go quietly; pride is more than a season.

    “There’s a real feeling of community and of change that can happen here,” Sewell said.

    LEARNING

    Young Queer People Teach Their Teachers

    Getting beyond pronouns, Nauset High students seek more inclusive history and culture

    By

    EASTHAM — A weird and difficult and rarely-touched-upon part of being a young queer person is that, often, you have to take on the role of educator.

    Most obviously, there’s coming out: educating people about who you are. Then — and this is the really hard part — there’s teaching people what to do with that information. You find yourself educating the people who should be educating you: your teachers, your parents, your elders — the people, you fear, who are the least likely to understand you.

    “It’s not fair at all,” AJ Beradi said.

    Beradi, who is trans and uses both “he” and “they” pronouns, is a senior at Nauset Regional High School and a member of the school’s Gender and Sexuality Alliance — an updated spin on the acronym “GSA,” which used to stand for Gay and Straight Alliance.

    In a time when “queer” means so much more than “gay” and when being an “ally” to the LGBTQ community is no longer a specialized, rarefied status, the old name seemed defunct to many members. Gender and Sexuality Alliance, on the other hand, seemed appropriately ambiguous. It’s a name that other groups around the country are adopting.

    The state of Massachusetts now sponsors a Gender and Sexuality Alliance Leadership Council as part of its Safe School Program for LGBTQ Students. The council is planning a three-day leadership summit in August at UMass Amherst.

    Jaiden van Bork, who leads Nauset High’s Gender and Sexuality Alliance, believes progress happens when elders listen to the younger generation. (Photo courtesy Jaiden van Bork)

    Jaiden van Bork, a junior who is the Nauset Alliance president, speaks about gender and sexuality with a grasp that is enviably deft. A trans woman, she rolls her eyes and makes a point about people who have “a typical experience with gender — if there is such a thing as a typical experience with gender.”

    In recent years, the members of the group (there are about 10) say, the GSA at Nauset has taken on the job of educating those people who have more seemingly typical experiences with gender. They say this means teaching adults how they can best be supportive, what does and does not offend (“I can make jokes like that, but you can’t”), and even teaching them about queer history.

    In practical terms, the GSA has been trying to educate teachers at Nauset about the importance of language: gender-neutral pronouns (including asking to have everyone put their pronouns in their Zoom display names), “deadnaming” (using the birth name of a transgender person), using “folks” and “parents” (as opposed to words like “ladies and gentlemen” and “mom and dad”), the fact that gender is a construct — and why they should care about all of this.

    “A lot of transgender people — especially younger people, especially if they don’t have supportive home environments — are going through life in this world where they are having their identity challenged and invalidated at every turn,” said van Bork. “Not only is that terrible in terms of self-image, but it’s also not conducive to learning.”

    In her view, “Anybody who cares not just about transgender people but about young people should really want to make even one part of teen life just a little bit less scary.”

    In addition to educating individual teachers about shifting language paradigms, the GSA is pushing for more inclusive course content. They want to see more education about LGBTQ history, more art and literature by queer artists included in the classroom, and more queer- and trans-inclusive health education.

    “I know first-hand what it’s like to have students in history and government classes talking about your rights in front of you,” Beradi said, “debating whether or not you get to have them.”

    Since a positive curriculum about LGBTQ people is right now mostly absent from schools — including Nauset — these queer teens say they end up turning to the internet to learn about themselves. For Beradi, YouTube was one of the main ways they went “about figuring everything out for myself. Queer history or identity wasn’t something I was taught. It was something I had to go get myself.”

    Those Beradi learned the most from, they said, include Kat Blaque, Miles McKenna, and Contrapoints. Contrapoints is the screen name of Natalie Wynn, a trans woman who dropped out of Northwestern’s Ph.D. program in philosophy, calling it “a guided tour of history’s most boring homosexuals.” Wynn uploads intellectually dense videos that draw on the work of queer theorists such as Michel Foucault and Judith Butler.

    Beradi joined the GSA as a way to share that learning with classmates, teachers, and parents.

    GSA members’ sense that their role — students educating their teachers — doesn’t seem fair hasn’t stopped them from believing things will change and from taking the long view.

    “As much as it’s stuff I’m very passionate about and committed to fighting for, I do think it’s unfortunate that this has to come from the bottom up rather than the top down,” van Bork said.

    She imagined what it would look like for administrators at Nauset to take it upon themselves to hold sessions for faculty about gender and sexuality, or for teachers themselves to slot LGBTQ history and culture into the curriculum, rather than students having to ask them to do so.

    “All that being said,” van Bork said emphatically, “I think that’s how society progresses. A lot of change happens when the older generation listens to the younger generation. And that’s exactly what the GSA is up to.”

    HAPPY CAMPERS

    Two Summer Programs for LGBTQ Youth Make Plans to Resume

    Closing the ‘disconnect’ across the spectrum of gender and racial identities

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — After last summer’s shutdowns and shifts, Camp Lightbulb and Summer of Sass are both coming back to town this summer. For both programs, the hope is to provide a warm welcome to a younger — and more diverse — generation of LGBTQ people.

    Kristen Becker, a comic and the founder and director of Summer of Sass, said she got the idea for the program in 2017 while visiting her old high school in Shreveport, La. “There was an article about a kid who was being bullied so much at the high school that he had to graduate early,” she said. “It was awful going to where I had grown up and seeing that over 20 years later there had been no progress.

    “That year, Trump had just been elected and there were visa shortages in Provincetown, so there was a labor shortage for service jobs that needed to be filled,” Becker continued. “I knew there were American kids who would love to have those jobs.”

    Summer of Sass helps provide housing in Provincetown and Truro for queer people between the ages of 18 and 20; they pay for part of the rent through their summer jobs.

    The program subsidizes their housing “because Provincetown is no longer accessible to the next generation of queers,” Becker said. “You used to be able to say, ‘Hey, I’m gonna work really hard so that I have enough money to go be gay at the beach.’ That’s no longer possible for young queer people.”

    The young adults who come to Summer of Sass work on whale watch boats, in coffee shops, and at art galleries. Becker tries to provide them as much freedom as possible in choosing jobs. “My role is to help them get from where they are to where they want to be,” she said.

    For even younger LGBTQ people, ages 14 to 18, there is Camp Lightbulb, an overnight camp in Provincetown. The campers sleep at the Truro Hostel for week-long sessions.

    Puck Markham is the founding director of Lightbulb. Based in Los Angeles, he came to Provincetown for the first time 12 years ago. “Provincetown is such an awesome, liberating place for me as an adult — just imagine how great it could be for kids,” he remembers thinking the first time he walked down Commercial Street.

    Markham said that Provincetown skews towards “wealthy, older white males.” His camp, he said, is changing that. “Our kids are really broad across the spectrum of LGBTQ and racial identities,” he said.

    Rob Williams, the finance director for Lightbulb, said that the program “accepts any camper whether they have the money to attend or not.” Forty percent of the campers receive “camperships,” meaning that, based on their family income, they pay only a portion of the normal $1,200 fee.

    Campers come from a variety of home situations. Most, said Markham, have parents who are “accepting.” But for campers who have only recently come out, often the families are trying to cope and figure out what it all means, he said. “I would call those types of families ‘reluctantly accepting.’ ”

    Finally, Markham said, the camp does have “a small contingent of kids who come from social services.”

    “Right now, our campers are very focused on social justice,” Williams said. “On one hand, they have pink hair and wear fuzzy little things. On the other hand, they’re intellectual young people with an incredibly strong point of view.”

    Markham and Williams said that one of their big goals is to connect those who have been in Provincetown for a long time with the kids who attend their camp. “There’s a bit of disconnect between the community in Provincetown and what the queer community at large looks like now,” Markham said. “We have a lot of nonbinary and queer kids.”

    Campers relax and make s’mores at a bonfire after a day full of activities in the summer of 2019. (Photo courtesy Camp Lightbulb)

    To bridge this divide, Lightbulb hosts events that involve the community. “We invite drag queens and speakers and performers who run the full gamut,” Markham said. They also host a variety show in which the campers perform at town hall.

    The people behind both programs are cautiously optimistic about the summer ahead. Last year, Summer of Sass was canceled, while Camp Lightbulb resorted to a virtual program, which it has been running throughout the pandemic.

    Becker is worried about finding housing for the people in her program this summer. A reluctance to rent to young people, she said, is compounding the housing crunch. “On one hand, this community runs on a service economy,” she said, “and, on the other hand, no one is willing to house the young people who would be excited to work those kinds of jobs.”

    Becker has been able to secure housing for only one young adult this summer so far, but said she has many more wanting to join the program.

    After lots of plans to adjust for Covid-related safety, Markham and Williams said they’re now confident that, with the guidelines that have come from Gov. Baker, they will be able to move forward with Camp Lightbulb this summer.

    “Provincetown is our home,” Markham said. “We want to make it home for these kids, too.”

    RELIGION

    Gay Catholics Seek Solace and Spirituality at St. Peter’s

    Social justice concerns and service lead to ‘a richer faith’

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — Mike Dubour was in the process of converting to Judaism. He was tired of the lousy version of Catholicism he kept receiving — what he described as “hatred and bigotry clothed in Catholicism.” As a gay man, he felt that there was no reason to go back to the Catholic Church. It offered, he said, “no message of love and, therefore, no message of God.”

    What he wanted was a reform movement and spiritual discipline. Judaism, to Dubour, felt “like a richer faith.”

    He was living in New York City at the time and confided in a friend about his search for spiritual direction. Had he ever tried the Catholic church down in the Village? his friend asked. The parish there was actually very open.

    Dubour checked it out. “I was waiting for words of hate — those messages we fear as gay men,” he said. “But I didn’t hear any of that. I heard words of encouragement and of service.

    Michael Dubour almost abandoned Catholicism for Judaism. (Photo courtesy Michael Dubour)

    “I was shocked that the pastor was very supportive of LGBTQ rights,” he added. “He was big on social justice. It is what I would call true Catholicism.”

    The church was St. Francis Xavier, and, as it happened, there was a gay men’s spirituality group that met in the parish center there. Dubour attended a meeting and immediately felt a part of it.

    In 2016, Dubour relocated to Provincetown and started a similar group at St. Peter the Apostle Church here.

    The group meets in the church on the second Sunday of every month at 3 p.m. They open with prayer and Scripture. They talk about what they’ve just read, and how it can be applied to their lives. There’s also a community topic of conversation, picked by one member of the group — a current event in the news that they talk about through the lens of the Catholic faith. Before Covid, they would then head to dinner, breaking bread with one another.

    The Catholic Church has a complicated relationship with the world’s LGBTQ community. Although the Church calls on Catholics to treat LGBTQ people with “dignity and respect,” the Catechism states that “homosexual acts” are “intrinsically immoral and contrary to the natural law.” It calls on gay Catholics to practice chastity. For the Church, homosexuality is not a sin, but the acts homosexuals might commit are sinful.

    It’s a distinction that might make sense for those who become priests, who are obliged to observe “perpetual continence.” Gay men make up an estimated 30 to 40 percent of the American Catholic clergy, according to research published in the New York Times.

    And the formal teachings of the Church are not reflected in the views of Catholic parishioners. In a 2019 survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, 61 percent of U.S. Catholics said they support same-sex marriage, and 76 percent said society should be accepting of homosexuality.

    “The people of the Church are the Church,” said Don Murray, who leads the gay men’s spirituality group at St. Peter the Apostle in the summer.

    Murray often finds himself turning to Catechism 1776 as a reference point for the good Catholicism can do. It reads that the voice of moral conscience calls man “to love and to do what is good,” and situates the conscience as “man’s most secret core and his sanctuary. There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths.”

    Progressive ministries today, Murray explained, see social justice lessons in the Christian story. “Jesus was marginalized just like us,” he added. “That’s why I have an appreciation for all of our marginalized groups. We’re all going through the same thing, just like he did.”

    Murray came out in his late 20s. He was struggling and went to see a therapist, who said to him, “You can’t come out and do this religion at the same time. We’re going to take the religion out. You’re going to come out. And then we’ll bring the religion back in.”

    Murray, with his partner and their adopted child, lives in Provincetown from May through October. The rest of the year, they are in Tampa, where he has set up a gay spirituality group. “My goal is to bring fallen Catholics back to the Church,” he said. “They want to come, but they don’t feel like they’re welcome. I want them to know that they actually are.”

    Locally, he’s up against memories that St. Peter’s parishioners signed a 2003 petition, circulated by the bishop of Fall River, that opposed gay marriage. The petition was made public, and Provincetown’s gay community saw the names of neighbors and local business owners who sought to keep their relationships unequal and illegitimate.

    At St. Peter’s today, the Rev. Hugh McCullough, known by all as Father Mick, said that he “couldn’t run this church without the support of our gay Catholics here. They do so much. We love them here.”

    Jerry Cassessi is one of those gay parishioners who does so much: he is the cantor at St. Peter’s and also does flower arrangements on the altar for special occasions. “I’m basically in charge of maintaining the look of the church,” he said. “It’s a lot of detail work. I make up a fresh garland for the altar stone.

    “When I found out Michael was forming this group, it was very exciting — just the thought that gay Catholic men could help one another as a group,” Cassessi added.

    “We love them here,” said Fr. Mick of the gay men’s spirituality group that meets on second Sundays at St. Peter the Apostle in Provincetown. (Photo Nancy Bloom)

    Even 10 years ago, Cassessi said, such a group would not have been possible. But in October 2020, a documentary about Pope Francis, Francesco, premiered and, in it, the Pope made a statement endorsing civil unions for same-sex couples.

    The Pope’s leadership has made a difference, in Cassessi’s view. “With Pope Francis preaching the love of God for everyone,” he said, “no matter who you are and what your sexual preference is — God made you and God loves you.”

    Some paradoxes remain. Are sexual acts committed in a civil union still sinful, since they’re outside of marriage? Pope Francis has said, “Who am I to judge?” Does the fact that we now have a Catholic president who supports LGBTQ rights and is pro-choice change anything?

    “I love seeing Biden go to church,” Murray said. “He is not afraid. He’s bringing faith back. It’s not out of fashion. He doesn’t care what other people think. And that’s what we have to do as LGBTQ Catholics.”

    DEMOGRAPHICS

    Wealth of Census Numbers Excludes LGBTQ Data

    Legislators and advocates for gay rights don’t have facts they need

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — With the counting stage of the 2020 census having drawn to its abrupt close, the Census Bureau’s next step is to release its final report, which will contain a wealth of demographic data about the U.S. population. There is one set of data, however, that the report will not contain: detailed information on America’s LGBTQ population.

    The census has been asking questions about respondents’ age, racial and ethnic backgrounds, and marital status for decades. The census does collect some information on same-sex couples — but it records only the numbers on people who report being in a same-sex marriage. There is no question on the form about sexual orientation or gender identity.

    As data analysis becomes an increasingly important element of the legislative process, advocates for LGBTQ rights say the lack of good data is an issue. As it stands, said Sasha Goodfriend, chair of the Mass. Commission on LGBTQ Youth, “we definitely don’t have enough data sources to be able to do our work as comprehensively as we wish we could.”

    State Sen. Julian Cyr of Truro agreed. When it comes to legislation affecting LGBTQ people, he said, better data would “allow us to make a whole host of better-informed policymaking decisions, particularly as it relates to a vulnerable population.”

    In the most recent 2019-2020 legislative session, 18 bills relevant to LGBTQ issues were filed in the state senate. Cyr introduced two of them, with data as a primary motivator. He proposed the first (S. 1237, “An act relative to HIV prevention access for young adults”) because he had data — surveys showed exceptionally high danger of HIV transmission in LGBTQ youth. The second Cyr bill (S. 905, “An act to collect data on LGBTQI prisoners held in restrictive housing”) calls for gathering information needed to address issues faced by LGBTQ people who are incarcerated.

    One notable source of data advocates in the state currently rely on is the Youth Risk Behavior Survey, a national survey administered to high school students in partnership with the Centers for Disease Control and the Mass. Dept. of Public Health. But this information says nothing about the adult population.

    Researchers at the Williams Institute, a think tank at the UCLA School of Law, have been conducting detailed analyses of census data on same-sex households since 1990. They release their findings in the form of “snapshots” that visualize the relative population of same-sex couples at the national, state, and local level.

    After the 2010 census, the Institute reported that Provincetown had the nation’s highest occurrence of same-sex cohabitating couples, with 163 same-sex couples per 1,000 households. The statistic led the LGBTQ news magazine, the Advocate, to proclaim Provincetown the “gayest city in America.”

    Lost in translation was the fact that the statisticians arrive at their findings by using census data to count similar-age people of the same sex living in the same household as same-sex couples. Then, they adjust the number downward in hopes of making up for the fact that not all those who live together are in fact couples.

    In the end, the data the Williams Institute releases appear to account for only about one-fifth of America’s total LGBTQ population. Their 2010 Census Snapshot found that there were 646,464 same-sex couples in the country, which is only about 0.42 percent of the American populace. That total falls well below virtually all research-based estimates for the national LGBTQ population.

    Kerith J. Conron, research director at the Williams Institute, said, “We spend a lot of time at the Williams Institute trying to provide basic demographic information about LGBTQ people that we should be able to find from the Census Bureau.”

    BOOKS

    Jane Fleishman’s Stonewall Generation Gives Voice to LGBTQ Elders

    A look at everything from a legacy of activism to sexual intimacy

    By

    “I have been an activist and organizer from my teenage years onwards,” says Jane Fleishman, author of The Stonewall Generation: LGBTQ Elders on Sex, Activism, and Aging. “As Mandy Carter, one of the contributors to the book, often reminded me — activism is a lifelong journey.”

    Fleishman, who has been coming to Provincetown since she came out in her early 20s, and who now owns a second home in Truro, will be doing a virtual book event via Zoom on Thursday, Oct. 29, through East End Books Ptown.

    Fleishman is also a researcher in human sexuality, with a focus on older adults. She spent two years traveling the country to sit with LGBTQ elders who took part in the Stonewall riots, listening to their memories of the New York City police raid of the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village on June 28, 1969, and the transformative eruption of gay pride and power that resulted. The Stonewall Generation, published last month by Skinner House Books, is an engaging and often deeply moving collection of life stories in the distinct voices of 10 contributors. In the book, Fleishman interweaves historical accounts of Stonewall with details of a deeply personal aspect of human experience: how aging affects our physical longings, sensual satisfaction, and intimacy with our lovers. There’s a reason she made this connection.

    “We think of Stonewall as the birth of what we used to call the gay liberation movement,” Fleishman says. “Yet many who write about LGBTQ politics today forget the underlying and fundamental reason why people began this movement: they wanted to be able to dance with the person they cared about, to be seen holding hands with the person they loved, and to have sex with a partner who happens to be of the same gender. I believe that sexual liberation is the heart of this movement.”

    Fleishman knows that sex matters much further into old age than people often assume. As one of her contributors, Lani Ka’ahumanu, puts it, “I feel fortunate, and I am able to challenge the wrongheaded notion that elders are not interested in sex or that we’re not sexual.”

    Two subjects of Fleishman’s book, Cape Cod residents David Velasco Bermudez and his husband, Bob Isadore, will be taking part in the virtual book event, along with Jane Fleishman, hosted by East End Books Ptown on Thursday, Oct. 29. (Photo Shana Sureck)

    Creating a space in which people feel safe enough to talk about some of the most intimate details of their lives is not a simple feat, yet Fleishman feels that talking about sex has been her calling for a long time.

    “My friends would come to me with questions about their sex lives, and for some reason that just came easily to me,” she says. “I’ve always been interested in taboo topics — topics that people are afraid of tackling. When I was a younger lesbian, 30 years ago, I taught a class on dating for lesbians, because we were terrible at it.” Fleishman laughs. “We knew how to get together with someone and proclaim a long-term commitment, but we didn’t really know how to go out on a light date, come home and say, ‘Oh, that was fun!’ ”

    Some of those interviewed in the book opened up with apparent ease, and others were shyer, which made their revelations that much more powerful. “What I learned,” Fleishman says, “was to let people be who they are, and to let them find ways to speak about their sexual lives in a way that was authentic for them.”

    When Fleishman put out a call for participants through SAGE: Services & Advocacy for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Elders, she received more responses than she had expected. She took care to include those whose contributions she feels have been most often overlooked. Her first chapter focuses on Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, a leader in the fight for transgender justice.

    “The Stonewall riots are often considered a rebellion of white gay men rising up and fighting against the police,” Fleishman says. “I looked for people of different races, nationalities, ethnicities, gender identities, and sexual orientations. They are in my book because their stories have not been told, and I wanted the world to hear them.”

    Jane Fleishman, author of the new book The Stonewall Generation: LGBTQ Elders on Sex, Activism, and Aging, was in Truro with her lover, Joan Tabachnick, for Rosh Hashanah last month. (Photo Jennifer Einhorn)

    Fleishman was also drawn to activists who, after Stonewall, went on to take part in other, different movements to fight for peace, civil liberties, and social justice. “The fact that they have been leaders of so many movements makes it even more important for their voices to be heard,” Fleishman says.

    Now more than ever, Fleishman feels the legacies of activists from earlier generations must be remembered and honored. “We are living in a time of unprecedented injustice,” Fleishman says. “Yet we’re also living in a time of almost unprecedented mobilization. Millions of people are taking to the streets, so it seems to me that this is a moment when the Stonewall generation can both inspire a younger generation and also step aside and let a younger generation take hold of the leadership that we need them to do to make the changes that are so important.”

    Generation LGBTQ

    The event: Jane Fleishman will discuss her book, The Stonewall Generation: LGBTQ Elders on Sex, Activism, and Aging, joined by David Velasco Bermudez and Bob Isadore, two of the 10 subjects she interviewed

    The time: Thursday, Oct. 29, at 6 p.m.

    The place: Virtual event via Zoom on Eventbrite.com, hosted by East End Books Ptown, at eastendbooksptown.com

    The cost: Free; pre-registration required

    POLITICS

    Cyr Nearly Alone in Speaking Out Against Morse Smear

    Vague sex allegations have ‘chilling effect’ on gay candidates, he says

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — A Democratic congressional primary race in Western Massachusetts wouldn’t normally make the news on Cape Cod. But the race for the nomination in the rural 1st district, covering about one-third of the state, attracted statewide and national attention when accusations emerged that the challenger, 31-year-old Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse, had abused his power to have sexual relationships with college students.

    That’s when the Cape and Islands state senator, Julian Cyr of Truro, got involved.

    Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse. (Photo alexmorseforcongress.com)

    Morse, who is gay, responded to the reports by acknowledging that he had had sexual relationships with adult college students. But he said he had never hurt anyone, nor abused his power.

    For several days, Morse was treated like a predator, and a goner. Most of the organizations that had endorsed him backed away, and he considered dropping out of the race.

    The LGBTQ Victory Fund decried the “vague and anonymous allegations,” however, and so did Cyr. In an Aug. 12 statement, Cyr, who is also gay, wrote that “this race will set a precedent for whether vague and anonymous allegations can be easily launched against LGBTQ candidates to destroy their campaigns.

    “The sex lives of LGBTQ people are too often sensationalized in politics and in media,” Cyr wrote. “The way these allegations have been brought [will] have a chilling effect on the willingness of LGBTQ people to run for public office.”

    The allegations of abusive behavior collapsed under serious scrutiny. The prime mover of the story, it turned out, was hoping to land a job with the incumbent, Democrat Richard Neal, the powerful chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, who has been in Congress for 31 years. A months-long effort to entrap Morse in bad behavior had produced nothing beyond innocuous conversations on Instagram.

    Incumbent U.S. Rep. Richard Neal. (Photo nealforcongress.com)

    On Aug. 13, MassEquality put out a statement. “These allegations have been widely publicized and repeated as fact by the Massachusetts media and establishment, without substantiation or even anecdotal evidence of wrongdoing,” it said. “It has now come to light that these accusations were made as a politically motivated attack, feeding into the homophobic trope of gay men as predators and pedophiles.”

    On Aug. 15, the Bay State Stonewall Democrats called for an investigation. “The alleged months-long effort by individuals in [the College Democrats of Massachusetts] to gaybait, entrap, and lure Mayor Morse into compromising, embarrassing, or politically taboo situations is an unacceptable, yet familiar, homophobic tactic that is maliciously damaging,” they said.

    Almost two weeks later, the allegations have dropped away. The groups that had endorsed Morse previously have re-endorsed him. The state party is organizing an investigation into the College Democrats who launched the attack and the state party leaders who advised them. Morse says his private polling shows him gaining ground, and he benefited from a fundraising surge as well.

    Even two weeks later, however, almost no other gay elected official has made a statement like Cyr’s. State Rep. Daniel Hernandez Jr. of Arizona retweeted Cyr’s statement, and so did state Sen. Jeremy Moss of Michigan. Those are the only statements above the city-councilor level that the Independent or the Victory Fund could identify.

    The Independent contacted all seven LGBTQ members of the U.S. House (David Cicilline of Rhode Island, Chris Pappas of New Hampshire, Sean Maloney of New York, Angie Craig of Minnesota, Sharice Davids of Kansas, Mark Pocan of Wisconsin, and Mark Takano of California), plus two LGBTQ candidates who recently won primary elections in heavily Democratic districts (Mondaire Jones and Ritchie Torres, both of New York).

    None of the nine responded to multiple requests for comment on Cyr’s statement — specifically, his warning about the risk to future gay candidates. Gay organizations have spoken about these events, but when it comes to elected leaders, Cyr stands nearly alone.

    State Sen. Julian Cyr of Truro.

    On Monday, Aug. 24, the LGBTQ Victory Fund organized an online conversation between Cyr and Morse. In it, Cyr expanded on his concerns.

    “I have a lot of thoughts about this,” Cyr said. “Every LGBTQ person I’ve talked to does. There’s something fundamentally vulnerable about the dating lives of LGBTQ candidates actually being used against them.

    “That’s why this incident is so important, how we handle this,” Cyr continued. “We saw this happen to Gerry Studds; we saw this happen to Barney Frank; we saw this happen more recently to Katie Hill. I hope this can be a turning point. I want to look back in a few years and say, ‘Remember when someone tried to do that to Alex Morse? Here was the response, here was the outcome. He’s now serving in Congress, and that stuff doesn’t happen anymore.’ ”

    DRAG

    Cacophony Daniels Celebrates Her Own Family Values

    The show-tune belter returns to Provincetown

    By

    “Cacophony is all about enjoying the moments we have,” Courter Simmons says of his drag persona, Cacophony Daniels. “I’ve always wanted her to be the kind of person you get a feeling of love and acceptance from, someone who will make you laugh.”

    Daniels is back at Pilgrim House in Provincetown, following a successful 2019 debut, with a new show, “So Close and Yet So Far,” which Simmons says is “Cacophony’s guide to surviving the pandemic.” Performances, which are held outdoors and are socially distant, run daily at 7 p.m. through Saturday, Aug. 1.

    “Last year was the first time I dipped my toe in the water of P’town, and I loved it,” he says. “The audiences are very discerning. They know good entertainment and a night of fun when they see it. If you can do well here, then you can do well anywhere, because everywhere else in the world pales in comparison to Provincetown.”

    David Burbank, the events and entertainment manager at Pilgrim House, invited Cacophony back to town as soon as it was possible to launch an outdoor summer series. “The audience loved Cacophony when she was here last year,” Burbank says. “I’ve been watching her virtually throughout the quarantine. She offers some great vocals from Broadway to ballads with such strength and joy. Our patrons can use some of that now.”

    Courter Simmons and alter ego Cacophony Daniels. (Photo courtesy Courter Simmons)

    Cacophony has been performing live on Facebook every Tuesday at 8 p.m. and intends to continue throughout the pandemic. “It’s important to remember to take time out of our lives to recharge our batteries,” Simmons says. “Especially now, when we’re all worried about tomorrow.”

    Simmons started performing very young and went professional at age 12. “I grew up in a small town in California that had a children’s theater program,” he says. “That’s where I was bit by the theater bug. In 2001, I moved to New York City to pursue acting and singing.”

    Cacophony was born to fill a vacuum. “Being a stage performer means that you go through times when you are unemployed,” Simmons says. “And when we think of an unemployed actor, we think of financial hardship, but, really, the saddest thing is that you have nowhere to express your creativity.”

    Developing Cacophony not only fit Simmons’s stage talents, it matched his stature and the unusual timbre of his voice. “It is higher in pitch than that of most men,” he says. “I discovered that singing as Cacophony allows me to belt way up there in the stratosphere, and that’s where my voice naturally sits.”

    It didn’t take long for Simmons to realize that, as Cacophony, he was more independent, career-wise. “As a theater or screen actor,” he says, “you’re relying on casting directors, directors, choreographers, and producers to hire you. As a drag queen, I’m able to do what I want to do. When I have a song I’d like to sing, I choose that song. And when people enjoy my show, which is the experience I’ve had, more and more audiences will want to see it. Cacophony has gone from performing at a couple of bars in New York City to traveling the world.”

    Cacophony’s appearances have also become a way for Simmons to support LGBTQ pride, a mission that is close to his heart. “It’s important to make use of the voice you have been given to speak out for others, who may not have a voice themselves,” he says. “I am blessed that I grew up in a family that was always accepting and supportive of me, but not everyone is that lucky.” Simmons’s father, a minister, married Simmons and his husband, Jason Cianciotto, a gay rights activist and co-author of the book LGBT Youth in America’s Schools.

    Courter Simmons, as Cacophony Daniels, poses with husband Jason Cianciotto and son Derrik at RuPaul’s DragCon at the Javits Center in New York City in 2018. (Photo courtesy Courter Simmons)

    The couple recently welcomed their son, Derrik, into their lives. “We knew that we wanted to adopt an older kid out of the foster system, maybe three to seven years old,” Simmons says. “We started to look at profiles of children who have no family to go to, and we came across Derrik’s video. Even though he was only 10 when it was shot, there were clues about who he might grow up to be. He talked about playing with dolls, talked about singing, and there was a moment when he crossed his legs in a very fabulous kind of way. There was no way of knowing for sure, obviously, but my husband said, ‘He is older than we were planning on, but I think if we take this kid in, we’re probably going to save his life.’ So many LGBT kids struggle through adolescence, but kids in the foster system have an even harder time.”

    As soon as they met Derrik, Simmons says, “There was never any question that he was always supposed to be a part of the family. Derrik needed parents to usher him through the rest of his life, and that’s what we are privileged to do.”

    When Derrik moved in with them in 2018, they “gave him the full crayon box of anything that he wanted to play with and experiment with as far as who he was and wanted to be,” Simmons adds. “Derrik took an immediate interest in Cacophony. He started to ask, ‘Can I have a dress? Can you put makeup on me?’ ”

    That same year, Derrik attended RuPaul’s DragCon in New York City with Simmons and Cianciotto, wearing a dress that Simmons, who creates his own wardrobe, made to match Cacophony’s. “Bringing Derrik to the convention was a great way for him to see that there are thousands of people just like him, and that he doesn’t have to feel shame or isolation because of who he is. Doing drag and being in drag means being oneself and celebrating whatever that is.”

    Broadway Baby

    The event: Cacophony Daniels in “So Close and Yet So Far”

    The time: Daily at 7 p.m. through Saturday, Aug. 1

    The place: Pilgrim House, 356 Commercial St., Provincetown

    The cost: $35 at pilgrimhouseptown.com

    QUEER HISTORY

    The Heroic Struggle to Be Out in Central Pennsylvania

    William Burton traces the building of an LGBTQ community

    By

    The history of the gay liberation movement is usually told from the point of view of those at the center of the action, from the Mattachine Society and Daughters of Bilitis to the Stonewall Riots in Greenwich Village to the various political battles that ensued. The setting is invariably an urban area — New York City or San Francisco — with a dense homosexual population and subculture.

    Yet queer people are everywhere, and their stories and struggles are everywhere, too. In some ways, the LGBTQ pioneers who created communities and support systems where there were none, and where hostility was strongest, have the most interesting stories of all.

    William Burton
    William Burton in Provincetown. (Photo Howard Karren)

    That’s what William Burton discovered in writing Out in Central Pennsylvania: The History of an LGBTQ Community, for which he’ll do a virtual reading and talk via East End Books Ptown on Saturday. Burton, a Provincetown resident and a contributor to the Independent, had just gotten his master’s in history at UMass Boston and was living in Philadelphia when he happened on a trove of archival material at the LGBT Center of Central Pennsylvania History Project. There, Barry Loveland had amassed a collection of 50 gripping oral histories of local gay, lesbian, bi, and transgender people, and in reading them, Burton, who had spent most of his adult life as an out gay man in Houston and Boston, realized, “I’d been living in a bubble.”

    Central Pennsylvania, which includes most of the state between the metropolitan areas of Philadelphia in the east and Pittsburgh in the west, is deeply conservative, religious, and socially regressive. The LGBTQ people who live there were largely closeted and isolated from one another in the pre-Stonewall era, and as gay liberation exploded in urban areas after the late ’60s, they had few visible paths to lift themselves up.

    “I never had to deal with what people had to deal with in non-urban areas,” Burton says. “I realized I had been blessed my whole life. I was thankful for what had been achieved in gay liberation, but I wasn’t involved in activism. I wanted to give back to the community.”

    He also realized that what has been written about non-urban gay life has rarely dealt with the formation of an LGBTQ community. So, with the help of Loveland (duly credited with co-authorship), Burton re-reported the oral histories, researched the evolution of LGBTQ groups in central Pennsylvania, and structured his history chronologically.

    Out in Central Pennsylvania
    Out in Central Pennsylvania: The History of an LGBTQ Community, by William Burton with Barry Loveland, was published by Keystone Books in June. (Photo Penn State University Press)

    The result is a satisfying mix of the personal and the political that offers a view of the queer communities of the region with surprising depth and breadth.

    Burton begins with the evolution of the gay and lesbian bar scene, from the ’50s through the ’70s, in the small cities of Harrisburg, Lancaster, and York. In the absence of any sort of social nexus, bars were the only places where homosexuals of that era could actually meet each other and be themselves. Though patrons were often harassed and arrested, they had no recourse — the consequences of being exposed were catastrophic and not infrequently led to suicide.

    The effects of gay liberation began to trickle in during the late ’60s, but uniting gay people with a sense of community and purpose was exceedingly difficult in central Pennsylvania. One man, Jerry Brennan, formed Dignity/Central Pa., a branch of the Catholic gay organization, which served as a way for people — many of them Protestant or Jewish — to socialize without a bar scene. A gay switchboard was formed, a kind of queer 911, and also various newsletters. Burton diligently traces these early efforts at creating support systems.

    Pride celebrations were started (and halted and restarted), many years after the annual march had become a regular ritual in New York and in other big cities. One lesbian, Nancy Helm, established a gay bookstore in Lancaster, only to see it firebombed twice; the threats to her well-being were so continuous, she gave up the business within a year.

    Eye-opening early anti-discrimination efforts by Gov. Milton J. Shapp, working with activists in the ’70s, are detailed. The rise of student organizations at Penn State — also located in the region — are likewise revelatory. So, too, is the landmark case of Jennifer Harris, a black lesbian student basketball player at the university who made a legal case against abusive and discriminatory treatment by a bigoted coach, Maureen “Rene” Portland.

    Burton documents the region’s desperate response to the AIDS epidemic in the ’80s and ’90s, and, later, the journey of transgender activist Mara Keisling.

    One of the oral histories in the book is that of Lorraine Kujawa, who started a popular lesbian newsletter, The Lavender Letter, and retired to Provincetown, where Burton interviewed her. “She was a teacher in the school system in Harrisburg,” Burton says. “All those years she taught, she never came out. No one knew she was gay. And now she’s happy to be living in Provincetown and to hold her partner’s hand in public.

    “The people who fought for their rights in places like Lancaster — they were very brave,” Burton continues. “They’re not national figures, but they’re part of a gay history that needs to be told. I’m so proud to be able to document that.”

    Keystone Quest

    The event: Virtual reading from Out in Central Pennsylvania and talk by author William Burton

    The time: Saturday, June 27, at 5 p.m.

    The place: eastendbooksptown.com, via Zoom; prior registration is required

    The cost: Free

     

    QUEER ‘I’

    Reflections on Gay Pride

    The first march commemorating Stonewall was 50 years ago

    By

    Pride, being one of the seven deadly sins, has good and bad sides to it. It’s like patriotism. To the extent that it means self-love and self-respect, it’s essential and a positive force. But to the extent that it’s exclusionary, about yourself and no one else, it can be hurtful and worse.

    Pride Parade 1989
    Brucie Bear and Harvey Fierstein at New York’s Pride Parade, 1989. (Photo courtesy Ed Christie)

    For gay people of my generation, pride was a key to happiness and self-fulfillment. It was the basis for coming out: letting the world know that you are gay and not hiding it. Not everyone who was gay or lesbian was capable of “passing” — putting a straight face on being in the closet. But many were, and did. In the same way that Jews might present themselves as gentile and “high-yaller” blacks might present themselves as white — pride makes the very idea offensive. Why should you prefer to be anything that you’re not? It makes you complicit with bigotry. If you use the false pretense to survive, it’s sad. If you use it to achieve success, the end result gets murky.

    Hatred of LGBT people has always been belittling: you were seen as diseased, perverted, disgusting, weak, laughable, pathetic, worthless. Coming out took pride, and the annual gay pride marches and celebrations were always out and public.

    The Stonewall Riots, which began on June 28, 1969, when the police raided the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street in New York City, became a symbol of gay pride. It was a pivotal breaking point: led by fierce drag queens, gay people fought back, no longer sheepishly accepting their persecution. Pre-Stonewall, pride came in fitful bursts. Afterward, it was a rallying cry, a credo, the basis for a full life.

    On June 28, 1970, a march commemorated Stonewall, starting with hundreds of people in Greenwich Village and accumulating thousands in the trek uptown to a rally in Central Park. It was symbolic: an emergence from the ghetto.

    It became a tradition on the last Sunday of June and spread to other cities and nations. What started as a political march evolved into a celebratory parade.

    I came to New York for graduate school in 1978. I was out but still finding my way to a life on my own in the city. My first pride march was a few years later. What I remember was being indoctrinated into the ritual by a friend in 1982. He pointed out to me and my boyfriend (now husband), Ed Christie, that a drag queen on the front lines of the march, Sylvia Rivera, was one of the Stonewall rioters. We marched up Fifth Avenue, past St. Patrick’s Cathedral, into Central Park. It was exhilarating to be among many thousands of gay people in the middle of the street, cheered by onlookers. But being out was no longer new to me, so the experience was not especially revelatory or affirmative. I was no longer coming from a place where being in the closet was the norm.

    Transgender activists
    Transgender activists Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera at a gay pride march in New York. (Photo New-York Historical Society)

    Heritage of Pride took over the march in 1984. It had become a parade, with floats and costumes, and less political. Controversially, the parade started uptown and went down Fifth Avenue to the Village. Some said it was because of the bars: they wanted the throngs to end up downtown. But the symbolism had changed.

    Rivera’s presence at the march, along with her friend, Martha P. Johnson, both of them pioneers of transgender liberation, is worth noting. In the early ’70s, in order to put a macho face on gay pride, drag queens were often disinvited. They were considered embarrassments. It was disputed whether Rivera actually was at Stonewall, though Johnson certainly was. Any discounting of drag queens’ crucial role in the riots was a cowardly P.R. move. It reflected an underlying sexism, racism, and transphobia in the gay movement at the time: Rivera was Latina; Johnson, black. More to the point: it was the flip side of pride.

    Ed and I went to the Gay Pride Parade most every year till the mid-’90s. Ed, who was a puppet designer and builder, would go as Brucie Bear, a walk-around character he created: a huge, musclebound gay bear in a tank top and gym shorts. (Ironically, this was before the Bear movement.) One year, we borrowed a car and drove in the parade with actor and playwright Harvey Fierstein, who is a friend. In 1991, sans Brucie, we rode on a float for a play Harvey was performing in, The Haunted Host. The last year that I remember well, 1994, was the 25th anniversary of Stonewall. The city was bursting with millions of LGBT people from all over the country and the world. I remember thinking, haughtily, how much the out-of-towners looked like out-of-towners. By the time we shifted our lives to the Outer Cape, in 2003, Gay Pride was more of a fond memory than an essential ritual.

    In a year when Covid-19 gives crowds (especially Trumpers) a threatening tint, and most Gay Pride celebrations, including Provincetown’s, have been canceled, what was once rebellious now seems a bit nostalgic. AIDS has made the gay male community more appreciative of support from lesbians, and leveled the playing field a bit. With the Supreme Court making non-discrimination the law of the land, coming out seems less an act of courage. Black Lives Matter makes us more aware of racism within the queer community. The transgender movement has come into its own.

    Pride is as necessary as ever. But it’s more therapeutic than revolutionary.

     

    YOUTH PRIDE

    Covid-19 Takes a Toll on LGBTQ Youth

    Facing cancellation, Camp Lightbulb goes virtual

    By

    For many in the LGBTQ community, annual pride events commemorating the Stonewall uprising of June 28, 1969, have constituted their first euphoric moments of connection, of celebration, of feeling recognized and accepted.

    Camp Lightbulb kids
    The kids of Camp Lightbulb at the Truro Hostel in 2019. (Photo Nancy Bloom)

    “I came out in the early ’80s, and going to my first pride parade in Boston was an indescribable experience,” says Rick Miller, a licensed clinical social worker and Truro resident who works in private practice here and Boston. “It gave me goosebumps to have the opportunity to be included in something so big when I had been hiding my entire life.”

    With pride events in Provincetown and elsewhere canceled this year due to the Covid-19 crisis, LGBTQ youth, a population that is already vulnerable and may be even more so after months of isolation, have been left without the opportunity to take part in that euphoric connection. This is especially true for young people who don’t live in what Miller calls the “bubble of liberal acceptance” on the East Coast and on the Outer Cape in particular.

    “We imagine and hope that everyone is doing better than previous generations, but that is, in fact, not true. There is a lot of pain out there,” Miller says. “And, of course, depending on one’s ethnic group and the norms of those groups, it can be even harder for young people.”

    According to Amit Paley, CEO and executive director of the Trevor Project, the world’s largest suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ youth, the pandemic has exacerbated the situation.

    “We know that positive social connections are vital for suicide prevention,” Paley says. “And since the onset of Covid-19, we have heard from many LGBTQ young people who find themselves in an environment that does not affirm their identity, or places them at risk for abuse.”

    Puck Markham, the founder of Camp Lightbulb, a nonprofit camp for LGBTQ youth, confirms that growing up can be “a very isolating and lonely, lonely period.” Markham launched Camp Lightbulb in 2011 in Provincetown. “Often, it is much harder for LGBTQ youth to find peers and experiences that are positive,” Markham says. “And that’s very much what the camp provides and what Provincetown allows us to do.” Markham has since added summer camps in a number of other locations as well.

    This year, Camp Lightbulb’s ninth season was scheduled to take place during the first three weeks of July, but because many of the nearly 95 campers who had signed up were traveling from all over the country, Markham made the difficult decision to cancel. “So many kids are really sad about this,” he says. “So, we decided to see if there was something that we can do online.”

    A trial virtual Camp Lightbulb took place in April, with 38 campers from all across the U.S. and Canada. “We had a pride and a prom party, all online,” Markham says. “It was amazing to see how connected the kids felt and how some of the basic things about camp, which is about community and making friends, happened online as well.”

    Shaun, a high school junior from New Hampshire, found the courage to come out to his friends while under quarantine after taking part in Rick Miller’s “Gay Sons and Our Moms” project on Instagram with his mom, Michele. (Photo courtesy Rick Miller)

    “We normally try to get our campers involved with members of the community and the different events that are going on, to immerse them in P’town during the time that they’re there,” says camp director Amy Kerr. “Now, of course, we have to adapt to the virtual experience, and attending a drag show or a dance party on the computer is different than being able to interact in person.”

    Fourteen-year old Ash, from New York, who identifies as pansexual, says that the experience helped her meet more LGBTQ friends and help others understand who they are. “Camp Lightbulb is like a family to me,” Ash says. “Everyone is so sweet and caring.”

    Markham says that because the cost of virtual camp is so much lower, teens can sign up independently of their parents, and he hopes that “this may be an opportunity to reach more kids, especially those whose parents might not be supportive.”

    Irrespective of Covid-19, Miller says that the opportunities to connect online are often “a salvation to LGBTQ youth.” He is currently conducting an online photo project titled “Gay Sons and Our Moms,” which is intended to validate the significance of a mother’s role in her gay son’s life. Miller posts the photos he receives regularly on Instagram (#gaysonsandmothers) and says the comments added by others have been “incredibly supportive. I am getting young followers from all over the world who are immensely grateful to see photos and hear vignettes and stories from other gay boys and gay men and mothers of gay boys around life being okay.”

    If you identify as part of the LGBTQ community and find yourself in need of help or support, the Trevor Lifeline can connect you to trained counselors 24 hours a day: 866-488-7386. You can also find help online via chat/text services at thetrevorproject.org/get-help-now.

    THEATER

    The Curtain Rises on Provincetown Theater’s 2020 Season

    A look at the year ahead with Artistic Director David Drake

    By

    “It was deliberate,” David Drake, the artistic director of the Provincetown Theater, says of his schedule of new productions for 2020, his third year at the company. “Doing this season with a lot of LGBTQ representation — it’s the gayest season I’ve ever done — was on purpose, because we’re having our rights attacked, tearing away at our dignity. We need to claim it — but enjoy claiming it.”

    The first Winter Play Date at the Provincetown Theater is a free public reading on Tuesday of Popcorn Girl by Sean Ably, pictured here. (Photo Chad Runyon)

    Subscriptions are up, and the Provincetown Theater is resurgent under Drake’s leadership and a revitalized and engaged board led by David Wilson. Drake’s first season, when he presented You Can’t Take It With You; Love! Valor! Compassion!; and The Laramie Project, all ensemble pieces, was, he says, about “gathering” and bearing witness — coming together as a community with the theater at its center, where it hadn’t been in a while. Last year’s season, which featured August: Osage County; Sweeney Todd; and It’s a Wonderful Life: A Radio Play, was about “emotions,” Drake says. And the emotions were certainly intense. He’s been batting a thousand with all the theater’s homegrown productions, and 2020 promises to continue the streak.

    Mae West, pictured here, wrote The Drag in 1927. Though the play, replete with a drag ball, was shut down before reaching Broadway, it will open the 2020 season of the Provincetown Theater this May. (Photo courtesy Provincetown Theater)

    It begins on May 14 with Mae West’s The Drag, described by the playwright as “a homosexual comedy in three acts.” The show, from 1927, was written before West became a major Hollywood star and was shut down by censors before it ever reached Broadway. “It has the funniest lines, and it’s an attack on puritanical attitudes toward sex and gender,” Drake says. “There’s a drag ball.” West is a natural icon in the world of drag. “She’s not a natural beauty,” Drake says. “She’s a construction: the jewelry, the hair, and the dresses.”

    On June 29, the Provincetown Theater will present the world premiere of Sarah Schulman’s The Lady Hamlet, a backstage comedy about dueling divas who want to be the first female Hamlet on Broadway. There will be post-show talkbacks with Schulman, a novelist, playwright, teacher, and queer activist.

    That’s followed by Jerker on Aug. 3, by the late Robert Chesley. It’s a 1986 love story of two men in San Francisco at the height of AIDS paranoia — a two-person play of phone sex (full title: Jerker, or The Helping Hand: A Pornographic Elegy With Redeeming Social Value and a Hymn to the Queer Men of San Francisco in Twenty Telephone Calls, Many of Them Dirty). “I did a reading of it in New York about four years ago,” Drake says. “I knew it was still relevant.”

    Robert Chesley is pictured here in 1989; the author of Jerker, the phone-sex play, which will be revived at the Provincetown Theater in August, died of AIDS in 1990 at age 47. (Photo Robert Giard)

    On Oct. 8, Bekah Brunstetter’s comedy The Cake takes the stage. Brunstetter is the creator of the NBC series This Is Us,and the play is based on current events: a North Carolina baker refuses to create a cake for a lesbian couple. Complicating the issue, one of the women getting married is the daughter of the baker’s deceased best friend, and her fiancée is black, making the denial that much more divisive. “There are a lot of layers to that cake,” Drake says.

    The season wraps up with Eugene O’Neill’s A Moon for the Misbegotten on Nov. 19. When he first took the job, Drake said that he was hoping eventually to be able to put on an O’Neill classic at the Provincetown Theater, and now he’s ready. “It’s his most forgiving play,” Drake says.

    The Drag and Moon for the Misbegotten bookend the season with older plays. “They’re all by impactful American writers,” he says, “and this season we have plays written by three women,” which is noteworthy, because in the past two years there have been none.

    Drake is intent on keeping the Provincetown Theater a year-round operation, and to that end, he cites the monthly Mosquito Story Slams that are lined up through April (next date: Feb. 8), and the 10th annual presentation of “The 24-Hour Plays” by the Provincetown Playwrights’ Lab on Feb. 15-16.

    Also back is a program of “Winter Play Dates,” five staged readings on Tuesday nights every other week, starting on Jan. 28 with Sean Ably’s Popcorn Girl. “It’s based on an actual murder that happened in a silent-movie theater in L.A. in the 1990s,” Drake says. A reading of Steven Myerson’s political satire To the Extreme! is scheduled for Feb. 11; Squall, a thriller by Elizabeth Hemmerdinger about two women trapped on a Maine island, will be Feb. 25; a new work by L.M. Feldman is set for March 10; and Michael Wallerstein’s Chasing Happy, a gay romantic comedy set in Provincetown, is coming March 24.

    The readings are done with local actors and only a few days rehearsal, and they’re free, followed by a talkback with the author. “They’re not auditions,” Drake says. “We’re helping to develop these plays.”

    Another program that nurtures talent is the theater’s playwright residency program, which this year will bring C.A. Johnson (All the Natalie Portmans) to Provincetown.

    It’s all part of Drake’s plan to make the Provincetown Theater a nexus of creative energy, and to have a trip to 238 Bradford St. be a regular part of people’s schedules, both townies and tourists. In year three of his tenure, that’s exactly what seems to be happening.

    Winter Play Dates Begin

    The event: Reading of Sean Ably’s Popcorn Girl

    The time: Tuesday, Jan. 28, at 7 p.m.

    The place: Provincetown Theater, 238 Bradford St.

    The cost: Free

     

    QUEER ‘I’

    Signs of Hope for the Methodist Church

    The Outer Cape awaits the lifting of homophobic rules

    By

    After the General Conference of the United Methodist Church (UMC) in February 2019 upheld the so-called Traditional Plan, which affirms the church’s ban on hosting and officiating same-sex marriages and on ordaining LGBTQ clergy, I had planned, as a writer, to take a look at how Methodists on the Outer Cape, straight and gay, were coping with the decision.

    Then, just as I set out to research that story last week, a group of 16 UMC leaders from around the world announced a proposal to split the church, the second largest mainstream Protestant denomination in the U.S., with an estimated 12 million members globally, allowing supporters of the Traditional Plan to leave the UMC, and for the UMC to finally overturn the bans on same-sex marriages and LGBTQ clergy. The proposal is to be voted on at an upcoming General Conference in May, and the leaders behind it expect it to be passed, because the split has widespread support from both progressives and conservatives within the church. It would solve a longstanding impasse. The details that had been negotiated were mostly financial.

    This is good news. The split would mean that the UMC would join the Episcopal, Presbyterian, and Evangelical Lutheran churches; the Disciples of Christ, United Church of Christ, and Unitarian Universalist Association; and Conservative and Reform Judaism in removing the stain of homophobia and transphobia from its doctrine.

    Mind you, the progressives — the opponents of the Traditional Plan — have never insisted that conservatives in the church be compelled to perform same-sex marriages or ordain LGBTQ clergy. All they sought was tolerance for either approach. As I see it, that is a compromise stance. It reminds me of the way slave states were appeased in the lead-up to the Civil War. The bigotry known as homophobia or transphobia is thus treated as a difference of opinion. But conservatives don’t see this as opinion: they see it as a dictate of scripture.

    It’s hard to fathom nowadays how a church could support slavery, but the truth is that churches did. And scripture was used to justify it. Scripture is used to condemn a lot of things. Ironically, there is precious little in the Judeo-Christian Bible that even contemplates homosexuality. The infamous passage in Leviticus that labels gay sex an “abomination” (meaning unclean, nothing more) can be found amid rules for conducting animal sacrifices and other preposterously outdated prescriptions for pious living (which are followed today by no one). The gist of the passages in Sodom and Gomorrah so often cited to vilify gay sex are actually condemnations of sexual violence and the brutalization of vulnerable guests — that’s the perversion. A couple of New Testament passages simply echo the Old Testament’s. And that’s all, folks. The scripture’s oft-claimed “unambiguous” condemnation of homosexuality is almost entirely nonexistent.

    Homophobes often claim to be full of love — “love the sinner, hate the sin.” Hogwash. Demonizing those who are different yet harmless is the sin. And churches have a lot to atone for.

    Provincetown United Methodist Church
    The Provincetown United Methodist Church with its rainbow sign still bears the name of the Rev. Jim Cox, who died in September. (Photo Howard Karren)

    I went to a sermon at the UMC in Provincetown last Sunday, and over the last week I spoke with local pastors and some in the congregation. Methodists on the Outer Cape are mostly progressive and actively welcome LGBTQ members and clergy and approve same-sex weddings. The late Jim Cox, who was pastor in Provincetown for many years, was, in fact, gay (though not formally out), and he officiated at same-sex weddings, though not in the church on Shank Painter Road. Among the local clergy who answered my calls — and who would speak only off the record — some were nervous that the General Conference in May might not approve the church split. To continue with homophobic national rulings would be a burden to them.

    Growing up in an atheist household — my parents were Jews and scientists who raised my brother and me in the Ethical Culture Society, which espoused ethical humanism — it’s difficult for me to relate to LGBTQ people who continue to attend churches that officially condemn them. When I watched the documentary Trembling Before G-d, about ultraorthodox Jewish gays and lesbians who come out and are ostracized by their families and communities, and who grieve and desperately want to rejoin, I was mystified. I thought, just leave! Save yourself. My reaction was the same to stories of excommunicated Mormons. My husband is a lapsed Catholic, and I am at a loss to explain why anyone LGBTQ who was raised Catholic would still go to or support the church, given its bigoted dogma and hypocrisies. But there are those who do.

    Listening to the beautiful sermon by the Rev. Sandra Junier on Sunday, about baptism, and watching the small congregation, mostly elderly, largely female, I did get a sense of what is so precious about their faith. “We acknowledge the diversity of God’s universe and open our hearts as Christ loved all,” proclaimed the flyer handed to me. “God is love,” I heard Methodists say over and over. Many in Provincetown and Wellfleet (the UMC in Eastham did not return my calls) work tirelessly to feed those who are in need and to help the homeless. If only the national church would reflect that transparent goodwill. No more pastors defrocked for being gay or marrying same-sex partners, I say. If God is love, let’s see some more respect for love of all kinds.

     

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