Kathleen McKinley

Kathy McKinley is a self-described “conservative activist” who blogs for the Houston Chronicle under the monicker “TexasSparkle.” In a recent post McKinley took the “It Gets Better” project to task for what she believes is their culpability in the suicides of LGBT teens:

“These kids were sold a bill of goods by people who thought they were being kind. The “It will get better” campaign just didn’t think it through. They didn’t think about the fact that kids are different from adults. They handle things differently. They react differently. Why? BECAUSE THEY ARE KIDS. You can grumble all day long how unfair it is that straight teens can be straight in high school, and gay kids can’t, but life is unfair. Isn’t the price they are paying too high?? Is it so much to ask them to stand at the door of adulthood before they “come out” publically? Because it may save their life.”

McKinnley’s primary confusion about the “It Gets Better” campaign (other than its name) is the assumption that the goal is to encourage teens to come out of the closet, or encourage them to become sexually active:

“Why in the world would you give teenagers a REASON to tease you? Oh, yes, because the adults tell you to embrace who you are, the only problem? Kids that age are just discovering who they are. They really have no idea yet. The adults tell you to “come out,” when what we should be telling them is that sex is for adults, and there is plenty of time for figuring out that later.”

I would like to encourage Ms. McKinley to watch the “It Gets Better” project’s founder Dan Savages’ video. Please, Ms. McKinley, listen, and tell me if you hear Savage or his partner Terry say anything about teens coming out or having sex. I think what you’ll hear them say is that all of the things that most kids, gay and straight, dream of (falling in love, starting a family, having the support of their parents, co-workers and friends) are possible for LGBT teens. I think you’ll hear them talk about how difficult their teen years were, and about the fears they had that their parents would reject them, that they’d never find success and that they’d always be alone.

Choosing to have sex is one of the most personal decision a person will ever make. For LGBT people, choosing to come out is another. I have not watched all of the thousands of videos from people who have participated in the “It Gets Better” project. It’s possible that there are a few that tell kids to come out right away, or to become sexually active, but I doubt it.

Every video in the project that I have seen has had the same simple message: that the person making it understands how tortuously awful the experience of being Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual or Transgender in Junior and High School can be, but there is a wonderful world of loving, vibrant, successful, engaged LGBT adults out there and if queer teens can just hang on, just for a few years, they can join it. I doubt that any of the contributors to the project think that hanging on for a few years will be easy. I suspect that most of them remember, with excruciating clarity, contemplating ending those temporary years of terror with a permanent solution and that is why they choose to reach out.

I grew up without role models, where people like Barbara Gittings, Bayard Rustin and Harvey Milk didn’t exist . I grew up in a small town where the two men with the pink house were talked about in hushed tones that immediately fell silent when I walked into the room, because it wasn’t appropriate for children’s ears. I grew up in a world where my mother wouldn’t tell me what “gay” meant, where the evening news was turned off if it reported on the AIDS crisis, where I wasn’t given words to describe who I was, and so the only word I could find was “alone.”

I was lucky. My suicide attempt failed.

I was lucky, I survived, and went to college, and found a church that embraced and loved LGBT people. That’s where I met doctors and lawyers and business owners and teachers who were like me. That’s where I met two wonderful women who had built a life together for over 50 years. That’s where I discovered I wasn’t alone and that being gay didn’t mean that i couldn’t have all of those things I’d dreamed of.

That is what McKinley missed in her blog post. In her haste to lay blame on anything other than the overwhelming prejudice perpetuated by schools, churches and governments against LGBT people McKinley missed the fact that kids need role models. In her rush to shove queer teens back into the closet she forgot that human beings need the hope of a better world, lest they give up in despair.

McKinley got one thing right in her post. She titled it “Are Adults Also To Blame For Gay Teen Suicides? Yes.” Adults are to blame for LGBT teen suicides. When adults hide the stunning diversity of God’s creation from their children they create a vision of reality that some of those children can’t see themselves in. When adults tell LGBT teens that they should be invisible then it is all too clear who is to blame when those teens believe them, and take steps to make themselves invisible permanently.

To all the LGBT kids out there: it does get better. There are adults who care about you and want all the wonderful things you dream of to come true, but you have to hang on. If you need to keep who are secret to remain safe then do so. If you need someone to talk to please call the Trevor Project at 866-4-U-Trevor (866-488-7386).

Q Cinema is bringing sexy back.

Its 13th annual festival, which begins on Thursday and runs over next weekend, is flush with sexy, fun and campy films, as well as smattering of dramas (gay, lesbian, trans and bi) through shorts and features. And, for a festival of its size, it manages to attract loads of talent, from stars like Bruce Vilanch and Charlie David to filmmakers like Casper Andreas.

And, in true Cowtown fashion, it finds a way to make it all yee-haw fun, with a bowling party and dishy programs.
Here’s a preview of some of the programs.

Going Down in LA-LA Land
OK, let’s be honest: A lot of gay cinema falls in too-easy pigeonholes and familiar clichés. Twinks getting shirtless. Over-the-top, homo-hating bad guys (who often turn out to be in the closet). Romantic encounters, both cheesy and predictable. Sitcom-y jokes — or else, tortured melodramatic emoting.

But we watch them, and even like them, because they have shirtless twinks. And romantic encounters. And bad guys who turn out to be closet cases.

So sue us. We like our mindless, lightweight fantasies as much as straight folks.

So, when Going Down in LA-LA Land starts with new kid Adam (Matthew Ludwinski) moving to Los Angeles only to be put off by back-stabbing, dating trouble and career misfires, it looks like it’ll be another of its genre: The sappy, silly, easy comedy.

And then something happens: It gets good.

Sure, you can see some of the plot turns easier than at the Texas Motor Speedway, but there’s also a canny, insider quality that adds some heft and authenticity to it all — largely with not-so-subtle references to real Hollywood (including Bruce Vilanch as a Chi Chi LaRue-esque porn director). Writer-director Casper Andreas has crafted a sexy but also funny and wise squinty-eyed look at Tinseltown, from the seductive side to the seedy (often one and the same), from the glamour to the pitfalls.

Andreas gets good performances from Ludwinski and Allison Lane (and himself as a methed-up photographer), but it’s the whole package of nudity, humor and pathos that makes it come together.
— Arnold Wayne Jones

eCupid
Marshall (Houston Rhines) and Gabe (Noah Schuffman) are both cute, young and seven years into their relationship — and, to Marshall at least, it feels as if that’s as long as it has been since they had sex. Hoping to spice up his love life, Marshall downloads an app called eCupid, which promises to match him with the love of his life. But, in traditional genie fashion, you need to be careful what you ask for.

The biggest problem with the film eCupid is that it’s a silly, supernatural romantic fantasy, but Marshall never seems weirded out that his phone seems to be sending text messages on its own, or that everything going wrong could be fixed with a system reboot.

Still, that’s also about the worst thing you can say about this breezy, sexy rom-com, filled with half-naked boys, familiar couples problems and easy-to-digest complications.
— A.W.J.

Trigger
A bad breakup will leave major scars, whether it’s the failure of a band or a couple. In the case of Trigger, it’s both.

Kat (Molly Parker) and Vic (Tracy Wright) reunite over dinner 10 years after their girl band Trigger suffered an onstage blowout. Vic is harder edged, battling her demons, while Kat has moved on to a glossier, pretentious life in Los Angeles. Both are different people; the tough part for them is figuring out if they are better people.

The movie is mostly a series of conversational vignettes between the two but director Bruce McDonald treats the scenes carefully, so as not to turn them into a gimmick. We learn about their backgrounds apart and relationships with each other: They were bandmates, they were lovers, they both got fucked up by drugs and alcohol.

Parker gets the flashier role as the bitchy but loveable Kat, but this is Wright’s show. As Vic, she delivers depths of frustration and hope while still eking out flashes of exhilaration. Her voice is heartbreaking and genuine. (The role was her last — Wright died of cancer shortly after filming.)

McDonald and screenwriter Daniel McIvor have churned out a very feminine film without pandering to clichés. There is no unnecessary delicacy added here. Minus some kitschy touches that missed

the mark (an after-party at a high school?), Trigger ends up being a surprising reality check that isn’t about a rock ‘n’ roll band, but how getting older is inevitable.
— Rich Lopez

Bloomington
Bloomington is about a student-teacher lesbian relationship, which falls under the still-lingering taboo of May-December romance with a strong sense of sexual exploitation. Jackie (Sarah Stouffer) is a 22-year-old college student; Prof. Catherine Stark (Allison McAtee) bears an almost creepy resemblance to Jackie’s mother, who was virtually absent during her daughter’s teen years.

Jackie spent those years as an actress in a TV series, Neptune 26, which ended four years earlier. Now Jackie’s in college, and although her fellow students are awed by her celebrity, her problems fitting in stem more from her own standoffishness. She hears rumors about the notorious Prof. Stark, who beds her female students, only to have them disappear. So when the two meet at a student-faculty mixer, they waste no time hooking up. The power dynamics change when Jackie is asked to reprise her role in a feature version of Neptune 26 and it becomes Catherine’s turn to worry about being discarded.

Perhaps out of fear of the creep factor, none of the displays of affection between the women even approach soft-core porn. They kiss a lot but when they take their clothes off, Brazilian-born writer-director Fernanda Cardoso gets coy about camera placement. Even Jackie’s bathtub scene has her well covered in bubbles.

Cardoso has supplied a lot of surprisingly intelligent dialogue about psychology, show business and academia, to shore up a plot that’s purely emotional. The ending may not be what you expect, but

it’s in line with Cardoso’s constant clash between intellect and emotion. A couple of Ani DiFranco songs are well used to boost the film’s lez appeal, but your overall reaction will depend on whether you buy the central relationship. I didn’t.
— Steve Warren

Judas Kiss
It’s been fun to watch Charlie David mature as both an actor and a producer. He first shot to prominence in the supernatural gay soap Dante’s Cove, where being hot and naked were the primary criteria. He parlayed that gig into hosting duties for the Logo travelog Bump! and the gay romance Mulligans.

Now, in Judas Kiss, David gets to show off his strongest acting chops yet. He plays Zach Wells, a once-promising filmmaker who pissed away his potential on drugs and bad decisions. When he returns to his alma mater for a film festival, Zach meets his younger self, and gets the chance to fix the errors of his youth.

The supernatural element is more subtle here than Dante’s, which allows the idea behind it to come through: How difficult it is to be someone you aren’t, no matter how much information you have.

The production values are as slick and sophisticated as gay cinema gets, and there’s a deliberative, smart style to it.
— A.W.J.

The Schedule

All programs at the Rose Marine Theater, 1440 Main St., Fort Worth, except as noted

Going Down in LA-LA Land.
A gay newcomer find his way in Los Angeles, from porn to closeted movie stars. Filmmaker/stars in attendance.
Preceded by the short On the Bus.
June 2 at 7:30 p.m.

Going Down in Cowtown Opening Night Party
At the T&P Tavern, June 2 at 9:30 p.m.

Our Shorts Are Showing 1.
Program includes: The Colonel’s Outing, Nothing Happened, Freak, Slip Away, I was a Teenage Werebear,
plus a sneak peek at the new project from Israel Luna and Toni Miller, The Zombie Project.
June 3 at 6:30 p.m.

eCupid.
An app takes over the romantic life of a 30-year-old gay man suffering from the seven- year itch. Filmmaker/stars in attendance. Preceded by the short Waiting for Goliath.
June 3 at 8:45 p.m.

There’s an App for That Party.
At The Usual, June 3 at 10 p.m.

Our Shorts Are Showing 2.
Program includes: Amen, Tools 4 Fools, Stay, The Defenders, Under Pressure, Bedfellows, and It’s Just a Community Place.
June 4 at noon.

The Cost of Love.
A gay escort craves genuine love.
June 4 a 2 p.m.

Trigger.
Former lovers from a girl band reunite after a decade. Preceded by the short Allison My Love.
June 4 at 4 p.m.

2 Frogs in the West.
A French-Canadian hitchhiker finds herself attracted to a man and a woman at the same time. Preceded by the short Refuge.
June 4 at 6 p.m.

An Evening with Bruce Vilanch.
The LA-LA Land co-star dishes (followed by a bowling after-party with Vilanch at Lucky Strike).
June 4 at 8 p.m.

We Were Here.
Documentary about the early days of the AIDS crisis in San Francisco. Preceded by the short Fucked.
June 5 at noon.

AIDS at 30: Panel Discussion.
June 5 at 2 p.m.

Bloomington.
A college professor engages in a romance with her female student, a child star.
June 5 a 3 p.m.

Gun Hill Road.
A Latino man, newly out of prison, discovers his son is now transgender. Preceded by the short Professor Godoy.
June 4 at 4 p.m.

Judas Kiss.
Charlie David stars as a time-traveling filmmaker given a second chance. Filmmaker/stars in attendance. Preceded by the video Like It Rough.
June 4 at 6 p.m.

The Q Awards/Closing Night Party
June 4 at 9 p.m.

This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition May 27, 2011.

Sheriff Lupe Valdez

The Log Cabin Republicans will hold their National Convention in Dallas this coming weekend, and we’ll have a full story in Friday’s print edition. But because the convention actually begins Thursday, we figured we’d go ahead and post the full program sent out by the group earlier this week.

Perhaps the biggest surprise on the program is a scheduled appearance by gay Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez, who is of course a Democrat.

Valdez, who’ll be one of the featured speakers at a Saturday luncheon, contacted us this week to explain her decision to accept the invitation from Log Cabin (not that we necessarily felt it warranted an explanation). Here’s what she said: 

“We have more things in common than we have differences, but it seems like in politics we constantly dwell on our differences,” Valdez said. “If we continue to dwell on our differences, all we’re going to do is fight. If we try to work on our common issues, we’ll be able to accomplish some things.”

On that note, below is the full program. For more information or to register, go here.

Log Cabin Republicans National Convention and Liberty Education Forum National Symposium Program

WHAT:
Log Cabin Republicans, the nation’s largest organization of Republicans who support fairness, freedom, and equality for gay and lesbian Americans is holding its 2011 National Convention, in coordination with the Liberty Education Forum’s National Symposium.

WHO:
Alan Kittleman, State Senator (R, MD)
Alex Nicholson, Executive Director, Servicemembers United
Audra Shay, Executive Director, Project GOPink
Bob Barr, Former Congressman (R, GA)
Bob Kabel, Chairman, DC GOP
Chuck Wolfe, Executive Director, Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund
Dan Woods, Partner, White & Case
Dan Zwonitzer, State Representative (R, WY)
Dave Nalle, National Chairman, Republican Leadership Council
David Lampo, Political Director, LCR Virginia
Evan Wolfson, Freedom to Marry
Fred Karger, presidential candidate
Jeff Cook, Allegiance Strategies
Kristen Silverberg, Former Ambassador to the European Union
Len Olds, Chairman Emeritus, Liberty Education Forum
Lupe Valdez, Dallas County Sheriff
Mark Groombridge, United Against a Nuclear Iran
Meg Ten Eyck, Education Manager, The Trevor Project
Mike Gin, Mayor of Redondo Beach and candidate for Congress
Mitchell Gold, Founder, Faith in America
Ned Farr, Director, “A Marine Story”
Richard Grenell, Former Communications Director to the U.S. mission to the United Nations
Richard Tisiei, former State Senator (R, MA)
Roy Ashburn, former State Senator (R, CA)
S. E. Cupp, Conservative political commentator
Sarah Longwell, Berman & Co.
Scott Schmidt, President, LCR Los Angeles

WHERE:
Hilton Anatole
2201 Stemmons Freeway
Dallas, TX, 75207
214-748-1200

WHEN:
April 28 – May 1, 2011

Friday, April 29
9:00 am- 9:45 am
Reagan’s 80-20 Rule: Building new coalitions in our common goal of creating a stronger, more inclusive Republican Party. (Sarah Longwell, and Audra Shay, Dave Nalle)

10:15 am-11:00 am
Ending ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’ An inside look at Log Cabin Republicans’ legal and legislative challenges to ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ (Dan Woods, R. Clarke Cooper, Alex Nicholson)

11:05am-11:55 am
Issues Around The Corner. Priorities being tackled by state and local leaders. (Jeff Cook, David Lampo, Evan Wolfson, State Rep. Dan Zwonitzer)

12:10pm-2:00pm
Log Cabin Republicans National Luncheon with remarks by Senator Richard Tisei & Senator Allan Kittleman, with recorded greeting by Congressman Pete Sessions. Introductions provided by Chuck Wolfe of the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, Evan Wolfson of Freedom to Marry, and R. Clarke Cooper of Log Cabin Republicans.

2:15 pm-3:15 pm
Foreign Policy Discussion. An in-depth look at global hot spots with leading foreign policy experts (Richard Grenell and Amb. Kristin Silverberg).

3:20 pm-4:15 pm
On the inside: Leading as Republicans. (Sen. Roy Ashburn, Scott Schmidt, DC Republican Party Chairman Bob Kabel, Presidential Candidate Fred Karger)

Saturday, April 30

9:30 am- 10:25 am
No Longer In Silence, Where We Are in 2011. A discussion of past Liberty Education Forum programs and looking forward to programs for 2011.

10:50am – 11:45am
Faith in America. Mitchell Gold speaks about his organization and book, “Crisis: 40 Stories of Growing Up Gay in America.”

11:55am – 12:55pm
Liberty Education Forum Luncheon featuring Evan Wolfson of Freedom to Marry and Dallas Sheriff Lupe Valdez.

1:00 pm – 3:00 pm
Film Screening: A Marine Story Followed byQ&A with Film Director Ned Farr

3:15 pm- 4:00 pm
It Gets Better. Overcoming bullying and discrimination with Meg Ten Eyck of the Trevor Project.

6:00-9:30 pm
Log Cabin Republicans National Dinner with remarks by S.E. Cupp & Congressman Bob Barr and recorded greeting by Senator Norm Coleman.

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