You read it here a year ago. Now the Phillip Pullman trilogy, His Dark Materials, complete with gay angels, alternative worlds, and the reason New Lines Productions Pres Toby Emmerich wanted to make the movie. Iorek Byrnison, an armored bear, is being filmed.
According to the Chicago Trib (12/25) and The NY Times (1/23) the book is already a hit play in London, the audience of which has pre-teens explaining all to their befuddled parents. The heroine, Lyra Silvertongue, and her daemon (you'll have to go see) will hit the screen next year.
From the 'Oops! Caught In The Wong Kind Of Picture' file: the Chicago Sun-Times (1/29) reports actor Josh Duhamel appeared in gay photographer Greg Gorman's book As I See It. Quoting the Times: '... The naked Duhamel was, uh, clearly 'up' for being in the picture.' Duhamel, star of Win a Date with Tad Hamilton, dismisses the whole thing.
From a re-surfacing of a year-old Matt Drudge tidbit: Cleveland Indians pitcher Kazuhito Tadano wants to be forgiven for being in a gay porn video in college. Just some sophomore hi-jinks. Both Duhamel and Tadano say they're not gay.
The NY Times (1/30) in a front-page story tells of clergy, even of Christian sects, that forbid it, performing gay union ceremonies and just calling them marriages. 'One Catholic priest, who has violated his church's ban, said: 'We can bless a dog, ... a boat, ... a car, but we can't say a prayer over two people who love each other and want to spend their lives together. ... You can call it a deep and abiding friendship, but you can't bless it.'' The article pointed out that the prayers, vows and scriptural references in weddings, holy unions, commitment ceremonies, etc., are often identical except for the word 'partners' instead of 'husband and wife' (and what would stop a straight couple from using the entirely equal-sounding 'partners'?)
The NY Times (1/25) had a very affecting story about two men in a new program called 'doulas' where one man, Bill Keating, became a trained volunteer to ease the pain of dying for 77-year-old Lew Grossman. The isolated Grossman who it turned out was gay rallied from Keating's friendship and lived a happy year longer than expected.
Check out a new play about bisexual poet Anne Sexton: My Own Stranger runs thru March 28 at the Writer's Theater Chicago, says the Chicago Sun-Times (1/25).
Gay writer Andrew Sullivan reviews Irshad Manji's book, The Trouble with Islam and calls it unscholarly, 'shocking, raw, but mercifully, joyously, still alive.' (NY Times, 1/25)
Peter Brooks is annoyed in the same issue in his enthusiastic review of a new translation of Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time because American readers can't get all seven volumes of the work until 2019 because of copyright laws. (Proust, who was gay, is considered by some to be the finest European writer in modern times.)