You Gotta Read This!

· Burroway, Janet. ”Tim’s Last Kill“

· Churchill, Ward. “‘Some People Push Back’ - On the Justice of Roosting Chickens“

· Dreyfuss, Robert. ”The Holy War on Gays“ /

· Farber, Celia. ”The Trial“

· Kushner, Tony. ”Three Screeds from Key West“

· Kushner, Tony. ”Matthew’s_Passion“

· Rainbow Noose Now With Free Lambda Gag! The Guide (n.a.)

· Rauch, Jonathan.”Pink Pistols.”

· Reitz, Daniel. ”Cunanan the Barbarian“ and “A Timely Death“

· Rofes, Eric. ”Barebacking and the New AIDS Hysteria“

Janet Burroway has more guts than twenty ordinary people put together. Here’s her story from The Guardian about her son’s suicide: “As a child Tim Eysselinck was obsessed with toy soldiers, John Wayne, and guns. As an adult he became a US soldier and toured the world clearing mines. Then he shot himself dead after returning from Iraq.” Read “Tim’s Last Kill.”

Daniel Reitz is a genius. For months I’ve been bitching that the one aspect of the Andrew Cunanan murders that NOBODY was talking about was the shallowness of the rich white fags who built the man up, went to his parties, took his money, fucked him, and never concerned their gym-bunny selves with the fact that he was completely false, empty, and narcissistic at the core. Well, I was wrong. Someone did talk about it—Daniel Reitz in these two essays taken from the Salon Magazine site. “Cunanan the Barbarian“ and “A Timely Death.”

Okay, so Tony Kushner is also a genius—as an artist, sure. No one’s gonna argue with me there. But more than that, now that the whole world wants him to appear on their panel or at their symposium, he’s using the opportunity to say some of the smartest and most necessary things about art and AIDS and politics that we’ve heard in a decade. Check out “Three Screeds from Key West.”

The campaign against sexual harassment may have started out as a noble cause, but is the cure becoming worse than the disease? Celia’s brilliant AIDS writing for Spin demonstrated a commitment to journalism--as a living, breathing thing that mattered--and what she says here about the Spin sexual-harassment trial (in which she was a witness) is, similarly, not for the easily offended. It’s strong stuff and not always easy to agree with. But, damn, is she brave. “The Trial.“

Yes, it’s Tony Kushner again, writing on the murder of Matthew Shepard: “When Trent Lott heard the news about the murder of Matthew Shepard, the first thoughts that flashed through his mind were all about spin. Trent Lott worried about how to keep his promise to the religious right, to speak out against the homosexual agenda, without seeming to endorse murder. Trent Lott endorses murder, of course; his party endorses murder, his party endorses discrimination against homosexuals and in doing so it endorses the ritual slaughter of homosexuals....” (“Matthew’s Passion,”The Nation, November 9, 1998)

Lily Tomlin once quipped, ”No matter how paranoid I get, I worry that it’s never enough to keep up.” Robert Dreyfuss’ ”The Holy War on Gays,” from the Village Voice of March 18, 1999, illustrates her point. “The Christian Right is on a new mission: to drive homosexuality back into the closet. Inside the war rooms of evangelical intolerance....”

“Barebacking and the New AIDS Hysteria—AIDS Leaders Defame Gay Men, Misread Data, and Demand a Crisis Mentality. Is It Any Wonder Gay Men Are Tuning Them Out?” By Eric Rofes. Seattle Free Weekly. April 7, 1999. ”Two visions rooted in vastly different understandings of gay men’s relationship to the epidemic have been advanced in the last few years: one argues that even as the medical syndrome of HIV/AIDS continues, the crisis stage of AIDS has passed for gay men; the other berates gay men for moving away from AIDS-crisis mindsets or taking even a single step out of the bomb shelters we’ve inhabited since the early 1980s....”

“Rainbow Noose Now With Free Lambda Gag!“ The Guide [Boston, Massachusetts], December 1999. “Did the politics of hate-crime and a thirst for vengeance short-shrift justice in the trial of Aaron McKinney? Some gay activists and civil libertarians are now questioning how Shepard’s parents became key players in the trial, virtually dictating the plea bargain that short-circuited it after the jury’s verdict.” If you think justice was done in the McKinney trial, read this for starters.

“Pink Pistols.” Salon.com, March 13, 2000. “The gay movement often portrays homosexuals as helpless victims. Here’s an alternative: Arm them.” Jonathan Rauch has the guts to say what a lot of people have doubtless been thinking. If there’s a war on, are you really counting on the lawyers to save you?

In the red states, people like the governor of Colorado can’t talk about Ward Churchill without frothing at the mouth like mad dogs, which is more entertainment than a person ought to be allowed to have for free. In a remarkable proof of the right’s inability to keep anything complicated in their little heads, you’d think Churchill’s essay (and the related book) were exactly four syllables long. (By now you probably know which four.) But if you look up the term “out of context” in the dictionary, it points you to this example. The essay is long and Churchill pulls no punches. “On the Justice of Roosting Chickens” is a brilliant piece of work.