HAS QUEEN ELIZABETH II "TURNED HER BACK" ON THE GAY COMMUNITY?

As Britain celebrates the Jubilee anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II's reign, British LGBT activist and OutRage! founder Peter Tatchell takes the queen to task for her silence on gay issues, in an op-ed in The Guardian:

Queen Elizabeth II (Wikipedia)

While I doubt that Elizabeth II is a raging homophobe, she certainly doesn’t appear to gay-friendly. Not once in her 60-year reign has she publicly acknowledged the existence of the LGBT community—or gay members of her own royal family. The Queen has turned her back on queens.

"While she has spoken approvingly of the UK’s many races and faiths, for six decades she has ignored LGBT Britons. Judging from her silence, it seems that we are the unspeakable ones – the people she cannot bare to acknowledge or mention in public. Why the double standards?

"Regardless of whether these omissions are a reflection of the Queen’s personal views or the result of advice from her courtiers, as monarch she bears ultimate responsibility. Her silence sends a signal of exclusion and disrespect.

"Astonishingly, since she became Queen in 1952, the words “gay” and “lesbian” have never publicly passed her lips. There is no record of her ever speaking them. Even when she announced government plans for gay law reform in her Queen’s speeches, she did not use the words lesbian or gay. Apparently, mentioning LGBT people is beneath the dignity of the monarch.

"The Queen visits many charities and welfare organisations. But never in 60 years has she visited a gay charity or welfare agency. She has, for example, ignored deserving gay charities like the Albert Kennedy Trust and Stonewall Housing, which support homeless LGBT youth. Although she is a patron of many good causes, none of them are gay or serve the gay community…

Peter Tatchell (Wikipedia)

"When there are major tragedies involving the loss of life, the Queen often visits the site and the victims in hospital. This did not happen when neo-Nazi David Copeland bombed the Admiral Duncan gay pub in Soho, London, in 1999, killing three people and wounding 70 others. At the time, it was the worst terrorist outrage in mainland Britain for many years. To most people’s surprise, the Queen did not visit the bombed-out pub or the hospitalised victims….

"As head of state, the Queen is supposed to represent and embrace all British people, not just some. How much longer will the LGBT community have to wait for royal recognition and acceptance?"

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QUEEN LATIFAH PERFORMS AT GAY PRIDE FESTIVAL - BUT DID SHE ACTUALLY COME OUT?

Queen Latifah headlined the Long Beach Lesbian & Gay Pride Festival in Californiaon May 19

“I've been waiting to do this for a long time,” Oscar-nominated actress and recording star Queen Latifah told 100,000 people in attendance at her May 19 concert at this year's 29th annual Long Beach Lesbian & Gay Pride Festival in Southern California

Gay activists are now asking whether or not Queen Latifah actually publicly came out when she told the crowd that she was happy to be in the presence of “her people.”

But as former MTV executive Terrance Dean told me following the publication of his terrific 2008 bestselling book Hiding in Hip Hop (Atria/Simon & Schuster), "I think if Queen Latifah came out, it would create a whole new precedent. She’s on the verge."

During her May 19 Gay Pride,  the 42-year-old Queen latifah - who will host a new syndicated daytime talk show that is slated to debut in the fall of 2013 - encouraged the audience to “to conquer hate with love.”

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THE MUPPETS SING HOTSTUFF BY DONNA SUMMER

Donna Summer - the Queen of Disco - died the morning of May 17 following a battle with lung and breast cancer. Summer believed she contracted it by inhaling toxic particles after the 9/11 attack in New York City.

The 5-time Grammy winner who shot to superstardom in the 1970s with such iconic hits like as Last Dance, Hot Stuff and Bad Girls.

"People continue to love disco because it’s joyful music," Summer told me in her final sit-down interview with Three Dollar Bill a couple years ago.You can read that entire interview by clicking here.

At the time of her death, Summer was reportedly finishing work on her new album.

Summer was 63. RIP.

  
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MONTREAL'S FAMED DIVERS/CITÉ FEST MOVES FROM GAY VILLAGE TO OLD PORT IN 2012

Montreal drag icon Mado La Motte greets her public at Mascara which will hold its 15th edition at Jacques-Cartier Pier in the Old Port, where Divers/Cité has moved their festival site for 2012  (Photo courtesy Divers/Cité)

The times they-are-a-changing.

The single most important and influential gay event in the history of Montreal was the police raid of the Sex Garage loft party on the night of July 14, 1990, in Old Montreal, which directly inspired Bad Boy Club Montreal to organize the BBCM’s first Black & Blue circuit party in 1991, as well as laid the groundwork for Montreal’s Divers/Cité Queer Pride March that Puelo Deir co-founded with Suzanne Girard in 1993.

Together, over the next decade, Divers/Cité and Black & Blue would transform Montreal into a choice gay tourism destination, pushing Tourisme Montréal to create a gay tourism template since adopted by tourism authorities worldwide.

In 2007 Fierté Montréal (Montreal Pride) took over the parade and community day previously organized by Divers/Cité, while Divers/Cité continued on as Montreal's internationally-renowned Divers/Cité queer arts and culture festival, which in 2012 runs from August 2 - 5.

But 20 years after Divers/Cité and Black and Blue put Montreal on the international gay map, this year Divers/Cité is moving their festival site from the Gay Village to the Jacques-Cartier Pier in the Old Port.

"Motivated by a desire for growth and by the increasing constraints of its previous site, the organization has made the decision to move its outdoor stages to a space better suiting its needs and the expectations of festival-goers," Divers/Cité explains in a prepared statement. "The recent move of Terminus Voyageur to Berri Street, the reduction of available space in Émilie-Gamelin Park and the sector’s recent vocational changes have made further development perspectives for the Festival in the area near impossible"

Up until last year the City of Montreal was actually pressuring Divers/Cité to move to the city’s new Quartier des Spectacles. The hope was Divers/Cité would move some of its mega-events there, like Mascara, 1 Boulevarde des Rêves and Le Grand Bal.

“We got an order from our board to move [last year]," Divers/Cité's director general Suzanne Girard told me on the eve of last summer's festival. "But we couldn’t because the First Peoples’ Festival – usually held during the summer solstice [in June] – have Place des Festivals [at the same time]. They were forced to do their festival then because Spectra moved their FrancoFolies festival from August to June.”

Thus the move this year to the Jacques-Cartier Pier in the Old Port.

The move will also likely help bolster Divers/Cité's finances. Canadian PM Stephen Harper and his ruling Conservative Party government began cutting funding to gay events across Canada in 2009, when Divers/Cité saw its federal tourism grant slashed by $155,000.

This year's 20th edition of Divers/Cité runs from August 2 - 5. Meanwhile, Fierté Montréal runs from August 9 - 14 in the Gay Village.

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BELGIAN GAY TEEN COMING-OF-AGE FILM RAISES MORE THAN, UM, EYEBROWS

 Bavo Defurne (L) directs actor Jelle Florizoone on the set of North Sea Texas (Photo courtesy Indeed Films)

If Toronto’s film festival has become an indispensable tool in the Hollywood publicity machine, then the Montreal World Film Festival is still an event that is principally about discoveries. And this past year no film was more anticipated than director Bavo Defurne’s debut feature film North Sea Texas, about two teenage boys who fall in love.

The Flemish-Belgian production was released in Belgium 2011, had its international premiere at the Montreal World Film Festival last August where it won the Silver Zenith Award in the First Films World Competition, as well as the International Federation of Film Critics’ FIPRESCI Prize, again for debut works. And it is the closing film at the BFI’s 26th London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, screening twice on April 1, before is goes into wide release across the UK on April 6.

“This film explores many of the same themes as my short films – the discovery that you are not the same as everybody else, that you are different,” says Defurne, the widely-acclaimed (and openly gay) director often described as Belgium’s best kept secret – until now, that is. “But my short films didn’t go far enough, they didn’t explore what happened afterwards.”

Jelle Florizoone and Mathias Vergels

star in North Sea Texas

(Photo courtesy Indeed Films)

So Defurne decided to film North Sea Texas, adapted from a novel called This Is Everlasting by André Sollie, a heartwarming coming of age story that follows a teenage boy called Pim (wonderfully played by Jelle Florizoone) who falls in love with Gino, the rugged, motorcycling boy next door (Mathias Vergels).

“Coming of age films usually end with the discovery of one’s identity, but in this film identity is not the issue, it is about love,” Defurne says. “The film is about what’s next. It is a film about finding happiness. So many [gay films] do little to uplift gay people. I saw Brokeback Mountain and it is a touching and heartbreaking film that makes us all cry, but not in a good way. I wanted to make a film about the life they could have had, a happy film.”

The press kit for North Sea Texas emphasizes that this coming of age tale is universal. And it is. But many straight people will insist that any film that focuses on two gay teens is not “universal.”

So it’s no surprise that Defurne and producer Yves Verbraeken (who also co-wrote the script) had trouble securing financing for their film. “Belgium is a country of beer drinkers and there is one Belgian beer company who sponsors all films and they told us, ‘Your film is not the target audience of beer drinkers.’ As if we only make films for gays and gays don’t drink beer.”

But Defurne was delighted with the raves North Sea Texas garnered following its international premiere at the Montreal World Film Festival.  Even Variety swooned in their review, “The [film] benefits from an artful combination of naturalistic performances and attractively stylized visuals, aided by judicious use of an evocative score. The isolated seaside location (unspecified in the film but shot in Ostende) practically becomes a character itself, with gorgeous shots of crashing waves, blowing reeds and empty sand dunes employed lyrically throughout.”

Defurne is currently screening his film on the gay-and-lesbian film festival circuit. “In an ideal world it wouldn’t make a difference,” he admits. “I wish heterosexuals would be just as charmed by my film as gay people were charmed by Titanic. But that’s not reality.”

North Sea Texas is the closing film at the BFI’s26th London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, screening twice on April 1, before is goes into wide release across the UK on April 6.

Click here for the official North Sea Texas website 

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PATTI LaBELLE, MAVIS STAPLES & DEBORAH COX 100% UNCENSORED - ON BEING DIVAS, SHOWBIZ RIVALRIES AND THEIR GAY FANS

Says Patti LaBelle, "Gay men are my glam squad. They are all my children."

(Photo courtesy Patti LaBelle)

Soul sister Patti LaBelle is looking for a pair of pink pumps given to her by supermodel Naomi Campbell when Joy, her housekeeper, interrupts to announce three boxes of brand new shoes have just been delivered.

LaBelle – a big-haired holy roller of a woman known for blowing other singers off the stage as well as for kicking off her shoes in the middle of gut-busting, gospel-stomping rave-ups – gives up the search.

The pumps are stacked somewhere among the thousands of other pairs of shoes in her Philadelphia home, a number I put at 3,000 in the course of our conversation. But if you ever doubted "Miss Patti Boom Boom" is a platinum member of the diva club, she dispels that notion when she tells me over the phone, "No, I’ve got 5,000 pairs and counting."

Mavis Staples

(Photo courtesy Mavis Staples)

It isn’t shoes that make a diva, of course. It’s inner strength and fortitude, a larger-than-life persona and voice, something LaBelle boasts in spades.

But two-inch eyelashes, fab hair and shoes go a long way.

"I say, ‘A diva got to do what a diva got to do.’ I’m a diva," LaBelle says. "I can’t deny that. But you have to pay your dues and I’ve paid mine."

So has gospel legend Mavis Staples, who with The Staple Singers rode I’ll Take You There straight to Number One and into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

But if LaBelle is a cosmic diva – the late Luther Vandross, onetime teenaged VP of Patti’s fan club and a soul legend in his own right, once noted, "If there was an intergalactic singing competition, I would suggest that Earth send Patti LaBelle" – then Mavis Staples is the earthly anti-diva.

"I think people use the word ‘diva’ in the wrong way," Staples told me. "And Mavis ain’t no diva."

For Deborah Cox, divahood is less a state of mind than being blessed with a big voice. When it comes to big voices, Cox – who like the late Whitney Houston was discovered, signed and groomed by music biz legend Clive Davis – was long compared to Houston until she matched Whitney chop-for-chop on the 2000 duet Same Script, Different Cast.

Deborah Cox

(Photo courtesy Deborah Cox)

In the studio Houston told her, "You can sang! You’re in the club now!"

Says Cox, "When I think of Mavis Staples, I think of her raspy, raw, soulful voice and inspirational music that resonated throughout my home when I was growing up. And Patti is an inspiration. I’ve been to many of her shows and she always gives it her all."

Just two weeks after our June 2005 interview, I saw Cox share the stage in July 2005 with LaBelle (who wept onstage before dedicating a gospel number to Luther Vandross, who had passed away a couple days earlier, on July 1) at the Montreal International Jazz Festival, the same summer Mavis Staples made her much-anticipated festival return in nearly a decade co-headlining with the Blind Boys of Alabama, who themselves recently pulled off one of the biggest comebacks in rock history.

Thank God for the devil’s music
 
"I’m so glad the Blind Boys decided to stretch out [on their recent string of Grammy-winning albums] because that’s what got them to this era," says Mavis Staples about the band that was formed at the Alabama Institute for the Negro Blind in 1939.

Now 72, Staples remembers when her cotton-picking guitarist father, Roebuck "Pops" Staples, brought her to see the Blind Boys when she was a child, and her mother used to cook them all dinner back home in Mississippi. Pops Staples founded The Staple Singers in 1948 and they finally cracked the top 40 eight times from 1971 to ’75, reaching number 1 with the funky, inspirational classic I’ll Take You There in 1972.
That’s when they were dubbed "God’s greatest hit makers."

Mavis Staples at Wattstax, with Pops behind her

(Photo: Wattstax Concert Photos)

 "I’ll never forget that time," Mavis says. "The Staple Singers at number 1! That was the best thing in the world. You just had to stop and listen to the radio. The DJs just jumped on the song and [Memphis-based Stax Records] didn’t have to promote it. That’s when [people] wanted to put us out of the church! They said we were singing the devil’s music!"

Born Patricia Holt 68 years ago, Patti LaBelle grew up singing in church too.

When word of a new lead singer at Beulah Baptist Church in southwest Philly spread, audiences flocked from all over the city. In 1959, 15-year-old Patti formed The BlueBelles and renamed herself Patti LaBelle. Cindy Birdsong left the girl group in 1967 to replace the late Florence Ballard in The Supremes, but not before the quartet recorded Patti’s signature song Over the Rainbow.

"My voice lends itself to high notes and I love to scream," LaBelle notes with considerable understatement.

In the 1960s she opened for The Rolling Stones. When she opened for James Brown, the Godfather of Soul was so jealous of The BlueBelles’ standing ovations he had the curtain closed before the audience stopped clapping.

(Incidentally, I got the last-ever sit-down interview with James Brown in December 2006. Mr. Brown would died just days later, on December 25. But I digress.)

The BlueBelles were even chased out of Texas by the Ku Klux Klan. During that tumultuous decade, Patti got engaged to Otis Williams, lead singer of The Temptations. Says Patti, "Honey, the ring was so big I could have used it as a headlight."

1970s disco funk queens LaBelle

(Photo courtesy Patti LaBelle)

Patti hit her stride fronting ’70s funk trio LaBelle, whose song about a New Orleans prostitute, Lady Marmalade, was a huge hit in 1975. Legendary hitmaker and New Orleans native Allen Toussaint - who produced the smash hit - once told me, "Patti was so professional. I remember her sitting down on a stool in the studio singing softly. She is such a great talent."

That same year, 1975, Patti's sister Viviane died of cancer. Then her best friend Claudette, 34, died of cancer. Her second sister, Barbara, would die of colon cancer in 1982. Then her third sister Jackie died of brain cancer. But LaBelle adopted and raised all of their children.

"Day by day I got stronger," Patti says. "My sisters would have wanted me to be a leader and take over. When they went through their chemo, and getting ready for their transition, I don’t think they knew they were leaving but they knew I was a survivor. I think about them every day. I got to be the mother of their children."

LaBelle was starring on Broadway with Al Green in the gospel musical Your Arm’s Too Short to Box With God when she learned backstage that her sister Barbara was dying. "I said [to Green], ‘Please take over for me.’ And he told me, ‘It’s not my fault your sister is dying’ and refused to give me time off."

So LaBelle lost it, smashed her glass of Courvoisier and lunged at Green. "I think he was going through something that made him mean and vicious. I hope he’s better."

Whitney Houston and Deborah Cox

Staples, meanwhile, finally received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005. But she is most happy "Pops" was alive when The Staple Singers were inducted into the Rock Hall of Fame in March 1999. (Pops died of a heart attack on December 15 that year.)

"Daddy’d been sick [for a while]," Staples recalls. "But he said, ‘I’m getting my tuxedo ready ‘cuz I’m going to that!’ I was angry [when he died]. I got sad and depressed. ‘What am I gonna do?’ I said, ‘Daddy, you left me here and I don’t even know what key I sing in!’"

LaBelle’s vocals reign Supremes
 
After years of being guided by Pops Staples, and then by Prince, Mavis Staples won her first three solo W.C. Handy Awards (a big deal in the R’n'B community) last month for her latest album Have a Little Faith.

Patti LaBelle has also risen from the ashes a living legend, in the process rubbing other divas the wrong way.

But it is her rumble with Diana Ross that is the stuff of legend: When the BlueBelles and the Supremes were on the same bill, Ross would sneak into their dressing room, see what Patti was wearing, and have her gofer buy her the same outfit.

Then at Mo­town Re­turns To The Apol­lo 1985 Di­ana Ross showed up to sing the last song, I Want To Know What Love Is. She asked the rest of the star-studded cast for a lit­tle help and LaBelle pretty much blew Ross off the stage (click here for the video or watch it below).

"I have strong pipes," LaBelle says. "I think I have one of the loudest voices in showbiz. It’s not intentional. That’s just the way I feel."

Which finally brings us to the ever-loyal audiences of LaBelle, Staples and Cox:  Gay men.

Patti LaBelle

(Photo courtesy Patti LaBelle)

"I think it’s the big-voice syndrome," says Deborah Cox, whose song Absolutely Not has become a gay anthem. "Singers like Donna Summer, Martha Wash and Patti are adored by the gay community because of the bigness of our voices and the bigness of our femininity. Gay icons have lifelong careers and I am grateful and accept their love and affection."

"Bless them," Patti agrees. "They’re my glam squad. They are all my children. They look to me as a mother, a sister or a real good girlfriend. Because I am strong and I fight for their rights. I fight when I see a gay person denied like I fight for my children."

But it is Mavis who sums it up best. "Everybody is the same," she says. "I am no better than you and you’re no better than me. We are all God’s children."

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DONNA SUMMER 100% UNCENSORED - ON HER RISE, DIVAHOOD, DISCO AND HER GAY FANS

Summer: "Disco is joyful music"
(Photo Courtesy Sony BMG)

May 17, 2012 UPDATE: TMZ is reporting Donna Summer died of cancer this morning in Florida at age 63. Click here for more info. Below is Summer's final interview with Three Dollar Bill. 

Donna Summer remembers the day she discovered Love to Love You Baby was number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart. She was returning to America from Germany in 1975 and was being picked up at the airport by the late Neil Bogart, the Svengali behind Casablanca Records.

"I was elated!" Donna Summer tells me. "I got off the plane and stepped into the limousine. Neil closed the door and we heard the first beats of Love to Love You Baby come on the radio."

Then Donna Summer begins to sing Love to Love You Baby to me on the phone. I just about die and go to disco heaven.

"The driver had no idea that song was mine," Summer laughs. "The song became a smash!"



Donna back in the day

So big, in fact, that Summer singlehandedly brought disco out of the gay and black underground nightclubs into the mainstream, becoming the ultimate disco diva of the era.

"People continue to love disco because it’s joyful music," Summer explains.

But Summer was always more than just disco.

The Boston-born beauty learnt her vocal chops singing gospel music in church, then auditioned – along with 300 other aspiring singers – for a part in the musical Hair in NYC. She won a role in the German production, moved to Munich and became a huge star in Europe.

Then she met producer Giorgio Moroder, the man who recorded Love to Love You Baby (with lyrics by Donna); 1977′s monumental I Feel Love, the gay anthem that laid the groundwork for the techno revolution of the ’80s and ’90s; and 1979′s number 1 disco duet No More Tears (Enough Is Enough) with Barbra Streisand.

The rest, as they say, is history, and Summer went on to sell over 130 million records.

Summer left Casablanca for Geffen Records – going from the hands of one Svengali (the late Neil Bogart)  into another’s (David Geffen would pair Summer with producer Quincy Jones) – after she won the first-ever Grammy Award for Best Female Rock Vocal for Hot Stuff in 1980.

"Awards are not important in and of themselves," Summer says, then jokes, "Though I do pick up a bottle of water sometimes thinking of getting a tenth Grammy!"

Then came the homophobic "disco sucks" backlash. Disco, mainstream America made very clear, is cocksucker music.

"The real animosity between rock and disco lay in the position of the straight white male," music critic Peter Braunstein once astutely opined in the Village Voice. "In the rock world, he was the undisputed top, while in disco, he was subject to a radical decentring. Only by killing disco could rock affirm its threatened masculinity."

Along the way the disco backlash claimed many careers.

For Summer, the attack was double-barrelled. In the early 1980s an urban myth claimed Summer made anti-gay remarks, that AIDS was divine retribution from God, and many gay clubs banned her music.

Summer issued a press statement in 1984 denying any homophobic statements. But in 1991 New York Magazine printed a two-paragraph item in their gossip column rehashing the rumours, concluding "it’s incomprehensible that she won’t retract those statements."

Summer sued the magazine for libel for $50-million and settled out of court.

"It was awful, especially since none of it was true," Summer says today. "But I can’t hunt these people down. In this business people write stuff about you all the time and I can’t control everything."

Today Summer continues to embrace her gay fans. But what is it about Donna Summer that gay men love? Is it the big voice? The big personality? The big hair?

"People ask me this all the time and I tell them it’s not about how I look," Summer replies, "It’s that I love you back. It’s about love. I have an ability to bring gay and straight people together [at my concerts] and [it's] all about the love."

In 2008, 17 years after the New York Magazine battle of 1991, the same year she recorded her last album of original music, Summer released Crayons (Burgundy Records/Sony BMG), her critically hailed album of original material that featured the number 1 Billboard dance hit Stamp Your Feet and the aptly named track The Queen Is Back in which Summer name-checks her old hits On the Radio and Love to Love You Baby.

"I’m poking fun at myself," Summer says. "The title is tongue-in-cheek!"

But Donna Summer – who turns 64 this December, has three children as well as three grandchildren ("I’m a grandmom!") and whose most recent single To Paris With Love topped the U.S. Billboard Dance Chart in August 2010  – admits she can be something of a diva.

"I think I’m a diva in the theatrical sense [on stage]," the Queen replies. "But not in my personal life. There is a big separation between who I am and what I do, and I do it well."

Click here for Donna Summer’s official website.

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