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Growing Diversity: News for the G/L/B/T and Friends Community
Issue 1. June 2003

Peace and love,
Margie Nichols Ph.D., Editor

In this Issue:
 

6,000 SOGGY PEOPLE: NJ PRIDE TRIUMPHS OVER WEATHER: the 12th annual New Jersey Pride Celebration in Asbury Park

GROUNDBREAKING STUDY OF BDSM AND PSYCHOPATHOLOGY: "Kinky" people at least as healthy as "vanilla" community

KUDOS TO THE SENATOR FROM NEW JERSEY: Senator Frank Lautenburg stands up for Gay Pride

NATURAL SELECTION SMILES ON STRUMPETS: monogamy is unnatural

GAY PENGUINS ROLE MODELS FOR RELATIONSHIPS: Wendell and Cass are a gay male couple at the New York Aquarium

COLLEGE OFFERS DRAG QUEEN MAKEUP COURSE: an art-form and fun

6,000 SOGGY PEOPLE : NEW JERSEY PRIDE  TRIUMPHS OVER WEATHER

June 1, 2003, marked the 12th Annual New Jersey Pride Celebration in Asbury Park, New Jersey.  Although the sun didn't cooperate, six thousand prideful gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered and intersexed people, and their friends, came out in the rain to celebrate.  The Parade was a huge success topped off with floats and a marching band.

The stage ushered in Suzanne Westenhoeffer as the emcee with Sophie B. Hawkins as the highlighted performer.  New Jersey Governor James E. McGreevey spoke on the rally stage in support of legislation that would grant domestic partnership benefits in the state of New Jersey.

The newest attraction to the festival was an exhibit entitled "Picture Me."  In recent months, a group of gay and lesbian youth documented their lives in words and photographic images.  The exhibit, sponsored by Merrill Lynch and Planned Parenthood, made its public debut at the festival.  (Reported by Sue Menahem, Festival Coordinator and IPG Psychotherapist)

SAVE THIS DATE:  Saturday, August 23, from 12:00-8:00 PM - Jersey City Lesbian and Gay Outreach, Inc., sponsors The 3rd Annual Pride Festival on the  waterfront at Exchange Place, Downtown, Jersey City, New Jersey.  The theme for the Jersey City LGBTI Pride Festival is, "POWER IN PRIDE." For information about the event, or to be a vendor, volunteer, etc., please visit their website at:  http://www.jclgo.org/festival/festival-2003.htm

Finally, research proves what we've known all along:  people in the BDSM community are as psychologically healthy as everyone else – maybe healthier.  On June 8, 2003, Dr. Pamela Connolly, Director of the Los Angeles Sexuality Center and Professor of Psychology at California Graduate Institute, presented results of the Center's groundbreaking study at the Annual Conference of the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors and Therapists.  Dr. Connolly and her colleagues gave a battery of psychological tests to members of the BDSM community and to 'vanilla' controls.  They found few differences between controls and kinksters – except that BDSM'ers are LESS likely than others to suffer from major psychopathology (maybe it all gets worked out in the 'scene'!).  Moreover, BDSM players had no greater levels of psychological sadism or masochism, disorders in which the sufferer either derives pleasure out of genuine cruelty (not the play-acting kind)  or compulsively seeks out harmful levels of  pain.

This is enormously important:  most psychotherapists are taught that people who engage in kink are 'sick' just because they enjoy BDSM sex; Sadism, Masochism, and Fetishism are classifiable mental illnesses in the 'official' shrink catalogue, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, or DSM.  Now mental health activists have the ammunition to demand that these categories be removed from the DSM.

Those of you familiar with gay and lesbian history remember that Dr. Evelyn Hooker, another psychologist, conducted a similar study in 1957 – only at that time, the research group was gay men.  Dr. Hooker found that gay men were as psychologically healthy as non-gay men, and her findings formed the basis for the successful fight for the removal of the homosexuality  from DSM classifications of mental illness.

Thanks to Dr. Pamela Connolly, the Evelyn Hooker of kink!

New Jersey is famous for more than just Bruce Springsteen and Tony Soprano.  We have long stood out ahead of other states for our progressive laws and policies on glbt civil rights.  Though we don't have legalized domestic union, we protect the custody rights of gay moms and dads, have second party adoption laws, and include transgender folk as a protected minority.

Last week Senator Frank Lautenberg, Democrat from New Jersey, continued his state's tradition by publicly blasting John Ashcroft's ban of the Department of Justice annual Gay Pride celebration.  This was the first time any Federal Agency has forced the cancellation of a pride event.

Lautenberg immediately fired off an angry letter to Ashcroft.  "I find it particularly outrageous that the Department of Justice , whose mission is to ensure fairness for all Americans, would deprive its own staff members of the right to gather on public property," said Lautenberg.   He also promised legislation if the matter is not resolved – and invited the DOJ employees affected to spend Gay Pride on Capitol Hill with him!

We can all show our appreciation for Frank by sending him a thank you note at his website: http://lautenberg.senate.gov/contact.html

Advocates of polyamory have a support from an unusual source: scientists who study sexuality in animals.   A book published last Fall,  Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation,  by Dr. Olivia Judson, an evolutionary biologist, describes the marvelously diverse forms that sex takes in nature. She concludes that monogamy is the least common and strangest of all, and that humans seem hard-wired for mild promiscuity.  Surveying the range of animal species, she also notes that there are many sound reasons for females in particular to pursue a policy of having many lovers, including to guard against male sterility, to ensure diversity in her offspring, and to encourage many males to protect her and her children.

"Natural selection, it seems, often smiles on strumpets," she observes.  And, she says of the astonishing range of gender and sex arrangements found in the wild: "Mother Nature's been having some fun."

Wendell and Cass, two penguins at the New York Aquarium in Coney Island, have been completely devoted to each other for the last eight years, according to a feature article written by Christine Cardoze  in the 6/10/02 edition of the Columbia News Service.   Unlike all the other penguin couples at the Aquarium, neither one of them has ever been seen 'cheating' with another bird.  Moreover, their keeper, Stephanie Mitchell, says "They're one of the few couples that like to hang out together outside their nest."

But that's not all that makes them stand out among their fellow penguins.  Wendell and Cass are both males:  that is, they are gay.  Since penguins don't have external sex organs, it took several years for zoo keepers to figure this out.   Staff began to suspected it when no eggs were produced despite the fact that the two penguins were known to copulate regularly.  Then, when a keeper noticed that they 'took turns' being mounter and mountee, blood tests confirmed that they are both male ( and 'switches,' apparently).

Rumors that Wendell and Cass keep the neatest nest at the aquarium because they're gay are not true, however.  "These are penguins," said Mitchell.  "They poop in their nest."

Reuters News Service reported on 5/7/03 that an Australian college has introduced a make-up course  targeted at drag queens and cross dressers as well as make-up
students.    Students in the course take on a complete drag queen persona, with wigs, dresses, and accessories to transform themselves.  Michael Schifferle, Swinburne University of Technology lecturer and a make-up artist himself, says that cross dressing movies like 'The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert' and 'To Wong Fu, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar' sparked popular interest in drag queens, but he noted that they have also been part of history for thousands of years.

"It is a serious art form," said Schifferle, "but it is a bit of fun, too, as all make-up should be."

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