THE VOICE OF CHICAGO'S GAY, LESBIAN, BI, TRANS AND QUEER COMMUNITY SINCE 1985

The New York Times ( 3/6 ) reports that Australia's 28th Mardi Gras gay pride parade went off without a hitch in spite of the country's conservative prime minister, John Howard, who dislikes gay marriage. The event featured gay 'cowboys' with sequinned neckerchiefs and a large gay police contingent. Even with Howard around, gays in Australia feel more and more part of the mainstream, the article stated.

John Tierney, writing in the Times ( 3/11 ) and commenting on the polygamous TV series Big Love, listed the pros and cons of having more than one spouse simultaneously and pronounced polygamy not 'necessarily worse than the current American alternative: serial monogamy.' '... [ I ] f a few consenting adults ... want to practice polygamy, there's no reason to stop them. And if the specter of legalized polygamy is the best argument against gay marriage, let the wedding bells ring.'

The Chicago Sun-Times ( 3/11 ) , in a story called 'The Naked Truth,' wonders why straight women don't seem as turned on to male nudity as straight men are to female nudity. However, the men they quote seem a little ... stuck on their opinions. One Tim McGowan says '... even the best-looking, most STUNNINGLY handsome men out there ( Brad Pitt included ) are ultimately, still hairy, smelly dudes. As Elaine on 'Seinfeld' put it, 'The male body is ... utilitarian.' ' Ironically, the genesis of this mini-sleazoid fuss is the current cover of Vanity Fair, which shows a clothed man making out with a number of nude women celebrities. No one's commented that the male model is the very gay Tom Ford.

The movie that won't go away: the Times ( 3/7 ) tells how Brokeback Mountain hits close to home for an estimated 3.4 million American women who 'once were or are now married to men who have sex with men.' This has been going on for a long time: Queen Anne of Denmark had eight children with King James I of England, who had his coterie of male favorites. Then there were the relatively unknown Constance Wilde, Phyllis Gates, Linda Porter, Renata Blauel and Dina Matos McGreevey, who were married, respectively, to the much-better-known Oscar Wilde, Rock Hudson, Cole Porter, Elton John and the former governor of New Jersey, James E. McGreevey.