Friday, May 6th at the First Unitarian Church
(Griffin Hall - basement stage)
2125 Chestnut Street
8:30pm - Doors Open!
9:00pm - The Show Begins!

* Philly’s finest amateur drag kings strutting their stuff!
* Guest performances by drag troupes, local and from afar!
* Prizes to audience members in drag!
* Raffle gifts and delicious beverages!

This is an all-ages show.

Everyone is encouraged to come in drag (in whatever way is drag for you).

Door entry $5-$10 (sliding scale).

This is a fundraiser for The Philadelphia Dyke March.

The guys have the cool clothes, the cool clubs and the cool part of any given queer city. I want to be a gay man. No, seriously, I think I really do want to be a gay man.

I think it all started when I realized I’d never really be accepted as a lesbian. When I go to a dyke bar, the bouncers tell me what type of bar it is while they check my ID. This has happened twice. Both times I wanted to just walk away and go home.

When I’m in a dyke bar I’m assumed to be straight and there with lesbian friends, bi and looking for a threesome, bi and looking to break some poor lesbian’s heart or lost. That’s before anyone knows anything about me. After five minutes or so of speaking to me and finding out that my interest is in queer masculine energy, I’m then either afraid of “real men” or get to listen to the If I wanted to be with someone who looked like a man bullshit.

More gay men than lesbians (with whom it’s definitely my job since I’m assumed to be straight) kiss me. I have a far better time around gay men. For a short time I was going to date gay men, like that would have worked (maybe if we made a rule that we would always keep our pants on).

Why can’t I have a 429 shirt that accentuates the my physique? It’s not fair.

After reading Choice Is Good. Yes, No or Maybe? and Love With the Proper Stranger in this week’s Sunday Times (yes, I’m just reading it now), I’m starting to wonder if maybe queers have too many romantic choices with the absence of the type of structure and expectations our straight counterparts have.

No one pushes us to marry because we can’t. There’s no one standing over our shoulders asking When are you two going to have children?. No one is really pushing us to do anything in the romance and family areas, really (besides moving past the phase). Have we become a little lost without any pressure or expectations? It is, after all, more than acceptable to be single in the gay world, but many singles are lonely and unhappy.

I don’t believe there is just one person for us, who we will live happily ever after with. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t going to have some wonderful long-term relationships (and maybe we do up growing old with one of our partners). My view of relationships is far from the heterosexual norm. Still, we all have times in our lives when we want nothing more than to find someone and settle down for a while and I wonder if that’s harder for the queer community than we realize.

I’ve never heard of a queer matchmaker. Has anyone else? Would you ever use one? I’d be more than curious.

Note: You may need to log in to nytimes.com before being able to use the links in this post. There’s no excuse for not being registered. It’s free. Do it.

Mary Cheney is currently writing her memoir. Yawn. I wonder if mom is helping her. I’m still trying to get my hands on Sisters.

Here’s some excerpts of Sisters from BellaOnline:

The women who embraced in the wagon were Adam and Eve crossing a dark cathedral stage — no, Eve and Eve, loving one another as they would not be able to once they ate of the fruit and knew themselves as they truly were. She felt curiously moved, curiously envious of them. She had never to this moment thought Eden a particularly attractive paradise, based as it was on naiveté, but she saw that the women in the cart had a passionate, loving intimacy forever closed to her. How strong it made them. What comfort it gave.

The young woman was heavily powdered, but quite attractive, a curvesome creature, rounded at bosom and cheek. When she smiled, even her teeth seemed puffed and rounded, like tiny ivory pillows.

Let us go away together, away from the anger and imperatives of men. We shall find ourselves a secluded bower where they dare not venture. There will be only the two of us, and we shall linger through long afternoons of sweet retirement. In the evenings I shall read to you while you work your cross-stitch in the firelight. And then we shall go to bed, our bed, my dearest girl.

I bet Dick has his own special copy. Don’t ya, Dick?

Forget about American Idol.

Windy City Gay Idol has kicked off its third year of crowning the best amateur gay or lesbian singer in the Chicago area. What began as a fun promotion with Windy City Media Group and Bud Light has became a yearly anticipated event in the gay community of talented performers hosted by Windy City Radio’s Amy Matheny and Jim Bennett.

For more info see www.windycitymediagroup.com.

Yep, that’s right. At a hearing last fall regarding amending an Albany County law to extend protections against discrimination to transgender individuals, a man dressed as a woman and women dressed as men spoke.

This proposal was recently withdrawn due to the chances of its passage being so slim. Democrat John Frederick of Albany’s 6th District is quoted saying since we started the discussion six months ago, there are more people with a deeper understanding of the issues than there were before.

Here’s a good starting point for understanding the issues: One can not dress “like a man” or “like a woman.” Clothes do not have sexes. It is society that has labeled clothing “for men” and “for women.”

I’m gonna wait until everyone gets that before I start using big, scary words like gender.

Aaron Cloward is.

Struggling with his gay sexual orientation several years ago, Aaron Cloward sought help from the leaders of his local Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He didn’t get any. “The last [Mormon] bishop I talked to said, ‘You are rejecting Christ. You are on the pathway to hell,’” says Cloward. “The way that makes you feel—”

He considered suicide.

“I walked home and got my boxes of Benadryl,” remembers Cloward, now a 28-year-old surgical technician who lives in Salt Lake City. “Fortunately I had the presence of mind to call my mom. She came over and held me as I cried myself to sleep. It made me take a step back and look at the church with a critical eye.”

Cloward, who served on a church mission to Southern California, quickly left behind the church and its antigay doctrine, which says that its followers can go forward in the religion only if they do not act on their same-sex attraction. He started a support group in Salt Lake City called Gay LDS Young Adults in the hope of helping other gay and lesbian Mormons find comfort and acceptance as they struggle with the church’s teachings and long-held traditions.

Read more at The Advocate.

Something I never thought about…

Why do gay men create icons for themselves, and what can we learn about human sexuality from the gay male perspective?

If you’re a fan of queer theory, take a look at this. The above is one topic of many lectures that are part of the ongoing Queer Studies Scholars Series, a program sponsored by the Tufts LGBT Center.

Check out No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive, Tufts English professor Lee Edelman’s new book, too. Ignore the hardcover price. There’s nothing wrong with paperbacks.

If someone steals $100 from you, call the police. If they steal $100,000, call the FBI. But if you’re the CEO of a Fortune 500 company and your chief financial officer embezzles $100 million on your watch, call Judd Risk Management.

Eyes premiers tonight on ABC. I’m so excited. I got bored with Desperate Housewives quite a while ago. I think they may be a little too desperate for me.

And Rick Worthy’s character, Chris Didion, is gay and they don’t make a fuss over it.

There’s also a difference between Day of Silence (an event about making anti-LGBT bias unacceptable in schools) and Day of Truth (an event invented to counter Day of Silence).

The difference is one event is against bias and the other counters the first.