Gay History – 1919: The First Gay Movie Was Made Over 100 Years Ago – “Different From The Others” [Video]

Entertainment, Featured, Gay History, , , , ,

We all know there is a HUGE selection of LGBT themed films out there available to watch. Many are recent while some began to come into mainstream media in the 1990’s.

But is it possible that the first film ever to showcase a gay couple was made over a 100 years ago?

The answer is yes.

A few years ago the UCLA Film and Television Archives discovered a film that was produced in 1919 Germany. During that time in Germany, a Social Democratic government came into power allowing long-standing censorship laws to be lifted. Acting quickly, filmmaker Richard Oswald joined with psychiatrist and gay-rights pioneer Magnus Hirschfeld to write and produce the first gay centered film.

Different From The Others was a 90 minute film centered around a famous violinist and his male student. This was a drama that showed a love affair between the two men. Although the film did not show any sex, it is very clear in the film that the two men were in love. Unfortunately, the film suffered many vicious attacks from the right-wing press calling Oswald a “perverted Jew”.

The complete physical copy of the film was lost except for 40 minutes that Hirschfeld edited into a 1926 documentary about tolerance.

As part of the preservation, the gay and lesbian film festival, Outfest, partnered with UCLA Film and Television Archives has reassembled those 40 minutes based on Oswald’s screenplay.

“To use the term ‘restore’ would be wrong,” says Jan-Christopher Horak, director of the archives. “There’s not enough footage for a real restoration. But what we have put together allows people to experience the remarkable culture that existed in Berlin in the 1920s, which was wiped out, of course, by the Nazis. As far as I know, this is the earliest document we have of gays and lesbians being represented on-screen.”

This is an incredible piece of LGBT history. This may be the first example of LGBT people being depicted in film. This also may be one of the first steps towards the fight for LGBT equality. 

Released in released in 1919 and starring Conrad Veidt and Reinhold Schünzel. you can watch scenes from  Different From Others below:

After 'Don't Say Gay' Bill Passed Online Abuse of LGBT's Increased 400% On Social Media

After ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Bill Passed Online Abuse of LGBT’s Increased 400% On Social Media

Featured, Gay News Domestic & U.S. Politics, , , ,

The month after the Florida Senate passed the Parental Rights in Education bill, aka the “Don’t Say Gay” bill,  on March 8th. anti-LGBT hate speech has surged online to over 406%.

Via NBC NEWS: On March 28, when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, signed the bill into law, there was also a marked increase in the use of the “#OKGroomer” hashtag, which the report said was often used as a derogatory response to tweets from LGBTQ educators, organizations and health care providers, among others. On the day after DeSantis signed the bill, “OK groomer” tweets peaked with 9,219 total, or about one every nine seconds, the report found. Tweets from just 10 people — including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., and Christina Pushaw, DeSantis’ press secretary — were viewed an estimated 48 million times and were “responsible for driving” the “grooming” narrative, researchers found. “We’re in the middle of a growing wave of hate and demonization targeting LGBTQ+ people — often distributed digitally by opportunistic politicians and so-called ‘influencers’ for personal gain,” Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate

Researchers collected a sample of 989,547 tweets that were posted between Jan. 1 and July 27 and that mentioned the LGBTQ community alongside words including “groomer” and “pedophile.” They found that an average of 6,607 tweets a day used such rhetoric in the month after the bill passed, a significant increase from 1,307 tweets the month before. 

Gay History – August 13, 1998: For The First Time In 10 Years The Bay Area Reporter Prints No Obituaries For AIDS Victims

Featured, Gay History, , , ,

Twenty-two years ago this day August 13th, 1998 for the first time in over a decade The Bay Area Reporter printed no obituaries.

Every week for 10 years BAR reported dozens of deaths for gay men who succumbed to AIDS. But on August 13th, 1998 three years after the release of the first effective HIV drugs for the first time The Bay Area Reporter had no AIDS related deaths to report.

AIDS deaths in New York City also plummeted by 48 percent accelerating earlier gains attributed to improved drug therapies.

By 1998, AIDS/HIV had already killed 14 million people, mostly gay men. But now also women, and children. 

Almost an entire generation of gay men were wiped out most of whom set the groundwork and fought for the many of the rights and visibility enjoy today.

#NeverForget

THEY/THEM Review: WHAT/THE FUCK

THEY/THEM Movie Review: WHAT/THE FUCK

Entertainment, ,

Was the world really ready for the first gay conversion camp horror story? Yes. Was Bluhouse Films and writer and director John Logan too afraid to show the REAL horrors that goes on in these torture camps? Unfortunately the answer is yes to that also.

In They/Them Kevin Bacon plays Owen Whistler in this slasher horror film set at an LGBTQIA+ conversion camp. Several queer campers join Whistler for a week of programming intended to “help them find a new sense of freedom”. Owen commences the gaslighting immediately. . He rolls out a series of red flags, from telling the campers they are there to seek the “gender-normative lifestyle that’s right for you” to weaponizing buzzwords like “inclusive” to defend his various positions. This is some of the better writing in movie and it become increasingly more psychologically unsettling, the campers must work together to protect themselves. When an unidentified axe murderer starts claiming victims, things get even more dangerous.

But They/Them removed the one major piece of true horror that would have made this the first one of a kind LGBT horror movie. (Aside from Kevin Smith’s RED STATE which didn’t shy away.) They/Them took all the religious fanaticism and many of the major abuses that have happened at these camps out of the movie.

“If you’re happy with the way you are, then more power to you,” adding that God doesn’t hate them said NO conversion camp director anywhere EVER.

Except in this movie that it.

The one truly unsettling and possibly ONLY real conversion camp activity was the therapy session between Jordan (Theo Germaine), the film’s central protagonist, who’s trans and nonbinary and Cora Whistler (Carrie Preston) who exploits Jordan’s innermost doubts about their parents’ rejection, saying, “You’re nothing to them, you’re not even a freak.” In the robotic creep of a Stepford wife, she crushes her prey: “They’re never going to love you… unless you drop this nonsense and admit what you are. A scared, lonely, ugly little dyke.” Jordan returns to their cabin disarmed, believing they’re a fake. 

And just like that all the suspense and tension is ruined a few minutes later, Jordan and the other campers appear to be in a Stephen Siondheim musical, proudly singing and dancing to Pink’s 2010 song Fuckin’ Perfect. Which believe me it was not.

It just goes further downhill from there. Including a bit about “he’s our forbidden fruit.” Don’t start me. (UGH)

They/Them is the first horror movie to tackle the theme of gay and trans conversion therapy as a slasher film. With a brilliant cast of LGBTQ actors, Logan (who’s openly gay) consulted with executive producer Scott Turner Schofield to make sure the characters were represented in an inclusive way.  Unfortunately Logan never called anyone to find out what conversion therapy camps were really like and the real life torture and horrors that TTHOUSANDS UNPON THOUSANDS of LGBT individuals endured for many for them for decades that make the events in the movie pale by comparison.

MINUS – 3 snaps for removing the religious fanaticism as not to offend anyone

MINUS – 2 snaps for using “forbidden fruit” gag.

MINUS -2 snaps for Pink’s “Fucking Perfect Glee Musical Number

FINAL SCORE – 3 SNAPS OUT OF 10.

They/Them is available to watch by purchase via Peacock Network (Wait till it hits LOGO)

Learn more about the TRUTH of Conversion Therapy Torture by CLICKING THE LINKS BELOW.

WATCH: ABC News 20/20 Brian Ross Investigates Gay Conversion Therapy Torture Industry – FULL SEGMENT

Four Men Sue Perverse Ex-Gay Jewish Therapy Group JONAH For Mental Torture – Video

FRC’s Tony Perkins Pushes LGBT Conversion Therapy Torture Plank, Republican Committee Approves It

Christian Conversion Therapy Camp Owners Charged W/ Trafficking, Abuse and Forced Labor Of Underage Boys

Liberty Counsel’s Mat Staver: Gay Conversion Therapy Torture is “Overwhelming Effective”

Gay History – August, 1673: Plymouth Colony Convicts Two Men Of “Spending their seed one upon another”

Featured, Gay History, , , ,

On August 6, 1673 Plymouth Colony convicted two men of “Lewd Behavior and Unclean Carriage”. 

While not directly labeled in the records as a case of sodomy, it is clearly an act of homosexual behavior.

From the official record:

John Allexander & Thomas Roberts were both examined and found guilty of lewd behavior and unclean carriage one with another, by often spending their seed one upon another, which was proved both by witness & their own confession; the said Allexander [was] found to have been formerly notoriously guilty that way, and seeking to allure others thereunto. The said John Allexander was therefore censured [sentenced] by the Court to be severely whipped, and burnt in the shoulder with a hot iron, and to be perpetually banished [from] the government [territory] of New Plymouth, and if he be at any time found within the same, to be whipped out again by the appointment [order] of the next justice, etc., and so as oft as he shall be found within this government. Which penalty was accordingly inflicted.

Thomas Roberts was censured to be severely whipped, and to return to his master, Mr. Atwood, and serve out his time with him, but to be disabled hereby to enjoy any lands within this government, except he manifest better desert.

Allexander and Roberts, were two men with a long history of sodomy in Plymouth and were spared capital punishment. Allexander, a property owning man, and Roberts, an indentured servant, not only violated sexual morals, but also transgressed class distinctions .

Their punishment, banishment for Allexander and the denial of future land ownership for Roberts, was approximately the same as was cast upon those who participated in illicit sexual acts between men and women.

Gay History 1961 – WATCH: “The Rejected” The Long Lost First Aired Television Documentary About Homosexuality

Entertainment, Featured, Gay History, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

While there were  a few previously produced television panel discussions about homosexuality  The Rejected was the first ever full-length televised  documentary about the then controversial subject.

Originally produced and broadcast  by KQED for National Educational Television (NET) – the predecessor of WNET – and first aired on September 11th 1961, on KQED Ch.9. it includes discussions about sexual orientation from: Margaret Mead (anthropologist, pictured aboved); Dr. Karl Bowman (former President of the American Psychiatric Association); Harold Call, Donald Lucas and Les Fisher of the Mattachine Society;

“We think the swish, or the queen, represents a small minority within the homosexual grouping,” Call states. “These people in most cases are not even liked by their homosexual brethren because they have perhaps rejected themselves and they feel society has rejected them.”

Harold Call calls for a change in laws and restrictions that put the lives and livelihood of gay people in danger, while Lucas emphasized the number and ubiquity of homosexuals living in America, not just clustered within large cities.

But it’s  Call’s closing remarks that resonate most deeply:

“The homosexual is no different than anyone else except perhaps in his choice of a love object. He desires the same kind of right to live his life freely and without interference, to pursue his happiness as a responsible citizen and to receive the benefits of constitutional rights, due process and protection of the law that all of us enjoy.”

The documentary also includes: San Francisco District Attorney Thomas Lynch; Dr. Erwin Braff (Director of San Francisco’s Bureau for Disease Control; Al Bendich; Mr J. Albert Hutchinson and Mr. Morris Lowenthal (who engage in debate); Bishop James Pike and Rabbi Alvin Fine.

This documentary was written by John Reavis Jr., produced by Reavis Jr. and Irving Saraf, directed by Dick Christian, with location photography by Philip Greene.

This copy of The Rejected was lost for many years and has been restored as much as it could.  The Library of Congress states that there were several problems with the edited 2-inch quad videotape master. Many different tape stocks were used to create this program and the quality of these was often poor. The base of the tape is slippery at times, which causes an unstable control track. The stock was also physically heavy, which causes tension during take up. The audio quality is consistent throughout but there are three extended sequences – noted onscreen by subtitles – which feature bad picture quality.  The Library’s Recording Laboratory remastered these 2-inch tapes onto digital.

You can watch The Rejected in its entirety here.

John Luguizamo Cries Cultural Appropriation While Fidel Castro's Daughter Approves of the Casting of James Franco

John Leguizamo Cries Cultural Appropriation While Fidel Castro’s Daughter Approves of the Casting of James Franco

Entertainment, Featured, Gay News Domestic & U.S. Politics, , , , , ,

On Saturday actor John Leguizamo has slammed the decision to cast James Franco as former Cuban leader Fidel Castro in ‘Alina of Cuba.’

“How is this still going on? How is Hollywood excluding us but stealing our narratives as well? Leguizamo posted. “No more appropriation Hollywood and streamers! Plus seriously difficult story to tell without aggrandizement which would b wrong! I don’t got a prob with Franco but he ain’t Latino!“

Leguziamo then went one step further and asked supporters to not put any support behind this movie by taking the decision to boycott the film.

But not everyone feels that way including Castro’s daughter Alina Fernández, who told Deadline she supports Franco playing her father in “Alina of Cuba. “James Franco has an obvious physical resemblance with Fidel Castro, besides his skills and charisma,” she told the publication, “I find the selection of the cast amazing.”

As for Leguziamo all he had to do was look at Wikipedia to see that Franco’s father was of Portuguese (from Madeira) and Swedish ancestry, And while he is there John can look himself up and see that he has played drag queens, gay men. and a French midget in Moulin Rouge.

Cultural appropriation that Mr. Lugiziamo.

New Orleans To Exhume And Attempt To Identify Unknown LGBT Victims of "Upstairs Lounge" Inferno Through DNA

New Orleans To Exhume And Attempt To Identify Unknown LGBT Victims of “Upstairs Lounge” Inferno Through DNA

Gay History, Gay News Domestic & U.S. Politics, Gay News From Around The Globe, , , , , , ,

 In New Orleans on a warm Sunday afternoon in June 24, 1973 an  afternoon arson attack on a gay bar called the Upstairs Lounge resulted in the deaths of 32 people. The UpStairs Lounge fire is the deadliest fire in New Orleans history and now the second largest mass murder of LGBT people ever in the United States after the Florida Pulse Massacre.

News coverage at that time, both print and television, made every effort to omit the fact that the fire had anything to do with homosexuals in the community, even though a gay bar and members of a gay church congregation had been involved.  The stories that appeared included quotes from local citizens that can only be described as ignorant, such as a cab driver who said “I hoped the fire burned their dresses off,” and one woman who opined that “the Lord … cooked them.”  Local talk radio hosts were making jokes such as, “What do they bury the ashes of queers in?”  The answer:  “Fruit jars.”

Of the 32 victims  four of the bodies were buried by authorities in an unmarked grave in the local “potter’s field”. Sadly, a record of exactly where those bodies were buried was lost during the Hurricane Katrina tragedy of 2005. Now, officials in the city have announced that they plan to renew efforts to find the victims in the unmarked grave.

Last Thursday, NOLA city council passed a motion promising to renew efforts to find the lost bodies. Doing so opens up the possibility of carrying out DNA testing to identify those not previously named. It also means they can receive a proper burial after all these decades..

“The City’s callous and deeply inadequate response … rooted in pervasive anti-gay sentiment” made suffering worse for victims´ families and friends” states the motion written by Councilmember Jean-Paul “JP” Morrell.

The motion says the city has a moral obligation to do all it can to aid “the recovery and dignified interment of the victims of the UpStairs Lounge massacre.”

You can rad more about the UpStairs Lounge Inferno by CLICKING HERE.

New Orleans To Exhume And Attempt To Identify Unknown LGBT Victims of "Upstairs Lounge" Inferno Through DNA

Gay History – August 1966: The Riot at Compton’s Cafeteria, San Francisco [WATCH: Screaming Queens]

Featured, Gay History, , , ,

On an warm August night in San Francisco in 1966 (no one knows the exact date since SFPD files have been lost) at Gene Compton’s Cafeteria, a seedy eatery in the Tenderloin district one of the first rebellions against the oppression of the LGBT community.

Compton’s became a sanctuary drag queens, young gay street hustlers, and down-and-out regulars much to the chagrin of it’s owners.

One August night the management who were finally fed-up and annoyed by the noisy crowd at one table, called the police. When a surly cop, accustomed to manhandling the Compton’s clientele, attempted to arrest one of the drag queens, she threw her coffee in his face and mayhem erupted. Windows broke, furniture flew through the air and the hustlers and drag queens fought back. Police reinforcements then arrived, and the fighting spilled into the street.

For the first time, the gay hustlers and drag queens banded together to fight back.  Getting the better of the cops, they kicked, punched and stomped on the cops with their high-heels. For everyone at Compton’s that night, one thing was certain — things there would never be the same again.

There is so much more to the story of the Compton Cafeteria than those bare-bones facts. In 1966 San Francisco it was unlawful to crossdress and it was unlawful to “impersonate a female.” Drag performers, transvestites, effeminate gay males, and rough trade hustlers experienced frequent harassment by police, including arrests, beatings and demeaning jailhouse treatment.  With no rights, employment or public accommodation protections, prostitution became survival sex work — it was the only way a drag queen or a down and out hot young guy could make a living.

The violent reaction of the drag queens and gays at the Compton’s Cafeteria did not solve the problems that they were having in the Tenderloin on daily basis. It did, however, create a space in which it became possible for the city of San Francisco to begin relating differently to the community — to begin treating them, in fact, as citizens with legitimate needs instead of simply as a problem to get rid of. That shift in awareness was a crucial step for the contemporary  social justice movement — the beginning of a new relationship to state power and social legitimacy. 

REMINDER: COVID Is Not Over! - 12,500 Americans Died Of COVID-19 In July.

REMINDER: COVID Is Not Over! – 12,500 Americans Died Of COVID-19 In July.

COVID-19, Gay News Domestic & U.S. Politics, , , , ,

Told you so.

Via USA Today: “COVID is over” might trend within social media circles, but weekly U.S. death tolls tell a different story. The pace of COVID-19 deaths has remained relatively steady since May, despite an uptick in July to about 400 a day, according to a USA TODAY analysis of Johns Hopkins University data. In July, more than 12,500 Americans died of COVID-19, according to the USA TODAY analysis. “We’re sitting on this horrible plateau,” said Dr. Daniel Griffin, an infectious disease specialist with Pro Health Care in New York and a clinical instructor of medicine at Columbia University. “It’s been this way for the past couple of months, and we’re getting used to it.”

Translation: “We’re done trying to fix the problem, we now are being “groomed” to live around it.” stage of how we handle all problems in this country.

See also: Homelessness, gun violence, poverty, domestic terrorism and the rising tide of Republican fascism among other things.