Obituary
Medical marijuana hero Scott Tracy Imler has died
Imler battled Bush administration for AIDS, cancer patients
All Photos via Scott Imler’s Facebook page
The announcement was sudden and shocking.
“I am very sad to share with all his friends on Facebook that Scott Tracy Imler passed away this morning here in LA. He died in his sleep. Scott was 60 years old,” his husband George Leddy wrote in an Aug. 10 morning post.
“We have been together for thirty years,” he wrote.
“We were married for nine years. I will miss him very much. We gave each other the best years of our lives. I will post details on his funeral here on his page. Thank all of you who loved him and struggled with him on so many fronts.”
George Leddy and Scott Tracy Imler
West Hollywood Mayor John Duran responded almost immediately, describing how Imler approached the defense attorney—who represented ACT UP/LA and Clean Needles Now—to represent him in trying to establish a reliable center to raise and responsibly dispense marijuana for medical use by AIDS, cancer and other patients with debilitating illnesses. Many had discovered that pot helped fight nausea after chemo treatments and swallowing toxic AZT another AIDS medications, fighting the “wasting syndrome;” it also helped fight glaucoma and epileptic spells, which impacted Imler. But since 1972, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration listed cannabis as the most serious Schedule I drug, with no “currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse,” along with heroin, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), methylenedioxymethamphetamine (ecstasy), methaqualone, and peyote. Less dangerous Schedule II drugs include cocaine, meth and oxycodone. Imler was very concerned about non-tested pot being sold on the black market.
A Methodist minister, “Scott set up shop as the Pastor at the corner of Fountain and Fairfax in West Hollywood at the Methodist Church. It became the “Sanctuary” for those who wished to receive and use medicinal marijuana,” Duran writes. “Remember this was before Prop 215 legalized medicinal or Prop 64 legalized every day use. This was a time when we used the defense of ‘necessity’ to prevent a greater evil. And it took a lot of work with law enforcement to make it happen,” including West Hollywood Sheriff’s station captains Lynda Castro and @Buddy Goldman, the DA’s office and the City Attorneys. Imler served about 1,000 patients at that church—“the first in Southern California.” The church at Fairfax and Fountain also hosted many AA meetings, and served as the headquarters and kitchen for Project Angel Food and for Coalition for Economic Survival (CES).
Imler subsequently joined with northern California medical marijuana advocate Dennis Peron in writing Proposition 215 that allowed for the legal use of medical marijuana with conditions, that passed in 1996.
One of his last Facebook posts was on Aug. 4, the second anniversary of the passage of Prop 64, which was supposed to close loopholes and “clean up” Prop 215. “Almost 2 years since the passage of Proposition 64, purported legalizing marijuana for adult commercial use and 3 years from the passage of its ugly step-sister the Medical Cannabis Regulation and Safety Act by the Californian State Legislature,” Imler wrote. “While Prop 64 deserves some credit for several important reforms to criminal statutes regarding personal use and cultivation and home cultivation and its social equity provisions in communities adversely impacted by the “war on drugs,” the solely FOR PROFIT provisions of both bills continue to stand COMPASSION on its head. In the category of “Sometimes Less Is More,” the simple and straight-forward 274 words of Proposition 215, passed by voters 22 years ago, stands as a testament of doing the right thing, at the right time, for the right reasons.”
Imler gained a solid reputation for founding and strictly running the not-for-profit Los Angeles Cannabis Resource Center co-op on Santa Monica Blvd near Gardner, a center that came about with help from Duran, the City of West Hollywood and Wells Fargo Bank. Imler was very cautious and rule-driven, screening out would be con artists.
But then came the feds, launching the pot wars from 1998-2004. On Oct. 25, 2001, the heavily-armed DEA raided LACRC with little courtesy notice to West Hollywood sheriffs and local elected officials. This was all the work of right wing US Attorney General John Ashcroft—the Jeff Sessions of his time— who had already raided scores of cause-minded pot-farms around San Francisco and were now cleaning up So-Cal. They wanted to make an example of Imler and since Imler and two others were not allowed to offer a “medical necessity” defense in court, they took a plea and the federal government confiscated LACRC under the “drug asset forfeiture laws” as ACT UP/LA and others staged ongoing protests in a parking lot across the street.
Defense attorney and then-West Hollywood City Councilmember John Duran with Scott Tracy Imler at news conference
“It went all the way up to the US Supreme court where certiorari was denied. So the federal government kept and sold the building at Santa Monica Blvd near Gardner,” Duran recalls. “Scott was prosecuted under federal law but never had to do any time. It was INJUSTICE for Scott and the Cannabis Resource Center family.”
Imler tried to re-establish LACRC, with no luck. And then he ran into head-to-head issues with the Methodist Church, which eventually evicted him. (See his “Fabulous Farewell” below). He and Leddy survived a slew of other problems, including a major close call until Imler was saved by the City of Hope Hospital and a devastating fire that killed their beloved dogs. And while younger LGBT activists may not grasp the power of going up against the heartless federal government at a time when so many were dying of AIDS, anytime the Rev. Scott Tracey Imler was in a room, those who remembered would nod their heads or reach out with hugs to thank him for his brave activism and endurance.
“RIP Rev. Scott. You were my friend. My hero. A warrior for patients and those who were ill,” writes Duran. “You brought such fortitude and color to the City of West Hollywood. A hero in the national AIDS movement. We shall not forget you my dear friend.”
When the Methodists shut down the church, Imler held a Thanks for the Memories: Both Yesterday’s and Tomorrow’s celebration. Here’s the letter Imler sent out as a “Fabulous Farewell and Hello” that talks about so much history during that period of times.
Dear Members, Families & Friends of Crescent Heights United Methodist Church
Greetings, in the name of the Christ of your understanding and in the Spirit of all that is beautiful, loving, and good in the world. I hope you’ve had a wonderful and re-creational vacation season. In the wake of the Annual Conference’s decision to “discontinue” Crescent Heights Church as a local United Methodist congregation, “re-creation” has certainly been the watchword in West Hollywood this summer. As we move through this time of transition and prepare for our final worship service on August 21st, I often times find myself singing the Lord’s Prayer to the tune of Auld Lang Syne, with the list of what might “be forgot” only surpassed by the fond recollections I will cherish forever.
Of course, saying goodbye is never easy, particularly to a 97 year-old hometown institution like Crescent Heights Church. Founded in 1914, Crescent Heights Church grew and came of age alongside an exciting young industry called “motion pictures” and has for almost a century played host to mogul and migrant alike, shining a beacon of hope over both the bountiful harvests of modernity and the fields of broken dreams of those who dared to chase them. As a “room at the inn” for so many of West Hollywood’s community-based programs of wholeness, justice, and compassion, the church has abided in the same spirit of love, healing, and hope upon which the City of West Hollywood itself would come into being some seven decades later.
But sometimes, the “great oaks” of our heritage can dim the light and obscure the forest of new possibilities sprouting in the shade of a storied past. And then, when winter comes and the creeping veil of dormancy presses in from all sides, even those few stalwart leaves clinging mightily to their branches, — that no rain or stormy blast can seem to dislodge — can only bear witness more starkly to a poignant and timeless farewell, that the coming Spring might prosper the emergent life yet to blossom beneath.
It is in that spirit of promise that the remnant “leaves” of Crescent Heights United Methodist Church and it’s “Acorn Choir” take a musical look back — with an eye toward the “new thing” God will do among us at the corner of Fountain and Fairfax — and in that same spirit of new beginnings that we cordially invite you to join former pastors and congregants, musicians and vocalists, civic and community leaders on Sunday, August 21st @ 3 PM, as we give Thanks for the Memories: Both Yesterday’s and Tomorrow’s and celebrate the noble beginnings, the fruitful life, and the latter-days of our beloved little church in the shadow of the Sunset Strip, that never stopped believing “it could.”
After the service you are invited to enjoy refreshments on the back patio at the Sacred Grounds Coffee House: Where Heaven and Earth “Do Lunch”. Friends and supporters wishing share personal reflections, prayers, poetry, or words of wisdom and hope may do so during the celebration or may submit them in writing by for inclusion in the Commemorative Program. RSVPs are greatly appreciated including any special needs or disability seating requests and can be lodged by e-mail at: [email protected] or by Voicemail @ 323-572-5221
With our deepest thanks for your love and support over these many years . . .
. . . Grace and Peace in God’s Service,
Pastor Scott
Scott emailed me this addendum:
As for the long-term future, I don’t know. The Hollywood UMC / P.A.T.H. proposal for a homeless facility is still on the table. I was told that if redevelopment gets too difficult for the LA District (who now gain title), they will sell the property. My hope is to cobble together an investment /endowment group to buy it and perhaps move forward with our redevelopment plan. for an LGBT Cultural Heritage Campus and Memorial Park It can’t be demolished as it is a “Historic Resource.”
There are a number of twelve step, nonprofits and community serving programs currently calling Crescent Heights home. For the time being they will be allowed to continue to use the facilities. They have asked me to stay on to caretake the property and manage the building. George and I and our extended family will remain in the parsonage. I will continue to lead the Midnight Ministry and its Crescent Knights Fellowship.
Here’s a piece Scott wrote on June 20 that explains the Midnight Ministry:
Yesterday, on Fathers Day, The California – Pacific Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church voted overwhelmingly in favor of “discontinuing” Crescent Heights United Methodist Church as a charted local congregation. As the vote went down I thought “Father forgive them, for they know not what we do.” Then I thought “Father forgive me for not telling them sooner.” As luck or fate or design would have it, the Cabinet Matters, which include local church closings were the last scheduled items of the four-day conference and Crescent Heights Church of West Hollywood was the last of those. Two minutes into my statement about our closure, which over the months we had reluctantly come to accept, with the assurance that we’d get a chance to make our statement to the conference., God and the Bishop, bless her heart, had other plans and cut me off.
So, yesterday when it was my turn to speak, I had started to talk about how the metrics by which we currently evaluate our work as pastors and congregations are ill-suited to the work of our 3 yr. old Midnight Ministry in West Hollywood, with the young men who live and work in the shadows of the Sunset strip. In a historically transitional community such as ours, and an increasingly mobile world, itinerancy might more aptly be applied to congregants than pastors. But we’re obviously not there yet as a conference, if the glazed over look on the faces of the delegates was any indication, which to her credit and pardon the Bishop noticed immediately.
But the fact is, for us at Crescent Heights Church every day hundreds of young male “itinerant congregants,” gay and straight alike, arrive from all points east, chasing the Hollywood dream, only to all too quickly run headlong into the Tinsel Town nightmare — from Huck Finns to Midnight Cowboys in a matter of days sometimes hours — going from bright-eyed and full of life . . . to lost, bewildered, sometimes drug-addicted walking dead — trading or selling for survival the only thing they have. In some ways it’s a throwback to a pre-liberation reality that some call the “gay circle of life” and others — myself included having been there as a teenager in Chicago — call the “gay food chain.” But whatever you want to call it, too many of our tribesmen are still all too willing “to go there”, perhaps unaware of the soul robbing consequences for the young men so consumed. An for their part, too many young men in search of an easy ride are all too willing to wag their faucets at the lonely and aging gay men who’ve been all too brazenly cast adrift in the Peter Pan world of a youthful and beautiful Gaydom.
Add to the problem that most all social services for the cohort in question are organized around two pathologies, addiction and AIDS. If you are not prepared to self-identify as an alcoholic, addict, or HIV infected, good luck finding help. Secondarily, almost all help is preconditioned, paternalistic, and rule-ridden, further robbing these young men of the sovereignty, choice, and self-reliance necessary to the well-rounded social, personal, and spiritual development of a healthy self-realized young adult male.
The Midnight Ministry and the Crescent Knights Fellowship have been our determined, albeit modest, effort to address this reality. Over the last 3 years we have offered to fifteen or so of these guys little more than a dry mattress, a hot-shower, a warm meal, and some big-brotherly love with which to hopefully give birth to their most authentic and intentional selves. A chance, just a chance, to take a different journey. The only rules are mutual respect, attend Sunday service, and show up for the Tuesday morning fellowship. We have a chore-wheel, but you know how boys are about doing chores – they hate ’em and they don’t do ’em. So we cook ’em breakfast every Tuesday morning and squawk at them about doing chores and they still don’t do them — right up until the day it dawns on them that they want to do them – because suddenly they want to do something for their brothers to improve the collective lot – and then it’s not a chore at all. Once that threshold is crossed, it’s not surprising to suddenly find them fixing broken furniture to put in their rooms, framing tattered photos long buried in their backpacks, ironing a shirt to wear on Sunday morning, playing Chess, reading books, keeping journals, playing music; taking up old hobbies, rekindling their dreams. Sometimes even showing up in the kitchen or the office out of the blue to see if they can help with something.
When what was taken from them has been returned they can once again give of themselves. Their eyes begin to shine again, smiles replace the sullen frowns, laughter fills our quiet church, infectiously spreading all around. It’s in their laughter that I most clearly hear the voice of God.
As I sat in the Memorial Chapel yesterday and looked around at the mostly antsy middle-class delegates, anxious for lunch and their comfortable suburban homes, all I cold see were the faces of our “lost boys” surrounded the the darkness in which we found them. Two in particular stand out that sadly we lost forever in the last month: one was gay and was never able to break the grip that crystal meth had on his bed to bed existence and died at County USC of lymphoma on May 11th. The other was straight and escaped his brief time here in L.A. before surrendering his dignity, for the University of Hawaii to get a teaching credential, where he met the love of his life. But he, tragically, died last Thursday after accidentally falling though a plate glass window and bleeding to death. He was to begin his new job with autistic kids today, but instead donated his organs that others might live – leaving behind his young wife and their baby son Koa. It was Tyler who I had just begun to speak of yesterday when the Bishop said “time’s up, let’s vote.”
As the sea of hands rose in the auditorium, still unaware of the lives they would impact I saw all the guys’ faces in a rainbow of light, colors woven as a beacon of hope. It’s a beacon that has been kept alive by thousands of faithful souls upon whose shoulders we have stood for the last six years, who loved Crescent Heights Church through the trials and storms of their own times, and who passed the spirit of that beacon to a new generation of light-keepers, who would do the same for the next, and they the next — for 97 years. That this progression of light-bearing, this rite of remembrance, will come to an end on my watch will be my greatest and most abiding sorrow.
But genuine Christic ministry of, by, and for the “itinerant congregant” is a lifetime adventure; a privilege and challenge as we each come to know both the lambs and the shepherds within us.
While the way of traditional Christian discipleship is a well-marked path, leading to an ordered faith, a disciplined peace, and a studied assurance, a Christic disciple’s ministry — self-determined and divinely inspired in any given moment — is more often risky than not and requires that we encounter the world AS IT IS, at times playing Red Rover at the crossroads of sin and death, and at othet times “catchers in the rye” on the edge of the abyss. Yet always with an eye for the awe and wonder of God’s hand, we bear witness to both the beauty and the beastly and without compulsion for judgment, heroics, or coercion to remake the world in our own image, we can merely love and lift up those who will rebuild the world in God’s. And in so doing, as we necessarily sacrifice the certainty of “how we’ve always done it,” we will undoubtedly be bounced and buffeted, perhaps even ridiculed, certainly misunderstood, but in the end be all-the-more compelled to wrestle with the overwhelming kindness and unfettered cruelty of the human condition as we know it – discovering along the way that we are capable of either and culpable for both. It is in this authenticity that we will be changed forever, born again with each rising sun, and the world further perfected in the light and love of God.
So, on behalf of the remnant congregation of Crescent Heights Church and the itinerant congregants of Crescent Knights Fellowship and our Midnight Ministry, please know that we bear no hard feelings and accept as a challenge our “discontinuance” as a chartered local church, if that is the wisdom of 2011 Cal-Pac Conference. But please know as well, as we each journey forth in our walks with the Wholly, we do so with our heads held high – not in pride, but as lights in the darkness that were not overcome, in praise and thanksgiving for the gifts of God and each other, holding fast to the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson to “Follow not, where the path may lead, but go instead where there is no path and leave a trail for those to come.” Those like Tyler, Stephan, and all of us, who will come searching for a ray of hope too long abandoned, a loving word by fear long silenced, or just a “room at the inn” in which to heal saddened bodies, renew broken spirits, reincarnate fondest dreams, and resurrect the disrupted adventures of our most authentic selves.
This IS the “new thing” that the Lord is doing in West Hollywood,. The IS the “new thing” the Lord is doing in these young lives. And his IS the “new thing” we will keep doing at Crescent Heights Church, whether the Cal-Pac Conference “perceives it” or not . . . so help me God.
Love, grace and peace – in God’s service and theirs,
Pastor Scott
June 20, 2011
Obituary
Gay baseball trailblazer Billy Bean dead at 60
MLB executive was last living former pro player to have come out
He achieved his lifelong dream of becoming a major league baseball player at 23, but Billy Bean gave it all up at 31 because he fell in love with another man. Bean, MLB’s senior vice president for diversity, equity and inclusion, died at home in New York on Tuesday after an 11-month-long battle with acute myeloid leukemia. Major League Baseball announced his death.
Bean was 60, and leaves a husband, Greg Baker.
Bean did not come out publicly until he left the game, in 1999, following an article in the Miami Herald that outed him. That led to even bigger stories in the New York Times and television interviews about being a closeted athlete. He wrote a book, “Going the Other Way.” For decades, Bean was the only living former baseball player to have come out as gay, following Glenn Burke.
Four years ago, Bean recorded an emotional video about coming out and how baseball has changed, titled “Dear Glenn Burke: A Letter from Billy Bean.”
However, the biggest impact Bean had on the game and on all professional sports came in 2014, when he was hired by former Commissioner Bud Selig to be MLB’s first ambassador for inclusion. He spent more than 10 years working for MLB, eventually being promoted to senior vice president.
Bean worked with pro baseball players and their clubs to, in his words, “advance equality for all players, coaches, managers, umpires, employees, and stakeholders throughout baseball to ensure an equitable, inclusive, and supportive workplace for everyone.”
The California native’s athletic career started as a two-time All-American outfielder at Loyola Marymount, then Bean played six seasons of pro ball. He was drafted by the New York Yankees in 1985, but returned to Loyola for his senior year, leading the team to the NCAA Men’s College World Series.
The Detroit Tigers drafted him the following year, and Bean made his debut in 1987 with a four-hit performance that tied a record for a player in his first game. Bean went on to play for the Los Angeles Dodgers, the San Diego Padres, in Japan as well as in the minor leagues.
But he hung up his mitt in 1995, when the lefty outfielder — who at that time was married to a woman — lost his first partner, Sam. He died of HIV-related causes in Bean’s final season. They had fallen in love on a road trip in Miami.
That 1999 Miami Herald article that outed him was a review of the restaurant he co-owned with his partner at that time. He had already told his parents in 1996, but Bean once told the LGBTQ sports site Outsports he still regretted ending his career in the closet.
“If I had only told my parents, I probably would have played two or three more years and understood that I could come out a step at a time, not have to do it in front of a microphone. And I was completely misguided. I had no mentor. I think that’s where the responsibility comes in for people who have lived that experience, and we take for granted that everybody’s adjusted and gets it. I had no one to confide in and that was the biggest mistake of my professional life was to think that if one person knew, everybody knew.
Just having some kind of ally at that time, I think I would have changed and I think I would have played so much better. You can appreciate the degree of despair when you’re hiding something and you’re on the bubble as it is. It just was a really frustrating time for me.”
At MLB, Bean led the charge for baseball teams to hold Pride nights, especially following the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The beginning of Pride month alongside fans returning to our MLB ballparks is tremendously exciting,” Bean told the Los Angeles Blade in June 2021. “The past year has been difficult for everyone, and I am so appreciative that our clubs are able to reach out and support the LGBTQ community in such a positive way.”
The league, baseball teams, his alma mater and LGBTQ advocates and allies posted remembrances and tributes to Bean on social media following news of his passing.
We are deeply saddened by the passing of our friend and colleague Billy Bean, MLB’s Senior VP for Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion and Special Assistant to the Commissioner. Billy, who fought a heroic year-long battle with Acute Myeloid Leukemia, was 60.
Over the last 10 years,… pic.twitter.com/dCfFM6hQlE
— MLB (@MLB) August 6, 2024
We mourn the passing of Billy Bean, a former Dodger and pioneering executive who as MLB’s Senior Vice President for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion truly elevated the culture and spirit of the game he loved. pic.twitter.com/fFykeWFWbi
— Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) August 6, 2024
We mourn the passing of our friend and former Padre, Billy Bean. He was a great ambassador for equality and inclusion in the game of baseball, and our thoughts are with his loved ones at this very difficult time. pic.twitter.com/D2sFHSVLhO
— San Diego Padres (@Padres) August 6, 2024
The #SFGiants are deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Billy Bean and join the rest of the baseball community in mourning this incredible loss.
We thank Billy for supporting and creating a more inclusive baseball environment and using our collective platform to elevate… https://t.co/tNdMQYCKHk
— SFGiants (@SFGiants) August 6, 2024
We join the entire baseball community in mourning the passing of Billy Bean.
Our hearts go out to the Bean family at this time. 💚💛 https://t.co/6TgKhC5QXp
— Oakland A's (@Athletics) August 6, 2024
The Washington Nationals join Major League Baseball and its Clubs in mourning the passing of Billy Bean.
It was an honor to host him at Nationals Park for our annual Night OUT in 2023, and we thank him for the many contributions he made to our game. pic.twitter.com/8t47tRhhfj
— Washington Nationals (@Nationals) August 6, 2024
The Tigers organization extends its deepest condolences to the family and friends of Billy Bean, who made his Major League debut with the Tigers in 1987 and spent three seasons wearing the Olde English ‘D’. https://t.co/BiB0pKpEbj
— Detroit Tigers (@tigers) August 6, 2024
Billy Bean brought all of his heart to this game. His courage changed baseball for the better, championing inclusivity and belonging.
Thank you for your friendship, energy and inspiration. You made us a better organization. We will miss you. ❤️ https://t.co/blhQNPJ2VO pic.twitter.com/EpBluffmYM
— Red Sox (@RedSox) August 6, 2024
Billy Bean left an indelible mark with his kindness, sincerity and tireless efforts to advance the causes of diversity and inclusion in baseball. The Players Association extends its heartfelt sympathies to his family and friends throughout the game. pic.twitter.com/6KHvcv4ZcR
— MLBPA (@MLBPA) August 6, 2024
The LMU community mourns the passing of Lions baseball legend Billy Bean.
The two-time All-American led the Lions to their sole appearance in the College World Series in 1986.
Bean was inducted into the LMU Hall of Fame in 1992 and will forever be enshrined in Lions lore. pic.twitter.com/QwJbt3Rfhp
— LMU Baseball (@lmulionsBSB) August 6, 2024
I just learned that Billy Bean is now gone on the same day we buried my father. I always loved working with Billy because, former big leaguer that he was, he was committed to finding positive outcomes, ways to win, big or small, for all #LGBTQ athletes. We should all miss him. pic.twitter.com/F3d2EKjAtL
— Christina Kahrl (@ChristinaKahrl) August 6, 2024
It's a sad day for all sports. Baseball Legend Billy Bean, MLB’s Senior VP for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and Special Assistant to the Commissioner, has passed away. Billy, who was 60, fought Acute Myeloid Leukemia.
— R.K. Russell (@RKRelentless) August 6, 2024
Heartbroken to hear of Billy’s passing. A kind man with a formidable enthusiasm for creating change. I’m so grateful for all the times our paths crossed over the years. I’ll always cherish the wisdom he so generously shared that helped shape me into the man & advocate I am today. https://t.co/JtSQDKgMh8 pic.twitter.com/MxRjOJRfQX
— Merts (@ConnerMertens) August 6, 2024
Funeral arrangements were not announced as of press time.
Obituary
Out American composer & lyricist Stephen Sondheim dies at 91
Sondheim did not come Out until age 40 & didn’t live with a partner until he was 61 when he was in a relationship with dramatist Peter Jones
ROXBURY, Ct. – The man who was heralded as Broadway and theater’s most revered and influential composer-lyricist of the last half of the 20th century with eight Tony awards alone, Stephen Joshua Sondheim, known for landmark musicals such as “Company,” “West Side Story” and “Sweeney Todd, has died at 91.
Sondheim’s death was announced by his attorney, Rick Pappas. who said that the composer died Friday at his home in Roxbury, Connecticut. The day before Sondheim had celebrated Thanksgiving with a dinner with friends in Roxbury, Pappas added.
Stephen Sondheim, the revered and influential composer-lyricist behind some of Broadway’s most beloved and celebrated shows, has died at 91. https://t.co/LDynQNwHrr
— New York Times Arts (@nytimesarts) November 26, 2021
An online listing of Sondheim’s accolades include nine Tony Awards (including a Lifetime Achievement Tony in 2008), an Academy Award, eight Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize, a Laurence Olivier Award, and in 2015, the Presidential Medal of Freedom bestowed on him by former President Barack Obama.
He has a theatre named for him on both Broadway and the West End in London.
Sondheim has written film music, contributing “Goodbye for Now” for Warren Beatty’s 1981 Reds. He wrote five songs for 1990’s Dick Tracy, including “Sooner or Later (I Always Get My Man)”, sung in the film by Madonna, which won the Academy Award for Best Original Song.
Film adaptations of Sondheim’s work include West Side Story (1961), Gypsy (1962), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966), A Little Night Music (1977), Gypsy (1993), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007), Into the Woods (2014), West Side Story (2021), and Merrily We Roll Along (TBA).
Sondheim did not come Out until he was 40 and did not live with a partner until he was 61 when he was in a relationship with dramatist Peter Jones. His current partner, actor-producer Jeff Romley, whom he married in 2017 and he had been living together for over 6 years at the time of the composer’s death.
David LaFontaine, a professor at Massasoit Community College, wrote about Sondheim’s early years and the critical friendship that would end up impacting his life, career, and American Theatre;
“Stephen Joshua Sondheim was born in New York City on March 22, 1930, the only child of affluent parents who divorced when he was ten. He believes he might have succumbed to depression had it not been for a friendship that began in the summer of 1941 with the Hammerstein family, who lived near Sondheim on the bucolic Highland Farm in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
“Dorothy and Oscar Hammerstein became my surrogate parents during my teen years,” says Sondheim, “and that’s essentially how I became a songwriter, because I wanted to do what Oscar did.” During his four years as a student at the George School, Stevie, as he was then called, often spent entire summers at the Hammerstein farm.”
Oscar Hammerstein II was an American lyricist, theatrical producer, and director in the musical theater for almost 40 years. He won eight Tony Awards and two Academy Awards for Best Original Song. Hammerstein along with his partner composer Richard Rodgers created some of the notable musicals in Broadway history including Oklahoma! (1943), South Pacific (1949), The King and I (1951), and The Sound of Music (1959).
This past September Sondheim was a guest on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, for a conversation that covers a lot of ground, from “Company” to “West Side Story,” to a new show titled, “Square One.”
Stephen Sondheim Is Still Writing New Works, As “Company” Returns To Broadway
Obituary
First trans mayor, Stu Rasmussen, dies at 73
Rasmussen, who used both he/him and she/her pronouns, became the first trans mayor in the nation’s history
SILVERTON, Or. — Stewart “Stu” Rasmussen, the first trans mayor in the United States, died on November 17 after several weeks under home hospice care battling metastatic prostate cancer. He was 73.
Rasmussen, who used both he/him and she/her pronouns, became the first trans mayor in the nation’s history when he was elected to lead the town of Silverton, Oregon, in 2008, serving until 2014. Before coming out as trans, he served as mayor of the western Oregon town for two terms starting in 1988.
The current mayor of Silverton, Kyle Palmer, took to Facebook to announce the news and offer his condolences.
“Throughout his career as an elected official, Stu advocated for many things on behalf of those who shared his vision for Silverton,” Palmer wrote. “Although citizens can debate their support or lack of support for some of those visions, the time for those conversations has long passed. His volume of service to city government, his role as a longtime downtown business owner, and his impact on the LGBTQ population in Silverton and beyond leaves a huge legacy behind.”
Rasmussen, a self-described “gender anarchist,” leaves behind his partner Victoria Sage, who he began dating in 1974 and married in 2014.
According to Palmer’s Facebook post, Sage noted that “he went bravely into the unknown on his own terms.”
In an email to the Statesman Journal, Sage said that she received many “beautiful and heartwarming” letters from people who said Rasmussen touched their lives.
Born and raised in Silverton, Rasmussen inspired many with his historic 2008 election. His historic 2008 election was covered nationally by People Magazine and Good Morning America. His story was the subject of a stage production in Seattle titled “Stu for Silverton.”
“He set an example for members of our community who needed to see that it was safe to live their lives openly in our community,” said Palmer.
According to Palmer, Westboro Baptist Church, known for anti-LGBTQ+ picketing, protested Rasmussen’s election in 2008. But they were met with a large crowd of Silverton residents — many of them wearing dresses — who supported the mayor, demanding congregation members leave town.
Along with public service, Rasmussen also ran a theater in Silverton for most of his life, “managing to preserve the magic of a small town theater even while showcasing the blockbusters that arrived in the late 70’s and navigating the frustrations of studio restrictions that made it harder and harder to turn a profit,” Palmer noted.
“I’m comforted in the knowledge that he is no longer in pain,” said Palmer.
Obituary
Veteran AIDS activist & TV-film-stage producer Scott Robbe dies at 66
“He was a fearless activist, always on the front lines, whether he was protesting pharmaceutical company greed or homophobia at the Oscars”
By Jay Blotcher | NEW YORK – Veteran progressive activist and TV-film-stage producer Scott Robbe died on Sunday, Nov. 21, 2021, according to a statement by Paul Algiers, a longtime friend and the executor of Scott Robbe’s estate. Robbe was in hospice care at the home of his sister, Angela, in Hartford, Wis. He was 66.
Robbe died of complications from Myelodysplastic Anemia, a blood cancer he had battled for more than a year. He had undergone stem-cell treatment at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston in April of this year.
Robbe was a prominent member in the founding of two direct-action groups in New York City: ACT UP and Queer Nation. Robbe was a member of an ACT UP undercover team, led by activist Peter Staley, that secretly gained access to the New York Stock Exchange in September 1989. Their goal was to protest and publicize the record high price of AZT, then the sole approved treatment for HIV/AIDS. Burroughs Wellcome eventually bowed to this nationally publicized activist pressure and lowered its drug price — then the highest in medical history — by 20 percent.
“Scott was a fearless activist, always on the front lines, whether he was protesting pharmaceutical company greed or homophobia at the Oscars,” said ACT UP New York veteran Ann Northrop. “And he was a total sweetheart.”
“Scott was one of those activists who didn’t flinch when our lawyers would warn us of all the possible charges and maximum sentences we’d face for infiltrating a powerful institution,” said Peter Staley, who chronicled his ACT UP days in the new memoir, “Never Silent”. “When it came to fighting for his dying gay brothers, he’d always reply, ‘I’m in.’”
In 1991, Robbe relocated to the West Coast and co-founded Out in Film, a Los Angeles-based group to battle homophobia in Hollywood filmmaking. At the time, several high-grossing films offered stereotypic and unflattering depictions of gay characters, including Jonathan Demme’s “Silence of the Lambs”, Oliver Stone’s “JFK” and Paul Verhoeven’s “Basic Instinct”.
Out in Film demanded equity for LGBTQ people on both sides of the camera. Robbe and Lesbian Avengers member Judy Sisneros created a pioneering protest at the Oscar Awards in March 1991, during which demonstrators outside the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion called for increased queer visibility and fairness in career opportunities.
The Oscars protest was one highlight of a life devoted to progressive activism. It began in his teen years, when Robbe took part in 1960s marches for the environment, for civil rights and against the Vietnam War. Over the four decades that followed, Robbe’s career encompassed both community organizing and producing dozens of works in theatre, film and television.
Scott Douglas Robbe was born on Feb. 16, 1955, in Decorah, Iowa, to Helen, a homemaker, and James Robbe, a construction supervisor. The family relocated to Hartford, Wis., the following year. Robbe was a graduate of Hartford Union High School in Hartford, and entered the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1974, where he majored in theater arts. Located in the state capital, the college was known for its progressive student population, and Robbe took part in numerous protests.
After he graduated in 1978, Robbe moved to New York City, where he met his first boyfriend, a Bennington College student. They lived together in the East Village from 1978 to 1984. At the time, Robbe was helping to renovate the Orpheum Theatre on Second Avenue in the East Village. At the same time he produced at the neighboring Entermedia Theatre his first theatrical production, “False Promises” by the San Francisco Mime Troupe. At the famed La MaMa ETC, Robbe workshopped Harvey Fierstein’s “Fugue in a Nursery,” which forms the middle segment of “Torch Song Trilogy.” That production won wide acclaim both there and after it moved to the Orpheum Theater. Robbe also produced several plays off-Broadway, followed by the Harvey Fierstein play “Safe Sex” on Broadway.
Robbe joined ACT UP New York after seeing the group protest at the White House in October 1987 during the Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. He joined the group’s Media Committee and took part in numerous protests. He also joined the newly-formed Queer Nation in March of 1990, helping to mount demonstrations across New York City aimed at queer visibility. Robbe was diagnosed as HIV-positive in the early 1990s.
In late 1990, Robbe relocated to Los Angeles to produce TV commercials for Japanese television. His first film job was an associate producer role for 1982’s “In the King of Prussia”, depicting the Berrigan Brothers’ pioneering anti-war efforts and starring Martin Sheen.
Robbe’s extensive television credits include the first-ever LGBTQ comedy special for Comedy Central in 1993, called “Out There,” and hosted by Lea DeLaria. Robbe was on the creative team for the groundbreaking 2003 series “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.” He also produced shows for Lifetime, Comedy Central, VH1, Children’s Television Workshop and American Playhouse.
In 2005, Robbe was named executive director and film commissioner for Film Wisconsin, Inc. During his tenure, Robbe brought 28 TV and film projects to the state, including the 2009 film “Public Enemies” by Michael Mann, starring Johnny Depp and Channing Tatum. Most recently, Robbe worked with activists in Cuba to bring pressure on the American government to distribute the COVID-19 vaccine in the country. Robbe was also involved in grassroots activism in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, where he had a second home.
Scott Robbe is survived by his mother, Helen, and his siblings and their spouses, Royce (Donna), John (Ken Hall), Jay (Francine), and Angela. Also surviving him are his uncle Peter Coffeen (Steve Getz), as well as several nieces, nephews and cousins.
There will be no funeral. Arrangements were handled by Milwaukee Cremation Society. A celebration of Robbe’s life will be broadcast online early in 2022. Donations in Scott’s memory may be made to Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS and ACT UP New York.
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Jay Blotcher is an American activist, journalist, and editor. He was active in the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power in its early years, serving as chair of the media committee, and was a founding member of Queer Nation.
Photo via ‘I’m From Driftwood’ LGBTQ+ stories video archive.
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Obituary
Former PFLAG president Paulette Goodman dies at 88
Beloved LGBTQ community ally grew up in Nazi occupied Paris
WASHINGTON – Paulette Goodman, a nationally recognized advocate for LGBTQ people and their families in her role as president of the national group Parents, Friends and Families of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) from 1988 to 1992 and her earlier role as the lead founder of PFLAG’s Metro DC chapter in 1983, died Aug. 15 of natural causes at her residence at the Riderwood retirement community in Silver Spring, Md. She was 88.
In an Aug. 16 statement, the national PFLAG group said Goodman was born into a Jewish family and grew up in Nazi occupied Paris until the family moved to the United States in 1949. People who knew Goodman have said her experience growing up in an atmosphere of potential danger to her and her family helped shape her response when her daughter came out to her as a lesbian in 1981.
Goodman first became involved with PFLAG in 1981 and helped to found the PFLAG Metro D.C. chapter in 1983, serving as its first president.
During her tenure with the local PFLAG group Goodman counseled families of LGBT people, answered calls on the PFLAG helpline, and led a campaign to display PFLAG ads on D.C. area Metro buses, according to the National PFLAG group.
She later appeared on radio and TV news programs and was the subject of stories in local newspapers, including the Washington Blade, which reported on her efforts to lobby the Maryland General Assembly and the U.S. Congress in support of LGBTQ equality. She also helped to start other PFLAG chapters in Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia.
In its statement on Goodman’s passing, the national PFLAG group points to a 2019 interview that Goodman gave to The Atlantic magazine in which she told how her own upbringing in Nazi occupied France shaped her response to her daughter, Cynthia Goodman’s, coming out.
“When I found out about my gay child, I realized it was the same situation,” The Atlantic quoted her as saying. “You’re guarded about who you are, because you don’t know who’s going to be supportive…I didn’t want my child to go through what I went through – being in the closet is stifling.”
The PFLAG statement says, “It was her understanding, passion, and success with PFLAG Metro D.C…that led PFLAGers to vote her in as president of the national organization.”
The statement notes that in her role as national PFLAG president, Goodman drew national attention to the issues facing LGBTQ people and their families when she wrote to then first lady Barbara Bush to tell of her experience as a parent to a gay child during the peak of the AIDS epidemic. In her letter, she asked Bush to “speak kind words to some 24 million gay Americans and their families, to help heal the wounds and to keep these families in loving relationships.”
In a development that created a stir in Republican political circles and the White House, Bush responded with her own letter, which stated, “I firmly believe that we cannot tolerate discrimination against any individuals or groups in our country. Such treatment brings with it pain and perpetuates intolerance.”
According to the PFLAG statement, Bush’s letter, which was inadvertently given to the Associated Press, caused a “political maelstrom” but was possibly the first gay-positive comment to come from the White House during the administration of President George H.W. Bush.
In her later years, the PFLAG statement says, Paulette Goodman retired but continued her advocacy work by, among other things, starting the first-ever chapter of PFLAG at her retirement home at Riderwood in Silver Spring along with a fellow PFLAG member.
In 2013, Goodman received recognition of her work with PFLAG from officials in Montgomery County, Md., where she lived, and from then Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley. She received numerous other honors of recognition from organizations that include the Human Rights Campaign, the Association of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists, the Greater New York Bar Association for Human Rights, and the LGBTQ Catholic group Dignity Washington.
“Paulette Goodman showed the world what it means to be a loving PFLAG parent and ally,” said PFLAG National Executive Director Brian K. Bond. “PFLAGers everywhere can look to her as a role model, for once she went through her experience with her own child and got the support she needed, she used that experience to educate others and then advocate for the wellbeing and equality of all LGBTQ+ people,” Bond said.
“She was the embodiment of what we tell PFLAG members,” said Bond. “Once you no longer need PFLAG, PFLAG needs you,” he said. “PFLAG needed – and was so lucky to have – Paulette Goodman. Our hearts are with her family and all who knew and loved her.”
Goodman was predeceased by her husband, Leo Goodman. She is survived by her daughter Cynthia Goodman and son Claude Goodman and his wife Toni Goodman; her grandson Max Goodhart and his wife Laurel Goodhart; her granddaughter Hannah Goodman; her niece Sue Einhorn; and her longtime friends Millie Spector, Tom Bull, David Feltman, and Peter Froehlich.
No immediate plans were announced for a memorial tribute or funeral arrangements.
Obituary
First United States Gay Ambassador James C. Hormel dies at 88
“Jim Hormel was a barrier-breaking public servant, champion for LGBTQ equality, and cherished friend who will be dearly missed.”
SAN FRANCISCO – The first openly gay diplomat appointed as the United States Ambassador to Luxembourg in 1999 by President Bill Clinton, has died at 88. James C. Hormel, heir to the Hormel meatpacking fortune, was a longtime philanthropist who parlayed his financial interests and contributions as a longtime Democratic Party activist and donor, into actively pursuing LGBTQ+ equality and civil rights.
“We are deeply saddened by the passing of Ambassador Jim Hormel. Jim devoted his life to advancing the rights and dignity of all people, and in his trailblazing service in the diplomatic corps, he represented the United States with honor and brought us closer to living out the meaning of a more perfect union,” former President Bill Clinton and his wife, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a joint statement. “We will always be grateful for his courageous and principled example, as well as the kindness and support he gave us over so many years. Our thoughts are with his family and all who loved him.”
Hormel’s work as an openly gay supporter for equality led to his being one of the founders of the Human Rights Campaign Fund along with fellow native Minnesotan Steve Endean. In 1995 the organization was renamed the Human Rights Campaign.
A long time San Franciscan, Hormel served as a member of the board of directors of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and the American Foundation for AIDS Research. He also founded and funded the James C. Hormel LGBTQIA Center located at the San Francisco Public Library.
Two notable national Democratic Party political figures and fellow San Franciscans, U.S. Senator Diane Feinstein and U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reflected on Hormel’s long service.
Sen. Feinstein’s statement read in part, “San Francisco lost a great friend today. A philanthropist, civil rights pioneer and loving spouse and father, James Hormel lived an extraordinary life and will be deeply missed by many, Feinstein said. I had the pleasure of working closely with him on several issues, most notably on the 1984 Democratic National Convention in San Francisco. Tapped to be the ambassador to Luxembourg by President Clinton in 1997, he was the first openly gay person to serve as an ambassador. While his nomination was controversial at the time, his service was distinguished and helped advance LGBTQ rights both at home and abroad.”
House Speaker Pelosi released a statement praising Ambassador Hormel’s commitment to advancing LGBTQ+ Equality rights.
“Jim Hormel was a barrier-breaking public servant, champion for LGBTQ equality, and cherished friend who will be dearly missed in San Francisco, in our nation and around the world. Jim Hormel made history as the first openly gay U.S. ambassador, showing the world how the voices of LGBTQ Americans are integral to foreign policy, and paving the way for a new generation of leaders,” said Pelosi. “With his gentle yet powerful voice and undaunted determination, Jim made it his mission to fight for dignity and equality for all. Paul and I are heartbroken at this tremendous loss, and hope it is a comfort to his husband, Michael, and his children Alison, Anne, Elizabeth, James Jr. and Sarah, that Jim’s extraordinary life continues to serve as a beacon of hope and promise for LGBTQ children across our country and around the world.”
Born at the height of the Great Depression in January of 1933, Hormel, the grandson of Hormel Foods founder George A. Hormel, earned his bachelor of Arts Degree from Swarthmore College in suburban Philadelphia and later a law degree from University of Chicago Law School. He later served as the school’s Dean of Students and Director of Admissions.
Hormel’s Democratic Party activism coupled with his dedicated efforts to advance the cause of LGBTQ equality led to a chance dinner conversation in 1992 with then candidate Bill Clinton’s campaign treasurer, Bob Farmer.
Cynthia Laird, the editor of The Bay Area Reporter, San Francisco’s LGBTQ newspaper noted Hormel’s recounting that conversation which was originally published in B.A.R. in 2016;
Over dinner, Farmer suggested to Mr. Hormel that he seek a presidential appointment as an ambassador.
“I was quite surprised when he brought up the idea,” said Mr. Hormel, noting that over 60% of such positions are held by career employees who have come up through the ranks in the Foreign Service.
The appointment did not happen easily, Mr. Hormel recalled.
In fact, it wasn’t until five years after that dinner that Clinton nominated Mr. Hormel for the job. During that period, recalled Mr. Hormel, he made “dozens of visits and hundreds of phone calls” to keep his name in consideration.
Mr. Hormel said he was persistent because, if appointed, “I would break a ceiling and make it easier for gay people to serve at the highest levels of government.”
Initially, Hormel was considered for an ambassadorship to Fiji by the Clinton White House, but according to published accounts in the Washington Blade, D.C.’s LGBTQ newspaper and the Washington Post in December of 1994, his name was withdrawn from consideration in part due to objections from conservatives in both parties on Capitol Hill and the government of Fiji itself.
The Washington Blade’s Lou Chibbaro reported; “The action on Hormel also comes after members of the moderate and conservative wings of the Democratic Party have said the stunning defeat last month of Democratic members of Congress was due, in part, to Clinton’s support for Gay civil rights in general and Gays in the military in particular.“
Fijian officials had protested in part because same-sex intimate sexual relations were a crime punishable by long prison sentences and Hormel’s status as an openly gay man ran counter to the principles of “Fijian Culture” they claimed.
“Hormel’s nomination as ambassador to Fiji would be “dead in the water,” said one source familiar with the controversy, who spoke on condition of anonymity,” the Blade reported. “The source said Helms made it clear through intermediaries that he would bottle up Hormel’s nomination in committee.
The Blade also reported that; “The only reason Jim Hormel did not get the job was because he is Gay,” said one Gay activist leader, who spoke on condition that he not be identified.”
The Clinton Administration according to the Washington Post then explored another appointment for Hormel that would not require Senate confirmation. One option under consideration, the Post reported, was a position in a delegation to an international conference on social justice issues in Copenhagen. Another possibility, the Post said, was participation by Hormel in the United Nations commission on human rights in Geneva.
President Clinton ultimately named Hormel as a member of the United States delegation to the United Nations Human Rights Commission in 1995, and in 1996 Hormel was named an alternate U.S. representative at the United Nations General Assembly.
The following October of 1997, the president nominated Hormel as his choice to be the U.S. Ambassador to the principality of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. While the Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved his nomination with the exceptions of Republican conservative Senators Jesse Helms and John Ashcroft opposed, the battle in the Senate which got progressively uglier as contentious portions of Hormel’s philanthropic and activist work were derided by more conservative Republicans and the powerful political foes of LGBTQ+ equality rights.
Those groups included the Southern Poverty Law Center’s designated extremist anti-LGBTQ hate groups, the Washington D.C. based Family Research Council and the Orange County, California based Traditional Values Coalition Christian organization founded by Rev. Louis P. Sheldon to oppose LGBTQ+ rights.
In a Wikimedia entry on Hormel it notes that FRC and TVC both:
- Labelled Hormel as being pro-pornography, asserting that Hormel would be rejected in the largely Roman Catholic Luxembourg. It was later observed that much of the same material could also be found in the Library of Congress.
- The FRC distributed video tapes of a television interview with Hormel at the 1996 San Francisco Pride parade in which Hormel laughed at a joke about the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a group of men who dress in drag as nuns to mock religious conventions, as they passed by. The Catholic League took this as an indication of approval of what they characterized as an anti-Catholic group. In a meeting with Tim Hutchinson, Hormel declined to repudiate the Sisters. In an interview years later, Hormel objected to the idea that the video clip showed that he approved of the group and that he was anti-Catholic.
- It was revealed that Hormel had contributed $12,000 to fund the production of the It’s Elementary: Talking About Gay Issues in School, a video aimed at teaching tolerance of homosexuality to grade-school students. This especially inflamed Senator Bob Smith of New Hampshire, who was portrayed unflatteringly in the film. Smith contended that he opposed Hormel not because he was gay but because of his “advocacy of the gay lifestyle”.
Ultimately after Republicans were successful in stalling Hormel’s nomination, preventing a vote which was orchestrated by then Senate Majority Leader, Mississippi Republican U.S. Senator Trent Lott, President Clinton in May of 1999 in a recess appointment made Hormel the U.S. Ambassador to Luxembourg.
The Washington Post reported, “Bypassing Senate confirmation, President Clinton moved yesterday to directly install gay San Francisco businessman James C. Hormel as ambassador to Luxembourg.
The president invoked a provision of the Constitution allowing him to make such appointments during a congressional recess. Hormel, who will become the first openly gay U.S. ambassador, can serve in the post through the end of 2000.
The “recess appointment” drew criticism from a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and conservative groups but was praised by gay rights activists.
“The denial of a confirmation vote by the Senate leadership, a vote he would have easily won, was nothing more than anti-gay discrimination,” said Elizabeth Birch of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay and lesbian political group to the Washington Post.
The Post also reported that Clinton’s recess appointment of Hormel was criticized by Lott spokesman John Czwartacki who said it was “a slap in the face,” particularly to Catholics.
Czwartacki cited what he said were Hormel’s links with the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence — drag queens who dress as nuns.
White House spokesman Barry Toiv said Hormel does not support “any such group. The idea . . . is outrageous and is false.”
The Family Research Council claimed that Hormel’s appointment was strictly to “advance the gay agenda.” on what the anti-LGBTQ+ hate group deemed a “a government-sanctioned platform.”
Hormel went on to serve as ambassador until the inaugural of President George W. Bush on January 20, 2001.
After his service as ambassador Hormel returned to his philanthropic work moving back to the City by the Bay where he was honored in 2010, with a lifetime achievement grand marshal for the San Francisco Pride parade.
Hormel also continued his lifelong advocacy work and as an elder statesmen in the Democratic Party. When then President-elect Joe Biden announced his choice of nominating openly out Pete Buttigieg as U. S. Secretary of Transportation, the Washington Blade’s White House reporter Chris Johnson reported, “Buttigieg, who made history as a gay Democratic candidate in the 2020 primary said at the time his career aspiration was to become an airline pilot and “was a long way from coming out, even to myself,” but gained knowledge from Hormel’s story.”
The Blade also reported; “I learned about some of the limits that exist in this country when it comes to who is allowed to belong, and just as important, I saw how those limits could be challenged,” Buttigieg said. “So, two decades later, I can’t help but think of a 17-year-old who might be watching right now, someone who wonders whether and where they belong in the world, or even in their own family, and I’m thinking about the message today’s announcement is sending to them.”
Hormel, in an email to the Blade the day after Buttigieg praised him, was able to return the favor by offering support.
“I enthusiastically support the nomination of Pete Buttigieg as secretary of transportation and will acknowledge him as the first openly LGBTQ member of the presidential Cabinet,” Hormel said.
“Today we mourn the loss of a true titan in our LGBTQ+ movement — a trailblazer, a mentor and a friend to all those who sought his counsel during his decades of leadership and advocacy. Ambassador James Hormel defined our community’s resilience — representing our nation with honor and distinction in the face of vile hate and discrimination,” Executive Director of Equality California’s Rick Chavez Zbur said in a statement. “In the years since his diplomatic service, Jim has been unyieldingly generous with his time and his resources, working tirelessly to create a world that is healthy, just and fully equal for all LGBTQ+ people.
“It is true that we stand on the shoulders of the giants who came before us. I am forever grateful for the wisdom and guidance that Jim shared with me and Equality California over the past 25 years, and I am confident that generations of LGBTQ+ diplomats, advocates and community leaders will benefit from his life’s work. I know that we will continue to see the immeasurable impact of his contributions on the faces of children who dream of walking the world’s greatest halls of power without worry that who they are or whom they love could ever limit their potential.”
The White House Friday afternoon released a statement by Vice President Kamala Harris on the death of Ambassador Hormel;
“During his remarkable life, Ambassador James Hormel made history – and he made the world a better place. Jim’s kindness and commitment to human rights, including his efforts to help found the Human Rights Campaign and advocate for those living with HIV/AIDS, changed lives and inspired generations of leaders. As our country’s first openly gay ambassador, Jim’s distinguished service represented the very best of America and paved the way for others. I will always be grateful for Jim’s friendship and counsel over many years. He will be missed. Doug and I send our condolences to Jim’s husband Michael, children Alison, Anne, Elizabeth, Jimmy, and Sarah, and grandchildren and great-grandchildren.”
President Biden, reflecting the recent passing of James Hormel, the first openly gay person to serve as U.S. ambassador gay person to the United States, said his “bravery paved the way” for LGBTQ appointees now working for the U.S. government.
“I am proud that my Administration is staffed by incredible LGBTQ+ public servants at all levels, including in my Cabinet and nominees for Ambassador-level appointments,” Biden said. “Ambassador Hormel’s bravery paved the way for all of them to serve, just as he hoped it would.”
Biden made the remarks in a statement late Friday following the death of Hormel, whom former President Clinton appointed as U.S ambassador to Luxembourg by recess appointment in 1999.
Statement by President Joe Biden on the Passing of Ambassador James Hormel
Ambassador Hormel was a man of incredible dignity and backbone, a national leader in the fight for LGBTQ+ equality, an early advocate for those suffering from HIV/AIDS, and a ground breaking diplomat who helped America to lead by the power of our example.
Ambassador Hormel put himself on the line to become our nation’s first out gay Ambassador in the face of unwarranted and hurtful opposition. I remember well the historic fight for his appointment, and I was proud to support his confirmation. He helped shine a national spotlight on the truth that no LGBTQ+ individual should be denied their basic human rights, and that the United States should be the global leader in that fight.
Today, I am proud that my Administration is staffed by incredible LGBTQ+ public servants at all levels, including in my Cabinet and nominees for Ambassador-level appointments. Ambassador Hormel’s bravery paved the way for all of them to serve, just as he hoped it would. Jill and I send our deepest condolences to Ambassador Hormel’s husband, Michael, his children and grandchildren, and all those mourning his loss.
Hormel is survived by his husband Michael and his children Alison, Anne, Elizabeth, James Jr. and Sarah.
Additional reporting from Lou Chibbaro, Chris Johnson, The Bay Area Reporter, and The Washington Post.
Obituary
Kay Lahusen, LGBTQ equality rights pioneer has died at 91
Kay was the first out LGBTQ photo journalist, an author and partner of her beloved Barbara Gittings. They were pioneers in LGBTQ activism
By Mark Segal | PHILADELPHIA, PA – Kay Lahusen, 91, died in gentle hospice care at Chester County Hospital on Wednesday, May 26, 2021, after a brief illness. She was born in Cincinnati in January 1930 and as an infant was adopted and raised by her grandparents. After graduating from Ohio State University, she moved to Boston, where she met her lifelong partner Barbara Gittings at a Daughters of Bilitis picnic in 1961.
Kay and Barbara lived variously in New York, Philadelphia and Wilmington DE. They were gay activists from the early days of the Gay Rights movement in the US, marching openly in picket lines in Washington DC and Philadelphia in the early 1960s. Kay became known as the first openly gay photojournalist. Her photos documenting these and many later activities were printed in various gay publications including Gay (a national weekly) and The Ladder. Her photos are archived in the New York Public Library, which drew upon them for the 2019 book, Love and Resistance; out of the closet into the Stonewall era.
Kay researched and wrote the book Gay Crusaders (1972), which was published under her pseudonym Kay Tobin and with the addition of a male “co-author” (her friend, Randy Wicker) to help with its public acceptance. The original research materials for that book are also archived at the New York Public Library.
Kay and Barbara remained activists throughout their lives. Shortly before Barbara’s death in 2007, they moved to Kendal at Longwood, Kennett Square PA. After Barbara’s death Kay continued to contribute to Gay history, giving many interviews, especially about their work with the American Psychiatric Association and the American Library Association. She collaborated in 2015 with Tracy Baim to produce Barbara Gittings, gay pioneer, a biography of Barbara which used many of Kay’s photos. She decorated her room at Kendal with dozens of photographs, and she would talk about her experiences as a gay activist at the drop of a hat, even regaling the nurses at Chester County Hospital with her story days before her death.
Kay is survived by Trusted Friends: Judith Armstrong of Hockessin DE, John Cunningham of Philadelphia, Ada Bello of Philadelphia, and James Oakes of Secane PA, and by the many, many friends, acquaintances, and admirers — too numerous to name here — who made up her chosen family.
Kay’s remains will rest in the Congressional Cemetery, Washington DC, along with her partner’s in a bench designed to express their love for each other and their dedication to showing that Gay is Good. Due to COVID-19, a public memorial will be postponed. In lieu of flowers, Kay would welcome your contributions to William Way LGBT Community Center, 1315 Spruce St, Philadelphia PA 19107 or to Kennett Area Community Service, P.O.Box 1025, Kennett Square PA 19348 for their local food cupboard.
Condolences may be left at foundsfuneralhome.com.
In December of 2019, the Philadelphia Gay News ran a profile on the 90th birthday celebration of Lahusen. She was asked, So visibility is one of the hallmarks of your life?
In answer she noted; “Oh, absolutely. I enjoyed working on “The Ladder.” I tried to put wonderful women on the covers. That was very important, because before then we only had drawings on covers. We went against the American Psychiatric Association and succeeded in removing homosexuality from the mental illness allegation. I wasn’t at Stonewall, but I certainly admired it. I had a lot to say about it and write about it. I’ve had a terrific life. I think gay couples, getting back to that question, should get involved, and give it all they’ve got. It’s so much fun. Don’t you agree?”
You can read the entire interview here: https://epgn.com/2019/12/27/activist-kay-lahusen-celebrates-90th-birthday/
Mark Allan Segal is an American journalist. He participated in the Stonewall riots and was one of the original founders of the Gay Liberation Front where he created its Gay Youth program. He was the founder and former president of the National Gay Newspaper Guild and the founder and publisher of Philadelphia Gay News.
AIDS and HIV
Patrick O’Connell, acclaimed AIDS activist, dies at 67
Played key role in creating red ribbon for awareness
NEW YORK – Patrick O’Connell, a founding director of the New York City-based AIDS advocacy group Visual AIDS who played a lead role in developing the internationally recognized display of an inverted, V-shaped red ribbon as a symbol of AIDS advocacy, died on March 23 at a Manhattan hospital from AIDS-related causes, according to the New York Times. He was 67.
Visual AIDS said in a statement that O’Connell held the title of founding director of the organization from 1980 to 1995.
During those years, according to the statement and others who knew him, O’Connell was involved in the group’s widely recognized and supported efforts to use art and artist’s works to advocate in support of people with HIV/AIDS and efforts to curtail the epidemic that had a devastating impact on the art world.
Thanks to a grant from the Art Matters foundation, Visual AIDS was able to retain O’Connell as its first paid staff member in 1990, the group said in its statement.
“Armed with a fax machine and an early Macintosh computer, Patrick helped Visual AIDS grow from a volunteer group to a sustainable non-profit organization,” the statement says. “A passionate spokesperson for the organization, he helped projects like Day Without Art, Night Without Light, and the Red Ribbon reach thousands of people and organizations across the world,” the group says in its statement.
“We were living in a war zone,” the statement quoted O’Connell as saying in a 2011 interview with the Long Island newspaper Newsday. “But it was like a war that was some kind of deep secret only we knew about,” O’Connell said in the interview. “Thousands were dying of AIDS. We felt we had to respond with a visible expression,” he told the newspaper.
With O’Connell’s help, Visual AIDS in 1989 organized the first annual Day Without Art in which dozens of galleries and museums in New York and other cities covered art works with black cloths to symbolize the mourning of those who died of AIDS. Among those participating were the Brooklyn Museum, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which replaced a Picasso painting with a “somber informational placard,” according to the New York Times.
In 1990 O’Connell helped Visual AIDS organize the first Night Without Light, which was held at the time of World AIDS Day. New York City’s skyscraper buildings, bridges, monuments, and Broadway theaters turned off their lights for 15 minutes to commemorate people who lost their lives to AIDS, the New York Times reported.
In the kickoff of its Red Ribbon Project in 1991, McConnell helped organize volunteers to join “ribbon bees” in which thousands of the ribbons were cut and folded for distribution around the city, the Times reports. Those who knew McConnell said he also arranged for his team of volunteers to call Broadway theaters and producers of the upcoming Tony Awards television broadcast to have participants and theater goers display the red ribbons on their clothes.
Among those displaying a red ribbon on his label at the Tony Wards broadcast was actor Jeremy Irons, who was one of the hosts. In later years, large numbers of celebrities followed the practice of wearing the red ribbon, and in 1993 the U.S. Postal Service issued a red ribbon stamp.
The Times reports that O’Connell was born and raised in Manhattan, where he attended Fordham Preparatory School and later graduated from Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., in 1973 with a bachelor’s degree in history. According to Visual AIDS, O’Connell served as director of the Hallwalls arts center in Buffalo, N.Y. from 1977 to 1978 before returning to New York City to work for a gallery called Artists Space.
The Times reports that O’Connell learned in the middle 1980s that he had contracted AIDS and began a regimen of early AIDS treatment with a cocktail of over 30 pills a day. His involvement with Visual AIDS, which began in 1989, ended on an active basis in 1995 when his health worsened, the Times reports.
As one of the last remaining survivors of his New York contemporaries who had HIV beginning in the 1980s, O’Connell continued in his strong support for AIDS-related causes through 2000s and beyond, people who knew him said.
Visual AIDS says it is gathering remembrances and photos for a tribute post for O’Connell on its website. It has invited people to share their memories of him by sending written contributions and images via email to: [email protected].
History
Anti-LGBTQ activist Judith Reisman dies at age 86
There was the time she appeared on the Liberty Counsel’s radio show to declare that all gays are inherent pedophiles
Editor’s note: Judith Ann Reisman was a vocal opponent of women’s reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights and known for her criticism and condemnation of the work in sexual studies of Dr. Alfred Kinsey. Reisman, a prominent conservative, has been referred to as the “founder of the modern anti-Kinsey movement.” New York-based LGBTQ journalist, activist and blogger Joe Jervis covered her for over a decade on his widely popular blogsite Joe.My.God.
By Joe Jervis | Longtime JMG readers will recall Reisman’s anti-LGBT claims as a regular feature here going back a decade or so. There was the time she appeared on the Liberty Counsel’s radio show to declare that all gays are inherent pedophiles:
We know that pedophilia, which was the original Greek they say it’s ‘love of’ but of course it isn’t, it’s ‘lust for’ boys. And there’s a strong, clear, cross-cultural, historical reality, people don’t want to do deal with, but the propaganda has been loud and strong to deny the fact, the aim of homosexual males and now increasingly females is not to have sex with other old guys and get married but to obtain sex with as many boys as possible. That’s the reality.
There was the time she called for a class action suit against groups that advocate for safer sex:
The reality is that condoms are manufactured and approved every day for natural, vaginal sex, not anal “sex.” They are not effectively designed to protect from disease those people who engage in sodomy. Such a lawsuit should target the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Planned Parenthood and a myriad of teachers and school systems, too many to count, that have taught that anal “sex” (traditionally termed “sodomy” or “buggery” under British-based legal codes) as not so different than natural coitus. Due to the lies that have told, people who practiced sodomy are under the tragically mistaken notion that a condom is effective protection from disease.
There was the time she went to Jamaica to advocate for keeping homosexuality criminalized:
American Religious Right leaders Mat Staver and Judith Reisman are scheduled to be featured speakers at a conference in Jamaica this weekend hosted by a group that has been working to preserve the country’s criminal ban on consensual gay sex. The annual conference, hosted by the Jamaica Coalition for a Healthy Society, will focus on how “[c]ontemporary society has become increasingly hostile to the traditional definitions of marriage and family” and Staver.
There was the time she blamed the demise of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” on a rise in reported sexual assaults in the military:
Why is the best-kept military secret that most soldierly sexual assaults are now definitively homo, not heterosexual, male-on-male sexual exploitation? While men are statistically more loathe to report their sexual victimization than are women, 10,700 male soldiers, sailors and airmen in 2010 actually reported their sexual assaults. What this means is not totally clear, since men are cannot technically be raped, despite the term being regularly used in the recent hearings on the matter.
There was the time she compared activists against school bullying to Hitler Youth:
Both the GLSEN youth and the Hitler Youth were trained to be revolutionary leaders of the brave new world order. GLSEN school clubs and their teacher sponsor/trainers are now funded by major corporations and by some state funds. GLESN’s Day of Silence and “GAY ALLY!” pledge cards for kindergartners and other children (left) are direct assaults on traditional parental, American values. German children’s literature historians document Hitler’s pioneering ban of both the Ten Commandments and biblical stories from Nazi school texts in favor of coarse and violent tales that ridiculed religious believers and their values.
There was the time she was condemned by the Anti-Defamation League:
Holocaust analogies generate headlines and get attention, they do little in the service of truth, history or memory. When [Peter] LaBarbera and Reisman suggest that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people are “demonizing [Christians] like the Nazis used to do to the Jews,” they undermine the historical truth of the Holocaust as a singular event in human history that led to the murder of six million Jews and millions of others. Holocaust comparisons are deeply offensive and trivialize and distort the history and meaning of the Holocaust.
And let’s close with this notation from Rational Wiki:
Reisman is a supporter of Scott Lively and his completely insane screed, The Pink Swastika. She has claimed that she believes that a homosexual movement in Germany gave rise to the Nazi Party and the Holocaust. She enthusiastically and unconditionally endorses criminalization of homosexuality, despite the fact that homosexuals were were one of the Nazis’ target groups for annihilation. Reisman has claimed that the homosexuals employ recruitment techniques that rival those of the United States Marine Corps to transform innocent children into raving homosexuals.
Reisman, passed away on Friday, April 9, 2021, two days before her 86th birthday. From the magazine of the far-right John Birch Society:
Like Judith the Biblical heroine, Dr. Reisman was fearless and stood against the great powers of the world in our time. When her countrymen were ready to surrender to the mighty Assyrian army, the Biblical Judith, trusting in God, walked into the enemy camp — and walked out with the head of Holofernes, the Assyrian general, thus saving her people. Likewise, Judith Reisman repeatedly, over the past several decades, strode into many hostile enemy camps around the world — colleges, universities, legislative bodies, media outlets — to speak truth to power and to expose vile works of darkness.
Joseph “Joe” Jervis is an American blogger and writer based out of New York City. He is the author of Joe.My.God., a personal blog which, since he first posted on April 27, 2004, has primarily covered LGBT news and opinion.
The preceding article was originally published at Joe.My.God and republished by permission.
History
S.F. Jewish and LGBTQ icon Al Baum dies at 90 after ‘full, rich life’
You have to be willing to do it yourself or you’re just being hypocritical
(Photo/Rajat Dutta)
By Maya Mirsky | SAN FRANCISCO – Alvin H. Baum Jr., a philanthropist and activist known as Al to his friends and admirers, died March 28 at home in San Francisco. He was 90.
“Al lived a full, rich life,” his husband, Robert Holgate, told J. “Through his example of giving, he taught many how to live, love and give back,”
As a philanthropist, Baum was a generous donor to Jewish and LGBTQ causes, the arts, civil liberties, and a host of other causes and interests. In 2019, the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation awarded Baum its Robert Sinton Award for Distinguished Leadership, and a J. profile at the time painted a full picture of his background and his longtime activism on multiple fronts.
Born into an affluent Jewish family at the height of the Great Depression, Baum grew up mostly in Highland Park, which in the 1930s was emerging as one of Chicago’s most prosperous Jewish-identified suburbs. He went to Harvard University as an undergrad and again for law school, then spent two years in the Army, in Berlin, during the Korean War.
Upon his return, he visited San Francisco to see how he liked it; at the time, he was living his life as a closeted gay man. He came out publicly in 1975, when he was in his 40s and living in San Francisco. It was a momentous step and not really planned.
“You know they say, ‘When you’re drowning, your whole life passes before your eyes?’” he said in an interview with OUTWORDS, an LGBTQ history archive, in 2017. “Well, it was like that. But I had been telling people, friends, that they should come out. And I wasn’t. I said to myself, ‘You have to be willing to do it yourself or you’re just being hypocritical.’”
From there he became an activist, working with the ACLU and Lambda Legal and many other organizations. Also, he worked as a city planner and attorney for many years and then, late in life, began a third career as a therapist, getting a degree from UC Berkeley in social work. In later years, with his husband, whom he married in 2014, he devoted himself to philanthropy.
Baum served on the boards of many organizations, including S.F.-based Jewish Family and Children’s Services, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the ACLU of Northern California, and the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund. He also founded the Federation’s gay and lesbian task affinity group. He was a founding member of the New Israel Fund, and has been an active supporter of LGBTQ senior organization Openhouse. In 2014, he served as grand marshal of the San Francisco Pride Parade, accompanied by Holgate.
Baum was a longtime member of Congregation Sha’ar Zahav in San Francisco. Holgate said details of a celebration of Baum’s life and a shiva would be forthcoming.
Maya Mirsky is a staff writer for J. The Jewish News of Northern California and is based in Oakland.
The preceding article was published by J. The Jewish News of Northern California and was republished by permission.
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