Lavender Magazine - Minnesota’s GLBT Magazine - Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender News - Minneapolis / Saint Paul
If you can read this text, you haven't installed the Flash plugin yet.
Girls will be boys, the old song says, and boys will be girls. That’s certainly true of transgendered people, folks who identify with a gender other than their original biological sex. Some transpeople go no further than dressing in the clothes of the “opposite” sex, while others take a medical route, using hormones and usually […]
Editor’s Note: The following letters are in response to Paul Varnell’s column “Death by Homophobia” in the February 28 issue of Lavender:
What is it going to take to pass hate-crime legislation? Another person to be murdered because they are gay? Homophobia in schools has reached the extreme of one youth killing another because a student […]
Love can be found anywhere. With the film Shelter, it comes in the form of a former surfing buddy. Writer and director Jonah Markowitz came up with the idea while he was at home in Colorado: “I saw two guys tossing a Frisbee back and forth, and I wanted to make a movie with two […]
Home & Yard Blvd. Section
The irony, of course, is that, despite its location in Downtown Minneapolis, a place founded in 1895 on design is sometimes hard to find. “People who drive by can’t find our store, because the light rail hides the whole front of it,” Rosie Lebowitz, who describes herself as Rosenthal Contemporary Furniture’s […]
Home & Yard Blvd. Section
Concrete is in Brian Kaufman’s blood. His grandfather, Nick, started Kaufman Concrete in North Dakota just after World War II. Some years later, Brian’s father took the company over, and still is running it today. Brian eventually founded his own Minnesota-based version of Kaufman Concrete, this one specializing in decorative detailing.
Photos […]
Home & Yard Blvd. Section
Gone for now are the dark, cold winter months. Remind yourself of that every day—it will make you happier…guaranteed. As the days keep getting longer and longer, bring some of that wonderful natural light into your home with Solatube solar skylights. These miniwindows to the outside rays, which let a great […]
Congressman Keith Ellison (DFL-Minneapolis) is wrapping up his first term representing Minnesota’s Fifth Congressional District. I sat down with him in his office to check in about some of this session’s highlights.
Congressman Keith Ellison and Kim Ellison. Photo by Sophia Hantzes
What was your position on the attempt to strip transgender protection from the Employment Non-Discrimination […]
National News
Oklahoma House Won’t Cite Member for Antigay Talk
Oklahoma State Representative Sally Kern will not receive legislative punishment for antigay comments she made earlier this year, House Speaker Chris Benge said. Thousands of e-mails and phone calls began flooding the offices of Kern and other legislators after she told a group of fellow Republicans that […]
Given the tenor of our times, I never would have thought that reading The Wall Street Journal would lead to one of the more inventive GLBT political donor sites on the Web today. But that’s what happened when South Beach-based Juan Ahonen-Jover, PhD, read a story about GLBT philanthropist Tim Gill, the Gill Foundation, and […]
Decades after her heyday in the 1920s and 1930s, self-described “ambisextrous” stage and screen star Tallulah Bankhead is as famous for her bad-girl antics as for her acting talent. Bankhead was born to a prominent political family in Huntsville, Alabama, probably in 1903 (the year is subject to debate). Her father, a US Congressman, sent […]
The Lady With All the Answers
Apr. 3-20
History Theatre
30 E. 10th St., St. Paul
(651) 292-4323
www.historytheatre.com
Suzy Messerole is a celebrated director of queer and feminist works. So, The Lady With All the Answers, a bioplay about Ann Landers (née Eppie Lederer), the most famous mainstream advice columnist ever, may seem uncharacteristic.
Cathleen Fuller in The Lady with All […]
A 30-year-old singer with the voice (and looks) of an angel, Stewart Olerich is well-known in our community. He performed with the popular group DiscFunktion, which disbanded after a number of years of musically enchanting audiences. He was a talented karaoke host with Mia Dorr’s Premier Entertainment. He also bartended at the Brass Rail.
Stewart Olerich […]
after Pi opened in 2007, Bitch caused a sensation when she made her first Minneapolis appearance there on March 26. Now, a year later, on April 13, she’s returning to Pi with her new band, The Exciting Conclusion, as part of a national tour. The openers for the evening are The Pussy Pirates.
Bitch. Photo by […]
This issue’s column was inspired by, and is dedicated to, Eliot Spitzer. What, you may ask, is the former Governor of New York doing in a leather column? He’s serving as a good example of a bad example. The leather/BDSM/fetish community can learn much from his recent misadventures. We ignore these lessons at our own […]
Clooney Is The Fantastic Mr. Fox
What’s the connection between the Coen Brothers’s dark, violent No Country for Old Men and the upcoming animated family feature The Fantastic Mr. Fox? Besides Coen collaborator George Clooney in the starring voice role, that would be gay superproducer Scott Rudin, the man whose recent Oscar acceptance speech included a […]
The 30-year-old Astraea Foundation for Lesbian Justice is the world’s only lesbian-led feminist foundation focused on both US and international rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersexed people. Astraea now is represented in Minnesota. You have an opportunity to learn about the foundation and contribute to it during a fund-raiser on April 6.
Louisa Hext. […]
Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex
Mary Roach
Norton
$24.95
Mary Roach tackles—dispassionately, factually, hilariously—the subject of sexual research. What’s not to fascinate? Take Chapter Four, for example. Does not the heading “The Upsuck Chronicles: Does Orgasm Boost Fertility, and What Do Pigs Know About It?” simply scream, “Read me!” Much food for…thought. Roach’s previous book is […]
Something makes me uneasy about the phrase “zero tolerance.” It smacks of every shade of right-wing extremist cant, although it is used with good intention—against school bullying, weapons in schools, and maltreatment of stockyard animals. But the phrase often is used with a kind of finality that implies it is in itself the solution, not […]
Alison Bechdel Visits University of Minnesota
Megan Kocher (left) and Alison Bechdel. Photo by Sophia Hantzes
Alison Bechdel, author of the critically acclaimed Fun Home and the comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, visited the University of Minnesota on March 6. Her pieces have been called “one of the preeminent oeuvres in the comic genre, period” […]
The very idea of “faith in action” calls forth in my mind visions of potlucks, Bible studies, and the phrase I have come to adore: “heart of hearts.” The substance of faith-based activism, religious-based dialogue, and the slow and steady progress of the religious establishment on GLBT issues is, by and large, the intimate realm […]
With winter fading fast, it’s natural to want to go through all the clutter in your house, and clean it out. The infamous “spring cleaning” bug is about to hit (if it hasn’t already), and, of course, you’re all set with your cleaning supplies.
Photo Courtesy of GarageTek
This year, it might be time to take that […]
I recently auditioned for the Public Broadcasting Service production of Frontline: Portrait of a Raging Underclass. The program attempts to chronicle the travails of one individual whose struggle is deemed entertaining enough to elicit donations for other provocative programming.
At 10 AM on March 6, I arrived at the studio for the first casting call. I […]
Welcome to the first lesson of Lesbian 101: Easy Out, a quick-start guide on how to come out. This lesson, and each subsequent one, will be posted at <www.jenniferparello.com/les101>.
So, you’ve decided to be a lesbian. Maybe you’ve come to this stunning revelation after a confusing episode in the ladies locker room. Or, perhaps you experienced […]
Dear Ms. Behavior:
My girlfriend of two years has told me she needs space to think about how things are going between us.
I have committed some infractions—invasions of privacy. I found out that she was going to see this girl she apparently likes while I was out of the country.
I was shocked, because I never noticed […]
I always have wanted to bond with the gals from Sex in the City, gossiping over salads at the Coffee Shop on the west side of Union Square in Manhattan. Then, I found the Grandview Grill, on the corner of Fairview and Grand Avenues in St. Paul. The retro chrome chairs, café tables, and booths […]
When grocery stores started carrying fresh flowers, the floral industry got nervous. The slashed prices, the convenience, the accessibility—everything about it spelled trouble. But according to Roger Beck, of Roger Beck Florist, the industry actually received an unexpected boost.
Beck says, “I think it really helped with people getting more comfortable with having flowers as a […]
Rainbow Families, the organization supporting GLBT families in Minnesota and throughout the Upper Midwest, recently updated its members on a planned merger with the Family Equality Council, a national organization also committed to supporting GLBT families.
The Rainbow Families board of directors unanimously recommended a merger in January, citing mission synergies between the two groups and […]
A luscious piece of cake—a piece of white or marble cake with a lemon-curd filling, and topped with butter cream frosting adorned with colorful butter cream roses. That’s all I wanted on January 17, my birthday. My partner, Chad, was planning to treat me to a dinner on my special day. “No,” I explained. “I […]
Horoscope for Mar. 28-Apr. 10 Get your motor going, when the Sun pounces into Aries this period. We feel a sudden urge to surge. This is no time to rest on your laurels. Wear them instead.
ARIES (MARCH 21-APRIL 20)
What is it that makes you so charismatic and such a social magnet now? With Sun in […]
A world-class city with one of North America’s most dynamic gay populations, Chicago is also a metropolis of lively, distinctive neighborhoods. Two of these areas, both of them on the city’s North Side, have especially strong cachet among gays and lesbians. Lakeview, aka “Boystown,” hugs the Lake Michigan shoreline and contains the wealth of the […]
Across
1 Loafer bottoms
6 Cole Porter’s “Well, Did You ___”
10 Hairspray list
14 Member of sexual congress?
15 Warrior Princess
16 Put in a position?
17 Material for nice stones
18 At once, to Byron
19 Club for Sheehan
20 Lesbian California state senator
23 Madonna’s pair
24 Dottermans of Antonia’s Line
25 “My lips are ___”
29 Announcement from the cockpit
30 Welcome response after an S/M […]
Cruising may be the politically incorrect opposite of commitment, but cruises can mark the beginning of an interpersonal commitment that will last a lifetime. “We do a surprising number of commitment ceremonies,” according to David Lawrance, owner of Paradise Charter Cruises which, almost incidentally, has become proficient and prolific where GLBT commitment-making is concerned.
Lawrance adds, […]
The Molever Law Firm
Trusting a lawyer may be the last thing you would think of doing, considering most contacts many people have with lawyers are geared more toward the negative aspect of the law. But with The Molever Law Firm—which consists of three attorneys, Jeffrey Molever, Cathy Molever, and Kimberly Frank; two paralegals, Jan Haag […]
More than 1,000 GLBT parents, their children, extended family, educators, and allies are anticipated to attend the13th annual Rainbow Families Conference on April 12, 8:30 AM-4:30 PM, at the Bryn Mawr/Anwatin schools in Minneapolis. The daylong event is geared toward educating and drawing together the GLBT parenting community. Keynote speaker Urvashi Vaid will highlight the […]
How times have changed! In 1951, when a young Charles Nolte dazzled Broadway in the innocently studly title role of Billy Budd, the show emanated homoerotic tensions to rival Brokeback Mountain. Trouble was, unlike Brokeback, it never was acknowledged openly. But, of course, the audience and the actors felt it.
(From left) Shirley Venard, Charles Nolte, […]