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

Gregory Maguire, as profiled in the March 11 issue of the New York Times Magazine, is a legally married gay man who has adopted three children with his partner, Andy Newman. Maguire, called 'Mr. Wicked' in the article, has several other 'children'—namely Glinda, Nessarose and Elphaba ( the three witches of Oz ) —since he is the author of the book on which the musical is based. Like Nessarose, his mother died from complications from his birth. He didn't realize until recently that '... there's almost no central character in any of ... [ his ] 24 books who doesn't have a dead mother or lost parent.' He and Newman ( a successful artist ) have extremely active careers but 'the couple do not employ a nanny, a babysitter or a housekeeper. They decided that if they were going to have children, they were going to do everything by themselves.' Maguire manages to give talks on writing to students at his children's school in his spare ( ? ) time.

The Economist ( March 10-16 ) surveys homosexuality in Latin America; Lesbians and gay men can have civil unions in Coahuila, Mexico. Mexico City will allow the same soon. Buenos Aires, Argentina's capital, and the Brazilian state of Rio do Sul also allow these unions. In addition, things are pending and tending along these lines in Columbia, Costa Rica and Peru. Unfortunately, according to the International Lesbian and Gay Association—a Brussels, Belgium-based non-governmental non-governmental community-based organization—2,509 gay men have been murdered in Brazil alone in the last decade: 'The more they come out of the closet, the easier targets gay people become.'

The Chicago Sun-Times ( March 11 ) reviews The First Man-Made Man: The Story Of Two Sex Changes, One Love Affair, And A Twentieth-Century Medical Revolution by Pagan Kennedy. The book, whose title practically tells all, is the story of Laura ( later Michael ) Dillon, the first post-operative female-to-male, who proposes marriage to Roberta Cowell, an early male-to-female. ( 'Transexual,' as a term, had not yet been invented. )

The marketing section of the New York Times ( March 12 ) notes that gay athletes are slowly entering the endorsement arena. Specifically ( and snarkily ) , it told of Tim Hardaway being fired as an endorser of shaved-head products after saying he hated gay people. Immediately after, a rival company hired the famously out John Amaechi. Mr. Amaechi was asked about the Snickers same-sex kiss debacle at the Super Bowl, to which he said, 'I could show you how to react to two men kissing. Smile broadly.'

The Chicago Sun-Times ( March 12 ) reports a survey says that 50 percent of American high school seniors think Sodom and Gomorrah were married.